I don't like the Affirmative Action. Let me explain myself. I think the basic idea behind Affirmative Action is good, all people, regardless of color and race should have the same opportunity in becomming employed, promoted and accepted to college. Unfortunately, I think it does more harm than good. I think Affirmative Action creates even more gaps between people with different backgrounds. If we as a society want to move towards a society that doesn't care about skincolor, we should concern ourselves with the content of character and not the color of skin.
I think many white people blame Affirmative Action and minority groups for their own lack of success in life. I also think they feel threatened and this type of thinking creates gaps between prople from different backgrounds."Others were assuring me that they would have been accepted at Stanford if some minority student had not gotten their slot"(Miriam Schulman, American Voices, p.285) Another problem with Affirmative Action is that you are putting race and color ahead of people's training and ability to perform, which leads to reverse discrimination. I think that most people, no matter where you are from wants to get hired, promoted, and accepted to school because they are qualified, and not because of Affirmative Action. One more problem with Affirmative Action is to convince people who had nothing to do with slavery to take responsibility for it. "It's very hard to persuade a young Asian college applicant whose parents did not arrive in this country for a century after abolition, that she must take responsibility for slavery"(Miriam Schulman, American Voices, p.287)
I want to believe that we are moving closer to a "color-blind" society. Unfortunately there are still many people who believe that their skin color and race are the only "right" color. I had a talk with a friend from Stockholm, Sweden, which is where I'm from. This particular friend has always been prejudiced, but I thought that she had gotten over it. During my conversation with her, she started to discuss my boyfriend's skin color, who she knows is African-American. She kept telling me that he's light skinned (mulatto). I told her "no" and she says "but he's not a negro, right?" I was shocked, but corrected her and said, "no, he's African-American" The entire conversation made me feel very uncomfortable, as if I was sent back in time. She was trying to make herself feel better by convincing me that he's light skinned. She's far from the only one among people that I grew up with that are prejudiced. I basically grew up defending people from countries other than Sweden. My "friends" and I have had many discussions about immigants over the years. Discussions were I was defending anyone other than Swedish descent. My "friends" continually made racists statement about non-Swedish people. These following quotes are some of my old friends favorite statements about immigrants. "They take our jobs.", "They get money from welfare, so that they can buy fancy cars.", " They take our boyfriends/girlfriends." These are all very horrible statements that were said about people they didn't even know. I know that these are statements from stupid and ignorant people, but Affirmative Action certainly doesn't help them to open up their eyes.
Based on my own experience, I believe that statements like this come from all types of ethnic people. African-American, white and Asian, stupidity and ignorance sees no color. I myself take notice to how African-American people sometimes look at me when I'm walking down the street with my boyfriend. So no matter what color the people are whose making the statements, I think they are all stupid and ignorant. People who are unable to identify the real source of their frustration need to find someone to blame. Even though my experience with prejudiced is limited compared to what minority groups have been going through for many years. I can sympathize with the injustices of society because very often ethnic or religious minority groups becomes the target of people's frustration with life. I think that people have always been looking for other people to blame their own mistakes on and for their own lack of success.
I don't have a sollution for how we as a society should achieve a "color blind" society. What I do know is that we all have to start with ourselves. We all have to look at ourselves as equal with each other. No one is better or worst then anyone else. If we don't look at ourselves as equal bad or equal good, who will? I don't believe that Affirmative Action is helping us with that. Affirmative Action makes us look different from each other, it puts us into different catagories. A catagorie for African-American people, one for White people, one for Asian people and so on. We have to remove the catagories and look at all of us as just people because that is all that we are.
In conclusion, I think we have many things to work on to achieve a complete "color-blind" society were skin color and race doesn't matter. I don't belive that Affirmative Action is the way to achieve that. It creates so many excuses for people to use when they need someone or something to blame their own misstakes on or their own lack of success in life. I do believe that we are moving closer to a society were it doesn't matter where you from, what skin color you have or what name you have. Unfortunatly, how close we get, there will always be ignorant people like my old friends. People who believe that their skin color and race are the only "right" color.