Throughout the history of the United States, there has always been a racial divide between whites and blacks stemming from the days of slavery. A century and a half after the abolition of slavery, the intentional institutionalized oppression has nearly been eliminated, but the wound has still not healed. Many newly freed blacks did not have proper access to the education or opportunistic tools and resources that would have successfully integrated them into society and as a result, their descendants were not as successful as their white counterparts.  Affirmative action was put into place in 1961 and stated that employees should be employed without regard to their race. The policy of affirmative action was taken up in order to increase diversity in the workplace as well as to allow formerly oppressed ethnic groups a chance to have the same economic opportunity as a white man. In the 21st century, however, the paradigm has changed. Employers and schools can, and will, hire applicants using race as a qualifier in order to meet racial quotas for diversity's sake. To deny a qualified person a position based on race is immoral and against the efforts of civil rights movement. Not only is it unjust and unnecessary, affirmative action's effect on the minds of the population may be the root of the current stagnation of race relations. The continued use of affirmative action is detrimental to the already unstable race relations in the United States. 

At its core, affirmative action was meant to allow disadvantaged people the opportunity to have the same chance as anyone else, but there is a problem in the way it currently runs. To determine whether or not someone was at a disadvantage, they use race as a means to find out rather than economic or educational status. At one point in time, one's race was all that was needed to determine whether or not someone had opportunities. Race has become less of a factor in overall success in the last few decades while economic class has become a larger factor (Bridges). Continuing this practice of race based policies rather than economic and education based policies makes the assumption that all people of a race, including the educated and qualified members, are of a lower economic class where that simply is not true. 

Being able to qualify someone based on race is a slippery slope that must be treated as a gateway for more dangerous profilings. Allowing small profilings for affirmative action policies can act as gateways for more harmful policies and practices such as racial profiling at an airport or by police officers. If one is allowed to assume the economic position of a person based on his or her race from historical trends for the purposes of hiring them, why can one not assume the criminal intent of a person based on their race from historical trends (Lim)? At what point is judging a man no longer affirmative action, but profiling? There is a thin cultural line in which these two are defined, but in the future, it may not be as clear. The Patriot Act allowed the United States government to profile minorities in the name of national security, so that future may be closer than previously thought. Affirmative action means well and at its core and a situation such as that would go against its core meaning, but as the proverb goes, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Affirmative action allows employers and universities to use the applicant's race as a qualifier in the admission process in order to ensure their percentage based racial quota is filled. If a white man, belonging to the majority race, were to apply for a position, he would only be able to compete for the job positions not explicitly reserved for minorities. He is now competing with all of the other white men and women, much like the minorities are only competing with other minorities for the reserved positions, but there is a problem in that system. Minority reserved positions representing a proportional population of the workforce and white majority positions representing the remainder is how most would think the system works, but contrary to popular belief, only the minority positions are reserved. That means that a minority applying for a position has to either compete with another minority, or compete with a non-minority, but not both while a white man or woman has to compete with both for the same position. 

In 1989, government enforced affirmative action took hold in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. In order to more closely resemble the city's 60% black population, reserved minority positions in the orchestra were put into effect. The problem arose that the overall orchestral quality had dropped since the introduction of the affirmative action policy due to the guaranteed minority spots. Since they no longer had to compete with all of the applicants, lower caliber musicians were able to make it in while the former players did not make the cut. To hire a lower quality musician because of his or her race is absurd. Settling for lower quality in the arts for political diversity reasons diminishes the accomplishments of minorities who have actually achieved the accomplishment without the extra assistance (Mills). 

There is a theory in the field of psychology known as the "Social Identity Theory." According to the theory, it was meant to "identify the minimal conditions that would lead members of one group to discriminate in favor of the ingroup to which they belonged and against another outgroup" (Social Identity Theory). It was shown that people favor those within the same social groups as themselves. Race is one such social group that people can identify with. Employers are forced to categorize people by race when asked to use race as a qualifier; there is no way around it. This mentality of categorization can bleed into everyday life and affect individuals in a non-professional environment. Colleges with racial quotas also funnel young minds into choosing their "ingroups" when deciding which race they must apply as. This is especially difficult for children of biracial parents when they must choose which group to be a part of in order to pursue higher education and potentially be selected as one of the reserved minority spots. Affirmative action reinforces the misguided belief that other races are an intrinsically different group than one's own race which forces the "us vs them" mentality to prevail. 

There are two prevalent ideas relating to the types of affirmative action. "Weak" affirmative action aims to give disadvantaged minorities an even chance of getting a job as a white man. "Strong" affirmative action is meant to give special treatment to minorities over white men (Pojman). The differences between the two become problematic when looking towards the future. If strong affirmative action is allowed to take precedence over weak affirmative action, it would only strengthen the divide between people of different races and promote inequality. Strong affirmative action was designed to quickly integrate minorities into the workforce on an equal level, and the only way to make that work was by taking away from other groups in order to empower minorities. There must be a middle ground to these policies in order to correct the mistakes of the past while also being fair for the future. If these policies must continue, weak affirmative action would be beneficial by only help the minority groups that need it without negatively affecting others that do not need it. 

It is a misconception that increasing diversity would lead to a decrease in racism simply because of the diverse workplace. A study into such a phenomenon took place in Australia where the police force was examined to see if artificially increased diversity from affirmative action quotas actually decreased the force's discrimination (Shepherd). This belief that increasing the number of minorities in a police force will increase relations with those minority groups stems from the "ingroups and outgroups" idea. A 3rd party onlooker sees a minority officer and assumes that since they are of a different race, they are of that racial outgroup and that they must get along with others of their outgroup. The study found that there was no increase in public relations and police discrimination remained at the same level as it was before the increase in diversity. This borderline racist mentality is supported by the social identity theory and only serves to make strong affirmative action even stronger, creating a cycle that will not end until there is serious reform. 

The earliest form of affirmative action was described in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in order to give equal rights to all people. The Act "forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing" (Teaching With Documents). The definition of discrimination is the treatment in favor or against oneself based on the group one is in. Just from that alone, one can see where the problem lies. It appears that affirmative action goes against what the Act says, yet policies are still in place. Nonspecific language in the Bill allows for it to apply to all people, including those it was intended for at the time. The hypocrisy of what is expressed today as "social justice" compared to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should be enough to do away with strong affirmative action. 

After years of fighting for or against affirmative action, is there actually anything to show for it? In the early days of affirmative action, it helped minorities find jobs that they were qualified for without having to be afraid of discrimination based on race. The government incentivized businesses to meet their diversity quotas by giving them tax breaks and funding if they were met. Decades since then, there is just about an even playing field in the opportunities given to the average white man and the average black man. To prevent racism on an individual case basis, weak affirmative action can and should be used to ensure fairness. Strong affirmative action would only start to give minorities an unfair advantage and that would not be advantageous in the struggle to bring people together and become a single ingroup.

Although that affirmative action's early progress was instrumental in bringing workplace and educational equality that does not mean that those same policies will work decades later. Affirmative action is described as a "tax on white male employment" (Leonard) that functioned much like redistribution of wealth would, except there is no longer a polarizing gap between the two groups. In the field of unskilled labor where strong affirmative action first began, there was a significant increase in minority populations that worked there because of the low skill requirements. In the white-collar world, there was little change until years later when affirmative action started to affect schools so that minorities would now qualify for these jobs. Affirmative action's goal is to remove the discrimination from  the hiring process, yet pressure from the government concerning racial quotas made employers "screen blacks more intensely and be less willing to risk employing less skilled blacks" (Leonard). Instead of making a fair decision with the same criteria a white man would, black men were looked at much closer so that they wouldn't run the risk of having to fire him and drop below the quota. Instead of the government mandating that minorities account for a certain percentage of a business's workforce, they should invest in education in order to make them competitive with the rest of the workforce.

Strong affirmative action also brings with it what is now being called the "white savior industrial complex." The white savior industrial complex is a relatively new cultural phenomenon in which the "white savior" believes himself to be morally superior in saving the helpless minority while in reality they did not need saving. Beliefs such as this are the basis for the popularity of bogus movements such as "Kony 2012" and Tom's Shoes. Not only does the charity not benefit those it had intended to, it makes people feel as if they have contributed and they are less likely to contribute to programs that may actually benefit those in need. 

Affirmative action has done little to solve the economic problems that minorities face. According to The Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, black unemployment has stayed consistently double that of the national average, yet the Bureau of Labor Statistics lists Missouri as a state of average unemployment. By cross-referencing the data, it becomes evident that blacks are still at a significant disadvantage in terms of employment compared to whites and Hispanics. The rate of unemployment of blacks in Saint Louis follows the same pattern of rising and falling as the national average, most likely due to external economic forces, but the chart of black unemployment stays consistently around 10% higher than white unemployment both before affirmative action was put into place and long after it. The data might lead one to believe that affirmative action did not have a significant effect on the employment rate of blacks. 

Affirmative action has a long history in America and in the rest of the Western world. It has been used in the past as a way to amend for mistakes made by giving opportunities to those who have not had it before. It allowed for skilled and unskilled workers alike to integrate into the workforce while still having some quality control. It also opened the way for discrimination and increased the racial tensions that have delicately littered society since the days of slavery. It was believed to be the key in purging racism in the police, but it proved to have no such effect. Affirmative action's time has long since passed and the modern world can no longer ignore the negative side effects of this once-influential policy. Morality and ethics are put in to question when one previously discriminated group will foreseeably be more desirable to a company because of government intervention. Despite all the negative consequences of keeping affirmative action policies, it does allow for one to ask where the line is drawn between discrimination for good and discrimination for bad in relation to race. 

