The Bakke Case & Affirmative Action

This paper will examine affirmative action through the lens of the Bakke case, and the effect that the battle over the issue has had and is having on the state of ethnic and race relations in the U.S.

Affirmative action is designed to help eliminate past and present discrimination based on race, gender, and national origin, particularly in employment and education. The policy seeks to create more opportunities for women and minorities by giving them special consideration in decisions involving hiring, firing, promotion, college admissions, and government contracts. In all of these areas, women and minorities traditionally have been underrepresented. Companies, government agencies, and universities use recruitment, set-asides, and preferences to achieve these goals.

Though the goal of affirmative action is equality, many challenge such programs precisely on those grounds. Opponents say that choosing one person over another because of their race, gender, or national origin is always wrong, no matter how noble the goal. The policy has created bitter divisions that often run along racial and ethnic lines, and it has created fractures among the members of those groups.

Proponents of affirmative action argue that the policy is necessary because women, African-Americans, and other minorities have been excluded from public life. Bringing them into public life not only ends the discrimination, it benefits society because it allows them realize their potential. If employers and

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s third asserted justification on two grounds. First, he found no evidence to indicate that certain areas were underserved by medical care, though he did not doubt that was the case. Second, and more importantly, the school had offered no evidence that this special admissions program would actually correct that problem. Powell found the state's fourth asserted justification to be valid and substantial. Powell wrote, "Physicians serve a heterogeneous population. An otherwise qualified medical student with a particular background whether it be ethnic, geographic, culturally advantaged or disadvantaged may bring to a professional school of medicine experiences, outlooks, and ideas that enrich the training of its student body and better equip its graduates to render with understanding their vital service to humanity." However, he added that the state failed to show how its special admissions program furthered that goal, or that another alternative could have done the same thing without infringing on Bakke's constitutional rights. Therefore, Powell invalidated the special admissions program because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. However, writing for a s

Category: Government - T