You Decide Affirmative Action
Brent Havens
December 15, 2012
Laws 420
Professor: Larissa Williamson

Before going into the “you decide” question let’s talk about affirmative action and what it means. Affirmative action is the encouragement of increased representation of women and minority-group members, in the employment industry; the plan is designed to end discrimination by guaranteeing minorities will be hired, regardless of race or gender. While our country hires such groups based upon these guarantees, the qualifications of such people are occasionally overlooked. Many believe that affirmative action is a very effective plan; however, the population which opposes such action frequently includes people of various minorities, as well as many others who have been wronged by this plan in several cases, this plan causes minorities to be perceived as being under qualified when hired; in addition, it also causes a new minority, the white male. Our government must acknowledge the fact that affirmative action is not putting an end to discrimination; in all actuality, this plan has succeeded in creating new minorities, and more reasons for discrimination. Affirmative action frequently causes qualified employees to be looked down upon because some believe them to be affirmative action hires. In this “you decide” we will be talking to other employees and making a case against the company that we suspect hired Susan rather than Richard. We are making a complaint because we suspect that Susan was hired only because it would increase the diversity in the law firm and not by the qualifications and work experience.
First of all, in the summary portion it tells us that the law firm employs over 100 attorneys, 15 of them are junior partners and 5 are senior partners. All of the partners are white men and out of the 80 remaining attorneys there are only 20 females and there is one Asian-American male. We can see so far that the law firm doesn’t have much diversity and recently the senior partners have been very vocal about adding more diversity. After introducing a friend to the position that has many qualities and is more than over qualified for the position the law firm went ahead and hired Susan, an African American. After speaking with key players about the situation we found out this. Samuel Thompson stated that, "Susan comes highly recommended and has been working in Corporate Transactions for almost ten years. She will be an excellent fit in this firm". With Samuel’s statement we can assume that Susan does have more experience than Richard and is qualified for the position. Another employee said, "We desperately need some diversity in this firm. We have the reputation of being a bunch of stodgy, old, white men. In order to appeal to more clients, we have to change our image. Susan will help us do that. After hearing this statement we can see that the law firm is trying to pursue diversity and would most likely put the qualifications behind the color of the applicant’s skin. Another employee stated that,