Affirmative Action to Achieve Equal Rights - Research Paper Example

Despite the institution of affirmative action in our nation, however, the legacy of racism and racism still lives on and this is despite those gains, which were made by the Civil Rights Movement. The opportunities available for those who were previously excluded remain very few and this is one of the reasons that affirmative action is still very much needed today. It has been seen that black people are nearly twice as likely to get employment as white people are and this is despite the fact of the presence of Affirmative action.

Not only is the unemployment rate higher among minority groups when compared to whites, but these groups have also been shown to earn much less than what their white counterparts earn. There tends to be very little likelihood of either black or Latino men to be given employment as managers or, as professionals, therefore, these are more likely to get jobs, which only involve labor. This also applies to women who have to work much harder and for lesser pay than their male counterparts do in order to get positions of authority (Phelan 376).

To correct this, more needs to be done to ensure that such inequalities do not persist in American society so that the gap that has existed between the different groups for centuries get to be filled and the dream of equality becomes a reality. The main purpose of affirmative action is the promotion of fairness and equality in American society. In the United States, what is popularly known as the American dream is always framed as a race in which the swiftest people always win (Lawson 281). This is a very wrong impression of the American Dream because not everybody in the United States started at the same level considering that minorities tended to be excluded from some of the most important aspects of American life.