RJA #2b: Research Topic

Affirmative Action

1. I have chosen this topic because it is very relevant to my educational career. I am a women, and Latina, and want to know what the controversy is regarding promoting Affirmative Action. I would like to research this more in depth because I want to have a better understanding of what this program does to benefit the people that it does, and why there are people opposed to having a program created to aid underprivileged minorities. It is something that has always caught my interest about the disadvantages and privileges that effect the education of students regardless of their race, ethnicity.

2. As far as knowledge to this subject, I do not know much about. By definition according to Dictionary.com Affirmative Action is, "A policy or a program that seeks to redress past discrimination through active measures to ensure equal opportunity, as in education and employment." It is something that I know most colleges and universities, and employers try and promote. I remember reading a short section in my American National Govt textbook one semester about Affirmative Action and that some universities will use this system when deciding what students to admit to their school. I think that Affirmative Action is definitely something that has benefit a wide variety of the public to be perfectly honest, and something that I would definitely fight to keep as a minority student myself.

3. I would like to know when/where/how this program got created. I would like to know how this program can tend to be negative to my Caucasian counterparts, who might feel that this program is being discriminatory against them. It would also be interesting to see what advantages minorties students had before the program came to be as a comparison of how it has changed through the course of time now that they have more advantages in education than before. It would be also a good idea to find out what the students who have been apart of this Affirmative Action feel about Affirmative Action and if it have benefited them in their educational career, or if they feel indifferent towards it.