Affirmative Action

Affirmative action was first brought into the world on March 6th, 1965 by President John F. Kennedy. The action was used to help make the all white schools and workplaces more diverse. The schools and businesses would set aside positions or rate minorities differently to give them the upper hand. This idea was made for the betterment of the workplace and educational systems but it was the center of much conflict.

The history of affirmative action has chalk full of conflict in the American history books. It all started with a case named Plessy vs. Ferguson and a railroad train car. Homer Plessy was a part of a plan to test the courts on the Separate Car Law, where blacks and whites had to stay on separate cars to prevent conflict. Plessy's case was saying that the separation of colored and white people was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. However the case didn't turn out in their favor and it was determined that the law was in fact constitutional because they considered blacks and whites unequal on social levels but are equal on political levels. "In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a Louisiana law mandating separate but equal accommodations for blacks and whites on intrastate railroads was constitutional. This decision provided the legal foundation to justify many other actions by state and local governments to socially separate blacks and whites."(Zimmerman) So the outcome of this case determines that whites and blacks can't be together, making the blacks and other minorities lesser than the whites, on a train but it spread to other places such as schools.

Later in history there was another case called Brown vs Board of Education that used the decision of the Plessy vs Ferguson case. This case arose when there were conflicts in the Kansas public schools with the blacks feeling like they are not equal. "...if the colored children are denied the experience in school of associating with white children, who represent 90 percent of our national society in which these colored children must live, then the colored child's curriculum is being greatly curtailed. The Topeka curriculum or any school curriculum cannot be equal under segregation."(Cozzens) Because of the separation the blacks felt that their options and opportunities were limited in school simply because of their skin color. The court overturned the ruling for the Plessy case by ruling this case constitutional.

These two cases were made at different times and for different reasons. The Plessy case was talking about traveling on trains and was to prevent conflicts and potential harm that might be caused during conflict. The Brown case was about children feeling lessened in an educational setting is not permitted under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Affirmative action was used to start to makes schools more diverse but people complained that it gave minorities an