Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action

Jordan Britcher
      Affirmative action the set of public policies and initiatives designed to help eliminate past and present discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, is under attack (now.org). Orlando Patterson discusses this very controversial topic in his essay entitled, “Why We Still Need Affirmative Action”. Through the use of statistics, surveys, and polls, he finds numerous examples proving his argument as he attempts to persuade the reader to agree with his opinion. Patterson uses a two part scheme in conjunction with strong statistics to support his argument about affirmative action. However, his attempt of persuasion demonstrates a clear favoritism toward one side of the equation more than the other. He seemingly expresses a deep-seated emotional dynamic for one half of the argument and by doing so his overall persuasion gets lost as to his true contention for the necessity of maintaining an affirmative action policy.

      In the first part of Patterson’s essay titled “The Concocted Controversy” Patterson uses statistics from surveys, but when analyzing the surveyed material he seems to exemplify an emotional tendency towards the Euro-Americans. Many of the statistics that Patterson includes at the beginning of “The Concocted Controversy” state the effect that affirmative action has had on just the Euro-Americans rather than a side by side comparison with the impact on the Afro-American culture. Patterson begins the survey with the question “What do you think the chances are these days that a white person won’t get a job or promotion while an equally or less qualified Afro-American person gets on instead” (Patterson, p 8). The respondents were asked to choose from three answers, very likely, somewhat likely, or not likely at all.   Additional follow-up questions asked the respondents to clarify why they had selected their previous answer.   The subsequent answers that the survey received were rather...