editorial board at The Nation, concedes, Affirmative action, as I understand it, was not designed to punish anyone (Wilkins 330). It is also unrealistic to believe that giving preferential job treatment to African Americans compensates them for the years of oppression their race has had to endure. In a article about affirmative action, Shelby Steele, a English professor at San Jose State University, stated, The concept of historic reparation grows out of mans need to impose on the world a degree of justice that simply does not exist. Suffering can be endured and overcome, it cannot be repaid (Steele 326). One of the main goals of affirmative action was to help minorities improve their social standing. To some extent, affirmative action has succeeded in this endeavor. Today African- Americans and other minorities hold more high paying jobs and positions of power than when affirmative action went into affect. However, a number of recent studies and numerous experts on the subject point out that affirmative action is more detrimental to blacks than helpful. Shelby Steele, a expert on the friction between whites and blacks, states in a essay, After 20 years of implementation I think that affirmative action has shown itself to be more bad than good (Steele 223). The original intent of affirmative action was to put minorities on equal footing with whites; however, today there is a larger gap between whites and blacks than ever before. Despite the best efforts of affirmative action to shrink the economical gap, recent studies conclude, ...only 26 to 28 percent of blacks graduate from college. The fact is that after 20 years of racial preferences the gap between median incomes of black and white families is greater than it was in the 1970s (Steele 325). Affirmative action has been successful in giving the minority population of America the idea that they will receive better treatment because of the color of their skin. This concepti...
