Affirmative Action and Diversity Management: It's in the Practice. Not the Principle.

                                        Affirmative action ?

                                                     Or...

                                   Diversity Management?

Which one, which one?

What do they  mean first of all? Affirmative action is the practice that no matter what someone's national creed, race, or gender is they should not be discriminated in the work place or the educational system.

Diversity management's principles state that it's use is to maximize the potential deficits of diversity while maximizing the benefits.

What does that mean? Well first let me explain something. In one of my classes this was a hot debate all last week and most of this one. But as I was heatedly looking for my sources and evidence I thought of an important question. When you are done debating what do you want?

And I realized. I didn't want to win. Okay I did a little.

But more than that I wanted everyone in that room to understand what I said.

Why I said it.

And to listen to what they were saying. and think about it.

Was there enough proof for their side? For mine?

Is it just the principle we are considering? Or the actual facts?

I want to show everyone who reads this post why I chose affirmative action and why I think it is still necessary. No, why we of think tank 8 think it is still necessary. So here it is. From the collective brain of think tank 8.

Affirmative Action Keeps Things More  Balanced.

When affirmative action is in place universities have a more balanced population. Although it will become evident campuses with affirmative action are far from equal in population of races, campuses without affirmative action have even lower  rates of diversity .Quite a few years ago now,  Michigan abolished affirmative action and not too long after their enrollment rates for other races other than caucasian sank down. The rate for enrollment went down 30%. I would like everyone to notice a keyword here. Enrollment. Not application rate. That information is not given. Students cannot enroll themselves in a school. They can only apply. Now on the campus of Michigan State University while the male and female population is nearly 50/50  , not quite but close enough,  Caucasians make up 69% of the population and African Americans only make  up 7% of the population and Hispanics come up to an even smaller part of campus population at 4%.

However Michigan State University isn't the only school that had drastically lower rates after the abolishment of affirmative action. Other places that did so (both abolished affirmative action, and got lower rates of enrollment) are California, Texas (temporarily. It was reinstated.) , Washington D.C.

Percentage of Freshmen at Universities of African Americans and Hispanics Before and After The Abolishment of Affirmative Action

Washington D.C.


University of Washington: African American Freshmen
Before: 2%
After:  2%


University of Washington: Hispanic Freshmen
Before: 2%
After: 3%

Major Universities in Texas,


University of Texas : African American Freshmen


Before: 5% 
After: 3%
After Reinstatement: 5%


University of Texas: Hispanic Freshmen


Before: 16%
After: 13%
After Reinstatement: 21%




Major  Universities in California,

University of California , Berkley :African American Freshmen

Before:8 %

After : 4%

University of California, Berkley: Hispanic Freshmen

Before: 23%

After: 9%

U.C.L.A: African American Freshmen

Before :7 % 

After: 4% 

U.C.L.A : Hispanic Freshmen

Before: 17% 

After: 13% 

Those are some sad numbers. Especially for the African American population at these colleges. The percentage of young adults at college age are not nearly as low as the enrollment rates are in their states. That's not to say they all applied there. However there isn't anything to say that they did not. of course, the same applies for young people outside of California, Washington D.C.,  and Texas. Who knows how many applied? Surely enough so that the population would be more equal seeing as some of these universities are in the top colleges listed on Forbes.com.

Discrimination is Still Present

From the statistics above it is obvious that in the educational system some discrimination is still present. What about the business system though? We believe affirmative action should stay in place to even out those populations. For example Google, one of the most popular companies to work for has it's headquarters stationed in California and it's diversity rates are not good.

Here's the table as provided by PBS.org

The rates are unfair for both genders and different races. While I don't posses a similar table for other popular companies such as SAS and Quicken Loans their headquarters are in diversity management states, so while I am unsure of what their rates are sadly I am not very hopeful  that they're very fair. Although they very well could be. However the facts of their locations are something to be kept in mind.

In conclusion I'd like to say just this.  When the time comes to make a vote will it be made on how one thinks something should work? Or how it actually works?

Thanks for reading.

See you next week internet.

Works Cited

"Best Companies To Work For." Fortune.com. Time Magazine, n.d. Web. Aug.-Sept. 2014. <http://fortune.com/best-companies/sas-2/>.

Fessenden, Ford, and Josh Keller. "How Minorities Have Fared in States With Affirmative Action Bans." The New York Times. N.p., 22 Apr. 2014. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/06/24/us/affirmative-action-bans.html?_r=1&>.

"High Court Upholds Michigan's Affirmative Action Ban." Npr. N.p., 22 Apr. 2014. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. <http://www.npr.org/2014/04/22/305960143/high-court-upholds-michigans-affirmative-action-ban>.

PBS.org. GBP, 28 May 2014. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/google-discloses-workforce-diversity-data-good/>

Berkeley HR. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. http://hrweb.berkeley.edu/guides/managing-hr/interaction/diversity.

"Affirmative Action." ACLU.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/affirmative-action.

Stohr, Greg. "Black Enrollment Falls as Michigan Rejects Affirmative Action." Bloomberg.com. N.p., 24 Sept. 2013. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-24/black-enrollment-falls-as-michigan-rejects-affirmative-action.html.