Affirmative action is a much debated topic based on the efforts of our government to overcome prejudicial treatment through inclusion. Affirmative action is a way of helping minorities in our country get jobs and avoid racial injustice. Many large companies have increased their employment of minorities after adopting these policies (Plous).
Despite the efforts of affirmative action today, women still only earn 76 cents for every dollar earned by males. There are 1.3 million unemployed African-American civilians and 112 million employed white civilians. Statistics show that “if every unemployed Black worker in the United States were to displace a White worker, only 1% of Whites would be affected” (Plous).
There is a group of people called the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) who are constantly fighting hard to defend their position. They feel that we are struggling to determine whether our nation will move forward toward integration and equality or backward toward injustice. This group of people is very determined to keeping affirmative action in our government system today and state the fact that we are all brothers and sisters, skin color and religion don’t matter (“To stop…).
Opposing views of this topic are quite common everywhere in the U.S. The University of Michigan has made the issues of race and affirmative action policies into very important and controversial discussions. One article, titled “Unite Against Affirmative Action”, states: “Unfortunately, between the ill-considered rantings of State Representative David Jaye and the hysterical tirades of the aptly named Coalition to Defend …
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…ve a substantial number of minorities attending the school, all with grades within the same range as the rest of the student population. Now, not all minorities in that range are admitted, only some (“How Affirmative…).
According to the Racial Privacy Initiative, “The state shall not classify by race, ethnicity, color or national origin in the operation of public education, public contracting or public employment.” This statement basically says not to refuse someone based on their race (“Racial…).
Then why is affirmative action even allowed? Why do we, as Americans, need affirmative action to be used? Because it makes sure that the minority population is not refused their right to an education or a job. Because there are racists out there, ones who might need this policy to tell them that what they have been taught to believe is indeed unfair and unlawful.
Free Measure for Measure Essays: Mercy vs. Justice
Mercy vs. Justice in Measure for Measure
Theme: Mercy vs. Justice. Allusion to justice = eye for eye, tooth for tooth [measure for measure]; allusion to mercy = let him without sin cast the first stone [esp. sexual sin].
Summary: Duke wants to restore the strictness of fornication/adultery laws. He sets up Angelo to do it, while he feigns that he will be away. Instead he remains to check up on Angelo and the town (Vienna). Angelo goes ahead and closes down Overdone’s brothel and the others, and puts Claudio in jail, condemned to die the morrow, for impregnating Juliet.
Isabella, Claudio’s sister and about to enter a nunnery, pleads for Angelo’s mercy on him. Lucio counsels her to be warm to him, and she is just warm enough to inspire Angelo to seduce her: seduction in exchange for Claudio. The Duke, posing as a Friar, overhears her exchange with Claudio in which he counsels her to go through with the act. He enters and sets up a plan: Angelo ought to have married Mariana but didn’t: Mariana therefore will go in Isabella’s place.
Angelo, after the deed, calls even more quickly for Claudio’s head. The Duke (as Friar) puts this off: now Angelo is two steps behind (not knowing about either Mariana or Claudio). The Duke returns, as Duke, and asks for anyone against Angelo to speak. Isabella does: finally it comes out that the Friar was behind Isabella’s suit. The Friar is called for, and so the Duke disappears and comes back as the Friar, but is revealed to be the Duke. The switch is revealed and Angelo must marry Mariana; Claudio is revealed as alive and is pardoned by the Duke. Lucio (a subplot) also gets his deserts.
Morality: mercy wins over justice, and yet there is a strong sense of justice having been done. Symbolically accomplished by the Duke (justice) taking on the habit of “a true friar” (mercy but with sense of justice) starting with I.iii.48.
II.i.17 ff, Angelo on justice without mercy: “‘Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,/Another thing to fall. I not deny,/The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life,/May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two/Guiltier than him they try. What’s open made to justice,/That justice seizes: what know the laws/That thieves do pass on thieves?”–this is unmitigated justice, just as II.i.30-31: “Let mine own judgement pattern out my death, [which Angelo is willing to accept once caught, in V.