Exploring Affirmative Action (AA)

I am going to start my essay by defining Affirmative Action (AA). AA is giving preferential treatment in hiring or admitting the less qualified candidate on moral grounds being discrimination or fairness. I am going to defend the view that the best-qualified candidate should not always get the spot in education, instead I am defending the view that it is morally just to give first nation students preferential treatment, on the moral grounds of promoting greater positive consequences, minimizing harm, and on the moral groups of compensatory justice. To define a few terms I use in my paper, a utilitarian point of view is one where the right action is the action that produces the net best overall consequences and minimizes the bad ones. I am going …show more content…
It would be a faster route to a more just society if we admitted a few first nation students that do have close to if not competitive grades. Further, I agree that there must be some minimal set of qualifications where one could compete meaningfully, but by reasonably setting those qualifications to allow first nation students a chance at a university degree can help get these first nations in professional schools, and graduated. As first nation students have the highest drop out rate of high school in Canada, by admitting a few of these first nation who do deviate from that pattern, and do graduate high school, and do have competitive grades in respect to those being admitted, might be what is needed as a temporary fix until first nation schooling can be brought up to societies standards. Further, by admitting these first nation students, you are widening the applicant pool, driving up the competition, which will help create a more meritocratic society. Objection 3: Who is to say that a first nation role model is absolutely necessary for a first nation student to succeed in university? Take Roberta Jamieson for example. She is the first, first nations lawyer to get her law degree, and one can argue that she did not need a first nation role model to help her succeed because she was the first to do it. Rebuttal: I agree that some outstanding first nations can succeed without a role model, but I am arguing that a first nation role model may not be absolutely necessary, but they are an effective, efficient, means of motivating, mentoring students to graduate high school, keeping them on track through university, and becoming future role models for generations to come. Further, to counter the above objection, Roberta Jamieson is now CEO of Indspire, a program designed to do the very things AA has helped to foster, role models! Indspire