DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE! COMMONMYTHS ABOUT AFFIRMATIVE ACTIONMYTH 1:
Affirmative Action is preferen-tial treatment.
FACT: Affirmative action creates a faircompetition by removing the barriersthat obstruct the lanes of women andminorities in the race toward theAmerican Dream.
For example, because female businessownersremain outside traditional oldboynetworks, they often receive only afraction of the public contracting dol-lars that men do. Similarly, womenand minority job seekers are frequent-ly shut out of good jobs in trades whereopportunities go only to those who arein the loop. Efforts to ensure that out-siders have equal access to opportuni-ties areonlyfair and do not amount to“preferential treatment.”
MYTH 2:
Affirmativeaction is no longer needed in America.
FACT:Since exclusion and unfairtreatment persist in America, weneed remedies to deal with them.
Affirmative action opponents turn ablind eye to the effects of race andgender on access to opportunity. Butcommon sense tells us that anyattempt to solve a problem by ignor-ing it makes no sense at all. Imaginetrying to eliminate the deadly conse-quences of lead poisoning by beingblind to lead paint! If we want to cre-ateopportunities that aretrulyequal,weneed toaddressthe barriers toopportunity.Promoting equality andsupporting affirmativeaction go handin hand!
MYTH 3
:
Affirmative action rewards theunqualified.
FACT:The real myth is that we havean equal playing field and that themost qualified people are the oneswho get ahead. In fact, affirmativeaction helps to offset barriers thatunfairly block the pathways of quali-fied Americans who are fully able tosucceed. In so doing, it promotesequal opportunity.
The world is full of people whose tal-ents are not always recognized by tra-ditional measures of intelligence. Forexample, although he went on to beone of the most gifted orators of the20th century, Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr. scored very poorly on a standard-ized verbal test in his youth. Researchhas shown that such tests and similarcriteria are often biased and underesti-mate the capabilities of working classindividuals, women, and people of color,and that they do not accurately predictprofessional or educational success. Incountering built-in discrimination, affir-mative action policies offset limitedmeasures of merit and identify individu-In the United States, access to the American Dream is often framed as a race in which the swiftest runners win.Critics of affirmative action say that such policies give some runners an unfair head start in an otherwise fairrace. At the same time, many supporters of affirmative action say we need these policies to assist “disabled”runners. In their focus on the runners rather than the track, both of these perspectives miss the point.Affirmative action isn’t about advancing “disabled” runners, but about repairing damaged lanes and removingthe barriers that block the pathways to opportunity that only some runners face. Policies that promote inclu-sion, such as affirmative action, are designed to equalize the conditions of an otherwise unfair race and giveeveryone a fair chance to compete.As long as such inequalities exist, treating everyone fairly does not mean that we should treat everyone thesame. Instead, we must support and defend policies that remove the numerous barriers that obstruct the lanesof women, Latinos, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and others disadvantaged by theirracial, gender and class backgrounds.
Protect Fairness and Equality
In November, voters will decide the future of affirmative action.
Give everyone a fair chance to compete. Support affirmative action!
In an ideal world, the lanes on the track would be the same, and we would all have equalaccess to opportunities. In reality, the paths of women and minorities continue to be blockedby many obstacles, including racial and gender discrimination, residential isolation, poverty,glassceilings, lack of access to good schools, and more. Some runners can realize theirpotential more easily because these barriers do not block their paths, while still others ben-efit from privileges like wealth and family connections that give them a head start.
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