Does Affirmative Action present more benefits than disadvantages? Affirmative Action policies were implemented to address favoritism or lack of diversity in many educational and occupational spheres.
On one side, Affirmative Action adds different perspectives and experiences to a learning environment that wouldn’t be there if not for the program.

Affirmative Action promotes diversity and ensures that a diverse environment can be created.
Yale University defends Affirmative Action by stating, “Diversity encourages students to question their own assumptions, to test received truths, and to appreciate the complexity of the modern world.” Harvard states that Affirmative Action is an essential tool in its efforts to build a welcoming and representative campus. Moreover, this increased diversity will lessen stereotypes because there will be more interactions between groups that may not choose to interact with each other in “real” life. Without these harmful stereotypes, people will be regarded more equally, meaning that various gaps, such as gender, wage, and minority gaps, will decrease.

Another huge benefit is that this initiative allows various people to pursue a career they may have only considered with the program’s help. There are significant gaps for women in specific fields that could potentially benefit from the diversity that Affirmative Action promotes.

Additionally, in the US, many minority groups are at a societal disadvantage because of their historical treatment. With a solution like Affirmative Action, those minority households will begin to reverse the societal losses they have experienced.

Finally, many students also favor Affirmative Action; Ishika Vyas goes to Harvard and said that this initiative is crucial because “you can’t remove things like ethnic and racial identity from someone — that shapes their life.”

Although some may say that artificially encouraging diversity doesn’t follow societal norms, humanity will become better when we can learn from our differences and do something about them instead of being complacent with our systemically biased world.

Affirmative action is not a perfect solution to increasing diversity in educational and occupational spheres. While the program may seem to benefit minority groups, affirmative action seeks to bend the socioeconomic rules already put in place instead of addressing the main systemic issue. Helping underprivileged communities by creating new laws, educational opportunities, and outreach programs would better tackle the pre-existing problem.

Many complications also arise when dealing with an initiative like affirmative action, such as prioritizing meeting the program’s requirements rather than seeking out qualified individuals. Demanding an institution, like a college or university, to accept a certain number of applicants belonging to a minority group can inadvertently bring a more prominent focus on the individual’s race or cause students to be chosen simply because they belong to a particular minority.

A student’s ethnic background, gender, or race being the deciding factor in their acceptance can also cause them to lose a level of respect in the eyes of their peers or make them feel tokenized. Institutions with affirmative action also tend to select upper-class or elite minorities who already have accessibility to educational opportunities, leaving lower-class minorities to fend for themselves and stuck in an unchanging situation. Two law professors, Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr. write, “The largest, most aggressive preferences are usually reserved for upper-middle-class minorities on many of whom they inflict significant academic harm, whereas more modest policies that could help working-class and poor people of all races are given short shrift” (Mismatch).

Affirmative action does sometimes help level the playing field for minorities and increase diversity, but it is also an imperfect and biased solution. Instead of having a program based on race or ethnicity, another answer could be a program with requirements based on class or socioeconomic status to benefit more communities with less privilege and opportunities in life.