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Home Who Is a Person in America? Debate--Caucus Table

GIVI GARCIA

In my group's ideal society, we believe that if you are an American Citizen your rank in society should be based on your work ethic and not on where you come from of what your religion, sexual orientation (ect). If you work hard in our society you will be rewarded with social status, wealth, and health care. In the book __Warriors Don't Cry__, Melba was beaten, burned, and verbally abused, and held back from oppertunities, all because she was an African American- In our society, this wouldn't be acceptable because race doesn't change anything, and everything is based on work ethic and how you perform, not based on our race. Women at the __Seneca Falls__ were discriminated against because they were woman, and soon banned together and were strong in the end because they got themselves together and achieved freedom; They wouldn't have had to do that if they lived in our ideal society where everyone is considered equal. Women who work hard and are trying to acheive rights will earn things like health care, which will allow them to get advantages with that health care, such as abortion, right to birth, and birth control. In this version of American everyone will get along nicely and not have as much discrimination as we do today.

Leepson, M. (1983). Abortion: decade of debate. //Editorial research reports 1983// (Vol. I). Washington, DC: CQ Press. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre1983011400

Beals, Melba Pattillo. //Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High//. New York: Pocket Books, 1994. [|ISBN 0-671-86638-9]

Lexie Morrison

 Our Society is against affirmative action, we believe that a truly equal society does not need this for minorities to prosper. If all citizens are really treated as equals then there is no reason for affirmative action to exist because everyone will have an equal chance at the same opportunities. Zach from the secret life of bees doesn’t need affirmative action to make his dream of becoming a lawyer come true because he is determined to work hard enough to make it happen; he doesn’t need his skin color to make his dream come true. Another person that did not need affirmative is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. When he applied to Yale he told the school to consider his race in the process of accepting applicants without seeing anything wrong with that, but now “Thomas said he was unable, even when he was nominated to the Supreme Court, to erase the stigmatizing effects of racial preference. ‘Once it is assumed that everything you do achieve is because of your race, there is no way out’” (de Vogue, Ariane). A well deserving student that had the opposite problem of Clarence Thomas was Allan Bakke. He was a more than eligible applicant to the University of California Medical School at Davis, but did not get accepted, while students of minorities got in even though they did not score as well as Bakke on the MCAT (Bobby B.). Affirmative action is in its own way a form of discrimination, and is not fair to anyone. Our society would not need affirmative action because everyone would have equal opportunities.

Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. New York City: Penguin Group, 2003. Print.

De Vogue, Ariane. "'Silent' Justice Outspoken on Affirmative Action." Abcnews.go.com. N.p., 30 Sept. 2007. Web 27. Oct. 2011.

B, Bobby. "University of California vs. Bakke." //Who is a Person?// Wikispaces, Sept. 2011. Web. 27 Oct. 2011.

Sarah Heuerman

Since our society beliefs everyone is truly equal, having benefits such as Affirmative Action goes against our beliefs. Affirmative Action gives minority groups and women an unfair and unneeded advantage in education, employment and business. According to Melvin Urofsky a professor of history and constitutional law and University of Virginia commonwealth “ The ant-discrimination laws say you cant close doors to minorities and women… Affirmative Action says you’ve got to open doors and invite them. There’s a difference”. These advantages does not support anti- discrimination laws but instead create reverse discrimination. An example is the 1970 University of California vs. Bakke case, when Bakke wasn’t accepted into the university because 16 spots in the class were reserved to minorities anyway Bakke was more qualified(Bobby B, University vs. Bakke). Affirmative action was put in to create an equal and colorblind society, but if the society was truly colorblind the opportunity would have been based on merit. Also minorities have shown they don’t need special treatment to be successful, for example in Secret Life of Bees by sue Monk Kid, three successful black women June, August and May have a thriving honey business (67). Affirmative Action goes against equality and gives unnecessary benefits to minorities.

Jost, K. (1995, April 28). Rethinking affirmative action. //CQ Researcher//, //5//, 269-392. Retrieved from []

Kid, Sue Monk. //Secret Life of Bees//. New York: Viking Penguin Books, 2002. Print.

B, Bobby. "University of California vs. Bakke." //Who is a Person?// Wikispaces, Sept. 2011. Web. 27 Oct. 2011.

Zach Owens Our group believes that a true ideal society must a meritocratic society, meaning that the people who have better talents and skills get the better and higher paying jobs. We cannot have everyone get well, high payed jobs because without people to do the dirty work (garbage, work in factories, construction, etc.), then our society would be a mess. Meritocracy has nothing to do with race or sex because it makes it more equal. An example of this would be having a group of people apply for a specific job, and of that group of people, there is a person of a different race. A non-meritocratic society would not let him/her apply for the job just for being a different race. It just does not seem fair for someone of a different gender or race being mistreated for doing nothing but being themselves. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act is a great example of this because even today, people with disabilities feel like they are being discriminated, but not severly. "...a blind man sued Southwest Airlines for making their website too hard to navigate" (Annie T.). For the current issue of Gender Preferences, I agree with the con side of that because it is discriminating against mainly females, and that is not a true ideal society. Our group does not believe in affirmative action because even though it may support people of different races, it does not help everyone else. In the book //The Secret Life of Bees,// Lily, a white girl, helps Rosaleen, an African-American girl, get out of jail. Lily starts living with other African-Americans and accepts who they are. This is a good example of equality because Lily was treating them with kindness and not thinking of them as a lesser person just because of their race. Everyone is created equal, therefore we do not need something to make Asians or African-Americans or Hispanics feel like they are better than everyone else. Richard Wilkinson describes what people act like in an equal society; "He found that what the healthiest societies have in common is not that they have more—more income, more education, or more wealth—but that what they have is more equitably shared" ([|Jarvis] ). The bottom line is that everyone in society should get equal opportunities and equal rights. However, if people break the law then their rights will have to be limited.

Works Cited Annie T. "Are disabled working Americans getting fair treatment from their workplaces, or are they being discriminated against?" //1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.// Wikispaces, Sept. 2011 

//The Secret Life of Bees,// Sue Monk Kidd 

Gender Preferences in the Workplace http://buchholtzsidoramericanstudies.wikispaces.com/Gender+preferences+in+the+workplace //Jarvis, Brooke. Equality and the Good Life// []

Jack Bebinger

Our group believes that a meritocratic society, a society in which people who are harder working get the promotion over the lazier worker, is the best society to have because it benefits the harder working citizens with higher ranking jobs and higher pay. Our society cannot function without the blue collar workers (garbage men, fast food restaurant workers, construction, and other jobs like these) because they provide the base for a good community. Everyone has the same opportunities in our society but not everyone pursues those chances and we need these men and women to work the blue collar jobs so that we can keep our society running. In a meritocratic society when a group of people are applying for the same job, the boss or whoever is looking over the applications doesn’t look at what race a person is or if they are disabled, they just look at the qualifications one person has over another and that’s how they choose a person for a job. In a non-meritocratic society they boss will look at the person’s race, if that person is disabled, or even if they are male or female. This why things like Affirmative Action and the Disabilities Act of 1990 have been put into place, to make sure that everyone is treated fairly. The Disabilities Act “was made to prohibit discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities (Annie T).”, this and many other acts have been put into place because certain groups of people have been discriminated against in the work place due to a physical or personal attributes. In the book The Secret Life of the Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, Rosaleen (a large black women) was beaten by three white men and then thrown in jail because she tried to fight back; this is a example of what our society wants to stay away from. This event and many others like it lead up to the installation of Affirmative action because white people were being extremely discriminatory against blacks so after a while people just thought that’s the way it was and everyone lived with it. But, eventually blacks wanted equality and Affirmative action gives them that. In our society this is not needed because everyone is equal (Truly equal, not like the way we say it now that everyone has the same rights but isn’t equal socially), and everyone has the same opportunities as everyone else. Also in our society, everyone has the freedom of choice and everything and anything. The only exception to this is I you break the law, then your rights are limited and you don’t have things like the freedom of choice.

works cited Trexler, Annie. "Are disabled working Americans getting fair treatment from their workplaces, or are they being discriminated against?" //1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.// Wikispaces, Sept. 2011 