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Affirmative Action has become of the most controversial social policy issues to be discussed in recent years. It is controversial because it challenges fundamental American beliefs. As Seymour Martin Lipset put it: "Affirmative Action policies have forced a sharp confrontation between two core American values: equality and individualism."(Dudley7) This values oriented approach, which pervades popular discussion and derives from functionalist sociology, fails to explain why similar challenges to our core values did not in the past result in the kind of spite surrounding Affirmative Action today. As the popular lore and written history of urban politics in America demonstrate and as minority leaders today frequently point out, benefits were routinely distributed to individuals not on merit, but on racial criteria (Sigelman7).
The Federal, state, and local governments run currently many programs intended to increase opportunities for various groups including women, and minority......

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Approximate Word Count: 1499
Approximate Pages: 6 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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