GRE Issue Topic 132

Sample 1:

Major policy decisions guide the actions of people in virtually all walks of life. The Federal Reserve determines policy regarding interest rates that banks charge their biggest customers and, consequently, the interest rates that the average consumer pays for mortgages and auto loans. Although the Fed chairman is appointed by the President, he or she must have autonomy to make monetary decisions independently of politicians. Certainly, the average citizen lacks the specific knowledge necessary to create fiscal policy for the entire country. However, many policies that guide the lives of Americans today would not exist were it not for activism on the parts of ordinary citizens. When policy decisions affect the basic rights of humans, the contributions of the general public cannot be overlooked.

Politicians do not always display better judgment than the general public when they make or uphold policy. For generations, states in the South enforced laws arising from the policy of segregation. Black Americans were banned from eating in white restaurants, using white restrooms, or attending white schools. In 1892, Homer Plessy, in an act that foreshadowed Rosa Parks' behavior on a Montgomery bus in 1951, sat in a designated "white" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. After Plessy identified himself as a black man, authorities arrested him. Plessy's case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where, in 1896, all but one justice declared that the policy of separate but equal facilities for white and black people was acceptable and did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The facilities for black people never reached the equal level of those for white people. Their schools were inferior; the buildings were run down, and the books were discarded by white schools. For decades, black children were banned from riding school buses and, often, had to walk long distances to attend schools designated for them. Nearly half a decade after the Plessy case, the NAACP sponsored a case in Topeka, Kansas, that represented several parents who wanted their children to be allowed to attend schools in their neighborhoods rather than the “separate but equal" schools. In a unanimous decision in 1954, the Supreme Court in Brown v the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, ruled that the separate but equal policy was unconstitutional, thereby integrating public schools through out the country. Left to their own devices, politicians and other government experts would have continued to allow de facto segregation in the United States. Without the impetus from those suffering under the policy, little change would have occurred or would have come much later.

When a policy has been in effect for a long time, it becomes difficult to change. Even though the Supreme Court decision of 1954 prohibited segregation, people in the South were reluctant to grant civil rights to their black neighbors. They held onto their belief in the superiority of the white man, a remnant of the days of slavery on southern plantations. Their leaders devised requirements for voting that made it virtually impossible for black men and women to exercise their right of suffrage. When any group of citizens cannot vote to change policy or elect legislators who represent their interests, repressive laws and regulations persist. Without the efforts of the NAACP, the Freedom Riders, student activists from northern universities and the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., President Lyndon B. Johnson may not have been convinced to sign into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

One should not assume that politicians and government experts are better informed than the general public and, therefore, the only ones capable of making or changing major policy decisions. Senators, representative, and the president all select advisers from the general public. They look for the best and brightest in a variety of fields to fill positions in their offices and the cabinet. The expertise they gained while plying their trades in the public sector makes them valuable assets at the national level. Although average citizens do not have the power to create policy, their voices contribute to the choices those politicians and government experts make to change the manner in which the business of everyday life is carried out.