Affirmative Action
 

Though technically illegal, affirmative action is rumored to be implemented in the US for employment and college admissions. Here's the reason why I'm not liking it. Affirmative action almost serves to act as reverse-discrimination. Sure, there should be some action to help students that are at an economic disadvantage, but it seems unfair that students that are more competent and capable are gimped because of this policy.

I'm not a good debater, so I'll leave it all up to you guys. This is a highly controversial topic, so mods and admins, please keep an eye on it.

On a slightly related note, I think that legacy advantage makes no sense at all.

The only reason this subject is controversial is because in todays society if you are white and so much as use race as an example for anything you are seen as a racist.

Where I live, I find affirmative action is a big problem.
For government jobs they basically tell you that if you're of aboriginal descent you will get the job before someone of a different ethnic backround.
I really can't stand it.
They get money to go to university, they have programs like PASS (Promoting Aboriginal Student Success), and they have constant help throughout the way. THEY MAKE MONEY IF THEY GO TO UNIVERSITY.

Affirmative action is discrimination. If we truly live in a society where we're all equal when it comes to race then that word should not even exist here anymore.

People make all sorts of excuses. They grow up in a tough neigh borhood, their parents are on wellfare, they grew up in a gang driven community.

But no one should get special treatment because of their race. I could probably go on for pages about my issues with racial views in todays society but I'll leave it at that.

I went to the best highschool in Louisiana. Our PSAT scores were beastly to say the least. We had at least 30 national merit scholars. Other highschools would display their one merit scholar proudly outside the building, and in comparison, Ben Franklin was very modest :P Needless to say, we were all very smart, so it's no leap of logic that we had loads of national "achievement" scholars. Every black friend I had was a national achievement scholar. One day, I foolishly brought up that if national achievement was available to everyone and not just black kids, we'd probably almost all have it. :shock: You'd have thought I was suggesting the legalization of slavery :xD: I was unprepared for the response I got. I literally had no idea anyone would be offended, and when they were, I didn't understand why or what to say. A few kids even called me racist that day.
Those same national achievement award winners collected enormous scholarships upon graduation, $10,000 or more, while I, in the very same boat as many of them, struggled not to go into debt even at the cheapy school I attend now :(

These may not be the most relevant examples ever, but they are the closest experiences I have to affirmative action, I think.

Ok, I agree with you, I hate legacy advantage. The only reason they do it is so they hope to get more money out of you. But, again that's what a university ultimately has to do: make money.

I do like need-blind admissions though, because a university should take students on how capable they are, not how capable they are at paying for college.

Finally, growing up in a tough neighborhood would make it a lot tougher than a financially stable suburb. Imagine doing your homework, but worrying if your family will have its house in a month. Is dad going to get shot tomorrow? Should I bring a knife on my way to school in case I get mugged on my way. My best friend's mom teaches at an inner city school, Columbus actually, and one of her female students carries a knife because she is afraid of being raped on her way home. And that teacher says it was almost daily that some kid would light the paper towel rolls on fire, so they had to get rid of them. If someone had done that at might school, school probably would have been let out for the day.

So, yes Affirmative action is racist, but is it acceptable, I'd say yes, although in an ideal society: no. But we are far from ideal.

Now, what I think about affirmative action is this: ideally, we shouldn't need it. We should be past the separation of races, and all should be equal. But we're not. Simple as that.

I'm white, so I can't tell ya for sure, but I bet growing up black, there's more racism than you would think. I mean there's social pressure to be a "gangsta" and so on. Also, I guarantee you experience a significant amount of racism. Like, people staring, or giving awkward/mean looks. Or if you're black and are walking alone at night with a hoodie, you're gonna experience something different than a white person doing the same thing.

Also, it was less than 50 years ago that blacks were being openly murdered in the south. And slavery was horrible. So as much as I like to be ideal and say "we're past that" I feel some repayment is in order, when I think of how terribley horrible that is.

I would say, that if you grow up white vs black in the same neighborhood, the black person will experience more social pressures and discrimination that would make it harder to do well in school. I think that's wrong, but there's not really a way around it right now.

It's racist and sexist. If more of one group of people do better, that's credit to them, and they shouldn't be punished for it.

Exactly.

Thouygh you must also compensate for all the factors that correalated with race, like poverty, uneducated parents, etc.

AFAIK, British universities are all NPOs, or something more complex. They certainly don't make any significant money off of the students.

That's why you provide for assistance to close the gap, then accept the best from each group, not say "10% of your students must be illiterate working class disabled lesbian illegal immigrant ethnic minorities" :P - by accepting that as not being the right action, people must accept that doing well will never be evenly distributed, and that to try and enforce otherwise is a Harrison Bergeron situation.

In the US, affirmative action is still popular as a means of "payback" for what are arguably crimes against humanity committed against both imported slave labor and native Americans. Politically conservative though I am, I'm not wholly against such "payback" in principle. Implementation is everything, though, and what made sense decades ago doesn't necessarily make sense today. The percentages should be revised constantly according to measured economic conditions for these ethnic groups.

I did not vote for Barack Obama, however there are good things about his Presidency. It certainly serves as a measure of significant progress in the civil rights movement, one without which people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would be free to continue denying 50 years of forward momentum. Again, there is still progress to be made, but when these types speak, all I hear is that peasant from Monty Python's Holy Grail: "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" It was absolutely true at one point, but their unyielding and unchanging message of "we are victims" is what gives people a bad impression of affirmative action, and ultimately hinders the civil rights movement more than it helps.

I agree that having a quota to meet, or a certain % is a bad idea. But if a college is looking at two students of different backgrounds, the factor of race, financial status, etc do come into play because a student with a struggling family who does a little less well than a student in a not struggling family, could arguably be a better student, because they had more pressures and performed well academically. It's all how the university wants to look at it.

I don't know if American universities are NPO, or if they make money of student's tuition costs. But, I do know they want students who will be big alumni donators, so they can have money to do research. Essentially so they can make money to do research.

A student in a harsher environment is going to be a better student than someone who was privledged and gets better marks? How in the world did you come to that?

For a job or school, nothing should factor other than your marks and/or history of work.
My family didn't enslave anyone. Why should I have to not get a job because a company needs "Diversity", or Payback I guess it was called in this thread.

If you live under a government, then you pay taxes, and things like affirmative action are just another kind of tax. It may not be your fault, but you still pay for it, just like you help fund welfare for people who can't (but also, unfortunately, for some who simply *won't*) get jobs. There is a social ecosystem out there that does ultimately benefit from not having festering pockets of social unrest. The difference between the political left and right in the US is not so much a disagreement on that particular point as it is a difference in the threshold for "festering." :)

In many of the northern states I think we could move beyond quotas, but the deep south?


Nope. The Southern "conservative values" still place the white male christian above all others.

Things are getting better down there, but yes, there are still places where the proverbial "fire under the melting pot" needs a little more fuel.

I'd agree with that.

Racism in the north is definitely still there, but in the South it's pretty bad. There are still plenty of people who think whites are superior.

Iron_jones - It used to be a black would never get a job over a white. Now, it's a bit different, although not in all cases. I guess our government sees it as necessary to repay the previous times where blacks simply could not beat whites for jobs.

And what I mean about a student being more than his marks, is most the universities I applied to, they wanted people who did well in school, but they also want unique individuals who would contribute something to their campus, and then be a contributor to society after they graduate. If a university sees a student who grew up in a poor community, with slightly worse grades than a student who grew up in an affluent community, they get to pick who they accept.

I also know some universities go way beyond an quota enforced on them, because they want a diverse campus, because they think it makes for a better learning environment by forcing students to cope with new ideas and beliefs.

Again, that's just a couple universities' opinions, not mine necessarily.