Affirmative Action, i had to Options

[onenonly101]

Should Affirmative Action be outlawed?

I want to hear what others say before I comment

[ComradeRed]

[quote]I never said it only happened to blacks. All I said was people hiding their racism in general.[/quote]

Then why does that justify AA if people hide racism against everyone?

[quote]You never said some you said most blacks.[/quote]

Most blacks aren't qualified for Ivy League schools. Most whites aren't qualified for the Ivies either. There's nothing racist about it -- it's pointing out a general trend that exists regardless of race. I never said "all" blacks or blacks in general.

[quote]That does not refute that the class was strong and affirmative action was still in place, weakened or not.[/quote]

It DOES refute the point that affirmative action was the reason that the class was strong. The class was weaker with a strong affirmative action program than a weaker one.

[quote]No, if 80% meet it on the minimum requirents then you wouldn't be isolated if you made the minimum requirements because only 20% of the entire school made above minimum.[/quote]

You misunderstand. 80% OF APPLICANTS meet the minimum requirements. The top schools in the country usually only let in 20% of the appliocants -- i.e., the 20% that made above minimum.

[quote]Honest question, where did yo uget that outof my post? All i said was that people of different races are different. I never said anything about accomplishment or that anyone was inferior. You pulled that our of the sky.[/quote]

If races are different, than the entire rationale for AA is destroyed. If races are different, that means that they account for differences. I can bring up statistical evidence to show that blacks on average get lower grades and SAT scores than whites. If you say that races are different, than I can infer that you are arguing that blacks, as a general principle, perform worse because they are DIFFERENT than whites -- thus reducing 'blackness' to a handicap, and destroying the whole rationale for AA.

[quote]45% is still not half of the black population in California. Some people vote in favor to abolish it because they feel as though the program is making them inferior. What opinion polls also reveal, however, is that, by and large, voters do not know very much about what affirmative action comprises, the scope of federal affirmative action policies, and who benefits (or is hurt) by these policies. As a result, public opinion is shaped to a greater extent by social attitudes and beliefs about recipients (e.g., minorities and women) rather than by solid information about affirmative action policies themselves.[/quote]

What polls? And how can polls test your knowledge of a policy? Californian university students, who are among the most well-informed about affirmative action, were also the demographic that voted most overwhelmingly to abolish it (over 75%).

[quote]In America surveys show that most people want to maintain some form
[/quote]

Show me the surveys. Every poll I have come across from a relatively unbiased source shows that AA is unpopular. I have never seen above 40% support for it in Nationwide polls, even in liberal ones.

[quote]No, even before AA some white hated blacks. People cannot use AA as an excuse for their hate.[/quote]

So? With AA, even more people hate blacks. It's a perfectly valid excuse.

100 years ago, when white people were given special preference to get into the top colleges, etc., when there was white man's affirmative action, LOTS of black people hated white people because of that. Why are white people not allowed to hate black people FOR THE SAME REASON? That's pure hypocrisy.

[quote]Presumptions are more commonly based on race. Presumptions come from the evident stereotypes are alrwdy presented. When someone see you they don't see what college you came from they see what you look like. And they base who you are since they do not know you on your race and how they have seen someone of your race act.[/quote]

Anecdotal at best. What if someone's life was saved by a black person?

[quote]Maybe the first few years because they will think the public will think that they accpeted those people in because of affirmative action. Then after it dies off, it will be back to the same, so I think. No college is diverse.[/quote]

Of course college isn't the most diverse place in the world. In college, everyone pretty much agrees that education is important, everyone is pretty much smart, etc. If I wanted to experience true diversity, I could go on a tour of the country. College isn't the place for that.

[quote]Goals and quotas are two different things.[/quote]

So is lethal injection and firing squad.

[quote]First, don't be a hypocrite. You have been grouping people this entire debate. So you cannot try to call me out saying i am grouping people, when all i did was present a fact. That 95% of top corprate executive are white males, and that AA obvivously is not making a dent in that. So how is it hurting?[/quote]

I'm grouping people because Affirmative Action CREATES those groups. When dealing with affirmative action, the people are already grouped. But before affirmative action exists, these groups do not. Affirmative action may not be hurting most white males IN GENERAL, but it sure as hell is hurting alot fo them.

[quote]The hiring company decides what unqualified is. If the qualifcations for the job is a BS in Law and 3 years of legal work. And you fit the qualifications(because nowhere does it you have to be a certain race) then you are qualified for the job. And if you do not have a BS in LAw then you are unqualified so then you cannot make it into the job with or without AA.[/quote]

But if more people fulfill BS in Law and 3 years of legal work than positions are available, than the standards are raised.

If a college has 1000 spots, and requires an SAT of 1200, but 2000 people with SATs of 1200 apply, then the college raises its standard so that only 1000 people are qualified. The college might raise its standard to an SAT of 1300 so only 1000 people can get in. A black person with SAT of 1250 would get in under affirmative action -- even though he would be unqualified under revised conditions.l

[quote]No, because the people affirmative action are helping are NOT in power.[/quote]

But the people who are actually doing it are.

The people the KKK are helping are rednecks who have no power whatsoever. Under your definition, my argument still holds -- the KKK is not racist.

[quote]That is why the program was implicated to help a minority in ANY situtation get the representation they deserve and need. [/quote]

ANY situation -- so a black person who's parents are Harvard lawyers making $500,000 a year each is somehow "disadvantaged" while a welfare white student from Mississippi has the representation he deserves and needs?

[quote]Affirmative action works. There are thousands of examples of situations where people of color, white women, and working class women and men of all races who were previously excluded from jobs or educational opportunities, or were denied opportunities once admitted, have gained access through affirmative action.[/quote]

And, by the Zero-Sum nature of affirmative action, each of those examples means another example of a more qualified white or Asian male rejected.

Furthermore, don't even bring up "white women" -- women have MORE opportunities today than men. Do you want enrollement statistics?

Brown University: 53% female
Yale University: 51% female
University of Pennsylvania: 52% female
Cornell University: 51% female
Princeton University: 49% female
Harvard University: 52% female

I could not find stats from Dartmouth or Columbia, but at five of the six Ivies I did find, Women outnumber men.

The gap is even wider at public schools -- women make up 56% of the student body at Penn State University.

If anything, men need affirmative action.

Furthermore, whites make up approximately 70% of the population, whereas at Harvard, whites are only 65% of the student body. If whites really do control the country and are racist, as you suggest -- why are whites UNDERrepresented at Harvard University? In fact, the ONLY Ivy League University (except Dartmouth and Columbia, which I can't get stats for) where whites make up more than 70% of the student body is Yale -- and even then, they only make up 72%.

[quote] When these policies received executive branch and judicial support, vast numbers of people of color, white women and men have gained access they would not otherwise have had. These gains have led to very real changes. Affirmative action programs have not eliminated racism, nor have they always been implemented without problems.[/quote]

And, has, in fact, increased racism -- by giving white people who otherwise tolerated blacks a reason to hate blacks.

[quote] However, there would be no struggle to roll back the gains achieved if affirmative action policies were ineffective. Affirmative action programs have been effective in many areas of public life because they opened up opportunities for people who would not otherwise have them, including white women and men.[/quote]

How have they opened up opportunites for white women and men? It seems to me that they only took away their opportunities.

[quote]The original concept and idea of affirmative action is good. Though alot of the programs need to be redefined and mended.


I don't think the entire program will die out.  Ibelieve that it will be restructured[/quote]

A great example of permanent affirmative action is Zimbawbwe -- where a white minority is given special legal status in a black government, which makes many blacks hate both whites, and their own black government.

Or Southeast Asia -- where the economically dominant Chinese have, in many countries, been persecuted to create "opportunities" for local peoples who do not have as money -- resulting in several economic crashes, most famously in Thailand, Malaysia, and the Phillipines.

And finally, you still have not addressed the fact that affirmative action causes blacks to fail school. According to US Government Statistics: http://www.bls.census.gov/cps/pub/1997/int_race.htm, whites have a 17.2% college dropout rates, Asians have a 12.8%, while blacks have an overwhelming 19.1% dropout rate. Not surprisingly, the lowest black dropout rates come from states such as California where affirmative action is nonexistent.