Affirmative Action, i had to Options

[onenonly101]

Should Affirmative Action be outlawed?

I want to hear what others say before I comment

[ComradeRed]

A) do you propose any alternatives to affirmative action?

No. The market resolves itself. Anyone working in admissions will tell you that disadvantaged students are treated more sympathetically. Even though affirmative action doesn't exist, a sort of income-based AA will still exist in practice, because it's easier to feel sorry for someone whose parents were illegals from Mexico and grew up picking garbage from the street but who has 50 points lower on the SAT, versus a kid who went to Philips Exeter.

B) what is your stance on affirmative action in admission to public high schools, such as thomas jefferson and stuyvesant? (actually, firstly, are those schools funded by taxes and do they use AA in admissions?)

All public schools are funded by taxes. That's why they're public.

I have no idea about Stuyvesant and TJ. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the Andover-wannabe public schools, but no, they shouldn't use affirmative action.

C) someone mentioned equal opportunity laws. could you explain what they would accomplish and why they would be a better alternative to AA?

Yes... I was mentioning how they were a bad idea in the private sector, because of violation of first amendment rights.

But in the public sector, there should be equal opportunity laws.

D) what is it that you would like to see done about affirmative action, exactly? (please be specific.)

Abolished in public institutions, private institutions retain their right to do it if they want, but shouldn't be forced to do it.

E) should all of this be decided at a state or national level?

The decision to abolish affirmative action should be national, since its the US Constitution at stake, not any state constitution.

However, if we're going to keep affirmative action, then each state should have the right to decide how it wants to do it.

AKA National for If, State for How.

F) how do you feel about basing affirmative action on socioeconomic status, going by the theory that "poverty begins poverty"?

Addressed earlier. Socioeconomic AA will always exist. There's no reason to write it into the law.

G) "Discrimination is ultimately wrong." -- how would you refute this statement?

By saying that affirmative action IS discriminatory.

As for my opposition to anti-discrimination laws in private sector trade, my response is that while discrimination is long, the violation of free association is infinitely worse. We discriminate every day in what people we want to be our friends, what people we want to come into our houses, etc. As sovereign individuals, we ought to have the right to decide who we want to deal with and who we don't. Remember that so-called equal opportunity laws which enforce association based on race is exactly the same thing that segregationalists advocated so long as it suited their purposes. The ends cannot justify the means, because when they do, those same means will be used for different ends later.