🚀 go-pugleaf

Kammy Mei Turner (turnerkm@vuse.vanderbilt.edu) wrote:

: My whole point is that affirmative action was put into place to open doors
: for minorities that otherwise were closed.  Not every minority that
: receives the benefit of aff. action is unqualified, and until a solution
: for racial discrimination is found, aff action or a similar program should
: remain in place.

: VU School of Engineering Senior
:  
You're point is well taken, however, if affirmative action is not racial 
discrimination, what is? Discrimination, the word, doesn't simply mean 
minorities not getting what they want, or minorities not being treated 
fairly. It means a difference of treatment based on race. When a person 
is kept from getting a job because they are white, that's discrimination, 
just as it would be with regard to a black person, or any other person, 
whatever their "race". Will it really help to create a better situation 
if whites of this generation, innocent of the wrongdoings of past 
generations, are subjected to blatant, racist policies which exclude them 
from employment in a field they may have worked very hard to get into? Do 
blacks really need such an unfair advantage in the work place? Do 
Latinos, or women? Of course not. But, being human, we all accept good 
fortune when it comes our way, I certainly would.

However, consider this: All government agencies, and all businesses which 
have government contracts, must implement an affirmative action plan. At 
a minimum, they must tailor their hiring agendas to result in at least a 
representative number of employees from any given group (let's not call 
them minorities because in some cases, in certain parts of the country, 
they ain't...). That means, that eventually, these companies must have at 
least 50 percent women. Some will have more, but none will have less, 
unless they can do some pretty fancy footwork around the requirements. 
The same applies to blacks, hispanics, etc. The logical conclusion is 
that while some companies manage to just straddle the line, having 
precisely a representative number of protected people (representative of 
that group's percentage of the national population, for example), some 
compainies will have a percentage that is higher. The scale tips the 
other way. Instead of resolving a deep-seated problem, we have compounded 
it. It's going to get ugly folks.

Certainly, something has to be done bring things back into balance. 
Terrible wrongs have been done to people of the past, by people of the 
past. One of the tenets of a civilized society is that culpability is not 
inherited from one generation by the next. You could not be punished for 
a crime committed by your mother or father. Yet, that is what is 
happening today, to young white men. Heaping injustice upon injustice is 
a formula for disaster, not success. Something must be done, but 
affirmative action may not be that thing.

The reason we have such a problem it this time is that certain people, in 
the past, have been denied equal access to opportunities. They were not 
given the option of doing their best in life. More accurately, they were 
prevented from becoming what they might have been. Handing out jobs and 
education to those who look vaguely like the people who were wronged in 
the past is an arbitrary attempt to undo what cannot be undone. I think 
the most we can hope for is to break the pattern, make things as they 
should have been all along, and do our best to keep it going that way. 
All people must be given the same chance to prove their merit, in the 
schools and on the job. That's an approach that is sustainable. 
Affirmative action is inherently flawed, and must eventually be 
discarded. We should ask ourselves what it might be replaced with, under 
duress, unless replaced now, with rational consideration.