Friday, May 29, 2009
Help me out
Sometimes I just fail to fully understand things. There is another "anti-affirmative action" movement starting up in AZ. Which leads me to the question, if you are against affirmative action, doesn't that mean you are in favor of maintaining White dominance of everything? Why isn't that racist?
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2 comments:
I assume you're not just asking for an "amen, brother", so I'll answer the question:
You might believe that by accepting substandard qualifications by a minority, you are removing the incentive for minorities to perform at the same level as whites. A truly non-racist person could hold this view.
You might also believe that the field is already level and since that's the case, a meritocracy exists and preferential treatment is racist against whites. I think this assumes a meritocracy that is likely not to be true, as the decision-makers often make racist decisions.
I'm sure there are other arguments. I'm interested in your answer to the first.
First, I really wasn't just asking for an "amen, brother."
re: "accepting substandard applicants": Affirmative action is different from quotas. Quotas are where you say, we will admit this many blacks to school, or hire this many blacks, etc. Quotas threaten to create a scenario where people are put in positions for which they lack qualification.
Affirmative action is taking positive steps to recruit a minority group. For example, schools don't just consider grades and legacies, they consider whether the potential student is a minority.
Government agencies must show that they at least attempted to offer contracts to qualified minority owned businesses.
So, I think the first non-racist reason to oppose affirmative action fundamentally misunderstands what affirmative action is.
re: "the field is already level": This is just not true. I would submit that to get to the second position one would have to actively train one's mind by, for example, only exposing it to certain less credible sources of information. Such willful ignorance is close enough to racist to receive my condemnation.
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