So now can we get rid of Affirmative Action?

unsung wrote:

A black man has reached the most powerful job on the planet. There should no longer be any excuses for black people to hold whatever job that they strive for.

Thoughts?

don't be silly, hes only half black... so of course we have to keep it.

We should have absolutely gotten rid of it regardless of whether he became President. It serves no good purpose.

know1 wrote:

We should have absolutely gotten rid of it regardless of whether he became President. It serves no good purpose.

Probably not... any more. There was most certainly a time for it though.

Mrs_Vedder78 wrote:

I'm not very popular with a lot of people for what I think about this.

Affirmative action at the workplace, I might agree since I believe in my heart that racism is very much alive in this country, so with affirmative action in the workplace I'm torn about.

Affirmative action as far as higher education goes to me is totally unfair. If a white person gets turn down when he/she has got a 4.0 GPA because the institution needs to meet their quota of women, or latinos, or whatever it is they need to meet and the person who takes that place has worse grades or less qualifications, how is that fair? People in this generation should be paying for previous generations mistakes.
Giving everyone equal opportunity in college based on grades and qualifications not on the color of their skin or their gender will only make people try harder and get better, not expect to get in just because they are a minority.

Technically the Supreme Court in a confusing decision in 1978 held that while affirmative action systems are constitutional, a quota system based on race is unconstitutional.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_California_v._Bakke

Whether or not colleges actually go by that ruling is anyone's guess.

what is missing from this discussion is the fact that affirmative action is not limited to equal opportunity based on race, rather any of what are considered "protected groups"

Mrs_Vedder78 wrote:

I'm not very popular with a lot of people for what I think about this.

Affirmative action at the workplace, I might agree since I believe in my heart that racism is very much alive in this country, so with affirmative action in the workplace I'm torn about.

Affirmative action as far as higher education goes to me is totally unfair. If a white person gets turn down when he/she has got a 4.0 GPA because the institution needs to meet their quota of women, or latinos, or whatever it is they need to meet and the person who takes that place has worse grades or less qualifications, how is that fair? People in this generation should be paying for previous generations mistakes.
Giving everyone equal opportunity in college based on grades and qualifications not on the color of their skin or their gender will only make people try harder and get better, not expect to get in just because they are a minority.

Funny. I feel the opposite. Minorities come from poorer schools and frequently get off on the wrong competitive foot. I'd rather see class rank emphasized. I cannot say with a straight face that someone in the Minneapolis school district (a decent urban school district) has the opportunity I had in the suburban (Robbinsdale) school district in MN. So if I finish say in the top 20% with a 26 on my ACT (yes, we use ACT, not SAT) and someone from and MPLS school finishes at the same class rank with a 23 on the ACT have I really accomplished more? I don't think so. I may be a bit more prepared so I guess my parents really "earned" that for me. All hail me. If I'd have been stuck at the University of Minnesota instead of the University of Wisconsin (tougher to get into), I'd have had less fun, but I'd have still been able to get my foot into the door. Nobody's getting denied from Harvard and getting stuck at Party State.

Then in the job market, I'd like to see it all go away. I know there's discrimination. There is also "white guilt". It's almost impossible for an employer to forget about race when hiring two essentially equal people. But if you've been given an educational opportunity in your relative youth, I'd like to see you be on your own in the job market (and the grad school market too).

Edit: so acutally, I am not necessarily for Affirmative Action as much as the acknowledgment that we are not born with an equal opportunity and that something be done about it. My "initial reaction" is to have much less emphasis on standardized tests (which I did well in) and more on class rank--then no worries about numbers because that should work itself out. Obviously other things are at play (extra curriculars, etc.). It's an art more than a science.

Uncle Leo wrote:

Funny. I feel the opposite. Minorities come from poorer schools and frequently get off on the wrong competitive foot. I'd rather see class rank emphasized. I cannot say with a straight face that someone in the Minneapolis school district (a decent urban school district) has the opportunity I had in the suburban (Robbinsdale) school district in MN. So if I finish say in the top 20% with a 26 on my ACT (yes, we use ACT, not SAT) and someone from and MPLS school finishes at the same class rank with a 23 on the ACT have I really accomplished more? I don't think so. I may be a bit more prepared so I guess my parents really "earned" that for me. All hail me. If I'd have been stuck at the University of Minnesota instead of the University of Wisconsin (tougher to get into), I'd have had less fun, but I'd have still been able to get my foot into the door. Nobody's getting denied from Harvard and getting stuck at Party State.

Yeah but the poorest getting worse education which is not their fault, is another thing we need to fix in this country, the government needs to help with this.
I mean lets not even get to college, lets just talk about the school level as you mentioned, I can't disagree with you on that but they are all public schools (well at least the ones I'm talking about) and all children should have access to good education regardless of what district they live in :(
I know though we are far away from that still

unsung wrote:

I think that rule only patronizes the black community.

I don't agree. Most NFL teams will go with also-ran coaches (read white) for interviews. Since there have been so few black coaches (or Latino coaches in Ron Rivera's case) they don't have the advantage of being a safe choice for an interview. NFL teams would also simply make their first choice because it seems safer. That's bullshit in a league that's at least 75 percent black from a player standpoint. The Rooney family took a chance on an untested assistant in his mid 30s because of the rule, liked what they saw, and then made a great hire. It took Tony Dungy two decades of being a top assistant coach to get a job in Tampa. That's too long for a coach who took teams to NFC and AFC championships and then won a Super Bowl. Besides, maybe black assistant coaches in the NFL don't feel at all patronized by the rule.