Affirmative Action Debate Help Needed

April 4, 2003 | Me (speaking for my brother)

[GiveEmDubya]

I once again come to tap FReeper knowledge. This time, it is not I who needs help, rather my brother. He has been assigned to debate an affirmative action amendment.

His task: Debate in FAVOR of an amendment to ban affirmative action.

Any articles, websites, or just really good points are welcome. Thanks for the help.

[GiveEmDubya]

Again, my brother thanks you for your help!

[APBaer]

He can go to the US Supreme Court Website
and review the briefs filed in the two cases

[Camachee]

http://www.cnn.com/US/9708/28/affirm.action/

Try the article at this web site. It's a start.

[SuzanneC]

Go to www.townhall.com. Thomas Sowell has a four-parter entitled "The Grand Fraud". If this doesn't help your brother, nothing will.

[Puppage]

If it is illegal for me, as a business owner, NOT to hire someone because of the color of their skin....why then should they be promoted FOR THAT VERY SAME REASON?

[sinclair]

The problem with “affirmative action” is that it implies that action needs to be taken because of race and not ability.

[John H K]

Ummm....

You mean Consititutional Amendment?

The problem with this debate is that it is set up incorrectly.

You don't need an amendment to "ban" Affirmative action. It's already unconstitutional.

[bourbon]

Here's an argument that always seems to surprise liberals: Affirmative Action is wrong b/c it devalues minority achievement. In essence, affirmative action provides a pretext by which majority groups may unjustly dismiss minority success.

Here's an example. A university with an affirmative action policy hires a black man who is generally acknowledged to be the best in his field. Thanks to affirmative action, his opponents (liberal or conservative) would still be able to say that he earned his job not b/c of his personal merits but because of his skin color.

Compare this to what would happen in a world w/o affirmative action. Just as an example, I don't think anyone (except maybe some racist crackpots) would say that the Dodgers hired Jackie Robinson b/c he was black and not b/c he was an MLB-quality baseball player.

[itzmygun]

Thomas Sowell is currently writing a series of articles on this subject:

here

[martianagent]

If AA were not such an atrocious idea to begin with, you could
almost make a case for it in the single case of the black man, who
you could claim had a major hand in building the nation early on
and was systematically denied any share of the proceeds.  AA for the
black man, however, is nothing like what has happened.  What has
happened is AA for women, blacks (here and there), hispanics (whom
the U.S. owes nothing), children of rich parents in Taiwan (whom the
U.S. also owes nothing), children of rich parents in Samoa (whom the
U.S. also owes nothing), women, who are more than 50% of the 
population of the world, and basically everybody on the planet with
the single glaring exception of the white male.

That's racism, and it's little wonder the American people, by and
large, are finally rejecting it, along with the fricking brain-dead
liberals who espouse it.

Blacks in particular would be far better served by a handful of
intelligent policies which would have nothing to do with AA,
including:

1. Ending of the NEA monopoly on education in America
 which especially harms inner city children, vouchers etc..

2. Rational drug laws so that ghetto kids no longer see drug  
 dealers as success stories or drugs as a reasonable line of  
 business..  This means legalizing anything 
 no more harmful than booze, providing heroin at cost to
 those already addicted, and punishments sufficiently severe
 for traffic in jeckyl/hyde formulas like crack or pcp, that 
 none would dare deal in them.

3. A rational welfare program (cheeseburgers, milkshakes,
 clothes, books etc. to kids, nothing to the welfare mother,
 the slum lord, the drug dealer, the liquor-store owner et.  
 al., no money changing hands anywhere etc.)

4. Retaining of manufacturing and manufacturing jobs in the
 United States for people with no reasonable hope of becoming
 electrical engineers, computer programmers etc. etc.  This 
 would mean recognizing that "free trade" has become a form
 of idolatry demanding human sacrafice and recognizing that,
 beyond some point, you have to figure the cost of welfare and
 prisons into the price of all of these super-cheap goods which
 all say "made in China" etc. on them.

Black leaders with any real desire to help their people could easily
enough add several more such items to this list in such a way that no
reasonable person could have any problems with it, and the sum total
of such a group of policies would do more for poor blacks than AA
ever would.  AA is basically dead as we speak;  the only possible use
for it from the point of view of anybody who may have ever hoped to
gain anything from it, would be as trade goods for the sort of things
noted above.

[GiveEmDubya]

Well, if you must know, my brother's teacher is a pinko leftie who is big on affirmative action, welfare, UN inspections, etc.

[Amerigomag]

Understanding the issue does not require a rocket scientist.

Either you believe or you don't.

Understanding the historical subtleties isn't going to change anyone's mind.

[bmwcyle]

[Catie]

My thought has always been that affirmative action burdens fully qualified minorities into 2nd-class status, in that non-minorities tend to assume that ALL minorities obtained their position, status, acceptance letter, etc. due to their race. That's a burden that fully qualified minorities should not have to bear, but it's the unavoidable price, IMHO, of "AA."

[phrespearit]

What is the difference between affirmative action and
aparthied? Aparthied Lite?

[SauronOfMordor]

Take a look at Thomas Sowell's articles at http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell1.asp

Dr Sowell is Black, and has been writing extensively about academia, culture, and affirmative action for decades. It would be difficult for anyone to paint him as an "ignorant" or "racist" source

[BrooklynGOP]

Easy. Liberals are against profiling. Affirmative action is profiling.

[amused]

Try Thomas Sowell who is doing a series on this right now.

Here are some links:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20030401.shtml

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20030402.shtml

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20030403.shtml

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20030404.shtml

[laotzu]

'Affirmative Action' is heralded as an example of how individuals can be 'empowered' by the government. After all, isn't that the epitome of exactly what a government is for?

Main, and eagerly overlooked problem is a putting of the cart before the horse in a most arrogant manner. It is the people that 'empower' the government....not the other way around.

When a government weilds the ability to 'empower' its citizens, they have been allowed far too much power.
(man!...I really hate the word 'empower'!)