An interesting point of order.
In reality, very few Americans benefited from Affirmative Action. The huge failures of the program hurt Blacks and Whites alike!
As former ABCer Bob Zellnick points out in his book on the subject, of course, it was a huge problem for Whites. It was racism, but this time, politically-correct racism that denied them higher educations, jobs, and contracts so the positions could be given to Blacks
But this idiotic program hurt Blacks as well,
The plan had the effect of pushing Blacks into competitive universities and jobs where they could not compete. A typical AA-aided Black student would be admitted to a highly regarded school such as Yale, Cal Tech, Harvard and others. Once there, the failure cycle started immediately. He would be on academic probation after one semester, removed then reinstated under a special tutoring program for minorities after the second semester, then finally, permanently out after his 3d semester after all the special tutoring failed to produce the impossible result of having him compete where he was not qualified to.
The tragedy was, if it hadn't been for AA, this student could have entered a second tier school such as SUNY, North Carolina, Florida, fine schools all, and exceeded. He could have gotten his degree and moved on.
But time and again, these otherwise qualified students did not return to second tier schools after being academically removed from Harvard and the like. The stigma of failure permeated their lives. They ended up flipping hamburgers in their home towns, another failure thanks to Affirmative Action.
Spot on. And when I used this example in presentations promoting Michigan's anti affirmative action amendment, the usual suspects nearly burst a blood vessel. BUT the important thing is that the exact same phenomenon shows up regardless of who is being promoted. Even sports scholarships can produce this phenomenon when an athlete that should go to a 2 year community college or vocational school is bumped into a college level program for which he is drastically unprepared.
Good points about AA, MB26. I hadn’t realized that...