By the way if you do not agree with my reasoning about why it is needed, come up with your own, but admit that it is still needed.
I don't - but for completely different reasons.
I do not believe as you suggest, that the purpose of affirmative action is to give jobs and education access to
people who do not have any business being there. It was to open the door for people who at least come close
to the requirements but who have been shut out for a long time due to prejudice, whether intentional or not.
It has however been abused to do exactly as you say.
When people have a large pool of qualified applicants - at least at one time, they tended to hire people JUST
like themselves. I do believe people often do this without thinking, but certainly people did it on purpose.
Affirmative action was intended to erase this idea. In the era I grew up in, if I needed the best programmer,
I wouldn't care what he looked like or if he was handicapped or if he was old, gay, ugly or wasn't a he.
I'd want the best one, period.
The IDEA was that eventually, equality is achieved and you don't need it at all. But my complaint is, not only is
it believed to still be needed, there's no metric whatsoever to measure if it's accomplished anything at all.
Fifty plus years for a program that hasn't improved anything is a failed program. It needs to be ended or replaced
with something that works.
Ditto programs to end poverty. They haven't ended poverty - they've preserved it.
I brought up the subject, because government tends to perpetuate or extend failed or failing programs and
continue to spend money on things that don't work, on the idea that it just needs more time and money.
