SamSpade
Well-Known Member
It should be that way, shouldn't it? But I've known and worked with dozens of persons from those other groups who were denied any access to Affirmative Action programs. I've never known an Asian American who was ever helped by an affirmative action program, and I know of at least one Indian woman who was openly ridiculed for even trying, skin color notwithstanding.
That may be the *intent* of Affirmative Action, but in practice, it is a program for African Americans - period.
The premise has always been that since the scales tipped in favor one way, it needed to be intentionally tipped the other way to set things right. That is, it's ok for it to be unfair, because the status quo itself is unfair already. So if someone calls it unfair - well of course it is. To deny that would be to deny its purpose for existence.
What bothers me is there seems to be no mechanism whatsoever to determine if it is doing its job - other than how people feel about it. I mean, if you see a social problem and embark on an admittedly unfair course of action to correct it - you have two obligations : one is to determine if the problem is being fixed and two, is your solution actually doing anything to change the problem? Nothing I can see about Affirmative Action does this. There's no objective mechanism to establish this, especially the second one.
Why do I say that? Because proponents of Affirmative Action firmly agree that it is STILL necessary - and I think if something hasn't made substantial progress in 40 years - it isn't actually solving the problem at all. You shouldn't need to KEEP an unfair program indefinitely to "tip" the scales back, because that means you are never actually addressing the problem itself - just the end result. If the problem is some kind of intrinsic form of racism, then Affirmative Action can NEVER solve the problem. It will just make people feel good about it.
