re: #314 buzzsawmonkey

It’s not a question of “leaving the door open for racists.” Affirmative action is a mandated preference; knowing that it is in operation, it is easy to resent that mandate’s existence; it is easy to assume that someone who could benefit from it does, even if that person doesn’t need to; it is easy to move from that to an assumption that any person who could benefit from it has, and that the person is therefore at least less-qualified, perhaps actually unqualified.

Plus everyone probably has seen an example at work, or heard of one from friends and family, where someone is not fired despite inappropriate deportment or bad work product, because the company is afraid of a discrimination suit. This many not happen as often as people say, but it happens enough times for there to be some truth to the stories.

None of this is “racists exploiting” anything; this is simply the natural progression of resentments and assumptions that builds up when you have a mandated preference.

Mandated preferences have a huge dose of foolishness towards them. However, there is a context. Given the set up in America, back in the day, the only way to get minorities into schools was by mandating that they accept them. The only way to get minorities out of an underclass position was by allowing them to pursue education and meaningful employment. Whether or not the time is passed for AA and we no longer need to do that, is something that has a lot of room for debate and I can hear both sides.

However, consider the following fact:

With the quota systems of the fourties, Feynman had to have special letters written from his professors at MIT to Princeton to accept him for graduate school even though he was a Jew. They argued that they overlook that fact because her really was that good.

Feynman was indisputably, the greatest American physicist of his generation. He was indisputably one of the greatest ever. He is in the same league as Newton and Einstein. Yet, Princeton saw him a Jew first and came within a nanometer of not accepting him because of it.

Interestingly enough, Jews have never directly benefitted from Affirmative action in this country, though, with it came a removal of the quota systems for Jews.

I am not going to say that I think AA has never been abused. I am not going to say that there isn’t room for serious and sober discussion about it and reforming it. However, I am not about to just jump up and say there is nothing to it or that it was in principle wrong from the start.