Affirmative Action

[MarshmellowKitty]

:question: What do you think about it?

I sorta support it but sometimes I feel its not fair to other people who make the grade and cannot get in because they exceeded the amount of non-minorities in a school...

I don't know all the details of Affirmative Action but still, what do you think?

[ILikeIke]

On the most basic levels of personal like and dislike, I do not have a solid opinion.

However, my cursory glance at the U.S. Constitution leads me to think that "affirmative action" through racial classification and entitlement, if enacted through the federal U.S. government, is unconstitutional.

The U.S. constitution forbids giving a "title of nobility:"
"Clause 8: No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States"

Giving someone the privileged, reproductively inherited title of "Native American" seems to be such "title of nobility," if privileges are given with it. It is saying that a person with that "title of nobility" and their offspring, shall be given privileges by the U.S. government; and, that seems unconstitutional.

I don't appear to be the only one with a similar opinion:

"U.S. Supreme Court
ADARAND CONSTRUCTORS, INC. v. PENA (1995)
No. 93-1841.

...

JUSTICE SCALIA, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.

...In my view, government can never have a "compelling interest" in discriminating on the basis of race in order to "make up" for past racial discrimination in the opposite direction. Individuals who have been wronged by unlawful racial discrimination should be made whole; but under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or a debtor race. That concept is alien to the Constitution's focus upon the individual, see Amdt. 14, 1 ("[N]or shall any State . . . deny to any person" the equal protection of the laws), and its rejection of dispositions based on race, see Amdt. 15, 1 (prohibiting abridgment of the right to vote "on account of race") or based on blood, see Art. III, 3 ("[N]o Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood"); Art. I, 9 ("No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States"). To pursue the concept of racial entitlement - even for the most admirable and benign of purposes - is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American...."
(bolding mine)
http://www.dickinson.edu/~rudaleva/adarand.htm

So, again, I haven't examined the issue thoroughly enough to know whether I am personally for it or against it; but, if we are going to do it in the U.S. federal government, we should first amend the U.S. constitution to allow giving such "titles of nobility."

[Shadow]

I'm glad that Scalia makes note of "admirable and benign of purposes" which I feel is the reason affirmative action was instituted. I don't agree that it was instituted so much to "make up for past racial discrimination" as much as to compensate for modern day disadvantages that may or may not have been caused by past racial discrimination.

With this, I believe that affirmative action may have had its place at one time when it helped people like Colin Powell and Clarence Thomas to reach their potentials, but it should never have become an indefinite practice. Years ago it reached a point of no longer compensating for current disadvantages, but rather lowering the standards for certain groups. It has now become a sly way for the left to use the idea of the prodigal child to keep Blacks and other minority groups from achieving self sufficiency and reaching their potentials (the same potentials as any other group), thus remaining more dependant on the system.

What it should be replaced with now is simply a strong watch for any remaining true racial discrimination in our society.

[PrezLeefun]

If it has anything to do with the state then there should be no race/religious based scholarships. although I am a woman of color and it would probably benefit me most; I am against affirmative action-of any form. I think it has gone from a good thing to racism in action. People should get ahead in life based on their merits, not what they were born into.
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[HomeschoolrsRUs]

"I have a dream that . . . . children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Martin Luther King (paraphrased by me)

Affirmative Action, while instituted with the best of intentions has exploited into a nightmare. The road to h-e-double-toothpicks is paved with good intentions. The answer is not to lower the standards for everyone, but to raise the abilities of everyone to achieve the standards. No one benefits from affirmative action these days. We tell those who "qualify" for it, your no good on your own, you need help. We tell those who do not "qualify," it doesn't MATTER how good you are, you can't get ahead because you are the wrong color/ethnicity.

Raise the people, don't lower the standards.

[PrezLeefun]

Raise the people, don't lower the standards.


ouch Homes! that was good. :)<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->