No. The children of Michael Jordan do not need affirmative action. No. The late son of Bill Cosby did not need affirmative action. The fathers of these children, by virtue of their economic power, can give them advantages not available to 99.99 percent of their counterparts. However, tens of thousands of other young people do need a lift here and there, such as the affirmative action boost that Colin Powell took advantage of years ago.
Re: "Does the child of a middle class black person deserve admission into a university while the son of a destitute white person does not ?"
You pose excellent questions, of which I do not always have answers. Affirmative action is not easy to define, or enact fairly, and any "solution"is fraught with potential problems. I struggled with same five years ago when my daughter, who was salutatorian of her high school class and had the highest ACT score in her class, applied to the same colleges as did one of her best friends at school, who is black. One girl got the fat envelopes and one girl got the thin envelopes. All worked out in the end, but it was highly stressful for a couple weeks.
That said, I think when one group of people ... whether they be African-Americans, Appalachian whites, Native Americans ... significantly lags behind the rest of the population in terms of economic or educational achievement, then I think it is incumbent upon government to extend a hand.
The difficult question is how should this hand be extended? And at the expense of whom? |
