Speaking only for myself, affirmative action is not something I've ever supported, but it's never been a hot-button negative issue either. I've certainly never felt threatened by it, despite being about as white, male, and Anglo-Saxon as it's possible to be. I've had one hell of a lot of advantages, none of which were due to anything I did to deserve them, and it doesn't really disturb me that someone who has not had similar ones might be given a little artificial assistance. Certainly it's unfair, but a lot of the advantages I have are equally unfair.
My personal preference would be to see affirmative action or similar programs directed at providing educational opportunity, rather than employment opportunity, and to have the unfair advantage distributed purely on the basis of economic status, not race. In general, a poor kid has to work a hell of a lot harder and be a hell of a lot smarter than a rich one to reach the same level of qualification for higher education; I have no problem with educational institutions acknowledging that difference in opportunity while considering applicants.
The original purpose of the civil rights movement was to destroy legal barriers based on race; now it erects them.
Original purposes often change. It is fairly apparent that our legacy of formal discrimination has created what could become a permanent underclass, and that merely removing these barriers has not significantly altered that situation. I don't think it reasonable to try and break the cycle of hopelessness that prevails in the ghetto; I'm not convinced that affirmative action is the best way to do this, but I'd be willing to listen to arguments for it, as well as for any other suggestions.
I'm also not convinced that affirmative action was ever practiced on a large enough scale to make it anything more than a facade, to be trotted out whenever an administration needed to cater to minority opinion.
What do you think of the defense budget? Does the current level of external threat really justify an increase in what is already - by a huge margin - the world's largest military outlay? |
