Myth 1: The only way to create a color-blind society is to adopt color-blind policies.
Although this statement sounds intuitively plausible, the reality is that color-blind policies often put racial minorities at a disadvantage.
Color blind policies don't put anyone at a disadvantage. Someone might already be at a disadvantage do to poor education, poor decisions earlier in life, or racism, but color blind policies pretty much by definition do not create disadvantages.
Myth 4: The public doesn't support affirmative action anymore.
Public opinion polls suggest that the majority of Americans support affirmative action, especially when the polls avoid an all-or-none choice between affirmative action as it currently exists and no affirmative action whatsoever
If you ask people if they like affirmitive action a lot of people will say yes, but if you ask them if they support the actual policies of affirmitive action such as quotas or racial prefences then a majority oppose it. Actually your link supports this when it says -
" What the public opposes are quotas, set-asides, and "reverse discrimination." For instance, when the same poll asked people whether they favored programs "requiring businesses to hire a specific number or quota of minorities and women," 63% opposed such a plan (Roper Center for Public Opinion, 1995b)."
As these results indicate, most members of the public oppose racial preferences that violate notions of procedural justice -- they do not oppose affirmative action.
It shows they don't oppose the words "affirmative action" but they oppose the policies that are called "affirmitive action".
Myth 5: A large percentage of White workers will lose out if affirmative action is continued.
If by "lose out" you mean lose their jobs then this argument is a strawman. Few argue this.
If by "lose out" you mean recieved reduced consideration for positions, and if "a large percentage" doesn't have to mean a majority then it isn't a myth at all.
Myth 6: If Jewish people and Asian Americans can rapidly advance economically, African Americans should be able to do the same.
Its not entirely a myth. Many of the Asians where servents building rail roads and such under conditions that approached slavery. The Jewish imigrants had a higher level of education and achievment on the average but not all of them. Also many black people have advanced economically. My boss is a black woman. Black people are at all levels of business and government and entertainment and the percent at the top is growing. The people who are left behind are mainly left behind because of two factors. There own decisions in life, and the lack of good education. To rectifiy the educational problems we have to reform the schools not put AA in place.
Myth 7: You can't cure discrimination with discrimination.
The problem with this myth is that it uses the same word -- discrimination -- to describe two very different things.
No it is not. In both cases one race or other group is getting preferential treatment. The myth here is that AA is not discrimination.
Myth 8: Affirmative action tends to undermine the self-esteem of women and racial minorities.
This is more of a complex uncertain question then it is an outright myth. Of course if it is uncertain then it doesn't make a good argument against AA even if it is not a myth. But it isn't one of the most common arguments against AA.
Myth 9: Affirmative action is nothing more than an attempt at social engineering by liberal Democrats.
All that the article shows is that the end part "by liberal Democrats" is a myth, but the fact that others besides liberal Democrats support AA doesn't mean that it is not an attempt at social engineering.
Myth 10: Support for affirmative action means support for preferential selection procedures that favor unqualified candidates over qualified candidates.
Not a myth. It often does mean support for candidates that would (before AA) be considered unqualified and would have to at least be considered less qualified using whatever objective criteria we have available.
Some writers have criticized affirmative action as a superficial solution that does not address deeper societal problems by redistributing wealth and developing true educational equality. Yet affirmative action was never proposed as a cure-all solution to inequality. Rather, it was intended only to redress discrimination in hiring and academic admissions.
If it is merely intended to redress discrimination in hiring and academic admissions it is probably not needed, esp. in the academic field where it is most prevailent. In fact it increases the amount of racial discrimination in those fields since it is itself an example of racial discimination, and in many cases it is not countering bias but introducing it.
Tim |
