Resolved: Affirmative action should be practiced in college admissions.

I'm gonna start with my case and then move onto my opponent's =========================================================================== CONTENTION #1: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PROMOTES INEQUALITY: =========================================================================== If all men are considered equal, then surely all men ought to have an equal opportunity to get into college, right? Unfortunately, with affirmative action, this can by no means be considered the case. I would like for you to take note of the following court case that was instigated due to the so-called "good" which my opponent happens to be in favor of: http://en.wikipedia.org... In Grutter v. Bollinger, we had a Caucasian female who worked as hard as she could and had a most noteworthy academic background no doubt superior to many individuals. How was the defendant from this case rewarded for her achievements? How was she rewarded for abiding by the system our society ENCOURAGES (to work your hardest to get results)? She was rewarded with a non-acceptance letter simply due to the fact that she wasn't a minority. How on earth is this considered fair? What is the point of trying so hard and giving it your all, only to be rejected based on matters which you have no control over (in this case, 'race' being that matter). This isn't fair play; this isn't promotion of equality; this is simply countering discrimination with discrimination. In other words, it's unjust and hypocritical. Most importantly, it only creates as many problems as it destroyed. ============================================================================ CONTENTION #2. QUOTAS ACTUALLY ENCOURAGE RACISM ============================================================================ Alright. Even if affirmative action actually promotes inequality, it is still putting a stop to racism, right? See the posted vid for the answer to this question. http://www.youtube.com... Ladies and gentleman, please direct your attention to the words of the only African American Justice of the supreme court; here's what Clarence Thomas had to say on the matter: http://www.cbsnews.com... As we can note here, Justice Thomas was ostracized when he had participated in Yale due to affirmative action and also had a hard time getting a good job (in spite of a YALE degree). Those around him wouldn't take him seriously due to the belief that he only got into Yale because he received a handout due to affirmative action. Hardly anyone actually believed that he had worked hard enough to get in by his own abilities. Although I disapprove of this mindset, there is plenty of reasoning that supplements it given that students are merely being allowed into schools based on being in the minority whereas hard working individuals in the majority don't have as much as an opportunity. Obviously, this causes bitterness and even prejudice to a great extent given that people become inclined to think of minorities as possessing inferior talents and only succeeding because the system enables them to. If our goal is to impede racism, ought not to be used as the means given the harm it brings about. ============================================================================ CONTENTION #3. THERE IS A SUPERIOR ALTERNATIVE TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ============================================================================ If the government wishes to get involved, it could just as easily simply insure that minorities are not denied on non-academic bases. In other words, students could either send their college admissions in, only for their admissions to be transferred to the government. The government would check all facts concerning the students academics and would send these to colleges . . . to which colleges would determine who gets in and who stays out solely based on academics (sports are related to. I'm just insisting that no irrelevant matter be provided). Once the colleges approved of all the satisfactory academic admissions, the government would inform them of the identities of the students they received (in other words, they wouldn't know anything extra about the students until they had already accepted them). Of course, there may be some possible factors which colleges would NEED to know about before measuring all of the potential students' academic records (such as whether or not the students have a criminal record), but nothing concerning race, gender or anything of the sort. Basically though, this isn't a method which would promote inequality or racism (as is the case with affirmative action). All students would actually be earning their acceptances into college based on their abilities alone ONTO PRO's CASE: RE: "As it is, if two equally qualified men apply for the same job and one is white and one is black, the white man will get the nod almost every time. This holds true for highly selective colleges as well." Interesting . . . however, with affirmative action, the roles are merely reversed. The African American individual gets the nod whereas the Caucasian individual gets the boot as is the case in "Grutter v. Bollinger." Even if the individual that represents the majority is better qualified, he/she still gets the boot. In other words, affirmative action doesn't really solve a problem. Rather, it encourages it. RE: "If Affirmative action was practiced in colleges, it would have dramatic effects on minority society, especially the "slums" of big cities." Correction. Affirmative action IS practiced in colleges and yet we are still seeing minorities at the bottom of the economic food chain. As I mentioned earlier, affirmative action encourages racism and promotes inequality. The problems which my opponent is positing are actually the result of this. We need to shift our society to a point where race and other similar factors DO NOT MATTER. Affirmative action simply suggests the opposite. RE:"If blacks were given equal opportunity more and more of them would be given the gift of an education and blacks would lose the unfortunate stereotypes applied to them." Cross Apply my second contention here. RE: "Malcolm Gladwell writes in his excellent book "The Tipping Point" that if around five percent of a given community are professionals or what the government considers "high quality" jobs we suddenly start to see an immediate plummeting of crime and high-school dropouts." This works for my case. If a given community does not find itself impeded based on matters concerning race or other uncontrollable traits (which can be applicable to both minorities and the majority, as I've already explained), every member will have the opportunity to fall under the aforementioned percentile (of course, with every member of the community being taken into consideration, the percentile would no doubt increase). This can be accomplished through relying on alternatives to affirmative action as it is an alternative that relies only on the abilities of the potential students. RE: "If we utilized our whole spectrum of minorities, it would attract more and more high tech companies to the United States which would help our economy recover and increase jobs and raise our overall GDP." With affirmative action? No chance. We're just swapping out some members of the majority and giving those jobs to the minority. In other words: No net gain. It would be far more logical and ethical to simply utilize our whole spectrum of those who qualify themselves. "In conclusion, if Affirmative Action did not devolve to preferential treatment and only equal treatment for minorities" Affirmative action did not devolve into preferential treatment. It IS preferential treatment. Equality is only possible when race/gender/etc is no longer a factor And that'll do it for now.