2a. Affirmative Action

http://en.wikipedia.org... "The term affirmative action describes many policies aimed at a historically socio-politically non-dominant group (typically, minority men or women of all racial groups) intended to promote its access to education or employment. Motivation for affirmative action is a desire to redress negative effects of actual or perceived, past or current discrimination that is regarded as unfair by relevant legislative bodies. It also serves to encourage public institutions such as universities, hospitals and police forces to be more representative of the populations they serve." My opponent wishes you to believe that affirmative action is not a warped kind of reverse racism because he know that that is exactly what it is and will certainly lead to his defeat. He then has the audacity to suggest that Affirmative Action is empowered businesses that wanted to add diversity to their workforce. What? Empowering? Affirmative action means that the less qualified person gets hired just because he or she is part of a minority group. That rather than allowing businesses to be left alone they require them to hire certain people because of the color of their skin. If that's not racism I don't know what is. Private groups can and do give out scholarships to whomever they want. This isn't strictly speaking affirmative action as the government isn't forcing them to do it. If the KKK wants to give a full ride scholarship to some young white financially neglected male student they are well within their rights to do so. Just as another group could give out a scholarship for having large breasts. These are the actions of private groups with private money. However, when my opponent suggests that "an employer should be able to hire anyone they want" he's striking at the heart of what he's suppose to advocate. Affirmative action suggests that if you have hired the most qualified workforce and that workforce has too many whites you need to hire a less qualified minority rather than somebody you want to hire. Affirmative action does exactly what he suggests it doesn't. Employers are free to hire whomever they want. They can hire a large portion of disadvantaged racial groups. The law is pretty clear however that employers can't actually hire based on whatever reasons they want. State and federal law make it punishable to be biased in the selection of employees on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity. Affirmative action however, make it punishable to not be biased in favor of some employees based on race and gender. That if you lack enough diversity in your hiring practices the Feds won't be happy. Stopping affirmative action means preventing the government from insisting you hire less qualified employees to make your workforce more diverse because of some sense of liberal guilt. It was attempted for a number of years and the end result wasn't any help for minorities. The only group it actually managed to help was white women. The law is clear as to the criteria which can be used to make employment decisions. And, it should be like that! You shouldn't be allowed to hire a white guy because he's white, or pass on a guy because he has IBS and you don't want to deal with the medical insurance, or hire a guy because he has a family at the deficit of a single person. These considerations are outside the purview of what a business should know about us. However, affirmative action goes beyond this. It says that we need to hire people because they are a minority. That we need a workforce with at least X% of people of this race or Y% of this gender. It's an albatross around the neck of business forcing them to hire the less qualified because of the color of their skin. Affirmative action is neither just nor acceptable. Companies are forbidden from hiring or firing based on criteria such as race or gender already and can be sued for such actions under the present laws. Going above and beyond this and demanding that they hire less qualified persons just to get a more diverse workforce is unneeded and unacceptable.