Affirmative action is a good idea

Thank you for your response! "But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone" (King). Even in 1963, when rights were not nearly as equal as they are today, Dr. King got it. Giving rights to minorities should not mean automatically antagonizing or punishing the majority. "It's no secret that African Americans were kept as slaves. " The thirteenth amendment was passed in 1865. There is nobody alive today who was legally kept as a slave. I understand that you're trying to say that they were oppressed, but we can't change how things were 150 years ago, so we need to look at the problems of today. And, as King said, "Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness" (King). "Is it fair to take these men and women, set them free, put them at the beginning of a race and tell them they're free to compete? " No. But we freed the slaves in 1865. We passed the Civil Rights act in 1964. Now it's 2010. It's not the beginning of the race anymore. "Not knowing 2+2=4 doesn't mean copying that answer from another classmate's assignment [not addressing the problem]. It means you grab a calculator and punch in 2+2 to get 4 [addressing the problem]. " I'm not sure if I understand this analogy. Affirmative action means giving a preference to minorities when applying for a job or college. You're somehow equating that to the difference between copying from a person and copying from a machine. I don't understand how they are even similar. "And so when an employer realizes, 'Hey, this guy is ready to work. And so is this man,' under affirmative action, he'll. .. give the disadvantaged man an advantaged by giving him the callback. " But it would make much more sense to give both men the callback. If they are both ready to work, why should only one get the opportunity, not because they are more qualified, but because of the color of their skin. "I have a Dream," as you can probably guess, is my favorite speech ever of all time. My favorite quote from that speech is, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" (King). I want you to think about that quote. Affirmative action judges people by the color of their skin. That's not King's dream. "Now, on the basis of race, blacks are claiming special status and reserving for themselves privileges they deny to others. Isn't one as bad as the other? " I'm going to have to disagree with Fish on this one. The answer is yes. "In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds" (King). If it's wrong for white people to do it, it's wrong for black people to do it. "So in equalizing the playing field, and bringing the majority to the same level, or close to the same level as the majority, Affirmative action is promoting fairness. " But it's not bringing them to the same level. If 2 people apply for a job, or a college, or anything, if they were at the same level, they would be judged on the same thing: qualification. They wouldn't be judged by the color of their skin. They wouldn't be punished for being part of the majority, and they wouldn't be rewarded for simply being a minority. As I said earlier, we need equal rights, not special rights. "Reverse Racism is a cogent description of affirmative action only if one considers the cancer of racism to be morally and medically indistinguishable from the therapy we apply to it. A cancer is an invasion of the body's equilibrium, and so is chemotherapy; but we do not decline to fight the disease because the medicine we employ is also disruptive of normal functioning. Strong illness, strong remedy: the formula is as appropriate to the health of the body politic as it is to that of the body proper. " This is also a false analogy. Chemotherapy is not a good treatment for cancer, but it's all we have as of now. Why do you think that so many scientists are looking for a cure for cancer? They're looking for something less dehumanizing and debilitating as chemotherapy. They're already looking promising for a targeted chemotherapy, which basically is more effective at just killing cancer cells instead of whatever it finds. Society is not like medicine. There are other methods, like hiring the right guy regardless of race. Also, cancer is a degenerative disease, which means that it gets worse over time. As we have established, the problem of race relations in America is getting better, not worse. We use chemo against cancer because it gets better, while cancer gets worse. As our society gets better, the racism inherent in affirmative action would get worse, because it would end up much easier for minorities to get jobs than the majority. This would lead to an enmity against the minority, and the whole process would start over again. It's nothing like Cancer. In fact, it's almost the opposite. It's almost like curing cancer by killing you faster with AIDS. The way I see it, Martin Luther King, Jr. was the original anti-affirmative action activist. He may not have known it, but he was. He argued for equality. He argued for equal rights. He was not a black supremacist. He wanted "the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners" to be able to "sit down together at the table of brotherhood. " He wanted people to not to "be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" (King). Affirmative action has no part of Dr. King's dream. Martin Luther King, Jr. is the face of equal rights, and his dream is the soul. Affirmative action is not equality. It's no different than our past of putting whites before minorities. Affirmative action is racism. According to Webster, racism is "racial prejudice or discrimination. " Affirmative action, by definition, is racial (sexual, religion-based, etc. ) discrimination. I am quite confident that, if King was alive today, he would not approve of affirmative action.