Affirmative Action is a necessary responsibility

I challenge my opponent to establish why it is "unfair" of a burden for employers to hire "any damn body they please." On this point, I would like my opponent to establish why an employer should be allowed to just hire white Christian men and exclude all others if they choose. Is that really what you are saying? I most definitely disagree for the following reason: Allowing a business to profit at the expense of protecting equality is effectively anarchy and it is, in fact, a neglect of equality to allow such discrimination to occur. There is little so essential to a person's life in the United States as the right to have a job, make a living, and support onesself and/or one's family. Allowing non-government entities within the United States (such as an employer) to conspire against this to exercise racist or other discriminatory beliefs is merely a neglectful dereliction, on the government's part, toward protecting equality. If it is not what you were trying to say, then I am unclear as to what your point or meaning was and would ask you to clarify. As for over-representation of minorities in the criminal justice system, unfortunately that's unaddressable on a direct basis in terms of whether they are convicted (and by extension any resultant over-representation) since any person who commits a crime must be punished, but if there is any truth to the notion that people who are desperate, such as minorities still struggling with unequal opportunities (and from they are unequal, I hope you will concur regardless of whether or not you believe all institutions have an obligation to do their best to fix it, from standpoint that, statistcally speaking, if you are born to, say, black, you have a much smaller chance of 'making it' well in the country than someone born white), then this over-representation in the criminal population should follow suit with over-representation of minorities among the impoverished and in inverse to the under-representation in our nations upper echelons. I am not certain that more-time-for-the-same-time is present as strongly as you claim, and whether that's the result of discriminatory sentencing from judges (easily addressable) or juries (not so easily, must be addressed as a more general re-education of our society against racist tendancies). Education, housing, employment ... these very basics of life in the United States are foundations for having a life. Presuming your are Caucasian-majority, how much of any of these could be reduced out of your control from you before you could no longer have as good of a life as you have had? And going back to the gist of "Affirmative Action is reverse discrimination" -- not an exact quote but the general idea you presented in your arguments of "Equality means equality" -- its a contradiction to my statements of why it is necessary because the inequalities that exist are our government and society's fault, and steps must be taken to correct them. However, you did not give a reason as to why my reasonings were flawed, you merely say they are and give your own contrasting version. I will give another example to explain why an apparant inequality to correct a previous inequality is necessary: Imagine a child abused by their parents. By your logic, beyond taking the child out of the abuse, the child deserves no special treatment, no extra help in coping, no restitution from the abusive parents, no protection from the parents' friends if they did not like the child having turned on the parents by abusing them, that simply not being abused anymore is sufficiently equality restored. I quite disagree.