Affirmative Action is Justifiable and Constitutional

Alright I think it"s necessary to outline a few things to recenter the argument a bit and the readress the issues we"ve already discussed. Firstly, a clear definition of what Affirmative Action is: A government (or private) program designed to redress historic injustices against specific groups by making special efforts to provide members of these groups with access to educational and employment opportunities. It was used to promote actions that achieved non-discrimination by preventing employers from discriminating against members of disadvantaged groups. It was intended to promote the opportunities of defined minority groups within a society to given access to that of the majority population. The stated justification for affirmative action by its proponents is that it helps to compensate for past discrimination, persecution or exploitation by the "ruling class" of a culture. Quotas are illegal in the United States, where no employer, university, or other entity may create a set number required for each race. [1] So firstly your claim that "Affirmative Action "aids" by imposing quotas based on race and when the standards of that quota are not met, unnecessarily lowering the standards for some, not all, races or sexes" is false. Quotas were made illegal by the Supreme Court in Regents of the University of California V. Bakke in 1973. This also makes claims about the lowering of standards also false because the need to do so would only arise from trying to fill a quota, which is an illegal and incorrect practice of affirmative action. So my argument is still very much about Affirmative Action. Riding that point, I"d like to point out that there is almost always a disparity between the law and it"s execution. This is true regarding Affirmative Action and even regarding the legislation that the con has cited regarding discrimination. Again, I"d like to give the example of the Civil Rights Act whose effects were not made completely evident until the end of the 20th century and debatably still occurring in an effort to equalize America"s social climate (this is mainly what our debate has been about. ) The Con has made the claim that both the 14th and 19th amendment contradict the premises upon which Affirmative Action is predicated. Could you please give further explanation? The absence of more constitutionally-based points in my argument is a result of the principle of strict scrutiny as applied in the majority of Affirmative Action cases. Strict scrutiny is a mediating standard that ties the constitutionality of any governmental or private practice weighing it against the government"s interest. This is made clear in Fisher v University of Texas. This also means that there is going to be a clash of ideologies given an originalist and activist interpretation of the Constitution. So, given the observance of strict scrutiny, in our current social climate, Affirmative Action has already been ruled as constitutional. So what we"re really debating on is whether or not it is still justifiable which would render strict scrutiny inert under the assumption that the needs of the groups that warranted and made Affirmative Action necessary and constitutional in the first place had already been met. However, that conversation is impossible to have without at least making skin, race, and/or biological sex a factor in the argument and by extension a basis. The con has made a clear and correct distinction between racial identity and culture. However, in the case of African Americans the two are nearly inseparable. That is not to say that they are one in the same, however a large part of anyone"s identity is rooted in culture. My claim is that historically, African American identity has always been and continues to be tied to the culture as a result of many factors. Blacks original identity on the North American continent was inseparably tied to slave culture. In the wake of segregation and the social impacts of that, it was still evident that the cultures of the black minority and the white majority were separate based on physical features namely race, skin color, and ethnicity. This trend in political inserts that have propagated cultural divisions based on race is easily observable. Now, policy and society at large function to serve to benefit the majority, it"s a natural consequence of established hierarchies and generally speaking do not necessarily playing to a racist narrative. However the claims I am making are that the hierarchal structures of America specifically were originally founded on racist ideologies given legislative processes, their constituents, and are made evident in our arc of history. These have prevailed and flourished for centuries and their endings are only now being seen at the turn between the 20th and 21st centuries. Now the question is whether or not racism still exists. Racism is defined as prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one"s own race is superior. Prejudice is defined as preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. "Disdain" is but a narrow window to define racism, as the belief, even if subconscious, that one is superior does not always correlate with negative feelings such as disdain and aversion to what is deemed as inferior. I"d like to briefly point out the the subject of race in this instance isn"t an attempt to off-road our debate, but rather it is paramount to understanding the context and the subject matter of Affirmative Action. So we previously equated the existence of racism to the existence of "unfavorable conditions" and in my view being in a minority group is already an unfavorable condition, because simply put the needs of the majority across history and geography have outweighed the needs of the minority"s per the pattern of the establishment of hierarchical structures. America is one of the few countries that seeks to rectify that through legislation and as a fundamental principle of its existence, but that has only occurred because the defining lines for what separates the majority from the minority were established from its beginnings and it was determined to be race. So I"d like to preface further comments with the fact that the racial and social climate for all minority groups is better than it has ever been in the history of mankind and continues to get better with each passing year. Equality of opportunity is becoming more of a reality and certainly is the reality for many, even within those minority groups including myself. However, as specified earlier, the natural tendency of a group, community, or nation is to establish laws that benefit the majority, and America is the first of its kind to go against that norm by attempting to expand the area of effect to which freedoms and equality of opportunity reach all people, but in order to do that, given the historical context that precluded that revelation, it has been seen as a necessary countermeasure by the Government (per its own rulings) and by those these programs effect to not only legislate programs that aid under-privileged groups in recognition of an advantaged majority, simply given their status as the majority, but to now tailor that aid to benefit the majority of the minority. Clearly there are exceptions to the predominant culture, and that is clear evidence of progress, but I believe Affirmative Action is a compromise that still requires the effort of underprivileged groups. In summary. Affirmative Action has already been ruled to be constitutional, which constitutionality is justified by the standard of strict scrutiny that grants constitutionality based on the needs of the people translated to the interests of the government.