Affirmative action is a good idea

Thank you for your quick and thoughtful response! "It is no secret that an enormous part of inequalities do lie in race. Is it possible to fix these racial problems without addressing these problems?" In order for that to happen, we would need a societal change. Luckily, we are going through said change. 50 years ago, this debate would have been very different. You are absolutely correct that inequalities do often lie in race, however, Martin Luther King, Jr. once had a dream, and our nation is living out Dr. King's dream. It has certainly not been achieved yet, but we are much closer to it now than we were when he delivered it in 1963. As of now, the president of our nation is a black man. Our vice president is Catholic. Our secretary of state and speaker of the house are women. Our supreme court has a black man, 2 women, 2 Jews, 6 Catholics, and a Hispanic woman. The majority leader of the senate is Mormon. In the 5 states bordering the Pacific ocean, of the 10 senators, only 2 are white, Christian men (Merkley and Begich). My point in throwing out these statistics is that we are in many ways achieving King's dream. So, to answer your question with my long, drawn out soliloquy, yes, it is possible to fix the problems without intervention. "With affirmative action, if two EQUALLY qualified men apply for a job, special recognition is to be given to the disadvantaged man." So, instead of going in for a second interview, they just choose the black guy? The reality is, it's not possible to have two people who are completely and totally equally qualified. The would have to be the same person. Race shouldn't be any factor at all in choosing who gets the job. Only qualification. "If we don't look at race as a deciding factor in hiring, etc., then we're letting the problem continue to exist and further perpetuate itself." In the days of yore, they would look at race as a deciding factor (If he's not white, we shouldn't hire him). I don't see how affirmative action is any different, except it pretends to be promoting fairness. "Seeing as this is nonbeneficial to anyone being harmed by these problems, we must recognize that, affirmative action, by addressing the problem, seeks to fix the problem" Between your commas, I can see what you mean in a way. I can see that it can be seen as a check against racism, but it assumes that people are racist. So, if the guy who's hiring ISN'T racist, it ends up being "reverse racist," or, to say it as it really is, racist against the majority. Now, I'm in no way a white supremacist, but I believe in equal rights for everybody, not special rights for some. 'I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal'" (King). "Simply put, they can't really afford to get into higher education as easily as the majority (the wealthy, men, and the white)." There are scholarships to get into colleges. If you do well in high school and you apply for a scholarship (and sometimes even if you don't), your economic status shouldn't hinder you from going to college. I'm going to choose to ignore your claim that men can more easily get into college because, to put it bluntly, that's not true. The majority of college students today are female. And, unfortunately, your claim about the white was very true in the past. Now, the people back then are bringing up the people of today, and since those people knew they had no hope in the past, they valued education less. Guess what that translates to. If you don't value education, your kids are less likely to. That is why Asian people very often excel in school. They value education much more in Asian culture than they do in American culture, and so their kids will too. So, since we are in a much freer society than we were in the past, the playing field is leveling out, and so, once again, these problems will fix themselves. Basically, your argument then proceeds to sound like you're arguing that minorities are naturally disadvantaged and/or less qualified. I disagree with that (Carlos Slim Helu? Oprah?), but even if it were true, it would hurt our economy greatly if we intentionally hired disadvantaged and unqualified people because they are disadvantaged and unqualified. If it so happens that those who are truly qualified are white, so be it. If they are black, so be it. If they are Jewish, so be it. If they are Asian, so be it. If they are Hispanic, so be it. I am looking forward to seeing what you have to say!