Affirmative Action is Bad

Please excuse the forfeit. I must have lost track of the debate. - Affirmative Action is a program of opportunity, it is not a program of discrimination. + I agree that affirmative action was not designed to promote discrimination. However, it does just that. Affirmative action is essentially that if a white person and a black person have the same qualifications, the black person gets the job. This is the same thing that happened to blacks in the 1960s only in reverse. Essentially, all that happen is that whites are discriminated against. This is no better than what blacks fought against in the civil rights era . Affirmative action = reverse discrimination: http://www.adversity.net... http://www.huppi.com... http://atheism.about.com... http://www.adversity.net... http://www.now.org... It is very hard to find sources that say that affirmative action is not reverse discrimination. The point is simple and definite: affirmative action is reverse discrimination. Your job is to justify reverse discrimination, which I feel cannot be done because it is essentially just discrimination. - Logically, Affirmative Action is about getting an equal decision. Now, what this does is it forces employers to open up the job to more people, which means that a single person has less of a chance of getting the job. What this means is that in order to stand above the pack, one must in fact be even MORE educated. Thus, this point is turned as, in fact, another reason to support Affirmative Action, as it improves education. + This is a bad argument and here is why: If a black wanted to get a good job in the 60s, he would have to do more schooling and be way more qualified than the white to even be considered. This is the same standard that whites have now. - Students admitted on this basis are often ill-equipped to handle the schools to which they've been admitted. Imagine a AA minor league baseball player suddenly asked to bat cleanup in the majors, or a high school science fair contestant suddenly asked to take a rocket scientist job at NASA. There's a possibility of success in these situations, but it's more likely they will be in over their heads. Schools like Harvard and Yale have high GPA and SAT requirements because it is extremely difficult to graduate from them. Thus, when they're forced to lower standards to achieve a minority quota, some students can't keep up. This isn't to say these students are less capable, but chances are that if they can't meet minimum requirements, they probably aren't ready to go there. The far-lower graduation rate of minorities is testament to the fact that they are too often going to schools that don't match their ability. The original application criteria of schools were put in for a reason. We should adhere to them. (Joe Messerli) Point 4 - It would help lead a truly color-blind society. I'm not here to be overly combative. I conceed with your interpretaion of point 4. However, I still have the debate on all other points. - Ask a man if he would rather have pride or a comfortable lifestyle. + As a black person, this statement offends me. It says that I require hands out to succeed to succeed, which is empirically false. - Again, what is the impact? Also, Affirmaive Action doesn't guarentee success. The person in question still must work hard to get to success, and if they truely are successful, then what does it matter to them what they think? Goes back to impact. + I thought it was a good point to throw in here because I know people who have experienced this and have experienced this and know the impact personally. - Increases Education + Education is not increased but rather people are less likely to succeed when thrown into bigger arenas. - Give oppurtunities for minorities + Minorities already have opportunites. - Stops racism + We all know that affirmative action has not and will not stop racism. It dies not even reduce it by one single person. I love your impact calculus despite how much I disagree with it. The three points you made are yor only offensive points and they each are false or unachievable. The 6 points I made were better, from experience and more realistic. Thank you.