Affirmative Action

It seems you don't quite have the right understanding of affirmative action, and sometimes you make ignorant or unsupported assumptions about the situations and behaviors of certain groups. To address your first situation: Affirmative action is made explicitly to take into account the realistic tendencies of employers or admissions officers. In post-Civil Rights America, the employer wouldn't necessarily "flip a coin," even though that might be the ideal situation for two completely equally qualified candidates. Affirmative action is taking into account both the natural bias that was and still is existent in American (see President Kennedy's Executive Order 10925 . http://www.thecre.com...) as well as the centuries of social deprivation and setbacks that the minorities and neglected social groups of this country have faced. In terms of the so-called "resentment" that the whites feel, I agree that there undoubtedly would be some cases of resentment, but it's not some unconditional hatred that suddenly is felt towards blacks by whites. And besides, the point of affirmative action is to to take into account these age-old economic and social inequities with the acceptance of burden by the generally better off white population. Also, you are not taking into account how affirmative action also applies to laying off workers from their jobs. A colorblind system of laying off workers would inevitably be favoring white employees, since they are the ones who have held senior positions due to the years of white male dominance in society. Therefore, in the absence of affirmative action "color-blind policies do not correct racial injustice -- they reinforce it" (. http://www.understandingprejudice.org...). "So, you say we should just reverse this discrimination. " You're employing the term discrimination incorrectly. Affirmative action is the preferential selection of equal candidates in a systematic way, and done according to statistics (. http://en.wikipedia.org...), in order to balance the existent inequality in society. This isn't "reversing discrimination," which implies an age-old innately felt resentment towards the opposite race, but a scientific way to counteract the natural discrimination among race-class divisions. When you used my quote against me, you understood it incorrectly. Whites would get more jobs because they have been holding senior employment positions for years, and have had more educational opportunities. With affirmative action, blacks would be given more jobs because the policy is, like you said, not favoring them due to some kind of natural superiority over whites, but selecting them because of their deprivation of opportunities and their inequality in respect to the majority. "Both the white man and the black man are supposedly equally qualified. .. The only blacks that benefit from affirmative action are the ones who lived in the North, where slavery and segregation ended sooner. " Yes, but just because they are equally qualified doesn't mean they have the same family history. It's true, their might be some cases where affirmative action is done at the expense of poor whites, but when there are two equally qualified candidates, there's a higher chance that the black one came from a more difficult background, and this is taken into consideration. "The black guy has to have had a family that was more successful than the average black family, or the white guy has to have had a family that was less successful than the average white family. " Wow. That's pretty ignorant as I understand it, and frankly, a little racist. So in order for a black guy to be as qualified as a white guy, the white guy has to be below the success of the average white family? That is a biased assumption; you're saying the only way a black person could be as qualified as a white person is if the black guy was unusually above the status quo and the white guy unusually below it. "Obviously, the family histories had the same effect, if they're equally qualified" Again, no. Just because a black guy happens to be exceptionally qualified in terms of intellect or test scores or whatever doesn't mean he was some 1/4 mixed race kid who grew up a pampered life in New England without any discrimination. "only the upper blacks compete with the average whites for jobs. " This is in theme with all your previous statements. Please either provide statistics or define what specifically you mean by "average. " Average in terms of what? Education? Income? Or a combination of all these factors. "The upper blacks are the ones who weren't hit strongly by racial segregation in the past. " An "upper black" as you call it could very well have been born into poverty and lived in the deep South under segregation, and therefore should be picked in a job if they are of equal or comparable qualifications to a white. This selection would take into account the difficult family history faced by the black, while the white, due to statistics, probably didn't face that same discrimination. Also, many sources can refute your statement that affirmative action benefits only middle and upper class blacks, who you claim aren't the victims of discrimination. The AAFP argues that affirmative action actually created the minority middle classes. (. http://en.wikipedia.org...) Even if, as you said, the white suffered from the xenophobic anti-Irish sentiment after fleeing from the Potato Famine, it is inappropriate to equate the suffering of a poor Irishman to the suffering of an African American. I am saying this with a deeply empathetic view of the Irish, because my ancestors were a proud Catholic family from Ireland who faced a lot of discrimination in employment once they arrived in the New World. Affirmative action might be able to be abandoned in the future, when the races are more or completely balanced. But as of now, the idealistic and unrealistic colorblind "flipping a coin" method just isn't practical, and it isn't fair. As said before, it just leaves in place the imbalance in opportunities between majority and minority. Also, you have failed to refute the benefit of diversity in the workplace. Diversity helps co-workers become more empathetic and tolerant of other cultures. Studies have been done to show that there's a ""consistent pattern of positive relationships between diversity in higher education and both learning and democracy outcomes""(. http://en.wikipedia.org...).