The Race Debate

1. Affirmative Action I will start by defining equal opportunity: Absence of discrimination, as in the workplace, based on race, color, age, gender, national origin, religion, or mental or physical disability. ( http://www.answers.com... ) Since equal opportunity has become the cornerstone of your argument then we should come to an agreeable definition of it. Affirmative action fundamentally violates the spirit of equal opportunity. It places preference on one group, which regardless of reasoning goes against the spirit of equal opportunity. What I was illustrating with the Irish examples was that many wrongs have occurred to many peoples. The effects of which are still felt to this day by their ancestors. Would not society be better served by simply saying that we are committed to ensuring our country's under-privileged (financially) have equal access to educational resources, employment opportunity/advancement, and are afforded the same rights as all? I would argue that affirmative action serves as a barrier to racial reconciliation, and racial equality. It violates the spirit of equality by targeting certain ethnic, and racial groups for preferential treatment. On the issue of white only scholarships, I was only able to find information on three such scholarships. "The scholarship was a proposal to parody and highlight the inequity and unfairness of racial preferences at his school, and on colleges across America, Mattera said" ( http://en.wikipedia.org... ) This actually occurred at a school in my state (Roger Williams University) and offered $250 to the selected student. This occurred as the above article indicates in 2004. I have been unable to find any active and institutionally recognized white only scholarship. I don't think I need to go through the trouble of comparing federal subsidies to minority exclusive scholarships and programs versus white exclusive. Another question on this topic I'd love to ask my opponent is whether or not jobs should be given and entrance to colleges given, strictly on a base of merit? 2. Racial Profiling I agree with the following," It is an accepted belief that all people are innocent until proven guilty. To place guilt of a crime on a minority before the official investigation would be breaking this conduct" from your rebuttal. I disagree with the context with which you are using this though. You are arguing assuming that I am of the position that it occurs routinely and that it is useful. I am not. I am pointing out that racial profiling advocates often point to racial arrest statistics, racial incarceration statistics as a means of furthering their arguments through examples. I attempted in the previous round to identify that crime occurs predominantly in the lower economic brackets. Recognizing minorities make up a large part of that group would indicate an obvious correlation between race and arrests/incarcerations. I admit that sometimes a white cop is pulling over a minority out of racial motives. I admit that sometimes black/ Hispanic / Asian / ect cops pull over whites out of racial motives. To categorize law enforcement as having been engaged profiling based on race due to arrest/incarceration rates is outright wrong. These statistics represent financial disparities more than anything. I submit that we must look at this issue with a microscope. Look beyond the most simplistic of reasoning an investigate the true causes of these statistics. 3. Slave Reparation Money I will first continue to argue that simply being related to someone who over a hundred years ago was denied wages, does not entitle you to a financial consideration. However, I'll play devils advocate. If you favor slave reparations then certainly you would allow the entire Jewish race to collect reparations from everyone who wronged them throughout history ( http://www.chosenpeople.com... ). By your own metric the Jewish people should certainly be receiving quite a massive amount of reparations from a great many nations and people. Another flaw with your argument is that you keep referring to modern day minorities not having the wealth they would have had there been no slavery. Let us assume that slavery never occurs. What wealth would have come from these ancestors anyways. They would have still endured brutal colonialism under the European countries. Lets look at this link here if we need any guidance on colonization by the Europeans. (http://exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu...). I argue that the assertion that descendants are entitled to financial reparations, even if entertained, would prove wrong in the long run anyways. Africa as a continent has been brutalized and oppressed by Europeans during the colonial days. The exploitation of its vast resources and wealth would have occurred with or without slavery. Even if you found a way to over look these facts and accepted this notion of reparations as valid then you would have to equally compensate everyone who's descendants were grossly economically exploited. I don't know that we have enough paper to print enough money to do that.