Affirmative Action is a necessary responsibility

== REBUTTALS == "Your position is becoming so ridiculous that I need only restate it in simple terms in order to show the contradictions. First of all is the assertion that our government, which has only been around for a couple hundred years, is somehow responsble for our thought processes. Now in the next round it is "government and society." Addressing racial (and other) prejudices would seem to require an understanding of the underlying situation. Your analysis of the history of inequality seems to lack that understanding, and therefore one can certainly be skeptical of any solution you propose." Con is actually asserting the U.S. government was never itself responsible for oppressive and discriminatory legislations that denied minorities the right to have liberty on par with white men, have an education or own property? First slavery, then Jim Crow ... are these just liberal conspiracies that never actually happened? I call -that- no only ridiculous, but conspiracy-theory-delusional! It is difficult to even try to tackle most of what Con wrote in his response, since so much is based on his notion that there never was a government-imposed inequality that's continued generation-to-generation such that its effects continue to this day. I re-emphasize but will not waste readers' time repeating my reasoning I set out on this matter of why the government is responsible for the original cause and the ongoing lingering damage to equality that continues to this day. Being so difficult to address the rest of Con's arguments for the previous round, I can find only one general "outlier" I think I can even try to grasp: the notion of vengeance. First I have to throw it back in his face, this notion of a "vengeance mentality." It contradicts his argument he made that government did nothing to create discrimination ... if it hadn't, what sort of vengeance mentality could there be back at the government? Do you think the proponents of Affirmative Action feel vengeance is due against a government because it did not create racial inequality when it should have? Off that back-in-your-face argument, I'll presume that you were merely arguing from a different perspective in which yes, the government did create inequality, but that efforts like Affirmative Action are purely vengeful in motivation and not just at all. Let me re-summarize my position: The government created harmful inequality. The government is therefore responsible for the ongoing damage, even if the government amended its active inequality and ended its direct-responsibility anti-equality legislations. The anti-equality legislations created a situation that lasts today -- the over-representation of minority groups in undesireable classes such as poverty-stricken families and the prison population, and under-representation in terms of wealth and political power. How can these inequalities ever truly end if no effort is made to correct the inequalities to begin with? I feel the government has ignored my points I have reasoned out and chalked them up as ridiculous, not even bothering to go point by point, and has instead come up with a ridiculous notion that the government has never had any responsibility for creating inequality. The Constitution itself once included written-in acknowledgements of slavery, such as the "three-fifths amendment," in addition to congressional leglislations concerning the severe crime of a black man trying to escape slavery. When Emancipation was declared, slavery laws were replaced with "Jim Crow" laws that tried to be less blatantly obvious but were no less of an intentional effort on the government's part to maintain a white supremacy by keeping minorities (on an individual basis of one white man vs. one black man) from having equal rights, equal say, equal power and equal access. I really cannot envision having to prove to anyone that slavery and Jim Crow laws -- laws being the very basis of the government's will -- were discrimination that was directly and willfully the government's fault and responsibility. If the notion escapes you, then I am afraid I cannot come to common terms to form a constructive debate. For those who, whatever their feelings on Affirmative Action, do agree the government was "bad" for its slavery and Jim Crow laws, I hope my reasonings are at least respectable by you and you can follow to see how I arrive at my conclusion, even if it is not something you can easily follow for your own beliefs. I do believe I have established my case, and that I have won the argument. My opponent, being the challenger, gets the "final inning." I would like to thank Con for taking up this debate with me, and I look forward to reading Con's final response, I hope it can give me a better picture of his/her stance and reasoning. Thank you!