The US should abolish affirmative action

In this round I will argue against Tej"s opening arguments and defend my own against his rebuttals. Observation 1: Under "Advocacy" on #1 Tej argues that minorities will benefit from multi-tiered AA programs carried out by the state. This is a major departure from the status quo because right now only government contractors are required to practice AA. In all other circumstances AA is purely a private practice. Businesses are required to be Equal Opportunity Employers, meaning they can"t discriminate when hiring, but they aren"t required to specifically hire minorities. Tej"s advocacy here is that every college and business has to be examined by the state government to ensure they are practicing AA, however that"s supposed to be determined without quotas. Tej needs to outline the specifics of his plan here so that the judges and I can properly weigh it (the cost of time and money to local governments among other things.) Observation 2: Under "Advocacy" on #2 Tej says that specific educational programs and skill training programs targeted at minorities is a policy that falls under AA. But per R1 definition only policies that benefit minorities in competitions is relevant. AA uplifts minorities Subpoint A: I agree. I do not contest that minorities face discrimination. Tej and I disagree that AA is a good answer to the problem. Subpoint B: Here Tej argues that the result of minorities achieving higher positions in companies is a reduction in workplace discrimination. I concede this. Subpoint C: Tej argues here that AA increases the quality of life of minorities. I concede this. AA creates Diversity I concede that it creates diversity, I contest the impact of this though. This is a hard impact to measure. How does the cliche "fresh perspective" and "thinking of things in different ways" hold up against the violation of freedom? This argument is too vague to matter much. Defense I will now defend my opening argument against Tej"s rebuttal. 1) I never argued that AA punishes anyone. Ctrl+F shows this. I argued that AA values genetic lineage over ability, and that this runs counter to the concept of free-will. 2) Although there are cases where more qualified minorities are denied positions because of discrimination, Con cannot quantify it. He refers back to his first contention but the only statistics he uses related explicitly to discrimination--this being equal qualifications but different race/gender--are based on percentages. In order for this rebuttal to work, Tej has to prove that AA dispels more racism than it creates, which is impossible in the absence of quantity. AA directly discriminates against those more qualified. African American students get to score 230 points lower on the SAT and still have an equal chance of acceptance as white students [1]. Therefore, AA still violates merit. 3) This argument mistreats how I was referring to freedom. I used freedom to argue that individuals ought to be judged based on their own merits. Even if minorities compete with the disadvantage of poorer former education, they are at least judged as individuals. Their intelligence and qualification is what they make it, and they are judged from that. With AA, their genetic lineage is what is judged rather than themselves, which violates the concept of freedom. 4) Tej points out that there is a contradiction in just taxation to protect rights and unjust AA to protect rights. The difference is that AA discriminates based on things that an individual cannot control--his genetic lineage--and therefore is unjust. Taxation is based on income, which an individual can control. 5) Reparations do not help in the least because those who would receive the reparations were never slaves. Reparations would assuage an injustice to those who never experienced the injustice. [1] http://www.princeton.edu...