Resolved: Affirmative action is in the best interests of the United States.

I negate. Let's start with the definitional debate: My opponent tries to define affirmative action as positive steps to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas from which they have been historically excluded. The fact of the matter is that you should prefer MY definition because it is more TOPICAL to today's debate. My opponent doesn't interpret "positive steps", and any positive steps that I can think of are ultimately going to lead into my definition. Giving women and minorities higher pay in jobs because they were discriminated over 100 years ago is, in my opinion, morally unacceptable. Allowing women and minorities to apply for more colleges and at lower costs because they were discriminated over 100 years ago is, once again in my opinion, morally unacceptable. But even if you don't buy that, prefer my definition because it is from the U.S. Legal Dictionary, which is arguably an unbiased source. The Pro side brings a definition from Stanford, but remember that Stanford is located in a very liberal state that may favor affirmative action more highly than other states. Finally, you should prefer my definition because it is more consistent with people's intuitions. Prop 209, which was intended to ban affirmative action in some environments, involved around the idea that hiring some people because of skin color was wrong. Hiring ethnic minorities like Hispanics, blacks, and Pacific Islanders over more qualified applicants was made illegal. Since my definition of "affirmative action" is less biased, more topical, and more intuitive, please prefer it to the Pro definition. My opponent tries to refute my first contention, calling it “irrelevant”. He quotes President Lyndon Johnson. The problems with this refutation are that: 1) once again, Lyndon Johnson was a Democrat and may have been biased in support of affirmative action, so the evidence against my contention is not necessarily valid. 2) I find Johnson’s quote inaccurate and partially offensive. People need to be treated as ends in themselves, according to American philosopher Louis Pojman (see my contention). There is nothing “unfair” about realizing that a man in slavery is in a desperate situation and putting him back on an equal playing ground. Lyndon Johnson makes an analogy to a [competitive] race and says that it is not completely fair to put a minority to the starting line after having been locked up in chains. I completely disagree. All of the progress made on the racetrack needs to be earned, not “deserved”. If I (hypothetically a white man) were running in the race, why should God pick up a black man at the starting line and place him directly in front of me? Why should I have to be punished for something I did not cause, something I did not support, and something for which I am not responsible? Ultimately, my opponent’s refutation does not make sense because he doesn’t sufficiently respond to the argument that it is immoral to grant people favorable advantages over us if we were not involved in creating the disparity in the first place. Again, inequality and slavery are deplorable. We solve them by taking occasional time off to think about society’s assault on minorities. We solve them by offering psychological and, voluntarily, academic help to minorities who may not have those supports at home. But we do NOT solve them by punishing whites, who have gotten what they have earned and have earned what they have gotten. In response to my 2nd contention, my opponent says that a reduction in economic productivity of the United States does not matter. (He also claims that it would be temporary, but I would not count this argument because my opponent fails to make in a plan in his speech that addresses for HOW LONG or UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES affirmative action would come into effect, and Round 3 will be too late for that.) My first response is that economic productivity is more important than fixing relations by about 4-fold. Who benefits from economic productivity? Who benefits when the U.S. is globally competitive and starts creating small businesses internationally? Who benefits when the U.S. climbs out of debt by eliminating wasteful programs and cutting health care entitlements? Everyone in the U.S.!! Judge, in this impact calculus, you should compare the benefits of aiding every single individual in the United States (with a cost to no one) with those of aiding JUST minority figures (with a cost to the other 70% of the population). My second response to my opponent’s refutation of my 2nd contention is just a cross-application to my first contention. My opponent wants to level an “uneven playing field”, but I argue that generations have passed and that the impact cannot be undone by inflicting the same harm on the several-times-removed descendants of those who were being racist. It is very possible that my opponent does not understand my 3rd contention, because he refers back to the same quote from a biased former president as did he in the first contention. My argument is that giving affirmative action to minorities is bad for the MINORITIES, because it undermines their achievements and attributes them to colleges and businesses that provide affirmative-action programs. I give one example in my 3rd contention of a very brilliant man who was accepted to Duke but who received no merit or acknowledgement for having gotten HIMSELF into the college because of an attribution to affirmative-action programs. Take another example. A young black woman named Taylor scores a 2290 on her SAT, engages herself in three extracurriculars for all four years of high school, has completed nine AP or honors courses by the end of high school, and has worked interning for a biotechnology company over the course of two summers. She applies to Tufts University in Boston, MA (a very competitive engineering school) and is accepted. When she gets there, she is bullied by other students. A white college freshman named Zach goes up to Taylor and says, “YOU are the reason my friend Richard, who scored a 2400 on the SAT, was denied. What a backwards society we live in.” It is not MORAL for Taylor to be bullied. My opponent says that this attitude has to be corrected in society, but it can NOT be corrected if we continue policies of affirmative action. The only way people will stop undermining the achievements of ethnic minorities and women is if we eliminate or reduce affirmative-action programs, which is illustrated in my plan for the debate as pronounced in my Round 2 speech. My opponent does not really respond to my 4th contention; he just repeats his refutation to my 1st argument. Please extend my 4th contention throughout the debate, which says that America has historically prioritized capitalism over just about anything. Affirmative-action programs are inconsistent with the U.S.’s intuitions, values, and morals as a nation because they incentivize skin color and not hard work. They incentivize race and not merit. A historical example is that the U.S. was under the “chains” of Great Britain for a long time and broke away through two wars. But 100-200 years after the American Revolution, we did NOT go back to Britain and start taking their jobs, money, and opportunities. What Britain did was deplorable and arguably naive, but since every single person living there now is different from every single person living there in the 1770’s, discrimination cannot be passed from generation to generation. America ought reward hard work, and everyone should have access to equality of opportunity. “All men are created equal.” My opponent’s one contention, which has no warrants or evidence, says that the inequality in the U.S. is as a result of past discrimination of certain minorities. He’s right; it is. Affirmative action breeds inequality. Its goal (of restoring equality) is different from its effect (of spawning inequality). We need to REMOVE affirmative action programs, not keep them. Thus, I negate.