Affirmative Action is Bad

Are you a policy debater? Love to debate some Policy with you sometime! I'll roadmap in logical order just following your points. Point 1 - Affirmative action leads to reverse discrimination. Affirmative Action is a program of opportunity, it is not a program of discrimination. This is the major argument people use in defending Affirmative Action. White males claim they are now discriminated against because of this program. There are accusations that minorities get hired just for the sake of filling a quota. However, Affirmative Action's mission has never been about hiring less qualified workers, but about opening up equal opportunity and ensuring that equal opportunity with equal results. In fact, in a Bureau of National Affairs Employment Discrimination Report, most court cases concerning white males being turned down for a job are found not to be because of Affirmative Action, but because of a lack of qualifications and shortcomings. In theory, Affirmative Action is great. Now, to explain a bit, what we are arguing, is the theory of Affirmative Action. In practice, it may or may not work, but you are arguing that Affirmative Action is bad. Were you arguing that "In Practice, Affirmative Action is Bad" then we could talk about semantics, but we are not, so therefore any attack on the practice of Affirmative Action is moot. Point 2 - Affirmative action lowers standards of accountability needed to push students or employees to perform better. Actually, the report mentioned earlier covers quite a good deal. What the report says si that, more often than not, the more qualified person got the job. This is important, because it means that the educated are rewarded, instead of the uneducated are rewarded. We also should look at this analytically. Logically, Affirmative Action is about getting an equal decision. Now, what this does is it forces employers to open up the job to more people, which means that a single person has less of a chance of getting the job. What this means is that in order to stand above the pack, one must in fact be even MORE educated. Thus, this point is turned as, in fact, another reason to support Affirmative Action, as it improves education. Point 3 - Students admitted on this basis are often ill-equipped to handle the schools to which they've been admitted. First off, a defensive attack. Basically your point only really attacks half of Affirmative Action. Secondly, this point is ridiculous. Student ability is almost impossible to determine, due to so many factors and unknowns. Also, if you look at this on a knowledge level, you have to realize that the school itself isn't harder than another school. School A isn't harder than School B, School A just is harder potentially. The student in question wouldn't be forced to take classes they weren't prepared for, and would take only the classes he/she thought they could pass. Also, because Affirmative Action actually increases education (see point 2) we would see minorities actually increasing in education, leading to this problem not even affecting the debate. Point 4 - It would help lead a truly color-blind society. Also ridiculous, for several reasons. Just as a little pointer, I'm assuming you mean that getting rid of Affirmative Action gets a color-blind society. Now, this point is assuming that a color blind society is possible. It is empirically proven that such a society is impossible. Regardless of the possibility of it, not having Affirmative Action would just lead to less educational oppurtunities, and less pay for minorities. This itself would lead to a stereotypical image of minroties, which would just further racism. Another point is that when Affirmative Action was enacted, there was actually a drop in hate crimes, which leads me to think that the lack of Affirmative Action may have had a adverse effect on racsim, one that Affirmative Action solves for. And lastly, why is a color-blind society important? It would lead to more oppurtunity for minorities? Affirmative Action does that already. What is the impact of a color-blind society? Point 5 - It is condescending to minorities to say they need affirmative action to succeed. First off, let me establish a question: What is the impact of this point? Why does it matter? So minorities feel babied? They still have better jobs! Ask a man if he would rather have pride or a comfortable lifestyle, and the human psyche dictates the response : "I'll take the comfortableness". Point 6 - It demeans true minority achievement; i.e. success is labeled as result of affirmative action rather than hard work and ability. Again, what is the impact? Also, Affirmaive Action doesn't guarentee success. The person in question still must work hard to get to success, and if they truely are successful, then what does it matter to them what they think? Goes back to impact. Reasons Affirmative Action must stay: -We must look at the positive impacts Affirmative Action has compared to the impacts of not having it. Affirmative Action: - Increases Education - Give oppurtunities for minorities - Stops racism Also, let it be known that the final three points, hav eno reasons to be voters, there is no impact