Affirmative Action is harmful.

Before I get into some more specific arguments, there are a couple of housekeeping issues that need to be taken care of. The most important of which is to clarify that the alternative to affirmative action is not blatant racism. When I make the argument that it is a bad thing to enforce policies based on race, color, religion and national origin, I do not conclude that policies should be put into place which harm others based on these things. Instead I place a call to value people based on their skills and to leave race, color, religion and national origin out of the question entirely. Next, I want to point out that it is unacceptable to simply ignore an argument, no matter how poor you personally find it to be. I would appreciate it if my opponent would treat me with more respect than that and actually responded to my argument on hardships. Con undermines my arguments further throughout his previous round, but I'm confident that the readers can see where for themselves. Finally, there was no reason for Con to redefine a term I had already clarified in the first round. Con's arguments are based on an alternative definition of affirmative action which functions differently than my own. The difference is a minor one, but it is important nonetheless. I'll get to that in a minute though. Before that I need to stress a theme my opponent seems to have ignored from my prior round; people are not Pokemon, you don't have to catch them all. I never claimed that affirmative action leads to unqualified employees being hired, I said that it doesn't lead to the most qualified employee being hired. Because companies and academic institutions want to diversify their employees and students they will overlook more qualified applicants in favor of those who meet a racial or gender-based quota. This is more obvious in the field of education, but this harm is present in the workplace as well; race-based scholarships are given out at just about every university in the US, while white students graduating high school with high honors get nothing. This behavior is harmful to fairness as it rewards traits beyond one's control instead of hard work, and to progress as it gives an education to one based on the same. I'm not sure why Con wants to conclude that this position assumes that minorities aren't capable of maintaining achievement based honors, but it's a wholly untrue. Moving on, we can now look at how my opponent's new definition fundamentally changes the debate to be skewed in his favor. First his definition includes veterans and the disabled, giving me a burden I shouldn't have. In the opening round I provide a definition which effectively limits Affirmative action to gender and race. Next, con places the term 'qualified' into his definition of Affirmative Action, cutting his burden down and seemingly invalidating my arguments. If these are qualified individuals then they should be able to find a job or be accepted into a school based on their own merit; the framing round as well as my previous round clearly illustrate that more than just qualified individuals are benefiting from Affirmative action. As for the straw man accusation, it's unfounded. Con never even refutes any of my arguments, and at one point openly admits to ignoring some of them. Meanwhile Con doesn't answer the fact that Affirmative action harms fairness by taking jobs and scholarships from more qualified individuals in preference of people only meant to fill a quota. Instead he actually means to claim that by me pointing out these injustices, I am insinuating that minorities are incapable of getting these positions by their own merit If anyone is assuming that minorities can't excel on their own, it's not me it's Con. In conclusion, we need to evaluate people based on what they can do, not the color of their skin. Affirmative action may benefit a few people, but on the whole it harms justice and progress immeasurably. Back to you Con!