Resolved: Affirmative action should be practiced in college admissions.

Thank you Logical-Master for posting your argument in the nick of time, my post is going to be pretty close-cut as well. I like the youtube video by the way. My opponent's first contention gives an example of one white woman who was denied admission to a law school despite the fact that she had better credentials than her minority counterparts. My opponent is looking at single people instead of the community as a whole. Yes, it seems unfair that a white person with equal or possibly even better credentials gets pushed aside because she is not a minority. But we need affirmative action because in America's colleges right now because racism is alive and well. Despite promises that they would give no regard to race, if affirmative action wasn't practiced, these colleges would fall right back into being almost purely majority. This is a fight which will have a few casualties, like your Barbara Grutter. When there have been civil unfairness, like during the civil rights era, we have always succeeded in overcoming this discrimination. We need to do this again. If we can eventually reach the point where the amount of blacks and minorities in colleges is proportional to the amount of minorities in society, we will see many benefits. Then my opponent's second contention also regards a single case. But if we brought up the amount of blacks in universities, they wouldn't be so discriminated. Because there were so few blacks in Yale, Thomas was mistreated. My opponent's third contention is that there is a better alternative to affirmative action, that people should only be judged on their academic performance with government intervention. This seems ok in theory but in practice it wouldn't hold up. As we see in http://www.heartland.org... Blacks are being left behind. There are more than twice as many whites proficient in various subjects than minorities, particularly blacks. They are victims of stereotypes. A smart black person is unheard of and they would be ridiculed in any middle or high school. This is why they need the boost from affirmative action. If blacks were lifted up into colleges despite the fact they are disadvantaged from the start, a smart black would no longer be unheard of. The number of proficient blacks would soar until it is about even with whites. >>> Correction. Affirmative action IS practiced in colleges and yet we are still seeing minorities at the bottom of the economic food chain. As I mentioned earlier, affirmative action encourages racism and promotes inequality. The problems which my opponent is positing are actually the result of this. We need to shift our society to a point where race and other similar factors DO NOT MATTER. Affirmative action simply suggests the opposite. <<< Affirmative action needs to be practiced for a longer period of time than it has been so far. If we can get this to work and there is a proportional amount of all ethnicities in universities (for example, if 30% of the nation were blacks, 30% of students in colleges were black) then we can do away with affirmative action. I feel like my opponent did not understand my point regarding the book "The Tipping Point." We need to get 5% of the population of slums to be professionals. This can only be accomplished if black professionals move there, and at the moment there is a severe shortage of professional blacks. >>> With affirmative action? No chance. We're just swapping out some members of the majority and giving those jobs to the minority. In other words: No net gain. It would be far more logical and ethical to simply utilize our whole spectrum of those who qualify themselves. <<< There is a huge net gain. As I said, if we can pull blacks up and have them be on level footing as whites then we will have fewer high school dropouts, more people who successfully graduate from college, and more colleges will spring up, creating a ton of net gain. >>> Affirmative action did not devolve into preferential treatment. It IS preferential treatment. Equality is only possible when race/gender/etc is no longer a factor <<< But this cannot be achieved without some middle factor. Affirmative action is like a band-aid that will only stay so long as the body can continue without it. That will do for now