Resolved: Affirmative action should be practiced in college admissions.

=========================================================================== CONTENTION #1: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION PROMOTES INEQUALITY: =========================================================================== 1) My opponent's only objection to my contention here is that the example I've given focuses on a single person whereas his concern is the community. In other words, he values utilitarianism. However, in pleading in favor for this value, my opponent has doomed his entire argument: If it is reasonable to ignore the minority and focus on the majority, then I could just as easily turn my opponents argument around and claim that we should ignore minorities and focus on benefiting what is essentially 90% of the US (the Caucasians). Racist and unfair? Sure thing, but it is my opponent who cares little for fairness to even ignore a single person of a different race only to benefit whom he perceives as being the majority. In other words, his argument violates the law of non contradiction. 2) My single example was all that was necessary to demonstrate my point; I only needed to make mention of a single example to prove that affirmative action promotes inequality. Seeing as how my opponent has provided no arguments against the notion that the Barbara Grutter case proves that affirmative action promotes inequality, my job has been done. This is not to suggest that the legal case I cited has been a single isolated incident or else there wouldn't be nearly as much controversy as there is now. Of course, for clarification purposes . . . if opponent IS claiming that there has only been a single case like the one which I've pointed out, I would like for him to say so in the next round so that I my properly address this objection. 3) We need affirmative action because racism is alive and well in America's colleges? As I've pointed out, judges, not only do we have affirmative action at the moment (hence showing it to be pretty ineffective against racism), but as I've further shown, it actually encourages racism. ============================================================================ CONTENTION #2. QUOTAS ACTUALLY ENCOURAGE RACISM ============================================================================ Again, my opponent counters my example merely by pointing out my decision to cite a single case, but as I've pointed out previously, I need only a single example to demonstrate how affirmative action promotes racism. If my opponent acknowledges this, then I've done my job. Of course, if my opponent is insisting that there has merely been a single case, I would like for him to state so directly so that he will not attempt to get around me hitting him with more examples just to pacify his argument. Finally, see what I've said on the matter of utilitarianism and how it actually harms my opponent's case (which favors the minority). As far as the amount of blacks in the universities goes, this is completely irrelevant as the fact of the matter is that even with more minorities, there'd simply be more people who would be inclined to devalue the efforts of minorities based on the fact that they are being given a handout (as even my opponent acknowledges with my citing of the Barbara Grutter case) whereas non minorities need to work their way into universities and often times pay an exceedingly large amount of money (which, incidentally, would show affirmative action to be especially unfair to lower class caucasians). Furthermore, PRO's argument fails on the grounds that more minorities means nothing if they are STILL the minority. ============================================================================ CONTENTION #3. THERE IS A SUPERIOR ALTERNATIVE TO AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ============================================================================ PRO attempts to counter my alternative to affirmative action by pointing out that african Americans would fail on the basis that stereotypes wouldn't hold them down, but as I've pointed out, my system detracts racism severely, thus most of these stereotypes concerning African American individuals would disappear. Of course, PRO brings up an interesting point. In his system, blacks are disadvantaged from the start. If this is the case, then my opponent is actually insisting that affirmative action merely sets most blacks up for failure (after all, if you don't actually have the skills in the first place and are merely being given a handout, you can't really expect an individual to progress further based on nothing). Essentially, this negates his own argument. RE:"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." Even if we were to assume that affirmative action needs to be practiced for a long amount of time in order to insure results, that still doesn't change the fact that not only would my system be effective instantly, but that it would also not bear the problems which affirmative action as (inequality and racism). In short, affirmative action is a waste of valuable time. "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." In exchange though, for ever black that is given a handout, there are more people (many who have actually earned their positions) who lose positions in colleges as well as jobs. Hence, no net gainl