Affirmative Action Should Be Dissolved

My pleasure debating you. AA is a really interesting topic as it spills over into so many different spheres. Psychology, econonomics, philosophy, biology, etc. First I'll address the topic at hand and afterwards I'll post somemore stuff dealing w/ AA. For purposes of this debate, we narrowed AA simply to race to make the debate simpler. I have tried to show throughout the round that if for income redistribution we discriminate based on race, we are if only weakly prgressively giving a larger share of money to the poor. Therefore, when you say "I propose again that we go into these poor communities and attack the problem at its root. It's easier to hand money to a beggar than to help him out of his condition." we are still helping poor people out be redistributing income based on race. We could of course redistribute based on income and I agree that would be more effective than race but income redistribution by wealth is considered a form of affirmative action outside of this debate. We are simply arguing here whether discrrminating by race can be more beneficial in redistributing income than not discriminating at all. 1. Purpose of AA Currently the purpose of AA is to somehow better the lives of those involved and for purposes of this debate we only focused on race. The purpose therefore is to raise the quality of life for minority races. This does not neccessarily require "employers to engage in special efforts to recruit and retain traditionally underrepresented classes of employees, including racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, women, veterans, individuals with disabilities" though it could include this. I couldn't get you link to work but I assume it was from UC riverside. There can be other actions like subsidies or free meal plans or neighborhood renovations etc. 2. Harms of AA If I am following everything then there are two possible harms from AA in this debate First is that expecting someone to do worse will make him do worse more on average. Second is that being admitted to harder curriculums increases dropout rates. The first is referred to as the self fulfilling prophecy and it has been shown in studies. However, in the studies I mentioned above, when the same tests are given to the same groups and there is no expectational difference, these same groups score as well as the other group. This shows that even if the self fulfilling prophecy is real which I agree it is, race doesn't cause students to do worse. Group A isn't worse than Group B at Math. If we eliminate the prophecy or what stems from it and give the same tests there is no difference between equivalent minorites/majorities. There are no inherent differences between groups but somehow, because of this prophecy, minorities do worse. I argue this is due to anxiety which would be negated if we lessened prejudice. By eliminating AA we aren't neccesarily telling minorities that we think they are worse at a subject. By having AA we aren't neccesarily saying this either. If we have AA for reasons such as past discrimination or guilt we can sidestep this self fulfilling prophecy harm. The second harm we barely brushed on but it is whether admitting minorities to programs they don't qualify for is bad. I believe Univ of California schools got rid of racial affirmative action for this reason. I think cost and other factors have a lot more of a reason for these dropout rates than was noted by whomever did the study on this though I'll agree that the increased rigor was a cause. Either way, this intense curriculum is not inherent in racial affirmative action. We can help by redistributing income or subsidizing college costs and not admitting people into colleges they don't qualify for (subsidies = a better plan imo). By getting rid of all racial AA, we cannot do any of these plans. 3. Benefits of Affirmative Action. A. Prejudice I thought I mentioned (though I forgot to) a bunch of studies last round that showed ways we can decrease prejudice. Two substantial ways are 1. Increase contact between groups when cooperation is needed or in egalitarian situatins (Oskamp 2000, Dovido et al 2003) 2. Provide information about the minority group (a.k.a education) (Schaller et al. 1991) By having increased diversity we lessen prejudice as not only is there increased contact between groups but one also is exposed to more information about the minority group. If prejudice is decreased we negative the self fulfilling prophecy harm above and there are other benefits such as diversity. B. Economic well being In the last round I mentioned "If firms won't naturally hire in a way that is best for societies future, then we must use government to solve the problem." You challenged me on what natural is so I feel I should explain this argument better. One reason many people dislike monopolies or laissez faire capitalism is that there are situations that can arise when businesses do what best for them and not what is best for the government. There are cases where CEOS don't do whats best for the company and they do what is best for the CEO. We all are working in our best interests. If we have increased Affirmative Action we not only gain diversity and lose prejudice (as argued above), but we also effectively redistribute income so those who need it more get it more. A firm will always, in its best interest, hire who is most qualified as you point out. We don't want this. We want the firm to hire who is best for society. By having government step in with AA, we can change preferences around so the firm hires who is best for society. At minimum we can make it so in the case of two equal potential employees, the one best for society is hired. By natural I meant spontaneously btw. 4. Equality We both agree now that the America does not have equality of opportunity. You mention that "to ensure equality is noble, but things will never be exactly equal. The government should step in if someone is turned down from a job based on the color of their skin alone... to mandate how many minorities you must hire ... gives special rights to minorities." and "I propose again that we go into these poor communities and attack the problem at its root. It's easier to hand money to a beggar than to help him out of his condition. " My response here is that racial Affirmative action does not need to act in this way. This debate is about whether or not we should totally disband affirmative action, and not reform it. I am all for reforming aspects but AA does not need to give special rights. We can get the benefits of AA w/o the harms that we have now, if there are any harms now. We can find better plans, such as going into neighborhoods and "teaching a man to fish" but this is not what the debate is about. In closing, affirmative action has at least the potential to lessen prejudice and to lessen the self fulfilling prophecy and to increase the economic well being of America. The only harm I see in this debate is that is not ameliorated are possible increased drop out rates at colleges but if we sent three underpriveleged children to college and two dropped out, we still improved life for that one child. Though there are much better plans out there than racial affirmative action, this debate showed that at worst, we can weakly distribute based on income by distributing by race. Perhaps we can do more good w/ a different plan but by itself, affirmative action has done more good than bad and if it comes down to dissolving AA and having no other better plan come into its place, keeping AA makes the most sense from a utilitarian and a moral standpoint. Thanks for the debate.