Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action is UnjustI asked Pro what Asian Americans had done to deserve being the subject of government-authorized discrimination. Asians where historically discriminated against as badly as any other group. Yet government deems it correct to punish them. Why? Pro didn't respond, I think that the answer is that advocates of affirmative action do not car in the least if people are actually victims of discrimination. Fairness is not an issue. The only issue is equality of outcome. If Asians happen to do better than others, they need to be taken down to achieve equal outcomes. Indeed, supporters of affirmative action have no measure of discrimination other than equality of outcome.Pro grimly pronounces that I am approving of discrimination based upon cultural values. I don't approve of government discriminating upon cultural values, but I do approve of people finding there own paths in a free society. If Frenchmen value cooking more than the British, that's fine with me. Back in the 40s and 50s, Ivy League schools worried about the problem of having "too many Jews" and actively discriminated against them. Now it's "too many Asians." The relevant concern should not be what groups people belong too, it is about the individual's competence. Government should work to provide equal schools and equal protection under the law, not to require preferences. Women are paid, on average, 77% of what men are paid. However, that statistic does not account for differences in the male and female workforces. One factor is that woman tend to work fewer hours, and part time employees are paid less. "Just comparing men and women who work 40 hours weekly, without accounting for differences in jobs, training, or time in the labor force, yields a ratio of 87.2 percent, with a smaller pay gap." Other factors include the choice of college major and years of uninterrupted employment. Even though more women graduate from college than men, they tend to major in lower-paying liberal arts. "Generally, the more information about women that is included in the analysis, the more of the wage gap that can be explained, and the less is the residual portion attributable to “discrimination.” An analysis that omits relevant information finds a greater unexplained residual, and concludes that there is more discrimination." [7. http://blogs.reuters.com... ]"Factor in occupation, industry and whether they belong to a union, and they jump to 91%." [8. http://www.time.com... ]Pro cited a study of ban loans to entrepreneurs that followed the same pattern. Everything that was not factored into the analysis is attributed to discrimination. The tipoff is that the authors only claim that the results are "consistent with discrimination." That admits they don't know why the differences exist. If they knew it was discrimination they would have claimed it. Another tipoff is they are studying bank loans to entrepreneurs, which is odd because entrepreneurs do not commonly get bank loans. Pro did not respond to either point, but wrongly asserted that the study proved discrimination. Neither Pro nor I can read the actual paper because it costs too much, so we cannot tell what factors they figured ad what they did not.Any discrimination that can be proved is illegal. Affirmative action only treats discrimination that cannot be proved. Pro points to cases of inferior schools and other disadvantages associated with minorities. There is not problem with providing remediation for any disadvantage. For example, a student who went to a bad high school can be given makeup courses in college. That's not affirmative action. Affirmative action requires that every member of the group be awarded a benefit, without regard for actual experience. President Obama's children must be given extra points, Never mind that they attended an elite private school and are guarded by the Secret Service. It's doubtful that they would want preferential treatment.School quality can be measured. There are more subtle forms of discrimination. We could allow a person to self-identify as being a victim of discrimination in order to get remediation. Hispanic students applying to UCSD from South America are unlikely to have claimed they were victims of discrimination. Taking any measure of actual experience into account is not affirmative action. Some institutions are using genetic testing to award affirmative action benefits. People who acknowledge that the never suffered any discrimination because no one thought they were minorities are given benefits when tests show they have some combination of Black and Native American genetic markers exceeding 20%. [9. http://www.nytimes.com... ]Affirmative Action Does Not WorkPro claims I did acknowledge the difference between government-required racial discrimination done for good purposes and government -required discrimination done for bad purposes. The US constitution has the same problem, with it's blanket requirement for equality. Pro argues that the Courts can carve an exception to equal protection for good purposes. My argument, which Pro did not address, is that government is not qualified to make a correct distinction between good and bad discrimination. Affirmative action only applies when there is no evidence of actual discrimination and it applies when there is no claim of discrimination and ample evidence of there having been none. Government decided to discriminate Asians on the sole grounds that the group succeeded.The power to discriminate based upon membership in a group is inherently corrupting. Martin Luther King as right: "Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority." [10. http://www.africa.upenn.edu... ] Affirmative action completely subordinates the human personality to a person's group. Pro claims that affirmative action serves to cure cultural disparities. He asserts that without evidence. The contrary is true. It works the way that Dr. King said discrimination always works, harming both sides.Thomas Sowell, an African-American researcher at the Hoover Institute at Stanford, reveals that "today many Americans will refuse to visit a black physician or dentist because of their assumption that he or she was admitted both to medical school and to the position held through 'special preferences', set-aside quotas, and relaxed standards. The same is true for many other professionals and for other beneficiaries of 'affirmative action.'" [11. http://voices.yahoo.com... ]"Tragically—for blacks, women and other “oppressed” minorities—affirmative action indirectly communicates a demoralizing message of inferiority that reinforces the same separatism it set out to solve. It is pure illogic to think that you can fight fire with fire and get anything but scorched earth." [12. http://www.humanevents.com...The data show that students admitted to the top level schools under affirmative action did not do well. When affirmative action ended in California, minority applicants applied to school suited to their qualifications, and both admissions and graduation rated increased. [5] SummaryDiscrimination due to race and gender exists. If any person is disadvantaged, it's reasonable for government to extend extra help through remedial education and the like. The key difference from affirmative action is that remediation ought to be based upon what has happened to the individual, not to his group.