Affirmative action sets a lower barrier to entry for people of certain races, or it establishes quotas around certain races. This is to say that they cannot be held to the same standard of merit and expect a proportional outcome to something like admission to a particular college.
> without regard to their race, creed, color...
Affirmative action does the very thing it purports to ensure against, by discriminating on the bases of race.
If you believe that one race is inferior in some way and cannot compete on a level playing field then you may feel that affirmative action is necessary to give them a greater advantage. You mentioned circumstances which basically form an inferiority from past accrued disadvantage (I know you called it disadvantage of circumstance, but try to follow me for a moment). This doesn't seem to be the case with affirmative action admissions programs because they lower the bar for Blacks and raise the bar for Asians. Sure Blacks, were treated worst than Asians throughout most of American history, but Whites were not treated better than Asians.
Often the greatest beneficiaries of these programs are not native born African Americans, but recent African immigrants whose ancestors were not enslaved in the US, and not subject to past discrimination and segregation.
Incidentally, the two cases above would make good counterpoints to the idea of racial intellectual inferiority regardless of affirmative action and would likely have been able to gain admissions to a top university without it. But the unfortunate consequence of affirmative action is that many people will assume it is all because of their special treatment. Clarence Thomas had much more difficult obstacles to overcome, and he was subjected to this unfortunate assumption after graduating from law school.
I think the real intention of affirmative action is to achieve more equal outcomes across racial divides. I think that's a good objective. But I also think this is a policy that sounds much better than it actually works. If we're to have more equal outcomes, then we need more equal opportunities and we need an end to all forms of discrimination.
> without regard to their race, creed, color...
Affirmative action does the very thing it purports to ensure against, by discriminating on the bases of race.
If you believe that one race is inferior in some way and cannot compete on a level playing field then you may feel that affirmative action is necessary to give them a greater advantage. You mentioned circumstances which basically form an inferiority from past accrued disadvantage (I know you called it disadvantage of circumstance, but try to follow me for a moment). This doesn't seem to be the case with affirmative action admissions programs because they lower the bar for Blacks and raise the bar for Asians. Sure Blacks, were treated worst than Asians throughout most of American history, but Whites were not treated better than Asians.
Often the greatest beneficiaries of these programs are not native born African Americans, but recent African immigrants whose ancestors were not enslaved in the US, and not subject to past discrimination and segregation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/nyregion/long-island-high-...
http://nypost.com/2015/04/05/meet-the-student-accepted-into-...
Incidentally, the two cases above would make good counterpoints to the idea of racial intellectual inferiority regardless of affirmative action and would likely have been able to gain admissions to a top university without it. But the unfortunate consequence of affirmative action is that many people will assume it is all because of their special treatment. Clarence Thomas had much more difficult obstacles to overcome, and he was subjected to this unfortunate assumption after graduating from law school.
I think the real intention of affirmative action is to achieve more equal outcomes across racial divides. I think that's a good objective. But I also think this is a policy that sounds much better than it actually works. If we're to have more equal outcomes, then we need more equal opportunities and we need an end to all forms of discrimination.