Debate: Affirmative action

Is Affirmative Action education legislation in the United States a good idea?

Background and Context of Debate:

Compensation: Is affirmative action justified as compensation for past wrongs to a group?

Yes

Affirmative action helps compensate groups for past wrongs such as institutional racism and level the playing field: If past wrongs have a legacy that live on today in the form of continued disadvantages, affirmative action helps alter those obstacles and correct past wrongs. Because disadvantages often perpetuate themselves in a vicious cycle, affirmative action helps give the disadvantaged traction to fight off their disadvantages and end the cyclical legacy of past wrongs. Once the playing field is leveled, than the need for affirmative action no longer exists.

Affirmative action is the only way to level the playing field now:

• Past historical discrimination severely limited access to educational opportunities and job experiences.[1]
• Ostensible measures of "merit" may well be biased toward the same groups who are already empowered.[2]
• Regardless of overt principles, people in positions of power are likely to hire people they already know or people from similar backgrounds, or both.[3]

Affirmative Action actually enables the selection of highly qualified candidates that only appear less qualified due to their systemic exclusion: Affirmative Action actually ensures that, on average, the best candidate is selected precisely because affirmative action systematically includes individuals from groups that are otherwise systematically excluded. That is, since individuals in such groups are — in the absence of affirmative action — systematically excluded, and since the groups are composed of individuals that are otherwise equal to others, such groups have a higher proportion of qualified candidates precisely because they are normally excluded. Therefore selecting candidates from the excluded groups yields, on average, a greater number of qualified individuals. Accordingly, the increased mathematical probability of generally selecting more qualified candidates from the groups targeted for affirmative action will decline as candidates are recruited from the targeted groups.

No

Many groups that have been victims of institutional racism are actually harmed by affirmative action instead of compensated: Asian Americans are an example of this, where they have been victims of institutional racism, but whom are harmed by affirmative action since it benefits largely black and Hispanic populations. Thus, how can compensation for past injustices be a justification, when this rule is applied arbitrarily.

Using affirmative action to remove discrimination is counterproductive because it requires the very discrimination it is seeking to eliminate: It promotes prejudice by increasing the resentment of those who are the beneficiaries of affirmative action from those who have been adversely affected by the policy. Therefore, it simply shifts the prejudice from one group to another, which does not resolve the problem of racism.

Economic or educational disadvantage is what's important, not race: Economic or educational disadvantages do not necessarily correlate to those of a particular racial/ethnic status. There are many examples of wealthy well educated black youths that have experienced every society advantage there is. There are also examples of white youths that have lived in economic and educational squaller. If it is economic and educational disadvantages that are the problem, why not focus in affirmative action on these criteria instead of race and ethnicity.

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Yes

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No

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Yes

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No

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