Why Affirmative Action?
There’s a debate going on concerning affirmative action. I haven’t decided which side I’m on, but I’m not seeing convincing arguments from the people for affirmative action. About thirty years ago, in the late 1960s, the United States was explicitly racist to a large extent. Negros (as they were called then) were discriminated against overtly and severely. Something had to be done. One step was called Affirmative Action. It started as a plea to consider only relevant facts about people when making hiring decisions, or college admission decisions, or whatever. For obvious reasons, this didn’t work. Part of it developed into a quota system, since that is enforceable. This was a race-based solution for a race-based problem, which seems reasonable. At first, it was nothing but a changing of quotas from 0% to x%, which was a step forward. The original principle is certainly sound, and always was. It is even put into practice sometimes. The quota implementation, or any other explicitly race-
Why Affirmative Action?