A Solution To Affirmative Action

JNightshade

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OK, first off, I decided to post this in light of the (not incorrect) allegations that everyone's just been saying "I told you so" instead of offering solutions.

I was thinking about the Affirmative Action issue in the US. Over here, colleges and universities have a quota of "minority students" to fill. This is MANDATORY, and as a result, sometimes white students will lose a spot in a college to a less qualified applicant, simply because that person has a different skin color. Of course, this has always bothered me, but when I sat down and thought about it, the solution hit me like a rock:

start with the community.

think about it! The idea behind affirmative action is extremely flawed. I won't argue out the various views, but Affirmative Action essentially states that, for whatever reason, minorities need help getting into colleges. We're all humans here, and the genetic differences are only skin-deep. So it can't be a hereditary issue. And the more I thought, the more I realized that the whole thing is one big stereotype... it's not the "minorities" that need help, it's the poor. The cause of all this trouble is substandard schooling, bad neighborhoods and learning environments, and the like. It's not a color issue at all. However, our dear government, full of corrupt old white men, deemed it so. This needs to change. So I believe the US needs to adopt an "Alternative Action" plan. We need to pour massive amounts of funding and willpower into doing a job that should've been done years ago- helping the poor. We need to fund better schools, better neighborhoods, better minds. We need to give the needy a better chance. And then we need to set up committees that do the exact OPPOSITE of Affirmative Action: make sure that race is not a factor whatsoever when college applications are looked at. Of course, this would take a very long time to achieve, so in the meantime we could simply change affirmative action, so it takes income into account, rather than race. But in the long run, I think we need to make the change.
 
The UK has a system based around getting people from poorer backgrounds getting into University :)

But yes, positive discrimination isn't a good thing
 
I think poor communities might be a factor but also its the media that messes things up. When they show some gangster on TV being all cool killing people and dropping out of school kids follow that to try and be cool. I think the affirmative action plan is wrong but I don't see any way to fix this. The problem is very complex and is more than the media or poor. There are also many more factors than what we have listed here.
 
Over here, colleges and universities have a quota of "minority students" to fill. This is MANDATORY, and as a result, sometimes white students will lose a spot in a college to a less qualified applicant
Pretty much everyone agrees that positive discrimination is wrong. However, this rarely happens. The vast majority of times it's two people with equal abilities, and race just breaks the tie. For instance, colleges get thousands of applications; most of which look exactly alike. They used to choose between ppl with equal resumes using meaningless factors like what state they're from. If they have five hundred people from nebraska, and two hundred from tenessee, they'd choose the tenessee applicant. Now they're just using another method for breaking ties between equal applicants, which just happens to be race. Weather or not this is right i'm not entire sure, but it hardly seems less valid than former methods.
 
I don't know about that... I just can't stand discrimination in any form. I mean, I just... bah. The point is, it seems to me that race is far less valid than other methods.
 
why don't they just have it where a person's name is merely replaced with the initials and their ethnicity is omitted. That way the people looking at all the applications are incapable of being racist.
 
JNightshade said:
We're all humans here, and the genetic differences are only skin-deep.
Actually, it's only 2/3 of a skin-deep :p

Oh, and I concur. Your idea of changing to it is also perfect :thumbs:
 
I think affirmative action is dumb... you'll end up screwing up the people you're trying to help, given a choice who would you choose as an employer, a black applicant or a white applicant who had to work harder to earn his qualifications. Besides, if you need positive discrimination to get into university you shouldn't be there in the first place.
 
Well, yes. This is what America needs to be doing and exactly what it doesn't seem to be doing right about now. It's also, to some extent, what JFK and Lyndon Johnson tried to do back in the sixties only both failed because of premature assassination and Vietnam respectively.
 
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