Complicated as hell, talked about to death. The author is sick
of it.
but i stand practically 100% behind the clinton position
some other interesting articles with which i find agreement:
They're
taking over by Troy Duster
Report
to the President from Edley & Stephanopoulos
A Personal Perspective | My Favorite Arguments | Random Essays
the race man understands that ability knows no racial boundaries. yet greatness has historical boundaries. what greatness is in any age is determined, ultimately by those with the greatest influence as they laud their heroes. and what is acceptable for anyone striving for social success has much to do with their proximity and direction towards that greatness. what has this got to do with affirmative action? everything.
you see affirmative action is a creation of a particular time in american history. what was seen to be great at that time was a function of the way people were thinking. to accept this as a fundamental premise is to accept the equality of all people without regard to race.
affirmative action works towards two fundamental objectives.
it is crucial that any discussion of affirmative action keep those objectives in mind. in my view, affrimative action has been directly and indirectly successful in the first case and mostly successful in the second case. the success of affirmative action as an integrative strategy has an ironic consequence. opposition to affirmative action's overall implemention comes from, among other things, the relatively high profile of successful african americans. despite the fact that white women have been the greatest beneficiary of affirmative action programs, it is the black american which most often symbolizes the. there are two fundamental problems with the argument against 'equality of results'. the first is that the american workplace, by and large, is ill equipped to demonstrate itself as a meritocracy. secondly, merit is socially determined and changes over time. when affirmative action sets up quotas and schedules, this is not in itself a problem.
(this was explained to me, by a gentleman who was an army special forces commando who, after several vietnam tours joined the corporate workforce. he ended up in personnel) the fundamental argument against integration of the armed forces was that blacks were unsuitable for certain functions - that racially they deficient and could not be made fit. independently demonstrating their fitness, african-americans came upon the secondary argument which was that integration would create more social problems than it would solve. the advantage of the military over the american workplace is that its regimentation, specificity of tasks and command hierarchy are well suited to objective evaluation of merit and promotability. however most american businesses have no manpower planning or rules of succession. given these, and the objective demonstration that 'minorities' are suitable for promotion, the secondary argument has the most force in the american workplace today. however, creeping racialism has begun to turn the tide of popular opinion back to the first argument.
how qualified is qualified?