Affirmative Action: My Favorite Arguments

Arguments in support of and opposing Affirmative Action are numerous. I pretty much have standard replies.

Affirmative Action is reverse discrimination. No it's not. So there. But seriously, one has to ask oneself if the discrimination of affirmative action is indeed the same kind of discrimination as it sought to remedy. The question of the efficacy of affirmative action in the workplace is generally answered by comparing incomes of blacks vs whites. I would ask, then if affirmative action cures racial discrimination against blacks by increasing their average income, does it create discrimination against others by lowering their average income? I believe the answer to that is no.
1. Did affirmation action comitted a criminal act when it discriminates
> against white males?
 Affirmative action is legal and constitutional and has been ruled so since its inception. the various laws and supreme court decisions limit the way affirmative action can be legally implemented. some of these laws are controversial, such as the adarand v. pena decision. others are less so, such as the bakke decision
Is reverse discrimination a crime?
there is no such thing as 'reverse discrimination'. it's a special term created for white folks. there is racial discrimination and there is racist discrimination. racial discrimination means i take your race into consideration and change the way i view you because of that. racist discrimination means i *only* consider your race and nothing else and that unalterably changes the way you will be treated. see the difference?

racial discrimination can be used for good or evil. racist discrimination is always wrong. the borderline between them is generally determined by the amount race matters. this is how the supreme court has been ruling, more or less consistently over the past 30 years. in the bakke decision, for example, when race is the sole criteria for university admissions (a racial quota), then it is racist and illegal.

now if you call 'reverse discrimination' any discrimination (be it 'racial' or 'racist') which doesn't decides in favor of white folks, then you have just established a category which necessarily makes everything that helps non-white folks wrong. i believe that is the idea behind the term.

if you are discriminated against for racial or racist reason, there is not a separate law that white folks use. it's the same law. that's why 'reverse discrimination' is not a legal term, it's just rhetoric.
How are white males affected by reverse discrimination? if the popular press is to be believed, white males have reserved a special type of anger and resentment. but what they haven't done is present a convincing number of legal cases that their civil rights have been trampled on.
Why are white males mostly affected by reverse discrimination? because that's what reverse discrimination is, by definition.
What percentage of the white male population are affected by reverse
> discrimination?		 let's try some math.
let's assume that 25% of america is non-white. and of those non-whites,
50% are in the workforce (>18 and <65)
thus 12.5% of america has the potential of being chosen, for the worst
reasons, over whites. oops but you said white males. so make that 12.5%
vs 37.5%.

now, let's futher assume that 50% of all american businesses has an affirmative action plan which is in effect. (remember that federal guidelines for affirmative action only applies to business with 12 or more employees). and let's assume that ALL of the 12.5% of non-white working men and women work ONLY in those business. and finally let's assume that EVERY one of those non-white working men and women ONLY get promoted or hired because of the WORST kind of RACIST and ILLEGAL affirmative action decision not because they earned it.

that being the case, mathematically it's 12.5% vs 18.25%. (18.25 because
half of the white men work in companies not affected by affirmative
action at all whereas all of the non-white men and women work ONLY in
affirmative action companies). so, under these absolute worse
conditions, all the non-whites could only take 68% (12.5/18.25) of the
jobs away from 1/2 the white males anyway. so 32% of the jobs are left
to white males IN affirmative action companies and 100% are left to the
white males in non-affirmative action companies.

that being the case, 34% of all *working* white males, a distinct
minority, would be the worst kind of victims of the worst kind of
affirmative action and all of it would be illegal.

now, let's interject some reality.
#1. non-whites have higher unemployment rates than whites. so that reduces the 12.5%
#2. white woman have been and always will be part of affirmative action, so that reduces the racial aspect.
#3. fewer than 50% of american businesses have affirmative action programs.
#4. even where these affirmative action programs are in effect, they do not cover all types of employment.
#5. even in the areas covered, every hire or promotion is not programmatic. i.e. non-whites *do* merit.
#6. the overwhelming majority of affirmative action programs are legal in every respect following the bakke decision. that means none of these hires or promotions is based *soley* on the matter of race.

so 'angry white males' are arguing against logic and mathematics and in
ignorance of the law and facts. but their rhetoric and politics are
pretty loud.