I’m watching the Sunday morning shows just now, something I never do.  It’s either church, football or some other activity going on right about now.  But today the kids are out having lunch with mom and I’m home alone.

I watching MSNBC and the table is talking about the Massachusetts race for senator; specifically the element of race.  Elizabeth Warren received advantages due to the fact that she is one thirty-second Cherokee.  It would seem that by identifying herself in this way she was able to help her early career.

Anyway, the conversation shifted to affirmative action and social policy in general.

Why Affirmative Action

I went to a pretty good source for an answer to this question:

The Racial Justice Program actively supports affirmative action to secure racial diversity in educational settings, workplaces and government contracts, to remedy continuing systemic discrimination against people of color, and to help ensure equal opportunities for all people. As part of this commitment, we are working to defend affirmative action in states that are threatened for a civil rights rollback.

Pretty clear and straight forward.

• Secure racial diversity in educational settings, workplaces and government contracts.
• Secure racial diversity in educational settings, workplaces and government contracts.
• Help ensure equal opportunities for all people.

Three simple goals, easy to understand and noble in its intention.

Is Affirmative Action The Right Approach

Even as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation we have to acknowledge that there is work to do; hard important work.  We have the opportunity to improve the relations between the races here in America.  However, we have to take time to consider that in just 150 years, really, borrowing an allusion from Louis C. k., that’s really the lives of two old people back to back.  We have to acknowledge that we’ve come a very long way.

The reason I mention this preamble is because we have to acknowledge that there are still unenlightened idiots out there who want to continue to discriminate based on race.  We’re not talking about that very small and insignificant minority.  Here I’m talking about the mainstream reasonable individual.  And of THAT population I find no one, not one single person, who feels that any individual should be denied opportunity based on race.

But is that the goal of Affirmative Action?

I don’t think so.  I think that Affirmative Action is a “results based” program and not a “build the base” program.  Think of it this way, I want my kids to excel in school, I want them to hit the honor roll and bring home report card after report card with A’s.  I probably can accomplish this in two ways:

1. I can enforce strict expectations regarding achievement and insist on homework and study.
2. I can use my influence with teachers, staff and administration to ensure that substandard grades are changed to more desirable ones.

Both paths result in my goal; Straight A’s.  However, the goal isn’t really straight A’s.  The goal is mastery of the subject such that positive life goals can be reasonably accomplished.  I want my kids to learn to earn those A’s.  Simply giving ’em to them doesn’t accomplish anything; in fact, it may prove to be counter-productive.

This is my beef with Affirmative Action.  The programs put in place often result in “inappropriate  promotion” not based on the merit but on the basis of race.  In the same way that I don’t want to see an unqualified white protestant middles-class male given preference over a more qualified candidate who may be a minority, neither do I want to see a member of a protected class given preference over that same WASP.

I want the gateway to be one of merit without bias of class, of race, of sex or of religion.

In short, we want the ELIMINATION of advancement based on those elements.  We do not want to extend discrimination simply by changing the group of people we discriminate against.

On other words, the goal of any “Affirmative Action” would be to reduce the number of qualified minorities being denied advancement.  It would NOT be to increase the number of unqualified minorities being advanced.

This seems so self apparent as to be bedrock philosophy and disagreement indicates an inherent racial bias.