Katie and I were talking about Affirmative action last week. Her class in school is now discussing the cases and court rulings pertaining to the controversial policy. Katie was impressed with the reasoning behind the social engineering that went into it. I guess she was surprised to find that the intentions of Aff Act were noble and well intended. Tons of policies are noble and well intended. Does anyone actually enact or uphold legislation saying "Ha! This will really screw everyone!"
I don't know, maybe they do. They're politicians, after all.
Anyway, we talked about how the SCOTUS decided that diversity was a great enough asset to a school to keep the racial element in their acceptance formulas. Only ethnic diversity is a great asset, of course. You're not going to get into Harvard as a token conservative or Evangelical. We can take it for granted that conservatives and Evangelicals can get into Harvard in significant enough numbers without taking their religious or political views into consideration.
And that's my problem with affirmative action.
Why do schools assume that if they admit students based only on their resumes that they won't get diversity?
Isn't that inherently racist?
And if it's true that certain minorities can't put together a transcript worthy of a top tier school, then isn't the problem in the nation's elementary and high schools? Affirmative action is a way to avoid addressing the problems with the public schools all over the country. I know there are good schools all over the place. I also know there aren't nearly enough of them. It's a tragedy and a disgrace that we parents can't take it for granted that by sending our kids to the neighborhood public school they will acquire the education necessary to get into any top tier college in the country.
Ask any teacher and they'll tell you that the problems they face with some kids can't be addressed in the schools. Part of the reason so many kids fail is because their family backgrounds are too messed up.
Affirmative action allows us to ignore that, too.
I understand the fear that colleges would always choose the white students over minority students with equally impressive transcripts, but aren't we waaaay past those days? And if we aren't yet, when will we be? After all, aren't college campuses progressive to a fault? If we can't trust these bastions of political correctness to treat students justly, whom can we trust? Let's say Harvard gets a thousand applications, all from straight A students. Do we really need the federal government to make sure some of the accepted applications will be from minorities?Why can't we just assume that all things being equal, a black or Hispanic kid has just as good a chance at getting accepted to any given school as a white or Asian kid?
I think it's a terrible thing for an institution to discriminate based on race. There's no such thing as "reverse discrimination", either. If you hit me, and I hit your back, am I "reverse punching" you?
When a college accepts one student and not another based on grades, they are discriminating against the B student. Sometimes one A student will beat out another A student based on where they earned their grades. A University might discriminate against the public school valedictorian in favor of the private academy grad. Not everyone gets into their first choice school. Affirmative action merely allows some people to make a federal case out of it.
But all judgments must be based on something.
I am in favor of discriminating against the blind when it comes to getting a driver's license. For that matter, I have a problem with issuing driver's licenses to the illiterate, as well. I want to assume that the driver in front of me can read the One Way sign or the Right Lane Must Turn sign coming up on the highway.
I'm in favor of discriminating against tiny little women being fire fighters. I'm in favor of discriminating against tiny little
men being fire fighters. I want to know the person offering to carry me out the fifth floor window of a burning building has passed the same rigorous physical exam demanded of a six' two" gorilla and not some watered down version just so that I can have the privilege of being dropped to the street by a girl. On the other hand, I don't care whether or not the fire fighter on the ladder can read. Although I do want the guy (or gal) driving the engine to be literate.
I don't want my lasik surgeon to have cerebral palsy or my dentist to be narcoleptic.
I don't want to sit through Mass with a reader who has a severe stammer.
But maybe that's just me.
Josie and Meg just popped in Disney's Robin Hood, which I loved when I was their age. Gotta go.
