First off let me just say that this is merely my opinion and I don't meen to offend anyone with. I am merely making an observation from what I have read in the book "Justice" and what we have talked about in class.
I can understand where the idea of affirmative action comes from and I think the idea is morally just. To give people who just happen to have been born into a worse situation then others help is definitely the right thing to do. However, I am not sure if affirmative action is the right way of doing things. I see where people are coming from when they suggested the idea and how it appears to be an easy way of correcting a wrong that has been in our country ever since its origin.
Three reasons the book gives for taking affirmative action into consideration when admitting students into the educational systems are correcting for the testing gap, compensating for past wrongs, and promoting diversity. Do you see any other main important reasons for affirmative action? The first is the idea that there is a gap that is in the scholastic aptitude testing we take to get into higher education systems. To start off the argument against this claim I would like to recall the inconsistency of these tests and the continual complaints people give for them not actually telling the academic ability of students. I do agree that someone from a poor public school getting the same grade as someone who went to a nice private school is much different. Although, I think instead of affirmative action we should be working on bettering the educational system of those kids in the bad public schools. I also think that we should be working on coming up with a better way of testing kids on something that could and will impact their lives so drastically. What are your thoughts on what they should do?
Next the idea that we are compensating for past wrongdoings. I do recognize that there has been extreme anguish experienced by minorities and still is today in some places. As to say that the government should pay for something that happened hundreds of years ago that most all of us had absolutely no direct interaction with is kind of strange to me. If we were to go by this mindset then why don't we try to compensate the families of the hundreds of thousands of people that we actually killed while dropping the bomb on hiroshima and nagasaki? I understand that due to the oppression that some minorities went through they are put into a bigger hole to, but we should focus on giving them better schools to start off in rather then discriminating against other people when choosing positions. What do you think we should do?
The last argument seems to be a very viable option, and I think it is very true that diversity does add to the learning experience. I just think that we shouldn't allow for someone to who has worked just as hard as another person to not get into a college regardless of their race. I think that we should work more at the root of the problem and give some lower end schools the upgrades to become like the private schools and better our educational system from their very start. Do you agree?
I know that there is a huge difference at times between minority and majority races, and it is very important for them to be integrated in classes. I just think that if we wrongly give someone a position just because their ancestors were wrongly abused that does not make a right. Any questions or comments?
One of the reasons for Affirmative Action that I see to be valuable is the fact that one has no choice into what type of circumstances he or she is born. We don't choose our hometown, we don't choose the socioeconomic situations of our parents, so we don't choose the type of education available to us. There was an example in the book about the two communities on either side of the Rio Grande in which the American town had more advantages to the Mexican citizens across the river. I don't see Affirmative Action as correcting past wrongs, although that is one of its goals. I see it as making America stronger by improving flaws such as the huge gaps in education. I recall someone suggesting that Affirmative Actions policies should be geared more towards class. This could be a more beneficial system in terms of bettering America as a whole and not focusing on the past.
ReplyDeleteThe issues you mention are problems that I think lots of people see with affirmative action. Concerning your second point, though, I think Sandel might argue that white Americans have a communal responsibility for our long history of racial discrimination, beginning with slavery. Another point that Sandel doesn't make but that we did discuss in class is the idea that, while no one chooses their race or their history, white Americans have benefited from America's racist history. We can safely assume that, if there were no such thing as racism, there would not be such inequality between races in America today. White Americans have a history of being advantaged, so one could argue that it is only fair to try to correct that imbalance.
ReplyDelete