Affirmative Action Thoughts

While reading Sandel’s chapter “Dilemmas of Loyalty”, I was reminded of our discussion yesterday in class. Sandel says, “you can’t apologize for something you didn’t do. So, how can you apologize for something that was done before you were born?” (211). This got me thinking of the possible reasons for affirmative action that we came up with. It seems safe to say that there is a sense of guilt held that affirmative action is in a way, an attempt to assuage. Although I agree that the intention of affirmative action is a good one, it isn’t executed in an effective way. Like the examples in Sandel’s chapter we read for Wednesday tries to illustrate, sometimes the best candidate doesn’t get the spot because race is looked at too much. A fault of affirmative action is that by trying to create a balance, an overcompensation is the result. Race ends up being blinding at times and taken as the defining characteristic of a person instead of looking at the person as a whole. I do not want to assume and generalize that this is the case every time but it is something to be aware of. Also, I think it is interesting that when talking about affirmative action people start talking about it first in terms of race not gender. I think this is in part because we are trained to be more sensitive to racial issues rather then gender ones. Gender dialogue can be more intimidating because we are not trained to use it as much. Affirmative action is a sensitive subject but it is important to remember that just because someone may not agree with the way it is carried out does not mean that the intention of it is not appealing.