These are history making times in the US with a woman and a mixed race man as viable presidential candidates. Apparently, this has caused some people to try to do away with affirmative action.
I'm ambivalent about affirmative action. I understand the basis for it ~ to level the playing field for past discrimination/disadvantages and for remnants of such discrimination/disadvantages that may exist today for minorities. However, I've also experienced the assumption that I've gotten where I am not through my own hard work but simply because I'm an asian female and heard about issues of institutions of higher education with a requirement that a certain minimum number of their students must be a minority using that minimum as a maximum and trying to force students who would qualify for that school under any circumstances to enter under the affirmative action program so that the school would not have to fill the slots with the intended people (people who were somehow at a disadvantage because of their background or due to some kind of discrimination but who could meet the academic standards if given a chance).
So, what do you think about affirmative action? and is it time to do away with it? Is the field now totally level for everyone?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23802303
/snip Connerly contends that the success of Obama and Clinton shows that preferences are no longer necessary "to compensate for, quote, institutional racism and institutional sexism." .... Hudson, of the Eastern Missouri ACLU, said opponents of affirmative action "fail to take into account the on-the-ground realities that continue to persist." Their victory, he said, "would undermine one of the greatest achievements of the civil rights era."
/snip Connerly contends that the success of Obama and Clinton shows that preferences are no longer necessary "to compensate for, quote, institutional racism and institutional sexism." .... Hudson, of the Eastern Missouri ACLU, said opponents of affirmative action "fail to take into account the on-the-ground realities that continue to persist." Their victory, he said, "would undermine one of the greatest achievements of the civil rights era."
So, what do you think about affirmative action? and is it time to do away with it? Is the field now totally level for everyone?
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