<p>A) I stated constitutional republic, which is what the United States is…</p>
<p>B) Constitutional republics attempt to weaken the threat of majoritarianism and protect dissenting individuals and minority groups from the “tyranny of the majority” by placing checks on the power of the majority of the population. [Constitutional</a> republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_republic]Constitutional”>Republic - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>Affirmative Action being one of those checks…</p>
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<p>Show me on African-American, to which we know you are referring, that has had to “WORK LESS” to succeed…</p>
<p>Your opinion, while seemingly harmless, is the reason AA still exists… As if those that are benefiting from AA are working less. This is the same tired argument given since the inception of AA yet has never been proven once… </p>
<p>Perhaps, Obama, worked LESS than say Bill Clinton…</p>
<p>Purpleduckman, You should go back and learn how AA started. Oh wait, white supremacy never existed and minorities were never treated different because of their skin (sarcasm). You are a product of your environment. You don’t get to choose the environment you live in . You’re born there due to the effects of history. The ripple from Americas abusive past can still be felt today. You just can’t take an entire race from oppression to equality. Ex. Blacks were abused for hundreds of years in America. You can’t expect things to be completely changed in 50 years. Minorities got the right vote not too long ago.</p>
<p>^ @purpleduckman…No, you are at a much greater risk of failure in every sense due to a long history of discrimination. Bring pulled over is just a product of this. You dont get it. Whites have been educated in america over 300 years more than blacks. Forget past ancestors, blacks moms and dads went through the social discrimination and segregation. Do you think ones family doesnt influence ones education? It does and can’t argue that fact. Blacks aren’t being admitted with 2.8s when whites average a 3.8. These black students are being admitted with 3.8 too! Its just not everyone can get in with a 3.8, there is limited space and schools reserve about 5% of seats for URMs that perform exceptionally well. This does not hurt whites AT ALL. There are not 100 spots and 30 of them go to underqualified URMs. Thats not the case at all. And AA doesn’t hurt URMs neither.These students aren’t dumb or underqualified. </p>
<p>“Constitutional republics attempt to weaken the threat of majoritarianism and protect dissenting individuals and minority groups from the “tyranny of the majority” by placing checks on the power of the majority of the population.”</p>
<p>How is giving a group an advantage a check on the power of the majority. Laws that prohibit discrimination protect minority groups and are the checks against majority power but laws giving minorities an advantage stretches that clause a little far.</p>
<p>“Perhaps, Obama, worked LESS than say Bill Clinton…”</p>
<p>Allow me to narrow the scope of my argument. I do not deny that in the real world, minorities all have to work as hard if not harder than the majority to succeed but I am only talking about college admissions. AA allows for URMs to have lower stats for admissions to colleges while others have to get higher stats. You cannot deny that it is much easier to get a 3.6 GPA and a 27 ACT than it is to get a 3.8 and 30. I just don’t want to broaden the scope of this argument too far because it is much more complicated in the real world and I could probably argue for an entire page about the effects and application of real world AA.</p>
<p>Not an advantage. A correction of an imbalance…</p>
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<p>Wrong again… At the same school perhaps but you MUST consider all other factors. Was one student accepted and the other a social pariah due to race? Is one student in a better district.</p>
<p>SCOTUS has already held that AA can’t be banned. They also held that “A state university’s admission policy violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because its ranking system gave an automatic point increase to all racial minorities rather than making individual determinations.”</p>
<p>SCOTUS has already stated that merely being an URM should not be enough for admittance or a benefit being given.</p>
<p>Any argument you’ve mentioned against AA is therefore null and void. If a school is violating that ruling by SCOTUS then THEY are violating the law and not properly applying AA…</p>
<p>And to be honest… If you grew up upper middle class and received a 3.8 and 30 ACT in a nice suburban school and a minority grew up poor in a bad neighborhood at a clearly subpar school and receives say a 3.0 and a 24 on the ACT it’s my position that he IS a better student than you and that given the chance to be in YOUR environment will surpass your performance… </p>
<p>If you BOTH grew up in the same circumstance then you BOTH should be admitted and someone with clearly better circumstances should take the hit…</p>
<p>If you grew up in worse circumstance than the minority due to poverty then you should also receive the AA benefit…</p>
<p>“Wrong again… At the same school perhaps but you MUST consider all other factors. Was one student accepted and the other a social pariah due to race? Is one student in a better district.”</p>
<p>I won’t argue against you there. I already admitted that it would completely be fair for a student for a poor environment to be admitted with lesser stats than another student with better stats from a better environment but what I am arguing against is the abuses you mentioned earlier yourself. You said earlier you do not follow the spirit of AA but only the letter. Race should not at all be a factor in determining admissions because it is completely irrelevant. I can draw from personal experience seeing a hispanic student, living in a upper middle class neighborhood, going to a suburban school admitted with lesser stats than almost everyone else admitted. That is clearly a case of abuse of AA and getting admitted solely on “race”. </p>
<p>“Any argument you’ve mentioned against AA is therefore null and void. If a school is violating that ruling by SCOTUS then THEY are violating the law and not properly applying AA…”</p>
<p>I disagree. Can you really make a case that no school violates this ruling from SCOTUS? It’s like saying rape doesn’t exist because there are laws against it. Any argument on creating further laws against rape are therefore null and void. Therefore, if you cannot make that case, my argument retains some merit. </p>
<p>“And to be honest… If you grew up upper middle class and received a 3.8 and 30 ACT in a nice suburban school and a minority grew up poor in a bad neighborhood at a clearly subpar school and receives say a 3.0 and a 24 on the ACT it’s my position that he IS a better student than you and that given the chance to be in YOUR environment will surpass your performance…”</p>
<p>I won’t argue with you here because I agree with you to some degree but you could also say because of how bad the school is, it could be like DPS, simply giving higher but unearned grades to pass state requirements and give the appearance of progress. That 3.0 might actually be a 2.0.</p>
<p>So we need to go around to every industry where there isn’t the perfect balance of race and replace more qualified people with less qualified people to correct the balance? That sounds like a horrible idea. </p>
<p>And all you did was show me a list of Fortune 500 CEOs. That didn’t really prove your point. </p>
<p>And it’s not a matter of qualified vs. Not qualified. Its qualified vs. More qualified. If you reserve seats for minorities you are potentially not getting the most qualified class you can.</p>
<p>Why do you assume the imbalance is because the minorities are less qualified. Historical data shows that your assumption is wrong AND biased.</p>
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<p>It proves my point exactly… The number of minorities (blacks, asians, women) in leadership positions does NOT match the percentage of qualified minorities in the work force. The glass ceiling is a proven fact…</p>
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<p>Really? The majority of these people in CEO are not there solely due to ability. We all know that. The majority of minority CEOs become so due to starting their own enterprise. Were these people NOT qualified for these other CEO positions?</p>
<p>The argument is weak because we know that nepotism and discrimination is widespread. Perfect example… George Bush Jr. was in no way qualified to attend Yale. Nor was he really qualified to be elected president. He was though on the strength of his father who was also the recipient of the advantage to the majority inherent in all facets of America. </p>
<p>However, due to the historical racism in this country how many minority students receive the advantage of legacy status at Ivy league schools??? I don’t see you on the legacy threads complaining about THAT advantage that is essentially only given to majority students… <a href=“Former%20Harvard%20University%20president%20Lawrence%20Summers%20has%20stated,” title=“Legacy admissions are integral to the kind of community that any private educational institution is.” In the 1998 book The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions, authors William G. Bowen, former Princeton University president, and Derek Bok, former Harvard University president, found “the overall admission rate for legacies was almost twice that for all other candidates.”>quote</a>
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<p>Plus… Do you rail against all the real disadvantages that are present in all minority’s lives as much as you rail against this ONE supposed advantage they receive???</p>
<p>Any advantage AA gives minorities is seriously overshadowed by the disadvantages that we are subjected too.</p>
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<p>Then we agree. Affirmative Action is an institution that needs to be protected. Protecting minority classes, no matter what the minority class happens to be, should be our number one priority.</p>
<p>@xSlacker before I begin my real point, how was George W. Bush not qualified to be admitted to Yale? Also, what qualifications does one need to be president? And how did Bush not have them?</p>
<p>To all you people who believe that AA should exist, you are wrong. Race(really the only thing that AA takes into account) should not be a factor in whether a person is accepted into a college. The idea that our public institutions are discriminating based on race, and we all know that this is discrimination, is just ridiculous. Our own Federal laws protect against the discrimination based on race. Also, I think that it is quite telling that the only people who are on here defending AA are the people who have benefited from it and who without it may not be where they are today.</p>
<p>Almost every university in this country(at least the selective ones) uses a holistic process in its admissions. This process should not include any mention of that person’s race because today your race is not the deciding factor on how much you achieve, it is where you live. The beauty about that is that a holistic process already takes that into account, seeing what opportunities you were given and what you did with those opportunities. A student from the projects of Detroit is not being evaluated the same as that kid from a New England prep school, without regard to the fact of race. To all those on here who seem to think that whites get all the advantages, let me ask you if i had any advantages that are so rampant in “white” america.</p>
<p>I come from one of the worst high schools in Michigan. My school offers 3 AP classes, has an average of 17 on the ACT, only 40% go 2 a 4year college(and crappy ones at that), and has a 33% dropout rate. Knowing that my school was crap, I pushed myself to do the best that i can and succeed. In middle school, i skipped far ahead in math so that I took AP Calc my freshmen year. Instead of taking electives, i maxed out the highest core classes that i could. I studied for the ACT, which means that i bought a $14 book and went through it by myself, and ended up with a 33. Also, I ended up taking 8 college classes(BIOL 145 Anatomy&Physiology, Calc1, Calc2, Multivariable Calc, Discrete Mathematics, Differential Equations, Complex Analysis, and a Programming course), and i graduated Valedictorian with a perfect 4.0UW GPA. I worked my ass off to overcome what was a crappy situation. Still, I am hurt through AA because all that it sees is my race, not what I have overcome and still gives the boost to the New England prep school kid who has had an way more opportunities and just happens to be black. Please explain to me how that is not wrong?</p>
<p>For those that are against AA, please ask yourself this question…</p>
<p>How would you feel if you grew up in a country where your race/gender defined you. Where people, corporations and institutions get away with blatant racism. Where you ALWAYS have to defend yourself or prove that you earned your way to where you are.</p>
<p>^^^please give us examples. it is illegal to discriminate based on race and if you are, there are ways to correct that</p>
<p>Also you didn’t answer his question. you deflected to a question of your which can only mean that the answer you would have given would have significantly hurt your arguments</p>
<p>“And to be honest… If you grew up upper middle class and received a 3.8 and 30 ACT in a nice suburban school and a minority grew up poor in a bad neighborhood at a clearly subpar school and receives say a 3.0 and a 24 on the ACT it’s my position that he IS a better student than you and that given the chance to be in YOUR environment will surpass your performance…”</p>
<p>I sure as heck disagree with this claim. Can you prove that the minority student would outperform the other in his environment? Based solely on the information you provided, you sure can’t.</p>
<p>I want to get back to a point. Jackie Robinson earned his way to the Big Leagues. Rickey Branch explicitly stated that Jackie was signed due to his skill, not his race. If somone can earn his way without affirmative action in a much more racist soceity, then why does someone need it today?</p>