Degs: You're smart, but you should stick to plain English rather than attempting to use $5 words like meretricious.

meretricious, adj,

1. alluring by a show of flashy or vulgar attractions; tawdry.

2. based on pretense, deception, or insincerity.

3. pertaining to or characteristic of a prostitute.(Source, Dictionary.com)

The first meaning rather describes your argument in favor of affirmative action as it stands today -- at the very least, I find that argument tawdry Really, the second meaning also applies to your argument, which is based on the pretense that society can mend racism in the past by practicing it in the present. I don't think your argument amounts to the third meaning -- but the racial whoring by people like the mayor of New Haven might apply. In any case, under no definition (nor in its latin roots which have to do with prostitution) does "meretricious" mean "based on merit."

The statement, "But in the case of minorities, that position defended by AA is usually the ONLY access to such rights," is as incorrect as your use of meretricious. AA doesn't, ahem, discriminate between rich and poor -- upper and middle class minorities have as much access to rights as poor whites. The fact that you continue to ignore this disparity damages your argument.

And arguing for a quota system is simply foolhardiness. The courts and the public reject it. Let's argue the real world, no pie in the sky.

In the real world, you cannot argue that differentiated treatment leads to equal rights. That is the pre-Brown v Board of Education view, and it is factually, legallyl and simply wrong.

I also find it racist to assume blacks can't compete with whites.

IOW recognizing the existance of racism and its consequences is racist. UHUH...

First off, even in the face of racism minorites CAN compete, but it is not a competition that stands the Constitutional scrutiny of EQUAL before the law. Thus you are going to have disparate outcomes. Disparate doesn't mean NO success, but it means disproportionate LIMITS on success. And that latter is very much true even today.

But even more racist is your statement that AA is the only access to such rights by minorities.

Again bad logic. Without AA that access is usually highly constrained, though in some cases it IS completely limited.

So Barak Obama is our President because of AA?

• Yes. Without AA, Obama doesn't get into Harvard or any Ivy, NO BLACKS do.
• Without Harvard he lacks the exceptional resume required to even be a minority senator much less a POTUS Candidate
• Without Harvard, he doesn't have an answer to "what are your qualifications"

Same is true of Rice, Powell, Thomas, Dinkens etc. etc.

Degs: For, "First off, even in the face of racism minorites CAN compete, but it is not a competition that stands the Constitutional scrutiny of EQUAL before the law" to be true, we have to be discussing that discrimination that takes place in a legal situation -- before the law, in other words.

AA provides differentiated treatment, not equal treatment, before the law. It does this in attempt to ameliorate discrimination that occurs throughout society -- but not before the law. While I deplore that social discrimination, it is not a reason that I should face a disadvantage under the law in hiring, firing, college admissions or any other area where legally sanctioned racial discrimination (in the name of integration) currently exists.

And, as we discussed, AA is also now set up to be a permanent entitlement, even if the circumstances that prompted its creation disappear entirely.

Sorry Degs -- no racial discrimination, not now, not ever. Unequal treatment is inherently racist.

degsme:

So Barak Obama is our President because of AA?

• Yes. Without AA, Obama doesn't get into Harvard or any Ivy, NO BLACKS do.
• Without Harvard he lacks the exceptional resume required to even be a minority senator much less a POTUS Candidate
• Without Harvard, he doesn't have an answer to "what are your qualifications"

Same is true of Rice, Powell, Thomas, Dinkens etc. etc.

Utterly False. Harvard Law School Graduated its first black in 1867. So you cannot state that Obama would not be right where he is. And to state that no blacks get in is false as blacks have been attending Harvard since 100 years before the Civil Rights Act. So for you to perpetuate the myth that none of them would be there without AA is racist.

For example Dr.Patrick Chavis would be still alive - except he would not be a doctor.

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