Some Thoughts on Affirmative Action |
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These thoughts are prompted by the Supreme Court decisions on June 23 in the affirmative action cases[1]. Michael Kinsey correctly points out in The Washington Post in the article Want Diversity? Think Fuzzy[2] that the two rulings are self contradictory and what the court has "produced is utter logical confusion." Richard Cohen in The Washington Post in the article Confused O'Connor[3] says the opinion is so poor ". . . that maybe it is the high court that could use some affirmative action itself. Clear thinkers are underrepresented." We need to take a step backward and do a better job of identifying the problem. The underlying problem is distributing the resources of our world, so as to add value over time to the people of the world. There are some basic facts that we need to recognize. One is that there is more wealth if we work together than if we work as individuals. A corollary to that is the larger the group that we can get to work together the greater the wealth. A second fact is that too much power or centralized power vested in one or a few people does not work well for the long term, although it can result in dramatic short term gains. Thus dictatorships, communism, fascism, monarchies, may work for a short time but fail over periods of 50 years or more. A third fact is that any self identifiable group that feels discriminated against by the system of wealth allocation will become disruptive to that system of allocation. A corollary is that groups that are actually discriminated against find self identification easier than groups that are not actually discriminated against. These problems are not new and have been faced by society for time immemorial. What is new is that we have unprecedented wealth and the ability to generate even greater amounts of wealth. Affirmative action is to deny no one who is qualified admission to this wealth. Affirmative action is to enable everyone to become qualified. Anything else is discrimination to which a self identifiable group will object. Why don't we admit everyone? Why don't we allocate resources such that all who want to become qualified can become qualified? I wish I knew the answers to these questions. Until we learn how to help our fellow human beings and cease discriminating based on artificial divisions, serious problems will persist. Footnotes |
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