Affirmative action represents one of the great logical fallacies of the extremist left-wingers today, in that it exemplifies almost all of the misguided principles and assumptions of those self-anointed elite.
The obvious argument against affirmative action, so-called, is made clear in the more accurate name for this policy: reverse discrimination. We agree that society should be blind to certain criteria - race, color, ethnicity, whatever. How can we hope to achieve that kind of society when we require that we identify race, color, ethnicity, etc., in every applicant, and that every decision give substantial or even decisive weight to those factors?
Ah, but we're not there yet, goes one familiar argument. Agreed, and the way to get there is to prosecute rigorously every instance of discrimination, not to institutionalize it. Doing away with race-based remedies is the only way to make us look at those who have been discriminated against, not as members of a victim class, but as individuals. Affirmative action continues the victimization, but merely designates a different group of victims. And it perpetuates the division, the hostility, between the favored and the unfavored.
One of the insidious aspects of reverse discrimination, accounting for the eagerness to do away with the policy, is the difficulty of guessing what will satisfy enforcers. How many classifications have to be tracked? That is, if you are tracking Native Americans, what happens if you have too many Cherokees and not enough Navahos? What proportions must be present in the selected group? If a particular ethnicity represents a given percentage of the population, must they be represented to the same percentage in the selected group? What if too few of that ethnicity apply for the job? How closely must the figures match? That is, in a workforce of twenty people, it might be that population statistics call for 3.2 to be of a particular race. You may be prosecuted if you only have three, but if you have four then one of the other groups is underrepresented. Suppose an applicant is gay, black, and Jamaican. Will this person count against your quota of gays and your quota of blacks and your quota of Jamaicans, or are you required to have a quota specifically for gay black Jamaicans? And, by the way, how do you satisfy both the whites who want him counted against the quota for African-Americans, and the African-Americans who say he's not one of them? Or do you need separate quotas for blacks who are African-Americans and blacks who are not?
The fragmentation and classification of our society continue, with the prospect of multiculturalism as excitingly practiced in Bosnia and Burundi. And it revives a pernicious evil from our shameful past and from Germany's: the attempt to define race based on fractional inheritance. What proportion of blood qualifies you for preferred status? One thirty-second? One sixty-fourth? Will you have to deny your Jewish heritage, because Jewish blood is not favored right now? Heaven preserve us from descending into these depths again.
Some narrowly-focused individuals say we must continue to discriminate, because the "playing field" is not yet level, those who were disadvantaged by slavery must continue to receive the offerings of our guilt. But my parents came over from Russia, shortly after the turn of the century, with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Should I, who had nothing to do with slavery, have to share the guilt? What about the advantage gained by those who immigrated with wealth? Why not ask them to share the guilt for the pogroms?
Those who came over when the United States was founded have had centuries to accumulate wealth, and in many cases had unique opportunities to homestead land. The Irish fleeing the potato famine had no such opportunities. The Cubans fleeing Castro had no such opportunities. The Cambodians fleeing the Khmer Rouge had no such opportunities. On the other hand, there were a few wealthy Irish, Cubans, Cambodians, and so on. How can it make sense to discriminate on the basis of groups? What about a family with by a genetic flaw that leads to their dying young, clearly a handicap in the race to accumulate wealth - how do we level the playing field for them? Or a family propensity for shortness, or obesity, or ugliness - I'm sorry, I mean impairment of beauty.
The point is, government has no business attempting to level any playing fields, or even trying to decide by what measures to define "level". Government's job is to enforce the laws that prevent people from preying on other people. That includes enforcing the laws against discrimination. But if I institute, for example, a hiring system, and I can show that it takes no notice of race and in fact makes every reasonable effort to eliminate race from the hiring process, that should be taken as a strong defense against a charge of discrimination, even if the people don't fall neatly into the categories the bean-counters prefer. After all, I'm hiring people, not categories.