What do you think about it? Personally, I think that in cases where prejudice is proven, then it is acceptable. However, making non-prejudical environments have "quota" of people to hire is absolutely ludicrous. Hiring someone because of race/religion/sex etc... is just as bad as not hiring them because of race/religion/sex etc...
It's a double edged sword. It can help in some cases and hurt in some cases. For example, preventing a more qualified person from getting the job because of race because they had to hire a minority. That is just as bad as what they are trying to prevent.
Justice Clarence Thomas is against it, and that's good enough for me.... I'm off the "it's just reverse discrimination" persuasion. It spits in the face of "being judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character"... PS - for those of you who don't know, Clarance Thomas is currently the only African American serving in the Us supreme court. He was accepted to undergrad and law school because of affirmative action, and has since repeatedly gone on the record stating that it is an unfair practice.
If prejudice is proven towards not hiring people because of gender/race/religion...etc and it is proven to be happening because of discrimination and not because of some external reasons, then I think anti-discrimination laws would do the job just fine. I believe that equality and non-prejudice is a mentality and revolves around viewing a person first and foremost as an individual and then as the group to which he supposedly belongs. Equality does not revolve around a percentage of people of different groups employed in a certain geographical area. Furthermore affermative action often revolves around dividing society in groups, groups that do not necessarily correspond with reality, if the black underprivileged person is entitled to say a place in university because he studied quite hard and gotten good grades, is underpivileged, and because blacks are underrepresented in university. then what about his neighbour who is white but is also underprivileged and who has also studied hard and gotten good grades? Now off course you shouldnt take this logic too far, when applying this logic things such as scholarships can also become forms of reverse discrimination. So you should make a big distinction between things such as imposing quotas which force people in a certain job or position and force others out and simply promoting and encouraging people to do certain jobs.
I believe that we need Affirmative Action in education, but it shouldn't be based on race (unless hard evidence of discrimination exists) it should be based more on income level. Also I hate the term reverse discrimination, just call it discrimination.
I could swear I've heard terrible things about that guy never listening to the counter arguments to cases or something like that. Not that I believe everything I hear.
By Clarance Thomas you mean Anthony Scalia right. But Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas may have just clarified why he doesn't talk much: ‘Today there is much focus on our rights,” Justice Thomas said. “Indeed, I think there is a proliferation of rights.” “I am often surprised by the virtual nobility that seems to be accorded those with grievances,” he said. “Shouldn’t there at least be equal time for our Bill of Obligations and our Bill of Responsibilities?”
To all you Thomas haters.... Yea, I'm pretty positive Thomas is the African American one.... "there is a 'moral [and] constitutional equivalence' between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality. Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law. That [affirmative action] programs may have been motivated, in part, by good intentions cannot provide refuge from the principle that under our Constitution, the government may not make distinctions on the basis of race." (Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U.S. 200, 1995). So to summarize, he is an African American who is against affirmative action despite having reaped the benefits to it. And sorry he doesn't like the sound of his own voice. Have you guys ever listened to an oral argument at the court? 90% of what they ask is useless and plays little to no bearing in their decision.
Its a complex issue when the act of avoiding/compensating for racism is an act of racism in itself, so called reverse discrimination which leads to normal discrimination and a whole host of issues.
