Affirmitive Action

I have always felt that affirmative action is wrong. Growing up in the eighties and nineties taught me that any sort of preferential treatment given on the basis of skin color is wrong. Horrible even.

Also working against it was the feelings it was generating in the white community. Many within that community are unhappy about the stack being against them. Since it is hard to maintain anger at a system, those feelings get redirected toward minority employees any time one of them fails to be anything but a perfect employee. It's easy to see how this system polarizes races.

How could any fair-minded person possibly for this?

In the past, I have always read that last line with an exclamation point rather than a question mark. It was the lynch pin to any debate with the liberal wackos who had lost all their moral bearings as well as their grip on reality. Of course, I never actually discussed affirmative action with someone who was in favor of it, so getting my imagined nemesis to tap out was rather easy.
But lately I've been trying much harder to understand differing viewpoints.

So, how could a fair-minded person be in favor of a system that is openly discriminatory?

Well, in this country the majority race holds a disproportionate amount of wealth and power. Part of that wealth and power derives generationally and has benefited from practices like slavery and segregation. In this since, there is something fair about restoring balance.

This is hard for me to swallow. I'm not personally guilty of racial suppression. Those practices were outlawed before I was born. Also, when I was growing up, we were lower middle class in our better days. We were hardly the aristocratic fat cats living off 150 year old plantation wealth.

However, I can recognize that when my dad desperately needed to get a job in the late seventies without a college education, it was probably easier for him than it would have been for an average black man.

We lived in Algonac. It was a safe environment with above average schools. It was also a town where black people were made to feel unwelcome and unsafe. That's not my fault. I played no part in either choosing where I grew up or in making anyone feel unwelcome. However, I did benefit from conditions that would not have been available for many non-whites.

So whether or not it is fair to white people is debatable. I still think it is unfair, but far less worth the angst that I used to give it.

Now, I'm more concerned about the injustice affirmative action does to the minority races. Imagine getting a job for which you are qualified, but always being forced to wonder if you are there to simply fill a racial quota. Imagine trying to figure out if you were being promoted because of the quality of your work or some institutional sympathy over the color of your skin.

I do not think that it is helpful to people to keep reminding them that they are victims. This just makes people feel powerless, as if they have already lost. I also don't think it is helpful to a person to force everyone around them to treat them as victims. This just creates more polarization, which is practical segregation.

What we need from the majority race is sincere sympathy and repentance, not the kind produced by legislature.

What needs to come from minorities is forgiveness. For as long as they keep pointing fingers for their current predicament (no matter how valid those complaints are), we all suffer.

In the current practice there are no winners. What we need are religious leaders from both groups preaching and practicing grace.

These thoughts are still being formed. Your input is very welcome.