[D9 (RIP)]

The real question with affirmative action, and all other like programs is this:

Do you think the government exists to protect the rights of the individuals in a society to make their own way, or do you think individuals exist to fulfill some "social" outcome dictated by whatever authority establishes such goals?

I hold the former to be the only legitimate interpretation of a just government. "Diversity," as forced on people by affirmative action, is not a value they are free to choose or resist for themselves. It is an injunction issued on the authority of law. It equates not hiring a desirable mix of ethnicities into your business with a violation of another person(s) rights. In other words, to give someone else their "rights" (to a job, say), you must be deprived of some of yours (the right to choose what to do with your own property - your business). A "right" that can only be enforced by infringing on the rights of others is absurd on its face, and a ridiculous contradiction. Once a right such as this has been established, it is a de facto abolition of the universality of rights, making them favors done for some at a cost imposed on others. There is no desirable outcome that can come from a system such as this. You will have, instead, all the degenerative symptoms of cultural decay that you have in The West today: class warfare, general malevolence and cynicism, and increasing consolidation of power in the central government as groups clamor at once for special protections from others and favors for themselves. That's the only kind of "Great Society" that has ever come from the stuff affirmative action is made of.

Maybe a white Harvard professor could learn a lot from a black NYC beat cop, but he could learn a lot from a white NYC beat cop too. But I don't think it's the job of the authorities to see that he takes on self-improvement projects of any kind.

Mi dos centavos.