Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!ora!ambar From: scl@uvaarpa.virginia.edu (Steve Losen) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Affirmative Action is Temporary Message-ID: <1058@uvaarpa.virginia.edu> Date: 13 Oct 89 19:02:45 GMT Sender: ambar@ora.ora.com Reply-To: scl@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU (Stephen C. Losen) Organization: University of Virginia, Charlottesville Lines: 40 Approved: ambar@ora.com Most opponents of affirmative action don't seem to realize that AA is a temporary measure. A kluge, a hack, a patch. In an ideal society jobs, college admissions, etc., would be granted purely on the basis of merit. There would be enough qualified women, men, minorities, etc., that all groups would be proportionately represented with no statistical differences in pay or GPA. Clearly no one believes that we are living in such an ideal society now. And why not? If we assume that merit alone should determine who gets a particular job or admission to a particular school, and if we assume that no sex, race, nationality, or religious group is inherently superior to any other, then the ideal society should be a natural product of our anti-discrimination laws. So where is the snag? Let me cite a small example. Back in the days of discrimination, all government road building contracts in the state of Virginia went to white construction firms, making it impossible for black contractors to get any road projects. When discrimination became illegal, the state of Virginia had to hand out road contracts purely on the basis of merit. Is anyone surprised that absolutely nothing changed? That all the road contracts continued to go to white contractors? This was perfectly legal under the new law bacause the white contractors were indeed more qualified. After all, they had built all the other roads in the state. Clearly it is not sufficient to simply declare discrimination to be illegal and continue afterward with business as usual. I personally do not like discrimination in any form and I freely admit that AA is reverse discrimination. But I also realize that some sort of temporary, corrective action must be taken to undo the damage of past discrimination. Perhaps AA is not the best solution. After all, "two wrongs don't make a right" and "the end does not justify the means", etc. Perhaps there should be more emphasis on education. But might this not require preferential college admission to traditionally under-represented social groups? Should we simply give up, realizing that no solution is truly fair, thus writing off as hopeless the current imbalance and praying that everything works out on its own after two or three generations? I say we must fix the problem now, for not doing anything is also unfair. -- Steve Losen scl@virginia.edu University of Virginia Academic Computing Center