Re: The just and the unjust ways to address modern racial inequality: affirmative act
If you are going to connect this to slavery, then keep in mind that slavery was finished close to 150 years ago. I understand, accept, and am disappointed that unjust discrimination on the basis of race happens in the US today, and that it is one of the causes of poverty among African-Americans. How much of a cause it is for their poverty today I am unsure of, but I'm sure it was very significant cause of their historical poverty, which (through social class permanence) has continued to today for unlucky ones.
The problem I see with this analogy is that it has been a very long time since slavery happened, and a somewhat shorter time since the civil rights movement; but still, both were multiple decades ago. All that remains of the slaves are their decendants. To make your above analogy more accurate, it would be as if the paralyzed person was my great-grandfather, who did not receive any reparations for the crash. But you can't fix what happened to him now; he's dead. Now, you COULD have the great-grandson of the drunk driver ordered to pay me money, or something of the sort, but how would (1) his great grandson be at fault for anything, or (2) I be justified in taking his money, having suffered very little personally as a result of his great-grandfather's actions?
The moral abominations of slavery happened in the past, and there is no way to help those who were wronged as a result of it. The wrongs have been crystalized in time, and cannot be rectified, unfortunately. Say the government could simply create money out of thin air and distributed $10,000 to each African-American family, to further equality and to make up partially for what happened 150 years ago. If no one was penalized (had to pay) for that, and $10,000 was not an overestimate of the effects slavery has had on the current generation of African-Americans, that would be great. However, the ability to rectify wrongs becomes dilluted with time. Now, it is true that people were widely discriminated against because of their race just a few decades ago, and this was unjust and unfair, because judging someone to be inferior because of their race is simply wrong. But affirmative action is doing the same thing; because of it, people today are being discriminated against unjustly and unfairly because of their race. A wrong on one side cannot be corrected by a wrong on the other side, however atrocious the wrong on the first side was.
Again, I would not have a problem with an [["attempt to give this group a chance to recover and get up to a reasonably close level to where they may have been had none of this been forced upon them"]] had it not also necessarily involved unjustly discriminating against another group simply on the basis of the color of their skin (simply on the basis of what other people in the country, who may or may not even be related, did 150 years ago).
Unfortunately, (1) it tries to help right a wrong by inflicting another wrong, (2) it tries to correct the results (poor job prospects, etc) rather than the causes (poor educational potential), and so is very temporary, and (3) there have been many other attempts to rectify problems caused by slavery, such as persistent inequality, other than affirmative action, and many of the programs have succeeded in their goals.
(2) is very important. Affirmative action tries to address the effects rather than the causes, and so is only as permanent as long as the African-American manages to hold onto his or her job, which may be short, especially given the current economic situation. I suggest that, rather than treating the symptom through affirmative action, we treat the disease itself. For instance, in my state, funds for local schools come from taxing the surrounding properties. If one lives in a poor, primarily African-American neighborhood, your school will also be quite poor. This is obviously an idiotic policy, which serves only to further inequality among students and schools. In addition, I have heard that some African-American culture, greatly influenced by popular rappers, is somewhat self-depreciating and does not carry all that much respect for the most important thing, education, nor so much for getting a job and working. I don't know how correct these rumors about some subsets of AA culture is, but if there may be a little bit of truth to them. I don't know. Or, there exists in my neighborhood an organization which seeks to pair up poor, typically unmotivated minorities from unprivileged neighborhoods with a more well-to-do mentor, who helps them with schoolwork, encourages them and gives them advice, and most importantly, helps them to become motivated to fully attend college. We need more programs like that, which help future families to fervently seek success on their own, without any outside help necessary.
Better to correct and encourage those, which help to permanently treat the causes of inequality, than affirmative action, which is temporary, unjust, and shortsighted.
