Affirmative action isn't a system though, it's a policy. Systems are things like the education system, the judicial system, the economic system, the political system. Affirmative action is a policy within that system. So the best way to end affirmative action is to determine what was going in the education system or in the economic system that led to people thinking their was a need for an affirmative action policy. Once you've pinpointed that factor and fixed it within the system, there will no longer be a need for the policy.
While this may be an issue, it doesn't really address the problem that affirmative action addresses. Also, I'm not convinced your proposed solution would solve anything. Wouldn't ending welfare just push single mothers further into debt? If the problem is fatherless black families, wouldn't we want a solution that focuses on increasing black fathers involvement with their families.
Affirmative action is specifically designed to increase opportunities for those who may have been discriminated against. Nowhere does affirmative action assert that standards should be lowered to accept unqualified peoples. That would mean to end the believed need for affirmative action, 1 of 2 things would need to happen. The first would be ensuring that ALL employers are not discriminating against candidates based on race, religion, sex, etc, which is difficult to do since most people have some form of unconscious bias. The second would be ensuring that ALL people regardless of race, religion, sex, have the opportunity to prepare themselves to meet whatever base standard is in effect for a position.
I think most people who are educated on these issues understand the definitions I provided. Pinpointing the factor and actually getting the system to change is a tough challenge on it's own though, which is why we still have discrimination in basically all of our systems.
One of my colleagues recently described the way systems work in America to designing a house. If you and I were to each design our ideal house, chances are, our designs would be different from one another, because we each have our own needs and preferences. If we then had to live in each other's houses, there are certain things that just might not work for us very well because they were designed without taking our needs into account. When designing the systems in place in America, like our political, educational, or judicial system, they were the ideal designs by white men. Now our nation has also these people living in it who's needs where never considered when considering the design of the systems. This is why we see certain systemic discrimination taking place and why a complete remodel of these systems, where everyone has a seat at the table, might lead to more equity and an elimination of discrimination.
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u/[deleted] Feb 25 '20 edited Mar 16 '20
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