<p>I’ve never liked affirmative action on the grounds that it ignores scarcity - there are a set number of seats, and if things come down to candidate versus candidate, (near the end of an admissions round), then admitting one student is denying another student.</p>
<p>And I’ll come right out and say it - on average ‘white’ (bahaha, you know, if we did this by haplogroup (specifically R1 and its a and b analogs and any admixture over 50%, everyone from Iceland to India would be white - Clearly, we’re not really using ‘race’ in affirmative action, we’re using a historical definition of the privileged majority. ) people have more opportunities than others. Alright, that’s absolutely true.</p>
<p>But to then say "For this advantage of race, we shall confer this advantage of race!‘’ smacks of racial discrimination to me.</p>
<p>I mean, what are we doing, playing trans generational racial tit for tat ? (I love that expression…yeah, because it lets me say ‘tit’, you’re right)</p>
<p>Then we’re left with a pretty skewed axis of value: Apparently previous injustices committed by long dead parties are just as important as socioeconomic disparity, which might not even be a byproduct of those injustices.</p>
<p>If that’s the case, I encourage all Iranian applicants to lobby for preference over Greek applicants, all Armenian applicants to push for preference over Turkish applicants, all group X applicants to apply for preference over group Y applicants…ad naseaum.</p>
<p>Yeah, those are preposterous examples, (oh, btw, it’s illegal to mention the ‘alleged’ Armenian genocide in Turkey, because it insults “Turkishness” which is a crime there.), but the reasoning behind their justification would only require a small modification to the normative population control that is current affirmative action policy.</p>
<p>Affirmative action can be changed for the better, and I will continue to refuse to accept it the way it is.</p>
<p>(Also, I’m not white or asian. …and that I had to make this clear to add legitimacy to my views which would almost certainly have been challenged with the premise “Hey, you only said that because you’re white/a ORM” is even more indicative of the motivations of affirmative action…)</p>