Affirmative Action to promote Equal Opportunity in the United States is Justified

SOMEBODY, tear me apart. I want it to happen, and I want VALID arguments!

Resolved: Affirmative Action to promote Equal Opportunity in the United States is Justified

Justified- being proven as just.
Just- equitable (Black's Law)
Affirmative Action- steps taken to increase the representation of historically excluded groups in employment, education, and business
Equal Opportunity- equal opportunity is closely aligned with the concept of equality before law
Promote- To encourage or incite

1.Not Beneficial to anybody
a.Minorities Failing out
b.Ruins Standards
2.I t is Unjustified
a.Rejected by States
3. Affirmative Action Promotes Discrimination
a.Racial crutch
b.Reverse discrimination

1.
Affirmative Action is not beneficial to anybody, including minority groups. In California, UC Berkley one year accepted all 317 of their minority applicants. These students were chosen under affirmative action criteria rather than that of academic qualifications. The average SAT score of these minority students was 952, which was well under Berkley's average of almost 1,200. Despite the low SAT scores, these students were still admitted because of being a minority under affirmative action. More than 70% of those students failed to graduate from Berkeley. Because of this, Walter Williams stated, "Students who might have been successful at a slightly less demanding university were transformed into artificial failures in the name of racial justice"
The 70%+ students that failed out, could have done much better at a lower level university had UC Berkley just looked at qualifications, and picked the students off of that rather than race, these minorities could have excelled elsewhere. Now, they are stuck with that loss of time, and money with nothing to show for it.
Affirmative action also ruins standards that are set for specific reasons. For example, if we want to create true diversity based off of affirmative action, we must also consider pageants and competitions. For an oral competition, you would need to include mutes. For a beauty contest, you'd need somebody ugly. For a race, you include a cripple. These examples are obviously unrealistic, because you never see it happen. Why? Because there is no use including somebody who doesn't even stand a chance. Now I'm not stating that the minorities don't stand a chance… I'm simply advocating that NO MATTER what race we are, that we be judged based off our skills, achievements, and other similar factors. Martin Luther King, Jr. – leader of the civil rights movement for minorities stated… "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. "
2.
Affirmative action to promote equal opportunity is unjustified. First we must look at the definitions of the resolution from the Black's Law Dictionary…
Affirmative Action- steps taken to increase the representation of historically excluded groups in employment, education, and business
Equal Opportunity- equal opportunity is closely aligned with the concept of equality before law
Just- equitable-consistent with principles of justice and right
Promote- To encourage
So we take steps to increase the representation of historically excluded groups in employment, education, and business to encourage the concept of choosing equality before law. This is not Just, this is not equitable because it is not consistent with the principles of justice and right.
In California, Michigan, Washington, Florida, and Nebraska, State law has banned the use of affirmative action in public education and hiring. Because of this, the equality is not consistent. These five states use affirmative action in fewer circumstances than the rest of the state. Since public education is state dictated, and federally, we cannot force affirmative action upon the public school system in states that ban it, affirmative action will never truly promote equal opportunity.

3.
Affirmative Action promotes discrimination. There are two really serious problems that came along with affirmative action. The first one is the social label. Affirmative action literally labels the white male as the majority, and the Black's, Mexicans, Asians, etc. as a minority. Because they are a minority, they gain special benefits which many would not have originally received. Affirmative action literally promotes racism on all levels because of that fact. Think of when you see a crippled person. People tend to help that person more just because they are a crippled person. We are crippling the minorities while using affirmative action as a crutch.
On the other hand, Affirmative Action causes reverse discrimination. The reason this happens is because when a job is hiring, or a school is accepting applications, when it comes down to comparing two males, one of majority, another of a minority, they will choose the minority to follow affirmative action. Even if the minority is less qualified, he will be chosen over the majority, which is discrimination against the white male.

I would like to thank the Con for the opportunity to voice my opinion about why Affirmative Action is justified.

Justice - The quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness.

Affirmative Action is just in the sense that justice can only be served once the American's make it even. The only moral way to do so is to give certain advantages to "historically excluded groups". The only other way to make it even is to do the eye for an eye method, which in this case is extremely immoral considering that it would violate just about every law.

"1.Not Beneficial to anybody"

I didn't understand your format at first, but as I scrolled down, I got it. I suppose you don't have a source for your first argument.. I suppose I can believe what you said, but I need to view the same story to make any arguments based solely upon that story. I do not wish to further argue about this point until I can read the story.

"2.I t is Unjustified"

It is justified because what the American people did to those certain historically excluded groups is unjustified, so in place of the eye for an eye idea, we implement the Affirmative Action idea and they're satisfied. It's the least that they can ask for, and it only levels the playing field.

"So we take steps to increase the representation of historically excluded groups in employment, education, and business to encourage the concept of choosing equality before law. This is not Just, this is not equitable because it is not consistent with the principles of justice and right."

The part where you say, "This is not Just, this is not equitable because it is not consistent with the principles of justice and right." is a run on sentence and contains very poor grammar, but aside from that, it also is just you repeating yourself and giving the definition of just. You have still yet proven to me HOW.

"In California, Michigan, Washington, Florida, and Nebraska, State law has banned the use of affirmative action in public education and hiring. Because of this, the equality is not consistent. These five states use affirmative action in fewer circumstances than the rest of the state. Since public education is state dictated, and federally, we cannot force affirmative action upon the public school system in states that ban it, affirmative action will never truly promote equal opportunity."

This doesn't prove how it is UNJUST. According to your definition of just, just means consistent with the principles of justice and right. According to my definition of justice, justice means righteousness, equitableness, and moral rightness. What you just said pertains nothing to do with the morality of the situation. It isn't MORALLY wrong to implement something after a NATIONWIDE vote would be taken to see if it would pass. Law is all about majority, some people have to do things they don't want to, but that's the great thing about the American government. Everybody has a chance. You get to voice your opinion. Nobody would be FORCING anything.

"Think of when you see a crippled person. People tend to help that person more just because they are a crippled person. We are crippling the minorities while using affirmative action as a crutch."

We aren't crippling anybody.. This analogy would make sense if it actually touched on the point. We're UN-CRIPPLING them.

"Affirmative action literally labels the white male as the majority, and the Black's, Mexicans, Asians, etc. as a minority. Because they are a minority, they gain special benefits which many would not have originally received. Affirmative action literally promotes racism on all levels because of that fact."

This is justified because the white male has always had the benefits that African-Americans, Mexicans, Asians, etc. will be receiving. That's why Affirmative action is JUST.

First I would like to start off by stating that the terrible grammar I presented in the run-on sentence was on purpose.
When defining the resolution, I took the definitions and input them where their origins were, so it started out like this:
Resolved: affirmative action to promote equal opportunity in the united states is justified.
And then after defining it from Black's Law dictionary- which is the dictionary used by the supreme court, the congress, lawyers, lower judges, etc. -it turned into this:
Resolved: taking steps to increase the representation of historically excluded groups in employment, education, and business to encourage the concept of choosing equality before law is consistent with the principles of justice and right.

There is NOTHING right with encouraging the concept of equality before law. What is the point of law if we are choosing to be equal before we choose law.
Justice is also defined as the fair and proper administration of laws- (also Black's Law dictionary)
Justified is defined as administers justice, so if justice is equitableness as you have defined, and equitable as I have defined is being consistent with the principles of justice and right, then that means that we must look toward my secondary definition of justice, which I just presented.

Justice is the fair and proper administration of laws. If equal opportunity is the concept of choosing equality before law, then equal opportunity is not the fair and proper administration of laws. Therefore, voters should look toward the CON side just off of this semantic evidence.
But… I think it's not fair to want to win off of semantics alone… So I will also rebut your arguments.

In the mid-1990s a relatively high fraction of minority students at the University of California (UC) were admitted "by exception"— that is, by a process that bypassed the standards for high school grade point averages and standardized test scores. For example, in 1996, 23% of black freshman enrollees and 11% of Hispanic enrollees were classified as admitted by exception, compared with approximately 2% of Asian and white enrollees.
This goes along with the 70% of the minority applicants failing out. You can read all about it on http://emlab.berkeley.edu... , but make sure that you read the whole thing instead of just taking that first page, because it starts off looking bad but the end result is the fact that we are filling out slots that many people don't deserve.

And I just want to restate this. This is powerful, and I strongly agree with it.
Martin Luther King, Jr. – leader of the civil rights movement for minorities stated… "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. "

STOP JUDGING OFF THE COLOR OF PEOPLE'S SKIN.

I see in your profile that you are latino. So you do fall under the category of affirmative action. Do you enjoy being labeled as a minority? Sorry bud, you are, so therefore I'm going to higher you to this job or accept you to this college even though this white man is more qualified. That is what I mean by a crutch. WE NEED to judge based off of merit, not off of skin/sex/ethnicity/religion, etc.

I stated "affirmative action will never truly promote equal opportunity" Because 5 out of 50 states, 10% of the states, have banned the use of affirmative action. The resolution states "in the united states" if 5 don't follow it, we have 5 states with different opportunities, so equality will never be truly reachable in the US.

Sadly I do not have the time to rebuttle much, but you didn't give me much to work with because I gave you facts and statistics, and even semantics, yet you only gave me semantic/emotional arguments.

Give me facts.

Oh, and what you misunderstand is that Aff. Action also includes women. By affirmative action, if a company has a woman as a CEO, first off they are called an "underprivileged" company. Second, they receive more tax refunds.

If you don't believe me- Look it up.

That's not the bad grammar I was referring to, maybe you didn't read my argument. It seems that you rearranged it. The bad grammar I was referring to was not on purpose, but if it was, it did not help your case at all. Here is how it was originally stated - "This is not Just, this is not equitable because it is not consistent with the principles of justice and right." Just should not be capitalized either, I don't know what that was about..

Moving forward, you argued with none of my points, but only brought up your own again.. That's not how it works. All of my points still stand. I will, however, comment on some of what you said..

"I see in your profile that you are latino. So you do fall under the category of affirmative action. Do you enjoy being labeled as a minority? Sorry bud, you are, so therefore I'm going to higher you to this job or accept you to this college even though this white man is more qualified. That is what I mean by a crutch. WE NEED to judge based off of merit, not off of skin/sex/ethnicity/religion, etc."

ACTUALLY, I'm not LATINO. I'm Mexican American. Born in America. Mother and Father both born in America though. Dark skinned; I have Mexican somewheres down the line. I fall in between the minority, not qualifying. And you said, "so therefore, I'm going to higher you to this job" I believe the correct term is HIRE.

You say that 5 out of 50 states banned affirmative action, which may be true, but in law THE MAJORITY ALWAYS RULES. Nothing will ever be 100% equal amongst the 50 states, but having the majority, this is justified.

I don't think YOU gave ME too much to work with. I responded to every one of your arguments, and you responded to none of mine.

My opponent has forfeited the last round. Con made no effort to respond to ANY of what I refuted. There's not much more to say. Vote PRO.