How do you reconcile affirmative action w "equal protection" clause of 14th amendmen

ShootSpeeders

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May 13, 2012
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"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall
any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
equal protection of the laws."

No question AA is unconstitutional and in sanctioning it, our Supreme
Court has given itself the authority to nullify the constitution when
they wish. Did the same with the tenth amendment.
 
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Originally, it was justified on the precept that where equality had been denied for so long, there was a justification to take race into account in the opposite direction to counter balance the present day effects of past discrimination.

It always entailed a contradiction, however. To compensate for the past violation of equality in the eyes of the law (and equality of treatment under the law), the law DId have to become race conscious. It did have to give some benefits to the prior victims in order to do that.

And it has never been deniable that to give a special consideration or benefit to some person on account of race is to deny it to some other person ON ACCOUNT OF RACE.
 
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Originally, it was justified on the precept that where equality had been denied for so long, there was a justification to take race into account in the opposite direction to counter balance the present day effects of past discrimination.
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Yes - that was the ethical justification. But there never was any legal justification. AA clearly violates the 14A.
 
AA is a tough subject.

It takes race into account in a world where the Constituion is supposed to be colorblind.

On the other hand, since the laws under the Constitution and the Constitution itself had a tragic history of NOT being colorblind at all, the question becomes, "How DO we make up for the present day effects of past discrimination?" It does seem counter-intuitive to suddenly insist on color-blind purity after the failure to do that led to the deprivation of an entire race in this land for so long.

And yet, even if there had been some justification for making an effort to counterbalance the present day effects of that past discrimination, it is also pretty difficult to determine WHEN such a race-based program should come to an end.

I cannot agree with speedshooter primarily because he's evidently just a bigoted racist.

But I am not going to stake out a contrary position just because he is the one saying something.

If Affirmative Action EVER had any legitimacy, the time has come to end it now.
 
AA is not only contradictory of our constitutional principles, it is counterproductive to its stated purposes. Why place a B student in an A school, where he will under-perform the other students? We have created a minority population which has become dependent on special treatment while the majority justifiably questions their competency. Is this progress?
 
How do you reconcile affirmative action w "equal protection" clause of 14th amendment.

You don't.
For some limited period of time, maybe twenty years, AA made a "rough justice" sort of sense so old timers could see their children advance at the expense of the children of racists and the "good people" who tolerated racism.

By the 1990s AA had become another reasonable basis for disrespecting the law.
 

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