by Adam Mcculley

Created on: November 05, 2010   Last Updated: November 06, 2010

One would think this a no-brainer, but this issue is definitely contested.  Well, I guess we will create a chain of logic, and follow it.........care to come along? Discrimination is, as a simple definition; A person, group, organization, showing preference for people of a certain sex, race, creed, religion, etc. In showing said preference, other people of different characteristics are denied favor and advancement, denied services, harassed, or otherwise put into unjust and counter-productive circumstances. I think we can all agree upon that, and move on without citing the obvious examples.

The notion of affermative action is to provide a built-in system to counteract, and defeat descrimination in the work place. Put simply, it means requiring certain buisnesses to fill "diversity quotas". In otherwords, it means a supervisor/employer is required to employ/promote a certain amount of diverse peoples; women, minorities, etc. It is a sort of centrally planned, self-regulating system that takes decision making out of the hands of......well anybody involved. One can see the humanitarian basis of such an idea.

One can also see affermative action as a product of the bureaucratic, central planning 'a la soviet Russia style of regulation that has grown and bloated exponentialy over the years, and almost completely choked our ability to get anything done in both government and the private sector. It is an outdated idea, born of a failed buisness model. It doesn't only promote descrimination, it IS descrimination. It is a policy created out of fear that only serves an organizations ability to nominally escape lawsuits. And in todays litigation-happy society, it stays around simply because wealthy buisness executives care less about the competantcy and character of their workforce, than they do about bad PR and sticky, expensive lawsuits, regardless of substance.

How is affirmative action discrimination? Like I said, a no-brainer. Going back to our definition, that we all so amicably agreed upon, (well...we did, in my head....) we see the word PREFERANCE jumping out at us. Discrimination is preference based on cultural identity, not ability or productive status. Affirmative action is a built-in syatem of preference, it is a guarentee that a certain cultural group will have a protected status, before personal evaluation even begins. It is rigging the game. So, it is a safe assumption, that the actual act of sanctioned, established descrimination......does indeed

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