Thoughts pressed and squeezed my mind as I left Politics class the other night, the topic was Civil Rights, the bunny trial, Affirmative Action. As a Conservative, I believe I should be more angry with AA than I currently am, I’m probably not so angry because the Professor’s prose was Siren of nature. He broke my classmates with information concerning the illegality of quotas and point based college entrance systems; I didn’t know this, it soothed my rage, I steered my ship towards the Island of Anthemoessa. What AA serves as, we were informed, is a tie breaker between candidates, all things being equal; diversity for the win.
Here is my kernel, what a small kernel it is! I’d like to believe AA is about altruistic equality of all things roughly similar, but I do not, I believe its naked, or somewhat naked advantage. People, deep down, do not want equal opportunity, they want advantage; you want the job over the other person even if you’re not the better candidate. President Johnson’s eloquent altruism delivered to the graduating class of Howard University couldn’t help but head in the direction of unfettered advantage. His line of fairness drawn in the sand of employment, a glorious moment ruined by inertia. For who stops at the the line of fairness when you can go beyond, into the land of advantage?
This is probably why I’m secretly okay with AA, it has nothing to do with altruism or siren song. Rather, the demographics showing shifts that will make me a possible minority in the next fifty years…
