“And I'm being moderate and patient, here. If I was really going for true equality and fairness, the Supreme Court should have only women on it for the next one hundred and ninety years, at which point a single male would be allowed to serve and twelve years later, a second male would be allowed to serve, with the court only opening up to allow a total of four males sixteen years after that.”
I realize that you are not going for "true equality and fairness", but I thought I might clarify why I think it would be a bad idea.
I definitely agree that the next Supreme Court justice should be a woman, and probably a Hispanic woman, assuming we can find a stellar candidate (I agree with pocketnaomi that quality should trump gender). That said we can only try to seek equality going forward. While pointing to history and saying if we were seeking true equality all Supreme Court justices should be women, why stop there? How about requiring the US military to be all female until over a million women have been killed in action? Maybe white people should be slaves for black people for 200 or so years? Heck, perhaps Native Americans should be allowed to kill 90% of the non-Native American population for a few hundred years?
Yes these are exaggerations, but I get nervous when we talk about oppressing the descendents of oppressors to obtain justice. Now, that said, I don’t have a problem with affirmative action, because I think there still is a problem with structural discrimination in this country. I look forward to the day when we can and do get rid of it because it is no longer needed. One sign of that will be either the elimination of the legacy system, or legacies producing as many non-white legacy admissions as their proportion in the general population. Another would be seeing resume studies showing that otherwise identical resumes for Mary Smith and Latisha Jones get similar numbers of call backs. Hint, right now black names get significantly fewer callbacks.
As long as the discrimination exists, I will support reasonable measures to compensate for it, even if the measures are somewhat unjust. However, that is compensation for current problems, not past wrongs. I don't really think we can fix a historical injustice by committing another injustice aimed at the descendents of the guilty. We can only try to avoid committing future injustices.
true equality - careful what you ask for
I realize that you are not going for "true equality and fairness", but I thought I might clarify why I think it would be a bad idea.
I definitely agree that the next Supreme Court justice should be a woman, and probably a Hispanic woman, assuming we can find a stellar candidate (I agree with pocketnaomi that quality should trump gender). That said we can only try to seek equality going forward. While pointing to history and saying if we were seeking true equality all Supreme Court justices should be women, why stop there? How about requiring the US military to be all female until over a million women have been killed in action? Maybe white people should be slaves for black people for 200 or so years? Heck, perhaps Native Americans should be allowed to kill 90% of the non-Native American population for a few hundred years?
Yes these are exaggerations, but I get nervous when we talk about oppressing the descendents of oppressors to obtain justice. Now, that said, I don’t have a problem with affirmative action, because I think there still is a problem with structural discrimination in this country. I look forward to the day when we can and do get rid of it because it is no longer needed. One sign of that will be either the elimination of the legacy system, or legacies producing as many non-white legacy admissions as their proportion in the general population. Another would be seeing resume studies showing that otherwise identical resumes for Mary Smith and Latisha Jones get similar numbers of call backs. Hint, right now black names get significantly fewer callbacks.
As long as the discrimination exists, I will support reasonable measures to compensate for it, even if the measures are somewhat unjust. However, that is compensation for current problems, not past wrongs. I don't really think we can fix a historical injustice by committing another injustice aimed at the descendents of the guilty. We can only try to avoid committing future injustices.