Affirmative Action and Collective Responsibility Essay -- Argumentativ

Affirmative Action and Collective Responsibility      It is not surprising that affirmative action is under attack: along with welfare, it benefits a section of society with very little political clout. It is a convenient place for the displaced anger of working-class white men who have seen their real wages decrease for the past thirty years. It stirs up feelings of racism that politicians are quick to publicly denounce but even quicker to exploit. There is, however, very little serious discussion about affirmative action underway; more often it is supplanted by buzzwords such as "quotas," "set-asides," and "reverse discrimination." A serious discussion of affirmative action must begin by addressing the question of collective responsibility. Affirmative action opponents firmly reject the notion of collective responsibility, claiming that it is unfair to punish those alive today for crimes committed by their parents. One letter to the editor received by The Progressive Review reads: "I never owned slaves, and have never discriminated against anyone. Why should I have to pay for someone else's sins? Slavery ended over a hundred years before I was born, and over seventy years before the first of my ancestors arrived in the United States." Unfortunately, responsibility for the effects of slavery and discrimination cannot be so easily shirked. Even if our direct ancestors did not participate in the slave trade, we are nevertheless members of a society that did; part of the "individual responsibility" so fervently worshipped by neo-conservatives must include taking responsibility for things done by our society. When a person becomes an American, he or she must accept not only the glory and honor of our history, but also the sh ... ... condemned to exist as a perpetual underclass, trapped in poverty by the racism to which their poverty gives rise. Racism will not eradicate itself; in a society ruled by the almighty dollar, one cannot separate legal equality from economic equality. That is the most fundamental flaw of conservative opposition to affirmative action: the belief that those who live under bridges have the same rights as those who do not. Unless we make an active attempt to undo the effects of three hundred years of oppression, there will never be a color-blind society. The complaints of a few white men who miss their traditional ascendancy seem insignificant in comparison to the alternative: an unbroken cycle of misery for everyone else. True peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" Affirmative Action and Collective Responsibility Essay -- Argumentativ Affirmative Action and Collective Responsibility      It is not surprising that affirmative action is under attack: along with welfare, it benefits a section of society with very little political clout. It is a convenient place for the displaced anger of working-class white men who have seen their real wages decrease for the past thirty years. It stirs up feelings of racism that politicians are quick to publicly denounce but even quicker to exploit. There is, however, very little serious discussion about affirmative action underway; more often it is supplanted by buzzwords such as "quotas," "set-asides," and "reverse discrimination." A serious discussion of affirmative action must begin by addressing the question of collective responsibility. Affirmative action opponents firmly reject the notion of collective responsibility, claiming that it is unfair to punish those alive today for crimes committed by their parents. One letter to the editor received by The Progressive Review reads: "I never owned slaves, and have never discriminated against anyone. Why should I have to pay for someone else's sins? Slavery ended over a hundred years before I was born, and over seventy years before the first of my ancestors arrived in the United States." Unfortunately, responsibility for the effects of slavery and discrimination cannot be so easily shirked. Even if our direct ancestors did not participate in the slave trade, we are nevertheless members of a society that did; part of the "individual responsibility" so fervently worshipped by neo-conservatives must include taking responsibility for things done by our society. When a person becomes an American, he or she must accept not only the glory and honor of our history, but also the sh ... ... condemned to exist as a perpetual underclass, trapped in poverty by the racism to which their poverty gives rise. Racism will not eradicate itself; in a society ruled by the almighty dollar, one cannot separate legal equality from economic equality. That is the most fundamental flaw of conservative opposition to affirmative action: the belief that those who live under bridges have the same rights as those who do not. Unless we make an active attempt to undo the effects of three hundred years of oppression, there will never be a color-blind society. The complaints of a few white men who miss their traditional ascendancy seem insignificant in comparison to the alternative: an unbroken cycle of misery for everyone else. True peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice. -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter From a Birmingham Jail"