Affirmative Action is not wrong, because whether or not you have engaged in racist actions yourself, if you are a white American then you and your ancestors have profited and benefited unfairly from the past abuses of those who did engage in such exclusionary behavior
whether you wanted to or not. This is why affirmative action treats racism as
systemic problem instead of a
personal problem; it doesn't matter if YOU are a racist, it only matters if there are enough of them in power (and historically, there always have been) for you to have benefited from their actions unjustly. That we have is not even in question; it'd been recorded public policy for almost the entire period in which black people were free that they were denied the same opportunities as white men and this helped create and perpetuate the systemic poverty issues that black (and other minority) Americans still face today. Giving them an edge against the known prevalent racial attitudes in this country, both historically and currently, is therefore just on the grounds that minority candidates were (and still are) disqualified from jobs on the basis of their ethnicity alone. The fact that some otherwise qualified white folks might have to look harder for employment is irrelevant; their whiteness and participation in white society confers know advantage to them in their job search.
This is not to claim that all white people have profited equally from the racist decisions of those in power, both currently and historically. They have not; the rich and powerful have profited much more. But merely being white provides known, measurable advantages at all walks of life and you have absolutely no say in that. Racism still benefits you even if you don't engage in it.
Here's a great piece on the systemic abuses of the government and how white society has benefited from racism, even if not all members engaged in it.
Now if you REALLY want to fix the issue of systemic racial exclusion in the jobs market, there ARE a few things you COULD do to make hiring practices a bit more fair without affirmative action.
- Remove applicant names from all resumes. All resumes will be submitted electronically and all applicants will be assigned and identified by number.
- Remove all mention of race, sex, ethnicity, age, orientation, etc.
- Only list information relevant to the job at hand, including skills, education, job experience, etc.
- Pick your choices based ONLY on this information.
No interviews (they are statistically worthless).
- Hire the most qualified. You will quickly find out if they lied about anything, have other issues they didn't tell you, or are simply intolerable to work with.
This doesn't fix everything... there's nothing to prevent management from firing minority candidates at the last stage and simply doing the entire process over until they get white folks, but that is at least an identifiable behavior. It's also still going to favor white people from wealthy/well-off backgrounds but that has ALWAYS been in an issue at all walks of life. But it does help prevent racist hiring practices by denying them the information they would use to identify those they would discriminate against long enough that their behavior is noticeable.
