Conservative Talking Points views affirmative action as an affront to all people no matter what their race. We should all be judged and graded by our character, performance, capabilities and accomplishments. Moving one person ahead of another due to their race is racism. It is unfair to all concerned and it ill-prepares people for the real world and sets them up for failure.
Quotes Against Affirmative Action
· “Affirmative action has a negative effect on our society when it means counting us like so many beans and dividing us into separate piles.” – John Kasich
· “Blacks who have not succumbed to the victim culture have been, are and will be doing quite well - all on their own, without handouts, affirmative action and other patronizing measures” - Tammy Bruce
· “All rights are individual. We do not get our rights because we belong to a group. Whether it’s homosexuals, women, minorities, it leads us astray. You don’t get your rights belonging to your group. A group can’t force themselves on anybody else. So there should be no affirmative action for any group.” – TX Rep. Ron Paul
Reverse Discrimination
· The first case reached the US Supreme Court in the early 1970s when a student with good grades named Allan Bakke accused a University of California medical school of twice denying him admission because he was white. He was finally admitted after winning his case. (Source: AP)
· In 2003 the fire department of New Haven Connecticut rejected the results of a firefighter-promotion test because whites outscored blacks and Hispanics. Recent Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor rejected the white firefighters’ case in the Appeals court but she was later overturned by the US Supreme Court in 2009. (Source: USA Today and numerous other papers)
· In South Carolina the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued a historically black college on behalf of three white faculty members who were denied jobs because of their race. (Source: AP)
Devalues Real Accomplishments
· "[A]ffirmative action in the United States has made blacks. . .who have largely lifted themselves out of poverty, look like people who owe their rise to affirmative action and other government programs." (Source: Dr. Thomas Sowell - Affirmative Action Around The World)
University Diversity Breeds Failure
· One of the worst results of affirmative action is the abysmal college graduation rate of minority students admitted to elite universities under lowered admissions standards. (Source: Dr. Thomas Sowell - Affirmative Action Around The World)
· Racial preferences force blacks and other minorities to end up at the bottom of the class, to flunk out in large numbers and to suffer in the job market. (Source: Peter Kirsanow - National Labor Relations Board)
· Due to affirmative action, about half of the black law students fall to the bottom 10% percent of the class and they are 2.5 times more likely than whites not to graduate college. Blacks are four times less likely to pass the bar exam on the first attempt. (Source: Peter Kirsanow - National Labor Relations Board)
· At some schools black applicants are more than 100 times more likely to be admitted than whites with the same GPAs and SATs. (Source: Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai on behalf of the Center for Equal Opportunity)
· The median GPA and LSAT percentile for students of the country's elite law schools were 3.8 and 98 respectively. At the time fewer than 20 black law students in the entire country met those standards. (Source: University of Texas law professor Lino Graglia)
· "There is no credible evidence that blacks would underperform whites if schools used race-blind admissions policies. (Source: Dr. Richard Sander, Professor of Law at UCLA)