[Samseau]

(10-22-2012 03:15 AM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

Regardless, I'm not going to get into a big discussion as to who is more disadvantaged and who isn't. I will say that I perceive AA's relations to Asian's in education (AA can still benefit Asians in employment/diversity initiatives) to be a sore weak spot of the policy, and I would support improvement in that regard. AA should do better by Asian-Americans.

Which by definition will come at the expense of some other group, since this is a zero-sum policy.

Picking political winners and losers - the mark of a sham state.

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Therefore, AA does not help those who have been disadvantaged in the past,

Factually incorrect statement. AA directly benefits the groups in this nation most harmed by this nation's past (as well as by discrimination in the present).

What you meant to say was this: "AA does not help all of those who have been disadvantaged in the past".
That is a statement I can agree with. Then again, that fact doesn't invalidate the maintenance of AA as a policy. What it does do is bring to light the possibility for improvement.
No policy is perfect.

It uses some kind of warped view of history where everyone has been oppressed by White Men (even though that is false - at best, some have been oppressed by some white men) to justify giving special privileges to non-white male groups.

Of course, since it is impossible to give everyone a leg-up over white men, some are picked as winners and others are picked as losers.

The Asians just happen to be a group no one cares about right now.

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since it offers no consideration of a person's past.

By weighing the realities of discrimination faced by the many of the main beneficiaries (Hispanics, Native Americans, African Americans), AA does in fact take into account the past of those it intends to benefit.
It may not account for ALL disadvantaged pasts, but that is not the same as claiming that it offers NO consideration of pasts. This is a rationale for improvement, not elimination.

Again - the discrimination you talk about has happened to a minority of minorities by a select group of people in a specific country, the USA.

AA makes no distinction - if you're a white man from the middle east, AA says you're white and therefore part of the oppressor class and must not be given any advantages.


And this doesn't even go into the bad premise with AA is founded upon - that people today should be punished for the wrongs of their ancestors.

It wouldn't make sense to punish a grandson for his grandfather's murder of some guy 60 years ago, would it?

Of course not, and proponents of AA ignore the fact that the wrongs of the past can never be corrected as the people who were wronged are dead, and the people who committed the wrongs are dead.

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It only selects on race,

This statement is easily disproven by the existence of the following groups, both of which benefit (or have benefited) significantly from the existence of AA:

A: White women (clearly selected by gender, not race)
B: Hispanics (hispanics are not a race)

Race cannot be claimed to be the only factor in the application of AA, as you have implied.

I disagree with Hispanics not being a race, anymore than I would agree with Asians or Whites not being a race, but you are right about women. Therefore I concede that AA isn't about race, even though it is indeed racist, it is about identity politics, the same kind of politics that communists used to separate the bourgeoisie from the proletariat.

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Not at all, American culture was mostly founded by immigrants who worked their nuts off in order to succeed, without any government intervention.

That's just wrong, really.

The early history of the United States is filled with large instances of major government initiative having a big impact on the progress and experience of (mostly white) American citizens. Thomas Jefferson is not excepted.
Slavery is actually another good example of this.

None of the examples you listed even come close to the welfare state programs we have in present-day America. The homestead act was merely formality to make legal what was already happening across the USA, which was farmers spreading across the West and starting farms.

If anything, the Homstead Act is a good example of the kind of legislation I support - the government supports and nourishes practices already in place by the dominant culture. This isn't engineering - it is more of cultivation.

The Indian Removal scheme, although horrific, was probably the best course of action given how many whites were already hostile to the Indians. The Indians were probably going to be killed off by racist whites anyways. The problem was that the Indians were removed in such a barbaric fashion.

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All the government did was provide a solid framework for capitalist institutions to operate within, and white people were more than able to prosper.

1. I fixed this piece for you-my edit is emphasized.
2. As I stated above, the American government has historically done much more than sit back and watch when it comes to the development of its citizenry. The white middle class in this country owes its very existence to government initiative, which is ironic given the tendency of some of its members to adopt a strongly libertarian view of things.

The whites who founded this nation were independent and built it without much help from anyone. No money was given to them, and the land they settled upon had to be developed without any promise of a return or gain.

Early America is one of the great historical examples of a successful capitalist society.

The slaves in the south didn't help make the south rich or powerful, it helped to make the south into a shithole. Even to this day, the North is the most powerful part of the East Coast.

Slavery creates a backwards economic system where the landowners became enormously wealthy, while all other whites were squeezed out of the labor market (due to slavery) and lived as idle heathens. By the time the Civil War began, the South was more or less a dump.

The reason slavery isn't in place today is because it is an economically inferior system to non-slavery. Unfortunately, justice has nothing to do with it.

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Nope, all it does is give racial favoritism in order to win votes.

AA is not solely about race, as I established above.
Furthermore, the intended benefits of AA go well beyond political capital. I established this quite clearly here.

All the arguments I've seen for diversity do not seem compelling. The idea that diversity breeds technological progress is contradicted by the historical fact that nearly all scientific breakthroughs came from homogeneous societies, and not diverse ones.

I think Roissy is correct when he says diversity breeds war. This is a claim that history supports.

I also find it ironic that colleges claim diversity helps the economy as we slide into insolvency.

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The 14th amendment says equal treatment - but AA explicitly gives racial preferences.

...primarily to groups that do not receive equal treatment and would not (and have not) receive (received) equal treatment without it (or, in some cases, even with it).

To fail to attempt to address this discrepancy would be to fail to adhere to the 14th Amendment. You seem to think that merely making a statement about the necessity of equal treatment is enough to establish the prevalence of equal treatment in practice, and all further considerations should end there-we should not be concerned about actual outcomes.

This is not wise in my view. When that stated "equal treatment" is not actually applied and there still exists a desire to stay true to the intent of that amendment, initiative can (and should) be taken to try and move closer to that outcome.

"Equal outcomes" have been tried in so many socialist societies, and they have all failed (or are in the process thereof). There is no reason to suspect it will be any different in America.

Not to mention the negative repercussions of engineering society - a restless youth deincentivized by a rigged system - but there is nothing people can do to stop an abusive dictator of seizing the controls of a system designed to regulate everyone's behavior. That is usually the ultimate cause and downfall of most societies.

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The fact that AA hasn't been overturned is a classic example of popular vote superseding the rule of law.

The fact that AA has not been overturned is a classic example of its place well within the rule of law. That reality has been made clear by our highest court on several occasions (the popular vote has never been relevant), and I'll not bother to list the instances in which it has been affirmed by lower courts.
Unless you have given more consideration to the policy than any past Federal/Supreme Court (and/or you possess more in the way of constitutional knowledge than they and their staff do), I would find it hard to give weight to any claim regarding AA as a policy standing outside the rule of American law. It has been affirmed to be well within it on too many occasions by too many of our best legal minds.

Our best legal minds do not care about the constitution as it was written and completely ignore the words contained within. They change the meanings to suit their political agenda in order to please the masses.

There has been a steady degradation of the Constitution since the New Deal. The slow erosion of the rights within the Constitution is another topic, though.

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The popular vote is also not quite as strongly against AA as you may think (see Myth #4).

Of course not, and that's what I'm saying AA is - a case of popular vote superseding the rule of law.

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Your idealized premise is further discredited by the reality on the ground that sees less qualified individuals promoted for reasons not strictly based on merit, regardless of the presence of AA.

The difference being one is done by a free association of individuals, whereas the other is carried out by the authoritarian government.

A difference that is irrelevant in determining the existence of a "culture of equality", as you so claimed has existed here.
If your "free association of individuals" results in the uplifting of many members of some groups on non-merit based grounds as it historically has without AA, then one must be forced to question the strength of your stated "culture of equality".

In fact, one would be forced to call it fluff, as it would clearly be shown not to actually exist.

Not sure what you mean here - just because whites choose whites over blacks does not mean that whites were not selecting each other based on merit. That's still merit.

The idea that a culture must accept another culture's members or else it will not be equal is false. Equality means equal treatment under the law, and if the law allows people to associate with whomever they wish, even if based on racial preferences, then that is still equality.

What you want isn't equality, it is a specific outcome. That's not equality, that's social engineering. True equality is blind to results, since equality rests on the premise that no one deserves preferential treatment under the law.

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It was always here, until AA killed it and made racial politics the norm.

"It was always here"? The USA has always been a non-racial meritocracy? Racial politics were not the norm prior to the civil rights movement?

Are you serious?

Yes. People did not care about race anymore than people cared about atheists. Most disputes involving slavery during the 19th century involved claims as slavery as an economic system - they didn't care about the blacks, as cruel as that may be.



Anyhow, the gist of what I'm saying is not that AA is ignoble, or with bad intentions, but that it is flawed, makes America a worse place to live in, and will be among the things that does it's eventual undoing (like woman's suffrage).

[Excelsior]

(10-22-2012 08:05 PM)Samseau Wrote:  

Which by definition will come at the expense of some other group, since this is a zero-sum policy.

I don't agree. The benefits of AA, which I outlined earlier, indicate that this is far from a zero-sum reality. Those benefits touch everyone, and most of the major players in this society are well aware of this. They're not backing AA out of the goodness of their hearts.

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It uses some kind of warped view of history where everyone has been oppressed by White Men (even though that is false - at best, some have been oppressed by some white men) to justify giving special privileges to non-white male groups.

What warped view?

The reality of American history is as follows: this nation was founded on the basis of a racial hierarchy that enriched some at the expense of others purely upon the basis of their racial and ethnic origin. The history of this nation is filled with laws, rules and regulations designed to keep this hierarchy in place at the expense of some groups.

The beneficiaries of these realities were white Americans, and within that groups white males moreso than white females. There's nothing warped about that view-whites occupy (and have historically occupied) the highest positions in the American racial hierarchy, and prior to the sexual revolution (where they basically gave away much of their power), white males were most certainly in charge of their females.

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Of course, since it is impossible to give everyone a leg-up over white men,

Nobody has a leg up over white males at the moment. All of the substantive numbers will confirm that.

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The Asians just happen to be a group no one cares about right now.

Asians actually benefit from AA.

Once you realize that AA extends beyond the realm of higher education, you'll understand that truth.

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Again - the discrimination you talk about has happened to a minority of minorities by a select group of people in a specific country, the USA.

That discrimination impacted the lives of all members of groups primarily targeted by AA, and it continues to do so. By contrast, all whites were (and to some extent still are) beneficiaries of this reality.

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AA makes no distinction - if you're a white man from the middle east, AA says you're white and therefore part of the oppressor class and must not be given any advantages.

This is merely an example of an area in which improvement can be made.

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And this doesn't even go into the bad premise with AA is founded upon - that people today should be punished for the wrongs of their ancestors.

...you mean the wrongs of the present?

Discrimination didn't end yesterday, and the effects of past discrimination do linger quite strongly. It is erroneous to pretend otherwise, something minorities can't really afford to do.

Your statement is based entirely on the notion that discrimination is over, the effects of it have long worn off, and AA is mere retribution for a distant past. This is a view divorced from reality.

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I disagree with Hispanics not being a race,

There's nothing to disagree about, unless you'd like to argue against reality.

A "hispanic" American can be A) Native American, B) Black, C) White, D) Asian or E) some varied combination of these things (possibly even all of the above). The term "Hispanic" refers to an ethnic group, not a race. These are not the same things-a hispanic can be of many races.

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anymore than I would agree with Asians or Whites not being a race,

They aren't the same. You should know the difference between an ethnic group and a racial group. As I mentioned above, an individual deemed "hispanic" could be white, asian, native american, or whatever else (usually a combination of these things, particularly white + native american in the case of Mexican-Americans).

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but you are right about women. Therefore I concede that AA isn't about race, even though it is indeed racist, it is about identity politics, the same kind of politics that communists used to separate the bourgeoisie from the proletariat.

It is about confronting the realities of race and ethnicity in this society, which cannot be avoided.

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None of the examples you listed even come close to the welfare state programs we have in present-day America.

An irrelevant point. The standard you set was as follows:

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American culture was mostly founded by immigrants who worked their nuts off in order to succeed, without any government intervention.

None of the examples I cited meet that standard.

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The homestead act was merely formality to make legal what was already happening across the USA, which was farmers spreading across the West and starting farms.

The Homestead Act was an instance of direct intervention on the part of the United States government to formally hand over Native American lands to (mostly white) American settlers.
That's not a passive government-that is an active government working to further the advancement of its landholding citizens by transferring large swaths of land directly to them.

It accomplished precisely what I mentioned earlier:

(10-21-2012 06:23 PM)Athlone McGinnis Wrote:  

All government policy represents an attempt to "engineer" society in one way or another by encouraging or pushing (and sometimes outright forcing) outcomes that are deemed, for one reason or another, to be beneficial to society (read: serving a "compelling government interest").

The homestead act was an attempt to encourage and/or push a desired outcome in line with a compelling government interest (the rise of the yeoman farmer and the growth of homesteading in "undeveloped" territory) that, in the absence of said legislation, would otherwise not be met.
This is a form of engineering in my book. If you'd like to call it "cultivation", that's up to you. The meaning is the same, and I'm not going to engage in semantics.

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The Indian Removal scheme, although horrific, was probably the best course of action given how many whites were already hostile to the Indians. The Indians were probably going to be killed off by racist whites anyways.

Interesting statements. A few points:

1. This is again an example that doesn't meet your prior standard for "no government intervention". In this case, the government intervened to forcibly remove Native Americans from lands they had rightfully occupied (a right affirmed by past treaties and by the Supreme Court, which was ignored). These (very lucrative, profitable) lands were then left wide open for white settlers who had no legitimate claim to them and would otherwise have had no access to them. They benefited greatly from this government initiative, as have their descendants.

2. You say that the policy was wise given how hostile many white settlers were towards native americans. This justified the separation of said Native Americans from their lands, since you estimate that many would have been "killed off by racist whites anyway".

Remember that "cultural underpinning" of equality you mentioned? If that did in fact exist can you explain to me why a) the rights of the Native Americans to hold their lands (rights again affirmed by prior treaties and the Supreme Court) were not respected at all and b) the interests of racist whites were held above the interests of Native Americans, to a point at which the United States Army intervened to ensure racist whites got what they wanted?

In a society in which there truly is a "cultural underpinning of equality", native Americans (being held as equals) would merit better treatment than that. A society truly concerned with "equality" would probably have recognized the rights of Native Americans to the lands they held, and worked to provide them with the protection from those "racist whites" that would have been needed to ensure their equal enjoyment of American right to property, liberty, etc.

The fact that "racist whites" were happy to violently attack them is not justification for the denial of property rights to Native Americans. That is justification for a policy to prevent said whites from carrying out such actions, and work to ensure that Native Americans continued to enjoy their rights.

This did not happen, so perhaps that "equality" you mentioned never actually existed.

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The problem was that the Indians were removed in such a barbaric fashion.

The problem was that Indians were removed at all. The method in which they were removed is irrelevant.

The very existence of the removal policy suggests the valuation of White American interests/rights above those of Native Americans, a reality which puts to rest any notion of "cultural equality" you have attempted to apply to this nation's past.

Your inability to recognize this makes a very strong case for the continuation of Affirmative Action.

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The whites who founded this nation were independent and built it without much help from anyone.

...except the slaves (without whom the labor shortage could not have been dealt with and settlement could not have been made practical).

...and perhaps the English (who established the trading networks that enriched early New England and made the nation economically viable).

But yeah, otherwise totally on their own. No help at all.

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The slaves in the south didn't help make the south rich or powerful, it helped to make the south into a shithole. Even to this day, the North is the most powerful part of the East Coast.

The slaves in the south sustained the southern economy for centuries by allowing it to produce and exports the lucrative cash crops that more indsutrialized parts of the world (including the North) relied on. This came at the cost of industrial development, which is the reason why the modern south is not as wealthy as the North. Nevertheless, the fact is that slavery was crucial to the economic strength of the south for most of its early existence, and its products were crucial to the North as well.

Your farmers (the chief economic actors of the day) could not have built any sort of settlement without slavery, which ensured enough labor to make money off of the land they settled. The settlement of the American south would not have been viable without slave labor, and the rise of the United States would not have been possible without the products of that labor, as I'll soon show.

The North owes quite a bit to slavery as well, given the fact that at least two of the largest industries that enriched it (shipping and textile manufacturing) were highly dependent on the products of slave labor (or, for a time, the importation of slaves themselves).

The entirety of the foundation of America's economic history rests upon the provision of dirt cheap (read: free) labor provided by slavery. Without it, there is a) no economically viable settlement of the south via the exploitation of fertile land capable of producing very lucrative cash crops and b) no American industrial revolution as we know it (nobody to produce the cotton and tobacco said factories largely depended on and no need to produce the many ships that carried said products).

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Slavery creates a backwards economic system where the landowners became enormously wealthy, while all other whites were squeezed out of the labor market (due to slavery) and lived as idle heathens.

That's precisely the reason chattel slavery found widespread acceptance in the first place-there were not enough whites to satisfy the shortage of labor.

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All the arguments I've seen for diversity do not seem compelling. The idea that diversity breeds technological progress is contradicted by the historical fact that nearly all scientific breakthroughs came from homogeneous societies, and not diverse ones.

That's a remarkably un-compelling response to an argument you deem not to be compelling.

Firstly, the data with regards to enhanced productivity, profitability, etc, is quite well documented. I cited it before (and am doing so again), and it isn't going away. That diversity enhances progress in several ways is backed by the weight of the literature.

Secondly, your response essentially boils down to the following: "It didn't happen before, therefore it will not happen in the future".
Your statement reads like the kind of flawed argument I'd see within a logical reasoning portion of an LSAT. It ignores the following realities:

1. The data I mentioned above, which evidence the benefits of diversity (including, but not at all limited to, technological progress) quite clearly.
2. The fact that homogeneous societies were much more common in the past than they are now relative to heterogenous societies (multiculturalism is a relatively new concept and only recently widespread). Your argument assumes that past = present, when in fact the distinctions between the two are quite large and leave open the possibility (and high likelihood) of very different outcomes.
3. Correlation is not causation.

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I also find it ironic that colleges claim diversity helps the economy as we slide into insolvency.

I think you'd find less confusion if you actually examined the arguments, which have again been linked to you above.

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"Equal outcomes" have been tried in so many socialist societies, and they have all failed (or are in the process thereof). There is no reason to suspect it will be any different in America.

Affirmative action is not communism.

The reality is that your government is concerned with the principles of equality, as stated in its own constitution. The practice of merely making a statement about equality without doing anything to make sure that said statements are respected is counter productive. The definition of "equality" is broad enough that it cannot be satisfied by mere writing. Establishing actual equality under the law goes requires more than that, and establishing the other components of equality (social, racial, etc) goes well beyond that.

Talk is cheap. Actions speak much louder than words. You may very well prefer a society in which lip service is paid to an ideal and then nothing is done to ensure its being adhered to (even in the face of widespread evidence that said ideal is being trampled upon and there isn't respect for legal equality).
You may very well have no issue with the fact that entire groups within your society may be marginalized as a result of this lack of adherence.

Others, however, do have some concern for these realities. Equality in name only is not good enough. Ignorance of outcome is also counterproductive.

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Not to mention the negative repercussions of engineering society - a restless youth deincentivized by a rigged system - but there is nothing people can do to stop an abusive dictator of seizing the controls of a system designed to regulate everyone's behavior. That is usually the ultimate cause and downfall of most societies.

At this point, it is not clear that we're even speaking about the same polities.
As I mentioned before, societal engineering has gone quite well for many in the past whose descendants now supposedly stand against it. Jim Crow Laws, the Homestead Act, and a host of other measures taken by the United States government represent forms of societal engineering, which I define as actions meant to encourage or push a certain outcome that would otherwise be unlikely to manifest itself. The modern white middle class is a direct product of this, as are our demographics (hint: The fact that America's population is as white as it is cannot be put down to natural circumstances).
You are a product of a highly engineered society...arguing against the engineering of society. Ironic indeed.

As for your talk of facing rigged systems, well, minorities do that every day. Last I checked, society was still here.

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Our best legal minds do not care about the constitution as it was written and completely ignore the words contained within. They change the meanings to suit their political agenda in order to please the masses.

LOL

Riiiight. I'm sure they do.

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Not sure what you mean here - just because whites choose whites over blacks does not mean that whites were not selecting each other based on merit. That's still merit.

You're saying that institutionalized racism is ok, then?

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The idea that a culture must accept another culture's members or else it will not be equal is false. Equality means equal treatment under the law, and if the law allows people to associate with whomever they wish, even if based on racial preferences, then that is still equality.

...so, again, institutionalized racism (whereby whites, who control most of the employment/finances in this society, choose only to work with other whites and discriminate against minorities) is cool, even if it naturally results in the complete disadvantage of minority populations (who are, supposedly, equal citizens).

If a dominant group decides it merely wants to associate with itself, it is therefore ok to disregard the rights of everyone else to equal opportunity. If white-owned corporations and predominantly white academic institutions decide they'd like to "freely associate" with whites only, that'd be ok with you, even if it would result in the disenfranchisement of everyone else (diminished access to education, wealth, land, etc) whether they were qualified or not.

It would be justifiable, for example, for (predominantly white) law firms to completely shut the door to minority employees, and for the (predominantly white) government to choose to only work with said firms, thus accomplishing the virtual elimination of any minority presence in law or any minority participation in the legal system under which they live. This entirely unequal reality on the ground is..."equal" to you?

In other words, equality is a cultural underpinning of our society...but can easily be disregarded in the interest of "free association". Discrimination is bad...unless it is used to achieve the interests of a group that only wishes to "freely associate" with themselves.

So this is the America you want. The openness of your disregard for your fellow citizens and their rights is quite welcome, actually, as it makes my case for me (I know that your views are not rare). Regardless, I'll respond further.

One does indeed have the right to freely associate. When said right infringes upon the rights of other citizens who are equal by law (examples given above), we have problems. Discrimination limits the rights of other groups (property, liberty, etc), and we can't allow it to be justified by someone claiming "freedom of association". We must therefore limit the potential for that outcome. Freedom of assembly still exists, but discrimination (a likely result of unchecked adherence to said freedom) is curtailed, thus protecting the provision of other rights to other groups of Americans.

We are all Americans. We come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, but at the end of the day we are all stuck together here with the same investment in the same society.
That society does not move forward when you choose not to guard against (and instead tolerate) the disenfranchisement of large swaths of your population upon the basis of their race or ethnicity. That society also could not be considered "equal".

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What you want isn't equality,

No, that is exactly what I'm concerned about.

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True equality is blind to results, since equality rests on the premise that no one deserves preferential treatment under the law.

This is nonsensical. The definition of "equality" has several components-equality before the law (the only kind you seem to give weight to) is merely one of them, and cannot at all be considered a complete representation of "equality" without its fellow components.
Also, stating that one possesses equality before the law is meaningless without confirming that said legal equality is enforced on the ground.

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Yes. People did not care about race anymore than people cared about atheists. Most disputes involving slavery during the 19th century involved claims as slavery as an economic system - they didn't care about the blacks, as cruel as that may be.

...let's ignore the 3/5ths clause.
...let's ignore the Dred Scott decision.
...let's ignore the Chinese exclusion act.
...let's ignore Jim Crow.
Hell, let's ignore all of this.

I don't know how anyone with any basic understanding of American history can make the claims you've just made.
America has never been a non-racial democracy.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

While I think that Athlone makes some great points here, there is one thing that I'd love to read more about.

USA was never a truly equal society, as government measures were used to artificially preserve the position of some races at the expense of other races. I agree. This makes the argument that AA is a government measure and thus un-necessary lose some merit. However, it is based on the premise that races are all equal (or at best have barely statistically significant differences) - that race really does not matter except for the color of the skin, which is just a cosmetic detail. Not only are all races equally deserving of opportunity in the moral sense, they are also equally capable and have all the same characteristics. This makes it unfair to discriminate based on just color of skin. The cause for AA today is because there was AA in the past (in the other direction), so today's AA is a correction of a certain injustice. And that's all fine.

However, what about AA in cases where there are many statistically highly significant differences, such as in the case of men and women, and where there really is a difference based on biology (I'm not saying that women worth less than men as human beings, just that they are different)? Cases of women abusing AA at the expense of men are, I'm sure, much more numerous than in the case of blacks or latinos abusing AA at the expense of whites or asians.

Doesn't this then make the concept of AA a slippery slope? Even if AA is just in the case of races, how could you provide it without simultaneously allowing its abuse in the case of genders?

[Excelsior]

(10-23-2012 02:10 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

However, what about AA in cases where there are many statistically highly significant differences, such as in the case of men and women, and where there really is a difference based on biology (I'm not saying that women worth less than men as human beings, just that they are different)? Cases of women abusing AA at the expense of men are, I'm sure, much more numerous than in the case of blacks or latinos abusing AA at the expense of whites or asians.

Doesn't this then make the concept of AA a slippery slope? Even if AA is just in the case of races, how could you provide it without simultaneously allowing its abuse in the case of genders?

AA can be abused. With regards to women, an excellent example can be illustrated in the case of white women who have been the largest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action over time (larger than women OR men from any other group). This seems odd, given the reality that when you look at most of the major indicators of wellbeing, white women grade out well ahead of everyone else (low unemployment, lower poverty rates, higher life expectancies, lower pay gaps relative to minority women, etc, etc).
This is a case in which AA was co-opted at the expense of some groups (male and female) who may have had a larger need for it. This reality is also key to my labelling feminism an extension of white privilege on the last page of this thread in response to durangotang-it perpetuates this development.

It is worth discussing the possibility of preventing these kinds of abuses. While I'm willing to concede that some discrimination against women may exist, I'm not willing to concede that the group most benefited by AA has faced more of this discrimination than all others.

This is another area in which the policy should be adjusted (along with its relations to Asian and Arab Americans), but several factors make this difficult. Non-hispanic white women make up a powerful and reliable voting block, have a ton of earning/spending power, and are generally held up on a pretty high pedestal in this society. Nobody wants to touch anything they hold dear, and I'm not sure anybody will for quite some time.

Is AA a slippery slope? Again, AA can be abused, like any other policy. It isn't perfect, for reasons I outlined above.
That doesn't leave it without value, however.

[Screwston]

I caught it the other day and it's cool. Danny Trejo looks short as fuck in it so I looked online and he's only 5'6 haha. Is he still allowed to be an alpha??