[seatdrummer]

Do you think affirmative action is something like pay back or reparations for all the stuff people who were white did?

AA is supposed to be about raising groups who have been systemically disadvantaged to raise them to a fair playing field. This isn't supposed to be everybody except whites get help. Its supposed to be help for those whose racial identity is the reason why they are doing so poorly. Asian Americans are doing well in the U.S. [1].

The only way you can sell AA is if you say its to help people by race. Its not to sell it as a program to disadvantage whites...

The whole issue is that AA for race really generalizes advantages and disadvantages for a race and trades advancement of the race in exchange for some merit and fair consideration for the individual. Maybe there is a balance, maybe its gone to far, maybe it hasnt gone far enough. But the point is that it pisses people off because they are no longer treated like an individual and a person unfairly carries the history of people who had the same skin color as themselves.

If a white person struggles to get somewhere they can now blame AA. If a black person gets in they can have an internal struggle wondering if they really earned it, as well as the judgment that they might've only made it due to their race.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

[solveit]

Just to be clear, Asians are doing well despite their racial identity. Given an actually fair playing field, Asians would have dominated as the Jews did and do.

[seatdrummer]

I understand, but to be clear, AA is not about undoing all injustice. Its about treating everybody fairly but accounting for people who are dug in at 0. Making it from the projects is really different than making it from a suburb. If asians are in the suburbs along with the whites, equal treatment is exactly fair.

The point is that we need to move on. AA makes it so people who have fallen far behind have a chance to catch up.

[klipt]

There are plenty of Asian majority countries where Asians have a fair (or even unfair in their favor, relative to their country's minorities) playing field. I assume you expect those countries to dominate the world in future?

[solveit]

No, or rather, not necessarily. Asians in the US are a very different group from Asians in Asia. Recent immigrants are heavily overrepresented, and I believe that the difficulty of immigrating to the US from most Asian countries selects for fairly capable people.

That being said, Asia does account for a ridiculous proportion of the world's population, so it probably wouldn't be a bad bet to bet on an Asian country becoming the next dominant superpower. You know, on purely general principles.