Quote:
Originally Posted by Doove
Yes there is. That's the whole point.
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No, it isn't. So, we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Government policies giving preferential treatment to a group are supposed to redress cases of ACTUAL discrimination caused by government. And they are supposed to be time limited. So if a city deliberately does not hire black firefighters, then courts are permitted to take the extraordinary measure of mandating racial discrimination in favor of blacks to correct the past discrimination. Correcting actual discrimination is deemed to be a compelling government interest that justifies the reverse discrimination. This was the traditional rational for quotas. Once the harm is corrected, the quotas are then ended and you return to what is supposed to be a color blind system.
Unfortunately, actual color blind hiring policies or college admission policies don't produce the required percentages of each group in real life.
In real life, you get too many Asians and Jews getting into college and not enough hispanics and blacks. Depending on how many Asians and Jews apply to the school, you may not get enough non-Jewish whites either.
So the rationalization of diversity is created to fill the vacuum of an act of actual discrimination. Ensuring that everybody gets to go to school with the correct percentage of other ethnic groups is now deemed to be a compelling government interest that justifies reverse discrimination. Diverstiy is supposed to benefit not only the under-represented minority but also the rest of the student body/work force and improve results for all.
Of course, no one can explain how societies that completely lack diversity (Japan, Korea, China) somehow consistently produce better educational results than the United States despite the lack of all those life-affirming and mind-broadening experiences of intermingling with people who are not like them.
But, hey, why let inconvenient facts get in the way of a beautiful theory?
And the best part for progressives? Diversity is forever. Unlike remedying past discrimination, you don't have to end reverse discrimination once the hiring imbalance or admissions imbalance has been corrected. You get to maintain quotas forever.
