The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case, deciding whether skin colour can be used as a factor when assiging children to public schools. This reopens the whole issue of affirmative action that has been in play since the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case, requiring integration.

Affirmative action proposes to eliminate discrimination by giving a preference to some minorities, which can exist in the form of racial quotas.

While I can understand some sort of affirmative action initially to reduce discrimination, I do not agree with it being open-ended. For example, immediately after school integration in the US, it was probably necessary to set some racial quotas as targets to ensure that the situation improved, however, these should only be in place for a limited timeframe.

Ultimately I think affirmative action based on race is racist. While it is often used to respond to previous racial discrimination, I don't think that using racism to fight racism is the best answer. In addition, I think it is a clear violation of the equal protection clause of the US constitution. It is racist and a violation of equal protection rights to admit a black kid to school over a white kid simply because he is black, just as it is racist to admit the white kid just because he is white.

Affirmative action doesn't solve racism - it just reverses it. I will not be surprised if the Supreme Court limits its use significantly when hearing this case.

Posted by Dave Bryant at 12:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)