I got too lazy to read through this whole thread (gotta get back to studying - you guys know how it is) so I apologize if any of this was already said. Also, I really appreciate that this thread has remained cordial and not degenerated into a flame war. It's good to know that we're all capable of educated and civil discourse here.
Anyways, I just wanted to back up Geliebt, who I think hits the nail on the head (at least in what I read in the first 1-2 pages of this thread). I think one of the most subtle and insidious residual effects of our past and continuing racism against certain minorities is that measures like affirmative action are interpreted by many as reactionary racism against the majority, or at least misguided.
Policies like affirmative action are, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively small band-aid against the backdrop of centuries of brutal racism and the oft-underestimated psychological reverberations that continue to this day. Geliebt mentioned earlier the effects on URM youth whose families do not encourage them to even try to pursue careers such as medicine. Add to that pop-culture stereotypes of black criminals and Latinos as illegal immigrants/maids and the influence of the URM youth's friends and relatives who are bad role models in part because they have fallen victim to the same forces and you quickly have a vicious cycle that takes much more to break than just making sure companies don't have racist hiring practices. Anybody read Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions?" One of my favorite quotes from his book was his snarky quote "Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Now they were free to run out and play." (That wasn't verbatim, but you get the idea.) When a people have been oppressed for so long, the poisonous effects fester, multiply, and entrench themselves deep within the fabric of society. You can't just remove the source of infection and expect everything to be ok. You need to administer some antibiotic too.
It's not just that the kid goes to bad schools and will bump into racist employers. It's also that the kid is less likely to try hard to succeed in the first place because he buys into pop culture stereotypes about himself, has parents/friends actively discouraging his dreams, and has parents/friends that make poor role models that implicitly tell him that as a URM, there is a ceiling on his success.
Because of this, policies like affirmative action are, in my opinion, necessary and painful measures that need to be instituted in order to problems like this that are rooted much deeper in society than many realize. Obviously, it's no fun, especially for poor whites, who do get the short end of the stick in some ways. But I think this will help all of us in the long run. Consider it a down payment on a future where minority health problems and crime rates go down and you have to pay less for increased police presence and healthcare for the uninsured (costs which make their way back to all of us indirectly.)
If you really think about it, minorities get screwed in a ton of ways in America (which is still probably one of the least racist countries in the history of the world). They make less money, live in poorer neighborhoods, don't live as long, get less healthcare, deal with more crime, get bad education, see themselves portrayed in racist fashion in the media, and when someone tries to fix it by handing out some scholarships to try to help a couple of them out of the hole, it looks illegitimate to a lot of people who are really much better off. And when a minority success story like Obama happens, people use his example to minimize the very real problems that still exist.
To those who cite the fact that many of their friends who benefit from AA are middle class or have parents who are 1st generation immigrants from Africa, I think that really should demonstrate just how bad black Americans have it. Even though we have programs like AA, many black Americans still aren't able to take advantage of it.
Full disclosure: I'm an over-represented minority.
Disclaimer: This was just a general defense of affirmative action, not an endorsement of any specific forms of it. I'm sure there are affirmative action policies out there that are bad, but I think that ultimately some form of it is needed to correct the inequalities in our society.
