Who loses?
Obviously the Constitution/DoI lose...
anyone who believes racism is wrong loses
Ideals are important too...
Hmmm, are you saying racism can exist without victims. It seems to be if there is racism, there must be a class of victims. Thus are you saying whites as a whole are degraded by AA, or that marginal candidates are affected, but no matter, if you can't relate racism to a class of people or victims, then you really don't idea worth worrying about. Would it matter if I hate purple aliens-Not really, how does that hurt any creature, maybe they exist somewhere across the galaxy, probably they don't, but no person or alien is hurt by my hate for purple aliens. Ideas only matter when they affect people.
Nevertheless, I agree ideas are important because they usually do affect behavior. Copying and pasting a post I made in Red's stereotype threat thread (pg. 24, took me like 5 minutes to sort through that thread and find the stupid post), here are a few ways to view AA abstractly, list not exhaustive at all...
"A. Merit
Argument 1 --AA defeats a merit system because it allows in those with lower stats
Argument 2- Merit is subjective
Argument 3- The current admission system is fauculty in that test conditions favor some groups more than others, so merit must take into account other factors.
B. Moral
Argument 1-- Natural law says we are all equal so giving some people an advantage is immoral
Argument 2-- The moral thing to do is to help the disadvantaged, otherwise we endorse permanent inequality
C. Social
Argument 1-- Diversity is a needed thing in higher education and society as a whole, else we segregate or selves and lose productivity and cause unnecessary quarrels.
Argument 2--Society needs to make sure there are no permanent underclass or they risk creating an alienated segment of the population that will reject mainstream values and be a burden to the rest of society.
D. Political
Argument 1--AA is an example of speical interests gone amok- going into areas they have no business going into.
Argument 2-- For a gov't to have political legitimacy in a political democracy- staple institutions like the legal profession must be inclusive to all segments of society.
Argument 3--AA is a result of a natural political process and we should accept just like we accept different tax brackets and the different ways gov't treats different people (think of the substantive due process part of your first year ConLaw course here).
E. Historical (Similiar to political-usually you would blend them together)
Argument 1: We have done things a certain way for so long. Originally there must have been a purpose and now AA become an institution in itself and cannot be done away with in the present without interfering with people's expectation.
Argument 2: AA is not an end to itself, but one step in a process towards equal civil rights, and it is a mistake to try to isolate the issue away from the larger civil rights issues.
Argument 3: Whatever the historical reasons in the larger civil rights context, in todays world the URM's that benefit the most from upper class backgrounds and are already empowered from a civil rights perspective due to their economic success.
Argument 4: AA helped create a self-sustainable middle class-so because the program is successful we should encourage it.
F. Economic
Argument 1--AA increases productivity by... (never heard this argument, but imagine what Posner would say if he was in support of AA). One example might be AA increases economic productivity by giving people who have contact segments of the population that are underdeveloped the technical skills to bring economic development.
Argument 2-- AA decreases productivity by... (never heard this argument, but imagine what Posner would say if he was against AA). One example would it decreases productivity by interfering with the natural market of higher education-adding fat to it."
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