Opportunity. Affirmative Action is a band aid on one of many gaping wounds in America caused by discrimatory policies.

White flight, block busting and redlining all contribute to the current state of affairs in which Affirmative Action seems like a decent solution. The real solution however will require full scale reform. Have you ever seen video of a school board meeting where desegregation bussing was on the agenda? Parents go bezerk. But these are probably the same parents that would veto any changes to education funding that diminish the reliance on property taxes or any other reform which may affect them.

We have a huge collective action problem in America. We have been taught that this is a land of fair opportunities and if you work hard you will get yours, but that has not been the case, so any action that tips the "free market" is looked down upon without acknowledgement that there are many policies that prevent equality of opportunities because they are subtle (in the form of tax breaks for instance) and are beneficial for the dominant groups.

Damn right I’ll fight tooth and nail any policy which aims to make my child’s school worse to make a different child’s school better. Selfish? Hell yes.

Affirmative action bestows a patronizing narrative on the selected groups. And what's worst, the narrative likely taints the reputation of the beneficiaries thereafter. We all know examples of that. Affirmative action for one person almost always results in an undeserved kick in the backside for someone else.

You may be aware of it, but there is a proposed solution that works on the problem on both ends, the admission process and the local school districts, and is not racially based (except for the deep historical roots of class/income inequality in the USA.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/05/an-unu...