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发帖数: 9926 | 1 【 以下文字转载自 SanFrancisco 讨论区 】
发信人: saiholmes (saiholmes), 信区: SanFrancisco
标 题: Mercury News的社论完全反SCA5
发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Tue Apr 22 22:34:26 2014, 美东)
Mercury News editorial: Affirmative action is yesterday's solution to
inequality
POSTED: 04/22/2014 03:18:22 PM
The Supreme Court ruling upholding Michigan's voter-approved ban on race-
based affirmative action effectively puts an end to what was always a
controversial strategy.
Once considered our best hope to level the playing field for minorities and
women held back by discrimination, the policy to provide opportunities in
universities and in the workforce succeeded by many measures. Blacks in
particular were able to crack barriers at a time when racial prejudice and
discrimination were overt.
But it's been clear for some time that affirmative action was a strategy of
the past -- too divisive to be a positive force against prejudice that
persists.
The latest kerfuffle in California makes the point: An attempt to revive
elements of affirmative action for universities was quashed in the
Legislature this year, not by white supremacists but by Asian-Americans
whose children are disproportionately succeeding without it.
The ruling Tuesday said voters can decide on affirmative action, leaving the
door open to it if voters approve. But Californians already have passed
Proposition 209 to end it, and there's no way it's coming back to a ballot
here.
America is still a land of unequal opportunity, however.
The same day the Michigan decision came down, The New York Times reported
that America's middle class, once the strongest in the world, has fallen
behind Canada's and some other industrialized nations'. America's poor now
earn less than those in poverty in Europe.
At the same time, it's getting harder for lower-income kids of all races to
rise on the economic scale. Wide disparities in K-12 education combined with
rising tuition costs and less financial aid put college farther out of
reach.
This is particularly true for black and Latino youths: They lag in academic
achievement behind whites and Asian-Americans, not just comparing rich and
poor but within every income level.
We never believed affirmative action harmed white Americans as much as its
white opponents claimed or that it diminished the achievements of people of
color, as black opponents claimed. If judgment today is more nearly color-
and gender-blind than it was 40 years ago, thank affirmative action for part
of the shift.
It's day is over. But the societal challenges it took on are ever with us.
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_25615920/mercury-news-edi | u*****a
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