Yesterday's Historic Election results

Affirmative action might shift from a focus on race to a focus on economic status/class. I really don't how you can make affirmative action MORE pronounced than it is currently without angering a majority of the electorate.

Come to India to see how

What do you mean? Is there affirmative action in India (forgive me, I'm ignorant in that area but would like to learn more)

A different kind of.

In education and government jobs, 50%- 70% ( depending on the state and deptt) places are reserved for "backward" communities ( and members of reserved communuties also receive financial assistance while studying ,get training program for preparing for competitive exams and concession in age such as if the age limit for certain service is 30 years it is 35 years for reserved category) and rest are open for competitions.

Now, There are many sections of the society which are backward for sure.

But politicians to ensure votebanks keep on adding communities to the backward people and more and more communities, to get the free sops, clamour for being recognized as backward ( e.g., google search : Gujjar Agitation).

While we were in final year college one of my friend designed the software for our college's admisson counselling. He was astonished to find that out of 300 places in first year, only 60 seats are open for general competition, after accounting for different quotas. And keep in mind, if people from reserved pool fare well in the exam they will get the general rank and some other from the "reserved category" pool only will be accomodated in the reserved place vacated by him/her.

Now this generates peculiar scenario. Since , for most of the reserved categories economic status is not a criteria ( for a few it is , but even then your income needs to be sufficiently high not to get the quota facility). For example, my dad's super-boss' ( who himself got the job through reservation) children got the facilities for reserved categories ( quota in institutions, age-concession in admission,financial assistance, jobs, special training program) though their family income was at least thrice more and socially also they were in higher rung.

I think this is the beginning of the end for AA. The Bollinger case (about AA at Michigan) while affirming the constitutionality of AA noted that the clock was ticking on it and that it would have to end at some point soon. Sandra Day O'Connor thought that that might be 25 years from that point. With Obama's election it will be more and more difficult to make a broadly based popular case for AA and I suspect that legislators will use that language in Bollinger along with the public view that the last racial barrier has fallen to do away with it soon.

True. According to the Indian Govt the sons/daughters of the Chief Ministers of most Indian states are "backward" (Karunanidhi, Laloo/Rabri, Mayawati, YSR etc).

or you can make the counter argument that AA is paying off and that we need to make a more aggressive push into the black communities to reach out to more applicants, who knows maybe there are more obamas??

Race can be an issue regardless of who is in the White House. One of the key concepts of Affirmative Action is that you can consider race as long as it is preferrential treatment towards the minority race. The point was not at all to create a bias in favor of less qualified minority candidates. The point was to identify qualified candidates and make sure that all qualified candidates were considered. I can't remember the case name, but there was a Supreme Court (Sup.Ct) case that took it one step further. Preferrential treatment was given to a minority candidate, all qualifications equal, in order to make up for past discrimination against minority candidates. This is often referred to as "reverse discrimination" (This term is a pet peeve of mine. Discrimination is discirmination regardless of who is being singled out.) This practice was deemed to serve a "compelling state interest" in order to survive strict scruitiny analysis by the Sup. Ct.

I believe the text of the Civil Rights statutes are clear. Race should not be a factor. Race should not be allowed as a factor because the discriminated person is white. It's not an easy situation to fix because virtually every part of society was stacked against African Americans. They couldn't get jobs because of their race. Then employers stated they didn't have the qualifications to even be considered under Affirmative Action because there were white employees that were actually qualified or had already been through the apprenticeship. So it was a never-ending circle with African Americans on the outside. Only when the law became that the African Americans were supposed to get preferrential treatment or the employer faced a big lawsuit, and the African American employees were allowed educational opportunities, di the playing field start to become level. I think it's getting there, but it now has more to do with economics than race, but there tends to be higher numbers of African Americans below the poverty line than whites.

I am in favor of a merit-based system, but this has to be built on trust and that trust does not exist between the citizens of this country and the government (federal or state). Many welfare benefit systems punish those that get a job and work. They cut benefits before that person is really self-sustaining. Many that use the benefits very much want to get an education, get a job, and provide for their family and "contribue back to socieity" as some say. It's difficult for people to do this when they get a job that pays a little more per month than the allowed limit so their benefits are terminated, but the job doesn't yet provide them enough to pay all their bills (and these are modest bills, not like they're trying to go get a house in the suburbs). When we can actually fix the welfare system to let it truly help people, we'll be helping those in economic turmoil that are currently in poverty. It's better to truly help 10 groups of 50 people at different times to become self-sufficient with education (work skills & personal financial management) and help them find a job that is able to pay all their bills than give money to 500 people all at once but it's not enough for any of them to actually succeed and become self-sufficient.

This is the biggest issue now in American, not race; but a by product of this appears to be racial because statistics show a larger part of those facing this economic catch-22 are minorities.

**Steps down off soapbox**

I realize I kind of went off of AA, but AA is about helping people and it is race-focused. The future is about economic stability, not necessarily racial stability.