Reply #19: I have a relative who always complained he could not get on [View All]

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the police force due to his unfortunate white maleness - both the minorities and the women had this advantage over him, he always asserted.

And it does seem he was passed over time and time again (he finally made it). But then other white men did get on, so one can't really say if he didn't make the grade due to the fact he just didn't make it, and wouldn't have without AA, or that if he was a white male who would have made it before AA but can't due to it, he is at the bottom of qualified white males anyway.

It is a tough call, though I think in the case of police and teachers, that AA is preferable to pure meritocracy (taking into account that the whites have an advantage in the meritocracy, the likely reason they would otherwise come out on top, or the fact of the testing and other factors just favoring them) - the kids/community out there need to see black or hispanic cops, so they don't have this sense of whitey just policing them and the white kids to see that people in authority are of all races - I remember the cops out front of Parker Center at the beginning of the riots in LA, all standing together, black and white and everything else.