The Unintended Consequences of Affirmative Action - 2012

Arthur Fletcher is known as the father of affirmative action and equal-opportunity laws, and he had a long career serving Republican presidents.  An African American and a Republican, he served in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

As head of the United Negro College Fund, he coined their famous slogan, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."  Arthur Fletcher’s affirmative action was based on equal opportunity through merit, not skin color or entitlement.  Today, affirmative action is a tool liberals use to peel back the scab of a wound which should be allowed to heal, but can't. The idea of affirmative action was rejected by liberals when Art Fletcher was presenting a case for it. The unflappable Art Fletcher continued with his mission – to present 'Merit Based Affirmative Action' to the United States. Constantly, he met adversity from liberal civil rights groups who could not understand how he could do this without their permission.  There were congressional hearings and liberals would come in opposing his views and ideas.  The unions decided to “buy” influence within these groups and, perhaps, slow or even dismantle his efforts.  Year after year Art would go to the annual convention of the NAACP and request a resolution of support for Affirmative Action.  

And year after year the union influence would forbid the management of the NAACP to raise the issue.  In fact, it was not until 1990 that the NAACP proposed and passed a resolution supporting Affirmative Action, 21 years after the Philadelphia Plan signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  In the Philadelphia Plan, Executive Order 8802, Roosevelt declared that the policy of the government was to encourage full participation in national defense programs by all U.S. citizens, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin. Admittedly, at one time there was a need for affirmative action.

Unfortunately, liberals have taken a tool which was needed in its day and have exploited it.  Now, 60 years later, affirmative action hurts those it was intended to help.  The blatant discrimination that existed fifty or a hundred years ago is all but completely gone.

Affirmative action has now has been turned by the liberals into an unfair quota system and now, just as with the dinosaurs, for the unqualified, it’s time has come and gone.  

Where has commonsense gone?

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