Positive discrimination

There's this tendency nowadays to be very "politically correct". Also there's a tendency from rulers and governments for positive discrimination. But is that really a positive thing?

Let's put it this way: you have the case of a white dude, applying for college. He has the right grades and the right recommendations and whatever else the college asks for. Normally he should get in there. But the college has a policy of having at least 40% women and at least (here I don't know exactly the numbers but let's assume we know) 50% ethnics (let's not discriminate and include them all in there). If this white dude is accepted, the percentages are not filled, so the dude gets rejected and an Asian woman is accepted instead - although her grades are lower (I randomly picked the ethnicity, I have nothing against Asians, don't sue) .

What will this do?

First of all, this woman is less prepared to follow the courses of this college - meaning that the college will have to invest more to bring her up to speed with everything. You will have accepted a student that will be more likely to fail.

Second of all, if the white dude ever finds out (acceptances I believe are not public and neither are the policies behind them, but it's something pretty widely known that colleges have such percentages to respect), he will develop a grudge. Not against the woman that got accepted in his place specifically, but maybe against women in general and maybe even against Asians. That will happen because we are humans and it's in our nature to be upset when something we perceive as unjust happens. Sometimes we take that too far.

The college is basically assisting in creating racism in places where it didn't exist beforehand.

Watch American History X if you didn't feel I was clear enough on why that happens. At the beginning, if you follow the thread logically, you will totally understand where the character's racism comes from. There's this speech from the father that explains how white people lose their jobs because companies need to fill in their quotas for African American people.

Don't get me wrong: racism is bad. It's an overreacted response to start hating all African American people because one of them took your job. But, again, we are humans and humans occasionally overreact. Isn't it smarter to just avoid creating that resentment in the first place?

Don't think I don't understand the reasoning behind positive discrimination. It is believed that minorities have less opportunity to get educated to reach the same level as what is perceived as majority (male WASPs basically). That is unjust, I agree. But the way to rectify that injustice is not to give a person that is less qualified the job of a person who can do it better just because that person is a woman, Asian, or whatever other quota you have to fill. That is just as bad and just as racist as giving the job to a person for the simple reason that that person is white. The criteria towards giving a person a job/place in college should be totally independent of race/sex/religion and should be 100% about capabilities.

The solution is to give the minorities the chance to become as educated as the majority. The investment should be in education from when they are young, so that by the time they reach college applications, they should have the chance to have the same level of education as a male WASP. It's that simple. Afterwards, let the best man/woman win.

Equality does not mean giving more rights to the less fortunate. Equality means giving the less fortunate the chances they need to become fortunate and then let them make the most of it.

Giving a minority more rights than the majority creates resentment inside the majority towards the minority. That does not eliminate, it actually encourages racism.