Resolved:

When
making
admissions decisions, public
colleges and universities in
the United States ought to
favor members of historically
disadvantaged groups

Definitions

Affirmative Case
Resolved: When making admissions decisions, public
colleges and universities in the United States ought to
favor members of historically disadvantaged groups
Value: Equality Giving equal opportunities to the general public.
People with different economic stature will have equal opportunities to
get in higher education. With Affirmative Action, we can give

equal opportunities in education to the general public,

which gives equality and fair competition. Without
affirmative action, we create a disadvantage to minorities
who do not have fair access to a good educational system
and have a lesser preparation for standardized tests such
as the SATs and ACTs. When Affirmative Action allows us
to help historically disadvantaged groups and create
equal access to education. Equality is one of the reasons
why America was created. Throughout history of America,
we, as a nation, have worked and worked on creating
equality in the nation.
Criterion Maximizing equality in education. When talking about
reaching equality, that includes basic rights including education. One
of the last fields where there are not equal opportunities for
disadvantaged groups is education. Affirmative Action makes the
bridge to equality.

Contention 1: Without Affirmative Action it is impossible for their to

be equal chances in the job market and in education.
Robert Justin Lipkin (Robert 'Bobby J. Lipkin, a Distinguished Professor of
Constitutional Law on Widener Laws Delaware Campus) Affirmative Action &
the Obligations of American, January 2010, Volume I, p. 5
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION LEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD
Affirmative action is one of the remedies for inter-generational racial oppression since it provides some
race conscious preferences in admissions to colleges and universities and in job hiring. If one believes that
intergenerational racial oppression inevitably handicaps those individuals born after the elimination of
these American evils, then a natural reaction

whether constitutional political, or moral - is to fashion a

If a parent
wrongly favored one child over another, and finally comes to his
senses that both children should be treated equally, eliminating the
favoritism without something more will not level the playing field.
remedy to reduce the force of this handicap. This is known as leveling the playing field.

Some compensatory treatment of the disfavored child is necessary to achieve that equality. This is, in part,

To now favor the traditionally disfavored child means

sacrifice on the part of the favored child.
a zero-sum game.

Contention 2: Affirmative Action helps spread out a competitive

environment, which helps for later life.
The competitive environments that are for opportunities are not
spread out equally. The competitive environments that are for
opportunities are not spread out equally. Without Affirmative action,
disadvantaged groups would already know that they dont have the
opportunities that the white man has and would be less motivated to
work hard and would be less successful in life.
Peter McHugh, (Social Theorist, Yale University), Human Studies, Volume 28,
p. 137, 2005
MUST HAVE SAME HARDSHIPS AND REWARDS TO HAVE EQUALITY
Sharing equality is not simply a matter of sharing of objects, say
hardships and rewards. It is not a distributive standard. In fact many collectives which do
share also believe it appropriate that hardship and reward maybe unevenly
distributed. To share freedom, emancipation, the kind of sharing that we will name shared being, is
more elemental than that (even though it can of course affect distribution). It is to recognize
that human experience of the world is of an intersubjective space,
an arc of encompassing language and history within which is formed
a sense of tradition, of place, and of ones self in that place . In that
respect shared being is substantial, really an experience of itself, of being within lifes substance as a
particular living composition of the possible and impossible. In that experience its space and language

It is a
materialization of the real. Shared being in our case is for white
faces to extend that notion of a person to black faces, faces with the
capacity to understand themselves, their evaluations, and their
choices in some reasonable accord with the trajectory of the real.
become objectified, objectified as unalterable form and structure and all possibility and limit.

Michelle Maiese Associate Professor of Philosophy at Emanuel College 03

MINIMIZATION OF STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE
Social and political institutions set the context for individual and group behavior and are meant to provide

How people act and live is shaped in

large part by the social structures in which they find themselves.
Social justice is, in part, a matter of ensuring that these structures and
institutions do in fact satisfy basic human needs. In some cases
however, a society's social institutions are characterized by
exploitation, political exclusion, and unequal access to resources.
These structural forces often create a system of winners and losers in which people
become trapped in a particular social situation. Structural violence often results, in
the form of power inequity, poverty, and the denial of basic human
rights. Basic human needs go unmet, and groups suffer from inadequate access to
resources and exclusion from institutional patterns of decision making.
the resources individuals need to survive.

[Unjust structural forces and divisions also contribute to discrimination, lack of education, and inadequate
employment opportunities. An example of this sort of structural violence is the effect of deindustrialization
on minority and working-class communities in the United States.

Affirmative Action gives historically disadvantaged groups (the losers)

winners. Without Affirmative Action Without affirmative action, we create a
disadvantage to minorities who do not have fair access to a good educational
system and have a lesser preparation for standardized tests such as the SATs
and ACTs.

Contention 3: Affirmative Action granting the same joint right to

other groups as it offers to the previously excluded groups.
Kwame Anthony Appiah (lectured at many schools including Harvard, Yale,
Cornell, Duke, Appiah graduated from Cambridge), Group Rights and Racial
Affirmative Action, Volume 15, 2011
Since legal collective rights are extremely common, as I pointed out,
it is hard to mount a principled objection against a legal collective
right to outreach in virtue of its being a legal collective right. But there
is a further reason why a collective right to outreach for blacks is uncontroversial: It does not seem to

That is because it is explicitly stated

as granting the same collective right to other groups as it offers to
the previously excluded groups. Even if an individual white person
could show that a policy of outreach reduced his probability of
employmentwhich, of course, it often wouldit is hard to see how,
in these circumstances, he could claim that this reduction in
probability amounted to denying him a right. As we shall see below, it is often not
the group right for the formerly excluded that opponents of affirmative action really object to, it is the
alleged denial of some individual right to members of historically
privileged groups. In this case there is no plausible argument of this form.
entail denying the individual rights of non-blacks.

Barbara R Bergmann (Professor American University), In Defensive of

Affirmative Action, Volume 83 p. 31-32, February 1997
How do the reasons for affirmative action stack up against the
reason for special admission of athletes, alumni children, the
Nebraskans, the wealthy well-connected, the deans friends
children? The reasons for affirmative action are far more compelling-helping to cure this countrys
racial cleavage, furthering the parity of blacks in the job market, getting
blacks and whites to know each other on campus, making an allowance for the
bad environment and lack of feelings of self-worth that man black youngsters have had to battle through.