My thoughts are that Affirmitive action needs to not only be done away with, but some action needs to be taken to reverse the damage which it has already caused.
Let me be honest here, part of the entire arguement is America-centric to begin with. Whites are a "racial minority" globally. Asians and Blacks both heavily outnumber "us" as Africa and Asia are literally packed to the gills with people.
When people talk about "minorities" they are usually speaking simply within the cosm of America. Such arguements tend to ignore the increasingly global economy and the fact that we do not keep our citizens prisoner. A white guy going overseas to work a better job is likely to be a minority where he winds up working. To some extent Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, etc... have an advantage in purely racial terms when looking at things in terms of a global market.
The point here being that the issue is a huge joke as things currently exist.
Back prior to the 1960s I suppose there was an American issue largely based on our principles as people were willing to discriminate. It wasn't just against Blacks and such though, they are simply the most ridiculously vocal. There was a time when people hung up signs like "Irish need not apply". The ethnic white/black issue is largely based on a guilt trip over America's extremely short term implementation of slave trade. Guilt largely based on a lack of understanding about what actually occured, why, and of course the scope of history and the fact that Blacks have also enslaved whites, and probably in greater numbers and over a longer period of time than white people have even had civiliations. Consider that the dark skinned "races" were developing civiliations in the Fertile Crescent region before the advent of White civilizations like Greece and Rome. They heavily raided the white peoples who were actually little more than savages at the time. Even with the advent of "white" civilization in the Mediterranean you still had the europeans as barbarians running around in furs and basically being poached by everyone who could get there. This was a time period when people we know as like "The French" were known as "The Gauls".
But of course today people don't think about it in the overall scope of things, listen to a bunch of propaganda, and go "OMG we did this unprecedented, horrible thing". This is what makes the issue of Affirmitive action so difficult to deal with because there are people who actually have been convinced that minorities DESERVE advantages over the majority as some kind of repairation.
In reality the turning point for racism in the US was the 1960s. Since like the 1980s Affirmitive action increasingly became a joke. People have been argueing since then that racism was dead as a mainstream phenomena, but nobody wanted to listen. Just now in 2008 we received an unignorable proof in the form of the election of Barack Obama, who simply could not have been elected without the support of Mainstream America. What's more in a deadlocked system he managed to get people to cross party lines for him in fairly sizable numbers (well sizable under the current situation).
As such, affirmitive action is simply an institution for reverse racism. Supported both by people who like the advantages (ie everyone wants to get ahead regardless of race and will take any advantage they can get), and by people who are basically afflicted by sociological masochism and screaming "punish me, I deserve it" due to an ongoing propaganda guilt trip over slavery, which typically lacks any kind of global/historical context when people are exposed to it.
Speaking for myself, I feel there is no inherant differance between whites and blacks for example. Anything that is there is sociological/cultural/sub-cultural. I however refuse to feel guilty because my grandparents might have been racist, and my great grandparents might have owned Black slaves. My general attitude is "so what, every person of every ethnicity on the planet, has some ancestor who owned slaves. Big, fat, hairy, deal. Get over it.". When you get down to it, whites are the new kids on the block so to speak anyway.
So basically, I'm all for getting rid of affirmitive action, but also for encouraging the retroactive removal of people who obtained jobs they were underqualified for at the time they received them due to the need to fill a racial quota. With perhaps a cut off date of say 1979. So basically if you've been working your job 30+ years your not a factor, but otherwise.... bouncy, bouncy. Reapply.
Sorry if this is not a popular viewpoint. As a sociological issue, affirmitive action is one of those things that gets my goat on a lot of levels. In the very beginning it was a nessicary tool. It has LONG since outlived having any viable purpose.
Right now racism in the US is only a word people use to dredge up some quick attention in connection to video games like Resident Evil 5 and such. There is no validity to it, except in dealing with tiny fringe elements with no teeth (and this IS a free country, these guys have a right to do what they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. They are harmless and basically the jokes of society at this point). I think that people who scream "racism" should be treated like those who yell fire in a crowded movie theater. I don't care if they are political, journalists, or message board posters.
