AFIRMATIVE ACTION OR NOT?

Affirmative action or not is the question.

The arguments have been polarized between extreme views of totol for or against it. Overall, debates boil down to all or none approach. Often liberal for it all, conservative against it all.

I think we should look at a broader picture. We need to consider the social consequence.

When a patient looking for a doctor and a client looking for an atterney, ethnicity does come into play. A lot of us will prefer to be taken care of by some one with similar ethnic background for many reasons. If all law makers, journalists, medical docs are belong to only one ethinic group, I am not sure that is good thing. Also very few white or asian medical doctors are like to serve in the poor black community. American medical association (AMA) has found black doctors are likely to serve in those communities. So AMA endose affirmative action based on this finding even though AMA is largely conservative politically.

On the other hand, natural science fields are more concerned with new discoveries or new designs which cause little ethinic inequalities or injustice.The work usually benefit all members of society maybe even all mankind. For example, if you want to develope a new rocket, you really dont care about person's ethnicity as long as the person is the brightest one.

With humanitarian value in mind and also progress of human society, the solution is like this:

1.For social science or service related fields, affirmative action is nessesary to ensure social justice.

2. For natural science, affirmative action is not nessessary. You only need the brightest to get job done.

This might not be the best solution. But we need to consider all aspect of life to make flexible decision regarding affirmative action. Cookie cutter policy is rigid way to handle such complicated issue.