SmashMouth

The U.S. Supreme Court is taking up a challenge to a University of Texas program that considers race in some college admissions. The case could produce new limits on affirmative action at universities, or roll it back entirely.
The university says the program that fills roughly a quarter of its incoming classes uses race among many factors and argues that is necessary to provide the kind of diverse educational experience the high court has previously endorsed. The rest of its slots go to students who are admitted based on their class rank, without regard to race.
Opponents of the program say the university is practicing illegal discrimination by considering race at all.
Justice Elena Kagan is not taking part, probably because she worked on the case at the Justice Department.


Read more: Supreme Court takes up affirmative action case | Fox News

Crusader

Its always good when these kind of things ge looked at from a legal standpoint. We have had the same discussion in Sweden for certain college programs but not because of race but because of gender.

I can see reasons for why gender or race shouldn't be a factor, if you are the best you should get a spot right? What have been discovered over here is that certain entry tests are not well suited for one gender while it favours the other, same thing has happened with a test that had a high rate of failure among immigrants.

Say its a teaching program and this leads to a majority of all teachers being white "pure" swedish women, would this be a good thing for coming genrations? Not neccessarily, our country is a mixture of all kinds of people and I think our childrens teachers should be too. For an instance like this I could se affamitive action being a good thing.

But if you would do the same thing with say fire fighters and (which has been discussed in Sweden) make easier physical demands for women when testing I think its a problem because it might cause a risk for a persons life. Hardly no woman could pick me (6'4" 26lbs) up if I was unconsious in a smoke-filled burning room. A big man could thou.

So I guess my point is that affirmative action doesn't automatically have to be a bad thing but I think it has to be carefully applied.

You kids get off my lawn!