Comment by cortesoft

> That JFK quote is not what it means.

That is literally where the term comes from. It isn't a quote, it was an executive order. That language is what it legally meant.

> It means denying access to limited places in education based on race.

Every person accepted is a denial to someone else. As you said, there are limited spaces. If you define it as a right to have a space at that school, then by definition you have to deny some people their rights, since you can't accept all of them.

Affirmative action means you are supposed to factor in the existing disadvantages that minorities face when deciding between two candidates. It doesn't mean accepting a less qualified candidate, it means acknowledging that our previous methods for choosing between candidates was inherently discriminatory already, and in order to counteract that, we need to take 'affirmative action' to make things more fair.

You can always argue about what criteria should be used to choose between two comparable candidates, there is no such thing as a perfectly 'objective' evaluation. Even if you chose to base everything on a test score, you still have to decide what goes on the test and how the questions are worded. There is no way to do that that is perfectly fair for everyone, even if we accepted the premise that test scores are an accurate and fair measure for choosing who to accept to a school.

Why shouldn't the pervasive, clear, and systemic racism and discrimination that many minorities face be used as a factor when determining school acceptance? How is ignoring that reality 'more fair', and how is acknowledging and compensating for that reality a 'denial of rights' to anyone? Wouldn't it be a worse denial of rights to ignore the discrimination and racism, and making decisions as if the world wasn't the way it is?