Affirmative Action: Pointers for essay?

[robotic]

i'm writing a first-year term paper for political science on the concept of equality (and how it can be contradicted, obscured etc.) and decided to write on 'affirmative action in north america'. since the subject is so broad, i wasn't too sure what to concentrate on. what do you think are the fundamental events, or facts that i could talk about (especially in regards to asian-americans or the asian diaspora)? any help would be muchlyy appreciated <3

[haplesshobo]

You might try this thread since it might have something that might interest you:

http://forums.yellowworld.org/showthread.php?t=24015&highlight=affirmative+action

[SunWuKong]

i'm writing a first-year term paper for political science on the concept of equality (and how it can be contradicted, obscured etc.) and decided to write on 'affirmative action in north america'. since the subject is so broad, i wasn't too sure what to concentrate on. what do you think are the fundamental events, or facts that i could talk about (especially in regards to asian-americans or the asian diaspora)? any help would be muchlyy appreciated <3

you could narrow it to specifically affirmative action in education in either the US or Canada. i assume the system is a little different between the US and Canada. and while affirmative action is often talked about in the context of higher education, it exists in business and the corporate world as well.

to further narrow it down, i suggest the topic of the effect of affirmative action in the Canadian higher education system on First Nations people.

[VV o n g B a]

i know i'm prolly starting to sound like a broken record on genes, but i do think it could be relevant. we discussed some of it here:

http://forums.yellowworld.org/showthread.php?t=33825

the issue is that affirmative action is currently at least partially based on the assumption that society/history has a significant effect on education that can be counteracted w/ the proper social policies. the underlying assumption here is that human populations are more or less biologically the same, including cognitive ability. however recently there have been findings like this (http://manollasa.blogspot.com/2007/11/genes-affecting-human-intelligence.html) that call that into question (the blog author is south asian btw). the fact that any genes at all affecting iq (and there are certainly many more than the ones identified in the post) are not distributed equally across populations means that there's a chance that biological equality does not hold for cognitive abilities. the implications for aa in north america are significant.

however, malaysian aa was based on the assumption that populations are inherently unequal and therefore the less productive group should get benefits. if aa is to be kept in north america, the underlying reasons to keep it might need to change when faced w/ ongoing genetic research.

[raacluse]

i'm writing a first-year term paper for political science on the concept of equality (and how it can be contradicted, obscured etc.) and decided to write on 'affirmative action in north america'. since the subject is so broad, i wasn't too sure what to concentrate on. what do you think are the fundamental events, or facts that i could talk about (especially in regards to asian-americans or the asian diaspora)? any help would be muchlyy appreciated <3

Don't know what you've decided to write about, but if you're interested in the american educational system and affirmative action, I suggest reading the following:

Color and Money; how rich white kids are winning the war over college affirmative action by Peter Schmidt, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007

The Big Test by Nicholas Lemann, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999