A lot of people don't believe that Americans of today should be liable for the actions of Americans then. But none of us today were alive at the time America consented to the Constitution, just as none of us today were alive at the time America imported millions of blacks into slavery. Yet we are nonetheless bound by the agreement our forefathers made in 1789! The document attesting to that agreement is also the document that protected and enshrined slavery in America for several more generations. I believe we are bound by that too. I believe the government created in that document, which still exists today, is bound by the obligation created by its sanctioning of slavery just as it is bound by treaties entered into at the time or treasury bonds issued at the time.

It is of course impossible to try to remedy all the mistakes of the past. But that doesn't mean it is pointless to try and remedy any mistakes of the past. And this is a big one that still has lasting and major effects today.

Do we try to "correct" it so there are literally no poor people of a particular ethnicity? How realistic is that?

We just had a black man elected to his second term as president, so I think that's a pretty good sign we aren't that racist. This wouldn't have happened a few decades ago.

Sir, I say this with as much respect as I can muster: Absent significant study, it is absolutely not the place of someone who is a member of the racial majority to declare the extent or impact of racism. You simply have no idea what you're talking about.

A mixed race man was, indeed, elected to high office. He was elected over the objections of people who claimed him to be, among other things:

- A Kenyan

- A secret muslim

- A liar inelegible for the presidency under the terms of Section I, Article II of the United States constitution

These claims have been made and repeated for over four years. They are made, in part, because Barack Obama looks different from the men who have previously run the country. They are repeated because that fact scares the absolute shit out of a certain subset of the country.

Racism – far from vanquished – has proven to be a politically expedient tool. (Though, thankfully, one with toxic side effects.)

Have we made progress since the civil war and the civil rights movement? Yeah.

But racism is an ugly, nasty force that persists in both overt and subtle ways. It's not over. And for the people who must still grapple with its effects, it's a big problem.

I think we're at least another generation away from that word being expunged from common discourse.

The opposite is also true: "Absent significant study, it is absolutely not the place of someone who is a member of the racial minority to declare the extent or impact of racism." Why not say simply it is not the place of someone to declare the extent or impact of racism without study?

Also I believe you are assuming the race of the parent. For all you know they could be a member of a racial minority.

More to the point what is our goal WRT racism? To eliminate associating traits with a person purely based on their race that are not backed up by a correlation? If that's the case affirmative actively works against that goal.

You believe incorrectly. I did my homework.

http://geekpolitics.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/derekclar...

But the rest of silliness about white people having it harder than minorities was the giveaway.

> The opposite is also true: "Absent significant study, it is absolutely not the place of someone who is a member of the racial minority to declare the extent or impact of racism." Why not say simply it is not the place of someone to declare the extent or impact of racism without study?

Being a minority can be a graduate level course on the extent and impact of racism. In America, most blacks and hispanics have had ample time to study up, sadly. And if you're from anywhere in the vicinity of the Middle East, god help you.

My apologizes you did your fact checking.

> Being a minority can be a graduate level course on the extent and impact of racism. In America, most blacks and hispanics have had ample time to study up, sadly. And if you're from anywhere in the vicinity of the Middle East, god help you.

That could all be correct however the person would still lack perspective and sample size. Without studying it on a large scale you could never be sure.

You also ignored my question of what is the goal in the end. My personal end goal is to have no one look at a person and label/judge them based on characteristic without facts to back it up and I think affirmative action takes us away from that.

I grew up poor, light skin (white?) part Scottish descent small part Native American Indian. I trained myself to get into the profession I love, buying my own books and writing code in several languages for a dozen years on the side while maintaining a full time job and family, before I started writing code for pay.

No one person in America deserves more than any one else based on the color of their skin.

People of marginalized groups are often much more familiar with racism and what is and isn't racist than people of privileged groups. It's like talking about sports with a sports fanatic and someone not that into sports. One person is going to know a lot more than the other.

If you are white the odds are massively stacked in your favor. That doesn't mean you can't lose, but it's less likely. All AA does is fudge the odds a bit in the other direction. No more.

Just stopping to discriminate would do nothing – because that's for the most part not the reason why the odds are stacked against minorities. Structural racism is the reason. Society is constructed in a way that leaves minorities with less opportunities, that decreases their odds. Individuals changing their behavior cannot address that problem.

The reason they have less opportunities is a structural problem, but it is not because of racism. Maybe it grew out of that, and it probably did, but at some point when they stopped you have to change yourself. The problem is lack of a family structure. The stats of black single mothers living in poverty vs. other races is unbelievable. We have to get fathers back to change this dynamic. I suspect racism and the things that caused along the way contributed to this, but now it is just that way because it's been that way. If you can turn this around, you can turn around a lot of communities, get rid of a lot of poverty, and provide as many opportunities as anyone could want for the black community.

Do you accept that the median salary if you are black is less that 2/3 of that if you are white?

You comment on the stats of single mothers in poverty, say we need to turn it around, then and pretend it's an easy problem to solve when these communities don't have the money to fund programs at a local level (since they, you know, live in poverty), coupled with a history of racism and neglect at the state level, and you just say "well it's not really a problem because more white people are poor and we should end affirmative action"

Affirmative action seems pretty targeted to me. Sure white people don't really get affirmative action (that's not really true because there's all sorts of advantages you for just being poor), but life's not always exactly fair.

Thanks for at least refraining from using the N word.

This is patently false. If you're white, you're at a huge advantage from birth. It's trivial to find data supporting this.

In general, averaging across all of America, I'm certain it's an advantage to be white. I'm also certain it's an advantage to grow up to rich parents. I'm also certain it's an advantage to grow up in a good school district. It's also and advantage to grow up in a 2 parent household. It's an advantage to not grow up in the ghetto, white or black.

Life isn't fair, but at the end of the day at some point you have to be accountable for your decisions and all you can do is your best. Picking a winner based on skin color is not the right answer. We should always be picking the absolutely most qualified person for everything. That is something that clearly doesn't happen enough.

Hiring through AA is _intentionally_ suboptimal. The whole point is to give members of disadvantaged communities access to opportunities they are less qualified for in the hope that they, and by extensions their communities, will over time become _less_ _disadvantaged_.

There are more important things in this universe than efficiency.

Merely looking like those who hold power is, in fact, a huge advantage.

Let me change the subject slightly, people who are tall and good looking have more opportunity and success than those that aren't. No one, even you, are making purely rational decisions based on merit. All of us make decisions that are influenced by things we aren't aware of.

Imagine that. All kinds of people leaving in poverty and having disadvantaged lives.

White Americans constitute 74% of America.

Thus African Americans are more than twice as likely to live under the poverty line. Those are not I odds I would like to gamble with had I been born black.

You won a lottery when you were born.

Is anyone really against the idea that all 49 million need help?

This is obviously a tough issue, but edge cases are important. There is too much noise in the statistics.

In these circumstances, some of us disagree with you.

Humans are shallow creatures.

Yes the level of racism is probably going down. However that doesn't mean it's at zero now.

Can't tell if I'm getting trolled here...

Another way to think about it: Wealth (and power) is often passed down through generations, through families, from parents to children. Most people are fine with this. Hence people now who are advantaged might be likely to have benefited from slavery in the past, when it was passed down. Why is the wealth allowed to be passed down, but not the responsibility?

If, on the other hand, the US government wants to help disadvantaged people gain a level economic footing with the rest of the population they should use a much better predictor of disadvantage than skin color.

Then we could get to the indians who actually _met_ someone of European descent and were harmed as a result.

By the time we're finished with the indians we can give what's left to other less disadvantaged groups.

How much money do you think a few generations' of slavery is worth?

> If, on the other hand, the US government wants to help disadvantaged people gain a level economic footing with the rest of the population they should use a much better predictor of disadvantage than skin color.

Would you like to suggest one?

    How much money do you think a few generations' of slavery is worth?

    Would you like to suggest one?

At the time my grandfather was getting his medical degree and building his law library (in the 1930's and 1940's--he had my mom at a late age), blacks in this country were systematically oppressed. They were prevented from voting, they were prevented from going to school, they were prevented from holding anything more than menial jobs. At the time my grandfather was building a social inheritance to pass down to his children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, blacks were being attacked with firehoses by the government for daring to fight for the barest of equal rights.

My grandfather has been dead for more than 20 years, but his legacy is going to reach out to at least another generation. When my little girl asks why she should do her homework, I will tell her about her great grandfather, her grand uncles and aunts, and how she should study hard so she can be a doctor like them. So too does the legacy of institutional discrimination reach out over the generations.

A poor white person and a poor black person (assuming they can trace their history back to the slaves) are not in the same boat. One is in his plight because of the vagracies of the economy, the luck of the draw, etc. For the other, at least part of his socioeconomic situation, some identifiable component, can be traced back to the systematic discrimination and oppression suffered by his ancestors at the hands of the still-extant state and federal governments.

So no, just basing efforts on socioeconomics generally is not enough. It's not the same.

But then you talk about a poor white person and compare him to a poor black person saying they're not in the same boat. What does this poor white person have to do with your successful white family? That whole story is not relevant to this person as an individual.

We can see that on a historic scale the entire group of people that can trace back to slavery was more hard done by than others. But that means nothing to this poor white person. In fact, he may have suffered oppression by government in some other form. He may have just shown up during slavery fleeing a war-torn country, or political or religious imprisonment. Or this government may have falsely imprisoned his grandfather years ago. On a large scale it's nothing like the systemic oppression of slavery, but the point is, he doesn't feel responsible for any of the other guy's issues.

It is well known that the government in the past was in the wrong. But when it comes down to individuals, it's going to be difficult for someone to accept that a guy living next door scraping by on food stamps gets a boon from the government every month, and they don't, simply because they are white. I see your point, that the white person's problems are less attributable to the government than the black person's. But I don't think that this is the way to stamp out racism or even make people feel any better about the past. I think this is the wrong way to go about fixing things.

I think it would be better to make a big deal about government racism and punish it going forward in a very serious way. I think people will appreciate ongoing work to punish current and future offenders much more than a handout for wrongs past.

Also, helping those who are economically challenged based on their economic situation makes more sense than trying to correctly and accurately attribute their economic situation to their race and offenses from decades past. The government is going to end up helping some poor white people in this case along with helping some poor black people. I don't think that's a bad thing.

Unfortunately, in this scenario some black people aren't going to be helped. In fact, even some black people who can directly trace their history back to slaves aren't going to get help because they aren't sufficiently poor today. That's not ideal, but hopefully they would appreciate that going forward, racism is being discouraged and at least some attempts are being made to assist the less fortunate.

Obviously there is no silver bullet here, and there will never be complete agreement on how to deal with this. But I absolutely do not think that continuing to make decisions and policy based on race is the way to show that racism is not okay. It's a completely toxic way of thinking that needs to be eliminated - especially from government.

My point is that, but for the actions of our society in the 1930's an 1940's, there would be many more black Americans who could tell the same story as me. But systematic denial of privilege is passed down from generation to generation just as privilege is passed down from generation to generation, and that denial is the inheritance of every black American who can trace his ancestry back to those times.

Your attempt to create equivalencies between poor blacks and poor whites misses one crucial fact: our government did not systematically oppress and deny opportunity to the ancestors of poor whites. If the government burns down my house, then my neighborhood suffers flooding because of a hurricane, I am not made whole by the government addressing the flood damage. I am not satisfied with the government's attempts to "forget the past" and treat my case as no more important than that of every other person affected by the flooding. That makes no sense.

Oh, come on. Think a little. Let's say your entire family was enslaved and made to work on a plantation for a few generations. How much money would you want for that? Why offer the alternative if you can't come up with a number?

Let's say I discovered that my great great grandfather was a slave. Let's say I somehow got paid $250,000 for that. What could I do with that money? If I'm careful, I could live on it for four or five years, maybe a few more, likely a lot less, then it's gone, and where am I? Right where I was to begin with.

Nice way of trying to distract from the main issue. We are talking about a very specific case. Blacks right now are still suffering from systematic oppression against them for hundreds of year. To ignore that and pretend that it is no big deal because it has happened before doesn't mean that we should not try to fix the problem. Frankly is disgusting the way you are dismissive of the current state of black people which is a direct consequence of hundreds of years of oppression which was not even that long ago.

>>Because there is no number

Sure there is, to claim otherwise is moronic. People are simply unwilling to pay. Affirmative action is a small price and still prcks like you think it is too much. Racist prck.

That was my point, yes.

> then it's gone, and where am I? Right where I was to begin with.

Much better to, say, send you to college and make sure you get employed so that it's easier for you to maintain a life of your own choosing, isn't it?

What would you suggest? All methods of trying to measure "disadvantage-ness" will be flawed (including race/ethnicity ones). I mentioned this in this comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4758649

There are plenty of worse methods.

Corporations and colleges are still biased against race, because the demographics of corporations do not reflect the population as a whole, and if they were hiring correctly, they would.

On other words - if 20% of the general population of 300 million people is a certain race, it stands to reason that corporations and colleges should mirror that. But they do not. The applicant ration is the same, but the actual hiring ratio is much, much smaller. Where do work? In an office? Stand up and look around and tell me if 20% of your coworkers are black. It should be pretty close.

It isn't.

No engineer or mathematician would argue this - if everyone hired entirely based on qualifications your workforce would directly represent the population at large.

Law of averages in a perfectly unbiased hiring world would make this so.

Why? African-Americans on average have lower incomes and thus lower high school educational attainment.

You should be treating the root cause (low-income) instead of implementing a plan that benefits the children of well-off African-Americans and the children of African immigrants to a greater degree than it benefits the children of low-income African-Americans (because those kinds of African-Americans are more likely to meet the minimum qualifications and benefit from the extra boost of affirmative action), a system that also detracts from the opportunities of poor whites and Asian-Americans, as affirmative action is inherently a zero-sum game.

There are women-only universities, historically black universities, universities that focus on arts and universities that focus on music. Why should the employee demographics of a coal mine be the same as the demographics of a hospice?

You can't turn back time and undo abuse. Trying to do so is just a waste of resources. In the race metaphor, the solution would be to just make sure everyone starts on a even footing in the next heat. In real life, I would say that means making sure all children have equal access to healthcare and education, regardless of their parents' income or circumstances. I don't see why race-based policies are necessary to achieve this.

Sure you can. The ancestors of those slaves are still suffering from that abuse. Your willful blindness is disgusting. The truth is that you are a racist. Only a racist would ignore all logic and pretend that the blacks of today are not a product of the slavery of yesterday. That the reason that they are poor and disadvantage compared to whites is because of the systematic oppression against them for hundreds of years. And the fact that many people agree with your comments shows that we are still infected with racism. Not as bad as before, but still going. You are proof of it.

And yes I'm angry, angry that racists people like you pretend that they are not racists.

If you define anyone who disagrees with you as a racist, I agree, the world will never be rid of racism.

So instead of affirmative action, radical income and property redistribution? I've never heard communism put forth as an alternative to affirmative action, but I'm all for it.

It seems like there's two lines of discussion around this topic. One, as you've pointed out, is whether people should be liable for the actions of past Americans (ie, whether something like affirmative action should exist in the first place). The second is whether affirmative action is the best way to remedy the mistakes of the past. It seems (to me) like a lot of people disagree more on the second point.

Baring some large redistribution of wealth the most effective thing we can do is to remove all the barriers that we can and encourage improvement.

There are many people who are direct descendants of slaves who don't qualify for affirmative action and there are people who's families moved here in the 70s who do qualify.

We need to stimulate the black belt, the effects of racism are highly geographical.

I like the two supers up poster on this. Target lower socioeconomic individuals born into poor areas with intellectually hostile circumstances. Don't discriminate on that.

The circumstances that brought the current crop of humanity to populate the Earth were beyond our collective wills. We just need to deal with what we were dealt to the best of our ability. That doesn't include trying to right racism and discrimination for 300 - 5000 years by doing the inverse.

There are several definitions of racism, one is essentially "making references to someone's race and implying everyone in that group is the same (in some attribute)", or more simply "anything based on race". Lots of people like this definition because it's a nice, simple and objective defintion and it means black people in the USA can be racist to white people, or that affirmative action is racist. I think this is the definition you're using.

There's another definition, which is that racist actions are actions that's designed to maintain & reinforce the institutionalised power structure among races. Right now, if modern USA life was a video game, "white male" would be an easier difficulty level than "black male". There are statistically less problems for the "white male" group. Racist actions is talk that re-enforced that imbalance, and attempts to undo the power imbalance is not racist. This definition is harder for some people to accept because it means that you need to look at yourself and think about what power imbalances you might be benefiting from, and it means that affirmative action is not racist, and attempts to stop is could be construed as racist (since stopping affirmative action can re-enforce power imbalances). This is the definition I use.

So no, affirmative action isn't racist.

America needs to put race on the sidelines and start thinking in terms of class.

Totally agree. Classism is a real and big problem.

However, the second horn seeks to correct for prejudice and descrimination, not poverty. This is not necessarily heavy-handed correction, like quotas, either. For example, one of the most effective instances is the enforcement of blind auditions for orchestras. Almost immediately after the rule was instituted, the demographics of major US orchestras shifted hugely. The point is to correct for latent, perhaps even unconcious, descrimination.

To understand how even unconcious descrimination can be self-reinforcing, consider someone hiring a new software developer. If they have a team of middle-class white male software developers and a middle class white male software developer applies, they have to give almost no thought to how they will integrate with the team. Sure, there are your corner cases, but we all share a lot of the same cultural background. With vulnerable groups, it's not the same. It requires some thought. Since we all don't like to expend mental energy on something we're not really thrilled about doing in the first place (reading resumes, interviewing, hiring), it's just so much easier to pick the white male and be done with it. By putting counterbalances in place we don't have to actually favor anybody, we just have to reduce the forcing function in the system that pushes us towards the status quo.

As others have pointed out, and as I agree with, affirmative action is for recompensing past wrongs against Blacks and Indians, who suffered slavery and Genocide, respectively.

But what about Hispanics? The affirmative action for them is entirely economic (they are poorer in general).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation

The strategy I'm talking about gives to poor and disadvantaged people regardless of their race, so if a ton of blacks are poor then they will receive the majority of the benefits.

But as an additional benefit middle and upper class minorities won't get advantages they don't need. You also won't require people to "prove" their ethnicity to be granted these benefits (or discriminated against because they aren't for example "black enough").

Here is a fun question: Exactly how black do you have to be to get affirmative action right now? Do they have like a colour wheel? How does that even work?

You said: "Affirmative action should exist; but it should be entirely based on parental income, growing up in a poor area, or other disadvantaged indicators. Not race, not ethnicity, and not gender. These things don't prove you're poor or disadvantaged." which seems quite reasonable.

He said: "Also, helping people who are affected by institutional racism is not racist, it is an attempt to correct for existing racism."

Your statement doesn't seem to acknowledge things in society contributing to future problems.

So he is saying that you have to counter current institutional *isms which still exists today. Otherwise the current biases of today will just contribute to the population of disadvantaged people of tomorrow. I think you need both approaches. Kind of a PID controller kind of solution to the problem.

I do agree with him though, you don't repay racisms of the past and present with more racism in the opposite direction.

Also, use of the legal system to remedy institutional and societal problems has really only been effective to introduce marginal change in the face of existing problems, so its not an overall solution to the problem, just a small part.

> I do agree with him though, you don't repay racisms of the past and present with more racism in the opposite direction.

This would of course assume that it is possible to be institutionally racist against the predominant white culture in the US, which is not possible. In that sense, a policy such as affirmative action is not racist and instead is a policy that combats racism.

Having a quota of minorities is passive because it's a fire and forget rule that must be met. That is still being racist, because you are discriminating applicants success based on ethnicity.

Reactive laws is really just judicial. You can't write a fire and forget rule of law and have it be anything but a passive manipulator of public policy, it doesn't have reactionary change based on circumstances like courts do.

> Also, use of the legal system to remedy institutional and societal problems has really only been effective to introduce marginal change in the face of existing problems, so its not an overall solution to the problem, just a small part.

You don't solve the hostile behaviors of cultures and groups by being racist. You solve it by criminalizing their racism and punishing those who are bigoted.

> This would of course assume that it is possible to be institutionally racist against the predominant white culture in the US, which is not possible. In that sense, a policy such as affirmative action is not racist and instead is a policy that combats racism.

I'd argue the MLB is institutionally racist against white people. There is a tremendous cultural racism thinking it requires high melanin skin content (not even necessarily African heritage) to be good in basketball. And that is a permeating cultural force that a lot of people don't argue against, they just "assume black people are better at basketball". Or how Asians are better at math because they are Asian, and not because they had strict parents who lauded over their studies.

There is plenty of institutional anti-white racism. White people can't be "street" or ideas like "white people can't dance". They are institutional, not of white culture, but other cultures. It doesn't mean it isn't racist if the majority population isn't in the culture that purports it.

I'm not saying there isn't tremendous institutional racism and sexism in the US. I'm just saying inverse bigotry that replaces merit with skin color, ethnicity, or gender is inherently wrong. When ethnic minorities and women experience less math, science, and intellectual learning, you go where they aren't getting that and give it to them, you don't take what is inherently not racial and make it so.

Racism exists, but trying to fight it with more racism is not going to help reduce the focus on race, and until people stop identifying race as a good way to classify a human, racism won't go away.

Your definition is too simplistic. Racism isn't just prejudice based on race. Racism requires a power imbalance. Acting to counteract an institutional imbalance caused by racism is not "just anotehr kind of racism."

And you can act to counteract an institutional imbalance caused by racism without furthering racism. Focus on something else. Race is being reinforced as an accepted means to classify people and that is the root cause of the problem.

This completely flies in the face of the history of racism and racism systems in the US. The most raw and visceral forms of slavery and de-facto slavery in the US are most certainly based on power imbalance. Being disproportionately affected by laws and economic policy drafted by mostly white political bodies is a power imbalance. Direct, physical actions by police forces and governments against communities of color is a power imbalance. All of these things are institutional problems regarding race the US faces today and all come back to fundamental power imbalance.

> And you can act to counteract an institutional imbalance caused by racism without furthering racism.

Absolutely true, and policies such as affirmative action do not further racism but rather attempt to fix a small aspect of it.

> Focus on something else.

This is a total derailment. Institutional oppressions are highly linked to racism, to ignore it is to dismiss the criticisms and voices of people of color point this power imbalance out.

I didn't say racism can't exist with power imbalance, I said it doesn't require it. Obviously racism, combined with a power imbalance is worse than racism without the power imbalance. But choosing who you hang out with based solely on skin color is also racist - no power imbalance.

"policies such as affirmative action do not further racism..."

Yes they do, by encouraging people to think that making decisions based on race is acceptable and in fact encouraged by the government.

"This is a total derailment. Institutional oppressions are highly linked to racism, to ignore it is to dismiss the criticisms and voices of people of color point this power imbalance out."

I didn't say it should be ignored. I said it shouldn't be the focus. You can acknowledge that racism and oppression is a problem. You can punish those who make decisions based on race, and you can show that making race an issue in your decisions is wrong - by not continuing to do it.

"Racism is usually defined as views, practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into distinct biological groups called races and that members of a certain race share certain attributes which make that group as a whole less desirable, more desirable, inferior or superior."

Wikipedia.

What your quote says: "...practices and actions reflecting the belief that humanity is divided into groups called races."

I don't see how my definition is all that far off.

That's the important part. "Using race as a classification upon which you base your actions" is not by definition racism. Just as using sex as a classification upon which to base actions is not sexism. There is a requirement that those classifications must be used to discriminate or suggest that another group is superior in order for it to be racism or sexism.

Thus your definition is wrong because you selectively ignored a key part of the actual definition.

At the same time, the poor white person benefited from that original wrong, and you can isolate, statistically, some economic advantage to him tracing back to that original wrong. It doesn't matter how poor he is, he would be incrementally poorer had that wrong not occurred.

AA is not reparations, it tries to correct for existing racism.

That is racism.

And there are other ways. You punish people who are racist and you acknowledge that as the reason for their punishment, but you help people based on their situation. If they happened to be in that situation because of previous racism, that in no way has to be taken into account in how they are treated going forward to help their current situation.

Sorry, but as soon as you use race as a means to classify another person for a decision you need to make, whether your intentions are good or not, you are being racist, and you are perpetuating the line of thought that is at the root of the problem.

In any case, according to this research, Obama's first term didn't improve racist attitudes in America.

Prejudice has risen since 2008 Obama victory:

https://bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/10/27/poll-majority...

Remember, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Ideally I'd just like to see a society where race is hardly ever even talked about. It should be as significant as hair color (as another commenter mentioned). We won't get to that point if decisions are made based on race. As soon as you do that, then others will do it. And race will never cease to be a discriminating factor in human relations.

Class mobility is essential for a healthy society. When everyone who starts life at one income level and almost always finishes life at that same income level you have an unbalance, neo-feudal society.

We live in a world where if a child's parents don't have the income or education to take them to a doctor when they get a simple inner ear infection they can be permanently disadvantaged (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otitis_media). This kind of class lock-in is what was so terrible about earlier human models of cooperation and what the Enlightenment apparently fixed. Any argument against class-based discrimination is void while poor children are going deaf and ending up with speech development problems from a curable condition that very rarely causes serious long term consequences for a child of wealthier parents.

So even absent any idea of the government "owing" a group for historical wrongs, there's (to me ) a convincing argument that affirmative action is needed. It helps break the feedback cycle.

Completely eliminating class distinctions would also break the cycle pretty quickly, but that seems staggeringly unlikely any time soon. :(