It's unfortunate...

[A Black Falcon]

Actually, I think the idea of changing the criteria from race to wealth is a great idea, because the benefits one would get in such a way from being poor can be eliminated if that person obtains a higher tax bracket. I wish affirmative action would not continue, but I accept that affirmative action will continue. What I hope is that it can be phased out over time as society in general becomes more progressive. As Justice O'Connor said in her announcement, she hopes that in about 25 years, affirmative action will no longer be necessary.

In any case, you bring up a great point about wealth, and it should definitely be the determining factor in affirmative action, and not skin color. After all, it is harder for a poor white person to get into college than a middle-class black person. Do middle-class and wealthy blacks really need extra help? No, not nearly as much as a poor person would.

Its probably somewhat of a factor already, but it should be made more important... because affirmative action exists to make up for our unfair society and most of the ones in the unfair category are poor minorities. But poor whites probably should benefit more too... not as much as minorities (because they don't have to deal with the less powerful but still there in many circles color barrier), but its there and they have trouble with these things too.

But we do need affirmative action as well because that wouldn't make up for the whole difference. In the future it might become less useful,

Oh, and given your opinion on poverty I'm suprised you'd support this...

ABF, your liberal hypocracy shines through. You think it's a worse idea for kids to be exposed to religion than it is for them to recieve a decent education. What would be nice is if education was completely privatized and the government's role reduced to merely supervisory, because public education is a failure, by and large, and lack of funding is only one reason for that. Another, much more major reason is the constant lowering of educational standards, a liberal idea meant to reduce discrimination against lazy and stupid students, which leads to grade inflation and other such nonsense. Since liberal education reforms began, public education has tailspinned, and it's so bad now that it might not be possible to fix.

I very much believe in vouchers, and those vouchers should be used for the parents' choice of private schools. That way, the child recieves a decent education, and they can choose whether or not their child attends parochial school or secular school, since they will use the vouchers as they see fit. Privatization of education would force higher standards from both teachers and students.

No, no, I have nothing against sending your children to whatever school you want... the problem is state funding of a religious institution. The federal government should NEVER be paying catholic private schools! That is a blatant preach of the seperation of school and state and the fact that it is allowed now in some fashion is a very bad sign for the future of upholding the constitution... yeah, its true -- a bit of it still does exist, despite so many attempts to the contrary from right-wing Republicans...

And saying that liberals degraded our schools is laugable. They most certainly did not. Liberals always try their best to fund the schools as much as possible, as opposed to the conservatives who want to cut school funding as much as they can... its absolutely absurd to blame anything on liberals when its Republicans who cut school budgets so relentlessly, Republicans who instituted that stupid No Child Left Behind Act which has hurt more than it has or will help, and brought us to the point now where they now want to "fix" the problem by letting all the better students leave those schools and have the state pay for them to go to catholic school.

I don't think so.