the project gets political
I try avoid political statements, but I'm tired of affirmative action foes who just refuse to see the other side under the aegis of protecting "high quality." For those people (and to get this out of my non-white, female system), I'll try for a simple explanation by way of example.

For three months at the suburban paper I used to work for, I put together the weekly entertainment "planner" section, a color two-page spread with dates, times, and pictures of local entertainment. Since the Suburb was near the Big City, it would have been easy to fill the page with "quality" entertainment: the ballet, the opera, book signings, plays, museum installations and other pastimes that are socially redeeming, are good for you, and which I love. But me and some other psuedointellectuals would have been the only people in that metropolitan area who would have read that page.

So, instead of filling the page with Masterpiece Theatre, I found mime acts, community musical theater (alarmingly common in the Suburb), rock concerts, comedians, jazz shows, the circus, Celine Dion, as well as the art galleries, the book signings, the modern interpretive dance. I had to make sure we had a balance of entertainment, that we had something for every day, and that we had at least 14 photos.

Obviously, not all of the high-brow, reedeeming entertainment made it in, to make room for all the other stuff. And high-brow or low-brow, if you could give me a color photo that wasn't too similar to the other ones, I gave you a second look. And everything had to be to me by two Wednesdays (I think) ahead of time.

This is a long anecdote to say that looking for the "best" sometimes begs the question, in the Aristotelian sense. People with a notion of finding only the "best" are in danger of hiring people who bring the same type of experiences, opinions and ideas. In other words: irrelevancy to everything outside the group.

While the unqualified always should be disqualified, the "most qualified" are not always those with the most acheivement or skill or letters behind their names. They are those who fill the gap of whatever the group needs in order to be vital and relevant. And being vital and relevant helps everyone in that group in the long term.

Sometimes that means considering things and people that otherwise might be outside of one's comfort zone.

America is the egalitarian land of the lucky: being the right person, in the right place at the right time. Achievement can increase rp-rp-rt, but often the opportunity to be the in right place at the right time still boils down to the random luck of being privileged.

Affirmative action is not about hiring unqualified people. Like putting out that entertainment planner, it's about reconsidering the rules of right person, right place, right time.