Is tolerance intolerant?

[tackattack]

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What I'm against is unmerited discrimination, which happens when you put affirmative action into action with a bunch of biased people running the show.

If you're against unmerited discrimination, then you should be for affirmative action (not against). No affirmative action means continued unmerited discrimination whereby the privileged continue to be favored when it comes to preferable things such as top university admissions and high-status positions.

And being biased against unmerited discrimination isn't a bad thing. The problem is that there are people who are doing whatever they can to get rid of affirmative action and trying to feed people (with the help of conservative media) all sorts of falsehoods about it.

There are biases on both sides with white privilege and being x in America (fill in gay, trans, black, asian, a woman, whatever).  Here's where the practical application fails:
1. People have not been treated equal
2. Overcome inequality with discrimination
3. pendulum swings the other way.
4. repeat

Where is the failure exactly? The expectation is that the pendulum eventually settles in the middle. Of course, success isn't going to happen overnight. But these issues need to be addressed for any real change to occur.

It's a never ending cycle and doesn't look like it's a fix but a perpetuation of discrimination.

Stop kidding yourself, man. This ain't discrimination what you're referring to. Reversing discrimination isn't itself discrimination.

The best scores/qualifiers are based on abilities, potential, and knowledge.

The "right" academic knowledge is often times culturally biased.

I just don't agree that the color of a person's skin or their life history (where it doesn't inform a related opinion) is worth anything more then me qualifying a person for their hair or the color of shirt they wore.

What you don't seem to understand is that perceived skin color has been in the way of many minorities in attaining the same chances of success as those not affected societally/academically/occupationally by their perceived skin color.

Possibly a side topic but, How can you support standardized testing, and not see a gap for equality there? If the underprivileged can prove they're underprivileged why not weight their test scores, or give them tests specific to their abilities? Because then the test isn't standard, and there is no equanimity.

These standardized tests are geared toward white students. Something does need to be done about that, and that's where affirmative action plays an important part. But it isn't just about tests, but also about better opportunities in life.

If affirmative action was promoting (in action) better tests and better qualifiers I would agree with it a lot more, instead it just fuels the race debate.

The race debate is necessary because people aren't race-blind like you and bennyboy like to think. Racial minorities don't enjoy the benefits as much as the privileged white majority exactly because we - as a society - subconsciously (if not consciously) identify people by race and skin color and such. To act like racism will just go away if we just blind ourselves to race is a little disingenuous, at best.

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I don't think it's disingenuous at all. In my daily dealings, I rarely see the person I'm talking to, so their skin color doesn't matter. I can appreciate that it's difficult for some, in some places to "walk down the street being black". I can appreciate that people are classifying machines and tend to categorize people based on biases. What you are shouldn't matter, but it does. That's my prevailing point. People don't have to be race-blind to choose how they react to people. I'm not race blind, I'm white. I see a black person and I don't automatically lock my doors or say "Wat UP my homie". I don't treat them any different than I do anyone else and I don't act differently because of their color or mine. You can see race and NOT factor that into your behavior. You can see underprivileged and have compassion and NOT factor that into your value assessment of that person. None of us know the entirety of people we talk to. I could have a conversation with a woman stranger who is a rape victim, or lesbian, or trans and it wouldn't make one bit of difference in how I act towards that person, or rate them for a job. The difference is between identity and value assessment. I can identify race and inequality without giving it a weighted value. Reversing discrimination using discrimination is discriminatory, which I illustrated above. Reversing discrimination with understanding, justice and compassion doesn't have to be discriminatory.