I'll try to explain it the same way it was explained to me. I may not do a good job, but I will try.
Imagine a foot-race. The distance is 18 miles. However, instead of everyone starting on the same line, some people start on a line that is ahead of others, and some start on a line behind others. Everyone's starting line is laid out in a different place, though some are separated by mere inches, while others are separated by many miles, and everything in between. Everyone runs only 18 miles. This means that their finish lines are all in different places, too. When they finish, some people are still ahead of others, and some are still behind.
Now, imagine that there are prizes for those who finish out in front. The people whose starting lines were set miles behind those of the front-runners will never win those prizes unless someone helps them or changes the rules, because they are handicapped from the outset by their starting places. Since the runners cannot decide where they will start, the help must be given to them at the end of the race. They must be allowed to "catch up" to the front runners in some way, so they can have an equal shot at those prizes.
This analogy is a very simplified form of what happens in the U.S. from birth to high-school graduation. If you start out as a child in poverty, and you attend low-quality, under-funded schools, live in depressed neighborhoods, deal with high crime rates, and have poor nutrition and medical care, then you are already handicapped compared to kids who start out middle-class or better, attending well-funded, well-run schools, living in safe neighborhoods, and having access to good food, good medical care, and so forth.
Affirmative Action is one help-plan established to try to make things more equal. The problem is that you can't fix the race at the end and call that equality. You have to do something, or many things, so that people can all start out on the same line, or darned close to it. Affirmative Action is better than doing nothing, but it will never make the starting lines even. Until that is done, the Race race can never be run equally. I mean, if the fastest runner is placed two miles behind the slowest, but both are allowed to run only 18 miles, it doesn't matter how fast (read: smart) either of them actually is; the guy who starts in front, ends in front, even if it takes him two days to get there instead of two hours.
The changes you are talking about must come from many areas, all at once. How do we lift everyone from poverty? The practical answer is that we can't. We are always going to have poor people and rich people.
If you are poor, your nutrition suffers. When you are a child with a developing brain, this can be disasterous. All children, in order to be equal, must have the same high nutrition level, which will increase the relative equality of their neural development. All children must be born to non-drug/alcohol using parents. All children must have relatively equal housing, clothing, and medical care, from conception on. All children must live in relative safety, from both their own families and from strangers.
This is a practical impossibility, especially in a country this size, and at the present time, with present attitudes and distribution of resources.
Can we make sure every child gets the same level of nutrition? Well, we do have programs in place here, like food stamps and food banks, but many people complain that's unfair. "Everyone should have to work for his money, like I do!" Yeah, well.....
You said, in respose to my statement that only 3% of all editors are black,
Sure, if the reasons are based on racial concepts and not education/skills. That's why it is so important that we know exactly what we base our segregation - and I use that word deliberately - of races on.
Racial concepts often determine our education and skills. They are intertwined issues. If you live in a poor neighborhood, with run-down, underfunded schools, where there are very few computers, and outdated, torn-up textbooks, and teachers who are burnt-out or undereducated themselves, and your nutrition/brain development is poor, and on top of all that you are not white, then you are penalized from the outset.
You can do things to change your circumstance, but usually as an adult, after the race has been run.
The only way I know how to change this, myself, is to do what I've done since I came to this forum: try to get skeptics to question their assumptions about race and equality, try to get people to see each aspect of the issue, and try to help people see that overt racism is not the same problem as covert, systemic, institutionalized racism. Try to get people to see that there is such a thing in the first place. I keep trying. One person at a time.
If you have a better solution that will address not only the problems I have outlined, but also the many problems I haven't even touched on yet, many of us would be very glad to hear it!
