How about when Joe Employer runs a factory that uses unskilled labor? If 30% of the town is black the factory should have somewhere in the 25%-35% range of black employees. If it’s 1 out of 100, there’s some serious discrimination going on.

When cops stop 10 times as many black motorists as white motorists, there’s reason to investigate why.

I realize that the GOP misses the good old days when blacks sat at the back of the bus, and whites sat at the lunch counters. Those days are gone. And if the GOP keeps up this support of institutionalized bigotry, it will soon follow.

Uncle Sam to Joe Employer: “You’re not instituting affirmative action.”

Joe Employer: “Yes, I am.”

Uncle Sam: “No, you aren’t. You have 100 employees, and only one is black.”

Joe Employer. “Well, no qualified black people applied.”

Uncle Sam: “Bull****. Here’s what were going to do. next time we check up on you, you better have hired three more black people.”

That’s how you enforce affirmative action, otherwise, there’s no point in even bothering implementing affirmative action as a policy.

affirmative action to PREVENT institutionalize discrimination is not “racial quotas”. The racial quotas argument was developed by racists to preserve white supremacy. Please find an argument with a better pedigree.

Consent is not as strong as you imply. It merely means to have no strong objection that would disqualify the applicant. You can consent to things that you neither hardily support nor vigorously object to. That’s the problem with the extreme right-wingers. They’re incapable of recognizing the middle ground.

Qualifications should not be the sole criteria, as there may be other reasons for the objection. For example, Robert Bork was completely nuts and out of touch with responsible judicial thought. Clarence Thomas was so minimal in his qualifications that he should have been dismisses as it would be difficult to swing a cat in a freshman law school classroom without hitting a better jurist.

Sotomayor is immensely qualified. An ALL-white, ALL-male court is INCAPABLE of understanding the Constitutional protections, because they haven’t been part of a group that needed protecting and can’t deeply understand the small ways in which bigots chip away at the rights of minorities.

Peggy- If this is the best you’ve got, you might as well drop out of the race now. You have fundamental misunderstandings of basic functions of government.
Pennsylvania rejected Bush, Rick Santorum, John McCain and Sarah Palin for good reasons.