Why is it Liberals think racial discrimination is fine and conservatives think it wrong?

Discrimination is unconstitutional. Judge Sotomoyer is not qualified for the SC because she's a racist! Obama is a looser for nominating her.

The thing is, you have to understand that the Liberal perspective is that you always are "suspicious" when minorities are disadvantaged in a situation. The law was crafted in such a way that it assumed, or rather, "treated with suspicion" any test or decision regarding employment or admission that favored one race too heavily. This policy was modified in Bakke v. Regents of the University of California in 1978, stating that quotas were unconsititutional. In other words, the Liberal point of view at the time was that you had to have racial quotas to prevent racial bias from skewing the employment or entrance at educational institutions---and this was also to make up for a perceived societal disadvantage that stemmed from the vestiges of Jim Crow and even slavery (read S.Con.Res.26 at thomas.gov; the Senate explains what it feels the impact of slavery has been on minorities... and even the most conservative senators voted for this resolution). Then following the Grutter v. Bollinger decision in 2003, justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the majority, stated that there will come a time in the not so distant future when affirmative action (treating people differently because of their race) will no longer be required. She pulled a number out of thin air... 25 years as I recall... which seems as good as any and rather praactical... just like her. I digress... Anyways, that means that as of 2003 affirmative action's days are numbered, but the threat to it isn't immediate. In Gratz v. Bollinger, the SCOTUS ruled that a point system, even though it wasn't a quota system, was "too mechanistic in its use of race as a factor in admissions, and was therefore unconstitutional."[1] THEN... (sorry this is taking forever), just recently, the SCOTUS ruled that employers cannot void the results of tests for promotion or employment simply because minorities did poorly on those tests (or so I understand... I'm just in college... not law school).

Sigh... this is a very complicated issue, but speaking as a liberal... Affirmative action in education and employment was never, and WILL NEVER, be a clean solution. It's a messy remedy to an even messier problem. I mean, how DO you make up for the enslavement of a whole ethnic group and the repression of several others? How do you correct for the fact that a person born into poverty is likely to stay in poverty for the rest of their lives... when it isn't their fault... Sigh... sometimes i feel as though we should switch from race based affirmative action to wage-based affirmative action, but that would open up a whole different can of worms...

I'm sorry. I think that I am probably leaving you with more questions than answers, but please understand that nobody, NOBODY is truly in love with the current solution.

PS listen to Nina Totenberg's NPR piece at npr.org if you want to hear more about the case today. I hate to break it to you, but FOX news will only let you understand part of what happened, and it will completely avoid/ignore WHY it happened in the first place.

PPS Even though we disagree, I encourage you to continue asking difficult questions. It keeps aspiring political hacks like me on their toes and it is the lifeblood of Democracy---especially when you focused on the facts of your question and not some ideological poppycock (kudos for that one). :-)

Liberals want the disadvantaged to succeed no matter what - they don't care about merit. They're the type of people that go to kid's sporting events and behind the scenes they make sure that everyone get's a trophy... total bs.

the harsh fact is that we are not all equal in our abilities - look at professional sports - i wish I could have played, but I'm unqualified....

we DO need to help those less fortunate in society, but there must be a better way than the system we have now.

Fetch me the link. I'll read it, then I'll tell you what I think.

And coming from me, racism is an abomination bred by intolerance and bigotry. Those who practice it need to get the hell over themselves and quit hating others for whatever reasons. I have no trifle with any race.

Liberals are never wrong because than yell louder than conservatives. They are also blind as bats, that have no idea that Messiah Obama is fixing to tax this country into third world status.

Liberals only operate on 1-way streets where rights are concerned. They think they are the sole arbiters of what is fair and just, which is not defined by traditional American standards of morality, but by their victim v. oppressor mindset.

It boggles the mind how liberals think reverse racism is ok in their pursuit of their definition of "politically correct". More like political fascism.

You can see a lot of racism on here from the conservatives. Did you forget that Alito had every decision overturned? He voted to allow citizens to be allowed to use machine guns!

The great hypocrisy of the left.

Funny, during the 2008 elections liberals on MSNBC said that the term "community organizer" was used by conservative to call Obama "black"... WTF? U liberals are sooooo stupid, it shocks me.