Few things burn me up more than affirmative action. I agree with what martin said. It's terribly counterproductive because it ultimately hurts the people that it's aiming to help, and it also hurts the people who are denied opportunities because of it. It's a lose-lose situation. It's like this damn "Disadvantaged Business Enterprise" (DBE) crap, which is common in the engineering field. Essentially, businesses that are at least 51% owned by a minority get preferential treatment when it comes to getting contracts on publicly-funded projects. I am familiar with some of the firms that qualify for this, and that is literally the only way that they get work because they are awful. They are constantly putting out crappy work that ends up costing the public more work in the long run because of setbacks caused by their negligent design practices. We were passed over for a DBE on the renovation of a historic high school campus in BTR (although I'm not saying which one ), and the architect actually asked us to review the civil engr drawings after the fact because they were so bad that the contractors could not even bid off of them. We also had to bail out another one on the airport expansion job because the DBE firm did not know the basics of building within a flood plain, which is a major issue in Baton Rouge. I mean, they are doing things that qualify as negligent practices and professional incompetence, yet they get awarded public contracts because of AA. Yep, everyone loses.
