What are advantages and disadvantages of affirmative action?

Although many people would like to claim that we are living in a "post-racial" world, the fact of the matter is that the United States continues to host horrifically racist and prejudiced behaviors and attitudes. We can see this everywhere from the fight in the South to maintain the use of Confederate flags (a Civil War symbol of those fighting to protect slavery) to Presidential nominee Donald Trump's message to "build a wall" to keep out "terrorists" and "rapists" (his discriminatory descriptors of Syrian refugees and Mexican immigrants) to the spree of police shootings of young Black, Latino, and Native American individuals.

Affirmative action was introduced to the United States in the 1960s to prevent discrimination based on race, creed, color, or national origin. There are many advantages of these policies. They ensure that space is carved out in historically privileged academic systems for minorities, and they promote diversity. They also provide job opportunities that may not otherwise be accessible due to the personal judgments of employers (who are often white), help protect people of color from hate crimes, and promote a moral commitment to working toward racial and social justice after centuries of oppression.

One might argue that one of the disadvantages of affirmative action is that it doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot to resolve racial tensions in America--especially given the aforementioned issues we've faced over the last five years alone. It also seems to give privileged white individuals "fuel for the fire," as they can wield the presence of affirmative action as "evidence" that they are being unfairly treated, despite the fact that their class status and race imbues them with huge perks. Even more sinisterly, many racists use affirmative action as an excuse to continue their racist behaviors, with these controversial policies seemingly serving as just another reason to hate or resent people of color.

Ultimately, I would argue that affirmative action does more good than harm. It may not solve the problem, but it is offering room for people of color to have their voices heard in important places, be it the classroom or the office.

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

nouns - what do you call the person who passes the trophies to the prize giver/presenter?

The person who gives out the trophies to the winners are called award presenters. So what do u call the person who passes the trophies to the presenter? Thanks!

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.

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