[Cavernio]

"I.e. You help upper class blacks while hindering lower class whites."

In some cases, yes, but I'm guessing the more likely scenarios are that you help lower class blacks compared to upper class whites, which is its whole purpose I'm guessing. If, in general, you aren't helping impoverished people more than the unimpoverished, then the plan must be failing terribly. However, I'm also guessing that if we could figure out to some degree of certainty if its working as planned, that we have the resources to actually make it work so that it would be targeting the more general impoverished community.

Regarding aboriginal rights and issues, there's a whole can of worms in there that are only loosely connected to the topic of this thread, and I will say that, unpopular and as seemingly unlike me to hold such a position, aboriginals in canada at least, should be fully canadian. The past is the past. (Although the canadian government won't allow for a single unifying government or voice from all the aboriginals, or so I've heard.)

However, I see what Fido said in his last post is the basic stance I hear all the time. 'You have the opportunity to change, if you want to succeed, you can in our world, so if you aren't succeeding, clearly its all your own fault.' And all the counter arguments against such thought is that the world isn't fair, some people simply by the fact that they were born into poverty, have a much harder and further struggle than people who aren't, and it is only fair to try and equalize the playing field whenever possible. To equalize the playing field by using race as a measure because it correlates with poverty has its problems, but I think it is the better choice than to ignore the inequalities. And I suppose its a lot easier to check off a box stating your race than it is to delve into who really is the most disadvantaged.
[I'm not sure why you assume aboriginals with degrees don't live on reserves though, or they've somehow severed their ties to their original communities and their family. My use of the word 'aboriginal' is specifically for a person who lives in canada but aren't actually canadian because they live on a reserve. They most certainly do not live like aboriginals did 200 years ago, nor do I think most of them want to. Currently, many reserves have incredibly high suicide rates for teenagers, and are full of substance abuse ranging from cocaine to gasoline and other run-of-the-mill items that you can get high off of while you're still a kid. They're canada's slums, and have been since the 1940's when my parents were kids, and they're not getting any better.]

Ideally, I will agree that we should give people jobs and things on the basis of how good that person will do at the job. But that doesn't happen on a large scale unless there's large-scale intervention to make it happen that way, and it also ignores the fact that what society says is good or not is not necessarily good. There are countless reasons why qualified people aren't hired; they were trained outside the country, they have a criminal record, they've done drugs, they aren't a family member, they have a disability that would require them to miss more than the average amount of work, they weren't as physically attractive as the person who interviewed before them. And all these are irrelevant of their race, and some of these reasons are government supported.

I guess most of my post is not really on-topic, oh well.