From the Republican party platform: “Merit and hard work should determine advancement in our society, so we reject unfair preferences, quotas, and set-asides as forms of discrimination.”
As a platform statement regarding such “forms of discrimination,” this doesn’t seem a bad one, provided you oppose discrimination. Yet there is this wee problem with the statement, which has to do with the word “unfair.”
“Unfair” modifies the nouns “preferences,” “quotas,” and “set-asides.” The statement thus could be read to mean that Republicans reject only unfair preferences, quotas, and set-asides, there being some fair preferences, quotas, and set-asides they might support. Did the platform committee want the statement to mean that?
I doubt it. It’s more likely that the committee thought it was composing a general rejection of the forms of discrimination identified—preferences, quotas, and set-asides.
If that was the case, the adjective “unfair” should have been cut and then, for reasons of clarity, perhaps relocated in a new dependent clause.
Thus:
“. . . we reject preferences, quotas, and set-asides because they are forms of discrimination and thus are inherently unfair.”
Anyway, this is just an observation. I hope I’m not being unfair.
