Just recently(today) Bush anounced he plans on challenging certain cases of affirmative action. So I figured that now's as good a time as any to talk about it.

Are you for affirmative action? Against it? Why

This is actually one of the few topics in which I actually agree with Bush. In my eye's there are two problems with quotas as it pertains to minoritys and or people who live in poor area's.

The first problem is that going to an underfunded school, with overfilled classrooms, and unqualified teachers makes it impossible to compete with students in the middle and uper economic classes in terms of ones education. My school is in one of the worst school districts in the country, yet I still scored a 1400 on my sat, many people had scores higher than me. In situations like these is learning everything you need more difficult? Yes. But hardly impossible.

As far as discremination against people in terms of jobs and such, my main problem with that is that I feel that the majority of the people in this world no longer base any part of there hiring on race(asside from mandatory quota's).

Lastly, just like my parents told me as a kid "Two wrongs don't make it right" Even though people of color may very well have been discriminated in the past, by giving them special treatment you are now hurting people that are not minority.

yeah, i agree. i know this sounds sick, but if you dont have a "racial enrollment gap" and try to just force people into things because they are of certain race, it destroys the incentive for one of a minority to better themselves. it destorys incentive for the majority to better themselves too.

in my view, thats why "extreme equality" (what de tocqueville calls it) doesnt work. its stalin-esque

sorry, i have a crazy stomachache so excuse anything dumb i said

Well, if you didnt know, minority's are those that dont make the MAJORITY of the US population ( Hispanics, Jews, Blacks and so on )

Now, Hispanics are the largest minority groups, and are no longer a MINORITY on the bigger states ( New York, California, Florida etc etc .. ) . Now, many of the imigrants, are actually smarter and are alot more accelerated then those in the USA, and they are hell lot smarter. I live in Florida, and attend one of the best Schools in Miami, and on the TOP when it means Florida Schools. Its an A + school, and its one of the most diversed schools in the county, with about the same amount of whites and hispanics, blacks are right after. Been a minority does not mean poor, although in some suburbs that happens, but thats when Mr.Bush has to help funding and helping those kids to get a better education, why blame them, thanx to the lack of money the schools receive, is the kind of education they get.

My area is nothing close to been poor .. all the way around, and is one of the places where the most hispanics live on .. so that opinion about education and minorities is all bs ... all there is about minoritys is the fact that they dont make the majority of the COUNTRY, as I said.. but , with hispanics making a big part, soon in 2010, if not 2005, they will no longer be a minority, so get things straight a bit when it comes to talk about poverty and minority ( when it relates to education ).

Now, Im not sure if Affirmative action is the best thing, but what BUSH is doint is totally wrong, thats up to the state, cause states like Florida, New York, and California, where most universitys are fed with hispanics, it will be in the best sense of the word... descrimination.

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I agree with both of you.

You don't achieve equality by treating people differently. That's just common sense.

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Originally posted by Arbiter I agree with both of you. You don't achieve equality by treating people differently. That's just common sense.

Thanks

And I agree, personally I think it would be best to not even ask for ethnicity or languages on any written applications

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Originally posted by Nadi Thanks And I agree, personally I think it would be best to not even ask for ethnicity or languages on any written applications

True, now thats a lot more fair ! ! First because many people dont even fit on any of the categories, I hate when they say WHITE ( NON HISPANICS ) .. jeez.. lol

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If I was running a business or a college, I'd want the most qualified individuals, regardless of diversity or lack thereof.

I consider myself a very liberal person, but come on, affirmative action is just bullshit. Whatever unfair/racist practices this country hold, affirmative action won't solve a damn thing. I'd like to hit the person who came up with the idea.

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Originally posted by DJ_Skaya If I was running a business or a college, I'd want the most qualified individuals, regardless of diversity or lack thereof.

I agree with the business part, however I have to disagree with your statement when it comes to colleges/universities. If affirmative action is needed to ensure a campus diversity then so be it. Part of the college learning experience should be interaction with others.

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I consider myself a very liberal person, but come on, affirmative action is just bullshit. Whatever unfair/racist practices this country hold, affirmative action won't solve a damn thing. I'd like to hit the person who came up with the idea.

Do you have a better idea?

Last edited by intrinsic on Feb-09-2003 at 11:49

affirmative action.

its funny how i've heard two hispanic girls in my school say how "i'm a minority, i should get accepted" and such things as "they need to let more hispanics in"...

whatever. affirmative action is as plagued as welfare benefits. once active, some just begin to expect it.

>JM<

Decades of "oppression" don't just reverse themselves once you give a certain group of people voting rights. The fact that the African-Americans are still the most underprivilaged, poverty-stricken race in the US should be evidence enough for this. It takes initiative - proactive initiative - to restore some balance, and to reduce the income gap. To quote Michael Moore:

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No black person is ever going to ruin your life by getting the job you "deserve". The door will always be open for you. Your only duty is to hold it open for those who have less of a chance simply because they aren't white.

Poverty begets poverty. Privilage begets privilage. This is an irreversible cycle without intervening ideas such as "affirmative action" to give the underprivilaged a chance.

And before someone misconstrues this as mere "anti-Americanism" I will say that I could say exactly the same thing about Australia and its mistreatment of the Aboriginal people. The Aborigines are one of the poorest, most mistreated people on the globe and even the UN Human Rights Commission have tried to intervene to force the Australian government to do something about it. Yet, without any proactive initiatives, Aboriginal poverty just self-perpetuates itself from generation to generation while rich white people just stand back and say "why can't they just help themselves? Look at me, I got into college and got a good job, why can't they?". The underprivileged don't have access to the same standard of education as the wealthy, so they are destined for a lifetime of poorly paying jobs, while giving birth to offspring destined for the same sort of life for exactly the same reasons.

I see nothing wrong with any initiative designed to offset self-perpetuating affluence (or lack thereof) and implicit racism, and I find it hard to believe that so many can disagree with affirmative action on these grounds. If you oppose affirmative action, then I can only ask if you are concerned about the obvious discrepancies in the level of education/income between the races? If so, how else do propose these discrepancies can be narrowed other than by actions such as these?

And, by the way, it's not about placing underqualified people into jobs/college courses that they are obviously not competent enough to be in, it's about encouraging employers to go out of their way to employ those who would otherwise be looked over through no fault of their own. There is obviously an issue of "reverse racism", but, so far as I see it, this "reverse racism" is literally the only way to rectify such a long period of actual racism. Once again, if you actually care that certain races are severely over-represented in certain income brackets, then I can only ask if you have a better solution than this one. Once again, if you do not see affirmative action as a solution to an very real, existing problem tell me if you deem this to be acceptable:

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The Urban Institute researchers found that the young white men were offered jobs 45 percent more often than the young black men. This result clearly reveals that some employers were not treating male minority job seekers equally with white males of similar qualifications. The same researchers paired white Anglo testers and Hispanic testers who were fluent in English. Again, the pairs of young men were matched to minimize the differences between them; the only apparent differences were the slight accents, somewhat darker complexions, and Spanish names of the Hispanic testers. The Anglos received 52 percent more job offers than the Hispanics.

Blacks and hispanics - even where they have credentials equalling those of their white counterparts - are not being given the same opportunities. If affirmative action is "racist" in any way, then what exactly is a society without affirmative action? More evidence that it's a self perpetuating cycle:

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Today, as Francine Blau and John Graham documented in a 1990 article in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, the major source of wealth is inheritance. Although at all income levels, blacks save more of their money than whites do, black families now have comparatively less wealth than whites do, because black parents had less to bestow upon their children. And the children of today's black families will, in turn, have relatively less wealth, because their parents will have less to bestow upon them.

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To believe that only the present matters is to deny the continued economic subordination of blacks. Yet as we enter the 21st century, black Americans' income per capita, is only 59 percent of that for white Americans--the same percentage that the economists Richard Vedder, Lowell Gallaway, and David C. Klingaman estimate was the case in 1880.

Besides, here are the current US laws pertaining to "affirmative action". Point to one of them and tell me which is unjust or racist. Go on. One:

http://aad.english.ucsb.edu/docs/Laws.html

I think this shows that affirmative action is about undoing a long history of racism (and the self-perpetuating income discrepancies that have resulted from it) and implicit racism that undeniably still exists in US society and is not about using "racism" to combat a different type of "racism".

So, any thoughts?

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Poverty begets poverty. Privilage begets privilage. This is an irreversible cycle without intervening ideas such as "affirmative action" to give the underprivilaged a chance.

Thats nice in theory, but I'm pretty damn poor, but I won't be recieving the majority of the benifits others will from affirmative action.

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Originally posted by Renegade Decades of "oppression" don't just reverse themselves once you give a certain group of people voting rights. The fact that the African-Americans are still the most underprivilaged, poverty-stricken race in the US should be evidence enough for this. It takes initiative - proactive initiative - to restore some balance, and to reduce the income gap. To quote Michael Moore: Poverty begets poverty. Privilage begets privilage. This is an irreversible cycle without intervening ideas such as "affirmative action" to give the underprivilaged a chance.

Suppose you had two competing businesses that are nearly identical, but one of the hires the best candidate regardless of race, while the other hires only whites. The country which taps the greater pool for human resources is going to simply outcompete the company that chooses to hire on a discriminatory basis because they are going to have more good employees. The result of this natural process is that today, the only type of racial discrimination left is affirmative action itself.

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The underprivileged don't have access to the same standard of education as the wealthy, so they are destined for a lifetime of poorly paying jobs, while giving birth to offspring destined for the same sort of life for exactly the same reasons.

That doesn't have anything to do with race. Poor inner-city whites don't have access to any better standard of education as poor inner-city blacks. This is not a problem that can be solved with affirmative action, it is a problem that can be solved with educational reforms. Trying to solve it with affirmative action is like trying to put a band-aid on a tumor.

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If you oppose affirmative action, then I can only ask if you are concerned about the obvious discrepancies in the level of education/income between the races? If so, how else do propose these discrepancies can be narrowed other than by actions such as these?

These discrepancies are the result of a variety of factors, none of which is race. If people whose last names begin with the letter 'A' happened to have a 5% higher income than those whose began with the letter 'Z', should we give people hiring preference for alphabetically late last names?

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And, by the way, it's not about placing underqualified people into jobs/college courses that they are obviously not competent enough to be in,

Whether or not that's what it is about, that is what it does.

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There is obviously an issue of "reverse racism", but, so far as I see it, this "reverse racism" is literally the only way to rectify such a long period of actual racism.

So you're willing to sacrifice principle for expediency? Don't you see that you're only creating greater divisiveness between the races by these policies? If minorities want to be considered equal, they shouldn't go around identifying themselves as a seperate group.

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Blacks and hispanics - even where they have credentials equalling those of their white counterparts - are not being given the same opportunities.

I don't believe that to be the case. The issue in actuality is that rich people have an advantage over poor people. Since a lot of wealthy families trace their wealth back past civil rights, it's no surprise that there are more rich white people at this point in time. But that doesn't mean that discrimination is still taking, place.

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If affirmative action is "racist" in any way, then what exactly is a society without affirmative action?

Not racist.

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More evidence that it's a self perpetuating cycle: Today, as Francine Blau and John Graham documented in a 1990 article in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, the major source of wealth is inheritance. Although at all income levels, blacks save more of their money than whites do, black families now have comparatively less wealth than whites do, because black parents had less to bestow upon their children. And the children of today's black families will, in turn, have relatively less wealth, because their parents will have less to bestow upon them.

More evidence that this is a class issue rather than a race issue. According to your recommended policies, poor white people really get the shaft, don't they?

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Besides, here are the current US laws pertaining to "affirmative action". Point to one of them and tell me which is unjust or racist. Go on. One: http://aad.english.ucsb.edu/docs/Laws.html

Here's one:

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Title Vl of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d, and regulations at 45 C.F.R. §§ 80.1 et seq. Title Vl prohibits race discrimination in any program receiving federal funds. This law applies to both admissions and employees. Violations can result in withdrawal of federal funds or suits by private individuals. Cases brought under Title Vl, such as University of California Board of Regents v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), establish that in an affirmative action context, race can be one of several factors used in admissions decisions.

"race can be one of several factors used in admissiosn decisions" If that isn't racism in its purest form, then racism does not and never has existed.

And another:

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Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §§ 1681 et seq., and regulations at 34 C.F.R. §§ 106.1 et seq., 45 C.F.R. §§ 86.1 et seq. Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in all educational institutions that receive federal funding. Title IX's affirmative action provisions apply to both employment and admission of students. Violations can result in withdrawal of federal funds or suits by private individuals. Regulations promulgated under Title IX, 34 C.F.R. § 106.3, authorize affirmative or remedial action in instances in which members of one sex must be treated differently to overcome the specific effects of past discrimination.

Title IX demands equivalent (not just equal) treatment of men and women. But men and women are not equivalent, so its premise is entirely irrational.

I could continue, but I don't want to belabor the point...

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I think this shows that affirmative action is about undoing a long history of racism (and the self-perpetuating income discrepancies that have resulted from it) and implicit racism that undeniably still exists in US society and is not about using "racism" to combat a different type of "racism". So, any thoughts?

Here's a thought: "I need to be treated preferentially, so I can be equal" is a self-contradictory statement. Affirmative action is fundamentally a self-contradictory policy.

No amount of rhetoric can erase the simple fact that the fundamental ideology of affirmative action is axiomatically false. To support it, quite simply, is to be irrational.

I could have applied to school as a minority. But I didn't. To do so would have been so incredibly dishonorable that I would never have been able to look myself in the mirror again.