Ironworks Gaming Forum - Anti-Affirmative Action Bake Sale Shut Down

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Potentially, but that's what is called a trade-off.

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Originally posted by Timber Loftis:
In all honesty, the only people I've ever known to use a skin color preference in hiring were minorities. I would never hear it, of course, but being a minority my wife gets to hear it all the time. You would be appalled at the number of minority bosses/mentors/professors she's had who remind her of her duty to help promote minorities. [img]graemlins/dontknowaboutyou.gif[/img]

Well in a strange way, AA could actually gaurantee that minorities dont go 'overboard' in "lifting their people up" any more than a majority could.
That is when whites become the minority, they could use the very same method to insure they get a fair shot. Works both ways. Of course when we have finally and definitely gotten past race in how we judge people then it will be a none issue.

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Of course, since you can't tell she's a minority (people usually guess she's Greek or Italian or Russian), we also get embarrasing situations where we're in the company of white folks who talk about hispanics in a derrogatory way. We usually let them wallow in their ignorance because the excuses they make when you inform them of what they're doing are worse than the insults.

Well thats unfortunate, but you guys are better than me in way, because I have a bad habit of laying the direct smack-down on racists banter. I would give little room in for excuses as I angrily departed company. The song 'racist friend' by the Specials sums it up for me:

"If you have a racist friend,
now is the time now is the time
for that friendship to end."

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Anyway, prejudice exists on both sides and always will -- but it is infinitely rarer today than it was in the 50's.

Note that the Supreme Court's recent AA case speculated that AA may no longer be needed in the future -- and guessed at 25 years from now.

It is rarer and definitely better hidden, and I agree that AA has an end in the future when it is clear that social conditions and opportunity are equal in every community. That could be 25 years or 10 years. All we have to go on is statistics really, so when the statistic reveal equal pay and social conditions maybe then we can declare victory and phase out the measures we used to get there.

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Well, what if you are more qualified? I can tell you undeniably that my wife's office hired less-qualified minority candidates. Look at my examples above -- those students who didn't try for s**t in law school, banking on the race card, obviously have horrible records. Now, in Chicago the State's Attorneys only hire about 1 in every 15 people they interview. I cannot possibly imagine there were not better candidates -- they just happened to be white.

The thing is I can't beleive that there aren't better candidate that aren't white as well. I can't just assume that every minority plays the race card, that would be presumptious. Like I said in my last post, it's a trade off that the system gets exploited.

This is the reasoning I started this thread out with, even though it may not be perfect, I think some critics of AA exagerate its flaws with out comprehensive facts to back up the hype. I CAN respectfully see why people take issue with it.

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Originally posted by Timber Loftis:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Potentially, but that's what is called a trade-off.

Okay. But, for me, if you add this trade-off with the Entitlement trade-off, you are setting the minority communities up for long-term failure. AA tells them they will always be looked down on by some because they had a helping hand in getting the job, and over time it creates the entitlement problem.

My wife's coworkers are likely the only attorneys I know who don't care about current events, don't read, have never encountered philosophy, and never watch the news. They slacked in law school and slack at work. Obviously, they have untapped ability. Had they had to work like the rest of us, they may be better off for their efforts. They would be more learned (yes, smarter), more aware, and would probably enjoy life a bit more. They would pass on more of these traits to their kids, and their kids would like "ask" you things rather say things like "I be axe-ing you dis" (yes, it's true, exact quote).

Look, we know that welfare creates a treadmill that hampers families for multiple generations. AA is exactly like welfare -- it's a dole. Accordingly, it will create long-term problems for the community as the community falls into this whole Entitlement philosophy. [/QUOTE]Alright, this is not overstating the issue and reveals an exact flaw that is inherent in the idea of giving a man to fish rather than showing him how to do it.

Ideally AA would not be the former and comes from the idea of the latter. It should be an enabling device that says if you do the work and excel, no racist can keep you from the job/school training you are equally entitled to to do.

I guess the question is: How do we keep the safegaurd, make it an enabler, but not make it a self-defeating entitlement?

Simple. Get rid of AA, yet keep the anti-discrimination rules. Getting rid of AA programs won't change the Civil Rights Act.

If you must insist on AA, keep in MINIMAL. I mean MINIMAL. And only for a short while longer.

And, ditch programs that lead to an entitlement philosophy. Rather than giving minorities an easy route into college and a job, give them opportunities in schools. Require that state grants, be they jobwise, moneywise, or otherwise, won't be given to the best minority student -- but rather the best minority student who can meed X, Y, and Z standards. Once a school gets 0 out of a possible 10 scholarships one year, it'll get its ass in line.

Remember, though, you cannot stop the private sources of funding -- such as the UNCF and the NAACP. No way to keep a private group from discriminating. It's their money, and they can do as they please with it.

[ 09-26-2003, 06:07 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

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Originally posted by Timber Loftis:
Simple. Get rid of AA, yet keep the anti-discrimination rules. Getting rid of AA programs won't change the Civil Rights Act.

If you must insist on AA, keep in MINIMAL. I mean MINIMAL. And only for a short while longer.

And, ditch programs that lead to an entitlement philosophy. Rather than giving minorities an easy route into college and a job, give them opportunities in schools. Require that state grants, be they jobwise, moneywise, or otherwise, won't be given to the best minority student -- but rather the best minority student who can meed X, Y, and Z standards. Once a school gets 0 out of a possible 10 scholarships one year, it'll get its ass in line.

Remember, though, you cannot stop the private sources of funding -- such as the UNCF and the NAACP. No way to keep a private group from discriminating. It's their money, and they can do as they please with it.

Sounds good to me! The only issue I have is if you get rid of AA and fall back on laws to stop discrimination the only recourse is reactionary. Your not really helping instill diversity, but merely punishing those who would practice disrimination if it can be proven they are doing so. Barring direct proof, it would take distinct patterns of discrimination to ever make a case and any recourse would come long after the fact.

AA does have the benifit of being preventative. AA creates diversity, which I think is the best preventative measure for a future without discrimination.

I do agree, from thinking of this discussion mind you, that AA needs to be an enabling device, not one like welfare entitlement. I hadn't thought of it in those terms before.

Thanks for the discussion! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Racial discrimination is racial discrimination - don't wrap it up in cutesy phrases like "affirmative action" - call it what it is, racial discrimination.

Is there anywhere else in the world where such practices are legal?

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Originally posted by Skunk:
Racial discrimination is racial discrimination - don't wrap it up in cutesy phrases like "affirmative action" - call it what it is, racial discrimination.

Is there anywhere else in the world where such practices are legal?

As far as in the interest to create an intergrated society, no where else I know of.

How else do you create a racially intergrated society from the ashes of one that was sharply segregated?

While working for the TX-DOT Area Laboratory in Denton with two black co-workers one permanent state job became open. Despite my education (double major in chemistry and mathematics), the fact that I had worked in laboratory settings before, and that I had already been at the job longer than one other candidate I didn't get the job. I had more education, more experience, and a better overall job performance review, so why did he get the position? [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img]

In short, all I need to know of "Affirmative Action" is that race does matter! It sure as heck isn't about "finding the best person for the job" or any of that nice-sounding crap. [img]graemlins/idontagreeatall.gif[/img] I know that supporters say that Affirmative Action isn't a quota system, but it has the appearance of being a quota. Affirmative Action hurts everyone.

edit: by the way...if you can afford to attend SMU you don't need a discount! 

[ 09-27-2003, 02:33 AM: Message edited by: Azred ]

So we get rid of Afirmative action, right, since it only benifits minorities, correct?
I found this nice little pro-AA statement that helps put giving preference to citizens in different perspective.

Source-“Angry White Guys For Affirmative Action”

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Thousands of Americans, including the Bay Area-based “Angry White Guys For Affirmative Action,” will march to the U.S. Supreme Court April 1st, in defense of University of Michigan affirmative action programs. The outcome of the national debate -- can a University use race as a factor to achieve cultural diversity in admissions? -- may depend on the frame of reference in which affirmative action is discussed. “Angry White Guys For Affirmative Action” offer a special set of arguments, a new focus that could change the very nature of the controversy.

For over 30 years opponents of affirmative action for women and people of color have overlooked a key American reality -- the role of affirmative action in the lives of white men. Opposition to affirmative action is based on selective inattention to the social props on which white men themselves depend. It is not affirmative action itself, but affirmative action for African-Americans and Latinos, that is under current attack.

Many of us recall our first heated arguments over preferential programs that took place over thirty-five years ago in the teach-ins about the war in Vietnam. In the ‘60s, the first big affirmative action debate was not about minority programs. It was about college students who were getting draft deferments during the hated wars in Indochina. How easy it is to forget that minorities were over-represented on the involuntary battlefields of Asia. Black and Brown kids from working class neighborhoods were being sent to die abroad, while primarily white college youth were building their careers through one form of affirmative action -- college draft deferment. Some professors, judges, and journalists who oppose affirmative action today took advantage of affirmative action (draft deferment) in college years ago.

Minority programs are only a small part of the spectrum of preferential policies in the U.S. It is time to consider the extent to which white males are intertwined with policies of preference for themselves. Tax breaks for corporations, subsidies for middle-class homebuyers, mass transit subsidies for white suburbs, bank bailouts for profligate bank executives, selective allotments for refugees, price supports for corporate farms, are all shot through with considerations of need and preference. Special considerations may be valid or invalid, but preference for those perceived to be in need is a basic concept of American society.

White Male Beneficiaries

In the last seventy years of social engineering, the vast majority of direct beneficiaries of affirmative action policies were not minorities; they were white males. Preferential social policies for those in need were not invented by civil rights leaders. Under Franklin Roosevelt, whom most white Americans still revere, the New Deal embarked upon a massive affirmative action approach to social crisis. With the critical exception of segregation, Americans approached their social problems -- unemployment, poverty of senior citizens, re-entry needs of veterans and GIs, farmers needing price supports -- through planned social engineering. The post World-War II Marshall Plan, a plan that provided billions of dollars for training and jobs, was a massive affirmative action plan for Europe. Former enemies got free training programs in Europe that were denied Black GIs at home in America.

The New Deal concepts became unpopular only after they were applied to the crisis and effects of segregation. It was not affirmative action itself, but the extension of affirmative action to minorities and women, that caused the backlash.

As white men whose own families got free medical care, unquestioned access to higher education through the GI Bill, who shared in the social uplift of the New Deal and Fair Deal, members of “Angry White Guys For Affirmative Action” support affirmative action for those who are still left out.

There is a normal tendency in most of us to overlook the social props, the network of special benefits on which we and our families depend. The late Mitch Snyder, advocate for the homeless, once gave an address to an affluent, white audience. He asked members in the auditorium: “Who lives in federally subsidized housing?” No one raised a hand. But then he asked homeowners to identify themselves. All hands went up, after which he pointed out that homeowners are subsidized. The Treasury gives up $46 billion each year to homeowner deductions in a system that predominately benefits people who earn more than $50,000 a year.

Tax breaks for home buyers may not be wrong. What is wrong is the smug psychology of the Bushites, the Rehnquists, who take advantage of all kinds of breaks for themselves while denying affirmative action for the most oppressed areas of society.

Affirmative action is already part of the fabric of American life. We are all bound together in a vast network of affirmative action, of mutual support systems we take for granted. It is hypocritical and profoundly wrong to call affirmative action for minorities “racism in reverse,” while treating affirmative action for bankers, farmers, white men of power, as entitlements.

There isn't a white judge on the U.S. Supreme Court that hasn't benefited from affirmative action.

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Originally posted by Azred:
 Affirmative Action hurts everyone.

More of that exaggeration and overstatement I was referring too. :rollseyes:

You obviously perceive that AA has hurt you since someone else got the job you referred to, whether thats the case or not, there is no need to take it out on the many people who do indeed get ahead in life because of having one preferred status or another by such a blanket statement.

[ 09-27-2003, 03:11 AM: Message edited by: Chewbacca ]