Affirmative Action at US Supreme

[The Hunter of Jahanna]

Affirmitave action is a crutch for the lazy and stupid. It doesnt matter what color you are or what "Historical wrongs" were done to you. Either you have the brains to go on to higher education or you start practiceing "Do you want fries with that?". Last time I checked melanin had no bearing on brain development.

[ 12-02-2002, 09:05 PM: Message edited by: The Hunter of Jahanna ]

[the new JR Jansen]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: On that note, I am glad that Affirmative Action is and has been dying. It irked me that no one ever cited an NBA team for having too few white folks on the team.

That's because sports is the only place left, it seems, where this BS about 'affirmative action' doesn't exist. Everybody wants to win, and therefor they are going to get the best players they can, no matter what race, etc.

It's still discrimination. They have given it another name but it's still discrimination and that has to stop.

[Angelousss]

I saw an article on this awhile back and it's not about affirmative action it's about diversity. the school had no trouble meeting the quotas but they were accepting minority students at lower standards even after they met their goals.
to give an example on their point system, an outstanding essay was worth 1 pt, being minority was worth 20 pt.

[Thoran]

You know, I don't have a particular problem with "forced diversity" in situations where it can be PROVEN that it will provide a boost to the target people that could not be gained by other methods... but it should be intended to be a BRIEF application time followed by a much longer analysis time to evaluate the efficacy of the program. These programs should never be thought of as permanent, or something the target peoples are "entitled" to.

In my profession the lack of women and minorities has lead to a very "white guy" environment in all my previous positions. Now I'm working for a company that actively recruits minorities and women, and I can say that my work environment is a LOT more interesting than it ever was when I was surrounded by guys who looked and thought a lot like me. Diversity IS good, and IMO the long term gains of some of these programs will be worth the cost. At the same time these programs have been around a long time, and it's totally appropriate that they be constantly tested and challenged... otherwise they'll become permanent.

(edited for atrocious grammar)

[ 12-03-2002, 08:38 AM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

LoL Thoran I am frequently surrounded by "white guys" but I could never say that they all looked or sounded like I do, there is quite a lot of diversity between us white folk too ya know. Check out all the debate threads, I am willing to bet that there is a majority of white guys as opposed to men of color and or women of any sort. (I am basing this on the pics at stealthy's)

[Thoran]

Yea I know I'm oversimplifying a bit, but in the engineering profession there's a certain amount of homogenaity (did I just make that word up? ) by virtue of the geek factor required to survive 4 years of Engineering undergrad without switching to much easier majors like "English", "Philosophy", or "Pre-Med" [img]smile.gif[/img] . We tend to have a lot in common, which makes Engineering a bit of an extreme example I'm sure.

LLAO ohh you are suffering from the Dilbert principle Ok Engineers do tend to be...a bit similar

[Barry the Sprout]

A lot of crap gets talked about affirmative action and I think some of the people here have got twisted views of what it is. Affirmative action is not "discrimination under another name", or "giving seats on the basis of race not ability". That is all complete nonsense used as quick slogans by its opponents. They are catchy and no one could possibly object to them. Thats not what its really about though.

Lets look at it this way. How do you decide on who gets a place at University? Say you have two students in front of you. One of them has good grades and one of them has good, but not quite as good as the first ones, grades. Easy choice? Nope. University places are given for the most part on the basis of ability - not marks. I think we should all recognise that marks mean pretty much nothing when looked at over a large scale. Marks depend on the kind of school you went to, who marked your work, whether or not you had private tuition. To a large degree they are governed by ability, but the two do not always correlate. What am I getting at here? Well - that quite a lot of the time universities pick the more able candidate, not the one with the best marks.

So how can you tell who is the more able candidate? Basically compensation has to be made. I don't think this can be considered discrimination, it allows a better representation of the ability of the two candidates not simply how they have reacted in the environments they have been put in.

Lets look at it this way. If we had no "affirmative action" the number of black people at universities would fall drastically. Why is this? Are White people naturally cleverer than black people? Why are they under-represented in university? Are you sure that it has nothing to do with the respective environments they come from? You cannot say that affirmative action makes it an uneven playing field - affirmative action evens it out!

[Thoran]

Here in the US the application of Affermative Action principles very often results in thinly disguised quota's... that's why you're reading the negative comments. In an ideal world affermative action would level the playing field but this ain't an ideal world, and human administrators and HR people have to figure out how to IMPLEMENT the idealistic concepts that AA contains. Generally being no-nonsense people, they look for solutions that can be actually used (and are affordable) and this often leads you to the application of quotas (just about the simplest way to approximate the goals of AA with minimum subjectivity and maximum affordability/efficiency). That's just how it ends up working out.

from there it trickles down:
A Gov. Administrator is told he needs to fairly/equatably dole out building contracts... he looks at population data and 15% of his population are minorities, so he takes the easy route and dictates that 15% of contractor employees must be minorities.
When a contractor finds out he can't bid on a job because he only has 5% minority representation, what does he do when two guys apply for a job, one white, one minority? What CAN he do?
On the flipside, without dictating a 15% minimum, how could the Government administrator insure that minorities have a equal opportunity to bid on or work on goverment contracts?

Tough problem we're discussing, and there's no easy solution. Everyone complains about how quotas are bad (and they are), but for many circumstances they're the ONLY way to satisfy the requirements of Affirmative Action, and IMO AA was a necessary step... necessary to "shake up" the system. The real question is "when is enough enough?"... and I think that we're pretty much at that point in most places.

[ 12-03-2002, 11:44 AM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

[Morgeruat]

standardized testing like the SAT's and ACT's is supposed to even out the playing field for (cap)ability, to succeed, they measure intelligence, other things can and are used in the same manner to increase or decrease eligibility, ie honors society, sports, other extracurricular activities, race should not be a significant factor in choosing.