Affirmative Action - Yeah or Nay.

I never claimed that women took my place in college; I asked why I should be happy if I had superior academic qualifications, yet was rejected in order to admit a less qualified woman or black. I notice you failed to address that.

As for the construction workers vs. cashiers, you’re fuckin’ A right they deserve every penny they make. During my college years, I earned some money doing construction. I had to carry shingles up to a roof when it was 95 degrees. I helped build a log cabin when it was 4 degrees above 0. That’s the actual temperature; not the wind chill. I installed insulation in an attic during the summer. Construction workers routinely risk their lives. Ask my father about the two times he fell more than 20 feet.

And what the hell do cashiers do? Run products through laser scanners. Construction workers DESERVE more money.

As for your comments about the male technician vs. the females, your anecdote is virtually meaningless: Do they work for the same company? Is he a supervisor? How long has he been at the job? Is he kin to the owners? How good a job does he do?
Degree be damned; if I own the company, a high school graduate with 30 years of experience and an excellent record is going to make more money than some wet-behind-the-ears grads who may have cheated their way through college, for all I know.

Actually I addressed your complaint in the first sentence of my first post. Yes you have every right to be pissed. Do blacks not have the right to be pissed when their resume is discarded because they have an “ethnic” name?

Both technicians are roughly the same age (mid 20s), and both do generally the same work (running tests on laboratory equipment), except my technicians do a lot dirtier work than the optics tech. He has roughly two years of work experience and she has a BS. No they don’t work for the same company. But they are both large publicly traded companies with roughly the same number of employees, except my pharmaceutical company makes much higher profits than the defense contractor for whom the optics tech works. They both do fine work, and are competent (the optics tech works for my husband). His department is 98% male, mine is 80% female. Both positions are in the Quality Control field.

I’ve notice that you have still failed to address the question of legacy points, those for male nurses, those awarded for socio-economic standing, and those for rural students. Do these people deserve to get in U of M before you, or is it just the blacks and women that piss you off.

Yes, lightstrand, they certainly do have the right. However, I remember that poster you mentioned, and some other Dopers made a good argument that he may have been lying. Myself, I think that he was telling the truth, but quit the board when he realized he was pissing off people, and some Dopers have the knowledge and brains to figure out who he is.

As to the technicians situation, I think the below quotation explains part of it. Unfortunately, the unions ain’t what they used to be, and I suspect many other companies are maximizing thier profits by screwing their employees:

As for the legacy points, here is my take on it:
10 points - Michigan Resident.
6 points - underrepresented Michigan county. These first two points are probably unjust, but I suspect that every state in the union discriminates against every other state. I know that Indiana’s public colleges charge out-of-state students a helluva lot more money than in-state students.
2 points - underrepresented state. This is interesting. I honestly don’t know what to say, except that I would probably drop if it I were setting policy.
Alumni
4 points - “legacy” (parents, step-parents)
1 point - other (grandparents, siblings, spouses) I am ambivalent about these. They are certainly unfair to students from non-alumn families. On the other hand, I find myself thinking that if alumni make donations to their universities and give help to university community, why should their children not be admitted, provided they meet the minimum standards?
Essay
1 point - outstanding essay (since 1999, 3 points). I would drop this, partially because cheating is very possible unless the essays are written in the presence of university representatives, and partially because students capable of outstanding literary work should have any English and/or intensive writing requirements waived.
Personal achievement
1 point - state
3 points - regional
5 points - national. Frankly, I don’t understand what is meant by these. If it refers to academic contests, then I think any students capable of winning national or regional competitions – hell, state competitions for that matter – probably have the smarts to go just about anywhere they please
Leadership and service
1 point - state
3 points - regional
5 points - national. I would drop these on the grounds that I think academic qualifications should be the only standard for admitting students. I know other people differ on the value of community service, and they may be right. YMMV
Miscellaneous
20 points - socio-economic disadvantage. I would drop this. When I attended Indiana University Southeast, I was involved in extra-curricular activities and got to know a couple of professors well. One day, out of idle curiousity, I asked one of them what he thought of a certain secondary school system (an all-white school, I might add) that I used to attend before I transferred to the systeml I graduated from. He replied that he had a low opinion of that school as at least half of its students routinely flunked out. I should clarify my remarks above; I favor helping poor students financially, but only if they meet the academic criteria of schools. Many students from rural or inner-city schools will flunk out of a place like MIT simply because they don’t have the academic preparation needed to succeed in such a demanding environment. To be fair, I would flunk out, too; I am not bright enough and disciplined enough to succeed in such a place.
20 points - underrepresented racial-ethnic minority identification or education. Nope.
5 points - men in nursing. Bullshit. It goes, too.
20 points - scholarship athlete. Fuck 'em. As I said above, if the NBA and NFL are worried, let them start farm systems.
20 points - provost’s discretion. This is the worst of all, I think. It definitely goes.

But you see, Peyote, college admission isn’t some reward that people get because they automatically deserve it. Universities arn’t in the business of selecting students by merit- they are in the business of selecting students who will make their campus livlier, more intellectual, and hopefully will go on to do great things. Few valedictorians go on to do great things. Most of them end up rank-and-file. It’s the poets and mad scientists that go on to bring fame (and money) into their institution. And an environment of all validictorians may be studious, but it isn’t likely to the most stimulating, innovative, eye-opening and challenging place to be. Colleges are far more interested in fostering debate and creativity, even in the sciences, then they are in creating another generation of kids that know how to study well and little else. It’s the people that come up with something new that get the books published, the awards won, and the donations rolling in.

Ask youself, as a professor, would you rather have the kid with the 4.00, or the kid who put together an international AIDS outreach program? The kid that writes a brilliant essay about how she’s going to save the world versus the five millionth 4.00 who wrote about the big meet on the math team? How about the kid thats gonna go back to his rich suburb to be a tax attorney vs the kid thats going back to be a public defender in the ghetto? Good grades don’t mean much more than your good at getting good grades. They are only of limited use when trying to assess how far a person is going to go in life.

Black guy ** and ** a University of Michigan student chiming in.

** InquisitiveIdiot **, you can rest assured that Affirmative Action will go away, the Supreme Court will undoubtedly abolish it. This is mainly due to the fact that conservative leap in the United States has pushed this country toward a darwinistic type society: that is, the one who succeeds (or survives) is the fittest and everyone who didn’t make it was either lazy or simply ‘unfit’.

Americans have metaphorically clasped their hands over their ears and chanted, “We are equal! We are equal! We are equal!” to the point that they actually feel that everyone is treated equally in America. Let me be the bearer of bad news: We’re not.

In this country, it has been less than a hundred years since women were allowed to vote, a bit more than forty years since the civil rights movement, and Americans have the audacity to say, “Yep, we sure fixed that. Let’s all be equal now. Got problems? Well just tough it out, you’ll make it somehow.” America is free only for those who are white, male, heterosexual and upper class. Honestly, just in March, the most idiotic case went before the Supreme Court: Can two men have sex in their own bedroom. Why is it so difficult for America’s “free” to recognize that the rest of us aren’t afforded the same privileges as them. I mean c’mon, two men can’t have sex in their own bedroom for crying out loud.

The eradication of Affirmative Action will be the undoing of the civil right’s movement. It will effect just the University admissions, then someone will take an “equal opportunity employer” to court and get that repealed as well on the same basis as AA. In this country, blacks are the jesters in American’s twisted court of democracy. Long as we play basketball, football, sing our tunes, and entertain the masses we’re ok. When blacks are given the opportunity for just a breath of a chance, America’s “free” calls foul. The whole thing is just a pimp-slap to every minority in this country, in an atempt to tell us exactly who “our massa’ be.”
It all boils down to the fact that Affirmative Action was working. When Affirmative Action was being thought of in the use in colleges, I am sure the reagents just snickered to themselves and said, “Yea, we’ll go ahead and let them in. They’ll just get kicked out anyway because they won’t be able to compete on level with white kids, but this way, they can’t say we didn’t give them a chance!” The look on their face when blacks were graduating, were getting high-paying jobs, and were succeeding must’ve been priceless.

So congrats, Conservatives. You’ll finally have it your way. We’re all equal. Everything is fine. Rainbows and Skittles. Or whatever you guys say that allows you to sleep better at night.
Brian R. Stephens
LS&A Junior

AA addresses the failure of the public grade schools / high schools
in the US. Rather then prepare the many, lets only help the few.

Any system that assumes one or more groups are unable to compete on an equal footing institutionalizes racism. There is the assumption on inequality.

Do hiring managers view minority candidate through a prism that says this person didn’t really earn the right to be here?

Fix the root cause and the point becomes moot. Pull out the life line now, and write off at least two generations.

At the end of all that, obviously, and practice that favors any group on the basis of race/gender, is discrimination. The question is, have we created a society where this “evil” has to exist?

Have you taken a look at thisthread? Read the responses. Like I said, racism is going nowhere.

InquisitiveIdot

That’s not what his example said.

So how have you been hurt by AA?

You don’t have to be happy (I don’t think anyone who worked hard to get into college would be happy if they didn’t get in), but understanding that the woman or person of a minority ethnic background might not have been able to get the academic qualifications you did because of the fact that they’re female or of an ethnic minority (eg, the librarian discriminated against them and wouldn’t hold materials that they requested for an assignment when this was done for other students, or that they were bashed up and had their notes/books/etc defaced and stolen by other students, or that their family was economically disadvantaged and they didn’t get as much time to do homework as they wanted because they had to work, or because their teachers were biased against them in the way they marked because of race/gender), and taking this on board, and considering that they may also be worthy of a place (and might have got similar academic qualifications, all things being equal) would be good. I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to discriminate on potential, especially if the person hasn’t had equal chances in their background.

Granted, this stuff doesn’t just happen to women or minority groups, but women and minority groups seem to be overrepresented in having stuff like this happen to them.

Count me in favour of affirmative action, even though it isn’t much used in this country, except voluntarily by organisations working for diversity.

So how have you been hurt by AA?

Every slot that is taken by a less-than-qualified minority (or legacy guy, or Michigan resident) forces out a potential student. That’s one reason why AA has been accepted more easily…it’s easier to identify those helped by it than those hurt. However, they are in equilibrium

That doesn’t even make sense. If they got in, they were qualified. It’s the recruiter who determines who’s qualified, not anyone else.

Basically, some arrogant losers with a ridiculous sense of entitlement couldn’t get into college so they blamed minorities. Suddenly it becomes national debate.

No. If you didn’t know already, many colleges are extremely selective. It isn’t about being “qualified”. Spots are being taken away from individuals who otherwise would have been accepted if it weren’t from AA. That is the situation, plain and simple. And even moreso, their spots are being filled by people who otherwise would not have been accepted if it weren’t for AA.

I don’t think it is the court’s job to determine if a minority deserves special treatment in something because of disadvantages they may have faced in their life. That is awfully subjective and doesn’t face the issue. Not getting taxis, getting bad looks from cops, this has nothing at all to do with education, and happens to whites and Asians all the same.

It all boils down to this: Whoever is most deserving of the spot should get it, case closed.

There are better solutions than this in my opinion. Why punish companies who don’t have a diverse work force? If anything, this will hurt businesses. Making it easier for one group to get in to a college who has had a hard time does get them into college, but sure as hell doesn’t make them any more qualified. It just gives them another reason to lay back and not strive to do better. Go after primary schools if you want to see improvement.

I think that this is just another in the long list of those easy solutions that our government thinks up that doesn’t really address the real problem, and ends up failing.

Splanky:

What’s your point? What if schools decided to reduce admission altogether. Then those first students mentioned still wouldn’t be able to get in. Would that be better somehow, as long as certain minorities aren’t benefiting?

I agree. So who determines who’s most deserving of the spot?

What’s the real problem?

This report is from the Courier-Mail (the newspaper of Brisbane, Australia) from page 17 on May 7, 2003:

The real problem is the systematic inequality that many people who aren’t white, male, straight and christian face. Affirmative action is a step towards addressing this inequality. Until straight white male christians accept that the inequality exists and start doing things to address it, so that the playing field may truly be level, things won’t change, rendering affirmative action a necessary but evil stopgap.

If you’re going to make that claim, I would like a list of demands. Since I don’t feel that I’m racist, tell me what I can do to prove it, then tell me what government office I can go to to apply for minority status to receive equal treatment under the law. If there’s nothing I as an individual can do, or if there is no where I can apply, you’re doing nothing but blowing hot air. Saying that an entire segment of the population should be punished because there are still some backwater racist shitheads out there doesn’t cut it.

None of you seem to get it. Alright. I’ll try to lay it out once more.

  1. Discrimination is wrong. It should not be present in any aspect to society.

  2. Legalized discrimination is doubly wrong. It’s the government, that fair and impartial body, pushing/forcing discrimination of one kind or other on the country. It was the civil rights movement’s biggest target. Once the government cannot pass discriminating laws, the first and largest step towards true equality is taken.

  3. Affirmative action is discrimination. I honestly hope everyone can agree with me on this. I’m not going to take the trouble of explaining the obvious.

  4. Affirmative action, as legally enforced discrimination, is just as wrong as Jim Crow laws and grandfather clauses, which did the same thing in the opposite direction.

  5. Affirmative action therefore should not exist in an ethical government body.

Yes, there is still work to be done. Yes, there is still racism. But affirmative action by its very nature should not be the method by which these inequalities are corrected. The end does not justify the means.

To those who claim that “It’s just a temporary evil. Shut up and live with it.” Who says when it’s over? The minorities benefiting from it? The white males being hurt by it? What safeguards are in place to keep it from getting out of check? Surely you would not be so stupid as to have no expiration date, or some other set-in-stone metric. Could it possibly be unneccesary now? The opinion of the majority of society is that everyone is equal. There are still a few racist people yes, but there are also still amish. The world will move on without them. Minorities will continue to climb the rungs of corporate ladders on their own merit. In summary, who says when enough is enough?

You have to know that isn’t true. You have to. If I can’t admit that, then this will never end.

In everyway Blacks are treated differently, from medicine to being pulled over people are not being treated equally.

So what do we do? How do we fix this? You have generations of people who never got their fair due. I’m not talking about a string of bad luck or bad decisions or one family member who got treated badly. But Millions of people, for hundreds of years…millions of them.

I keep hearing that two wrongs don’t make a right and that’s fine when you’re ten and break your brother’s toy because he broke yours. It’s different when you’re talking about finally righting a wrong. We as a nation have to make this right.

You’re talking degrees here and motivation. No one wants or believes that affirmative action was designed to prevent all whites from going to any school or Job or having any power in the world which Jim Crow was created to do. You realize what the purpose of Jim Crow was right?

Why is it different? Because All whites weren’t denied an education or a job and further only an person who is dishonest believes that there are less opportunities overall for that same “Discriminated” white as opposed to a black or woman. Every white student in the UofM got into college, not the one they wanted, but they did go to school. The big bad government didn’t forbid them from going to any school…try that under Jim Crow. Funny thing is, if a black person had cried discrimination, they would be called whinners…

Let me ask you this, what do you propose we do? What’s your answer? How do we create an equal society, when the society was never equal in the first place?

How do we make this right? or do we just keep ignoring the problem and be glad that it’s not us?

The world isn’t fair nor just, but sometimes we can attempt to make it so, but only if we are willing to sacrifice a little bit of our own convenience.

Easy. Instead of enforcing a policy that is just as unethical as the problem it’s trying to fix, take care of the causes of that problem, and find ethical ways to accomplish the same results.

Diversity in education is IMO making the largest strides toward equality. Once people begin to see that other ways of doing things are just as valid as theirs, surface differences begin to matter less and less. Look how far education has managed to bring society. And don’t tell me it’s because of affirmative action. If people don’t already support it, they generally dislike it once they understand it enough.

Couple education- the elimination of the roots of racism- with nonracial laws that do effectively the same thing and you pretty much have a solution. One example of a nonracial way of looking at the problem would be to base decisions on socioeconomic status rather than race. That way, people who honestly have had to overcome difficulties to succeed are rewarded, as opposed to saying “All minorities are discriminated against and no whites are, therefore all minorities deserve to be treated better than all whites”

Of course, keep in mind that I’m not advocating legalizing discrimination for anyone. The current anti-discriminatory laws should be kept, in that if you feel you have been discriminated against in employment or what have you, you should have legal recourse.

To address a few points I’ve been neglecting:

  1. legacy points-
    I have always disliked legacy points. In my opinion, it should be merit and merit alone that gets you anywhere in this world. But I don’t think they should be outlawed for private industry. If businesses want to use them, they should be able to. But also, if they don’t want to use them, they shouldn’t have to.

  2. So how have you been hurt by AA?
    I have had, in my experience, a much harder time getting jobs than my minority friends, despite the fact that I have considerably better qualifications than some of them. Sometimes the job search is so frustratingly uneven that I would be tempted to sue, were I a minority. As it is, I have no chance of winning. Basically, everything I’ve said here.

I agree with you…in principle, but in reality most schools are segregated as are most neighbourhoods. Where are you going to find to create diversity unless you create it?

I didn’t see any diversity until I went to college…guess what, it was committed to affirmative action and that was in the 80’s.

i agree again, but once again, reality check…most poor people in America are white, because there are more white people. If you go solely by numbers, there’s no way to create diversity, i think there’s about 13% or so of African-Americans and in some states African-Americans may only be 1%. That won’t work.

How do you know it was ONLY because you were white? I’ve taken and given many interviews and sometimes, employers just don’t like you…because of you. Perhaps that ‘chip’ is clouding your judgement? Not to say that you’re not right, but once again, if a black man said that he would be considered ‘paranoid’ or blaming ‘the man’ for his own short-comings.

Being on the stickly end on the stick, sucks…

I wasn’t talking about evening up the education system in terms of the diversity of the students going there. I was talking about the material taught to the students at school. If bigotry is denounced at the school level, it would have more effect then forcing everyone to be bigots, IMO.

Okay… suppose you have a poor white person, going to a poor underfunded school. Wouldn’t that person have to overcome more than everyone else, just to compete on a even level? Doesn’t that person deserve the same help that is currently reserved only for minorities? Isn’t that what the entire program is about?

Very true. But how do you know discrimination against minorities goes on at all? Perhaps many employers don’t like them… because of them? The answer: yes, you can write off a few jobs lost because of the personality factor. But there comes a point at which the differences are too great to simply say, “well, maybe they were better suited for the job than I was.” If there were no circumstances in which one could say “I should have gotten the job”, discrimination lawsuits would be impossible to enforce. But the fact remains that there are.

First of all U of M gives points to poor whites, going to a poor underfunded school. i don’t know what other schools do, but U of M is doing exactly what you want.

here

The way you tell is by pattern, there is always a pattern. If every job you applied for and didn’t get, you could show that every other white person was also denied and a black person was hired you have a case. If you can’t then you don’t. That’s the criteria…real simple.

If it’s just you, then it’s just you.

Hispanic man, and University of Arizona GRADUATE chiming in:

Wasn’t going to get into this, just lurk, but I hate this whinning “I’m a minority, pity me you white male bastards” crapola…it just makes me grit my teeth. In my family, we were raised that, in spite of our ‘race’ or sex, we could do anything in this country. Certainly, we can do a lot more than we could of if our family would of stayed in Mexico.
Honesty writes:

"In this country, it has been less than a hundred years since women were allowed to vote, a bit more than forty years since the civil rights movement, and Americans have the audacity to say, “Yep, we sure fixed that. Let’s all be equal now. Got problems? Well just tough it out, you’ll make it somehow.”

To me, this makes a great point…but its a point I’m sure he didn’t intend. Its only been “less than a hundred years” since women could vote…and “a bit more than forty years since the civil rights movement”. Yet look at the progress we’ve made!! Women not only vote, but are out in the work place, in force. One of the engineers I work with is a woman, and she is one of the best engineers I’ve ever worked with. We have the same amount of experience, and while I have a college degree, she has a lot of experience…and we make the same salary. Fancy that. My boss is black. I’ve never seen him be asked to dance or sing, Honesty, but he IS a top notch engineer and administrator. He wasn’t hired 'cause he’s black, he was hired 'cause he’s GOOD. I asked him if the white man is keeping him down while I was writing this, and he just laughed and said ‘bullshit’.

The race barriers ARE coming down. In my fathers day, mixed couples were almost unheard of, even in Arizona. I still remember my dad lecturing me on not trying to date ‘white girls’, cause I’d only be bringing myself trouble (kind of dates me). I’m now married to one of those ‘white girls’, and looking around, I see a LOT of mixed couples these days (and I rejoice when I do…to me its a clear sign that things have changed). Open your eyes and you’ll SEE that things are better. Are they perfect? Nope. We have a long way to go still. But, every generation seems to get better and more integrated…IMO anyway.

In my grandfathers day, he could work on a farm, picking lettuce, or MAYBE, if he was really lucky, he could work construction. When my grandfather died, my family was forced to go on welfare just to survive. My father went into the military to get an education, and now he owns his own company through his own guts and will. Myself, I’m a senior network engineer for Williams and I like to think that I got my position because I’m good, not 'cause I’m hispanic. How have the white boys kept my family down? We excelled in spite of them, and now they HAVE to respect us. And now, they have to ACCEPT us too, because things have changed. My dad talks of when he was a boy and people called him a ‘spic’, and did all kinds of things to him and my family I won’t bring up…anyone calls ME that and they will get a boot up the ass. You know its true…how maybe white boys would call you ‘niger’ now?? Not any that expected to live through the encounter, I’m sure. And they’d KNOW they were in the wrong, too. Yet, 30 years ago, it was common place. Sure, maybe some of that ingrained prejudice has gone underground, but some of it has washed away as well…as one of the posters said, time heals all wounds.

Honesty writes:

"Long as we play basketball, football, sing our tunes, and entertain the masses we’re ok. When blacks are given the opportunity for just a breath of a chance, America’s “free” calls foul. The whole thing is just a pimp-slap to every minority in this country, in an atempt to tell us exactly who “our massa’ be.”

:mad: All I can say to you is, I don’t NEED the white boys to GIVE me anything. In THIS country, its there for the taking, if you have the will and the guts to take it…the white boys can’t stop you, if you REALLY want to do something. Maybe it is a bit harder for me (or you perhaps) to make it, though I think thats not as much the case as it once was, but you CAN make it, if you want too. If you really think its so bad, go back and look at whatever is your ‘old country’ and see how much better things are there (snort), were everyone is your same ‘race’. I still have family in mexico, and to me, this country is heaven on earth compared to there.

AA played a part in getting us where we are today. Without it, I’m sure my family would still be picking lettuce somewhere, or maybe have the coveted mechanic or construction job if they were REALLY lucky (I certainly used the grants to help get me through college). But its time is past. Its counter productive now. Now is the time to heal, and to allow time itself to weld us into one nation of AMERICANS, not a bunch of splinter groups.

Maybe I’m overly optimistic on this, but I see the progression from how things were in the past, to today, and I’m amazed by the progress we’ve made. Considering we are the ONLY country in the world with the mix of different races and religions that we have, its telling (and amazing to me at least) that we have so few problems…and its also telling that we are the greatest country on the earth as well.

But thats just my opinion…I could be wrong.

-XT

p.s. I appologize if this was more a rant than a reply to the OP. Reading back through this, I guess most of its the subject for another thread entirely.