He doesn’t have to. I was careful to make it clear I was talking about AA in relation to Apartheid from my first post in this thread (when I wasn’t commenting on other points). All he had to do was read my posts.
Sorry for the ignorance on your country of origin, MrDribble - I’ll pay better attention next time. I assumed you were talking about America because your comment was in response to a comment I made about America. Surely you can forgive me for not keeping everything 100% straight in this circumstance, right? Right? 
Some people would see that as Greeks like to receive a lot of benefits but not work that hard or pay that much in taxes.
:rolleyes:How about you pay attention to my name, for a start?
Now where in your post did it say anything about you talking specifically about America? The only country-specific thing you mentioned was “Will and Grace”. Here’s an important point to note: America is not the only country in the world. It’s definitely not the only one to have affirmative action.
But my point still stands, even in America - check your privilege before you talk about who has or hasn’t benefited from the current system. Even in America, an adult White male is the recipient of some unique benefits - automatic freedom from hassle for Driving While Black, for instance, or automatic freedom from hitting his head on the Glass Ceiling. He is automatically a member of the class in power, as it were, even if he just stepped off the plane from Europe or Australia. That not every White male is poised to leap at the privileges afforded him does not mean the privileges don’t exist. It’s all about the opportunities available, both in privilege and its redress.
And yes, even in America, those privileges often exist because of wrongdoing in the past. Everything from systemically oppressing both enslaved and free blacks, to butchering Lakota babies with Hotchkiss Guns, to infanticizing women and holding them down for centuries. That a particular male *now *doesn’t do these things, doesn’t make him a Good Guy *unless *he also actively works to change the system that exists. If he meekly goes along with it, that makes him at best only a tiny bit complicit in the wrongdoing. At best.
It’s like being a non-combat medic in the Schutzstaffel. Sure, you didn’t kill any Jews yourself. You just helped oil the machine that did.
I may not be 100% behind AA, but I don’t see how anyone can not seen how past inequities need to be addressed somehow.
African Americans have been here for centuries. Most can trace their ancestry to this continent for much longer than your average white person can. But something’s weird, because they haven’t fared as well economically. Even with the vestiges of overt discrimination off of our books, blacks are still behind their white counterparts, even though theoretically they should be ahead (having been here for so long to accumulate wealth).
So what happened? Well, we know about slavery. That was almost two and half centuries of shittiness. During that time, white people–even the ones who came here penniless–were accumulating wealth through the Homestead Act and the like. Then following slavery we had almost a century of Jim Crow. Slightly better, but still shitty.
OK, so the Civil Rights Act gets passed and suddenly black folks are finally free (in a legalistic sense). Civil Rights Act…that was '64, right? My folks were teenagers at the time. Imagine that. Look at far we’ve come.
Except…how in the world can you now expect black people–who we can all agree were oppressed into the Baby Boomer generation–to perform fairly on the same playing field as whites. It’s like removing heavy weights off the legs of one track runner during the middle of the race and expecting him to make it to the finish line at the same time as the white guy, and if he doesn’t, well, he just didn’t work hard enough. If we remove AA, I expect that in a couple of generations, the black-white gap won’t be so severe. But to expect that gap to close completely in one generation? When one generation ago, we still had things like Massive Resistance? That does not make any sense.
So if people want to abolish AA, go ahead. But then don’t complain about how poor black people are, how they always have a chip on their shoulder, how they always suck at school, etc. There are concrete reasons for these things that have nothing to do with genetics, but everything to do with how blacks were treated for centuries in this country.
I read this story a while ago. A woman who was the salutatorian in her senior high school class was denied access to her local college due to segregation policies. Instead of becoming the school teacher she had wanted to be, she became an elevator operator, then a janitor. Now…I’m scratching my head just a little. Plenty of black people were denied access to their state schools and still attended college and become professionals, even during segregation. But perhaps there wasn’t a historically black college or university close to where she lived, and even if there had been, she couldn’t have afforded it. Maybe there were circumstances that required her to live close or near home. Maybe being ignored like this demoralized her so much that she didn’t want to even bother. I guess my point is, though she could have improved her situation by having a tad bit more moxy, that experiencing such discrimination was enough to transform how her life unfurled. White people, in large part, do not share this experience.
Is it wrong to point out that oppression doesn’t simply stop when the law books have been scrubbed clean? That hardship, just like wealth, can be inherited? Many free blackshad their freakin’ land taken away, going back even before the Civil War. You could buy your freedom, if you were a slave, acculumate some assets, and then have it all taken away from you if you ran into someone who’d kidnap you and sell you for a shiny penny. And there wasn’t a thing the law would do on your behalf. Yes, this happened a long time ago, but lest we forget, obtaining land as a yeoman was the original American Dream. This was something that simply did not exist in Europe. If you had land, that was something you could always depend on as an inheritance for your children. Many white people owe their wealth today to some fortunate German or Irish ancestor who acquired “free” land by the government.
So while I might be skeeved out by AA sometimes (and I say this as someone who no doubt has benefited from her gender as well as her race), I think it’s better than nothing, at least in regards to black Americans. Dismantle the problem when the last Baby Boomer dies, and I won’t blink an eye. But it’s hard to justify doing that when black Baby Boomers were born on this soil as second-class citizens and could not do things, like buying any house they could afford or making use of the GI Bill, that white Americans took for granted as their God-bestowed entitlement for simply being born here. In white skins.
I think it’s the notion that it’s a class issue.
A guy can start a company in his garage and become a billionaire. It happens. There is no “class” keeping him down.
Of course, the guy who becomes a billionaire is often a dick who screws over ther people in the process…
Because it is the one concept that has any meaningful chance at changing the political power dynamic in the United States. As a result, certain people want to stomp it out as quickly as possible whenever it is brought up.
“What’s the matter with Kansas?” Well, it’s full of people, like the rest of America, who responded to the “look over there” effort that distracts them from the real issues in their lives. That, and the apparent belief that as long as one guy can start a company in his garage, the system must thus be fair and merit-based.
Rags to riches stories don’t negate a class system. In fact, they strengthen it. Because they enable people like you to deny the existence of a class system.
Again, I apologize for the misstep. Now roll your eyes at that.
White people don’t get pulled over? Women don’t excel in the workplace? I have a female boss who recently got a speeding ticket - she might not totally agree with your wild generalization and use of buzzwords.
I’m a mutt - of Polish, Irish, and Cherokee (and some others)descent. The Russians systemically abused the Polish, and the Americans systemically abused the Cherokee and, to a much lesser extent, the Irish. What am I owed from all of this? Should I get preferential treatment from anyone of Russian lineage? Should I get job opportunities because of Cherokee blood, or does white skin negate that, so I’d be immediately let go. Maybe I can pay myself reparations…
Identity politics are too full of loopholes and create too many additional problems and inconsistencies to be adopted as national policy. Go back far enough and everyone has a gripe - where does the statute of limitations run out?
Handing things to aggrieved minorities does not help them become equal or make up for something that happened in past centuries. It victimizes them and further cements logically the notion that they are lesser and deserved to be treated as such in the first place. If an African-Lakota-American woman gets a job based purely on her minority status, it does not raise other African-Lakota-Americans, it tells them that they cannot succeed on their own and must depend on the generosity and charitable acts of the majority. I believe we’ve seen this referred to as “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Yes there is. America is less socially mobile than allegedly class ridden Europe. As a rule, the guy who invents a billion dollar industry is lucky if he gets a small bonus out of it; the people who make billions are those who already have billions.
For what it’s worth, I did not mean this as a personal slam against you, but simply to point out to you that the tone your post carried was one that did not match with the individual I have come to know and respect, if often disagree with. I do regret that you took offense at it. For whaqt it’s worth, my Duke Power example was an effort to suggest that contextually you were not demeaning minorities per se but the aftereffects of prior discrimination – which I but evidently not you see as good reason for AA programs today.
White people aren’t pulled over for being white. A good friend of mine in Philly stopped driving to visit me in my neighborhood because he got tired of being pulled over for being black, driving a BMW, in a white neighborhood.
There are negative things that are faced by black people simply because of the color of their skin. I’ve watched black colleagues of mine get ignored by cabs, and ended up having to flag the cabs down instead. And this is in DC - a city with a very high African American professional population.
I don’t think white people get pulled over just for being white, but this happens all the time for non-white people.
Ever been pulled over for waiting too long at a stop sign and “obstructing traffic”? I have. Ever been pulled over for doing 32 in a 25? I have. Ever been pulled over for a cop to confirm that your out of state plates are legit, and that you have insurance. I have. I am not black, I am South Asian. Black people I know have a lot more issues. A black neighbor of ours in Atlanta was stopped by the police for running in the neighborhood. He was a runner. But another neighbor called the cops because a “suspicious person” was in the neighborhood. He was supposedly wearing “gang attire”. Apparently a warm-up jacket worn by a black person is gang attire.
I bet your boss got a speeding ticket for doing more than 10mph over the speed limit. That is what you are supposed to get a speeding ticket for. I know a guy who got pulled over for doing 63 in a 65. Obstructing the flow of traffic. Surely you can’t be dense enough to know that the reason is that they wanted some excuse to search the car.
I myself have been questioned by the policy when all was doing was putting recyclables in the recycling bin at the YMCA, where I am a member. He accused me of dumping household trash. This was in Massachusetts. There are a lot of cops out there just looking for an excuse to bust people who “don’t belong”.
I bet if you searched white people’s cars as often as you do black ones’, the arrest rates for drug possession would converge quite a bit. Of course when the cops find a couple of joints in the white teens car, he is busted for simple possession, but the black kid will get bumped up to possession with intent.
Now I will just go and sit quietly in the back of the bus.
There are only 1000 billionares in the entire world.
It’s difficult to argue that there isn’t some form of class system when 90% of the employees at the consulting firms and investment banks I’ve worked at are white (or Indian or Asian if they are quantitative), the only blacks tend to work in admin or mailroom jobs and most of the interns are some partner or client’s nephew, son or daughter’s boyfriend.
Social mobility is also significantly linked to mental ability. Richard Herrnstein pointed out in the 1970’s that as talents are partly heritable over time you might see reduced social mobility.
http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/daniel.nettle/britishjournalpsychology.pdf
Oh, please not this again. Let me guess; brown people have less mobility because they are stupid compared the the Superior White Race.
Gosh, and I know South African Black people who were financially successful and well-educated before Apartheid was abolished. Does this mean Apartheid had nothing to do with oppressing Black people in general? Of course not, that’d be as silly as your example. Blacks are selectively discriminated against by law enforcement, and women (and minorities) are discriminated against in the business world. These are facts.
:rolleyes: It’s always Cherokee for some reason.
No, you’re not owed anything, because you are a White male - you are the group in power. I doubt you could find an American over two generations removed from immigration who doesn’t have some native and African blood, really. Doesn’t make you Black, doesn’t make you Native.
Nothing
In America? Are “Russians” the elite in power?
Are you advocating for some sort of one-drop rule here? Because the Native councils generally make it pretty clear what level of ancestry is required to be considered a tribe member. And I think it’s their say-so that should go.
When the inequalities are addressed. Take your Irish ancestry, for example. A century-and-a-half ago, you could well have made the case that some sort of AA for iriah Americans was in order, and I’d agree with you. Now, not so much. Irish=White for America today. An application letter with “Sean O’Riley” on it is *not *going to get shitcanned the way one from a “LeShawn Washington” would. EWrgo - Society no longer needs to make adjustments for Irish (or Russians or Poles). It still does for Natives (most especially reservation-raised Natives), but you’re not Native.
AA isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about “handing things” to anyone. It’s about equality of access and *removal *of barriers.
I’m a minority with eligibility for AA and it tells me no such thing.
I don’t doubt that there are *some *who feel that way. I do doubt they are a large minority, certainly not the majority, and they are responding from some misplaced pride rather than logic or class-consciousness. Well, as far as I am concerned, they’re just those crabs holding the rest of us in the bucket.
Yes, that someone is able to GET RICH despite whatever imaginary “class” he belongs to due to hard work and luck, completely negates any notion that there is class in this society.
I mean, if people realized their own potential, we wouldn’t need a big government making sure everyone played fair and redistributed wealth.
That a nonzero number of people manage to achieve [whatever] despite extraordinarily disadvantaged odds doesn’t contradict the existence of extraordinarily disadvantaged odds; it just means the extraordinarily disadvantaged odds haven’t gone all the way to zero.
:rolleyes: Oh, please. Wealth has little to do with “potential”, and far more with luck, ruthlessness and connections. The people who get wealthy the way you describe are so few as to be effectively nonexistent. Most people who are skilled and work hard are lucky if they can keep from getting poorer, they certainly aren’t likely to get rich.