I pit Asians against Affirmative Action

The BBQ Pit
101

[QUOTE=Dead Badger]
Going to a community and saying “you’ve got to appreciate education more” while simultaneously offering a crap education is actively counter-productive; it breeds mistrust and achieves less than nothing.
[/QUOTE]

I am not advocating leaving the schools as is. I’ve repeatedly said that money* alone* will not fix the problem.

[QUOTE=Dead Badger]
Why is it not fair of me to point out that the money was not used wisely?
[/QUOTE]

You keep pointing to the extremes went to. In that isolated experiment, going to those extremes is immaterial, unless, you can show that the money that went to these extreme things left other more sensible measures wanting. The point is that they did all the good stuff, and then went overboard. The going overboard aspect is only then important if one is looking to roll the program out. As far as the experiment itself, it shows that no stone was left unturned.

[QUOTE=Dead Badger]
Fine, but I think at this point it behoves you to show some evidence that the problem is cultural rather than structural. As simplistically appealing as it is to say that a given population just has to value what they’re given more highly, at some point it really is necessary that we determine whether there is value there in the first place.
[/QUOTE]

I never said it was not structural. :rolleyes: I’ve been trying to find that C-Span program that was on a couple of weeks ago. No luck. (I think it was C-Span, hmm.) But, I’m really quite surprised you’re pushing this. I’ve heard this to be a factor in every discussion I’ve heard, and everything I’ve read. If you wish to discount it, oh well.

Why don’t we just say that it is entirely structural. That inner-city culture plays zero role. I’ll leave you to spend all the money you want in any manner you see fit. Of course, you’ll have to argue that the money you want will do good and convince people to give it to you. I wish you luck. Maybe you can get some great ideas grom the teachers’ unions. I’m sure that’ll fix everything. Ahh, problem solved. Now I can sleep soundly.

102

[QUOTE=you with the face]
And all this occurs because they become better educated. Not because they suddenly start valuing education more. Right?

When they see more gets going to college, and then getting good jobs afterwards, it changes the perception of that subculture regarding education.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
Because blacks are to Asians as apples are to oranges. The only thing the two groups have in common is that they are non-white in a predominately white, historically racist society. That, to me, is insufficient grounds to justify measuring the achievments of one against the acheivements of the other. Ostriches have wings just like bats do. Doesn’t mean it should be able to fly just as easily.
[/QUOTE]

Let’s see, they both are minority groups. One group does so well that it makes the comparison almost ridiculous. But let’s not look to that group and see what things make them more successful. Instead, let’s compare them to another group, Native Americans, that do just as poorly, if not worse. Yeah, let’s see what practices the group is doing worse adheres to and let’s possibly adopt them. The important thing is that whatever we do is to not compare them to a group that will make them look bad. Gotcha. Brilliant.

By the way, ostriches do not have wings “just like bats do”. There are important differences. That is the point that continues to elude you.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
Dictate to whom and by whom?
[/QUOTE]

Dictate to the culture at large, by the actions of the group in question. What else could it possibly be?

[QUOTE=you with the face]
There is much irony in this belief. You decry black kids who think book learning is incompatible with acting black, but why fault them for this attitude when, in your own way, you do the same thing by associating blackness with the social ills of poor people everywhere?
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What? I’m not faulting the kids. They are simply a product of the culture they are born into. I’m faulting that culture. I can’t begin to decipher the rest of that.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
How are you going to get poor urban youth to buy into the concept that doing well in school doesn’t make one a sell-out, when you suggest that their ethnic identity is related to very thing you’re trying to get them to leave behind? If poor urban kids take comfort from the ethnic identity, disparaging that will only breed distrust and resentment. These kids don’t want to become “white wannabes” but that’s exactly the message you’d be sending to them by suggesting that their is something wrong with black culture.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, now we’re onto it. We can’t tell these kids that something might be wrong with the black inner-city culture. Nonsense. We owe it to these kids to tell them, in no uncertain terms, that there are roads that will help them prosper and roads that lead to a lifetime of mimimum wage jobs, if not jail or the graveyard. That’s what the adults are supposed to do. How we do this I do not know. I think the charter schools will help, as I explained. The NBA’s campaign showing kids that’s it’s cool to read is another small step in the right direction, particulalrly among the younger ones. Black leaders like Bill Cosby speaking out is helpful, reminding the parents and adults in these neighborhoods that they cannot allow another generation to be lost to drugs, violence and yet another dose of politically correct pablam.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
I think you are throwing around “black culture” too freely. There is culture associated with class, there is culture associated with regional differences, there is culture associated with social/geographical barriers (which lead to the formation of ethnic groups), and there is culture associated with religion. To throw everything under the umbrella of “black culture” obscures what we are really seeing.
[/QUOTE]

I’ve made the distinction a few times that I’m talking about the culture of the inner-city. You keep choosing to ignore that distinction for some reason.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
A poor white family in the middle of Podunk, Alabama is literally and figuratively miles apart from the rich white family in upstate New York. They may have a few cultural things in common due to a shared ethnic and regional descendancy, but it would be folly to say that self-destructive habits of the poor white family can be attributed to the same species of culture that the other family is a party to. Their class differences are much greater in magnitude than any similarities imparted by membership in the same ethnic group, and so class should be what should be the focus is on. Not race or ethnicity.
[/QUOTE]

Do you deny that there is a black inner-city culture? One that is distinct from most poor white cultures and the culture of successful blacks?

[QUOTE=you with the face]
I’m not saying otherwise. I’m just saying poverty is not a black thing and the same problems seen in the ghetto are played out by other socially isolated and low income ethnic groups. That tells me that everything that you are attributing to black culture actually should be blamed on “poverty culture”.
[/QUOTE]

The group that is doing the worst is the black inner-city youth. So we look at that group, try to understand it, and make things better. Usually looking more closely at a problem is viewed as a good thing. For some reason alien to me you are advocating against this. Wouldn’t a closer look allow us to gain a better understanding of the problem, then come up with solutions that would be more tailor made? Thus, more effective?

[QUOTE=you with the face]
Because poverty breeds drug dependency. Drug dependency breeds poverty. Acoholism is a social ill associated with poverty. It has nothing to do with culture. Unless you’re saying that symptoms of poverty make up one’s culture, I don’t understand your point.
[/QUOTE]

It was a commentary on your point about culture being a product of environment.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
We try to counteract the negative, self-destructive behaviors that keep people mired in poverty and low self-esteem. Breaking down the walls of social isolation by ecouraging the development of mentoring programs and other activities that bring do-gooders into poor communities. Intensified recruiting efforts for non-McJobs that instill pride in employees, a sense of belong, and optimism. Figuring out a way to engage students and keep them motivated in school, even if it means being unconventional and creative. Tackling the various obstacles that keep poor students from being less college-competitive than more affluent students. Teaching people how to become entrepenuers so that they won’t have to rely on others for a job. Promoting television programming that is diverse and doesn’t rely on stereotypes that reenforce negative ideas about what it means to be black.
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What is wrong with working at MacDonalds. Nothing. Work is good. If you’re beyond school age and that is the only option you have, that is problem. The very problem we are trying to eliminate. Are you of the mind that there is something inherently inferior, or so “different” about black youth that they are incapable of pursuing the same paths that are successful for others. This I think is exactly the problem. You do many of these things and the message is sent that these kids cannot compaete with kids from other groups. I say tell them they can. That they are every bit as smart and they have every bit as much right to compete for the best jobs society has. That attitude, I think, will produce m,ore black success stories—doctors, lawyers, bankers, captains of industry—then an approach that communicates that these kids “Hey work really hard and get really excited about those second-tier jobs”.

To see how well these kids can do when the bar is set high, I suggest the Thernstroms’ book I’ve mentioned a few times.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
Please note that none of my ideas have anything to do with fixing culture. Even if the problems could be attributed to culture, I don’t know how stating this will lead to anything constructive.
[/QUOTE]

Dealing with reality is constructive.

103

[QUOTE=magellan01]
When they see more gets going to college, and then getting good jobs afterwards, it changes the perception of that subculture regarding education.
[/quote]

But they first have to get a better education before they realize the value of education. That goes to the point that Badger made, remember?

So what if they are both minority groups. Gays are also a minority group. So are Muslims. So are members of the Green Party. That doesn’t justify looking at all these groups as if they should be at the same place socioeconomically.

Why not compare blacks to the only other American ethnic group that experienced a similar kind of history when trying to figure out why present-day disparities exist in the first place? When making comparisons, you don’t start off looking at what makes groups different. You look at their similarities. Asians historically have little in common with blacks. In just about every major aspect, they are unlike due to their different experiences. But you want to disregard all that in favor of oversimplifying the issue by blaming black poverty on black culture.

No, that is the point that eludes you. You’re exactly right. Bats and ostriches don’t have the same type of wings. And Asians and blacks don’t have the same type of wings, either (wings = history). Therefore, faulting the ostrich for its failure to fly like the bat makes as much sense as faulting blacks for their failure to fly like Asians.

You are faulting the culture and calling it black, when you should simply be calling it a manifestation of poverty. In other words, just like the anti-scholar who thinks striving for the honor roll is “acting white”, you associate the signs and symptoms ubiquitous to socioeconomic marginalization (such as anti-intellectualism) with “being black”. Both you and the anti-scholar are playing out the same ideology responsible for prejudice against black people (“Black people are dumb”) and the internalized oppression that black people inflict themselves with (“I am dumb because I am black”). It is not a black thing! It is a poverty thing.

Funny how you bemoan how we can’t tell kids that there is something wrong with black inner-city culture, but then you go on to suggest strategies that have nothing to do with railing against black culture and all to do with behavior modification and ignorance eradication. Which is no different from what I proposed.

Because you keep harping about black culture.

What is a “black inner-city culture” and in terms of negative behavior, how is any different from a “white inner-city culture” or a “Latino inner-city culture”? I bet if you make a list of all the things these “cultures” have in common, it would be amazing to you. Gangs. Teen pregnancies. Broken homes. Drug use. High dropout rates. Delinquency. I could go on.

Would you feel like the world is your oyster if the only jobs you thought you could get were at fast food joints?

There is nothing wrong with working at McDonald’s. My dad did a stint there right before I was born, to help make ends meet so that my family could move into a new home. (My mom worked at Domino’s a few years later too, much to the chagrin of my teenaged siblings.) He wasn’t working there full-time. He was a science teacher with visions of becoming a principal; his gig there was for the summer only. He knew that he had other options in life, so working at McDonald’s was a fun thing for him. That wasn’t his identity. That wasn’t the only thing he had going for him. He had other income to fall back on. He had an education and was on track to even get more education, so that he could become a principal (which he did). He realized that he had attainable opportunities that went beyond “would you like fries with that”. And that’s what poor people need, too. If all you see in your horizon are dead-end, unfulfilling jobs standing in front of a hot vat of grease or cleaning out a toilet, you’re not going to realize the accessibility of the American Dream and you’re not going to apply yourself in school. There is currently no shortage of low-level service sector type jobs in the inner-city, so more of the same will probably only return more of the same.

If you really think lecturing to people will make them realize the importance of taking pride in doing work that no one else in society would resign their lives in doing, I have a movie you should watch. It’s called Pollyanna. Might have heard of it.

104

[QUOTE=you with the face]
But they first have to get a better education before they realize the value of education. That goes to the point that Badger made, remember?
[/QUOTE]

No. You have it backwards. Respect for education is what you need before you realize that you have to study and you actualy attain a good education. You can’t think it worthless and work hard to get educated at the same time. The charter schools are a good idea because they understand that there are some people in these poor inner-cities who already do value education. It allows them to get a better education, then, hopefully, act as role models for others. Hopefully, they will start to value education AND THEN task themselves with getting a good education themselves.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
So what if they are both minority groups. Gays are also a minority group. So are Muslims. So are members of the Green Party. That doesn’t justify looking at all these groups as if they should be at the same place socioeconomically.
[/QUOTE]

Please don’t be silly. People who liked Ishtar are also a “minority”, but not in the sense we are talking. Please tell me you understand this.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
Why not compare blacks to the only other American ethnic group that experienced a similar kind of history when trying to figure out why present-day disparities exist in the first place? When making comparisons, you don’t start off looking at what makes groups different. You look at their similarities. Asians historically have little in common with blacks. In just about every major aspect, they are unlike due to their different experiences. But you want to disregard all that in favor of oversimplifying the issue by blaming black poverty on black culture.
[/QUOTE]

I’m fine with comparing blacks to those with similar histories. I’m even fine with starting there. I’m just not fine with stopping there. You are depriving yourself of information. Information that might be the most valuable because it is the most specific.

With the possible exception of communities that are predominantly or exclusively Native American (reservations), blacks as a whole have the poorest scholastic performance. Obviously there are many black kids getting stellar educations, but the black kids in the inner-cities do worse than any other inner-city group. Did you know that the performance gap between blacks and whites is twice as big as the gap between whites and hispanics? And that are kids going to the same schools! Did you know that recent black immigrants do amazingly well comapred to both those groups, as do immigrants from almost any other country? Obviously there is something about the black inner-city culture that is working against these kids. Poverty is a big factor, no doubt. But the non-black kids living on the same blocks and going to the same schools do better. It seems to me that understanding why that is is imperative to finding a solution. Why you are so dead set against it would be baffling, if it were not for the likelihood that it’s pure PC pablam. God fornid we say anything Black is bad.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
No, that is the point that eludes you. You’re exactly right. Bats and ostriches don’t have the same type of wings. And Asians and blacks don’t have the same type of wings, either (wings = history). Therefore, faulting the ostrich for its failure to fly like the bat makes as much sense as faulting blacks for their failure to fly like Asians.
[/QUOTE]

And this is why analogies should be used sparingly, if at all. I accept my portion of the responsibility for encouraging it.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
You are faulting the culture and calling it black, when you should simply be calling it a manifestation of poverty.
[/QUOTE]

There you go again, not acknowleding that I have repeatedly made a distinction between the overall black culture and inner-city black subculture. And it should be clear from what I wrote above that it is not solely a manifestation of poverty. Or, at least, poverty manifests itself in different negative ways and to varying degrees among different ethnic groups.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
In other words, just like the anti-scholar who thinks striving for the honor roll is “acting white”, you associate the signs and symptoms ubiquitous to socioeconomic marginalization (such as anti-intellectualism) with “being black”. Both you and the anti-scholar are playing out the same ideology responsible for prejudice against black people (“Black people are dumb”) and the internalized oppression that black people inflict themselves with (“I am dumb because I am black”). It is not a black thing! It is a poverty thing.
[/QUOTE]

See above.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
Funny how you bemoan how we can’t tell kids that there is something wrong with black inner-city culture, but then you go on to suggest strategies that have nothing to do with railing against black culture and all to do with behavior modification and ignorance eradication. Which is no different from what I proposed.
[/QUOTE]

Good. I just don’t think it’s helpful to dance around facts that may make you or anyone else uncomfortable. Bill Cosby has done more good for these black kids in the past couple of years than the past twenty years of well-intentioned coddling. Hyperbole? maybe.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
Because you keep harping about black culture.
[/QUOTE]

Amazing. Please reread and digest my words.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
What is a “black inner-city culture” and in terms of negative behavior, how is any different from a “white inner-city culture” or a “Latino inner-city culture”? I bet if you make a list of all the things these “cultures” have in common, it would be amazing to you. Gangs. Teen pregnancies. Broken homes. Drug use. High dropout rates. Delinquency. I could go on.
[/QUOTE]

I think you’re right and that there are many things that are manifestations of poverty. But that does not explain why inner-city African-American kids do worse than any other group of kids in the same neighborhoods and the same schools. That is something that needs to be understood if it is going to be remedied. Once again, I recommend the Thernstroms’ book to you.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
Would you feel like the world is your oyster if the only jobs you thought you could get were at fast food joints?
[/QUOTE]

Of course, not. Which is why I studied some and made sure I got into college. That notion was drilled into me by my parents and relatives.

[QUOTE=you with the face]
There is nothing wrong with working at McDonald’s. My dad did a stint there right before I was born, to help make ends meet so that my family could move into a new home. (My mom worked at Domino’s a few years later too, much to the chagrin of my teenaged siblings.) He wasn’t working there full-time. He was a science teacher with visions of becoming a principal; his gig there was for the summer only. He knew that he had other options in life, so working at McDonald’s was a fun thing for him. That wasn’t his identity. That wasn’t the only thing he had going for him. He had other income to fall back on. He had an education and was on track to even get more education, so that he could become a principal (which he did). He realized that he had attainable opportunities that went beyond “would you like fries with that”. And that’s what poor people need, too. If all you see in your horizon are dead-end, unfulfilling jobs standing in front of a hot vat of grease or cleaning out a toilet, you’re not going to realize the accessibility of the American Dream and you’re not going to apply yourself in school. There is currently no shortage of low-level service sector type jobs in the inner-city, so more of the same will probably only return more of the same.
[/QUOTE]

First of all, I take my hat off to your parents. And based on what you just wrote, I think you wold be in complete agreement with me. If those kids don’t get that education—which has to start at a very young age—all will be lost.

I could very well be wrong about this, but it seems that there is a shortage of entry level or low-skilled jobs. I come to this conclusion when I drive through these areas and see a lot of young people just hanging out, It seems to me that at least some of them might want a job. No?

[QUOTE=you with the face]
If you really think lecturing to people will make them realize the importance of taking pride in doing work that no one else in society would resign their lives in doing, I have a movie you should watch. It’s called Pollyanna. Might have heard of it.
[/QUOTE]

You can disparage advice and lecturing. I won’t. And it’s cute how you imply that that is all I would recommend. Not surprising, at this point.

105

col_10022 you said that we should let the affected minorities decide if they were offended by standing to benefit from AA, and I was just letting you know that I was one of those “affected minorities” that stood to benefit and I was offended.

In regards to this cultural difference, I admit that there are probably a number of reasons why blacks as a group seem to value education less than other groups, however that should not mean they get preference over anyone else. Should whites get hired through Affirmative Action in Asian restraunts because they are at a cultural disadvantage when it comes to cooking Asian food? I mean it doesn’t matter that Asians as a group hold culinary skills like that in higher regard than whites do, does it? All that matters is there’s less whites cooking at Asian restraunts and it’s better to force the Asians out of a job they are better qualified for as opposed to whites working hard to hone their skills to deserve the job on their own merits.

Ultimately, it’s a case of eating your cake and still wanting to have it. If you aren’t willing to put in the work yourself why should a guy who is willing to put in the work be shoved to the side? Oh right, because America is supposed to feel guilty about slavery and racism. Well you know what… slavery was bullshit, you didn’t deserve it, and it was unfair. You can choose to blame all your problems on it and use it as a crutch for the rest of your life or you can put your nose to the grindstone and make some changes. Right now the bitching is working, but in the long run it will only be hurting black people and society as a whole.

Do I complain that I live in Arizona and the culture down here doesn’t value ice hockey as much as the one up in Minnesota so I am at a disadvantage to make it the NHL? Sure, I could raise Cain and try to force the NHL to sign a certain number of hockey players from the Southwest (even if they aren’t as skilled as others), but that would be seen as asinine and rightfully so. “B…b…but I just haven’t seen enough Southwestern players become succesful to want to try.” Well you know what? Tough shit, they won’t become succesful sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. “Well we just don’t have the same funding for training and ice rinks.” Then you take it upon yourself to do the damndest with what you do have and work on your own to become better.

When does it stop? Do short people demand equal representation in the NBA because they have been discriminated against? Should Mexicans be employed as ice-fisherman at the expense of others because it’s culture’s fault they are not traditionally knowledgable in that arena? Affirmative Action starts down a slippery path of denying personal responsibility and encouraging reliance on society to support you, and once that train gains enough steam it’s impossible to arbitrarily jump in and stop it.

If the thing you desire is equal opportunity and the dissapearance of racism, supporting a program that does nothing but discriminate based on race while giving advantages to people based on prejudice is not the way to do it.

106

Well said, Brandon. Very well said.

107

[QUOTE=magellan01]
Those kids are going to have to be dealt with either way. A charter school prevents those kids from holding everyone back. It also, allows more time to be spent with them and have more of the curriculum designed for their needs.

First of all, charter schools, I’m farily certain, do not require extra payment. That is voucher schools. But to answer your question, it allows government money to do a better job of what it was inteded for: educating children.
[/quote]

Charter schools cherrypick so any proposal for charter schools have to provide increased funding for the non-charter schools which will be left with the high maintenance student population. With all that said, charter schools are a better idea than school vouchers, they have a school voucher system here in Washington D.C. and all it has done is diverted funds from the general public education system to the private school system, all the public schools still suck balls. I’ve seen what happens to a school system that has a large magnet school program (like NYC), all the smart kids go to the magnet schools, the rich kids that couldn’t get into a magnet school goes to private school and the regular public schools are left with the poor not so smart kids.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
We might have to different understandings of reasonable. I think most people who know enough to raise the issue intelligently are doing so to point out that it IS cultural. It is not innate. If the culture changes, so will the academic success of kids.
[/QUOTE]

I think I agree with what you are saying (there is a high degree of opportunity ignorance in the Black community) and I think a part of the argument for affirmative action is that we need a higher population of successful black college grads before the Black community really believes that education is important enough to make sacrifices for. Right now the attitude I see isn’t “studying isn’t cool” the attitude I see is “what is the point in studying, its not really going to improve my life, the opportunities that require higher education aren’t open to me anyway”

108

[QUOTE=you with the face]
It is too common in schools everywhere for good school performance to be thought of as “nerdy”, “geeky” or “dorky”. The inner-city version of conventional anti-intellectual epithets happens to be of the “trying to be white” variety because, in the eyes of these kids, “nerds”, “geeks”, and “dorks” are white (Steve Urkel, not withstanding). But what is your point?

[/QUOTE]

I don’t think there is a stigma to being smart in school anymore (at least not in subrubia). The stigma is still there in the inner city. There is a lot of parental and community pressure to achieve academic success in suburbia, not so much in the inner city.

109

[QUOTE=col_10022]
I don’t think there is a stigma to being smart in school anymore (at least not in subrubia). The stigma is still there in the inner city. There is a lot of parental and community pressure to achieve academic success in suburbia, not so much in the inner city.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not suggesting that anti-intellectualism is dispersed equally throughout the population, but it does exist. Kids still get called nerds. Bookishness still has a stigma that atheleticism does not. Presidents who eschew reading still get elected because “he seems like the kind of guy you could have a beer with”.

The higher the economic strata, the more value people assign to education. One leads to the other bidirectionally. It shouldn’t be surprising that poor kids think they are too cool for school and it shouldn’t be surprising that poor black kids express that attitude the way that they do (i.e. she’s acting white). That’s their way of saying nerd or geek.

110

[QUOTE=magellan01]
I guess the major point is that what can we do to fix things. I prefer to focus on things that are actionable. We can attribute everything to three hundred years of slavery. Fine. Now what? Let’s understand where we are now and improve the situation. I think not giving poor kids—of any color—an opportunity to extricate himself from the dismal situation he was born into is the largest failing of this country. If I could fix one thing, that would be it. There have been millions and millions of poor kids over the past 150 years, but they were able to use education as a ladder. Every day we allow these kids to waste away is a blight upon the moral character of this nation. It is a break with the idea of America. I want action. That is why I like charter schools. The salvation of some starts immediately.
[/QUOTE]

That’s funny because I think most immigratns think that one of Amreica’s shining virtues is the socio-economic mobility in our society. So they come here and they work hard and make huge sacrifices they pressure their kids to work hard and study hard and go to good schools because they think it will make a difference. Now if we took those same immigrants and enslaved them for 300 years and when slavery went out the window, we instituted segregation and Jim Crow laws until 40 years ago and suffered lingering racism ever since, they might not believe in the socio-economic mobility of America quite as much.

111

[QUOTE=Brandon]
col_10022 you said that we should let the affected minorities decide if they were offended by standing to benefit from AA, and I was just letting you know that I was one of those “affected minorities” that stood to benefit and I was offended.
[/quote]

People like the NAACP and the UNCF don’t seem offended by the idea that something other than going with the flow to reverse the effects of 300 years of slavery combined with 100 years of racial segregation and lingering racism. As a matter of fact, I think they support affirmative action.

[QUOTE=Brandon]
If the thing you desire is equal opportunity and the dissapearance of racism, supporting a program that does nothing but discriminate based on race while giving advantages to people based on prejudice is not the way to do it.
[/QUOTE]

Your analogies are terrible. How do you compare the disadvantages that non-Chinese have in cooking Chinese food to the disadvantages that Blacks have in this society? You seem to downplay the role history plays in the current situation and you seem to oppose the idea of using any sort of preference to remediate the situation because now that noone is holding the black man’s head underwater, they should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Or do you think there is some other method of remediation that makes more sense than affirmative action and isn’t discriminatory in your view (I don’t think affirmative action is discriminatory, it is remedial)?

112

[QUOTE=col_10022]
That’s funny because I think most immigratns think that one of Amreica’s shining virtues is the socio-economic mobility in our society. So they come here and they work hard and make huge sacrifices they pressure their kids to work hard and study hard and go to good schools because they think it will make a difference. Now if we took those same immigrants and enslaved them for 300 years and when slavery went out the window, we instituted segregation and Jim Crow laws until 40 years ago and suffered lingering racism ever since, they might not believe in the socio-economic mobility of America quite as much.
[/QUOTE]

Funny? :dubious:

I’m not sure why you bothered to type this. The tone of it is in disagreement but the substance supports my argument. Is is the black inner-city culture. Not poverty alone, not blackness, not minority status, the black inner-city culture. I don’t know all the factors that created it. Certainly slavery is partly responsible. And Jim Crow. I’d say some of the programs that instigated the the break of the family, and the development of hard drugs played a role as well. While it’s important to have a basic understanding of these historical factors I think it wise to concentrate on the present situation and the future.

113

[QUOTE=magellan01]
Funny? :dubious:

I’m not sure why you bothered to type this. The tone of it is in disagreement but the substance supports my argument. Is is the black inner-city culture. Not poverty alone, not blackness, not minority status, the black inner-city culture. I don’t know all the factors that created it. Certainly slavery is partly responsible. And Jim Crow. I’d say some of the programs that instigated the the break of the family, and the development of hard drugs played a role as well. While it’s important to have a basic understanding of these historical factors I think it wise to concentrate on the present situation and the future.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know that we disagree on all that much. We both agree that there is a cultural impediment in the Black community. We both think that the Black community has no choice but to exercise at least a little bit of bootstrapping. You think its mostly about poverty, I think that there is also a lot less hope in the Black community because the history of racism results in a lack of faith in the equalizing force of an education (imagine if you really thought that you wouldn’t get a fair shake even if you got a good education, BTW neither do many of your elders and noone encourages you as much as they otherwise might). I believe that racism still exists, both overt and structural.

We both think the Black community needs more representation in the middle class to show that there are real dividends to be gained from education even if you aren’t super smart. You think that things like charter schools can form the backbone of that critical mass of Black middle class. It think that you end up cherrypicking the most motivated and intelligent students and we need a more broadbased initiative that helps the mediocre student to succeed to provide a more credible path to the American dream.

I think affirmative action is a neccessary temporary measure. You might think that affirmative action does more harm than good.

I might have mischaracerized you a couple of times there but you get the idea. It is perfectly reasonable for people to disagree about the best mathod of solvinig the problem. My pit was against Asians who (not realizing that affirmative action benefitted Asians during our initial entry into the ivy leagues) want to eliminate affirmative action because it no longer benefits them. Its kinda like the union workers who no longer care about the minimum wage because it doesn’t really affect them anymore.

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[QUOTE=col_10022]
I don’t know that we disagree on all that much.
[/QUOTE]

No, I don’t think we do.

[QUOTE=col_10022]
It think that you end up cherrypicking the most motivated and intelligent students and we need a more broadbased initiative that helps the mediocre student to succeed to provide a more credible path to the American dream.
[/QUOTE]

Like what? I agree in concept. But it seems to me that any effort to fix the whole kit and kaboodle will take much, much longer. That’s the nature of the beast. I am reluctant to write off another generation of kids in the hopes that the next thing will work.

[QUOTE=col_10022]
I think affirmative action is a neccessary temporary measure. You might think that affirmative action does more harm than good.
[/QUOTE]

I do.

[QUOTE=col_10022]
I might have mischaracerized you a couple of times there but you get the idea. It is perfectly reasonable for people to disagree about the best mathod of solvinig the problem. My pit was against Asians who (not realizing that affirmative action benefitted Asians during our initial entry into the ivy leagues) want to eliminate affirmative action because it no longer benefits them. Its kinda like the union workers who no longer care about the minimum wage because it doesn’t really affect them anymore.
[/QUOTE]

Sorry if things veered off course. That was not my intent. I do think that one needs to have a principled stance on the issue. You can’t take advantage of it when it benefits you then wish to abolish it. That is clear hypocricy.