[QUOTE=Northern Piper]
Having skimmed the posts you’re complaining of, denis, I have to say you’ve not made out your case. First off, Bricker is questioning your authorities, in a way that some find very irrititating. But it’s the mandate of these Boards to fight ignorance. One of the ways Bricker fulfills that mandate is by rigourous questioning of general statements. If you think of him as Professor Kingsfield, (“you come here with your minds full of mush; you leave here thinking like a lawyer”), it makes it a bit more understandable.
Second, I think his points are valid. First, you referred to a cite to Wiki that did not exist. He called you on that. Second, you gave a cite that only referred to the academic part of Clarence’s history, and extrapolated that to your personal views on the political appointments. Bricker called you on that as well. Both of those criticisms help to define the debate, in a Socratic fashion. That’s not to say it’s an enjoyable experience (See: Athens, pissed off citizens of, c. 399).
And finally, he’s challenged your assumption that an outreach program to increase diverstity is automatically a form of affirmative action. That’s a fair comment on his part, because part of the entire debate over affirmative action is to define the boundaries of when race can be taken into account, and when it cannot.
For example, if the Jesuits of Holy Cross had looked out at their classroom, saw a sea of white faces, and said to themselves, “We are not ministering to the entire population,” and then went on tours to a wider variety of junior schools to increase their catchment, without in any way changing their academic standards, then it would be hard to say it was affirmative action. They would simply be taking steps to make sure that as diverse a group of qualified students as possible got into their school.
If they did, however, change their admission standards for particular races, that probably would amount to affirmative action.
Bricker’s point is that your cite is vague on this key issue, which is essential to determining if Clarence did in fact benefit from affirmative action. That in turn is the major point of your thread. By challenging your reliance on this source, Bricker is forcing you to refine your argument, as a good Socratic.
(Perhaps I’m more accepting of this approach having gone through a few law degrees, and then standing up in court and facing judges trained in it - but believe me, though it can be unpleasant to be on the receiving end of it, it is a well-accepted way of probing assertions.)
[/QUOTE]
First of all, this is not law school (or a movie for that matter) and Bricker while he may be as big an ass as Kingsfield is, nevertheless, not Kingsfield and the issue we are discussing is not a legal one it is posted in great debates. It is therefore a debatable one. As such I offered an opinion. I did not expect to be asked for cites regarding something I thought to be common knowledge and when i said wiki it was because I thought I had read those things there when I had really read them on oyez. Now I don’t doubt that the method you describe for interrogating lawyers on the fine points of the law works well in life or death situations, although more and more from what I have read the Socratic method is used by some justices to make the lawyers look stupid while not negating any part of the lawyer’s actual argument. (Find your own goddamn cite, but you might start with the search word Scalia.) As to the rest of my argument and what Bricker extrapolated please read the argument or don’t comment. As for the citizens of Athens - cite please.
Finally, you say, Bricker challenged my assertion that an outreach program to African American students is affirmative action. I say to you, do you speak English? What is it if it is not an affirmative action? It is aimed at one race of persons who obviously are not currently entering the university, either because of cultural reasons, unfamiliarity with the curriculum, or possibly the admission standards are too high. It does not matter which of the reasons may be applicable in a particular case, one of these or a plethora of others that may exist, if the university is out to remedy the situation that is affirmative action. It does not mean that none of the persons discovered and ultimately admitted under the program are legitmate students or that they will ultimately fail. It means that the university identified a weakness or a failure in its own admission procedures and took an affirmative action to correct it. Clarence Thomas benefitted from this action (use whatever cite you want to convince yourself of this.) By the way, the entire legal debate over affirmative action may be to determine when particular applications of race are permitted (I don’t have an opinion) but we are not talking about that. We are simply determining what is or is not affirmative action. In my view any action taken to benefit one race that is not taken for all other races, if benign in its intent, is affirmative action. If it were not benign, but harmful it would be a negative or discriminatory action.
As to your paragraph 4 and 5 above, that is your opinion. See above paragraph for my opinion.
Actually Bricker did not challenge the main point of my thread, which is that the uproar over nominations followed Thomas’s nomination. There was never any question that he benefitted from affirmative action, only the question of whether the benfit accrued during his matriculation at Holy Cross. Please read the original thread if you want to make assertions about what occurred on it.
As to the Socratic method, perhaps I am not so accepting of it, not having gone through a few law degrees and living in a world where lawyers have everything so fucked up that George Orwell could not discern what went wrong. I have no doubt it is a well-accepted way of probing assertions in your universe, but in rational universes the assertion that the sky appears to be blue does not require a cite.
