Yes, that’s the tautology that supporters of AA have created, and often refuse to confront.
Yes, this thread has demonstrated that. If one who claims to want to end racial prejudice cannot make an argument without appeal to someone’s race (a classic circumstantial ad hominem) then one has failed miserably to do what one claims to want.
I am not confused and you have made my point. Claiming that attitudes and standards “have been carried into today” while denying that it is a historical trend with historical consequences is a bit odd.
And you want to pretend that a woman, today, carries no burden of a lack of role models, a lack of mentoring, and family attitudes that were generational? When a woman is told that “women do not make good CEOs,” you are saying that that attitude was created at the moment that it was spoken and not the expression of an idea that has permeated much of business for several hundred years?
Your reasons appear to be lacking in foundation, (or have not actually been explained, despite your protest). I do not understand how you can make the claim that you are making, as if history plays no role in current discrimination and achievement.
I realize that you are saying it. I have no idea how you can believe it. I particularly do not understand how you can believe it when your second and third quoted sentences directly contradict each other.
Well, blacks don’t make good quarterbacks and Asians don’t make good leaders. The best leaders are straight white males. Or at least that is most people’s subconsious reaction.
Tom, I didn’t deny this. I have repeatedly explained otherwise. You’re not getting it.
No, I don’t.
I’m done trying to explain this. It wasn’t important enough in the first place. I surprised I had to explain it this much, and obviously I’m not getting anywhere. Never mind.
The attempt to reinstate AA in college admissions in California has been temporarily stopped by the Asian-American community:
Here’s the upsetting part though:
**But Der said any debate that pits ethnic minorities against one another serves no one. **
Why, is a debate always supposed to be whites vs. minorities? Asians are just supposed to grin and bear it for “the team”?
If you don’t want to pit minorities against each other, then don’t try to pass policies that pit minorities against each other.
The most successful demographic in human history is the white male; I’m presuming most of them were “straight.”
Oddly, the opponents of affirmative action never seem to acknowledge that White incompetent males exist or that they are recipients of the ultimate affirmative action: their gender and skin color.
For a group that doesn’t even have a majority in the United States (the largest single group in this country are White females), they hold the majority of the reins of power. How this would be possible WITHOUT their being recipients of “special treatment” is never made clear.
Ah, so there should be a stigma attached to all the white males who made billions of dollars founding Facebook, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and um, virtually every other Silicon Valley success story.
And as far as I can tell, none of those guys had anything handed to them other than a fairly normal upbringing. Obviously, they received special treatment.
I won’t deny white privilege exists, but it does not explain everything.
In human history? Really? So what do you think that means?
Of course not but if you discount Jews and eliminated white privilege, are you sure that we would have approximately the same level of lopsided white male success that we have today?
No. We’ll probably know what the “natural” level is once some minorities stop catching up. As long as they are making progress we can hope that they continue to make progress until equality in many fields. Although of course due to cultural preferences there will always be some areas where different groups excel more than other groups. There just aren’t that many female computer geeks who have lived and breathed the stuff since they were children, so we can expect there will never be very many female Silicon Valley entrepeneurs compared to males. Silicon Valley is going out of its way to promote female execs, but female founders are very rare.
In history? Really? When did history start as far as you’re concerned?
And that’s the problem with using “white privilege” (or any other race-based doctrine) to make policy - you can’t tell the difference. It doesn’t leave any room for explaining what people have or do based on either the hundreds of other possible advantages or disadvantages in life, nor the legitimate work or talent people put into them. It just labels everyone as black or white and walks away as if it were all so simple. Just like any other racist policy, like Jim Crow.
Exactly. And that’s why if you’re from wealth and a minority, you get a double bonus, while if you’re poor and white, you get a double penalty. And if you’re poor and Asia, forget about it, might as well just go back home. The deck is stacked against you on all fronts.
Well, no, that’s false.
I, for one, acknowledge that being white and male can be an advantage (whether due to current discrimination or the legacy of past discrimination).
My criticism of AA is this: by using an irrelevant factor, it is just as evil and unfair as any other racism or sexism and it ignores the many other sources of disadvantage or advantage that exist.
People should be treated as individuals, not members of a group. Pretty simple stuff. Judging people by their race or sex rather than as people is wrong, even when it means well.
The reason is because of past discrimination and because they used to have a majority. Duh.
The solution is to end discrimination and end the domination of or advantage of one race or sex over the other. It’s not to replace one advantage with another.
No, adaher, there is no such thing as “wealth and a minority” or “poor and white.” You are either black, white or Asian. All blacks are assumed poor and all whites are assumed rich. No deviation from these assumptions are allowed. If they were allowed, you’d have to, you know, throw out assumptions based on race and scrap all this race-based nonsense.
I don’t think that’s really fair. But the arguments they make are kind of ridiculous, saying that no white person would want to trade places with Shaq or something. Yeah, right. I’m sure there are some people who would rather be white than rich and famous, but I’m not one of them.
Maybe in the 1950s it would be better to be poor and white than rich and black, but that’s nowhere near true in 2014.
Even if you couldn’t find a single white person who wouldn’t want to trade places with Shaq (and that’s kind of silly to assert), does that mean Shaq needs AA?
Go back home where? You mean go back to China or something? Because, you see, that is an example of how your whiteness gives you an advantage over Asians. noone ever thnks of you as being from somewhere else as being an “other” There are a gazillion advantages like this that white males enjoy that you want to ignore and pretend that the playing field is already level.
So you understand white privilege and yet you don’t think race is a relevant factor?:smack:
But you have an advantage by virtue of your race and gender. All other things being equal, you have an advantage.
Thats funny, becuase all I hear is “we should stop AA because its racist” without any ideas about how to level the unearned advantage that white males have by virtue of their race and gender.
So do you have examples of rich black kids that have gained admission to some top end college over a better qualified poor white student? Because you keep saying things that indicate that you think this sort of thing is common and there are plenty of anti-AA folks who look for this sort of information that you would think that there would be a million examples of this sort of thing happening. Or is this like when Reagan talked about welfare queens that didn’t really exist.
I think we all hope for a day when race doesn’t matter but you seem to insist that the way to get to the point where race doesn’t matter is to pretend it already doesn’t matter when clearly it does. Either that or you have no idea how to fix things but you know you don’t like the one that gives blacks and advantage to counteract the institutional advantages that whites have in society.