I applaud your family’s ability to rise above poverty through hard work. My point was not that it can’t happen, but that a simple claim of immigrant origins do not tell us what we need to know to judge whether it is true in all cases. For every story like yours, there are a thousand others with tragic endings. For those with less humble beginnings, the odds are not as long.
When my father first came here, he was most certainly NOT middle class. Not only did he work menial jobs, but he sent much of the money he made back to El Salvador to help support his mother and family there.
We were poor. Period. I don’t know how to say it any plainer than that.
I’m conflicted over this issue. On the one hand, I do believe in equal treatment for everyone.
But on the other hand, I know that in real life we don’t all start out on a level playing field, and pretending that there’s no problem isn’t going to make it go away. I side with the Supreme Court on this one. Quotas go too far, but it’s not impermissable to take race into consideration with other factors to ensure a diverse student body. And like the Supreme Court, I expect in the next 25 years or so this will no longer be necessary.
I didn’t really want to turn this into a debate on AA, per se, but on whether that issue was a plus or a minus for the “liberals”. I see it as a significant minus, and one that is not a simple matter of getting a better PR agent. There definitely are some issues that lend themselves to PR, but I don’t see that this is one of them.
The real problem with the American Dream is that it’s such a seductive narrative. There have been studies cited in Ferdinand Lundberg’s “The Rich and the Super Rich” which showed that even very poor people preferred that wealthy people not get taxed too heavily because THEY don’t want to pay taxes when THEY get wealthy. The book also cites economic data that shows that although there’s a good deal of migration between being poor and being middle class, there’s very little migration between the middle class and the upper class. To be fair, the book was written in 1969, so it’s more than a little out of date, but the figures I’ve heard about the increasing control of American’s wealth by a small minority of Americans shows that nothing much has changed in the intervening decades – and if it has changed, it has changed for the worse among the average folks.
The reason that they pay so much of the taxes is that they control so much of the wealth.
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Check this site out for some interesting information along these lines. The figures are from the Federal Reserve Board. Note that the bottom 40% of U.S. citizens owns less than 1/2 of one percent of the wealth in the United States. What are you advocating, taking their rice and beans away so the wealthy have less of a “burden”?
Ignorant pipe dream hell. Just because I haven’t swallowed everything the Cato Institute spills out, doesn 't mean I’m ignorant. It means I’m skeptical. You, apparently, are not skeptical.
Sure, you’d like it if I sounded like an Eastern liberal elitist, wouldn’t you? Ain’t gonna happen, noway nohow.
But not Clinton’s robust economy? :dubious:
Well, compared to the widespread hunger and homelessness in the U.S. during the Great Depression, you gotta admit, they didn’t look so bad as they do now. Plus, the New York Times was printing lies about conditions in the Soviet Union, making them look better than they were. Potemkin villages and such were working.
[qoute]I lived in Germany during the 1980’s and unless things have changed drastically I didn’t notice their standard of living being much different then the United States.
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Here’s an interesting little statistic to chew on:
Wealthy people have historically considered being employed as a sign that you’re not a high-status person any more. Are they evil?
To put it simply, no. Middle class people with incomes of as much as $50K a year are increasingly faces the loss of health insurance. Here’s a site with some stats. There are a lot of them.
Telecommuting and better city planning to allow people to live closer to workplaces, for two.
See my earlier cite on the book “Perfectly Legal.”
You mean you weren’t aware of the huge problem of rising housing costs?
The problem is that, as Sevastopol has said, conservative media have people like you almost totally blinded to what’s really going on around them.
Are you claiming Clinton was an economic liberal?? :dubious:
-XT
Thank you for proving my point.
What do you want us to give you, a cookie?*
Serious answer: Just because you’re doing ok now, doesn’t mean it’s impossible some serious of unfortunate events might lead you into bankrupcy and you’ll be needing some help to pull yourself back up to where you were. Perhaps unlikely, but I doubt impossible.
What exactly will motivate you then? Does it take a lucrative government no bid contract to a company you’re heavily invested in to make it worth your while to support?
I think you’re confused. Removing the unfair advantages we already enjoy does not equal discriminating against us. **Not **treating minorites as second-class citizens does not equal treating us as second-class citizens.
I think you’re confused about the scope of “affirmative action.” Among other things, this refers to the practice of hiring a minority over an equally or better-qualified non-minority.
I think we’ve gone far afield here. My main point was that any progressive or liberal program needs to be tooled to appeal to middle class dreams and aspirations, with a distinctive awareness of how conservatives have succeeded in characterizing liberal goals as something out of 1984.
We need to emphasize choice, autonomy and freedom as the result of liberal and progressive policies. I think it can be done, easily. We just need to start emphasizing something that the poor and the middle class already know – that how much discretionary income you have has a LOT more to do with how much choice you have in the world, than almost anything else. And liberal and progressive policies tend to put money in the pockets of the poor and the middle class, by dealing with the big problems they have … housing costs, medical costs, etc. The poor and the middle class are relentless “follow the money” types, they’ll buy what we say because they remember how well Clinton does. (It really doesn’t matter if he was an economic liberal or not – he was a Democrat, which makes him more of a liberal than Republicans on economic issues by default.
Affirmative action is a good program that conservatives have used to fan the flames of white resentment over not being able to relegate blacks to the low end of the totem pole automatically. But it’s also a side issue to the main argument as I see it.
Hiring a minority over a better qualified non-minority? I’m against that. But if we’re talking about a tie here in terms of qualifications, I don’t really object to making it a tie breaker.
I second that thought.
I don’t really find the “tie” argument of much use.-- it’s too hypothetical.
The kinds of programs that most Americans don’t like are those such as the U of Mich admission standards that give extra points to minorities. This is a real world example, and a recent SC case, too. If that’s the brand of AA you’re selling, most Americans aren’t buying it.
Why not make the tie breaker ‘need’ instead…wouldn’t that be more in line with liberal philosophy? hehe, it would put you into a quandry if the white guy ‘needed’ the job more than the minority though…perhaps enough so that heads would explode. 
This attitude of trying to give an advantage to the poor helpless minority is fine by me, btw. The more free breaks tossed my way the more advantage I’ll take…I’d be a complete fool to do otherwise, and minorities of whatever stripe who DON’T take advantage of whats out there ARE fools IMO. Whenever I hear liberals rail at the lack of oppurtunity for minorities in this country I howl with derision…they have no idea what they are talking about. The fact that some minorities don’t take advantage of the oppurtunities out there doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I think its unfair as hell, but I’m MORE than willing to take advantage as it gives me a HUGE advantage over others…especially over non-veteran (there are a few veteran owned set asides out there that whites can take advantage of) whites in the same niche market. My company is an 8A, and most of our government contracts are special minority only set-asides…or teaming with big companies that want to use our status.
My education was partially funded by government programs and grants for hispanics (well, some of it was funded by me working of course and the rest by private hispanic grants which I’ve repaid with interest in the hopes that OTHER hispanic Americans can do what I have been able too do). Those same government programs and grants are available to other hispanics…if they choose to take advantage of them. If they don’t…well, more the fool they.
As for quotas, personally I think the time for them is long past. If it really is a ‘tie’ (and I’ve been hireing people as a manager or now as a business owner for over 20 years and can’t remember this situation ever coming up where two people I interview are so close a fit, with the same credentials, etc that I couldn’t decide) then flip a coin. In reality decide based on which person is the best ‘fit’ for your company based on what you think they will bring to the company…not on their skin color, sexual preference or religion.
-XT
It seems that comic strips like mallrd Fillmore perpatrait the idea that liberals heads explode (metaphoricaly) when confronted by an idea they did not expect. I always interpreted it as the writter imposing his own feeling on the shadowy " other side"
How I would interpret the above senario, i.e. two people, both poor and in need of a job, both equally qualified, is that the non-white guy should get the job. I am white. It sounds far to me, even if I was the one who would wind up with no job, since a history of repression has left a legacy of repression and discrimination. And I have other prospects.
You’re entitled to your view, and I’m pleased that this is your view, since it’s a view NOT shared by the majority, and efforts by the left to implement it will cost more votes than it wins.
It doesn’t remotely sound fair to me, even though I am, theoretically, entitled to benefit from this view, being of Hispanic origin. (In practice, it’s a coin toss - my name is certainly Hispanic, but I’m relatively fair-skinned and speak with no accent, so I suspect I ‘pass’ – but if someone is checking blocks on a form somewhere, I’d be entitled to the job over another fair-skinned person named Miller or Fletcher.