The original Affirmative Action: the effort to extend marketing and search teams to find qualified candidates who would not know of opportunities or recognize that they were not excluded, then judge all applicants in a fashion that ignored any preferred demographics.
It does not work well for education, which probably needs a different model to help people who are SES challenged or to provide diversity, but it does work and it is not racist to apply those practices to jobs and housing.
My comment is addressing something YouWithTheFace said.
If racism includes meaning “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities,” then believing that teaching styles vary according to “race” is a racist notion. And it just isn’t true. As a professional educator, I am aware that teaching styles have to do with individual personality, education and experience as an educator among other things. That is also the reason why gender doesn’t matter and why there is legislation that prevents discrimination based on either of those characteristics.
One can’t promote just a little bit of racism or a little bit of sexism.
Zoe, it would only be racist if you think being black or white inherently means something about behavior, etc. But to make a general statement about group tendencies is not racist or sexist. It’s simply recognizing what’s evident to the senses. There’s nothing noble about pretending everyone is the same.
Let me bring this back to gender since that’s what monstro was talking about when you responded to her. Do you think women and men are identical except for genitalia? Do you think they tend to relate to people the same way? Do you think there’s some differences in the way they tend to communicate and react to certain things? I do. If you think this a sexist opinion, go ahead. But I’ve been around too many women and men to believe that women are nothing but long-haired, breast-having men.
I’m also curious to hear your opinions on AA for women, since I often hear you talk about feminist issues. Do you think it’s wrong that women get a boost in certain fields and in managerial positions? Do you think its sexist to try to increase gender diversity in places like engineering schools?
I don’t think we disagree when it comes to jobs.
I apply a different standard of AA when it comes to college admissions. There I would apply the same standard to blacks as I would to legacies.
Wow.
Can we replace the words “as a whole” with the words “in general”
I don’t remember supporting legacies in any way
Its easy to oppose remedies if you haven’t been harmed
Can you go through the logical and factual proof that AA cannot remedy historical injustice (assuming we limit AA to poor black kids and leave out all those really rich black kids).
If I killed 6 million of one group of people and everyone else sat on their hands and watched it happen, would it make sense for everyone who sat on their hands to try to make it up to them (even if you did so by victimizing another group of people)? Because at least with AA there is some connection between who AA victimizes and who created the initial injustices as well as who benefit from the historical injustices.
First you have to create a group, with no actual scientific basis, whose definition is arbitrary, subjective, malleable and lacks self-continence. Then you have to generalize from a subset to the entire population ‘in general’. This entire process adds nothing and may in fact do much more harm when considered against a policy of actually describing the individuals you’re addressing, rather than ascribing their traits to their “group”, “in general”.
Self-identification and certain concomitant behaviors may fall under such an operational definition (eg. those who self identify as “non-white” and who place societal pressure on some for “acting white”), but it isn’t always useful. “Black culture”, for instance, seems to exist as long as such an absurd, ignorant and bombastic generalization is useful for Identity Politics, and disappears soon after.
Cognitively, many among our species still have not made the leap to realizing that the map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal, and while individuals are real, generalizations are almost always convenient fictions.
Treating real things as bothersome details to be ignored, while worshiping fictions as the only truly useful things to look at, is a sign of massive and fundamental ignorance. As I’ve pointed out numerous times, the exact same type of ignorance that has legitimized every form of group-discrimination and prejudice throughout time, from slavery to the Holocaust to Jim Crow and so on, and so on, and so on. As Zoe points out, you cannot have just a little bit of racism, or just a little bit of sexism. Those who, themselves, champion racism should not them be surprised when they live in a society where racism still exists.
Non sequitors are fun.
If you really want to play, we can look at all the atheists and see that bigotry against atheists is one of the last prejudices about which it is not only perfectly acceptable, but in certain circumstances socially required, to be vocal about. But we’ve long since gotten past the canard that AA is really about helping those people who actually need it, right?
Well, you could respond to what I’ve written on the subject, in this thread, several times. Failing that, you could phrase your challenges less disingenuously, and admit that AA doesn’t work on SES levels at all as it is a racist and a sexist system, not a needs-based system. You could also not cast the debate in terms of “really rich” black kids and simply look at whether or not comfortably middle class children need more “remedy” than children whose parents can’t put food on the table every day. You might, also, try to figure out how we decide who exactly is “black” and who, exactly, needs “remedy”. Despite bluster to the contrary, there is absolutely no objective standard on the societal level, let alone the biological level, for an operational definition of that sort.
Does someone who had one great grandparent who was African count as “black”? What about one great grandparent who, in turn, had one great grandparent who was African? How about someone like that who self-identifies as “white”, and whose family has done so, and fit in without a hitch, for generations? Would someone with 1/8 of their great grandparents hailing from Africa need more “remedy” than someone who was identified as a Jew and whose parents only recently left Russia? How about a “white” child who hasn’t had appropriate winter shoes in his life, ever? An African from a stable African nation who stepped off the plane in Newark yesterday? An African from a war torn African nation who arrived years ago, but isn’t an American citizen? An atheist child who doesn’t let anybody know that they’re an atheist? A vocal atheist child? Who benefits, how much, and at whose expense? How do you decide?
Fuck no.
Not only do many self-respecting people reject pity, not only do people who are confident in their prowess generally not use Victim Status as a key to upward mobility, but someone with a strong moral compass wouldn’t have any reason to believe that injustice can be balanced by even more injustice.
And as you seem to have missed in this thread, I have had virtually my entire extended family wiped out. Entire branches of my family tree are nothing more than names at Yad Vashem. I will never see, talk with, play with or have dozens of relatives, in my generation, at my wedding or present for the naming of my children. The parents who would have ushered in those generations were burned, shot, gassed, killed by disease, malnutrition, etc… In a nutshell, my family is much smaller than it might be, because virtually my entire extended family was exterminated.
And I view the suggestion that I somehow might merit special treatment, let alone specially and deliberately racist AA policies, as insulting and abhorrent. Let those whose politics support racism, who justify bigotry as long as they may benefit, who support racism and sexism as long as it’s not directed at themselves, deal with their own consciences.
If you, or others, feel the need to support racism that’s your burden. But I’ll be damned if you’re going to justify racism in my name.
I am no racist.
I request that justice be done and racist discrimination be illegal, not used whenever I think that I can take a piece of the pie away from someone else. I want fair treatment, I am no Victimology Pimp, ready to trade my history for someone else’s crust of bread. I want equal treatment before the law, not preferential treatment based on “good” bigotry.
Only the most tangential of connections, for the flimsiest of reasons, based on the most slipshod of support. Harming an individual, by the way, because of what one of his ancestors or his ancestors’ relatives, might, possibly, have done? That’s racism. Pure and simple.
It’s also worth noting that, as you’ve stated, you’re of Asian descent. Which makes it quite probable that the Mongols’ bloodlines intermixed with your native stock somewhere back in the centuries. If so, are you, then, willing to actually put your money where your mouth is and give up any job you applied to if an equally qualified candidate of Russian ancestry was also applying? After all, it’s possible that some of your family tree benefited from the social conditions that have hamstrung Russia for a substantial period of its modern history. That way, there is some connection between who AA victimizes and who created the initial injustices as well as who benefit from the historical injustices.
Ready to sacrifice your own potential to atone for the sins of the Mongols?
Our schools already have officially sanctioned hate against the uber evil “dead white European males”. Surely we can add some hate in there for “dead Asian Mongolian hordes”? Heck, many Africans who were sold into the slave trade were sold by other Africans. Maybe we have some of that ‘good’ racism left for “dead black African males”?
I agree. Anyway, I’m a little skeptical of the biological/social distinction that some attempt to draw. Let’s suppose someone says “We need encourage more people from Group X to register as organ donors so that there will a better chance of matches if somebody from Group X needs an organ donation” Or let’s suppose somebody says “We need to make sure that new drugs are safe and effective for members of Group X.”
I doubt anyone would have a serious problem with those statements, even though Group X is being referenced in a context where biology matters.
Like you say, it seems that racial distinctions are fine when it means that certain groups are receiving benefits, but as soon as an inconvenient issue comes up, the “race is impossible to define and therefore does not exist” crowd has a tendency to show up.
Society has applied a label of “race” to a number of people and created situations where people who have been slotted to one “race” or another have been the recipients of either oppression or support based on their apparent membership in one group or another. Since the people who wrote the Jim Crow laws and the Northern “point” systems for housing, and enforced bank red-lining or Last-hired/First-fired rules in industry were basing their actions on their categorization by “race,” there is clearly a societal category of “race” that exists. As poorly defined as it is, it has been the tool by which societal decisions (and even laws) have been made. It seems to be a bit odd to claim that all those events did not happen since biology has demonstrated that its older biological categories were erroneous.
Even in medicine, it is the societal, not the biological, term that is used in the U.S.
In the context of medical decisions, the societal word, (based on older and disproven biological beliefs), continues to be a convenient short-hand to identify groups in a limited context. When a U.S. medical text suggests using “race” as one diagnostic tool for Sickle Cell Anemia, it is not based on the erroneous belief that there is a genuine correspondence between the disease and some biological “race.” The word is used in its societal definition to identify the group of people in the U.S. whose ancestors were imported to this country from regions of Africa where the disease was endemic. In Europe, medical tracts concentrate on telling doctors to look for Sickle Cell in people from Malta, Sicily, Southern Italy, and areas of Greece because they see far more Sickle Cell in those populations. In the U.S., (where the Mediterranean immigrants were sufficiently diffuse that the disease remains rare in those U.S. populations), we simply lump potential sufferers under the banner “black” because it reduces the number of keystrokes from “persons who have a number of ancestors who were imported from Africa.” If the WHO shipped massive amounts of Sickle Cell test equipment to Madagascar or Zimbabwe, they would be wasting resources, even though such people are black, however, using “black” in the U.S. is convenient, since so few slaves imported to the U.S. came from those areas.
So what?
I was mildly pointing out the error of your straw man.
No big deal.
It doesn’t look to me as though your post contradicted anything I have said.
Also, I don’t see how I have misstated anyone’s position.
How exactly have I misstated anyone’s position?
Your the “race is impossible to define and therefore does not exist” crowd has a tendency to show up claim is a straw man in that it attributes to (unnamed) posters positions that have not been asserted.
As to
I was identifying the distinction and noting its reality.
There is a difference between the biological and societal definitions of race. The biological definition (when applied to the three, four, or five “races” as it commonly is) has been demonstrated to be incorrect and is not useful. When race appears to be used in a biological context in the U.S., it is actually employing a societal definition, therefore the distinction between the biological and societal meanings remains valid, with the biological meaning having been disproven and the societal meaning being employed as a label that means something different than the biological meaning.
Note that my comment was not limited to this message board. But anyway, here are a couple of mild examples:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4965418&postcount=3
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6551570&postcount=2
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4966839&postcount=6
And in the case of organ donation, are we using the “societal” meaning or the “biological” meaning?
You can dismiss the historically ascribed white social status and dominance given to all whites at birth as wacky logic or fallacy. The poor white’s ability to accuse a black of a crime knowing his word, as a white person, carries more credibility is power. The inherited entitlement that a white from any social class can commit a criminal act against a black without fear of legal repercussions is power. There is power when a poor white can tell a black to move to the back of the bus. Does the poor white family have the same power today? No. But the belief in arbitrary entitlement based on race is passed down from one generation to the next.
I use the word black to describe African Americans, or more specifically, American decedents of emancipated African slaves. Because African slaves and their decedents have specific physical traits, those physical traits were used as the basis for institutional discrimination. Regardless of the actual gene pool, African Americans are identified by skin color.
The Jewish American experience is not comparable to the African American experience. The vast majority of Jewish immigrants came from Europe. Many Jews in Europe and America changed their surname to hide their heritage. It was much easier for Jews to assimilate. There was/is no automatic discrimination of Jews based on skin color that is automatically attributed to African American heritage.
Affirmative Action policies affect approximately 1% of white college applicants, but the lack of Affirmative Action adversely affects the admission of a significantly large number of African American students. There is a gap on standardized tests between African American students and white students. The gap can be the sole reason to keep out black students, or it can be viewed as a disadvantage caused by many complex social issues.
FinnAgain, there is a black culture. The culture developed because of slavery and segregation. Blacks were never equal partners in the economic, political, and cultural institutions of the larger white society. The black culture has merged with American culture, but the culture is still unique. If you have doubts, look for a black church on Sunday. Here is a good example, AME
Edit window closed - Should read descendant.
Societal.
When we use “race” to identify people in the U.S., based on outmoded and incorrect biological hypotheses, we are actually referring to limited populations of people who have immigrated from (or been imported from) fairly narrow ranges of geography. There has been more widespread immigration in the last thirty years, but the population still basically comprises selected segments of the older “racial” categories. We get away with talking as though there are “Negro” health situations, not because there is a “Negro” race, but because the black people we encounter are closer to an identifiable population than to a real “race.”
As to your quote mining, it hardly demonstrates your claim that posters (because you were certainly not clear that you were addressing some larger community) have taken a position
Which of the quoted posters have argued in favor of bestowing benefits upon any group because of any “racial” (as opposed to societal) distinctions?
Ok, and the same reasoning would apply if somebody were to advance the claim that blacks in the U.S. have an average IQ approximately 1 standard deviation less than the national average; and that the gap was due in part to genetics. Right?
Nice try at moving the goalposts. Strawman indeed.