I don’t see it.
And frankly, I think the only people who still see ‘racial discrimination’, in this country, on a large scale are those who ‘profit’ from it. The NAACP, Jesse Jackson, etc. Also, those who have fallen for their hype.
I don’t suppose it has occured to the pro-AA types that if you keep beating into people heads the notion that the races are different, and some need special help to ‘make it’, that people will continue to treat people differently, based on race?
I don’t see it.
And frankly, I think the only people who still see ‘racial discrimination’, in this country, on a large scale are those who ‘profit’ from it. The NAACP, Jesse Jackson, etc. Also, those who have fallen for their hype.
I don’t suppose it has occured to the pro-AA types that if you keep beating into people heads the notion that the races are different, and some need special help to ‘make it’, that people will continue to treat people differently, based on race?
You’re lucky. I have seen many examples of discrimination in employment and housing. (Far less so than 30 years ago, but hardly eliminated.) Sometimes it is subtle; sometimes it is not subtle at all. I’ve seen it challenged in court and I have seen the deck stacked so that court challenges are pretty much useless.
There is no question that we are farther along than we were in the 1960s, but discrimination is still an ongoing part of American life.
Brutus wrote:
The system will not be fixed until the effects of long-standing institutionalized racism go away. And this will not happen passively. Hundreds of years of active discrimination is responsible for the disparity between white and black wealth in this country. Even if a miracle happens tomorrow and racism disappears, the disparity sown from discrimination in the past will continue to haunt us into the future, unless processes are set in motion that actively redress what was done in years past.
You don’t see it because you don’t have to see it, dude. Go talk to some black people and ask them what they see. You may learn that all is not like Candyland.
I see it
the races ARE different, they eat different foods, have different traditions, some even speak whole other languages and are from whole other countries
race should not be a factor in hiring, etc
abilities should be the only criteria
but who are we kidding if we try to pretend that we don’t discriminate?
speaking as a “pro-AA type,” anyone who’s head can’t make room for the notion that discrimination still exists and can’t be combatted with denial needs to have it beat into them.
Beat yourself over the head with this:
Jesse jackson and the NAACP and spike lee and LULAC aren’t the only entities that profit from the adequate representation of minorities in our institutions. It’s truly sad if you can’t see how their presence benefits yourself and our society at large.
I want to know why I am scrutinized for fair consideration of racial preferences when hiring a employee, but not when I marry someone. Why isn’t the government fining me for not having enough black friends? What’s the difference?
Good point. 100 years ago, “WASP” society didn’t accept Italians, Jews, or Poles as “whites” in many cases. Jews in particular had a long period of exclusion, and there are still some people who don’t accept them as “white”. But today most people would say they are white. Perhaps in 100 years people such as Japanese-Americans and other Asians, or some groups of Hispanic people (like the mostly white Cuban-Americans) will be not be seen as separate from the majority at all. These groups intermarry with Anglo whites at a fairly high rate.
Besides if someone did a projection a 100 years ago, they may have said that now the United States would be half South Italian, a quarter Jewish and Slavic, and Anglo Protestants would be a small minority. These new immigrants were so polyglot that people such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilosn feared for the continuance of English. Also at that time there was much talk of the European immigrant wave as making the “Negro Question” less and less relevant. They thought so many Southern and Eastern Europeans would come that blacks would remain a rural southern group at the margins of society, and pushed from migrating to cities or to the North.
They could not see WWI, the twenties , the Great Depression, WWI, and the Cold War. We too don’t know what may cause one source of immigration to end (maybe Latin America will become more developed economically or Europe will attract more of their emigrants), and open up a new wave (Africans will start finding it easier to arrive). Maybe a mass wave of Eastern Europeans due to an unforseen war will add more whites. We just don’t know.
Money. Power.
Who you marry or with whom you associate in your free time has little bearing on whether the group from whom you selected those companions has the same opportunity and access to jobs, housing, or education as the majority of citizens.
It is not the refusal to associate, but the disparate effects on the opportunity to earn money or choose housing that draws the government’s interest. To the extent that one group or another is denied access to the opportunity to pursue Life Liberty, and Happiness, the government has an interest in keeping the playing fields level.
I think that there’s a good deal of ‘racial discrimination’ in the US, particularly against black people. Look at it this way: Nobody can really doubt that there’s a lot of discrimination on a personal level. So it’s hardly a surprise that a certain percentage of people bring this sort of baggage to work and discriminate in hiring, promotions, etc.
Just curious on your opinion here. IYO, how much residual racism is the fault of AA? For example, the black college student is often perceived as having been admitted “because they are black” and is considered inferior for that reason. Or the black attorney at the big law firm is seen as a “token” because the firm needs to show it is “sensitive to minorities.” In both cases it is entirely possible, perhaps probable, that race was not an issue in the college/firm’s decision to admit/hire the individual, but the perception remains.
It seems to me that as long as we have AA, there will be some racism precisely because AA perpetuates racial stereotypes. For the same reason I cringe when someone cites Brown v. Board as a great turning point in American race relations. “Separate but equal is inherently unequal,” think about what that means.
More generally I would object to the idea that AA is designed to compensate individuals for the present disparity in wealth and power between whites and minorities. If AA is about wealth and power, why should it not apply to poor whites as much as to wealthy minorities? AA is a mechanism designed to correct for past injustice, and has nothing to do with disparities between people today.
So to answer the OP, no, whites will not get AA. Hopefully AA will be long gone before whites are in the minority anyway.
of course not. 'cause whites are bad, mmmkay? And non-whites are good, mmmmkay?
Some. Not much. Certainly AA provides a good excuse for racists to fulminate about the poor, downtrodden white male, but my experience has been that the majority of people who link their racism to AA were racist before they ever learned to spell “affirmative.”
AA cannot do away with racism, in any event. Its intent is to minimize the effects of discrimination. Xenophobia will always play a part in human relations, but the issue is allowing it to physically harm the members of a perceived group for the mere reason of being a member of that group.
The Supreme Court has been slowly chipping away at quota systems since 1978–as they should. This should leave outreach programs and stricter enforcement of anti-discrimination rules as the primary (and less offensive to most people) methods of encouraging AA. And I agree that I hope that AA does not survive (or have a need to survive) for many more years. I don’t believe that we have reached that point, yet.
I think that is a flawed view of what AA should be. (Which is not to say that some supporters of AA do not hold that view.)
In my perspective, AA should never be perceived or established as compensation. It is about making sure that the opportunities to participate are made available and that the knowledge of those opportunities (both the awareness of the opportunities and the wherewithal to pursue them) is promulgated within those groups.
That phrase, like Spencer’s “Survival of the fittest” can certainly be taken out of context to mean what was never said. A clearer statement (and one clearly born out by the opinion set forth in Brown) is that when a majority decides to establish a “separate but equal” condition, they will never actually maintain the equality.
—Money. Power. Who you marry or with whom you associate in your free time has little bearing on whether the group from whom you selected those companions has the same opportunity and access to jobs, housing, or education as the majority of citizens.—
That’s not what many sociologists and even experts on discrimination conclude: social capital, which is built heavily on top of patterns of marriage and association, is a MAJOR factor in people’s life fortunes, and the lack of social capital is diagnosed as being one of the major modern harms of racism. Association is VERY powerful.
Again: if the government polices who I trade my goods or services with, why shouldn’t it also police who I have sex with? Or any other aspect of someone’s conduct that might systematically exclude minorities? Why does the moral principal suddenly do a U-turn when someone’s property is involved?
—It is not the refusal to associate, but the disparate effects on the opportunity to earn money or choose housing that draws the government’s interest.—
I guess I’ve never agreed with the idea that economic relationships are somehow more or less inherently deserving of regulation than any other sort of relationship. This view seems to me to be more like a cultural bias than a solidly grounded reality: say “money” and suddenly we are an entirely different world. If the government can regulate who I enter into mutually beneficial relationships when they involve money, goods, or servives, why shouldn’t it regulate them just as vigorously when they don’t? What’s the difference? Why does the addition of “money” change moral obligation?
—To the extent that one group or another is denied access to the opportunity to pursue Life Liberty, and Happiness, the government has an interest in keeping the playing fields level.—
People still have the opportunity to pursue life, liberty, happiness without forcing all others to hire or associate with them.
I don’t like bigots anymore than the next person, and I think it’s my personal right not to associate or trade with them if I don’t want to. But that doesn’t mean I think bigots shouldn’t have the same legal rights as everyone else.
You are right. When we say “money” we are in a different world.
In the economy of North America, the presence or absence of money determines whether or not you can survive–and to what level.
Beyond that, the government does not regulate who you enter into relationships with–not even economic relationships.
If you are edging toward a discussion on Libertarian views regarding what actions should or should not be permitted to a government, that is a separate discussion. The current government, as it is formed, merely sets limits on the manner in which you may deprive another person of the opportunity to pursue wealth, food, or shelter. The government does not order you to associate with any particular person. It forbids you from denying opportunity to another.
—You are right. When we say “money” we are in a different world.—
Just the cultural bias I was talking about.
It seems nothing more than another form of discrimination: class discrimination. Because the wealthy are evil, it’s okay to do to them what we don’t do to others: place social responsibilities on them that have no symetry with anyone else.
—The current government, as it is formed, merely sets limits on the manner in which you may deprive another person of the opportunity to pursue wealth, food, or shelter.—
Sounds like Newspeak to me. When I build an apartment building and offer it only to my friends (which all happen to be black: neglecting all Korean tenants), how I am depriving someone of housing? How can that possibly be if, without my action, there would have been NO apartment building in the first place? If I have an obligation to provide people with opportunities for housing, why don’t you?
People can pursue wealth, food, and shelter without it being demanded that another private citizen provide it for them, much less that only CERTAIN private citizens be singled out to provide it for them.
It’s ridiculous that if I waste all my time unemployed posting on message boards, I accrue no social responsibility to provide wealth, food, or shelter to others. But if Ispend my time working, or start a bussiness, suddenly I DO have an obligation to do so.
If we should draft some of the proceeds of my bussiness to provide for others, then why should we not draft some of my leisure time to do the same? Not doing so is fundamentally asymetrical with regards to people’s obligations to others, which undercuts any claim of moral grounding. I might accept that it’s more pragmatic: but it’s a joke to call it fair.
The wealthy are not the only ones bound by the law. A dirt-poor, hard-scrabble truck farmer is as prohibited from refusing to sell to someone as is Bill Gates.
You’re taking this discussion out of this thread.
Perhaps.
Are you arguing that the government should play no role in the regulation of commerce?
Or that it should play a role in the regulation of social affairs?
Should the government take no interest in fraud in commerce?
Or should the government regulate the events in people’s lives that lead to broken hearts and ruptured friendships?
I would agree that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to quantify this effect. However, my perception is that AA creates resentment that leads to racism that leads to discrimination.
Compensation was a poor choice of wording on my part. Imagine a world without a history of racism, but in which minorities had naturally fallen to the bottom socio-economic level. Would we have AA? I don’t think so. A fundemental idea behind AA is that the present situation is a result of past wrongs. So while AA is not a form of compensation * oer se* it is also not completely severable from the history of how the situatioin got to be the way it is.
I agree with your rearticulation of the phrase; some time this afternoon I will try to find the phrase in the actual case online and post it in its proper context, perhaps it is less offensive in that setting.
I quote leroy washington (an inner city african american man, raised in public housing, alcoholic father, the whole stereotypic bit)
i posed some of the opinions in this discussion to him, particularly regarding racial backlash from affirmative action
“white people hate me anyway, i might as well have a good job while they do it, at least that way i can get away from them if i want to”
An overbroad generalization from someone who very likely is not even in a position to know if all/some/a majority of white people “hate” him. Of the dozens of blacks with whom I have worked, several were hated for their personalities. A very few of my white co-workers hated (or feared) them “just because.” There is no general hatred for blacks among whites, and pretending that there is will do nothing to make anyone’s life easier.
I am in favor of programs to reduce discrimination, but sound bites such as “[they] hate me”, don’t make the cut as justification.
greck, you have argued in multiple threads that minorities have a right to “get back at” the perceived oppression of the perceived majority. (I am not accusing you of inciting violence, only of supporting the child’s notion that every insult must be “paid back” before it can be healed.) That is a lose-lose situation.
No one has the right to perpetuate hatred (or unfocussed anger). That simply leads to increased hatred and anger and prevents any future reconciliation. If Mr. Washington expresses that thought very often, he is going to create a self-fullfilling prophecy as people do come to hate him for his attitude. My experience has not been that Mr. Washington is typical. Rhum runner has suggested that his attitude may be more typical than I have encountered. Barring a decisive statement from the Gallup or Harris groups, I do not know who is more correct. Regardless, while a life in the projects may engender the feelings he has expressed, the broad expression of those feelings will do nothing to help his children.
I support the general notion of institutional racism that you have mentioned on a few occasions. Whites (as an overall group) have gotten ahead at the expense of blacks and other racial minorities. Even immigrants to the North in the 20th century (where slavery was brief, ancient history or non-existent and Jim Crow never appeared) benefitted (as a group) from the ability to take advantage of the “last hired, first fired” policies and the “guilty until proven innocent” attitudes directed at blacks along with underfunded schools and periodic riots to “keep them in their place.”
However, you have extended that thought to include every person who is white–and that is simply wrong. Outside the South, blacks have generally been an urban group. There are many white people who never lived close enough to cities to have personally benefitted from racist actions. There are many middle-sized communities where too few blacks lived for anyone to have benefitted from oppressing them, despite their urban, industrial environment. When you extend the concept that whites as a group have benefitted to claiming that any single person has also benefitted, you are simply wrong. Trying to push that notion on people whose ancestors faced extreme hardships will simply cause them to dismiss you as an ignorant crank.
There are whites who fear and hate blacks.
There are blacks who fear and hate whites.
No law will change either attitude. No “getting back” at the other side will improve the lot of our children.