—The wealthy are not the only ones bound by the law.—
Yet they bear a far greater set of obligations to service the needs of others.
If I own a bussiness, I have to prove that I’ve properly considered all the minority applicants (since who I hire is, apparently, the decision of the government). But if I’m looking for work, no one ever asks me to prove that I’ve fairly considered employment with minority owned and dominated bussinesses first: the government never tells me that who I choose to work for is their bussiness. But offering and taking a job are two sides of a mutually agreed-to relationship. What is the rationale behind applying a supposed moral principle to one and not the other?
—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.—
Oh, I understand your belief about that. It’s just that I see it as akin to Chinese thinkers who think that considerations of justice and human decency are irrelevant to discussions human rights: all that matters are the laws of China. I see how it might be convienient if that were the case, but I don’t quite see your point as to why it is really so.
—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?—
In this case, I don’t think it’s morally sound to do one and not the other. There’s no sensible rationale that distinguishes my agreeing to marry someone (with all the economic consequences that brings) and me agreeing to trade my services for money so distinctly as to completely reverse the moral of the story.
—Should the government take no interest in fraud in commerce?—
Are you suggesting that refusing to hire someone because of their race or religion or any other reason, let alone simply refusing to be forced to hire someone ON the basis of their race, rather than their talent, is a form of fraud?
—Or should the government regulate the events in people’s lives that lead to broken hearts and ruptured friendships?—
You are being disingenuous about the scope of association. I noticed you completely bypassed the debate on social capital: too troublesome?
i was just trying to add another voice to the discussion, one that wasn’t heard prior.
for future reference, you don’t need to convince me that generalizations, pay back, and other such things are bad, i know, i’m simply engaging in the debate to see if i’ve overlooked something, or if there is a fresh perspective out there.
We dont really think we’re solving or proving anything here do we?
The court could have said that the white majority will never provide equal facilities, or that as a practical matter the fact that minorities were segregated deprived them of the interactions with their peers that would lead to success later in life. They did not say that. They said that seperate was inherently unequal.
Clearly this is going beyond the scope of the OP, and perhaps it is a minor point not worth discussing, but it does illustrate, I think, the kind of paternalistic “white man’s burden” belief system that underlies much of what AA is about.
Ah, I see. Very convienient way to debate the merits of a social policy: declare social good off topic! How about the question of justice? Getting in the way of making, without challenge, your assertions about what is and isn’t just? Out with it!
Apos, I infer from your comments that you oppose AA. It seems that you might also oppose most equal rights legislation, but your comments have not been specific enough for me to tell.
Your approach has been to bring up a philosophical discussion regarding the areas in which government should or should not involve itself in the lives of its citizens coupled to an unclear (to me) declaration that somehow people with wealth are being deprived of some rights. These issues seem to me to inhabit a different area of discussion than whether whites will eventually require or be granted AA status.
When I tried to determine your specific position on your issue of where the government should or should not intervene in people’s lives, moving the topic to the more neutral one of fraud so as to avoid being tangled in the issues of AA and equal opportunity, you simply dismissed my question as disingenuous.
Given that this is your hijack and that I have no idea where you are going with it, it seems to me that it would be better served in its own thread where you can actually lay out your points. Obviously, threads do drift and I have no problem with this one going into other areas, but your comments to date have not provided me with an actual topic to which to respond.
Even outside of racial issues, wealthy and powerful institutions are subject to much more intense regulation and scrutiny than are individuals.
See, in the United States, we place a high premium on individual autonomy. However, in the case of a corporation, hospital, or school, those concerns are not as strong. For one thing, the “individual” being regulated is not a person at all, but a corporation that exists by the grace of the State. Additionally, an institution is (generally) in a much better position to systematically abuse large numbers of people. Further, as a practical matter, an institution is (typically) much better equipped to comply with government regulation.
To take an example outside of the world of affirmative action/discrimination, let’s suppose that the government passes a law that requires companies larger than a certain size to build ramps for handicapped access to all of their offices. However, the law doesn’t apply to private homes or to “mom & pop” stores. This seems totally reasonable to me - would you have a problem with it?