Affirmative Action

[theonefroberg]

Any thoughts?.. go after it in a typical ILP melee.

[Thinker-Kid100]

I think the intentions are good, however…

Some view this as a pity boost of, you are a minority, so you are dumb and poor. Heres some money.

Favors minorities, regardless of economic situation. It would make more sense to just give federal funding to those who actually need it, regardless of race.

[JrnymnX]

@Thinker-Kid100

It would make more sense to just give federal funding to those who actually need it, regardless of race.

Ack!

Never spend government money on people - they’ll quickly become addicted.

Which should I choose… Ah heck, might as well use both:
Better a hand up than a hand out.
Give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish, he’ll eat all his life.

[Impious]

Being given a job because you’re black is just as bad as being given a job because you’re white. To disagree is to advocate the further levelling of man. The modern idea ‘equal rights for all!’ taken to its extreme conclusion - ‘equal means for all peoples!’ What? Am I ignoring the 'humanitarian blessings?'of affirmative actiom?

[Xunzian]

J,
I disagree. People act like people getting jobs means that people also can’t lose jobs. At the end of the day, if you aren’t qualified, it will show and you will lose your job. That is how businesses are run, yes?

So then, what does AA do? It levels the playing field. Because of my background, I was born with a large amount of connections already, and many of these things combine in a very non-linear fashion. So, it is my birthright to have a better job than an African-American, who have much less of a support-system built in.

Here are some thoughts about it that I wrote on another forum:

There are some people, Jay Z is actually the prime example of this, who refused to play the white-man’s game and ended up being successful. However, at the start of his business venture, he was financially well-off enough to be able to write the rules as he went along.

To me, that is precisely why AA is a good idea. As long as the rules are written by rich white men, then the game will see to it that rich white men come out on top. Not just because it is being conciously tilted in that direction (and I don’t think it is anymore, at least not like it used to be) but rather because of cultural assumptions. Those little unwritten social rules that let you get ahead. A prime example of that is accent – there is a very talent scientist in my lab. She will never, ever get tenure. Why? Because she has the thickest missouri ebonics accent I have ever encountered. While pidgen english from the mouths of a Chinese scientist is a perfectly acceptable way to hold a seminar, ebonics? Come on, it will never happen. And she’ll get passed over time and time again.

But there is no doubt that she will be much better off (financially) than her parents. With that money will come the ability to affect the rules of the game. In this way, over the course of a few generations, there will be enough affluent people of all races to make the rules and play the game.

The Irish weren’t white until they took over the police. Then they re-wrote the rules and became as white as a Wasp. Less than a hundred years ago, there were strong immigration rules designed to keep out the “Yellow Menace who can never integrate”. Now Asians, as long as they aren’t incredibly fobish or in an incredibly backwards area, are pretty much white.

With the integration of Irish and of Asia to the overall notion of ‘white’ or ‘acceptable’ in America, so too has the definition of ‘white’ changed.

How is viewing poverty as a disease wrong?

People talk about the welfare dependents, but you don’t observe nearly the number of welfare dependents in Europe (where the welfare system is much more extensive), so clearly there is something else at play.

In America, due to the massive uneven distribution of wealth (and along with it, opportunity) social mobility is pretty much shot and the poor will remain poor.

The idea of AA is to provide booster shots, selecting people who would normally have been passed by.

While we could spend time arguing that wealth is a zero-sum game (which, ultimately it is), but there are very few people who are arguing that there aren’t enough resources to go around (certainly not in America, one of the most resource-rich nations in the world) but rather it is a problem of distribution.

[JrnymnX]

Xunzian,

You say you disagree. Does this mean you would rather pay an able person to sit at home than pay them to learn a skill?

Six months down the road, the person who learned a skill may be fired, but they still have the skill they learned, the one who sat home still has nothing.

[Xunzian]

AA is distinct from welfare, wouldn’t you argee?

AA is a helping hand up, whereas welfare is a safety net.

While I agree that learning a skill is prime, providing a minimum standard of living to all citizens takes priority. Now, hopefully those people on welfare will have skills (or use the time to get new ones), which is the idea. It seems to have worked fairly well in the European model.

Under your model how do the people get the money necessary to gain those skills?

[Mudman]

AA is a gray area. There is no way to measure it. How much compensates for almost an entire history of slavery? None. You cannot make up for it with “special” treatment. Equality can only be maintained when blacks are treated as good as whites. Whites do not get AA. So neither should blacks. True equality.

I will tell you this, though. If I was black, I would be thinking “What a dick.” But even if I was black, I would know that this is the truth.

[JrnymnX]

@Xunzian

Under your model how do the people get the money necessary to gain those skills?

Government subsidized traing.

[Xunzian]

And what do people eat when they are training?

Who watches their kids while they are training?

Not to mentioned, how do they even get to training?

[JrnymnX]

@Mudman

Equality can only be maintained when blacks are treated as good as whites. Whites do not get AA. So neither should blacks. True equality.

Unfortunately this equality is the equality of the status quo.
It does nothing to remedy the problem and create a situation where equality is reality, not merely a lofty ideal.

[Phaedrus]

“Affirmative Action” is the misguided belief that enough wrongs will eventually make a right.

[JrnymnX]

@Phaedrus

“Affirmative Action” is the misguided belief that enough wrongs will eventually make a right.

It works in the world of medicine… medicine with painful side effects to prevent a worse disease.

It also is better than inaction, a quite consent to the distatseful.

[Phaedrus]

That’s a poor analogy, I think. Affirmative Action is a saccharine euphemism for racism. Fighting the disease of racism with even more racism isn’t like medicine- it’s like preventing arson by burning down your house.