Don't you love how I must be a bigot in reverse for discussing the idea that minorities start out behind, and have to work harder just to get even? Anti-AA folks thing that people exist in a vacuum, and if we pretend theat the societal differences don't exist, they will simply go away.Originally posted by Chemicalsuperfreak
Maybe he's just judging you based on the content of your character?
More importantly, does affirmative action really work that way? It seems to me that the way it works(or it should, anyways) is sort of like giving a 10% boost to a minority student's test scores when considering their application. That wouldn't affect the top students either way, because someone with a 3.8 GPA is getting in either way. Let's say a university is going to admit 5000 students. The cut-off GPA that they will accept is a 2.5. The only students who are going to be affected either way are those marginal students in the bottom 10%. No white kid with a 3.8 GPA and a 1400 SAT is being denied college. No black student with a 2.0 GPA and a 500 SAT is being accepted.Originally posted by Chemicalsuperfreak
You are assuming both had equal opportunities in life. I'm saying that this is a terrible assumption to make. Do you think that racism is so rare that the black students never get racist teachers and their by poorer grades. Also, do you really believe that a 0.5 difference in GPA is accurate enough to judge an applicant by?
No white kid with a 3.8 GPA and a 1400 SAT is being denied college. No black student with a 2.0 GPA and a 500 SAT is being accepted.
Suppose both students refused, as a point of principle (asserting their constitutional right?) to state their race, class, gender, age*, etc? Would the college refuse to consider their applications until they gave up their quixotic protest?Let's say student A is white, middle class, and has an overall 3.9 GPA. While student B is black, middle class also, and has an overall 3.4 GPA.
'dumb' yesterday, 'retarded' today, 'mentally challenged' tomorrow, ... usage trumps PC?the use of 'mentally challenged' in place of 'retarded' offensive
Originally posted by Chemicalsuperfreak
You are assuming both had equal opportunities in life. I'm saying that this is a terrible assumption to make. Do you think that racism is so rare that the black students never get racist teachers and their by poorer grades. Also, do you really believe that a 0.5 difference in GPA is accurate enough to judge an applicant by?
Originally posted by Njorl
On the other hand, some of this political correctness smacks of bigotry. I find the use of 'mentally challenged' in place of 'retarded' offensive. Retardation is a technical term. It has real meaning. It is not a source of shame. Using 'mentally challenged' as an attempt to defray shame is a tacit acceptance that there is something to be ashamed of. There is not! It's one thing when a community comes to a near consensus about what they wish to be called, it is quite another when outsiders decide to call them something "less shameful" than what they are.
Njorl [/B]
Originally posted by Zantra
And do you think just because I'm white I grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood with a privledged lifestyle? The pendulum swings both ways. It's amazing how many people "assume" those things about white people, when there are many who had an economically disadvantaged lifestyle. I was one of those people. Every argument in favor of AA has a completely valid counter. To automatically assume all blacks are disadvantaged is racist, and I can tell you many black people would be offended by that statement.
I have more non white friends than white friends, and believe me, one of the least racist people you will meet, so I'm offending when it's insinuated that simply because I'm against AA that I'm a racist.
As far as the spread of the GPAs, change it to suit your needs. What constitutes an acceptable difference? 1.0? 1.5? How big of a gap does it take to notice that the practices are tilted in the favor of minorities when the system should be blind to race?
Originally posted by megashawn
On that same note, how many white kids with a 2.0 GPA and 500 sat make it in?
Originally posted by Zero
I guess most white people can't see beyond maintaining their favored status. I'm not going to argue with you folks...maybe the next generation will make further strides, but I think you folks have gone as far as you are able.
Originally posted by Zero
Don't you love how I must be a bigot in reverse for discussing the idea that minorities start out behind, and have to work harder just to get even? Anti-AA folks thing that people exist in a vacuum, and if we pretend theat the societal differences don't exist, they will simply go away.
I guess most white people can't see beyond maintaining their favored status. I'm not going to argue with you folks...maybe the next generation will make further strides, but I think you folks have gone as far as you are able.
Maybe he's just judging you based on the content of your character?
Don't you love how I must be a bigot in reverse for discussing the idea that minorities start out behind, and have to work harder just to get even?
Didn't Bush get into Harvard and Yale with a D average in high school and a C average in college? Talk about white entitlement.
I agree that the system is blind to race. And when we have a porportional number of minorities in colleges and corporate boardrooms, and a porportional number of white people in prison, then I'll agree that we have a color blind society. Until then, we need AA.
Originally posted by Chemicalsuperfreak
I think that because you are white then you are more likely to be more privileged than the average black person from the same socioeconomic class. Do you disagree? I can tell you that many black people believe that racism is still wide spread and will often give you a recent example of the last time they experienced it. That's probably why the wide majority of blacks support affirmitive action.
Yes, yes. I'm sure you have lots of black friends. And that you are very polite to those people. And you get off of work on MLK day. Yeah, yeah. People say that alot.
I agree that the system is blind to race. And when we have a porportional number of minorities in colleges and corporate boardrooms, and a porportional number of white people in prison, then I'll agree that we have a color blind society. Until then, we need AA.
Originally posted by Chemicalsuperfreak
Isn't the first rule of denial to accuse your opponents of what you yourself are guilty of?
Zero and Chemical, you both aluded to it, but neither of you answered the question. I'll restate:Originally posted by Zero
Russ, you are persuasive, and wrong, as usual!
Originally posted by Zantra
And yet here you stand accusing me of being a racist. Now who's prejudiced?
Originally posted by Hurkyl
I think the driving factor here wasn't his skin color...
every criterion?
Originally posted by Chemicalsuperfreak
Nooooooo. I never call you racist. All I said was that you said you have lots of minority friends. Lots of people say that. Now it just so happens that just about every closet racist in the history of time says "Oh, I have lots of black friends" as some bizarre kind of evidence that they aren't racist, but I never accused of racism.
Now, are you accusing poor people of being violent criminals who will attack your precious car if you should denigrate yourself to drive through a poor neighborhood? Or are you just accusing poor people hating you because you're rich? Because I would like to know how that would prevent you from getting into college.
But let's take it to an extreme. If I go into a poor area driving a BMW, I guarantee you I will experience bias.
Black people don't have the luxury of having ancestors in powerful positions in american society. That's a big part of what white entitlement is about.
Originally posted by Chemicalsuperfreak
The driving factor was genetics. His father got him in. And his father (you know, the nazi collaborator) before him. And the Bushes wouldn't be are where they are today if they were black. Black people don't have the luxury of having ancestors in powerful positions in american society. That's a big part of what white entitlement is about.
Originally posted by Zantra
Man you're just full of contradictions. I guess I missed my turn in line when they were handing out powerful white ancestors- I had to make it without the benefit of one You may be trying to argue for pro-minority, but you have so many preconceptions and biases that you're not helping your cause, you're hurting it, and making yourself look bad in the process.
Originally posted by Zantra
Oh so you're calling me a CLOSET RACIST.
Wonderful. Now you're simply putting words in my mouth which I never uttered.
This was in response to your comment that minorities are still experiencing racism. I was making the point that even white people encounter bias,(not necessarily exclusive of, but including race, and including socioeconomic status). I went to a high school where I WAS the minority, and let me tell you, I'm VERY familiar with racism.So far your argument isn't very strong. You're basically insinuating that being a minority automatically denotes bias. You're also insinuating that being white automatically precludes racism. I'm saying that racism comes in many forms, and isn't confined to minorities only.
Originally posted by Chemicalsuperfreak
You can dish it out but can't take it.
Anyway, as for your unfortunate experiences with racsim. Was it institutionalized? Was it systematic? Was it widespread? Did it come from positions of authority? Did it keep you down? Did it result in a bad grade? Did it keep you from getting into college? Did it keep you from getting a good job? Do you think you would have had better opportunities if you were black?
Now, on the basis of race, blacks are claiming special status and reserving for themselves privileges they deny to others. Isn't one as bad as the other? The answer is no. One can see why by imagining that it is not 1993 but 1955, and that we are in a town in the South with two more or less distinct communities, one white and one black. No doubt each community would have a ready store of dismissive epithets, ridiculing stories, self-serving folk myths, and expressions of plain hatred, all directed at the other community, and all based in racial hostility. Yet to regard their respective racisms--if that is the word--as equivalent would be bizarre, for the hostility of one group stems not from any wrong done to it but from its wish to protect its ability to deprive citizens of their voting rights, to limit access to educational institutions, to prevent entry into the economy except at the lowest and most menial levels, and to force members of the stigmatized group to ride in the back of the bus. The hostility of the other group is the result of these actions, and whereas hostility and racial anger are unhappy facts wherever they are found, a distinction must surely be made between the ideological hostility of the oppressors and the experience-based hostility of those who have been oppressed.
At this point someone will always say, "But two wrongs don't make a right; if it was wrong to treat blacks unfairly, it is wrong to give blacks preference and thereby treat whites unfairly." This objection is just another version of the forgetting and rewriting of history. The work is done by the adverb "unfairly," which suggests two more or less equal parties, one of whom has been unjustly penalized by an incompetent umpire. But blacks have not simply been treated unfairly; they have been subjected first to decades of slavery, and then to decades of second-class citizenship, widespread legalized discrimination, economic persecution, educational deprivation, and cultural stigmatization. They have been bought, sold, killed, beaten, raped, excluded, exploited, shamed, and scorned for a very long time. The word "unfair" is hardly an adequate description of their experience, and the belated gift of "fairness" in the form of a resolution no longer to discriminate against them legally is hardly an adequate remedy for the deep disadvantages that the prior discrimination has produced. When the deck is stacked against you in more ways than you can even count, it is small consolation to hear that you are now free to enter the game and take your chances.
One way of tilting the field is the Scholastic Aptitude Test. This test figures prominently in Dinesh D'Souza's book Illiberal Education (1991), in which one finds many examples of white or Asian students denied admission to colleges and universities even though their SAT scores were higher than the scores of some others--often African-Americans--who were admitted to the same institution. This, D'Souza says, is evidence that as a result of affirmative-action policies colleges and universities tend "to depreciate the importance of merit criteria in admissions." D'Souza's assumption--and it is one that many would share--is that the test does in fact measure merit, with merit understood as a quality objectively determined in the same way that body temperature can be objectively determined.
...In short, what is being measured by the SAT is not absolutes like native ability and merit but accidents like birth, social position, access to libraries, and the opportunity to take vacations or to take SAT prep courses.
Furthermore, as David Owen notes in None of the Above: Behind the Myth of Scholastic Aptitude (1985), the "correlation between SAT scores and college grades . . . is lower than the correlation between weight and height; in other words you would have a better chance of predicting a person's height by looking at his weight than you would of predicting his freshman grades by looking only at his SAT scores." Everywhere you look in the SAT story, the claims of fairness, objectivity, and neutrality fall away, to be replaced by suspicions of specialized measures and unfair advantages
NEVERTHELESS, there is at least one more card to play against affirmative action, and it is a strong one. Granted that the playing field is not level and that access to it is reserved for an already advantaged elite, the disadvantages suffered by others are less racial--at least in 1993--than socioeconomic. Therefore shouldn't, as D'Souza urges, "universities . . . retain their policies of preferential treatment, but alter their criteria of application from race to socioeconomic disadvantage," and thus avoid the unfairness of current policies that reward middle-class or affluent blacks at the expense of poor whites? One answer to this question is given by D'Souza himself when he acknowledges that the overlap between minority groups and the poor is very large--a point underscored by the former Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander, who said, in response to a question about funds targeted for black students, "Ninety-eight percent of race-specific scholarships do not involve constitutional problems." He meant, I take it, that 98 percent of race-specific scholarships were also scholarships to the economically disadvantaged.
I can hear the objection in advance: "What's the difference? Unfair is unfair: you didn't get the job; you didn't even get on the short list." The difference is not in the outcome but in the ways of thinking that led up to the outcome. It is the difference between an unfairness that befalls one as the unintended effect of a policy rationally conceived and an unfairness that is pursued as an end in itself. It is the difference between the awful unfairness of Nazi extermination camps and the unfairness to Palestinian Arabs that arose from, but was not the chief purpose of, the founding of a Jewish state.
THE point is not a difficult one, but it is difficult to see when the unfairness scenarios are presented as simple contrasts between two decontextualized persons who emerge from nowhere to contend for a job or a place in a freshman class. Here is student A; he has a board score of 1,300. And here is student B; her board score is only 1,200, yet she is admitted and A is rejected. Is that fair? Given the minimal information provided, the answer is of course no. But if we expand our horizons and consider fairness in relation to the cultural and institutional histories that have brought the two students to this point, histories that weigh on them even if they are not the histories' authors, then both the question and the answer suddenly grow more complicated.
The sleight-of-hand logic that first abstracts events from history and then assesses them from behind a veil of willed ignorance gains some of its plausibility from another key word in the anti-affirmative-action lexicon. That word is "individual," as in "The American way is to focus on the rights of individuals rather than groups." Now, "individual" and "individualism" have been honorable words in the American political vocabulary, and they have often been well employed in the fight against various tyrannies. But like any other word or concept, individualism can be perverted to serve ends the opposite of those it originally served, and this is what has happened when in the name of individual rights, millions of individuals are enjoined from redressing historically documented wrongs. How is this managed? Largely in the same way that the invocation of fairness is used to legitimize an institutionalized inequality. First one says, in the most solemn of tones, that the protection of individual rights is the chief obligation of society. Then one defines individuals as souls sent into the world with equal entitlements as guaranteed either by their Creator or by the Constitution. Then one pretends that nothing has happened to them since they stepped onto the world's stage. And then one says of these carefully denatured souls that they will all be treated in the same way, irrespective of any of the differences that history has produced. Bizarre as it may seem, individualism in this argument turns out to mean that everyone is or should be the same. This dismissal of individual difference in the name of the individual would be funny were its consequences not so serious: it is the mechanism by which imbalances and inequities suffered by millions of people through no fault of their own can be sanitized and even celebrated as the natural workings of unfettered democracy.
"Individualism," "fairness," "merit"--these three words are continually misappropriated by bigots who have learned that they need not put on a white hood or bar access to the ballot box in order to secure their ends. Rather, they need only clothe themselves in a vocabulary plucked from its historical context and made into the justification for attitudes and policies they would not acknowledge if frankly named.
Never mind them, even I am a racist these days. The political correctness seems to be putting people into boxes where they don't belong..Originally posted by Zantra
Oh so you're calling me a CLOSET RACIST. Gee, so glad we clarified that. If you think I'm making it up, say so and I'll forward you a list of as many people you need to talk to to verify I'm not lying. While you're generalization that all white people are closet racists and fabricate "fake minority friends" I can assure you that's not true in my case, and I could prove it if called out. It's funny how people resort to baseless accusations and name calling in some last ditch effort to win an argument.
Thank you.Originally posted by Zero
I read it, BH.
Oh, and to Russ...if we could be colorblind, I'd say go for it...it would be nice if those situations actually existed except in very limited cases.
Originally posted by Zantra
You come across as a paranoid who sees conspiracy everywhere you look. I think you would do better in the M&P forums than here. Everybody encounters bias at some point in their lives. That's an unfortunate fact of society that we can only hope will improve with time. While I'm sure there are instances of what you're describing, they are few and far in between.
Maybe you've had bad experiences which have tainted your view, but the people I know well who are minorities generally don't share that viewpoint. Have that had bad experiences? Yes., But they don't let it make them bitter or judge all people based on those experiences, and that is exactly what you are doing.
Except this summer, when it wasn't struck down...Originally posted by russ_watters
Thank you.
And as I and someone else (Hurkyl?) pointed out, it is a simple thing to make the college admissions process for most colleges completely color blind.
Something else that is completely colorblind is the US Constitution. And that's why AA is struck down every time a case reaches the Supreme Court.
So why aren't there a proportionate number of minorities in colleges and corporate boardrooms? There are two explanations that I can think of. One is that it is a racist society, that's what I believe. Or two, blacks have the same opportunity, but can't compete do to some inferiority. So which is it? What's your explanation?
You bask in the glow of the media spot light, you passionately decree
that racism and prejudice are alive today as they were four hundred
years ago, but does this do anything to reverse it's effect?
No one with the intellegence will deny that a great atrocity was commited
against the black race at the hands of white settlers of this country,
but a wound cannot heal if it is continuously re-opened
That is to say, that it will heal but it will take much longer and the
scar it leaves will be grotesque and raise high on the skin
A true leader leads by example and the example you have shown is not one
of stregnth of character, self-reliance, commentment to excellence or
personal accountability
It's these traits that are necessary to advace oneself as an individual
It is only as strong curagous and moral individuals that any race can
live the quality of life that it chooses