Frosstbyte

I really have no interest in affirmative action as a concept or any part of any plan to combat anything. It's a bad solution, and a solution which, in my opinion, does as much harm as it does good.

I think poverty as an endemic problem with a capitalist system, so I don't know that a "War on Poverty" would do any more than a "War on Drugs" does. There are always going to be lazy people, unlucky people, stupid people and incapable people. And those people are going to be poor. Without turning this into a giant discussion about the virtues of capitalism, I think what we need to figure out how to fix are why specific communities of people find themselves trapped in a pattern which makes it substantially harder for them to achieve than others.

Anecdotes being what they are, my family is Jewish and my great grandfather immigrated here with the clothes on his back from Ukraine just before WWI. Four generations later, his progeny are almost without fail all professionals. My wife's family is Chinese and immigrated here with nothing after the CCP literally stole all their assets and they had to flee the country in the wake of the revolution. Two generations later, they're all going to college.

So here's what I'm saying. Slavery is not all that far past, and laws upholding race-based discrimination are even more recent. Depending on how you want to count, we have at most three generations (probably two, though arguably one) since Brown and separate is not equal. I would not claim even in the slightest that racism is "gone" or dead, but there's something...bigger...going on than simply racism. It's a convenient scapegoat, because it looks ugly, and it is ugly, but it's not the only cause.

People need to be willing to help themselves, even as we build social programs to help them. There is an unquestionable glamorization of the thug lifestyle-bling, bitches, cars, power, respect-and being a traditionally well-educated and productive member of society doesn't fit anywhere in it. That leads to kids without fathers or families. It leads to cyclical violence. It leads to substance abuse. It leads to a lack of positive role models that people can relate to. I honestly don't know if a kid from inner city Detroit can relate to Barack Obama as being someone he could aspire to be. I feel like I know a lot of pretty WASP-y kids who seem to me to have a pretty similar life history to Obama.

I think the solution would take an enormous amount of local, community energy and support in the context of a larger framework. And if we could make it happen, I would happily support it, but a lot of people-and not just white bigots-need to change their attitudes to make that a reality. In my opinion, all affirmative action does is reinforce the concept of us and them and reinforce race as being an appropriate way to sort people. When they came up with it, I can see how it was necessary, but I think it has run its course.

And, as an aside, I don't think the election of Barack Obama has the slightest bit to do with why AA needs to go away. The fact that a half black man was elected president is certainly historically and symbolically important, but it doesn't mean anything. AA was bad before, and it's still bad and it will continue to be bad, because it lets people feel like we're doing something about the problem, when we're not, and we're hurting people who have worked hard and have achieved simply because they have the wrong chromosomes or skin color.