Crack

I have been reading up on this recently, mostly from the AffirmativeAction.org site, and I am basically annoyed. How did this happen in America, isn't it common belief that two wrongs don't make a right?
You might read this and think that I am a middle-class white guy who is peaved because someone of color could get into college or get a job ahead of me on the basis of color. Well, I am a white guy, and I am peaved.
Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister once spoke of having a dream;

"I have a dream,

that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character"

How do we think Dr. King would feel if his daughter or son got into college or got a job basied on the color of his or her skin?

I think he would feel like I do after reading about affirmative action; peaved...

Thoughts?
~Crack

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Crack, you and I are long overdue for a vicious bout of mansex.

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Mojo_PeiPei

Typical progressive policy, heart is in the right place, logic is skewed, execution horrible. I mean I'm just a racist white man trying to hold them down though. My biggest beef is these two things 1) a rich privileged black kid still would benefit more then me because he is black and 2) it is a racist policy what about poor inner city white kids? They need help too but because they are white they are forced to fend for themselves.

Go go Boston Public btw....

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Phaenx

Affirmative action is a sack of crap. I can't begin to comprehend the logic behind it without bludgeoning myself repeatedly with a cudgel of some sort.

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FoolThemAll

Ends do not justify the means. Especially now that they're trying to replace "level playing field" with "diversity" as the ends.

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Kadath

I'd like to point out that being a white guy, you have a statistically greater chance chance of coming from a wealthier background, thus living in a nicer area, thus going to a better school, thus being more encouraged to go to college and being better prepared to do so. You being peeved is noted, though.

Affirmative action isn't the solution. It's a stopgap. It's an attempt to bootstrap minorities into the same economic strata as whites. Phaenx, as much as I'd like to see you cudgel your brain some more, don't bother trying to get it. Maybe you only see affirmative action as taking something away from you, not giving it to someone else. Maybe you've just never seen it work. AA is not great, and I'll support ditching it the minute something even marginally better comes along.

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Zamunda

I agree with Kadath, while affirmative action is by no means a wonderful method of "leveling the playing field," it does help many people and you do have to look at it as giving opportunity to somone else rather than taking it away. However, what Mojo said about inner city white kids has a valid point as well... perhaps then affirmative action should apply not to color but to socio-economic background instead.

Crack

I would agree with affirmative action being appilied to Socio-economic background, but race, religion, creed or culture is wrong. Personally, I have never been affected by affirmative action, I am in the military, have not gone through the typical college, and I have not had any job where I made more than minimum wage before joining the military, affirmative action has never had an affect on me, but nevertheless, I am still disappointed with the program, and the system that let it come to pass.
~Crack

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Crack, you and I are long overdue for a vicious bout of mansex.

~Halx

Rekna

Affirmative action treats a symptom not a problem. This is the problem with it. Why not focus on removing the gap between the education of the less priviliged and the priviliged. Privlige is not based on race as so many would love to say. Did you know that in some universities scoring a perfect on your ACTs or SATs means less than being black? How can we use racism as a method of fighting racism?

wipeout

aa is something that drives me insane--how can anyone agree with it

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tinfoil

AA only promotes more hatred. People get excluded from jobs because of a minority quota and some of those people will begin hating minorities.

Yes, it may promote minority hiring but what happens to said member of the minority when he steps out of the office? What of his co-workers and the stigma attached to him saying that he was just a minority hire and not *really* quallified?

AA was a good idea indeed, but as with many good ideas, it wasn't thought through nor executed properly and it is now exploited.

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Mojo_PeiPei

Also I seem to remember hearing that the Supreme Court outlawed quota's along time ago...

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EbolaVirus

Affirmative action is the worst idea ever

Sparhawk

Nice contributions, guys.

The problem with affirmative action isn't that it's bad, it's that it starts way too late to do any real good. If we decided to start spending some real money on primary and secondary schools in poor and inner city areas, and make it money that you can't just cut from your budget like every state and local budget makers like to do, then you'd start seeing some real benefits.

But you can't just throw money at these schools, you have to shake up their administrations, a lot of them are incredibly slow to change, which has a lot to do with the caliber of people they can get to work there. We start paying some real wages, and get the best and the brightest teachers and administrators, you'd see a difference.

/idealistic prattling

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Conclamo Ludus

AA is a band-aid for cancer. It looks really cute and puts a smile on your face, but the cancer (racism) gets worse. If it were applied based on socio-economic background it would help those who truly need it. Take race out of the equation. Just because you are a minority doesn't mean you are poor and need a break to get somewhere. Why can't it just be for the poor? Why does it have to be all about race? There would be absolutely no problem if you made it about economics instead.

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Zamunda

I said this at the top of the post, glad to see somone agrees, I rest my case. I don't think any more really needs to be said because we all seem to agree that the system has problems, and we don't need any more one liners about how AA sucks, doesn't get us anywhere.

Conclamo Ludus

What annoys me is that it is a pretty easy fix. At least the way I see it. Just don't make it about race. Its not an elusive problem with no solution. Help people who need it, based solely on their need for it. Don't help them based solely on their race. Its easy. Everyone wins.

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I wouldn't mistreat you baby, for my weight in gold.
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KellyC

Is it weird of me to be against AA too? Since I am of the minority....? Vietnamese.

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smooth

no, it fits right in with the myth of the model minority.

KellyC

thanks! But what do you mean by "myth" ?

Love your avatar BTW

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smooth

I should have said stereotype. I don't want to assume whether it's true or not, so I left it as a myth.

But model minority, as I understand it, isn't particularly a compliment. It's usually a portrayal of a particular minority by the dominant group as an example of those who have "made it." I think "Asians" are currently our nation's model minority.

That isn't to say that their "group", in so much as Asians are a composite of diverse ethnic groups, hasn't become successful. But it is to argue that "Asians" only corresponds to diverse members our society has arbitrarily lumped together. That is, Chinese immigrants may have made it but that doesn't necessarily extend to Vietnamese immigrants.

The fallacy of this, of course, is that the dominant group attempts to use this as evidence that other groups should be able to "do what they did." This doesn't take into account a lot of other particulars, however, which I don't think I ought to go into in this post.

I think people can deduce for themselves whether claiming that, since particular members of one ethnic group have succeded, such propensity for success really extends to an entire "class" of people and even moreso to all minorities.

Paq

Yeah, i'm probably one of the most outspoken for minority rights and all, but even i will agree that AA just sucks.

I don't even think the idea is sound. I would say the heart is in the right place, but cmon...when boston public can do a 5 minute skit to show just how absurd AA really is..you know something is wrong.

AA could work if based on economic need instead of racial need.

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irseg

I am against AA of any form, but I would find it somewhat more palatable if it was based upon economic rather than racial status.

I especially don't know why minorities support AA, since it basically says "Blacks are inferior and can't get by on their own merits; the government needs to help them so they can be competitive with other races."