there is a curious problem with ancient threads that get bumped in that it is not obvious how to deal with the entirety of the previous discussion--does it still matter? does it still frame the debate? do you respond to posts that are over a year old?

anyway: i read through the more recent tendrils gorwing off the seemingly dead stump from before and wondered if i had accidentally stumbled in to another of those annoying college republicans stage pinhead agitprop bakesales while pretending that the pricing policies something like a coherent metaphor for how affirmative actions works. same goofball thinking from the right in the responses.

it's like there is some secret conservative parlor game that involves trawling around for threads in which they can say exactly what got shot down each of the last 20 times it was posted so they can write the same arguments down again. maybe they get fabulous prizes. maybe there is something erotic about writing this kind of argument, something erotic i wouldnt understand because it think the arguments are just stupid.

the question is not "discrimination in general" but the problems caused within the u.s. by slavery, then by the appalling sequence of events that was reconstruction, a history of racism, a civil rights movement after world war 2 that demanded a lot more than affirmative action--things like basic changes to the american capitalist order--but instead the movement was handed affirmative action. so the question of discimination was, and remains, about this particular type of discrimination practiced by these particular agents upon this particular set of other folk for no reason really beyond the color of their skin.

if the americans were a bit less world class in their virtuoso use of racism, they probably would not have seen the extension of anti-discrimination legislation to include other groups--but they were, and the americans really have no-one to blame but themselves for it.

to read that history does not matter from the same people who in other threads spend much time grovelling at the feet of the fetish-objects the call the Founding Fathers, defending obvious lunacy like the doctrine of original intent is just funny.

they do seem to like the reconstruction period, however, these folk who claim that history is not binding on them except when they say it is....they reproduce alot of the arguments floated by white poorer southerners of the period: like the sense that they were the victims of federal government attempts to provide some recompense for the folk who had previously been understood as objects, commodities...dealing retrospectively with the fact of racism and its effects...you know, i am sure these people felt that history did not weigh on or bind them either--hell, by reconstruction (1870, say) the civil war was over, it was history, it ended ....what....5 years before why should the past weigh on the present. and there were the same arguments for limiting the authority of the federal government, which threatened the continuity of systems of racist privelege---the same types of arguments for states rights, for local control....

I'm white and I don't care.

I was going to teach in Canada right out of college. I had friends up in (name of Canadian College withheld) and they needed a music prof. The problem? They already had a good amount of white men working there. I knew I didn't stand a chance against females or non-whites. I had no problem with that. I stayed local and became a consultant for 4 time what I would have made. The playing field still isn't level. Slavery may have been over for a long time, but racism isn't.

I may not be racist, so it isn't fair when I am treaded less for being white, but how often are black, asian, latin, etc. people treated unfairly for no reason? I can take a little heat for my race being stpuid for a while.

I always though racism against whites was called political correctness?

nosoup: have you tried sending in some rejected "non-white" applications as "white" to see if there's ever a difference? Or maybe sending rejected "white" ones in as "white" again? I only ask because I'd think different people would decide on each one, and when they're borderline, different people would give different results. Just a thought.

Yes, I have. I have switched white to non-white and they have been approved, I have also switched non-white that were approved to white and they were denied. After switching them back, I get the original result.

I would understand the whole situation a lot more if the problem had something to do with people and their specific preferances - but the parameters that are used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are fed into automated underwriting - computers make the decisions, people have nothing to do with it...

NoSoup...here's the biggest problem i see with your argument. you say "if our goal is equality, in my opinion, we shouldn't be helping some more than others based on the color of their skin." you're missing part of the statement: it's only true if people are equal to begin with. if large groups have been dumped in holes they have to climb out of, treating everyone equally will serve only to maintain the same levels of imbalance in society that existed before.

my views on this subject as a whole have changed dramatically in the past five years. i've applied to college, gone, graduated in 3 years, applied to law school, and gone there too. it sucks. don't go. anyway, i see plenty of people who didn't have the same sat/lsat scores i did that got into better colleges than me. is it fair? not really. is it good policy? probably. my parents worked for what they have, but they had enough to lay out 13 G's for private school, and i know that i got 34hrs of college credit, among other things, from having a chance to go to private school. looking back, do i understand why some "less deserving" minorities got into schools that i didn't? yeah. did it piss me off when it happened? yeah, but the thing is, for every minority you can find that gets affirmative action admission to your favorite school, i can find four fairly privileged white kids who were squarely on the fence but got turned down. it's not perfect. i think it's ridiculous that the rich black girl at my private school gets her choice of college even though my SAT is over 200 pts higher, but she also spent four years as the only black girl in her class, so it's not like there are too many others like her.

since all things go back to baseball, i'll borrow this bit from a quality book: two guys run to first in fairly similar times. one runs with perfect form and gets down the basepaths smoothly. the other runs a little wild, and may be slightly inefficient in making the trek. who do you take? answer: the one without the form. he's already about as fast as the other guy, and he can be taught to run with form, making him better long-term.

ps...quotas aren't real. don't talk about them. the college i went to had well over 20,000 students, and in a class of 4500 freshmen, they had 200 black kids show up. this isn't wisconsin either. the state's about 1/8th black, and they get 200 black students. sorry, but i got no problem letting in an extra hundred less advantaged students or minorities when the demographics at my school (and many my friends attended) are overwhelmingly full of white kids from middle and upper class homes.

at the risk of starting another flame war, there would appear to be some misconceptions here that no one noticed.

first, affirmative action does not mandate preference in all situations. AA only comes into play when it is deemed that there is a problem. now, before any of you respond with the kneejerk flame, i ask that you actually sit down and READ the legislation. (oh, and btw, quotas dont exist, as was pointed out a bit earlier)

second, we can spin "fact" any way we want to, but the census info that was posted was correct (and, not that it is any consolation, but i have run the numbers myself). if u want statistics, ive got plenty of them. like for instance, blacks are arrested more than three times as often as they actually commit the crime they are arrested for. or, perhaps the API scores for inner city and mostly minority schools being around 1 or 2, while there is a little (predominantly) white city of..... 130,000 people a bit south of me that has API scores of 9 and 10, some of the best in the nation.

i refuse wholeheartedly to get into hypotheticals or any form of "i know a guy." all i can do is report the things that are collected.

to complain about preferential treatment in colleges without looking at the dismal quality of education recieved by understaffed, underfunded schools is simply wrongheaded.

as for the so-called "culture of poverty" (the idea that minorities are socialized to remain in poverty) is a load of crap, sociologically speaking. open a newspaper. turn on the news (local is best). please, some one tell me how many instances of positive white males there are in any given hour. now, tell me how many violent crimes by minorities are reported. the simple fact is that we live in a white world. if you were told day in and day out that you couldnt amount to anything, you would start to believe it (a la labeling theory).

i understand that this forum is dedicated to giving people the chance to express their thoughts, and for that i am very appreciative. but seriously now, before you post another comment, stop and take a look at the world around you. then compare this to the "common knowledge" that everyone is so aware of. Do you see a disparity between the two?




I do.

So do I. And now that I've written two big fat checks to the government which dishes it out to everyone except me, I'm going to grab my checkbook again.

I just need to know how big a check to write to Colin Powell and Oprah to alleviate their misery. Oh, and Jesse Jackson. Maybe I should send a check to the estate of Johnny Cochran too.

(Translation for anyone who needs it: My point is that these people overcame perceived or actual racism. Why do others claim it's impossible?)

If this counts as a flame, I guess I'm guilty.

HERE'S A GREAT IDEA

Just eliminate the race checkbox from all forms, government and private. If you feel the need to differentiate yourself from others based on the color of your skin and not the content of your character, you are a racist by definition.

Just dont even let it be an issue.

see, you are very and firmly rooted in your feelings, and that is okay. the simple fact of the matter is that you are looking at the exception and thinking that it proves the rule. the simple fact that there are three famous african americans (four, including the supreme court) in washington and oprah does not mean that everythign is okay. of the hundreds of television shows and thousands of people working in washington, five is not such a huge number.

simple numbers are against you. and it doesnt matter how many people you know or i know that have made it, the facts remain the same. there are entire groups of people that are not as advantaged as you are. if you think this isnt the case, think about whether you would want to trade places with any minority living in an inner city..... south central LA for example. with over a 50% unemployment rate since the factories left the inner city, do you think you could make it? put yourself in the shoes of the people you claim are so advantaged and ask yourself this: would you change your skin color to become a black man if you could?

if the answer is no, you need to acknowledge that there is a reason for it. if everythign was equal or they have it better, there would be no question about whether you would do it.

simple fact of life at the moment is things are not equal. not even close.

if u want a personal story instead of statistics, here u go: i am a white male, and i come from a rather poor family, but i am about to graduate with my Masters in Sociology and will be attending Berkeley this fall to start my doctoral work. thing is, at every step i have been advanced and seen my friends fall by the wayside because they couldnt afford to advance, or werent able to. it takes money to get into college, and when a family cant afford to put food on the table, college start-up expenses are a bitch. i dont know of a single person in six years of college that was there on any scholarship for ethnicity. when it comes right down to it, minority students have not had the same opportunities as i have. there is not a day that am not thankful for the advantages i have had.

but you know one big difference between me and most of my friends? i could do exactly what i am about to do to this thread. LEAVE. i got out because i was advantaged; they didnt because they werent. if you want to believe that you are the victim, go ahead; its youre right. but i havent the time to argue with you about our differences. the challenge still stands. look around you and see how many positive images of whites and negative stereotypes of minorities you see.

as for me, i've said my piece

The funny thing is that, when most white people complain about being discriminated against, they only think that they are being discriminated against. They only pewl about "the poor, suffering white people". As far as they're concerned, racism ended somewhere between mlk's death and the cosby show.