is "affirmative action" further spreading race issues in our society?

[garfoldsomeoneelse]

Allow me to paraphrase from the late George Carlin:

"Racial issues are being perpetuated by the people in charge, because they want to keep us too busy fighting each other to realize that they're the ones screwing us over."

 

[Mr.Pandah]

There are many ways to look at this particular topic, but the stance that I take on it is that I don't owe anybody anything. I'm not going to apologize for what some white guy has done to someone of a different ethnicity. I didn't do it, so stop shoving that stuff in my face.

Affirmative Action hurts more than it helps in my opinion. I feel like it would make more people prone to be lazy than anything else. Plus the racial lines are drawn pretty damn clearly with AA. I was a victim of AA anyways, so I know how bullshit it is. I had a 3.8 GPA, and I wanted to transfer to another college. Apparently, since I'm a white boy, my GPA wasn't deemend high enough for even half scholarship. They were giving it to the other men and women going there who were Indian, Asian, or black. I had a 2,000 dollar scholarship to a 36,000 dollar school. At least I could pay for books...

Its just a load of shit that needs to be done away with in my opinion.

 

[Rigs83]

The problem with affirmative action is that it puts a band-aid over a hemorrhaging wound.
If minorities are going to under funded schools then they will often do worse in life because they won't get an equal education than someone in a better school district. The answer is not force equality in the work place but equalizing the playing field at the school house so the best, regardless of race, get the job.
If someone is being racist against minorities they should be punished somehow but if someone hires the best because they are the best regardless of race we all benefit. The problem is that the best is not what you get out of most public school systems where most minorities come from.
That is what is not fair.

 

[Crazy Elf]

The problem is that when the GOVERNMENT has a debt, it doesn't go out and get a job, or buy lottery tickets from the United Nations or something. It raises taxes on the the people under its jurisdiction or prints more money or sells some bonds or something like that, something that the people under its jurisdiction wind up paying for.

At which point, yeah: then it does become about 'me'.

Yeah, but the reason that you're able to live in the country to begin with is because of the government. They provide roads, services, healthcare... hang on you're from America aren't you? Okay, they provide roads and services at least. On top of that the US economy is pretty damn solid. Now, one of the reasons for that economy being so strong is that many of the companies that add to it profited in huge way on African American as well as Chinese slavery. They didn't do too badly off the American Indians, either, seeing as they took their land and all that.

Sure, you didn't choose for all that to happen, but you do profit off many of the results of the oppression that occurred. You've got a strong dollar that manages to purchase things pretty cheap from overseas. You've got a lot of land and a lot of infrastructure. You've got some bloody powerful companies around the place that are powerful from lots of workers in the past working for NOTHING.

You profit from all of this. Do you really think that all of that isn't worth one cent out of ever dollar (although I'm quite sure the spending is much much less than that)?

 

[Crazy Elf]

I feel like it would make more people prone to be lazy than anything else.

And by people you mean the minority group that's getting a hand up, right? Sure, but doesn't it also mean that the majority group has to work HARDER? Statistically speaking, doesn't that make people less lazy?

 

[Crazy Elf]

Maybe, but don't say it isn't about 'me' just by describing it as: 'the GOVERNMENT has the debt, not you'

You benefit from the government's past actions today, like it or not. That's about as far as your involvement in the issue goes. It's the government that has to work things out, and you have very little say in that, just like you have very little say in the majority of things that the government does.

With all the abuses of power that US administrations partake in it boggles me that affirmative action, something that is largely quite positive and is completely above board, gets so much attention. It has problems, sure, but the US has much much bigger problems.

 

[Crazy Elf]

Whites have also been enslaved - should they get reparations or aa in those countries?

Oh really? Care to state which countries white slavery and second class citizenship has taken place in within the last one hundred years?

 

[Rigs83]

There are many ways to look at this particular topic, but the stance that I take on it is that I don't owe anybody anything. I'm not going to apologize for what some white guy has done to someone of a different ethnicity. I didn't do it, so stop shoving that stuff in my face.

Affirmative Action hurts more than it helps in my opinion. I feel like it would make more people prone to be lazy than anything else. Plus the racial lines are drawn pretty damn clearly with AA. I was a victim of AA anyways, so I know how bullshit it is. I had a 3.8 GPA, and I wanted to transfer to another college. Apparently, since I'm a white boy, my GPA wasn't deemend high enough for even half scholarship. They were giving it to the other men and women going there who were Indian, Asian, or black. I had a 2,000 dollar scholarship to a 36,000 dollar school. At least I could pay for books...

Its just a load of shit that needs to be done away with in my opinion.

Wow you really are a victim. When you go shopping you are not followed around by security. When you apply for a loan you will probably get it. When you drive around in a nice car you won't be pulled over. If you have stand in front of a jury probably get a less harsh sentence or depending on the state get off because the DA will try to pin it on the nearest minority.
I guess you like to be angry because of inconveniences you have suffered but you still managed to go to school and I assume get a decent job but if it wasn't for AA those opportunities would not exist at all for many minorities. It doesn't solve the problem that wealth and political clout remains mainly in the hands of the few. I would love to live in a world where your education is not affected by the zip code of where you live and to stand in front of a jury and not fear being railroaded because I look different and to be respected and treated like everyone else when I am in public but I am not.

My teacher called my a mentally retarded, pathological liar after I read a summary of an article I read in "Discover" science magazine in front of the whole class. We had a cluster program so I saw her next year and she started the year discussing the article I read last year so basically I was a year ahead of the class on one subject so she decided that to save herself the hassle of mentioning a subject she was not going to touch for another year by humiliated me in front of the class. And the kicker, she was black. She just hated Latinos.

My silver haired mother had a gun drawn and pointed at her by an officer while driving her car because she apparently fit the description of a suspect. I don't know how many silver haired old ladies in Corrolas are evading capture in America but the cop let her go eventually.

My brother had a bottle of wine in a paper bag when two officers stopped him on the subway, took his bottle, opened it, drained it and arrested him for drinking in public.

Oh let me shed a tear for every white man inconvenienced in his life because of AA.

 

[Crazy Elf]

The people who collect my taxes disagree. They seem to think my involvement goes as far as "give us the money for this or we'll come to your house with guns and put you in jail if we have to"

Yeah, but they're going to do that on a whole range of issues much more costly than AA is. You pay a crapload, and have already paid a crapload, for Iraq, and no one sane supported that action.

AA costs very little and heals some damage. If it were removed you'd still pay just as much tax.

It gets attention because:

1) idiot racists stirring up people on the fence about it doing a better job than the liberals are in defending it.

Bias media coverage more than anything else. It's a complicated issue. There's no one line explanation for the history behind it. You'll get more ratings putting a bunch of white hooded idiots on screen than someone that can explain the issue.

2) AA has been *classist*. It comes at the expense of middle and lower class whites while upper class whites are able to maintain their privilege. Both upper class whites and some liberals have deflected that legitimate gripe into being a gripe about racism, playing right into the hands of racist idiots.

Well to counter that the country would need a reform of the entire education system.

 

[Crazy Elf]

England--even in the 50s you could find establishments with the sign "No Irish, no blacks and no dogs."

Yes, but England abolished slavery in 1839, the Irish have control over most of Ireland, and although there are still problems, they're well on the way to being solved due to the groups in question having land to go back to, away from the system that enslaved them in the first place. The African Americans, however, were still being enslaved legally right up to 1865, and had no where to get away from the people that were enslaving them before that point.

It's not nearly the same thing.