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

[vampirekid.13]

the funny thing is as soon as whites arnt the majority (and it will happen) they are going to definatly have something just like affirmative action or will be using the hell out of it

i woudlnt accept it personally, i dont need to have my employer forced to pick me, i can do fine w/o it.

 

[Agayek]

That may be your belief, but you shouldn't just criticize hate crimes then on the basis of 'all crimes are about hate' or as if the ones having to do with race are the only ones that work like this. You should always let it be known that your criticism is on the basis of your belief that "Reasons or intentions don't matter, only actions do."

In other words, don't make it seem like you have a problem with hate crimes because you feel they are racist--make it explicit that you have a problem with hate crimes because you have an issue with a major element of Anglo-American law that goes back for hundreds of years.

Fair enough.

I still have a problem with hate crimes though. They are racist. Treating groups separately based on their race is racism. Calling a murder a hate crime and enforcing stricter or more lenient penalties on it is bullshit. It doesn't matter why the perp killed the victim, just that he did. You can call it whatever you want, it's still murder and treating anyone involved differently from a same-race murder is patently ridiculous.

 

[YuheJi]

i strongly believe racism cannot be minimized when you have rules that are race based, it teaches people to think in races.


also consider:

"well, mr. caucasian and mr. african-american, amazingly you both qualify for the job...but we'll take the african-american because he's a minority and we're supposed to"

you now just made a choice based on race. which is racist. its just being ignored because its against a white person so it doesnt matter.

there is no debt, and there is no reason to "pay them back" we didnt do anything wrong.

How can you be so sure that both of them are qualified equally? I find that it has become more and more an assumption made by white people whenever they see a person of color hired instead of them. You don't know anything about the two persons lives, interviews, or qualities that might make them better or worse for the job. Getting the same degree does not make them qualified in the same way.

 

[Muphin_Mann]

ok, obviously im taking a topic that was locked, rewording it and trying to have an interesting conversation with the rest of the members of this board about it.


rules: no flaming, trolling, or racial slurs allowed, actually, no "bad" words at all. just keep it civil.


with that in mind, do you feel affirmative action is the right way to minimize "racism" in this society.

i personally feel that affirmative action, and race specific rules does nothing but further spread the issue. when you create a law that targets actions specifically against a race or multiple races, such as the introduction of "hate crimes" and affirmative action, you are doing nothing but spreading the problem.

I think its less "spreading the problem" and more "not allowing it to be swept under the rug" I seriously doubt that hate crime legistlation causes hate crimes, but it does mean that they get reported on when they happen as opposed to being ignored.

"well, mr. caucasian and mr. african-american, amazingly you both qualify for the job...but we'll take the african-american because he's a minority and we're supposed to"

you now just made a choice based on race. which is racist. its just being ignored because its against a white person so it doesnt matter.

there is no debt, and there is no reason to "pay them back" we didnt do anything wrong.

But when has that ever happened in exactly that way? And it would have to be in a company that didnt have a racial imbalance before hand. If their was an over-represntation of white people before this then it would be racist to hire another white person because it would become clear your going out of your way to not hire blacks.

Also, you used the words "us" and "them" which suggests you personaly have a stake in this and it doesnt look to me like its very friendly to the "Them".

It doesn't matter why the perp killed the victim, just that he did

This argument suggests that a paid hit, genocide, a serial killing, a self defence attempt gone overboard, a murder-rape, infanticide, and a mugging-gone-wrong are all the exact same thing. They clearly have different levels of motivation and dislike of the victim involved. It has always been our tradition to consider some crimes worse than others and i dont see why hate crimes should be an acception.

 

[Agayek]

This argument suggests that a paid hit, genocide, a serial killing, a self defence attempt gone overboard, a murder-rape, infanticide, and a mugging-gone-wrong are all the exact same thing. They clearly have different levels of motivation and dislike of the victim involved. It has always been our tradition to consider some crimes worse than others and i dont see why hate crimes should be an acception.

Does that make the victim any less dead?

It doesn't matter what you call it or what motivated it. The victim is still dead, and the perp made the conscious choice to kill them.

The only situations in which different factors should be considered is in self-defense and accidental killings. Anything else is still murder. You can call it whatever you like, at the end of the day, somebody's dead and somebody else killed them.

Varying the punishments for killing someone because of why they did it is just asinine.

 

[YuheJi]

This argument suggests that a paid hit, genocide, a serial killing, a self defence attempt gone overboard, a murder-rape, infanticide, and a mugging-gone-wrong are all the exact same thing. They clearly have different levels of motivation and dislike of the victim involved. It has always been our tradition to consider some crimes worse than others and i dont see why hate crimes should be an acception.

Does that make the victim any less dead?

It doesn't matter what you call it or what motivated it. The victim is still dead, and the perp made the conscious choice to kill them.

The only situations in which different factors should be considered is in self-defense and accidental killings. Anything else is still murder. You can call it whatever you like, at the end of the day, somebody's dead and somebody else killed them.

Varying the punishments for killing someone because of why they did it is just asinine.

The punishments vary based on how that murder might lead to more. Most murders are simple to figure out, as the murderer will typically reveal him or herself and show regret immediately. When this is not the case, however, it might encourage more crime. This becomes especially true for racially motivated murders, as they could easily rile up people on both sides leading to more violence.

 

[LongAndShort]

i strongly believe racism cannot be minimized when you have rules that are race based, it teaches people to think in races.


also consider:

"well, mr. caucasian and mr. african-american, amazingly you both qualify for the job...but we'll take the african-american because he's a minority and we're supposed to"

you now just made a choice based on race. which is racist. its just being ignored because its against a white person so it doesnt matter.

there is no debt, and there is no reason to "pay them back" we didnt do anything wrong.

How can you be so sure that both of them are qualified equally? I find that it has become more and more an assumption made by white people whenever they see a person of color hired instead of them. You don't know anything about the two persons lives, interviews, or qualities that might make them better or worse for the job. Getting the same degree does not make them qualified in the same way.

He knows that they are equally qualified because he invented the situation and so knows the exact circumstances and he's probably right. It probably does happen, with more and more laws and legislation forcing companies to 'better reflect the population'.

Oh and Cheeze_Pavilion, saying that something is only racist if it is based on race illegitimately is like saying the final solution or slavery was fine because it was state-sanctioned.

 

[Crazy Elf]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/29/house.slavery/index.html

Interesting. That skipped past my radar. I stand corrected, the US government has apologised, albeit in a very quiet manner. No presidential declaration or anything like that, which would have made a lot more sense seeing as it was purely a symbolic, non binding, gesture.

If the government has done wrong, which it has now admitted to, does it not also follow that they should do something about the injustices? If a murderer were to apologise for their wrongdoing, would they not still go to jail? My original point is that other countries have gone to greater lengths to try to right the wrongs of the past, whereas the US has done very little in comparison. That point still stands.

How does not getting a job I otherwise would have gotten have nothing to do with 'me' and only with 'the government'?

That's even clearer: if the government passes legislation affecting the marketplace for jobs that I am a part of, how does that not have anything to do with me?

Simple. You still have access to those jobs, but in order to get them you have to work harder. That's all there is to it. If there are ten jobs, and one of them has to go to someone from a minority group, then there's still nine there that you can get. If you were only good enough to get slot number ten you needed to work harder.

Fact is, also, that many of the minorities getting these jobs have also worked pretty damned hard in order to get them. If that slot gives them access to jobs that would have been barred to them on grounds of colour (and let's face it, that still does happen today) then they're still going to have to be better than everyone else that's applying for that one slot.

You're white I'm assuming. In the US there isn't any job out there that you're not going to be able to get as a result of your ethnicity. The same can be said about blacks, women and the disabled, but only because of AA and legislation that surrounds it.

I didn't ask if that was equality. It's not: that's why I used the word "inequality." What I asked is why that's a bad thing if disenfranchisement is unavoidable.

Because it's disproportionate. If the US wants to bill itself on being all about equality and freedom, they're going to have to do something about glaring inaccuracies in the claim such as this.

Slavery did not play the part in creating American prosperity that people think: if anything, slavery held America back and if it had not been eliminated by the Civil War, America would have gone down the path of the Belgian Congo and become a third-world country.

Um, no not really. American can't be a third-world country as that term refers to countries that were not aligned with either the US or Russia during the Cold War.

If you're looking at it in terms of poverty, though, the US isn't doing too well. It has next to no health care, horrifying crime rates (particularly in terms of shooting deaths due to all the guns floating about everywhere), garbage infrastructure (American roads and buildings are used as, "Don't do this!" examples in civil engineering courses over here) and rubbish education (nice illiteracy rate you've got going on over there).

Also racial tensions within the US are bloody ridiculous, but primarily because of the treatment of African Americans well into the twentieth century. There were still lynchings in the 60's, and probably even more recently than that. Hell, a whole bunch of them were complaining about the vote rigging during the 2000 election in Florida.

Slavery built most of the US, and continues to. You're right that it's unsustainable (worked out badly for Rome), but that doesn't stop the inherent draw towards it in America. Hence thousands of illegal immigrants flow into the US and take up all the jobs that no one else will do. Cleaning, cooking, labouring. They work for next to nothing and have no legal rights. Companies make huge profits using that workforce rather than one that has the legal right to complain.

I think you underestimate the political and economic realities of slavery. Slavery may have been abolished, but that didn't stop African Americans receiving substandard wages and living conditions, as well as substandard legal treatment. Giving someone a buck a day may legally stop them being a slave, but it doesn't stop them behaving and feeling like one.

Of course you're probably going to argue with the definition of slavery, so I'll beat you to the punch. Most definitions of slavery include something along these lines:

American Heritage Dictionary - Slavery:
4. A condition of hard work and subjection

Collins Essential English Dictionary - Slavery
3. hard work with little reward

If we think of it in these terms, and we can certainly grammatically do so, then we can see that although the conditions of outright ownership of people was stopped after the civil war, the practice of slavery did not. We can also see that it has not stopped today, with illegal immigrants taking up the mantle. It's also interesting to note that the large influx of illegal immigrants is relatively recent, becoming a much larger issue after the civil rights movement.

Of course this gets into a whole new debate about illegal immigrants, but it does illustrate a point. African Americans have had it bad for a bloody long time in the US, and any progress on their part is recent rather than something that happened at the end of the civil war.

So, if you feel inclined to lecture me on the finer points of US history, you best learn it yourself.

I'm not saying slavery wasn't abhorrent and that any such treatment shouldn't be reparated for. What I'm saying is that you cannot hold people today responsible for actions of people from 100+ years ago. You cannot say accountability spans several generations. No one alive today was a slave, nor were they a slave owner. If you want to hold someone responsible, you can dig up their corpses and lecture them all you want.

I quote you because this myth of slavery and ill treatment of African Americans being a thing of the distant past is just that, a myth. African Americans were treated as subhuman well within living memory. If you doubt that, back up and read the last section of this post.

 

[Agayek]

I quote you because this myth of slavery and ill treatment of African Americans being a thing of the distant past is just that, a myth. African Americans were treated as subhuman well within living memory. If you doubt that, back up and read the last section of this post.

Then look to those who treated them as subhuman for reparations. Do not hold people who had nothing to do with it responsible because they share some genetics.

Again, doing so is the equivalent of sending a baby to prison because its father raped its mother.

 

[Crazy Elf]

Then look to those who treated them as subhuman for reparations.

Um, yeah. The government, buddy. How are you arguing against government intervention and are at the same time saying that the ones responsible should be handing out reparations?

 

[Muphin_Mann]

The reason there are hate crime laws is because people who commit hate crimes have no reason to stop until they've killed/hurt/etc. a whole bunch of people they have absolutley no connection to. That's why they have stiffer penalties: they indicate that person is a more dangerous criminal than someone who commits a regular crime, just like people who kill for money or who are willing to kill a witness to get away with a crime or who will kill a cop to avoid being arrested.

Well said.

 

[Agayek]

Um, yeah. The government, buddy. How are you arguing against government intervention and are at the same time saying that the ones responsible should be handing out reparations?

Find the people responsible for their treatment, and hold them personally responsible.

If you want to punish the stupid laws, find the people that wrote, supported and enforced them. Do not go around saying "People committed atrocity A, therefore all people who look similar are responsible".

 

[The Wooster]

I'm very much a liberal but I'm heavily opposed to affirmative action.

I believe affirmative action masks the problem. Here in Canada we simply don't have enough Native doctors, and, whether you believe this is racist or not, native patients are simply more comfortable with native doctors. Same goes for white people. The correct way to ensure we have more native doctors is to a: fix the fucking school system- no-no, don't apologise for it, don't hold a ceremony, just fucking fix it. b: instill native youths with an increased desire to become doctors. The wrong way to fix this problem is to make it harder for white people to become doctors, which is all the current programs do.

I don't begrudge Natives any of the benefits they get, I'm not deluded enough to think that if I shut down the benefit systems I'll be any better off, I just think the affirmative action systems in place only mask the problem at hand and sow resentment amongst the white community.