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

[tehweave]

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

In short: yes.

I won't elaborate, due to the amazingly huge amount of text people have already posted on here.

 

[vampirekid.13]

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.

So you realize that this is probably going to be locked as well, yes?

well to quote the mod that locked the previous thread:

"Topic locked.

Please do not create topics with inflammatory titles designed to draw attention at the expense of the site's moderation policies. Our moderation policies are here to make anyone, regardless of race, religion, or sexual identity, welcome here.

That being said, I am sure you're all mature enough to hold a deep and interesting debate on affirmative action and double standards without bringing site policy, racial stereotyping, or slurs into it."

so basically, no this wont be locked.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.112449?page=4

 

[vampirekid.13]

so basically, no this wont be locked.

You just keep telling yourself that, mate. I'll be laughing when it is.

why would it be locked?

i reposted it using the moderators guide lines, and its a very civil discussion about affirmative action.

 

[sauerkraus]

You also have a debt to make up to the african american population, whether you like it or not, and I think this is one of the better ways of doing this, allowing society to start to balance itself out again.

As the descendent of the kind of poor white cracker sharecroppers Chicken George looked down on in Roots, I am always amused by this oversimplified view that EVERY white person profited from slavery or even other milder forms of discrimination.

We weren't all plantation owners 150 years ago.

Heck, some of us weren't even *in* this country 150 years ago!

EDIT: Why would White Entertainment Television be racist?

Because the only content available would be racist.

I mean, really: what are we going to put on WET? Documentaries about skin cancer from sun exposure and the joys of not being lactose intolerant? What exactly do white people have in common that they would put on this TV network?

here is a nice quote from a friend a few days ago. if i was lets say interviewing for a job, and at the end of the group interview i turn to the only girl in the group and say "you got the job, because YOU ARE A WOMAN." is that not sexist? how about "Gentlemen, you did not get the job because you are men."

thats downright sexist but its deemed ok under the preface of affirmative action.

It's quotations like that which reduce affirmative action to this kind of caricature that does nothing but further spread the issue of race.

The problem is *illegitimate* discrimination, not *all* discrimination. If you think any form of discrimination is the problem, then you also have to be against male and female restrooms.

I'm lactose intolerant. And I love documentaries!

 

[Veylon]

To throw my two cents in....

Affirmative Action was launched as a "catch up" program. African Americans (and other minorities) had been denied a place in society, so in comes a program to hurry up the process of integration. And that was fine then, but at what point do we say Mission Accomplished and shut it down?

I say that it should be canceled now. We have a president every bit as black as those who had been oppressed, and that he was freely and fairly elected says a lot about how much society has changed since then. AA is based on the assumption that minorities are incapable of receiving an education or finding a job on their own, and that is no longer the case. Right now, it only serves to raise a shadow over every minority member's head as to whether or not they are truly qualified for their post. And that is something that should not be in America.

 

[ZZ-Tops89]

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 would have to agree with you, and in preparation for some inevitable counter-arguments, here we are. I formatted it with "argument" being the pro-affirmative action argument and "my response" being, simply, my response to it.

argument: Uneven footing i.e. past racism means we must address past wrongs
My response: The first problem here is measurement - how do we decide what amount of affirmative action is needed? The victims of past wrongs may say they need more, but other groups might say less. Further, many third parties may have been affected over time. In short, it becomes impossible to define the correct amount of affirmative action. A second problem is that inevitably costs and benefits will be borne/received by those not affected. For example, tax dollars from a Holocaust survivor whose family came from eastern europe and never owned slaves, much less benefited from them directly, may go to help an African-American whose ancestors were slaves in the deep south. In short, affirmative action can create huge asymmetries in actual repairs vs. intended repairs. Finally, this argument assumes affirmative action works, which is, far from being an acceptable assumption, a highly contentious claim with highly inconclusive data.

argument: Specifically for the USA, all Americans (except for African-Americans) benefited from slaves, therefore we must all repay that unjust profit.
My response: First of all, this assumes that we actually can assess the size of the "unjust profit", a problem I just elaborated on above. There is a larger problem in the fact that not everyone benefited equally from slavery and yet affirmative action can't be practically done without assigning uniform blame by exacting an equal cost on all people not in the victim group.

argument: Creates a sense of evenness; yes, wrongs were committed, but now they are righted.
My response: Not really. There's all sorts of backlash against affirmative action, as we've seen with past experience, and generally it creates more racial tension by casting issues in terms of race. Racism is wrong, and the intuitive solution is not to be racist. However, affirmative action does exactly that by conceiving of the issue in terms of clear and arbitrary racial lines.

 

[YuheJi]

You also have a debt to make up to the african american population, whether you like it or not, and I think this is one of the better ways of doing this, allowing society to start to balance itself out again.

As the descendent of the kind of poor white cracker sharecroppers Chicken George looked down on in Roots, I am always amused by this oversimplified view that EVERY white person profited from slavery or even other milder forms of discrimination.

We weren't all plantation owners 150 years ago.

You do realize that slavery isn't exactly the only thing that has been brought down upon blacks by whites in America, right? There is still the black codes, Jim Crowe laws, and general discrimination throughout most of American history. And even if most whites did not make those rules, they still benefited from them, whether they wanted to or not. The whites from Europe were lucky, in that they were able to hide their previous culture, become Protestant, and pass for any other common white American, even though it meant tossing out their entire heritage. That wasn't possible for any other people of color.

 

[JWAN]

Yes, I believe it is. I did a report actually where my friend and I put down opposite races on college applications, he is black so he put white and I'm white so I put down black then we scheduled visits to the deans office and the results concluded that the schools were doing it so they would not have to deal with the NAACP.

The NAACP has done and continues to do good work but the radicals have taken over and now every time a black person does not get a job and cries racism a full investigation is launched into the issue. This is happening so much companies are hiring black people to interview black people so they don't get investigated

that does not help improve race relations
I don't hate people because of race or creed but I do believe that some extremists are doing more damage than good, Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson both stood my MLK Jr. in the 60's now they have both gone along with every single case where race is involved.

In 2005 or 06 a team from out east was said to have raped an exotic dancer and thier was an investigation even after the dancer admitted she lied so she could extort untold millions from the school Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton led marches for the players to go to jail for a crime that never occurred
that's just stupid and does not reflect well on an organization with such important roots in history.

 

[JWAN]

You also have a debt to make up to the african american population, whether you like it or not, and I think this is one of the better ways of doing this, allowing society to start to balance itself out again.

As the descendent of the kind of poor white cracker sharecroppers Chicken George looked down on in Roots, I am always amused by this oversimplified view that EVERY white person profited from slavery or even other milder forms of discrimination.

We weren't all plantation owners 150 years ago.

You do realize that slavery isn't exactly the only thing that has been brought down upon blacks by whites in America, right? There is still the black codes, Jim Crowe laws, and general discrimination throughout most of American history. And even if most whites did not make those rules, they still benefited from them, whether they wanted to or not. The whites from Europe were lucky, in that they were able to hide their previous culture, become Protestant, and pass for any other common white American, even though it meant tossing out their entire heritage. That wasn't possible for any other people of color.

my decedents fought for the north, your welcome

 

[peduncle]

we have a black president, we don't need affirmative action

 

[ZZ-Tops89]

You also have a debt to make up to the african american population, whether you like it or not, and I think this is one of the better ways of doing this, allowing society to start to balance itself out again.

As the descendent of the kind of poor white cracker sharecroppers Chicken George looked down on in Roots, I am always amused by this oversimplified view that EVERY white person profited from slavery or even other milder forms of discrimination.

We weren't all plantation owners 150 years ago.

You do realize that slavery isn't exactly the only thing that has been brought down upon blacks by whites in America, right? There is still the black codes, Jim Crowe laws, and general discrimination throughout most of American history. And even if most whites did not make those rules, they still benefited from them, whether they wanted to or not. The whites from Europe were lucky, in that they were able to hide their previous culture, become Protestant, and pass for any other common white American, even though it meant tossing out their entire heritage. That wasn't possible for any other people of color.

But at the same time, how do you measure responsibility? There is no way to gauge how much I personally "benefited" from slavery, therefore any attribution of benefit would be arbitrary. Also, many other groups have been persecuted in the past but received little compensation. Jews have been persecuted for over 2 thousand years by a plethora of different cultures, including african cultures. Does this entitle me to a check from Jesse Jackson because Africans have historically been abusive to Jews (using Ethiopia, Libya, and Egypt as examples of this)? As I see it a large amount of the affirmative action concept is based on the assumption that we can somehow quantify things which are, in my opinion, completely un-quantifiable.

 

[vampirekid.13]

You also have a debt to make up to the african american population, whether you like it or not, and I think this is one of the better ways of doing this, allowing society to start to balance itself out again.

i didnt see this little gem until right now.


lets get a few things straight. my opinion:

1. im white. i grew up white. im caucasian by definition.
2. i have no debt to anyone, and ill say this to every race out there.
im sorry you were treated like crap. not my fault, it wasnt me, and you cant hold ME responsible for some idiots hundreds of years ago.

my debt to the african american population is inexistent.


im sorry jews were killed in the holocaust. its not my fault, get over it and stop playing the holocaust card so much, its in the past.

im sorry your race was somehow wronged by a race that encompasses me. i didnt do it, and you cant hold me responsible for it. so yet again. there is no debt to pay back.

 

[Lord Monocle Von Banworthy]

I'm 7/8 white, so do I only "owe" 86% as much as a pure white guy? What if some of my ancestors were white but immigrated to the US after Jim Crow was abolished? How about the fact that I live in Japan currently where I get to experience roughly the same amount of racism a black man in the 70s in America would (can't get a cab, can't rent apartments if the other tenants don't want to live in the same building, and yes the landlord will ask them, have been met at the door to businesses and told "no foreigners,"), do I get to claim some reparation credit? Your whole collective responsibility thing doesn't work, LibDem.

Individuals have to be responsible only for their own actions as individuals. It's the only way a modern rational society can work.

 

[Crazy Elf]

Just for context here, it would be very interesting for people to detail their ethnicity and gender while they're detailing their responses to this topic. I'm pretty certain that most of the people arguing against affirmative action are white males that feel the system doesn't work in their favour.

So, for context, ethnicity and gender, please.

White male here.

 

[Crazy Elf]

my debt to the african american population is inexistent.

Totally true. You're not behind any of the past actions that occurred against the African Americans. However, the government certainly was behind many of those actions, with legislation being actively against African Americans for a good long while.

Although there is no need for YOU to legislate affirmative action, the argument really isn't about you. It's about the government, which is responsible for the legislation in the first place.

Now, when you look at it that way, wouldn't you agree that the GOVERNMENT has a debt?