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

[LongAndShort]

Let me begin by saying that of all the places in the world, Africa has one of the worst slavery issues in the world.

I shall continue by saying that my ethnic heritage is Assyrian, a christian ethnic minority in the middle-east who have been suffering under intolerant arab rule for hundreds if not thousands of years. At the beginning of world war 1 there was 800,000 of us in the ottoman empire. By the end the mostly turk and kurd armies had slaughtered all but 50,000 (saved by Brit, Canadian and Aussie troops and American Missionaries) along with the millions of Armenians and greeks. Where's my bloody compensation?

Plenty of Europeans have been enslaves, but you don't hear them claiming that they're owed anything. As far as i can see, ethnic minorities need to get over this "we're owed" crap, stop thinking how "they can make our lives easier or open doors for us" and start doing it yourself.

Racism is still an issue and nobody should be turned down because of race but nobody should be given preferential treatment because of their race. If a white guy was turned down over a ethnic guy who was less qualified or experienced, that's just going to fuel hatred, not balance it out.

And what about all those who went to America after the end of slavery or in recent years? do they owe minorities something as well?

I'm all for a multi-racial society, but completely against multi-cultural societies. I think that's what's ruining my country of Australia. There's nothing wrong with practicing your own religion or speaking your own language within your home and family, and remembering and paying respect to your history and heritage, but first and foremost you should identify yourself as Australian. There's a real issue when you identify yourself as 'French' or 'African' or 'Chinese' or 'Lebanese' before you identify yourself as Australian, even though many of them were born here.

And if someone doesn't want to work hard to be successful, or relies on government handouts or believes the rest of the world owes them, then maybe they should be assimilated into a new culture.

I'll end by saying this, all those ethnic minorities out there, get over it. Every cultures suffered. The japs killed, raped and tortured 30,000,000 chinese and millions of others, but suffered under the rule of others. Christians have subjugated and killed millions, but so have muslims, both religions were themselves persecuted and often still are. The Africans were enslaved, often by there fellow Africans (even before the Europeans and Americans started buying them). The Irish were enslaved and sent to work the cotton and sugar plantations even before the Africans. Yes the Jews suffered horribly in the holocaust, but so did many others, and now Israel is starving the Palestinian people.Everybody suffered. Get over it and get on with life.

 

[Crazy Elf]

Where's my bloody compensation?

Well seeing that the Ottoman Empire was destroyed and you're no longer living in those lands from the sounds of things it's hardly the same situation.

 

[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.

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.

Yeah, well when you can't pay for the tuition, it is a problem. I was only able to go for a semester, so get over yourself. I don't need to hear about the problems you face as a latino because I was speaking about AA, and the racism that is caused through that. You just explained racism. I would've shed a tear for you if you weren't so in my face about it.

I respect everyone equally, so don't take your fight up with me because I'm a "whitey". You don't think that shit like this happens to white people as well? I'm sick of all this bullshit getting spewed at white people because everyone thinks we owe someone something. My ancestors had to work just as hard as yours are right now to get to where they are today. Equal opportunity my ass.

The majority of people will work less since you can't motivate people. In the workplace, this is true, and I take it to be true in school as well.

And I love the fact that as soon as a white person says something is wrong with the way it works, they get pounced on for their views of it because they're white. You're making this more racist then the situation has already called for.

 

[Agent Larkin]

I feel that the less government intervention the better as if the government keeps trying affirmitave action some people are going to become bitter and disillusioned at it as the government would rather help them.

 

[Agayek]

Now hate crimes, they are real. And we do need laws against them. But I think people should take it seriously and not make light of it. I know, a crime is a crime, but if we can attempt to eliminate a reason for it, we may help prevent it. I just hate people who try to equate uttering a slur word with inflicting violence on someone for being a minority. It's not the same. The word isn't the problem, it's the feeling behind it. A joke with slurs shouldn't be punished, but hate speech, even without slurs, should. Jokes don't turn people into criminals, hate does. Focusing on the words over the feelings just takes us backward and makes the problem worse.

I think I'll just leave it at that for now.

There is no such thing as hate crimes. Whenever someone is murdered, or raped, or beaten, or any of a variety of things that will fall under "hate crimes", the perpetrator hates the victim. The only way to kill someone is to hate them. It doesn't matter what color either party is, it is an act of hate. Whether I murder a black guy or a white guy, I still murdered someone. The term "hate crime" is meaningless and needs to be abolished.

 

[asinann]

I think in places like the US at the moment you do need a period of affirmative action, because what people regularly regret is that it rarely involves admitting actually poorer candidates, it tends to just mean if your at the same level as someone else but they happen to come from a racial minority they get let in above you. Frankly as most figures will show if you've got to the same stage as many white applicants while being from what is often a poorer, less educated home then you deserve to get in above some middle class white boy who feels he has a god given right to go to college.

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.

And nobody else had slaves? African Americans weren't the only race enslaved on Earth. Does that mean everyone should get some form of preferential treatment in the nations that their race was enslaved in worldwide?

From what I've seen around the world there is less racism in the general public of the US than just about everywhere else on Earth. There on the other hand IS massive institutionalized racism against the white male (affirmative action ONLY applies to the government, public colleges and universities and the contractors of those two groups.)

 

[demonsaber]

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.

QFT only about 20% of the white population had slaves. Those that did mainly had about 2-5 slaves. Only about 5% of the population had slave plantations that were large and prosperous with multitudes of slaves.

To further this point, the statistics I have state that only 31% of white Southerners belonged to the slave owning population in 1850, and 24% by 1860. Of these nearly 75% of owned fewer than 10, and most slaves were concentrated in 12% of plantations.
Think of what percentage of the whole population that really was, given that the population of the North was far larger than that of the South.

I apologise if this is completely separate from the current discussion, as I haven't read pages 2 or 3.

those are the stats I was going for just thought id simplify it a bit.

 

[Agayek]

Well seeing that the Ottoman Empire was destroyed and you're no longer living in those lands from the sounds of things it's hardly the same situation.

Why?

All of the politicians in charge when slavery was legal, practiced, and sometimes encouraged are all long dead. Why are the new politicians responsible for their actions?

 

[munkyforce]

My problem with affirmative action is not so much that it promotes discrimination, but rather it fails to help those who are actually disadvantaged. Research has shown that the greater portion of the benefits of affirmative action are captured by those who are middle class or higher. I just don't see how any programme aimed at reducing disadvantage can be effective if people in lower socio-economic classes fail to receive any benefit from them.

 

[Crazy Elf]

All of the politicians in charge when slavery was legal, practiced, and sometimes encouraged are all long dead. Why are the new politicians responsible for their actions?

Because they're still part of the American government, and they're still dealing with a population that was taken away from their actual country in order to be slaves in another one, a very long way away. It's still symbolic of the old regimes, and it suffers loss and accepts profits from what past administrations have done.

Well, at least that way of thinking has ended up ruling the day in a lot of other countries and institutions that have made mistakes in the past. Australia apologised to the Aboriginals. New Zealand formed a treaty with their indigenous people. The Vatican apologised for the Crusades and Inquisition. The US, to the best of my knowledge, has never formally apologised for slavery.

 

[Agayek]

Because they're still part of the American government, and they're still dealing with a population that was taken away from their actual country in order to be slaves in another one, a very long way away. It's still symbolic of the old regimes, and it suffers loss and accepts profits from what past administrations have done.

Well, at least that way of thinking has ended up ruling the day in a lot of other countries and institutions that have made mistakes in the past. Australia apologised to the Aboriginals. New Zealand formed a treaty with their indigenous people. The Vatican apologised for the Crusades and Inquisition. The US, to the best of my knowledge, has never formally apologised for slavery.

So Turkey should be held accountable for the Ottoman's mistakes? They haven't apologized to the Assyrians.

Just because the name of the government changed, doesn't mean they don't benefit from previous rulers.

If the US government hasn't apologized for slavery (can't be bothered to look it up), that should be done, but it's postmortem so it won't have much of an effect.

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.

It's not my responsibility to pay for what happened to someone else's ancestors, just like it isn't their responsibility to pay for what happened to mine. If you're lucky enough to be born in a successful family with lots of opportunities, good for you. If not, you'll have to work harder than the aforementioned people. That doesn't make it anyone's fault but random chance.


Edit: for clarity's sake, no one today deserves reparations for things that never happened to them, just as no one today is obligated to pay reparations for things their ancestors did.

 

[AdamAK]

Now that we're talking about a 'repayment of a past debt', why don't we make Germany pay for the Second World War? That seemed to work pretty well after the First World War, didn't it?
Let's also donate all of our money to women, to repay the 'past debt', as they were a minority for many centuries.

Money will certainly fix every damned problem, won't it?

Making the current generations pay for past mistakes is like blaming Fritzl's kids for being raped.

 

[vampirekid.13]

Because they're still part of the American government, and they're still dealing with a population that was taken away from their actual country in order to be slaves in another one, a very long way away. It's still symbolic of the old regimes, and it suffers loss and accepts profits from what past administrations have done.

Well, at least that way of thinking has ended up ruling the day in a lot of other countries and institutions that have made mistakes in the past. Australia apologised to the Aboriginals. New Zealand formed a treaty with their indigenous people. The Vatican apologised for the Crusades and Inquisition. The US, to the best of my knowledge, has never formally apologised for slavery.

So Turkey should be held accountable for the Ottoman's mistakes? They haven't apologized to the Assyrians.

Just because the name of the government changed, doesn't mean they don't benefit from previous rulers.

If the US government hasn't apologized for slavery (can't be bothered to look it up), that should be done, but it's postmortem so it won't have much of an effect.

I'm not saying slavery wasn't abhorrent and that any such treatment should 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.

It's not my responsibility to pay for what happened to someone else's ancestors, just like it isn't their responsibility to pay for what happened to mine. If you're lucky enough to be born in a successful family with lots of opportunities, good for you. If not, you'll have to work harder than the aforementioned people. That doesn't make it anyone's fault but random chance.


Edit: for clarity's sake, no one today deserves reparations for things that never happened to them, just as no one today is obligated to pay reparations for things their ancestors did.

I fully agree with this, also the union and confederecy are as dead as the ottoman empire, you cannot keep people responsible for things they did not do. I find it unethical, and it makes me feel punished because if I apply for a scholarship against a minority I am guaranteed to lose it. Which is stupid.

 

[ZZ-Tops89]

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.

The intuitive solution for a person having a diabetic attack isn't to give them sugar, but guess what--the non-intuitive solution is the right solution sometimes.

While it may be true that the backlash against AA makes things worse, don't blame the victim: it creates racial tension because racists have successfully turned attitudes against AA. That's not a failing of AA, that a failing of all of us for letting the racists win this battle.

I enjoyed reading this response. Despite disagreeing with you, it's good to see a well-educated opinion in an internet forum for a change, regardless of which side it's on. Now for the task of (trying) to dismantle your counter-argument.

First, racial tension is racial tension, and it still fuels conflict. Just because it's the bad guys' fault, that doesn't mean you aren't still creating a problem. As an example of this, racial profiling is wrong, but it's probably not a good idea to tell the cop who's doing it to stop right to their face. Likewise, yes, the racial tension may very well be all on one side, but that doesn't deny the harms it can create for the cause of eliminating racism. Further, I would argue both sides bear at least some fault in AA related racial tension. Neither side is going to have a completely perfect calculation of responsibility; victim groups tend to estimate high, and others estimate low. The difference between these assessments is often a catalyst for racial tension. Finally, I would argue that AA polarizes the issue and moves neutral groups towards racism. People that might otherwise not be racists become more sympathetic towards racists when the anti-racism movement makes an overstep.

I won't disagree that oftentimes intuition is a poor guide, but that doesn't mean we should assume in this scenario that it is. I would argue that racism is an issue where little good can come from thinking about things in terms of race over the long term, and therefore steps must be taken to try and alleviate existing racism before other steps can be taken. Yes, sometimes sugar might help with diabetes, but that doesn't mean a diabetic should eat a diet consisting entirely of ice cream and Twinkies. Likewise, I can see instances where racism, embodied in specific forms and expressed in specific ways, can aid in eliminating racism, but AA isn't one of them.

 

[Infallius]

Treating a person differently, specifically because of their race, is the definition of racism. When it comes to laws it should be for everyone or for no one. One 'group' of something should not get any more or less benefits for something inherent such as skin color.

I don't see how someone can complain about being discriminated against because of their skin color but then want something special for it at the same time. The two contradict each other. Ideally, neither one should exist.

 

[Steelfists]

If you have a problem with white people hating black people, how the fuck is giving black people preference over whites going to solve anything...?

 

[Donbett1974]

Did anyone see that show where they took a white and black family and had them change color. The black father who looked white was still treated so called like a black man.While the white guy who looked black was treated so called like a white guy. This means there may be something else than race at play.

 

[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.

Yeah, well when you can't pay for the tuition, it is a problem. I was only able to go for a semester, so get over yourself. I don't need to hear about the problems you face as a latino because I was speaking about AA, and the racism that is caused through that. You just explained racism. I would've shed a tear for you if you weren't so in my face about it.

I respect everyone equally, so don't take your fight up with me because I'm a "whitey". You don't think that shit like this happens to white people as well? I'm sick of all this bullshit getting spewed at white people because everyone thinks we owe someone something. My ancestors had to work just as hard as yours are right now to get to where they are today. Equal opportunity my ass.

The majority of people will work less since you can't motivate people. In the workplace, this is true, and I take it to be true in school as well.

And I love the fact that as soon as a white person says something is wrong with the way it works, they get pounced on for their views of it because they're white. You're making this more racist then the situation has already called for.

Blanco tell me why your are crying because you had trouble transferring from one college to another.
You got into college then you changed your mind about it and you tried to go to another college you could not afford so you just had one semester at the new college.
Hey, how much money you spent just to get into the first college you chose? If I was an administer at the second college I would invest in the freshmans who need the most help as for a sophomore like you I would expect that you to know the ropes and make a sensible decision on what you can and cannot afford.
My guess, you reached for the brass ring, overstretched, fell and now you are trying to find someone to blame for your scoffed up knee. Just because you couldn't finish what you started is not AA's fault. Take your 3.8 GPA and prove it's worth more than paper it's written on find the college that will want you and give you what you want.
If you can't go Ivy League go state, can't go state go community,can't go community go Canadian eh.
All else fails go military, get free hair cuts and all the brown people you can kill.
If you gave up it's on you. No one else.
Now, as for your ancestors, how many were force sterilized, exposed to lethal levels of radiation in laced foods, denied life saving medical care to protect Syphillis research, abandoned on the frontlines during World War 2, denied federal aid under the GI Bill, sodomized with a broom stick by the police in the police station and this was just the last hundred years.
I can't feel your pain because you have not suffered. You have been inconvenienced, perturbed, and or delayed in your goals but you have not been victimized.