Not Another Homosexuality Thread

[LouisBooth]

"Affirmative Action is based on curent need. "

the problem is there is no need. Thus AA should not exsist.

"If anyone actually thinks there are no significant obstacles to minority progress in America today, then they are sticking their head in the ground. "

LOL, brim then I would say you need to get out more. The only detirment I see to them is they 1. dont' want to work and get paid for it 2. dont have the drive to go get a job and want to get paid for it or 3. are competing in an employers market where there is a surplus of workers with higher skills as them and they cry foul just becuase they don't get hired.

"a) AA was not created to generate quotas."

Thats a load and you know it.

"If such lawsuits are sometimes filed frivolously or otherwise used as leverage, then ending affirmative action will not do anything whatsoever to end this"

Yes it will because then the employer can show someone was better at the job. Now according to AA a lesser skilled employee must be hired due to race. I've seen it happen pretty much all my life.


"makes me want to dig in my heels more and provide blank check support for AA than getting a sense that opposition to AA is part of a vague resentment of pro-minority politics in general."

ahh..not a true position but a reactionary one, gotta love those kind of people *sigh*

 

[Brimshack]

Subtheme # 1, is a summary statement without evidence. Poverty is real, and it has real consequences. Simply saying there is no need demonstrates nothing but your own refusal to take the issue seriously.

Subtheme # 2, I happen to work in an community with chronic unemployment, and I have lived on the southside of Chicago. Don't tell me I need to get out more. Points 1, 2, and 3 are all ways of saying minorities are lazy, and that is the only reason they are poor. You might as well just start hauling out racial epithets at this point. You are ignoring a host of historical developments, but it seems perfectly cealr you are imperfious to empirical evidence, so why bother.

Subtheme # 3. It's not a crock, and I know it. If you have equated all AA programs with quotas, then you are wrong.

Subtheme # 4. An employee can allege discrimination with or without AA quotas, and incompetance is still an answer to such suits with or without AA quotas.

Subtheme # 5. My point is that the more reactionary you get, the more those of us on the left get. So far, you are the one doing the most to polarize the issue, and thus your comment here is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

 

[LouisBooth]

"Poverty is real, and it has real consequences"

This is a very very poor generalization and a wrong one at that. AA doesn't exsist to end poverty, it exsists to lower the unfair advanage a certain race has against another in getting a job. Stop building strawmen. There is no need for this field to be lowered because it already is.

"Points 1, 2, and 3 are all ways of saying minorities are lazy, and that is the only reason they are poor. You might as well just start hauling out racial epithets at this point. "

brim come to houston sometime. I'm sure it way surpasses chi. in things like that. I'm not racist at all. I do see people wanting a hand out, and I don't want to give them one if they don't want to work for it. I see at least 50 or 60 immagrants a day on the street corner looking for a job. I think they are the ones that deserve the jobs. its called work ethic brim

"If you have equated all AA programs with quotas, then you are wrong."

Quotas? I said the reason that AA shouldn't exsist is because they field is lowered.

"So far, you are the one doing the most to polarize the issue, and thus your comment here is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black."

LOL, polarizing the issue? You've got to be joking. Why don't you come down to houston and I'll show you the people that use AA to get a free lunch, then you can tell me I'm polarizing the issue. I've seen a person work his way up. It takes work, something people who advocate AA don't want to do.

 

[Brimshack]

If there were no link between minority status and poverty the rationale for AA programs would not be there. Poverty is and always has been a fundamental component of the rationale for AA programs. It is also possible to extend AA programs to non-minority communities. This is what got Clarence Thomas noticed, when he tried to make AA itself color-blind in some federal programs.

You didn't distinguish between minorities in general and those who refuse to work. Your post merely uses the anaphoric pronoun 'them', and the only clear referent for it is minorities. Hence, your previous post did indeed convey a racist message, whether you are racist or not. As it is, the existence of people who abuse the system does not entail the absence of those who truly need it. Since you present your view on this in terms of a blanket generalization, denying that any minorities could genuinely need AA programs, and do so by referring to the ones you regard as lazy, you are still promoting a racist theme. Whether you are personally a racist or not is another question, but your stance in this thread is another matter.

As for the equation of quotas with AA, this is from your own post: Me "a) AA was not created to generate quotas." You: "Thats a load and you know it." Your most recent response is, well, non-responsive.

On Polarizing the issue: Again non-responsive, quite illustrative, but non-responsive.

 

[Dewjunkie]

Wow, gone for 2 more days and look what happens....

O.K., brim, I'll recant my AA=reparations argument, as I cannot directly prove it. Although I still believe they run a complete parallel.

Perhaps in the 50's and 60's, when general thinking was (unfortunately) that minorities were only good for manual labor, AA had a place in allowing minorities jobs to disprove that general thinking. I refuse to believe in this day and age that general thinking is still such. I know all too well that racism still exist, but I think it exists in a broader scope because minorities want it to exist. As long as it does, they have a trump card.

But, from my days with my nose buried in scholarship books looking to help my own collegiate cause, I know good and well there are a myriad of scholarship opportunities for any minority. Poverty is an excuse. Anyone who truly wants to further their education and earn a better lot in life is able to, regardless of age, gender, race or creed. To say that AA is a need is wrong.

I'm sure you know I also live on the edge of "the rez", and I see too many who have plenty of potential to be wonderful, difference making members of society, but lack the motivation. If anything, AA hurts the minority cause because it gives them an out if they don't want to try. If you can get a job starting at $15.50 per hour at the Navajo Generating Station without any qualifications beyond passing the physical and being Navajo, where is the motivation to try harder? I believe AA to be outdated, unnecessary, and even detrimental to the minority cause.

To disqualify an applicant because of race is wrong. That is why AA was created, but in the creation for solution, the problem was reversed. Applicants are still disqualified because of race, only now it's the whites. That's not leveling the playing field, it's slanting it in the opposite direction.

 

[Brimshack]

Dew:

I understand there are parallel aspects of the two issues; my concern is that the critique may turn on the differences rather than the similarities. I appreciate your decision to drop that theme.

I'll grant you that miinorities conytibute their share to the culture of racism. Whether or not AA is a means of doing this, is another question. Whether or not such a strategic value is the sole reason for AA programs is another reason altogether.

On scholarship opportunities I would actually say that there is a parallel between these and AA programs. These are opportunities that are granted to minorities only, and the only reason they do not violate equal protection statutes is that there is a perceived need to assist those students. Yes, such things do provide opportunities to minorities that the rest of us do not have, and yes these opprtunitiesa re often squandered. But to suggest that minority status and particularly growing up in an impoverished community doesn't impact ones' potential for success seems rather implausible to me. The occasional ethnic horatio Alger story doesn't change the fact that people coming from minority (or otherwise impoverished communities) are far less likely to achieve significant success than those from elite or at least middle class families.

I know exactly what you are talking about, but the lack of motivation is more complex than it appears. In Navajo families the responsible members are far more responsible to take care of their family members than most Anglos. If there is a midterm and Gramma Yazzie needs someone to chop wood, an otherwise 'A' student is likely to go haul water instead. So much for the 'A'. If she doesn't haul the water, she will be viewed as selfish, and a undervaluing her family. Anyone who gets wealthy on the rez. soon has to pay for treating all his relatives ailments, etc. This is a major disincentive to the kind of careerism that Anglos typically value, but it's not just lazyness, it's a different sense of how to approach a different set of responsibilities and priorities. I'm not saying I don't get frustrated, or that I don't understand the resentment. I never had any fiunancial aid, and I see my own students waiste it every semester. But I never had Gramma Yazzie breathing down my neck abuot 'choppin woods' either. Whether or not AA could really help here is a legitimate question, but I don't think it's just lazyness.

AA was not created just to break through overtly racist barriars; it was also crete to overcome the practical consequences of growing up in communities shaped by those barriars. The issue wasn't simple disqualification of an applicant on racial rgounds, but trying to offset the practical biases against certain applicants in the absence of overt racial criteria. If BTW an AA program openly disqualifies someone because he is white or male, etc. then it too is an unconstitutional discriminatory. This is one reason outright quotas have often been struck down whereas fuzzier programs which give applicants an edge without necessitating a pro-minority hiring still pass the muster.

As to the leveliong the playing field metaphor; there is a disanalogy here. A game runs by a formal system of rules, and refs. are not required to accout for the environment form which various players originate. When it comes to education and employment and the general prospects for success in life, the formal rules are simply not the complete picture.

 

[LouisBooth]

"AA was not created just to break through overtly racist barriars"

Brim, you're wrong, in more ways then one. since you don't want to take my word for it read it yourself.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/affirm/affirm.htm

As for the statement I quoted, its quite clear you don't know what you're talking about according to this newspaper who said, "Born of the civil rights movement three decades ago, affirmative action calls for minorities and women to be given special consideration in employment, education and contracting decisions. "

Its all about racist barriars.

This story is also interesting

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/affirm/stories/aa110497.htm

 

[Brimshack]

I read the article, and I don't see anything in it that contradicts my point. If you take both my point, and that of the article's out of context you can pretend that it contradicts me and move on to the "its quite clear you don't know what you're talking aout" comment, but you do have to take them both out of context to do it.

I said:

"AA was not created just to break through overtly racist barriars; it was also crete to overcome the practical consequences of growing up in communities shaped by those barriars. "

Your quote:

""AA was not created just to break through overtly racist barriars"

Notice that you left the second half of my statement out, and provided no elipses to indicate that the point continued. I was drawing a distinction between overt barriars to hiring minorities and attempts to compensate for covert barriars, as the second half of the statement makes clear (and even the qualifier in the first half should be a clue). But you apparently construe this to mean that I am saying that AA programs were not intended to overcome discriminatory practices in general. That is takling my comments out of context. If you are doing it on purpose, then please knock it off. If you are doing it by accident, then it really wouldn't hurt to take a little more time and think about the post before tou attack.

As fo the article, it does indicate that AA is intended to overcome racial inequalities and discriminatory practices, but it does not explain the strategic differences between desegregation principles and affirmative action programs. Hence, it is simply not dealing with the level of detail that I was responding to in my previous post. You are thus taking the article out of context in order to apply it to my post.

 

[Outspoken]

"But you apparently construe this to mean that I am saying that AA programs were not intended to overcome discriminatory practices in general. "

Well it sounds like you want to say that it was NOT ONLY to overcome racial barriers, which the article clearly indicates that was its sole purpose. The whole article is specifically about AA (the first link anyway).

 

[Dewjunkie]

Brim,

Unfortunately, in my line of work, too many of the promising souls I see squander their chance at a good, productive life do so because of Uncle Jack Daniels instead of Grandma Yazzie. I do know what you mean about their take care of family first culture. I certainly wouldn't ask for them to give that up, and if helping chop wood or a lack of interest in taking care of family financially is a disincentive for Navajos to aspire, fine. But I don't want to hear that it's discrimination or poverty that is holding them back as a whole, which I hear all too often around here. If they choose to pass up the opportunities afforded them, they are only holding themselves back.
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As far as the articles, they were fairly vague, and with a little contextual bending could probably be used to support either side. I did, however, find this particular statement (from the 2nd link) interesting:

"Proposition 209 seeks to lock shut the window for state and local action that [court] decisions . . . have so painstakingly left open," the challengers said in Coalition for Economic Equity v. Wilson. They said the law violates the Constitution's equal protection guarantee by preventing governments from specifically favoring women and minorities.

How is the equal protection guarantee effective if it gives preferrential treatment to anyone? If ANY one person gets an advantage, it is not equal. If the field is to be truly levelled, all people, regardless of race, gender or creed should have to put forth the same amount of effort to attain the same goals. Until that happens, the field will never be level.

 

[Brimshack]

Outspoken: I do not believe you have made an honest attempt to grasp either my own position, or the point of the article. The one thing I cannot do is force someone to read my posts, but I'm getting rather tired of defending myself from deliberate mischaracterizations.

Dewjunkie: I've known a lot of thoise wobblers too, but I've also known a lot of highly responsible people ut there who nevertheless define success very differently than I would. You may be right that affirmative action won't help that particular community as a whole, and my initial post should make it clear I have my own doubts there. But I will say that it does help those few individuals who are willing to cut lose from some of the family ties, and get out of the four corners area. In such cases, affirmative action can help compensate for growing up under those conditions and the correspondingly low academic credentials which will re**** from it. It does give some individuals a chance they wouldn't otherwise have.

 

[Outspoken]

"The one thing I cannot do is force someone to read my posts, but I'm getting rather tired of defending myself from deliberate mischaracterizations."

Brimshack, I read your post several times and don't see where your statements are mischaracterized. I see you several times where you say AA was made for this, and a publication said otherwise very plainly. Your "defense" (not really seeing any of these posts as attacks though? ) was just to say, well thats out of context because it has less detail then I was using. I don't see how the main topic of the article could be less to do with your post. You said one thing, the article says another? If you would like to point out specific instances where the article is saying something different or the same as you, I'd love to see it.

 

[Brimshack]

Outspoken:

I didn't say it was a personal attack. I said it was a micharacterization, which it was. I have already posted one attempt to clarify the matter (post 48). I will give it one more try.

My point which the articles were said to contradict was this, that the purpose of afirmative action was not really to overcome explicitly discriminatory hiring practices (read 'overt barriars' in the original post). Various court rulings and civil rights legislation had already dealt with that when affirmative action programs were put in place. The point behind affirmative action programs was to help those who had inherited the legacy of long-term discrimination by providing a means of accelerating their promotion to comparable status. Affirmative Action policies thus adopted a goal over and above breaking down explicit barriars to minority hiring (i.e. policies against it), and sought to address covert barriars associated with informal discrimination (i.e. simply refusing to hire someone without explaining the racist rationale for doing so) and the impact of growing up in communities impoverished by generations of discrimination. My point was about the specific role that AA was to play in overcoming discrimination, not a denial that it was ever intended to combat discrimination in any sense at all.

The article which supposedly proved me ignorant of the whole matter simply says that affirmative action programs were "…the nation's most ambitious attempt to redress the nation's LONG HISTORY of racial and sexual discrimination (emphasis mine)." This does not entail the specific notion that AA programs were intended to remove explicitely discriminatory policies, which was all that I was deying in the single HALF SENTENCE that was quoted in order to misrepresent my position. Indeed the second half of my sentence went to precisely the issue that it was the legacy of history that AA was intended to remedy. There is no conflict between my position and the content of this article whatsoever.

 

[Outspoken]

"Various court rulings and civil rights legislation had already dealt with that when affirmative action programs were put in place."

Obviously not or it would have not been needed. The problem was that you can't explicitly outlaw it because it would be in breach of the constitution, thus AA was made to hit people where it hurt, the pocketbook.

"There is no conflict between my position and the content of this article whatsoever."

I see that there is, but it doesn't seem that you have either the words to express it or I'm just not connecting with the idea you're trying to convey. I see you saying one thing explictly and the article saying something entirely different explictly and you are trying to dodge that fact by skirting the issue. so I guess we will have to leave it at that.

 

[Brimshack]

Do not tell me that I am dodging the issue when you are defending a blatant attempt to quote me out of context. My words were quite sufficient in this case. But is you choose deliberately to ignore my point, and a fundamental part of the rationale for AA, then there is nothing I can do about it.

 

[Outspoken]

"Do not tell me that I am dodging the issue "

Why are you being so defensive? The article is saying one thing, you're saying something different. AA in all its forms are starting to actually do the reverse, thus the big push to abolish it.

 

[Brimshack]

Me: "Do not tell me that I am dodging the issue when you are defending a blatant attempt to quote me out of context."

Outspoken Quoting Me: "Do not tell me that I am dodging the issue "

Actually, I think that illustrates my point rather well.

BTW: are you a sock puppet character Outspoken? Does your name denote a certain relief at being able to express yourself more forcefully than usual?

 

[Outspoken]

I guess we can't discuss this issue in a civil manner so I'll just drop it. I appologize if you felt I was attacking you.

 

[Brimshack]

Forget about it. I'm putting you on 'ignore', may I suggest that you do the same with me.

 

[coastie]

**mod hat on**

LOL... alright everyone!

let's curb this before I have to institute a tough Love policy

**mod hat off**