Actually, they do and they explained why.
I explained why their explanation was faulty.
But if you want more detail -
"For instance, all else being equal, color-blind seniority systems tend to protect White
workers against job layoffs, because senior employees are usually White (Ezorsky, 1991)"
That is an example of treating employees of any race equally. In this case seniority is considered a merit. If you want to argue that it should not be considered a merit I am open to that, but you can get rid of seniority benefits without implementing AA.
Likewise, color-blind college admissions favor White students because of their earlier educational advantages.
Again an example of the college treating the races equally. Allowing them in based on their preparation to deal with the level or work and learning required by the college. If black people tend to not be sufficiently ready for college the answer is not to put them in a top college anyway, the answer is to prepare them better. Don't lower the bar for them, help them jump over the bar where it is.
Unless preexisting inequities are corrected or otherwise taken into account, color-blind policies do not correct racial injustice -- they reinforce it.
People start off at different places and have different skills. Treating them justly and fairly means the results that you get will not be the same. Enforcing equal results is racial injustice. Giving someone a bonus and someone else a negative mark based on their race is racial injustice. Affirmative action is what does not correct racial injustice, it is racial injustice.
If by "lose out" you mean received reduced consideration for positions, and if "a large percentage" doesn't have to mean a majority then it isn't a myth at all.
I know of no factual evidence that supports your argument. Do you?
The factual information would be the existence of affirmative action programs that include quotas or bonus points or other ways of discriminating against certain groups such as White people or sometimes Asians or others. UM is a good example of this but it is not the only one.
If you want to argue that such programs are very very rare then we would have to conclude that AA did very little for blacks or any other group it was supposed to favor. To give advantage to one group you have to give a disadvantage to another. If there is no significant disadvantage to one group there is no significant advantage to another.
Secondly the advancements you are so
quick to proclaim did not start in earnest until after AA was put in place.
Not true. Black people where slowly catching up even before the civil rights laws. Affirmative action was not widespread until the 70s.
There is a huge difference between racial discrimination and AA.
There is no difference because one is an example of the other. Some particular examples of discrimination are much worse then what we have seen through AA, so it could be said that there is a difference between those examples and AA, perhaps even a huge difference, but the difference is of degree only even if it is a big difference of degree. AA is just relatively mild discrimination. That doesn't mean it is not discrimination.
Lets for a moment say you're right.......how is that any different than say Bush getting points to get into Yale because his father was a Yalie. There has been an informal AA among whites forever in this country.
1 - The bonus for children of alumni is not based on race.
2 - The bonus is typically much smaller then that of AA.
3 - Yale is not a government institution. If they want AA or bonuses for children of alumni it is there right. I would let them have pretty much whatever admissions policy they want. I might say its unfair if I see it as being unfair but I don't think the government should force them to change it.
4 - If you want to argue that we should try to get rid of or greatly reduce bonuses for children of alumni as a way to equalize opportunity I might be prepared to accept that idea. Particularly for government run schools or other government institutions.
Conservative whites have never complained about that form of AA so
why are they so adamant about this one?
Some of them have complained about the "good old boy network". Also it was not an example of official racism. It established criteria and treated all races fairly according to that criteria. It might have had the practical effect of reducing black participation, and maybe that practical effect is a good reason to junk it, but the practical effect does not amount to racial discrimination unlike AA.
Tim |
