But it isn't faulty.
Its totally faulty. They didn't even make a real explination of how color blind policies put some people at a disadvantage. They didn't even try to do that. They showed how other factors may put some people at a disadvantage. For example if someone receives poor education in elementary school and high school they will be less able to meet the requirements of a good paying job or a top flight university. But it it the lack of educational oportunities at a lower level that put them at that disadvantge not AA or the lack thereof.
The claim in the article that you posted would be like saying that the standards of the NBA put me at a disadvantage, but their standards are fair. I am at a disadvantage because I am only average height, I am overweight, not very fast, and have no expierence playing orginized basketball since before High School.
But you miss the point completely.........since whites have been the dominant race for all of this country's history, whites dominant everything including seniority.
I'm not sure what you mean by "dominant in everything including seniority". But if whites are really more qualified then they should be picked. Racism is not having more or less people of one race in a particular position then their % in the population or the % of applicants. Racism in hireing and admissions consists of treating people unfairly based on race. Its hard to eliminate totally because people can be subtly racist in their own minds but we can eliminate any racist rules that keep people out and insist that no rule forces someone of one race to be accepted over someone of another race based on their skin color or ancestry. Over time if just about all such rules are eliminated it will help to reduce racism in peoples "hearts and minds".
No one said to lower the bar..
AA lowers the bar for admissions. It lets less qualifed people in because of an advantage they have been given based on their skin color. Also if the bar is lowered enough for admissions it can put pressure on lowering the bar for perfromance after admissions. If you let less qualified black people in more of them will fail. If more of them fail there will be pressure against some of the academic standerds because they will be attacked as racist. This heppens on the SAT test for example. The test is not counted as much because it is called racist, but beyond that questions on the test are dropped if people of one race score much lower (at least if that race is not white) then other races on the particular questions. So instead of trying to raise the performance of blacks so that they meet the standards, the standards get lowered. AA will only increase the pressure to do this.
You seem to want to ignore this issue no matter how many times its presented but before AA, people were rarely treated "justly and fairly". So if people mostly were not treated "justly and fairly", how were women or minorities supposed to get into the hierarchy in the first place?
Equal oportunity laws and anti-discrimination laws where the main legal methods of people being treated justly and fairly. Affirmitive action did not become wide spread until after these laws where in effect. They are mostly responsible for the increase in fairness and justice.
The evidence that AA is working is that for the first time women and minorities are closing the income gap with their white and Asian counterparts.
Which doesn't answer my point at all. If they are closing the gap it could be for reasons other then AA. If it is because of AA then AA would have had to have given them a major advantage. If it gave them a major advantage then it gave someone else a major disadvantage. If it did that then your earlier point about my statement - "If by "lose out" you mean recieved reduced consideration for positions, and if "a large percentage" doesn't have to mean a majority then it isn't a myth at all." - being wrong is incorrect.
What are you talking about? In the 60's they were still trying to integrate the coffee shops.
Yes that was part of the long process of them "catching up".
This is impossible.......the good ole boy network was the very empitome of racism and discrimination.
Not at all. It is hireing people you know or like, or who are known or liked by people you like. It isn't racism because it isn't based on race. It can be and in many cases was combined with racism, and even if it wasn't it could have a negative impact on people of one race (if people hire people they know it may not include anybody of one particular race even if the person making the decision is not racist), but the practice itself is not based on race so it is not racism in and of itself.
Affirmitive action is directly discrimination based on race. Its by definition treating people differently based on their skin color or ancestry. That is precisly what racism is. Even if it is an attempt to counter other racism against a group with some racism for them (fighting fire with fire) it still is an example of racism, the only argument would be that this racism was justified based on the situation.
I am assuming this need to rewrite history is so you can negate the effectiveness of AA.
I have not said anything about the effectivness of AA other then to say if it is to give a great bonus to one group it has to give a great negative to another. It may do both, it may do neither. I was only saying you can't have one without the other.
I don't want to go backwards even if you do.
I wan't to treat people according to the content of their charecter and the level of their skill rather then the color of their skin even if you don't.
Tim |
