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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (13238)	5/19/2002 7:46:27 PM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

The poor Moose people don't realize that in China the state owns all the land. I'm surprised the Red Army has not obliterated them. 4panda.com

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (13238)	5/19/2002 11:04:11 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Now we have "affirmative action", AKA legal discrimination. Jim Crow lives and is alive and well in the NAACP! So just what is wrong with the idea that you get equal rights - -but that's all? No special privileges. As you surely know, I am not a supporter of affirmative action. Remediation programs for anyone of any race, yes, but not preference by race.... But here's a story. Actually, I have a couple, but time for one, maybe. On Wednesday afternoon N and I went to an American Academy of Arts and Letters "Ceremonial." They gave out a bunch of awards. We knew some of the honorees so were there. One we didn't know was a black fellow named John Hope Franklin. (I'd never heard of him, my bad; I only know his name because I looked at the program.) He got a Gold Medal for History. The thing was brisk, but there were so many people between introducers and honorees that it took two hours and parts were very tedious. Two parts that weren't were the longest speech, by Edna O'Brien (who is as wonderful as her writing), and a short one by Franklin. He talked about his fine family, his childhood in Georgia, about the abject poverty in which he was raised, and about how it felt not being able to find work if you were black, or if you could, the wage you earned from it keeping you still impoverished (as was the case with both of his college-educated parents.) The point of my telling this story is that he made a reference when talking about the lives of black people to the plight of blacks "struggling under a hundred years of affirmative action for whites." Even though I think affirmative action has done more harm than good -- for example in devaluing or making suspect legitimately-won recognition (just one example) -- I found that moment painful, and could understand as he spoke that many blacks must hear my views on the subject with a strong sense of irony. A couple of things happened last week that this reminds me of. One in a thrift shop, one in a nursery. Race-related. But it's late.