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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (158324)	1/18/2003 6:05:47 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1586599

The whites are the predominate race in this country. There have been laws passed that prohibit discrimination against all races. Those laws are not obeyed as evidenced by demographic statistics. In many cases the laws are obeyed. Demographic statistics can't really show this. Even absent discrimination not all groups will participate equally in different things or have the same income. In fact some statistics seem to indicate the opposite. Admissions at major universities are tilted towards blacks. I would not say they are tilted towards blacks but they encourage black enrollment. And its been successful to some degree: nces.ed.gov In 2000, high school graduates racially broke down as follows: whites made up 80.5%, blacks were 14.7% and hispanics were 10.9%. The percentages of the three racial groups who enrolled in college were 81.4%, 13% and 9.1% respectively. On the surface, while whites are still in the lead, it looks like minorities have made some good progress; however, that appearance is somewhat misleading. The percentages look good until you start to look at the high school dropout rates for each of the groups: egprodcf.iservices.state.or.us The dropout rates for blacks and hispanics are almost three times that of whites; 11% and 11.3% vs 4.5% respectively. So progress is being made but we're not there yet. One way of showing this (other then turning up information about point systems like the one at UM) is to see how at the top schools blacks don't do as well as the whites there. If you take in a group by applying lower standards to them then you get people who are less capable of dealing with the situation. So what? Is the goal to move people up the food chain, or to keep them away from anything that may challenge them and make them uncomfortable? An even better example of this is mortgages. For all the claims that blacks are discriminated against in home lending the evidence doesn't support this conclusion. Conditions have improved but there are still potential problems. milwaukee.bizjournals.com If blacks where treated unfairly and only got loans if they demonstrated a greater ability to pay back the loan then that required of whites then their default rates should be lower. However their default rates are higher. That's true......but a higher percentage of blacks applying for home mortgages are at marginal income levels for owning a home. People at those levels whether white, black or purple tend to default more than the general population. Every group gets discriminated against. Blacks face discrimination more often but its not a simple case of massive unjust and illogical discrimination against blacks. Most of their statistical under performance in terms of income and other things would probably be explained from things like a higher percentage of illegitimate births, and more difficult conditions growing up, and perhaps a greater percentage of young black people who find themselves in a subculture that discourages the behaviors that are needs for achievement. Racism probably accounts for some of the disparity as well by not IMO the majority of it. Then what explains these higher incidences of illegitimate births, more difficult conditions etc? As TigerPaw pointed out in his post, AA is one way to even out years of neglect and wrongdoing. If Bob abused Mary, punishing Bob's daughter Jane and giving benefits to Mary's son Dave, neither punishes the wrong doer or compensates the victim. TP was not talking about individual wrong doing.....but rather wrong doing on a societal level. Besides, most of the wrong doers croaked long ago. Should we go after their descendants and make them pay retribution? In any case affirmative action would discriminate against white immigrants who never kept blacks down in America, in favor of black immigrants who never where kept down in America. If you want justice you will have to target things better. But even that doesn't work well as most of the "criminals' are dead", and even if they were not the attempt to even out all past injustices could very well cost more then the price paid by the victims of the injustice, and would encourage an a sense of entitlement and a race to present yourself as the biggest victim. The only way to move our of a racist battle for the best position is simple to stop having positions determined by race. If that's the way conservatives feel, then they should have spoken up two hundreds years ago. There's not a lot of point screaming that the dam's broken after all the water has emptied out and flooded the local town. Instead, fault [for the break] must be determined and retribution made to the victims. Our ancestors were at fault; we are making retribution now. In fact, I think your ancestors may have come over earlier than mine, and therefore you should be paying more of your income to taxes to help pay for the bs that went on back then. Just kidding.....don't want you to freak out over my using the T word that way. <g> Should the son of Colin Powell get bonus points over some white person from a poor backwater in apalachia? Should whites who are under represented in most sports get bonus points (but non-whites would get a bonus in hockey)? Yup, I am afraid so. You are being naive......its simply not true. The glass ceiling exists for a number of minority groups. AA is the only way I've seen that insures all groups get a piece of the pie. With black CEOs, a black secretary of state that had a shot at the presidency if he went for it, a black supreme court justice, I don't see any ceiling. That doesn't mean individuals are not discriminated against, or even that such discrimination doesn't happen a lot, but it does mean that black people can and do experience "the general benefits of society." How many black CEO's are there? How many cabinet post secretaries? How many SC justices are black? One of each does not reflect this country's cultural diversity....instead it smacks of tokenism. AA is not the same thing. AA is giving out a job, or a position at a school or whatever on the basis of skin color or sex or other condition other then that of merit. It is judging someone by the color of their skin rather then the content of their character. It gives extra points for race but not at the expense of merit. What about the incompetent white people who are put into positions because they are a part of the ole boy network? Why are conservatives so concerned with only minorities and AA? Why don't you clean it all up? Incompetent people put in place because they are part of the old boy network is bad, but it isn't directly racial discrimination (unless all whites are part of the "old boy network" in your opinion). More importantly it is not mandated by law or an official government policy. If private institutions want an old boy network or affirmative action then I think they have a right to it, even if I think it is the wrong decision to make. Frequently, the good ole boy network is motivated by race and gender. AA conteracts its effects. That's true and it happens every day in this country with both whites and people of color. And AA intentionally increases the consideration by race rather then by merit or other fair basis for making the decision. That's right.......whites get pissed off because they don't have as much of an advantage as they once did. The main reason that blacks have lower qualifications is the poorer education when they are younger. If your looking for an alternative. If you want to make the races have more equal results, then look at the poor and failing schools and do something about them. And it can't just be throwing money at them. They often have gotten worse as more money has been thrown at them. Yes, the condition of public schools has deteriorated dramatically in the past 30 years. Now lets look at the reasons why......roughly 40 years ago the Sup. Ct required that public schools be integrated. Since many whites did not like mixing of the races and/or their children bused, they began to pull their children out of public schools and put them into private religious schools. S. Baptists and Catholic administrators were more than willing to pick up the slack. Previously, private schools had been the domain only of the rich. However, now more and more middle income parents were enrolling their kids in private religious schools. Eventually, more affordable non religious privated schools opened their doors and even more parents pulled their kids from public schools. Now its 40 years later and most of the kids attending public school are from poorest minority and white families. Their wealthier counterparts who pay the most taxes are shipping their kids to private schools. These wealthiers families now are much less willing to commit their tax monies to benefit the public schools and so they vote down tax referendum after referendum aimed at improving the public schools. Eventually, one of the major parties proposes a voucher system which will encourage even more children to leave the public schools. The death knell for public schools grows louder. What has happened to our public schools is a worse crime than murder..........and it all started with racial bs. And you don't think there will be a price to pay for this stupidity, think again. it will be very bad for this country if a conservative Sup.Ct rules against AA and encourages its dismantlement. It will be a first step towards treating people according to the content of their character (and their qualifications) rather then the color of their skin. How can you expect to have that arrangement when we still don't have it with AA? Frankly, I think you espouse this utopian ideal to avoid having to come to grips with the reality in this country. ted