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

To: combjelly who wrote (613411)	5/27/2011 4:36:16 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570682

It is the truth. You like to believe that, but your at least mistaken, perhaps deluded. I challenge the idea it is far more odious. Both are bad. And even at its worse, official discrimination is not on the same scale as private. Worse not meaning "more extensive" (although it was very extensive in the past), but worse because it has the power of government behind it. Government is an armed monopoly. Also worse because people are forced to pay their tax money to support it, so you not only have the negative against the person discriminated, you also have the negative of forcing everyone to support that negative. Arguably people have a right to privately discriminate (and in some ways they even have a legal right to do so), there is no such right to force others to discriminate. If something is bad (and many forms of racial discrimination can be very bad), its important that our government not be involved in it. (For another example, while I don't think gambling is evil, if one accepted the idea that it was, it would make sense to first eliminate state lotteries before we went after on line poker.) Also the official discrimination in the context of universities that you are talking about, doesn't only harm those that are discriminated against, it can harm those that are supposed to be favored. (See cato.org specifically the area "The Harm"). In addition to increasing drop out rates (above what they would otherwise be, if they are dropping anyway they may not actually go up), you have (at least if the affirmative action is extensive enough, rent-seeking through competitive victimhood, and private discrimination against the favored group inspired by the thought that they achieved their status through advantage not through effort or qualifications (at some point, and I'm not saying we are there the preferences would have to be more extensive) such thoughts move from misunderstandings, or excuses used by racists, to becoming a rational way to consider things. (Just as in the past at certain times in certain fields it might have made sense for small scale private actors to tilt their decisions towards discriminated against minorities because the minorities in question had managed to reach their qualifications and standing despite widespread discrimination against them, both official and non-official). Higher education needs to have a diverse student body. Overall it should, if all of the student body in all colleges and universities is from one group, or very few groups, it suggests and perhaps directly means that there is little opportunity for the other groups. But there is no need for each institution to be diverse. And in fact if some (maybe many) are very diverse why some are not so diverse you increase diversity, by increasing the diversity of the different institutions and the experiences they offer. Not that I'd rate diversity within each institution as a negative or even something with zero weight (I might give the idea of diversity within every single institution zero weight, but I'd like to see a lot of them be diverse within the institution, not just between institutions), it just doesn't have enough weight to support government (including state universities) discrimination by race, when race is not a highly relevant qualification (which is usually isn't, it might be on say an undercover police job, where you need someone who can blend in an effectively fake a particular background, but it isn't a qualification, at least not an important one for college students). To express part of the general point in a less wordy way I'll quote someone else (since I'm likely to be wordy) --- "Racism has never done this country any good, and it needs to be fought against, not put under new management for different groups." - Thomas Sowell