emphryio

And the straw flys anyway. Just can't help yourself, can you?
Pity.

Loren Pechtel

Yeah, the only true solution has to be applied very early on. AA is simply trying to pretend the earlier differences don't exist.

vixenell

I'm sure that everyone agrees with this, both pros and antis... the problem is... what are we supposed to do until then? Education is obviously not on the top ten list of priorities in this country. By abolishing it now, is it fair, then, to screw over an entire generation (or two) of minorities until the government decides that equality in early education is important enough to address on a federal level?

meritocrat

But by solely aiding blacks you discriminate against other races.

Shouldn't positions be awarded to people on the basis of merit, IRRESPECTIVE of a person's race or ethnicity?

vixenell

not only blacks, but hispanics, and women as well.

Quote:

Shouldn't positions be awarded to people on the basis of merit, IRRESPECTIVE of a person's race or ethnicity?

Yes! That is the ultimate goal of AA. However, there is a huge gap between what the government says it wants to do as far as reforming early education, and what it has actually done, which amounts to zilch. AA will be most effective in conjunction with providing equal early educational opportunities for all children, until we reach a point at which our society doesn not need an institution like AA.

Loren Pechtel

While I agree that a true fix isn't exactly on the list of priorities I don't see AA doing any more good.

vixenell

How much harm is it doing? Not many whites are being displaced by AA... if anyone, asians are bearing the brunt as far as college and grad school admissions are concerned.

By keeping AA, reforming it and essentially phasing it out, it will provide a sizeable portion of a population with an opportunity that would likely be unattainable without some preferential treatment. If we stop thinking about ourselves for a few minutes, and think about how these sorts of opportunities could very well possibly positively affect our children and our children's children (and our children's children's......), then AA is the best solution we have today. Flawed, yes, but its good enough for the time being.

It can't be done without educational reform, and educational reform will be initially ineffective without some form of AA. It may not appear to be "doing any good," but we'd be alot worse off if we were to do away with it now without doing something to fix the root problem.

Koyaanisqatsi

*sigh*

I'll try one more time...

Right now or always? Since they never were before, then no, they should not, because this was not the case for upwards of two hundred years.

Once again, this discussion is about reparation for past transgression.

My ethnic ancestors inflicted grievous harm upon particular minority groups in this country from an officially sanctioned, Federally mandated segregationalist policy (first put into practice by Woodrow Wilson). This is documented and a matter of legal public record. It does not exist in a vacuum; it is not academic or abstract; it is concrete and demonstrated and a matter of law.

It is therefore incumbent upon our government to make reparations for such harms, even if it infringes on the rights of others in a temporary nature in order to balance and repay what was done in the past.

If innocent whites are inconvenienced by this temporary solution, so be it. Innocent minorities have suffered far worse than a temporary shift in preferrential treatment as a means to repay past crimes.

What the KKK has to do with this is beyond me, since AA is already in place. My proposal actually seeks to address everyone's concerns, by simply putting a legally recognizable time cap on the guidelines (based on the reparation standard we have employed time and time again in various ways throughout our history).

The question of this thread has never been should we have AA; the question has been at what point do we phase AA out and upon what standard do we do this? The reparations standard has legal precedent to support it and would insure a fair and equitable solution to the problem by being (a) officially sanctioned, (b) Federally mandated and (c) insure ample time to level the "playing field" unfairly stacked by almost two hundred years of white supremacist policy.

If you wish to call this temporary reverse discrimination, then fine, call it that. We whites deserve it--solely because we were born caucasin in this country; precisely the reason why blacks and other minorities were discriminated against in the past and present-- and since I'm not advocating the kinds of infringement that was done to various minority groups in the past, the tradeoff is more than fair to insure reparation.

All we're talking about is a temporary shift in preferrential treatment for a specific time period in order to insure reparation for past crimes.

If you have a better suggestion then kindly present it. If you do not, then do not post here. The purpose of this thread is to investigate how best to phase out AA and insure that reparation has been made.

That's it. It is a given of this thread that innocent caucasins will be temporarily inconvenienced by this and further that such considerations are irrelevant, so please do not continue to try and argue the "two wrongs don't make a right" fallacy. Our country regularly imposes laws and sanctions that infringe upon people's rights as a matter of due course and procedure, so this is not the thread to discuss matters of such esoteric nature.

Reparation is the topic and how best to insure it and/or phase it out and nothing else. If the rights of others are temporarily infringed upon in the process, then so be it. It won't be the first or last time, so any such arguments are irrelevant to this thread.

Thank you.

repoman

Does anyone have stats on how well blacks, asians, hispanics and whites do from the same high schools at grades and getting into college? Those are the kind of stats that will give a better picture as too how much of the disparities in test scores and university enrolment come from differences in school or from the different cultures.

I remember a special hosted by Peter Jennings about 3 yeasrs ago, where he talked to about racial problems with high school students. I remember that the black kids saying that they didn't want to very well in their classes because they would be seen as trying to be white or as oreos. That just floored me.

But, to be honest I remember riding the bus home from my school where nearly all of the kids it was like a shouting contest absorbed in short term gratification and constant racial hyper- awareness.
When I ride the metro bus now with whites kids who are obviously in high school, I see a much different story. In their converations they intellectualize much more, they try to categorize their life and pop culture as if they are writing an outline for an english paper.

I think the program that would best serve blacks would be a way to make an all too large portion of them realize they don't have to walk around with thug swaggers, being paranoid and CHOOSING to have anti-academic mindsets. Now, how much of that comes from the neighborhoods they come from and their peers must be very large. Maybe you could blow up BET, that would be a start.

lunachick

Just a quick post as I head out the door to got to school - in all the talk about AA and reparations, Native Americans have not been mentioned. Are they to be considered, also?