Originally posted by: Mursilis
Originally posted by: Craig234
When you just look at John Whiteguy, who scores better on a test, and Bill Blackguy who scores worse, you say "UNFAIR!" You aren't looking at the history of their families.
And neither are you. You're just assuming Bill Blackguy was born in the ghetto to an unwed welfare mom and absentee father, and that John Whiteguy was born in the lily-white suburbs with a middle class family and all sorts of advantages. Reality isn't always like that. Additionally, AA isn't always limited to blacks either; most major programs include Asians, Hispanics, women, etc.
Actually, I am. You are making assumptions about my position that are wrong and contradict what I have said.
But you make an honest mistake, and some fair points as well, I think, and I'll clarify my position:
Consider for a moment the effects of the century of racism. You may never have. Many never have.
What they're about is that following centures of slavery, there was a century of racism in which blacks were systemically denied college, white collar work, social netowrking with the upper classes and living anywhere other than the 'ghetto', denied houses in the whit neighborhoods, relegated to bad schools.
Take a look at the Kennedys, not obviously as typical, but as illustrating what most families experienced to a lesser extent. You had an immigrant who worked in a bar, a son who bought the bar, a son who went to Harvard and bought a bank and went on to become one of the wealthiest men in the country, and a sone who became President of the US. One generation advanced from the next. That was the norm for white families, as labor rights grew and the middle class grew, as public education was increased, etc.
In contrast, black families were restricted to the ghetto, and the son was not allowed to college, was kept in manual labor, was little educated, not advancing much.
After a century of that, you had on average whites who started the race many steps ahead of the black counterparts.
This was one huge unique situation of injustice in our history, with no clear solution. The situation defies 'fixing', you cannot just 'undo' the effects of that century's wrongs.
So you make a choice - ignore them or make some efforts to reduce them.
That's the background - on to the issues:
I fully acknowledge that there are cases where Bill Blackguy is doing *just fine*. Maybe he would have been the next Kennedy if not for racism, and instead is just 'upper middle class', but he's just fine and ready to compete. We have plenty of disadvantaged whites - including many from poor areas. The people from the poorest areas did not 'deserve' to be disadvantaged, but they are - sometimes, in conditions worse than some blacks.
But I make a distinction between unintended disadvantage, and the wrong of racism, that was a choice our society made to harm people. The first is tragic, the second immoral.
If you don't agree with me on that, then we're not going to agree on the policies that flow from that view.
The approach I use is not, as you said, to treat every black person as needing affirmative action, and every white as advantaged.
What I do say is that there was, factually, a huge societal program it's easy to forget about today that did draw the lines clearly on blacks. While there was other racism at times, for some races at some times - including immigrant Kennedy - the black situation is unique with its roots in centuries of slavery and its consistency for the century after the civil war.
And I do say that while there were whites disadvantaged, they were not subject to the policies of racism, with the sort of limited exceptions I mentioned like the Irish for a bit.
So, here's the approach: as I said in an erarlier post, there are two basic issues. One, the 'big picture' issue - if you have large populations with very unequal outcomes, there's reason to suspect the history of racism is affecting the situation - and you can consider how to improve it. The other, which is irrelevant to this discussion, is direct racism today, where a specific person or group is subject to discrimination based on racism for which they can get protection under the law.
Under this standard, if you look at a 20% black population in a city where only 2% of poositins, managers, whatever, are black, you can say that we should give more weight to making that more equal, and in most cases doing some 'justice' against the earlier racism effects; or you can say 'but there are some exceptions where some blacks doing fine are given help', and decide to leave the large injustice in place because of the imperfect nature of taking any large action.
Having said all that, I'm defending affirmative action where these is evidence of a widespread problem with thelegacy effects of racism, as a one-time temporary measure.
I'm defending doing something about the century of racism that some do not consider or have any interest in, to whom it's invisible.
You mention affirmative action for other minorities and women; that's different than the defense I've provided for AA aimed at the black racist issues.
Other affirmative action is based more on simply saying that there are benefits to society having somewhat proportional representation. It compromises - it doesn't just put unqualified people in place to fit quotas and make things proportional. Rather, it uses gradual measures - a few extra points on test scores and such - to gradually erode unequal representation, and the measures end when things become more equal, moving to the merit-based, color-blind, gender-blind system.
I haven't discussed that much, because I think the clearest issue is the one with black racism's history, the invisibility to many whites of that issue.
It gets more difficult to reach agreement on other forms - and introduces the additional issue of weighing 'outcomes' versus 'merit' in the absence of clear discrimination.
That's a fine debate to have, but I'm not as interested in it - I think it'd be hard to have it until the black situation is understood anyway.
So my defense is not for all affirmative action, on which I haven't really commented one way or the other. Rather I've discussed specifically black affirmative action.
