response 105 of 232:

Jan 22 03:49 UTC 2003

I think if Affirmative Action opponents were conecntrating on fixing the
problems John mentions in the second sentence of his last paragraph, they'd
be getting a lot less opposition from Affirmative Action supporters.  That
they generally aren't shows their claims to be supporting racial equality to
be pretty hollow.

However, having spent some time tutoring kids in a middle school in a rather
rough neighborhood of Detroit, I will take issue with John's second to last
paragraph.  I don't think I encountered any cases of kids not wanting to
learn.  I did encounter lots of cases of kids thinking they couldn't learn
various things, and being very excited to find that they could.  There's a
huge difference.

re 97, 99, and 100:
        The Equal Protection Clause is in the 14th Ammendment, which was added
to the Constitution during the post-Civil War Reconstruction.  It doesn't have
to be reconciled with slavery, because slavery had ready been eliminated. 
It did take another 80 or so years before the courts started striking down
other forms of discrimination based on that ammendment.

Still, it would be nice if klg would stay on top of his own argument enough
that I wouldn't have to make it for him.  He's been handed an easy to rebut
argument, based on a part of the Constitution that he had either just looked
up or had memorized, and yet he completely missed it.

response 107 of 232:

Jan 22 06:44 UTC 2003

If I understand what klg is saying, he thinks the constitution
supersedes the SC and common law.

Interestingly, a google search on
        constitution "common law"
finds a whole bunch of documents that claim the constitution was never
properly ratified and therefore isn't actually enforceable.

response 109 of 232:

Jan 22 10:03 UTC 2003

  re #107:  The Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of its meaning
  in our system, but the Constitution *does* supercede common law.

response 111 of 232:

Jan 22 18:49 UTC 2003

re resp:108: Any time anyone says they oppose any sort of program 
regarding race, for any reason at all other than that they favor a 
bigger and more expensive program, they're accused of being a racist.  
If you're going to assume I am a racist, there's nothing whatsoever I 
can do to counter your assumption, other than to fall into line and 
agree with you.  There's no need for you to look any further than that 
in order to answer anything I say that you disagree with.

I think there are other reasons, not requiring bigotry, for disliking 
affirmative action.  If you are unable to perceive that someone can 
have another position on this matter but still want to see reductions 
in racism, there's nothing for you and I to discuss in this item.

response 113 of 232:

Jan 22 20:12 UTC 2003

I am a currently a student at EMU even though I could easily have 
gotten into UofM. One nice thing I have noticed about EMU is that it 
has a very diverse student body. I dont know if this is because of 
affirmative action or what but having people from different backgrounds 
participating in class discussions has improved the experience for me. 
It is possible that UofM's decision to try to have a more diverse 
student body isnt to make up for past discrimination or to make things 
more fair but to provide a more enriching experience for everyone. That 
they give points to children of alumni is all the evidence I need that 
they arent really interested in making up for past discrimination. 

I wish I lived in a society where diversity at a place like UofM would 
just occur naturally but I dont. I'll bet there are a lot of people in 
the admissions office at UofM who wish the same thing. 

response 115 of 232:

Jan 22 22:11 UTC 2003

I hate to break it to you, drew, but it doesnt take a genius to figure 
out a person's race during a job interview. Or are you seriuosly 
suggesting that people should hire folks without interviews? That might 
be fine for jobs where charisma isnt important but for other jobs it 
would be a disaster. 

response 117 of 232:

Jan 22 22:46 UTC 2003

Sometimes people are racist (or sexist or classist or whatever) in 
subtle ways that they dont really notice in themselves. I am sure this 
is true about me. It might be true about you, John. Think hard about 
why you think the legacy points are ok but points based on race are not.

response 121 of 232:

Jan 23 01:18 UTC 2003

Re #120: Regardless of whether or not anyone thinks you're a racist (and
I don't think we have enough information to claim you are or aren't) I
*am* curious about your answer to the question posed in #117.  Why is it
that legacy points are considered okay by pretty much everyone, but
affirmative action is strongly opposed by conservatives?

response 123 of 232:

Jan 23 01:49 UTC 2003

Re #116: that's right, "I always get the strong sense that those that
 argue against affirmative action......etc". But that's how they come
across: I don't know nor did I assert that they are racist. I did not
suggest what you suggested I suggested (this sort of thing happens a
lot here - people jumping to unwarranted conclusions). 

But read all the pronouncements from the anit-affirmative crowd: do you
get any sense that they have a *better* idea, or that they even recognize
that there is even a problem with prejudice and discrimination? No. 

response 125 of 232:

Jan 23 02:09 UTC 2003

re resp:123: Rane, when you strongly suggest, as you did, that someone 
is a racist, people are going to notice.  When you then deny you meant 
any such thing, it makes you seem like you're being deceptive and 
trying to hide from the direct implications of your comments.

If you don't want to stand behind what you said, then apologize and 
correct what you said.  Don't blame me for drawing the obvious 
conclusion about what you *did* say.

I have strongly advocated, in this item, against the U-M's racially 
unbalanced admissions policy.  You have called me, solely because of my 
position, a racist.  I am offended.

response 127 of 232:

Jan 23 04:09 UTC 2003

jep asked yesterday why I support Affirmative Action...

For me, it's a basic issue of fairness.  I'm still pretty young compared to
many of the people in this discussion, but I've done pretty well so far.  I've
got a pretty big apartment in a nice safe neighborhood, a few miles away from
the neighborhoods where people who don't look like me have to worry about
being shot, or get told not to go outside because the local refinery just blew
up, again.  I don't have a job that pays at the moment, but that's ok because
I can afford to go several months before it becomes an issue.  I worked hard
to get this far, and I'll do a lot more hard work if I want to keep up this
lifestyle.  But I had a lot of help getting here.

I grew up in nice neighborhoods where it was always safe to go out and
explore.  I went to good schools, some just by virtue of the neighborhoods,
some by virtue of my parents' ability to pay, and one by virtue of my parents'
ability to wait in line.  I always had prestigous universities nearby,
available to help with whatever I was interested in that wasn't being fully
covered in school.  I had a house full of computers.  I had well educated
parents who could help me with stuff I was studying and having trouble with,
and could teach me about lots of other stuff.  I had lots of very well
connected friends and aquaintences.  That didn't mean I did well in school.
I pursued the stuff I was interested in, ignored the rest, and ended up with
an impressive mix of As and Ds ("don't you ever do anything average?" I was
asked at one point) that wouldn't have gotten me into any college I would have
wanted to go to, but that was ok.  Job offers for stuff that I was interested
in doing appeared without me even having to look for them, and the job I took
led to contacts that led to another job, which led to experience that led to
another job, and now here I am.

So, how did my family get from poor immigrant farmers and storekeepers to this
in a few generations?  A lot of hard work, the classic "American Dream" of
upward mobility, and taking the opportunities that presented themselves.

So then we've got this other class of people, who were enslaved, tortured,
and not getting any of the benefits of their labor, while my ancestors were
working their way up.  As slavery ended, segregation ensued, isolating those
people from the resources that tend to present the opportunities that my
ancestors and I were able to use so well to our advantage.  As segregation
has in some ways gotten more absolute, going from black people and white
people not sharing the same drinking fountains to in many cases not sharing
the same cities, the gap between poor black people and the resources that tend
to make success just a matter of hard work has gotten more extreme as well.

When people do get out of that environment, even when they've been out of that
environment for generations, or even if they're recent immigrants whose
families were never in that environment, they still report being treated
differently, by white people who see black people and don't know what to say,
or worse wonder if they're about to get robbed.  My step step grandmother
tells the story of how when she was working for the NAACP in New York in the
1940s, her friend Thurgood, already the most influential civil rights lawyer
in the US and a future US Supreme Court justice, defiantly refused to be
intimidated by the doorman in her apartment building, something her other
black friends didn't manage.  Even now, even in a part of the US known for
its liberalism, a friend who had recently arrived in the US was complaining
a few years ago that of the several countries he had lived in, the US was the
only one where he'd ever felt like his race was an issue, and he wasn't
talking about being treated better here.

And as for the poor black kids who never get out of their neighborhoods, who 
go to schools where getting shot is a bigger worry than failing a class, 
schools without computers, or up to date text books, or frequent field trips 
to major universities, or doors that will open to let them out if there's a 
fire, and whose lucrative connections tend to be drug dealers and gang members
rather then professors and computer geeks, many of them don't even get the
chance to be treated as suspects in the neighborhoods where real opportunities
are.

So, I'm not sure if this makes any sense to anybody but me, but this is why
I support Affirmative Action.  To reward people who have had to struggle a
lot harder than I have for their hard work, to provide people who wouldn't
otherwise have access to them the kinds of connections and opportunities I
had, to hopefully boost the number of well off black people who are members
of integrated communities to the point where black people in privlidged
neighborhoods are no longer automatically treated as suspects, and to expose
people from more privileged backgrounds to people and stories they would
otherwise be unaware of.  I support Affirmative Action with some reservations,
however, because I worry that it's too little, too late.  I would be much
happier to see this integration happen long before we get to the point of
college admissions, but that doesn't seem to be the direction the US is going
at the moment.

response 129 of 232:

Jan 23 05:02 UTC 2003

re resp:127: At various points in American history, Italians, Germans, 
Chinese, Irish and many other ethnic groups have been singled out as 
being inferior in various ways, and denied the capability to compete on 
equal terms with other Americans.  They almost all overcame it, and did 
so without affirmative action.  Some were pretty easily distinguishable 
from "white" Americans.  Irish weren't considered white.  Hispanics 
aren't now, though I cannot figure out why.  Aren't they as Caucasian 
as I am?  Not that anyone should care, other than census bureau folks 
who want to figure out how much affirmative action to give them.

The handiest example of another group which was separated from the rest 
of society and given "advantages" that mostly weren't advantages at 
all, is the American Indians and the reservation system.  Those who 
stay on the reservations live a lot differently than other Americans.  
They don't have much money, or much chance of getting any.  They have 
very high unemployment, alcoholism, drug usage, rates of child and 
spousal abuse, and crime, and low life expectancies that remind one of 
Third World countries.

I think the nation's minorities, including African Americans, would be 
better off if treated like the minorities which came before them who 
became "just plain Americans", than they will be if we continue to 
treat them as a separate class of people.