response 126 of 217:

Feb 4 15:05 UTC 2003

Rane, I think if you consider Jan's response in a reasonable manner, 
you'll get closer to understanding the point he made.  Obviously if you 
want to go to vet school and Michigan doesn't have one, you wouldn't go 
to Michigan.  You probably wouldn't apply, like your daughter, putting 
you outside the rules.  No one is accepted who doesn't apply.

If you want to go into medicine, though, and both Wayne State and 
Michigan have med schools, and you've applied and been accepted at 
both, chances are pretty good you're going to Michigan instead of Wayne 
State.

Not everyone will.  There are plenty of reasons why some wouldn't, such 
as location (maybe you want to stay in Detroit), cost (U-M is more 
expensive), parents might have gone to Wayne State, friends might be 
going there, you don't like trees, etc.  But most, given the choice, 
are going to pick Michigan.

response 128 of 217:

Feb 4 17:17 UTC 2003

No, it's not.  The argument against affim. action is that it amounts to 
racial discrimination and, as such, it unconstitutional.

What the "choosing the wrong school" argument does is to highlight a 
corrolary - why affirmative action is harmful to the very people who it 
is supposed to help.

response 130 of 217:

Feb 4 22:33 UTC 2003

I also agree that the "wrong school" business is not an argument against
affirmative action.  It only says that we offer some students a very
tempting opportunity to fail.  Not exactly discrimination.  It's also
very specific to college admissions.  Similar arguments don't
necessarily apply to other arenas.  I thought affirmative action worked
very well in hiring faculty.  This was because (1) there was a glut of
people seeking very few jobs, so we might have had to pass up someone
who was stupifyingly overqualified to choose someone who was merely
amazingly overqualified, and (2) because there are so many different
success modes for a faculty member (succeed as a researcher, succeed as
a fund raiser, succeed as a teacher, succeed as an administrator, etc.)

The "reverse discrimination" argument is a valid objection to
affirmative action in general.  But it's also the whole point.  We try
to counter-act discrimination with reverse discriminaton, balancing
things out.  This is why the courts have upheld it in the past.  To make
the "reverse discrimination" argument stand, you need to demonstrate
that the reverse discrimination is substantially in excess of the
discrimination it is supposed to be balancing.  Not an easy case to prove.

response 132 of 217:

Feb 5 03:01 UTC 2003

Had to punt, eh?

response 134 of 217:

Feb 5 09:09 UTC 2003

 1)  You can discriminate against someone or you can discriminate in their
     favor -- there is nothing inherent of the definition of "discriminate"
     that requires it to be negative.

 2)  Other than by retracting what he said and claiming he never said it,
     I can't imagine how Rane intends to justify his statement that 
     "affirmative action is not racial discrimination."  It is clearly
     discrimination - differentiating between candidates based on a
     particular attribute - and that attribute happens to be racial.
     In my book that means it's pretty fair to call it racial discrimination.

 3)  I think the problem Rane's having with his argument is that he's too
     scared to go on record as saying that there can be good forms of racial
     discrimination and bad forms of racial discrimination.  His position
     on affirmative action, which he favors, doesn't reconcile neatly with
     his position on racial discrimination, which he disapproves of, so 
     apparently he's decided to avoid the resulting cognitive dissonance
     by just refusing to admit to himself or others that affirmative action
     is, in fact, a form of racial discrimination.

 4)  Klg seems to be having fun making Rane squirm, but he's fixated on the
     wrong question.  The dominant issue is not whether affirmative action
     is a form or racial discrimination but whether it is a legally
     permissible form of racial discrimination.  If the answer were clearly
     an automatic "No", as klg prefers to believe, I suspect the courts would
     have settled the issue a long time ago..

response 136 of 217:

Feb 5 16:08 UTC 2003

 > I'd be obliged if you would show any currently standing law or court
 > opinion in the U.S. that sanctions "racial discrimination" in so many
 > words.

 I'll leave that up to someone who has nothing better to do than dig for
 research material you could easily be finding yourself.  The numerous
 federal, state, and local laws which provide for hiring and contracting
 preferences for minorities and minority-owned businesses should be ample
 demonstration that some race-based laws are currently in effect and
 presently considered good law in most jurisdictions in the country.

response 138 of 217:

Feb 5 18:34 UTC 2003

re resp:137:

   "the answer is simply that affirmative action is not racial
   discrimination. No direct action it taken to discriminte against
   anyone."

I find that a completely flabbergasting statement.  Do you not 
understand that, when you choose to give one person an advantage in a 
competitive situation, you take away something from another person?

You can't just move a person higher on a list without any other 
effects.  When you move one name from position 10 to position 5, then 
the previous 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 will then become 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.  The 
first gains position, and the others lose position.  The act of moving 
one person higher on the list does indeed directly move the others down 
on the list.

There's no way around that.  There's no way you can have affirmative 
action without also having adverse discrimination on some of the others 
who do not receive affirmative action.

response 140 of 217:

Feb 5 19:33 UTC 2003

Just tell me which drinking fountain I am allowed to use, please, (they 
both dispense water) or whether I should sit in the front of the bus or 
in back (I still get to my destination).

I guess it's true that some animals are just more equal than others, 
George.

Amendment XIV of the US Constitution

Section 1. . .  No state shall . . . nor deny to any person within its 
jurisdiction the EQUAL protection of the laws.


Where is the law banning churches and private agencies from 
discriminating in the work they do?
 

response 142 of 217:

Feb 5 20:13 UTC 2003

You prove my point in #140, klg. What churches do for the poor is
not "racial discrimination", but it would be if they were not equal
opportunity employers on federal funds. 

response 144 of 217:

Feb 5 21:23 UTC 2003

re resp:139: Rane, you're not responding to anyone's points.

You said my position is:  "Aid to one group is deprivation to 
another."  Nonsense!  I've not said that, neither has anyone else in 
this item, except you.  No one could possibly believe it.  The argument 
is indeed a red herring.

Here's what I really said: *Preference* for one group deprives 
another.  Aid to one group *to give it advantages over another group* 
does indeed deprive the other group.  This really is a typical argument 
used by people who don't much like affirmative action.  No one has a 
very good answer for it, so it makes a pretty good argument.

response 146 of 217:

Feb 6 03:45 UTC 2003

Re #143: Black admissions are being concentrated in fewer colleges. 
Eventually that could result in colleges that are majority black and
colleges that are majority white, basically re-segregating the colleges
there.

response 148 of 217:

Feb 6 04:38 UTC 2003

Re #134.1:  In a zero-sum game like an admitted pool of students of
a certain size, discriminating for someone necessarily creates some
measure of discrimination against everyone not so favored.  The question
is what factors are legitimate when making decisions.

I find it very amusing that klg has rcurl on the run this time.  Where
he grasps the principles involved, he's mastered the material.