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Grex > Agora46 > #17: affirmative action - UM - supreme court (wha-hoppin?!) | |
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| 25 new of 113 responses total. |
senna
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response 39 of 113:
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Jun 26 03:55 UTC 2003 |
Wait, so separate is equal?
Self-segregation now is, for the most part, quite voluntary. That is, people
with money go ahead and segregate themselves from the inner city, where the
people without money are stuck. Coincidently, most of those people are
minorities. (I say coincidently to indicate that those who leave the cities
don't actually dislike the minorities, just the unpleasant living situation
created by living amongst a lot of people without money). Solving this
problem is not a legislative issue, but it is an economic one.
The problem in the meantime is that the groups are evolving separately, and
the old negative attitudes are starting to creep in.
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scg
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response 40 of 113:
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Jun 26 05:18 UTC 2003 |
Have you spent much time talking to people fleeing Southfield, for example,
to move to "if you lived here you'd be home by now" land? Nobody now will
say they're doing that to get away from the black people, but they'll tell
you Southfield "isn't safe" anymore. They'll you too many people are coming
over from Detroit. And they will openly wonder why somebody they know who
was mugged didn't know to turn and run when they saw they were being
approached by black people.
It should also be noted that the early black movers into expensive white
neighborhoods are rarely "people without money." The typical white flight
pattern is that some small number of affluent black people move into an
affluent white neighborhood, followed by the affluent whites fleeing in
droves, thus causing a nosedive in the property values which brings in far
less affluent black residents.
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sj2
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response 41 of 113:
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Jun 26 05:29 UTC 2003 |
Ok. To collect reliable information on employment statistics of
students favoured by affirmative action, you would need to:
1. Make public the information of students favoured by it.
2. All employment forms which a person fills have to have a field
asking the candidate whether they were favoured by affirmative action.
3. A method of verifying that such information provided by the
candidate is true.
Right?
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senna
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response 42 of 113:
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Jun 27 02:43 UTC 2003 |
Haven't talked to those people, Steve, so you probably have a point. I have
heard quite a bit of rhetoric from Ann Arbor, though, which says
otherwise--ironically, I think that further backs up your point.
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russ
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response 43 of 113:
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Jun 29 06:07 UTC 2003 |
Y'know, it's funny.
Society at large is becoming more and more anti-intellectual.
Jerry Springer and The Osbournes have attracted huge audiences.
Innumeracy and scientific illiteracy are high and going higher.
On the other hand, books and newspapers are downright cheap. A
great many good textbooks in ageless subjects like reading are
out of copyright, and could be reprinted for next to nothing.
More recent texts which have fallen from favor could be obtained
and fixed up for the price of some bindery work.
The opportunity for some hitherto-disadvantaged group to leap to the
top of the educational achievement ladder has never been better!
If some poor, downtrodden community (such as Benton Harbor, or
even Detroit) had the will and the cohesion to insist on education
and hold it up as one of their primary values, they could vault right
over the majority culture and put themselves just below the elite.
It probably wouldn't take more than half a generation. Heck, it
could have been done at any time in the last 30-40 years.
This has not happened, and the word I hear is that bookish students
in many minority communities have to conceal their capabilities to
avoid being harassed. Even more so than in the majority culture,
these people devalue education.
Entitlements won't fix this. Change must come from within.
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scott
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response 44 of 113:
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Jun 29 06:47 UTC 2003 |
"Change must come from within."
Er, so we should just fence them in and hope for the best? A lot of
anti-intellectual messages are coming in, from TV and other sources - what's
needed is not pretending that it's their own fault, but instead figuring out
some way to push an "education is cool" message in via the same channels.
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jaklumen
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response 45 of 113:
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Jun 29 08:18 UTC 2003 |
resp:43 there is much more to this, I'm sure, than meets the eye. Is
there any sort of class distinction or snobbery to intellectualism?
I'm assuming the myth that is being perpetrated here
is 'intellectualism is establishment, old money, traditionalist,
stuffy'... etc. The rudeness and cheap thrill that seems to be pushed
today in society seemed to be packaged in the whole 'be a rebel'
albeit 'be a rebel and get with the program' deal.
I don't think it helps too much that disappointing voices about
education come from the press, at least, the mainstream press. You'd
think it would come from the youth, Hollywood, or someone
anointed 'cool.' Ergo, Scott, although there are anti-intellectual
messages from the media, at times, part of it wonders at times about
it, at least as far as schooling is concerned. I
think 'entertainment' should maybe be a little bit more interested.
But strangely enough, it should be noted that the media *does* have
more intellectual offerings in some areas. We have A&E, the Discovery
Channel, the History Channel, et al for a start. Documentaries are
effective at presenting certain types of information, for example.
You'd find intellectualism in the weirdest sorts of places, albeit,
again, in small niches. I'm a gamer by one hobby, and one group of
games I play draws on a wealth of folklore, pop culture, history, and
many real references for material in its game material. Some of the
game books are almost mini-novels in their complexity.
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janc
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response 46 of 113:
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Jun 29 12:07 UTC 2003 |
I had the impression that part of the split on the decision was also based
on the fact that law schools play a bit of a different role than, say,
engineering schools. Law school is one of the key routes into politics.
As such it is important for the survival of democracy in America that
people of all ethnicities feel that the routes to power are open to them.
Something like 25% of all senators are graduates of elite law schools.
The percentage in the judicial branch is even higher. All of the current
supreme court justices are graduates of elite law schools. Admissions to
those law schools are highly competitive. Many more qualified applicants
apply than can be admitted.
So the argument works much the same way as the one Larry gave for medical
school.
(1) There is a compelling social interest in diversity.
(2) There is a glut of applicants.
I think that under such circumstances, affirmative action works very well
and serves an important need.
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jmsaul
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response 47 of 113:
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Jun 29 15:05 UTC 2003 |
However, to get into an elite law school, you need to have gone to a very good
undergraduate school...
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slynne
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response 48 of 113:
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Jun 29 15:44 UTC 2003 |
I can think of one or two people who have gone to elite graduate
schools (even UofM law school) after completing their undergrad at a
second tier state university (such as EMU).
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rcurl
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response 49 of 113:
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Jun 29 18:33 UTC 2003 |
Since public education is a State function, there should be a much greater
effort to ensure that all public schools have the facilities they need and
the well trained (and paid) teachers. Education (and diversity) would be well
served by eliminating the disparity of quality among public schools.
That said...I recognize that it will still be more difficult to maintain the
level of operation of such schools in areas of poverty than in areas of
plenty, which would call for some more resources and effort (and inducements)
in the more difficult to manage school districts. But I think this would go
further to attain the desired equality of education, and hence access to to
later higher education, than just treating higher-education access alone.
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klg
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response 50 of 113:
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Jun 29 19:47 UTC 2003 |
Does Mr. rcurl have in mind the model where the public schools in the D.
of C. ought to consume the highest level of resources in the nation as
compared to the level of resources expended in some of the obscure
western states - the result being the elimination of the disparity in
educational performance among the two areas - or is he once again
displaying his droll sense of humor?
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russ
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response 51 of 113:
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Jun 29 23:51 UTC 2003 |
Re #44: Nice straw-man, but no. We have to insist that any demand
for help to compensate for past discrimination has to come in return
for effort. It's the difference between having a chance to get to
the top of the mountain, and the chance to be a mountain climber;
the person who demands a ride up in a Jeep because they were once
forbidden to climb still won't be a climber.
Re #46: If you were looking for a way that disaster could strike
the USA, groupthink caused by the narrow experience pool of those
few elite schools is a scary possibility. It's also one way that
a self-perpetuating aristocracy could be set up - the basis for it
exists right now.
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jmsaul
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response 52 of 113:
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Jun 30 00:52 UTC 2003 |
Re #48: There are exceptions to every rule, but you have to admit that
going to a really good undergrad school helps a lot.
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slynne
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response 53 of 113:
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Jun 30 01:22 UTC 2003 |
sure, I'll admit that.
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lk
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response 54 of 113:
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Jun 30 03:17 UTC 2003 |
Jan in #46 talked right around society's biggest problem: politicians
are lawyers, not engineers. (:
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polygon
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response 55 of 113:
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Jun 30 16:06 UTC 2003 |
Re 54. We have had a significant number of engineer politicians, and
I'm not sure they're really any better as a group than lawyer politicians.
Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter were engineers, no?
The upcoming new version of PoliticalGraveyard.com will have pages listing
politicians in various occupational categories. Lawyers, physicians,
bankers, dentists, farmers, automobile dealers, florists, veterinarians,
architects, funeral directors, engineers, hardware and implement dealers,
hoteliers, and many others.
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gull
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response 56 of 113:
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Jun 30 16:38 UTC 2003 |
Re #51: Isn't that the idea between things like legacy status, and
eliminating the inheritance tax? Ensuring that rich families stay rich,
and the poor stay poor?
Re #54: I think complaining that politicians are mainly lawyers is a bit
like complaining that the people who write building codes are mainly
engineers. The basic implement politicians work with is law, so it
makes sense that they'd come from a lawyer background. A basic
understanding of law is essential to being an effective politician.
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tpryan
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response 57 of 113:
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Jun 30 17:36 UTC 2003 |
re 54,55 That's why Archie Bunker crooned "Mister, we need
a man like Hebert Hoover again".
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klg
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response 58 of 113:
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Jul 1 00:46 UTC 2003 |
re: "#56 (gull): The basic implement politicians work with is law, so
it makes sense that they'd come from a lawyer background. A basic
understanding of law is essential to being an effective politician."
Which explains why the President is a businessman, the Speaker of the
House is a teacher, and the Majority Leader of the Senate is a
physician.
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janc
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response 59 of 113:
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Jul 1 01:21 UTC 2003 |
In a lawyer's training, the final arbitrator of what is good is a jury.
If you can convince a jury that you are right, then you are right.
This is to a large extent true even for lawyers who never argue cases in
front of juries. A contract is well-written if it would hold up in court.
And so on. For a lawyer, an idea has merit if you can convince other
people that it has merit.
For an engineer, the final arbitator of what is good is the real world.
If have a theory or a design, then you build it, and see if it works.
An idea has merit if and only if you can make it work in the real world.
So we set them each to writing laws and setting social policy.
The engineer thinks up an idea for policy, and then she gets stuck.
She can't just send it off to manufacturing to build a prototype.
She's got to get out and convince a lot of people that her idea is
a good one before she can get it implemented in a democratic society.
To do this she needs to stop thinking like an engineer and start thinking
like a lawyer.
The lawyer hasn't got this problem. He selects a policy that he likes
and that he thinks he can convince to the public to support. He sells,
it and with luck gets his law passed. He is obviously a much more
effective politician than the engineer was. Only problem is that
once the lawyer has got his law passed, he thinks he's won his case.
He throws a victory party and moves on to the next law.
If the engineer had ever managed to get her law passed, she probably
would have remembered to stop and look to see if it actually worked
once implemented. Maybe spent some time fine tuning it. However,
her efforts would have been largely foiled by the fact that it is
almost impossible to meaninfully measure the effectiveness of nearly
any service that the government supplies. Telling if a tax cut is
working is a lot harder than telling if a garage door opener is working.
So I think lawyers make much more effective politicians than engineers.
What they get done may or may not be good for anything, but that's
certainly more likely to get you re-elected than total deadlock.
There is such a thing as a one-man engineering shop, and a one-man
law firm. If there is such a thing as a one-man government, then it
is thankfully a rare item. In real life we don't have to pick between
lawyer mind-sets and engineer mind-sets. There is room in government
for an awful lot of people with an awful lot of minds. Thank Gosh.
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mdw
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response 60 of 113:
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Jul 1 01:52 UTC 2003 |
The main problem with lawyers for politicians is well, they think like
lawyers. I'm not entirely sure a lot of lawyers is any improvement over
just one.
To some extent, I think politicians work like movie producers: they all
want to steal someone else's idea, preferably one that worked somewhere
recently. So tax cuts work something like cowboy movies or SF movies;
somebody once made a killing selling tax cuts to the public, and now
everybody wants to get in on the act.
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russ
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response 61 of 113:
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Jul 1 02:30 UTC 2003 |
Re #56 para 1: Amen, brother.
Re #56 para 2: Except that the politicians are writing laws about
engineering, and medicine, and all kinds of things where the study
of law confers no understanding of the various gotchas which apply.
Given a choice between an expert in the subtleties of law who
approaches, say, pollution control without subtleties, and an
expert in pollution control who approaches law in a direct fashion,
I think I'd rather have the clean air & water acts drafted by the
latter. The points of law can be cleaned up in the courts based
on legislative intent, but if the author misses a way that someone
can shift pollution without cleaning it up (or is overly prescriptive
about how something is to be done rather than what is to be done),
the result can easily be worse than no law at all.
The dearth of broader experience (than law and/or "public service")
among our political class is a big problem for the nation.
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rcurl
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response 62 of 113:
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Jul 1 03:40 UTC 2003 |
Re #58: that is very telling: the businessmen, the teacher, and the physician,
were promoted to positions in which they don't usually write legislation.
They left the lawyers to write legislation.
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gull
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response 63 of 113:
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Jul 1 13:26 UTC 2003 |
Re #61: That's why politicians need advisors who understand things like
engineering, and medicine. That's also why people who have backgrounds
in things like engineering tend to be appointed to regulatory positions.
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