(split) Affirmative Action discussion

[Jolly_Penguin]

@ Jolly Penguin, Metaphor..
yeah, affirmative action ain't perfect to you but it is better than your alternative that you have offered.

Is it? Does it do more good than harm? Can you prove that? I would say that things like inter racial couples, integrated schools, and generally encouraging empathy has done a lot more. By insisting on keeping things split by race, and encouraging the conflict, do you really think you are fixing the core problem? At some point does it become more a problem than a solution? And as I said above, if you justify it by pointing to discrimination against non-white people, then doesn't that justify said discrimination against non-white people? How can you then say that the discrimination against white people is good, but the discrimination for white people is bad? And why push to end the latter if you have put the former in place?

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@ Jolly Penguin, Metaphor..
yeah, affirmative action ain't perfect to you but it is better than your alternative that you have offered.

How about ignoring race and using socioeconomic status as a criteria instead? If you need to give a leg up to the disenfranchised, why bother to care about why exactly they're disenfranchised?

This is the proper response. And it is no different if laughing dog is correct and no poor disenfranchised white people exist.

 

[none]

@Tom Sawyer,
how do you find the disenfranchised?
"white push" generated the problem.

 

[none]

@Jolly Pengiun,
"white push" has occurred for how long?
and in comparison you want me to judge affirmative action now?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Using socioeconomic status as a criteria is way, as Tom just wrote. Also, if we insist on equating poverty or disenfranchisement with blackness, then why do people complain when somebody like Oprah is assumed to be too poor and disenfranchised to be shopping at a richy rich store? Isn't assuming that of her because of her race, racism? And if so, then why do we suddenly decide it is not when talking about AA?

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@Jolly Pengiun,
"white push" has occurred for how long?
and in comparison you want me to judge affirmative action now?

Why does it matter how long one has been in place, if you are using an offsetting model? Are you saying that past injustice to past people in the group should count against current people in the other group?

 

[none]

So what, you want to create a bigger government entity to search out people and help them out?
I know you are joking, that is why we have affirmative action, the past transgressions are reflected now.
If there weren't white people or those perceived to be white affected by affirmative action I bet you wouldn't say anything and I say that because you fail to acknowledge that "white push" is the contributor and cause of the whole situation.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

So what, you want to create a bigger government entity to search out people and help them out?

Universal basic income could be one good start. You can implement it as a tax deduction / refund. The infrastructure is already in place.

 

[none]

So what, you want to create a bigger government entity to search out people and help them out?

Universal basic income could be one good start. You can implement it as a tax deduction / refund. The infrastructure is already in place.

and you are going to tell me this helps? right a program that encourages people to earn less.
fuck

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Universal basic income could be one good start. You can implement it as a tax deduction / refund. The infrastructure is already in place.

and you are going to tell me this helps? right a program that encourages people to earn less.
fuck

How does universal basic income encourage people to earn less?

 

[none]

and you are going to tell me this helps? right a program that encourages people to earn less.
fuck

How does universal basic income encourage people to earn less?

tax deductions are a motivator, right?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

How does universal basic income encourage people to earn less?

tax deductions are a motivator, right?

By universal basic income, I mean everybody is guaranteed $x in income, paid to them through reverse taxation. For people who earn more than that, it would be a tax deduction. For people who earn less than that, it would be money coming in. It would be fair, across the board, applicable to all, and it would both support the poor and force employers to compete for employees, who no longer would be at their mercy in regard to wages.

 

[none]

I'd have to check into it, but I am glad the conversation changed a bit.
I am coming from the perspective that the more wealth you keep is a motivator.
If you are suggesting a tax structure where the mantra of "cut taxes for the wealthy so they are more wealthy and that benefits us all" is false I'd be interested in hearing more about it, in the mean time keep affirmative action... not some promise of get rid of affirmative action before we implement this new tax program and then never implement the tax program because of "politics" i.e. "white push".

 

[Toni]

Using socioeconomic status as a criteria is way, as Tom just wrote. Also, if we insist on equating poverty or disenfranchisement with blackness, then why do people complain when somebody like Oprah is assumed to be too poor and disenfranchised to be shopping at a richy rich store? Isn't assuming that of her because of her race, racism? And if so, then why do we suddenly decide it is not when talking about AA?

I'm pretty sure I remember you as having no objections to Oprah being assumed to be too poor to shop at certain stores.

It isn't me who associates poverty or disenfranchisement with being black. As a matter of fact, I believe I am one of those who has pointed out that unlike childhood poverty, something that I experienced, although not nearly to the extent my parents and grandparents did, the pigmentation of your skin follows you all your life and certain people--let's just admit it: a whole lotta people--make certain assumptions about you based upon the color of your skin. No matter how you are dressed, what kind of vehicle you drive, no matter which is your neighborhood or your career or your degree.

And that judgment a whole lotta people make is: poor or at least poorer than me; not well educated, or at least not as educated as me, and not as powerful, either. Hadda have that dam AA or they wouldn't have gotten a dam thing without that and welfare. 'Cause no matter how bad I've got it and no matter how much I ain't got, at least I'm better than some people.

And I never picked cotton.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I'm pretty sure I remember you as having no objections to Oprah being assumed to be too poor to shop at certain stores.

You remember wrong.

It isn't me who associates poverty or disenfranchisement with being black.

To be fair, I wasn't addressing you.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

@Tom Sawyer,
how do you find the disenfranchised?
"white push" generated the problem.

By looking at a tax return.

 

[none]

@Tom Sawyer,
how do you find the disenfranchised?
"white push" generated the problem.

By looking at a tax return.

looking at a tax return prevents "white push" and the subsequent alienation and disenfranchisement?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

By looking at a tax return.

looking at a tax return prevents "white push" and the subsequent alienation and disenfranchisement?

I have no idea what your post is referencing. I haven't mentioned white push and don't care enough about what it might be to search back to find a definition. Feel free to discuss it with those talking about it.

I simply said that socioeconomic status is a better measure than race to use in determining who needs an extra leg up in order to compete on a level playing field.

 

[laughing dog]

What if the entirety of Group A does not need special targeting?

Then you would be discriminating against individuals of Group B, by giving special targeting to people of Group A who don't need it, but not doing the same for those of Group B. Whether this is unfair or just wasted effort would depend on if that special targeting benefited those who don't really need it. Why not just dump the proxy and simply target those who need it? If poverty is the issue, why not address the poor, instead of a proxy for it?

Here is an example. A small university in Minnesota has a traditionally overwhelming white student population mostly from small towns. In an attempt to broaden its student body diversity, the university does extra high school visits to high schools in Milwaukee and Chicago with high ratios of black students in an attempt to publicize and attract the university to black students. Just how is that discriminating against white students?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Then you would be discriminating against individuals of Group B, by giving special targeting to people of Group A who don't need it, but not doing the same for those of Group B. Whether this is unfair or just wasted effort would depend on if that special targeting benefited those who don't really need it. Why not just dump the proxy and simply target those who need it? If poverty is the issue, why not address the poor, instead of a proxy for it?

Here is an example. A small university in Minnesota has a traditionally overwhelming white student population mostly from small towns. In an attempt to broaden its student body diversity, the university does extra high school visits to high schools in Milwaukee and Chicago with high ratios of black students in an attempt to publicize and attract the university to black students. Just how is that discriminating against white students?

If it is specifically done as an effort to attract black students, how is this effort not discrimination against non-black students?

Is it more apparent to you if the school were to reach out to small poor communities in an attempt to attract more isolated or less wealthy students, and explicitly avoided doing so in areas with a lot of black people, in an effort to avoid inviting black people to the school? That too would be racial discrimination.

 

[none]

@Jolly Penguin, I looked at some Universal Basic Income analyses but I am still unsure how it would combat what I called "white push".
Do you think that UBI would eliminate white favored race selection in general as we seen now or have record of in the past?

 

[Davka]

My answer is to STOP DISCRIMINATING BY RACE.

That is, of course, the ideal. But it's like saying the answer to rape is to stop raping, or the answer to murder is to stop killing. Yes, of course, that's where we would like to be as a society and as a species. The question is: how do we get there, and how do we address the problem in the mean-time?