I would never presume to question the relationship between your wife and yourself.
It is far too personal a matter.
I didn’t realize you considered AA such a personal matter.
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It is far too personal a matter.
I didn’t realize you considered AA such a personal matter.
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Rich_Olszewski
Guest
The “beat your wife” or “cheat on your wife” remarks are classic examples of questions that can’t be answered either way without one indicting ones’s self. Sorry you took them literally and sorry you thought that I was implying that you meant that personally about me.
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YoungTradCath
Guest
Why, might I ask? Isn’t that unjust?
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Rich_Olszewski
Guest
No, it wasn’t. Of course, some who despise Justice Thomas would say that it was.
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YoungTradCath
Guest
Kbro, nice implication.
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stinkcat_14
Guest
So you are fine with the fact that some people of privilege benefit from AA and some people not of privilege are discriminated against by AA? If you want to give up your job so that someone less privileged can have it, that would be admirable. But to take joy in the fact that some people who lack any sort of privilege are discriminated against is pretty immoral. What percentage of the population is it ok to discriminate against? 1%, 5%, 10%?
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Whitacre_Girl
Guest
Any portion, so long as the discrimination doesn’t personally threaten their own livelihoods.
In my experience, people who support AA are either eillingly or totally imcapable of not seeing things from other people’s perspectives. If people have to suffer for their ideals, that’s fine, so long as it isn’t them.
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stinkcat_14
Guest
You would think that they, of all people, would understand the idea that discrimination is wrong.
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NonServiam
Guest
As I said, with any social policy – any attempt to do things to improve society as a whole – there are always going to be individual cases you can find where the policy causes problems for people.
We’re not talking about the individual cases here – or, at least, it’s misguided and myopic to focus in on a handful of individual cases when the issue at hand isn’t an individual one, but a societal one. The purpose of the policy is to address broad social problems that exist today that we, as a society, want to address.
Strictly speaking, I don’t “take joy” in the fact that you can find a handful of cases where people are hampered a little bit by the policy, but I do take issue with people who blow these few cases out of proportion and engage in what I consider whining about the “unfairness” of it all. I may, at times, phrase my response to this in rhetorically entertaining ways, but the underlying and undeniable fact is that life isn’t fair.
Now, we can have an unfairness in which there are broad inequities divided on racial lines – resulting from factors not in our control – or we can have unfairness in which we attempt to address these inequities. Neither is perfectly “fair” because perfectly fair doesn’t exist…the question is what we want to do, the question is which unfairness we want to plump for.
As I have been implicitly indicating, I don’t think “discrimination” is the proper way to frame this issue. There’s always going to be unfairness, no matter what you do. The question is whether you want the unfairness that maintains certain inequities or whether you want an unfairness that attempts, as best as possible, to take those inequities into account and address them.
The fact that you can always – always – find some sob stories, no matter which policy you pick, isn’t relevant.
Or they are benefitting from the discrimination.In my experience, people who support AA are either eillingly or totally imcapable of not seeing things from other people’s perspectives. If people have to suffer for their ideals, that’s fine, so long as it isn’t them.
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Nec5
Guest
Bingo!
politicians and affirmative actions supporters:
That’s why Christ kept repeating the emphasis on the world to come vs being tied down to the laws of this world. This world twists and lowers morals and principles.
So you tolerate discrimination based on skin color?
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Rich_Olszewski
Guest
But, Christ did not say that we are free to disobey the laws of the world or not be tied to them while we are in this world. “Render unto Caesar…”
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stinkcat_14
Guest
When you treat two people differently because of either their skin color or gender it cannot be anything else but discrimination. Some of us thing discrimination, in all forms, is simply wrong.
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NonServiam
Guest
You’re playing a word game here.
I could equally play that word game and say that to ignore the inequities that exist and treat everyone as if they were starting from a level playing field is itself a form of discrimination.
The question before us is not “Do you think discrimination is good or bad?” because most people will answer “bad” to that question. To ask that question is to miss the point. The question before us is “Which kind of discrimination are we going to have?”
Are we going to have the kind of discrimination that works by tacitly allowing inequities to continue unchecked, or are we going to have the kind of discrimination that seeks to address these problems by taking them into account?
The whole “discrimination” objection is an equivocation, a smoke-screen to get people all froth-mouthed over a relatively simple situation: we have to choose whether to continue to tacitly allow the discrimination that’s already built into the system or we have to choose to do something different. Now, you’re certainly free to label that something different as “another kind of discrimination,” but now you’re just making a mess of language and playing an incredibly silly semantic game that’s going to get us nowhere.
In other words, it sounds like you’re hung up on words, not on what’s actually going on. Drop the words for a moment and look at the situation: there are inequities that we, as a society, don’t like. We decide that those inequities should be taken into account when making certain decisions. While taking those inequities into account will cause problems for a few individual cases, on the whole, taking those inequities into account will, to some extent, ameliorate the unfair effects of the inequities.
No reasonable person should have any serious opposition to the policy, provided that they don’t insist on confusing themselves by playing word games.
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rlg94086
Guest
“Discrimination” is always used when reviewing applicants for college. They discriminate against those who didn’t do well on tests, for example.
If a university were to decide not to accept people because they are a minority, it would be abhorrent and racist because they are favoring whites over minorities. Changing the policy to favor minorities (not all minorities, though) is no less racist. Why? Because it is discrimination based on skin color.
Your word play is on the wrong word. There is nothing wrong with discriminating, but discriminating based on “race, creed or color” is wrong.
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Rich_Olszewski
Guest
If “not all minorities,” then what minorities are you willing to discriminate against on the basis of skin color?
Fair skinned Swedes? “Yellow-skinned” Chinese? Dark-skinned Indians and Pakistanis?
This is a policy that arouses passion in many, but it is also a policy that is not likely to be overturned or eliminated. I support Affirmative Action, and I’m certain that it will still be a factor in college admissions and job hiring indefinitely. I lose no sleep over it.
Right, and we have people willing to discriminate based upon skin color and others willing to discriminate based upon the achievements of the individual.
Currently AA discriminates based upon skin color.
This is clearly wrong. And it paints the proponents of the system in a very bad light since defense of AA amounts to defense of the worst possible discrimination possible.
So what kind of discrimination do I want? I want the kind where my work is judged on its own merit…where I am judged based upon my character rather then based upon my skin color.
And AA prevents this.
You claimed it a word game… it isn’t. Acceptance of a system that discriminates based upon skin color is acceptance of that discrimination.
There is no other way around that.
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rlg94086
Guest
I’m not in favor of discrimination on skin color, at all. My comment was directed toward the racist policies of affirmative action. Not all minorities are given a leg up. Asians and Pacific Islanders don’t count as minorities in the affirmative action policies for university admissions.
You have offered no evidence at all that AA does not discriminate on these factors (skin color, gender, etc.), and actually affirmed it in at least one post.
How exactly can we read this any other way then you support skin color based discrimination?
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