Affirmative Action

This may have been touched on, but would AA lose anything by ignoring race altogether and focusing on, as Mise so thankfully abbreviated it, SE? It addresses the same core problems while nicely avoid the whole 'reverse racism' stuff.


Poor white people are not poor because of systematic oppression and discrimination. Poor black people are. SE AA alone will not address the causes of the problem, and so will not address the effects of the problem.
 
@Cutless
First of all, what luiz said. Are you sure you read my post? Because what he replied can also be found within it. And that AA aims at those that need help the least further increases the potential for unfair disadvantages.
Seriously, the first statement of your post, which you bothered to bold and write cursive, is factually untrue. You need to understand that.
Secondly, that racism somehow causes economic costs is probably a reasonable assumption. To just shoot this out there in the inflated manner you did and to use it as some universal justification for AA is not reasonable however.
Your other assumptions about AA, that it will make the world a better place, meritocracy, save the oppressed etc, are vague and IMO quit spurious as well and my post (sorry if I seem a little obsessed with this post, but I feel it contains all key arguments against AA while considering a pro-AA stance) offered IMO good reason to not assume so in such a seemingly reflexive manner.

The only point I take no issue with is that AA has little costs. But only in the sense of economic costs. However, naturally, economic cost is not the ultimate criteria to policy decisions, or at least should not be. What serves the people in the best way, what is "right"/moral does. And there AA IMO fails.

Slightly.... :p But yes, SE (and God why did no one introduce this earlier?!) has significant advantages over race. I myself am also arguing with the assumption that racial AA would be replaced by SE, not just abolished. Its only drawback is that it does not benefit all members of a race (that is also those which need it the least), but only those which need it the most. But well, I don't actually see this as a drawback, but another advantage.

Oh come on, what a smug statement to make. "It is so easy, but they still don't want to surrender to its awesomeness". Maybe it is because it simply sucks?


If moral costs are your primary consideration, then no ifs ands or buts, you are for AA. Opposing AA is opposing the moral imperatives.
 
Then I've lost your point. AA is opposed because people want whites to have an unfair advantage. Why do you think it is supported?
 
Finale assumption marked.
But I am not only disagreeing that it was worthwhile. As my post explains, I think there is no valid rational that it was worthwhile and which is not appalling far to seek as soon as one bothers to dig into the depths of what AA in practice can be projected to really mean. That all that is left in the end is to insist on advantaging entire races no matter what, based on the intuitive feeling that this must be good. Simply disregarding all that is wrong about this approach. Which is not just covered with white boys whining (while them being discriminated is one part of my argument, though a secondary one) and economic inefficiencies (which I did not even care to mention), but concerns the very purpose of AA, too.
So basically, that racial AA ultimately is most of all supported for sentimental reasons, not for sound objective criteria.
I went deeper into that in my long post.
But to emphasize again and this time with more focus on how my assumption correlates with what I witness: From what I have gathered when it comes to racial AA supporters it is all about pointing out how people may suffer for their race and very little - yes next to nothing is done to demonstrate how AA is a reasonable consequence of this impression. The best shot so far was done by Mise with his comparison to minimum wage. But there he didn't actually consider the flaws that characterize racial AA (edit: or a least not very thorough so). He stayed on a general level and talked about how measures, which are supposed to shape society as a whole, in general can be justified even though they cause trouble.
 
Finale assumption marked.

I went deeper into that in my long post.
But to emphasize again and this time with more focus on how my assumption correlates with what I witness: From what I have gathered when it comes to racial AA supporters it is all about pointing out how people may suffer for their race and very little - yes next to nothing is done to demonstrate how AA is a reasonable consequence of this impression. The best shot so far was done by Mise with his comparison to minimum wage. But there he didn't actually consider the flaws that characterize racial AA (edit: or a least not very thorough so). He stayed on a general level and talked about how measures, which are supposed to shape society as a whole, in general can be justified even though they cause trouble.


Ya know, I very deliberately did not make any moral or sentimental argument. I gave you exclusively an objective argument. But you didn't accept that, and said that morality against AA trumps objective criteria for AA. I answered that that morality is explicitly clear in favor of AA.

So here we sit: Given an objective argument for AA, you reject it for moral reasons. Given a moral argument for AA, you reject it for objective reasons.

And you are wrong on both counts. You've had it explained to you why.
 
Ya know, I very deliberately did not make any moral or sentimental argument. I gave you exclusively an objective argument. But you didn't accept that, and said that morality against AA trumps objective criteria for AA.
Excuse me? Where did you get that? Morality is of course substantiated by objective criteria. (edit: Or rather: How moral something really is.) And I rejected your "objective argument" for reasons that you apparently don't feel worthy of consideration. While it did hardly address my points of the long post.
edit2 (I need to stop posting right ahead): But I admit that you gave it a short to argue on objective ground alone.
I answered that that morality is explicitly clear in favor of AA.
Yes yes and I disagree. We should not get hung up on this point. We obviously both believe our points of views to be morally superior.
 
Excuse me? Where did you get that? Morality is of course substantiated by objective criteria. (edit: Or rather: How moral something really is.) And I rejected your "objective argument" for reasons that you apparently don't feel worthy of consideration. While it did hardly address my points of the long post.

Yes yes and I disagree. We should not get hung up on this point. We obviously both believe our points of views to be morally superior.


I can't parse out any objective opposition to what I said from your posts. All I get is that you didn't even consider what I said at all. :crazyeye:

The situation is this: Consider the analogy of a race. The staring position is that the white guy has 100m to run, and the black guy has 150m to run. You see the white guy winning, and assume that he's the faster runner. And you are objecting to letting the black guy only run the same 100m because that would be unfair to the white guy.
 
And you know, I would in principle like to explain how your post did not consider my points, but at this point it feels like a total waste of time. I mean a gave the long post basically all I got and thought to have done a pretty good job, but now it seems in vain.



ditto :p
 
Thinking about it, I actually see what you mean with regards to your objective argument. I made not much effort to explain my opposition and if I were you, I would probably feel the same as you do about that (though I would still have engaged the criticism at least - which would have lead to further explanation). So alright, I'll give it another more thorough shot. But that will have to wait until the day after tomorrow I am afraid. Maybe already tomorrow, but don't count on it.
 
The situation is this: Consider the analogy of a race. The staring position is that the white guy has 100m to run, and the black guy has 150m to run. You see the white guy winning, and assume that he's the faster runner. And you are objecting to letting the black guy only run the same 100m because that would be unfair to the white guy.

To be fair the black guy would probably still win this sprint :lol:
 
@Mise
You last post consisted of nothing more than complaining about racism. How racial AA actually is suitable to tackle those you did not even bother to get into. So you essentially just established that SE-based-AA does not put a stop to the negative effects of racism. This is what I mean with sentimental reasoning.
If you accept that SE-based AA is suitable to tackle SE-based issues, then you ought to accept that race-based AA is suitable to tackle race-based issues, for the same reasons. Or at least, you would have to prove that race-based AA is inadequate but SE-based AA is not inadequate. To me, the reason why SE-based AA is adequate to tackle SE-based problems is the same reason why race-based AA is adequate to tackle race-based problems.
 
Don't tell me that this is from the same study which has already been discussed in great length.
And what exactly do you mean by "systemic"?
But most of all: The general existence of racism is not enough to justify AA!!!
RAHHHHG
Sorry about that.

I find it interesting that a set of black names are seen as "poor" and the white names are seen as "not poor." (Also, for some totally anecdotal evidence, I just sent the list of names to one of my bosses who is black. He described the names as "middle class.")

I think it would be helpful if when saying "AA" that we specify what part of AA we're specifically talking about.
 
I find it interesting that a set of black names are seen as "poor" and the white names are seen as "not poor." (Also, for some totally anecdotal evidence, I just sent the list of names to one of my bosses who is black. He described the names as "middle class.")

I think it would be helpful if when saying "AA" that we specify what part of AA we're specifically talking about.

That was a problem of the methodology chosen by the study. They chose the "most uniquely white" and "most uniquely black" names, not the most common names for blacks and whites. The thing is, the "most uniquely black" names are all poor names (or at least perceived as such, lets face it, most people do not consider Jamal and co. to be middle class names), while none of the "most uniquely white" names in those cities were poor names. If they were doing their research at another place, like somewhere in Appalachia, they might have found "uniquely white" names such as Cletus and Billy Bob, which are also regarded as poor names.
 
Another point against the "discrimination is preventing blacks from going to college" argument is that blacks are not, in fact, the ethnic group least likely to attend college in the US. 20% of blacks have at least a bachelor's degree, compared to 14% of "hispanics", who also have the lower overall per capita income.

Should we assume "hispanics" face greater discrimination, or realize that historical and other factors play the dominant role?
 
There are always other factors. But the fact that there are other factors does in no way diminish the factor of systemic racism.
 
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