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Affirmative Action

Is affirmative action necessary in today's society?

  • Yes, it bridges the disparity between minority and non-minority students and workers

    Votes: 5 8.5%
  • Yes, it is important for the social welfare and diversity of the country

    Votes: 4 6.8%
  • No, it encourages individuals to identify themselves as "disadvantaged"

    Votes: 25 42.4%
  • No, it provides a basis for "reverse-discrimination"

    Votes: 34 57.6%
  • No, it is devalues the accomplishments of both those who it benefits and those it does not

    Votes: 31 52.5%
  • It is necessary for gender, but not race

    Votes: 2 3.4%
  • It is necessary for race, but not gender

    Votes: 1 1.7%
  • Other, please specify

    Votes: 9 15.3%

  • Total voters
    59
This is applicable to only a few. The overall cause is not racism or the failure of the system. It is the absolute and utter failure of the black family structure. This is something we can fix, but we have to do it ourselves and soon.

"Both explanations are true. But black men aren't born incarcerated, crime-prone dropouts. What principally renders them vulnerable to such a plight is the absence of fathers and their stabilizing influence.

Fatherless boys (as a general rule) become ineligible to be husbands -- though no less likely to become fathers -- and their children fall into the patterns that render them ineligible to be husbands.

The absence of fathers means, as well, that girls lack both a pattern against which to measure the boys who pursue them and an example of sacrificial love between a man and a woman. As the ministers were at pains to say last week, it isn't the incompetence of mothers that is at issue but the absence of half of the adult support needed for families to be most effective.
" - William Raspberry - Why Our Black Families Are Failing - washingtonpost.com

"Read through the megazillion words on class, income mobility, and poverty in the recent New York Times series “Class Matters” and you still won’t grasp two of the most basic truths on the subject: 1. entrenched, multigenerational poverty is largely black; and 2. it is intricately intertwined with the collapse of the nuclear family in the inner city." - The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal Summer 2005

How can a problem be fixed when every time it is mentioned it is somehow racist?



Exemplifying gangsta's as hero's and the blatant excuse giving for failure is not helping. We don't need excuses, we need people to accept responsibility for their own actions.

:applaud Good post.
 
This is applicable to only a few. The overall cause is not racism or the failure of the system. It is the absolute and utter failure of the black family structure. This is something we can fix, but we have to do it ourselves and soon.

"Both explanations are true. But black men aren't born incarcerated, crime-prone dropouts. What principally renders them vulnerable to such a plight is the absence of fathers and their stabilizing influence.

Fatherless boys (as a general rule) become ineligible to be husbands -- though no less likely to become fathers -- and their children fall into the patterns that render them ineligible to be husbands.

The absence of fathers means, as well, that girls lack both a pattern against which to measure the boys who pursue them and an example of sacrificial love between a man and a woman. As the ministers were at pains to say last week, it isn't the incompetence of mothers that is at issue but the absence of half of the adult support needed for families to be most effective.
" - William Raspberry - Why Our Black Families Are Failing - washingtonpost.com

"Read through the megazillion words on class, income mobility, and poverty in the recent New York Times series “Class Matters” and you still won’t grasp two of the most basic truths on the subject: 1. entrenched, multigenerational poverty is largely black; and 2. it is intricately intertwined with the collapse of the nuclear family in the inner city." - The Black Family: 40 Years of Lies by Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal Summer 2005

How can a problem be fixed when every time it is mentioned it is somehow racist?
the stigma, the shame of being an unwed mother no longer exists - at least to the point that it seems to dissuade women from becoming pregnant without a husband
Nearly 40 percent of babies born in the United States in 2007 were delivered by unwed mothers, according to data released last month by the National Center for Health Statistics. The 1.7 million out-of-wedlock births, of 4.3 million total births, marked a more than 25 percent jump from five years before.
Out-of-wedlock births hit record high - CNN.com
Nearly 72 percent of the births to black women were out of wedlock. Mothers were unmarried in about 51 percent of Hispanic births and 28 percent of non-Hispanic white births.
Unwed birth rate reaches all-time high - Women's health- msnbc.com
i share your observation that individuals having children they cannot afford to raise is irresponsible. and while the growing problem is more epidemic in the minority populations, it is not exclusively theirs, as the data indicates
but we have a problem without a solution - at least a solution more effective than wishing irresponsible people would start behaving responsibly
as i see it there are but two options to stem this long-term, growing problem:
1. end the incentivization of having more children out off wedlock; each child adds to the government check received for those who require public assistance
but to do that and deny additional assistance also hurts the child, who did not ask to be born a bastard into poverty. so, to reach the cause we adversely impact the innocent
2. license people to have children. hell, we license someone to do something as common as fish in public waters or drive a vehicle
but that would upset those whose knee-jerk response would be that such licensing encroaches on one's right to self determination ... tho these are very often the same folks who object to the public burden of subsidizing the rearing of the out-of-wedlock kids
and possibly, there is a third solution, which is to take away the children from parents who are unable to provide for them. but that would not stifle the future opportunity for the same people to have more out-of-wedlock children for the government to have to provide for

if you have another solution, please offer it up; otherwise, identify which of those above you could support and why

Exemplifying gangsta's as hero's and the blatant excuse giving for failure is not helping. We don't need excuses, we need people to accept responsibility for their own actions.

what are the role models for success in the poor minority communities other than the baller, the dealer, the rapper ... who else do these kids have to emulate in their own behavior to attain "success" as they understand it

i don't think we actually disagree much about the problem. it is the solution which evades us both. and this is a major reason why i believe that poor parenting is the second worst problem in America which needs to be addressed
 
i don't think we actually disagree much about the problem. it is the solution which evades us both. and this is a major reason why i believe that poor parenting is the second worst problem in America which needs to be addressed

I agree with most of your post.

My problem is programs like affirmative action is not addressing the problem. It instead is making it worse, and creating a racial rift. It is in my opinion adding to this entitlement mentality that is completely screwing up the black community as bad as the drug trade. It's not just the inner city either.

Like you I don't know the answer. I do know things like affirmative action have long outlived it's usefulness.
 
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I agree with most of your post.

My problem is programs like affirmative action is not addressing the problem. It instead is making it worse, and creating a racial rift. It is in my opinion adding to this entitlement mentality that is completely screwing up the black community as bad as the drug trade. It's not just the inner city either.

Like you I don't know the answer. I do know things like affirmative action have long outlived it's usefulness.

i spent a career working in the federal AA program and saw first-hand that there remains a genuine need to level the playing field for all. racism remains present, tho it is now more covert than overt
i am disappointed that Obama, who is well positioned to eliminate the race aspect of federal AA programs and instead tailor the eligibility to those of low economic capacity, has shown no inclination to do so
when we take race out of the equation for eligibility then we will enjoy a substantial buy-in of AA by the general public, which does not now exist
 
i am disappointed that Obama, who is well positioned to eliminate the race aspect of federal AA programs and instead tailor the eligibility to those of low economic capacity, has shown no inclination to do so

This would be a step in the right direction, IMO.
 
I'm seeing so many liberal non-sequiturs in the last few pages. You almost have to play some warped game of Six Degrees of Separation to figure out the point.

When you start bringing up unwed mother demographics, you're losing the fight. If you want to open your argument with "black women make dumbsh*t choices in life so they should be favored", then just say so. Don't sit there and take an issue of poverty and springboard it into a valid discussion of AA, because it doesn't work like that.

My tax money should not go to subsidizing stupidity - black, white, or otherwise.
 
No, of course not. Environment is probably the biggest factor though.
 
Are children stupid simply because their parents are?

While certainly not automatically, intelligence is at least partially determined by a person's genetics. A person born to "stupid" parents is going to be carrying the genes for that "stupidity". Likewise, if you're looking at stupidity as a result of lack of education, it's also a fact that parental involvement in education is important to the learning process. Parents that don't comprehend the subject matter are not going to be much help in their child's education.

Certainly, both factors can be overcome to a certain extent, but both are probably going to affect the end result.
 
Some geneticists would agree with that assertion, yes.

true-which is why legacies at big name ivies often have higher GPAs than non legacies. But one thing is true, parents who value education tend to produce children who do far better in schools than children whose parents don't care or aren't around. There is a reason why Cornell engineering has more Chinese than the world table tennis ranking list and why places like Yale Law and Harvard Med have far more Jewish students than the 2% of the population that is Jewish.


my brother's wife is first generation chinese american. Her parents came to this country without knowing much English but they were well educated and ended retiring both as tenured professors at a major league university. Their daughter earned a BA and a Masters at Harvard, their son ane aerospace engineering degree from Cornell. Education was valued in their household. so was hard work. no one ever called my sister in law names for being top of her HS class even though at the time it was in the middle of the cornbelt at a big state University town where Chinese kids weren't exactly the norm. No one made fun of her practicing piano 4-5 hours a day.
 
true-which is why legacies at big name ivies often have higher GPAs than non legacies. But one thing is true, parents who value education tend to produce children who do far better in schools than children whose parents don't care or aren't around. There is a reason why Cornell engineering has more Chinese than the world table tennis ranking list and why places like Yale Law and Harvard Med have far more Jewish students than the 2% of the population that is Jewish.


my brother's wife is first generation chinese american. Her parents came to this country without knowing much English but they were well educated and ended retiring both as tenured professors at a major league university. Their daughter earned a BA and a Masters at Harvard, their son ane aerospace engineering degree from Cornell. Education was valued in their household. so was hard work. no one ever called my sister in law names for being top of her HS class even though at the time it was in the middle of the cornbelt at a big state University town where Chinese kids weren't exactly the norm. No one made fun of her practicing piano 4-5 hours a day.

Indeed. Parental involvement is more of a factor in test scores than private vs. public school
 
I don't see what minorities being disproportionately poor has to do with AA. Why is a middle class African-American child in a stable family any more deserving of advantages than a poor White child with a single mother? Aid should be based on need, not skin color.
 
I don't see what minorities being disproportionately poor has to do with AA. Why is a middle class African-American child in a stable family any more deserving of advantages than a poor White child with a single mother? Aid should be based on need, not skin color.

But that would require serious effort and a time commitment by an admissions office or HR department and it might well mean less black or hispanic students rather than more. Its so much easier to equate "black" with "disadvantaged"
 
Well if the parents would get off the crack pipe this problem would not be nearly as big in the inner city.

Wow. Just Wow. You are part of the problem as you cannot "see" the problem. You think everybody living up in the hood is hitting the pipe? Of course not and even if they are? Are you gonna blame these kids for it? Not wanna help them? What is wrong with you? :(
 
This is the most ridicules non answer I have ever seen. It has nothing to do with what I said. I call B.S.

So you do not think people would be bitching about the "poor" folks getting over on others? You know it would happen and that is why all you had to say was that my REAL answer was B.S.

Honey let me school you on something you should know by now: only a few people give a crap about poor people and much less poor non-white people.

If people REALLY cared? There would be no hungry kids in our country. There would be no reason for AA or anything else if the majority gave a **** but guess what? They do NOT!

We wanna act as if we can save the goddamn world while kids sitting up here in the U.S.A. are going to bed with no food to eat. We spend billions of helping other kids but we got people bitching about helping kids here at home? We really gonnna get all MAD about A.A.? REALLY????? How about direct your anger and outrage over something that matters. You know like taking care of people and the kids at home first!

But people wanna be all pissed cause we give someone an education, job, etc. to because they do deserve it?

What the hell is wrong with this picture? I will tell you what: it is all kinds of wrong to think people can simply rise out of the hood, it is simply wrong to suggest that because a "few" have done it that there is nothing stopping it.

The fact of the matter at hand is that racism and sexism is real and still here. All the while people that do not bitch about helping others outside our country are sitting here running off at the damn mouth about **** they know nothing about. Like Racism and Sexism.
 
I agree with most of your post.

My problem is programs like affirmative action is not addressing the problem. It instead is making it worse, and creating a racial rift. It is in my opinion adding to this entitlement mentality that is completely screwing up the black community as bad as the drug trade. It's not just the inner city either.

Like you I don't know the answer. I do know things like affirmative action have long outlived it's usefulness.

The only "racial rift" it creates is by people who are racist and do not understand this problem.
 
My tax money should not go to subsidizing stupidity - black, white, or otherwise.


So you would rather it go to stupid blue collar criminals or something? Maybe help bail em out??
 
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Wow. Just Wow. You are part of the problem as you cannot "see" the problem. You think everybody living up in the hood is hitting the pipe? Of course not and even if they are? Are you gonna blame these kids for it? Not wanna help them? What is wrong with you? :(

Taking one line out of context and outrageous exaggerated claims is just stupid. :doh

So you do not think people would be bitching about the "poor" folks getting over on others? You know it would happen and that is why all you had to say was that my REAL answer was B.S.

Your comment had nothing to do with what I said, nothing at all. Just like this one. :2wave:

When you are not the most qualified for a position, you are not qualified for that position, period.

Honey let me school you on something you should know by now: only a few people give a crap about poor people and much less poor non-white people.

You have got to be kidding. Then again maybe not.

If people REALLY cared? There would be no hungry kids in our country. There would be no reason for AA or anything else if the majority gave a **** but guess what? They do NOT!

We wanna act as if we can save the goddamn world while kids sitting up here in the U.S.A. are going to bed with no food to eat. We spend billions of helping other kids but we got people bitching about helping kids here at home? We really gonnna get all MAD about A.A.? REALLY????? How about direct your anger and outrage over something that matters. You know like taking care of people and the kids at home first!

But people wanna be all pissed cause we give someone an education, job, etc. to because they do deserve it?

What the hell is wrong with this picture? I will tell you what: it is all kinds of wrong to think people can simply rise out of the hood, it is simply wrong to suggest that because a "few" have done it that there is nothing stopping it.

The fact of the matter at hand is that racism and sexism is real and still here. All the while people that do not bitch about helping others outside our country are sitting here running off at the damn mouth about **** they know nothing about. Like Racism and Sexism.

This has to be one of the most uneducated rants I have seen in awhile. It is not really even worth responding to, really. It is just so absured and over the top. Bah typical.

The only "racial rift" it creates is by people who are racist and do not understand this problem.

So now people are racist because they don't understand a problem. :lol:

This I can help you with...

Racist - noun
1.a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

2.a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination. <----- Hmmm Sounds like Affirmative Action. The dictionary must be racist!.

3.hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.


No mention of not understanding a problem making you racist.

You cannot hope to understand a problem when you don't even understand the words involved.
 
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The only "racial rift" it creates is by people who are racist and do not understand this problem.

Really? So the people who think that minorities are just as good as everyone else and are quite capable of doing what we want on our own... *we're* the racist and sexist ones? We give minorities more credit than you do, we actually think that we have what it takes to survive like everyone else, and WE'RE the racist/sexist ones?

Please do explain that to me.
 
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I don't see what minorities being disproportionately poor has to do with AA. Why is a middle class African-American child in a stable family any more deserving of advantages than a poor White child with a single mother? Aid should be based on need, not skin color.

Awesome. You've reached the point that the rest of us got to about 2 pages ago.
 
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