A Slew of SCOTUS Decisions.

[blaxshep]

I don't know. Do you? I'm curious whether you have any data about how much every black family in the U.S. has received in the way of money from the rest of us. Ditto first peoples, Latinos, etc.



1. Black people are not the only people who figure into Affirmative Action programs.

2. Despite these facts, blacks in general are paid less and have lower socioeconomic status than most whites. Until that changes, Affirmative Action should continue.



1. Many of those who look like thugs actually do have jobs.

2. Many who do not have jobs don't look like thugs.

Ok then when will they finally be able to fend for themselves without preferential treatment? I want to treat them like equals you want to coddle them because they are incapable of providing for themselves, but I'm the racists right? :roll:

 

[ludin]

And who will oversee the independent judicial review, then who will oversee them.......?

your slippery slope is over there.

 

[Casper]

your slippery slope is over there.

Oh, was I on yours?:roll:

 

[ashurbanipal]

Ok then when will they finally be able to fend for themselves without preferential treatment? I want to treat them like equals you want to coddle them because they are incapable of providing for themselves, but I'm the racists right?

I don't know whether you're racist or not, since I don't know you. Nothing you've said suggests to me that you hold racist beliefs.

I do think it is clear you haven't spent much time really thinking about what life must be like for someone with darker skin. Consider the widely publicized recent study which showed that people who have white-sounding names get substantially more interviews for the exact same resume than someone with a black-sounding name. The researchers would take a resume and attach a name like "Darren Smith" to it, send it out to 100 employers, and note how often there was a call-back. Then, they took the same resume and attached a name like "Shaquile Jackson" and repeated the procedure with different employers. Darren Smith got something like four times* as many calls as Shaquile Jackson, despite the fact that, as far as the employers knew, they were both exactly equally qualified. Of course, they did this with dozens of resumes and thousands of employers, and got consistent results.

The implication from this one study (which is pretty easy to find) is that white people have something like four times as many job opportunities as black people. Other studies have shown that black people face all kinds of discrimination in every area of life. Put yourself in their shoes for a while before making a judgment.

*I don't recall the exact difference in number of call backs; I only remember that it was substantial, and surprisingly so.

 

[ludin]

Oh, was I on yours?:roll:

nope you created your own.

 

[Casper]

nope you created your own.

Really? I believe I only extended yours, but hey if you want the slope to yourself by all means have at it.

 

[blaxshep]

I don't know whether you're racist or not, since I don't know you. Nothing you've said suggests to me that you hold racist beliefs.

I do think it is clear you haven't spent much time really thinking about what life must be like for someone with darker skin. Consider the widely publicized recent study which showed that people who have white-sounding names get substantially more interviews for the exact same resume than someone with a black-sounding name. The researchers would take a resume and attach a name like "Darren Smith" to it, send it out to 100 employers, and note how often there was a call-back. Then, they took the same resume and attached a name like "Shaquile Jackson" and repeated the procedure with different employers. Darren Smith got something like four times* as many calls as Shaquile Jackson, despite the fact that, as far as the employers knew, they were both exactly equally qualified. Of course, they did this with dozens of resumes and thousands of employers, and got consistent results.

The implication from this one study (which is pretty easy to find) is that white people have something like four times as many job opportunities as black people. Other studies have shown that black people face all kinds of discrimination in every area of life. Put yourself in their shoes for a while before making a judgment.

*I don't recall the exact difference in number of call backs; I only remember that it was substantial, and surprisingly so.

Racism to prevent racism is not right.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Racism to prevent racism is not right.

Hmmmm...

It strikes me that this (racism to prevent racism) is an impossibility. I do not agree that's how Affirmative Action should be characterized (i.e. as racism) in any case.

 

[blaxshep]

Hmmmm...

It strikes me that this (racism to prevent racism) is an impossibility. I do not agree that's how Affirmative Action should be characterized (i.e. as racism) in any case.

Giving preference to a person based on skin color. I don't see how you can see it any other way.

 

[matchlight]

True, but we have long ago repaid out debt to these people. Enough is enough.

If the sea of blood shed by the 350,000 or more Union boys who died in the course of ending slavery in the U.S., once and for all, did not atone for whatever wrongs had been done to blacks, I don't know what could.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Giving preference to a person based on skin color. I don't see how you can see it any other way.

First, racism is a belief, not an action. Affirmative Action is at best discrimination. But in fact it is not; it takes nothing away from anyone that should have been theirs in the first place, under our current system.

I would ultimately argue that the system should be changed, and funds allocated to allow colleges to admit all qualified candidates plus some Affirmative Action folks, but in the absence of the political will to do that, what we have is neither racism nor discrimination.

 

[ashurbanipal]

If the sea of blood shed by the 350,000 or more Union boys who died in the course of ending slavery in the U.S., once and for all, did not atone for whatever wrongs had been done to blacks, I don't know what could.

Atonement is a matter of punishment, which has nothing to do with Affirmative Action. Part of what is at issue is that opponents of Affirmative Action do not clearly distinguish in their minds the concepts of punishment and administration of justice. The latter need not include the former.

Anyway, I'm not sure the sacrifice you mention did atone, but whether it did or not isn't relevant to the present discussion.

 

[ttwtt78640]

First, racism is a belief, not an action. Affirmative Action is at best discrimination. But in fact it is not; it takes nothing away from anyone that should have been theirs in the first place, under our current system.

I would ultimately argue that the system should be changed, and funds allocated to allow colleges to admit all qualified candidates plus some Affirmative Action folks, but in the absence of the political will to do that, what we have is neither racism nor discrimination.

That (bolded above) makes little sense - if all qualified candidates were admitted then the classrooms would be full. What AA does (for the most part) is to disqualify someone (white?) otherwise qualified in order to create an opening for someone (non-white?) who was otherwise unqualified.

 

[Deuce]

It's hilarious that people think affirmative action works the way the OP does.

"She's white and there were black students with worse grades who got in!"

There were far more black students with better grades than her who didn't get in.

 

[clownboy]

It's hilarious that people think affirmative action works the way the OP does.

"She's white and there were black students with worse grades who got in!"

There were far more black students with better grades than her who didn't get in.

Explain then why they didn't get in.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Explain then why they didn't get in.

Having served on an admissions board, here's one reason: they wrote an unattractive essay. It failed to move the board in the way that another essay did.

 

[ashurbanipal]

That (bolded above) makes little sense - if all qualified candidates were admitted then the classrooms would be full.

Well, classes might be full, but then, the college would just offer more classes, at least if I had things my way.

What AA does (for the most part) is to disqualify someone (white?) otherwise qualified in order to create an opening for someone (non-white?) who was otherwise unqualified.

Not really. It merely adds ethnicity as a qualifier, and requires the admissions board to admit a certain proportion of each ethnicity. Separate decisions based on funding and made by an entirely different group of people determine how many students may be admitted in any given term.

 

[matchlight]

Atonement is a matter of punishment, which has nothing to do with Affirmative Action. Part of what is at issue is that opponents of Affirmative Action do not clearly distinguish in their minds the concepts of punishment and administration of justice. The latter need not include the former.

Anyway, I'm not sure the sacrifice you mention did atone, but whether it did or not isn't relevant to the present discussion.

You can niggle about semantics with someone else, if you like. I think the enormous sacrifice I mentioned is entirely relevant to the present discussion. The proponents of preferential treatment for blacks, for example in admissions to graduate schools. justify this racial discrimination as a way to even the score for past discrimination against blacks by whites. What today would be equivalent to several million men died serving the U.S. in a horrific war that ended slavery here. You may think that immense sacrifice--almost all of it made by white men--was not enough to even the score. But you may also think no sacrifice could ever be enough to even the score.

You are trying to justify racial discrimination by portraying it as the "administration of justice," just as various Supreme Court justices have done in the Court's decisions on what is often called "reverse discrimination." I have read most of those decisions, and I do not find the arguments for discrimination against non-blacks convincing, however high-sounding the language they are dressed up in. Apparently it is fine with you for government to give whites (or members of racial minorities other than blacks) the short end of the stick, even though they took no part in the oppression of blacks. They couldn't have, because they were not even born when institutionalized discrimination against blacks in this country was ended by a series of Supreme Court decisions and federal civil rights laws.

 

[Deuce]

Explain then why they didn't get in.

...because it's not just about grades? Jesus, you really thought grades and race were the only two metrics, didn't you?

 

[matchlight]

Not really. It merely adds ethnicity as a qualifier, and requires the admissions board to admit a certain proportion of each ethnicity. Separate decisions based on funding and made by an entirely different group of people determine how many students may be admitted in any given term.

Say what? So-called affirmative action could not be implemented unless government required college admissions boards to admit more black applicants than would otherwise qualify for admission, if only factors other than their race were considered. Whatever the number of spots available in any given term, it is fixed. If blacks get more of those spots than they would if their race could not be considered in decisions about admissions, applicants who are not black will necessarily get fewer spots than they otherwise would. That's the race discrimination you are trying to defend, and no amount of doubletalk can hide that fact.

I heard some plain talk about this preferential treatment, in private, from two different professors at my law school. Each term, they both sat at the table where decisions about admissions were made, and they heartily disliked the pressure the dean of the school brought to bear on them to admit black applicants who had no business being there. Only one of these blacks belonged there, and she got some of the highest scores on final exams of any of the 200-plus students in my class. And then there were the others. I remember very well how three or four of these black students who were in my classes regularly embarrassed themselves with their pathetic answers to questions the professors asked them.

 

[NotreDame]

So, answer the question: do you think it's fair to just do nothing, including leaving the stolen property with the people who now possess it? If you do think so, why do you think so? It's not punishment to, say, repossess a stolen ring from a pawn shop that had nothing to do with stealing it, for example. So why would it be punishment to take wealth from people that should never have had it?

First, I was deriding your justification for affirmative action programs. Your justification, for contemporary times, is untenable.

including leaving the stolen property with the people who now possess it?

First, there has been no showing "people" are presently in possession of stolen property. I can perceive of a few examples you may interject with, all of which are very contestable, resulting in a protracted dialogue about the validity of your possible myriad of claims/examples. What you have successfully done, however, is diluted the efficacy and justification of affirmative action programs by resorting to and invoking very argumentative statements, such as people in possession of stolen property. There are less objectionable justifications for affirmative action, better justifications in my opinion.

So why would it be punishment to take wealth from people that should never have had it?[/

First, a rather obvious objection to your position is wealth is not stagnant or static. We are not discussing a situation in which, at the time of the injustice, wealth existed at X dollar amount and this X dollar amount has remained the same, identical, not altered, changed, comingled, reduced, or increased, since the injustice. Since the injustice, subsequent people, and generations, have lawfully labored to increase the wealth, adding their own wealth to the X dollar amount. At some point, ALL of the people and generations, adding to this wealth with their own labor, had absolutely nothing to do with the injustice perpetuated many generations ago and centuries in the past.

In other words, what your approach is missing is people in the past and today legitimately added wealth to the already existing wealth, rendering nearly impossible to separate the two, and to take the wealth away now, today, is to also deprive people of wealth they legitimately and lawfully earned. This is but one problem with your suggestion, hinted at in your query. The people of today have not committed the injustice and to treat them as they had, by taking away their wealth today, on the basis some of it was acquired at a time an injustice was perpetuated, but undoubtedly some of the wealth was not attained during an injustice, is equally an injustice. Perpetuating an injustice to remedy an injustice is not fair, just, or rational.

In addition, once again, I am not convinced the wealth acquired at the time of the injustice was illegitimately attained or attained by unjust, impermissible, unlawful, and/or unfair means/methods. Again, you invoke very contestable assertions to defend affirmative action, thereby making affirmative action less appealing to the broader public, especially and including those alive today who had absolutely nothing to do with the injustice. There are better justifications for affirmative action.

To answer your query.

So, answer the question: do you think it's fair to just do nothing

No, if affirmative action is going to exist, then I like the idea of merit based affirmative action. In other words, showing preference to minorities and giving them opportunities/positions/admission, on the basis their work, their grades, their profile, etcetera, meets the necessary criteria, even if this necessarily means equally qualified or well qualified Caucasian applicants are denied.

 

[ashurbanipal]

You can niggle about semantics with someone else, if you like.

Well, semantics is the term that means, er, what words mean. So, if you're not a fan of getting the semantics correct, I have no idea what your posts mean. You might as well write
adify;aoidnfb;iahsvjn;auhfouajf;iauhf'anrfkha;odsfadjfoaidjfshf

and you will neither lose nor gain any quality in your prose.

I think the enormous sacrifice I mentioned is entirely relevant to the present discussion.

Then it is up to you to at least say why. I have distinguished between punishment and Affirmative Action. When you catch a thief, it is no punishment of the thief to return all the property he has stolen to its rightful owner. Punishment is throwing the thief in jail or something like that. Affirmative Action is akin to the former act, not the latter.

I do not find the arguments for discrimination against non-blacks convincing, however high-sounding the language they are dressed up in.

If you think it's a mere matter of high-sounding language, you've failed to understand something at a fundamental level.

Apparently it is fine with you for government to give whites (or members of racial minorities other than blacks) the short end of the stick, even though they took no part in the oppression of blacks.

The short end of what stick? What are you talking about?

Say what? So-called affirmative action could not be implemented unless government required college admissions boards to admit more black applicants than would otherwise qualify for admission, if only factors other than their race were considered.

Most colleges have no regulation imposed by government to do anything other than avoid racial discrimination; colleges that have diversity goals typically impose those on themselves.

Whatever the number of spots available in any given term, it is fixed.

This is true of doctoral/professional programs, but usually not master's, and almost never true of undergraduate, programs. This is a common misconception. There may be some hard upper limit to the number of students a college or university could handle, but I'm not aware of any university that has admitted that many students. This fact is why the vast majority of suits challenging some Affirmative Action decision fail.

I heard some plain talk about this preferential treatment, in private, from two different professors at my law school. Each term, they both sat at the table where decisions about admissions were made, and they heartily disliked the pressure the dean of the school brought to bear on them to admit black applicants who had no business being there. Only one of these blacks belonged there, and she got some of the highest scores on final exams of any of the 200-plus students in my class. And then there were the others. I remember very well how three or four of these black students who were in my classes regularly embarrassed themselves with their pathetic answers to questions the professors asked them.

Sounds like an argument against the decisions made by that particular dean.

 

[ashurbanipal]

First, I was deriding your justification for affirmative action programs. Your justification, for contemporary times, is untenable.

Pretty difficult claims to make, since we haven't even gotten to my justification in this thread yet. I'm just trying to lay some groundwork and establish some basic principles. In general, people are making too many assumptions so far.

First, there has been no showing "people" are presently in possession of stolen property.

I don't know why that should be first. Again, let's just establish a few clear ethical principles. I think it can be shown people are in possession of stolen property, especially when it comes to American Indians and basically everyone not of American Indian descent living in the Americas. But before we get to that, again, there needs to be some agreement about general principles. The need for such agreement begins to appear in the very next paragraph, below.

First, a rather obvious objection to your position is wealth is not stagnant or static. We are not discussing a situation in which, at the time of the injustice, wealth existed at X dollar amount and this X dollar amount has remained the same, identical, not altered, changed, comingled, reduced, or increased, since the injustice.

Granted. I'm assuming you're going to go on to explain why this is an objection. The first thought that occurs when you raise this point is to go back to one of the examples: I steal your money, and I invest it, causing the stolen wealth to double. Should I get to keep the increase over the stolen capital, given that I should never have had that capital in the first place? I agree that intuitions will likely differ, though I doubt very many people will claim that I should get to keep all the increase. Many will think I should get to keep none, and some will think that you are entitled to some significant portion of the increase. In most jurisdictions, when a constructive trust is created on someone's assets due to unjust enrichment, any increase is generally also given back to the party that rightly possessed the investment capital.

Since the injustice, subsequent people, and generations, have lawfully labored to increase the wealth, adding their own wealth to the X dollar amount. At some point, ALL of the people and generations, adding to this wealth with their own labor, had absolutely nothing to do with the injustice perpetuated many generations ago and centuries in the past.

I've agreed that no one in the current generation was alive to have committed the crimes which inaugurated the disadvantages that now continue to affect African Americans, First Peoples, Hispanics, etc. This fact signifies; it means no one currently living deserves to be punished for those crimes. However, Affirmative Action does not punish anyone.

...people in the past and today legitimately added wealth to the already existing wealth, rendering nearly impossible to separate the two

Oh, I agree. That's why I wrote earlier in this thread that it wouldn't be as simple as just giving all the land back to the American Indians, for example (even though that would be of immense personal benefit to me). But this is not an objection to anything I've said so far; the intuition behind the examples I've posted in this thread reveal moral truths that must be respected. The task is to figure out, once we've recognized there has been a crime from which a great many people are still suffering, how to respect all the moral truths that impinge on the situation. To simply ignore the effects of slavery and civil rights abuses, lynchings, Jim Crow laws, etc. is to let the crime pass unpunished, even after the guilty parties are known and even though we could still do something to mitigate their effects.

and to take the wealth away now, today, is to also deprive people of wealth they legitimately and lawfully earned.

This, however, does not follow from anything you've said. Again, if I steal a thousand dollars from you, and invest it so that it becomes two thousand dollars, that doesn't mean I legally and legitimately earned one thousand dollars. I should never have been able to get that increase without stealing the capital to do it.


This is but one problem with your suggestion, hinted at in your query. The people of today have not committed the injustice and to treat them as they had, by taking away their wealth today, on the basis some of it was acquired at a time an injustice was perpetuated, but undoubtedly some of the wealth was not attained during an injustice, is equally an injustice. Perpetuating an injustice to remedy an injustice is not fair, just, or rational.

 

[ashurbanipal]

No, if affirmative action is going to exist, then I like the idea of merit based affirmative action. In other words, showing preference to minorities and giving them opportunities/positions/admission, on the basis their work, their grades, their profile, etcetera, meets the necessary criteria, even if this necessarily means equally qualified or well qualified Caucasian applicants are denied.

The problem with this suggestion is that intelligence is to some extent a product of culture, and grades, as a result, do not necessarily reflect intelligence or ability, especially when it comes to minorities. But as a suggestion, it's a good one. I'm at least sympathetic.

 

[matchlight]

Well, semantics is the term that means, er, what words mean. So, if you're not a fan of getting the semantics correct, I have no idea what your posts mean. You might as well write
adify;aoidnfb;iahsvjn;auhfouajf;iauhf'anrfkha;odsfadjfoaidjfshf

and you will neither lose nor gain any quality in your prose.



Then it is up to you to at least say why. I have distinguished between punishment and Affirmative Action. When you catch a thief, it is no punishment of the thief to return all the property he has stolen to its rightful owner. Punishment is throwing the thief in jail or something like that. Affirmative Action is akin to the former act, not the latter.



If you think it's a mere matter of high-sounding language, you've failed to understand something at a fundamental level.



The short end of what stick? What are you talking about?



Most colleges have no regulation imposed by government to do anything other than avoid racial discrimination; colleges that have diversity goals typically impose those on themselves.



This is true of doctoral/professional programs, but usually not master's, and almost never true of undergraduate, programs. This is a common misconception. There may be some hard upper limit to the number of students a college or university could handle, but I'm not aware of any university that has admitted that many students. This fact is why the vast majority of suits challenging some Affirmative Action decision fail.



Sounds like an argument against the decisions made by that particular dean.

I know exactly what your posts on this subject mean. You are trying to defend racial discrimination against whites, while dressing it up in nice-sounding terms.