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Do you support affirmative action?

Do you support affirmative action?

  • yes, racial minorities are disadvantaged

    Votes: 13 19.7%
  • yes but it should be based on income, not race

    Votes: 8 12.1%
  • no

    Votes: 43 65.2%
  • not sure

    Votes: 2 3.0%

  • Total voters
    66

Masterhawk

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Affirmative action, in theory, is government help geared towards a disadvantaged group. In the US, htis is primarily geared towards ethnic minorities such as blacks and native Americans.
 
Affirmative action, in theory, is government help geared towards a disadvantaged group. In the US, htis is primarily geared towards ethnic minorities such as blacks and native Americans.

In theory it has some validity. In theory, it works like this

You are a tennis coach at a major league university-say Stanford. You have one scholarship spot to give and two candidates. Candidate one is a rich kid with a private coach. he has 24/7 access to a top indoor tennis facility and his parents send him all over the country, with a coach and trainer to play tournaments. He is ranked in the top ten in the Country in his age group

The second kid comes from a lower middle class environment. His single mother works a second job to pay for his tennis. He is number one on a very good HS team and his HS coach works with him during the summer at a public court. He wins the local tennis tournaments in his state and is an extremely good all around athlete. However, he doesn't have a really high national ranking because his mother cannot afford to send him to Kalamazoo, the Orange Bowl and other big national ranking tournaments.

Now the coach might well pick the second kid. Why? because the coach might conclude that if that athlete had a private coach, access to a top of the line practice facility 24/7 and if his mother could afford to send him to the big tournaments, he might well be ranked ahead of the other boy. The coach might also believe that the first player has maxed out his talent since he has every possible advantage but the second boy, with the sort of program Stanford has to offer, could grow into a collegiate champion

Now that would be a proper use of affirmative action. Sadly that is not what happens in most cases. In many cases "black" was seen as "disadvantaged" so lots of Ivy schools are full of wealthy prep school "Minorities" who didn't produce despite advantages but were given breaks due to their race. and that is wrong.
 
Affirmative action, in theory, is government help geared towards a disadvantaged group. In the US, htis is primarily geared towards ethnic minorities such as blacks and native Americans.

No. It's racist.
 
No. It's racist.

as currently practiced in both government and universities that is true. In a world where the commerce clause was actually properly interpreted, I would say a private university should be able to accept whomever it wanted but since Title VII is the law of the land, affirmative action is contrary to that
 
BTW anonymous Polls suck, IMHO
 
I mean...if there are systemic things in place holding any particular group back then we should address those issues, not put a band aid on it to the detriment of other people who are deserving as well but get kicked to the curb because they don't fit the desired demographic.
 
affirmative action is appropriate, needed, and beneficial
as a former administrator of a federal affirmative action program, i witnessed how beneficial this self-help program can be to level the playing field
that said, affirmative action eligibility should be based only on economic disadvantage. racial, gender, ethnic factors should in no way be used to identify who is eligible to participate in affirmative action programs
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race, is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
~ Chief Justice John Roberts

minorities will be disproportionately eligible to participate because they are disproportionately disadvantaged, economically
but many majority members are also economically disadvantaged and should thus be eligible to participate in programs intended to elevate persons out of poverty
 
affirmative action is appropriate, needed, and beneficial
as a former administrator of a federal affirmative action program, i witnessed how beneficial this self-help program can be to level the playing field
that said, affirmative action eligibility should be based only on economic disadvantage. racial, gender, ethnic factors should in no way be used to identify who is eligible to participate in affirmative action programs
~ Chief Justice John Roberts

minorities will be disproportionately eligible to participate because they are disproportionately disadvantaged, economically
but many majority members are also economically disadvantaged and should thus be eligible to participate in programs intended to elevate persons out of poverty


its disgusting to punish people who have nothing to do with the plight of some minorities to reward other minorities who often haven't suffered any detriment.

The black kids who were given acceptances at top universities with much lower scores than whites or asians usually did not come from really disadvantaged backgrounds.
 
Affirmative Action does not fight racism..it increases it, imo.

Giving people a job - that the color of one's skin is irrelevant - over other people, for NO OTHER REASON than the amount of melanin in their skin is staggeringly wrong.

Maybe it worked when it was first brought out - though I doubt it. But now it is dead wrong.

You want to fight racism?

Stop ****ing talking about it so much.

When I go to Canada - it is barely mentioned. When I come back to America - people won't shut up about it.

(and save the 'Canada is all 'white'' crap. Canada is actually more ethnically diverse than America).

Stop looking at people as different 'races' and just as people and racism will virtually vanish within a generation.
 
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In theory it has some validity. In theory, it works like this

You are a tennis coach at a major league university-say Stanford. You have one scholarship spot to give and two candidates. Candidate one is a rich kid with a private coach. he has 24/7 access to a top indoor tennis facility and his parents send him all over the country, with a coach and trainer to play tournaments. He is ranked in the top ten in the Country in his age group

The second kid comes from a lower middle class environment. His single mother works a second job to pay for his tennis. He is number one on a very good HS team and his HS coach works with him during the summer at a public court. He wins the local tennis tournaments in his state and is an extremely good all around athlete. However, he doesn't have a really high national ranking because his mother cannot afford to send him to Kalamazoo, the Orange Bowl and other big national ranking tournaments.

Now the coach might well pick the second kid. Why? because the coach might conclude that if that athlete had a private coach, access to a top of the line practice facility 24/7 and if his mother could afford to send him to the big tournaments, he might well be ranked ahead of the other boy. The coach might also believe that the first player has maxed out his talent since he has every possible advantage but the second boy, with the sort of program Stanford has to offer, could grow into a collegiate champion

Now that would be a proper use of affirmative action. Sadly that is not what happens in most cases. In many cases "black" was seen as "disadvantaged" so lots of Ivy schools are full of wealthy prep school "Minorities" who didn't produce despite advantages but were given breaks due to their race. and that is wrong.

That is not how affirmative action is supposed to work. It has nothing to do with advantages and your parents' wealth.

A coach can choose either of those students, for the reasons you state, and it would have nothing to do with race or affirmative action.

Affirmative action is to rectify what had been the practice in America of intentionally not hiring blacks or other minorities, or not admitting into certain schools blacks or other minorities...and rectify the lack of diversity in businesses and schools. It doesn't force any institution to hire a minority. But if a business is over a certain size, or works with the federal government, it has to show why it doesn't have a certain % of workers or attendees to jive with the geographical area or to jive with the # of applicants. That is, if a business is in an area with 50% blacks and other minorities, but has 90% white employees, it has to run a report to show the govt what # of minorities applied, and check boxes to show their skills and education so that it can be determined if on the face of things, those minorities weren't hired because the white ones hired had better skills or other qualifications.

It may seem unfair, but this law does not force businesses to hire unqualified minorities. It merely requires a report to show that there's not a pattern of discrimination and that the company is fairly hiring qualified applicants and not specially hiring whites or males. The reason for the law is because companies and schools did in fact do that: block out anyone other than white males for jobs, and particularly higher paying jobs. Had that situation not existed, affirmative action wouldn't have been necessary.

But at this stage, I think that affirmative action has done a fairly good job, from what I can tell, so I think it may no longer be necessary.
 
That is not how affirmative action is supposed to work. It has nothing to do with advantages and your parents' wealth.

A coach can choose either of those students, for the reasons you state, and it would have nothing to do with race or affirmative action.

Affirmative action is to rectify what had been the practice in America of intentionally not hiring blacks or other minorities, or not admitting into certain schools blacks or other minorities...and rectify the lack of diversity in businesses and schools. It doesn't force any institution to hire a minority. But if a business is over a certain size, or works with the federal government, it has to show why it doesn't have a certain % of workers or attendees to jive with the geographical area or to jive with the # of applicants. That is, if a business is in an area with 50% blacks and other minorities, but has 90% white employees, it has to run a report to show the govt what # of minorities applied, and check boxes to show their skills and education so that it can be determined if on the face of things, those minorities weren't hired because the white ones hired had better skills or other qualifications.

It may seem unfair, but this law does not force businesses to hire unqualified minorities. It merely requires a report to show that there's not a pattern of discrimination and that the company is fairly hiring qualified applicants and not specially hiring whites or males. The reason for the law is because companies and schools did in fact do that: block out anyone other than white males for jobs, and particularly higher paying jobs. Had that situation not existed, affirmative action wouldn't have been necessary.

But at this stage, I think that affirmative action has done a fairly good job, from what I can tell, so I think it may no longer be necessary.


the analogy apparently escapes some. its discrimination and it unfairly punishes people for being of the wrong race It violates title VII and should be made illegal across the land.
 
anyone here other than me ever litigate a Title VII lawsuit in a federal jury trial? the law states an employer can do something for a good reason, a bad reason or no reason at all but not an illegal reason (i.e. discriminate based on race, gender, religion, national origin, age or in some cases handicap). affirmative action sure violates Title VII if you actually apply the law
 
No. It's racist.

No, it's not racist. It's not discriminating against a race or age or gender to block them out of a company or school. Most companies and schools are primarily white, anyway.

It was a law passed to try to prevent companies and schools from continuing to block blacks and other minorities from companies and schools. It doesn't force companies to hire anyone. If a company is over a certain size, or works w/the fed govt, it merely requires a report to show data about people who have applied, who the co. hired, and certain stats about education and skills of each applicant, so the govt can see that the company didn't intentionally discriminate against minorities or certain ages or females. The report is done with special software that spits out the results, so the govt doesn't have to read the data; the software does the calculations.

If a company or school chooses to hire or admit unqualified minorities, that's their decision. Aff. action does not require them to hire anyone not qualified, or even a qualified minority over a white person.

The law exists because companies and schools did block minorities from being hired or admitted in the past. After integration was required, some companies and of course schools refused to obey the law of integration. So quotas were installed, to force integration, since the institutions, particularly in the south, weren't following the law. Then it was changed to this affirmative action plan.

I think the quotas and the aff. action plan were instrumental in integrating the business and school worlds. But at this stage of the game, i think they've accomplished what they were trying to do. These were not racist laws, though, even though it resulted in companies and schools looking at minority status of applicants as one data to consider.

Racism: prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

The affirmative action plan is not racism, since it wasn't prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that the minority is superior.

It's sad that these plans had to be passed, but they did, because of what our businesses and schools were continuing to do to minorities...block them from good jobs and schools because of their minority.

I knew of an engineering company that wouldn't hire any female, period. I worked at a law firm where a black temp secretary came in to work at our all white firm and an attorney stood behind her and made big lips faces to make fun of her. I've had men tell me that a man should get a job over a woman because he deserved it more and likely had a family to support. I've had bosses admit that they paid women less because they're women.

It's a better country because of affirmative action. But I think the work force and schools are integrated now, that I know of. But if businesses and schools revert to a lack of diversity, the plan may need to be put in place again.
 
anyone here other than me ever litigate a Title VII lawsuit in a federal jury trial? the law states an employer can do something for a good reason, a bad reason or no reason at all but not an illegal reason (i.e. discriminate based on race, gender, religion, national origin, age or in some cases handicap). affirmative action sure violates Title VII if you actually apply the law

By definition, a plan to correct a pattern of discrimination by having companies report their percentages of hiring of certain minorities versus the applicants, in order to show there was not a continuing pattern of discrimination....such a plan is not discrimination or racism.

Racism is prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior. That is what was going on that gave rise to quotas, and then relaxed to affirmative action. What had been going on was discrimination against races or females or certain ages on the belief that ones own race or age or gender was superior.

Had businesses and schools not discriminated, the government would not have had to devise a plan to try to counter the practice. Some institutions refused to obey the integration law (which some regarded as racist, too). Some people think that any consideration of race is racism. But as you can see from the definition, that is not the case.

Let's not pretend the govt just came out of nowhere to write laws "forcing" schools and companies to admit/hire minorities over white people or males or young people. This was a response to a pattern across the country of refusing to integrate the business world and schools.

There is also a misconception that aff. action forces companies and schools to hire/admit minorities. It does not. Now, some colleges, on their own, seek diversity and choose to admit minorities over whites for that reason. That's their decision. The govt does not require it. BUT...they would have to show that their admitting practices are nondiscriminatory.

A business could conceivably be within affirmative action laws and have 100% white employees. If it's in a town that's mainly white, and everyone who has applied was white, and it ran ads for job openings in places where the whole town would see it, then that would probably be fine. The co. doesn't have to go looking for minorities to hire. Even if it had one or two obviously unqualified applicants, the co. should be safe with a 100% white staff. It reflects the community. (Aff action applies only to large companies, not small ones.)
 
No, it's not racist. It's not discriminating against a race or age or gender to block them out of a company or school. Most companies and schools are primarily white, anyway.

It was a law passed to try to prevent companies and schools from continuing to block blacks and other minorities from companies and schools. It doesn't force companies to hire anyone. If a company is over a certain size, or works w/the fed govt, it merely requires a report to show data about people who have applied, who the co. hired, and certain stats about education and skills of each applicant, so the govt can see that the company didn't intentionally discriminate against minorities or certain ages or females. The report is done with special software that spits out the results, so the govt doesn't have to read the data; the software does the calculations.

If a company or school chooses to hire or admit unqualified minorities, that's their decision. Aff. action does not require them to hire anyone not qualified, or even a qualified minority over a white person.

The law exists because companies and schools did block minorities from being hired or admitted in the past. After integration was required, some companies and of course schools refused to obey the law of integration. So quotas were installed, to force integration, since the institutions, particularly in the south, weren't following the law. Then it was changed to this affirmative action plan.

I think the quotas and the aff. action plan were instrumental in integrating the business and school worlds. But at this stage of the game, i think they've accomplished what they were trying to do. These were not racist laws, though, even though it resulted in companies and schools looking at minority status of applicants as one data to consider.



The affirmative action plan is not racism, since it wasn't prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that the minority is superior.

It's sad that these plans had to be passed, but they did, because of what our businesses and schools were continuing to do to minorities...block them from good jobs and schools because of their minority.

I knew of an engineering company that wouldn't hire any female, period. I worked at a law firm where a black temp secretary came in to work at our all white firm and an attorney stood behind her and made big lips faces to make fun of her. I've had men tell me that a man should get a job over a woman because he deserved it more and likely had a family to support. I've had bosses admit that they paid women less because they're women.

It's a better country because of affirmative action. But I think the work force and schools are integrated now, that I know of. But if businesses and schools revert to a lack of diversity, the plan may need to be put in place again.

how is favoring a lesser qualified black over a better qualified white or Asian NOT racist?
 
it's idiotic to use race, because then you grant preferential treatment to say floyd maywhether's kids. Besides, there are plenty other groups who *in general* face as much or greater barriers (lgbt, the disabled). No, economic poverty is more promising, because that is without exception a disadvantage, and yeah there's plenty white people in this position. I mean even if you're one of the few from that background who gets into a top school and thrives, then you face obstacles of getting to far flung job interviews, doing a summer internship or study abroad, and just being able to afford rent at a foot-in-door location
 
In theory it has some validity. In theory, it works like this

You are a tennis coach at a major league university-say Stanford. You have one scholarship spot to give and two candidates. Candidate one is a rich kid with a private coach. he has 24/7 access to a top indoor tennis facility and his parents send him all over the country, with a coach and trainer to play tournaments. He is ranked in the top ten in the Country in his age group

The second kid comes from a lower middle class environment. His single mother works a second job to pay for his tennis. He is number one on a very good HS team and his HS coach works with him during the summer at a public court. He wins the local tennis tournaments in his state and is an extremely good all around athlete. However, he doesn't have a really high national ranking because his mother cannot afford to send him to Kalamazoo, the Orange Bowl and other big national ranking tournaments.

Now the coach might well pick the second kid. Why? because the coach might conclude that if that athlete had a private coach, access to a top of the line practice facility 24/7 and if his mother could afford to send him to the big tournaments, he might well be ranked ahead of the other boy. The coach might also believe that the first player has maxed out his talent since he has every possible advantage but the second boy, with the sort of program Stanford has to offer, could grow into a collegiate champion

Now that would be a proper use of affirmative action. Sadly that is not what happens in most cases. In many cases "black" was seen as "disadvantaged" so lots of Ivy schools are full of wealthy prep school "Minorities" who didn't produce despite advantages but were given breaks due to their race. and that is wrong.

Leaving aside the preferential treatment for athletes, which is not what education is about, it's a glaring enough issue of 'privileged' blacks getting the spots at these places that researchers noticed long ago - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more-blacks-but-which-ones.html

I picked that old story also because there's a juicy line from Bollinger, who defended UM's racial quota (yes, a hard quota) to SCOTUS before joining Columbia:

''I don't think it should matter for purposes of admissions in higher education. The issue is not origin, but social practices"

So because there's a lot of prejudice against blacks and hispanics Columbia should take them even unqualified. But then why not take especially those from rural areas, where it truly is terrible to be the one black kid, or the ghetto? Isn't that leveling the playing field even more?

Truth it, these academic elites don't give a damn about societal injustice. They take the prep school, and also foreign and immigrant, black kids because they're easy to control on campus and their parents just might have something to donate. Private schools demand discipline and the foreign/immigrant kids know that if they **** up, there goes the visa

It's really a sham to pretend to be more diverse than they are and makes a mockery of the real purpose of AA. If the minority kids they do give a leg up to aren't really disadvantaged, there's really no defending it
 
Affirmative Action does not fight racism..it increases it, imo.

Giving people a job - that the color of one's skin is irrelevant - over other people, for NO OTHER REASON than the amount of melanin in their skin is staggeringly wrong.

Maybe it worked when it was first brought out - though I doubt it. But now it is dead wrong.

You want to fight racism?

Stop ****ing talking about it so much.

When I go to Canada - it is barely mentioned. When I come back to America - people won't shut up about it.

(and save the 'Canada is all 'white'' crap. Canada is actually more ethnically diverse than America).

Stop looking at people as different 'races' and just as people and racism will virtually vanish within a generation.

I think you're on about something that doesn't even matter any more. Few employers do this, but some 70% of new jobs in the US are gained thru nepotism...which tends to favor the white and privileged when the position is highly sought. So to the extent businesses do still make it a point to hire minorities, i don't see how it can overcome the favoritism to every white worker's half cousin

The real issue is with college admissions, which is really the last path for the lower class to gain upward mobility

Also, no one in academia or the corporate world pretends to care about "combating racism" as in changing the attitudes of the deplorables. The idea is to uplift individuals who show promise yet were hindered in trying to reach that potential, and also to create a more diverse environment
 
When I go to Canada - it is barely mentioned. When I come back to America - people won't shut up about it.

(and save the 'Canada is all 'white'' crap. Canada is actually more ethnically diverse than America).

Stop looking at people as different 'races' and just as people and racism will virtually vanish within a generation.

Canada seems to have hit upon a great idea. Unlike the US which tracks certain key racial groups, the Canadian census is content to ask what national culture you identify with. So c. 33% of Canadians consider themselves Canadian, 18% consider themselves English, X% Scottish, X% French, etc. Makes more sense than race which is pseudo science to begin with and no one agrees on what "whites" are (Turks? Arabs? Jew?). It takes us back to the old 1% rule or having one drop of Negro in you made you a Negro.

I think that the Census Bureau should stop tracking people by race and stop all these applications that ask such questions.
 
I think you're on about something that doesn't even matter any more. Few employers do this, but some 70% of new jobs in the US are gained thru nepotism...which tends to favor the white and privileged when the position is highly sought. So to the extent businesses do still make it a point to hire minorities, i don't see how it can overcome the favoritism to every white worker's half cousin

The real issue is with college admissions, which is really the last path for the lower class to gain upward mobility

Also, no one in academia or the corporate world pretends to care about "combating racism" as in changing the attitudes of the deplorables. The idea is to uplift individuals who show promise yet were hindered in trying to reach that potential, and also to create a more diverse environment

I was using the the term 'hiring' as an example for all forms of affirmative action. I am fully cognizant that it primarily is in regards to scholastic matters.

As for your 70% nepotism stat?

It is, no offense, meaningless. Most people are not going to admit to a stranger that they hired someone due to nepotism. So that statistic is virtually impossible to tabulate.
It might be true. My guess is it is closer to 50% if not lower. You cannot hire hundreds of people at a time for a factory job based 70% on nepotism. You would take months/years to fill 7/10'th's of the positions.
And if you have run a business, than you know the worst possible thing to do is to hire a relative or friend as it is much harder to discipline them as you would any other employee AND often times they will take advantage of their friendship/relationship. Plus, it causes problems among the other employees. I would much rather hire a stranger that I can boss and fire as I see fit and not have to worry about family/friend loyalties.

In fact, I have a rule that I have maintained for decades...never do business with a friend/relative unless you absolutely have to.
 
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Canada seems to have hit upon a great idea. Unlike the US which tracks certain key racial groups, the Canadian census is content to ask what national culture you identify with. So c. 33% of Canadians consider themselves Canadian, 18% consider themselves English, X% Scottish, X% French, etc. Makes more sense than race which is pseudo science to begin with and no one agrees on what "whites" are (Turks? Arabs? Jew?). It takes us back to the old 1% rule or having one drop of Negro in you made you a Negro.

I think that the Census Bureau should stop tracking people by race and stop all these applications that ask such questions.

I agree with you 100%.
 
I agree with you 100%.

No it's a terrible idea. The way that redistricting works is republicans try to assign congressional districts based on what racial groups live where. If you take 2 districts in which 98% of the black voters will go for the democrat, now you can confine them all to a single district and ensure a republican gets one of them. It therefore diminishes the voting power of minorities and has led to many lawsuits, and the census data is the evidence of this nefarious plot that's usually used in court
 
If it's my business exactly why can't I be racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc in my hiring patterns? Why can't I decide that I don't want to associate with and pay a certain group of people?
 
No it's a terrible idea. The way that redistricting works is republicans try to assign congressional districts based on what racial groups live where. If you take 2 districts in which 98% of the black voters will go for the democrat, now you can confine them all to a single district and ensure a republican gets one of them. It therefore diminishes the voting power of minorities and has led to many lawsuits, and the census data is the evidence of this nefarious plot that's usually used in court
So you believe that race is more than just a skin color and represents beliefs, values, morals, etc.? Race to you is everything and MLK jr was just goofing around when he hoped that in the future people would be judged by some BS about content of character?

The fact is that racial differences are insignificant and there is no more reason in today's global society to worry about gerrymandering by race than there is of gerrymandering by income, religion, type of housing, ethnic background, or whatever. What possible reason is there to say that Blacks are so important and so privileged that we will gerrymander congressional district so that we can better guarantee that Blacks will have representatives? And how is doing so in keeping with Constitutional required equality?
Do you believe that good public policy, or good economics, is racially based?
 
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