OK, what's your solution? Affirmative action is a bandaid, and its effects are at best poorly distributed. But it actually works to reduce ethnic imbalance, and most people (I assume you too) agree that's a good thing.
You have an alternative to suggest that doesn't have equivalent problems?
Just recognize that (I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume) that, because you are a middle class white man, probably 90% of the reason you oppose "affirmative action" is because it negatively impacts your own demographic group. Well, sorry. We're in a priviledged group; get over it.
Just recognize that (I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume) that, because you are a middle class white man, probably 90% of the reason you oppose "affirmative action" is because it negatively impacts your own demographic group.
Arguments for or against AA aside, this line of reasoning, where you invalidate somebody's argument based on what demographic group they belong to (white middle class males in this case), really seems like a simple ad hominem argument. You're no longer addressing what is said - only who is saying it.
Sigh... First: that's not a logical argument, it's a message directly to the poster (and anyone like-minded, probably including you) intended to provoke introspection. Read it again, I don't claim anything in those words says anything about AA.
Second: you seriously think it's inappropriate to point out that people tend to have opinions which advantage their own station? Really? You're not simply saying that this is incorrect, you're actually saying that I'm not allowed to make the argument that white people might not like AA because it disadvantages white people. That's insane, sorry.
I agree that affirmative action is a good thing, but I thought it was a quite interesting discussion we were having.
Let's go back to the original topic at hand and refrain from derailing the discussion with personal messages directly to the poster and those like-minded.
A good argument is not solely made up of logical arguments, but it does not sacrifice logic for pathos. If your argument is sound you should be able to defend it both logically and emotionally.
As I have said, the alternative is affirmative action for the poor in general.
Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other social programs don't discriminate based on race, but certainly have that effect where there is larger poverty among African-Americans. What would be the advantage of basing them on race?
I'm questioning the best way to achieve the economic effect that we agree on, reducing racial inequality, in the same way that I question if Carbon credits are the best way to reduce emissions (simply taxing fossil fuels, I believe.
It sounds like you simply don't understand what affirmative action is. It's not welfare. You're seriously saying we should give out slots on boards of directors to people on food stamps?
AA doesn't correct for immediate need, it corrects for the fact that people growing up in unpriviledged environments lack advantages. So they have to work a job instead of going to a test prep class. They go to schools with high teacher turnover and poor class selection. They live in social environments with high crime. So they don't get into the "right" colleges, and they don't get the great jobs.
At what spot on that chain would your "make AA like food stamps" idea actually work? You're not even addressing the problem.
The first sentence is just bad statistics. Obviously all that's required is that "more" poor black kids grow up in unpriviledged environemnts (something that I assume you agree with) to have a problem worth correcting. You can't disprove a correlation with a single counterexample.
And why must I "justify" that it be "race based"? There's a problem. It's a solution. It works, if imperfectly. I'd like to see a better option too. (Not least because one of it's biggest problems is that it pisses off entitled white kids like you and starts pointless internet flames like this.)
So I repeat what I said earlier: if you have another solution that works better, then propose it and advocate for it. Right now all you're doing is whining.
(edit to avoid prolonging thread: both replies have ignored the issue mentioned upthread, namely that AA corrects for disadvantage in the past, not currently. You can't give executive jobs to unqualified poor people, you need to start farther upstream. So if that's your suggestion, come up with a new one -- you're essentially saying "eliminate poverty", which is dumb.)
> (Not least because one of it's biggest problems is that it pisses off entitled white kids like you and starts pointless internet flames like this.)
> Right now all you're doing is whining.
Stop the nonsense.
I'm going to specifically look at college admissions since it's a pretty interesting area. Specifically, I want to point out a passage from here (the article itself is worth reading): http://www.tnr.com/book/review/disadvantages
> Moreover, some universities have been successful in maintaining racial diversity despite a ban on using race in admissions. At UT Austin, which was forbidden by a lower court from considering race between 1997 and 2003, a class-based affirmative action plan, combined with a plan to automatically admit students in the top 10 percent of their high school class, resulted in a net increase in racial diversity. In 1996, prior to the ban on race, African Americans and Latinos made up 18.8 percent of the freshman class. In 2004, under the socioeconomic and top 10 percent plan, the combined representation had risen to 21.4 percent.
Not only is such policy less racist, but it is more effective!
If a policy benefits poor people in general and more black people are poor it would stand to reason that it would help more black people. I think that the problem with AA is that it attempts to treat the entire country. A better solution would be to concentrate efforts on the poorest communities with the largest percentage of black population. Once those cities start to succeed it would help turn around institutional bias. I don't thank that AA has helped reduce bias, it seems like it has served more as a cosmetic measure. I could be wrong.
You must justify it because you are advocating for race based discrimination.
We have already proposed an alternative: economics based discrimination. It is better because it captures the group of people that deserve help more accurately.
It came about when the disparity was more substantial. That it's less obvious now is a sign that it's working. Institutional underrepresentation of poor white people is already dealt with separately by the lack of historical institutional discrimination against them.
Affirmative action is about dealing with the discrimination in education that often leads to unequal opportunity. How do you deal with the opportunity gap without acknowledging the impacted groups?
You have an alternative to suggest that doesn't have equivalent problems?
Just recognize that (I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume) that, because you are a middle class white man, probably 90% of the reason you oppose "affirmative action" is because it negatively impacts your own demographic group. Well, sorry. We're in a priviledged group; get over it.