Affirmative Action is necessary and right
| June 30th, 2003In the comments to another post, frequent Alas comments resident Joe writes:
Equal treatment is a wonderful ideal, but in the real world that’s not one of our choices.
Here’s the choice we have: do we have a big overall advantage for whites (no affirmative action), or do we have a somewhat smaller overall advantage for whites (affirmative action)? In real life, that’s the choice we have as a society, right now. We don’t get to choose whether racism exists or not (it does); we don’t get to choose to make the white advantage go away (it won’t). All we can choose is whether or not we’ll support a policy which will reduce the extent of the pro-white discrimination.
Would I support an alternative to AA? Sure, if someone has a realistic one. I don’t know of any, though. But, in effect, eliminating AA without providing an effective alternative is increasing pro-white discrimination.
It would be better if we had equal treatment and therefore didn’t need AA at all, just as it would be better if a stabbing victim didn’t need surgery at all. But, since we live in a society in which racism does exist, we should do something to fix it - even if it’s something painful. Once the person’s been badly stabbed, it’s better to go under the surgeon’s scalpel than not.
And, frankly, saying we must oppose AA in the name of “equal treatment,” even when the effects of opposing AA would be to increase discrimination’s overall impact - that just doesn’t make any sense to me.
June 30th, 2003 at 1:24 pm
We can do better than AA, though.
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
June 30th, 2003 at 4:07 pm
I would do this via trackback, if I could do trackback.
The last thing I’m writing about the UMich decision
This comment was written by Prometheus 6.Report this comment to the moderators
July 1st, 2003 at 12:24 am
I don’t know of anyone on the left who does not think that equal treatment is the ideal. However, we don’t have equality. I doubt that we will. There will always be some individuals who are stigmatized or marginalized for one reason or another.
This seems to be fundamental to human nature for some reason. Behaviorally it seems to be a hold over from the idea that *others* are a threat if they are not known or familiar to us.
I do agree that AA is not a very good way of dealing with this but it is like the old saw about capitalism being a terrible system, but the best one we have.
A bigger problem is the myths about AA that are spread mostly by people on the right side of the political spectrum. The primary one is that someone who gets a boost with AA is unqualified. I do not know when if ever that has been the case and I hired lots of people under AA during my management career. If a person was unqualified (for example he or she lied about his/her qualifications or recommendations) I could eliminate them not only for consideration for the job they were applying for but any other similar job.
Sometimes I had to hire an AA candidate when I would have preferred to hire another. But that is the point of it. It tries to take those kinds of intuitive connections we make with some people out of the equation and make it less emotional and … well … more fair and impartial. It is rather like the ideal you allude to… treating people absent our prejudice.
This comment was written by Marie Foster.Report this comment to the moderators
August 21st, 2003 at 8:22 pm
Another perspective
This comment was written by -=-Nurse Ratched's Notebook-=-.Imagine, if you will, a line of millions of people waiting for food. The line isn’t single-file, but fluctuating in width and length. For most, it is the only way they know to get food, though a very few are willing to get out of…
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June 9th, 2004 at 10:03 am
If this is the Ampersand I’ve seen in the newsgroups, he’s an old-school bigot who absolutely hates white men and is violently opposed to not discriminating against them.
“Would I support an alternative to AA? Sure, if someone has a realistic one.”
How about Civil Rights Ampersand?
No, I know you’d never support the idea of Civil Rights for white men.
I’ll leave the rest alone as Ampersand uses the rubrik of ‘white privilege’ as an excuse to piss on poor white men, who don’t see this white privilege that Ampersand and his communist buddies have made up.
The big problem with a Marxist analysis is that there is no actual analysis done. You define things in terms of two sides, typically called the oppressors and the oppressed, and everything follows from that. There is no evil that you won’t justify against the ‘oppressors’ and nothing the ‘oppressed’ can do, even when it’s exacly what’s so wrong when done by the ‘oppressors’, is not justified and supported. It’s not an analysis, it’s hypocrisy on a massive scale, and in this context racism and sexism incarnate. And that’s Ampersand in a nutshell, as it were.
Yeah, this is an old blog, I thought I’d comment anyway.
Either you support Civil Rights, or you do not. Ampersand opposes *my* civil rights on racist and sexist grounds. And he’s complained that I lack civility.
Rich
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June 9th, 2004 at 12:13 pm
Hey, it’s Rich Payner! Hi, Rich, how are you doing.
I don’t see any reason to debate you, Rich, since I’m sure you haven’t changed. And since you also call folks like Martin Luthor King Jr. “racist,” being called a “racist” by you is hardly a credible insult.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
June 9th, 2004 at 1:17 pm
Huh.
He also apparently thoroughly enjoys calling women bitches.
So long, credibility.
—Myca
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators