The last thing I’m writing about the UMich decision

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.

“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

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.

He also apparently thoroughly enjoys calling women bitches.

So long, credibility.

—Myca