follow up my to affirmative action rant

FatbackFatback 6,746 Posts
edited August 2005 in Strut Central
this articulates my arguments against current practices of affirmative action.
(better than i did last week)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/magazine/28ROBERTS.html?pagewanted=print

Jeff Rosen, appeared in this week's New York Times Magazine:

IV. D.N.A. and the Future of Affirmative Action

If current demographic trends continue, over the next few decades the United States will become more diverse. The Census Bureau estimates that the number of non-Hispanic whites may shrink to less than half of the population before 2060 and that Hispanics will soon outnumber blacks. As intermarriage rates continue to rise, more and more Americans will consider themselves multiracial. This is a recipe for conflicts over affirmative action and public entitlements.

To better understand these coming battles, I phoned Peter H. Schuck, a professor at Yale Law School and the author of ''Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance.'' Schuck emphasized what he called ''the growing and palpable absurdity of color-coding and racial preferences in a population as hybridized, individualistic and immigration-driven as ours.'' He predicted a rise in the number of state limitations or bans on affirmative action, as well as the increasing fragility of Grutter v. Bollinger, the 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2003 that upheld affirmative action in higher education.

In her opinion for the court in Grutter, Sandra Day O'Connor noted that ''it has been 25 years'' since the court first approved the use of racial preferences in higher education, and she added that ''since that time, the number of minority applicants with high grades and test scores has indeed increased.'' O'Connor concluded hopefully, ''We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.''

What to make of O'Connor's prediction? There's no guarantee, first of all, that in 25 years O'Connor's opinion will still be the law of the land. In Grutter, she cast the swing vote on a divided court, and if Roberts succeeds her, he may view affirmative-action programs less indulgently. (As a young Justice Department official in 1981, he wrote a biting criticism of a defense of a federal affirmative-action program by the outgoing head of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.) Even if the Supreme Court continues to approve of affirmative action in higher education in 25 years, it's possible to imagine a challenge to the policy from a rejected white applicant, arguing, in effect, that O'Connor had promised that affirmative action would no longer be necessary by 2028. In response, defenders of affirmative action might argue that O'Connor was too optimistic, and that racial preferences were still necessary to maintain educational diversity in the face of continuing gaps in grades and test scores.

But would this reply persuade the court to preserve affirmative action beyond its expiration date? Schuck pointed to a recent paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research expressing skepticism about O'Connor's prediction. The study notes that the gap between white and black test scores, which narrowed in the 80's, actually widened in the 90's. And the authors of the study conclude that black economic gains over the next 25 years are likely to lead to less than 20 percent of the level of black representation at universities that affirmative action currently guarantees. How a justice like Roberts, presumably an affirmative-action skeptic, would respond if this pessimistic situation came to pass is hard to predict, but he might be reluctant to extend the term for another 25 years with no end in sight.

Affirmative-action programs may also be challenged by people other than disappointed white applicants. As America becomes increasingly multiracial, there may be debates over who, precisely, gets to qualify for racial preferences. Akhil Reed Amar, a colleague of Schuck's at Yale Law School, told me that people might eventually resort to genetic tests to prove their racial heritage. ''I can imagine a predominantly white person who has been rejected because of an affirmative-action program saying, 'I should benefit from it because I am of mixed race, and I can prove it with sophisticated DNA analysis showing the percentage of my genes that came from Africa,' '' he said. ''The university might respond: 'It's not a genetic test but a social understanding test, and since people don't perceive you as black, you haven't been subject to discrimination.' ''

In response to disputes like this, Amar suggested, state legislatures might conclude that ''the social-understanding test is unacceptably fuzzy, and at least science can give us some rules. So the government might require a genetic test because it's easy to administer.'' If, however, a state legislature were to declare that anyone with a drop of African-American blood is entitled to be considered black, the policy might provoke a bitter Supreme Court challenge. ''It would recall the shameful history in times of slavery and Jim Crow,'' Schuck told me, ''in which one drop of blood was sufficient to render an individual black for the laws of slavery. And it would be extremely distasteful for blacks and whites.'' Still, Schuck acknowledged, the problem of deciding who is eligible for affirmative action will grow only more urgent in an era of shrinking public resources. ''I think as pressure on affirmative-action programs increases,'' he said, ''affirmative-action programs will have to make refined judgments about eligibility.''

  Comments


  • alieNDNalieNDN 2,181 Posts
    this is unrelated, or maybe in some way it is, i guess i'l just rant...but i still have people go to me "affirmitive action is so stupid, all these minorities and..." (meanwhile im brown, but i guess to them i'm not "colored" at that particular moment in time).

    I dont check off those survey's that ask me if i'm a visible minority.
    My personal thought is at the crux, affirmative action as a concept is wrong and perversed...
    However we live in a really phucking peversed discriminating world.
    Somehow that has to be compensated.
    I'm not here to say how...

    BUT,

    it sickens me when someone can't at least step into someone else's shoes and TRY to appreciate where they're coming from. when my dad first came to canada and didn't have a penny to his name, he got screwed royally. the problem? well first of all he had an advantage, he DIDN'T have an Indian accent, and he DIDN'T have an Indian name (we're Goan, so that's what's up), but guess what happened when he went for countless interviews in person and they saw his dark face? "Oh i thought u were...." "I'm sorry sir, we're not hiring right now." These day's they aren't stupid enough to say "Oh i though you were" but they are definitely at liberty to say "we're not hiring right now".

    Like I said, im neutral on the issue, I can feel it and feel against it, but like i say to people that won't even try to understand,

    "Imagine a world where when you watched a movie or tv show, or commercial, or magazine front cover or bilboard and your color was not represented. I mean, really really think about how phucked up that would be, you can't even remotely picture it can you? and everytime you were represented it seemed like a token thing, like hey look a beer commercial, where's the token black guy....oh there he is at the corner of the screen, see there he is!" At that point they come to a sort of understanding. I am not telling them that affirmative action is right, im telling them consider why it may exist in the first place. i have to say though that i've seen a lot of progression over the years from commercials to children's cartoons(awesome!) but we still got a long way to go.

    one of the most reassuring things i've ever heard was when my european friend went to an all black club for the first time in his life and said, "man that was wierd, not saying it was bad, but i really felt wierd, just odd, sheit, you must go through that all the time!!"

    affirmative action ain't gonna solve humanity's stupidity...but people are being phucked over way too much for nothing to be done.


    peace

  • asprinasprin 1,765 Posts
    I wish they would only put this much effort into solving the reason for affirmative action in the first place instead of trying to predict how complex it will get in the future.

  • Birdman9Birdman9 5,417 Posts
    I wish they would only put this much effort into solving the reason for affirmative action in the first place instead of trying to predict how complex it will get in the future.


  • DrWuDrWu 4,021 Posts
    Here's al little food for thought while we're on the sujbect/subjugated. THe title of the proceeding book is misleading because the programs described were not Affirmative Action policies but rather entitlements. I believe that this shows how long we have to go in leveling the playing field. From the NYT book review this weekend.



    WHEN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION WAS WHITE
    An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America.
    By Ira Katznelson.
    238 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. $25.95.

    By NICK KOTZ
    Published: August 28, 2005


    After years of battling racial discrimination and braving state-sanctioned violence -- with hundreds of Southern black churches set fire to and scores of citizens beaten or murdered for daring to challenge American apartheid -- the civil rights movement achieved a climactic victory when President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965. It was the outcome of ''a shining moment in the conscience of man,'' declared the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In less than two years, the nation did more to advance equal rights for minorities than at any time since Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.



    The 1964 Civil Rights Act struck down the South's segregation laws, outlawed employment discrimination and forbade discrimination in federal programs. For black Americans living in the South, the voting rights law finally secured the right to the ballot. And President Johnson initiated a sweeping new government policy called affirmative action. Its purpose was to overcome at least some of the accumulated human damage caused by 350 years of slavery and Jim Crow, and to ensure further progress toward equality.

    Benefiting from that ''shining moment'' in the 1960's, a black middle class has prospered and grown rapidly. Yet millions of African-Americans remain mired in poverty in a nation bitterly divided over whether special help to minorities should continue. Affirmative action programs have long been under siege, vigorously attacked in Congress and the federal courts and criticized for ''discriminating'' against the white majority. With conservatives dominating the federal government, civil rights groups and other liberal organizations have waged a mostly defensive battle to protect the gains of the 1960's. Fresh ideas and effective leadership to advance the American ideals of equality and social justice have been in short supply.

    Ira Katznelson, the Ruggles professor of political science and history at Columbia University, enters this fray with a provocative new book, ''When Affirmative Action Was White,'' which seeks to provide a broader historical justification for continuing affirmative action programs. Katznelson's principal focus is on the monumental social programs of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Harry Truman's Fair Deal in the 1930's and 1940's. He contends that those programs not only discriminated against blacks, but actually contributed to widening the gap between white and black Americans -- judged in terms of educational achievement, quality of jobs and housing, and attainment of higher income. Arguing for the necessity of affirmative action today, Katznelson contends that policy makers and the judiciary previously failed to consider just how unfairly blacks had been treated by the federal government in the 30 years before the civil rights revolution of the 1960's.

    This history has been told before, but Katznelson offers a penetrating new analysis, supported by vivid examples and statistics. He examines closely how the federal government discriminated against black citizens as it created and administered the sweeping social programs that provided the vital framework for a vibrant and secure American middle class. Considered revolutionary at the time, the new legislation included the Social Security system, unemployment compensation, the minimum wage, protection of the right of workers to join labor unions and the G.I. Bill of Rights.

    Even though blacks benefited to a degree from many of these programs, Katznelson shows how and why they received far less assistance than whites did. He documents the political process by which powerful Southern Congressional barons shaped the programs in discriminatory ways -- as their price for supporting them. (A black newspaper editorial criticized Roosevelt for excluding from the minimum wage law the black women who worked long hours for $4.50 a week at the resort the president frequented in Warm Springs, Ga.)

    At the time, most blacks in the labor force were employed in agriculture or as domestic household workers. Members of Congress from the Deep South demanded that those occupations be excluded from the minimum wage, Social Security, unemployment insurance and workmen's compensation. When labor unions scored initial victories in organizing poor factory workers in the South after World War II, the Southern Congressional leaders spearheaded legislation to cripple those efforts. The Southerners' principal objective, Katznelson contends, was to safeguard the racist economic and social order known as the Southern ''way of life.''


    After years of battling racial discrimination and braving state-sanctioned violence -- with hundreds of Southern black churches set fire to and scores of citizens beaten or murdered for daring to challenge American apartheid -- the civil rights movement achieved a climactic victory when President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965. It was the outcome of ''a shining moment in the conscience of man,'' declared the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In less than two years, the nation did more to advance equal rights for minorities than at any time since Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.



    The 1964 Civil Rights Act struck down the South's segregation laws, outlawed employment discrimination and forbade discrimination in federal programs. For black Americans living in the South, the voting rights law finally secured the right to the ballot. And President Johnson initiated a sweeping new government policy called affirmative action. Its purpose was to overcome at least some of the accumulated human damage caused by 350 years of slavery and Jim Crow, and to ensure further progress toward equality.

    Benefiting from that ''shining moment'' in the 1960's, a black middle class has prospered and grown rapidly. Yet millions of African-Americans remain mired in poverty in a nation bitterly divided over whether special help to minorities should continue. Affirmative action programs have long been under siege, vigorously attacked in Congress and the federal courts and criticized for ''discriminating'' against the white majority. With conservatives dominating the federal government, civil rights groups and other liberal organizations have waged a mostly defensive battle to protect the gains of the 1960's. Fresh ideas and effective leadership to advance the American ideals of equality and social justice have been in short supply.

    Ira Katznelson, the Ruggles professor of political science and history at Columbia University, enters this fray with a provocative new book, ''When Affirmative Action Was White,'' which seeks to provide a broader historical justification for continuing affirmative action programs. Katznelson's principal focus is on the monumental social programs of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Harry Truman's Fair Deal in the 1930's and 1940's. He contends that those programs not only discriminated against blacks, but actually contributed to widening the gap between white and black Americans -- judged in terms of educational achievement, quality of jobs and housing, and attainment of higher income. Arguing for the necessity of affirmative action today, Katznelson contends that policy makers and the judiciary previously failed to consider just how unfairly blacks had been treated by the federal government in the 30 years before t he civil rights revolution of the 1960's.

    This history has been told before, but Katznelson offers a penetrating new analysis, supported by vivid examples and statistics. He examines closely how the federal government discriminated against black citizens as it created and administered the sweeping social programs that provided the vital framework for a vibrant and secure American middle class. Considered revolutionary at the time, the new legislation included the Social Security system, unemployment compensation, the minimum wage, protection of the right of workers to join labor unions and the G.I. Bill of Rights.

    Even though blacks benefited to a degree from many of these programs, Katznelson shows how and why they received far less assistance than whites did. He documents the political process by which powerful Southern Congressional barons shaped the programs in discriminatory ways -- as their price for supporting them. (A black newspaper editorial criticized Roosevelt for excluding from the minimum wage law the black women who worked long hours for $4.50 a week at the resort the president frequented in Warm Springs, Ga.)

    At the time, most blacks in the labor force were employed in agriculture or as domestic household workers. Members of Congress from the Deep South demanded that those occupations be excluded from the minimum wage, Social Security, unemployment insurance and workmen's compensation. When labor unions scored initial victories in organizing poor factory workers in the South after World War II, the Southern Congressional leaders spearheaded legislation to cripple those efforts. The Southerners' principal objective, Katznelson contends, was to safeguard the racist economic and social order known as the Southern ''way of life.''


  • motown67motown67 4,513 Posts
    this articulates my arguments against current practices of affirmative action.

    (better than i did last week)



    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/magazine/28ROBERTS.html?pagewanted=print



    Jeff Rosen, appeared in this week's New York Times Magazine:



    IV. D.N.A. and the Future of Affirmative Action



    If current demographic trends continue, over the next few decades the United States will become more diverse. The Census Bureau estimates that the number of non-Hispanic whites may shrink to less than half of the population before 2060 and that Hispanics will soon outnumber blacks.



    I'm suspect of this article right here because Latinos already passed up blacks by a few percentage points.



    As intermarriage rates continue to rise, more and more Americans will consider themselves multiracial. This is a recipe for conflicts over affirmative action and public entitlements.





    This argument comes up from time to time. In practice though, if you're half white and half black and people look at you are you going to be called mixed, white or black? Halle Berry's mom is white, how many people have called her mixed or white? I'm still waiting for that count. For Latinos and Asians mixing with whites the race line isn't as rigid, but if you just have a little black in you, you're black.



    To better understand these coming battles, I phoned Peter H. Schuck, a professor at Yale Law School and the author of ''Diversity in America: Keeping Government at a Safe Distance.'' Schuck emphasized what he called ''the growing and palpable absurdity of color-coding and racial preferences in a population as hybridized, individualistic and immigration-driven as ours.''



    Immigrants have been coming to America from day one, that still hasn't stopped racism nor the division of people by ethnicity, etc. Somehow this idea that because people will have mutli-racial relationships and immigration is still here will suddenly end the defining of people by their race and ethnicity rings a little hollow.



    In her opinion for the court in Grutter, Sandra Day O'Connor noted that ''it has been 25 years'' since the court first approved the use of racial preferences in higher education, and she added that ''since that time, the number of minority applicants with high grades and test scores has indeed increased.'' O'Connor concluded hopefully, ''We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.''



    Which minority groups are they talking about? Latinos are now the 2nd largest minority group in the U.S. and have the lowest education levels, highest drop out rates, and the highest levels of poverty in the U.S. Blacks still have low college attendence rates, high drop out rates, etc. The numbers of blacks and Latinos going to college have increased, especially if you take the starting point as the 60s and 70s when segregation was ending, but overall it's not that good. Even Asians, who have the highest education and college rates of any group in the U.S. are held up by the number of Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese students. Other groups like Cambodians and Laotians are down at the bottom. I think this might be a hint at the "model minority" idea i.e. Asians have made it into college, Blacks and Laitnos can do it to, which hasn't held up.Not only that, but when the number of Asians in college took a huge increase in the 1980s there were many charges against the University of California system here that they were rejecting Asian applicants because they were "changing the nature/face of the instutition," code words for there's too many yellow people and not enough white ones.





    Affirmative-action programs may also be challenged by people other than disappointed white applicants. As America becomes increasingly multiracial, there may be debates over who, precisely, gets to qualify for racial preferences. Akhil Reed Amar, a colleague of Schuck's at Yale Law School, told me that people might eventually resort to genetic tests to prove their racial heritage. ''I can imagine a predominantly white person who has been rejected because of an affirmative-action program saying, 'I should benefit from it because I am of mixed race, and I can prove it with sophisticated DNA analysis showing the percentage of my genes that came from Africa,' '' he said. ''The university might respond: 'It's not a genetic test but a social understanding test, and since people don't perceive you as black, you haven't been subject to discrimination.' ''



    Again, here's the mixed race argument. This "predominantly white person" would have to be passing for white and consider themselves white for a college board to turn them down, because by American racial standards you're black if you have the littlest black blood and people know about it.



    Amerie, half Korean, half black, how many people are calling her Korean or mixed?



    And we're only talking about race here. Affirmative Action also applies to women. Last time I checked about 90%+ of all the CEO's in America were white males. That glass ceiling still seems to be there.

  • GrafwritahGrafwritah 4,184 Posts
    Has anyone considered the likelyhood of universal higher education?

    That would make this a moot discussion.

    With the necessity of a degree these days, I wouldn't find it at all odd if there was eventually "college for free."

    Even caucasians.

  • BrianBrian 7,618 Posts
    Has anyone considered the likelyhood of universal higher education?

    That would make this a moot discussion.

    With the necessity of a degree these days, I wouldn't find it at all odd if there was eventually "college for free."

    Even caucasians.
    i can see this happening in like a hundred years and definitely not in america.

  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,905 Posts
    Has anyone considered the likelyhood of universal higher education?

    That would make this a moot discussion.

    With the necessity of a degree these days, I wouldn't find it at all odd if there was eventually "college for free."

    Even caucasians.
    i can see this happening in like a hundred years and definitely not in america.

    There are already a few countries around the world that have free higher education. Funny thing tho... I know this just because I met all of them while going to school in the US. I always asked them why they were in the US if school is free there. Always the same answer... If you can get a degree in the US it means more. But I think most just used it as a way to move to the US for good.

  • DrWuDrWu 4,021 Posts
    this articulates my arguments against current practices of affirmative action.
    (better than i did last week)

    http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/magazine/28ROBERTS.html?pagewanted=print

    Jeff Rosen, appeared in this week's New York Times Magazine:

    IV. D.N.A. and the Future of Affirmative Action

    If current demographic trends continue, over the next few decades the United States will become more diverse. The Census Bureau estimates that the number of non-Hispanic whites may shrink to less than half of the population before 2060 and that Hispanics will soon outnumber blacks.

    I'm suspect of this article right here because Latinos already passed up blacks by a few percentage points.



    Mo, last figures have blacks and hispanics tied, though trennding in the direction you suggest. http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/usinterimproj/natprojtab01a.pdf


    The info in the book is pretty indisputable and not hard to understand in the context of apartheid era America. I suggest you examine the arguments very closely because the shit is very disturbing.

  • FatbackFatback 6,746 Posts
    Affirmative action is an attempt to give reparations to descendents of African slaves and Native Americans not White women, or Koreans, Eritreans, Lebanese, Pakistani or any other group you can classify as non-white.

    This talk of ???black blood percentages??? is too Jim Crow for my blood. No thanks.

    The real solution is to improve public education and access to health care. Everything else falls in line after that. (Maslow)

  • ZeusZeus 162 Posts
    The real solution is to hire the person most qualified for the job, no matter who they are or where they come from[/b]. Everything else falls in line after that.

    Real bosses know the deal!

  • DrWuDrWu 4,021 Posts
    Affirmative action is an attempt to give reparations to descendents of African slaves and Native Americans not White women, or Koreans, Eritreans, Lebanese, Pakistani or any other group you can classify as non-white.

    This talk of ???black blood percentages??? is too Jim Crow for my blood. No thanks.

    The real solution is to improve public education and access to health care. Everything else falls in line after that. (Maslow)


    That's actually not correct. Whether you agree with it or not, affirmative action is used to level play field for protected groups including the disabled and sometimes vietnam vets. All of whom have historically been excluded by the white power structure (aka the American gov't at the local, state and federal level) from freely participating in the land of the free. IMO access=$$$$$$$. There is no way that you will rectify historical imbalances without one group paying (whether its preferences or through taxation to pay for entitlements/reparations/directed bus. loans) for another groups' access to dollars, jobs and decision making. If a credible system exists, 'splain me.

    I do not believe that better education alone will solve poor people's problems. Without offering real world $$$$$ and access, minorities will still face discrimination by society. BTW improving health care is a serious $$$/access issue and is an entitlement just like social security, welfare and gov't backed student loans.

  • FatbackFatback 6,746 Posts
    affirmative action is used[/b] to level play field for protected groups including the disabled and sometimes vietnam vets.

    you should look up the histroy of affirmative action policy

    ok, but we should not have a huge difference between the policy intent and the practice.

    you stumbled onto the what will destroy the policy:
    "leveling the field" for protected groups* exluded by the "white power structure". Especially since white women are reaping the most ebenfits from affirmative action.

    list the protected groups.

  • DrWuDrWu 4,021 Posts
    I am well aware of the history of AA. I also sat on the Affirmative Action Board at my university. No job posting was allowed to go forward without our committee's ok. So I am familiar with how it applies to the hiring practices at a large academic institution.



    If at some point it becomes impossible to effectively offer access (due to the intermingling of races) or it needs to be means tested (let's say for college grants) then I don't mind altering the system. We're not even close to said situation on the racial front IMO.



    Are you saying that women, white or not, should not be a protected class? I think that women's gains have been impressive and necessary. Perhaps you disagree.



    Protected "classes" differ amongst jurisdictions but often inlcude:



    Racial minorities (no matter what their immigration status is)

    Women

    Disabled (mental and physical)

    Vietnam Vet



    I may be forgetting several others. Strutters please chime in if your up on this.



    Lastly, AA is one tool in the chest. People also need access to loans, health care, education and technology. The article in question points out the US gov't understood this in the depression and WW II era and got in the business of very effectively offering a hand up. Meanwhile, blacks (and others) were excluded.








  • Has anyone considered the likelyhood of universal higher education?

    That would make this a moot discussion.

    With the necessity of a degree these days, I wouldn't find it at all odd if there was eventually "college for free."

    Even caucasians.

    see: community colleges, while not free its pretty darn cheap

    the problem would still exist cause there will always be elite colleges and there will always be a limited number of people allowed to go to these colleges

  • GrafwritahGrafwritah 4,184 Posts
    Has anyone considered the likelyhood of universal higher education?

    That would make this a moot discussion.

    With the necessity of a degree these days, I wouldn't find it at all odd if there was eventually "college for free."

    Even caucasians.

    see: community colleges, while not free its pretty darn cheap

    the problem would still exist cause there will always be elite colleges and there will always be a limited number of people allowed to go to these colleges

    The world will never be 100% equal. Most "elite colleges" are private anyway, same as K-12 "elite schools", etc. But if people could go to any state-funded school for free I think that would lessen the impact.

    Or exacerbate it.

    One of the two.
Sign In or Register to comment.