End Affirmative Action

Ok you didn't see the contradiction...

The contradiction is that you wanted proof that the European nationality scholarships officially refused to give scholarships to black people. Implying that they were ok in your book if they didn't officially forbid scholarships going to black people. But then you were saying that although the UNCF doesn't officially refuse to give scholarships to white people, that doesn't matter because in practice they give most their scholarships to black people. That is a double standard you are employing there.

As to the rest of your post, yeah, the UNCF and the various white person focused scholarships do discriminate. But, that isn't illegal. Personally I can see why scholarships focused towards black people exist- to try to offset the inequality. But I have a harder time understanding why anybody would want to target scholarships just at white people.... To increase the inequality? What's the point in that?

 

The point would be to make it more equal. Compare myself and a very good friend of mine who is black. She was eligible to apply for 32 scholarships. I was eligible to apply for 16. Our grades were identical. Both of us active in sports. One of the scholarships I applied to she was not eligible for because it had to do with my father's job. All the other scholarships that I was ineligible for were race-based.

 

If you want to talk about equality we should include employment opportunities and the wealth of your parents in the discussion. It is true that college applicants who are black have access to more scholarships, but it is also true that on average college applicants who are white have parents with 14 times as much money. And white college graduates who are looking for jobs get 2.5 times more interviews with the same resume. You can't just focus on equalizing the few niches where one race has a leg up without equalizing the others too or else you are just widening the overall inequality.

 

BS. The poor minorities do not get the scholarships. Don't you get it? The scholarships go to doctor's kids with Hispanic last names. AA hurts minorities. They give people a reason to believe that a person is not as good as the other guy. When a minority goes to a college that uses race in their judgment, they can never prove that they are as good as the white guy that went to the same college. They may be as good or better, but even they will never know for sure.

 

Yeah there is some truth to that. I would prefer that we set up a broad array of scholarships based on the wealth of the parents rather than on race.

You are saying "AA" but you mean college admissions that consider race.

Regardless, that's just nonsense a handful of right wingers obsess about. Do you sit there and think about whether people who were members of student organizations during their undergrad are not as good as people who were not that also got into med school? Because that has just as big of an impact in admissions processes.... Or, do you assume that white employees aren't as good as black employees because white job applicants have a massive advantage when they apply for jobs? It's just a pet issue that some on the right have fixated on so long that they think it is a big deal. It isn't.

Overall a black person who reaches a certain station in life has, on average, accomplished a whole lot more than a white person that reaches the same station in life. They are more likely to have overcome challenges when they were growing up and they likely had to have a far superior resume to compete with the bias in favor of white job applicants. The advantage they have in applying for colleges is dwarfed by all of that.

 

Children of wealthy parents may have more opportunities. So what? That's life. That's how the real world works.

Children of wealthy parents aren't guaranteed anything. Lots of children of wealthy parents are high school dropouts or in jail or drug addicts or working minimum wage jobs. Lots of children of poor white parents rise above it all and become successful. So what? That's how the real world works.


White college grads, you keep claiming, are 2.5 more likely to get interviewed..So what? There are more white college grads. It's mathematics, not racism.

There is no utopian fantasyland where everyone makes the same money and has the same job and everyone gets free lollypops and pony rides..The real world doesn't work that way, either. It might be a noble and worthy daydream and I'm sure it makes you "feel" good, but...the real world just doesn't work that way..

What kind of legislation or government intervention do you propose to make sure no one excels and mediocrity prevails?

 

Two job applicants, one white and one black, both went to the same school, a school that gives admission points to minorities. On paper, they are perfectly equal. Were they equal before college admission?

You should preface such garbage with the words "I think" or "I believe". Srsly.



Bottom line. I refuse to feel sorry for someone because they have a certain skin color. I think some people do just to make themselves feel superior. This is what happens when one lives by labels.

 

Just because something happens doesn't mean it is good.

You misunderstand. If one black person and one white person apply for the same job with the same resume the white person is 2.5 times as likely to get an interview.

I'd like to have criminal sanctions for employment discrimination for one. Right now if a manager discriminates the company he works for, which may have had no hand at all in the discrimination, is civilly liable, but the actual manager who did the discriminating faces no penalty. IMO the person who actually did the discriminating should face a stiff penalty too.

I would also like to see the burden of proof for discrimination suits reduced. There are currently a lot of very difficult to pass hurdles to a discrimination suit. Basically you need the employer to have been caught flat out admitting that they were discriminating. I would like to see statistical evidence about discriminatory hiring patterns to be more broadly admissible and for it to be easier to get discovery of hiring records and submitted resumes.

 

Yes. Overcoming challenges in life is a huge measure of one's merit. Somebody who started off middle class and got a particular score on the MCAT is much less accomplished than somebody who started off in poverty and got that score.

That said, again, I do agree that going based off of the wealth of the applicants' parents rather than race would be a more accurate way to figure that out. But, unfortunately, race is pretty closely aligned to that. That would counteract the disadvantages one suffers before college more directly rather than the ones one encounters after college which are more based on race, but IMO the disadvantages of growing up poor are greater than the even the rampant discrimination in hiring, so I'd rather focus on that.

That's just a bunch of slogans you are using to avoid thinking about the issue.

 

Since you felt the need to make a comment about me, I will point out that San Francisco's minority population is mostly Asian. My location is by far more diverse in every way. I know many rich Latinos and blacks, many smart ones too. I also know plenty of poor white folks. Maybe in SF minorities are all economically handicapped. Not so here in south Texas. If I go to a doctor I haven't seen before, I'm not surprised if he isn't white. It seems always to be the case that those yelling the loudest about race live in the least racially diverse areas of the country.

 

Lots of bad things happen to good people..in the real world. That's life.
Nothing can be done about it

Right. As if we don't have enough government intrusion and laws already. I read that the Ca. legislature invented 600 new laws last session. Insanity. 600 new laws every year? Ridiculous.

Who is going to enforce all this stuff you suggest?
Another unelected "czar" who doesn't have to answer to the public?
Maybe a special legislative "committee" or "bureau of equality" who oversees EVERY SINGLE BUSINESS IN THE NATION? Impractical and impossible.

If you think the government has the answer for everything you may imagine is a "problem", you are going to very disappointed when reality finally overtakes idealism.

 

do you have any proof of this or are you just spewing your usual black supremacist rhetoric?

 

Wow, exactly 2.5 times you say. Do you have a source for that info?

I would like to see evidence that a random white guy with exactly the same qualifications as a given black guy is 2.5 times more likely to get the job.

I think that would open the door for abuse. The burden of proof should always be on the person making the claim.

I agree that is unreasonable if that is true.

Only if the statistics include the actual qualifications of each applicant. I am ok with requiring employers to keep records of this stuff as well as notes on why applicant A was chosen over applicant B.

Lots of people do, and that is one reason I oppose affirmative action...it creates racial tension unnecessarily.

That is probably true. That does not mean that people should be given advantages merely because of their race. Not all black people are disadvantaged. I have met black people that grew up in wealthier households than I did. I have met black people that are smarter than me.

There are lots of white people that had advantages over me as well. Not everyone is equal. Some people are smarter, some are better looking, some are more social (and have better connections)...there are lots of variables.

 

SF is actually very diverse. Just around 50% white. Hispanics and asians are both big chunks of the population. But, before that I lived in DC which is 50% black. And where I grew up was like 90% white with the largest minority group being Native Americans. So I've had a variety of experiences.

But I have definitely not said, nor would I say, that all minorities are economically handicapped. Certainly on average they are economically disadvantaged relative to whites though.

 

Sure. There are a ton of studies that have found roughly that figure. One particularly good one is here- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1490471

It is an experiment that does exactly what you're describing. They send in three people to apply for randomly selected jobs with the same resumes and they found that the white applicants got called up for interviews 2.5 times more often than the black applicants. It's a very robust study. They made sure that the test subjects dressed the same, had the same IQ, spoke the same way, said the same things, etc. First Northwestern did it then Princeton repeated the whole thing in a different city and got about the same results. When Northwestern did it they found that it was 2.5. The link above is from when Princeton did it and they found whites got interviews 2.2 times more often, so very close.

There is also a review of other major studies on the topic at the start of the paper if you're interested.

 

i want you to prove that black peopkle have accomplished so much more and prove that they have better resumes that the average white person

 

Nobody claimed that kiddo.

 

prove it....

 

That premise sounds good, but it is BS. I wrote a paper on it before. EVERYONE should get the same money for college in terms of pell grants, which is federal money. Actually, pell grants should be based on merit as well. Then scholarships should be completely merit based. EVERYONE should get the same loans as well.

It's BS that the government thinks they know how much parents are going to contribute. Just because someone's parents are wealthy, it shouldn't affect anything. The only people who think like you are the people who are getting the free money.

Kids from poor families can take out loans and go in debt like the rest of us did from middle class families.

The system right now doesn't reward success. It rewards minorities and people from low income families, and people who make bad decisions.

Anyone who has been to college has seen it before, these kids from poor families living like kings on taxpayer money. They don't work, yet they always have money. They have bridge cards... while the rest of us take out loans and work our ass off.

 

that is an exaggeration, race based scholarships mostly go to low income minorities than rich minorities.

if scholarships were given equally then whites would get them more on average so this is called positive discrimination against whites.

 

Not true. Have you ever applied for a scholarship? They don't ask how much money your parents make on the application. Your theory is a fallacy.

Correction, the most qualified would get them... black or white. If you aren't qualified, you don't deserve the scholarship.

That's a racist comment. There is no such thing as "positive discrimination". I can't believe people are dumb enough to think like that.

 

why would a race based scholarships exist except at an institution which follows a racially discriminatory policy?

back in the 1950's, race bases scholarships and practices were called "Jim Crow".

what shall we name this new Jim Crow?

 

Which raced based scholarships are you speaking of?

 

even if those scholarships were based on income the caucasians complaining still wouldn't be eligible.

positive discrimination is still neccessary on this matter.