Affirmative Action

hence my use of the words "Chinese diaspora culture".

Dammit, dlowan, quit using them thousand dollar words.

Actually, such stereotypings run in all directions, of course - I worked for years in a Chinese restaurant when I was a student.

The very ignorant, racist Chinese bosses were quite happy to make their racism extremely clear.

There were a number of Chinese students also working there. Every summer holidays, they would be given lots of extra shifts, and the whites' shifts would be cut.

I went to the boss in my second year and complained about the unfairness of this. "But these Chinese people are students" he said "they must make money at this time."

I pointed that I, and a number of the other white staff were also students, who also needed to work lots over summer. "White waitresses don't go to university!" he said (they would not employ male Australians - too lazy.) "All Australians are lazy and do not study!" I said I was quitting if the shifts were not made fairer. He gave in.

Words are cheap - CI!

Words cheap, so is broccoli beef!

Hop to it bunny! Customers waiting!

LOL! I was a VERY speedy waitress.....in a very busy place...

You know, Rufio, i've been out of university for more than 35 years, and yet i take more care in reading and attempting to understand what people have written than you seem to do, even though in your situation this should be a daily practice. Affirmative action is a very specific term, which dates from the Johnson administration. Johnson was a classic FDR Liberal Democrat, and he got on board big time with Kennedy's basic domestic policy: Social Security Disability and Surviror benefits, and support of the civil rights movement. The Voting Rights Act, 1965, was the first all out assault on Jim Crow. Kennedy's Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy, had sicced the FBI on the KKK, and Johnson stepped up the pressure, was more quiet and circumspect, and ultimately more successful. It was damned hard to bring to justice the murderef of Medgar Evers, the bombers of the 16th Street Baptist Church, the murderers of four college students, of the Michigan mom--but the killings stopped, and Southerners who were not racist began to lose their fear. Johnson was a Southerner, and when he wanted to push through legislation, he knew where all the bodies were buried, and he twisted arms just as hard as he could. It could be argued that he ultimately drove conservative Southerners into the arms of the Republicans, but i'm fairly certainly it would have happened eventually anyway. Because he wrought a change in the South that would not go away, against which segreationists and white supremacists could not retrench.

Part of that was affirmative action--which is distinct from equal employment opportunity, which is quite a different thing from the desegregation plans mandated after the Supremes' 1953 decision in Brown v. Board of Education (one of five desegregation cases, the decision was handed down in the Topeka, Kansas case) which held that separate schools are not and cannot be equal, very different from equal housing access, and very different from the efforts being made in this generation--and for which there is no legislation--to end the practice of red-lining by lending institutions and insurance companies. Affirmative action took on a life of its own, and became the outward symbol of the end to racism in corporate America--or so we were expected to believe. The term is charged with such emotional import for both blacks and whites in America because of the way in which it played out, becoming little better in 9 out of 10 cases that an exercise in tokenism to project an image of racial harmony. It would be difficult to argue that affirmative action has resulted in a demonstrable improvement in the lives and the living conditions of any significant number of black Americans, nor Hispanics, nor any other "category" of Americans. It is my argument that equal employment opportunity, equal education opportunity, equal housing opportunity, and an end to red-lining can produce demonstrably positive outcomes for the residents of poor neighborhoods. You claim that: "Clearly you people just really don't like to be wrong." No one does. Which is why it is useful to have your ducks in a row before offering an opinion, which is what i was clearly doing. It is even more important to assure oneself that one has read and understood what was written before telling someone they are wrong. It is most important to know what the hell your talking about before you open your mouth.

I don't dedicate nearly as much time to this forum as I do to things I actually have to do, and I get sloppy. We've been over this. As for your history of AA, that's all very nice, but what is mean by AA today is "equal opportunity" employment, school benefits, and so on.

That was what I was refering to, whatever you want to call it.

This caught my eye for two reasons. The first refers to an article which i read many years ago about perceptions of ethnic conditions. (I believe it was in the Sunday New York Times magazine, but i'm not going to be able to offer a citation.) It compared the Irish in America to Jews. The premise (with which i would not argue) was that there is a perception among Protestants and Catholics that the Jews are disproportionately wealthy and educated in comparison to the former groups. I don't recall if the author stated why s/he had chosen those two groups, but, being Irish, it piqued my interest. The author demonstrated from Census bureau statistics, as well as Internal Revenue records, that the Irish and the Jews were affluent in the same proportion, which meant that Irish Americans ultimately control much more wealth, being greatly more numerous. It also looked at both college enrollment statistics, as well as surveys and studies done on the two ethnic groups to advance a claim that a good deal of the demonstrable economic success of both Jew and Paddy (i get to call us that, the rest of you don't) arises from a particular dedication to education. I know that in the case of the Irish, some of the worst Hibernophobes among the Angle-ish has acknowledged this, going back at least as far as one of the worst of them, Edmund Spenser, in the 16th century. I think your observation about the Chinese, is, therefore, significant.

The other thing which came to my mind, was Sons of the Yellow Emperor: a History of the Chinese Diaspora, Lynn Pan, Kodansha Globe, 1994. This is an excellent read, and is accessible to the non-specialist reader. I also think it germaine here, as the Chinese have tended to remain in ethnic neighborhoods, and have still succeeded on western terms in western societies. Another good book on that subject is Chinatown: Conflicts in Urban and Regional Development by Min Zhou (sorry, no citation, i don't have a copy at home)--which thoroughly considers that aspect of "enclaving," and the ability of the Chinese to make a "chinatown" work.

More grist for the mill . . . always more to grind . . .

I would think that by now, Rufio, you would know that i'm not going to accept your statements from authority. "What is meant now" by terms such as this is not a subject upon which you have any basis to claim to know more than i. It's not as though i stopped paying attention at some time after the War on Poverty you know. Except for a few years in Southeast Asia courtesy of my rich uncle, and a brief stay in Ireland, i've been living here ever since Johnson became president. I know perfectly well what is meant by affirmative action, and i know of no knowledgable individuals who consider it synomymous with equal employment opportunity, equal housing opportunity, equal education opportunity, etc. The term was specifically coined to describe a program to intentionally hire those members of categories of persons considered to have been deprived of access to certain types or levels of employment. A different thing altogether from the work of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was established to assure that people simply were not prevented from obtaining employement because of prejudicial treatment based upon appearance, gender, ethnicity, etc. Seems you hate being wrong as much as you claim "you people" do.

Okay, Set, I can't even find "hibernophobes" in my dictionary. Tell us/me what it means. grrrrr....

People who hate Hispanics....

Or irish! yikes - looking up dictionary...

No, I'm not the expert who decides what everyone has to think, Setanta, but everyone I know refers to those things as AA. So that's what I'm calling them. Can I explain my use of language without you challenging my expertise on my own vocabulary?

Lol!!! fell over me brain!

people who hate the Irish.

Yes, set - I had been wondering if another possible aspect to Chinese success as emigrants might be the tendency to maintain culture and ties to each other - ie a mentoring and employment network as well.

It is interesting having worked within (and yet excluded from) a Chinese organization for as long as I did.

One of the interesting things was that, in the end, patronage WAS extended to me (because it was decided that I, having had the same fella for all the years I worked there, was not a "slut" as it was assumed by the bosses that western women were, and because I worked hard and was very reliable, and because they realised that I was educated and involved in higher education seriously) despite my western-ness - I became a sort of honorary but lesser Chinese woman, and, since it was a family business, sort of family! The generosity of offers of help then extended were amazing - like buying me a new car when mine died - with no sexual strings attached. Hurt was great when I refused these sorts of offers - and I had a lot of explaining to do.

Here I was thinking that 'hibernophobes' were people who were afraid of bears.

dlowan and Set, There is a practice by Koreans in the US whereby they have a private bank that helps fund new business ventures. They all put money into the pot, and anybody that wants to borrow money can get so at very low interest rates.

cav, Makes sense to me! LOL