Is affirmative action REALLY fair?

Some of the quotes are from US statistics. I find these three particularly telling:



The other examples don't really talk about discrimination in other counties. They talk more about the effect that AA policies have on the motivation and williness of those that the policies are trying to "help." I think this is a very relevant point no matter what country it is happening in. My second quote even shows that it is happening in the United States.

It is my belief that AA policies do nothing but add to the entitlement mentality of this country.

jp, Did you see the article I posted from the San Jose Merc about minority graduation rates from high school in California? The study by Harvard shows that blacks and Hispanics graduate high school at very low rates - something like 50 percent for blacks and 60 percent for Hispanics. Before we talk about job discrimination, we need to find out the why graduation rates are so low for these two groups before we look at why jobs for these groups are lacking. Don't you agree?

Yeah I read it and yes I agree.

I have long believed that things/problems have gotten so large and intertwined that it may be to late to right the ship.

The way I see it is: we have students who do not care, we have parents who do not care, we have teachers and schools that do not care.

I think the solution, instead of hand outs and dumbing down of schools even more, is to make things even stricter. We need to start flunking everybody.

I have a friend who teaches at a charter school in Milwaukee. He teaches Spanish Literature to hispanic speaking students. He says that most of his students (high school level) do not even speak SPANISH correctly. He said most of them are illiterate in their OWN language and instead speak different dialects of spanish.

His greatest problem is that niether the kids nor the parents care. When he tries to discipline the kids, they run to a symathetic teacher or administrator who overturns the discipline that he handed out. For him it is a lose/lose situation. He thinks that instead of hiring teachers they should just hire psychiatrists.

My mother is a BD/LD teacher in a elementary school that is very diverse. She has the some of the same problems. She teaches her kids that it is THEIR responsability to get to school. She has hundreds of sad stories about kids walking to school because their parents won't take them. Parents not helping with homework. Parents not caring about their childrens education. It is no suprise to me at all that their are kids not graduating because from the time they are young they learn that it is not important.

AA feeds into this. AA isn't just about making a diverse work place. It is about the mentality and preperation of those involved. You even hear about African American students who speak correct grammar and work hard in school getting teased because they are "acting white."

Is this the message we are trying to send?

jp, Your comment about Spanish kids taking Spanish language classes was also the problem our younger son identified when he took Spanish for three years in high school. He said most of the Hispanic kids that took Spanish flunked. Our younger son is now 38 years old.

It is really sad, isn't it? Maybe the fact that 20 some years have passed and nothing has gotten better could indicated that our current policies are not working.

Agreed; and to think the people in charge of our educational system doesn't seem to have learned to improve it. Our rankings on educating our kids have been falling for many years, especially in math and science. We're scraping the bottom of the barrell amongst all developed nations; our future looks bleak when high tech is the future of all economies.

It paints a scary picture of the future. I honestly don't know what the answers are. Like I said earlier, it may be to late to right the ship.

ill use it but i dont agree with it.....
yea fine ill freely admit as a mexican american that i view afirmative action as nothing more than a pathetic racist practice. I believe that it not only discriminates against caucasian students but is also an insult to the minorities its supposed to help. It seems as thugh colleges believe that a student of a minority ethnicity is incapable of getting into college on his own. Therefore he has to be helped along because poor fellow cant seem to do it on his own. That is what truly annoys me about it . However, that having been said I do appreciate the fact that because im mexican my application receives a little more attention than others.

rushjedi: I have a tough time deciding whether your position is more cynical than hypocritical or more hypocritical than cynical.

hey you
allright so ill admit that last post was a little ambigious and hypocrtical but it wasnt cynical its the truth thats how i view the situation. I'm tired of the condesceding view people have towards minorities especially those minorities who are successfull. For some reason a black man doing well is suprising or something to appreciate its no more spectacular than a white man doing well. minorities dont need the handouts of afirmative action financial aide is always appreciated tho