Affirmative Action

Must rush and don't have time to read this, but Kinsley is always smart as a whip...
http://slate.msn.com/id/2084805/

You seem to be switching gears on me here, but I think you see my point. I do not favor the idea of government telling a private university who they must or must not admit.

Anybody else out there see me switch gears? c.i.

blatham
Prejudice is a something that will never be erased from peoples hearts. Not religious, ethic or racially. It is there in all of us. White, Black and Brown the white people of the world have not cornered the market. The US is becoming a nation where more than half the population will be a Black and Hispanic. Shall the majority still be entitled to preferential treatment? Will it be AA for the majority. I should note that the most prejudiced people I have encountered both religiously and racially have been black.

CI - That was not intended as a condemnation or negative in any way, I merely noted that we were discussing your idea of requiring unviversities to accept the top 5% of students and then you suddenly tossed out a comment on the concept of giving points for ethnicity. That seems like a complete change in direction to me. If it was not, please explain, since you lost me. Thanks.

Scrat, It's talking to the very same issue; Affirmative Action. If the colleges and universities accepted the top five percent of students from all schools, the need for giving points for being a minority (affirmative action) will be unnecessary, and still allow for a minority representation. Somebody also suggested that colleges should look at economic background, and I fully support it, because it doesn't give points for being black or Hispanic, but they will all be included in that group. Government intervention is not necessary; it's just a matter of providing equal access to all without determination or race or culture being a advantage or disadvantage. Most of this will come from education of the poor and disadvantaged school districts, and not from 'discrimination.' c.i.

I think I understand that you are not suggesting that the government enforce this (which is what I thought you meant). You are just saying that it would solve the problem if universities just automatically took the best candidates and ignored race and other factors.

Isn't that what they did before AA and racial bean counting? I'd certainly welcome a return to focusing purely on the merits of the candidate and his or her probability of success in the program for which he or she has applied.

Right-O! c.i.

And...the ruling on the Texas sodomy law...6 to 3 find it an unconstitutional violation of privacy...voting against were Scalia, Rehnquist, and Thomas. Scalia wrote
What happened to this guy? He used to have a good noggin.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/26/politics/26WIRE-SODO.html

I'm sure his "christian" background confused him. c.i.

Things I have learned from A2K.

It's bad to be Christian.
It's even worse if you're a protestant.
It's bad to be white.
It's bad to be a conservative.
...

Such a place this is.

blatham

What happened to this guy? He used to have a good noggin.

When upon coming out of his mothers womb?

Things I have learned from A2K:

There are people who mistake authoritarianism for Christianity.

There are people who identify with conservatism but who havena't a clue what a real conservative is.

There are people who see life in terms of black and white which, in every sense of those terms, means Bad and Good, Them and Us.

I'm glad I learned all that. It tells me who the enemy is and how to overcome them.

What I learned from A2K:
Christians are easily offended
I still haven't learned what a "Protestant" is
Many people have a inferiority complex
We're still trying to define what a "Conservative" is

c.i.

Scrat. You asked:
What would you have the government tell all the competitors to these farms who were not going to be getting tax dollars with which to pay their workers?
--------------------
I'd tell them a horrible mistake had been made re: slavery. That because the gov initially allowed it, citizens based their livelihood on it and made heavy investments toward it--and now that the gov was declaring it illegal, it was only right to assist both the slaves and the citizens that had invested their livelihood into the use of slaves, as the plantations reorganized their operations to meet new legal standards. The farms not using slave labor wouldn't be negatively affected by Emancipation, and therefore would have no need of assistance due to the new law.

I think the greatest benefit would have been to Freedman's assimilation.

If HG Wells had only finished that time travel machine...

Things Scrat has learned from A2K:

Liberals believe they are the only people who know who the "real Christians" are.

Liberals believe they are the only people who know who the "real conservatives" are.

Liberals think that there are no issues that are black and white. Everything looks grey to them. Their view of people who recognize that some issues are black and white is one of "us and them".

Liberals think that they learn from consulting their own point of view and those who share it, and consider those with other points of view as "the enemy".

Sofia - There is compelling historical evidence that slavery was an inefficient business model and that those relying on it were well on their way to being non-competitive at the time it was abolished. Your plan would have propped up failing businesses and rewarded them for not only choosing a lousy way to run their business (from a business standpoint) but also for being lousy human beings. It would have done so to the detriment of more enlightened business owners and their workers, perpetuating and bailing out a source of competition with which they would not have had to deal absent your intrusion by the government.

Your idea is well-intended, but flawed. A better alternative might have been for the government to offer grants to help non-slave companies and farms hire displaced slave laborers.

It's odd (not to mention horrible) to have to remember this, but it's an important fact of life about slavery and the "Negro," and that is that for a very long time after the end of the Civil War, Af-Ams continued to be thought of, even by educated northerners, as less than human. One would think this had disappeared by the middle of the 20th century, but I can remember specific graduates of Harvard and Penn and other places -- well-to-do friends of my parents -- who absolutely swore that they were dealing with inferior unfortunates. I mention this because the fact that this kind of thinking was endemic in high places of academia, government, law, and community until recently (and may still be) shows the tremendous struggle Af-Ams and their allies have had. It is VERY hard to deal with people who are decent and kind and educated and in powerful officer who are certainly no fans of slavery but who remain damn sure of something as totally absurd as "natural inferiority." The Time Machine more often than not takes one back to a world in which one scarcely speaks the language and where one is wholly disconcerted by the contexts.

Well, this looks like fun...

Things I've learned from A2K

The classic tale of the woman who was kidnapped and forceably taken by a Saskwatch was actually a factual account and that this union bequeathed us one of the posters above.

Although somewhat surprising, it is not even vaguely frightening to be confronted by a sheep in sheep's clothing.

Ann Coulter doesn't have orgasms. It's possible she could, but who'd want to be anywhere near her when it happened?

George Bush has the very same gait and the identical IQ as did Benito Mussolini. However, there are significant differences between these two political giants - there is no record showing that Mussolini was EVER able to bring himself to describe Ariel Sharon as 'a man of peace', nor are there any credible reports that Mussolini spent his father's money on cocaine parties.

I award you your PhD in A2K, Blatham, and I'd make a long speech about it except I'm choking with laughter.