About Diversity...

Scrat
I think the laws enacted to "force" diversity are wrong headed however, what exactly do you mean by:

What barriers are you referring to. IMO that has already happened.

Don't expect me to convince you that working to foster diversity is a social good. I think that there WAS a time when affirmative action was a noble experiment. It DID allow some minorities to get ahead, where there had been real barriers to advancing for minorities. IMO, to a great extent the barriers have been broken.......not perfectly, but certainly good enough. It is now time for people to get ahead based on ability.

As far as I am concerned, the foremost criterion for college admission or job selection should be ability of the person to do the job. Period!

(Maybe my answer belongs in the "politically incorrect" thread! :wink: )

Phoenix32890
Haven't you learned yet that it is politically incorrect to expect people to be qualified for their positions. Ethnicity, sex, race and, etc., are now the standard qualifiers . As usually happen in correcting a wrong the pendulum swings too far to the other side. Hopefully it will eventually find center.

I hesitated to include this. I think it may be politically incorrect, as well.

One reason to press for diversity is crime prevention.

If you were to be percieved by a racial group as discriminating against them, even if that were not the intention, but the unintended result of established policy-- The group could mount a violent campaign of civil disobedience...

nimh briefly discussed factors contributing to the "Arab terrorism" phenomona, and poverty figures heavily in mix, IMO. A definable group (especially definable by race), which believes they are being discriminated due to their race is more apt to anti-social behavior for redress and expression. I think.

I don't agree that this is a reason the US should continue measures like AA, but equal opportunity is a vitally important goal for this reason, and moreso for fairness.

I do think when a definable demographic group shows across-the-board problems, they should be addressed.

sofia
I can't buy that. What your implying is "if I am going to have the name I might just as well play the game." That is an excuse not a reason or justification.

OK.

I knew I was on thin ice, but I thought I'd throw it out there, anyway.

Sophia,

as regards your post of Sat May 31, 2003 12:11 pm
are you suggesting that civil disobedience may be considered a form of terrorism if it turns violent ?

Do you have a link to nimh's thoughts you refered to?

Thanks,

JM

Sofia- I hear what you are saying, and I understand your point, but doesn't that kind of thinking simply promoting extortion? Attitudes like this have spawned people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. IMO, we need to get away from "if we don't give them what they want they are going to riot" mentality. It does nobody any good!

I believe Phoenix has captured exactly the right interpretation of the question of Affirmative Action. In its original form it was described in these terms - as positive action to break through existing barriers. It has subsequently morphed into actions required to achieve equal outcomes. Even there, very deficient statistical analysis has been applied in the determination of equal outcomes - other important variables are left out of the equations, very often for political purposes.

In a similar manner the word,"Diversity", has been captured and distorted by the theologians of modern political correctitude. A word that indicates the existence of differences among the elements of some group, has morphed into one describing the allegedly desirable state assigning equal value to all of those differences. This is an absurd attack on the march of human civilization. Perhaps the best example of this was the attempt by the school board of Oakland CA to institute the teaching of "Eubonics" in the schools as a substitute for English grammar.

I'm inclined to agree. I was looking for justification for pushing to specifically create diversity ("force" it, as you write), and simply wanted to be clear that I am in no way against making every effort to remove barriers where possible, much of which has already been done and is being done.

JM--

From the What Has The Iraq War Wrought thread-- These comments by nimh sent me off on a tangent--

Facing the question Phoneix asks about stamping out the tumors, you must ask yourself where Al-Qaeda comes from. Al-Qaeda itself comes from religious zealotism and political fanatism, of course. But where does its sudden increase in financial and human support come from, this last decade? What fuels the radical Islamist movement, in general? If you dont tackle the root causes, whether they be poverty, injured pride, Palestine, name it, and focus solely on military clampdowns, you risk the thing about, err, slamming the bubble under the carpet. Everytime you slam it, it props up somewhere else.

The more blanket your approach - the more blanket your retribution, your violence - the more people you turn into enemies, and the bigger the bubble becomes. Terrorism asks for merciless attacks - with surgical precision. Refrain from the "merciless" part, and the cancer will spread. But replace "surgical attack" by blanket-approach (and I think the Iraq war falls in the latter category, if we're strictly speaking war on terrorism) - and you will actually feed the cancer, rather than eradicating it, making it spread at least as quickly.

Isolating the actual terrorists from their potential feeding grounds should be paramount. The merest suggestion of the war being against Islam, or even political Islamism - or of it being about any other ulterior causes (gaining economic advantages, a strategic US foothold in the Gulf, etc etc) - rather than about the actual extremist terrorist networks responsible for 9/11, specifically - and you'll just drive more sceptics into the camp you're fighting.

To eradicate a tumor you must radiate it, but you must also be careful to isolate it, and do all you can to ensure the patient himself gets all the nourishment, rest, etc he possibly can - otherwise the patient will die with the tumour.

I must say, I threw the thought out (crime prevention). It's not like I support the notion...
To go long with the premise, JM, sure violent civil disobedience can be terrorism.
The What the Iraq War Has Wrought thread.

Sofia - I would argue that poverty is not the root cause of terrorism, but would like to argue it in its own discussion. Perhaps you would be so kind as to create one for us?

OK, dearie. Let me sally forth into cyberspace and find a document. :wink:

Sophia,

Thanks for the reprint of nimh's thoughts. I now remember reading them. Your post did get me thinking about the similarities I see in terrorism. The threat of a discrimination lawsuit seems to have many attributes in common with conventional terrorist acts. Notice, I use the phrase "threat of a discrimination suit" as opposed to an initiation of an actual legal action in the courts. The only difference is the method of extortion involved. Terrorists threaten and apply actual physical force towards their victims. The civil legal action threatens mainly grenades of subpoenas and bombs of long lasting depositions and discovery fishing expeditions into personal and company private correspondence etc. The hopeful outcome for conventional terrorist is political recognition; that for the legal terrorist is economic reward. The former threatens assault and battery the latter extorts the victim hoping they will find "settling" less expensive and time consuming than defense of the legal action. Both, however, bargain from a position of weakness indirectly proportional to the volume of their verbal pronunciations.

We all seem to agree that not only minorities have been given a good chance but that attitudes of those that have the power to hire or admit have changed. I am sure that last statement would qualify me for a public hanging on some threads, but I think it is a fair statement, which could only be argued against regarding certain geographical areas or political backwaters of our nation. I am not necessarily for diversity as much as I am for fairness sans race... etc. Hiring for any reason other than merit is counter-productive and robs employers of the best people... nothing new here.

So, for us, the question becomes what is our exit strategy? I see nothing but teeth pulling ahead. A number of minorities seem to have elevated AA to entitlement status. If doubtful let me impart an anecdote:



To all who have worked and paid taxes out of their compensation this seems absurd, but these people had been receiving tax-free checks so long they forgot what it was all about. Indeed, a lot of these people were third generation welfare recipients (Grandma founded the tradition) and now expected Rome to pay for their Circus tickets, Coke, Hot Dog, and that of their children's Balloon(ing expenses).

This is what I fear with the continuance of AA in the workplace. Sophia has already alluded to this type of workplace attitude in one of her posts in the other diversity thread started by Blatham. Perhaps the only exit from this is the alternating lawsuits that we have recently seen.

Any thoughts as to a solution?

JM

Scrat,

Indeed. Terrorism is not rooted in poverty. Wasn't Osama personally worth something like 27 million dollars? What about the Saudi's contributions to certain "Charities"?

Terrorism is pay back or regime change by "Other Means" thereby imparting new definition to the term "Political Action Commitee".

JM

If I were a Black man, I would consider continuation of AA policies insulting for me and for the other Blacks. Only handicapped people need special privileges to make their abilities equal with other contestants' when looking for job or for university admission. Black color of skin is not a mental or physical disability, the opposite opinion pertains to mere racism.

steissd's comment is at the heart of my anti-AA sentiment.
To believe in the necessity of AA, to me, is to deem a race inferior.

Due to the way most blacks arrived in the US, and the following prejudices against them--I agreed with the spirit of redress in AA for a while--but think continuation of it is detrimental to blacks.

I do think it's time to shift the focus of govt assistance from color to economic disdvantage-----BUT,

I also take issue with legacy points and athletic scholarships. I think it is the same as AA.

What do you think?

Athletic scholarship is nonsense as well. Prominent athletes usually have more money than the average citizens do, hence they do not need any financial aid. And the mediocre athletes merely do not deserve treatment better than any other people that have socially safe hobbies like collecting stamps or amateur painting. I have never heard about scholarships for philatelists or amateur artists, however. Legacy points are unfair in their very essense, but they rather pertain to a tradition than to PC or AA.

I'm going to stay out of the actual topic of this thread because I feel too strongly about it, though the one thing I will do is to ask any of you to provide any proof, statistical data, whatever, on the submission that "the barriers [to advancing for minorities] have been broken".

I know, Phoenix wrote, "to a great extent", and that can be interpreted freely. But if AA and the like was, even in your eyes, justified as a means to "removing or eliminating [..] the barriers to advancing for minorities" (collating quotes, here), then shouldn't they be continued until these barriers have been removed/eliminated/broken - fully, not just "to a great extent"? Hence my question: what data and research would you base the argument on that they have indeed already been broken?

To the business of my actual post, it's about a reference that appeared here to what I wrote earlier. Sofia quoted me and JM then protested, agreeing with Scrat, that:



But that's a very selective reading of what I'd written. I'd very explicitly said that, yes, "Al-Qaeda itself [i.e., Osama, too, and all of his like] comes from religious zealotism and political fanatism, of course" - and should be subjected to "merciless attacks". What I added was the question, "what fuels the radical Islamist movement, in general? [..] where does [Al-Qaeda's] sudden increase in financial and human support come from, this last decade?" For that, I suggested "poverty, injured pride, Palestine, name it". And the financial support from the Saudi backers would of course again have different motivators than the human support of people willing to join its troops.

Look - Lenin's Bolsheviks, even just half a year before the Russian 'Revolution', were political maniacs, isolated, exiled, voices crying in the wilderness. They were political extremists, fueled by zealotism and fanatism. But by the time they staged their coup d'etat in Russia, they could count on the support of around a quarter of the population, more in the cities. Not quite the 'masses of workers and peasants' they claimed to speak for, but still, that's a lot of people. Were they all fueled by zealotism and fanatism? No, of course not. They were fed up with the war. They were hungry. They were disgruntled about the Provisional Government. They were desperate, clueless, confused.

So, if with that example I have established a propable divergence of motivations between the leaders and the average new recruit of an extremist movement, can I suggest the same to be true for the radical Islamist movements as well? What fuels Mullah Omar? Hate. But what fueled the masses of the Taliban's latest recruits? Or even Al-Qaeda's very own newly recruited footsoldiers? That's where I would suggest poverty, alongside a range of other sources of societal desperation. Is that really an observation you could not share?

We - and that's a very broad "we", spanning from Suburbia, USA to Government HQ, Moscow, to Guerilla camp, Herat, Afghanistan - created a world in which increasing numbers of people seem to see the absolutist visions of terrorist leaders as their last resort. If the children follow the rat-catcher (do you have this story?), the rat-catcher may be the villain, but is certainly not the be-all and end-all of the explanation, and thus not of the long-term solution either.