Why I don't agree with AA

[Matthies]

It's enough in the past that I don't see it being a problem in everyday life. When's the last time you saw someone being asked to give up their bus seat because they were black or the last time that you saw segregated water fountains?  Certainly, there are some idiot holdouts, but AA just drives that wedge in deeper.

Maybe your not looking hard enough, or in the right places, or have enough "life experince" yet to see it (not atcking, just saying the farther away from shelltered home/school/collge the more visable it really is)

I mean you really don’t think that you or your family have personally gained, albeit indirectly and unintentionally, from the systemized racism of the past? I mean if one could seriously make that argument with clean hands then I might be willing to give more credence to that same person being upset about AA at a school they are not even going to attend about an issue that really has so little baring on thier lives. Otherwise its making an argument that while you have benefited, indirectly, by the racism of the past, no one should befit to make up for it, even if its indirectly to you, of AA as racism in the present.

I mean I own a house in an almost completely white, predominantly upper middle class neighborhood. Blacks can move in here now, but they used to be forbidden from doing so all the way up till the late 70s though lending habits, redlining etc. So there is no history of blacks living in my neighborhood. Sure they can buy here now, but they would stand out like a sore thumb. I would welcome them, but I don’t know if I would want to be the only person of my race on a block that had been all white since the first house was built here in 1880. That's more guts then I got.

Likewise because its mostly white, and gone upper income, we pay more in property taxes, our schools are better funded, or hospitals better funded, or police better funded than the predominantly black neighborhood just six blocks north of me. I have, although I never owned slaves, never beat up a black person, never discriminated against anyone, still indirectly, and unintentionally benefited from the systematic racism that kept, and to a large degree has still keeps my neighborhood predominantly white and the other neighborhood predominantly black. I have bett acess to services, my kids better schools, my health care is better, no lines in ER.

I’m no so blind as to think just because I never did it myself, I have not benefited from it, nor am I willing to concede that just because I never did it, it did not happen and that we should not try now to make up for the fact that blacks could not for far longer than they could, be lawyers. Or the fact that black lawyers in no way are represented in proportion to the black community precisely because there was a history of keeping them out of the profession until very, very recently. Or that even now it tgakes a lot guts to be the one balck guy in a section of 100 white law students in a freakishly white state and school like Iowa.

[vjm]

Matties, I think I love you.

[Matthies]

Matties, I think I love you.

Your not black are you? 

[vjm]

Only in your dreams! 

[Freak]

So its ok for whites to reap the benefits of laws enforcing racial discrimination for 250 years, then defacto discrimination for another 100 years until the late 1960s. A legacy the practically kept all blacks out of the law school, much less top law schools, and almost entirely out of the legal profession until the last 30. All that discrimination was OK, but reverse discrimination is not. Because now the discrimination is against whites so its bad? So, what your saying is it cool for whites to discriminate, but not for blacks. We have moved away from that, all discrimination, even if it helped us in the past is bad now, if it hurts us now.

So two wrongs make a right? You endorse that principal with that argument. Life is not fair, it never has been fair, and until the hearafter, life will never be fair. Justice means correcting wrongs by making individual wrongdoers pay. Does a thief's son have to repay the victims of his father's crimes? Of course, not that would be absurd. AA means a thief's grandson or even great-grandson or even a recent white immigrant whose ancestors never owned slaves or tolerated slavery, must pay.

Go read Fredrick Douglas - he knew what he was talking about.

[vjm]

Do think that might be because many of the applicants to the "top schools" may have just a wee feeling of entitlement?

I think for some of them it is the first time they haven't been able to get something they want.

I hope this isn't utterly offensive, but I also get the feeling that many applicants to the "top schools" have grown up in environments where diversity is not a priority. They go from a wealthy, predominantly white private school to an expensive, predominantly white private college. They really don't get the argument that fostering true diversity is valuable, because they have no significant experience with diversity.

And can everybody pay attention here--I don't think anyone has argued that poverty should not be a basis for additional AA programs. Can we please stop conflating the two issues?

That is all.

[Susan B. Anthony]

lol @ merit based

[pikey]

Did a post just disappear while I was reading it?  That was fast.

[vjm]

Yes. Wally, if you want to have a discussion you need to leave them up for longer than a few minutes.

And it makes an interesting thread unreadable.

[vjm]

Symbolic Racism: beliefs about individualism and meritocracy become racialized and motivate opposition to policies designed to benefit racial and ethnic minorities. http://repositories.cdlib.org/crisp/1/

Modern Racism: Moderating contexts provide justification for negative responses to minorities (e.g., a previous negative decision about a comparable white job candidate justifies a negative decision about a black job candidate). (can't find a very informative link).

Implicit Bias: Unconscious biases, particularly against out-groups, rooted in normal cognitive functions related to categorization, confirmation, and memory biases. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/background/index.jsp

Would someone kindly quote me so I can delete out? I hate pointless AA conversations but I wanted to share.