Why don't blacks work harder in UG and on the LSAT so we can get rid of AA?

[t...]

I'm not sure - there is just as much vested interest in exposing the flaws in AA as there would be in suppressing any (should they be found), I would think.

Do you have any such evidence or information? It would interesting to read.

[PNym]

I love it. I love it.

You being Asian doesn’t invalidate your arguments and furthermore to suggest that AA will have “deleterious” consequences is a gratuitous use of the English language. Even in the most extreme circumstance I would submit to you AA would have negligible adverse consequences at best. Many of the consequences you have outlined in your previous post would exist with or without AA. Discrediting Black folks because of AA, would merely turn into discrediting Blacks due to neighborhood they grew up in, maybe even undergraduate institution, clothes we wear, hairstyle or some other BS.

No I have not read Sowell’s book COMPLETELY, but I am familiar enough with it to make educated commentary. When it comes to mystical ability I would define it more so as intuition with a very low coefficient of error as it relates to detecting self loathing Blacks.

Incidentally, I have a more socialist lean.

Sub Saharan Africa by definition is the area below the Sahara. That’s roughly ¾ of Africa.

I brought up the slave trade because you brought up the slave trade. I don’t think you were trying to trivialize it, but there seem to consequences stemming from the slave trade that for one reason or another you can’t link to Blacks folks here and now despite them being conspicuous to most Black folks. That’s gap you will have to bridge on your own.

I will accept your accept your premise for lack of Asian partners, but I will assure you that 5-10 years from now there will still be a disproportionately small number of Asian partners. You mentioned business men, doctors and engineers; maybe its me but I haven’t seen even the slightest prevalence of Asian chief executives in the Fortune 1000. Are you familiar with what some people call a “glass ceiling”. There is no shortage of smaller businesses and engineering firms headed by Asians I am certain, but again you seem to be wearing blinders.

“I don't doubt that some doors are blocked for some people, but seeing that it's impossible to actually gauge how much discrimination exists, it's impossible to tailor a standardized program that would address discrimination in all its possible individual cases, and AA causes more problems than it solves (possibly even causing more discrimination as a backlash against favored groups receiving privileged treatment due to unequal standards), AA doesn't strike me as a very wise policy.”

I love it. The mere fact that you made this comment demonstrates the need for AA.  If it is impossible to gauge exactly how much discrimination exists yet everyone is cognizant of its pervasiveness it would be foolish to abolish a program that combats it. The fact it is not iron clad does not invalidate it. AA came about to reverse instances where less qualified Whites were being selected over more qualified Blacks, Indians…etc.  I think  it is quite convenient you haven’t brought that up. Ergo the “quota”.

Sowell is arguing that AA "increases" discrimination. People who resent the favored privileges conferred to favored groups by AA programs will transfer that resentment to the favored groups. If any particular incident (such as a doctor from the favored group screwing up) draws into question how many of those people of the favored group are underqualified, people will not hesitate to point fingers at the AA policies as contributing to the cause.

You can't measure the extent of the "systemic" and "pervasive" discrimination you describe, so how do you know that AA isn't increasing that discrimination? How do you know when that discrimination has been rectified? If AA means to correct for this discrimination, you must have some means of measuring it, to see if AA is indeed correcting or having a negative effect on that discrimination. If, as Sowell suggests, AA is exacerbating discrimination by increasing racial conflict, then AA will only make the problem worse. If AA is making the discrimination worse, but means to correct for that problem, then even greater levels of AA are needed, which will, in turn, further increase discrimination.

Setting people at each other's throats for the drippings of political power will fragment the country.

Furthermore, differences in ethnic representation in a given industry or group is not necessarily an indication of discrimination. There are probably more Jewish financiers than Southern Slavic financiers. The Jews have worked in finance since the Middle Ages, while Balkan newspapers from as late as 1920 have decried bankers and moneylenders as hated "Greeks." These differing cultural attitudes towards finance are a more likely cause of the different levels of representation in that industry.

Why the Chinese not broken into the management positions of the Fortune 500 can be answered by examining the demographics of the Chinese. Most Chinese people immigrated to the United States around 1960. The Chinese who had lived in the United States prior to that were manual laborers (or, in some rare cases, their descendents - as these laborers couldn't marry or bring their wives from China) who were discriminated against and prevented from obtaining an education, precluding their opportunities to learn management skills. In the case of the 1960s immigrants, only one generation of cultural acclimation would hamper *any* ethnic groups attempts to rise to levels of management. Traditional Chinese cultural practices also tend to hamper cooperative undertakings (although that is another topic).

And I brought up the role of black Africans (and Arabs) in the slave trade to counter someone else's attempt to pin moral responsibility for that trade on the Europeans. The Europeans deserve some share of the moral condemnation, but much of the rest falls on various tribes of enslaving Africans.

Don't forget that slavery had been an accepted institution for thousands of years of human history across all cultures until the British and the Americans began to regard it as a moral injustice. If it weren't for British antislavery efforts, sometimes over the objections of their later subjects in their African colonies, Africans might still be enslaved today.

[PNym]

People are only likely to think that if they're racist anyway. Otherwise, they're liable to chalk it up to people f-ing up, as do many, many, many white doctors, which I'm thinking was a reason Piggy would like to see that list of successful malpractice claims. If black doctors aren't f-ing up proportionately more than white doctors are, then there's no reason to say that AA has relaxed admission standards, because presumably the white doctors who screwed up were admitted under the more "rigorous" admission standards.

Sorry for spoiling the second homework assignment, P. I had doubts about whether s/he was gonna get it anyway, though.

That would be a good place to begin a study, although I'm not sure successful medical malpractice claims are necessarily a good way to measure physician incompetency. I'm fairly certain the number of medical malpractice claims levied varies from specialty-to-specialty (OB/GYN suffers from a large number of claims; that's how John Edwards made his money); how many of these successful claims are due to genuine medical incompetence, versus finding a sympathetic jury or being brought by a convincingly charismatic plaintiff's counsel, is not necessarily easy to gauge.

If the racial distribution of doctors varies between specialties, any study would necessarily have to correct for these distorting factors. There are probably others, but the number of claims per specialty is the factor that I can think of at this moment.

[dashrashi]

Never mind. Already taken care of, I see.

[H4CS]

Never mind. Already taken care of, I see.

This is sort of generalizable in these discussions, no?  It seems like clockwork that some kid comes along thinking his opposition to AA is somehow magical and due to always being the smartest of his friends, he must be right.  Throw in some Thomas Sowell (he's BLACK!!!!) and we have ourselves another thread.

[dashrashi]

Never mind. Already taken care of, I see.

This is sort of generalizable in these discussions, no?  It seems like clockwork that some kid comes along thinking his opposition to AA is somehow magical and due to always being the smartest of his friends, he must be right.  Throw in some Thomas Sowell (he's BLACK!!!!) and we have ourselves another thread.

And then we can sojourn here to see the scattered corpses and charred remains of valiant warriors on both sides of the issue littering the landscape, festering, smelly, foul.

T S Eliot?

From now on my stock response is going to be "ur jus a jellus h8r."

[t...]

Eh, I prefer reality.

Becomes pretty obvious then, no?

[dashrashi]

T S Eliot?

From now on my stock response is going to be "ur jus a jellus h8r."

B M F Piggy

Take it as a compliment, my good sir. No one does despair like Eliot.

[PNym]

Never mind. Already taken care of, I see.

This is sort of generalizable in these discussions, no?  It seems like clockwork that some kid comes along thinking his opposition to AA is somehow magical and due to always being the smartest of his friends, he must be right.  Throw in some Thomas Sowell (he's BLACK!!!!) and we have ourselves another thread.

First you characterize me as white. Then you characterize me as thinking my opposition to AA is magical. Then you characterize me as being the smartest of my friends.

Look, moron. You have no idea who I am, nor do you have any idea who my friends are, nor do you have any idea about many other aspects of my life. What you do have an idea of is what arguments I have put forward against AA. Perhaps you should address those, instead of grasping at straws about my private life or personal identity, a topic that you have proven yourself to be completely and necessarily ignorant about.

[PNym]

Eh, I prefer reality.

Becomes pretty obvious then, no?

Leftists don't care about people. Leftists only care about proving their moral or intellectual superiority to other people. What actually happens to other people is of no interest to leftists.

If by reality you mean "the leftist vision," then yes.