[Some] minorities [agree]....Class based AA.

[eastend]

I was terribly, terribly angry, thank you for schooling me on that fact.  I've decided to be less angry and to embrace race based AA.  I hope this new SC doesn't strike down AA as unconstitutional, really I don't...Now I have to go and see my therapist.  Eastend, out. 

[OperaAttorney]

I was terribly, terribly angry, thank you for schooling me on that fact.  I've decided to be less angry and to embrace race based AA.  I hope this new SC doesn't strike down AA as unconstitutional, really I don't...Now I have to go and see my therapist.  Eastend, out. 

Pitiful.  Just pitiful.

[Freak]

I tend to agree with argument that culture is the real problem. I know several  Blacks, but mostly recent immigrants - with a different culture than the typical inner city Black.

I lived in Chicago for 3 years and it seems to me that inner city kids (of all races) have little chance. They either join a gang or lose their lunch money and get beat up constantly. Once in that lifestyle, they learn how much money dealing drugs earns them. It doesn't take a genius to look up what college educated professionals earn and compare it with a drug dealer who sets his/her own hours. I spoke with one former pot dealer who earned $3k/wk ($156k/yr) in high school. No long miserable years of studying, no unemployment risk and no student loans. Just the risks of jail and bullets (which he risked anyway). He ended up in jail, found religion and turned his back on the life, but he struggles to support a family in the inner city, struggles to keep his kids from what he went through. He barely earns $20k/yr.

So how do we solve this problem? The gangs have the carrot and stick approach down to a science.

[Kirk Lazarus]

I tend to agree with argument that culture is the real problem. I know several  Blacks, but mostly recent immigrants - with a different culture than the typical inner city Black.

I lived in Chicago for 3 years and it seems to me that inner city kids (of all races) have little chance. They either join a gang or lose their lunch money and get beat up constantly. Once in that lifestyle, they learn how much money dealing drugs earns them. It doesn't take a genius to look up what college educated professionals earn and compare it with a drug dealer who sets his/her own hours. I spoke with one former pot dealer who earned $3k/wk ($156k/yr) in high school. No long miserable years of studying, no unemployment risk and no student loans. Just the risks of jail and bullets (which he risked anyway). He ended up in jail, found religion and turned his back on the life, but he struggles to support a family in the inner city, struggles to keep his kids from what he went through. He barely earns $20k/yr.

So how do we solve this problem? The gangs have the carrot and stick approach down to a science.

Too bad you described an environmental problem and not a cultural problem.

ETA: Nevermind, I think you're right.

[Freak]

Point, but it's also a culture. The dealers then spend their money on drugs, clothes and cars instead of appreciating assets. Shoot, if one of those high school dealers cleaned his money and invested it. He could get out in one year.

It's not just dealers who spend their money that way. How many cars do you see with $5k rims in the ghetto. That's enough to get out. Why don't they leave the environment?

Edit: So how does one fix it? After all, gangs are a culture.

[Kirk Lazarus]

Point, but it's also a culture. The dealers then spend their money on drugs, clothes and cars instead of appreciating assets. Shoot, if one of those high school dealers cleaned his money and invested it. He could get out in one year.

It's not just dealers who spend their money that way. How many cars do you see with $5k rims in the ghetto. That's enough to get out. Why don't they leave the environment?

Edit: So how does one fix it? After all, gangs are a culture.

Well, I did a lot of work with gangs in DC and I tend to see gang culture as a unfortunate transformation of militant civil rights groups. This is not only true of the Black gangs in DC, but in the south side of Chicago, LA, Louisiana and elsewhere. The problem started with welfare and the incentive given for Black men to leave their families.

I define culture as learned behavior. And in a sense the gang problem in its most simplistic sense is a cultural problem. It is a problem of young men without fathers learning how to be "men" from other young men without fathers. Unfortunately, what results is a perversion of what it means to "be a man." Outward expressions of ultra machismo and aggression are seen as masculine.

In an economic sense, gangs are not the worst problem. For all our talk about education and higher education, the reality is that many inner city Blacks (or poor whites, Asians or Hispanics for that matter) aren't going to ever have the doors of higher education open to them. The reason I single out Blacks in particular is that a white former felon is more desirable as an employee than a never incarcerated Black male all other things being equal. When we pitch to young African Americans that drugs aren't the answer, we don't take into account the fact that there is a significant amount of lender discrimination making it difficult for entrepreneurship, affordable home interest rates, etc.

So the situation is pretty bleak. You have a good portion of Black Males aged 18-32 incarcerated. The poor Black men that have never been incarcerated are the 2nd least desirable employees behind illegal immigrants and practice and custom make it difficult for economic development that benefit poor residents.

In one sense, we could ask gang members to invest illegal money in the market and then laugh at them in April when they get indicted. Or we can recognize that the problem is actually symptomatic of pretty deep rooted environmental, economic and social factors beyond the control of the individual. Thus, the solution has to be systematic imo. Sure, there are problems with the "culture," but then again those that are playing by the rules aren't exactly getting ahead either as your example illustrates.

[Lindbergh]

Did you know that the way you reply to people is supremely annoying?

Lighten up, Francis.

I actually thought B. Sands response was pretty thoughtful.  Is there a reason you considered it annoying?

[Lindbergh]

This thread was making some progress before the petty bickering took over. Hopefully we can return to that. I usually don't get into these AA debates because people approach with closed ears but I saw a few legitimately open minded questions and propositions advanced here that I wanted to weigh in on.

First of all, as an aside, "The smart minorities get it..." is just a tad bit insulting, and factually incorrect to boot. Support for the proposition underlying this disrespectful statement could more easily be garnered by simply rewording the title of this thread to reflect that some minorities agree with Class Based AA as opposed to Race Based AA - but to say that only the smart minorities are in agreement with class based AA is ridiculous.  I would urge blondngreen to rename the title of this thread if he/she is serious about encouraging an intellectual discourse about the topic.  A simple "Class Based AA" would suffice.  But moving on...

It's an assertion, or a statement of opinion.  Kind of like "AA is necessary."  We can debate the truth of both statements, but I personally agree with the idea (though I would change "smart" to "thoughtful.")

I agree with the legitimacy of the class based AA.  Rich kids (white or black) certainly don't need any more help getting into professional schools, and many legacies who fall into the upper middle to upper class will get admitted into schools that they didn't necessarily deserve with the assistance of their own form of affirmative action: by virtue of their legacy status. (although nobody seems to be pissed off about this for some strange reason)  But at the end of the day, if you were to take a pool of America and ask everybody do you think school admissions should be based on race or based on income, most people (both black and white) will say based on income.

Excellent post, although signficant legacy preference in law school appears extremely rare.  To the rare extent this occurs, I think it's considered less offensive because it's not a form of racial discrimination.

Somebody asked a good question: what argument remains for the race based AA once we accept the legitimacy of class based AA?  Unfortunately there is one glaring argument that remains even for those of us who agree and support Class Based AA, which ties into what Opera Attorney pointed out - blacks, latinos, and other minorities are still, in 2007, discriminated against in employment and the professional setting

How so?  We need more concrete evidence of this, especially since the evidence appears to indicate that minorities are actually favored in hiring these days.

and what's worse is that, despite 40 years worth of AA, minorities still exist only in very very very small numbers in the legal profession.  White males still continue to dominate the working worlds of biglaw and big-business long after we have all left the 3 or 4 year academic setting of law school, med school, etc.

Now, this is indisputably true.  However, a differential in results doesn't necessarily mean the cause is discrimination.  For example, jews and asians have historically faced discrimination, but they are OVERrepresented in various professional fields.  Blacks are also overrepresented in sports and music -- again not necessarily the result of discrimination. 

In other words, when attempting to remedy past wrongs and level the playing fields with an AA program, too many of us who support class based AA focus on getting into school and stop there - as if that's the entire purpose of class based AA.  The issue being addressed by Class Based AA doesn't end by merely getting into law school, folks.

The problem, to me, is that this "issue" appears primarily cultural, not societal.  Jews predominate in law because of their cultural background and aspirations.  Hispanics are underrepresented because of a different cultural background.  The idea that we should favor certain cultures simply because they prepare their members less well seems questionable -- especially since this doesn't really motivate the culture to adapt and change.

Even though I agree with the legitimacy of Class Based AA, I am less certain that we, as a nation, are in a position even in 2007 where we can completely swap out one for the other.  I would certainly like for us to be, but the fact of the matter is that we are not.  I am hopeful that we can be there someday.  Former Justice O'Connor estimated that day at being 25 years in the future.  Who knows.  But one thing is for certain, we're not there yet.  Replacing Race Based with Class Based now is premature.  Even Obama (one of the alleged "smart minorities" according to the blondngreen) is very clear on this topic when asked about the state of race in America - he says that he believes that America is ready to get past it's race problem, which is to say that it still has a problem that it needs to get past.

Obama is certainly entitled to his opinion.  However, the real question, again, is why certain minorities struggle once educational opportunity it controlled for.  To me, again, the primary problem is cultural, and people like Obama himself are clear examples of the fact that there is no nebulous, impervious force preventing minorities from achieving academically -- it ultimately comes down to the individual, and, perhaps, his family outlook.  It is therefore unclear to me that creating different standards for minorities is the answer to this question. 

I stopped reading at the bolded.

Why so?

[Lindbergh]

This thread was making some progress before the petty bickering took over. Hopefully we can return to that. I usually don't get into these AA debates because people approach with closed ears but I saw a few legitimately open minded questions and propositions advanced here that I wanted to weigh in on.

First of all, as an aside, "The smart minorities get it..." is just a tad bit insulting, and factually incorrect to boot. Support for the proposition underlying this disrespectful statement could more easily be garnered by simply rewording the title of this thread to reflect that some minorities agree with Class Based AA as opposed to Race Based AA - but to say that only the smart minorities are in agreement with class based AA is ridiculous.  I would urge blondngreen to rename the title of this thread if he/she is serious about encouraging an intellectual discourse about the topic.  A simple "Class Based AA" would suffice.  But moving on...

It's an assertion, or a statement of opinion.  Kind of like "AA is necessary."  We can debate the truth of both statements, but I personally agree with the idea (though I would change "smart" to "thoughtful.")

I agree with the legitimacy of the class based AA.  Rich kids (white or black) certainly don't need any more help getting into professional schools, and many legacies who fall into the upper middle to upper class will get admitted into schools that they didn't necessarily deserve with the assistance of their own form of affirmative action: by virtue of their legacy status. (although nobody seems to be pissed off about this for some strange reason)  But at the end of the day, if you were to take a pool of America and ask everybody do you think school admissions should be based on race or based on income, most people (both black and white) will say based on income.

Excellent post, although signficant legacy preference in law school appears extremely rare.  To the rare extent this occurs, I think it's considered less offensive because it's not a form of racial discrimination.

Somebody asked a good question: what argument remains for the race based AA once we accept the legitimacy of class based AA?  Unfortunately there is one glaring argument that remains even for those of us who agree and support Class Based AA, which ties into what Opera Attorney pointed out - blacks, latinos, and other minorities are still, in 2007, discriminated against in employment and the professional setting

How so?  We need more concrete evidence of this, especially since the evidence appears to indicate that minorities are actually favored in hiring these days.

and what's worse is that, despite 40 years worth of AA, minorities still exist only in very very very small numbers in the legal profession.  White males still continue to dominate the working worlds of biglaw and big-business long after we have all left the 3 or 4 year academic setting of law school, med school, etc.

Now, this is indisputably true.  However, a differential in results doesn't necessarily mean the cause is discrimination.  For example, jews and asians have historically faced discrimination, but they are OVERrepresented in various professional fields.  Blacks are also overrepresented in sports and music -- again not necessarily the result of discrimination. 

In other words, when attempting to remedy past wrongs and level the playing fields with an AA program, too many of us who support class based AA focus on getting into school and stop there - as if that's the entire purpose of class based AA.  The issue being addressed by Class Based AA doesn't end by merely getting into law school, folks.

The problem, to me, is that this "issue" appears primarily cultural, not societal.  Jews predominate in law because of their cultural background and aspirations.  Hispanics are underrepresented because of a different cultural background.  The idea that we should favor certain cultures simply because they prepare their members less well seems questionable -- especially since this doesn't really motivate the culture to adapt and change.

Even though I agree with the legitimacy of Class Based AA, I am less certain that we, as a nation, are in a position even in 2007 where we can completely swap out one for the other.  I would certainly like for us to be, but the fact of the matter is that we are not.  I am hopeful that we can be there someday.  Former Justice O'Connor estimated that day at being 25 years in the future.  Who knows.  But one thing is for certain, we're not there yet.  Replacing Race Based with Class Based now is premature.  Even Obama (one of the alleged "smart minorities" according to the blondngreen) is very clear on this topic when asked about the state of race in America - he says that he believes that America is ready to get past it's race problem, which is to say that it still has a problem that it needs to get past.

Obama is certainly entitled to his opinion.  However, the real question, again, is why certain minorities struggle once educational opportunity it controlled for.  To me, again, the primary problem is cultural, and people like Obama himself are clear examples of the fact that there is no nebulous, impervious force preventing minorities from achieving academically -- it ultimately comes down to the individual, and, perhaps, his family outlook.  It is therefore unclear to me that creating different standards for minorities is the answer to this question. 

I stopped reading at the bolded.

I know the feeling.  Let's hope Lindbergh devotes more energy to his law classes.   LOL .

If you get tired after a few paragraphs of reading, you're going to need a lot more energy for your law classes.   

[Lindbergh]

In the words of the immortal Tony Kushner, "You don't make assumptions about me, mister; I won't make them about you."

You don't know what other people go through. Focus on yourself, a-hole.

Who are you responding to?  And how does your post relate to AA?