S/O- Affirmative Action- where does it end?
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Anonymous
Fair enough. Thanks for being consistent. |
Anonymous
OP, PP's opinions are horrible and ignorant. Affirmative action should absolutely be a thing. I have no opinion about what box your child should check, but commend your throughtfullness in asking the question. Have you spoken to your child's guiance counselor or any admissions offices? |
Anonymous
Affirmative action should be based on income not race, hence that would be no need to check "boxes". if you are white and poor, brown and poor, yellow and poor, and black and poor, you should benefit from affirmative action. The common denominator should be income not race. |
Anonymous
You should pick up a book. The economic situation of the Black community in America is pretty much entirely due to aggressive govoernment action. For example, during and after WWII, every single government agency with any involvement in housing, and there was a lot of involvement due to a wartime and post war housing crisis (WPA, CCA, VA, FHA, etc.) aggressively pursued segregation policies that ensured that Black wartime and post war workers who worked in the same positions as white workers were not able to buy homes in expaning suburbs and were instead packed into poorly constructed (often by government) apartments or makeshift homes in unincorporated areas. Blacks couldn't affort well constructed homes because insurance companies -- as a matter of explicit policy -- wouldn't insure them and banks, savings and loans and mortgage companies wouldn't lend to them. Companies that did try to lend to or insure Black families (and real estate agents that tried to sell to them) were sanctioned. Again, as a matter of explicit government and state board policy nationwide -- not just in the south. If you look at the origins of, for example, Palo Alto and East Palo Alto in California, the horrible disparities there were all about government housing policy. Thus Blacks were shut out -- by explicit Federal, state and local government policy -- from the single biggest source of wealth accumulation in postwar America. So, for example, when my father in law died, my wife inherited hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of it from her parents's home equity. When the parents of a Black friend from the same town died, he sold their house for, if I recall correctly, $25,000. Both families had worked thier whole lives at simiar jobs, but by virtue of the location of their home, one family left hundreds of thousands to their kids and the other next to nothing. Add to that explicit federal government policy to criminalize and incarcerate black men as a response to the civil rights movement, and you get the situation that we have today. PP is doing the work of racism by spouting a nonsense, ahistorical narrative. |
Anonymous
Generations of race-based housing segregation and policing are based on race. That's why affirmative action is based on race. My mom and dad were poor and the first in their families to go to college. My dad ended up the CEO of a large public company. Members of the board made racist jokes and used the n-word. No way in hell a Black person or a woman was going to be hired as CEO, no matter thier qualifications or income. You should pick up a book. |
Anonymous
You don't seem to understand what affirmative action actually is, and you are also confusing it with financial aid. |
Anonymous
I don't need to pick up a book as I have lived through affirmative action policies. As you said, your mom and dad were poor so they benefited from affirmative action and are now successful. That is good, that is how affirmative action should work. Their children (meaning you) are now rich, so you should not benefit from affirmative action policies. See how this works to everybody's benefit, not just one race? We need to look into the future and not perpetuate policies that discriminate on racial grounds. |
Anonymous
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OP you should actually make sure you understand what race is and explain it to your child as well. Lots of the posts here don't have a basis understanding. If you and your child do not identify as African American or with the experience of racism then I'm not sure you can rightfully check the box. Race is not biological or genetic. The list below is from the PBS documentary Race: The Power of An Illusion. http://newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0149
Here are 10 things to know about race. Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, gender, class, even language. The English language didn’t even have the word ‘race’ until it turns up in 1508 in a poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings. Race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic, trait or even one gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race. Human subspecies don’t exist. Unlike many animals, modern humans simply haven’t been around long enough or populations isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or races. Despite surface appearances, we are among the most similar of all species. Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, height, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing one trait, like skin color, doesn’t necessarily tell you anything else about a person’s other traits. Most variation is within, not between, "races." Of the small amount of total human genetic variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian. Slavery predates race. Throughout much of human history, societies have enslaved others, often as a result of conquest or war, even debt, but not because of physical characteristics or a belief in natural inferiority. Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, ours was the first slave system where all the slaves shared similar physical characteristics. Race and freedom evolved together.The U.S. was founded on the radical new idea that “All men are created equal.” But our early economy was based largely on slavery. How could this anomaly be rationalized? The new idea of race helped explain why some people could be denied the rights and freedoms that others took for granted. Race justified social inequalities as natural. As the idea of race took hold, white superiority became “common sense” in white America. It rationalized not only slavery but also the extermination of Indians, exclusion of Asian immigrants, and the taking of Mexican lands by a nation that otherwise professed a deep belief in liberty and equality. Racialized practices became institutionalized within American government, laws, and society and persist even though de jure segregation ended. Race isn’t biological, but racism is still real. Racism is a powerful social force that gives people different access to opportunities and resources. Our government and social institutions disproportionately, albeit often invisibly, channel wealth, power, and resources to the “unmarked” race - white people. This affects everyone, whether we are aware of it or not. Colorblindness will not end racism. Pretending race doesn’t exist is not the same as creating equality. Racism is more than stereotypes and individual prejudice. To tackle racism, we need to identify and remedy social policies and institutional practices that advantage some groups at the expense of others. |
Anonymous
+1 It's a racist policy. The worst part is the never ending lies, which have caused the sickos to rebrand the policy every few years. They give someone an opportunity because of the color of their skin, and that same opportunity is denied to someone because of their skin color. The policy has nothing to do with opportunity, it's all about genetics. And to make matters worse, when it comes to college admissions, they are discriminating against a group of people that has historically been discriminated against. |
Anonymous
You seem confused. My mom and dad were poor and WHITE. The "affirmative action" that my family benefitted from was SYSTEMIC RACISM. My dad was hired into the top job in his company because he was great at his job, but HE WOULD NOT HAVE GOTTEN THAT JOB AS A BLACK MAN OR A WOMAN (this was 30 years ago). My parents and my inlaws were able to buy in neighborhoods where their house would appreciate BECAUSE THEY WERE WHITE. The scholarship that my dad attended college on was not offered to a Black student until the 1980s. My mom's college didn't even desegregate until 1967, and THEY HAD TO GO TO COURT TO FIGHT THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN ORDER TO BE ALLOWED TO ADMIT BLACK STUDENTS. My elementary school didn't end de jure, official segregation until 1972 (18 years after the first Brown v. Board decision). Why do these events of 50 years ago matter today? Becasue my parents were able to buy houses in good school districts. I got a good education, and I attended an exclusive, almost entirely white university. In my first job after grad school, my boss's boss's boss had previously worked for my dad, so I was a good candidate, but there's no was I wasn't getting that job. After a few years in the corporate world, I started my own company, and I got a lot of work with large, privately held companies that employed almost no Blacks or women in management. When I sent them non-white consultants, there was almost always something not quite right about those candidates. I was literally in a project meeting with a large team of 100% white men, and the exec running the project commented at some length but indirectly, how glad he was that the team was all the "right kind" of people and that we'd be "culturally" harmonious. My in laws paid the down payment on our first home (from home equity from a large home that they had sold after their kids moved out -- something that Black families were not eligible for in their city at the time they bought their house). We used equity from our first house to buy rental property and started acumulating wealth. This is how it works for many welathy white people in America, but not for Black people, and my life trajectory and current wealth is due partly to my hard work, but WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSIBLE IF I WERE BLACK. I know you are working hard not to face this, but until the late1960's, US federal, state, and local government all over the country explicity enforced racial segregation, and as a matter of policy favored whites in all aspects of housing, criminal justice and eductation. After the 1960s, those policies became unwritten, but it's absolutely the case that the criminal justice system in the US is designed from the ground up, at every stage of the process, to favor whites. This article links to dozens of studies -- many funded by police departments -- that demonstrate the systemic racism of the criminal justice system in excrutiating detail. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/opinions/systemic-racism-police-evidence-criminal-justice-system/#Policing |
Anonymous
Interesting that you don't seem concerned about hundreds of years of explicitly racist policies in education, housing and criminal justice that continue to this day. There are zero "lies" in affirmative action, but plenty in people like you who deny the ongoing systemic racism in this country and the generational effect of dejure policy that continued until at least the 1970s. |
Anonymous
Do your excuses make you feel better about discriminating against other minorities? I bet you are the psycho who wrote the extremely lengthy manifesto above. |
Anonymous
+2 I understand the historical inequities, I understand how systemic racism has affected generations of Black people. I don't understand why Black people think it's okay for Affirmative Action to discriminate against another much smaller than them minority group based on race who were not their oppressors to right the wrongs they have faced by the hands and laws of White people. This notion of collateral damage to get mine is racist, discriminatory, unjustified, and belligerent. All the things they seem to stand against, yet have no problem partaking in. Rising up by stepping on others is no different than what White people have done to Black people and other races all over the world. |
Anonymous
Name calling is a pretty lame response, and I'm not really able to get at your intent based on this word salad. As a white person, I'm part of the majority, so not sure what' your on about. |
Anonymous
You really don’t understand affirmative action and your too close minded to understand it. |