We all know how supportive everyone on this board is regarding the support of satire, and free speech. Especially when it is being used to put the truth across to people.
I wonder how all of you feel about the numerous universities putting a stop to these bake sales that are using satire to make a point.
The sales, when allowed to occur for more than 10 minutes, sell cookies. They sell them to different people for different prices. The more "disadvantaged" or "at-risk" you are because of your gender or skin color, the lower the price. It is meant to provoke discussion about affirmative action being based on factors other than economic need.
Comments, thoughts?
Nick
1) Why do the boards even have a say in this matter? Are they the police authority over the students? If we want to protest over anything at my university we don´t have to ask to do it as long as we follow the laws. And that include rooms and buildings we have 24/7 access to.
2) Good idea for a protest. Sometimes creativity is lacking when students want to protest something but this was a good thought provocing idea.
3) I strongly agree with the protesters: that your skin colour, gender and the like doesn´t have anything to do when you are apply for a college. The only way ahead is to give the students the same start in K12. That means much more money should be put into schools in neigbourhoods where disadvantaged kids live. And much more should be done for disadvantaged neighbourhoods in general. That mean that the goal should be that if you took a class from a rich neighbourhood and one from a poor they would on average have the same standart of grades and grades should be the only thing counting when applying for college. That is a lot more difficult than AA but its much much more fair.
I'm generally against affirmative action based on race, but I have no problem with it if it addresses the consequences of racism (lower socioeconomic status, generational poverty, etc).
As an example, I remember some university was forbidden to use race as a criteria for acceptance, so instead they gave extra points if your parents didn't go to college and some other factors which had the effect of favoring minorities. The reasoning was simple- if racism has an effect, then measure the effect and counter accordingly.
Still, it didn't make conservatives happy and I haven't heard any who advocating giving preference to low income families. "Why should people who worked hard to provide more for their kids be punished?" is the typical retort. Also, they don't seem to advocate getting rid of legacy points.
Obviously by using a bake sale, they're trying to avoid the historical issues, and trivialize the long-term effects of widespread discrimination. Cool!
I don't think so. What did these students do but provoke? And already I know some minds are twisting with all the negative permutations of "provoke" but it is a university, provoke can just as easily mean promote discussion and thought, in essence to stimulate a new outlook. Are they to blame? Or perhaps the mobs of angry minority associations should comport themselves better? Why are a bunch of white students suddenly responsible for the comportment of another group of minority students? (your terms)
What I do involves a lot of time spent figuring out how people think, in the past few years I've found a lot to make me uncomfortable with the politics of white and black. Most specifically this: If you get an angry mob of (insert your minority here) shouting down white people, that doesn't conjure nearly the amount of negative association as any group of white people organized to shout about anything at all. Having been around campuses a long long time, I can tell you with 100% certainty that whenever a white person makes race an issue they are immediately characterized as nazis, period, it comes out, and fast, from both students and faculty. When a "minority" traffics in race, then we heap various praise on their activities. Should "minorities" organize and protest it is invariably deemed "just." The logistics might (and do) work out such that the history of protest more often than not lands American minorities on the "just" side and American whites on the bigoted side, but that logistic imbalance is far from a given any more, especially from center-left politics/academics.
3) I strongly agree with the protesters: that your skin colour, gender and the like doesn´t have anything to do when you are apply for a college. The only way ahead is to give the students the same start in K12. That means much more money should be put into schools in neigbourhoods where disadvantaged kids live. And much more should be done for disadvantaged neighbourhoods in general. That mean that the goal should be that if you took a class from a rich neighbourhood and one from a poor they would on average have the same standart of grades and grades should be the only thing counting when applying for college. That is a lot more difficult than AA but its much much more fair.
Yup, that sounds about right. But the problem is that in America education is handled on the local level. The Federal government has very little say. Primary education is funded almost exclusively by real-estate taxes. So during the Great White Flight? of the 60s and 70s a large number of whites left the cities and took their income with them. Suburban schools got better and better while urban schools got worse and worse. AA is a band-aid on a gun shot. The only real way to solve the problem is to have much much better schooling early and often.
p.s. What have I done? I swore that I wouldn't get into any of the heated political debates in AO.
Yup, that sounds about right. But the problem is that in America education is handled on the local level. The Federal government has very little say. Primary education is funded almost exclusively by real-estate taxes. So during the Great White Flight? of the 60s and 70s a large number of whites left the cities and took their income with them. Suburban schools got better and better while urban schools got worse and worse. AA is a band-aid on a gun shot. The only real way to solve the problem is to have much much better schooling early and often.
p.s. What have I done? I swore that I wouldn't get into any of the heated political debates in AO.
Well since you bring up the funding of Public Schools I agree that local funding is a scam. I believe the public schools should be funded at the federal level. The quality gap of schools needs to be bridged. This would benefit America in huge measure.
I didn't mean your typo. I meant the whole paragraph.
Oh, well then I'm sorry for your lack of reading comprehension ability. It's truly terrible that you can't comprehend a paragraph while attending a university.
Maybe there is something to be said about this white privilege issue. I think Shawn is a prime example of it.
Remember Shawn. This is not the Shawniverse. I don't have to make sure you understand, feel comfortable with the wording, sources or anything else. If you don't like it, post or deal with it yourself.
Oh, well then I'm sorry for your lack of reading comprehension ability. It's truly terrible that you can't comprehend a paragraph while attending a university.
Maybe there is something to be said about this white privilege issue. I think Shawn is a prime example of it.
Remember Shawn. This is not the Shawniverse. I don't have to make sure you understand, feel comfortable with the wording, sources or anything else. If you don't like it, post or deal with it yourself.
Yup, that sounds about right. But the problem is that in America education is handled on the local level. The Federal government has very little say. Primary education is funded almost exclusively by real-estate taxes. So during the Great White Flight? of the 60s and 70s a large number of whites left the cities and took their income with them. Suburban schools got better and better while urban schools got worse and worse. AA is a band-aid on a gun shot. The only real way to solve the problem is to have much much better schooling early and often.
p.s. What have I done? I swore that I wouldn't get into any of the heated political debates in AO.
Yes and you seem to forget that when the white flight took the taxes with them, many urban centers sued the state over the funding disparity. Won and this usually resulted in the funding system for the entire state being rewritten.
There is even well known examples where judges, under the guise of desegregation, have basically taken over the state funding mechanism of schools and directed large amounts of money at certain schools and townships.
Likewise there are schools and districts that spend craploads of money per student on their education. It doesn't improve the result. One of the best examples of this is Washington D.C. schools where the per student spending is about $12000 per pupil last time I checked and the results were horrible.
As I mentioned the funding at the school I attended was well beyond equal. States give school improvement funds to needy (read minority) schools. The federal government gives Title I and Title VII to school that have bilingual and low achieving, or impoverished student bodies. We even provide breakfast and lunch to insure the students eat well, invervention programs, before and afterschool programs, magnet programs, etc. The number of dollars it adds up to are very real. In Los Angeles, the district was even sued and had to make up the difference in teacher salaries with regard to experience. So for example if one school had 20 teachers with 20 years experience, and a minority school had 20 teachers with 5 years experience, the district had to take the difference in salaries, and give it to the minority school to spend.
I worked at a school that was actually majority white for about 4 years. It was flat broke. No Title I, VII, barely any SIP. It was nonstop fund raisers just to afford the buses for field trips. I have worked the other 7 years at schools that are overwhelmingly minority and the money difference was huge.
The school I am at right now is a fine arts magnet. We have a keyboard lab, dance studio, two computer labs. We go on several arts field trips each year to the ballet, college drama productions, etc. I have 6 computers in my room and any supplies I need.
The only time I ever had a lack of computers, a lack of supplies or where we couldn't even afford a field trip was when I was working at the majority white school. They had decent test scores, even among the minority groups there and hence no money.
Maybe you should ask yourself why it is getting so huge. Here in California we have many of the same issues and have tried and at times succeeded in passing color blind issues. You mention that there were alot more minorities than you thought attended the school. Perhaps that says something about you and your circle of friends and not the reality of the matter.
haha, you have obviously never visited texas a&m's campus. the only place where there is more than a trickle of minorites present is in the engineering department. and to say that it says something about me is about as stupid a comment as i've ever heard. i myself am a minority. the school is about 93% white, and therefore who i surround myself with is based on this number. i dont actively seek out minorities or whites.
and i am well aware of how it is done in california--i used to live there. i would prefer to be there instead of here at Caucasian Station, but hey...we take what life throws at us, n'est pas?
The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.
While blacks didn't have their freedom or the fruits of their labor, I don't think they were slotted for extermination.
As for income based affirmative action, yes I believe that is what conservatives support because that is what I have seen implimented in place of the race based initiatives. I've seen income and I've also seen programs where they take the top X% of say, each high school.
So I guess in view of the actual ACTIONS, and not angry allegations, I will need that "talking to about the facts of life." Likewise make sure you explain how "underrepresented minorities" are some how systematically held down by "the man" while other minorities like asians, indians, jews, and others attend in disproportionate numbers and are somehow not held down by "the man."
Nick
I don't have any problem with people making a principled argument against affirmative action. However, what it so often devolves into is an attempt to minimize what has been done to Africans by Americans over a couple hundred years. I don't think anyone knows the actual numbers, but I believe one estimate is that 10 million Africans were murdered in the slave trade across the Atlantic, most simply dying in the ship in transit. And obviously many times more than that were actually brought to slavery. Maybe it doesn't fit the technical definition of genocide, but it's pretty damn close, and in any case, it's certainly one of the worst events in modern history. It rivals anything Stalin or Hitler did, and easily makes Saddam Hussein's Iraq look like good times. And nothing like that was ever done to the Irish, or the Chinese, or anyone else.
I think too often we middle class spoiled brats forget that and don't have a sense of history about these things.
haha, you have obviously never visited texas a&m's campus. the only place where there is more than a trickle of minorites present is in the engineering department. and to say that it says something about me is about as stupid a comment as i've ever heard. i myself am a minority. the school is about 93% white, and therefore who i surround myself with is based on this number. i dont actively seek out minorities or whites.
and i am well aware of how it is done in california--i used to live there. i would prefer to be there instead of here at Caucasian Station, but hey...we take what life throws at us, n'est pas?
Again I am sure it would be claimed it needs affirmative action since it is only 6.6% black. But it is obviously racially diverse.
Here is UCLA which is along with UC Berkeley is claimed to be one of the campuses that desperately need affirmative action because they are so lily white.
As you can see, it is not even majority white. It is majority asian. Whites make up 34% of the campus. Yet it is claimed this campus does not have "diversity." What nonsense! But again it is only 3.7% black but how, at being 37% asian can it be claimed that some white male power is keeping that percentage at that level? Likewise when asian kids go to these same supposedly terrible schools, why do they go to college?
I don't have any problem with people making a principled argument against affirmative action. However, what it so often devolves into is an attempt to minimize what has been done to Africans by Americans over a couple hundred years. I don't think anyone knows the actual numbers, but I believe one estimate is that 10 million Africans were murdered in the slave trade across the Atlantic, most simply dying in the ship in transit. And obviously many times more than that were actually brought to slavery. Maybe it doesn't fit the technical definition of genocide, but it's pretty damn close, and in any case, it's certainly one of the worst events in modern history. It rivals anything Stalin or Hitler did, and easily makes Saddam Hussein's Iraq look like good times. And nothing like that was ever done to the Irish, or the Chinese, or anyone else.
I think too often we middle class spoiled brats forget that and don't have a sense of history about these things.
Yes be we are talking about American history and the slave trade. American's kept and brought over families. They treated them more like animals to be bought and bred. We ended the slave trade much earlier than we did slavery and this in part contributed to this.
There are nations that would only bring over the males and basically worth them to death. However that was not the United States and I don't think it right that you intentionally attempt to link the two very different behaviors.
"oriental" refers to a direction. ASIAN refers to where the people come from, and thus the people themselves. just thought i'd help you out with this before you get your ass beaten for referring to some asian dudes as "eastern." they hate it.
Yes, I know, but I'm not talking about Turks, Russians, Siberians, Arabs, Indians, Uzbeks, or any of those fellas. I'm talking about Chinese, Koreans, and various Malaysian people. . . Primarily Chinese.
When people call me a westerner, big f-ing deal. I am a westerner. I also am cool with "white" and even "caucasian." Of course, I actually AM caucasian. . . Armenian pride, hoorah.
People that come from the far east are orientals are far as I'm concerned, and they can get mad if they want. I think they like it better than when I call them "yellows."
Yes be we are talking about American history and the slave trade. American's kept and brought over families. They treated them more like animals to be bought and bred. We ended the slave trade much earlier than we did slavery and this in part contributed to this.
Oh that makes it all better.
Part of the point here about AA is not such much a reparation for slavery as it is a reparation for the century of continued injustice against blacks and a systematic limiting of opportunities for them that followed the civil war--and that really continues today. All this business about "I didn't enslave anybody" misses the point of AA entirely.
Go take a drive through Mississippi or Alabama if you don't believe me.
Part of the point here about AA is not such much a reparation for slavery as it is a reparation for the century of continued injustice against blacks and a systematic limiting of opportunities for them that followed the civil war--and that really continues today. All this business about "I didn't enslave anybody" misses the point of AA entirely.
Go take a drive through Mississippi or Alabama if you don't believe me.
Cheers
Scott
I didn't say it made it right. I just didn't make it genocide. Big difference. You know...difference, like the difference between killing a three day zygote or a full term baby? That sort of difference.
I didn't say the issue was who enslaved who. I also asked that you and others discuss how filipinos, hispanics, and the countless other "underrepresented minorities" suffered from slavery since they do receive affirmative action.
If you are talking about the poverty I might see in Mississippi or Alabama, that again can be addressed through economic affirmative action. I have seen people here dismiss it, but I have yet to see them address it. If black children and their respective parents are disproportionately poor, wouldn't they disproportionately benefit?
I think the real issue though is having your cake and eating it too. Racial critics will contend for example that people addressing welfare always put a black face on the examples, and claim whites are just as poor, but just not as concentrated. It is either one way or the other. Either blacks are disproportionately poor, and would still benefit in larger percentages from economic affirmative action, or they aren't in which case, why the outrage?
If the problem is poverty, address poverty, not race.
Hell, you can see it here in Chicago in everything right down to individual interactions.
Well, I started to give a more complete list of states and then realized that there would be 50 of them, and I always forget Delaware.
This is one of those topics that I just plain don't understand how people get so easily (wilfully?) distracted about, mostly by turning it back to the civil war/slavery, which is really a non-issue when it comes to all of this--unless we're talking about reparations, which I'd ****ing love to see paid in cold, hard cash to every black person in America whose ancestry can be traced back to slaves. I'd love it. Impossible, but I'd still love it.
Anyway. All this business about "I didn't do this" or "I didn't do that" simply misses the point. This isn't about individual wrongs, which can be dealt with in the judicial system; this is about culturally sanctioned injustice.
Hell, on the day I was born (in the summer of 1972), some local klansmen lined up arm in arm with local law enforcement officers. My uncle Charlie carried a loaded M-16 to protect James Meredith at Ole Miss. Another uncle took part in a kind of human shield aimed at protecting the Mississippi State basketball team, who were endangered simply because they were going to play in a tournament where teams with blacks were also playing.
I may not have personally gone out and oppressed someone, but I have certainly benefitted from the oppression conducted by others.
Comments
Originally posted by trumptman
A typo, it should read shouldn't instead of should.
Nick
I didn't mean your typo. I meant the whole paragraph.
Originally posted by trumptman
Conservative Cookie Comedy
We all know how supportive everyone on this board is regarding the support of satire, and free speech. Especially when it is being used to put the truth across to people.
I wonder how all of you feel about the numerous universities putting a stop to these bake sales that are using satire to make a point.
The sales, when allowed to occur for more than 10 minutes, sell cookies. They sell them to different people for different prices. The more "disadvantaged" or "at-risk" you are because of your gender or skin color, the lower the price. It is meant to provoke discussion about affirmative action being based on factors other than economic need.
Comments, thoughts?
Nick
1) Why do the boards even have a say in this matter? Are they the police authority over the students? If we want to protest over anything at my university we don´t have to ask to do it as long as we follow the laws. And that include rooms and buildings we have 24/7 access to.
2) Good idea for a protest. Sometimes creativity is lacking when students want to protest something but this was a good thought provocing idea.
3) I strongly agree with the protesters: that your skin colour, gender and the like doesn´t have anything to do when you are apply for a college. The only way ahead is to give the students the same start in K12. That means much more money should be put into schools in neigbourhoods where disadvantaged kids live. And much more should be done for disadvantaged neighbourhoods in general. That mean that the goal should be that if you took a class from a rich neighbourhood and one from a poor they would on average have the same standart of grades and grades should be the only thing counting when applying for college. That is a lot more difficult than AA but its much much more fair.
As an example, I remember some university was forbidden to use race as a criteria for acceptance, so instead they gave extra points if your parents didn't go to college and some other factors which had the effect of favoring minorities. The reasoning was simple- if racism has an effect, then measure the effect and counter accordingly.
Still, it didn't make conservatives happy and I haven't heard any who advocating giving preference to low income families. "Why should people who worked hard to provide more for their kids be punished?" is the typical retort. Also, they don't seem to advocate getting rid of legacy points.
Originally posted by BRussell
Obviously by using a bake sale, they're trying to avoid the historical issues, and trivialize the long-term effects of widespread discrimination. Cool!
*insert platitudinous comment here*
Originally posted by Matsu
I don't think so. What did these students do but provoke? And already I know some minds are twisting with all the negative permutations of "provoke" but it is a university, provoke can just as easily mean promote discussion and thought, in essence to stimulate a new outlook. Are they to blame? Or perhaps the mobs of angry minority associations should comport themselves better? Why are a bunch of white students suddenly responsible for the comportment of another group of minority students? (your terms)
What I do involves a lot of time spent figuring out how people think, in the past few years I've found a lot to make me uncomfortable with the politics of white and black. Most specifically this: If you get an angry mob of (insert your minority here) shouting down white people, that doesn't conjure nearly the amount of negative association as any group of white people organized to shout about anything at all. Having been around campuses a long long time, I can tell you with 100% certainty that whenever a white person makes race an issue they are immediately characterized as nazis, period, it comes out, and fast, from both students and faculty. When a "minority" traffics in race, then we heap various praise on their activities. Should "minorities" organize and protest it is invariably deemed "just." The logistics might (and do) work out such that the history of protest more often than not lands American minorities on the "just" side and American whites on the bigoted side, but that logistic imbalance is far from a given any more, especially from center-left politics/academics.
Well said Matsu
Fellowship
Originally posted by Anders
3) I strongly agree with the protesters: that your skin colour, gender and the like doesn´t have anything to do when you are apply for a college. The only way ahead is to give the students the same start in K12. That means much more money should be put into schools in neigbourhoods where disadvantaged kids live. And much more should be done for disadvantaged neighbourhoods in general. That mean that the goal should be that if you took a class from a rich neighbourhood and one from a poor they would on average have the same standart of grades and grades should be the only thing counting when applying for college. That is a lot more difficult than AA but its much much more fair.
Yup, that sounds about right. But the problem is that in America education is handled on the local level. The Federal government has very little say. Primary education is funded almost exclusively by real-estate taxes. So during the Great White Flight? of the 60s and 70s a large number of whites left the cities and took their income with them. Suburban schools got better and better while urban schools got worse and worse. AA is a band-aid on a gun shot. The only real way to solve the problem is to have much much better schooling early and often.
p.s. What have I done? I swore that I wouldn't get into any of the heated political debates in AO.
Originally posted by HOM
Yup, that sounds about right. But the problem is that in America education is handled on the local level. The Federal government has very little say. Primary education is funded almost exclusively by real-estate taxes. So during the Great White Flight? of the 60s and 70s a large number of whites left the cities and took their income with them. Suburban schools got better and better while urban schools got worse and worse. AA is a band-aid on a gun shot. The only real way to solve the problem is to have much much better schooling early and often.
p.s. What have I done? I swore that I wouldn't get into any of the heated political debates in AO.
Well since you bring up the funding of Public Schools I agree that local funding is a scam. I believe the public schools should be funded at the federal level. The quality gap of schools needs to be bridged. This would benefit America in huge measure.
Fellowship
Originally posted by ShawnJ
I didn't mean your typo. I meant the whole paragraph.
Oh, well then I'm sorry for your lack of reading comprehension ability. It's truly terrible that you can't comprehend a paragraph while attending a university.
Maybe there is something to be said about this white privilege issue. I think Shawn is a prime example of it.
Remember Shawn. This is not the Shawniverse. I don't have to make sure you understand, feel comfortable with the wording, sources or anything else. If you don't like it, post or deal with it yourself.
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
Oh, well then I'm sorry for your lack of reading comprehension ability. It's truly terrible that you can't comprehend a paragraph while attending a university.
Maybe there is something to be said about this white privilege issue. I think Shawn is a prime example of it.
Remember Shawn. This is not the Shawniverse. I don't have to make sure you understand, feel comfortable with the wording, sources or anything else. If you don't like it, post or deal with it yourself.
Nick
Go fvck yourself.
Originally posted by HOM
Yup, that sounds about right. But the problem is that in America education is handled on the local level. The Federal government has very little say. Primary education is funded almost exclusively by real-estate taxes. So during the Great White Flight? of the 60s and 70s a large number of whites left the cities and took their income with them. Suburban schools got better and better while urban schools got worse and worse. AA is a band-aid on a gun shot. The only real way to solve the problem is to have much much better schooling early and often.
p.s. What have I done? I swore that I wouldn't get into any of the heated political debates in AO.
Yes and you seem to forget that when the white flight took the taxes with them, many urban centers sued the state over the funding disparity. Won and this usually resulted in the funding system for the entire state being rewritten.
There is even well known examples where judges, under the guise of desegregation, have basically taken over the state funding mechanism of schools and directed large amounts of money at certain schools and townships.
Likewise there are schools and districts that spend craploads of money per student on their education. It doesn't improve the result. One of the best examples of this is Washington D.C. schools where the per student spending is about $12000 per pupil last time I checked and the results were horrible.
As I mentioned the funding at the school I attended was well beyond equal. States give school improvement funds to needy (read minority) schools. The federal government gives Title I and Title VII to school that have bilingual and low achieving, or impoverished student bodies. We even provide breakfast and lunch to insure the students eat well, invervention programs, before and afterschool programs, magnet programs, etc. The number of dollars it adds up to are very real. In Los Angeles, the district was even sued and had to make up the difference in teacher salaries with regard to experience. So for example if one school had 20 teachers with 20 years experience, and a minority school had 20 teachers with 5 years experience, the district had to take the difference in salaries, and give it to the minority school to spend.
I worked at a school that was actually majority white for about 4 years. It was flat broke. No Title I, VII, barely any SIP. It was nonstop fund raisers just to afford the buses for field trips. I have worked the other 7 years at schools that are overwhelmingly minority and the money difference was huge.
The school I am at right now is a fine arts magnet. We have a keyboard lab, dance studio, two computer labs. We go on several arts field trips each year to the ballet, college drama productions, etc. I have 6 computers in my room and any supplies I need.
The only time I ever had a lack of computers, a lack of supplies or where we couldn't even afford a field trip was when I was working at the majority white school. They had decent test scores, even among the minority groups there and hence no money.
Nick
Originally posted by ShawnJ
Go fvck yourself.
Showing off that keen intellect and large vocabulary again.
See what happens when you don't feed the trolls? They get very grouchy.
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
Maybe you should ask yourself why it is getting so huge. Here in California we have many of the same issues and have tried and at times succeeded in passing color blind issues. You mention that there were alot more minorities than you thought attended the school. Perhaps that says something about you and your circle of friends and not the reality of the matter.
haha, you have obviously never visited texas a&m's campus. the only place where there is more than a trickle of minorites present is in the engineering department. and to say that it says something about me is about as stupid a comment as i've ever heard. i myself am a minority. the school is about 93% white, and therefore who i surround myself with is based on this number. i dont actively seek out minorities or whites.
and i am well aware of how it is done in california--i used to live there. i would prefer to be there instead of here at Caucasian Station, but hey...we take what life throws at us, n'est pas?
Originally posted by trumptman
Genocide?
The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.
While blacks didn't have their freedom or the fruits of their labor, I don't think they were slotted for extermination.
As for income based affirmative action, yes I believe that is what conservatives support because that is what I have seen implimented in place of the race based initiatives. I've seen income and I've also seen programs where they take the top X% of say, each high school.
So I guess in view of the actual ACTIONS, and not angry allegations, I will need that "talking to about the facts of life."
Nick
I don't have any problem with people making a principled argument against affirmative action. However, what it so often devolves into is an attempt to minimize what has been done to Africans by Americans over a couple hundred years. I don't think anyone knows the actual numbers, but I believe one estimate is that 10 million Africans were murdered in the slave trade across the Atlantic, most simply dying in the ship in transit. And obviously many times more than that were actually brought to slavery. Maybe it doesn't fit the technical definition of genocide, but it's pretty damn close, and in any case, it's certainly one of the worst events in modern history. It rivals anything Stalin or Hitler did, and easily makes Saddam Hussein's Iraq look like good times. And nothing like that was ever done to the Irish, or the Chinese, or anyone else.
I think too often we middle class spoiled brats forget that and don't have a sense of history about these things.
Originally posted by _ alliance _
haha, you have obviously never visited texas a&m's campus. the only place where there is more than a trickle of minorites present is in the engineering department. and to say that it says something about me is about as stupid a comment as i've ever heard. i myself am a minority. the school is about 93% white, and therefore who i surround myself with is based on this number. i dont actively seek out minorities or whites.
and i am well aware of how it is done in california--i used to live there. i would prefer to be there instead of here at Caucasian Station, but hey...we take what life throws at us, n'est pas?
Try 82%.
Texas A&M
So see,
Here's my alma mater in case you wondered.
CSULB
Again I am sure it would be claimed it needs affirmative action since it is only 6.6% black. But it is obviously racially diverse.
Here is UCLA which is along with UC Berkeley is claimed to be one of the campuses that desperately need affirmative action because they are so lily white.
UCLA
As you can see, it is not even majority white. It is majority asian. Whites make up 34% of the campus. Yet it is claimed this campus does not have "diversity." What nonsense! But again it is only 3.7% black but how, at being 37% asian can it be claimed that some white male power is keeping that percentage at that level? Likewise when asian kids go to these same supposedly terrible schools, why do they go to college?
Nick
Originally posted by BRussell
I don't have any problem with people making a principled argument against affirmative action. However, what it so often devolves into is an attempt to minimize what has been done to Africans by Americans over a couple hundred years. I don't think anyone knows the actual numbers, but I believe one estimate is that 10 million Africans were murdered in the slave trade across the Atlantic, most simply dying in the ship in transit. And obviously many times more than that were actually brought to slavery. Maybe it doesn't fit the technical definition of genocide, but it's pretty damn close, and in any case, it's certainly one of the worst events in modern history. It rivals anything Stalin or Hitler did, and easily makes Saddam Hussein's Iraq look like good times. And nothing like that was ever done to the Irish, or the Chinese, or anyone else.
I think too often we middle class spoiled brats forget that and don't have a sense of history about these things.
Yes be we are talking about American history and the slave trade. American's kept and brought over families. They treated them more like animals to be bought and bred. We ended the slave trade much earlier than we did slavery and this in part contributed to this.
There are nations that would only bring over the males and basically worth them to death. However that was not the United States and I don't think it right that you intentionally attempt to link the two very different behaviors.
Nick
Originally posted by _ alliance _
"oriental" refers to a direction. ASIAN refers to where the people come from, and thus the people themselves. just thought i'd help you out with this before you get your ass beaten for referring to some asian dudes as "eastern." they hate it.
Yes, I know, but I'm not talking about Turks, Russians, Siberians, Arabs, Indians, Uzbeks, or any of those fellas. I'm talking about Chinese, Koreans, and various Malaysian people. . . Primarily Chinese.
When people call me a westerner, big f-ing deal. I am a westerner. I also am cool with "white" and even "caucasian." Of course, I actually AM caucasian. . . Armenian pride, hoorah.
People that come from the far east are orientals are far as I'm concerned, and they can get mad if they want. I think they like it better than when I call them "yellows."
Originally posted by trumptman
Yes be we are talking about American history and the slave trade. American's kept and brought over families. They treated them more like animals to be bought and bred. We ended the slave trade much earlier than we did slavery and this in part contributed to this.
Oh that makes it all better.
Part of the point here about AA is not such much a reparation for slavery as it is a reparation for the century of continued injustice against blacks and a systematic limiting of opportunities for them that followed the civil war--and that really continues today. All this business about "I didn't enslave anybody" misses the point of AA entirely.
Go take a drive through Mississippi or Alabama if you don't believe me.
Cheers
Scott
Originally posted by midwinter
Go take a drive through Mississippi or Alabama if you don't believe me.
Hell, you can see it here in Chicago in everything right down to individual interactions.
Originally posted by midwinter
Oh that makes it all better.
Part of the point here about AA is not such much a reparation for slavery as it is a reparation for the century of continued injustice against blacks and a systematic limiting of opportunities for them that followed the civil war--and that really continues today. All this business about "I didn't enslave anybody" misses the point of AA entirely.
Go take a drive through Mississippi or Alabama if you don't believe me.
Cheers
Scott
I didn't say it made it right. I just didn't make it genocide. Big difference. You know...difference, like the difference between killing a three day zygote or a full term baby? That sort of difference.
I didn't say the issue was who enslaved who. I also asked that you and others discuss how filipinos, hispanics, and the countless other "underrepresented minorities" suffered from slavery since they do receive affirmative action.
If you are talking about the poverty I might see in Mississippi or Alabama, that again can be addressed through economic affirmative action. I have seen people here dismiss it, but I have yet to see them address it. If black children and their respective parents are disproportionately poor, wouldn't they disproportionately benefit?
I think the real issue though is having your cake and eating it too. Racial critics will contend for example that people addressing welfare always put a black face on the examples, and claim whites are just as poor, but just not as concentrated. It is either one way or the other. Either blacks are disproportionately poor, and would still benefit in larger percentages from economic affirmative action, or they aren't in which case, why the outrage?
If the problem is poverty, address poverty, not race.
Nick
Originally posted by giant
Hell, you can see it here in Chicago in everything right down to individual interactions.
Well, I started to give a more complete list of states and then realized that there would be 50 of them, and I always forget Delaware.
This is one of those topics that I just plain don't understand how people get so easily (wilfully?) distracted about, mostly by turning it back to the civil war/slavery, which is really a non-issue when it comes to all of this--unless we're talking about reparations, which I'd ****ing love to see paid in cold, hard cash to every black person in America whose ancestry can be traced back to slaves. I'd love it. Impossible, but I'd still love it.
Anyway. All this business about "I didn't do this" or "I didn't do that" simply misses the point. This isn't about individual wrongs, which can be dealt with in the judicial system; this is about culturally sanctioned injustice.
Hell, on the day I was born (in the summer of 1972), some local klansmen lined up arm in arm with local law enforcement officers. My uncle Charlie carried a loaded M-16 to protect James Meredith at Ole Miss. Another uncle took part in a kind of human shield aimed at protecting the Mississippi State basketball team, who were endangered simply because they were going to play in a tournament where teams with blacks were also playing.
I may not have personally gone out and oppressed someone, but I have certainly benefitted from the oppression conducted by others.
Cheers
Scott