Would an Obama presidency help curb the use of racial quotas in America?

If you asked Ted Kennedy's father in 1940 whether Jews were white, I don't think he'd respond affirmatively. If you asked the admissions committees of the Ivy Leagues as late as 1958 whether Jews were white, I don't think you'd get an affirmative response.

Sorry, I still believe that many people in this country believe that Jews are Jews, neither white nor black.

 

Gee, this is a fight I've been dying to have again.
Where's the abortion thread?
'yab, I don't believe for a minute that your opposition to affirmative action -- which does not mean "quotas," per se, which are merely one method of achieving the goals of affirmative action, and a method invented by Richard Nixon, I might add -- is based on the historical wrongs done to Jewish students at Harvard. You just don't like policies much that help black folks. Please stop, OK. Your record's clear on that.
Affirmative action is meant to help victims of current discrimination. (Saying that it is a remedy for past discrimination is a self-defeating argument.) In that, it is every bit the parallel with legacy admits. And the people who oppose it know that, which is why some of them give the game away when they clamor about "unfairness" and still argue for "class-based" affirmative action. Class-based affirmative action wouldn't be any more "fair" than race-based affirmative action, but it would include some white people, which is the raison d'etre for the original resistence to affirmative action.

 

Sorry, but I don't need you to tell me what I truly believe. I just need to talk to living family members who were both harmed by Jewish QUOTAS and benefited from their being lifted.

If any person can prove that they were denied anything because of race, they should be entitled to immediate Affirmative Action as a remedy. Aside from that, Affirmative Action is discrimination.

 

"If any person can prove that they were denied anything because of race, they should be entitled to immediate Affirmative Action as a remedy. Aside from that, Affirmative Action is discrimination. "

Priceless. This is an argument straight out of Jim Crow, when trying to prove that got you killed. Unless you can prove that University X organized its admissions policy to keep you specifically out because of your race, there is no remedy for you at law that doesn't diminish 'yab's rights -- and that's assuming there'd ever be proof that he'd unreservedly accept, which I doubt.

I tell this story all the time because it sums up my attitude to this stupid argument.
My grandfather left Ireland because his family wanted him to join the priesthood and he didn't want to. In 1916, while there were still NINA signs hanging in certain places, he walked off the boat and right into a job on the police force in an Eastern city. He had no experience in law enforcement. He'd been a student and a shopkeeper's kid in the old country. But he had a cousin on the force, and another on the fire department, and that's how he got the job. There was no meritocracy involved at all. And that was the first step my family had up the ladder in America.
That city did not hire its first African American patrolman until 1974, and then only under a court order mandating affirmative action. In other words, three generations of black children grew up in that city denied because of their color -- and, please, don't tell me there was any other reason -- the original opportunity for advancement that my family was handed the day my grandfather walked off the fucking boat.

 

I tell this story too, my grandfather applied to New York University (NYU) before WWII and was told, in no uncertain terms, that NYU was No Yids University. That he should apply to the City College of New York (CCNY) aka Circumcised Citizens of New York.

Also another family member applied for Admissions to a famous graduate program at Johns Hopkins University only to be told that he was too late, they already admitted the class Jew.
So I'll excuse the fact that you don't give a fuck about my family if you'll excuse the fact that I don't give a fuck about yours.
That in the cause of Affirmative Action, it is a zero sum game. For every admission made to an African American student that would not otherwise be accepted, but for race, another student will be denied admission, because of race.

You are willing to accept that because you and yours are beneficiaries of that policy, having been victims of a previously odorous policy. However, be aware, that I and mine may be the victims of your benefits, though we too were victims of a previous odorous policy. The Bushes and Kennedys will still get theirs, but the real people will be harmed.

 

'yab,

Do you honestly believe that in present-day America, they discriminate against Jews on the same level of blacks?

Fifty years ago, your argument might have made sense.

Oh, and to answer the question, no I don't think Obama winning will change anything.

 

Well this is fun.

 

No, I think Jews are accepted more than blacks in today's society, and that rests mostly on the fact and belief that, in spite of discrimination and antisemitism, Jews have achieved an enormous amount in this country. I also think there is resentment of those accomplishments, and the memory of 1,950 years of Christian oppression doesn't go away in 50 years.
But Affirmative Action is not a victim-less remedy, real people are harmed and those people are disproportionately Jewish and Asian, since they are disproportionately represented in higher education.

 

OK. I get what you mean. I can kind of, kind of see the point you're making, but I would argue being black is/was more of a target for discrimination than being Jewish.

You're also forgetting about the poverty -- which I'd think you'd have to concede was a result of discrimination/slavery/Jim Crow -- that many blacks were born into and were/are unable to escape because of the vicious cycle of poverty.

Nobody who voluntarily came to this country came as a slave. Poor, uneducated, the victim of discrimnation, yes, but not as a slave. IMO, a big difference.

 

I got mine, Jack.
Please tell me the last time a Jewish person was killed in this country for trying to vote, because there are precedents for black people in my lifetime.

Oh, and I'm sure that we're hearing similar things to this about about other minority groups every day on 400 odd fucking radio stations.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200801310003

And I'm not asking you to "give a fuck" about my family. I'm asking you to look at the story and realize that the opposition to affirmative action isn;t about "fairness." It's about a disinclination toward black progress that is inherent in this society and has been throughout historical memory. Other forms of "unfairness" are just fine with us.

 

This argument is so pointless and reductive.

Of course affirmative action is a zero-sum game so long as the admission/employment number is finite. That's not a argument; that's a statement of fact.

Affirmative action exists because it was presumed that:

1. Certain gaps (wealth, education) were created because of overt, now illegal racism, and that shit - 200 years of oppression - doesn't resolve itself overnight

2. If the gaps aren’t resolved overnight - and they can't be in a capitalist society - then how does America integrate some of the previously oppressed into the upwardly mobile market? It creates opportunities. Not just through jobs, but incentives for small business, etc.

3. Now, for each bout of affirmative action, yes, there is an equal bout of negative action, for dollars and jobs are finite. But that's OK, the thinking goes, because the victim is in a far better position to manipulate the market to their advantage than the recipient of affirmative action ever was.

Would you like to refute that? You can try.

I'd also like to see your statistics on victims of affirmative action, and how they're disproportionately Jewish or Asian.Then reveal to me the economic consequences of their victimhood as compared the lost economic potential of someone who's denied the benefit of affirmative action.

Because that <i> isn't </i> a zero-sum game.

 

What Alma said, too.