Ending Affirmative Action

I know we'll probably wind up talking about whether or not affirmative action is acceptable today, and that's fine, but it's a smaller subset of what I want to discuss.

Justice Blackmun said, even as the court upheld affirmative action in school's accepting students, that he thought that one day we wouldn't need it anymore. I think most of us probably share a hope, at least, that that will be true.

But what does that day look like? What must have happened before we say, "We no longer need this program"? Must all races be equally (proportionately) wealthy, politically powerful, and influential in our media? Is there a lower standard that we can articulate? If so, what is it? And either way, how do we get there?

EDIT: Just as clarification, affirmative action is the legally sanctioned use of race as a factor in deciding whether or not to hire a candidate, or recruit a student, or similar. However, with affirmative action, the goal is not racism, but rather to undo the effects of racism. It is often called reverse discrimination, but the goal is more of "reversing the damage of discrimination."

The idea is that in generations passed, we have enslaved black people, treated them as inferiors, and that the results of that treatment has bled over into today such that they are still facing the disadvantages of what's happened to them in the past (generally speaking, they are poorer). There is also a belief that institutionalized racism still pervades the United States, and therefore the culture itself is more hostile to black people than white, making it more difficult to get a job or join the right social circles, etc.

edited 1st Feb '13 3:49:35 PM by Vericrat

Some might not know what Affirmative Action is. Could you post a short definition of it in the OP?

A sentence or two about how it came about in the US would also be helpful but it's not strictly necessary.

I don't think affirmative action is ever warranted. It doesn't solve the problem it's meant to solve, and the only kind of problem it could actually solve is a kind that doesn't really exist.

If there's a cultural bias against people of certain ethnicities, then that's something that culture has to work out; and, given equality before the law, eventually that will happen. Trying to bias things the other way just makes other people resent those favored by the law. Giving racists the excuse to think to themselves 'X only got job Y because he was of ethnicity Z' doesn't help end racism.

I'll need a longer post to present my thoughts on this; as it's an intimately personal subject for me.

I'll begin by saying I echo Justice Blackman's wishes to see AA abolished one day; even though I'm not sure I could've gotten where I am without it.

One way to end it: make it unnecessary. The record shows that these programs gradually disappear as they render themselves obsolete. If you want to speed that process up, try more blind interviews/assessments (you're not allowed to see someone's face or name when you judge their resume/piano recital/whatever).

I'd say "when people of minority races are not much more likely to attend schools which provide their students with a low quality education which render them disadvantaged in seeking higher education relative to students at better schools."

Why in the heck would you want to end this?

That's not the meaning "affirmative action" has taken. This is just "no discrimination", while affirmative action is putting minimum quotas of minorities like "at least one black per class".

edited 2nd Feb '13 9:38:05 AM by Medinoc

although, even with AA, employers are likely to overlook applicants names Shanequa & Treyvon in favor of Sharon & Trevor

Why do african americans name their kids like that so often? (when did such names start being common? 60's? 70's?) it makes it so much harder for them to succeed in the world

I guess they wouldn't deny their culture for petty monetary concerns. And they shouldn't have to.

edited 2nd Feb '13 10:14:54 AM by Medinoc

I'm aware of what you mean; back when I was a waiter, one of our black waitresses was terrible. She was always coming in late, always fucking up her tables, never running food or doing sidework, leaving her shit for other people to do, and the managers would never fire her for it because they were afraid of a discrimination suit. Everyone resented her for it.

On the other hand, it doesn't "just make people resentful". The goal is to ease a future cycle of discrimination - if cultural expectations now mean that black people get fewer jobs, black people become poorer, turn to crime, and cultural expectations drop more. Affirmative action works to counter that.

What record? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about, and I'd love to see it.

This almost has to go back to proportionate wealth distribution, which makes me think the programs might never go away.

The reason I say that is that the poorer a place is, the more crime it's going to have, the more unruly its students are going to be, etc. The best teachers - the ones that have a choice about where to work - are not going to want to work there. So the poorer places are going to have to come up with enough money to attract better teachers than the richer places. Some teachers might not have a price at all where they can be lured to such schools, and others might have such a high price that it's more efficient not to hire them.

Of course, until educational problems are fixed, poverty will be an issue, so it creates a cycle of pure, unadulterated shit.

No, they shouldn't have to, and society shouldn't expect them to. But if I were black you can be damn sure I wouldn't name my kids that anyway, because monetary concerns aren't petty, they can have a huge impact on the quality of my kid's life.

edited 2nd Feb '13 10:26:41 AM by Vericrat

While I would like to see it unnecessary one day, I think it's still needed.

That being said, I think there need to be more programs out there that help the poor regardless of race. But I've had that discussion before, and people say I'm racist for pointing out that it really isn't any easier to rise out of poverty because you're white, and therefore we need help too.

It's not racist, but I do think that you're missing the big picture.

Ok, let's say there's 100 factors running against a poor white person when trying to get out of poverty. Absent affirmative action, all of those, plus the extra cultural bias (institutionalized racism) are also running against a black person who is in the exact same position. That's why people say it's not "just as hard" but "a little bit harder."

On the other hand, if I had to choose between solving poverty in general and poverty among black people, you can be damn certain I'd be working on the former.

Oh no, I'm seeing the big picture here. I'm just taking Affirmative Action programs into account when I say that. I can't help but wonder when I look up my highschool friends on Facebook, all the black kids who went to college have a degree, and most of the white kids (including me) who went to college dropped out.

That's telling me that Affirmative Action is working, and I'd like a little bit of assistance here?

edited 2nd Feb '13 10:50:19 AM by DrunkGirlfriend

So you're saying, "Okay, now that we have affirmative action, can all poor people get some love now?" That's cool.

I guess I'm still wondering what conditions will cause us to say, "Let's get rid of this program, it's obsolete"? Is it just what Desertopa said? Equality of schools?

Equality of schools wont cut it. It'd take removing the tendency for people to discriminate in hiring and other applications based on faulty racially charged assumptions hardwired into them by popular media and their upbringing.

In shor,t likely never.

Basically yes. It's just that people are usually so quick to point out that privilege means we don't need additional help. Ergo, me saying we do is racist.

Personally, I'd think that social safety net programs (which I consider Affirmative Action to be a part of) will only be obsolete when the people they benefit are no longer disadvantaged. As long as black people are disproportionately poor, we're going to need it around.

edited 2nd Feb '13 11:09:35 AM by DrunkGirlfriend

Again I recommend blind interviews/assessments/recitals.

I think AA should be the last thing to do against discrimination. Especially the work place would balance itself out if we all else would be equal (it isn't, but that is what we should focus on changing). In the education system it's much more reasonable but there needs to be some radical changes in the American school model anyway, for everyone's benefit.

Do you mean "aren't poor anymore," or "the disadvantages people face when trying to climb out of poverty are gone"?

I'm on board with that. I don't know if it will fix the problem entirely such that we can get rid of Affirmative Action, but I'm sure it would be helpful.

And how would you suggest we change it?

edited 2nd Feb '13 11:19:35 AM by Vericrat

Disadvantages to climbing out of poverty. Poverty will probably always be around, but when people can reliably move up to middle class without the need of the programs, we can start paring them back and see if that royally screws things up or not. If not, then we can probably get rid of most of them.

edited 2nd Feb '13 11:21:55 AM by DrunkGirlfriend

@OP: I've always had mixed feelings about AA, especially as it applies to the workplace. While I will readily acknowledge that there is bias against certain groups in the job market and those need to be addressed, there are a few issues I've seen.

For one, there's a "one size fits all" mindset about workplace demographics; that there needs to be a certain percentage of each group or that individual workplace is discriminating against this or that group. Sorry, but this isn't necessarily so. Different communities have different racial compositions. Simply put...a company cannot be expected to have X percentage of African-American employees if there are no African-Americans around to apply. *

This can be applied to America in general. It needs to be remembered that the groups we are talking about here are called "minorities" for a reason. According to the 2010 census, roughly 75% of the US population is Caucasian.

This leads into the second thing I don't like about perceptions regarding AA: the "guilty until proven innocent" mindset a lot of social activists have regarding employers. They look at a workplace's demographics, notice a lack of a certain group and assume that company is guilty of discrimination. Again, not necessarily so. Accusing a company of discrimination - which is essentially accusing a company of breaking the law - requires evidence. A simple lack of a certain group of people is by itself not evidence of anything.

Again, take where I work as an example. No women work there, at least not on the factory floor. Are we discriminating against females? Considering a woman does our hiring I should hope not. We don't have any women working on the floor because A: few apply and B: most of the ones that do either lack the skill-set or the physical strength. Simply put, they don't meet our standards. If an individual did, they would be hired - we've had women on the floor before.

Another example; recently the military opened combat roles (including Special Forces) to women. Bully for them, but I do not feel that the military should be under any obligation to change its employment standards. Those standards are based in what a combat soldier is expected to do; if an individual woman cannot measure up, she has no business doing that job.

Scriblerian took the words right off my keyboard.

I recall someone calling the NHL mad racist, yo because of the lack of black players. Is the NHL supposed to just manufacture these black players out of thin air?? Where are they supposed to find them, the minor leagues which have none, or the collegs that have none, or the junior leagues which have none?

edited 2nd Feb '13 11:55:52 AM by TheStarshipMaxima

Affirmative Action in regards to women is especially ridiculous, even more so in education. Women already score higher anyway. If the people in charge would actually believe in what they are doing we would see AA for men in education now. And regarding the workplace, the only reason we don't see more women in higher paying jobs is because they rarely apply for those jobs in the first place.