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I think if you take a population that has been the subject of generations of systemic government oppression, remove it (allegedly), and then declare "fairness accomplished! You are free to complete on a level playing field! Pay no attention to the effects of generational poverty!" you are on real dubious ground. This would also presuppose that we have successfully eliminated systemic racism from our society, which is... an argument that would require substantial supporting evidence.

And with respect to the whole "taking of jobs", I will add a more comprehensively researched rebuttal to my own anecdotal experience: if you're good, you're in no danger of getting caught up in a quota system. Competent white folks are doing just fine. The less-competent.... probably should cowboy up. As my exploited millennials would say: "git gud".

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/03/13/gender-quot...

>> I think if you take a population that has been the subject of generations of systemic government oppression, remove it (allegedly), and then declare "fairness accomplished! You are free to complete on a level playing field! Pay no attention to the effects of generational poverty!" you are on real dubious ground.

Equality of outcomes enforced by excluding certain racial groups creates intergenerational systemic government oppression of the excluded groups. Again the goal and the means are contradictory.

The socially acceptable way to increase participation by a perceived underrepresented group is to target that group with sustained improvement programs with measurable outcomes. This is the only serious way to address the problem. The opportunities are there but talent with proper skills is not.

>> This would also presuppose that we have successfully eliminated systemic racism from our society, which is... an argument that would require substantial supporting evidence.

The burden of proof is on the accuser to prove that 'society' is in fact guilty of 'systemic racism'. The presumption of Innocence until proven guilty is a cornerstone of western law. Whey you have an indictment of 'society' in a court of law then we can have a fruitful discussion of 'societal systemic racism'.

>> And with respect to the whole "taking of jobs", I will add a more comprehensively researched rebuttal to my own anecdotal experience: if you're good, you're in no danger of getting caught up in a quota system. Competent white folks are doing just fine. The less-competent.... probably should cowboy up. As my exploited millennials would say: "git gud".

Once again your presenting a contradiction. You want to argue that 'systemic racism', for instance against blacks is a horrible injustice. But also claim that other racial groups such as whites are being excluded because there is a racially discriminatory quota system, but you have no problem with that.

So what I gather from your post is that you support racism as long as its against Whites and Asians.

And you also think that its perfectly fine to remove 'less-competent' people as long as they are White or Asian and replace then with presumably even 'less-competent' black people?

> If leftists/liberals wanted everyone to be treated fairly without prejudice of their race or sex

Which they do.

> then they would not continually push for the expansion and entrenchment of race and sex based affirmative action programs

They would continually push for the recalibration of them, which may include expansion in some areas.

> which deliberately exclude people from employment opportunities, scholarships, networking opportunities and many other essential resources.

That is the opposite of what AA programs do; AA programs address pre-existing structural exclusion.

> If you abandon the goal of equality of opportunity as the left has for the more dubious goal of equality of outcomes

Equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are not opposed goals, and the left hasn't abandoned the former for the latter. The left, OTOH, recognized that the absence of the latter causes the absence of the former (outcomes at t0 define opportunities at t1; one of the most important parts of outcomes are the opportunities that they create) and so in the absence of equality of outcomes, corrective measures are necessary to create equality of opportunity, and those measures are in many cases going to involve moving toward equality of outcomes, both in direct nature and indirect effect.

> Equality of opportunities and equality of outcomes are not opposed goals, and the left hasn't abandoned the former for the latter.

They may not be opposed goals but if a method includes the exclusion of certain racial and sex groups then you can not call the method an equality of opportunity. You are simply trying to gift success to a preferential and privileged race or sex. That is the method the American liberal left has chosen. And it is racist and sexist methodology.

> The left, OTOH, recognized that the absence of the latter causes the absence of the former (outcomes at t0 define opportunities at t1; one of the most important parts of outcomes are the opportunities that they create) and so in the absence of equality of outcomes, corrective measures are necessary to create equality of opportunity, and those measures are in many cases going to involve moving toward equality of outcomes, both in direct nature and indirect effect.

Equality of opportunity will never, and can never guarantee an equality of outcome.

In most cases including employment and other competitive activities there will always be losers. When two tennis players play a game there will be one winner and one loser. When there is a management spot open in a company there will only be one winner and multiple losers. When 1000 applicants apply for a single job opening there will be one winner that gets the job and 999 people who lose.

What the Liberal Left has embraced by promoting equality of outcomes is the removal of equality of opportunity in its entirety for anyone they have preemptively decided should be the looser. There can be no competition in the first place and there is no opportunity. Winners are simply anointed by a committee of divinely anointed deciders.

If 1000 people apply for a job and 999 of them are White and Asian men and one is Black woman and the anointed deciders decide that a Black woman should get the job, which is what race based quotas do, those 999 white and Asian men had no equality of opportunity period.

If this is the sort of game that the Liberal left thinks they are going to play with hundreds of millions of people's lives, and they think they cap pick and choose who's hopes and dreams come true, and they can exclude hundred of thousand on a whim to meet an arbitraty and ever changing percentage of racialy balanced winners, good luck. The small window of accaptence of these sort of ideas are closing with the Baby Boomers. The vast majority of people under under 60 do not sees these type of policies as fair or good. And they have every right to reject them. These are massive iniquality that the left thinks they are entitled to try and engineer into a very fragile and tenuous democracy.

In conclusion promoting the equality of outcomes is erasing the possibility of equality of opportunity. And in the specific case of hiring decisions using race as a criteria for deciding who wins the job it's simply an act of blatent discrimination by the specific employer and the management who made the decisions.

> They may not be opposed goals but if a method includes the exclusion of certain racial and sex groups then you can not call the method an equality of opportunity.

Actual affirmative action programs do not include the exclusion of racial or gender groups, so your comment is a non-sequitur regardless of its validity in isolation.

> Equality of opportunity will never, and can never guarantee an equality of outcome.

Which is why its likely affirmative action will always be necessary, though the calibration will need to change over time, because while a cohort having equality of opportunity between subcohorts does not, as you accurately describe, produce equality of outcome, inequality of outcome within the cohort does guarantee inequality of opportunity in the successor cohort.

However, we're nowhere near that sort of nearest-approximation-of-ideal situation where the inequality of opportunity we are concerned with leveling is merely the result of the result of the inevitable inequality of outcome in a prior cohort with equalized opportunity; we still see historically disadvantaged groups (by race/ethnicity, but also gender, gender identity, sexuality, and other axes) continuing to be disadvantaged not only by durable effects of past de jure and de facto discrimination, but also in many cases by overt and covert current discrimination.

> The vast majority of people under under 60 do not sees these type of policies as fair or good

Every poll I've ever seen breaking out support for affirmative action policies by age groups, and I've seen a lot over the from the early 1990s through the last couple of years, has consistently found support higher among younger Americans. (And also shown overwhelming majority support for Affirmative Action generally, though only minority support for the kind of strict mechanical preference measures which have generally been eliminated many decades ago everywhere except college admissions.)

> Which is why its likely affirmative action will always be necessary.

Affirmative action programs like most progressive ideology and policy has simply not produced any tangible lasting results. In most respects the focus groups of these programs are in worse shape now then they were 30 years ago. The presumption that 'racism', 'sexism' or 'oppression' is responsible for the failure of certain groups is simply unfounded blame shifting by sloppy ideologues. And the notion that gifting them undeserved employment opportunities is going to fix there problems is also a misguided and harmful idea.

The premise is simply wrong and will continue to fail at its stated goal but have the consequence of creating new groups of disadvantaged people who have been systemically discriminated against for having an undesirable skin color or genitalia according to the Liberal Lefts preferred fetishes.

Either out of social opposition or economic necessity these programs will be ended. The most egregious of policies such as race based admission quotas that certain universities use is already under sustained lawsuits and there is every indication that they will be forced to stop there racist and misandrist discrimination against European and Asian men.

> Every poll I've ever seen breaking out support for affirmative action policies by age groups, and I've seen a lot over the from the early 1990s through the last couple of years, has consistently found support higher among younger Americans.

The Baby Boomers cling to these ideas out of stubborn habit but people under 60 when asked if they think certain racial groups should get preferential access to job opportunities strongly disagree. That's not to say certain groups think they themselves should get preferential access to jobs for xyz reasons. Disparate groups claiming they deserve affirmative action for a cornucopia of mostly undefinable grievances like 'oppression' and 'reparations' is not going to sustain these misguided programs in the current century.

It's a shame that people cling to these misguided failed ideas. There is a lot of good work people could do trying to fix the broken communities that have problems. But I suppose that would be a lot of work and perhaps not as economically rewarding as keeping a failed and bloated bureaucratic failure on its feat at least until they can retire.

> The Baby Boomers cling to these ideas out of stubborn habit but people under 60 when asked if they think certain racial groups should get preferential access to job opportunities strongly disagree.

Preferential access to employment opportunities isn't the point of AA; modern employment AA programs are mostly outreach and other funnel programs to neutralize existing structural preferences (hiring preferences have, in fact, been bright-line illegal for decades.)

Which is why there is simultaneously majority support that is higher among younger Americans for affirmative action in employment, despite majority opposition to hiring preferences.

> It's a shame that people cling to these misguided failed ideas.

It is a shame that people cling to false ideas about what the debate is even about.

In fairness, I'm aware of the hypocrisy in using positive discrimination to combat negative discrimination. I just haven't heard any better ideas to fix the problem. And the argument that we owe a debt to continue our forefathers' unfinished work towards a more perfect union is persuasive to me.

There is no positive and negative racial discrimination. There is only racial discrimination and its always a bad thing.

If you are advocating for racial discrimination against European people then your no different then European people who advocated for racial discrimination against Africans.

There was many books and arguments that advocated for discrimination as a 'good thing' in the 18th and 19th century. They are as morally bankrupt as the arguments made today in favour of racial discrimination against Europeans.

A more perfect union is not achieve in any sense by adopting racial discriminatory policies. You are headed in the opposite direction. These policies will be short lived and overturned, but in the meantime cause enormous harm and injustice.

Its very important that well intentioned people understand that they are playing with fire that they will not be able to put out with this issue. Racial discrimination in the 21st century, especially in education and employment are for all intent and purpose a form of slavery. And the people who are being effected by these illegitimate racist policies are growing a fire inside and it is spreading and that fire is going to grow and grow.

Trump is just the first spark of this fire if you understand me. There is righteous indignation of these policies and severity of the opposition to these injustices are going to be much more explosive then the 1960s were in terms of racial and societal disintegration.

You can not fix the problem of a perceived under-representation of certain groups such as Africans by forcefully removing and ghettoizing hundreds of millions of Dispirit European ethnic and religious groups from employment and other opportunities. I simply do not think many on the left understand the gravity of the repercussions that are unfolding because of these policies.

This is a curious strawman, but I'll play, what the hell?

I believe you and I agree that there has been systemic oppression against, let's choose african-americans in particular. Slavery, Jim Crow, the War on Drugs, Block-Busting, these are pretty cut-and-dried examples.

So the government did this stuff. I maintain that, as beneficiaries of our forefathers' efforts in establishing this country, we owe a debt to continue their work and clean up their messes. It's a great benefit to live here and I have to be honest, I didn't do shit. I was born here. I did nothing but get born. My grandfather fought, my father fought, on for several generations. I am a businessman, that's what I do, and that's fine.

But there's unfinished work to be done. I think we owe a debt to continue that work. And this injustice is one that merits redress. Would you do nothing? Can you argue that point? Do you have a better idea? I hear so much from the right that basically boils down to "let somebody else do it." And that's... disappointing to me, as a fairly conservative guy with fairly conservative values. I really do believe in this dumb 'America' thing and I believe it merits sacrifice. An old-fashioned idea, I realize.

> So the government did this stuff. I maintain that, as beneficiaries of our forefathers' efforts in establishing this country, we owe a debt to continue their work and clean up their messes. It's a great benefit to live here and I have to be honest, I didn't do shit. I was born here. I did nothing but get born. My grandfather fought, my father fought, on for several generations. I am a businessman, that's what I do, and that's fine.

Your argument is confusing your very personal emotional cultural and racial feelings with what you assume to be the experience of other American citizens, this is a false presumption. You are further assuming that these feeling supersede Our legal framework and constitutional rights.

> "beneficiaries of our forefathers"

For my self and I can attest for most of my social circle neither George Washington or any of the colonial American founders or 18th and 19th century Americans are my 'forfathers'. The are the founders of America and I am legally an American citizen but I have no cultural or hereditary connection to any of these men or America previous to my families very recent immigration to this country.

"we owe a debt to continue their work and clean up their messes"

Again there is no 'work' that I or any other American citizen is legally obligate to do to as you say to 'clean up there mess'. On a general note one of the key freedoms that we enjoy in the modern democratic state that separates us from feudalism is the abolition of intergenerational debt. And again there is no intergenerational relationship between myself and any historic American hereditary.

Do you think that a Ukrainian immigrant who immigrates to this Country in 2017 should be denied employment to give the job to an Ethiopian immigrant who immigrates here in 2017 also to 'finish the work' of 18th century English American who farmed potatoes there whole life and probably never even saw a an African let alone owned any land or slaves?

Quite frankly its a bizarre and brutish sort of racial totalitarianism that is being put forward by American liberals to deny opportunity to broad brush of people they have chosen to discriminate agaist.

Should a Chinese immigrant who works as a dishwasher be denied a spot at Harvard to make room for a Black American who comes from a Millionaire sport star family so that an arbitrary quota is filled?

These historical grievances are alien to an increasing percentage of the American public who has no racial or historical connection to any of these issues. And we are certainly no going to forsake out future wealth and prosperity and the opportunities of out children to 'make happy' a small wealthy group of mostly white Americans who think they have the right to discriminate against us for 'good reasons'.

You say you owe your country nothing. If you truly don't think so, we're all the poorer for it. A very modern malaise. The right wing in this country has taken a curious turn of late.

I think embracing these imagined grievances is going to lead you down a dark road, but living well is the best revenge. Enjoy whatever it is you get out of your trolling. Ta ta.

I owe the United States and fellow citizens precisely what they owe me. The right to succeed or fail based on my abilities with the right to equal opportunity under the law regardless of my race religion etc.

I certainly do not owe another man's child my child's future and wealth because we have been christened 'White People' and are now responsible to atone for unfashionable property holding of 18th century English American Noblemen and be discriminated against by the state. If that is what the 'left' of America thinks this country stands for and that is how we should live then I am fairly certain they will continue on the downward trajectory into the pages of history and possibly the insane asylum.

A healthy and prosperous farewell to you my geriatric Boomer good man.