I'm not denying that these are a result of the U.S's past action, and that we have a responsibility to fix them, but I have doubts that associating them with race is necessary or helpful in any way.
You have an alternative to suggest that doesn't have equivalent problems?
Just recognize that (I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume) that, because you are a middle class white man, probably 90% of the reason you oppose "affirmative action" is because it negatively impacts your own demographic group. Well, sorry. We're in a priviledged group; get over it.
Arguments for or against AA aside, this line of reasoning, where you invalidate somebody's argument based on what demographic group they belong to (white middle class males in this case), really seems like a simple ad hominem argument. You're no longer addressing what is said - only who is saying it.
Second: you seriously think it's inappropriate to point out that people tend to have opinions which advantage their own station? Really? You're not simply saying that this is incorrect, you're actually saying that I'm not allowed to make the argument that white people might not like AA because it disadvantages white people. That's insane, sorry.
Let's go back to the original topic at hand and refrain from derailing the discussion with personal messages directly to the poster and those like-minded.
A good argument is not solely made up of logical arguments, but it does not sacrifice logic for pathos. If your argument is sound you should be able to defend it both logically and emotionally.
Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other social programs don't discriminate based on race, but certainly have that effect where there is larger poverty among African-Americans. What would be the advantage of basing them on race?
I'm questioning the best way to achieve the economic effect that we agree on, reducing racial inequality, in the same way that I question if Carbon credits are the best way to reduce emissions (simply taxing fossil fuels, I believe.
AA doesn't correct for immediate need, it corrects for the fact that people growing up in unpriviledged environments lack advantages. So they have to work a job instead of going to a test prep class. They go to schools with high teacher turnover and poor class selection. They live in social environments with high crime. So they don't get into the "right" colleges, and they don't get the great jobs.
At what spot on that chain would your "make AA like food stamps" idea actually work? You're not even addressing the problem.
So poor white folks never grow up in unpriviledged environments?
You're providing no justification for why AA is race based instead of socio-economic based.
And why must I "justify" that it be "race based"? There's a problem. It's a solution. It works, if imperfectly. I'd like to see a better option too. (Not least because one of it's biggest problems is that it pisses off entitled white kids like you and starts pointless internet flames like this.)
So I repeat what I said earlier: if you have another solution that works better, then propose it and advocate for it. Right now all you're doing is whining.
(edit to avoid prolonging thread: both replies have ignored the issue mentioned upthread, namely that AA corrects for disadvantage in the past, not currently. You can't give executive jobs to unqualified poor people, you need to start farther upstream. So if that's your suggestion, come up with a new one -- you're essentially saying "eliminate poverty", which is dumb.)
> Right now all you're doing is whining.
Stop the nonsense.
I'm going to specifically look at college admissions since it's a pretty interesting area. Specifically, I want to point out a passage from here (the article itself is worth reading): http://www.tnr.com/book/review/disadvantages
> Moreover, some universities have been successful in maintaining racial diversity despite a ban on using race in admissions. At UT Austin, which was forbidden by a lower court from considering race between 1997 and 2003, a class-based affirmative action plan, combined with a plan to automatically admit students in the top 10 percent of their high school class, resulted in a net increase in racial diversity. In 1996, prior to the ban on race, African Americans and Latinos made up 18.8 percent of the freshman class. In 2004, under the socioeconomic and top 10 percent plan, the combined representation had risen to 21.4 percent.
Not only is such policy less racist, but it is more effective!
We have already proposed an alternative: economics based discrimination. It is better because it captures the group of people that deserve help more accurately.
We are not whining, we are having a discussion.
Because targeting based on race is a simple and effective way to target these ills. Race is often strongly correlated with these problems.
Why not make laws to simply help the disadvantaged? Why does race have to be the indicator, even if its a pretty good one? Why cant income be the indicator? It seems like it would be at least as accurate, if not more so... and no need to bring race into it.
You suggest income, but then that ignores:
(a) debt
(b) medical costs (Joe & Jim have the same income, but Joe has cancer and has to pay $LOTS per month, has less energy etc. Who's more disadvantaged?)
(c) where one lives (Joe & Jim have same income, but Joe lives near where possible jobs are, Jim needs a 2 hour bus journey)
(d) existing assets (Jim has a new car and partner has a second hand car, Joe has a crappy car that could break, who is more advantaged)
(e) family support/obligations, both financial & emotional (Joe has to care for his mother, Jim's mother can pay for her own nursing home. Joe knows he can rely on his parents to bail him out, Joe can't). etc.
All systems have flaws. This stuff is hard and complicated, and you'll have mistakes, false positives and false negatives with all methods (yes including race/ethnicity). There'll also be costs to each method: Cost for the applicant to have to find & submit paperwork, cost for staff to process and review it, opportunities for fraud (e.g. asset-based-measurement means you can fake it by moving assets to a family member/close friend for a year).
Race/ethnicity has several advantages as a "disadvantage metric":
(a) easy to apply (hard to fake), yes there are problems with people of many ethnicities
(b) cheap and quick to decide, no calculations or hours of staff time checking that the payslip from 2007 is legit, or try to figure out if the person really is a single parent or is the partner still living there, etc.
(c) applicants don't have to find old information & forms & letters
(d) strongly statistically correlated with disadvantage
However some people just react negatively about race being mentioned at all, thinking that "racism = any reference to race" and "racism = bad" ergo "any reference to race = bad". Sometimes conversations about this can be like talking about evolution to a creationist, ask yourself if there is any evidence you'd accept that would convince you that it's OK to have affirmative action, if not, you might be being dogmatic.
The strong and convincing argument for affirmative action is that African Americans and Indians have been severely wronged in the past and should be recompensed.
But what about would Hispanics, more recently immigrants who never suffered from Genocide or Slavery.
Or what about Asian Americans, who actually suffer reverse AA (need higher scores than whites) for no reason other than being smart. They're aware of this and don't mark Asian on applications if it can be avoided.
Racial discrimination does cause problems. Personally, I really do feel that Blacks and Indians need to be compensated for past ills. I'm not sure how the best way to do that is, however.
Oh? Care to elaborate?
When I said "reduce paperwork", I mean it's less paperwork to evalulate and classify people based on race (since looking at a photo for 30 seconds will get you the answer 95% of the time (or some other high percentage)), vs. if you looked at income. To classify people based on income you have to look at lots of different forms and letters and statements etc.
Also, a part of why we don't have the political will is latent racism.