It's just a joke, my friends. Just trying to say that some topics can be so divisive that they really don't serve a useful purpose here, and that it would be better if we tried to find more things that we have in common.
John,
Are you annoyed by my post? If so, why? People (here and in the media) have been speaking about fundamental christians involvement in US governmant politics as if it were fact. I'm not so sure it is fact and I was interested in seeing if people here felt the same way. And if they did or didn't, how they felt about it.
From the way you speak, you seem to think the whole concept is silly. Am I right?
Let's go hug a tree. Peace, love, and happiness. Legalize pot. Outlaw affirmative action. School is for learning and should be an unbiased institution that teaches students to formulate their own opinions. Pro-choice. God created evolution. Teachers are underpaid. CEO's are overpaid. The Enron folks should be in jail and stripped of their assets. OJ did it. Michael Jackson is probably guilty. Rice in '08.
That's a good list with the following modifications:
Let's go hug a tree. Peace, love, and happiness. Legalize pot. Outlaw affirmative action. School is for learning and should be an unbiased institution that teaches students to formulate their own opinions. Pro-choice. God created evolution. Teachers are underpaid. CEO's are overpaid. The Enron folks should be in jail and stripped of their assets. OJ did it. Michael Jackson is probably guilty. Rice in '08.
That's a good list with the following modifications:
- Strengthen Affirmative Action - Hillary in '08 so close...but then you went and asked for those mods!
From the way you speak, you seem to think the whole concept is silly. Am I right?
No... To be honest with you, I really didn't read much beyond your poll choices. I've gotten to the point where my brain shuts off whenever I hear (or read) what seems to be one group of hardliners beating up on another group of hardliners. And I'm not saying that you're a hardliner, but that was my first perception of the poll. Nothing personal to you at all.
I think I'm just tired of the whole thing, actually.
Let's go hug a tree. Peace, love, and happiness. Legalize pot. Outlaw affirmative action. School is for learning and should be an unbiased institution that teaches students to formulate their own opinions. Pro-choice. God created evolution. Teachers are underpaid. CEO's are overpaid. The Enron folks should be in jail and stripped of their assets. OJ did it. Michael Jackson is probably guilty. Rice in '08.
That's a good list with the following modifications:
- Strengthen Affirmative Action - Hillary in '08 I'll ignore the Hillary thing, but...
Stregthen Affiemative Action?!? (sigh) It's nothing more than legalized discrimination that grants preference based soley on gender, sexual preference, and ethnicity.
Positive steps to enhance the diversity of some group, often to remedy the cumulative effect of subtle as well as gross expressions of prejudice. When numerical goals are set, they are set according to the group’s representation in the applicant pool rather than the group’s representation in the general population. For example, a medical school with an affirmative action program would seek to admit members of an underrepresented group in proportion to their representation in the population of those who had completed pre-medical requirements and wished to attend medical school. Affirmative action should be distinguished from reparations.
This is what the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 concerning AA:
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The Supreme Court ruled Monday that race can be a factor for universities shaping their admissions programs, saying a broad social value may be gained from diversity in the classroom.
But race cannot be an overriding factor for schools’ admissions programs, the court ruled, saying that such plans can lead to unconstitutional policies.
In separate decisions the high court struck down a point system used by the University of Michigan’s undergraduate programs but approved a separate policy used by the University of Michigan law school that gives race less prominence in the admissions decision-making process.
The law school program was upheld by a vote of 5-4, with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor providing the swing vote by siding with more liberal jurists. The undergraduate program was overturned 6-3.
Afirmative Action is the lesser of two evils (IMO).
Sorry I just had to put my 2C in especially since I’m a teacher. As some has pointed out the real money goes to admin and state people not to the classroom education itself. I get to spend my budget for supplies of $100.00 a year for 4 classes of history and 1 keyboarding class which works out to less than $1.00 per student. Well, at least I get to retire in about 5 years.
Toker, it’s not an evil. Shame on you, a good liberal like you, saying that it is at all an evil.
Think of AA as part of the remedy for 4 centuries of violation of the social contract. I’m with Cornell West - AA is the least of possible responses. It’s barely anything.
Toker, it's not an evil. Shame on you, a good liberal like you, saying that it is at all an evil. Yeah I know. What I mean is that if we would need it if discrimination didn't happen.
Think of AA as part of the remedy for 4 centuries of violation of the social contract. I'm with Cornell West - AA is the least of possible responses. It's barely anything.
It replaces one form of discrimination with another, how is this not evil?
ahhhhh..... nevermind... my opinion, your opinion, you say tomayto, I say tomahto, you say potayto, I say potahto... let's call the whole thing off.
anybody else watch that Buddy Rich video? He was pretty smokin’! I like the little thing he did right near the end when he was doing rolls on just his sticks; he wasn’t taking himself to seriously, and seemed to be having a great time.
It would be a hoot to gather in some centrally located establishment for a weekend and drink beer,pop,snapple or ? play a little music and generally BS about all this stuff face to face and really get to know us all. It seems to me that we all patiently agree to agree and disagree fairly politely…
Think of AA as part of the remedy for 4 centuries of violation of the social contract. I'm with Cornell West - AA is the least of possible responses. It's barely anything.
It replaces one form of discrimination with another, how is this not evil?
ahhhhh..... nevermind... my opinion, your opinion, you say tomayto, I say tomahto, you say potayto, I say potahto... let's call the whole thing off.
Discrimination is not evil itself - I discriminated against Cheerios this morning, in favor of Froot Loops. More to the point, if a movie role calls for a female actor, then a female actor it is. Generally if there is a bona fide reason for the discrimination, it is OK.
So think about AA like this: there is a social contract. Like all contracts, it should provide a remedy for cases in which one party or another did not live up to the terms. 400 years of denial of civil rights certainly qualifies as that. Most of those who have suffered under slavery/segregation are dead now, but some are alive, so they deserve rememdy. And there are many, many people today who continue to suffer harm as a result of the consequences of past denials of civil rights. Remedies are appropriate in those cases as well. What remedy makes most sense? Well, one that would put them in the position they would have been in had the contract not been violated.
That's what affirmative action seeks to do. (Toker, I think you might have misunderstood this too, since you say something about discrimination not happening - what if it didn't - and the answer still is: if there are present harms that resulted from past denials of civil rights, then it doesn't matter that no one today is discriminating . It's still needed.)
I think generally people are quite ignorant about the purposes of and justifications for AA. As a contractual remedy it only applies to wronged people, and hence is necessarily temporary. Mostly people hear rather shallow right wing rheotric about it, hear "discrimination" and think all discrimination is bad. It isn't, obviously. But right wing rhetoric has jumped on the idea, itself a liberal idea, and turned it back against itself in a really dishonest way. Dunno if I've said enough to make plain what I mean here...