10th January 2004, 1:34 PM
I will a little but won't waste too much time on it.
You just do not want to understand the concept that sometimes people in disadvantaged situations need additional laws so that they can be equal. It isn't racism any more than the laws that make it illegal to fire people over their ethnicity (or many other things) is... it is trying to make everyone equal. The only way to make everyone equal is to help the people on the bottom. You do that with laws that help people on the bottom get on to a more level playing field with the people who have more. In this country, blacks as a group are far poorer than whites. That is just a fact -- a large percentage of the black community is poor and has been for a long time. And when you're poor for that long you lose hope of improvement... that's what's happened here. Some blacks can help themselves, but not most. Nowhere near. So we need to help them because leaving them in opressed in poverty like conservatives want to do is a cruel thing. Affirmative action is a great way to do that. It helps people who would otherwise have no chance of ever going to college to get there... a great way to help people who can't do it for themselves. It makes things somewhat more fair. Oh, it's still tilted towards whites, but affirmative action makes it a bit fairer.
And if you say that it gives them advantages I'll just repeat the fact that they are poorer and cannot afford all the aids that people with more money can. Yes, black society does seem to not want to get out of it's situation when you look at rappers and stuff... but then you see that those guys get rich and get out themselves...
And I've said all I can about vouchers. It'll help a couple of kids in poor schools and doom the rest in those schools to an even worse education, which is a very bad deal for society as a whole.
Oh, people say that they aren't racist, that is true, but in their hearts? Far more people than you admit are. And yes, it was government policy to opress. The result was that they were opressed and still haven't recovered. We need to improve all of them, not just the smartest or most athletic ones like vouchers would! We need to fundamentally change how we deal with 'failing schools' in a way that would give them not just more chances but would have some kind of program for success... removing money is not the way to go. You need to do something in the school to improve things. We can't just leave kids in failing schools and say by effect 'we don't care about you, because you aren't good enough to get into private schools you are stuck in poverty for life'... that is not right! It is not right to say that the rich or the lucky ones who can get rich should be able to exploit that... but that's fundamental right-wing policy...
And as for giving blacks a chance, again, that's just trying to make things fair. There is no other way to do it, really... without those laws almost all of those jobs would go to whites and the blacks would be where people like you think they belong -- stuck forever in ghettos...
Quote:Disadvantages? What disadvantages? Not physical or mental. You make it sound as though blacks are an inferior subspecies that is incapable of existing on the same level as whites, and that isn't true. The disadvantages of black people are in their condition, which is caused mostly by failed social programs. To erase inequality you have to level the playing field at a different level. You can't put two different people in the same job, when one has a college education and one is a high-school dropout. It won't work that way. To make blacks and whites truly equal, first the whole concept of race has to be eliminated (liberals of course don't want that), the second is to start the equalization process from the very beginning: Better schools (which liberals, fighting school vouchers, also do not want). You can't give them twenty years of failure and THEN start the process. It puts everyone at a disadvantage: The 'beneficiaries' who are given things they aren't prepared to handle for the sake of equality, and the others who are qualified but denied from the racial quota.
Fortunately, most black families see that vouchers are the only way out of the mess. Unfortunately, liberal democrats know that the black vote is a big one, and if they allow black people to succeed and become truly equal in society, they will have no need for the democrats and will lose that vote. So the left spreads lies of hatred and racism to scare blacks into voting democrat. They spread lies about how we want to re-enslave them, how we are nazis and the voucher program will only benefit rich white people (an absurd claim if ever one was made). Fortunately, it seems like blacks are starting to ignore it in a very important way.
You just do not want to understand the concept that sometimes people in disadvantaged situations need additional laws so that they can be equal. It isn't racism any more than the laws that make it illegal to fire people over their ethnicity (or many other things) is... it is trying to make everyone equal. The only way to make everyone equal is to help the people on the bottom. You do that with laws that help people on the bottom get on to a more level playing field with the people who have more. In this country, blacks as a group are far poorer than whites. That is just a fact -- a large percentage of the black community is poor and has been for a long time. And when you're poor for that long you lose hope of improvement... that's what's happened here. Some blacks can help themselves, but not most. Nowhere near. So we need to help them because leaving them in opressed in poverty like conservatives want to do is a cruel thing. Affirmative action is a great way to do that. It helps people who would otherwise have no chance of ever going to college to get there... a great way to help people who can't do it for themselves. It makes things somewhat more fair. Oh, it's still tilted towards whites, but affirmative action makes it a bit fairer.
And if you say that it gives them advantages I'll just repeat the fact that they are poorer and cannot afford all the aids that people with more money can. Yes, black society does seem to not want to get out of it's situation when you look at rappers and stuff... but then you see that those guys get rich and get out themselves...
And I've said all I can about vouchers. It'll help a couple of kids in poor schools and doom the rest in those schools to an even worse education, which is a very bad deal for society as a whole.
Quote:Some people are still racist. That will never change unfortunately. But once upon a time in America, racism against blacks was officially sanctioned and encouraged. It was acceptable and right at one time. It was official government policy. That is nowhere near the case anymore for black people. Most people aren't racist, because as a society we have matured. Most people, at the very least, are tolerant, if distant to other races and creeds. However, there is official government policy now practicing the very same thing in reverse. There is nothing different in the practice of denying jobs to whites in favor of blacks than there was early on in Nazi Germany when Jews were denied jobs in favor of Aryan Germans. The Germans used the exact same reason you do: "We were taken advantage of by the Jews". Official racism against blacks is very wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right. The Germans were wrong, and so are you
Oh, people say that they aren't racist, that is true, but in their hearts? Far more people than you admit are. And yes, it was government policy to opress. The result was that they were opressed and still haven't recovered. We need to improve all of them, not just the smartest or most athletic ones like vouchers would! We need to fundamentally change how we deal with 'failing schools' in a way that would give them not just more chances but would have some kind of program for success... removing money is not the way to go. You need to do something in the school to improve things. We can't just leave kids in failing schools and say by effect 'we don't care about you, because you aren't good enough to get into private schools you are stuck in poverty for life'... that is not right! It is not right to say that the rich or the lucky ones who can get rich should be able to exploit that... but that's fundamental right-wing policy...
And as for giving blacks a chance, again, that's just trying to make things fair. There is no other way to do it, really... without those laws almost all of those jobs would go to whites and the blacks would be where people like you think they belong -- stuck forever in ghettos...