I cannot even being to respond to your statement regarding socialists.
Hard to believe you actually think like that. I think your doing it just to create shock value so I'm going to ignore it since it's not relevant to the issue at hand.
Has Affirmative Action Run its Course ?
- Thread starter QueEx
- Start date
I cannot even being to respond to your statement regarding socialists.
Hard to believe you actually think like that. I think your doing it just to create shock value so I'm going to ignore it since it's not relevant to the issue at hand.
When It Really Counts, Qualifications Trump Race
November 16, 2008
Economic View
When It Really Counts, Qualifications Trump Race
By ROBERT H. FRANK
WHILE campaigning in western Pennsylvania last month, Barack Obama was asked whether racial bias might hurt his campaign. “What I’ve found is that people here, they don’t care what color you are,” Mr. Obama told a Pittsburgh television reporter. “What they’re trying to figure out is, who can deliver? It’s just like the Pittsburgh Steelers. They don’t care what color you are, they want to make sure you can make the plays.”
Mr. Obama’s comments didn’t cite Milton Friedman directly, but they could be read as an implicit endorsement of the late Nobel laureate’s claim that competitive markets are the surest way to eliminate job discrimination. Mr. Friedman, the conservative thinker who taught at the University of Chicago years before Mr. Obama’s arrival there, advanced this position forcefully in his 1962 book, “Capitalism and Freedom.”
The Friedman argument rests on the observation that when business owners don’t hire the most qualified candidate, they pay a price. Some owners might be happy to discriminate if they could do so without penalty, Mr. Friedman conceded. But discrimination in a free market is always costly, he said. If owners hire a white candidate who is less able than a black candidate they could have hired, profits suffer. Mr. Friedman argued that most owners would conclude that discrimination simply isn’t worth it. (Mr. Friedman, of course, had no illusions that competition would eliminate the disadvantages that stem from growing up in poverty or attending substandard schools.)
The notion that employer discrimination will be eliminated by competition is appealing, but it’s not consistent with field experiments suggesting that such bias in labor markets remains widespread. In a 2004 paper published in the American Economic Review, for example, Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, professors of economics at the University of Chicago and Harvard, respectively, found that applicants named Lakisha or Jamal were less likely to be considered for jobs, even when they had qualifications on paper that were similar to those of applicants named Emily or Greg. In response to job advertisements in Boston and Chicago newspapers, the economists submitted fictitious résumés and cover letters under the two sets of names. Candidates with the Anglo names, they reported, were significantly more likely to be invited for interviews.
Many economists concede the validity of Milton Friedman’s argument when all participants in a labor market are well-informed, particularly employers, who would need precise measures of applicants’ abilities to estimate how costly discrimination would be. In reality, though, hiring decisions are often made under time pressure with imperfect information about candidates. In a 2005 paper jointly written with Dolly Chugh, an N.Y.U. management professor, Ms. Bertrand and Mr. Mullainathan argued that under these circumstances, labor market discrimination may persist — albeit often outside the conscious awareness of those who make hiring decisions.
In any event, Mr. Friedman’s argument is clearly most persuasive when labor market conditions come closest to the full-information competitive ideal described in textbooks. So Mr. Obama’s invocation of the Pittsburgh Steelers was well chosen for the point he was making. Professional sports markets may not match the textbook ideal, but they are at least as competitive as other labor markets and have no shortage of data on candidates.
For example, teams hire high-priced scouts who spend thousands of hours gathering detailed data about individual prospects before deciding whom to draft or hire as free agents. Won-lost records provide a conspicuous measure of success. And while corporations often retain employees who are well past their productive prime, professional athletes who have lost a step are usually cut pretty quickly. In short, professional sports provides as forceful an example as we are likely to find of a market in which the color of a person’s skin is irrelevant.
By contrast, the job market for presidents — the election campaign, culminating in the actual vote on Election Day — may be the best method we’ve come up with for choosing a national leader, but as I’ll explain, it bears little resemblance to the textbook ideal of a perfectly competitive job market.
In 2008, however, an unusual confluence of circumstances made the resemblance much closer than usual. With the economy in the midst of its most serious downward spiral since the Great Depression, voters were forcefully reminded that the quality of the person they elected could have enormous implications for their own well-being. The campaign also began earlier and confronted voters with a tremendous amount of information, on the Internet as well as through traditional media, about the candidates’ positions and achievements.
In typical campaigns, candidates stick to carefully prepared scripts that many voters find difficult to distinguish. But this year’s volatile climate forced candidates to react to events on the fly, often in full public view. And in addition to whatever impressions they were forming on their own, many voters were undoubtedly influenced by trusted figures like Warren E. Buffett, Paul A. Volcker and Colin L. Powell, who were telling them that Obama was the better choice.
All told, the 2008 campaign made it hard to deny the importance of choosing a candidate who could “make the plays.” Under these circumstances, even some strongly prejudiced voters might have found the price of indulging their bias too steep. If the stakes had been lower, race might well have been a bigger issue.
Even so, Mr. Obama’s election could mean that race will henceforth always matter less. Such, at any rate, is what the experience of the world of professional sports suggests.
There were no black major league baseball players before Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers team president, added Jackie Robinson to his roster in 1947. During Mr. Robinson’s 10-year career with the team, the Dodgers went to six World Series and he was voted to the National League All-Star team six times. In retirement, he was elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Shortly after Mr. Robinson’s arrival in the major leagues, it became clear to all that failure to field the best possible team, irrespective of color, was a sure recipe for failure.
As events unfold, it will be interesting to see whether Mr. Obama changes voting practices as much as Mr. Robinson changed hiring practices in baseball.
Robert H. Frank, an economist at Cornell, is a visiting faculty member at the Stern School of Business at New York University.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16view.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print
November 16, 2008
Economic View
When It Really Counts, Qualifications Trump Race
By ROBERT H. FRANK
WHILE campaigning in western Pennsylvania last month, Barack Obama was asked whether racial bias might hurt his campaign. “What I’ve found is that people here, they don’t care what color you are,” Mr. Obama told a Pittsburgh television reporter. “What they’re trying to figure out is, who can deliver? It’s just like the Pittsburgh Steelers. They don’t care what color you are, they want to make sure you can make the plays.”
Mr. Obama’s comments didn’t cite Milton Friedman directly, but they could be read as an implicit endorsement of the late Nobel laureate’s claim that competitive markets are the surest way to eliminate job discrimination. Mr. Friedman, the conservative thinker who taught at the University of Chicago years before Mr. Obama’s arrival there, advanced this position forcefully in his 1962 book, “Capitalism and Freedom.”
The Friedman argument rests on the observation that when business owners don’t hire the most qualified candidate, they pay a price. Some owners might be happy to discriminate if they could do so without penalty, Mr. Friedman conceded. But discrimination in a free market is always costly, he said. If owners hire a white candidate who is less able than a black candidate they could have hired, profits suffer. Mr. Friedman argued that most owners would conclude that discrimination simply isn’t worth it. (Mr. Friedman, of course, had no illusions that competition would eliminate the disadvantages that stem from growing up in poverty or attending substandard schools.)
The notion that employer discrimination will be eliminated by competition is appealing, but it’s not consistent with field experiments suggesting that such bias in labor markets remains widespread. In a 2004 paper published in the American Economic Review, for example, Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, professors of economics at the University of Chicago and Harvard, respectively, found that applicants named Lakisha or Jamal were less likely to be considered for jobs, even when they had qualifications on paper that were similar to those of applicants named Emily or Greg. In response to job advertisements in Boston and Chicago newspapers, the economists submitted fictitious résumés and cover letters under the two sets of names. Candidates with the Anglo names, they reported, were significantly more likely to be invited for interviews.
Many economists concede the validity of Milton Friedman’s argument when all participants in a labor market are well-informed, particularly employers, who would need precise measures of applicants’ abilities to estimate how costly discrimination would be. In reality, though, hiring decisions are often made under time pressure with imperfect information about candidates. In a 2005 paper jointly written with Dolly Chugh, an N.Y.U. management professor, Ms. Bertrand and Mr. Mullainathan argued that under these circumstances, labor market discrimination may persist — albeit often outside the conscious awareness of those who make hiring decisions.
In any event, Mr. Friedman’s argument is clearly most persuasive when labor market conditions come closest to the full-information competitive ideal described in textbooks. So Mr. Obama’s invocation of the Pittsburgh Steelers was well chosen for the point he was making. Professional sports markets may not match the textbook ideal, but they are at least as competitive as other labor markets and have no shortage of data on candidates.
For example, teams hire high-priced scouts who spend thousands of hours gathering detailed data about individual prospects before deciding whom to draft or hire as free agents. Won-lost records provide a conspicuous measure of success. And while corporations often retain employees who are well past their productive prime, professional athletes who have lost a step are usually cut pretty quickly. In short, professional sports provides as forceful an example as we are likely to find of a market in which the color of a person’s skin is irrelevant.
By contrast, the job market for presidents — the election campaign, culminating in the actual vote on Election Day — may be the best method we’ve come up with for choosing a national leader, but as I’ll explain, it bears little resemblance to the textbook ideal of a perfectly competitive job market.
In 2008, however, an unusual confluence of circumstances made the resemblance much closer than usual. With the economy in the midst of its most serious downward spiral since the Great Depression, voters were forcefully reminded that the quality of the person they elected could have enormous implications for their own well-being. The campaign also began earlier and confronted voters with a tremendous amount of information, on the Internet as well as through traditional media, about the candidates’ positions and achievements.
In typical campaigns, candidates stick to carefully prepared scripts that many voters find difficult to distinguish. But this year’s volatile climate forced candidates to react to events on the fly, often in full public view. And in addition to whatever impressions they were forming on their own, many voters were undoubtedly influenced by trusted figures like Warren E. Buffett, Paul A. Volcker and Colin L. Powell, who were telling them that Obama was the better choice.
All told, the 2008 campaign made it hard to deny the importance of choosing a candidate who could “make the plays.” Under these circumstances, even some strongly prejudiced voters might have found the price of indulging their bias too steep. If the stakes had been lower, race might well have been a bigger issue.
Even so, Mr. Obama’s election could mean that race will henceforth always matter less. Such, at any rate, is what the experience of the world of professional sports suggests.
There were no black major league baseball players before Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers team president, added Jackie Robinson to his roster in 1947. During Mr. Robinson’s 10-year career with the team, the Dodgers went to six World Series and he was voted to the National League All-Star team six times. In retirement, he was elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Shortly after Mr. Robinson’s arrival in the major leagues, it became clear to all that failure to field the best possible team, irrespective of color, was a sure recipe for failure.
As events unfold, it will be interesting to see whether Mr. Obama changes voting practices as much as Mr. Robinson changed hiring practices in baseball.
Robert H. Frank, an economist at Cornell, is a visiting faculty member at the Stern School of Business at New York University.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16view.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print
Racial quotas are slowly losing their cover
From Citypaper.com
Heather Mac Donald
A Preference for Truth
Racial quotas are slowly losing their cover.
Autumn 2008
The noblest-sounding justification for racial preferences—that they lift up their beneficiaries—may soon be exposed as fraudulent. A group of law professors and economists examining the effect of law school admissions preferences on students’ bar-exam passage rates is suing the State Bar of California to obtain data for their study. The proposed research could deal a death blow to the quota regime by proving that affirmative action actually damages a student’s chances of becoming a lawyer. Predictably, the race industry has mobilized to crush the project.
Lead researcher Richard Sander has already earned the enmity of much of the law professoriate for his pioneering work on affirmative action in law schools. Almost all black students are admitted to law school with drastically lower college and LSAT grades than those of white and Asian students. After their first year of legal education, 51 percent of blacks are in the bottom tenth of their class; two-thirds are in the bottom fifth. Blacks are four times as likely as whites to fail the bar exam on their first try. Sander has drawn two conclusions from these data, first published in 2004: first, that blacks’ low qualifications entering law school predict their lagging performance in school and on the bar exam; second, that there would be more black lawyers if schools stopped extending preferences to black students—because these students would learn more in schools that matched their capabilities.
An advance guard of preference advocates furiously tried to discredit Sander’s “mismatch” hypothesis, without drawing much blood. But Sander himself admitted that the national data that he used for his 2004 study were imperfect; thus his effort to obtain the records of the California bar, which has the most extensive set of law student information in the country. It can link individual students’ college GPAs, LSAT scores, law school grades, and bar scores going back to 1973. Researchers would be able to compare, with an extraordinary degree of precision, the bar-passage rates of students admitted into elite schools via affirmative action with the rates of those with similar qualifications who attended less elite schools. When Sander and his colleagues approached the bar’s leaders and statisticians in 2005 about collaborating on a study, they got an enthusiastic response.
Then a platoon of law school deans paid the bar a little visit. Suddenly, the bar changed its tune. It threw up obstacle after obstacle, claiming that the study was an “anti-affirmative-action” ploy and would violate student privacy.
Both objections were ludicrous. Sander’s research team included skeptics of his mismatch theory as well as affirmative-action supporters, all of whom just happened to believe that any theory should be subjected to rigorous empirical testing. Sander has invited his many other critics to get involved in the study as well. His project had the backing of leading social scientists. As for privacy, only the bar’s chief researcher—who has conducted many analyses of student performance in the past without incurring any objections—would have access to students’ actual records. The research would make the data anonymous so that tracing any individual’s records would be impossible for anyone else.
Nevertheless, the legal establishment’s assault on Sander’s project continued. A group of activist law professors argued that the study would lend undue importance to the bar exam. (Law students will undoubtedly be relieved to learn of the exam’s insignificance.) A UCLA law professor launched an e-mail campaign to minority lawyers in California, portraying the research as a frightening invasion of their privacy. After a hearing process that failed to give Sander’s team any opportunity to respond to the critics’ charges, the bar’s board of governors voted in November 2007 to reject the research proposal. Sander is now suing the bar, which is a government body, under California’s public-information laws.
The racial preference regime has thrived in deliberate secrecy and duplicity, but it is gradually losing its cover. Against all expectations, Sander recently convinced the University of California that it had a legal obligation to share its records on undergraduate students’ incoming qualifications and subsequent performance. Though this data set is more generalized than what Sander seeks from the bar, it will likely buttress his mismatch theory and expose lingering preferences at the university, in violation of a 1996 voter initiative outlawing them. The lawsuit against the bar remains pending, but Sander expects to start releasing results from the UC study this fall. They promise to be explosive.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal and the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
From Citypaper.com
Heather Mac Donald
A Preference for Truth
Racial quotas are slowly losing their cover.
Autumn 2008
The noblest-sounding justification for racial preferences—that they lift up their beneficiaries—may soon be exposed as fraudulent. A group of law professors and economists examining the effect of law school admissions preferences on students’ bar-exam passage rates is suing the State Bar of California to obtain data for their study. The proposed research could deal a death blow to the quota regime by proving that affirmative action actually damages a student’s chances of becoming a lawyer. Predictably, the race industry has mobilized to crush the project.
Lead researcher Richard Sander has already earned the enmity of much of the law professoriate for his pioneering work on affirmative action in law schools. Almost all black students are admitted to law school with drastically lower college and LSAT grades than those of white and Asian students. After their first year of legal education, 51 percent of blacks are in the bottom tenth of their class; two-thirds are in the bottom fifth. Blacks are four times as likely as whites to fail the bar exam on their first try. Sander has drawn two conclusions from these data, first published in 2004: first, that blacks’ low qualifications entering law school predict their lagging performance in school and on the bar exam; second, that there would be more black lawyers if schools stopped extending preferences to black students—because these students would learn more in schools that matched their capabilities.
An advance guard of preference advocates furiously tried to discredit Sander’s “mismatch” hypothesis, without drawing much blood. But Sander himself admitted that the national data that he used for his 2004 study were imperfect; thus his effort to obtain the records of the California bar, which has the most extensive set of law student information in the country. It can link individual students’ college GPAs, LSAT scores, law school grades, and bar scores going back to 1973. Researchers would be able to compare, with an extraordinary degree of precision, the bar-passage rates of students admitted into elite schools via affirmative action with the rates of those with similar qualifications who attended less elite schools. When Sander and his colleagues approached the bar’s leaders and statisticians in 2005 about collaborating on a study, they got an enthusiastic response.
Then a platoon of law school deans paid the bar a little visit. Suddenly, the bar changed its tune. It threw up obstacle after obstacle, claiming that the study was an “anti-affirmative-action” ploy and would violate student privacy.
Both objections were ludicrous. Sander’s research team included skeptics of his mismatch theory as well as affirmative-action supporters, all of whom just happened to believe that any theory should be subjected to rigorous empirical testing. Sander has invited his many other critics to get involved in the study as well. His project had the backing of leading social scientists. As for privacy, only the bar’s chief researcher—who has conducted many analyses of student performance in the past without incurring any objections—would have access to students’ actual records. The research would make the data anonymous so that tracing any individual’s records would be impossible for anyone else.
Nevertheless, the legal establishment’s assault on Sander’s project continued. A group of activist law professors argued that the study would lend undue importance to the bar exam. (Law students will undoubtedly be relieved to learn of the exam’s insignificance.) A UCLA law professor launched an e-mail campaign to minority lawyers in California, portraying the research as a frightening invasion of their privacy. After a hearing process that failed to give Sander’s team any opportunity to respond to the critics’ charges, the bar’s board of governors voted in November 2007 to reject the research proposal. Sander is now suing the bar, which is a government body, under California’s public-information laws.
The racial preference regime has thrived in deliberate secrecy and duplicity, but it is gradually losing its cover. Against all expectations, Sander recently convinced the University of California that it had a legal obligation to share its records on undergraduate students’ incoming qualifications and subsequent performance. Though this data set is more generalized than what Sander seeks from the bar, it will likely buttress his mismatch theory and expose lingering preferences at the university, in violation of a 1996 voter initiative outlawing them. The lawsuit against the bar remains pending, but Sander expects to start releasing results from the UC study this fall. They promise to be explosive.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal and the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
I am at a loss as to how AA is focused on race when I see nothing but white females at college, at my job, downtown in the corporate sector, going 50/50 with black females in the gov't sector, and who I do transactions with (Doctors, Bankers, etc).
<font size="5"><center>
Virginia Senator James Webb Calls for
an End to Affirmative Action Programs</font size><?center>
</center>
The Root
July 23, 2010
Virginia Senator James Webb has made no bones about his disdain for affirmative action programs and policies. The Democrat believes that affirmative action programs marginalize whites and that "white privilege" is largely a myth. Webb's views about affirmative action caused controversy during his 2006 run. In a Wall Street Journal book review written in 2000, he stated that affirmative action "has within one generation brought about a permeating state-sponsored racism that is as odious as the Jim Crow laws it sought to countermand." Since he sounds like a Republican and a Tea Party member, the reintroduction of this topic via a Wall Street Journal op-ed is a great way to rally the troops, especially in a state like Virginia. We've said it before and we'll say it again: There is a reason the Democrats used to be called Dixiecrats.
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/virginia-senator-james-webb-calls-end-affirmative-action-programs
Virginia Senator James Webb Calls for
an End to Affirmative Action Programs</font size><?center>
The Root
July 23, 2010
Virginia Senator James Webb has made no bones about his disdain for affirmative action programs and policies. The Democrat believes that affirmative action programs marginalize whites and that "white privilege" is largely a myth. Webb's views about affirmative action caused controversy during his 2006 run. In a Wall Street Journal book review written in 2000, he stated that affirmative action "has within one generation brought about a permeating state-sponsored racism that is as odious as the Jim Crow laws it sought to countermand." Since he sounds like a Republican and a Tea Party member, the reintroduction of this topic via a Wall Street Journal op-ed is a great way to rally the troops, especially in a state like Virginia. We've said it before and we'll say it again: There is a reason the Democrats used to be called Dixiecrats.
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/virginia-senator-james-webb-calls-end-affirmative-action-programs
<font size="5"><center>
Webb calls for end to most affirmative action
programs, criticizes 'myth' of white dominance</font size></center>
Updated 4:21 p.m.
Just as race issues have returned to the forefront of political debate, Virginia Sen. James Webb (D) on Friday reiterated his opposition to some affirmative action programs and suggested that white Americans are being "marginalized" by current government policies.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege," Webb writes: "Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers."
This is not a new topic for Webb, whose complicated views on race-based programs were an issue in his 2006 Senate campaign, when some of his fellow Democrats complained that Webb sounded like a Republican. In a 2000 book review, also published in the Wall Street Journal, Webb wrote that affirmative action "has within one generation brought about a permeating state-sponsored racism that is as odious as the Jim Crow laws it sought to countermand."
Webb has said he supports some preferential programs for African Americans but not for other ethnic and immigrant groups. He reiterated that point in Friday's op-ed.
"I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship," Webb writes. "Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white."
Webb's latest airing of his views comes during a week when racial issues have dominated the headlines, after the firing of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod sparked heated debates on alleged "reverse racism" and whether the Obama administration -- and society as a whole -- is capable of engaging in mature discussions of racial issues without descending into acrimony.
Asked whether Webb's latest piece was prompted by the racial controversies of recent days, Webb spokesman Will Jenkins said Webb would let the article speak for itself.
Though Webb's position on affirmative action has long been known, at least one prominent Virginia Democrat -- former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder -- was highly critical of Friday's column.
"If it's not for the civil rights movement and diversity programs, he would not be a United States senator today," Wilder told the Associated Press, referring to Webb's 2006 victory with the help of minority voters. "Things are tough enough without having people you thought were friends do things like this."
In recent weeks, some conservatives have cited the controversy over the New Black Panther party and comments by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to promote the idea that the current White House is biased against whites.
Webb makes no such allegation in Friday's column, though he does complain that immigrants who have come to America in recent decades "have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years."
Webb notes that, "[c]ontrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith." This is also a frequent topic for the Virginia senator. He authored a well-received book, "Born Fighting," that focused on "how the Scots-Irish shaped America." And in yet another Wall Street Journal column, a 1995 piece titled, "In Defense of Joe Six Pack," Webb pointed out that there were huge variations in income and educational status among white Americans.
He argued then that "less-advantaged white cultures by and large did the most to lay out the infrastructure of this country, quite often suffering educational and professional regression as they tamed the wilderness, built the towns, roads and schools, and initiated a democratic way of life that later white cultures were able to take advantage of without paying the price of pioneering. Today they have the least, socio-economically, to show for these contributions." Webb even claimed "the prospect of a class war is genuine" among those who have felt left behind by government policies.
Now that he's in the Senate, Webb is advocating a significant shift in government priorities when it comes to race.
"Where should we go from here?" Webb asks in Friday's piece. "Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end. Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white."
[im]http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2010/07/webb_criticizes_affirmative_ac.html?wprss=virginiapolitics
Webb calls for end to most affirmative action
programs, criticizes 'myth' of white dominance</font size></center>
Updated 4:21 p.m.
Just as race issues have returned to the forefront of political debate, Virginia Sen. James Webb (D) on Friday reiterated his opposition to some affirmative action programs and suggested that white Americans are being "marginalized" by current government policies.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege," Webb writes: "Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers."
This is not a new topic for Webb, whose complicated views on race-based programs were an issue in his 2006 Senate campaign, when some of his fellow Democrats complained that Webb sounded like a Republican. In a 2000 book review, also published in the Wall Street Journal, Webb wrote that affirmative action "has within one generation brought about a permeating state-sponsored racism that is as odious as the Jim Crow laws it sought to countermand."
Webb has said he supports some preferential programs for African Americans but not for other ethnic and immigrant groups. He reiterated that point in Friday's op-ed.
"I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship," Webb writes. "Unfortunately, present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white."
Webb's latest airing of his views comes during a week when racial issues have dominated the headlines, after the firing of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod sparked heated debates on alleged "reverse racism" and whether the Obama administration -- and society as a whole -- is capable of engaging in mature discussions of racial issues without descending into acrimony.
Asked whether Webb's latest piece was prompted by the racial controversies of recent days, Webb spokesman Will Jenkins said Webb would let the article speak for itself.
Though Webb's position on affirmative action has long been known, at least one prominent Virginia Democrat -- former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder -- was highly critical of Friday's column.
"If it's not for the civil rights movement and diversity programs, he would not be a United States senator today," Wilder told the Associated Press, referring to Webb's 2006 victory with the help of minority voters. "Things are tough enough without having people you thought were friends do things like this."
In recent weeks, some conservatives have cited the controversy over the New Black Panther party and comments by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to promote the idea that the current White House is biased against whites.
Webb makes no such allegation in Friday's column, though he does complain that immigrants who have come to America in recent decades "have frequently been the beneficiaries of special government programs. The same cannot be said of many hard-working white Americans, including those whose roots in America go back more than 200 years."
Webb notes that, "[c]ontrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith." This is also a frequent topic for the Virginia senator. He authored a well-received book, "Born Fighting," that focused on "how the Scots-Irish shaped America." And in yet another Wall Street Journal column, a 1995 piece titled, "In Defense of Joe Six Pack," Webb pointed out that there were huge variations in income and educational status among white Americans.
He argued then that "less-advantaged white cultures by and large did the most to lay out the infrastructure of this country, quite often suffering educational and professional regression as they tamed the wilderness, built the towns, roads and schools, and initiated a democratic way of life that later white cultures were able to take advantage of without paying the price of pioneering. Today they have the least, socio-economically, to show for these contributions." Webb even claimed "the prospect of a class war is genuine" among those who have felt left behind by government policies.
Now that he's in the Senate, Webb is advocating a significant shift in government priorities when it comes to race.
"Where should we go from here?" Webb asks in Friday's piece. "Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end. Nondiscrimination laws should be applied equally among all citizens, including those who happen to be white."
[im]http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2010/07/webb_criticizes_affirmative_ac.html?wprss=virginiapolitics
Hell yeah affirmitive action aint going no gotdamn where if you are white, white folks have been solidifying foundations for over four hundred years..
those whites only signs that have been in effect in this country for over three hundred years is hard core cracker affirmative action..
basically when you see a cracker fighting against affirmitive action they are pretty much admitting they are inferior and need a leg up to effectively compete with us..
let call a fuckin spade a fuckin spade and fuckin inferiority inferiority...
because if they were not inferior they would have no problem even the playing field.. and competing effectively. someone is afraid of something.
but they must know something we dont, to be so fuckin scared shitless of the sunblessed gettin a fair chance to play catch up ball through affirmitive action that white folks still are getting to this day....
the whites only apply sign have been taking down from public view and just place in the human resource dept hidden codes of many corporations.
you think its by chance corporate america is over eighty percent white, and lets not even talk about the board rooms that shit is in the fuckin upper upper ninties...
you think its because white boys have exclusive inside networks that only they have privy to, through their college frats and fathers connection... or because they are just superior in mind body and spirit...
because if they REALLY were superior they wouldnt need 400 years plus and counting of affirmitive action..
in fact truth be told white folks getting affirmitive action right now, you cant tell me the unemployment rate is much higher for blacks than it is for whites because whites are just smarter and more efficient at doing their jobs....
well if thats the case, how the fuck did they let enron happen, that whole company was one big affirmitive action hire. thier superiority must have been asleep at the fuckin wheel..
I say I dont want NO reparations and NO affirmitive action from no body.
I just want karma to show its beautiful face and rectify the situation...
when whitey pays you back you may smile for a minute,
when the universe pays you back, you smile forever.....
please let these inferior beings keep their tools of white supremecy, it will only be their demise in the end...
dont beleive me, check the birth rates, how you going to be a superior being have medicine designed specifically for you, and still have the lowest birth rate. It aint hate its fact, do your own homework.
dude when the universe gets ya, it gets ya goooooooooooooodddd...
truth is nobody wants to talk about is the extinction of white folks...
everybody was talking that black man dying, almost being extinct bullshit, we aint almost extinct, we just being warehoused in fuckin jails,
with bullshit like marijauna laws and over policing....
ok enough with this, its a beautiful day, hot than a motherfucker but beautiful, let me outside and enjoy all the good karma I have coming to me....
did I say fuck your affirmative action....
oh well than I will say it now fuck affirmative.... you keeep it low birthrate having motherfukas!!!
those whites only signs that have been in effect in this country for over three hundred years is hard core cracker affirmative action..
basically when you see a cracker fighting against affirmitive action they are pretty much admitting they are inferior and need a leg up to effectively compete with us..
let call a fuckin spade a fuckin spade and fuckin inferiority inferiority...
because if they were not inferior they would have no problem even the playing field.. and competing effectively. someone is afraid of something.
but they must know something we dont, to be so fuckin scared shitless of the sunblessed gettin a fair chance to play catch up ball through affirmitive action that white folks still are getting to this day....
the whites only apply sign have been taking down from public view and just place in the human resource dept hidden codes of many corporations.
you think its by chance corporate america is over eighty percent white, and lets not even talk about the board rooms that shit is in the fuckin upper upper ninties...
you think its because white boys have exclusive inside networks that only they have privy to, through their college frats and fathers connection... or because they are just superior in mind body and spirit...
because if they REALLY were superior they wouldnt need 400 years plus and counting of affirmitive action..
in fact truth be told white folks getting affirmitive action right now, you cant tell me the unemployment rate is much higher for blacks than it is for whites because whites are just smarter and more efficient at doing their jobs....
well if thats the case, how the fuck did they let enron happen, that whole company was one big affirmitive action hire. thier superiority must have been asleep at the fuckin wheel..
I say I dont want NO reparations and NO affirmitive action from no body.
I just want karma to show its beautiful face and rectify the situation...
when whitey pays you back you may smile for a minute,
when the universe pays you back, you smile forever.....
please let these inferior beings keep their tools of white supremecy, it will only be their demise in the end...
dont beleive me, check the birth rates, how you going to be a superior being have medicine designed specifically for you, and still have the lowest birth rate. It aint hate its fact, do your own homework.
dude when the universe gets ya, it gets ya goooooooooooooodddd...
truth is nobody wants to talk about is the extinction of white folks...
everybody was talking that black man dying, almost being extinct bullshit, we aint almost extinct, we just being warehoused in fuckin jails,
with bullshit like marijauna laws and over policing....
ok enough with this, its a beautiful day, hot than a motherfucker but beautiful, let me outside and enjoy all the good karma I have coming to me....
did I say fuck your affirmative action....
oh well than I will say it now fuck affirmative.... you keeep it low birthrate having motherfukas!!!
I once had a conversation with a group of well-intentioned white folks. The topic turned to drugs in the black community and how many blacks are impoverished because of being burdened by drug addiction.
I told the group of educated white professionals that I was born and raised in a black community on the south side of Chicago. I also have lived in several predominately black communities in the Midwest and Southeast.
The one thing I know about drugs in the black community is this: there are a lot of drug dealers in the black community. Moreover, there are probably more black drug dealers in the hood than black drug addicts. More young black men are burdened and strung out by a conviction related to an intent to sell a control substance record than any sort of chemical dependency.
Sure there are black drug addicts but most crack dollars are paid by folks with a living income and jobs and not the Tyrone biggums of the hood.
Welfare queens are not the supporters of the dope boy. White folks spend far more money in the hood buying crack than the 5 or 6 local crackheads.
I say these things to illustrate how any and all things perceived problematic in this society are given a black face.
Affirmative action has a black face but just wait and see how much them white bitches wail and roar if our society no longer includes their greatest tool for economic and educational advancement.
If the elimination of Affirmation action resulted in the advancement of black people, I would be support of such a measure.
Why?
Because Affirmative action hasn't fixed or remedied the motivation to abuse and disallow the inclusion of black people.
More importantly, Affirmative action has not motivated more blacks to overcome - everything.
Yes, i could talk about all minorities but i don't feel all we are the world at the moment.
I told the group of educated white professionals that I was born and raised in a black community on the south side of Chicago. I also have lived in several predominately black communities in the Midwest and Southeast.
The one thing I know about drugs in the black community is this: there are a lot of drug dealers in the black community. Moreover, there are probably more black drug dealers in the hood than black drug addicts. More young black men are burdened and strung out by a conviction related to an intent to sell a control substance record than any sort of chemical dependency.
Sure there are black drug addicts but most crack dollars are paid by folks with a living income and jobs and not the Tyrone biggums of the hood.
Welfare queens are not the supporters of the dope boy. White folks spend far more money in the hood buying crack than the 5 or 6 local crackheads.
I say these things to illustrate how any and all things perceived problematic in this society are given a black face.
Affirmative action has a black face but just wait and see how much them white bitches wail and roar if our society no longer includes their greatest tool for economic and educational advancement.
If the elimination of Affirmation action resulted in the advancement of black people, I would be support of such a measure.
Why?
Because Affirmative action hasn't fixed or remedied the motivation to abuse and disallow the inclusion of black people.
More importantly, Affirmative action has not motivated more blacks to overcome - everything.
Yes, i could talk about all minorities but i don't feel all we are the world at the moment.
AA does lead to dependency on the govt. Getting rid of it wouldn't hurt Blacks much because we are usually the last hired and first fired. Our employment is dictated more by the job market or need for workers than by govt programs. But we do tend to forget how this society is structured when discussing the need for govt assistance. It is no accident that poverty rates in the Black and Brown communities are always in the 20-30% range. Thats because the power structure feels it needs that many people living in poverty to support the system, prisons, the military, teachers, doctors, etc. The fear is if too many people are lifted out of poverty the pyramid would crumble. This is not going to change anytime soon because in America everything revolves around maintaining the status quo.
The only way change is going to happen is if people change their behavior. Stop being predictable make it harder for govt to govern. Stop paying taxes, buying things on credit, getting high, watching tv, going to movies, downloading porn. In other words we are fucked cause that is not going to happen.
The only way change is going to happen is if people change their behavior. Stop being predictable make it harder for govt to govern. Stop paying taxes, buying things on credit, getting high, watching tv, going to movies, downloading porn. In other words we are fucked cause that is not going to happen.
<font size="5"><center>
At the Supreme Court,
Odds Lie Against Affirmative Action</font size><font size="4">
The justices will hear a case on whether universities can encourage
diversity at the classroom level, but court conservatives may
use it as an opportunity to set a new precedent. </font size></center>
If you believe in the value of affirmative action in high academics -- "that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions," to use United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's phrase from the last big case on the topic -- then you should know from the get-go that little good is likely to come from the court's choice Tuesday to add a new school admissions case to its docket for consideration next fall, right around the presidential election.
Instead, the best you can reasonably hope for in Fisher v. University of Texas is that the court will produce a narrow, fact-driven decision that does no more than strike down UT's admissions policy because it goes beyond where Justice O'Connor said such academic policies could go when she wrote the majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger. That's the 2003 affirmative action case out of the University of Michigan Law School, decided by a 5-4 vote, which stands as the controlling legal precedent here.
Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself from Fisher, meaning that only eight justices will determine the case.
FULL ARTICLE
At the Supreme Court,
Odds Lie Against Affirmative Action</font size><font size="4">
The justices will hear a case on whether universities can encourage
diversity at the classroom level, but court conservatives may
use it as an opportunity to set a new precedent. </font size></center>
If you believe in the value of affirmative action in high academics -- "that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions," to use United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's phrase from the last big case on the topic -- then you should know from the get-go that little good is likely to come from the court's choice Tuesday to add a new school admissions case to its docket for consideration next fall, right around the presidential election.
Instead, the best you can reasonably hope for in Fisher v. University of Texas is that the court will produce a narrow, fact-driven decision that does no more than strike down UT's admissions policy because it goes beyond where Justice O'Connor said such academic policies could go when she wrote the majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger. That's the 2003 affirmative action case out of the University of Michigan Law School, decided by a 5-4 vote, which stands as the controlling legal precedent here.
Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself from Fisher, meaning that only eight justices will determine the case.
FULL ARTICLE
4 Reasons Why Black People
No Longer Need Affirmative Action:
(1) Affirmative action is reverse discrimination;
(2) Slavery and Jim Crow are in the past;
(3) Affirmative action promotes unqualified Black people; AND
(4) America is the land of opportunity.
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<A HREF="http://newsone.com/newsone-original/boycewatkins/why-you-black-people-no-longer-need-affirmative-action/">link</A>
</IFRAME>
I believe test scores and grades unfairly judge a person intellectual ability and potential contribution to society. The plaintiff argument that I worked hard, I deserve acceptance at the school is faulty. The school should be allowed to make subjective judgments about a person along with quantitative; this is no different than the system that will used by her future employer to hire, retain, and promote her.
Difference in test scores can be attributed to teachers, school curriculum, and other factors outside the control of a student. Many people are gifted intellectual but find school boring and not a challenge because of its rigidity. A test score may not reflect their true abilities.
When the plaintiff leaves college, she will interview at companies and institution that will use even worse criteria such as interpersonal skills, sex, physical attractiveness, weight, likability, race, or other factors to judge your success. People that are less capable may move up into management position because of their ability to play golf or hunt even though you worked much harder. This experience with applying to college will be good preparation for her career.
Finally, employers use colleges not because of what they teach, but the ability to attract the best students that may perform well at their company. The NFL does the same thing, they rely on the school to pick the right people and its ability to attract the best athlete which is recruited.
Difference in test scores can be attributed to teachers, school curriculum, and other factors outside the control of a student. Many people are gifted intellectual but find school boring and not a challenge because of its rigidity. A test score may not reflect their true abilities.
When the plaintiff leaves college, she will interview at companies and institution that will use even worse criteria such as interpersonal skills, sex, physical attractiveness, weight, likability, race, or other factors to judge your success. People that are less capable may move up into management position because of their ability to play golf or hunt even though you worked much harder. This experience with applying to college will be good preparation for her career.
Finally, employers use colleges not because of what they teach, but the ability to attract the best students that may perform well at their company. The NFL does the same thing, they rely on the school to pick the right people and its ability to attract the best athlete which is recruited.
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That logic only applies if that black man with a degree is completely and utterly dependent on going to a white person, who hates him, for a job.
I'd rather have the conditon of black businesses addressed than fight for white people to hire me.
So would I but they aren't mutually exclusive ideas.
I'm curious to whether anyone has asked these plaintiffs and ones past if they had proof that less eligible students of color were allowed in to their detriment? Frankly, were they the bottom of the White applicants so there were no White students of lesser scores and grades allowed in but there were ones of color?
The Liberals Against Affirmative Action
The Liberals Against Affirmative Action
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: March 9, 2013
WHEN the Supreme Court last ruled on affirmative action, almost a decade ago, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy issued a 13-page dissent that may now provide the best guide to the future of affirmative action.
Justice Kennedy charted a path between the liberal-leaning ruling that essentially upheld race-based admissions programs and the dissents from his more conservative colleagues, who called for the programs’ abolition. He agreed that universities could take race into account in order to create diverse classes. But he argued that race should be “one modest factor among many others” — and that universities were instead treating it as “a predominant factor,” which was unconstitutional.
In the 10 years since that case, Grutter v. Bollinger, the court has moved to the right. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., a critic of affirmative action since the 1980s, has replaced Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote the majority opinion upholding the practice in 2003. That switch leaves Justice Kennedy as the swing vote in the current case involving the University of Texas, on which the court could rule anytime between next week and late June.
“I think Kennedy is likely to do something very similar to what he did in Grutter,” Sheryll Cashin, a law professor at Georgetown University and former clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, told me.
With most cases before the current court — especially ones involving race — liberals would be contemplating the prospect of another 5-to-4 decision with dread. The affirmative action case, however, comes with a wrinkle.
Most prominent liberals, including civil rights leaders and the Obama administration’s lawyers, have indeed urged the court to uphold the current version of affirmative action. Yet a rump group of left-leaning legal scholars and education experts share at least some of Justice Kennedy’s concerns. And they find themselves in the unusual position of seeing upsides in another potential liberal defeat in Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s court.
When elite colleges describe their admissions process, it sounds like one that follows Justice Kennedy’s standard, with race as just one factor. In an amicus brief supporting the University of Texas, the eight Ivy League universities and six others said they sought a student body that was “diverse in many ways.”
In fact, race plays a role unlike almost any other factor. An African-American student with a similar application to a white student received the equivalent of a 310-point lift in SAT scores, on a 1,600-point scale, according to a study of elite colleges by Thomas J. Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist. For Latino students, the margin was 130 points.
Recruited athletes and so-called legacy applicants also receive huge bonuses. But students who bring the other diversity that colleges claim to value — socioeconomic status, geography and perspective, to name three cited in the brief — receive no such advantage.
One study of 1990s data found that, all else equal, poorer students received no lift relative to affluent ones. Mr. Espenshade found that low-income minorities were somewhat more likely to gain admission than similar higher-income minorities but that lower-income whites received no advantage. In effect, poor and middle-income students are rejected, while others with the same scores and grades — legacies, athletes and minorities, often from privileged backgrounds — are admitted.
As a result, elite public and private colleges remain dominated by affluent students. Some colleges probably have more students from the top 2 percent of the income distribution than the bottom 50 percent.
The current system has left colleges in legal jeopardy because of both the conservative bent of today’s judiciary and the high legal burden that the law places on any race-based program. In a 1978 case, the justices called for “strict scrutiny” of such programs. In his 2003 dissent, Justice Kennedy argued that colleges did not meet this standard. Instead, he wrote, race often determined admissions decisions.
As he said to the University of Texas’s lawyer during arguments in October, “What you’re saying is that what counts is race above all.”
The Kennedy dissent leaves the door open to affirmative action, but only a form that makes the explicit consideration of race a last resort. Other factors would have to come first. As it happens, there are several officially race-neutral factors that would raise no constitutional risk — and help many minority applicants.
The most obvious is income. But others may be more important. If colleges gave students credit for coming from a low-income ZIP code, black and Latino students would benefit enormously, as they would from the consideration of wealth and family status. Only 27 percent of white students grow up in a single-parent family, compared with 60 percent of black children and 34 percent of Latino children.
One possible outcome is that the court will force colleges to show they have tried these forms of affirmative action before they turn to race. Another is a decision holding that racial preferences can be no larger — in terms of SAT points, for instance — than class preferences, says Stuart Taylor Jr., a co-author of a book critical of affirmative action.
The liberal critics of affirmative action believe that many of these approaches would be better than the current one. Racial discrimination obviously continues to exist. But the disadvantages of class, by most measures, are larger today. A class-based system would be more expensive, forcing colleges to devote some money now spent on buildings and other items to financial aid instead, but it would also arguably be more meritocratic.
Predicting the outcome of any Supreme Court case is a dangerous game, of course. Richard Primus of the University of Michigan puts only a two-in-three chance on a ruling along the lines of the 2003 Kennedy dissent. The court could also issue a ruling with little effect beyond Texas.
Perhaps the biggest reason to expect something more is simply that the justices took the case, Fisher v. University of Texas, in the first place.
“I think that after Fisher, there is going to be a lot of experimentation,” Ms. Cashin predicted. “Fisher’s going to create a crisis for people who care about diversity. The good thing about that is it will force some re-evaluation of what’s going on.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/sunday-review/the-liberals-against-affirmative-action.html?_r=0
The Liberals Against Affirmative Action
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: March 9, 2013
WHEN the Supreme Court last ruled on affirmative action, almost a decade ago, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy issued a 13-page dissent that may now provide the best guide to the future of affirmative action.
Justice Kennedy charted a path between the liberal-leaning ruling that essentially upheld race-based admissions programs and the dissents from his more conservative colleagues, who called for the programs’ abolition. He agreed that universities could take race into account in order to create diverse classes. But he argued that race should be “one modest factor among many others” — and that universities were instead treating it as “a predominant factor,” which was unconstitutional.
In the 10 years since that case, Grutter v. Bollinger, the court has moved to the right. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., a critic of affirmative action since the 1980s, has replaced Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote the majority opinion upholding the practice in 2003. That switch leaves Justice Kennedy as the swing vote in the current case involving the University of Texas, on which the court could rule anytime between next week and late June.
“I think Kennedy is likely to do something very similar to what he did in Grutter,” Sheryll Cashin, a law professor at Georgetown University and former clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, told me.
With most cases before the current court — especially ones involving race — liberals would be contemplating the prospect of another 5-to-4 decision with dread. The affirmative action case, however, comes with a wrinkle.
Most prominent liberals, including civil rights leaders and the Obama administration’s lawyers, have indeed urged the court to uphold the current version of affirmative action. Yet a rump group of left-leaning legal scholars and education experts share at least some of Justice Kennedy’s concerns. And they find themselves in the unusual position of seeing upsides in another potential liberal defeat in Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s court.
When elite colleges describe their admissions process, it sounds like one that follows Justice Kennedy’s standard, with race as just one factor. In an amicus brief supporting the University of Texas, the eight Ivy League universities and six others said they sought a student body that was “diverse in many ways.”
In fact, race plays a role unlike almost any other factor. An African-American student with a similar application to a white student received the equivalent of a 310-point lift in SAT scores, on a 1,600-point scale, according to a study of elite colleges by Thomas J. Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist. For Latino students, the margin was 130 points.
Recruited athletes and so-called legacy applicants also receive huge bonuses. But students who bring the other diversity that colleges claim to value — socioeconomic status, geography and perspective, to name three cited in the brief — receive no such advantage.
One study of 1990s data found that, all else equal, poorer students received no lift relative to affluent ones. Mr. Espenshade found that low-income minorities were somewhat more likely to gain admission than similar higher-income minorities but that lower-income whites received no advantage. In effect, poor and middle-income students are rejected, while others with the same scores and grades — legacies, athletes and minorities, often from privileged backgrounds — are admitted.
As a result, elite public and private colleges remain dominated by affluent students. Some colleges probably have more students from the top 2 percent of the income distribution than the bottom 50 percent.
The current system has left colleges in legal jeopardy because of both the conservative bent of today’s judiciary and the high legal burden that the law places on any race-based program. In a 1978 case, the justices called for “strict scrutiny” of such programs. In his 2003 dissent, Justice Kennedy argued that colleges did not meet this standard. Instead, he wrote, race often determined admissions decisions.
As he said to the University of Texas’s lawyer during arguments in October, “What you’re saying is that what counts is race above all.”
The Kennedy dissent leaves the door open to affirmative action, but only a form that makes the explicit consideration of race a last resort. Other factors would have to come first. As it happens, there are several officially race-neutral factors that would raise no constitutional risk — and help many minority applicants.
The most obvious is income. But others may be more important. If colleges gave students credit for coming from a low-income ZIP code, black and Latino students would benefit enormously, as they would from the consideration of wealth and family status. Only 27 percent of white students grow up in a single-parent family, compared with 60 percent of black children and 34 percent of Latino children.
One possible outcome is that the court will force colleges to show they have tried these forms of affirmative action before they turn to race. Another is a decision holding that racial preferences can be no larger — in terms of SAT points, for instance — than class preferences, says Stuart Taylor Jr., a co-author of a book critical of affirmative action.
The liberal critics of affirmative action believe that many of these approaches would be better than the current one. Racial discrimination obviously continues to exist. But the disadvantages of class, by most measures, are larger today. A class-based system would be more expensive, forcing colleges to devote some money now spent on buildings and other items to financial aid instead, but it would also arguably be more meritocratic.
Predicting the outcome of any Supreme Court case is a dangerous game, of course. Richard Primus of the University of Michigan puts only a two-in-three chance on a ruling along the lines of the 2003 Kennedy dissent. The court could also issue a ruling with little effect beyond Texas.
Perhaps the biggest reason to expect something more is simply that the justices took the case, Fisher v. University of Texas, in the first place.
“I think that after Fisher, there is going to be a lot of experimentation,” Ms. Cashin predicted. “Fisher’s going to create a crisis for people who care about diversity. The good thing about that is it will force some re-evaluation of what’s going on.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/sunday-review/the-liberals-against-affirmative-action.html?_r=0
I fail to realize why more people have not come to this conclusion yet...
Who cares about affirmative action when it really hasn't been to our benefit the most
I fail to realize why more people have not come to this conclusion yet...
Who cares about affirmative action when it really hasn't been to our benefit the most
Why act like the two things are mutually exclusive?
I would like to know why you bring up this question...You say that it isn't? Why?
. . . you keep asking that same question
.
I do...
and still, no response
Got one now.
It's extrememly narrowminded to think that people can be about starting their own businesses and creating their own opportunities while at the same time, other people can be fighting to break down barriers and obstacles.
It's possible to fight a battle on more than one front.
MOst of the time, it's downright neccesary.
I feel you on this...However, I feel that being able to start and grow various businesses knocks down the issue of unemployment for many African-Americans.
There are other factors that would definitely contribute to that process...
Affirmative action in universities
Affirmative action in universities (07:32)
An uncomfortable admission
Apr 26th 2013, 15:55 by Economist.com
RICHARD SANDER, co-author of a book on how affirmative action hurts students it means to help, on how to improve the use of preferences in higher education
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/04/affirmative-action-universities
Affirmative action in universities (07:32)
An uncomfortable admission
Apr 26th 2013, 15:55 by Economist.com
RICHARD SANDER, co-author of a book on how affirmative action hurts students it means to help, on how to improve the use of preferences in higher education
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/04/affirmative-action-universities
I actually agree with you in some ways, however many of us are not in positions of independence. In the longterm it will help but AA existed for a reason. Cacs will get so blatantly racist in business many of our folks would be in serious trouble.
Re: Affirmative action in universities
and then on top of that . . .
With ALL of this NEGATIVE ACTION, sounds odd that there are arguments that Affirmative Action, is no longer needed
and then on top of that . . .
The Atlantic said:
With ALL of this NEGATIVE ACTION, sounds odd that there are arguments that Affirmative Action, is no longer needed
Re: Affirmative action in universities
At least advocate for a different version like the liberals in my earlier post want. Don't just ask for government to keep doing what isn't working just because you're pro-government-doing-something.
I find it odd how, as you've wanted, affirmative action has existed for 40 years but when you look at the results you want more not less.
and then on top of that . . .
With ALL of this NEGATIVE ACTION, sounds odd that there are arguments that Affirmative Action, is no longer needed
At least advocate for a different version like the liberals in my earlier post want. Don't just ask for government to keep doing what isn't working just because you're pro-government-doing-something.