Comments on: Anti-Affirmative Action Crowd Achieves Pathetic Failure

By: duvexy

duvexy — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:01:42 +0000

That is true. This does happen. I work at a cable company that offers bundles and the english bundle is more expensive then the spanish bundle.

By: The Black Side: It’s Been a Year Since Obama Ended Racism | Tainted Saints

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:05:09 +0000

[...] up over four hundred years of racial oppression has seemed to vanish. Nobody ever questions my credentials or intellect anymore. I get along fabulously with police officers. And Obama even won a Nobel Peace Prize which [...]

By: Elie Mystal - The Black Side – It’s Been a Year Since Obama Ended Racism in America - True/Slant

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:21:42 +0000

By: iammike

iammike — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:48:07 +0000

Assuming you are correct that “we are not there yet,” how does continuing to require that race be a consideration through afirmative action programs bring us closer to the goal of a color-blind society? While Elie makes fun of the “thought” behind the bake sale, and persuasively argues that people should be considered as individuals rather than stereotypes, he does so in support of a policy that is premised solely upon the exact stereotypes he denounces.

I think Justice Thomas has it exactly right; the simple fact that quotas exist serves to diminish–or at least call into question–the validity of his (or Elie’s for that matter) accomplishments, which truly are laudable. If you desire to be judged on the content of your character rather than the color of your skin, why would you ever permit, not to mention demand, that the color of your skin be a consideration?

By: libtree09

libtree09 — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:56:10 +0000

Mike,

There was a time in this country when a black or latino man could not achieve a high position in a fire company nor could they become a fireman. It wasn’t a southern thing, it was a major northern city thing. Your evaluation is spot on, it shouldn’t matter, we are on our way but not there yet. Keep thinking the way you do.

By: iammike

iammike — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:25:50 +0000

In criticizing those who conducted the bake sale, you make their point. Race has absolutely nothing to do with bringing “a diversity of experiences and backgrounds [that] makes for a stronger institution, company, and nation.” We all are individuals with diverse backgrounds–as your experiences at HLS so aptly demonstrate.

My complaint about affirmative action has nothing to do with whether or not there was “a more deserving white male.” Rather, my complaint stems from the fact that a person’s race is even a consideration. If anything, affirmative action detracts from the goal of analyzing a person for who they are and the experiences they bring to the table and replaces it with how a person looks.

Stated differently, how can a person’s race ever be relevant to determining whether or not they should be admitted to a school, be hired for a job or be elected to a political office, UNLESS you are making sterotypical generalizations based solely on a person’s skin color (apple vs. sweet potato pie–the exact generalizations you seem to condemn)? And if race is not relevant, how can it make sense to have a policy that demands it be considered?

By: Elie Mystal

Elie Mystal — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:05:22 +0000

This is an excellent point. I’ve been discussing the pros and cons of AA from the kind of academic theory behind it. But it is unmistakably true that you can’t fully look at AA without adding economic factors as an important — perhaps the most important — overlay.

Many of the factors we are all discussing have a much bigger correlation with money than they do with race, color or creed.

By: trishara

trishara — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:36:45 +0000

Thank you for giving a real life example to what I mentioned before re: the affirmative action bake sale. It’s nice that you want to ask the African American person what his stats were to prove he deserved entrance into Harvard Law. If/when you ask white applicants and they fall short of your numbers, do you then judge them and think they didn’t deserve to get into HLS/must be undeserving beneficiaries of some program? Or do you just assume they have something special about them?

By: libtree09

libtree09 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:26:48 +0000

I must say this exchange pissed me off a bit. There are many qualified students who would like to go to a good university or college. They know it gives one a leg up on the economic scale. However it is money that is the problem. My niece could barely afford the books required for her classes and until the passage of the new GI Bill couldn’t afford college at all.
Now I barely got through high school but managed to survive as an entrepreneur but my niece is entering a world where our president says you will need a least four years of college. She wants to get into Forestry and she will have to be in hock for the rest of her life to do it. And here you two are pissing away about grade point average while Harvard sits on a ton of money that could have allowed both of you admission. Yes, life is more complicated, more complicated by far for the average guy or girl.

By: Elie Mystal

Elie Mystal — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:57:02 +0000

Brother, you kind of aggressively missed my point didn’t you? I totally disagree with a stats-based analysis of what you call “merit.”

Just looking at your stats, it seems like you were right in the range of a lot of people who get into HLS, and a lot of people who get rejected by HLS. Why do you think that being a “white male” was the crucial difference between you getting in or not? I’d imagine that you got into schools that are of similar caliber to HLS, do you think that those schools had fewer minorities competing with you?

Anyway, I’m not going to answer your question because I don’t accept the premise of your question. I don’t think that merit has a lot to do with these stats and figures.

And even if I did, it wouldn’t really shut anybody up who needs to believe that I’ve been unfairly promoted through life thanks to AA.

But I’ll tell you this, I didn’t graduate with a 4.0 GPA, and I didn’t score a 180 on LSAT. That means that there are some people out there that scored and graded better than me, and yet didn’t get into the same law schools I got into. I’m sure they feel aggrieved.

The last time I was in Vegas, I pushed all in before the flop with cowboys against a sloppy drunk Englishman who had been playing like an idiot. He called me with Queens. The flop came down King, crap, crap. I had him statistically dominated. He pulled runner-runner, queen, queen, took all my money and did a little dance all the way up to the MGM lions.

While planning my homicidal revenge the dealer said “he’s been waiting for you all night. he got lucky, but he been doing it to people like you all week.” Life is often more complicated than it looks.