On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 05:26:29PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: > On 05/11/07 11:08, Amy Templeton wrote: > > > access to certain forms of expression. Similarly, white people are > > well-established as "in charge" in, say, the corporate world. > > Although thanks to affirmative action there are now some (often > > tokenized) people of color in the upper echelons of some > > businesses, for the most part it is white people who gain > > promotions (not due to racism, but not necessarily due to > > differences in ability either). These are just a few examples...if > > you would care for more I could give you a more extensive and > > possibly better-written list at a later date, or point you to a > > citation for such a list. > I can honestly say that I *hate* affirmative action. I hate the thought that when I walk in to a meeting or a room full of professionals that they might look at me and think "oh, he must be the token spic." Seriously. I have earned what I have on my own merits. All affirmative action does is erode *my* credibility and the credibility of every hard working non-WASP (or whatever term you want to use). Please don't mistake my statement. I don't hold anything against anyone based on their ethnicity or skin color or whatever. What does burn me up is the way in which a bunch of people can think up ways of trying to "help" which only do the opposite. Here is a short anecdote my calculus teacher told my class in high school. In my high school, the valedictorian of the class which graduate one year before me was a black female. She was the first black valedictorian at any non-predominantly black high school in the county's history. She went to MIT when she gradutated. According to the story, during the first few days of the first term, all the freshmen were required to take placement tests. The first test was the calculus placement test, which was held in a big auditorium. Now, imagine a black female in the freshman class at MIT. Lots of people must have thought "well, there is the token black girl." Now, I don't know if anyone said something like that to here face, but I imagine some folks there thought it. Either way, she related to our calculus teacher that during the first days there, she felt pretty much shunned. Anyhow, when the test results were later announced, it turned out that this girl placed number one of the new freshman class. After that, she never had to "prove" anything to anybody and she was treated equally by her class mates. I'm sure I may have forgotten some things or not got everything perfectly right, but I think I got the gist across. While I understand that there are specific cases of discrimination that have occurred out there, I think that affirmative action has done more harm than good. > And in China, "yellow" is promoted more than "white". > > This "preference for your own" is also states "birds of a feather > flock together". It will *always* be so. > > White *hatred* of blacks, OTOH, is or should be intolerable. > Prejudice by one group of another is almost always bad. However, many times members of a group will see members of another group as outsiders. I don't believe that sort of thinking can be eradicated from society. > > > > Perhaps an example of how this can be particularly damaging is that > > an able-bodied person doesn't have to think about the steps leading > > to the only door of a shop--so there is no pressure to make the > > shop more accessible, leaving people with certain types of physical > > handicaps out on the street. On a large scale, this leads to > > normalization of certain unwholesome practices (like not making > > buildings universally accessible) throughout a society, which in > > turn leads to marginalization of the people who don't have the > > option of "activating" that privilege and not thinking about it. > > I have a seizure disorder which means I can't drive, plus various > other congenital physical "issues". > > Do I complain and whine? Do I demand free transportation from the > government? No. > "We're the government and we're here to help!" The government screws up so many things that I can hardly believe that people want *more* involvement from them. Seriously, if a business is not accessible to someone, that person is free to patronize a business that is willing to cater. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez http://people.connexer.com/~roberto http://www.connexer.com
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