Lee Corbin wrote (re affirmative action):
> But we'd be without the arrogance of whites "granting"
> them rights, favoring them because they had to (by law),
> making it impossible for a black to tell whether he got
> an important job on his own merits, or whether it was
> merely the result of affirmative action, and so on.
I'm not certain I understand what you are getting at above. I don't think
the arrogance of whites is what's important here - black people I know don't
give a fig about how whites perceive themselves ... they just want a place
at the table. For hundreds of years whites have benefited from the UNPAID
labor of slaves (in the South and the North, in the latter by business
owners who profited from the work of southern slaves, even when they did not
live in slave states). After hundreds of years of slavery, then another 100
years of legal segregation, to today's de facto bigotry - generations of
blacks have been affected. While some blacks have done all right for
themselves, the playing field is far, far from level, and the successes are
disproportionately rare.
Reiterating, whites in America have profited from hundreds of years of
UNPAID labor from blacks. Many rich families in the United States (whose
businesses have benefited from slavery generations ago) are still profiting
from that "slave labor" ... interest earned, stocks, trusts, what have you.
Generation upon generation. Where's the fairness in all this? Affirmative
action is merely a pittance-solution. I think blacks should get
reparations - not in the form of cash, but in the form of assistance to help
their kids get the best education they can, from an early age. The average
5-year-old black kid today is way behind - at that age, already - to
privileges bestowed on the average 5-year-old white kid. The help probably
needs to start earlier than age 5.
Remember - whites profited from UNPAID slave labor for hundreds of years.
When a tourist goes to visit the White House, it is rarely mentioned - if at
all - that it was built with unpaid slave labor. How shameful - both this
historic fact, and the fact that not many people are aware of this.
> Thomas Sowell documents in excruciating detail the horrible
> results of affirmative action ...
My guy also has some interesting stories to relate, also in excrutiating
detail. Randall Robinson (whose brother was Max Robinson, the first black
anchor on TV back in the late 1970s-early 1980s), in his book "Defending the
Spirit," tells of his daughter, Khalea (who tested as a gifted child and who
was doing very well at Beauvoir, a highly rated private school in
Washington, D.C.). Khalea told her parents that only the other three other
black girls in her class were ever made to take "time out" (for disciplinary
reasons) - the white girls, never. The other black girls were relatively
"privileged," as was Khalea - one (an especially quiet girl) was the
daughter of a Time magazine columnist, another was the daugther of a judge
on the D.C. Superior Court, and the third girl's mother was on the governing
board of the Beauvoir School. When the teacher was asked whether she
thought it was odd that only the black girls and none of the white girls
were ever made to take "time out" for discipline, the teacher's response was
that, no, she didn't think it was odd at all. The teacher justified it, in
fact, by explaining that, "Studies show that black parents rear their
children to be more aggressive."
And this was in a special, privileged private school. You'd think that
extra care would have been taken to treat children fairly and without
bigotry in such a school. If Thomas Sowell says that racism doesn't exist
in the U.S., he's lying in the grunt (and I'm certain he gets paid very well
to tow that line, if that's what he says ...). I have capitalized UNPAID up
there three times, I realize. There seems to be so much concern about a
little tax money going to undeserving, lazy, good-for-nothin's among some of
you. Can you imagine living for generations, working hard all your life for
the benefit of other people (who owned you, to top off the indignity), and
never being paid for your labor? Then, and again - for generations -
suffering the indignities of living as "untouchables" in the South. I would
have gone stir crazy. All of us now - black and white - are all still
living with the legacy of those times. That's what I think, anyway - that's
how I see it.
Olga
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