Something to ponder . . .

[bigguns7]

This thread is created specifically with RyanH in mind.

RyanH, along with a few other extreme leftists on this board, applaud the government's efforts to combat racism, and support any organizations which champion the advancement of minorities. They take on the typical demeanor of the ultraliberal when they pretend to be more enlightened, more civil, and more humane by rallying the cause of minority-enhancement programs.

Here is an idea that I wish to present to them, a challenge to their beliefs which may very well scare them, because it will show them that they are as racist as the very organizations which they denounce. My assertion is this:

Any organization, movement, program, or law which simply acknowledges the existence of race is, in itself, racist. The NAACP shares some of the same basic principles as the KKK. Affirmative action shares some of the same basic principles as segregation. David Duke shares some of the same basic principles as Lewis Farrakhan.

Any organization that rallies for "the advancement of black people" is just as racist as any organization that rallies for "the advancement of white people," yet these simple truths somehow escape the confines of the liberal agenda.

In summary, I'd like to challenge all those who ask us to be "open-minded" to practice what they preach. Our society will be the most enlightened, the most educated, and the most prosperous when we cease to acknowledge race as a qualification or guideline and simply chalk it up to what it really means . . . nothing.

 

[Kahn]

Somebody kiss this man.

 

[Kahn]

Fuck that, blow him

 

[havoc]

Many see what they want to see, they dont empathize with both sides and look at every possibility available. Good post!

 

[frorider6]

Very well stated. I say the same line of reasoning can be applied towards Christianity as well.

 

[GaryWary]

The truth is - most of us are a little bit racist. After the September 11th thing, I began viewing all muslims with suspicion. I even slagged them off on this board - how's that for hypocrisy!? It was the emotion of the whole event.. I recognise that my 'racism' was wrong.

My girlfriend is beautiful. She is also Indian Hindu. She (and many other hindu's apparently) has a distrust of Muslims - which I find interesting.. Especially since many white people tend to think of asians as being 'all of the same stock' i.e. all the same. They are usually all referred to as Pakis. My girlfriends family don't like or trust Pakistani's. My girlfriends sister is dating a Hindu Sri-Lankan.. His family want the relationship ended because they don't like Indians.. She has a PhD by the way.... this means nothing to them.

I lived in Norwood for a while (near Brixton). Norwood and surrounding areas are the most crime-ridden and violent in England. They are very black areas. I have black friends... but.. I now fear reprisals for what I am going to say now.. but I just want to prove my honesty and non-hypocrisy... I distrusted all of the black men in that area. Instinctive dis-trust. I had my reasons.. there was a very real feeling of bad-ass attitude in the area. I was wipped by a guy with a pitbull because I dared to pat the dog on the head!? It had stopped in my path.. I was just being friendly.. He wipped me with the dog lead.. my pre-conceptions (however right or wrong) of a 'certain kind' of black man were being added to. I got into 5 fights with black men in the 1 year of living there... I swear I didn't start any of them. I don't live there anymore. One of my most trusted friends is black, but like I said.. my brain made a distinction between what I percieved to be hostile blacks and friendly blacks...

When I was at junior school.. because I have itallian roots.. my teacher once held my hand up in front of the class and asked whether it was a tan or whether it was dirt on my skin (it wasn't a joke it was meant nastily). When I got to senior school, I was called half-caste for the same reasons.. I was bullied severly for having a tanned appearance. I was the closest thing to coloured in my school.

I could go on...

I ain't perfect.. I got some thoughts and feelings that are probably wrong... but we are shaped by our experiences. I have had some very negative experiences with SOME black men.

Sorry if this offends. It shouldn't do.

I am not racist, but I do have a few negative thoughts.

I truly believe that we absolutley must work together to eradicate racism and more importantly - ignorance and mis-trust of other races. That is how we will build a happier world.

 

[decem]

good thread.. good posts by everyone.

 

[bigguns7]

I'm surprised that this hasn't gotten more response.

 

[Peyote Killa]

Badass Thread, Badass posts
But the real issue is do away with religion and there will hardly be any worldly controversy anywhere. I know not everyone will agree with this, but do like the man said and try to think as open-minded as possible for about 5 minutes, then respond.

 

[bigguns7]

This must be one of those posts that RyanH chooses not to answer. I wonder why that is.

 

[RyanH]

First of all Bigguns, I will begin by saying that I will respond to your arguments since:

1) you have not waged personal, ad hominem attacks directed toward me, such as immature name-calling, and

2) I have not deemed you at this point unworthy of debating.

In short, there are several posts by several members I do not bother reading since they do not appear to have the intellectual capacity, maturity, or knowledge-base to waste my time by engaging in intelligent discourse. My time, like yours, is quite valuable.

With that said, I will address the argument you have laid out above. First, you'll be surprised to learn that----I ABSOLUTELY AGREE with you!!! At least, I agree with you in that race should not be a criteria in hiring decisions or even college admission decisions----our society will, indeed, function best when we are all truly color blind. Thus, we agree, at least, in part.

However, as you well know, our great nation has not functioned in that manner for centuries now. For hundreds of years, African-Americans have been beaten-down, denied employment, denied their constitutional right to vote, racially profiled, and even denied tables in their local diners. The list, of course, goes on.

Therefore, the last few hundred years have created a huge disparity in equalibrium between the races; the majority has had hundreds of years to make influential connections, to receive the jobs of their choosing, and to receive sought-after seats at our nation's most prestigious academic institutions. In the meantime, African-Americans had governors blocking their ways into universites or employers throwing their resumes out, not simply because the applicant was African-American but also because African-Americans lacked the historical family ties to get ahead since, recall, that many of their ancestors were beaten into submission while working for the masses as slave trade.

Result: a huge imbalance in economics and treatment between whites and African-Americans. Because the majority is responsible for putting African-Americans into the positions of 2nd class citizenship, it's now the majority's social as well as moral responsiblity to level the playing field which is precisely the goal of affirmative action programs.

Until that field is leveled and African-Americans have access to the same opportunities that the majority has, the government will continue to remedy both modern and historical inequities.
Further, not only is affirmative action consitutional in most instances, it shows that our government can play a role in our lives and quite successfully.

Finally, for all of you terrified of losing out to 5% of the applicant pool reserved to African-Americans in many of our nation's universities, don't be. Just learn to compete that much harder with the rest of the 95% of the applicant pool.

I sure have, and well, I've won everytime.

Good evening,
Ryan.

 

[Drizzt]

Re: Re: Something to ponder . . .

First of all Bigguns, I will begin by saying that I will respond to your arguments since:

1) you have not waged personal, ad hominem attacks directed toward me, such as immature name-calling, and

2) I have not deemed you at this point unworthy of debating.

In short, there are several posts by several members I do not bother reading since they do not appear to have the intellectual capacity, maturity, or knowledge-base to waste my time by engaging in intelligent discourse. My time, like yours, is quite valuable.

With that said, I will address the argument you have laid out above. First, you'll be surprised to learn that----I ABSOLUTELY AGREE with you!!! At least, I agree with you in that race should not be a criteria in hiring decisions or even college admission decisions----our society will, indeed, function best when we are all truly color blind. Thus, we agree, at least, in part.

However, as you well know, our great nation has not functioned in that manner for centuries now. For hundreds of years, African-Americans have been beaten-down, denied employment, denied their constitutional right to vote, racially profiled, and even denied tables in their local diners. The list, of course, goes on.

Therefore, the last few hundred years have created a huge disparity in equalibrium between the races; the majority has had hundreds of years to make influential connections, to receive the jobs of their choosing, and to receive sought-after seats at our nation's most prestigious academic institutions. In the meantime, African-Americans had governors blocking their ways into universites or employers throwing their resumes out, not simply because the applicant was African-American but also because African-Americans lacked the historical family ties to get ahead since, recall, that many of their ancestors were beaten into submission while working for the masses as slave trade.

Result: a huge imbalance in economics and treatment between whites and African-Americans. Because the majority is responsible for putting African-Americans into the positions of 2nd class citizenship, it's now the majority's social as well as moral responsiblity to level the playing field which is precisely the goal of affirmative action programs.

Until that field is leveled and African-Americans have access to the same opportunities that the majority has, the government will continue to remedy both modern and historical inequities.
Further, not only is affirmative action consitutional in most instances, it shows that our government can play a role in our lives and quite successfully.

Finally, for all of you terrified of losing out to 5% of the applicant pool reserved to African-Americans in many of our nation's universities, don't be. Just learn to compete that much harder with the rest of the 95% of the applicant pool.

I sure have, and well, I've won everytime.

Good evening,
Ryan.

Ya they have been beaten down but its evident that its not often enough because they still WON"T SHUT UP. SOmeone get me a ballbat I will do my part. Adios

Drizz

 

[mrbill]

Re: Re: Something to ponder . . .

Result: a huge imbalance in economics and treatment between whites and African-Americans. Because the majority is responsible for putting African-Americans into the positions of 2nd class citizenship, it's now the majority's social as well as moral responsiblity to level the playing field which is precisely the goal of affirmative action programs.

Until that field is leveled and African-Americans have access to the same opportunities that the majority has, the government will continue to remedy both modern and historical inequities.
Further, not only is affirmative action consitutional in most instances, it shows that our government can play a role in our lives and quite successfully.

Finally, for all of you terrified of losing out to 5% of the applicant pool reserved to African-Americans in many of our nation's universities, don't be. Just learn to compete that much harder with the rest of the 95% of the applicant pool.

Ryan:
First, who is this majority you are refering to that has relegated Afr. Americans into 2nd class citizens?
Second, you refer to leveling the playing field and giving Afr. Americans the same opportunities as others. Can you please point out an actual example of where an Afr. American does not have equal opportunity.
Third, who decides when this hypothetical playing field is "level"? Don't you see that no matter how much equality there is there will always be those who will want preferential treatment, not equality.
Finally, why should affirmative action benefit only blacks? Are Asians not as deserving, or Hispanics, or Arabs, etc, etc. and what about impoverished whites. Opportunity has much less to do with race than it does with economic circumstance. Some of the poorest people in the US are whites living in places such as the coal mining areas.
There can be no equality for all until all are treated equally, this means no one can be given preference. We should all succeed or fail based on our own choices and merits.

 

[bigguns7]

Re: Re: Something to ponder . . .

Result: a huge imbalance in economics and treatment between whites and African-Americans. Because the majority is responsible for putting African-Americans into the positions of 2nd class citizenship, it's now the majority's social as well as moral responsiblity to level the playing field which is precisely the goal of affirmative action programs.

Until that field is leveled and African-Americans have access to the same opportunities that the majority has, the government will continue to remedy both modern and historical inequities.
Further, not only is affirmative action consitutional in most instances, it shows that our government can play a role in our lives and quite successfully.

Good evening,
Ryan.

Ryan, don't you agree that these affirmative action programs are in alot of cases taking one step forward and two steps back? If an employer is forced to give a black man a job, don't you think that will create some sort of disdain and lack of respect for that employee? Haven't you just created another enemy of affirmative action?

If a group of office-workers sees a white co-worker fired so that he can be replaced by a black co-worker, what do you think that does to those individuals and to that office environment? We've seen it for several years, affirmative action programs cause a general loathing for those who benefit from them.

Let's look at what happened in California. A huge pecentage of blacks voted to GET RID of affirmative action in California. Do you know why? Because their jobs were being given to hispanics. The blacks hated that, and voted to abolish the very program that was put in place to help them. These programs do nothing but further a more distinct separation between the races.

I realize that you, in the ivory halls of Academia, have not actually had experience with the repercussions that these programs cause. You have not been forced to hire someone who wasn't qualified for the job, nor have you or a family-member or a friend or a coworker been ousted from a job so that it could be given to a minority. So I see where you're coming from. I was an idealist when I was in college too.

You can sit behind your computer and preach your idealist views, and you can debate with your classmates on the merits of affirmative action, because you don't know what really happens. That's what the politicians who are putting these programs into place are doing. They don't see that a black man who is given a job that he doesn't deserve is actually hated by his coworkers, both white and black. That don't care what happens to that black woman after she gets the job. They will never know that they have done her more of a disservice than they ever could. All they know is that things sure look good from way up there on Capitol Hill, the black man looks more prosperous than ever according to recent polls!

You'll learn.

 

[bigguns7]

*waits for a preachy retort from RyanH*

 

[Sushi X]

big guns, good post. i agree.

do away with religion, not gonna happen. the world is full of various religions in which many people hold their devotion and build their foundations on. it's a part of the simbiant cirlce. you abolish it and you abolish morality, law, and eventually end up in a world full of anarchy and dismay. you'll get a world like that off of mad max where everyone is poor, dirty and there aint no football(ok, i had to add that).

ryan, open your mind and read a view on affirmative action that's not rep or dem, but libertarian. it's about women and affirmative action.

Libertarian Solutions: To succeed, women don't need government affirmative action
by Elizabeth Larson
Free-lance writer


EDITOR'S NOTE:
How can Libertarianism solve America's problems? Each issue, LP News showcases how "Libertarian Solutions" -- or interim steps in a libertarian direction -- can help improve our nation.



The American working woman pays a high price for the position or promotion she receives from affirmative action: the unspoken assumption that she was not the "best man" for the job.

Suspicions about the merits of those who receive affirmative-action jobs are often undeserved, and thus all the more insidious. When the suspicions are held by one's colleagues, rather than the general public, it is particularly divisive. Resentment against an individual case of hiring by quota ferments into resentment against all members of the privileged group. Intended to reverse discrimination, affirmative action eventually breeds it.

The supporters of such a perverse system must answer the question of how successful -- and more important, how moral -- a system is that harms the very individuals it purports to help.

If feminists truly cared about women succeeding rather than constructing a social utopia, they would herald individual women who have genuine, free-market success stories to tell. These women are not running to government for affirmative-action privilege because they are too busy running companies.

Jane Hirsh is one such woman. Hirsh founded Copley Pharmaceutical, Inc. more than two decades ago because she wanted to be able to bring her children to work.

After 21 years spent building her company into a generic-drug powerhouse, Hirsh sold a 51% stake in Copley to the German company Hoechst for $546 million in cash, retaining 37% of the shares for her family. Starting her own company "was the only way I could have a crib in my office," Hirsh recalled.

Edith Gorter of Gorter Express Company has her own hard-work success story to tell. She was one of seven female entrepreneurs that author and businesswoman Joline Godfrey chose to highlight in her book on businesswomen, Our Wildest Dreams. Gorter took over the trucking company when her brother-in-law who had been running it died. (Her husband, who had no head for business, had wanted to sell the family company, founded by his father in 1910 with a horse and wagon.)

When Edith Gorter took the company's reins in 1972, Gorter Express had just one client, two trucks, and little else. By the mid-1990s, the company had hundreds of clients and about $2 million in rolling stock.

Little Caesar's pizza chain, Mrs. Field's Cookies, and Ruth's Chris Steakhouses are a few of the better-known companies founded or run by women, but there are literally thousands of great free-market success stories like these.

In fact, more than 7.2 million American businesses are owned by women. As an Associated Press story reported: "From 1991 to 1994, woman-owned businesses in the transportation, communications, wholesale trade, real estate, and financial services grew nearly 20%, while construction firms grew 19% and manufacturing firms 13%, according to the National Foundation for Women Business Owners." Since women start their own companies with half as much capital as men do, these entrepreneurs do not have the luxury of free time to complain about perceived workplace inequalities.

Some might argue that while entrepreneurial women have the opportunity to pick their field, most female workers are still forced to do "women's work." Although about two-thirds of working women still enter traditionally female fields such as nursing, teaching, and social work, a study from the Population Reference Bureau found "striking gains" for women in such traditionally male fields as medicine and law during the 1980s.

The number of women lawyers more than tripled, and the number of female doctors doubled. Since the "decade of greed" was supposedly even worse for women than for men, this is good news.

It is important to note that the debate about affirmative action is not a debate about the existence of individuals who discriminate on the basis of sex, nor should it be. Like the poor, the misogynist will always be with us. What differentiates the sexist society from a free society in which there is sexism is whether that prejudice is sanctioned by legislation and government policies or whether it is forced to the margins of society by general condemnation.

The affirmative-action debate is ultimately an argument about group versus individual rights. Affirmative action's opponents understand that it is wrong, and not merely impractical, to restrain the individual for the sake of the group. They know from history that to ignore or denigrate the achievements of the individual is to head society down the road to chaos.

The factional fighting that ensues is not of the beneficent type described by the Founders, wherein special interests jostle amongst themselves, creating a balance from which everyone's rights emerge intact. It is a splintering of communities born of contempt and resentment. Liberty has no friends in a world where success is seen as an entitlement, for the politically strong do what they can to obtain this "right" while the politically weak suffer what they must.

Feminists ought to be particularly attuned to the dangers of relying on a central force or figure for support and protection. Women struggled far too long to free themselves from paternalism to hold the hand of Uncle Sam now. An eagerness to rely on the government is an affront to what feminism should stand for. It betrays a lack of confidence in women's abilities to achieve financial and personal independence, and it undermines the real gains women have made in the workplace in recent decades.

As with any group that considers itself the vanguard of a brave new world, feminists want immediate change -- and affirmative-action programs with the force of bureaucratic edict promise it to them.

Yet utopias are malleable things. Just as the dream of a color-blind society has become the reality of a color-coded one since the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the goal of equal opportunity has become the mirage of equal outcome. A system in which less than 5% of construction jobs are held by women -- even though women own almost as many construction companies as men -- is a system which, to many feminists, has failed the fairer sex.

But try telling that to someone like Edith Gorter -- who hasn't just made it in a "man's world." She's made it in a man's field, trucking. Where are the feminists to praise strong, independent women when you need them? Running after yet another gift from the government sugar daddy.

 

[the nature boy]

wow, this is a pretty good thread. except for one stupid post it's been very enlightening. I'm waiting for the name calling to start.

 

[Sushi X]

which post was that nature boy?

 

[the nature boy]

which post was that nature boy?

the one by the imbicile. Drizzt