From: elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green)
Newsgroups: tx.politics
Subject: Re: The NAACP (was: Re: HR 4983)
Date: 14 Aug 92 23:20:42 GMT
Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home

From article <21367@rpp386.lonestar.org>, by jfh@rpp386.lonestar.org (John F. Haugh II):
> In article <00713652409@elgamy.sccsi.com> elg@elgamy.sccsi.com (Eric Lee Green) writes:
>>From article <1992Aug10.164655.1764@awdprime.austin.ibm.com>, by jfh@greenber.austin.ibm.com (John F Haugh II):
>>> This isn't to say that the NAACP doesn't occassionally do good for
>>> blacks in America.  After all, anyone can have a bad day ...
>>
>>As my friends at Dodson would put it (though they weren't talking
>>specifically about you, but, rather, a certain person from Dallas):
>
> I refuse to support handouts for blacks because handouts create needless
> dependency on the part of the recipient.  The NAACP supports increased
> wealth re-distribution schemes.

True, and a point where, in my opinion (and most of the Dodson crew), the
NAACP errs -- but only barely.

The problem with today's welfare system is that it does not have reasonable
contingencies built into it. Receipt of money is not contingent upon
reasonable behavior.

On the other hand, I deal with kids whose mothers give them baths outside
on the sidewalk with a waterhose because the landlord never got around to
fixing the water pipes in the bathroom (the toilet is filled via that hose,
too), kids who don't have school supplies because $10 worth of notebooks
and pencils is beyond the means of someone who has $40/month to spend after
paying rent and electricity, kids who live in dirty and decrepit homes...
and I say this to you: someone is going to pay. Either you, or your
children. What I find is not irresponsible parents, generally, but, rather,
overwhelmed parents, parents working two or three minimum-wage jobs trying
to keep a roof over their kids' heads, parents too exhausted to help their
kids with their homework, parents who are living out the "rugged
individualism" that you advocate and gotten nowhere.

I don't think it's too out-of-it for this society to make sure that
everybody who works their tail off at least gets decent housing, adequate
food, and a good education for their kids.

Unfortunately, that's not true right now.

> I refuse to accept education solutions
> which treat blacks "specially" (that is, race norming of scores to
> create the false impression of educational equality) because LOWERING
> standards has never produced any result but LOWERED results.  The NAACP
> stands by race norming of college enterance exams.

College entrance exams were originally designed to make sure that
lower-class kids did not besoil the halls of Harvard (see the history of
the College Boards). I've read the questions on the SAT, and can
unhesitantly say that it is racially biased. I can say this despite the
fact that I score in the 99th percentile on the blessed thing.


> I refuse to accept
> racial set-asides and other forms of racial "protectionism" because it
> prevents blacks who are capable of performing equally from being taken
> seriously, and those who are incapable are never forced to deal with
> the reality that the need more and better skills.  [ By the way, this is
> the same thing as protectionist trade, and if you want to see a perfect
> exmample of how protectionism fails, look at the early 80's auto
> industry. ]  The NAACP supports racial set-asides and preference
> programs.

Experiment: type up a resume, perhaps your resume. Put a white man's name
on one copy, put a stereotypically black man's name on another copy. Mail
out fifty copies with the white man's name to one group of companies in
your field, mail out fifty copies with the black man's name to another
group of companies (choose companies which do not bid on government jobs,
i.e., are not covered by affirmative action -- the vast majority of
companies out there in the workforce). Count how many responses you get
from each group.

This experiment has been conducted literally dozens of times. Each time,
the copy of the resume with the white man's name recieves many more phone
calls than the copy of the resume with the black man's name.

When that consistently becomes false, when the number of responses become
equal, THEN you can argue that racism is dead and that racial set-asides
are not needed.


>>"The man just don't have a clue."
>
> That you support the actions of the NAACP is consistent with your
> political views, which are pretty far to the left.  You suffer from the
> basic delusion that the best white-anglo-christian-male is a dead
> white-anglo-christian-male.

Do you even know what color and religion I am? Or the color, religion, and
sex of the coworkers who said "The man just don't have a clue"?

I work in an inner-city school with a 98% black population, a black
principal, and a black supervisor. All of us are very conservative
educationally. We believe in direct instruction, high expectations,
no-excuses education. Like all workers, we want decent wages for decent
work, no crime, good schooling for our children (in fact, one of my
friends, a teacher at another inner-city school, wants me to work the
levers to get her child into the Montessori magnet program at my school),
good government that keeps the roads and schools fixed and doesn't waste a
bunch of money on spectacles like $35 million dollar administration
buildings (which, alas, the late departed superintendent Joan of Ice built
for Houston ISD, bond payments on which are still dragging along).
We'd also like it if the kids that we taught didn't so often come to school
dirty and hungry and with diseases that could and should have been treated
years ago -- many kids who need hearing aids or glasses, for example, never
get them, and many kids who have diabetes will never pass age 30 due to
haphazard regulation of their condition.

Yeah, I guess we *ARE* a bunch of left-wing radical kook-nuts, eh?

--
 Eric Lee Green  elg@elgamy.sccsi.com         Dodson Elementary
 (713) 437-6908  uunet!nuchat!elgamy!elg      Houston, TX
                "Kids are kids, no matter what"