From: galan@netlink.cts.com (Greg Gross)
Newsgroups: misc.education,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: What A White Person Learned in College About AfAm Culture
Date: 17 Dec 92 04:10:23 GMT
Organization: NetLink Online Communications, San Diego CA

Greg Gross wrote:

> 
Jason's original post:
> |> Every single minority in such a program will have to live with the 
> |> suspicion that they don't deserve their position and thus be treated 
> |> differently by whites?
> |>    Uh, Jason, I don't want to wake you up from your nap or anything, but 
> |> what do you think is happening to us *now?* What do you think has *been* 
> |> happening to us all along? What you describe as a negative affect of "AA" 
> |> is what all too many of us describe as "daily reality." 
> |>    Translation: We're subjected to this treatment whether affirmative 
> |> action is involved or NOT. So from the standpoint of those who are going 
> |> to be subjected to such attitudes, like me, what's the difference?
> 
> If all blacks were that short sighted then I would think that they deserve

Jason:
The only thing shortsighted is your steadfast refusal to recognize racial 
discrimination against blacks in this country as involving anything other 
than white resentment over affirmative action. That is your mantra. So be 
it. I live a reality that tells me otherwise.

> to be discriminated against, but that is not the case.
> 
> The answer is that the level of discrimination WILL NOT DECREASE until AA
> is removed. There are many causes of discrimination. When AA was created,
> there may have been large amounts of blatant racism. In fact, I am sure of
> it. But today, the primary cause of racism isn't being told by one's
> parents that blacks are somehow inferior, it is going through life and
> noticing differences between blacks and whites. To decrease racism, you
> need to decrease the difference.
> 
> |> The discrimination and glass ceiling you see being created by affirmative 
> |> action were there before affirmative action existed. And if affirmative 
> |> action were done away with tomorrow, all the evils you describe above 
> |> would still exist and worse...because they grew not out of affirmative 
> |> action, but out of the racism that caused affirmative action to be tried 
> |> to begin with.
> 
> You act as though the people who are dicriminating today are the same
> ones who were discriminating years and years ago. The reasons why they
> discriminate are not the same. The world has changed over the past 30
> years.

Jason:
Are you familiar with a certain French saying having to do with change?
You know, "The more things change, the more they remain the same." -- 
that one?

The majority of the people who have discriminated against me in my 
lifetime -- and still do -- are *not* octegenarians. Nor are they 
necessarily people who have run afoul of the dreaded affirmative action.

Am I glad that the last *official* lynching in this country took place in 
1958? Yes. But what happened to Rodney King, or the young black 
undercover police officers in New York City and Nashville, TN, was not in 
a previous era. Neither is the racism and prejudice that my wife faces on 
the job on a daily basis in the local school district here. Nor, for that 
matter, is the harassment of black kids in predominantly white public 
schools here.

And while we're on the subject of change, have you noticed the neo-Nazi 
anti-foreigner riots and violence in the *new* Germany, Jason? Not too 
many SS veterans with canes and wheelchairs involved in that, either.

You have a blindspot called affirmative action. You also have a lot to 
learn.
G.

--
Gregory Alan Gross      Welcome to life, where no good deed goes unpunished.
San Diego Union-Tribune         (619) 293-1270 (voice)
P.O. Box 191                    (619) 293-2333 (fax)
San Diego, CA 92112-4106        galan@netlink.cts.com (Internet)
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