From: arocho@acsu.buffalo.edu (Vance A. Arocho)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: AA
Date: 13 Apr 92 21:37:29 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: UB

From: goid@zooid.guild.org (Neil Hull)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination
Subject: Re: Whites Critical of Af

VAA> (lines about Clarence Thomas's history deleted)
VAA>man derides AA yet himself was a beneficiary of it (that's how he got into
VAA>law school). Can you say 'hypocrisy'?

I think that right now, somebody up there is saying "GOTCHA!"

I say this because of your statement that Clarence Thomas got into law school
because of "Affirmative" Action.  Now, again, while I am a Canadian and
therefore not very well versed in American politics, the politics of
Affirmative Discrimination err whoops, Affirmative Action (excuse my obvious
lack of subtlety here...) are similar in both of our countries.

And ONE of the arguments used by people against such programmes, which is
even used by many people in the designated groups, is that people will
come to believe that those in the designated groups "got in" because of
an "A"A programme, rather than on the basis of their own merits.

I believe that you may have unwittingly fallen into that trap.  Mind you,
this is NOT meant as a flame or insult of some sort, it's just meant to
stimulate some discussion on how we view such programmes, ie., will its
benefactors begin to wonder whether they would have gotten in REGARDLESS
of their skin colour, gender, or some other characteristic(s)?

This is just one of the many reasons why I oppose such programmes.

***** Affirmative action (AA) should be an aggressive attempt to recruit, hire
and promote qualified minorities and women. It should not degenerate into quo-
tas, which will probably lead to tokenism. Why I do not support the concept of
quotas: Currently, Hispanic Americans make up ~8% of the U.S. population. There
fore in order to avoid a discrimination suit brought against it by Hispanics
company XYZ should have ~8% of its employees be Hispanic. The only problem with
this is that ~8% (or more) of the applicants are NOT Hispanic. Thus such a dis-
crimination suit is invalid unless a qualified individual can prove he/she was
in fact denied a job/promotion because of race/ethnicity/etc.

And I think that we can all agree that tokenism does no one any good.

I find it amusing that opponents of AA always equate it with reverse discrimi-
nation and are silent with regard to the continuation of the 'good ole boy'
practice of hiring certain individuals who may be un(der)qualified/less quali-
fied relative to a minority candidate for reasons of 'comfort'. Just because
this is not 'government-sanctioned' doesn't mean it doesn't exist, nor does
it make it any more acceptable. As was mentioned before, even when qualifica-
tions are equal, the White candidate is 3X more likely to be hired than his
Black counterpart. But I imagine that this is OK to opponents of AA.

As for Thomas, the question remains: if he'd known at the time he'd gotten in-
to law school because of AA, would he have immediately dropped out of Yale Law
School and thus allow a more qualified (presumably White) individual to take
his place? 

Peace.
-- 
"A young man who is a conservative has no heart; an old man who is a liberal 
has no brain." (Winston Churchill)
"Sin trabajo, no hay nada." ("Without work, there is nothing.")
Vance Arocho: arocho@acsu.edu (SUN)/V068PZYD@ubvms  (VAX)
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