From: clin@eng.umd.edu (Charles Lin)
Subject: Re: Racist/Sexist Role Models
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 06:06:05 GMT
Organization: College of Engineering, Maryversity von Uniland, College Park
Originator: clin@feedback.eng.umd.edu


In article <18412@mindlink.bc.ca>, Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:
>I'm in the embarrassing position of disagreeing with a supporter. Charles Lin
>comments:
>
>(I know, I've complained about long pastes, but give me a break...)

    You don't know what a long paste is.  (my articles run on and on.... )
>
>The problem with Affirmative Action is that is does indeed take the
>applicant's race (rather than individual traits) as a deciding factor. And to
>hire someone on the basis of AA is not improve the status of the "group," but
>only of the individual who gets the job or the place in school. If anything,
>as my hero Shelby Steele points out, AA will probably most benefit the
>children of affluent, educated middle-class minorities and women who least
>need a compensating advantage. The vast majority of minority and female
>students and job applicants will continue to miss out.

   In that case, AA is not doing what it ought to.   The question is that
even if you remove racism and discrimination, I would think that there
would still be a large number of minorities who aren't going to get
move up in society (and this applies to other poor people).   I was
watching an interview with Robert Reich,  who is Labor Secretary designate
in Clinton's administration, who said that the top 20% of the people are
doing well, while the bottom 80% are going on waht he calls a downward
escalator.   If true, it seems to say that class to play an important
part in determining whether you do well or not.

    My feeling is that AA does not represent a cure-all and is only
a temprorary fix that tries to compensate for a lack of well-representation
by minorities in the most obvious way, namely hiring more minorities.  
I think that the long run solution will be to improve the education of
minorities (and other disadvantaged) so that the "lack of qualified minorities"
isn't an excuse.   Until the general level of education of minorities
is roughly equivalent to the majority,  it would seem bad to just to do
nothing, and so my grudging acceptance of AA is in this light.

>Maybe it doesn't bother those who benefit from AA, but it would drive me
>crazy to know I'd received a job not because I was a clever sod with more
>talent and experience than anyone else competing with me--but because someone
>thought tall myopic males of Anglo-German-Slovak-Polish descent had had such
>a crappy time that they deserved preferential treatment. By the same token,
>AA deprives women and minorities of real assurance that their ability is
>equal to that of others...and thereby keeps them trapped in the ghetto.

    Which is why AA needs some long term plan to phase it out.  Otherwise,
there seems like a possibility that it may remain around a long time.  
AA deals in the short-term with getting more minorities in the workplace
(or ought to), but the tougher problem is looking to the long run solution
of figuring out ways to make educational opportunities more equivalent.

--
Charles Lin
clin@eng.umd.edu