From: djohns@elm.circa.ufl.edu (David A. Johns)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: What A White Person Learned in College About AfAm Culture
Date: 29 Dec 92 16:27:17 GMT
Organization: University of Florida, Gainesville

In article <H2ucwB3w165w@netlink.cts.com> galan@netlink.cts.com (Greg Gross) writes:

[The parts quoted with ">" are from Jason Solinsky, and Greg is
answering him.]

# > How is it that you have acquired this fantastic knowledge of why
# > other people discriminate? Few are the whites that have not
# > failed to get a job or an awar or an admission from an
# > institution which practices AA.
#
# [...] But here you are, telling that few whites have *not* been
# denied something due to affirmative action. Maybe you'd care to
# tell me what you base *that* assertion on, other than a
# near-religious belief.

Heh heh ... Libertarianism is very similar to a religion in the sense
that it *deduces* reality from its axioms instead of *inducing* it
through the senses.  In other words, Libertarians have to make up
"facts" in order to protect their theory.

Not only is Jason's claim empirically silly, it's mathematically
impossible.  There simply aren't enough people eligible for the
benefits of AA to have taken jobs from more than a tiny fraction of
white people.

# > You can not possibly know what causes people to be biased
# > towards you, and it is only understandable that you keep on
# > repeating this assertion that everybo is out to get blacks
# > because of a feeling of "racial superiority". After all, it
# > makes your achievements more significant and it makes failure
# > acceptable. Unfortunately, as many successful blacks have noted,
# > this attitude is not at all likely to lead to success.
#
# [...] 2) "You cannot possibly know what causes people to be biased
# toward you.." But you, of course, can, right, Jason? It's all about
# affirmative action, right Jason? there couldn't *possibly* be
# anything else at work here, right, Jason?"

Actually, I think there's a grain of truth in this claim of Jason's.
Most people who apply for a given job don't get that job.  That means
that there are lots of reasons why a given person doesn't get a given
job.  Most of the time these reasons are legitimate, ranging from just
not calling at the right time to coming up short on some qualification
in the judgment of the manager.  But in the case of blacks (and other
minorities, and women, and older people, etc.) there is often another
criterion -- race, gender, or age, which have been deemed illegitimate
grounds for hiring decisions.

Most of the time when you apply for a job you don't know who
ultimately gets it.  If 100 people apply and 10 of those are black,
every black applicant who is turned down (and at least 9 must be) will
be sorely tempted to think that he was turned down because of race.
This obviously isn't going to help them if race was *not* the reason
(for instance, if one of the 10 blacks was hired), because they will
not be motivated to work on whatever it was that *did* determine their
losing the job.

But to my way of thinking, this is one of the biggest arguments *in
favor* of government interference in private hiring.  If every hiring
agent were in constant fear that the people he was interviewing were
part of a sting (i.e., matched pairs of applicants) or that his
overall hiring record would be examined by an enforcement agency, we
could eventually get this paralytic disease out of our system and let
people start working on the *real* criteria.


# > Crime enforcement is an interesting area. An urban law
# > enforcement official is likely to be more effective and less
# > likely to be hurt if he or she is strongly biased against
# > blacks. This has occured to officers of all colors.
#
# The racism imbedded in those words stands on its own. Will only
# tell you this, in the (probably vain) hope that you can grasp it:
# When those whom *all* of us are compelled to trust with the safety
# of our lives and property feel entitled to automatically exercise
# their biases against any citizen solely on the basis of their race,
# not only will law and order *not* have been served, not only will
# justice *not* be done, but officer safety itself will be
# *jeoparadized* like never before.

This has got to be the most disgusting statement Jason has made so far
in this forum.

What he is conveniently ignoring, of course, is the principle that we
are innocent until proven guilty.  He is essentially approving
"profile" judgments, where a statistical tendency is used to terrorize
everyone who fits the profile.

Police officers in dangerous situations naturally have a right to
improve their own chances for survival, but there are right ways of
doing it and wrong ways.  It seems to me that the right way is to
allot law enforcement resources in proportion to need rather than in
proportion to geography or property value.  The innocent people in a
high-crime neighborhood deserve the same protection of the law as
people in low-density, low-crime suburbs do.

David


Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american