From: solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky)
Subject: Re: What A White Person Learned in College About AfAm Culture
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 01:34:25 GMT

In article <TkmeVB1w165w@netlink.cts.com>, galan@netlink.cts.com (Greg Gross) writes:

|> Affirmative Action does not contribute to a reduction of racism? As I 
|> understand it, it was never designed to do that inthe first place. It was 
|> designed asa a means of redressing the affects of racism that had existed 
|> for many decades and still exist. You say the method is fatally flawed? 
|> Fine. Offer a better alternative, one that offers redess *and* reduces 
|> racism (as you understand racism to be) at the same time.

As I mentioned in the previous post, AA is not providing redress BEACUSE
of the feedback from increased racism.

We are talking here about a racist program that penalizes non-racists, does
nothing against the racists that cause discrimination and has no net
positive effect on the groups that are supposed to benefit. Where is the
merit in this.

You can not seperate racism from the redress because it is racism that
causes the need for redress. 

|> White affected by affirmative action might be bitter and pick up an 
|> "unconscious" bit of racism as a result? There's nothing "unconscious" 
|> about it. Just reading some of the postings from whites in this newsgroup 
|> should be enough to tell you that.

Agreed. My bitterness certainly isn't unconscious. It was a poor choice of
wording.

|> 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
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.

|> Welcome to life, where no good deed goes unpunished [by AA and similar
|> evil forces].

Jason W. Solinsky
Newsgroups: misc.education