A Martian Looks At Affirmative Action
Great piece by Coleman Hughes laying out some of the absolutely absurd justifications for affirmative action.
Oh, and a little setting the scene is necessary: "The following is a hypothetical conversation between an ambivalent earthling and a Martian academic on the topic of Affirmative Action."
An essential bit from it (one of many):
Martian visitor: "The study found that Asians had to score 450 points higher on the SAT than blacks, and 140 points higher than whites, to have the same odds of being accepted into elite colleges. I've tried to square this fact with what I learned in my textbook--about racially discriminatory policies being viewed as wrong here--but I've been unable to."
Summed up nicely by Fred Reed:
"'Affirmative action' means hiring people because they can’t do the job well. Near-synonyms are 'diversity', meaning groups that cannot do the job well, and 'inclusiveness', which means seeking people who you know cannot do the job well."
Some deride people who are not the "correct" religion, mocking them for believing all sorts of blatantly absurd things - and then turn around and show everyone they are missing a few fries from their Happy Meal, too, by supporting AA...
Ask a fan of AA when (s)he thinks it will end. That's fun!
Radwaste at August 2, 2018 3:33 AM
You could make an argument in favor of affirmative action back in 1970. I might or might not agree with that argument, but at least it would be an argument with some rationale behind it. But today, fans of AA know, in their heart of hearts, that AA has passed its use-by date. It's rotting in the bottom of the vegetable drawer, and it's time to throw it out. Which leads us to:
"Ask a fan of AA when (s)he thinks it will end."
If he/she/xyr is being honest, they will say "never". The people who drove AA to happen never intended for it to end -- all of that stuff about rectifying past wrongs was just a recruiting slogan. They always intended for it to be permanent, because the goal is to cripple Western society by eliminating merit-based promotion. Consider what would have happened if blacks had bootstrapped themselves after 1965, and had become an elite intellectual group over-represented in the top tiers of test scores, like Asians have. What do you think would have happened? The AA advocates would have moved seamlessly to lumping blacks into the group that should be discriminated against. They would have done this so smoothly that it would take a long time before it drew any attention, just as they have done with the Asians.
(Note: I'm using "Asian" in the American sense, of people whose ancestry is from the Far East -- Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Eastern Chinese. In Europe, "Asian" is a euphemism for Middle East / North Africa. That's not what I mean here.)
So what really needs to happen in order for these under-represented groups to advance? Two things:
1. Primary schools in their neighborhoods have to be made functional. That means overthrowing the public-education establishment -- the DoE, the ed schools, the NEA and other unions, and the portion of the Office of Civil Rights that deals with schools.
2. The dysfunctional culture among these groups of dependency, instant gratification and enforced mediocrity needs to be replaced with a culture of work ethic, delayed gratification and achievement.
I'm pretty sure that neither of these things will happen in my lifetime, because there are far too many ruling-class people who are invested in things staying as they are. I'm starting to think it will take some drastic upheaval to change it. I hope I'm wrong, but I fear that I'm right.
Cousin Dave at August 2, 2018 6:08 AM
Affirmative Action was not about correcting a societal imbalance. It has always been about punishing society, not only for the sins of the past and the sins of the present, but for the sins of the future.
Affirmative Action is a re-education gulag writ large, with all of society as inmates. As such, it must not be ended, it must be intensified with new groups added to the protected groups in order to keep the inmates off balance.
Conan the Grammarian at August 2, 2018 7:27 AM
Thomas Sowell has some great discussion about the insanity of thinking you can rectify the wrongs of the past. First is, the current people are not the people who did the wrongs. To insist that current people are guilty of their ancestors (or not even THEIR ancestors, just people the same color or nationality) is to institute blood libel, which is why Jews have been persecuted for 2000 years--they can never atone for the sin of killing jesus way back when. Second, there are so many wrongs you can never untangle them. After World War II they attempted to "fix" the ethnic problems by moving millions around Europe to consolidate ethnic groups. It caused intense hardship to little benefit. Third, no one cares to right the wrongs of blacks or Arabs having participated in the slave trade. It is so obviously selective.
A final big problem with AA currently is that the belief of the Left that blacks can never be left on their own, when you take away institutional racism --which no one seems to be able to point to--you are left with the Left's belief that blacks really are inferior, whereas conservatives favor individual initiative and morals as solutions, which assumes blacks DO have capacity. Irony.
cc at August 2, 2018 10:33 AM
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