quote:1. Poverty among people of color is the legacy of a history of slavery and legally inforced racism.
2. People of color just aren't naturally as productive as white people.
If you believe the first, then you should feel an ethical obligation toward some form of afirmative actions.
This only true if you accept two assumptions:
A. That we have an ethical obligation to eliminate this 'legacy of racism'.
and
B. That affirmative action will achieve the elimination of this legacy.
I believe BOTH of these assumptions are false.
Firstly, we have no ethical obligation to eliminate the legacy of racism. Consider a poor white family that is poor because of the legacy of poor policies during the Great Depression. Or consider a poor white family that is poor because of the legacy of injuries recieved in Vietnam by a parent. Or consider a poor Native American family who is poor because of the legacy of colonialism. Do we have a responsibility to give the children of these families an advantage over the children fortunate enough to be born in more successful families? Apparently not, because we do not give them any such advantage. The fact is, there are thousands of children born into families that are poor due to legacies of unfair things in the past. It would be completely unfair to give the children of one legacy an advantage over the children of another legacy.
If we are going to begin correcting past injustices by giving special benefits to the descendants of those involved, then we must be fair and correct all of them equally. We actually have an ethical obligation to NOT give the children of one injustice advantages over the children of another.
Secondly, as to assumption B, I think affirmative action actually harms the cause of fixing the legacy of racism. For more on this, see this thread.
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Getting back to the subject of the first column, not only was the man in the hospital racist, he was an idiot.
If my wife was in there, I'd want the best doctor available. There is absolutely no reason to limit the pool by something as arbitrary as skin color. The black doctor might be incompetent and got in through affirmative action or liberal guilt, or he might be the most amazingly skilled physician the hospital has ever seen. The white doctor could be Marcus Welby incarnate or he could be there only because his malpractice suits were covered up. What the hell would skin color tell you?
The fact that to him, "black doctor" meant "affirmative action" makes him racist. No logic was used, no investigation was attempted, no questions were asked to determine the actual skill of any of the doctors. And in so doing he may have put his wife in danger, especially if a black doctor was the only one available in an emergency. And that makes him an idiot.
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quote: If there is a higher proportion of poverty among minorities then establishing educational aid based solely on economic need will disproportionately benefit minorities. Race need not enter the question at all. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote:Firstly, we have no ethical obligation to eliminate the legacy of racism.
Perhaps not. I'll accept the elimination of affirmative action in education if you also eliminate all legacy advantages. If you get into a college, you get there on merit only. Doesn't matter what color you are, who your daddy was, or how much your family gave for the new library, you earn your way in or you don't go.
Leveling the playing field doesn't have to mean giving everyone advantages, it could just mean taking them all away.
[ October 22, 2003, 05:39 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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