Why aren't US affirmative action progams based on economics?

[stickdog]

Wouldn't that achieve 95% of the desired result and eliminate 95% of the right's power to divide America's underclass along racial lines using this issue?

I realize that I'm probably stomping on hallowed ground here, so let me first be clear in saying that I personally fully support racially-based affirmative action as well as economically-based affirmative action, and I understand that minority groups often have disadvantages above and beyond economics, including both overt and covert racism.

My question is strategic. Note that College Republicans go around pricing cookies by race to basely exploit white xenophobia. However, if they had to base their cookie prices on income instead, their metaphorical illustration would seemingly appeal only to the myopically selfish rich snots who already populate their ranks. Meanwhile, if affirmative action was both enlarged and reworked on an economic basis, wouldn't it be nearly as helpful to minorities as long as tough sanctions against even the appearance of racial discrimination were built in?

Also, please understand that I'm just throwing out a question at this point, and that I haven't yet reached any conclusions on this strategy. If you think that anybody who'd even contemplate such a thing must be an uneducated racist, please consider this your opportunity to educate me.

[bluestateguy]

1. There is a reason why opposition to AA comes from the white working class

And that's a big part of the reason. Race and gender are not the only factors that mitigate against opportunity in this country.

[Syrinx]

2. I think they should be

For strategic and moral reasons. But I think that makes me a minority around here.

[liberalpragmatist]

4. I agree with you...

... although I think race is still a factor. The chief problem I find, at least on college campuses, is that most of the African-American and Hispanic-American students come from solidly middle-class backgrounds. Several went to private school. While I'm sure their race handicaps them somewhat, I do not think they are anywhere near as disadvantaged as poor blacks, poor Hispanics, and poor Whites. I do think that as an end goal race-based a.a. needs to somehow be phased out, but I don't want it to until we can put together workable economics-based affirmative action programs that don't sacrifice racial and cultural diversity, as critics of economic-based affirmative action have said that relying on economic factors would reduce overall racial diversity at the expense of economic diversity (probably because there would be a lot more poor Whites benefiting).

[bananas]

5. Why should it be phased out?

It just says that statistically there's no good reason for demographic groups not to be represented in proportion.
There's an old saying that career advancement is not what you know, it's who you know. So aa brings people into the "who you know" category that would have been excluded. And this administration is an example of how far cronyism can go.

[stickdog]

8. It's also an example of the pitfalls of racially-based AA.

Exhibit A-D: Condi, Colin, Roberto and John Woo.

Certainly, minorities still face significant obstacles against success in many careers. But so do dirt poor white folks, and non-discriminatory economic affirmative action would help a lot of minorities without giving the Repukes a way to alienate a large naturally Democratic constituency.

[bananas]

10. Let's do both. nt

[stickdog]

13. I agree we should try to do both under one umbrella.

The more kinds of diversity we promote and the more racial groups who at least have some opportunity to benefit, the less the Repukes can foment racism to the elite's advantage and the working class's disadvantage.

[bananas]

24. I disagree about "one umbrella"

it's like the people who say Social Security should be means-tested - that turns it into a welfare program - it's not a welfare program. People who've worked all their lives paying into Social Security will say no they don't want welfare, they want what they paid for. Bush tried to use his "political capital" to destroy Social Security and quickly realized he was going to lose big time.
The republicans tried to turn Social Security into a divisive issue, young workers vs older retirees, it didn't work. For some reason it does work (partially) when they try to turn aa into a divisive issue - it doesn't work in the courts, which keep affirming that affirmative action is necessary and beneficial to society as a whole.

[stickdog]

27. I'm not saying to means test it for anybody but whites.

I'm saying that if the poorest whites were also give a helping hand that we could gain some political capital while helping some people in need.

[Syrinx]

6. very well said

But wouldn't poor minorities still benefit more, until such a time as racial/economic disparities disappear and racial factors regarding AA become, in fact, moot?

[meow2u3]

14. That's a partial truth

Proportionally, minorities would benefit not because of their race or ethnicity, but because most minorities live in poverty.

Poor whites would also benefit more from economically-based AA because of their poverty, too. They would also get a hand up from AA and the end result would be the inability for repuke elites to pit poor whites against poor blacks and Hispanics.

[Syrinx]

19. that's it

That's exactly what I meant, but you phrased it much more clearly than I did. Thanks. :thumbsup:

[bananas]

3. But conservatives also believe that poor white people are just stupid

or lazy, so they would be against this because it's wrong to reward stupidity and laziness.

[stickdog]

7. I think our elite basically hate to help ANYBODY who is poor.

It's easier to control and direct someone like Condi than someone like Michael Moore.

So race based affirmative action is win-win-win for the elite in that they can use it to promote divisions across the board.

Working-class blacks are divided against upper-middle class "affirmative action" success stories like Thomas, Rice and Powell who sell them out for personal gain.

Blue collar whites are divided against the liberal whites and minorities who equate their Repuke-stoked economic envy of race-based affirmative action with unadulterated racism.

The entire working class is divided between whites and non-whites, the nasty result of which drives a significant portion of working class whites into the waiting arms of their natural political and economic enemies -- the xenophobia-fomenting, union-busting, cheap labor conservatives.

The bottom line is that race-based affirmative action has been used elites to exploit and foment the very racism that these programs were developed to combat. Meanwhile, the real political struggle between all regular American citizens and their elite exploiters often gets lost in the shuffle.

[bananas]

9. The biggest beneficiaries of aa are white women

and guess who got the right to vote first - blacks or women?
Look it up if you don't know.
Yet somehow people talk about aa as if it's all about race.

As far as your point regarding politicians using racial divisions:
Racial division was exploited long before aa,
it was exploited when segregation was legal,
it was exploited when slavery was legal.
But slavery was worse than segregation,
and segregation was worse than today,
and today is worse than ten years from now (I hope).
In the long term we are going in the right direction,
it doesn't make sense to take away a tool to combat actual discrimination.

[stickdog]

12. Aren't women also poorer than men in general?

I'm not saying that I disagree with programs that help promote racial and sexual diversity.

However, this has been turned into a major wedge issue among whites to the point that even a majority of white women oppose it. Sure, we can try to educate people about this issue. Certainly we can frame the issue much better than we have so far. However, wouldn't even more ambitious economically-based programs help minorities, help poor people in general and help heal the racial divisions that Republicans are fomenting to fool a large portion of America's large white underclass into voting against their own economic interests?

[spooky3]

15. Factually--the biggest beneficiaries of AA are NOT white women

if you are defining it as something other than merely ensuring that people are treated similarly with similar qualifications and that position openings are advertised to all. In higher education, for example, women tend to have close to the same test scores (e.g., SAT) as men, and they have slightly better high school and college grade point averages. A policy of equal opportunity is all that is required for their representation to increase in universities. Similar conditions exist in many employment settings. In contrast because of pervasive discrimination and other factors, members of African American and Latino communities tend to have substantially lower test scores. Thus it is necessary to use more aggressive outreach and other steps if the representation is going to approach parity with the population.

Black men got the right to vote before women did.

[raccoon]

18. Black men got the right to vote 50 years before women did. nt

[Solo_in_MD]

11. Race based AA is harder to justify

and qualifying for a protected group is getting slippery. In the US there is no standard for claiming minority status, such as blood quantum. There is the visible minority standard in Canada, but even that weakening. Economics is going to be the only long term supportable form of AA.

[HamdenRice]

16. Another APPALLING race thread on DU

I don't understand how people who are relatively well informed about history and politics and who are generally progressive can so go off the tracks whenever racial issues are discussed.

Please try to read some history, not only about the history of racial discrimination, but the history of judicial decisions and Congressional actions that tried to create remedies for the effects of past racial discrimination.

To put it in a few blunt words, there is no affirmative action for poor white people because poor white people have not suffered from persecution as a distinct racial, religious or national minority.

They may have been discriminated against because they are poor, but discrimination against poor people, whether you like it or not, is not illegal or unconstitutional, nor is discrimination against baking establishments, milk processing plants, students with low SAT scores, people with bad credit histories, bald men who throw wild parties, or people who live in zip codes areas that end in the number 5. In other words, in day to day economic existence, people and institutions discriminate (that is choose between options) all the time and almost all of that discrimination is considered perfectly legal.

Because of the history of slavery, the legislative history of the 14th Amendment and the persistence of racial discrimination after Reconstruction, Congress and the Supreme Court found racial discrimination to be particularly odious constitutionally and Congress in addition was empowered to enact remedies to undo the damage of racial discrimination. Affirmative action is a remedy for the effects of past and continuing racial discrimination.

Schools and companies may seek diversity -- an entirely separate goal -- for many other reasons, whether out of a sense of social responsibility, to prepare students for a diverse world or to be able to relate to their customer base.

But remedies for racial discrimination are on a different plane.

In 1938, the Supreme Court decided it would scrutinize consitutionally only certain kinds of problems -- restrictions in the democratic political process, burdens on civil liberties and discrimination against discrete racial, religious and national minorities -- in the most famous footnote in Supreme Court history, footnote 4, Carolene products:

<quote>

It is unnecessary to consider now whether legislation which restricts those political processes which can ordinarily be expected to bring about repeal of undesirable legislation, is to be subjected to more exacting judicial scrutiny under the general prohibitions of the 14th Amendments than are most other types of legislation...

Nor need we enquire whether similar considerations enter into the review of statues directed at particular religious...or national...or racial minorities; whether prejudice against discrete and insular minorities may be a special condition, which tends seriously to curtail the operation of those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect minorities, and which may call for a correspondingly more searching judicial inquiry...

[stickdog]

17. What makes this thread so appalling?

To put it in a few blunt words, there is no affirmative action for poor white people because poor white people have not suffered from persecution as a distinct racial, religious or national minority.

Yes. But can't you see the political problem with this characterization? My Irish ancestors were persecuted. The Asians at China Beach were persecuted. The Japanese that we put in internment camps were persecuted. Native Americans were basically exterminated. People who grew up in asbestos mining towns were persecuted. Finally, women were and are persecuted.

Frankly, I can't see the public policy justification for giving special preferences to anybody who is already in the upperclass, regardless of race. Whatever persecution that happened before has somehow been overcome. If you've got a million bucks in today's world, 98% of American doors are open to you.

What the Supreme Court decided in 1938 really isn't all that politically relevant almost 70 years later. Congress doesn't need the judiciary's approval to legislate programs that help out those disadvantaged by their minority OR economic status. There's certainly nothing unconstitutional about using either basis for affirmative action.

[bananas]

21. You must be pissed about the "Glass Celing Commission"

Frankly, I can't see the public policy justification for giving special preferences to anybody who is already in the upperclass, regardless of race.

So you think it's ok to let women go a little beyond secretary,
into lower or maybe middle management, but not much further?

http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/glassceiling/

Glass Ceiling Commission (1991-1996)
Art

About the Commission - In 1991, the U. S. Department of Labor defined glass ceiling as "those artificial barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias that prevent qualified individuals from advancing upward in their organization into management-level positions." (Report on the Glass Ceiling Initiative. U. S. Department of Labor, 1991. Available in the Catherwood Library at HD 4903.5 U6 U585.) The department's Glass Ceiling Commission (1991-1996) studied these barriers not only as they apply to women, but as they apply to minorities as well.

[stickdog]

28. How does affirmative action address this problem? Is there now AA

for top executive positions of which I'm unaware?

[spooky3]

29. Affirmative action programs apply to all positions where minorities

and women are underrepresented. Whether they are actually taken seriously, enforced, etc., is another matter.

Maybe I don't understand your question.

[bananas]

30. Top executives file age sex and race discrimination lawsuits all the time

Do you really want rich people to be exempt from the law?
How about theft and murder?
If a rich person steals from another rich person, you think the law should not apply?
What if a wealthy executive murders a wealthy competitor?

Discrimination and poverty are different problems, and require different solutions. You can't fix a flat tire by changing the spark plugs. You can't solve discrimination with welfare programs.

[stickdog]

31. Is that the same thing as affirmative action?

Please educate me on the direct relationship between age, sex and race discrimination lawsuits and affirmative action.

[bananas]

36. These lawsuits result in affirmative action programs

For example, a news article from last month.

http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2006/01_15-73/TOP

King award given to Denny's Restaurants executive
By DANIEL VALENTINE, Staff Writer

...
In 1993, servers at the Parole location of the national chain blatantly ignored several African-American Secret Service agents while serving their white co-workers. It still haunts the company, of which she is diversity officer.
...
Ms. Hood set up a program in which employees at every level of the company, from the dishwasher to top executive, were required to take classes on diversity. The company launched an aggressive program recruiting managers and executives from historically-black colleges, and sold franchises to minorities.

By 1998, a survey by Fortune magazine rated the company in its top 10 list of the 50 best companies for minorities.

By 2000, the company was at the top of that Fortune list. More than 45 percent of its 2,000 locations are minority-owned.
...

Published January 15, 2006, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
Copyright © 2006 The Capital, Annapolis, Md.

[Syrinx]

20. government should not treat people differently according to race

Period.

There is nothing appalling about that notion. It is, to coin a phrase, a self-evident truth.

[bananas]

22. And how do you determine that government isn't doing so?

The only way is to look at the statistics,
and see whether or not they are doing so.
And that is what affirmative action is.

[Syrinx]

26. the LAW shouldn't treat people differently

And the people should be vigilant to make sure the law is upheld.

[bananas]

23. Thank you - it is appalling.

And people are arguing with you.

[Hekate]

25. I believe Dr. ML King was moving in that direction...

...at the time he was asassinated. IIRC he took a good look at numbers of poor and disadvantaged and concluded that although people of color were (and are) disproportionately affected by adverse socioeconomic conditions, that greater numbers of whites were in those circumstances. IOW, MLK was broadening the scope of his ministry to include all humanity.

I still support the idea of affirmative action as a means of opening the door to greater opportunity. It works. My bright, talented, younger sister probably wouldn't have been admitted to Engineering School or even felt she could apply if she had started college a decade earlier than she did. As it was, she was among a small number of women in her class, did quite well, and got a nice summer internship from IBM and was hired when she graduated.

We're white, but were raised by lower-middle-class parents who believed in the equality of all humans. I served on my county's Affirmative Action Commission for almost 12 years -- don't anybody talk to me about "quotas" -- they are a straw man, and illegal to boot.

Hekate

[sadiesworld]

32. And that's why they killed him.

The elite know the peons must stay divided.

[Hekate]

35. That and his vocal opposition to the Vietnam war, which he rightly saw as

That and his vocal opposition to the Vietnam war, which he rightly saw as sucking up mostly the lower socioeconomic classes, who did not have recourse to college deferments.

The disciple of Ghandi and Christ... We were all lucky to have him when we did for as long as we did.

Hekate

[FrenchieCat]

33. The question I have is....

Is there an assumption because a student is Black that they were accepted into a school because of Affirmative Action and not based on their own merits?

I ask this because someone posted that many of the Black students they know are middle class....and I am trying to find out if that is supposed to mean that these middle class Black Students were admitted under AA.

[ieoeja]

34. They are!

This country has TONS of "low income" programs out there, including college admissions programs.

But I guess you mean why aren't "all" affirmative action programs based on income. I would suggest it is because some people are disadvantaged for reasons other than having a low income. Nothing says we have to limit our help to only one disadvantaged group.