Affirmative Action will die

[Kristopher]

From Raving Black Lunatic


I  expect Affirmative Action to die.

Any other outcome seems completely unlikely. The program has been the whipping boy of white folks from all political vantage points for years, and increasingly even black folks have come to believe that it's outdated and unnecessary. People recoil at the mention of quotas and inferior candidates being offered positions they don't deserve. Affirmative Action has become a symbol of the mistakes inherent in trying to legislate fairness.

There is some truth to that viewpoint. No one who has studied or considered Affirmative Action can deny its failings. People implementing it have reserved spots for black folks and other disadvantage minorities, they have denied people who on the surface appear to be better candidates a spot at the table. It has been poorly implemented and horribly defended. On many levels, it has failed.

But, how many folks recognize its mission. If you talk to many people they think Affirmative Action programs were enacted to get black folks jobs they otherwise couldn't earn. Or get them into colleges that otherwise wouldn't give them a second look. They think the program was a free gift to black folks to make up for slavery and Jim Crow. It was our reparations.

Ignorance is such an ugly thing sometimes. Affirmative Action was not created to give black folks something, it was created to prevent white people from denying us those things that were rightfully ours as American citizens.The program wasn't created to give the unqualified jobs, but to stop white people from consistently denying black people the right to work in jobs they could do, and attend schools they could prosper act simply because of the color of our skin. It wasn't a program designed to make everything fair, it was designed to stop black folks from getting legally screwed.

Most folks don't get that. They don't understand exactly how unbalanced the system has been in this country for centuries. And if they do understand, they don't really want to acknowledge what that means to their lives today. No one wants to admit that their success is tied directly and indirectly to evil perpetuated by their ancestors. Hell, most folks don't want to admit that their ancestors were evil at all. But it's true, it's completely true.

The program has been thwarted by the complete unwillingness of most white people to ever admit that racism and discrimination cause serious problems until well after those serious problems have become entrenched and intractable.  White people have never, ever been interested in creating a society where they relinquished their position of authority, power and privilege, and they never will be. To believe otherwise is to ignored human history in totality.

Unfortunately that is not a part of life that most Americans will ever deal with. Instead, it's been swept under the rug of forgetfulness. Folks don't want to deal with the true legacy of racism and discrimination because some problems just aren't fun to fix. And they are tired of trying.

So Affirmative Action has to die.

[BPStorm4ever]

So Affirmative Action has to die, to remind us why we needed it in the first place. Messed up.

[Reginald Hudlin]

They hate affirmative action BECAUSE it works. 

Our president is a product of those policies.

It's a natural component of their anti-educational agenda.  There's not enough jobs for rich people, so they need to eliminate the competition whenever they can.

[BmoreAkuma]

If many of the people didnt prevent people of color to get ahead in the first place then we wouldnt have this problem at all. Personally I am not against it or for it but if it does help a person of color with at least some hope then by all means. I just grow tired of the elitism when it comes to this. Every time something happens where a person of color gained some success some clown would go into the "PC" arguments.

[Curtis Metcalf]

Backlash at my alma mater.

[Reginald Hudlin]

What I can't STAND about anti-affirmative action arguments is this BULLsh*t presumption that unqualified people are getting in.

There's been several generations of black doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc as a result of affirmative action.  They function at the same level or above their white counterparts.  The proof is in the pudding.

White men just hate having to give other people a fair shake. They liked having their own affirmative action called institutional racism.

I have heard white and black people declare affirmative action is going to end for over a decade.  As long as strong people stand up, like women do when planned parenthood is attacked, like gays do when their right for marriage is attacked, we will keep our rights intact.

But unlike those groups whose efforts we in part inspired, we get fatalistic about our chances.  Which is why I hate the headline of this thread.

[Battle]

[Hypestyle]

Romney and Santorum criss-cross Michigan as the state's GOP primary looms next week:

http://tinyurl.com/88a66o4

Santorum: "President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college," he said. "What a snob."

http://tinyurl.com/6t5d58x

I'm glad I wasn't in the room when he said this. I'd likely be on the news and not in a good way.  

Curious that neither candidate has had any sort of minority-community outreach events.  For all of the GOP- endorsing megachurch pastors here in the city, I'm actually surprised that a tent-revival hadn't been set up yet.