I don’t even see how one could vote on this incredibly biased and stupid poll. It’s another of these homophobic fundamentalist christianist sites trying to argue that homosexuality is evil, and is a conspiracy to promote an anti-Christian agenda. It contains a collection of questions that are a beautiful example of how not to design a poll. One example:
Should homosexuals be given the same special rights extended to African-Americans and other minorities?
Your choices are “yes”, “no”, and “undecided”. They leave out the reasonable options, “Minorities aren’t given special rights”, “We want all people given equal rights”, or “This site is racist as well as homophobic”. Whatever. All I know is that I have a strong opinion on this matter, and none of the possibilities represent my position.
There’s also a video. Don’t waste your time, unless you’re suffering from low blood pressure or have a too optimistic view of American intelligence.
The wording of that question make suspect that the questioner is dubious of all civil rights.
I think that the “Donate” button is about the only real point to the “survey”.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
To add insult to injury, the questions and answers are misaligned and of different number. Christers are always dumb.
I did make an attempt at voting opposite of what the poll was fishing for. I used a fake name and email to submit the poll, obviously. It did not display the results. I suspect the poll’s only purpose is to gather names and email addresses of likeminded maroons in the hope of extracting a little money from them. It may be worthwhile to enter enough fakery to at least make them work for their money.
I see my message was preempted by faster, smarter folk. You gotta get up early to seem smart around here.
I played with this one the other day, and while frustrated by the answer choices, I was delighted that they left me an opportunity to tell them what I think of them in the form of fake names and email addresses.
Ooh, I like this one:
Mu. “The Bible” is a culturally contingent construct: different factions have their own selections of holy books, each book is one particular translation of the “original” — an “original” which is itself constructed from a plethora of varying manuscripts. It’s not just that people interpret the same text in different ways. Interpretations shape both the translation and the choice of the “original”, after which the resultant English texts are then argued over. “The” Bible doesn’t deserve the definite article.
When I see slated poll questions like this I tend to get in their faces and vote the way they don’t want me to. I did it with a questionnaire I received in the mail from a Catholic organization and never got another piece of mail from them. (Of course, I’m going to hell now, but that’s a small price to pay to reduce my junk mail.)
I mucked about with this one yesterday, and they will take any load of bollocks for an address. I used “[email protected] and it went through just fine.
Such polls are frustrating beyond description. Why do these people never take into consideration that their hate against something that is none of their business hurts actual people and destroys their happiness?
Wow. I just… WOW.
Does the author of the poll believe “African-Americans and other minorities” should not be allowed to marry or adopt? Or that homosexuals are currently not allowed to vote?
So much head-hurty. How can you even begin to talk to someone like that? Is any common-ground starting point even possible? Is he/she/it even sentient?
Such polls are frustrating beyond description. Why do these people never take into consideration that their hate against something that is none of their business hurts actual people and destroys their happiness?
for those who don’t want to watch the movie, it contains the following gem:
“being politically correct has replaced being biblically correct”
KI> as did “[email protected]”
I also voted the direction I figured would most piss them off. Peddling fear for money. I wonder what the religious right would be all hep up about if homosexuality did not exist, wearing different types of fiber or picking up firewood on the sabbath? Gotta keep those coffers full.
Does this site have any ads on it? I’m running adblock and flashblock, so I can’t always tell.
I ask because this poll registered so high on my ‘tard meter, that the damn thing fried its own circuits, just to stop the pain. The only reason for this site’s existence is to drive traffic and sales.
Seriously, some of these polls don’t even try to be objective anymore.
I think I’m going to put up a poll with the same level of fairness and objectivity. lets see, here’s a sample question:
Should theists be be ridiculed unmercifully until they cry?
-Yes
-Hell yes
Perhaps these lovely racist xians will emulate Heaven’s Gate when the next comet comes bopping along.
i’m seeing this more and more: “secular media”. Is this an attempt to make a bad word out of ‘secular’like they have done to the word ‘liberal’?
They started out great with that url, “Silencingchristians”. I thought it would be a site for monks who took a vow of silence, and maybe might make a nice Belgian style abbey ale. Noooooooo, those jerks are just some fundy-nutbags. Damnit I need a beer now.
I just gave them all the answers they do not want to see.
I was amused by this question: Do you believe that churches and religious organizations should be forced to hire homosexuals?
Don’t they already do that voluntarily?
I strolled through the website and found this description for one of their videos:
“Georgia Tech student faces death and rape threats for opposing leberal feminist policies and a social work student is told she must violate her conscience to complete her program.”
What, exactly, is a leberal feminist? A lesbian liberal?
Anyway, this is a “persecuted christian” site containing links for the ADF, Liberty Counsel, Liberty Legal Institute, Pacific Justice Institute, and the Rutherford Institute. All very righteous organizations, as in very right wing.
I’ll take your word for it ;)
These type of thing must really piss off fiscal conservatives.
I find that the Fortiguard site-blocking software we run blocks the site titled “silencingchristians.com”. Nice irony! Now, if I can only get it to silence all christian sites…
I endured less than 30 seconds of the video before closing it in disgust. This is Poe´s law incarnated theres no way you can do a parody of this video and be more stupid.
Forgot to add:
I answered the poll appropriately, didn’t see any results.
my email address: christonastick at heaven dot com. Apparantly heaven is not an official domain name and needs an extension appended to it. I think I chose an appropriate group.
Boy that’s dumb. If it’s the same rights as everyone else has, there’s nothing “special” about them.
Well…
it’s the AFA. (Proof: here’s the give us yer money and we’ll send you a free DVD half-full of cretinous rambling and half-unused page.) What did you expect from this group of professional imbeciles?
Silencing Christians? Now, _that’s_ a message I can get behind!
Found this in their comment section:
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
What do you mean ‘a beautiful example of how not to design a poll’? We’ve already established that internet polls are worthless for gathering usable data, so the only purpose of an internet poll has to be hortatory. Within that context, a question that has no answer that doesn’t fit your chosen narrative is well designed.
Have you stopped beating your wife?
a. Yes
b. No
c. Undecided
Are these polls useful?
a. No
b. Of course not
c. Never
Should homosexuals be given the same special rights extended to African-Americans and other minorities?
I would like homosexuals given the same special rights that heterosexuals enjoy, just as I’d like minorities and women to be given the same special rights that are extended to white men.
I’m currently having lots of fun feeding the thing fake and insulting e-mail addresses :-D
You know, polls like this are sort of a microcosm of politics as a whole. Some idiots start framing debates the exact same way that these questions are framed and then you have to spend more time trying to explain to people why the debate is incorrectly framed than you do actually engaging in the debate. For example, I’m a pro-choice activist and I have to spend a fairly large portion of my time explaining why ‘Pro-choice’ is not the same as ‘Pro-Abortion’ (as if anyone could ever think that abortions are just grand, the more the merrier). Argh.
OT, but the idiots who kept an 18-foot python with a toddler are being charged with child abuse and neglect (video from cnn.com).
Do you believe that there should more severe punishment for hate crimes against homosexuals?
No, I believe all hate crimes should have the same punishment.
Do you believe the Bible condemns homosexuality as sin?
[No. It’s very loving and affectionate towards it.]Can homosexuals change their sexual orientation?
[Of course! Just need to reset the switch in their prefrontal cortex.]
Should homosexuals be given the same special rights extended to African-Americans and other minorities?
[What? Blacks have rights now? Isn’t it 1850 …?]
Is the secular media demonstrating a bias in favor of the homosexual agenda?
[Kinda hard to be biased in favor of something totally normal, dude.]
Should children in public schools be taught homosexuality is normal, acceptable, and equal to the traditional marriage of a man and a woman?
[Noooo. Teach them the horrors and sins of teh gayz! Mount your little kiddie army against Gay Rights!]
Seriously, I don’t find anything really angering about this poll. I just spend time feeding false addresses and names and screwing with the results. Anarchy! :P
Ran a WHOIS search over the site. It’s the American Family Association.
You know – wingnuts.
African-Americans and other minority groups are given special rights; affirmative action. This applies to government funded universities as well as being hired for a job. Also government money is spent on tolerance education to get people to promote tolerance of African-Americans and other minority groups. I do not know of any specific government programs devoted to convincing people to stop making fun of poor rural white Christians. (Not that such don’t deserve much of the ridicule that they do get) So I think it is a fair question to ask if affirmative action should apply to homosexuals or if government money should go to promoting tolerance of homosexuals. Reasonable people can come down on different sides of this issue. Personally I am against affirmative action or government funded tolerance education for any group, African-Americans, poor rural white Christians, or homosexuals.
After responding to the poll, may I suggest a polite email my local TV station who may be showing the video Saturday?
http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/Speechless_elicits_strong_reaction
Personally I am against affirmative action or government funded tolerance education for any group, African-Americans, poor rural white Christians, or homosexuals.
Personally, I’m for making the bigotry that makes affirmative action necessary go away, but hey. Until minority candidates with the same qualifications have equal chances at getting hired for the same jobs as able-bodied white guys do, I’ll think you’re on to something. When nobody has been arrested for “driving while brown” in so long, the term has to be footnoted in works of literature aimed at students, get back to me. When you can look me in the eye and tell me with a straight face that there’s no more discrimination of any kind against anyone, ever, I’ll be completely on your side.
I absolutely love it when privileged white men claim that affirmative action equals “special rights,” given that minorities of all sorts (including women, the visibly disabled, and people of colour) are still actively discriminated against in pretty much all areas of life. Wasn’t there a study not so long ago that showed that white male ex-convicts had a better chance of getting jobs than black males with no criminal records?
I’m all for meritocracy. Let’s have some goddam meritocracy, instead of butthurt able-bodied white guys whining about how put-upon they are because people of colour, women, the disabled, and whoever else are demanding their equal (and fair) share of the pie too.
“There’s also a video. Don’t waste your time, unless you’re suffering from low blood pressure or have a too optimistic view of American intelligence.”
Dude….seriously.
Benzion N. Chinn – what color is the sky in white male privilege land?
“Let’s have some goddam meritocracy, instead of butthurt able-bodied white guys whining about how put-upon they are because people of colour, women, the disabled, and whoever else are demanding their equal (and fair) share of the pie too.”
Thank you. Nothing scares the privileged more than a level playing field.
Benzion, you seem to be looking at affirmative action from the narrow perspective of White supremacists. A more liberal point of view would see affirmative action as a foot in the door for people who have been historically locked out of full citizenship and continue to face discrimination in mainstream society.
Affirmative action serves as a balance to an overwhelming marginalization; a special negation of rampant inequality if anything. It certainly isn’t in the same class as improbable laws that would prohibit one from making fun of poor religious rural White people.
And what’s this about affirmative action for homosexuals? I’ve never heard of this before and it isn’t listed on the Homosexual Agenda.
That was fun. I did give them a valid email address.
crystal dot meth at spambob dot net (actually, spambob went off the net a while back, but you get the idea)
I keep one of those in my back pocket for occasions like this.
I look forward to some fun dialogue with their fund raisers. Might be more fun than chatting with Liberians in distress over how they can get you to help move millions out of the country.
Benzion, you’re just another whiny whiny white guy pissed that someone who isn’t you is getting a chance.
Why don’t you take one big step back, and literally fuck your own face?
Benzion!? WTF kinda satan name is that?
Fixed! after looking at your blog; that is some seriously deranged historical commentary.
I signed in as “Dick Satan”, eddress godsucks @ hotmail…
Answered the questions, all of which were as loaded and dishonest as the one propmting this post, in ways guaranteed to be seen as outliers…
I’d prefer if we could start actually persecuting them again.
I miss the blood and circusses of the Colisseum, even if it was a little hard on the animals…
I mean, let’s give ’em sumpin REAL to comlain about…
[blockquote]I wonder what the religious right would be all hep up about if homosexuality did not exist[/blockquote]
I have this idea (which I hope is true) that the Republicans will never give the religious right a ban on gay marriage or a ban on abortions. This is because once they do there’s nothing else left that they can use as ammunition to manipulate the Christians.
I’d like to think that it’s all sound and fury signifying nothing. But I fear that the biogtry is real.
aratina> I’d love to presecribe to your view of affirmative action, and perhaps that’s how it’s supposed to work. From my limited personal experience, the people who have been “locked out of full citizenship” are quite well looked after by anyone who’s aware of the situation and isn’t a complete and utter bigot. In fact, I have the feeling that someone after me will lump me into that category, because I don’t support special hiring practices for anyone, whatsoever, at any time. Hire the best candidate, as best you can determine, and shut up about it already. I’m perfectly willing to compete with whomever (and yes, I’m a white male, but I don’t consider myself “butt-hurt”.) on a level playing field. I don’t see anyone proposing to fund, well anything, for me just because I happen to belong to a certain gender or race. You can certainly attempt to argue that I have advantages because of those characteristics, but honestly I’ve yet to see any of those advantages materialise. In fact, I know for a fact that I was passed over for a scholarship because I happen to be white, have a penis, and not be from the right part of the country. (Freely admitted by the professor who’s job it was to distribute the money.) As this was privately donated money, they’re free to do as they wish with it, including put stipulations on who might receive such money, but don’t pretend it’s levelling a playing field.
Do you actually think that forcing someone who is against interviewing or hiring a minority to do so is going to result in a positive result?
And as we all know, you can lead a hortatory but you can’t make her whig.
Why did Napoleon cross the Mississippi?
And how did I know that affirmative action was going to be brought up? Probably the people behind these polls still believe that quotas exist, and they’re afraid that we’ll have queer quotas in hiring now. Oh the horror.
I’d like to see them stop all preferential hiring
of Raelians & Zoroastrians. Enough is enough!
“Should homosexuals be given the same special rights extended to African-Americans and other minorities?”
D*nm. Looks like they gaffed, and spoke their minds.
The “I’m discriminated against for being white” people live their lives at a slant – everything is tilted in their direction, but that’s *normal* to them. When the real world comes in and the playing field is actually put level, they get dizzy, fall over, and complain.
My pie-in-the-sky dream: The sponsor of the poll is just like us, but is trying to fleece all the right-wingers it can in order to put the money towards progressive causes.
I was Ted Haggard, [email protected], with a Salt Lake City zip code to round things out. These people are really offensive, I need a shower! With bleach!
“You can certainly attempt to argue that I have advantages because of those characteristics, but honestly I’ve yet to see any of those advantages materialise.”
*lol* that’s precisely because you’re privileged. You see the world only through your self-identified “limited personal experience” which means you have no freakin idea what its like for others. But you’re convince that because one time you didn’t get exactly what you wanted when and how you wanted it, you’re not privileged.
What a freaking joke. Extra douche points for insinuating that those of use who aren’t anti-AA are the real bigots. O’Reilly would be proud.
Affirmative action programs are totally banned in the USA now? That’s news to me, because they sure aren’t here in Canada. And those kinds of programs ARE special rights given to minorities.
However, I’ll concede that’s probably not what the poll authors are on about.
Permitting discrimination against one group of people so another group of people can imagine that historic wrongs have been corrected is still wrong.
No. I personally have been discriminated against for being male, however. For years I kept a letter from the Canadian Forces denying my request to become an air traffic controller because, although I was qualified and had the support of the ATC school commander, I wasn’t female.
Take out the “fe” and it’s horrible discrimination. As written it’s affirmative action. But either way, it’s bullshit.
If you REALLY want to see people howl, you’ve got to check out the reaction to things like job postings in provincial welfare offices. Those sorts of social work jobs are typically dominated by women, so men are the beneficiaries of affirmative action, and wow do the women whine about how unfair that is. I guess it’s unfair if you’re not getting the special rights.
Or maybe affirmative action is just plain unfair, end of sentence.
That was beautiful, Endor!
“This is because once they do there’s nothing else left that they can use as ammunition to manipulate the Christians.”
Well, there’s always abortion and us evil, evil atheists.
Do you suppose it would do any good to complain to optimusmedia.com, who hosts the site? If they know it is racist and homophobic, perhaps they’ll shut them down. Other hosting sites have been known to respond to complaints.
http://who.securepaynet.net/WhoIs.aspx?domain=silencingchristians.com&prog_id=muchmodotinfo
“Permitting discrimination against one group of people so another group of people can imagine that historic wrongs have been corrected is still wrong.”
*headdesk* Yeah, it’s all about HISTORIC wrongs. Because bigotry against such groups is, like, totally over!
Chraters.
Fucking whiny-ass entitlement babies.
The stupid, it burns …
The hate, it burns even worse …
The problem with discrimination, IST, is that you won’t see it as a member of the non-discriminated against unless you pay attention. As white males, we don’t get cat-called every time we walk down the street. As white males, our driving mistakes don’t get blamed on our sex or ethnicity. As white males, we don’t stand around waiting until the clerk has served everyone else first. As white males, we’re scrutinised on our ability and we never have to worry that one little fuck-up will be used to validate somebody else’s opinion of our entire sex, skin colour, or eye shape.
Of course you don’t notice the advantages because you’ve never experienced their lack. Think about it: how many times a day do you stop and note that once again, no-one took any notice of your sex or ethnicity?
(Having had a decade-long relationship with someone who was member of a visible minority, it became disgustingly apparent how many bigots I encountered on a daily basis but never knew it because they considered me one of them.)
Endor> excellent strawman and quotemine… it’s nice to see what it’s like on the other side of the mainstream opinion on here. I didn’t imply, or state that supporting AA makes you a bigot. I was implying that it’s abused.
As for privilege, you reacted exactly as I expected, and there’s not a whole lot I can do to convince you otherwise. I consider that I’m not privileged because I have had to earn and pay for everything I have, period. Know anything about that? I don’t consider it anything special, but it’s not privilege either. You might consider the anecdote before decide that it was a case of “one time I didn’t get exactly what I wanted”, but you were so determined to call me a moron for not agreeing with your policy that you didn’t bother. My limited personal experience also includes having taught for 6 years in an extremely low income, minority school system. Hmm… I wonder if I have any idea what life is like for the kids I teach that are homeless or packed 15 to an apartment if I choose to do home visits for parent conferences?
Extra douche points for jumping to conclusions. I was looking for an actual discussion, not trolling. I don’t believe for a second that anything other than poverty is a distinct disadvantage, and there are ways to overcome that based on merit rather than something else. If you have evidence otherwise, I’ll be happy to consider it.. try keeping the instant derision to yourself.
I had to go with the classic [email protected]
Brownian> fair point for the most part. You’re saying that not being discriminated against is privilege? I agree that no group should be singled out, period… I simply don’t agree that government or corporate policies designed to make up for that discrimination does anything other than foster resentment. I could honestly care less who takes a position I applied for so long as they were as well qualified as I was or more. If it works the other way, and at times it does, that has to be changed.
If everyone who was gay or bi turned bright green tomorrow, no one would worry about queer quotas, but there would be a hell of alot of people trying to readjust the color on their tv sets, especially during religious and sports broadcasts.
Yeah, well, I’ll wait until I live in a world where my ex isn’t referred to as a paki or a nigger before I start demanding a level playing field for my white penis.
IST, I’m sorry things did not work out for you. Your anecdote, though, kind of answers your own end question. Quota systems like the one you went up against obviously do force White supremacists to select people of color for employment and scholarships.
At least one result of affirmative action is a wealth of evidence against the notion that for every competent non-White person there is a more competent White person. In fact, there is nothing in affirmative action policies that says you have to hire or give scholarships to unqualified people; it is about recognizing as a nation that qualified non-White people should not be passed over based on skin color, just in case such a bias exists.
I mean, look–what you said, “Hire the best candidate, as best you can determine, and shut up about it already,” has always been said. The motto was never any different even when many organizations were composed solely of people that we could consider to be of the same race.
Three-fifths of a person for census purposes only is not really citizenship at all and that is written in the Constitution. (By the way, Greg Laden had a couple of illuminating threads going about race here and here.)
Thank you, E.V., you made my day.
-S
Logically thinking people will instantly see the lunacy in video and poll. But, we’re not the target. This is slick marketing for their message of intolerance directed towards their intended audience. Those of us opposed to that message should recognize that it’s an example of the right stepping up their game.
Yeah; but the problem is that 99% if the time, it’s the white males that are hired over nearly everyone else regardless of skill. For fuck’s sake, look at the kerfuffle over Barack oh-my-fucking-God-he’s-a-fucking-darkie Hussein Obama’s middle name.
Yeah, the pastie John Smiths of this world have it so fucking bad because it takes ’em two more tries to get into their local police or firefighting forces than it would if the Chinese had just stuck to building our railroads.
Note: I should hope (likely in vain) that everyone here recognises that the terms ‘white’ and ‘black’ used in posts herein refer to the social concept of race rather than the biological one, as the latter doesn’t exist.
Here comes the privileged whining and justifications.
“it’s nice to see what it’s like on the other side of the mainstream opinion on here.”
Don’t be absurd. I in no way claim(ed) to speak for everyone here. Grow up.
“I didn’t imply, or state that supporting AA makes you a bigot.”
Yes, you did. Here: “From my limited personal experience, the people who have been “locked out of full citizenship” are quite well looked after by anyone who’s aware of the situation and isn’t a complete and utter bigot.”
Nice try, though.
“As for privilege, you reacted exactly as I expected, and there’s not a whole lot I can do to convince you otherwise. ”
Typical. The privileged always hate to hear that their not the poor victims they’ve convinced themselves they are.
“I consider that I’m not privileged because I have had to earn and pay for everything I have, period. Know anything about that? I don’t consider it anything special, but it’s not privilege either.”
Of course you don’t consider yourself privileged – you have no freakin idea what the word means. You think having had to work hard means you’re not privileged. You think not getting exactly what you want on demand means you’re not privileged. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You just really, really want to believe you’re a victim.
The truth is, you wouldn’t last an HOUR in their shoes.
“but you were so determined to call me a moron for not agreeing with your policy that you didn’t bother. ”
A little tip: don’t lie about what others say when it can be easily disproven by merely scrolling up.
And I don’t give a rat’s ass about your (conveniently unverifiable) claims about your students. YOU got to leave. YOU don’t have to live it. Yet you think you know all about it. THAT’s privilege.
Yeah; but the problem is that 99% if the time, it’s the white males that are hired over nearly everyone else regardless of skill.
I call bullshit on this. Show me some evidence.
For fuck’s sake, look at the kerfuffle over Barack oh-my-fucking-God-he’s-a-fucking-darkie Hussein Obama’s middle name.
Yet, in case you hadn’t noticed, Obama was elected. And I doubt you could seriously assert that all those who voted for McCain, or for third parties, did so because of racism. Yes, there were and are racists. Big deal. They are a minority, and they don’t run things any more. Indeed, in my experience, most racists are of decidedly low education and socio-economic status; they tend to be unemployed tabloid-reading thugs whose attitude is “stop teh immigrantz taking our jobs!!!” They are not the kind of people who make decisions about employment.
Affirmative action is ridiculous. Why should I be artificially disadvantaged in comparison to another candidate, simply because I happen to be a white male and he or she isn’t? That is racism in its purest form.
I should hope (likely in vain) that everyone here recognises that the terms ‘white’ and ‘black’ used in posts herein refer to the social concept of race rather than the biological one, as the latter doesn’t exist.
I absolutely agree. And I would also like to see the social concept of race eradicated – as I presume you would. Yet affirmative action does precisely the opposite – it elevates race, artificially, into a relevant characteristic, where it ought to be completely ignored.
I don’t deny that there is still a certain amount of implicit racial and sexual stereotyping in our culture. (Which works both ways, especially in the case of gender and sexuality: the “man up” culture – in which all heterosexual men are expected to be macho, to hide their emotions, to drink heavily and to be obsessed with sex – is something I find incredibly depressing, personally. But I’m digressing.) But the solution to these is not to use artificial policies to treat people differently on the basis of race and gender.
The lead-in to the video was titled “Silencing Christians” but I couldn’t find the instructions anywhere!
Given all the BS that those nice christians (lower-case c deliberate)have heaped them, the homosexuals should all be given drinking fountains spewing champaign on command (funded by the nearest church).
Should this ever come to pass, may I (I’m straight) be considered as an honorary homosexual?
I did it with a questionnaire I received in the mail from a Catholic organization and never got another piece of mail from them. (Of course, I’m going to hell now, but that’s a small price to pay to reduce my junk mail.)
I used to get a lot of wacko conservative mail, thanks to the previous owner of my house, but I’m also a postal worker. I know how to make somebody pay for sending me junk mail, especially if they’re silly enough to include a business reply envelope, which most of them did.
No, I didn’t tape it to a brick or bowling ball. I can assure everyone that those go nowhere (and if we catch you trying to mail something like that, it won’t turn out well for you–think MAIL FRAUD).
No, you can get even with them in many other ways with that envelope. Remember: They have to pay for BRM to be sent to them. And the heavier the mail, the more they pay. If you’re really mean, send several of them with nothing to identify you inside. I did this to Bob Barr for about a year, then I tired of the game.
I really hope all the whiny-ass titty baby entitlement brats crying over how poor, poor white men are being OH SO DISCRIMINATED AGAINST AND DISADVANTAGED BY THE BROWN PEOPLES drown in their own tears.
We need more of me, and fewer of you.
I tried watching some of that horrible video. The angry narrator is horrified that those evil gays(!) would try to make people think homosexuality would be all right. It’s… it’s NOT all right, though! It’s gross! And a book of myths that can’t be backed up by any evidence says it’s evil! …Right? How dare those gays (they took our precious word!) try to pretend they’re actual human beings and trick others into thinking so, as well? And now… and NOW those evil homos are trying to stop us, poor, godly, persecuted US from telling the world that they’re disgusting degenerate scum that will rot in hell forever! They’ve gone too far!
I almost wish the rapture WOULD happen. The seven years of tribulation and the eternity in hell would be worth it to have a world — if only briefly — free of these assholes.
Walton, I can introduce you to some people who would blow this theory to smithereens. College educated, middle to upper middle class racists. Have a drink in the backroom with a majority of GOP members and you’ll be treated to their Plantation mentality. Look behind the curtain, because what’s in front is a dog and pony show.
If it were not for EEOC, racism in the US would still dominate most regions. Replacing “African American” with “ni**er” doesn’t mean the bigot is no longer bigoted. Your hero Rush is one bigoted motherfucker, and I come by that knowledge firsthand. You do get points though, for nailing him as a “tabloid-reading thug whose attitude is “stop teh immigrantz taking our jobs!!!”
And I’m sure that many women here can give you a perspective on patriarchal attitudes still existing in the business place as well. Dunning-Kruger, huh?
Oh, gay for spray, eh?
@ #39
Affirmative action and other such measures are not special rights. They are special measures which are intended to protect the basic rights of groups who are having their basic rights comprimised.
For example, I as a woman have the right to be hired based on my competance for the job. However this right will be comprimised if throughout my life teachers and employers are thinking less of me (giving me lower grades, failing to promote me etc). So when it comes time for me to apply for a job, even though I may be just as competant as male counterparts, my resume may not reflect this as well as it should. Affirmative action makes up for this by giving me a few ‘bonus points’ so that my chances of getting hired more accurately reflect my level of competance. Yes this is a special measure, but it is not a special right. I do not have a right to affirmative action (the special measure) I have a right to be hired/promoted etc based on my skills and competance. This is a right that everyone has. Affirmative action is just one way of attempting to make sure that this basic right is respected.
Walton,
Canada in particular doesn’t have the best track record for gender equality among developed nations. As for rough numbers, 36 out of 105 (34%) of Canadian senators (appointed, not elected) are women, while 69 out of 308 (22%) Members of Parliament elected in 2008 are women. While my off-the-cuff number of 99% was a great exaggeration, we’re still far short of gender parity. And you don’t even want to know the status of indigenous people in Canada as compared to their non-indigenous counterparts.
I won’t be offended if you want to hold out for better figures, but unfortunately I can’t indulge in stat-hunting this afternoon, so this is the best I can come up with for now.
Yeah, but the fact that his name was an issue at all speaks volumes.
While I agree with you in general, I’m not so sure how marginalised racism and racists are. Particularly in Alberta.
It’s unfortunate, but the aim of affirmative action is to end the problem at the source, and eventually remove the need for its own existence. While I agree it’s most definitely bigotry, the alternative of “waiting and seeing–the problem’ll end on its own” hasn’t been all that effective.
I’m with you all the way here, and good point about machismo and the impositions we place on ourselves. Having said that, I’m still 100% pure Alberta beef in the man department–if you know what I mean–and I’ll fight any pansy who says otherwise.
I’d be more than happy to toss out affirmative action in favour of more effective policies, but I’m loathe to do so without a viable alternative. “Wait and see” hasn’t worked. Any other ideas?
According to wiki:
So the hypothesis is that “policies that take gender, race, or ethnicity into account” will “maximize the benefits of diversity in all levels of society, and to redress disadvantages due to overt, institutional, or involuntary discrimination.”
Unfortunately, this definition of AA has no ability to gauge who deserves to have disadvantages redressed outside of gender, race, or ethnicity. This is a fundamental problem that taints the entire proposition, and could be easily fixed if we considered socioeconomic factors instead of race and gender.
Personally, I am not against giving a leg up to those who need it. However, anyone who says that Affirmative Action is not a special right for a minority group is either foolish or intellectually dishonest. It is really hard to claim it isn’t a special right out of one corner of your mouth while claiming we need to have separate standards for a specific ethnic group to right historical wrongs or improve diversity.
I guess I just really don’t understand the obsession with race and gender based Affirmative Action when economic based AA works just as well and is not dependent on forcing everyone to be defined by narrow an inaccurate categories.
I am always open minded and curious to hear new opinions on this, but really haven’t heard a genuine reason why race and gender based AA isn’t a special right and why it is better than giving benefits based on socioeconomic status. Thank you.
It is important to separate two different issues here. One, is a affirmative action a good thing or not. Two, is affirmative action a special right. To be up front about this again, I am personally an opponent of affirmative action. I acknowledge that there are plausible reasons to support it and it is not my intention here to attack people who do support it. I am perfectly willing to debate the issue with people, but it is probably best that it be done on some other forum than this commentary page as it would take us on a side tangent. Now none of this has anything to do with the second issue of is affirmative action a special right. I fail to see how someone can say that it is not a special right. Now I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that there are good reasons for such a special right to exist, but that does not change the fact that it is a special right. It is the government stepping in granting aid to a specific group of people as a specific group of people.
Eddie
The name Benzion is Hebrew for “son of Zion.” I fail to see what is so Satanic about that. If I were a member of the PC crowd I might accuse you of bigotry.
“after looking at your blog; that is some seriously deranged historical commentary”
Aratina. Could you give a specific example of something on my blog that you think is deranged historical commentary.
Walton, are you 10 years old? Seriously?
Do you understand anything about the real world? Have you ever lived in it?
Racism is not exclusive to white trash. From a letter sent to the California Republican party by one of its few African-American members;
Emphasis mine.
How many of those people asking Shannon Reeves to carry their bags do you think were “poor, uneducated” people? Usually, poor, uneducated people who get the chance to stay at hotels expect to lug their own damn suitcase to their room and get their own car. You don’t see bellhops or valets at Motel 6.
It was educated middle class and wealthy people who did those things. They do it a lot, in all kinds of settings here in America. Don’t you think that kind of thinking can have an effect in the workplace when it comes to hiring and promotions (and guess who controls that)? Are you really so naive as to think it doesn’t?
Sorry for the double post, but I thought I also aught to point something out for those who seem to doubt that sexism/racism etc. are still prominant in our society. My brother is a female->male transexual and has many friends who are male->female transexuals. According to these folks, there is a huge difference between how they get treated after the transition. The women have reported that they no longer get listened to, they get pushed around more and are generally not taken seriously. The men find just the opposite. And really, who better to ask than folks who have gotten to see both sides of the fence?
Maleman, SES-based affirmative action seems to be an intriguing alternative to the other kind, although I imagine it even harder to push forward (particularly in the US) because it sounds so much like the dreaded socialism.
Besides, we generally have that here in Canada, at least with respect to health care. (Generally, most barriers to access to health care here are geographic.)
By the way, that Shannon Reeves letter was sent not in 1963, but in 2003.
And Walton wonders why affirmative action is still around! It’s been nearly 45 years since the Civil Rights Act became law, and we’re still having African-Americans being seen (and treated) first as a servant, not as an equal!
Why is affirmative action always equated with a quota system (and always to insure non-white males get positions they aren’t qualified for by the detractors)? I know some places go the quota route, but it doesn’t have to be done in such a manner. Most places don’t simply hire/admit people after just one round of application review. Just making sure that a representative percentage of every group makes it past the first round does wonders (kind of like the blind auditions method).
if you watch the movie about 11 minutes in this crazy lady says we don’t have the scientific data to prove kids can or can’t handle knowing about homosexuality but we do have experiential knowledge that it does. I think her experience is probably from dumb redneck parents yelling at their kids that they ain’t right if they think 2 mommys is allright
cpsmith @ #89
FYI, this is the kind of intellectual dishonesty I am referring to when I say it is tough to talk out of both sides of your mouth when saying it isn’t a special right, its a special…uh…uh…MEASURE!
The rest of her post is just more personal bias:
CPSmith openly admits the other male job applicants have better resumes, but don’t worry, through the unbiased process of “because CPSmith says so”, she has determined that she is just as competent.
She goes on to state that:
and
Let me distill this whole story for you: CPSmith applies for a job. CPSmith sees other applicants resumes and determines they are stronger than hers. CPSmith decides this must be because she has been held back her whole life on account of her gender by people who are just like the people she is now competing against. She is certain that she is just as competent as the other applicants, thus confirming her suspicion that they must have benefited from the same system that handicapped her and thus she deserves a leg up over them! It isn’t an unfair advantage, it’s a bonus at the expense of the other applicants to make up for her lifetime of purported disadvantage. So, you see, gender based AA is fair!
Or, CPSmith has a victim complex, is sexist, and is looking for excuses.
Is it me, or is the crazy lady in the video called Janet PARTIAL?
Brownian @#90:
Yes, it is, of course, true that in most countries and most professions there are fewer women than men at the top, and that women are particularly under-represented among those who choose to run for elective office. But I don’t see that this can be ascribed to some sort of covert bias against women on the part of employers; rather, it’s merely that fewer women actively seek the top jobs. Those who do seek the top jobs, and have the ability, usually get there (from Margaret Thatcher to Ruth Bader Ginsburg). I have never seen any evidence that most, or a substantial proportion of, employers are likely, given no restrictions, to choose an incompetent male candidate over a competent female one.
Similarly, the fact that women in most countries have lower average earnings than men does not mean women are paid less for doing the same work – rather, it reflects the fact that more women choose to work part-time, or to leave the labour market altogether once they have kids.
We need to look, then, why more women than men choose to drop out of the job market, or compromise their careers severely for the sake of family. That reason is probably largely cultural (even if they have careers, our culture tends implicitly to expect women to take the major role in looking after the home and the children). I would agree that this is a problem; it does reflect outdated cultural norms, and there is certainly no inherent reason why the woman, rather than the man, in a relationship should have to sacrifice her career for the sake of the family. But IMO this is a cultural, not a political, issue; and using the clumsy iron fist of the State to try to effect change will only make things worse.
E.V @#87:
Walton, I can introduce you to some people who would blow this theory to smithereens. College educated, middle to upper middle class racists. Have a drink in the backroom with a majority of GOP members and you’ll be treated to their Plantation mentality. Look behind the curtain, because what’s in front is a dog and pony show.
I was, of course, generalising; and I have known a few educated middle- or upper-class people, even here in the UK, who covertly harbour politically incorrect (verging on racist) attitudes. Of course, I can’t comment on the US.
But for the most part, the only overt manifestations of real racism which one encounters, here in the UK, are from the BNP and the National Front (Britain’s homegrown quasi-fascist far-right loony movements), which mainly consist of ill-educated, unemployed thugs who can’t get a job and who blame the state for “letting all these immigrants in”. They are manipulated, of course, by a few bright people, like BNP leader Nick Griffin (a Cambridge graduate), who stir up hatred in the cause of self-promotion and building a power base. But these people are not running the country, nor are they managing major corporations, nor are they making important decisions about people’s lives. They’re a marginalised group of fringe lunatics.
cpsmith:
For example, I as a woman have the right to be hired based on my competance for the job. However this right will be comprimised if throughout my life teachers and employers are thinking less of me (giving me lower grades, failing to promote me etc). So when it comes time for me to apply for a job, even though I may be just as competant as male counterparts, my resume may not reflect this as well as it should. Affirmative action makes up for this by giving me a few ‘bonus points’ so that my chances of getting hired more accurately reflect my level of competance.
I can only hope that said job doesn’t require a high level of “competance” in spelling and grammar…
And, in seriousness, can you show me any evidence that teachers and employers have “thought less” of you, or deliberately given you lower grades/fewer promotions than you deserved, merely because you were female? I don’t doubt that there are some people who harbour unreconstructed attitudes; but they are certainly a small minority (especially in the teaching profession, which tends to be dominated by left-wingers, and is disproportionately female). I find it hard to believe that the average teacher, or the average employer, harbours a substantial bias against females and acts on said bias in his or her professional life; and you’ve presented no evidence to support this claim.
[email protected] worked just fine….
Walton (#81)
So, um? Women and minorities are naturally disadvantaged? I don’t think so. If you really want to think of it in terms of disadvantage, consider that the entire point of AA is to make sure everyone is equally artificially disadvantaged.
Affirmative action isn’t a single-step “fix all” to the problem of inequality. It’s (meant to be) a way to catapult us all into a place where we can start working to achieve social color-blindness after the shock of enforced equality has worn off and avoiding bias is something we take for granted. Whether or not you think AA will achieve that, we can’t rely on, say, simply agreeing to ignore one another’s visible differences because there are still so many people who would refuse.
Walton,
You’re addressing an outlying case. Often, the qualified candidates from the applicant pool will include both sexes. At that point, considerations over other than qualifications will be employed, and personal biases may be indulged in.
Brownian> I’d love to see that data that actually supports your point of view. While I would be completely in favour of SES based AA, I don’t see any real evidence that basing it on race or gender has a positive impact that can’t be acheived by education and integration. Deliniating who gets what based on those factors serves to divide people more. You’re right in that “wait and see” simply doesn’t work either.
Endor> Having a good time moving the goalposts? You obviously have a definition of privilege and entitlement with which I’ll never agree. We can leave it at that. Apart from the one experience, I don’t claim to be victim of anything; Sorry to burst that bubble. In all fairness, I should probably have scrolled up on my own to check my own post.
aratina> If AA policies were consistently applied in the method you describe, there’s no reverse discrimination to argue about. Instead it seems to fuel those claims. There seriously must be a better method of consciousness raising available. Perhaps my argument should be with the implementation of those policies rather than the policies themselves. 3/5 is certainly not a person, it is written into the Constitution, and explicitly rewritten in later amendments, so your point on that was?
Walton, #81
If this is your experience, then it is exceedingly good evidence of your privilege. I will never forget being told by the (well-off, PhD-holding) chair of a Biology department when applying for a (white-collar academic) position in a southern state that I’d probably prefer living at a certain address because “it’s on a white street.”
It took me a good ten or fifteen seconds to even know what he was talking about. More fool I, I took the job, but I didn’t stay long. The racism and sexism were intolerable, and not all of it was so overt as that comment. Far more of it was unspoken–deeply insidious attitudes and policies that would be easy to overlook.
That is, they would be easy to overlook if the attitudes and policies favored the color of your skin, or the shape of your genitalia.
And, in seriousness, can you show me any evidence that teachers and employers have “thought less” of you, or deliberately given you lower grades/fewer promotions than you deserved, merely because you were female?
I can give examples. Plenty of them, but I’ll list only one, the part time job I got during college, where I rudely learned about a week after starting work that my actual job, was to, well, “entertain” the boss. Sexually. This wasn’t a strip bar or brothel. It was an insurance company! I just about ran out of there. Didn’t even ask for a paycheck for the hours I had worked. I’ll take that as a definite sign of an employer “thinking less” of me because I was a woman, wouldn’t you?
OK, I was hoping to stay out of the affirmative action sub-thread, but as Popeye the Sailor used to say, “I’ve stood all I can stand and I can’t stands no more.”
Affirmative action exists for a reason. It is an imperfect solution to the problem of white/male racial/gender preferences that have always existed in this country.
For every white person who was overlooked in favor of someone from a minority group, there are multiple stories of qualified minorities who were overlooked in favor of someone who was white. That’s just the plain truth right there folks.
NOTE: funny how whenever this issue comes up, the whiner always likes to add, “less qualified” before the word minority. I call bullshit as I’ve seen more than my share of incompetent, unqualified whites in private industry and government. I mean, have we forgotten George Bush already?
And for those gentlemen who claim that they have not benefited from white privledge, there are a hundred ways that subtle race/gender bias impacts people of color and women on a daily basis. You have no idea how fortunate you are…. what an advantage you have.
In closing, let me put it to you plainly: if you’re a middle-class, college educated, white male, you know as much about racial discrimination as you know about what it feels like to give birth.
Sorry to bust your bubble, but you just don’t have a clue. Now quit’cher bitchin’ get off yer arse, and get out there and make something of yourself. This is America dammit. Land of opportunity, even in these trying times.
Walton (#101)
See, you seem to be over-emphasizing overt racism. Do you think that covert racism is less real or less pernicious? Racism doesn’t have to be overtly expressed to have an effect on people’s lives. Just because middle- and upper-class society tends to frown on exuberant expression of one’s prejudices doesn’t mean those prejudices run any less deep. And where they do exist, their effect tends to be magnified since these are the people with the power to hire and fire or set up social policy.
Attention, bigots: Your tears are utterly sublime. You cannot imagine the joy I’m getting out of watching you whining little bastards throw tantrums.
Wrong. Nice try though.
It’s not obvious due to font colour (Yay for not discriminating for/against links! Way to go Scienceblogs!), but the second blockquoted paragraph in my recent comment links to the Statistics Canada report from which it is taken.
The question’s wording betrays its author’s bigotry. It’s not just pointless PZ – it’d downright offensive.
A. Noyd @ 103 said:
The problem is that equally artificially disadvantaging everyone is an impossible task, particularly when disadavantage is measured by membership in a specific minority group. Not everyone in any given minority group is equally disadvantaged, and some minority groups are more disadvantaged than others. What about those who belong to more than one disadvantaged group? What about disadvantaged members of the normally advantaged group (i.e. poor white males)? What about advantaged members of the disadvantaged group (i.e. wealthy minorities)? Do you honestly think Obama’s children are more disadvantaged than say, your average white boy?
It is obvious to me that proponents of race-based AA are really not concerned with individual people and their merits, or they would recognize that race based AA helps the most advantaged minorities at the expense of the least advantaged members of the majority. The beneficiaries of these race based policies are far more likely to be like Obama’s children than some child from the projects, and the person who is harmed is far more likely to be some random white guy instead of true sons of privilege like GWB. But who cares? To supports of race based AA, the ultimate goal is to have the “perfectly diverse” business/school/organization and as long as the photo op looks good, it makes no difference who the individuals are. I guess I disagree that this is a valuable goal when it is attained at the expense of elevating race and gender to rigid class categories with arbitrarily differing treatment.
Brownian> Thanks for the link. Going back to your first comment: Accusations of being spoiled, privileged, etc by others here tend to cloud the issue. If the point is that there are subtle biases to which I am not subject, I can’t help but agree. Saying that because I’m not the target of some ignoramus we have to force that person to deal with the people their biased against doesn’t solve the issue. We need to find a way to do something about the ignorance that feeds it. My point all along is that I don’t agree with AA policies because they aren’t based on merit, at least not as they are currently applied. I appreciate that you chose to discuss that rather than instantly label me as a racist or whiner, as a number of people above did.
“This site is racist as well as homophobic”
in for a penny….
KEvron
Whenever I hear this, I cringe. The implication is that whenever a black person is chosen for a position over a white person, it is because of race and even when that is true, it’s never because the black person was equally qualified. In other words, there’s no such thing as a black person who is equally, or doG forbid, more qualified than someone else who happens to be white.
Believe it or not, many people believe that Obama was elected, not because he was qualified for the position, but because he happens to be black. If that were true, we would have had a President Barbara Jordan, a President Jesse Jackson, a President Al Sharpton, and a President Allan Keyes, by now.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but is there a passage in the AA regs, which stipulate that a minority under consideration for a job MUST be less qualified than a white person competing for the same position? If not, then I’m mystified about how anyone can say that these hires are not based, at least in part, on merit.
Hey, here’s a crazy idea. Is it possible that someone who makes a race-based minority hire might actually look for a minority applicant who just happens to also be qualified for the position? Is that so hard to believe?
I guess it is for those people who believe that no minority can ever be as qualified for a position as someone who’s white.
Hey, it sucks if you’re white and you lose an opportunity because of affirmative action, but welcome to the club. Women, short people, fat people, tall people, disabled people, black/hispanic/asian people, young people, old people and yes, even atheists, have all been there and we all feel your pain.
The AFA bought TV airtime immediately preceding Obama’s press conference to air this video on a local station here. The station started to catch flack before it showed and canceled the broadcast, offering the AFA a Saturday afternoon airing instead. The controversy grew and included a Facebook page protesting the video.
It looks like the station has withdrawn its offer and the video will not be shown.
PlaydoPlato> no, it isn’t hard to believe, and that’s an utterly fair hiring. Nothing at all says that the person hired must be less qualified than the person passed over, it simply aids that. I’d love to believe that all the people hired through AA were the best candidates for the job or at least equal to those that weren’t, I just haven’t seen that this is always the case. Cringe all you like… you’re reading more into what I said than what I intended. I suppose with the lovely nazis and such we’ve had here recently, I should have chosen more words more carefully or kept my mouth shut if I didn’t want to be lumped in with them.
The video and poll was mentioned by someone on a different thread. It’s sponsored by the AFA (American Family Association), a totally homophobic group. It’s not worth crashing as its biased questions don’t have good answers for a rational person. PZ has just pointed out the worst one.
As for the video, I watched it. It has all the homophobic right-wingnut Evangelical Christians who’ve been against equality. It does (like all anti-gay propaganda) do an effective job of fear-mongering.
Plado, you are missing something. If a minority candidate is the most qualified, then he or she should be hired, without any AA. AA only comes into play when you place value on an applicant’s race to justify picking that person when a decision irrespective of race would lead to a different result.
You showed your true colors when you claimed that many groups experience discrimination, so white males should just get over it. You know AA is racist/sexist and is used to benefit certain genders and ethnicities at the benefit of others. The only thing that makes AA different than Jim Crow is that this time, you’ll be the beneficiary. In your mind, I guess that has made it OK
Are you slimebags still trying to justify your whining? Jeez, go do something worthwhile – if you’re so concerned that DEM EBIL BROWN PEEPLEZ will TAKE YER JERBS, why don’t you go try to make yourselves into productive members of society rather than bitching that you’re being passed over for people who don’t look like you?
Fucking idiots!
BLue Fielder> since what you’re really looking for is some attention with all the overblown personal attacks, here ya go:
1) find where someone who posted in criticism of AA is complaining that they lost a JOB to someone else because of it. I have one, and I was hired fairly as far as I can tell. I seem to be the only person who related any sort of story that could be perceived as whining, and it was meant to be an example. Take it as you will.
2) demonstrate that any one of us isn’t a productive member of society
3) go ahead and defend your position instead of being a juvenile fucktard (yup, that’s irony right there).
4) If your one and only point is that not supporting AA wholeheartedly is racist, you’re flat out wrong.
If you actually have something reasonably intelligent to say, feel free to contribute. Right now you’re being significantly more biased than anyone else in the conversation.
I tried registering for the AFA, site but the stupid is so thick I could not wade through it.
Maleman (#114)
That’s sort of like saying evolution is incomplete because it doesn’t address abiogenesis. AA is about negating the effect of bias against groups, not making sure every individual is on equal footing. Because people in the position to hire are usually biased against groups, people in that group are made equal disadvantaged regardless of any other disparity. Which is basically what AA is seeking to address.
Well, no duh. AA isn’t meant to work on an individual level. It’s meant to counteract current biases and change the face of society at an accelerated pace rather than dithering about waiting for a more gradual sort of equality to work itself out. You might disagree with its goals or doubt its effectiveness towards them, but don’t set up strawman arguments against it.
Just because “random white guy” doesn’t have quite as much privilege as “random white rich fucker” isn’t an argument for him having so little privilege that he’s harmed by measures taken to remove the special benefit of that privilege. Of course, we’re not looking at “random white guy” but “random white guys.” Either “random white guys” aren’t reaping the benefit of their privilege and you can argue AA is unfair or they are gaining from privilege and AA isn’t hurting them, only removing that gain.
The belief is that forcing diversity for a little while will let us reach a point where it’s self-perpetuating and force is no longer necessary. Certainly there are valid criticisms of such a strategy, but your major problem with AA seem to be that it fails to counteract the effects of class. Supporting AA isn’t denying that economic disparity is a very real handicap for people looking to get better education and employment, but that’s not what AA is there to (try to) remedy.
This reminds me of the time the FRC conducted a poll. I heard about it via their mailing list. I don’t need to point out the obvious way in which this invalidates their poll.
A few days later, One News Now reported on the poll’s findings, implying that it was a representative sample of Americans.
I suspect this is going to be used for data-laundering – exactly the same trick again. Conduct a worthless poll like this one, then circulate the number as an isolated statistic and hope people forget it’s origin.
As you know, you can use [email protected] for an e-mail address. I also found that the first name field will take several words, such as “Equal rights not special rights”.
I had a severe case of SIWOTI, Benzion, after skimming your blog, but I’m not going to quote you. It was inappropriate of me to bring it up, and I take back what I said in #48.
A thorough reading of the U.S. Constitution and a study of U.S. history would hopefully allow one to see that affirmative action is not a special right but a special rectitude towards equal rights.
I also don’t agree that affirmative action is bigotry, although it can be blunt. It exists for an entirely different reason than forms of bigotry.
IST, my point was that the three-fifths compromise hangs over the heads of many people in a country that was supposedly founded on the principles of freedom, democracy and equality. In my reading of history, the reality is that the U.S. started with severe structural biases that favored certain types of people over others, and these biases linger on even today. But feel free to agree with the AFA, Benzion, and Walton that the real problem is special rights being handed out to minorities; in all likelihood you are on the winning side of the modern U.S. Supreme Court.
I wonder if anyone is going to look at those e-mails and responses or they are just going to be stored in a data bank and computer-analyzed.
My email address was [email protected]. And I responded “undecided” to all the questions because they were all so screwed.
Walton, when I worked at a large bank’s national computing centre (many years ago) there was precisely one manager who promoted women. When he left, they stopped moving up, even though they were a couple of the best managers in the place. They both eventually left for other companies where they had a chance of getting promoted.
At one point I worked in a small group of three specialists in a certain software package. There were two women and one man. The supervisor was a man, and he believed that his male subordinate was brilliant in his understanding of the software, while the females weren’t so good at it. That led to real perks, like who got to go to conferences. Eventually, the boss decided to quantify our knowledge so that we could get some remedial help, and we were tested. I got 95%; the other woman got 85%; and the “expert” man got 65%. The remedial plan was quietly dropped. It’s that kind of unconscious bias that affirmative action is supposed to counteract.
Similarly, in the U.S. for a particular action, a “black” person is twice as likely to be stopped by police than a “white” person; twice as likely to be arrested if stopped; twice as likely to be denied bail if arrested; and so on right through the process.
I’ve been told that the job I was applying for was “a man’s job;” that I was a good driver “for a woman,” and so on. One of my more interesting experiments was with driving. I was accustomed to a certain percentage of male drivers doing crazy and dangerous things to get back ahead of me if they fell behind while driving. After I cut my long hair so it wasn’t quite so obvious that I was a woman, the crazed re-passing stopped.
A study a few years ago in Sweden, surely a beacon of equality, found that female researchers had to publish FIVE TIMES as many papers to be thought equal to males. And a few years ago I overheard a male manager congratulating himself on talking a new hire, female, into taking the job for $20,000 less than she was worth.
When a job is advertised, there must be several or many people who could do it. It’s probably a soothing lie to tell someone they could have been hired that they could have had the job if not for affirmative action. It might even be half true. But ya know what? You’ve had years of affirmative action yourself. It’s time to spread it around a little.
I can see the attraction of affirmitive action and will concede that at times it may be the best option. However, I have also seen the downside of it. For example, in parts of Africa where apartheid was practiced, it is now Blacks who get preference, followed by Whites, with mixed-race people trailing well behind. They are still not getting any breaks.
Where I work now I am teaching high school material in an Adult Education college. I am supposed to be co-teaching a Grade 10 course with a person who was hired because he is of the same ethnic background as the majority of the community, which would be fine except that he has difficulty with Grade 8 material (I am talking about doing the material himself, not about teaching it). There have been complaints from the students that he can’t teach the course, but they will be ignored because he has the ‘right’ background.
I do not know of a single non-White teacher (about 90% of the teachers) at the nearby school who is qualified to teach beyond middle-years, yet they do. I have to deal with some of the output from the school and estimate most are at least 4 years below grade level. Somehow, this is supposed to increase the self-worth of the members of the community.
I still answering “yes the babble does condemn homosexuality” then clicking all the “pro-fag” answers…
Yeah, I looked into this website when someone brought it up in a previous discussion. I stopped when I got to AFA.
I’ll pass on the affirmative action slapfest.
A. Noyd:
Just because “random white guy” doesn’t have quite as much privilege as “random white rich fucker” isn’t an argument for him having so little privilege that he’s harmed by measures taken to remove the special benefit of that privilege. Of course, we’re not looking at “random white guy” but “random white guys.” Either “random white guys” aren’t reaping the benefit of their privilege and you can argue AA is unfair or they are gaining from privilege and AA isn’t hurting them, only removing that gain.
What he said. White people with their bullshit about “equality” and “reverse racism” need to deal with this honestly.
No more “I can’t believe I might not get a job, or a loan, or a contract, or into college, just because of my race!” US-resident members of racial minorities just have to accept this as a plausible outcome, every single time they apply.
Hang on a sec…
This website is called Silencing Christians. Its homepage features a video, in the very first scene of which an African-American Christian recounts how she was arrested. The video (and website) were evidently produced in the USA, a country with a large, historically oppressed, still generally disadvantaged, and largely devout Christian African-Americans.
I think I must have lost the plot here. Are they arguing for or against the notion that gays and lesbians should be given the same special rights which African-Americans evidently don’t have?
Yes, this stupid propaganda is the work of Donald Wildmon’s loony-bin American family association, which organises campaigns against any busineses donating to any gay organisation at all.
They’ve been trying to tout this video around to broadcasters – one TV channel booted it off of the schedule as soon as they realized what it was about, thankfully….
http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/02/11/8725#comments
“You obviously have a definition of privilege and entitlement with which I’ll never agree.”
Once again, that’s because you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. To accept the actual definition of privilege would mean you’d have to admit you’re not the poor put-upon boy you want to believe you are. It would require opening your eyes to the realities of other people. Which you won’t do because you’re privileged and don’t have to.
“Apart from the one experience, I don’t claim to be victim of anything; Sorry to burst that bubble.”
You did claim only one unfortunate experience. And then used that to claim you aren’t privileged. All because you really want to believe you’re the victim of AA policies.
That you could only come up with *ONE* unfortunate experience to disclaim privilege speaks volumes, btw.
@Mark#133:
Heh, did the same thing here, only I firebugged my way in to the poll. If they need my name, zip, and email that badly, they can do forensics on the IP.
Critics of affirmative action can too easily end up sounding like a fat Westerner complaining that African kids get free rice, whereas they have to pay for their hamburger…
I’m sure that the beneficiaries of affirmative action would much rather it didn’t need to exist, but what is the alternative? If there is any advantage given to individuals, then it has to be seen in the much broader context of the likely disadvantages that go along with the quirk of fate that is being born into a minority group.
I keep getting spam from the AFA, due to signing up as a Landover Baptist chapter while they were encouraging preachers to use their pulpits as political tools in violation of federal law. They apparently never realized there isn’t a werewolf in Georgia running a church created for the sole purpose of parody. It’s actually somewhat useful. They were babbling about Campbell’s soup supporting “teh ghey”, so I made a point of buying some Campbell’s soup last time I went shopping. :P
But congrats to the AFA for publicly admitting that they’re racist bastards. Morons whine about persecution, when they’re bigots who want to persecute anyone the slightest bit different from them. The projection is strong with these fuckwits.
@maleman and walton
You both attacked my post on the grounds that I was arguing in favour of affirmative action so I suppose I must not have made myself clear. While I do think AA is appropriate in some cases, it was not the purpose of my post to defend it, but rather to draw attention to the distinction between the right being protected and the measures we may adopt to protect those rights. My defense of AA was supposed to help clarify the distinction by making the standard case for why we might take such measures, but it seems to have only served to muddy the waters. Sorry about that.
I know it seems like splitting hairs to insist on recognizing this distinction, but I do find that conflating the two makes discourse on the subject difficult. ‘Rights’ are the sorts of things that we tend to think individuals have in equal measure and so as soon as we talk about the measures used to protect rights as though they were rights in and of themselves, they automatically seem unsavoury regardless of their merit. Everyone here is pretty much in agreement as to what rights we have and the importance of these rights. The debate should therefore be about whether some groups are systematically denied these rights and if so, then what if any measures should be taken to rectify the situation. The arguments about ‘special rights’ are just pointless distractions.
Aratina
While I am a theist, I am very strongly pro-evolution and anti creationism and even intelligent design. I am critical, for example, of Ben Stein’s documentary though I make some attempt to treat him charitably, maybe a bit too charitably, since I was a fan of his gameshow. I also acknowledge that Pharyngula’s emperor’s clothing argument has some validity when dealing with a crude version of the theist argument. I do think, though, that Pharyngula needs to brush up on his medieval and early modernist intellectual history. He is not a medievalist or an early modernist and should not pretend to be.
“affirmative action is not a special right but a special rectitude towards equal rights”
I think we are in a game of semantics here. For me special rights has nothing to do with right or wrong. There can be valid reasons why a group does get special rights so special rectitude would be included as a type of special right. What would the government have to do in your eyes in order to cross over into creating special rights for a group? Is it simply a matter of them doing something you disagree with?
A.Noyd and CPSmith. Thanks for the respectful responses. I know I am a bit trollish ;-)
A.Noyd:
My problem is, AA’s method of doing this is…by creating bias against (other) groups.
I disagree with your premise that people in a position to hire are usually biased against disadvantaged groups. Any evidence for this? I also disagree that there is any way to quantify “disadvantage”, let alone to say that all people from a given group are equally disadvantaged.
You agreed with me that AA isn’t concerned with specific individuals and their merits, and is more about changing the (colors of the) face of society. So how is my stating precisely that a strawman argument? Under this system, Obama’s kids are considered disadvantaged…because they are black. It really is a ham-handed and racist way to define who needs help and who gets it.
It is an argument for using economic factors instead of race. There are many, many upper class minorities who are far more advantaged than your “average white guy”. These upper class minorities end up being the primary beneficiaries of race based AA programs because they are the best positioned to do so. Again, I ask how this is better than using economic status?
CPSmith:
Again with the verbal contortions? Special Rights vs. Special Measure vs. Special Rectitude? I’ve studied the Constitution and U.S. History, so a general wave of your hand in its direction is not a justification for your position. Please point me to what sections of the Constitution you are talking about.
The dictionary definition of institutional racism is: “The differential access to goods, services, and opportunities of society based on race or ethnicity”. This differential access already exists and is harming minorities. Your measure to protect minority rights is to codify an opposing system of institutional racism to counteract this, but just until racial disharmony is behind us and then we will remove race based programs. Could we have an honest discussion about whether this plan contains a contradiction in its goal and its method, or if it is even feasible? Can you explain why this is better than using economic status?
Bernard Bummer:
Use economic status.
Blue Fielder:
Did the “man” steal your lollipop when you were a baby or something? Your posts make it sound like you never got over it. Anyone who disagrees with you is a unemployed, whiny-ass entitlement baby brat, right? Dude, I’m Atheist, Iranian-American, my name is damn near impossible to pronounce, and I live in East Texas! I get shit from the people who hate the “Ay-Rabs”, shit from the Church people, and shit from the idiots who think I’m Mexican because I’m brown. It hasn’t given me the victim mentality that you seem to wield as both sword and shield, so please go get another lollipop and get over yourself.
Another poll on the Speechless video:
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Poll.aspx?ekfrm=418556
What’s the primary reason that some TV stations are refusing to air ‘Speechless: Silencing the Christians’?
They fear reaction from homosexual activists – 42.41%
They fear potential loss of ad revenue – 19.15%
They do not like programs from a Christian perspective – 33.61%
They feel their viewers will not be interested – 2.48%
Other – 2.35%
Oh great. I just got spam from “Onenewsnow” about “Secular stations suppressing Christian TV special”.
Damn, I should have used a fake email address.
Maleman: you seem to be confusing individual rights with group rights.
When you talk about AA giving Obama’s kids prefernce over some poor white kids – you are playing a very racist card. there are some rich/privileged black folks – see look there – there thay are!
The whole point of A is that minorities have been systematically marginalized: in both entry to the workforce, and in promotion within.
Anecdotes about where an AA influenced hire was capable of doing the job will not cut it – because AA says nothing about hiring incompetents. It merely states that your hiring policies must not show bias – neither in the ‘outreach’ (advertising jobs in KKK weekly is not a reasonable approach) nor in the selection process (criteria should be reasonable and consistently applied – protected classes should not be a factor in selection).
If you can demonstrate that lack of bias your organization has nothing to fear regarding AA. The fact that many organizations HAVE hired people who do not have the requisite qualifications merely suggests that their practices WERE structurally biased, such that the only way they can ensure passing the AA litmus test is to hire enough minorities to hide behind.
Your anecdotes (as well as that of Glyn) are more supportive of the structural need for AA rather than for its abolishment.
@maleman
Well, that first quote wasn’t me. That was the person who posted after me. I’m a Canadian and I really cannot claim to know much about the American constitution. I do agree with the sentiment though. The policies we use to protect rights are not the rights themselves. Policies can change and we can argue about whether or not they are effective or appropriate. Rights on the other hand, tend to be fairly solid and are not generally thought to be subject to change. I know I am probably being waaaay to anal retentive on this point, but sometimes specificity just makes understanding one another easier.
As for the use of economic status, I think that is an interesting idea and I think it would be neat to see if it could work. However, I don’t quite see how it is different from AA in principle, and I suspect that trying to implement any policies based on it would be fraught with all the same perils as AA. What kind of policies would you advocate?
Tony, you seem to be confusing group privilege with individual privilege. Race-based AA helps the individual in the disadvantaged group with the most privilege at the expense of the individual in the advantaged group with the least privilege.
What is racist is your inability to understand that someone’s race is a foolish and ham-handed way to determine the level of hardship and disadvantage that person has experienced, particularly when economic status is a much better indicator. Obama’s kids were just an anecdotal example to illustrate that well-positioned minorities are the most likely to benefit from race-based programs, and disadvantaged whites bear the burden on behalf of the privileged members of their race because, well, you have decided there are just too many of certain types of people.
What is racist is your assumption that whites are a homogeneous group full of interchangeable individuals that have over-saturated society and must be handicapped. Nevermind that “white” encompasses a large variety of people outside of the silver-spoon WASPS that seem to be the target of these programs.
The irony is that you call me a racist while you push for institutionalized race-based programs, all while ignoring the question of why economic-based AA is not better. If you are not a racist, tell me then why you insist on using race as a measure of disadvantage instead of economic status, when economic status has been repeatedly shown through scientific study to correlate to your future success better than race.
Sadly, you can’t. You are racist, and really so is everyone who is in favor of race-based AA. If only you had the intellectual honesty to state “yes, I am racist, but against the right group for the right reasons and using the right methods, then we could start to have an honest debate about those points. As-is, all I see are verbal gymnastics and logical fallacies.
As a gay man, I thank you for being irate about the AFA’s bullshit. Or as I call them, ever since Jon Stewart said it… FAMBLA.
Re: Benzion
You may have noticed that special rights dealing with race are almost uniformly negative in their implementation: People of Group A can’t do this because of X, giving everyone not in Group A a special right. Theocracies, oligarchies, monarchies and dictatorships, however, tend to give their ideology and leaders special rights that are positive in implementation by insisting that everyone fall in line with those ideals and worship whichever charlatan happens to be ruling at the time.
I would define what rights are based on the ideals of the United States democracy and secular humanism. I don’t see how you can call affirmative action a “right” by any stretch of the imagination. It isn’t elevating one group over another, it is eliminating the disparity between groups–a disparity that has no place in our democracy. (Side note: morality has been discussed on Pharyngula before, here.)
Re: Maleman,
I’m pointing you to Article 1 section 2. I’m talking about slavery, lynch mobs, the Civil War, Jim Crow, Loving v. Virginia, Bloody Sunday, Brown v. Board of Education, etc. ad nauseum. It isn’t handwaving.
Maleman (#144)
That could have been more clear. I meant, if they are biased, it’s against groups rather than individuals. Something of a truism, I suppose, but the point is that the person in power will apply bias without regards to anything that might be unique to the situation of a particular individual, thus in this particular cicumstance individuals with other sorts of advantages will suffer equally from the bias.
It’s merely not the level that AA is working on. You’re still trying to get AA to address all of the systematic disadvantage in society. Or rather, criticizing it for failing to do something it wasn’t meant to do alone. Its goal is to eradicate disparities caused by gender- or race-based bias, nothing more.
Are you saying that because of their economic status and the prestige of their father’s job, Obama’s kids could never be passed over for a job because they’re black or female? That they could never face discrimination in being promoted for the same? Seriously? Maybe they get to go to great schools and have a better shot at good jobs, but do you really think that discrimination has no effect for women and minorities higher up the social ladder? That it’s okay to let racist or sexist hiring and promotion policies fester somewhere because a middle class black woman is better off than a white man living below the poverty line?
If you want to argue that systems to promote parity concentrating on economic factors would be more effective towards eradicating systematic racism, fine. But you’d have to make a compelling case for it. AA is pretty clear in its priorities. Again, keep in mind that AA is not a “fix all.” Obviously economic disparity is real, obviously there needs to be systems put in place to help eradicate the disadvantage that comes from poverty, etc. However, I fail to see how anything you’ve brought up shows that AA works against this.
Can you explain why this isn’t a false dichotomy?
(#149)
Except, this isn’t what AA does!
Because race (and gender, etc.) does act as a factor of disadvantage. Recognizing it doesn’t make one a racist unless one thinks it a good thing. It’s a measure. Not the measure. There is no “instead of.”
A.Noyd, Thank you for your well thought out response.
I guess the issue I have the most trouble overcoming is if the goal is “to eradicate disparities caused by gender- or race-based bias”, the method to do this is not a sweeping “bonus” to racial or gender groups. It really just goes against everything I believe regarding equality. Other than that, it just fails in its goal. I will admit it does bother me that a middle class black woman will benefit over a poor white guy solely because of race. It just feels out and out wrong. And for the record, no, I do not believe the Obama girls will experience any measurable disadvantage in their careers. If anything, they’ll have life handed to them.
And yet, which two presidential daughters had beanie babies made in their likeness and named after them? Has such a thing ever happened before? Racism is so ingrained in our society that we can’t even see it most of the time.
I spend 3 months a year in Downtown San Francisco, where I grew up and 9 months a year in Bible Belt East Texas where I work and go to school. In SF it was Obama hats, shoes, etc. In Texas it was Sarah Palin and Joe the Fucking Plumber clothes, beer coozies, and other assorted crap (I guess no one wants McCain’s jowels on a tank top?). Click this link if you are brave of heart (SFW)
I think they sold more merchandise for this election than all other elections put together.It really just felt like people trying to make a quick buck, and this beanie baby thing might be of the same vein.
Maleman (#153)
So you don’t think that white males get a sweeping bonus of their own that they benefit from? Or you think that putting everyone on artifically equal footing in regards to gender- or race-based benefits is ineffective towards that goal?
She doesn’t. She benefits over a poor white guy due to class disparity. She is at a disadvantage compared to the white men in her class bracket because of race and gender discrimination. A poor black woman would be at a disadvantage compared to a poor white guy. That level of disadvantage and only that is what AA is supposed to remedy; it’s a solution to a particular problem.
Now is that because the prestige of their father’s position offsets any racism or sexism they might face or because discrimination simply doesn’t affect children of presidents? While you might be able to argue the former, consider that Obama only gets a limited number of years in office and that benefits his children gain are temporary at best. What’s to protect them from racism and sexism later? And would you argue that Obama’s children are equally advantaged compared to the white children of white presidents? If so, I suppose the true solution to creating a color-blind society would be to simply elect everyone president!
Aratina
You offer a reasonable definition though you are choosing to put a negative slant on the issue of special rights which one has no need to do. The difficulty is that there is a very thin line between making things equal and giving one group an advantage. Who gets to decide where to draw the line between righting an economic injustice and giving a group an advantage? Is it fair that an African American from the same middle class background as I am should have affirmative action just because he is black? What things should count for affirmative action? I have Asperger Syndrome. People “discriminate” against me because I do not behave like a normal person. Should I get affirmative action? If you have not gone through life with Asperger Syndrome than you are in no place to judge my pain and weigh it against that of other people. Someone once called the cops on me because they thought my Asperger behavior was threatening. Why is that different than “driving while black?”
Why stop at just affirmative action? What about economic injustice? Do you want the government to even the playing field in terms of wealth? I grew up going to a school with a lot of children from wealthier families than mine. I am dating myself here, but my parents did not have the money to get me a Nintendo NES or, as I got older, a Sega Genesis or a Super Nintendo. My parents never held major birthday parties for me. I was socially left out and “traumatized” because my friends had these things and I did not. (You may laugh at this and I may laugh at this now but when I was a kid I shed many tears over this and felt very alienated.) Should the government have stepped in and “equalized” the situation.
“morality has been discussed on Pharyngula before, here”
I am not sure why you are mentioning the issue of morality. I did not bring it up. I believe that an atheist can be moral so morality and atheism is not an issue for me. I would argue that moral statements gain a coherency that they would otherwise lack if you assume some sort of deity. For example when I say that clergymen who cheat on their taxes or on their wives are doing something wrong I mean something more than just I personally find it objectionable. I mean that they have violated some sort of universal moral law of practice what you preach. Of course once I admit the existence of some universal moral law than I am faced with the issue of whether there is some sort of universal law giver.
Well, they haven’t asked for money yet, but I got a spam email from them with links to 30 christian and right wing blogs and “news” sites.
If autonomy of person (or allowing other people to live their private, unharmful lives the way they want to) doesn’t prevail, than this leaves the possiblility of Catholicism being legally prohibited alongside homosexuality. The Christian-right don’t get this …
Benzion N. Chinn (#157)
Yes, because AA is not giving him an advantage over you, it’s giving him as much of an advantage as you have from being white. (I’m assuming you are from the way you pose the question.) It might not seem that way on a 1 vs. 1 basis, but that’s how it’s meant to work.
The difference is that your neighbor was reacting to your actions. People pulled over for “driving while black” are not being targeted for misinterpreted abnormal behavior, but because someone sees them behaving normally and believes that they are doing something criminal because they are black. This doesn’t make your neighbor right for doing what he did, but it’s not the same at all.
I mean, I’d be justified in moving across the street if a person walking towards me was screaming obscenities and punching the air, even if they were harmless. I couldn’t know their intentions, but aggressive behavior is generally good to avoid. On the other hand, if the person walking towards me wasn’t acting aggressively but was black and that’s why I moved, then I’d be acting on racism and I wouldn’t be justified. See the difference?
Why would combating one preclude the other? AA merely has the potential to right certain economic injustices where they are linked to gender- or race-based discrimination. But who says we need an all-in-one fix to all forms of disparity? Don’t be ridiculous.
Re: Benzion,
I’m really sorry and it was wrong of me to assume so much about you. I have a cousin with Asperger syndrome and my coworker’s son has it and I have heard firsthand how difficult it is for people with Asperger syndrome to get others to listen and not have them freak out over miscommunications (like the person did who called the cops on you and like I did). I think Asperger syndrome would fit best under the category of disability, don’t you? And it would be reasonable to get it recognized nationally as such.
Absolutely, I think more should be done to eliminate poverty in America, unfortunately anything other than handing over money to religious charlatans is labeled socialism. Can’t we tax people with incomes over $1 million at more than 50%? Why not?
As for childhood situations like the one you describe, the social disparity does not constitute neglect per se and so does not necessitate government intervention. Although, some bold social programs would probably help children in similar situations quite a bit by raising the standard of living all around, as would a universal healthcare system.
Human rights are inextricably linked to systems of morality, which had been discussed here before and I wasn’t sure if you had considered morality aside from religion.
In rereading my earlier post (157) I think I could have worded it better. Keep in my mind that my interest here is not to support or oppose affirmative action, but whether it fits as a type of special privilege and what does a special privilege means. There is a difference in how I define special privilege and how others do. I believe that it is important to focus in specific issues within their technical context. This stops one from turning every issue into a meta-struggle of worldly importance where one’s opponents become the forces of darkness. For example the issue of how to define special privilege and whether affirmative action counts as such is different from whether to support affirmative action. The issue of affirmative action in turn is different from whether you support tolerance and oppose bigotry.
If one defines special privilege as putting someone above someone else than one is faced with the problem of who gets to define whether things are equal or not. Particularly since we are dealing with issues of non physical suffering being balanced out with very physical benefits. So for example A.Noyd thinks that the benefits of affirmative action are a fair exchange for the benefits of being white. That is a fair opinion though if I had the choice of exchanging my skin color for affirmative action I would make the swap. There is no objective way of deciding which of us are right. All we can do is to play the John Rawls game and ask individuals what they would choose if they were given the choice. Since different people would make different choices affirmative action would end up as both an equalizer and a special privilege (even under Aratina’s definition) depending on the person in question.
I think Aratina hit the nail on the head when she said that special privileges are something that those seeking power give to their supporters as the spoils of victory in order to maintain support. So where does affirmative action fit in this picture, particularly when we choose to take one particular type of mental suffering , being black in a white dominated society and having to put up with explicit and implicit racism, as opposed to other types of mental suffering, having Asperger syndrome in a neurotypical society or being lower middle class child without a Nintendo in an upper middle class society? Can it be that white liberals give blacks affirmative action as the spoils of victory in exchange for their support? People with Asperger syndrome or who are lower middle class are not known to lean particularly to one political side so no one is going to give them any spoils of victory.
This is not to say that affirmative action is either good or bad. Just that it might still fit as a special privilege even under Aratina’s definition. At the end of the day I still win since you cannot rule out my definition of special privilege which would make the original question about homosexuals a valid one. Should homosexuals get affirmative action?
A.Noyd. Here is a fuller version of the incident I was referring to. (http://izgad.blogspot.com/2008/10/being-part-of-disabled-community-versus_20.html) What happened was a lot more subtle than you think. It was not a matter of me yelling and shouting but simply me raising my voice and waving my hands in a theatrical manner. So this really is not any different from a black man minding his own business in a white neighborhood and somebody getting suspicious and calling the cops.
Aratina. Thank you for your words of support. You have nothing to apologize for. You have been very civil with me and I have no complaints against you. I do not view Asperger syndrome as a disability, it helps me be a better historian. I have an advantage when it comes to dealing with texts. Think of it as playing basketball and being six inches taller. Having Asperger syndrome does mean that I am a member of a minority group and that it is easy for people to misjudge me based on their preconceived values.
Do you realize how incredibly patronizing that assumption is? Why on earth would you assume that AA is something doled out to the poor, suffering black person? First, it’s not something white men give to everyone else; it’s something all supporters demand and put in place. Second, the person receiving AA still has to rely on their own abilities to succeed; they are merely no longer impeded by racism/sexism in their struggle to do so. Third, it implies that white men get to somehow keep their position of power (or what else would the motive be for gaining support?) when the entire point is to put everyone on equal footing.
I don’t know that I can get you to understand the difference between someone misjudging actual behavior and someone prejudging a person regardless of behavior. “Neurotypical” is called that because it’s the typical mode of reasoning and emotional perception. The problems you face arise from people attributing that default “normal” status to you–the opposite of what other minorities face.
You were doing something that in a neurotypical person would be signs of aggression. What you want is for people to make a special case for you. Now, that’s perfectly reasonable provided you don’t mind being categorized as an Aspie and you enlighten them ahead of time so they realize that they have to apply different mental rules when interpreting your behavior. But you can’t reasonably expect those unaware of your situation to relax their definition of aggressive behavior since correctly identifying aggression in neurotypical antagonists is something crucial to their personal safety.
You are not seen as behaving normally because you do behave in a significantly different fashion than most people. That difference is not imagined nor arbitrary. In the case of racial minorities, the difference is both imaginary and arbitrary because people expect those of other races to be inherently different based on prejudice. People need awareness of your differences rather than blindness towards them in order to give you equal treatment.
Should you get AA? Well, AA is a systematic approach to combating systematic injustice. If you can make a case that you and others with Asperger’s are systematically disadvantaged, then it might be helpful to you, but otherwise, it’s not going to do you a whole lot of good.
A. Noyd
I did not mean to come across as patronizing. If I did than I apologize. At the end of the day, and I think that most non-white liberals would agree with me on this one, the Democratic Party and by extension mainstream liberalism is still in the hands of whites, President Obama or no President Obama. Affirmative action still depends on this white liberal establishment in order to happen. I think one of the ironies of affirmative action and multiculturalism in general is that they do not do as much to change the status quo as one might expect. The status quo of white males is still alive and healthy even on the left. They just have to now sprinkle some women and minorities in, but one can simply find ones who are for all intents and purposes white males. (Sen. Clinton and President Obama I think are great examples of this) I recognize that affirmative action is not a ticket to easy street. It is simply something that a reasonably intelligent and talented person could use help smooth things along.
The line between behavior and prejudging someone can be quite vague. That black man I see wearing “gangsta” clothing and driving a Cadillac Escalade through my white neighborhood looks a bit suspicious; he might be a drug dealer or otherwise up to no good. Let me call the cops. I think we would both agree that such an attitude is a sign of prejudice. That being said one is focusing on behavior here, the cloths, the car and the neighborhood being driven through.
Benzion N. Chinn (#164)
I think you’re selling short all those minority voters who are the ones who, by their choices at the polls, actually decide the face of “mainstream liberalism.”
You could as easily argue that the “white liberal establishment” depends on minority voters in order to exist at all. Also, a lot of those white faces are increasingly female, which is not something to ignore. And it’s your own cynicism that requires all politicians to be in it for themselves or in it to maintain the status quo such that any work they do to enhance equality can only be a handout in exchange for being put into power.
The man in your example is not behaving in a threatening or dangerous manner, he is merely wearing clothes and driving a car. There is nothing inherently threatening or dangerous about him. Stereotyping is required for your mind to see his perfectly normal behavior as worthy of suspicion.
In contrast, when someone is, in your own words, “bearing down on” you while speaking loudly and gesticulating, it is not stereotyping to interpret this as aggression. While there are some culturally determined factors in the matter (how close the other person must be and how loud they speak before you feel indimidated), it is not prejudice but some more rudimentary compulsion that would cause nearly any neurotypical to react this way.
Your situation, however, makes a wonderful case for how a special measure would not make for a special right. It would not be wrong of you to request that, once informed of your behavioral quirks, people around you make an exception for you and adjust how they judge your behavior. (It would be wrong to expect it out of people who have no way to know what your behavior really means.) So by being granted special measures, you are treated as an equal.