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someone is mad because they lost out to a competitor from a minority.maybe you all got the reason for affirmative action wrong. it's not there because we're trying to apologize for our wrongs to them. it's there because they haven't had a chance to thrive, thanks to our oppressive racism against them all of these years. we're giving them a little advantage now, so that they might be able to make up for all those years that they haven't had a chance to succeed because of us. no, it's not an apology. it's debt repayment. what's the difference between those two? an apology doesn't do squat for either the person on the giving end or the receiving end; if i smashed your nose in, and said sorry, would that make any difference as to the fact that your face is now a bloody pulp? no; therefore, an apology is, for all practical purposes, unproductive. however, if you went to court after i punched your nose, and say, got $500,000 out of me (hey, it's America), then would that help someone? of course! that money is going to pay for your plastic surgery, money that you would otherwise have had to pay out of your own pockets.
the parallel i'm trying to draw is that, NO! we are not doing this affirmative action to say "sorry for treating you like crap," we are doing it so that they have a better chance to rise out of the horrid social conditions that we ourselves created for them. all of the vice - or rather, the excess vice, the excess of crime that is apparent when the black community is compared with others - have one way or another been caused by white oppression of blacks in general. now, today, that oppression might not exist at all, but nevertheless, the oppressive social conditions created for them by whites have shaped the stereotypical black community in the past so that now, they have long since accepted it as a way of life even without white oppression present. and that is the white debt to the blacks - it is up to the whites to make up for the oppression that blacks endured; not to raise unqualified blacks up into the high ranks of society, but rather to provide them with the opportunity to make themselves qualified enough to enter said high ranks of society. affirmative action aims to do just that, providing blacks with an advantage to counteract the obvious disadvantage they are at today (the social conditions in which they live make it hard for the average black person to receive and utilize a good education, and consequently to land a job).
maybe you're a little naive, but the Civil Rights Movement did absolutely nothing in the way of how some whites viewed blacks. sure, it equalized the legal footing on which whites and blacks stand, but is that going to have any weight on the decision of an employer, a boss of his own company, to hire a white or black employee?
and how do you think those blacks got on the streets? let's take a quick overview, starting from the late 1800s. end of the civil war, blacks have officially been freed, but conditions haven't changed much for them. although they have experienced some reforms, by the 1960s, blacks are still very much down in the slums. things like alcoholism, drug use, street violence, and the hostility of whites have largely restricted them to the lower classes of society. why did alcoholism and drug use become so popular? let's see. you can't get a decent education. you can't get a job. one of your parents has either been beaten, lynched, or works in a lowly position serving a white person/family (a job which he/she can't get out of, because he/she has to feed the family). you have no idea when your next meal is. and it's not like the police or government wants to take care of you, because you're black. you have absolutely nowhere to turn to, no way to actually make something of yourself. plus, you weren't even educated of the fact that alcoholism and drug use will ruin you (although you've probably observed that from the people around you). you're in total despair, and you drink/snort to forget. why was violence so popular? simple. if you're starving (literally), and you see some guy (who seems to display at least some kind of sign of wealth) walk down the street, chances are that you will try to steal from or mug him. or it could be that you're so enraged at the conditions offered to you by whites that you assaulted him (presuming the victim was a white man) out of anger.
whatever it might be, this continuous cycle of despair has been a legacy of the black community that lasts still today, because each generation has grown up in a community in which all they see is the poor conditions and the despair, and the people that they grow up admiring are gangsters and drug dealers. it's a chain effect that the white started over a decade ago.
which, again, brings us to the fact that affirmative action should exist, not as a way of saying sorry, but as a way of making right a wrong that we helped to cause.
you probably didn't bother to read all of that. then again, you probably don't read much at all, if you're into complaining about affirmative action and how it gives blacks such an unfair advantage.
This post has been edited by Kaezion: 25 December 2005 - 06:45 AM
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