Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!ginosko!usc!aero!gazit@lear.cs.duke.edu
From: gazit@lear.cs.duke.edu (Hillel Gazit)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Is Affirmative Action Sexist?
Message-ID: <15828@duke.cs.duke.edu>
Date: 21 Oct 89 20:04:42 GMT
References: <8910200344.AA29498@uunet.uu.net>
Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Reply-To: gazit@cs.duke.edu (Hillel)
Organization: The Piranha Club
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Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org

In article <8910200344.AA29498@uunet.uu.net>  writes:

>However, as one begins to think about the problem, there
>are certain taboos.  For instance, one can conclude that, 
>in a highly competitive society which also maintains rights 
>of inheritance and other strong familial connnections, it 
>is almost certain that inequality between categories of 
>families will persist for many generations.  

Let's assume that what you say is true (fat chance...) do you
see the main stream of feminism as part of the solution?
If not, how do you see the main stream of feminism?

>much.  Most specifically, the power of existing elites may 
>not be seriously disturbed.

The poor Jews who came 60 years ago succeeded in the American society.
The asians refugees who come today seem to have a similar success.
But people who know all the political theory can ignore these facts...

>Thus the affirmative action solution: if the figures are wrong 
>for one disadvantaged group, change the figures, more or less 
>by force, at the expense of another disadvantaged group.  For

We agree.

>whose prospects were already somewhat limited.  In the case
>of racial discrimination, this may in fact solve the problem,

Did you check the situation in black ghettos 20 years after AA was initiated?

>itself unfair.  But there is probably no other solution given 
>the requirement of avoiding the taboos, which protect a kind of 
>inherent "unfairness" in the situation as a whole.

Please present your solution, and tell us all what it has to do with feminism.

>Thus, the surface fix which may work for racial minorities may 
>not work for women, because it demands acceptance of an existing 
>structure of things which some of them may be unwilling, or 
>unable, to accept.

Would mind to start writing *clearly*?  
How many is "some of them"?  What can't women accept?

>This brings me around the the question of whether affirmative
>action on behalf of women is a form of sexism.  Some people
>say that any difference of thought or treatment of another 
>based on the other's gender, other than in sexual and 
>reproductive matters, is sexism -- in other words, women are 
>men whose bodies are shaped somewhat differently, and to think 
>or act otherwise is to be a sexist.  In this case, affirmative 
>action is non-sexist, since it assumes all that need be done is 

\begin{sarcasm}
Whites are blacks whose skin color is somewhat different.
Therefore discrimination against blacks is not racist.
\end{sarcasm}

Hillel                                         gazit@cs.duke.edu

"People who can't address real issues in any coherent fashion resort to
analogies...and usually incredibly *bad* ones..." ---  Diane Holt