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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.flame
Subject: Re: Discrimination
Message-ID: <213@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 10-Jun-85 01:52:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.213
Posted: Mon Jun 10 01:52:57 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 11-Jun-85 05:39:46 EDT
References: <354@iham1.UUCP>, <250@spar.UUCP> <3779@alice.UUCP> <463@rtech.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
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Xref: watmath net.women:5689 net.flame:10435

> > I'm a white male (last time I looked), and the one notable thing
> > about my early education (both home, in a lesser way, and school,
> > in a major way) was that I was urged to follow my father into the
> > steel mills, since THAT WAS MY PLACE IN LIFE.  Gee, doesn't that
> > sound like discrimination?
> > 
> > OK, given that I (and, I'm sure, many other white males) have
> > been just as discriminated against (national origin counts
> > as much as race in some places, Michael) why do I have to
> > be DISCRIMINATED AGAINST by AA agenda.  
> > Why do I get put into last place on all sorts of lists just 
> > because I'm white and male?   (I seem to have learned how to
> > deal with that, but I shouldn't HAVE to deal with it at all, damnit!)
> 
> You were discriminated against, but not because you are a white male.
> It was because you were the son of a steelworker, and some people think
> that no one who comes from your background has any brains.  I wouldn't
> be opposed to AA in favor of people who were discriminated against in
> this way.  Now, you may say that you overcame this discrimination without
> AA, and so others should be able to, also.  I say that you sound like
> an exception, just as blacks and women who were able to overcome discrimination
> before the AA laws and other anti-discrimination laws were exceptions.
> 
I don't think this is so exceptional, going from being a steelworker's
son to a professional career; *my* father worked in construction as a 
welder.  I would suggest that a lot of people have managed to overcome
prejudice.

> > (ihnp4/allegra)!alice!jj
> -- 
> Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
> aka Swazoo Koolak
> 
> {amdahl, sun}!rtech!jeff
> {ucbvax, decvax}!mtxinu!rtech!jeff

If affirmative action were operated based on socioeconomic status, it
would be hard for me to get terribly angry at it --- unfortunately,
affirmative action is based on race, sex, and national origins, and
assuming that *all* blacks, women, and Hispanics (among others) have
been culturally and economically disadvantaged, and this is simply
not so.

You may recall what motivated the Bakke suit against the University
of California was that a number of positions in the medical school
had been reserved for people based on race, even though this was
supposed to be in recognition of socioeconomic disadvantage.