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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.politics
Subject: Re: Discrimination and AA
Message-ID: <483@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Jun-85 16:39:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.483
Posted: Tue Jun 11 16:39:03 1985
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Geoff Sherwood writes:

> If you pursue racist policies against racists, it is still racism.

So what?  This is what I have repeatedly asked without getting a
straight answer.  Supposing that affirmative action is "racism"
according to your favorite definition of the term, how does that
prove that AA is wrong?  (When the US fought Nazi violence in WW2
with violence, it was still violence.  Was the US morally wrong to do
so?  Did we believe that "the end justifies the means"?)  But to look
for a rational argument here is to miss the point.  The only reasons
I can discern that net-posters keep saying that "AA = racism" are:
(1) to score debating points on the net (no difficult task), and (2)
to annoy liberals.  To quote Ayn Rand out of context:  "Philosophy:
who needs it?"

> 'The ends justifies
> the means' is the argument that such things are justified, and has 
> justified some of the most atrocious things. 

Another instance of being attacked for something one did not say.
Careful readers will have noted that I never claimed that the
intention of eliminating racism is sufficient to justify any and all
actions taken with that end in view.  Nor do I know of anyone who
believes this.

Richard Carnes