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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.women
Subject: Re: Re: Discrimination and Affirmative Action
Message-ID: <238@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 13-Jun-85 18:19:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.238
Posted: Thu Jun 13 18:19:26 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 15-Jun-85 07:56:06 EDT
References: <566@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>, <478@hou2g.UUCP> <174@luke.UUCP> <191@ubvax.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
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Xref: watmath net.politics:9411 net.women:5822

> First, I have never understood why attempts to raise the probability of
> social peace and help the advancement of some need to be justified as
> "attempts to enforce equity".  The only reason I can see for the debate
> to be posed on a moral plane of "justice" is because historically in the US
> struggles for civil rights have mostly been fought in the courts.
> 
> There's something implicit in this moral debate that if AA isn't a means
> of "enforcing equity", whatever that means, then it shouldn't be pursued as
> policy.  Rhetoric aside, the work that needs to be done to assuage (note,
> I don't say "rectify") a historical crime (cultural-institutional racism
> backed by law and custom) has no NECESSARY relationship to equity at all.
> 
If "equity" and "justice" aren't the reason for affirmative action, then
what is?  Just an amoral grasping for power?

> The only reason equity is in the debate is that lawyers have to mangle
> issues in order to collect fees for disentangling issues, that lawyers
> get far too much respect in the US, and because civil rights had to be
> defended in the legal arena because they couldn't be defended anywhere
> else -- a sad comment on the US.  And there equity was a useful buzzword.
> 
Civil rights are defended in the legal arena because civil rights are
protections from the government.

> And recently, equity's in the debate because a new legal principle has arisen --
> that any policy not backed by the full weight of American moral and political
> theology is a bad policy.  That the weight of this theology was designed by
> the Founding Fathers to be obstructionist to the oppressed and expeditious to
> the "worthy" makes me question both the new "principle" and its politics.
> 
I suggest that you do a little reading about the Constitutional Convention
debates.  Much of the dispute about how to hamstring the government was
*not* fear of the poor (which was discussed as a possibility and dismissed
as unlikely) but fear that ambitious and power-mad aristocrats would 
use the lower classes as dupes to amass power and wealth for these same
aristocrats.  Certainly this century demonstrates that their concerns are
real --- the totalitarians have risen to power mostly because of the votes
of working class people who honestly believed they were going to be given
a fair shake.

> Another thing that amazes me about this debate is the lack of challenge
> that the US system gives to the Orwellian rights of "freedom to work"
> (remember "arbeit macht frei"?), "freedom to hire", and "freedom to
> promote".  Why should any society give EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYERS ALONE the
> right to set up a social dictatorship answerable to none?  Isn't that what
> all of these "freedoms" mean?  Isn't that Orwell?
> 
The phrase "arbeit macht frei" (hung over the entrance to one of the
concentration camps) means "work makes you free".  It's quite a stretch
to link that the idea of "freedom to work".  As for social dictatorship
of employers: that's bunk.  Employment is definitely a two-way street,
with employers sometimes having the upper hand, and employees sometimes
having the upper hand.  It sounds like you would prefer a dictatorship
of the proletariat.

> People take their Orwellian rights seriously, by the evidence of this
> debate.  Arguments like "I resent any RULE that restricts my freedom to
> hire" are believed by many in here to be a positive argument against
> affirmative action.  Incredible.  So you resent it.  So what.  The only
> reason anyone should empathize is because they too dream of being an employer
> someday and want just the same freedom -- the freedom to be a little Big
> Brother.  Or a little sexist.  Or a little racist.  It freaks me out.
> 
No.  We say, "leave us alone, and we will leave you alone."  You are the
one with the Big Brother desires, because you want to involve the government
in a relationship between employer and employee.  I am not a racist, or a
sexist.  I don't want to government telling employers what they can and
can't do in this area simply because promoting racism is intrinsically
evil. 

> The last argument made in the AA debate that I will never understand is
> that "either the whole thing has to hold together or it should be canned."
> Why?  If it's not perfect, piss on it?  Why?
> 
> I read this AA debate (intermittently), and I think I must come from another
> planet.
> 
> Tony Wuersch
> {amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw

You're right, you come from another planet.  Perhaps you should read
Orwell's _1984_ again --- I think you managed to miss the whole point of the
book --- absolute power corrupts.