Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lanl.ARPA
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!lanl!crs
From: crs@lanl.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Discrimination and Affirmative Action
Message-ID: <27181@lanl.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 13-Jun-85 09:52:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: lanl.27181
Posted: Thu Jun 13 09:52:11 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Jun-85 09:13:07 EDT
References: <sphinx.566> <338@unc.UUCP> <337@mhuxr.UUCP> <219@kontron.UUCP> <344@mhuxr.UUCP>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 47

> > When it came time for me to go off
> > to school, the University of California managed to find plenty of money
> > for scholarships for "minority youth".  In a color-blind environment,
> > I would have gotten a scholarship also.  In 1973, my parents combined
> > income was $4700 a year (just below the poverty line); I graduated 28th 
> > in a graduating class of > 980; my SAT Scores were 700 and 690; and yet 
> > the people that administered scholarships at UCLA didn't think I needed 
> > any help.  If race wasn't a factor, I'm not sure who the scholarships 
> > were going to.
> 
> You of course know your own situation better than I, but let me
> point out that there are scholarship funds with strings attached; in
> othe words, the university may not have had one large pool of scholarship
> money available. Besides, other considerations than grades and need
> are used in awarding scholarship.
> 
> Besides, you obviously did manage to get to college; you probably
> succeeded in graduating and now hold, from all appearances, a quite decent
> job. I fail to see how you were *hurt* by the University of California's
> AA program (if such was indeed the reason you were denied a scholarship.)
> 
> Marcel Simon

I thought we were talking about fairness and nondiscrimination, not
about whether a particular individual can *manage*.  To use this line
of reasoning, why do we need affirmative action, EEO or any of the
other institutions that this discussion is about?  If the person in
the earlier of the two quotes can do it why don't we just say that
anyone else can do it and get rid of EEO and AA?

This is, obviously, not an acceptable approach to any who *benefit*
from AA and EEO so why should it be an acceptable approach to the
person above who, it seem to me, *was* hurt by it?  Hurt in the same
sense as a person who doesn't get a deserved salary increase or
promotion is hurt.  One can only conjecture about how the individual
managed, if indeed he (?) did, to graduate, etc as assumed in the
second quote, but it seems reasonable the it was by virtue of a lot of
work *while* going to school.  To say that he was not hurt by being
denied a scholarship is to say that he would not have benefitted by
having the time spent working either to study or just to relax.  I'm
afraid that I think that is bullshit!

Charlie
-- 
Charlie Sorsby
...!{cmcl2,ihnp4,...}!lanl!crs
crs@lanl.arpa