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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.politics
Subject: Re: Discrimination and AA
Message-ID: <496@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Jun-85 17:00:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.496
Posted: Thu Jun 20 17:00:27 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Jun-85 02:31:56 EDT
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
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Xref: watmath net.women:5971 net.politics:9495

The discussion on affirmative action tends to get lost in a tangle of
abstractions.  Diego Gonzalez makes a valuable contribution by
writing of his experiences as a black with a Hispanic name.  If you
missed his article, please read it.

As for those who complain that AA oppresses white males, it's
difficult for me to understand why anyone would seriously make this
argument, but then there are a lot of things about American politics
that I have a hard time understanding.  As Tony Wuersch wrote, we
seem to be living on different planets.  I'm not sure that an
intelligent dialogue is possible on the net between these two camps,
but I'll try.

Barry Fagin writes to the effect that it is ludicrous to suppose that
anyone has a right to compel an employer to change his hiring
practices.  But it is ludicrous only on the assumption that the
Non-Coercion Principle on which Barry's objection is apparently
based is self-evidently true.  The confidence of libertarians in the
NCP is matched only by their inability to convince anyone else of it.
To me it is ludicrous to suppose that employers have the right to
discriminate against minorities and women because of their irrational
prejudice against them, and AT THE SAME TIME no one has the right to
make them stop it.

SJ Berry writes:

> AA is fully implemented, and we can't buy the home of our choice or
> send our kids to a good school, etc. all because *I*, a WHITE MALE,
> though completely qualified, can't get a job.  They give them all to
> equally qualified "minorities".

I thought of writing a satirical response to this and similar
postings, but the above already sounds like satire to me, and I would
need the talents of a Mark Twain to do an adequate job.  I was going
to say that I was founding the NAAWM and requesting all WM's to send
me their tax-deductible contributions so that we could fight for the
rights of this oppressed minority, but lots of you would have taken
me seriously and sent me your checks -- come to think of it, it might
be worth a try sometime.  Wake up, fellow white males!  They're
trying to take away our GOD-GIVEN RIGHT to be on top of the heap!
Let's organize, march, demonstrate....

Suppose we abandon AA, or suppose it was never applied.  Then we're
back to the good old days when many blacks and women, though
completely qualified, couldn't get a good job or a promotion or a
good education.  Do you think that the comfortable white males who
are now howling their outrage about the "discrimination" AA inflicts
on them were howling as loudly in the good old days about the
discrimination and oppression inflicted on minorities and women, an
oppression incomparably more severe than any that white males will
ever experience?  Take a guess.

--Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
I have striven, not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them,
nor to hate them, but to understand them. --Spinoza