Caramel Baloney

wesruvlikesstuff:

jonathan-cunningham:

(via queerwatch)
This is an always reblog- I think this is the third time it’s been on my blog. The source is Ampersand by Barry Deutsch, by the way- I highly recommend reading his work. I’ve added the click-through to his political cartoon site.

I’ve never been a fan of many affirmative action initiatives as public policy. While I like this cartoon, and it’s very accurate about our past, I don’t know that I agree with some of the things it may imply.
One example is the idea that the amount of colored people in an institution or group is worth monitoring. Diversity’s great, but measuring seems a bit off.
How does one decide what’s an appropriate number for an organization. Many people groups have a strong culture that can tie together with their race. This can decide what kinds of occupations they tend towards, which can affect the amount of people of that could have applied for the job in that organization. Culture can also affect what organizations a people group might tend towards. There are plenty of other variables that make measuring diversity a little silly (at least to me).
This isn’t to say all forms of affirmative action are bad, I’m a big fan of private organizations, charitable organizations (& whatever other non-public org I’m not thinking of) providing scholarships/grants for underprivileged. Those organizations holding conferences, groups, classes etc on bridging culture gaps between the popular work culture and culture of some groups.
I like publicly funded groups or organizations that want to help the under privileged. But it should be by setting up programs/scholarships/grants that target the certain circumstances of of underprivileged. But I do not like requirements or specs that could be called racist, reverse racist or otherwise. I don’t qualify race as a primary identifier for the disadvantaged.
Public policies like that imply a few things that I don’t like:
That an underprivileged white person is less important to help than an underprivileged colored person.
Somehow the current generation is owed something for something their lineage paid for, by the progeny of those that incurred the debt.
A colored person cannot help themselves enough to make it (when it’s a private organization I don’t think helping implies this, it implies solidarity, not pity.)
The cartoon (and in some ways affirmative action) implies that white people owe colored people something. If government is the one to pay for affirmative action, does that mean the government is the work of the white people? Not really an important point, but it is a thought that sticks to the back of my mind when these conversations come up.
Last big beef I have is you can’t magically turn around or undo all of the bullshit that has happened. This kind of pulls from an opinion that guided my thinking on Iraq, so I’m going to explain that first.
If we wanted to give Iraq democracy (not that I actually think that was our reasoning) what would work better: going to war and deposing their legal (albeit kind of evil) government; OR exposing them to our way of governing, when something really bad happens (ethnic cleansing, mass poverty, etc) stepping in and trying to help, and allowing their change to happen organically.
I vote the latter. Sure, it’ll take a long time, but if our way really works, and theirs is that bad it won’t last. You can’t hand a country a revolution. It has to happen on it’s own. There is one very important step that you can’t give Iraq. Unification. ‘We hate that so much let’s get together and do something about it.’ That seems to be Iraq’s biggest problem right now, there’s no common mindset on where to go.
Tying that back together with the problems affirmative action tries to solve, you can’t hand a marginalized under privileged group an equal share in our world. Change doesn’t work that fast. If it happens more organically, it will last longer. Individuals that have been set back from what their people group have suffered aren’t usually going to become Fortune 500 CEO’s after one or two generations.
How many generations are we from slavery? (Not as many as you might think)
How far are we from Civil Rights? Not very far at all!
Does that mean no one should help, no. But I think it does mean that we shouldn’t expect everything to be equal right now. There’s still growing to be done, and its not the governments place to mandate it, and it’s no one’s business to mandate how many colored people there should be in any group/organization/institution (internal mandate or otherwise).
And as shitty as it may be, I feel much better about helping myself than the scrawny arian bastard helping me up to that ledge. It’ll happen eventually, and the scrawny little bastard won’t be nearly as awesome.

Racial diversity doesn’t need to be monitored if there isn’t a glaring lack of it within an institution. Unfortunately, that lack is more often the case. It’s possible that culture may indicate desired fields, but then perhaps we should ask why.
Take a look at some obvious examples. Walk into any urban government office, where affirmative action is enforced, and almost all of the receptionists and secretaries will be black. Almost all of the scientists, analysts, etc. will be white. Is there something about black culture that makes those workers choose secretarial work over science? Doubtful. Or consider some rich people: most NFL players are black, yet most coaches and owners are white. Does culture tell white players to continue on into coaching and other positions of power, but not black players? Some might consider football a case where white people are getting richer off the brain injuries and torn ligaments of black people.
My field, environmental science, is nearly 100% white or Asian, even despite exhaustive campaigns to include poor poc. This is perplexing, since blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be affected by environmental damage than other groups in the US. Perhaps this “cultural difference” is more a sense of helplessness against oppressive white-owned industries.
You “don’t qualify race as a primary identifier of the disadvantaged”, but it’s a mistake to ignore the correlation:

(source)
This information suggests the presence of systematic racism. We can’t exactly change the racists, but we do have the ability to change the system, to change the institutions. It’s a conservative myth that affirmative action replaces qualified whites with unqualified blacks. Affirmative action attempts to correct inequalities in education, public services, and employment for women, disabled people, and people of color. Since the government provides education and public services, then it should provide those equally (it doesn’t). And unfortunately, if there weren’t any kind of monitoring for discriminatory hiring, then most workplaces would be dominated by white, able-bodied men. True, we aren’t that far removed from slavery or the Civil Rights Movement, but that’s no excuse for preserving discrimination.
And if our generational proximity to slavery is a justification for institutionalized racism, then one should realize that black people must still be suffering some of the effects of slavery, while white people are still reaping some of the benefits (and continue the pattern with illegal immigrants). In that case, shouldn’t this generation of whites start taking some responsibility for the past, a past which is still ingrained in our economic system?
As for underprivileged whites, they have some advantage in that they do not have to overcome racism. The only area in the maps that doesn’t overlap is central Appalachia, and those residents do face similar isolation and neglect. A quote comparing poor whites in the area to other disadvantaged groups also helps sum up the need for affirmative action, which perhaps should include them in some way:

…we need to recognize these larger histories of deliberate underinvestment for control, to maintain vulnerability. These histories of underinvestment, which most Americans would not want to see today, are now still playing out in contemporary isolation for poor people, preventing them from being able to get together what it takes to be part of the mainstream.

It also seems somewhat naive to suggest that poor poc could just help themselves. Class mobility (good interview) is extremely difficult in this country, and nearly impossible for those in poverty. They define class by education, occupation, income, and wealth. Government should play a role in eliminating racial inequalities in the first three: equal education should lead to equal occupational opportunities, along with equal pay for equal work. Inter-generational wealth, however, has a strong impact on opportunity. For example, if you were raised in white, middle-class suburbia, then you never really had to pull yourself up onto that ledge. You benefited from the opportunities that white, middle-class suburbia provided; you were surrounded by a community that invested in you and expected you to do well; and you may have had a loving family to buffer you from any losses due to unemployment or enormous college debts.
Of course we can’t eliminate racism overnight, but we shouldn’t just sit idly waiting for the system, which we have control over, to change on its own. Charity isn’t going to cut it. Affirmative action isn’t reverse racism; it’s an attempted correction of racist business and governmental policies.

jonathan-cunningham:

(via queerwatch)

This is an always reblog- I think this is the third time it’s been on my blog. The source is Ampersand by Barry Deutsch, by the way- I highly recommend reading his work. I’ve added the click-through to his political cartoon site.

I’ve never been a fan of many affirmative action initiatives as public policy. While I like this cartoon, and it’s very accurate about our past, I don’t know that I agree with some of the things it may imply.

One example is the idea that the amount of colored people in an institution or group is worth monitoring. Diversity’s great, but measuring seems a bit off.

How does one decide what’s an appropriate number for an organization. Many people groups have a strong culture that can tie together with their race. This can decide what kinds of occupations they tend towards, which can affect the amount of people of that could have applied for the job in that organization. Culture can also affect what organizations a people group might tend towards. There are plenty of other variables that make measuring diversity a little silly (at least to me).

This isn’t to say all forms of affirmative action are bad, I’m a big fan of private organizations, charitable organizations (& whatever other non-public org I’m not thinking of) providing scholarships/grants for underprivileged. Those organizations holding conferences, groups, classes etc on bridging culture gaps between the popular work culture and culture of some groups.

I like publicly funded groups or organizations that want to help the under privileged. But it should be by setting up programs/scholarships/grants that target the certain circumstances of of underprivileged. But I do not like requirements or specs that could be called racist, reverse racist or otherwise. I don’t qualify race as a primary identifier for the disadvantaged.

Public policies like that imply a few things that I don’t like:

That an underprivileged white person is less important to help than an underprivileged colored person.

Somehow the current generation is owed something for something their lineage paid for, by the progeny of those that incurred the debt.

A colored person cannot help themselves enough to make it (when it’s a private organization I don’t think helping implies this, it implies solidarity, not pity.)

The cartoon (and in some ways affirmative action) implies that white people owe colored people something. If government is the one to pay for affirmative action, does that mean the government is the work of the white people? Not really an important point, but it is a thought that sticks to the back of my mind when these conversations come up.

Last big beef I have is you can’t magically turn around or undo all of the bullshit that has happened. This kind of pulls from an opinion that guided my thinking on Iraq, so I’m going to explain that first.

If we wanted to give Iraq democracy (not that I actually think that was our reasoning) what would work better: going to war and deposing their legal (albeit kind of evil) government; OR exposing them to our way of governing, when something really bad happens (ethnic cleansing, mass poverty, etc) stepping in and trying to help, and allowing their change to happen organically.

I vote the latter. Sure, it’ll take a long time, but if our way really works, and theirs is that bad it won’t last. You can’t hand a country a revolution. It has to happen on it’s own. There is one very important step that you can’t give Iraq. Unification. ‘We hate that so much let’s get together and do something about it.’ That seems to be Iraq’s biggest problem right now, there’s no common mindset on where to go.

Tying that back together with the problems affirmative action tries to solve, you can’t hand a marginalized under privileged group an equal share in our world. Change doesn’t work that fast. If it happens more organically, it will last longer. Individuals that have been set back from what their people group have suffered aren’t usually going to become Fortune 500 CEO’s after one or two generations.

How many generations are we from slavery? (Not as many as you might think)

How far are we from Civil Rights? Not very far at all!

Does that mean no one should help, no. But I think it does mean that we shouldn’t expect everything to be equal right now. There’s still growing to be done, and its not the governments place to mandate it, and it’s no one’s business to mandate how many colored people there should be in any group/organization/institution (internal mandate or otherwise).

And as shitty as it may be, I feel much better about helping myself than the scrawny arian bastard helping me up to that ledge. It’ll happen eventually, and the scrawny little bastard won’t be nearly as awesome.

Racial diversity doesn’t need to be monitored if there isn’t a glaring lack of it within an institution. Unfortunately, that lack is more often the case. It’s possible that culture may indicate desired fields, but then perhaps we should ask why.

Take a look at some obvious examples. Walk into any urban government office, where affirmative action is enforced, and almost all of the receptionists and secretaries will be black. Almost all of the scientists, analysts, etc. will be white. Is there something about black culture that makes those workers choose secretarial work over science? Doubtful. Or consider some rich people: most NFL players are black, yet most coaches and owners are white. Does culture tell white players to continue on into coaching and other positions of power, but not black players? Some might consider football a case where white people are getting richer off the brain injuries and torn ligaments of black people.

My field, environmental science, is nearly 100% white or Asian, even despite exhaustive campaigns to include poor poc. This is perplexing, since blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be affected by environmental damage than other groups in the US. Perhaps this “cultural difference” is more a sense of helplessness against oppressive white-owned industries.

You “don’t qualify race as a primary identifier of the disadvantaged”, but it’s a mistake to ignore the correlation:

(source)

This information suggests the presence of systematic racism. We can’t exactly change the racists, but we do have the ability to change the system, to change the institutions. It’s a conservative myth that affirmative action replaces qualified whites with unqualified blacks. Affirmative action attempts to correct inequalities in education, public services, and employment for women, disabled people, and people of color. Since the government provides education and public services, then it should provide those equally (it doesn’t). And unfortunately, if there weren’t any kind of monitoring for discriminatory hiring, then most workplaces would be dominated by white, able-bodied men. True, we aren’t that far removed from slavery or the Civil Rights Movement, but that’s no excuse for preserving discrimination.

And if our generational proximity to slavery is a justification for institutionalized racism, then one should realize that black people must still be suffering some of the effects of slavery, while white people are still reaping some of the benefits (and continue the pattern with illegal immigrants). In that case, shouldn’t this generation of whites start taking some responsibility for the past, a past which is still ingrained in our economic system?

As for underprivileged whites, they have some advantage in that they do not have to overcome racism. The only area in the maps that doesn’t overlap is central Appalachia, and those residents do face similar isolation and neglect. A quote comparing poor whites in the area to other disadvantaged groups also helps sum up the need for affirmative action, which perhaps should include them in some way:

…we need to recognize these larger histories of deliberate underinvestment for control, to maintain vulnerability. These histories of underinvestment, which most Americans would not want to see today, are now still playing out in contemporary isolation for poor people, preventing them from being able to get together what it takes to be part of the mainstream.

It also seems somewhat naive to suggest that poor poc could just help themselves. Class mobility (good interview) is extremely difficult in this country, and nearly impossible for those in poverty. They define class by education, occupation, income, and wealth. Government should play a role in eliminating racial inequalities in the first three: equal education should lead to equal occupational opportunities, along with equal pay for equal work. Inter-generational wealth, however, has a strong impact on opportunity. For example, if you were raised in white, middle-class suburbia, then you never really had to pull yourself up onto that ledge. You benefited from the opportunities that white, middle-class suburbia provided; you were surrounded by a community that invested in you and expected you to do well; and you may have had a loving family to buffer you from any losses due to unemployment or enormous college debts.

Of course we can’t eliminate racism overnight, but we shouldn’t just sit idly waiting for the system, which we have control over, to change on its own. Charity isn’t going to cut it. Affirmative action isn’t reverse racism; it’s an attempted correction of racist business and governmental policies.

Source: queerwatch