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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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So, genuine question: Is affirmative action good or bad?
It's good.
There are people who are arguing it's bad. They are either doing so in bad faith, or have the luxury of either never experiencing the racism that made affirmative action necessary, or never looked into the historical reasons for it.
A good place to start to understand why laws like this we're enacted is Redlining
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
The TL:DR here is maps would be drawn that we're used to determine how risky it was to loan people money. These maps would be drawn based on the ethnicity of the neighborhood (this can be verified, there are poor white neighborhoods). If an applicants address was in a neighborhood that was Redlined, they could be denied a loan.
A modern example is the NFL. In 2021 they were ordered to pay a billion dollars to retired black players. The reason? The NFL were "race norning" cognitive tests designed to see if players had suffered mental decline over their career.
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002627309/nfl-says-it-will-halt-race-norming-and-review-brain-injury-claims
Essentially if a white player suffered mental decline and was reduced to the cognitive ability of a 15 year old (this example is made up, I don't know the exact metrics) that player would be paid for their injuries.
If a black player suffered mental decline and was reduced to the cognitive ability of a 15 year old that player would not be paid for their injuries. Because the NFL was working under the assumption that black people are fundamentally less intelligent than white people, so for them to be "damaged" they needed a higher level of mental decline to qualify.
This was happening in 2020.
The US needs affirmative action. We're a wonderful country that does many things well. We also still have a fuckton of racists at all levels of government and business. We're simply not there yet.
So your answer to institutional racism is more institutional racism? Making sure an under-qualified kid gets into college instead of a well-qualified kid because the latter had the wrong skin color isn't going to make up for the racism experienced by other people who happen to have the same skin color as the under-qualified kid.
Yeah it will. For decades, undeserving white people got loans over black people who may have been more deserving.
How would you right that wrong if not by giving more resources to the community that was denied them
If you want to fight economic inequality, do it by lifting up impoverished people regardless of race. There are plenty of poor white people who have never benefitted from preferential treatment. Make public schools good enough to enable those who are financially disadvantaged to have an opportunity to do well academically regardless of their race.
Sure, we can do both.
Why don't you want to give to poor people who also have been victimized by systemic racism?
Giving to poor people regardless of race includes economic victims of racism. It doesn't matter if you're poor because you or your ancestors experienced racism or if you're poor because of more broad economic oppression and bad luck, it doesn't make you any more or less deserving of help either way.
Yes it does
💀
It's still funny to me your solution to centuries of systemic racism is "ok, ok. That absolutely did happen. But now we're going to treat everyone equally. No need to give the people oppressed for generations any kind of additional benefit '
How do you quantify the financial oppression if not with financial status?
Yeah, so oppressed people should be compensated. I'm glad we agree
This doesn't explain why affirmative action is good or bad.
I think he did just explain it with the modern day NFL example…
They explained why redlining is bad and why "race norming" is bad, but all that isn't connected to affirmative action (in the post).
Argument structure:
There's no link between the points. To be fair, I'm for affirmative action. Just that post doesn't really say anything about it.
Who is going to teach you to be a carpinter if your parents don't know and the school doesn't want you because you're non-white? This also include preparation to attend that school. To break a cycle of poverty people need to be granted a chance to escape. Education is one path to give people tools.
Again, I understand why affirmative action is a thing and why it's good. My point is that the top level comment doesn't actually answer why it's a good thing. It doesn't really make a coherent argument at all.
It forces corrections for racists doing harm to large groups of people.
If you couldn't get that from that explanation, you weren't paying attention.