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Not being from your country, I'm not particularly qualified to comment on this, but I will say something: When you have two equal groups of people, and one is

Not being from your country, I'm not particularly qualified to comment on this, but I will say something: When you have two equal groups of people, and one is given an advantage such as the ones you describe, then this is discriminatory and wrong. But I believe in your case, you have two groups of people, and one group is not equal to the other, in that they have only recently been allowed full societal rights, and come from a line of people that were not allowed full access to the educational system as other groups. Observing the society, this seems to have had a clear effect in that the one group has a much higher criminal rate, much lower educational rate, etc. It would seem to me that to fix the societal problems caused by having such a group of people living within the country, certain steps would have to be taken to try to accellerate the rate of these people. The thing is - it has really not been long since african-american people in the United States have been treated as equals. It took a while for MTV to play the first black song, did it not? A group was disadvantaged and it shows. If you believe the group should just "walk if off", I'm sure it will work with time, it will just take a whole lot longer. In the meanwhile, you're going to have to deal with high criminality, dependence on on the social state, etc by this group.

ErrantX 17y ago
It's one of those things were it is easy to go too far and end up doing more harm. In essence you make a great point. Unfortunately there are situations were overzealous beurocrats end up taking it too far. And on the other hand there are situations where simple schemes are just not implemented.... It's a sorry mess of a minefield all round.
philk 17y ago
The problem with this approach is it gives benefits to people on the basis of race rather than social disadvantage. So you have the difficult situation (for example) of explaining why a black person from a wealthy background benefits from affirmative action, and on the flip side you wind up with poor white people who miss out. At the same time, anyone from the group that benefits from affirmative action who is successful will carry the stigma of being the recipient of an unfair advantage. If you want to address disadvantaged groups you should do so in a color blind fashion - ie provide benefits based on socioeconomic status, rather than skin color.
- maxklein 17y ago
  But is the problem not racial? As in - if you took too poor people, one black and one white, one speaking 'white', another speaking 'black', cleaned them up and sent them out looking for jobs, would one have an advantage over the other? I think the point of affirmative action is not to make poor people rich, it's to negate a disadvantage a certain skin color may have. This disadvantage may extend into the upper strata of society. If it's to correct a disadvantage based of a color of skin, to me it seems to make sense to use the color of skin as the indicator. And from what I understand, anyone in the U.S can basically call themselves 'Black'. So if the advantage were so great, any white person can just call themselves black and gain those same advantages.
stcredzero 17y ago
There are numerous examples of chattel slavery in history. There are even examples of slave status attached to racial characteristics. (As opposed to purely legal status as in ancient Rome.) I've been told that my surname indicates my ancestors were essentially hereditary slaves from a period of widespread indentured servitude in Korea. Apparently, this was only officially abolished as late as 1894. As far as I can tell, no one really cares about it anymore. However Korea has the advantage of more homogenous racial characteristics. No one in my entire life has claimed to know my ancestors were low caste by looking at me. No one has crossed the street to avoid me by looking at my face. What I have experienced, is that within a second of seeing me, the occasional stranger has decided that it would be good sport to humiliate me, often with a racial joke or slur. Racism is real and widespread. Everyone should acknowledge that without getting uptight about it. However, I don't know if current forms of social intervention by the US government are the right thing to do. The only thing that has been shown to help historically is true economic empowerment. Many fear that such intervention results in a false empowerment, where the "natural" choice of the market is inverted, which in turn results in resentment. On the other hand, if racism is widespread and results from natural tendencies, the choice of the market will also reflect this.

ErrantX 17y ago

It's one of those things were it is easy to go too far and end up doing more harm. In essence you make a great point. Unfortunately there are situations were overzealous beurocrats end up taking it too far. And on the other hand there are situations where simple schemes are just not implemented.... It's a sorry mess of a minefield all round.

philk 17y ago

The problem with this approach is it gives benefits to people on the basis of race rather than social disadvantage. So you have the difficult situation (for example) of explaining why a black person from a wealthy background benefits from affirmative action, and on the flip side you wind up with poor white people who miss out. At the same time, anyone from the group that benefits from affirmative action who is successful will carry the stigma of being the recipient of an unfair advantage. If you want to address disadvantaged groups you should do so in a color blind fashion - ie provide benefits based on socioeconomic status, rather than skin color.

maxklein 17y ago
But is the problem not racial? As in - if you took too poor people, one black and one white, one speaking 'white', another speaking 'black', cleaned them up and sent them out looking for jobs, would one have an advantage over the other? I think the point of affirmative action is not to make poor people rich, it's to negate a disadvantage a certain skin color may have. This disadvantage may extend into the upper strata of society. If it's to correct a disadvantage based of a color of skin, to me it seems to make sense to use the color of skin as the indicator. And from what I understand, anyone in the U.S can basically call themselves 'Black'. So if the advantage were so great, any white person can just call themselves black and gain those same advantages.

stcredzero 17y ago

There are numerous examples of chattel slavery in history. There are even examples of slave status attached to racial characteristics. (As opposed to purely legal status as in ancient Rome.) I've been told that my surname indicates my ancestors were essentially hereditary slaves from a period of widespread indentured servitude in Korea. Apparently, this was only officially abolished as late as 1894. As far as I can tell, no one really cares about it anymore. However Korea has the advantage of more homogenous racial characteristics. No one in my entire life has claimed to know my ancestors were low caste by looking at me. No one has crossed the street to avoid me by looking at my face. What I have experienced, is that within a second of seeing me, the occasional stranger has decided that it would be good sport to humiliate me, often with a racial joke or slur. Racism is real and widespread. Everyone should acknowledge that without getting uptight about it. However, I don't know if current forms of social intervention by the US government are the right thing to do. The only thing that has been shown to help historically is true economic empowerment. Many fear that such intervention results in a false empowerment, where the "natural" choice of the market is inverted, which in turn results in resentment. On the other hand, if racism is widespread and results from natural tendencies, the choice of the market will also reflect this.