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The problems you mention were not problems until after affirmative action was implemented.
by bdunbar 14y ago
The problems you mention were not problems until after affirmative action was implemented.
- _delirium 14y agoI don't believe your chronology is correct: affirmative action was first implemented in the U.S. in 1961, with widespread implementation not until the late 1960s, but there were already many poverty-ridden black ghettoes in the 1950s. (And the areas talked about in this article have been full of grinding poverty for their entire existence, with most of their inhabitants being slaves prior to the 1860s, and then desperately poor from the 1860s to today.)
- AimHere 14y agoMaybe I'm leaning too much on the 'benefit of the doubt' side, but I parsed the prior post to mean that all those things existed, but they weren't considered problems by, say, white people, or people in power, prior to the 1960s. The alternative is that some (presumably intelligent) poster on HN stating something completely at odds with the facts, and perhaps even informally suggesting that affirmative action was likely to have caused black people to live in poor, squalid, crime-filled ghettoes.
- bdunbar 14y ago"even informally suggesting that affirmative action was likely to have caused black people to live in poor, squalid, crime-filled ghettoes." That is what I am suggesting.
- tjic 14y ago> completely at odds with the facts Asserted without evidence. The argument makes perfect sense to me. What part of it do you think is false?
- _delirium 14y agoIsn't the person making a very strong causal claim the one in need of evidence? If someone's claiming that affirmative action caused black poverty, then I would expect some good data to back up that claim. Merely asserting it is not an "argument".
- bdunbar 14y agoWhy not put it back on the poster who asserted without evidence that affirmative action will cure "gang violence, intense poverty, substance abuse, neglect, and trauma"? I will allow that it could. But we've had this deal in place for fifty years. If you've got a program running, and the problems keep getting worse .. maybe it's time to check one's assumptions. At any rate - I'll go grubbing around for the facts. Later tonight. Now I've got lunch to eat and work to be done. I've got a tax bill to pay.
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- bdunbar 14y ago"there were already many poverty-ridden black ghettoes in the 1950s." There is poverty. And then there is "gang violence, intense poverty, substance abuse, neglect, and trauma" I am asserting that these became systematic problems after the introduction of affirmative action.
- Synthetase 14y agoYou're seriously suggesting affirmative action leads to social ills? I'd also suggest you avoid hospitals because they cause cancer.
- rmc 14y agoYou mean there was no extreme poverty amoung marginalized groups before affirmative action?
- bdunbar 14y agoThe poster I was replying to said "gang violence, intense poverty, substance abuse, neglect, and trauma" These, by and large, were not systemic problems before the introduction of affirmative action.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mkconor 14y agogang violence The gangs were white, but the contours of the violence would probably be familiar to contemporary observers. intense poverty Sociocultural hurdles that limited property ownership, the inability to meaningfully advocate for fair wages, and the lack of the suffrage required to change this reality meant that intense poverty was the status quo. substance abuse http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/jamdoi.html http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/jamdoi.html "William Henry James and Stephen Lloyd Johnson document the role of alcohol and other drugs in traditional African cultures, among African slaves before the American Civil War, and in contemporary African American society, which has experienced the epidemics of marijuana, heroin, crack cocaine, and gangs since the beginning of this century. The authors zero in on the interplay of addiction and race to uncover the social and psychological factors that underlie addiction." neglect see:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining#History; see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JimCrowCar2.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JimCrowCar2.jpg trauma Subjective, based on who you ask, but I'd say yes.
- mkr-hn 14y agoWas it the flight of money, mostly in the hands of white people, out of the cities and into the suburbs around the time institutional segregation started to crumble, or was it affirmative action? I'm not leaning toward the latter.