What do you as Autistics think about Affirmative Action

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Awfully strange way of saying 'Goodbye' ...

That could not be further from the truth.

My ideas about affirmative action are tainted by my own experiences and those of others around me with the welfare system here in Belgium, where Muslim immigrants make up 5% of population yet consume 40-60% of welfare, largely due to preferential treatment by the Belgian government.

My ideas about affirmative action are tainted by the gender & race quota that exist in my country and companies actively discriminating White men to fill those quota.

I don't care what any side of the political spectrum says. If the Left tells the truth, I side with them... as I do eg. on issues like legalization of narcotic substances. If the Left tells the truth, I side with them... as I do in the case of "affirmative actions". I don't believe in the whole "Left-Right" dichotomy, which only exists to narrow our thought and keep us divided on arbitrary issues.



Why? Why is it so absurd to you, when you know gender quota and race quota exist?

How do you expect companies fill those gender quota and race quota when they do not find applications at least as good as White male applicants, if not by hiring less capable applicants?

Why do you deny such discrimination happens, when such discrimination at eg. Harvard is well-known, well-documented and the cause of several on-going court cases?



The problem is when eg. welfare or jobs are going to Blacks or Hispanic because of their race, in favor of Whites who would otherwise be just as eligible, if not more. In that case, you're literally taking something from the weakest segment of one race to give to members of another race, which is racist and anything but fair or just.



Of course they did. Even back then, wealth & class played a far greater role than race!

Why do you believe a well-respected Black intellectual like Booker Washington was worse off than White workers who worked 10 hours or more per day, in a factory or coal mine, sometimes starting at an age as young as 9?

Booker Washington was even invited to dine with Teddy Roosevelt and his family at the White House in 1901, and would become a presidential adviser to both Teddy Roosevelt and WH Taft.

Now that's what real privilege looks like!



All it reveals, is that I've actually read books from the 1920s addressing the living standards for the various races at the time, rather than getting my information on that era from Liberal, race-baiting demagogues.

Also, the fact that you continue to ignore how badly poor Whites were treated during the same time period actually demonstrates your prejudiced viewpoint coming into this thread.



Unlike you & some other people here, Kraichgauer seems genuinely interested in exchanging ideas on the topics at hand... which is why came back for the time being.

Last edited by aspiesavant on 17 Jan 2019, 10:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's true that there have been white people who have been denied opportunities because of "affirmative action."

But to say there's systematic "discrimination" against/hatred of "white people" is going too far.

I will make an admission - - I did not know you were a native of Belgium; rather I thought you were an American. I can forgive misunderstandings about American race relations on your part.
Yes, Booker Washington had been invited to the White House, because Teddy Roosevelt was ahead of his time. But his choice of inviting Washington was roundly criticized around the country.
In material wealth, someone like Washington had had it better than poor whites, but none of them faced their right to vote or to hold office threatened, whereas African Americans like Washington did, let alone having freedom to practice a chosen profession or trade.

Thanks?



Still, Booker Washington was praised and his goals strongly supported by leading voices among the pro-eugenics, pro-segregation White intelligentsia.

I actually learnt about Washington only recently when reading Re-forging America (1927), by leading eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard. I can very much recommend several of his books for anyone who wants a better understand American politics in that particular era. In spite of what may seem a very radical and untenable position today, Stoddard is extremely nuanced and very empathic in everything he says.

Stoddard's vision for the segregated South was one with not less but more segregation... a concept he refereed to as "bi-racialism". The idea was for Blacks & Whites to be fully equal legally in every way, but to live side by side and have separate economic, political and cultural lives. He supported this as at least a temporary experiment. And the reason for separation would be not so much the alleged superiority or inferiority or a particular race, but rather the inherent biological differences between the different races, resulting in different economic, political and cultural needs.

Was it not for WW2 and the increasing taboo associated with both eugenics & racial thinking following the fall of the Third Reich, the America of the 1950s and 1960s might have actually been based on the visions Stoddard described in this book.

So if you are truly interested in how White elites were actually thinking about issues like migration, race relations or eugenics, there is really no better source than Stoddard's books. And I can assure you that they shine a very different light on this than the vast majority of post-WW2 sources, which a very much colored by post-WW2 biases.



It was only since 1856 that poor White men were able to vote, due to the abolition of property qualifications.

White women were guaranteed the right to vote in all US States as late as 1920.

Still, Southern states suppressed the voting rights of both black and poor white voters. Take for example Alabama. Historian J. Morgan Kousser found that "they disfranchised these whites as willingly as they deprived blacks of the vote." By 1941, actually more Whites than Blacks had been "disfranchised"!

Not that it matters that much, though. To quote Emma Goldman : "If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."

Last edited by aspiesavant on 17 Jan 2019, 10:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

Why don't you google "the Jim Crow South"?

You find crap like this on the Internet all the time. And crap which is opposite, too----like "How BLACK people plagued society."

Most people believe all this crap is nonsense. They don't take this stuff seriously. They go on with their lives.

As I said, I prefer to get my information on the Jim Crow South from actual sources from that time period... which sheds a very different light on this matter than all the race baiting demagoguery published on it today.



... except the former is pushed by "educational" institutions, the mainstream media, etc... while these same institutions condemn the latter!

There's a double standard permeating the entire establishment with respect to what you can and can't say about Whites vs what you can and can't say about other races.

Whites can only be put in a negative light. Other races can only be put in a positive light. Do not comply and you're immediately branded as a "racist"!





I've seen several people on this forum spout the most virulent anti-male, anti-White propaganda.

So, it is a serious matter.

Last edited by aspiesavant on 17 Jan 2019, 11:07 am, edited 5 times in total.

The rest engage in race-baiting and other trollish behavior.

Personally, I'm happy that my state abolished Affirmative Action, because doing so made merit-based hiring and promotion more socially acceptable, and forced women and non-whites to work on acquiring marketable job skills. In my inbox, I'm seeing more and more curriculum vitae that list STEM degrees and experience than any healy-feely, happy-clapping, socially-conscious, New Age crap. It's nice to be able to have meaningful interviews with job candidates who actually know things worth talking about.

Good to see there's at least one thing we can agree on

That's what I'm advocating. Reading about the Jim Crow South from sources which date from the Jim Crow South. I'm not necessarily advocating reading something published well after the Civil Rights era.

Frequently, people have been poor around the world, and throughout history because they were oppressed by the ruling classes. They were not poor and oppressed because they were "white."

In the United States, people were actually lynched solely because they were "black." No white Southerner was ever lynched because he/she was "white."

I'm a man who believes in equality of opportunity for all. I'm not a defender of "affirmative action." Within an American context, it had its place a couple of generations ago---but not today.

I don't believe, say, that white people need to pay "reparations" to black people because of the evils of slavery.

I don't follow the academic line. I follow the "real" line.

As mentioned before, Stoddard is one of my main sources. His ideas had a leading impact on policies of this era, which makes his perspective representative for that era. Also, I've always found his books to be very nuanced and very much driven by the scientific spirit. In fact, one of his books (titled "Scientific Humanism") actually deal entirely with why he believes science should be the foundation for pretty much everything... including moral issues... much like Sam Harris is doing today. And, sharing that same conviction, that makes me value his contributions even more.

Anyway, the America Stoddard and his contemporaries describes is barely recognizable if you look at it from a 21st century perspective, going with the very biased, politically motivated narratives that pass for history today.



Nor was anyone poor and oppressed just because they were Black.



That's one of those claims that's blatant nonsense. Lynching was a form of extra-judicial punishment, occurring when angry mobs felt the justice system failed to produce justice and they thus should provide justice instead.

Obviously, there must have been some alleged criminals were innocent. And this may have involved a large minority or even a majority of lynchings. I'm definitely not arguing that all lynching victims were in fact criminals.

However, the reason for lynching was individuals being suspected of a crime... not them being Black.



Nor for being Black.

Either way, Blacks weren't the only suspects of crime who were lynched by an angry mob. A very infamous case of a non-Black lynch victims was Jewish child murderer Leo Frank.

Frank was initially convicted to death by hanging, but powerful friends convinced the judge to commute his sentence to life imprisonment. This infuriated the public, resulting in his lynching.

Jewish groups claimed the lynching was caused by antisemitism, which would eventually lead to the creation of the ADL. The real reason, however, was not really antisemitism but the impression of failed justice when backroom deals cause a child murderer's death sentence to be commuted to life in prison.

The typical lynching of Black person was not so very different : a Black person was arrested for a crime, but failed to get the punishment the public believed to be just. Not racism but perceived injustice because of a corrupt or incompetent justice system was the reason why lynchings took place.

A good example of a non-Jewish White person getting lynched, would be John Heath. He was the only one out of 6 outlaws to receive a sentence of life in prison rather than death by hanging. The public considered this sentence to lenient, so they lynched him instead.

Even Joseph Smith, the founder of mormonism, ended up getting lynched, for treason, subversion & immorality.

Here's a list of lynching victims, which includes members of various races... including Whites!

That list is very incomplete, though, and probably only contains the most newsworthy cases.



Forcing Whites who never were slave owners to pay "reparations" to Blacks who never were slaves... now THAT is what real racism looks like!



If you believe Blacks were lynched just for being Black, you're not following the "real" line. Then, you're just perpetuating a propagandist version of history, intended to demonize Whites and portray Blacks as their innocent, oppressed victims. Real history is far more nuanced... far less "black and white" so to speak.

Last edited by aspiesavant on 17 Jan 2019, 11:56 am, edited 3 times in total.

There were black people who were lynched solely for being black. Guaranteed.

I believe science and morality are partners. But I don't believe morality always has a scientific basis. There have been times when things done in the name of "science" and "logic" have been eminently immoral or amoral.

Sources please... from that era, if you can!

And even if that were the case, it was hardly public policy.

Lynchings were caused by public outrage and not exactly legal.



It doesn't. But IMO it should. See both Sam Harris or Lothrop Stoddard for a perspective on why it should, from respectively today and a century ago.



Doing things because science implies it is the best option and using (pseudo)science as a justification / rationalization for doing something are two very different things.

Also, there is no standard upon which to judge something as objectively "moral" or "immoral" if your morality is not based upon science.

All morality not based on science is inherently subjective and thus arbitrary to some degree.

There is the hope for objectivity in science; I believe it is a prime objective in science. I believe many scientists aspire to that ideal.

But science hardly ever rises to that standard.

At least some of morality comes "from the heart."

That stuff with Stoddard's pro-segregation, and eugenics is just an example of how even the best of us can be wrong.
If the poor white vote was suppressed, it was only out of the interests of the reactionary right. That is, the same people today who want to reverse affirmative action and civil rights legislation.
Of course we became biased against such godawful things that had happened during WWII! It made the western world take a look at itself in the mirror, and realize that such hateful practices actually harm real people. How is that a bad thing?

Yes, there were lots of whites who had been lynched. But to say that it happened alongside lynchings of blacks is very misleading. In my part of America, the west, it was common to lynch anyone who was found to have committed criminal offenses. This was done even before any law enforcement involvement, or even involved breaking into jails to drag the accused out kicking and screaming. As most such lynching victims tended to be horse thieves and cattle rustlers, the lynch mobs and vigilance committees were of the mindset that livestock was of more worth than human life.
In the south, lynching was a purposeful means of racial terrorism to keep blacks suppressed. As with the lynched desperadoes of the American west, most black victims of lynching never lived to see the inside of a courtroom. I don't know personally of any white lynching victims in the south. And if there was, it certainly didn't include the carnival atmosphere of hundreds if not thousands of whites rushing out to watch and cheer, then take gruesome souvenirs from the corpse, let alone use photos of the lynching on postcards.