{"id":23,"date":"2003-06-25T16:14:23","date_gmt":"2003-06-25T20:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tradermike.net\/movethecrowd\/2003\/06\/affirmative_action_response\/"},"modified":"2003-06-25T16:14:23","modified_gmt":"2003-06-25T20:14:23","slug":"affirmative_action_response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/25\/affirmative_action_response\/","title":{"rendered":"Affirmative Action Response"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rob, the BusinessPundit, correctly states that the government should neither restrain nor aid the American people in their pursuits<\/a>. (By the way, he used a quote from Thomas Jefferson, of all people<\/a>, to make that point.) But he fails to even mention the centuries of free labor through slavery that helped to build this great nation. While I know there are flaws in the current affirmative action system, I haven’t heard a better proposal for fixing the centuries<\/b> of discrimination & abuse against minorities. (I won’t even get into the stolen land and genocide.) Rob also makes a good point about some<\/i> kids making poor choices. But we have to look a little deeper than the surface. If a people have been stuck in a vicious cycle of poverty, discrimination, poor education, and poor housing for centuries, can you really expect them to compete fairly with people who reaped the benefits of their free labor? (Many whites will say that their ancestors didn’t own slaves, etc. But society as a whole benefited from slavery. The wealth generated off of the backs of slaves trickled all throughout society.) Please remember that it was illegal to even educate Blacks in this country for centuries<\/b>. And it’s only been 50 years (2 generations) since schools were desegregated by law (they still aren’t desegregated in practice). Rob offers up a solution to these problems – changing the culture of ‘inner city African Americans’. Well, for many of the reasons stated above, that’s easier said than done. Again, I know there are no easy answers to this issue, but don’t the government and the American people owe some kind of reparations for the centuries of past wrong-doing?<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Idols of the Marketplace has also responded to Rob in his post entitled ‘Affirmative Action: Punching Bag for the Clueless<\/a>‘ There’s also some good discussion going on at Brad DeLong’s blog<\/a>, and at Truck and Barter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rob, the BusinessPundit, correctly states that the government should neither restrain nor aid the American people in their pursuits. (By the way, he used a quote from Thomas Jefferson, of all people, to make that point.) But he fails to even mention the centuries of free labor through slavery that helped to build this great… Continue reading Affirmative Action Response<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":21,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/25\/bridging_the_racial_divide_at_work\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":0},"title":"Bridging the Racial Divide at Work","date":"June 25, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Fortune has an interview with one of the authors of The Race Trap: Smart Strategies for Effective Communication in Business & In Life Given all the chatter over the recent affirmative action rulings by the Supreme Court, this book needs to be read by a lot of people. Can't we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Current Events"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":63,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/07\/09\/cant_we_all_just_get_along\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":1},"title":"Can’t We All Just Get Along?","date":"July 9, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"This is just sad! Here's a must-read article about the shooter in the recent Mississippi factory shooting. I have to say that I'm not the least bit surprised though, given all the madness I've been reading about affirmative action on some blogs. (You know who you are!) Here's the key\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Current Events"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":39,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/29\/just_who_is_affirmative_action_helping\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":2},"title":"Just Who is Affirmative Action Helping?","date":"June 29, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I just came across a post that really struck a chord with me. Here's a snippet: \"You have to look under the surface,\" my young friend cautioned. \"Many students are black, it's true. But where did they really come from? Are these the descendents of slavery? Are these students, like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Race"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":174,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/08\/29\/21st_century_slaves\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":3},"title":"21st Century Slaves","date":"August 29, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"This issue of National Geographic looks like a must read for the story on modern day slavery: There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach\u2014and in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Current Events"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":286,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2004\/03\/12\/uk_youth_need_to_be_schooled_in_codeswitching\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":4},"title":"UK Youth Need to be Schooled in Codeswitching","date":"March 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a trip - Slang makes youths unemployable. Some snippets: Young people face being overlooked for jobs because of their inability to speak English properly, education and business leaders have warned. Street slang made popular by rap music artists and wider TV culture is making thousands of youngsters unemployable.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Current Events"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":91,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/07\/19\/yet_another_reason_to_not_visit_germany\/","url_meta":{"origin":23,"position":5},"title":"Yet Another Reason To Not Visit Germany","date":"July 19, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Check out this hilarious post about the poor design of German toilets. (via Hi. I'm Black!)","rel":"","context":"In "Just for Fun"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}