(no subject)

[vicarz]

An argument to end programs (link below) claims that authors of such programs, designed to help "people of color," make the mistakes of:
1. Repairing disparities which are inappropriate since 1965,
2. Greatly misappropriate reparations to minorities not affected by histories of slavery and institutionalized racism (giving programs to latinos and azns rather than blacks by and large)
3. lumping all white people together as a monolithic culture despite statistics showing large diversity within that group, including distinct multi-generational disadvantaged segments

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703724104575379630952309408.html?KEYWORDS=jim+webb
As argued by VA'a democrat Jim Webb

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_blackjack_/]

Um, re-read that out loud. You may have left some modifyers dangling or failed to make verbs agree with their subjects, because I'm not sure what you are saying.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Did, lazy but seems comprehendable to me. Read also lazy
Edit - unless I was so damn sloppy I also forgot to link the article!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_blackjack_/]

Well, yes, a little context does help, although I still challenge you to diagram your sentence. What is the subject of "make (the mistakes of)"?

[railwaymadness]

I also can't figure out what the hell that sentence is supposed to be. The programs are designed to help people make mistakes? People make plenty of mistakes on their own -- they don't really need help to make more. If it can't be fixed just delete the damn thing, vicar.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Editing, but still lazy overall

[http://users.livejournal.com/_blackjack_/]

There ya go.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_blackjack_/]

And as far as Webb's argument goes, he picks some very randomly specific 35-year-old statistics for education of white Baptists to support his case, but fails to take into account the fact that, even correcting for factors like income and education, blacks in this country still end up far behind whites in most metrics of quality of life, from property ownership to infant mortality. (Fun fact: a white high-school dropout or a first-generation African immigrant are both less likely to have a low-birth-weight baby than a college-educated black woman in this country.)

And all his talk about share-croppers and the fact that most southern whites didn't own slaves betrays a fundamental misunderstanding both of the concept of white privilege and the purpose of affirmative action. The idea is not to _punish_ individual white people for anything they personally have done, but rather to try to correct for inequalities in the system itself.

I wholeheartedly support targeted programs designed to help poor whites in Appalachia. (Such programs already exist, I might add, but we could use more and better.) We need to put the bandages where the wounds are, and that's a big one. But the wound of racism is not just still open, it's festering, and requires some special attention that can't happen if we ignore the racial element.

It is interesting that the US has lost most of its sense of class _consciousness_, without actually losing its system of social class. Poor whites identify not with poor blacks and Latinos, with whom they have the most shared interest, but with the rich whites who would sell them for a dollar. They look at Affirmative Action and immigration as threats to their livelihood, and ignore the real threats from anti-union policies, free market profiteering, and the shift away from a manufacturing/service-oriented economy to a purely finance-based one.

[curvemudgeon.livejournal.com]

It is interesting that the US has lost most of its sense of class _consciousness_, without actually losing its system of social class. Poor whites identify not with poor blacks and Latinos, with whom they have the most shared interest, but with the rich whites who would sell them for a dollar. They look at Affirmative Action and immigration as threats to their livelihood, and ignore the real threats from anti-union policies, free market profiteering, and the shift away from a manufacturing/service-oriented economy to a purely finance-based one.

This +1, although I'm not inclined to be as supportive of labor unions as I once was. Too frequently in recent history they've exhibited all the flexibility of uncooked pasta and seem inclined to cut of their own noses to spite their faces.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_blackjack_/]

They are sadly often guilty of forgetting that their mission is to serve the interests of the workers, not the interests of the unions. This is particularly evident in the hostility some have shown towards migrant workers very in need of their protection. But without them, workers have little voice at all.