Hmm, thanks for the references. I wonder, though, what really counts
as "societal" discrimination and what counts as "governmental"? If
the government spends its resources on the privileged and not on the
poor, isn't that discrimination?
Bill
The question of affirmative action, discrimination - societal versus government, is apparently complex, for reasons I have never really grasped. Affirmative action arose as a response to "something."
Although affirmative action speaks to "minority categories" - including women, who I believe constitute the majority of society and the workforce. In fact the concept called "minority" as opposed to "national minority" had to be invented in the ideological sphere.
Here is what is obvious to me. Market ethics - not morality, governs law and legislation. In my opinion this thing called affirmative action in America is related to the Brown verus Board of Education. Brown versus Board of Education is related to the mechanization of agriculture and the influx of millions of descendants of black slaves into the industrial infrastructure and the need to break the barriers and ideological frameworks that segregated the black. This segregation had very little to do with blacks being a minority and everything to do with them arising as a class of slaves - Negroes or rather African Americans.
That is to say affirmative action policy did not arise as the result of the struggle of "minorities" or a greater insight into the meaning of "morality" but from the economic factors and environment describing the social life of the Negro in America.
If we do not know the genesis of affirmative action how can we make sense? Here the question of the ideology of the oppressing peoples and the oppressed reflects different approaches.
Whites - specifically the Anglo American people, are not discriminated against on the basis of race. Affirmative action arose as the result of breaking the barrier of segregation against Negroes - not Mexicans, women, homosexuals, Asians, handicap folk or anyone else.
Today at work I was asked why giving added point to a test score by minorites was not inherently discriminatory towards white people. This was asked in a group of perhaps twenty people of which the majority was white.
My response was
"no one in America that is poor or working class gets Justice. If we think that Justice is equal rights we will not understand one another. Affrimative action deals with things like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the children, grandchildren and their kids kids of slaves. Trying to right a wrong is most difficult. To say that Affirmative action discriminates against white people is stupid because it was a tool by the courts to try and right a wrong. Instead of white people having access to everything a plan was created to make sure that other people was included. If you have a better way to right a wrong submit it and become a genius in American history. Don't tell me shit about white people being discriminated against, when affirmative action was used to try and right a wrong."
"Now Justice . . . .hey . . . .that is a big question and what is your plan?"
Everyone shut up.
The separation between societal and government discrimination is interesting. I believe I have the capacity as an individual to "get you off me" as an individual. "I" can compel "you" to leave me and my family alone and the density - mass gravity, of the people from whom I come, is significant enough to correct an individual injustice. But then again I live in Detroit.
See, when I go to get my home refinanced and a company with some knucklehead in it wants to determine my worth, I go to a black company with someone that will use the system to my benefit.
Discrimination is real. What is your plan?
I have a plan. My plan honors Marx exposition on the mode of production in material, life, but is based on my reality. My daughter went to the University of Michigan and my son to Michigan State.
The working class and political in Michigan have taken a position that the Bush administration is attacking.
Hello. OK.
Melvin P.