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October 25, 2010

Negative, Not Affirmative, Action

Justin Katz

Let's be honest: We've all realized that so-called "affirmative action" was never meant to be an objectively applied tool ensuring proportional representation; it's always been a weapon for use against white men. But it's still going to be interesting to watch the intellectual contortions as elite society's war on masculinity tips scales in the other direction. In an article about the increasing over-representation of females on college campuses:

Alerted by media reports that some admissions officers may be accepting less-qualified male students over female applicants, the Civil Rights Commission is investigating whether women are being discriminated against in college admissions.

"Everybody should feel very uncomfortable by the notion that it is more difficult for a woman to get into a college than a man," Heriot said in an interview.

Heretofore, it has never been an accepted argument against affirmative action that the dominating demographic on campus (or wherever) just happened to be more likely to be included. Rather, it was always taken to be evidence of a vague "institutional" ism in their favor. Now that there is institutional feminism in our system of education — not just adapting schools' methods to serve both male and female communities, but changing their structure to coincide more significantly with girls' learning styles than boys' — it's becoming victimization to adjust for discrepancies.

Comments

Maybe after "Right-Wing-Nuts" go through 400 years of slavery and then another 100 of state sponsored oppression. (by conservatives in both parties)

Maybe after all of that and much more happens to the "Conservatives", then maybe you'll have a point.

Posted by: Sammy at October 25, 2010 7:55 PM

There is NO "war on masculinity" or "war on Christmas", or any other "phony" war invented by right-wing-nuts,
Who like Gingrich, Limbaugh, Bush, Cheney, Carcieri, Frist, DeLay, Rove, Scalia, Roberts, Alito, and Clarence Thomas.. REFUSED TO FIGHT IN REAL WARS

Not to mention Tom Tancredo who faked insanity, to avoid the draft

Posted by: Sammy at October 25, 2010 8:18 PM

Sammy,
At least he was faking.

Posted by: George at October 26, 2010 5:31 PM



Affirmative Action is wrong. It deliberately disadvantages highly qualified people and is discriminatory to the core.

I'm an old enough woman to have been told to my face when I applied for some jobs for which I fit the criteria stated, that they didn't hire women for those positions. So I understand the pain and the desperation. It doesn't matter. Affirmative Action isn't about giving everybody an equal chance based on merit.

If we are to live in a free society,we cannot let the government continue to dictate to individuals who they will and will not hire. Who can and cannot be admitted to institutions of higher learning. On and on...

As for the slavery arguement,my ancestors came from Europe,where they had suffered immensely. The slavery of the peasants and serfs of Europe lasted much longer than slavery in our country.
Ever heard of the Ukranian famine? How about the Irish potato famine? All caused by the respective governments at the time. Those are more recent examples.

The great majority of European immigrants had to take the lowest jobs which were probably worse than what most of the slaves had to endure,because they were on their own, not valued and subjected to the most dangerous,terrible working conditions for pennies,including children. Nobody gave them welfare or taxpayer funded college educations.


It is a terrible injustice to think that my family and I should suffer because slavery existed in this country.

Posted by: helen at October 26, 2010 11:27 PM