Without citing specific examples, it sounds like you just don’t like affirmative action programs, which is an opinion I’d be embarrassed to say out loud. When one group of people has all the money and all the connections, it’s not fair to say “just treat everyone equally!” because it maintains the unequal status quo—poorer minority groups continue getting into schools at lower rates since they live in poorer neighborhoods with poorer schools and poorer access to the funds needed for higher education, women continue getting passed up for management positions, leading to more male dominated companies hiring more men for more management positions, et cetera
Not the guy you replied to, but I’ll give you one: if you are male, it is (or at least was last federal election) impossible to be at the highest spot of any candidate list of the german green party. There was a hard rule that spot 1 had to be a woman and then it alternates. The alternation rule seems pretty alright, but blanket excluding someone from the #1 spot because of gender is pretty blatant sexism. It doesn’t matter that women were in that position and worse in the pretty recent past, 2 wrongs don’t make a right (also ironically this kind of ignores other gender identities entirely but they’d probably be given the woman treatment as they’re clearly generally disadvantaged, which seems alright). Something like having at least 45% at #1 of both men and women and then keeping the alternating rule seems a lot more sensible, or even flat out forcing 50% and flipping the genders each election.
I can also spend a very long time talking about how affirmative action in general feels more like the lazy route to achieve a somewhat better state since socioeconomic factors play a huge role in education and those heavily correlate with ethnicity, but it’s unfair to exclude people based on their skin color (almost like that’s racism by definition), but whatever. I haven’t seen any cases of it being actually abused, and overall just fast tracking more representation of all sorts of people into all kinds of jobs and social groups will likely help a lot against racism in the long run. It just feels like the inferior means to that end.
Germany has things like giving disabled people preference in job applications given otherwise equal qualifications which I think is great as they most likely have much fewer options overall, and I believe that might be considered affirmative action too? I’m not super familiar given that that’s not a term here.
When one group of people has all the money and all the connections, it’s not fair to say “just treat everyone equally!” because it maintains the unequal status quo
Then targeting socioeconomic status makes more sense. Any system that categorizes people and puts poor white folks in the same “has all the money and connections” bucket as the Clintons and the Obamas in the same “has no money or connections” bucket as poor black folks is not, in any way, actually about having money or connections.
Well unfortunately, the overlap is close enough to a circle that it makes plenty of sense, especially since the issue is not purely economic, but social, as you accidentally point out by using the phrase socioeconomic. Obama has wealth that is unfathomable to the everyday person, as does Clinton—both deal with a society that belittles them because of who they are in a way that white men don’t face, rich or poor.
Surely you’ve noticed that Obama is the only black president so far, despite black people making up 10 to 20% of the population over the last few centuries.
You are also aware that Clinton would have been the first female U.S. President. She won the popular vote by a significant margin, which is a great sign for public opinion on women, but the reality is still that women, who are more than half the country, are not more than half in charge of it.
The fact these two got as far as they did is in no small part thanks to the concept of affirmative action, where we try to right past wrongs and level the playing field. Encourage women to go into nontraditional fields, encourage black students to apply for Ivy League schools and ensure there are spots for them—these things only “hurt” white men because resources are so artificially limited already, disproportionately held by the tiny percentage of [rich white men] who control the US’s giant conglomerates and obedient politicians, and regular old white men aren’t used to feeling the squeeze.
Did Obama pull the ladder up behind him somewhat by applying the same neoliberal bullshit that has destroyed the concept of compassionate social safety nets in favor of a more competitive marketplace? Can you be mad at him? Yeah. That’s beside the point. White people have been allowed to fuck over other white people for ages.
Without citing specific examples, it sounds like you just don’t like affirmative action programs, which is an opinion I’d be embarrassed to say out loud. When one group of people has all the money and all the connections, it’s not fair to say “just treat everyone equally!” because it maintains the unequal status quo—poorer minority groups continue getting into schools at lower rates since they live in poorer neighborhoods with poorer schools and poorer access to the funds needed for higher education, women continue getting passed up for management positions, leading to more male dominated companies hiring more men for more management positions, et cetera
Not the guy you replied to, but I’ll give you one: if you are male, it is (or at least was last federal election) impossible to be at the highest spot of any candidate list of the german green party. There was a hard rule that spot 1 had to be a woman and then it alternates. The alternation rule seems pretty alright, but blanket excluding someone from the #1 spot because of gender is pretty blatant sexism. It doesn’t matter that women were in that position and worse in the pretty recent past, 2 wrongs don’t make a right (also ironically this kind of ignores other gender identities entirely but they’d probably be given the woman treatment as they’re clearly generally disadvantaged, which seems alright). Something like having at least 45% at #1 of both men and women and then keeping the alternating rule seems a lot more sensible, or even flat out forcing 50% and flipping the genders each election.
I can also spend a very long time talking about how affirmative action in general feels more like the lazy route to achieve a somewhat better state since socioeconomic factors play a huge role in education and those heavily correlate with ethnicity, but it’s unfair to exclude people based on their skin color (almost like that’s racism by definition), but whatever. I haven’t seen any cases of it being actually abused, and overall just fast tracking more representation of all sorts of people into all kinds of jobs and social groups will likely help a lot against racism in the long run. It just feels like the inferior means to that end.
Germany has things like giving disabled people preference in job applications given otherwise equal qualifications which I think is great as they most likely have much fewer options overall, and I believe that might be considered affirmative action too? I’m not super familiar given that that’s not a term here.
Then targeting socioeconomic status makes more sense. Any system that categorizes people and puts poor white folks in the same “has all the money and connections” bucket as the Clintons and the Obamas in the same “has no money or connections” bucket as poor black folks is not, in any way, actually about having money or connections.
Well unfortunately, the overlap is close enough to a circle that it makes plenty of sense, especially since the issue is not purely economic, but social, as you accidentally point out by using the phrase socioeconomic. Obama has wealth that is unfathomable to the everyday person, as does Clinton—both deal with a society that belittles them because of who they are in a way that white men don’t face, rich or poor.
Surely you’ve noticed that Obama is the only black president so far, despite black people making up 10 to 20% of the population over the last few centuries.
You are also aware that Clinton would have been the first female U.S. President. She won the popular vote by a significant margin, which is a great sign for public opinion on women, but the reality is still that women, who are more than half the country, are not more than half in charge of it.
The fact these two got as far as they did is in no small part thanks to the concept of affirmative action, where we try to right past wrongs and level the playing field. Encourage women to go into nontraditional fields, encourage black students to apply for Ivy League schools and ensure there are spots for them—these things only “hurt” white men because resources are so artificially limited already, disproportionately held by the tiny percentage of [rich white men] who control the US’s giant conglomerates and obedient politicians, and regular old white men aren’t used to feeling the squeeze.
Did Obama pull the ladder up behind him somewhat by applying the same neoliberal bullshit that has destroyed the concept of compassionate social safety nets in favor of a more competitive marketplace? Can you be mad at him? Yeah. That’s beside the point. White people have been allowed to fuck over other white people for ages.