What do you call Affirmative Action Forever, and the ability to play the race card at any time to avoid debate?
First of all there is no such thing as a black person "playing the race card". One can hardly play a card, to one's advantage, that everyone can see.
http://clutchmagonline.com/2011/06/race-is-not-a-card-its-a-reality/#comment-127481
The “race card” is a concept that has been used to silence people of color who attempt to speak out when they feel that race has been used unfairly in determining how people are treated. It is one of the most dangerous weapons in the White privilege toolbox, for it implies that a non-POC would know better when something is truly racist than someone who is constantly subjected to racism.
So, every time you bring up , Me, "playing the race card", you are , in effect, trying to silence my discontent, at your injustices and my pointing out you taking advantage of "white privilege".
And knowing , full well, the advantages you richly enjoy, but unjustly do not deserve, how you can fix your finger to type any disparaging of affirmative action is simply "beyond".
http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/...e-people-going-to-stop-waiting-for-a-handout/
When Are White People Going To Stop Waiting For A Handout?
Sunday, March 22, 2009
A phrase you will hear every now and then is “when are blacks going to stop waiting for a handout?” I saw it in print last night while reading commentary by Roy Blount Jr. in the Oxford American , whose latest edition is dedicated to race (that means its only about black people in America) this month.
I chuckled a bit after reading that phrase – it wasn’t a half an hour earlier that I’d watched a news clip on The Larry King Show that featured a small group of protesters going from house to house in Connecticut to demonstrate in front of the mansions and estates of AIG executives.
If you’ve been watching the news, reading the newspaper (SUBSCRIBE NOW – THEY NEED THE MONEY), or surfing the web the last two weeks, you can probably understand why I was busy trying out that age-old phrase, one that is often uttered by those who feel that hundreds of years of racial discrimination should be bygones, with a substitution of my own.
When are these white men going to stop waiting for a handout?
The alliteration between “handout” and “bailout” does not escape me. Because that’s what it feels like right now – that there is absolutely no difference between the two.
The only people I see on my TV these days, arguing with Congress about how much they think they should make even though their businesses would closed by now without taxpayer assistance, or pouting to cable news analysts about the severity of their company’s situation, are white people. White men in particular. They all seem to be waiting for the government to do something to help them now that they are in trouble.
And I imagine we are about due now for another bombshell announcement in your local newspaper (THE MOST INFORMATION YOU CAN GET FOR THE MONEY) about yet another “paragon of investing virtue” whose financial chicanery will be unveiled as a total fraud. There have been several who have been uncovered in the last few months, including Allan Stanford, the “billionaire” from Texas whose tight lipped exhortations were prominently featured on CNBC on a regular basis. Haven’t seen one black face in the bunch.
This racial stereotype has gotten so bad that the CEO of Dominoes Pizza, in a commercial that skewers the whole bailout fiasco, is walking down what is supposed to be a New York City street amid a gang of Dominos delivery guys who are handing out boxes of pizza to everybody on the street when he pauses to snatch a box back from a pinstriped suited, grey haired, gruff looking white man.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/04needs/98wood.htm
Erwin Chemerinsky, Symposium on Race Relations in America: What Would Be the Impact of Eliminating Affirmative Action?, 27 Golden Gate University Law Review 313, Spring 1997
Professor Chemerinsky begins his article with an 1883 quote from Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley (taken from a civil rights case) citing the arrival of the end of racial discrimination and the termination of the need for affirmative action type programs only 20 years after the end of the Civil War:
When a man has emerged from slavery and by the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitant of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation where he takes the rank of a mere citizen and ceases to be a special favorite of the laws.(78)
Professor Chemerinsky notes that the relevance of this quote is especially significant today. He cites that the civil war era was followed by over 100 years of Jim Crow laws which segregated all aspects of Southern Life. It was only about 40 decades ago when the law declared the inequity of the separate but equal doctrine and fewer years still, 1964, when the law outlawed discrimination. Finally, he completes the foundation for his argument by noting that even in the 1970s that an African American presence in California medical schools and in state employment ranks, was virtually non-existent.(79) It was this backdrop from which affirmative action was born. The problem the article addresses is that one of the greatest myths of the "end affirmative action chorus" is the notion that discrimination against minority racial groups and women is a thing of the past.(80)
The most gripping aspect of his analysis relates to recent studies conducted by the Urban Institute to assess the extent and severity of racism today. For example, one study of racism in employment practices recruited college students, both black and white. All the students looked presentable and all the students used the same resume: The only difference in the applicants was race. The bottom line: Whites received job offers 41% more than blacks and were offered wages 17% higher. Additionally, whites were told of additional job opportunities 48% of the time.(81) He states that it would be nice if our nation was race and gender blind and maybe someday it will be. However, at the present "race and gender matter and we can't pretend they don't."(82)
Professor Chemerinsky offers a very frank discussion on the realities of modern day racism. As he also observes, its interesting that the opponents of affirmative action want to discuss the potential harms these programs can inflict on non-minorities as they throw around the term "color-blind." However, color-blindness is a myth. While there may be fewer lynchings, fewer klan rallies, and maybe fewer black people are called "nigger" to their face, the impact of racism is as significant as it ever was. This is a very informative article.
Affirmative action is still needed to offset inherent discrimination, both conscious and subconscious, and to counterbalance the negative outcomes behind nepotism and cronyism. -poet
