Affermative action: yes or no?

[trialbyerror]

Affirmative action, BEE (Black equity empowerment are fine in theory.

Problem is placement of incompetent people in positions to fulfill quotas for contractual / tender requirements

Our president is a excellent example. Only has a STD 3 schooling. Elected president OF the ANC and de-facto president of the country.

It is an open secret that he was elected President of the ANC to prevent further prosecution in fraud & corruption charges, as, being the president of the country, it is "not in the public interests" to continue with the prosecution.

Government entities are under huge pressure to meet BEE / AA requirements leads to nepotism & corruption.. I't common practice for the person on the inside to get a % of the person they place in a job's wages / salary

The result of all of this is the catastrophic decline of our country over the last 20 years.

They have managed to exchange racial oppression for economic oppression and are raking in billions into private accounts such as Nkandla, 246 Million rand's of tax payer's money spent on the President's private house / compound in a rural area

[Pix]

Wow, those minorities are really incompetent. Clearly white men are much smarter and more capable, and if anyone other than white men are allowed any positions of importance then the country is doomed. Though given how stupid and incompetent these minorities are I wonder how they've gotten away with screwing you for so long. Normally it's the smart who screw the stupid rather than the other way around.

And then there's the government that answers to both the majority of the enfranchised (who don't benefit from affirmative action, unless you allow felons to vote) and also those who fund their campaigns (big business) who typically hate jumping through government hoops, but still these successful people and the smarter majority are outsmarted repeatedly by these incompetents. How embarrassing.

What's even more embarrassing is that if all these corrupt politicians and business people weren't hurting themselves so badly by hiring some of the inferior stock which is killing their golden gooses then they could rake in even more from their corrupt percentages as well as taxes. Perhaps white people wouldn't allow themselves to be so gouged which is the real reason behind affirmative action, but if that were true then surely they wouldn't support such a clearly self-destructive policy of allowing inferiors to work with white men either.

[Virge]

I'll go with that.
Minorities aren't stupider.
but givenrment makes sure they get moved to the head of the class.

[Pix]

Why not hire the available smart and competent minorities then instead of the stupid ones?

Offhand the only thing I can think of is it's a government and business conspiracy to promote white male supremacy by diabolically hiring or accepting those who are incompetent over the competent minorities, though if that's the case then they sure are taking their sweet time in getting to the finale.

[Virge]

Why not hire the available smart and competent minorities then instead of the stupid ones?

Offhand the only thing I can think of is it's a government and business conspiracy to promote white male supremacy by diabolically hiring or accepting those who are incompetent over the competent minorities, though if that's the case then they sure are taking their sweet time in getting to the finale.

Why not just hire the best qualified people for the job and screw all the nippletwisting?

[Virge]

Oh yeah let's hang up a sign that says "NOW HIRING ~ SMART MINORITIES ONLY"

[Pix]

Why not just hire the best qualified people for the job and screw all the nippletwisting?

They do. You're just thinking that because they're minorities they're not as smart or qualified.

I've talked to someone who worked in academics and his school went out of their way to exceed racial quotas, and they never had to settle for someone less who made their school look bad just to fill their quotas, nor would they (if they boost someone's score then it will be over athletics rather than race or gender). But they did have plenty who claimed to have lost a spot due to quotas yet there was always another reason why such a person wasn't chosen.

[Buzzer]

In my opinion, the only deciding factor as to whether someone should get a spot at a particular university should be their study achievements. Legislation should prohibit schools from refusing to accept someone on the basis of gender, ethnicity, functionality etc. and a collectively financed education system makes sure every child is given the same possibilities. To me this is justice.

But this viewpoint does ignore the fact that socioeconomic status, and thus the quality and funding level of local schools available to students, are heavily overlapped by racial category in the U.S. Yes, it's not 100% (i.e. if you're white you're well off, if you're black you're poor), but it's an extremely strong relationship.

The solution is not to simply get rid of all systems altogether and just let everyone compete equally based on a factually false premise that we all started at the same starting point of the race with the same finish line, because we don't. The long-term solution is to standardized school funding and academic quality nationwide, as societies like Japan, France or the UK have done. This will mean a "socialist" school system that isn't this stupid feudalist system we have where local property taxes pay for local school districts, meaning that wealth stays in the wealthy areas and poor communities all pay in less than what is needed to maintain quality schools in their neighborhoods or districts. Affluent cities use this system to "break off" and form "private school districts" so that their tax dollars are not being fairly shared with neighborhoods within the same county that may be impoverished. Right in the area where I live you can go to the high school "up on the hill" and, literally, both gender bathrooms have lounges attached to them. Then go to the poor district and just keep an eye on the ceiling because you don't want one of those ceiling tiles that are hanging precariously to fall on your head.

The short term solution is to amend AA to include qualifiers on socioeconomic background. This does not mean take applicants who are wholly unprepared for a top tier university and shove them in there, but it's largely a middle class white myth that this was ever what AA was ever doing in the first place.

[Buzzer]

I'll go with that.
Minorities aren't stupider.
but givenrment makes sure they get moved to the head of the class.

Surely, that explains why economically disadvantaged minorities continue, to this day, to be underrepresented in higher education, right?

They were all offered free spots and turned them down?

[Buzzer]

Oh yeah let's hang up a sign that says "NOW HIRING ~ SMART MINORITIES ONLY"

It's amazing to me that this is what you think the state of affairs is when, in reality, the past century has been a slow and incredibly gradual process of taking down the "Whites Only, Coloreds Need Not Apply" sign that was on absolutely everything-- and we're not just talking about jobs or college spots, either. This problem continues with home loans, financing to start businesses or renovate housing or refinance a home, etc.

The things you are saying only makes sense from a zero sum point of view which assumes that everyone was already equal and that AA or similar programs simply turned the bias against whites. You won't find any objective facts or statistics to back up that kind of a picture.