Republican Voter Suppression!

[quasarvs]

I'm sorry you're depressed, I know the feeling, but come on!


You talk of our founding fathers, well why should illegal immigrants not have to fight for their country
to achieve freedom and prosperity eventually, as did our founding fathers?

Mexico in particular has great potential if it was only managed right.

Do you have any conception of justice? Nothing in life is fair. On top of that there are laws that must be obeyed.
Sure illegal immigrants live in horrible conditions in Mexico and if you had read carefully above you should have noted that I said nobody should have to live like that.
I think its quite unjust for you to compare me with a brute with no sympathy!

Another thing my family does know what it is to be poor with nothing to their name. My father, as a youth worked his way up from a bedless, empty room to the middleclass, all thanks to God's grace and free enterprise.

I think you are wrong about poor people coming up from poverty and not being conservative:

Justice Clarence Thomas
economist Milton Friedman

And with a little research many more could be named.

Please note also with the obesity, debit/credit spending, abuse of social programs such as foodstamps, national debt etc. Americans are spoiled and corrupted.
Therefore, don't you think that will happen to anyone who is immersed in our culture as an illegal immigrant is?

[sanantone]

You seem to want racism to disappear when its not in your favor, but don’t mind racism when it is in your favor as with Affirmative Action.
Racism is putting a race or gender above other races or genders.
Favoring affirmative action dissolves your argument against racially profiling.

If you can’t live without Affirmative action, what does that say for those favored races or the people of minorities who benefit from it? Is it saying that they are not ever capable of being successful in whatever capacity they apply for? Of course not. Affirmative action is just a racist choice and irresponsible.

Like I said earlier, most conservatives misunderstand Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action is meant to create a balance among qualified people. The girl who is suing University of Texas because Affirmative Action kept her from being admitted is completely uninformed. Blacks and Hispanics are way underrepresented at UT in comparison to the general Texas population, so the favoritism is not there. White females (and she is one) have benefited more from Affirmative Action than anyone else. If she would have worked harder and got into the Top 10% of her class, she would have been admitted. I applied to Tulane University when I graduated from high school and didn't get in. My SAT score was above average, but it wasn't high enough for Tulane. Minorities and women still have to meet the minimum standards set by the organization. Affirmative Action is about equal opportunity, not quotas. After graduating with my degree, I went to a lot of interviews and almost a year went by before I got a new job. People simply do not understand how Affirmative Action works. I'm in a small minority where I live. If I were being favored for employment, I wouldn't have been turned down so many times. The organizations repeatedly chose older, more experienced people and they weren't black in most cases.


There are dirt poor people who are conservatives -- they live in Mississippi and take government handouts at a pretty high rate.

[quasarvs]

You're minority is still being favored, because if a company needs to hire for a position and both
a white man and a black man with the exact same qualifications apply, the company would be required to
hire the black man.
Here's explanatory evidence, Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action FAQs - Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity - The University of Iowa

"Affirmative action goes further than equal employment opportunity. It affirms that organizations and individuals in organizations will seek to overcome the effects of past discrimination against groups such as women and minorities, disabled persons, and veterans by making a positive and continuous effort in their recruitment, employment, retention, and promotion."
"Affirmative steps should be taken to attract those qualified women and minorities in the field."


Why not let the chips fall where they may according to free enterprise?

Don't employers have a right to choose who they want?

It doesn't matter if the whites were the minority affirmative action still shows a preference to a race or gender above other races or genders and that's racism.

No matter what side you're on, majority or minority the balance among qualified people will never be achieved because that's the very meaning of the words majority and minority.
For example, if I was interested in a job in security for a company, and many men of different minorities applied they would probably get it over me, even if they were not more educationally qualified, because in all reality they are probably more physically suited for the job.
That's not a bad thing, because that's freedom to choose.

However, like you said yourself the jobs you applied for chose people who were even more experienced.

Blacks and Hispanics are also the minority in population size in Texas, of course they will be underrepresented!

What you're trying to say is that there are some people who are minorities that are just as qualified as majorities and they are still not getting jobs.
So what! There are plenty of majority people out of work who are qualified that are not getting jobs. What's the difference?

Racism?

Again bad things happen but nobody should let that stop them!

We still live in a free society with free enterprise, we should take advantage and use it!

It's not correct to compare a minority to a majority because they are numerically less. Of course, they will never stack up with the most benefits even if all members of a minority were hired.

Affirmative action draws attention to race. How does that help racism go away?

[sanantone]

OMG! When I say they are underrepresented in comparison to the general Texas population, I mean that they are underrepresented in comparison to the general Texas population. They make up a much smaller proportion of UT than the general Texas population. For example, if a group makes up 30% of a population and they only make up 15% of an organization, then they are underrepresented. Creating a balance does not mean that there should be an equal number of minorities and whites in a job, it means that the representation should be proportional.

As far as the webpage you linked to, I think you need to read the whole thing slowly. It says nothing about favoring certain groups over others. It's all about increasing recruitment efforts so that all groups have an equal opportunity. This is from the page you linked to.

Isn't affirmative action a form of reverse discrimination?

No. The concept of affirmative action addresses the fact that discrimination against members of minority groups and women has been a part of our nation's history and continues to exist. Learning to value the contributions of women and minorities requires a change in how we think. It does not mean devaluing the contributions of others. The fact that a candidate is able to serve as a role model for other employees and students and can offer a range of perspectives are also relevant elements in the evaluation and selection process. However, no one should be selected solely because of their membership in any group; similarly, no one should be rejected on that basis.

My point is that minorities are getting turned down for jobs they qualify for just like everyone else (actually more often). So, obviously, Affirmative Action doesn't work like you think it works. You don't make racism go away by acting like it doesn't exist. Problems never get solved if they aren't acknowledged to exist in the first place.

[quasarvs]

You are :

1. Interpreting the data to fit the preconceived notions of your beliefs for what you want to see.

If you do a study on all the Sonics in the country you will probably see 16-25 year olds vastly outnumbering 40 and up.
There are natural economic reasons for this. Instead of perhaps considering the possibility that there are various natural economic reasons for various proportions of minorities in businesses, you assume that this is solely because of racism!

This is a pretty big assumption since you do not know all the various economic factors that affect these businesses! Based upon this assumption, you look at the data and assume that there is a massive problem of racism in this country. This is simply not true! Though there are some racist people out there, the plethora of successful black and Hispanic business people in America goes to show that hard work and dedication is really what makes one successful, not race, religion, or color.

It is easier to blame lack of success on something else. Sure, there are some blacks and Hispanics who've had a really raw deal. But the same is true with many white people! Taking responsibility is essential to success!

2. Your second assumption is that the government's regulation is the most effective way to eliminate any problem of racism that might exist. This is another very large assumption that is simply not backed up by historical data (or common sense for that matter!)

All the tons of media and governmental emphasis on race has just drawn more and more attention to the subject. Isn't the real goal that we simply forget about a person's race and judge them individually? Then how can you achieve this by doing nothing but exacerbating the tension by tons of regulation and media attention?!?

By the way, my source does indeed support my beliefs on affirmative action. If you'll read it closely you'll see its mention of 'protected classes', that is proof positive that favoritism is a goal.

[sanantone]

I don't know why I have to repeatedly breakdown everything for you and why you're putting words in my mouth. I never said the disproportionality was a sign of rampant racism. However, the name discrimination and racial profiling is a sign of racism. I know this sounds harsh, but you didn't even know the definition of underrepresentation or racial profiling. In the other thread, I had to correct your comprehension errors. You would even forget what you were talking about and what I was responding to even though I quoted you.

If you want to look at history, look at a time when the federal government ignored racism. We had Jim Crow laws. You are sort of contradicting yourself by saying that the government and media's drawing attention to the subject has increased it. Since more and more attention is being drawn to it, wouldn't that make racism more rampant? Racism has actually decreased after the Civil Rights Act. History does not back up your often incorrect assertions. We already know what you think of women's rights so there you go....... Do you have a problem with the federal government protecting veterans from discrimination? They need the extra protection because there is proof that they are more likely to be discriminated against than non-veterans. The same goes for other protected classes. There are a lot of things and people in life that warrant extra protection for various reasons outside of government laws on protected classes. It's not about favoritism, it's about acknowledging reality. If you know that the type of vehicle you own is more likely to be stolen, you are going to take extra precautions to protect it. It's not that you like that vehicle more than the other ones you own.

The people who are trying to make data fit their preconceived notions are the people who like your comments because you have been so obviously wrong and offensive so many times. Remember your implication that Catholics are polytheistic? There is absolutely no getting around the mistakes you've made. It's a purely objective measurement.

[OE800_85]

Departing from race for a moment (I feel enough has been said by sanantone) I wonder how much people have considered the class that truly gets the most from the government. Their benefits are astronomically higher than anyone's. I'm talking about the plutocrats. The scary rich. Interesting read here: (watch out, it's got plenty of numbers)
Daily Kos: The GOP tax plan: Leave no billionaire behind

[quasarvs]

Although I was swept away with school finals and the holidays, I would now like to return and make possibly a few more posts here.
Maybe this thread is dead as a doornail, but I’d like to reply anyway.

This is in response to Sanantone,

I don’t think it’s necessarily a discredit to someone in a debate if they have their opponent break things down.
I think the reason someone should break down their thoughts depends on their purpose. If you only want to win an argument then no one should care whether you break down everything for me or not. However, if your purpose is to try and reason with me to bring me to another point of view, you should be glad to break things down.

I’ll tell you right out, that my goal in arguing this is to bring you to another point of view.

I believe I understand your point now, about proportional representation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you meant that if a minority is 30% of a population then in any given business in that population, 30% of the business should be made up of a minority. If that’s correct I’d like to ask how that fits in with free enterprise or freedom? I mean you can’t guarantee that an open-minded business manager will hire 30% of his work force from a minority. You can’t even guarantee that enough of the minority will apply and be available to that business for hiring. So if the opportunities are not guaranteed available naturally, in an already free society, why do we need affirmative action to correct this ‘problem’ of disproportionality? After all, there is freedom. Anyone can apply and hire/fire who they want, and I would assume you can agree that you can’t punish or regulate hatred or racism unless you want to be the thought police.
All that affirmative action does is cut down more personal freedoms in an attempt to regulate irregulateable things such as thoughts, emotions etc.

The fact that the Jim Crow laws were made is only the same example of affirmative action. They are both sides of the same coin. You can’t outlaw racism because its an emotion, but when you try to regulate it with affirmative action you are only empowering one person above another and creating an imbalance that can promote the same issue once again, racism. It’s like over-correcting a car. Democracy is a wild ride and when you try to curb its excesses with laws you can’t go too far and over correct. The civil rights movement was good because it brought to light the mal-functions of our current laws. But the civil rights movement was aimed at upholding the freedoms and rights for black folks that every American already had. Affirmative action is an over-correcting of the car of democracy. When the car of democracy slid off the road with Jim crow, Martin Luther King guided it back into the lane of the law. I believe that anything more would be right back off the road into racism. Affirmative action by the definition of racism, is just another form of such.

A vehicle is one thing but people are another. A car is not sentient but people are. By ‘protecting’ other people from ‘discrimination’ by insuring they will always have a ‘fair’ shot is all based on trying to regulate people’s free thoughts and choices and trying to create a perfect world when there is none. As long as someone’s free choices don’t contradict another person’s rights then they should retain the freedom to make those choices. Americans have never been assured that they will always have a job. The Pilgrims didn’t land on Plymouth and demand England to provide for them because they had a right to survive. They knew the risks of freedom and assumed the responsibility to take care of themselves.

Finally, you haven’t given me any real proof of the military being discriminated against, until then your question is irrelevant.
Discrimination is an attitude. Is it right to make laws against attitudes in a free country?

[mrs.b]

If another voice can jump in on just this one topic, I manage the Affirmative Action plans for my employer location, and deal with these concepts daily. On Affirmative Action only, there are differences between EEO in theory, and EEO in practice from both regulatory and employer perspectives. In theory, it is an exceptionally positive program that could do the economy a world of good and bring about a point in time when very minimal or no regulation is necessary. In practice, regulation is so heavy-handed that many employers do the bare minimum to avoid penalty with dozens of ways around "doing the right thing," and well-meaning employers that already do all they can to benefit themselves with a diverse workforce must still spend obscene volumes of time maintaining documentation in case a DOL auditor grows bored and decides to dig through paperwork. There are few benefits to compliance, which is where I think it all goes astray.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you meant that if a minority is 30% of a population then in any given business in that population, 30% of the business should be made up of a minority. If that’s correct I’d like to ask how that fits in with free enterprise or freedom?

Sanantone would have to address what he specifically meant, but by EEO standards, yes and no. The percentage is based upon protected groups' representation in similar positions in similar organizations. In other words, a manufacturing group will base their "population" on how many of that minority are representated in similar positions in other manufacturing businesses. Let's say we're talking about minority shop floor managers. The community itself may be 30% of that minority, but of all the shop floor managers of all the surrounding manufacturing businesses, that population may only be 15% in similar positions. Ideally, the organization in question will also have 15% of that minority in its shop floor manager roster. If they do not, they will have a goal of recruiting 4/5 (80%) of that 15% for their EEO plan year.


The fit with free enterprise and freedom are up to interpretation. Both parties generally agree that some regulation of business and economy is necessary; the levels to which those regulations are employed are where differences arise. To go at it from a different angle, though, freedom is usually associated with equality for all, which is what Affirmative Action is intended to produce. The usual Conservative stance is that anyone who works hard - no matter the ethnicity, gender, race, religion, or disability - can be successful, so why give a leg-up to some groups while others must achieve the same results alone? The usual Liberal stance is that some groups in society are at a disadvantage due to circumstances outside their control, so measures must be put in place to balance the playing field. Whatever your interpretation, EEO in theory is a well-meaning program that does not force employers to hire unqualified people over qualified based purely on skin tone or anatomical differences. It only states that if two candidates meet a job's qualification standards, and one of them is from a protected group that is underrepresented in the organization, the employer must select that individual. In my own organization, we have a goal to recruit women to some of our workforce categories, because our minority representation is well above the surrounding communities' percentages. It is where the confusion with quotas comes in, but they are not quotas. They are recruitment goals and only in place if underrepresented as compared to businesses similar in makeup within the surrounding community.

I mean you can’t guarantee that an open-minded business manager will hire 30% of his work force from a minority. You can’t even guarantee that enough of the minority will apply and be available to that business for hiring.

An open-minded business manager who is hiring from a hiring pool that has been given equal education and advancement opportunities will have a candidate pool that includes 30% of the minority in question (if the surrounding community of similar businesses has 30% of that minority in the same type of workforce), and that open-minded business manager will select the most qualified applicants from that candidate pool. Naturally, 30% of the manager's hires will be qualified minorities since all other things are equal, and as an open-minded individual, s/he is not including race or gender in the decision-making process. In reality, we do not live in a perfect world where everyone had the same initial opportunities, nor are all hiring managers open-minded no matter how much 100% of them will claim to be.


In practice, there are few candidate pools that are legitimately made up of those percentages of protected groups because of the differences in education and advancement opportunities that still exist, so it becomes the hiring manager's responsibility to actively recruit qualified individuals made up of that protected group. For instance, an employer in the manufacturing industry that has a goal of recruiting females to the company's workforce may reach out to women's groups to find women interested in applying, rather than merely posting the ad and hoping some ladies fill out an application. In an Affirmative Action plan - a document employers must maintain and update yearly that defines the goals and practices of recruiting protected groups - there is a section devoted specifically to the measures an employer intends to take to bring their workforce closer to the surrounding communities' racial and gender percentages. It is not merely a "wait and see who shows up" situation; employers must seek out qualified individuals of the groups underrepresented in their organization. It is much harder to do in practice than in theory, but in a perfect world, the hiring manager would contact the women's group and they would have a horde of qualified women who just did not know about the company and want to leave their cushy office jobs for manufacturing facility plant floor jobs... Yeah.

So if the opportunities are not guaranteed available naturally, in an already free society, why do we need affirmative action to correct this ‘problem’ of disproportionality? After all, there is freedom. Anyone can apply and hire/fire who they want, and I would assume you can agree that you can’t punish or regulate hatred or racism unless you want to be the thought police.
All that affirmative action does is cut down more personal freedoms in an attempt to regulate irregulateable things such as thoughts, emotions etc.

Oh goodness, how this sounds like arguments of some of the managers at my work. The first question sort of answers itself; the opportunities are not guaranteed naturally because few communities have achieved the enlightened point where education and advancement opportunities are distributed evenly among the races, genders, and so forth, so Affirmative Action is intended to be the boost to move society to a point where it is a natural guarantee. No, it does not work as intended, not by employers' standards, nor by the individuals it is intended to protect.


If it were more incentive-driven rather than punitive, I think employer buy-in would be much more willing. Unfortunately, it is largely driven by punishment. There are some tax incentives offered to employers, but they are few and minimal. If there were more benefits to organizations that met or exceeded the requirements, I think executives and Accounting Groups throughout the business world would join frustrated HR managers in "encouraging" business managers to be more open-minded. It is generally agreed that positive reinforcement is a tried and true method of changing behaviors with children and pets. It works just as nicely in business when trying to correct backwards thinking. But, that's another debate for another thread.








The rest of the discussion is a bit too political in nature for my tastes, so I'll leave it at that.

[sanantone]

I don’t think it’s necessarily a discredit to someone in a debate if they have their opponent break things down.
I think the reason someone should break down their thoughts depends on their purpose. If you only want to win an argument then no one should care whether you break down everything for me or not. However, if your purpose is to try and reason with me to bring me to another point of view, you should be glad to break things down.

Well, it is a discredit if the person is so adamant about arguing something of which they know little. My goal is to relieve ignorance and to stop it from spreading, but I become irritable when people refuse to acknowledge facts and think logically. It's even more infuriating when people express agreement with someone who has repreatedly been proven wrong and, yet, they don't express the reasoning behind this.

I believe I understand your point now, about proportional representation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you meant that if a minority is 30% of a population then in any given business in that population, 30% of the business should be made up of a minority. If that’s correct I’d like to ask how that fits in with free enterprise or freedom? I mean you can’t guarantee that an open-minded business manager will hire 30% of his work force from a minority. You can’t even guarantee that enough of the minority will apply and be available to that business for hiring. So if the opportunities are not guaranteed available naturally, in an already free society, why do we need affirmative action to correct this ‘problem’ of disproportionality? After all, there is freedom. Anyone can apply and hire/fire who they want, and I would assume you can agree that you can’t punish or regulate hatred or racism unless you want to be the thought police.
All that affirmative action does is cut down more personal freedoms in an attempt to regulate irregulateable things such as thoughts, emotions etc.

I couldn't have given a better explanation of how EEO laws work than Mrs B., so I'll address some other issues. What I've noticed is that the people who seem to gripe the most about things like Affirmative Action, the Civil Rights Act, the abolition of slavery, desegregation etc. usually end up showing tendencies of prejudice. If you dig long and deep enough, they usually reveal their bigotry in things such as having outdated views on women's rights, intolerance and gross misconceptions of other religions, praise of Confederate "heroes" who partook in forcing people into slavery but show disgust for someone who forced them to give up the evil institution, and a penchant for stereotyping ethnic groups outside of their own. These people really aren't concerned with the freedom of those who do not think like them to discriminate; these people are really concerned with their own freedom and the freedom of those like them to deny the natural and civil rights of others. The most maddening are those who believe in upholding states' rights (an entity) over individual rights (a human being). None of this makes sense to me, but I have to often remind myself that bigotry is caused by ignorance and an irrational thought process. Some people are open to and capable of learning and others will either insist on or are just doom to forever wallow in their ignorance.

The fact that the Jim Crow laws were made is only the same example of affirmative action. They are both sides of the same coin. You can’t outlaw racism because its an emotion, but when you try to regulate it with affirmative action you are only empowering one person above another and creating an imbalance that can promote the same issue once again, racism. It’s like over-correcting a car. Democracy is a wild ride and when you try to curb its excesses with laws you can’t go too far and over correct. The civil rights movement was good because it brought to light the mal-functions of our current laws. But the civil rights movement was aimed at upholding the freedoms and rights for black folks that every American already had. Affirmative action is an over-correcting of the car of democracy. When the car of democracy slid off the road with Jim crow, Martin Luther King guided it back into the lane of the law. I believe that anything more would be right back off the road into racism. Affirmative action by the definition of racism, is just another form of such.

A vehicle is one thing but people are another. A car is not sentient but people are. By ‘protecting’ other people from ‘discrimination’ by insuring they will always have a ‘fair’ shot is all based on trying to regulate people’s free thoughts and choices and trying to create a perfect world when there is none. As long as someone’s free choices don’t contradict another person’s rights then they should retain the freedom to make those choices. Americans have never been assured that they will always have a job. The Pilgrims didn’t land on Plymouth and demand England to provide for them because they had a right to survive. They knew the risks of freedom and assumed the responsibility to take care of themselves.

What are the signs of this overcorrection? Do blacks and Hispanics have higher employment rates than white people? Do they have higher high school and college graduation rates? Are their incomes higher? Minorities were disenfranchised by Jim Crow Laws and it showed in the statistics. How are white people being disenfranchised by Affirmative Action, especially when white women have benefitted the most from it?

Finally, you haven’t given me any real proof of the military being discriminated against, until then your question is irrelevant.
Discrimination is an attitude. Is it right to make laws against attitudes in a free country?

The proof is in the history behind laws addressing discrimination. Veterans would not be a protected class if there wasn't a history of discrimination against them.
Do Employers Discriminate Against Veterans?
Are Employers Discriminating Against Hiring Veterans? | Veterans Today
http://jobsforveterans.military.com/849/...stice-act/

Discrimination is an act; prejudice is an attitude. Regulating discriminatory practices is regulating actions, not thoughts.