I was asked to explain why I believe race preferences are immoral.
Immorality is the state of being immoral. An immoral thing is that which is contrary to accepted principles of right and wrong. Morality is conformity to ideals of right human conduct. For a primer on right human conduct, I direct you to God’s word, the Bible.
Natural rights, as well as those found in the Constitution, belong to individuals, not groups. If an individual is discriminated against because of his race, he should be compensated, not his entire racial group. There is no such thing as Group Rights. An individual has a right to seek redress from injury from a particular institution, not an entire race.
Skin color preferences bestow undeserved advantage on some and undeserved burdens on others. Such an idea is anathema to democracy and freedom. Why should people be compensated for a wrong they did not suffer? Why should some be penalized for a wrong they did not commit?
A person’s sex or skin color doesn’t entitle him to special favors or treatment. Skin color or sex doesn’t entitle anyone to receive less or more consideration. Giving one group preferred status over another group is unjust, especially when done by our own government. It is against the law and in violation of the U.S. Constitution, regardless of intentions.
The idea that we can “fix” history by preferring the race once discriminated against over the race once doing the discriminating is flat out wrong, not to mention counterintuitive.
In his brief for the Brown v. Board of Education, the case that declared government-sanctioned race discrimination illegal, Thurgood Marshall wrote, “Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state, bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere.”
I’ll concede this: I believe social engineers’ hearts were in the right place, but they had no idea what their skin color schemes would look like thirty years out. Thanks to them, we’re still entangled in race debates and race politics. These things will not pass until individual rights regain their proper place in this country.
Any questions?
Addendum: “Affirmative action tends to undermine the spirit of individual initiative. Such is human nature; why struggle to succeed when you can have something for nothing?” — Arthur Ashe, Days of Grace
“There is no logical reason why conditions today, so obviously very much better than they were for our forebears, somehow call for Victimology where conditions for people two steps past slavery did not. Victimology is, ironically, a luxury of widened opportunities.” — John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America
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LaShawn,
First of all, they weren’t all “social engineers”. You are speaking in white, conservative code. Using that phrase dishonors men like Hubert Humphrey, who fought for the extension of civil rights and was one of the best men, in the real sense of the word, to serve this country in the last 60 years. During that same period, Reagan and Goldwater were speaking in “code” to the South. Human nature being what it is, and you are right when you keep emphasizing that aspect of truth, it did not take long after the death of Dr. King for all kinds of shysters, both white and black, to use the issue for their own political and financial gain, Jesse Jackson,Al Sharpton and George Wallace being the most visible and notorious examples.
But conservatives almost worship the “status quo” so what would you folks have done? Do you want to go back to that era when job and educational discrimination were blatant everywhere in the country, but especially the south? I grew up in supposedly liberal Lincoln, Nebraska in the 50s and early 60s and I know white people. I know how they talked and how they felt. My family on my Dad’s side was racist to the core. My Uncle Fred worked in Gary, Ind as a meat cutter and saw the black exodus to the Chicago-Gary area after WWll after the mechanization of cotton production and the boom in industrial production in the north. Whites were scared that blacks would take their jobs. What he continually said about blacks will never be heard through my lips.The stories and lies told about Thunder Thornton, Willie Ross, etc., Nebraska’s first black football players, made me want to vomit. I was called “ni**er lover” many times before I ever hit 20. In the late 50s, a black family tried to move out of the designated black areas into Havelock on the northeast side. They were quickly burned out. My Dad told me about it watching to see my reaction. My mom and grandma, and some in our church, believed that blacks were basically getting what they deserved because God had cursed Noah’s son Ham and grandson Canaan with perpetual servant status. We were taught that Ham was possibly black and that his son Cush certainly was.
Do you conservatives, and I count myself as one, want to go back there? I did work in inner-city Phoenix and San Diego way back in the early 70s and 80s when white people wouldn’t even drive “down there..” My wife and two small blond boys lived there with me. The problems with black kids were astronomical and so sad and they were almost overwhelmingly caused by discrimination and the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, especially in Phoenix. My Bible says “help the weak” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” My family tried. We did our best. But white conservative donors wanted salvation decisions. No matter that the kids couldn’t read or didn’t have decent clothes or even ANY shoes.I was fired for expressing my concerns. We now work in Cambodia with the poorest of the poor. But my gratitude still goes out to PeanutHead and his mom, and Robert and his blind grandma and Lou Thaddeus, who endured life with a totally destroyed heroin-addicted mother and Albert and Renee and Pearl who fought there way to find a place in the sun in a family of 17. They taught me the value of a human life. They taught me to love the unlovely like Christ loved and still loves me…and you
.Where were the conservatives? I was raised an Ike, Nixon and Goldwater Republican and by 1965 had seen enough. I have been fiercely eclectic and independent since the death of Robert Kennedy. I lived in Dallas in 67-68 and worked in a drugstore that had 3 bathrooms. I lived there when MLK was shot and saw the reaction. I lived in Phoenix, Goldwater country so-called, and saw conditions far worse than anything I’ve encountered in Cambodia. I heard how the white “conservatives”, including fundamentalists and evangelicals talked about the blacks and Indians.
It is all fine to sit back and criticize and analyze…bla, bla, bla. And its fine to say that helping the weak is for the charities and the churches (Hell will freeze over before the churches do much beside offer tokens).
I heard Billy Graham, who I had cherished since I first heard his name as a 3-4 yr old, say over and over in the 60s that legislation and laws couldn’t change morality. That of course was the old southern mantra.”We are virulent rascists and bigots and your laws won’t change us!” He was wrong then and that thinking is still wrong. It was about extending rights and benefits to ALL of OUR people in keeping with our great foundational documents. Laws, when they are just, are ALL about morality. As Paul said, laws are made for the lawless and rebellious, the ungodly and sinners.You are exactly right when you say that racial preferences are immoral but what were they for 350 years before the Civil Rights Movement? Just tough cookies for the parties who suffered under them? And can we expect that such racial preferences over the centuries did not effect the people who were so treated?
Stan in San Diego
Stan,
I am proud to say I turned down the cookie, and worked 3 part time jobs (usually 35+ hours a week)while in college, and went on to a nice career and even own a modest little bungalow in the burbs (no fha or hud for this bear, TYVM) 
Hows about you, Stan?
You really need to read what people say before going off. I said I was eligible, not that I took any of the things I was eligible for.
As for charities, I do give. In time and dollars, I gave more than John F’n Kerry did last year
As for the Constitution, while that was someone elses point… the big C and the Bill of Rights discuss what the Government shall have the right to do and what it shall not. The Bill of Rights takes pains to spell out a nice top ten things they forgot to include off the bat, like government shall not establish religion, not infringe on political speach, not search or seize property without provocation, etc. It is all about what the government shall not do to us, the people.
I don’t have the energy this late to respond to all of your long post, but, is it your belief that 350 years of inequality can only be solved by more another kind of inequality? When does it end? Are you going to give back your stretch of San Diego to the Spanish? Will they return it to the Cupeno and the Cahuilla? Once that is done, will they have to give it back to the Yuman? Then hand off to the La Jollans?
Should the Angles and Saxons pay off the Brittons? Man o man, Italy must owe Africa, Europe and the mid east quite a bit… then those pesky vikings… I wonder if I can get some Ikea stock out of that deal… or some Legos, preferably Star Wars legos.
Which brings me back to San Diego… who will own Legoland when the land is re-destributed based on who was wronged by whom? And when will we right the wrongs that were made while righting the other wrongs? I hope whomever is in charge wrights it all down.
Chris,
I don’t know if you’re totally right about affirmative action wearing out its welcome, but I do think that the time is soon. We are approaching the time when the benefits of the Civil Rights movement and other programs will have achieved most of their aim. I personally think that it is time to really work hard to search out the “deserving poor” who are weak and need help from those who are still “gaming” the system, most of whom are unmarried white women with children. I know this from personal experience. I am helping a homeless Cambodian refugee family which was evicted from their home for non-payment of rent and violation of Sec. 8 limitations regarding number of occupants. I helped them resettle in 1985 and employed the woman and her husband in the late 80s, getting them off welfare. He took her cousin as a girlfriend and I warned him once and then gave him an option of quitting or getting fired. He quit. His wife, who went through the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and had about a year of education and only the skills of a rice farmer, has not been the same since. She started drinking and gambling, most of the time using AFDC money. With only one child left she has very little income, $195 AFDC and $78 foodstamps, and now needs surgery on her eyes. I personally made the decision for the landlord not to give her another chance. I’m also encouraging the landlord to turn her in to Sec. 8 because she doesn’t deserve it. The landlord is black with a big heart that got in the way of her head. But God will bless her. Her boyfriend is conservative in the mode of some black conservatives who like to brag that they made it without any help so nobody else deserves help either. (Not you LaShawn!). The landlord left him last week because of his lack of compassion and flexibility . But I’m training the Cambodia lady and her 24 yr old daughter to make wise decisions. All their money has to be turned over to me. I give them a very small allowance. The daughter is now working and the mother has been able to get a little bit of work at a Chinese fast food place at about $2.50 per hour, paid under the table. They are living with another Cambodian family and we’re trying to find another place but they have next to no money for a deposit and have no one to give them a good reference, including me. I will “sit on them” for the next year or so and hope they get it right. I have put in about $50 so far and that will be about it although I had to buy school clothes for her 13 yr. girl. And that’s why I do it. There is a 13 yr old and a 4 yr old. I do it for them. And I do it because I love all of them and I am told to love others as Christ has loved me. He “looked beyond my faults and saw my need” and practices “tough love” with me, training me to be wise and obedient. I , as the chiefest of sinners, cannot ever forget that. I often want to get so angry at shirkers and profligates and the immoral and I’ve yelled at this lady and her daughter over and over. But they know that I love them and want the best for them and I know that God feels the same for me.
Stan in San Diego
HEADS-UP HEADS-UP
Sometimes comments get “stuck” in the holding area because a word in your post triggered the spam filter. I try to approve “stuck” comments as fast as I can, so if yours doesn’t appear right away, it will show up momentarily. Except for when I’m asleep, which I’m about to be in a few minutes. Good night!
Stan-
Keep on keepin on brutha!!!
DarkStar-
You’re right. It’s not indicative of racism, though many people out there automatically assume it is. Wow, something you and I can agree about. Knowledge gained from former girlfriends is sometimes priceless. :>
Wuzzy,
Its really hard to respond to you for the same reasons. Re: the Constitution and Declaration.
Declaration
“certain unalienable rights”
“that to secure these rights, governments are instituted…”
“it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it…”
“it is their right, it is their responsibility…”
“a right inestimable to them…”
“his invasion on the rights of the people…”
Constitution
“the right of the people to assemble…”
“the right of the people to bear arms…”
“the right of the people to be secure in their persons…”
“the right to a speedy and public trial…”
“the right of trial by jury…”
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights…”
“The right of citizens…to vote…” (4 times)
Frankly, I have never heard your’s or Mark’s interpretations before. Both documents are rather straightforward. And I wonder why you’re taking everything so personally, using LOL over and over again, questioning my charitable giving, accusing me of wanting reparations going back centuries (I never mentioned it). I guess I wouldn’t want to give San Diego back to the “Indians”. Now LA, that’s a different story! Can anyone argue that LA metro is a better place than it was when the “Indians” “owned” it? You really are a good example of the “tough cookies” for losers attitude. Nice to know you know about our wonderful area. Feel free to visit anytime and leave as much money as you can before you leave.
Stan in San Diego
Stan,
— Regarding the “fact” that discriminators also pay a financial price for their discriminating, what does that mean? that discriminators are morons and intellectual midgets, incapable of making value judgments in their own favor? What does that say about the slaveowners or the schools and universities and employers that had to be dragged kicking and screaming before allowing even one black student to enroll or one black to work? —
schools and universities aren’t ‘for-profit’ enterprises.
as such, they can discriminate without penalty.
especially if the majority of their funding is through taxes.
slavery was profitable – or it would not have existed.
slavery is also different from discrimination in a free market…unless you consider the institution of slavery to have existed in a free market. do you?
—Were they so educationally challenged in the knowledge of capitalism that they continued to hit themselves over the head for over 300 years to their own financial loss? Is that the choice? Either they were among the dumbest people God ever made or they were discriminators? You make the call.—
obviously, this point of yours is answered adequately above.
feel free to ask any other questions.
- lee
Lee,
Not sure what you’re saying. You said that discriminators paid a financial price. How? Slavery DID operate in a free market because the slaves were a commodity to be bought and sold. Constitutionally, they were property. Arguments have been made by others that slavery was unprofitable to slave owners. That would mean that slaveowners were discriminators AND morons.
As for schools and universities having the right to discriminate because they are not-for -profit…then why are we so upset about affirmative action. Your statement would indicate that schools have the right to discriminate against whites or Asians in favor of blacks, Latinos, etc. I don’t understand.
Stan in San Diego
Stan my Man in San Diego:
The declaration described rights as given by GOD, not government. The constitution is (was?) a document setting definite and limited parameters for the newly created (by the states) Federal government. The first ten articles of which we call the “Bill of Rights”, which again are PROHIBITIONS on the government (can we even imagine today our government being prohibited from meddling in ANYTHING?).
Affirmative action and welfare (both for the poor AND for big corporations) might be well and good, but we must stop pretending that our form of government, involved as it is in so many things not provided for in those documents, is the same as that set forth by the Founding Fathers.
I’m sure your charities are noble, and your giving is reflective of a servant’s heart. But I believe that you are worthy of reproof in this matter of the proper role of government (particularly the Washington gov’t).
—Not sure what you’re saying.—
obviously so. i guess i’m not communicating my point clearly enough.
—You said that discriminators paid a financial price.—
in a free market. a free market that includes labor.
—How? Slavery DID operate in a free market because the slaves were a commodity to be bought and sold.—
i disagree.
simply b/c a commodity can be bought and sold does not prove that the market in which that commodity is bought and sold is ‘free.’
the slaves had no ability to bargain with their labor.
the market, as such, was not free.
—Constitutionally, they were property. Arguments have been made by others that slavery was unprofitable to slave owners. That would mean that slaveowners were discriminators AND morons.—
the first point is beside the point.
the second point brings up studies that have been largely discredited by economists.
—As for schools and universities having the right to discriminate because they are not-for -profit…then why are we so upset about affirmative action.—
i never said schools and universities have the right to discriminate. i said they wouldn’t suffer an economic penalty from discrimination. you are putting words into my mouth.
discrimination of any sort is not ‘right.’ but that doesn’t mean universities or colleges will suffer economic penalties for such discrimination if their budgets are largely buttressed by tax dollars.
—Your statement would indicate that schools have the right to discriminate against whites or Asians in favor of blacks, Latinos, etc. I don’t understand.—
no.
you have misread my statement.
i merely stated that in the case of universities and colleges, since most public institutions of higher learning are largely funded by federal and state tax dollars as well as tuition, fees, etc. any economic penalty that would come about due to discrimination is severely muted. no one has a ‘right’ to discriminate. some can merely get away with it without a large economic penalty while others cannot.
- lee
Lee & Mark,
I stand by my statements. Reread what you wrote to me. I didn’t misread you. Your thinking is somewhat illogical and historically innacurate. Thanks for the dialogue.
Stan in San Diego
—-I stand by my statements. Reread what you wrote to me. I didn’t misread you. Your thinking is somewhat illogical and historically innacurate. Thanks for the dialogue.—-
*shrugs*
yeah, what the hell do i know. i just have a master’s degree in economics. guess i better notify my alma maters and ask for a refund.
hate to break it to you friend, but you have no clue what you’re talking about.
later.
The most egregious example of racial preferences historically and still extant today is those extended to the children of white elites, both Democrats and Republicans. Both Pres. Bushes are examples of this as are enormous amounts of others in both parties. Why do we ignore this and focus almost entirely on blacks?
Lee, maybe an additional degree in sociology and/or history might help. I guess I don’t have as much faith in Mr. Sowell or Mr. Friedman as you do. You never addressed my argument regarding the slaveowners. Were they virulent racists who built their empires on stolen land and stolen labor or were they intellectual morons who didn’t understand that slavery was actually costing them (an argument still being made by the way) and that freeing the slaves to sell their own labor was to the slaveowners financial profit?
Stan in San Diego
Mark,
I gratefully receive your reproof but you are still wrong in your interpretation of the Constitution. It both restricted the rights of the government and enlarged and protected the rights of the individual. Are you a libertarian?
Stan in San Diego
Lashawn,
When Wuzzy called me out on my charitable giving in comparison to his, he used the “F” word.
Stan in San Diego
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