Ryan. The vast majority of blacks nationwide have fairly recent roots in the south. Have you not read the writings of Thomas Sowell? Before the mass migration of blacks to the north, the fewer northern blacks were SIGNIFICANTLY better educated and better off economically than southern blacks.

“very few still alive experienced segregation.”

Roughly 20% of the population is over 60.

government enforce quotas?

Quotas are illegal. Thus, adding “government enforced” to it is an oxymoron.

Frank, idiotic statements like yours are so easily kicked to the curb, that I have difficulty believing that you’ve ever tested your own beliefs or attempted to apply logic to them.

For example, by your own admission, these Jim Crow laws, and your claimed selective nature of New Deal programs took place mostly in the south, esp Jim Crow.

So, if they were indeed the cause, then the IMPACT would be concentrated in the south. Which means that either there exists now a SIGNIFIGANT (statistically) difference between north and south employment/poverty/etc rates, or else you have some ‘splainin to do.

Game over. Now don’t you feel stupid for not examining your beliefs for weaknesses before opening your mouth on the internet?

P.S. How long is enough? No one still alive remembers the freeing of the slaves or a time when women could not vote, and very few still alive experienced segregation. When they are all dead, is that long enough that minorities/women have to have government enforce quotas? If not, how about 5 years from that day?

10?
20?
Fifty years?
75?
A Century?
Never?

In individual cases none of that may be true, but I can only play the odds as they’re presented.

How anyone can think that this situation benefits anyone, “minority”, “disadvantaged”, or otherwise, is a mystery. A degree (or any similar credentials) awarded to one of our officially-approved “disadvantaged” types simply isn’t as valuable as the same thing awarded to someone not on the official handout list. It’s a second-class degree and we all know it (including, usually, the person who has it). The burden of second-class credentials has to be borne for the rest of the holder’s career. And what, exactly, did this individual do to deserve such a burden? Only be a member of an officially recognized and subsidized group – as good a definition of racism or sexism as I know.

This is a national disgrace, and we owe it all to the current institutional incarnation of AA. Forget about going back to the Spartans to try to rationalize AA – it’s screwing people over right now.

Incidentally, the best resume I ever saw belonged to an Indonesian fellow – it reminded me a lot of mine when I was his age, and made me realize what I wasn’t seeing in run-of-the-mill resumes.

Instapundit highlights this story about a new turn in anti-discrimination law. Northern Arizona University raised salaries for varioius non-white-male professors. According to a judge, they have run afoul of anti-discrimination law, and owe the white m…

LBJ did more damage to race relations and the GOP – not to mention the free speech of many religious people and organizations – than any other person in the past fifty years.

Why people still esteem the man amazes me. It doesn’t matter that he signed the Civil Rights Act. He was a consummate politician, like certain other guy who likes to have himself called “the first black president.”

There’s tons of empirical literature on this that opponents of racial reconciliation are either unaware of, or choose to ignore.

Not just “never written into law” — as implied.

Meaning that while the country did indeed have a mishmash of federal and local laws and statutes on the books that all fall under the general heading known as “Jim Crow Laws” there was never a single federally mandated Act, Bill or law specifically named “The Jim Crow” law.

“Affirmative Action” on the other hand, is indeed a single federally enforced piece of legislation.

In that respect, the newer arrival may just prove to be the harder of the two to eradicate.

Especially considering how many still erroneously view AA as a desirable mandate.

Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough in the original post.

.

Doctors have hundreds of years of empirical evidence saying how long it takes to heal a broken leg… we don’t have any idea how long it takes to heal a broken society. We’ve probably left the cast on too long but it’s coming off. I’ve seen a lot of scaling back of AA in the last 10 years, and more and more voices in the black community like La Shawn and Baldilocks that reject (or at least question) the need for it.

The Machine: While I agree with most of what you said (I’ve seen black co-workers feel the need to prove they deserved the job) I have a bit of a problem with this bit:
“…that problem was never written into law…”
Jim Crow?

Frankly, I think the future looks pretty good. Then again, I grew up believing the USA and USSR were going to destroy the world in a nuclear war any day now, so any future looks pretty good.

As a black engineer in a research job at an ivy league university I was constantly in the position of being looked upon as if I was GIVEN the job rather than having EARNED it and capable of doing said job.

AA is insidious any way you look at it.

One would have to assume that white males were simply given jobs they were not qualified to do in the first place to justify doing the same thing for minorities. It is a twisted logic.

Historically, it was a Republican legislature that fought hard for a civil rights initiative if not a bill itself, in a situation that can only be termed as a deal of the devil, Johnson signed it to gain some backroom cred about the Vietnam War.

To look at AA from the standpoint of “discrimination” or “reverse discrimination” or any other race’s viewpoint is to not see the forest for the trees, it is simply bad policy from any standpoint, actually worse than the problem it was designed to fix, for that problem was never written into law like this one is.

Before AA, the US never had a law nor regulation that forced hiring by race, creed or color.

Can a law change peoples’ hearts?

One guy in particular had a pattern of screwing a project up completely, then when he was rotated out to sea someone else would get the project and have to finish it up. The guy’s name was Curtis, and it happened so often that one of my co-workers started referring to it as “Curtis Interuptus.”