You’re being really anal here dude. When posters say not much has changed, they’re clearly saying that things haven’t changed enough. That people are still fighting the same fundamental fight.
Why do you keep making this point? It veers dangerously close to basically telling people to basically shut up and be grateful
I was wrong with regards to none of them using the word 'nothing', I was completely correct with regards to none of them making the point you claimed they were making. The latter renders the point you were making completely invalid, which has been my point all along.
Congratulations here is a one handed clap.
If that is your opinion then you are entitled to it. I don't agree with that.
I'm just replying to the exaggerated statements being made. I don't even know what the point is anymore the discussion has turned into a point scoring contest.
In an odd way it's sort of funny that when I googled affirmative action one of the first articles was from the LA Times where a study of harvard admissions found that 43% of white students benefitted from the legacy, athletic and faculty systems they have in place, compared to 16% from the non-white students.
I will give @Mastadon credit for this: We may not agree, but at least they are attempting to argue their position, which is all to often a quality lacking from contrarian view posting members in the CE forum.
It's laughable right? To the best of my knowledge, the biggest group of benefactors of affirmative action as a policy is white women - so to suggest that there are black students getting in above smarter/more capable asian students is frankly absurd and shouldn't be tolerated, without evidence to back up such a claim.
To my great shame I, for a VERY short time, held some pretty abhorrent views on college admission affirmative action when I was younger. I was lucky to go to private catholic high school as the local public school was pretty awful. I had a minority classmate who was extremely wealthy, drove a BMW to school, etc. We both applied to UCLA Pre-med and he was accepted, I was not. I had better grades, test scores, etc. I was pissed, for a very short time. Why a short time? Because I was lucky enough to have a great friend, also a minority, who did not get to go to that nice private school, but to the public one. I am lucky that I complained to him, and I am luckier still that he took the time to explain why I was an asshole.
Honestly, it's not that surprising to me for you, or anyone else to hold such views - we are influenced so much by our environment & the media, that it's incredibly difficult to hold objective views on anything, especially these days.
I'm not going to repeat discussions you and others have had in the meantime, but on this point: after very little and slow reforms in policing, there has been enormous attention to the subject in the past two months with already a lot of noticeable changes in different US cities. Do you think that would have happened also without the violent part of the protests? If so, why now, why not previously?
Because, first, you do not much make that distinction and in your text give the impression that most of this match is violent. And second, because I and many on here feel that the violence is understandable in this case, and ultimately contributing to there finally being some more movement on police reform in the US. (And also elsewhere: it's now being discussed here in Canada as well, and changes are likely in, for example, Ottawa and Toronto, from what I have seen.)
The way you are writing this, you seem to say that there are two kinds of protests: peaceful ones, and violents ones that include looting. That's not true; protests can turn violent in various ways without looting, such as by vandalizing government property. I have also said many times now that I can understand violence and I can see the practical purpose it serves, but that I do not support the looting, especially of unrelated business. So, your turn: where do you stand on violent protests that focus their violence against elements representing the state and society as a whole?
So people on here, for example, that say they understand the looting? If I got it right this time: but what if they live in another state or country and can't ask to loot their business or house first?
I think this is another case where you might want to check your sources of information. Affirmative action in the US does no such thing; it doesn't catapult people with inferior objective credentials into success. Its point is to undo a situation where, if people have similar objective credentials (like grades), the White person is getting the position, job, or whatever, because they are scored better on subjective things (like how professional their appearance is). I'm probably not capturing it right entirely, but check the relevant Wikipedia page, for example.
I think everyone agrees that things are better than they used to be, but that 'better' is still very far removed from 'good', or even just 'acceptable'. That's the point here. If you're concerned about being deliberately misunderstood, then I feel you might be returning the favour here.
Sure, I can agree to that. It's a hell of a lot better than the people who respond with
or declare you an idiot for having a differing opinion.So your post about the entirety of affirmative action is only because of Harvard admissions, and you used this as a basis that somehow things are better for black people?
In that case since they are looting businesses from innocent people I’m guessing they have to protect their own property themselves which would be ugly
The funny part is that the article that he quoted from Forbes explains what you just wrote. Just a small sample:
What about the second study I posted which is based on 3 universities not just Harvard.
Give me an example of where I said this or admit you are misrepresenting me.Sure, I can agree to that. It's a hell of a lot better than the people who respond with
That being said, the refusal to engage with the arguments other posters put forth, combined with the general "well things have improved some, can't you just be happy with that?" and the laser focus on RIOTING and LOOTING meant there was no fruitful discussion to be had.
The one with this conclusion?
Like Harvard - the elite schools focus on more than just SAT scores alone - they care about personality & character, achievements outside of school etc - also they're fecking hard schools to get in to. If they can be compared to Oxford or Cambridge, then there are 50x as many students who get rejected than those who get admitted - to assume that it's 'easier' for black students to get into a ridiculously hard school is beyond offensive & also is in no way representative of affirmative action as a whole, which again benefits white women more than it does black people.
I can assure you, anytime MLK's name is mentioned nowadays, it's always the cotton candy excerpts they take from his speeches. They love any sentence of his that has "love", "peace", "nonviolent". Of course they skip over the more substantial parts of his speeches.
This, this and this again. I'm sure I saw someone suggest that MLK's vision was for people to be 'colourblind' earlier in this thread and I truly, despair.
It's not an act, necessarily. They don't know, and they don't care. It's debate club, not the real world.
Ah, yeah, you're right, my bad. I was having a discussion on largely the same topic on twitter, and conflated you and some guy on there.
Good thing I was on a hiatus, I would have blown a fuse if I saw that
You made me realize a mistake that I have made, I generally use MLK as a point of reference knowing that he wasn't actually that, that he was one important voice but not the only one. That mistakes means that today we have black politicians who for some reason act as if MLK was the only voice and as if the 60s were some sort of political shangri-la where peaceful speeches and protests led to incredible results. So let me introduce you one of the other major voices.
I think the video of a black man being murdered slowly by a brutal white officer shocked people everywhere in the world. I think this would have happened without violent protests yes because the imagery is so shocking that it leaves no room for interpretation. Floyd wasn't fighting or struggling or doing anything that could be used to defend the police action there is no case to be made for anything other than police brutality and murder.
I think my tone and has worked against me here in that it makes people think I'm saying something which I'm not. Thats my own fault internet arguments are very often the product of misunderstandings of the other parties meaning.
I mean you might think differently about looting if your house was being looted instead of someone else you don't know.
Would you agree with the statement that very little has changed since the 1960s? Anyway its not a big deal since the definition of very little and a little is subjective.
I won't hold it against you then because I've been making the same mistake. It gets a bit hard to track who is who in these situations.
It's a honest mistake. In my history classes all we were taught was MLK and the I Have a Dream speech. But it is deliberate that figures like him are promoted. Because the parts of them that are deemed relatively benign are amplified by both sides of the establishment.
Obviously, it's hard now to separate correlation and causation, since everything did happen. We don't have parallel cases that omit one element or another. I would say that we have seen videos of the murder by Black people by police before; but you might counter that George Floyd murder was different in nature. I might say that protests have happened for a long time; but you might counter that the scale of these protests now went beyond the usual more local response. And I might say that the explosion of violent protest was more sudden and wider than before, but you might counter that we've seen violence before and point back to the other factors.
That's an important point for me. Repression (including conscious withholding of equity) can be seen as a kind of state violence, and so there is a justification in a violent response. As for what level of violence is appropriate and when vigilante action is OK: there are so many possible scenarios that I'm not going to try and answer that; that's beyond me. But I will say that I don't think that kid should've been there, coming from out of town with his assault rifle.
I agree on that as well: I think some of our discussion subjects have to do with language use. I'm not too motivated to continue that. We've made our points, we actually agree on some of it and less on others, and I feel like we've kinda exhausted that. Also, at the core of the matter, I think we're all not that far apart here.
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Any identification of the shooter? The victim seems to belong to a patriot prayer group.
Sketchy info, apparently. Hearing both sides blame the other.
