I'm "African American"

[Ali G. 37]

I'll be the first to post the day I hear anyone in the US say, "I am not hiring or dealing with this guy because they are black". After four years, I am yet to hear one person I know of even hint of this.

As I has said many many times before, it's honestly not that hard to become normal functioning members of society. Certain not in any first world country. However, much like Australia and the UK, where welfare is generous, there is a group of people who will work the system and refuse to work. At least in Aus, you cannot use the historical race card to cry poor. The Australian welfare system is quite generous and designed to meet you half way. As such, they have provisions in it, including having to search for 14 jobs every 2 weeks (which are logged and verified), to stop people from abusing it.

Edited February 10, 2010 by Booyah

[spookyturtle 9,466]

I'll be the first to post the day I hear anyone in the US say, "I am not hiring or dealing with this guy because they are black". After four years, I am yet to hear one person I know of even hint of this.

As I has said many many times before, it's honestly not that hard to become normal functioning members of society. Certain not in any first world country. However, much like Australia and the UK, where welfare is generous, there is a group of people who will work the system and refuse to work. At least in Aus, you cannot use the historical race card to cry poor. The Australian welfare system is quite generous and designed to meet you half way. As such, they have provisions in it, including having to search for 14 jobs every 2 weeks (which are logged and verified), to stop people from abusing it.

Today it's more like you won't get hired because you're white since there's often a minority quota that must be met.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Bollocks BY. Total bollocks.

There's nothing logical about what you wrote. Its all the same stale old stereotypes and preconceptions I've heard from you a thousand times before.

You are arguing against something with no concrete idea of what it is, and in total ignorance of how it works.

[Gary and Alla 3,696]

Your assesment is both naive and simplistic. But you keep your head in the sand.

I started a business in 2003 which netted me over $400K per year on less than $10,000 in initial investment. Didn't borrow a penny. Paid itself back 2 weeks after opening...gravy ever since. BUT it was the third try. Oh well, I am glad I didn't get discouraged. Glad I paid for the education to make it possible (worked for that too) and glad I saved my pennies for some twenty years while working for someone else.

I would never say that anyone else can't do it...they absolutely can.

Edited February 10, 2010 by Gary and Alla

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I started a business which netted me over $400,000 per year in 2003 on less than $10,000 in initial investment. Didn't borrow a penny. Paid itself back 2 weeks after opening...gravy ever since. BUT it was the third try. Oh well, I am glad I didn't get discouraged. Glad I paid for the education to make it possible (worked for that too) and glad I saved my pennies for some twenty years while working for someone else.

I would never say that anyone else can't do it...they absolutely can.

I believe the comments he was responding to related to something a few pages back - where it was suggested that rather than work for a big company that took diversity into account as part of its hiring procedures, a person should simply start up their own business.

[Gary and Alla 3,696]

I believe the comments he was responding to related to something a few pages back - where it was suggested that rather than work for a big company that took diversity into account as part of its hiring procedures, a person should simply start up their own business.

Good advice. A person who is educated can do anything!

Edited February 10, 2010 by Gary and Alla

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Good advice.

Yeah...

[mawilson 2,133]

Seriously Mark, there's nothing here for you to play with. Do yourself a favour and just don't bother.

I will decide for myself what to play with, thanks for your concern.

[Gary and Alla 3,696]

As I said, there is nothing wrong with educating people, but there are problems with the education system that would make a performance based welfare system, rather questionable to say the least.

FIX education and the need for welfare will evaporate. Are you against FIXING education? Why do we accept a broken education system and all the horrors it imposes on all of us. Welfare costs more than health care for the few people that do not have healthcare coverage. Why are we trying to fix health care and not education which ought to be a whole lot easier. Identify the problem, FIX IT, then require students to go to school. If we can, by law, require them to go to school until age 16, then we, by God, can require them to go to school until age 21. We are no longer, and have not been for a long time, an agrarian society and even agrarian vocations now require a high degree of education. There are no longer any ignorant farmers in this country. They simply cannot survive a single season. In themselves, the laws mandating education only until age 16 are racist. They were pushed by southern Democrat racists under the guise of "those people need to work on farms" in order to limit the education of blacks at the time this law was mandated. It was obsolete when it was implemented and they knew it, but they also knew it would disproprotionately affect young blacks and who wanted THEM educated anyway?

Throughout history, the oppressors have kept control of the oppressed by denying education. We do it here (and have for several centuries) it was done by the church, by numerous totalitarian governments, and is till practiced today against whoever they wish to oppress. It is a proven technique, foolproof over many centuries in every culture it is tried in. Uneducated people are slaves. They are dependent, they have no freedom, they have no ability to be free. The Taliban kills people for trying to educate women. Pol Pot executed millions of people for being educated. In every oppressive regime (save for the Soviet Union) "intellectuals", educated people, were hunted down and killed. The Soviet Union valued educated people, but it eventually led to their own demise as a government...just reinforcement to oppress people with lack of education I suppose.

The federal government can withhold highway funds to any state that issues a driver's license to anyone under 21 that is not in school. They can do it if the state doesn't drop the DUI limit to .08 and education is a lot more important.

You know as well as I do, and as well as everyone does, that educated people are not collecting welfare because they have no need to. We all need to demand that ALL people receive a complete and quality education. So many of our problems will evaporate if we do.

But, as I said earlier. Politicians need the underclass, politicians need people on welfare so they can control them and so (perversely) the controlled will vote for the controllers (I never did quite figure that one out, the racists have the oppressed thinking they NEED the oppressors...if only the South Africans had been able to pull that one off, eh?) Oh well, it is all in the presentation. The racists in this country are just smarter after years of dodging and ducking attempts to free people that never did get to the core values. Education and independence. Education is the ONE thing that has always been different between blacks and whites at any stage...slavery, free oppression and the civil rights era. Successful black people are educated.

These SAME oppressors go into a country like Afghanistan and what do they do? They scratch out SCHOOLS from basically mud huts and the people are glad to have them because it is better than what they had before and our government KNOWS the way to end the oppression of the Taliban is with education. Yet we cannot improve education here to end the oppression of black people? How is it we know what is good for Kabul but not for south Philly? Why can we fix Kandahar, but not Detroit? we can free oppressed people in the farthest provinces of a 7th century country, but we cannot free oppressed people on west Madison Avenue? And you expect me to believe this is a coincidence?

The racists who want to keep people oppressed say "yeah, well, but education may not fix it for everyone" or "yeah, but there are problems with education" Excuses. Excuses to cling to the very effective, oppressive welfare system. Effective but very hard to justify. It can ONLY be justified with varying arguments of "But those people CAN'T do it for themselves, they NEED us" (rearrange the words as needed to fit, it is all the same) Imagine the perverse thinking it must take to deny education to a class of people and then try to defend it by saying EDUCATION is the problem...not welfare! Most of the problems with education are as manufactured as the poverty, they go hand in hand. The manufactured problems with education are most pronounced where the manufactured problems of poverty are most concentrated. Now isn't THAT a coincidence. Welfare segregates people as surely as apartheid ever did. Government housing may as well be a prison for as few people escape from it and succeed in life. It is a crime that accepting this "help" from the government is as condemning as a prison sentence.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

FIX education and the need for welfare will evaporate. Are you against FIXING education? Why do we accept a broken education system and all the horrors it imposes on all of us. Welfare costs more than health care for the few people that do not have healthcare coverage. Why are we trying to fix health care and not education which ought to be a whole lot easier. Identify the problem, FIX IT, then require students to go to school. If we can, by law, require them to go to school until age 16, then we, by God, can require them to go to school until age 21. We are no longer, and have not been for a long time, an agrarian society and even agrarian vocations now require a high degree of education. There are no longer any ignorant farmers in this country. They simply cannot survive a single season. In themselves, the laws mandating education only until age 16 are racist. They were pushed by southern Democrat racists under the guise of "those people need to work on farms" in order to limit the education of blacks at the time this law was mandated. It was obsolete when it was implemented and they knew it, but they also knew it would disproprotionately affect young blacks and who wanted THEM educated anyway?

Throughout history, the oppressors have kept control of the oppressed by denying education. We do it here (and have for several centuries) it was done by the church, by numerous totalitarian governments, and is till practiced today against whoever they wish to oppress. It is a proven technique, foolproof over many centuries in every culture it is tried in. Uneducated people are slaves. They are dependent, they have no freedom, they have no ability to be free. The Taliban kills people for trying to educate women. Pol Pot executed millions of people for being educated. In every oppressive regime (save for the Soviet Union) "intellectuals", educated people, were hunted down and killed. The Soviet Union valued educated people, but it eventually led to their own demise as a government...just reinforcement to oppress people with lack of education I suppose.

The federal government can withhold highway funds to any state that issues a driver's license to anyone under 21 that is not in school. They can do it if the state doesn't drop the DUI limit to .08 and education is a lot more important.

You know as well as I do, and as well as everyone does, that educated people are not collecting welfare because they have no need to. We all need to demand that ALL people receive a complete and quality education. So many of our problems will evaporate if we do.

But, as I said earlier. Politicians need the underclass, politicians need people on welfare so they can control them and so (perversely) the controlled will vote for the controllers (I never did quite figure that one out, the racists have the oppressed thinking they NEED the oppressors...if only the South Africans had been able to pull that one off, eh?) Oh well, it is all in the presentation. The racists in this country are just smarter after years of dodging and ducking attempts to free people that never did get to the core values. Education and independence. Education is the ONE thing that has always been different between blacks and whites at any stage...slavery, free oppression and the civil rights era. Successful black people are educated.

These SAME oppressors go into a country like Afghanistan and what do they do? They scratch out SCHOOLS from basically mud huts and the people are glad to have them because it is better than what they had before and our government KNOWS the way to end the oppression of the Taliban is with education. Yet we cannot improve education here to end the oppression of black people? How is it we know what is good for Kabul but not for south Philly? Why can we fix Kandahar, but not Detroit? we can free oppressed people in the farthest provinces of a 7th century country, but we cannot free oppressed people on west Madison Avenue? And you expect me to believe this is a coincidence?

The racists who want to keep people oppressed say "yeah, well, but education may not fix it for everyone" or "yeah, but there are problems with education" Excuses. Excuses to cling to the very effective, oppressive welfare system. Effective but very hard to justify. It can ONLY be justified with varying arguments of "But those people CAN'T do it for themselves, they NEED us" (rearrange the words as needed to fit, it is all the same) Imagine the perverse thinking it must take to deny education to a class of people and then try to defend it by saying EDUCATION is the problem...not welfare! Most of the problems with education are as manufactured as the poverty, they go hand in hand. The manufactured problems with education are most pronounced where the manufactured problems of poverty are most concentrated. Now isn't THAT a coincidence. Welfare segregates people as surely as apartheid ever did. Government housing may as well be a prison for as few people escape from it and succeed in life. It is a crime that accepting this "help" from the government is as condemning as a prison sentence.

Gary, I feel like I'm repeating myself, so either you're not reading what I write or you're just being pig headed. Yes, I get it Gary, education is key. I trust bolding the statement will make that sufficiently clear - and if you have any doubts as the thread continues (or even "if" it does) you can refer back to the previous sentence and remind yourself.

Where I am disagreeing with you is in this idea that merely tying welfare payments to educational performance will do anything to "fix" the education system.

Lets not pretend that its a matter of waving a magic wand and simply saying that "education needs to be fixed" will somehow make it happen. You can't do that, and I can't do that. Personally, I'd like world peace too, not to mention a solid gold toilet; but, as mr Powers reminds us, "its just not on the cards, baby".

But let's talk about education - you went off on a diatribe, so I shall follow suit.

IMHO, most of the problems we have in this country (including welfare abuse and failing education systems) result more or less directly from the fact that the US electorate are both ignorant and gullible. You seem to appreciate bluntness, so I trust you will not take it personally when I say this.

If the US has anything that amounts to real political debate in the public arena I must have missed it. When it comes to electing our leaders why does it always come to a matter of clever marketing and image manipulation? Why is it that Barack Obama can get elected on the promise of providing "change" without ever having to substantiate, in real terms, what that change might be? Why does Sarah Palin get huge media and public interest when nearly all of what she says in public are stale feel-good soundbites about "limited government", "cutting spending" and "cutting taxes?" (sounds familiar I bet...). More to the point - how is it a man like George W. Bush could get elected to the highest office in the land, not once but twice!? TWICE!!! How is this possible when it clear to the entire western world, that he was a complete buffoon - intellectually sub-par and generally ignorant about the issues he was elected to address. Were people stupid? Were they not paying attention? How on Earth could any self-righteous US Citizen not be ashamed, truly ashamed to have a guy like GWB as their duly elected leader?

I mean... what else are these Presidential elections but a shallow personality contest, not far removed from American idol or Big Brother? Its politics for the celebrity news generation, people who would rather read about Tiger Woods for an hour, sit through 25 minutes of condensed headline news and then an hour of fist shaking talk show rhetoric.

You can trap off all you like about the need for smaller, limited government and how anything remotely socialist in nature is the biggest evil since the Holocaust. So how is it then that when it comes to politicians actually following through on promises to "cut spending" that this invariably involves slashing education budgets? You can't have it both ways - if you want a good education system you have to be prepared to pay for it, you shouldn't have the situation where teachers have to spend their own money to pay for classroom supplies. That shouldn't happen.

For that matter - how is it that there is an entrenched fear and suspicion of higher education among members of the general public? Where does this idea come from that colleges are little more than liberal indoctrination camps? How is it that there is deep suspicion of scientists and their work? Ask yourself who is perpetuating this guff - if you need a clue, its not the highly educated intellectual "elite"

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I will decide for myself what to play with, thanks for your concern.

Feel free. (If you can find room in the thread for you and your ego).

[mawilson 2,133]

Feel free. (If you can find room in the thread for you and your ego).

[Gary and Alla 3,696]

Gary, I feel like I'm repeating myself, so either you're not reading what I write or you're just being pig headed. Yes, I get it Gary, education is key. I trust bolding the statement will make that sufficiently clear - and if you have any doubts as the thread continues (or even "if" it does) you can refer back to the previous sentence and remind yourself.

Where I am disagreeing with you is in this idea that merely tying welfare payments to educational performance will do anything to "fix" the education system.

Lets not pretend that its a matter of waving a magic wand and simply saying that "education needs to be fixed" will somehow make it happen. You can't do that, and I can't do that. Personally, I'd like world peace too, not to mention a solid gold toilet; but, as mr Powers reminds us, "its just not on the cards, baby".

But let's talk about education - you went off on a diatribe, so I shall follow suit.

IMHO, most of the problems we have in this country (including welfare abuse and failing education systems) result more or less directly from the fact that the US electorate are both ignorant and gullible. You seem to appreciate bluntness, so I trust you will not take it personally when I say this.

If the US has anything that amounts to real political debate in the public arena I must have missed it. When it comes to electing our leaders why does it always come to a matter of clever marketing and image manipulation? Why is it that Barack Obama can get elected on the promise of providing "change" without ever having to substantiate, in real terms, what that change might be? Why does Sarah Palin get huge media and public interest when nearly all of what she says in public are stale feel-good soundbites about "limited government", "cutting spending" and "cutting taxes?" (sounds familiar I bet...). More to the point - how is it a man like George W. Bush could get elected to the highest office in the land, not once but twice!? TWICE!!! How is this possible when it clear to the entire western world, that he was a complete buffoon - intellectually sub-par and generally ignorant about the issues he was elected to address. Were people stupid? Were they not paying attention? How on Earth could any self-righteous US Citizen not be ashamed, truly ashamed to have a guy like GWB as their duly elected leader?

I mean... what else are these Presidential elections but a shallow personality contest, not far removed from American idol or Big Brother? Its politics for the celebrity news generation, people who would rather read about Tiger Woods for an hour, sit through 25 minutes of condensed headline news and then an hour of fist shaking talk show rhetoric.

You can trap off all you like about the need for smaller, limited government and how anything remotely socialist in nature is the biggest evil since the Holocaust. So how is it then that when it comes to politicians actually following through on promises to "cut spending" that this invariably involves slashing education budgets? You can't have it both ways - if you want a good education system you have to be prepared to pay for it, you shouldn't have the situation where teachers have to spend their own money to pay for classroom supplies. That shouldn't happen.

For that matter - how is it that there is an entrenched fear and suspicion of higher education among members of the general public? Where does this idea come from that colleges are little more than liberal indoctrination camps? How is it that there is deep suspicion of scientists and their work? Ask yourself who is perpetuating this guff - if you need a clue, its not the highly educated intellectual "elite"

A most excellent post Gene. You are much better when you get off that one line snarky stuff! I will gladly respond, and you may be surprised that I agree with you and will give my opinion on answers to your many questions. It is late now, so it will be tomorrow when I do so but I look forward to it. You have certainly pegged a LOT of other things that need change, probably first, before anything else could ever be fixed.

[Tahoma 2,298]

Let me just say that there was another thread on exactly this topic a while ago - and someone on here who was an admissions counsellor for higher education posted on here and explained just how much goes into determining a university place.

I remember that posting. I wish I could find it. It would open the eyes of some on this thread.

[Danno 1,228]

Since you can't find that one chew on this.

Looks like Asians get cheated even more.

Do colleges redline Asian-Americans?

By Kara Miller

February 8, 2010

SAT SCORES aren’t everything. But they can tell some fascinating stories.

Take 1,623, for instance. That’s the average score of Asian-Americans, a group that Daniel Golden - editor at large of Bloomberg News and author of “The Price of Admission’’ - has labeled “The New Jews.’’ After all, much like Jews a century ago, Asian-Americans tend to earn good grades and high scores. And now they too face serious discrimination in the college admissions process.

Notably, 1,623 - out of a possible 2,400 - not only separates Asians from other minorities (Hispanics and blacks average 1,364 and 1,276 on the SAT, respectively). The score also puts them ahead of Caucasians, who average 1,581. And the consequences of this are stark.

Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade, who reviewed data from 10 elite colleges, writes in “No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal’’ that Asian applicants typically need an extra 140 points to compete with white students. In fact, according to Princeton lecturer Russell Nieli, there may be an “Asian ceiling’’ at Princeton, a number above which the admissions office refuses to venture.

Emily Aronson, a Princeton spokeswoman, insists “the university does not admit students in categories. In the admission process, no particular factor is assigned a fixed weight and there is no formula for weighing the various aspects of the application.’’

A few years ago, however, when I worked as a reader for Yale’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, it became immediately clear to me that Asians - who constitute 5 percent of the US population - faced an uphill slog. They tended to get excellent scores, take advantage of AP offerings, and shine in extracurricular activities. Frequently, they also had hard-knock stories: families that had immigrated to America under difficult circumstances, parents working as kitchen assistants and store clerks, and households in which no English was spoken.

But would Yale be willing to make 50 percent of its freshman class Asian? Probably not.

Indeed, as Princeton’s Nieli suggests, most elite universities appear determined to keep their Asian-American totals in a narrow range. Yale’s class of 2013 is 15.5 percent Asian-American, compared with 16.1 percent at Dartmouth, 19.1 percent at Harvard, and 17.6 percent at Princeton.

“There are a lot of poor Asians, immigrant kids,’’ says University of Oregon physics professor Stephen Hsu, who has written about the admissions process. “But generally that story doesn’t do as much as it would for a non-Asian student. Statistically, it’s true that Asians generally have to get higher scores than others to get in.’’

In a country built on individual liberty and promise, that feels deeply unfair. If a teenager spends much time studying, excels at an instrument or sport, and garners wonderful teacher recommendations, should he be punished for being part of a high-achieving group? Are his accomplishments diminished by the fact that people he has never met - but who look somewhat like him - also work hard?

“When you look at the private Ivy Leagues, some of them are looking at Asian-American applicants with a different eye than they are white applicants,’’ says Oiyan Poon, the 2007 president of the University of California Students Association. “I do strongly believe in diversity, but I don’t agree with increasing white numbers over historically oppressed populations like Asian-Americans, a group that has been denied civil rights and property rights.’’ But Poon, now a research associate at the University of Massachusetts Boston, warns that there are downsides to having huge numbers of Asian-Americans on a campus.

In California, where passage of a 1996 referendum banned government institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, Asians make up about 40 percent of public university students, though they account for only 13 percent of residents. “Some Asian-American students feel that they lost something by going to school at a place where almost half of their classmates look like themselves - a campus like UCLA. The students said they didn’t feel as well prepared in intercultural skills for the real world.’’

But what do you do if you’re an elite college facing tremendous numbers of qualified Asian applicants? At the 2006 meeting of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, a panel entitled “Too Asian?’’ looked at the growing tendency of teachers, college counselors, and admissions officers to see Asians as a unit, rather than as individuals.

Hsu argues it’s time to tackle this issue, rather than defer it, as Asians’ superior performance will likely persist. “This doesn’t seem to be changing. You can see the same thing with Jews. They’ve outperformed other ethnic groups for the past 100 years.’’

Which leaves us with two vexing questions: Are we willing to trade personal empowerment for a more palatable group dynamic? And when - if ever - should we give credit where credit is due?

Kara Miller teaches at Babson College.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editoria...sian_americans/