"In order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently."

The reference is to, you guessed it, affirmative action.

One of the chapter titles of a book I'm reading (And Still We Rise by Miles Corwin) for Honors English 11 is:

Affirmative Action
In order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.

The argument they make is that some students (minorities) don't have the same opportunities. Corwin says that this is a result of lower watches and cultural isolation. To me it seems that perhaps, by that logic, affirmative action should be for the poor and also people that live out in the boonies and are not "cultured."

Anyways, the book is about an AP English class in South-Central LA. The whole book is about how crappy their lives are and how they "overcome" their obstacles. However, many students drop out, get pregnant, or go to jail. Little of this is their fault, of course.

It's a flawed statement because it relies on a flawed assumption; that I give a shit about anyone or everyone being treated equally.

Quoted: Is this statement logical or illogical?

WTF? Are you on Star Trek? Spock? Is that you?

Quoted: Quoted: Is this statement logical or illogical? WTF? Are you on Star Trek? Spock? Is that you?

Goddamnit. This is the second time someone has asked me about Star Trek.

I've never seen an episode of Star Trek in my life.

It is a catchphrase--but it is impossible for it to be a true statement, because it is impossible to treat people both differently and equally at the same time.

Quoted: I've never seen an episode of Star Trek in my life.

Well, that explains a lot, then......



As to the statement, being treated equally and being treated differently are not equivalent. I treat my two daughters differently for any number of reasons (age being the most important one now), but I hold them to an equal standard according to their abilities.

The statement mixes words that sound the same, but aren't.

The phrase that burns me is "level the playing field." Look at any real playing field. It IS level and everyone who plays on it has an equal opportunity* for victory.

When people talk about leveling the playing field, they really are talking of tilting the playing field so the talented have to run uphill while the mediocre enjoy the handicap.

On a level playing field the talented win and the untalented lose. There is nothing tragic about that. It simply points out to the losers that they should find a different game - one in which their talents can lead them to success.

*Equality defined:
Conservative: equality of opportunity.
Liberal: equality of outcome.

Isn't it a little late to be starting your homework...


ByteTheBullet  (-:

Quoted: Equality defined: Conservative: equality of opportunity. Liberal: equality of outcome.

I really like this. If you originally came up with that, congratulations.

Quoted: Isn't it a little late to be starting your homework... ByteTheBullet  (-:

As a matter of fact, it is.

Tomorrow is the first day of class. I have 50 pages left.

But, there is no homework on the book until school starts.

Quoted: I've never seen an episode of Star Trek in my life.

Well then throw that race-baiting pile-of-shit book in the garbage and go rent the Star Trek original series collection.

Star Trek actually addresses racism, equality, individuality and freedom far better than any leftwing propaganda book you'll ever come across.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Is this statement logical or illogical? WTF? Are you on Star Trek? Spock? Is that you? Goddamnit. This is the second time someone has asked me about Star Trek. I've never seen an episode of Star Trek in my life.

Episode? It's all real

flawed statement.  In the "affirmative action" world, there is much confusion between the words "equal" and "same".  

I can treat people equally without treating them the same.

Quoted: Quoted: I've never seen an episode of Star Trek in my life. Well then throw that race-baiting pile-of-shit book in the garbage and go rent the Star Trek original series collection. Star Trek actually addresses racism, equality, individuality and freedom far better than any leftwing propaganda book you'll ever come across.

I can imagine what my grades will be like when I write about this book. I still remember getting a D on a paper about Roosevelt because the teacher loved him.

Star Trek doesn't seem interesting to me.

Quoted: Quoted: I've never seen an episode of Star Trek in my life. Well then throw that race-baiting pile-of-shit book in the garbage and go rent the Star Trek original series collection. Star Trek actually addresses racism, equality, individuality and freedom far better than any leftwing propaganda book you'll ever come across.

Aint that the truth!

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Is this statement logical or illogical? WTF? Are you on Star Trek? Spock? Is that you? Goddamnit. This is the second time someone has asked me about Star Trek.

I'm betting he's Klingon, just look at that temper.

Quoted: Quoted: Equality defined: Conservative: equality of opportunity. Liberal: equality of outcome. I really like this. If you originally came up with that, congratulations.

I came up with my own take on the playing field. But alas, I stole the equality definitions from Rush Limbaugh.

www.philosophypages.com/lg/

Of course the statement is not logical.  "All men were created equally" therefore no concessions need to be made.  

This is a contradiction of terms; you can not treat someone equally and differently at the same time.

Quoted: I've never seen an episode of Star Trek in my life.

Now that is illogical!  Get some, boy!

Regarding you question, that statement is complete horseshit.  If I treat someone with an IQ of 80 the same way as someone with an IQ of 120, is it going to make the first person feel like they're equal to the second?  No, if they have any dignity, they're going to resent being patronized.  If not, they'll just leach off the system (i.e., the major result we see from affirmative action).

"Affirmative Action" is in my opinion unconstitutional and I wish a Federal Judge would have the guts to say so.  You should not give someone an advantage over someone else based on the color of their skin.  Racism at its worst.

BTW... if it ever comes up in class or in a written assignment, see if you can work in my favorite quote of all time regarding the plight of the blacks in America:


"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs - partly because they want sympathy, partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

I'm afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."
~ Booker T. Washington, written in 1911.
The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 1, ed. Louis R. Harlan (Chicago: University of Illinois Press: 1972), p. 430.

Quoted: BTW... if it ever comes up in class or in a written assignment, see if you can work in my favorite quote of all time regarding the plight of the blacks in America: "There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs - partly because they want sympathy, partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. I'm afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public." ~ Booker T. Washington, written in 1911. The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol. 1, ed. Louis R. Harlan (Chicago: University of Illinois Press: 1972), p. 430.

Jesse Jackson comes to mind.

there is no such thing as "equality"--its just a frame of mind we have

i'm all for equality, but we all know that is not possible as human nature prevents "equality"
utopian ideas and societies cannot exist......read Animal Farm

I can understand their thinking, and how we have to "level the playing field" for those who dont have the same opportunities and privileges as others.

But this argument flies apart in reality when Black Americans like Lani Guinier (Bubba's first choice for Attorney General, < SHUDDER >) complain that African immigrants are exploiting Affirmative Action, which they now say was created to benefit descendants of slaves.

www.temple.edu/news_media/ls0407_07.html

At colleges, immigrants are `minorities' too
Clarence Page

July 7, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Smiles turned to tightened jaws at the most recent reunion of Harvard University's black alumni.

The mood shift, as reported recently in The New York Times, occurred when two very prominent black faculty members reported encouraging increases in Harvard's black enrollment, then raised questions as to where those new black students were coming from.

Harvard law professor Lani Guinier and Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of Harvard's African and African-American studies department, reported that 8 percent, or about 530, of Harvard's undergraduates are black, but somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of them are "West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples."

Not counting those who are classified as "foreign students," Guinier and Gates said, only about a third of the students classified as "black" at the nation's most prestigious university were from families in which all four grandparents were born in this country.

I was not surprised by those findings. Like many other African-Americans, I have been noticing for years how the children of black immigrant families tend to be much better represented among high school honor-roll achievers than their native-American black counterparts are.

Now that they are showing up in disproportionate numbers at selective colleges like Harvard, both advocates and opponents of affirmative action are raising a howl in their various ways.

"Here's something I bet you never thought you'd hear a liberal say: Harvard is letting in too many Africans," razzed Tucker Carlson, conservative co-host of CNN's "Crossfire" when the Times story broke.

Actually, the Harvard "liberals" were worried less about too many immigrants than too few blacks of American slavery-descent.

Now Harvard has to ask itself what its affirmative action plan is supposed to accomplish. If its goal is simply "diversity," it may not matter how American the roots of its black and brown faces happen to be. But if its goal is to address historical racial inequalities in American life, Harvard may have to take black ethnicity into account in the way that some institutions have argued over which nationalities should be counted as "Hispanic."

A bigger question to me is this: Why are black students whose families have been in America for generations being left behind by newcomers, including black newcomers from other countries?

Gates plans to organize a study group around that question. I can offer the group one easy possibility, no charge: Immigrant kids work harder.

They work harder, in part, because their parents work harder--and their parents work harder because of their relentless optimism: Where others might see a dead-end job, immigrants of all colors see an entry-level opportunity.

Where others may see inequities, immigrants tend to see a ladder to be climbed. With a hyperoptimism, they move ahead, upward and outward, undeterred by discrimination, short-term poverty, substandard housing, lack of financial capital or any other barriers that fate throws in the way of their hopes and dreams.

And they pass this spirit of enterprise on to their children. A University of Chicago study in 1995, for example, found children from a variety of minority groups whose mothers are immigrants outperform students from their respective ethnic groups whose mothers were born in the United States. "Family optimism" about the future played a crucially important role in determining school success, according to sociology professor Marta Tienda, an author of the study.

And the more recent the family's arrival, the better the children perform, according to a study of Asian and Hispanic families by Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University social scientist whose latest book is "The 10 Basic Principles of Good Parenting."

That immigrant optimism is not unknown to black folks born right here in the USA. Many of us saw it drive our parents or grandparents in their desperate migrations from the rural South to the urban industrial North during the last century. Unfortunately, much of the later wave, having run up against the lost jobs and deindustrialization of factory towns over the past half-century, were left stranded in poverty, even as others moved on to more prosperous jobs and neighborhoods.

"We have had successful black students tell us they felt they had to make a choice between doing well in school and having friends," Steinberg told me in a telephone interview. "Almost any American kid, given that choice, would choose having friends, regardless of their race."

Some forward-thinking high schools have responded by helping older black students mentor younger ones, encouraging them to regard academic stardom with something approaching the godlike stature they normally award to sports stars.

That's a very lofty goal and it's worth striving for. With the optimism of our elders, we can make affirmative action obsolete.

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Do you get the gist of what is happening?  The instance of African and West Indies immigrants succeeding and performing far better than native black Americans is demolishing the culture of victimhood and racism so carefully cultivated by black American "leaders" as an explanation of why black Americans do so poorly compared to other ethnic groups.

It's not racial; black Africans and black West Indies negros are the same race as black Americans.  The difference is in the ethos of the immigrants compared to the ethos of victimizaion, shiftlessness, and irresponibility, and blaming it on the system that hamstrings poor black Americans.

"In order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently."

Is that from the book "It takes a village idiot" By Hillory Clinton?



GM

There are some who maybe cant cut it because of of a medical or emotional condition. But if someone thinks they are a special case because they have 'had it hard' or some crap like that they are speaking pure BS.

Everyone should be set to the same standards within reason.

As the child of Asian immigrants, I think there's a side to this issue that people often overlook.

People have this stereotype that immigrants are poor people who take menial jobs in an effort to give their kids better opportunites in the future. While this is true for many immigrants (i.e. from Mexico), this is not true for many others (i.e. from China, Taiwan, Europe, certain African countries). From these countries, the people who immigrate to America are actually the more educated, wealthier people -- educated enough to get admitted to American schools, educated enough to expect a decent job at their destination, and wealthy enough to move overseas.

Asians tend to score high on standardized tests. Lots of non-Asians I know chalk it up to genes or culture. I think it's just because many Asian immigrants are the upper-middle or upper-class of their original countries and were well-educated themselves. Among Asian immigrant families where the parents are not well-educated (i.e. refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.), children do not score as high.

My point is, with respect to this article, these immigrants and immigrant's-decendants may be doing better not solely because they "work harder," but rather because many of them are the cream of the crop of their respective countries anyway.

Actually, it is an oxymoron. The statement is self-contradictory.

It's rhetoric that is intended to justify giving certain groups preferential treatment over others.

Logically, then:

To treat people equally, you must treat them ALL the same.

If one person receives preferential treatment due to something as incidental as skin color, it is definitely NOT equal.

Quoted: "In order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently." The reference is to, you guessed it, affirmative action.

There are two types of equality: equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.

We can try to make everyone start the race from the same place, or make sure they end the race at the same place.

The original idea was that we would have everyone start from the same place, but the fact is that it is hard to tell if that is what is going on. Consequently, the bean counters look to results, and push affirmative action into achieving equal results.

Quoted: there is no such thing as "equality"--its just a frame of mind we have i'm all for equality, but we all know that is not possible as human nature prevents "equality" utopian ideas and societies cannot exist......read Animal Farm

It is a mental construct. Interesting in theory, useful in argument, valuable in sorting out playground issues among children. In that it is smilar to the concept of "fairness".

Quoted: Quoted: There are some who maybe cant cut it because of of a medical or emotional condition. But if someone thinks they are a special case because they have 'had it hard' or some crap like that they are speaking pure BS. Everyone should be set to the same standards within reason. Where is the boundary of that reason?

Within reason is that if someone has had or has a special medical or emotional condition they should be treated differently.

But in the great scheme of things people with different non medical hardships should be treated the same. A kid that 'grew up in da hood' with 'drug dealers on every street and murders happenin all da time' shouldnt be given any more special consideration than a upper class 'normal' kid.

 Take women for instance. They are constantly blabbing about equality with men but they dont want the baggage that comes along with it. In order to be equal they must be treated the same.

The same military training, the same job standards. None of this sexual harrassment BS just because some guy said 'foxhole' They have to deal with it. We do so they can too.  And If a woman hits a man she damn well better expect a hit in return and not go whining to the police about being hit. You dish it out and you WILL take it in return.  Otherwise you will STFU about this equality BS.

Quoted: Quoted: I've never seen an episode of Star Trek in my life. Well then throw that race-baiting pile-of-shit book in the garbage and go rent the Star Trek original series collection. Star Trek actually addresses racism, equality, individuality and freedom far better than any leftwing propaganda book you'll ever come across.

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