Hello CMSux,
Pretty much from its beginning, though it is cyclical. John Adams, remember him, one of those founding fathers and an early presidents? How about old Ben Franklin? Neither of them were from a well connected family. Also, with nearly all things American, our founding fathers began with an ideal above the reality and with each generation we have moved closer to fulfilling that ideal. At the beginning America was much more of a meritocracy than Britain with its strict class structure. When I say its cyclical what I mean is that a power elite does come into establishment, in the beginning it was the agrarian land holders. But once the industrial age got going that elite establishment falls away to be replaced by a new elite. The robber barons of industry become the new elite. For an example of merit within those circles, how about Andrew Carnegie. What about now ... Bill Gates, even Rush -- neither of them graduated from the "right school." Yea, but that's just a bunch of white guys! Okay, Frederick W. Douglass, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Jesse Owens, Jackie, Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Alvin Ailey, Marian Anderson, Benjamin Banneker, Guion Stewart Bluford, Jr., Ralph J. Bunche, Charles Drew, Dr. Mae C. Jemison, Percy Julian, Lewis Howard Latimer, Jan Ernst Matzeliger, Elijah McCoy, Garrett A. Morgan, and hundreds of others. Each made their mark through merit in spite of the obstacles they faced.

What happens if an individual cannot meet the bottom line? What happens if an individual cannot deliver the goods in a timely manner? What happens if they lose? Will it matter what school or frat they belonged or went to? Will anyone care who their family happens to be? Does it matter who they play golf with or the cocktail parties they go? Not one bit. Sure who you know or who your family happens to be may help you get in the door, but once your in you got to prove your merit. The first lesson of business school is learning the importance of meeting the bottom line and making a profit. Even if Dad owns the corporation, if the son cannot deliver the goods he will be moved into a job with perks, but no power to harm the company. If such a person does gain control then the company goes out of business.

Quotas do not "balance out" the social advantages of others for all time. It can't do that. What percentage of the different races must be accepted, for all to be satisfied that the social wrongs of the past have been corrected? It creates resentment and too often, especially with education, it places individuals in institutions which they are not qualified to attained. This is a recipe for failure. Quotas rest on the ideal that there is some kind of cosmic justice that society can reach. Read the book by Thomas Sowell Cosmic Justice to gain a little understanding of the fallacy of such an ideal. Oh, I should add to the list above Thomas Sowell and Bill Cosby, both grew up in the same projects and through merit achieved success.

So, since it is such a benefit for WHITE WOMEN it should be easier to accept? Wrong is wrong. Period.

Affirmative action assumes that race is a determining factor that overshadows all other qualities. It is based on the idea that due to your race alone you have automatically received either inferior or superior opportunities in life.
Since the Civil Rights Amendment became law it has been illegal for the U.S. government to engage in racism of any kind. With the signing of that law minorities have clear legal procedures to redress any wrongs done to them. Racism as we have come to know it in the twentieth century was essentially nonexistent until after the Civil War when more than 4 million African-Americans became free and became direct economic competitors to poor whites in the South. Prior to that "race" as an issue that divided Americans had nothing to do with race and everything to do with the injustice of slavery. Slavery was a sin that was paid by the blood of 600,000 Americans. Affirmative action cannot pay for the sins of segregation, or Jim Crow, or the lynchings of African-Americans and in fact drives a wedge between the races. Identity politics does not lead to a colorblind society where all are judged by their character rather than the color of their skin.
That's right. There is not an extensive history of infecting African-Americans with fatal diseases to commit genocide against African-Americans. Again, the Tuskegee experiment did not entail African-Americans being infected with syphilis.

There are a few problems with this premise. There are just as many cases, if not more given the percentages of the population, of experiments on other groups and on whites in the medical literature. I'll pick up your book the next time I am at the library. You should take a look at War against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race by Edwin Black. Yes, it does show the inherent racism of eugenics, but it also shows how those who believed in its tenets were more than willing to eliminate anyone they deemed less than worthy regardless of race.

Let's not forget the tests with military servicemen who were exposed to the fallout of nuclear blasts during the 1950s to see if our boys could still fight. Most of whom were white. The LSD tests were done with all races. The medical literature is full of such cases that have nothing to do with singling out any one race. There is not one case that comes even close to what Rev. Wright claims and when he brings up Tuskegee he lies about the facts of that case.

He is wrong about his conclusions and he lies about Tuskegee in his attempt to prove them.
Martin Luther King, Jr., worked to end segregation to integrate the races. Rev. Wright promotes a separatist doctrine along with his compatriot Louis Farrakhan. At their best they both follow the discredited idea of separate but equal (even though the white man is uniquely guilty of the sin of racism and oppression) as a way to attain racial harmony.

Martin Luther King, Jr., believed that segregation was a sin, a social injustice worth fighting for through nonviolent means. He believed in nonviolent Civil Disobedience and did not use or condoned the angry rhetoric of the militant who wished to undermine the social order. It has been twenty years since I read Letter from Birmingham Jail. In many ways I agreed with MLK's stance on the Vietnam War, but at the same time if I had been old enough I would have gone. When America turned its back on South Vietnam, because the Democrats ended funding for the South, it basically condemned millions to die.

One of the sadder aspects of identity politics is the segregation of our education system into separate study groups. We see this in literature, the arts, the humanities, and in history. We read and learn in American literature a bunch of white guys, but if I want to read any of the African-American authors I have to take a Black literature course. If I want to learn about the contributions of African-Americans I have to take a Black History course. But what about women or Latinos or fill-in-blank, I must take a course in feminist writers or Latino literature. The hyphened-American is the worst thing that happened for race (or ethnic or sex) relations. I understand framing a course around "American History," or "English History," "Russian History" or "Asian History," or "African History," or European History" -- they are separate geographical spheres and individual nations. I understand framing a course around specific time periods or events "Middle Ages," or "WW I" or "Vietnam War." But when you separate the histories of the races, or ethnic groups, or of the sexes at the undergraduate level you create the impression that these events or these works of art happened within a vacuum and encourages the identity politics of separation. It ends up doing a disservice for each individual group and does harm to the whole of society. How many white people (how many any people) know the profound thanks we owe to Charles Drew and the sad irony of his tragic death?

MLK did not draw from the same Black Liberation Theology that Rev. Wright promotes. Black Theology and Black Power by James Cone was not published until 1969. "In this new formulation, Christian theology is a theology of liberation -- 'a rational study of the being of God in the world in light of the existential situation of an oppressed community, relating the forces of liberation to the essence of the gospel, which is Jesus Christ,' writes Cone. Black consciousness and the black experience of oppression orient black liberation theology -- i.e., one of victimization from white oppression."
Black liberation theology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rev. Wright asserts that the African-American community is still oppressed by whites and has embraced victimhood. MLK would not do that today and there is nothing in his writings that I have come across that even hints that he would.

Your attempt to elevate Rev. Wright to the stature of MLK by attempting to assert that they are cut from the same cloth is insulting to the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., and all he stood for.

tashi deleks,

M

__________________
"They haven't got Brains, any of them, only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake, and they don't Think." -- Eeyore, The House At Pooh Corner

Sit like a mountain,
Breathe like the wind,
Mind like the Sky.

When all the Gods are crazy, who do you pray to?