Affirmative Inaction

[schiros]

As I've been following the past couple of anti-Scott posts, I've noticed
something that occurred during the Gene Barret fiasco as well: people,
instead of considering what was really being said, immediatly struck back
and  attacked the counter-culture (at least for the highly liberal
institution of collegiate debate) things they proposed. I understand that
debate naturally breeds a bunch of argumentative people, myself included,
but I also assumed that we were an intelligent enough group to maybe
consider what they were saying, and to not take their satire's as offenses
against God, man, and nation that should be punished, and their authors
taken out and killed.  Those tactics may have been popular during the
Inquisition and the Nazi regime, but I'm not so sure they should be now.
Gene's excellent satire aside, Scott does make an excellent point: the basis
of Affirmative Action, and policies like that, is a pre-emptive, artificial
control of results and situations, whether it be in the job area, or how
many female judges are on a panel, and policies like that simply do not
work.  They refuse to deal with problems as they arise, but instead enact
"reforms" under the unfair assumption that the "minorities" will be
discriminated against.
This point of view also demands the creation of an oppressor, which, in this
and many other cases (all of critical race thought) is the "white male
devil".  However, the vast majority of men in teh country, and the world,
are neither racist nor sexist.  It is an unfortunate minority that manages
to screw things up for the rest of us.  However, by enacting Affirmative
Action policies, the white men in the community are demonized, consciously
or unconsciously, and that is simply unfair.
The policies are also unfair b/c they refuse to acknowledge the possibility
of a bias going in the other direction.  I'm assuming everyone here is
familiar with the "Blacks can do no wrong, whites can do no right" ideals of
people like the Rev's Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton (who, coincendentally,
just marched in Cleveland, proving this point), a position that is mirrored
by many feminists in the country (Bell Hooks comes to mind (I refuse to
violate the common rules of grammar b/c someone thinks capital letters are
oppressive)) but with the bend of "women can do no wrong, men can do no
good".  I'm also sure that we've all encountered someone who is naturally
more sympathetic toward women, or people of another race.  Is it fair to
create panels with a majority of these types of people?  Does the majority
deserve to be disadvantaged?  Only under the idea that they deserve to be
punished for their actions against the minority, but that's an unfair
generalization against the majority of the majority.
Affirmative action policies fail to create a level playing field for anyone.
They unfairly propell the minority ahead at the expense of the majority
(sounding very Marxist in it's nature, but who knows in this activity),
under the auspice's of "equality of opportunity".  However, I would think
that the opportunity of everyone in this activity is equal.  There are no
institutional barriers to women or minorities achieving (quite the
contrary), and the ignorance and idiocy of a few rednecks and bigots
certianly doesn't count as an opportunity inhibiting factor, any more than
militant feminism and black radicalism counts as an inhibiting factor
against the majority (because, remember, the majority of white men are NOT
bigots or sexists), so the only problem is the equality of results.
We do not live in a society that is based on the equality of results though,
something I am thankful for every day.  Anything based on equality of
results can only result in stangation for everyone, because not everyone can
excel.
Members of "oppressed" groups will claim that they suffer emotional and
spiritual damage from the shit they get from the ignorant.  However, as
tough as it may seem to believe, you just have to suck it up and ignore
assholes.  As a really wise man once told me, treat shit like shit.  Ignore
the people who make fun of you, that's something we all learned in
pre-school.  If your self-esteem is dictated by what a bunch of people who
are obviously iditos say, then you have problems that go far beyond those of
"white male neo-colonial imperialistic patriarchial hierarchial hereditary
domination", or whatever the current term for it is.
I'm fat, ugly, and a bad debater.  All three things are easy, and consistent
targets of insult by people in every sector of the nation, and debate is no
different.  However, whenever I recieve an insult about these things
(overweightness and unattractiveness being an immutable physical
charactaristic), I don't go crying about how they oppress me.  I, amazingly
enough, ignore it.  I certianlly don't go running to the nearest ear and
bitch about how I'm being oppressed and how I need massive new policies to
protect me from it, how I must have fat unattractive judges who sympathize
with me, and who are also bad debaters, because they need to be on my level.
It's no different than the aff axn policies ya'll are proposing.  Not at any
level.
Maybe ya'll should listen to satire.  This is potentially the 2nd time this
month that an excellent example of it will be shouted down by people who
don't want to deal with it.  Maybe not.
Later,
Roid



----MSchiros at AIM-----Gyrations at EFNet--------
Matt Schiros - Supreme CafMaster Gyrator
The Gyrations of Freedom:
http://www.nacs.net/~schiros/gof/

"The writer's overpowering impulse is to gyrate before his fellow man,
flapping his wings and emitting defiant yells. This being forbidden by the
police of all civilized countries, he takes it out by putting his yells on
paper."
[H.L. Mencken]
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