Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

NewsFlash! Attention Neo-Conservatives: Martin Luther King Supported Affirmative Action
Toogood Reports ^ | 26 January 2003 | Nicholas Stix

Posted on 01/24/2003 2:16:17 PM PST by mrustow

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-67 next last
To: mrustow
I supported affirmative action in college admissions in the '60s also, but that was then and this is now. I was part of a student advisory committee at Temple to make suggestions on how to get more Blacks into graduate schools. But, times have changed and the necessity to make concessions because of race has changed too. In the past 40 years, with supposedly equal opportunity to public school education, all races should have equal opportunity.
Whose fault is it if the inner city public schools are failing Black kids? Chances are those same schools aren't doing much for white students either. It's not skin color, it's the school system that is holding kids back from success.
41 posted on 01/24/2003 5:21:13 PM PST by Eva
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Eva
Whose fault is it if the inner city public schools are failing Black kids?

Actually, a pretty damning case has been made over the past 35 years, that black educators are at fault for black educational failure. A white fellow recently published a long report at Front Page Mag on his attempt to help by teaching for Teach for America, in the public schools of his hometown, Washington, D.C. At one point, a black teacher aide from another class barged into his class, and announced in front of the guy's black students, "I'll kick your white ass!" (Nothing happened to the aide.)

See also the section "Explaining Black Academic Failure," in:

Bush: My Quotas are Better Than Yours!

42 posted on 01/24/2003 5:54:28 PM PST by mrustow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: mrustow
I'm sorry, sneaky, but I can't understand you when you talk with marbles in your mouth. Just spit out what you want to say, and stop beating around the bush!

I'm sorry,but I hope you realize the trouble I have getting over my natural shyness. I'll try to be more direct in the future.

43 posted on 01/24/2003 6:03:39 PM PST by sneakypete
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: sneakypete
Thank you.
44 posted on 01/24/2003 6:04:50 PM PST by mrustow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: mrustow
Actually, a pretty damning case has been made over the past 35 years, that black educators are at fault for black educational failure. A white fellow recently published a long report at Front Page Mag on his attempt to help by teaching for Teach for America

This was an absolutely sensational liberal-mugged-by-reality article, but in the article there are good black teachers, despicable whites, as well as visa versa. This link is easier to use than that provided by mrustow:

How I Joined Teach for America — and Got Sued for $20 Million

45 posted on 01/24/2003 6:41:45 PM PST by Steve Eisenberg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: mrustow
Affirmative action is a moral outrage. There is no justification for admitting an unqualified student to a college or graduate school, or hiring an unqualified person, or letting a contract to an unqualified person, based on the color of his skin, any more than there is a justification for rejecting a qualified person based on the color of his skin.

Yes, I agree with that. Affirmative action discriminates against the majority. Favoring someone's race over another's accomplishments is not only wrong but it also hurts everyone involved. So much for Martin Luther King's comments about people should be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

46 posted on 01/24/2003 8:18:47 PM PST by Victoria Delsoul
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: mrustow
Attention Neo-Conservatives: Martin Luther King Supported Affirmative Action

You mean this isn't why neoconservatives worship him...?

47 posted on 01/24/2003 8:42:08 PM PST by Pelham
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Comment #48 Removed by Moderator

To: mrustow
That's why I know about all the economic progress blacks made prior to pc, and their lack of progress since.

Define "PC."

49 posted on 01/25/2003 1:05:29 AM PST by L.N. Smithee (<---------Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan for one week....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: Clock King
Well said.

Having been first entering the job market and thence involved in a small construction business that was hiring a new crew for each job it built in the late sixties, as a kid I learned the ins and outs of the political climate that fostered the Affirmative Action programs for the EEO office at the time.

It was seen by those that introduced it from the executive branch to be a way to temporarily change the hiring climate. Many businesses had an "internal", institutionalized, wall against hiring black for any postition, women for job "x", or jews for job "y". That was known and thought to be a very tiresome thing that, dispite the civil rights act, would take a very long time to wither away.

It wasn't so much opposed by conservatives at the time, but more by the southern voting block that was stinging from the battles it had recently lost in the Civil Rights legislation of the late fifties and the Civil Rights Act of '64. But the temporary vision of the EO when it was introduced in '65 and then expanded by Johnson in '67 and then further instituionalized by Nixon, was still a vision of a temporary leveling of the playing field due to conditions that had sloped it in the other direction.

Political decisions are often compromise, artificial constructs and products of temporary coalitions and prudent measures to meet a problem of the day. Unmet, such problems fester, as indeed the institutionalized job segregation did.

Our nation, like any, regards as legitiment, those acts of government most closely adhering in their creation to the processes laid down in its constitution and its history. This is why the non-judicial action, of an activist court, making law rather than interperting it, in Roe v. Wade has had little acceptance. Likewise, Executive fiat in making law is often felt non-legitiment. But this Executive Order 11246 which dealt with government contractors and those wishing to sell to the government that all citizens pay for in their taxes, was felt to be the temporary measure to (1) forstall quotas elsewhere, which many knew was the truely divisive issue, and (2) to be a true measure of the Executive Branch laying in place a program to implement the civil rights acts measures in the one arena that the Feds could rightly control, their own purchasing.

But people remember what was promised. It was promised that this was a temporary measure, and it was promised that it wouldn't become a quota. When programs go through elaborate constructs to thwart the Baake case such as the case that brought this current fever about, people know that a wrong turn has been taken.

Think of it. A point system for evaluating graduate program students that awards 150 points on race alone, while awarding 100 points for a PERFECT SAT SCORE.

If such programs haven't now become unequal application of law and public funds, what else can they be termed?

No, this temporary measure, understood in its time, is due for retirement. Lets see where we are now. Many friends of mine who are minority owners of contracting business, despise the government niches such programs carve out. They wish to be plain business owners preforming a simple trade, no more, no less.

50 posted on 01/25/2003 5:51:41 AM PST by KC Burke
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

To: Red Jones
So, I think that MLK said a little bit different things at different times on this issue

This is exactly the case. At first, MLK just wanted to have people get their fair shake, without the government mandated racist policies which were clearly wrong at the time. Only later did he get co-opted by the leftist crowd. I prefer to remember the former MLK myself. Hey, no one is perfect.

51 posted on 01/25/2003 6:29:14 AM PST by Paradox
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: L.N. Smithee
That's why I know about all the economic progress blacks made prior to pc, and their lack of progress since.

Define "PC."

"PC" as in m-i-s-t-a-k-e. I had meant to say affirmative action.

52 posted on 01/25/2003 10:35:24 AM PST by mrustow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 49 | View Replies]

To: Steve Eisenberg
Thanks for the link; that's the article I was referring to.
53 posted on 01/25/2003 10:36:18 AM PST by mrustow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 45 | View Replies]

To: Pelham
Attention Neo-Conservatives: Martin Luther King Supported Affirmative Action

You mean this isn't why neoconservatives worship him...?

I guess not. I don't think tney'll be addressing Greene's article any time soon.

54 posted on 01/25/2003 10:38:06 AM PST by mrustow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

To: seamole
Most of George Washington's good deeds have stood up to the test of time; but with every year that passes, MLK's legacy becomes more tarnished.

The political and economic emancipation of Black America becomes more tarnished every year?

Thanks for the history lesson. I wasn't aware that MLK was "the Great Emancipator." (Economic emancipation, too? Wow -- MLK was even greater than what the public schools teach!)

55 posted on 01/25/2003 10:40:40 AM PST by mrustow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: Pelham
"You mean this isn't why neoconservatives worship him...?"

Neos have been in the front lines fighting AA for the last 20 years. Actually, a paleoconservative once admitted as much to me. He just thought neos were doing it because AA keeps so many Jews out of the universities.

56 posted on 01/25/2003 10:41:53 AM PST by Truthsayer20
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]

To: Victoria Delsoul
Yup. Discrimination is discrimination, and all the pretty sermons in the world can't disguise that fact.
57 posted on 01/25/2003 10:42:37 AM PST by mrustow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies]

To: Clock King
MLK wasn't racist. He supported AA because at the time it was needed.

As a white former Army EEO officer, I can tell all here that Affirmative Action plans as originally devised were not code words for quotas. The socialists in the Democratic party have equated AA with quotas. Nothing could be further from the original intent of AAPs. I support AA, but not quotas; and those who do not understand the difference have no business criticizing MLK's support of AA.

58 posted on 01/25/2003 10:43:03 AM PST by connectthedots
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]

Comment #59 Removed by Moderator

To: connectthedots
MLK wasn't racist. He supported AA because at the time it was needed.

As a white former Army EEO officer, I can tell all here that Affirmative Action plans as originally devised were not code words for quotas. The socialists in the Democratic party have equated AA with quotas. Nothing could be further from the original intent of AAPs. I support AA, but not quotas; and those who do not understand the difference have no business criticizing MLK's support of AA.

I've read a library's worth of books and articles on AA, and I'm not familiar with these non-quota AA programs. Oh, I see, you said "as originally devised." So, you're talking about theoretical, utopian AA, as opposed to real, existing AA. But I suppose that in your book, I have "no business criticizing MLK's support of AA."

60 posted on 01/25/2003 3:36:14 PM PST by mrustow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-67 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson