Tangled Webb
Senator Jim Webb (whom I'd have guessed is on Obama's short list) has made some waves for saying the following regarding Barack's lack of support among some white voters:
We shouldn't be surprised at the way they are voting right now. This is the result of how affirmative action, which was basically a justifiable concept when it applied to African-Americans, expanded to every single ethnic group in America that was not white. And these were the people who had not received benefits and were not getting anything out of it.
I question if this is what's affecting the voters, but in any case I don't think Webb's distinction is sustainable. Webb is trying to split the difference, saying it's acceptable to take the race of African-Americans into account, but not anyone else's race, ethnicity or sex. Seems to me once you get in the business of noticing these things, there's no clear line regarding where you have to stop.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:12 AM
4 Comments:
How's this for a clear line: where there was pervasive, legally-sanctioned - or mandated - discrimination against a group, there is an equally valid basis for affirmative action to remedy the remaining effects of that former legal discrimination. Not that I think it's necessarily a good one from a policy point of view, but it's certainly clear and logically justifiable.
I don't think that's good enough. (Let's leave aside the question as to whether affirmative action is ever the proper solution, or if its legal justification today is more about diversity than remedying past discrimination, or why don't we need it for Asians, etc.).
First, of course, since we didn't have certain protections against all sorts of discrimination before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there are tons of groups that can claim this--really any ethnicity (not to mention women). And you've got other groups, based on disability, sexual orientation, weight, height, etc., who also aren't/weren't covered. So we're in the same boat we were before, which is--how do you say we're just going to stop at one group.
Answer to LAGuy -- No other group subjected to slavery in the United States followed by Jim Crow and large-scale legalized segregation enforced by cross-burnings and lynchings.
Every group has a unique history. Once you accept different standards for one of them, it's no trouble intellectually to cahnge standards for any other.
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