"Class warfare" is invariably a phrase used by those who are currently winning at class warfare.

"I LOST!?!?!?!?! It MUST be voter fraud!!!" - Literally everything every Democrat has done for the past... ever!!!

Jon'C does have a point though.

The treating differently part goes with out saying. If you throw out the subject of the sentence, you have butchered the definition of the word. Motivation is a component of racism, whether that's the part you want to emphasize or not. That's because racism is bigotry. I do not hold that bigotry is rational, in any circumstance.



I agree that it is bad, and I agree that something should be done about it, but neither of us has an effective legislative solution. I advocate strongly pursuing a cultural solution, while preserving the benefit of an ideology that protects personal freedom.
I don't believe that there is any definitively "right" way to do things, I just believe that some ideologies are more useful than others. Compromising the ideals of strict personal freedom for an almost entirely ineffectual attempt to fix a cultural problem, seems like a poor trade.




If you don't have anything to say, there's no point in snarking off.



http://www.understandingprejudice.org/readroom/articles/affirm.htm

How about the part where it said that universities often employ the strongest legal type of affirmative action which involves giving less qualified persons from certain races preference over other, more qualified candidates? That is not quota based. Also, I specifically said that it mostly happened at universities. Maybe it happens no where else at all. I don't know, I doubt it. Do you know? My point was just that that is what people think of when they talk about affirmative action. I'm not sure what I would be backpedaling from or where I would be backpedaling to. These are just mundane facts.



You don't need to support an assertion about time being relative because it is strongly supported by repeated observations with good methodology. Any fool could easily find ample published evidence for this with no effort at all. Your assertion is a tenuous extrapolation from personal anecdotal experience.

No it doesn't.

"Asian people are different than Caucasian people. Their skin tends to be darker, they tend to be shorter, and their eyes tend to have more pronounced epicanthic folds." These are inherent traits, but making these observations is not racist.

"Asian people have epicanthic folds, so they obviously don't see as well and shouldn't be allowed to drive." That's racist. It's also wrong.

The treating differently part absolutely does not "go without saying."

Wrong. According to the site you posted (http://www.understandingprejudice.org/readroom/articles/affirm.htm,) affirmative action has made important and significant gains. You do read your own citations, right? You don't have to answer, I already know you don't.



How about the part where it said:

"My own view is that the case against affirmative action is weak, resting, as it does so heavily, on myth and misunderstanding. Here are some of the most popular myths about affirmative action, along with a brief commentary on each one."

or the part where it said:

"Myth 10: Support for affirmative action means support for preferential selection procedures that favor unqualified candidates over qualified candidates."

Wow. Well, I know I'm totally convinced by your use of this essay to argue against affirmative action.

Talking about discrimination in university admissions if you've never heard of the gender gap is a lot like talking about astrophysics if you've never heard of relativity. In other words, it makes you look like an uneducated simp.

No it isn't.

I throw in large words from the thesaurus and hope my awkward grasp of the English language makes me seem smarter than I really am.

So do I obscurantism!

One of my favorite signs at protests is "They only call it class war when we fight back"



Although the 2000 election in Florida is a good example of this actually happening. I'm no fan of the Democratic Party by any stretch of the imagination, but this does happen. (Just look at new voting laws in places like Florida for example that are clearly meant to disenfranchise black voters)



You should explain how "personal freedoms" are being compromised in this example.

Gerrymandering warfare is the reason US elections are decided by 1-3%. Both parties are constantly fighting to marginalize as many groups as possible.

ok, im going to help you out here... THIS>>>
is clearly meant to disenfranchise black voters.

the new rules in florida are CLEARLY poorly thought out. but not CLEARLY meant to disenfranchise black voters any more than they are meant to disenfranchise white or latino democrat voters... which may be the case.

the new laws are CLEARLY stupid. but not how you are saying.

What... is that real? It's like a picture of Apartheid in South Africa.

You have just made a contrary claim but have not backed it up with anything really.

Also this article about "Liberal" and "Left wing" support for Ron Paul is pretty excellent: http://www.timwise.org/2012/01/of-broken-clocks-presidential-candidates-and-the-confusion-of-certain-white-liberals/

Yes, I agree. JM is a horrible person.

I'm guessing JM is a Liberal then. I think it's even more appalling when Socialists try to apologize for Ron Paul based on "anti-Imperialism"

Huh? No, I don't think so. I just think he's a horrible person.

lol, ok. Let me try it without pictures this time. If you choose to believe there is some evil white man behind the scenes twirling his handlebar mustache and scheming about ways to suppress the black vote, have at it! Apparently i must have skimmed right over* the evidence that supports that idea.









*just to be a fair player, maybe i did actually skim over that evidence. if you can point it out i will be more than happy to give it a look.

yeah! if black people didn't want to get disenfranchised, they would vote 50-50.

I see! I say IF there is a nefarious intent behind the Florida election law, it likely has more to do with the party a person is registered with than the amount of melanin their skin has. and you infer... that i think black people want to get disenfranchised?

or did i miss something? about what you said just now specifically, that is. because I'm sure you could give me a laundry list of things you think i have missed and therefor i am clearly too dull to grasp this.

Why? It might be the most important single thing that a politican could affect in this country.

Palestinian suicide bombers don't mean to kill Israelis, they just happen to blow up in Israel.

So you are saying that there IS in fact an evil white man twirling his handlebar mustache and secretly (or overtly) plotting the disenfranchisement of black voters behind the legislation??

I'm not saying it is not bad legislation, just that i have doubts about it being an attempt to discriminate based on race, rather than political allegiance.

No, I just had a hard time looking for a good metaphor that didn't involve Adolf Hitler.

I think you're right when you say (basically) that the Republican party doesn't discriminate against them because they're black. They do, however, discriminate against people who are more likely to vote Democratic. And they identify the targets of their discrimination by various factors which essentially boil down to 'black.' Which means, yes, they actually do discriminate against black voters.

Just like how you'd be right if you said the Civil War wasn't about slavery. It was actually about a variety of cultural and economic issues, especially the declining value of southern industry and the prohibition of southern manufacturing practices in the land grab states. Which means, yes, it actually was about slavery.

Easy way to tell if you're talking to a racist *******: Ask them what the Civil War was about. If they say "state's rights" they're a racist *******.

That article does a poor job of describing why I support Ron Paul. The author appears to, mostly, just be very angry about something.

It doesn't take some "evil secret scheming" to look at the situation which is a Republican Party (the pushers of these reforms) that gets very little share of black voters to see the motivation for disenfranchising black voters in these places.

This of course raises further questions like: why is the more "pro-business party" so lacking in terms of support from the black voting population. (Granted both Parties are "pro-business")



Right, but imperialism (at least from the socialist perspective) isn't the result of a mere policy preference of this or that President, but is the result of a social system.



Do you support David Duke?

what can i say. you have a point.

as you said earlier...

i still think that the legislation was probably put in place try and keep democrat voter turnout down (minority or otherwise) but the fact is (or at least seems to be) minorities were the ones targeted the most in the voter registration drives so they will get hit the most by the new rules. so i guess you can make of that what you like.

either way its complete bull **** and in no way ok.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Ron Paul is in favor of dismantling the military and economic arms of that system, which is basically all there is to it.

David Duke does not appear to be running for anything.

You will interpret that to mean that if he was, I would support him.

I would be interested to see his actual plans for this, considering that military arms come from private companies that he would not want to touch in any way. And he is not for dismantling the military completley.

On top of that, imperialism is the result of capitalism in the socialist analysis: especially monopoly finance capitalism that Paul doesn't really seem to understand in the slightest.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_duke#Political_activities
Well he has in the past, do you wish that he had won/will run again?

I don't see why you wouldn't?

This silly internet image does a decent job at summing up the problem with support for Paul:

(A little reversed but you get the point)

It goes with out saying when we talk about racism, because when we say racism, everyone is on board with the fact that it involves people being treated differently. When I said, "goes with out saying" I refered to the fact that it went with out saying that it was part of the definition of the word, not that it wasn't part of the definition. You are just twisting my words.



Wow, a pro Affirmative Action website subjectively thinks that Affirmative Action is effective. Let's go ahead and interpret that conclusion that as an objective fact. They may consider the gains they quoted to be worthwhile, but by their own admission, they haven't done very much if anything to change the overall condition of blacks in the US. (See the graph) I don't think the cases of artificially increased minority representations in some limited groups is going to hold candle to a changed cultural perspective of minorities.





I wasn't citing the entire essay opinion, just that one objective fact in it. I intentionally used a source that disagreed with me about the overall subject so that the individual fact that I was citing in it had more credibility. It's called intellectual honesty. It removes any bais that might be in my direction.



This isn't wrong, it just doesn't address any point that was made in the text you quoted, and no other issue being raised in the thread. You strongly imply that it does, that I have never heard or else disagree with the existence of the gender gap, and that I was expressing and opinion about discrimination in university admission specifically. None of those are true.



Then how about a source? The gender gap is common knowledge. However, you asserted that: "Without racist/sexist universities admissions policies every single university in the United States would be an intellectually-stagnant literally-100% middle-class suburban white girl monoculture." This sounds unlikely to me, so I merely asked to see a citation other than your ass. I'm didn't even say you were wrong, I just think that it's reasonable that you give me some evidence before I consider it believable. If you can't provide any evidence, then I think it's safe to say that you are full of ****. Furthermore, to equate me asking for support for that assertion with doubting the existence of the gender gap is blatantly dishonest.

In fact, speaking in dishonesty, let's review some of the things that happened so far.

I made the statement that people who are angry about affirmative action get most angry about the sort of discrimination that involves chooseing less qualified minorities over more qualified applicants. http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?59933-Remember-how-Ron-Paul-is-unelectable&p=1150569&viewfull=1#post1150569

You responded by telling me that quota based hiring is illegal, something which I never said was happening. http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?59933-Remember-how-Ron-Paul-is-unelectable&p=1150571&viewfull=1#post1150571

I responded, clarifying that I wasn't talking about quota based hiring. http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?59933-Remember-how-Ron-Paul-is-unelectable&p=1150571&viewfull=1#post1150571

You then say I was too, because you can't understand the difference between discriminatory hiring and quota hiring. http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?59933-Remember-how-Ron-Paul-is-unelectable&p=1150747&viewfull=1#post1150747

I then use a pro-affirmative action source to explain the factual difference between quota based hiring and what I was referring to. http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?59933-Remember-how-Ron-Paul-is-unelectable&p=1151146&viewfull=1#post1151146

Then finally, you respond to this by accusing me of not realizing that the link I provided as a source for a single fact disagreed with me in its overall opinion. http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?59933-Remember-how-Ron-Paul-is-unelectable&p=1151172&viewfull=1#post1151172

Why? You pick fights over the most trivial ****, even minor facts that don't contradict your overall point. You repeatedly try to misrepresent what I'm saying, and act incredibly rudely in the process. Why? There's no purpose to this. Any intellectually honest person would be happy to provide a source, or admit that he is wrong about a minor irrelevant detail. This is necessary to conducting a meaningful conversation or making a good argument. For my part, I love to have a constructive conversation with someone that I disagree with, because even if we don't end up agreeing, it helps me understand both my position and his much better. This is not even close to what happens here. Every discussion with you devolves into a pissing contest about an irrelevant or trivial detail, which you act like a snarky jerk about. Why even go to the trouble of becoming reasonably well informed if you can't do anything other than act like egotistically? It's like you don't have the emotional maturity to handle anything that is not a total circle jerk of similar opinions. Why? I don't hate you, I am just disappointed. You do inform yourself very well, and you usually have pretty worthwhile opinions that would be interesting to discuss, if that were possible. I can respect that. Why then, must you respond to any disagreement with immediate, sloppy hostility? You don't even argue well. Not nearly as well as you could if you made the effort to, and had a more constructive attitude. It's just a waste.

From what little I know of the man, I'd say that even when he comes to the correct solution, his motives are bigotted and selfish.

What I can say about Ron Paul, however, is the exact opposite. Even when he's wrong, his motives are compassionate.

Your image comparing Ron Paul to Jesus Christ couldn't be more accurate. Rejecting the core of Ron Paul's platform and still supporting him is absurd. Unfortunately for Jesus, your picture says exactly what most Christians do.

Why would you support a candidate based on their motives? It seems like a bizarre reason to support someone running for President.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not...

This question seems to go against not supporting that duke guy BECAUSE of his motives...

Or are you saying that you should not support someone based on their motives, even though it is ok to NOT support someone based on their motives...? I mean do someone's motives matter or not? Or is that just based on if you happen to like their motives?

American imperialism is mostly made possible by an interest-bearing debt currency and the IMF. Ron Paul's monetary reform wouldn't solve the biggest problems, but if he only managed to kill the central bank that would be a giant leap forward for stability and prosperity.

For those of you just joining, this thread and most of this board is about politics and religion.

It hasn't been about religion whatsoever for at least seven years.

Oh man, I loved Clive Owen in that.

-What were we talking about?

No I think you should support a candidate based on their platform: what they say they will do. In the arena that Ron Paul is in: most candidates are there to serve the wealthy, so the motives are pretty much the same and they differ in terms of how they will serve the wealthy and what segments of the wealthy they will favor the most.

Getting into these personal motivations may be interesting, but it's certainly not the most important thing.




How exactly would killing the central bank be a giant leap towards either of those things?

Really?

I call white men "white." I call a black man "black," and I am called racist. I am told that I should consider his feelings more carefully than the feelings of others, because he is a fragile person with an unfortunate family history. I should call him "African-American" instead.

Obi_Kwiet, I suspect that very few people are actually on board with this fact.

Yeah, they also "subjectively" provide two pages of references.

I still think you intentionally used a source that you didn't think I'd read (it's not like you even quoted the relevant part.) But, alright. I'll take your word for it.

You cited a website that claims universities use the strongest available form of affirmative action. And you know what? I agree! In fact, I already talked about it, why it's technically legal (Grutter v. Bollinger,) and provided my subjective opinion that it's actually a benefit to the students. I'm fine with this point, other than being confused about why you felt it was even necessary.

That should be the end of it. Except that's not what you actually cited! You said - quote - "How about the part where it said that universities often employ the strongest legal type of affirmative action which involves giving less qualified persons from certain races preference over other, more qualified candidates" which is literally the exact opposite of what your own citation claims!

That's not intellectually honest. That's, like, the definition of intellectual dishonesty. It's also profoundly insulting to the intelligences of all of the people who are reading your posts.

Assuming that you didn't read your own citation is probably the most positive thing anybody can think about what you posted. Why would you ever want anybody to believe the alternative?

It's hyperbole... but not very much.

Now that you're aware the gender gap is common knowledge, you're also aware it's common knowledge that the feminization of education is believed to be a primary instigator. You're also aware that men are significantly more likely to be accepted than women at many universities in order to maintain an appropriate gender balance. You're also aware that the universities which (proudly) don't engage in gender discrimination tend to have 60-70% female populations. It's good that you're aware of all of this because it means I don't need to find very many citations for you.

It's okay, you take yourself seriously enough for the both of us.