The Best Medicine

The court is out. The City of New Haven has officially reversely discriminated against some white firefighters. They gave a promotional test to firefighters, the higher scoring officers were white, & to fix it, they pulled a No Child Left Behind & got rid of the test. A lost-lost situation, in my book. Why? The problem happened long before this test was even created.

First of all: reverse discrimination?? furreal MSNBC? I thought we got over this term back when we were having the affirmative action debate (...as if that's done)? The whole concept is like walking in one direction, turning around & then walking backwards. Same shit, except now you just look dumb.

Here's the problem with this case, with affirmative action, with every initiative to integrate minorities who have been systematically oppressed since the 30's. Always too late... not matter how little or how much... always too late. When would have been the best time to remedy this problem? About 200 years or so ago when a couple European dudes landed on a rock called Africa. Unfortunately, that moment is passed.

A metaphor: Imagine I had stolen at lot of money from your father. Now, imagine that between that time & now, your father & his whole generation had died. You would say that the appropriate thing for me to do would be to give you & your siblings that money. Simple enough.

...But now it gets messy. Imagine I stole a lot of money from your father & he had died, but I had since invested it in my family. So mixed in with your/father's money is my blood, sweat, & tears. And what happens next? I pass it on to my kids, they bleed on it, sweat on it, cry on it. & so on. My offspring feeding off of my wealth & your offspring feeding off of your unjust poverty.

Eventually, it comes out at this time that I stole it all in the first place. You would say that some kind of recompense should be paid to your family. The problem is that none of my family members did anything wrong, so to take from them would be unfair. But at the same time, here are all of your offspring who should be enjoying your father's wealth, & so to leave them with no recompense would also be unfair. The criminal is dead & the victims are only multiplying.

If America didn't have a long history of systematically not educating & then (after some arduous changes to American society) systematically under-educating an entire “race” of people, then we wouldn't need affirmative action or to get rid of tests to have a fair racial representation. But we do. Keep it moving.

If things were as they should be, more non-white & -asian students (& thereby fewer white and asian students) would be on college campuses not because there would be any discrimination against white & asian students, but because everyone else would have a fighting chance. So what are we trying to do? Retroactively make the dispersion better reflect our ideals when kids are 18 or graduates of the Police Academy? Terrible, terrible idea.

The answer to the problem is not "affirmative action" or doing what the City of New Haven did. It's the 14th Amendment. Obviously, it doesn't make any sense to lower standards because some people can't meet them, that defeats the purpose of a standard. Instead, let's actually made this the "Land of Opportunity" & give everyone the tools & resources they need to actually get into college & the promotions they desire. Can't say it's unfair to give everyone a fair shot. Let's pull it together. [MdG]