Something can be racist even if it is combating racism. Let use an example, Biden decides the next Supreme Court Justice nominee with be a black woman.
His intention is for African American woman to be better represented in our justice system. But at the same time, he has excluded Hispanic women, Native American women, Asian women from consideration because they have the wrong skin color. My guess is there was a qualified minority woman, who felt discriminated against by Biden's decision. Are you okay excluding qualified minorities from positions based on the wrong skin color?
Imagine if Biden had said, a black women will not be considered for a Supreme Court position, because I am only going to consider a Native American or Asian woman, because we already have a black man on the Supreme Court, do you think he would have been accused of racism? Do you think he would have deserved that label?
Affirmative Action was sexist. It justified hiring a woman over a man based on gender. I think you are struggling with the concept of using gender and racism as race and gender-based tool to fix past racism. It is what it is.
True story, the head of Human Resources was accused by a white male of discrimination at a company where I was one of three senior executives running the company. She had 15 employees in her department and over 5 years never hired a single male. Is that okay with you? We research the claim, and we told her we told we would lose based on our Chief Counsel's appraisal of the facts, because another lawyer would simply point out the statistical improbability that not a single male was ever the best person for a job in her department of 15.
Discrimination is never okay, even if it is done intentionally to favor women and minorities. It is particularly wrong if it used against women and minorities. But it is wrong either way. And that is how the courts see it. Which is why the recent Supreme Court ruling really summarized what many lower court rulings had already determined. The 14th Amendment does not have any exceptions for discriminating.
We tried to pretend that certain discrimination laws were okay. But such laws ignored the individual rights of people in favor of achieving group equity. Our laws simply don't allow that under the Constitution and only a Supreme Court willing to ignore that allowed Affirmative Action to exist for almost 50 years.
The court argued that some discrimination was okay if it helped to prevent greater discrimination and on the face of it, that seems fair.
In other words, because white people could not be trusted, affirmative action was necessary. I get that... but I don't agree with it. I think if a company discriminates it deserves to get sued, even when it hires only women. And today, lawyers are extremely good at attacking discrimination and they have amazing tools to ferret it out.
Regarding identity...
Elizabeth Warren said she was Native American. The tribe she claimed to belong to said she wasn't. She took a DNA test and went on television to proclaim she was 2% Native American (though her DNA was different than the tribe she claimed to be descended from). She was hired as a Native American by Harvard and paraded as an example of how they were achieving diversity among their professors.
Hence my point, who decides whether someone is Native American?
Recently, Hawaii redefined how much "Hawaiian" you have to be to be ethnically Hawaiian. This is a big deal since it impacts your rights to live on lands reserved for Hawaiians. If you identify as Hawaiian, you grow up Hawaiian, but you don't meet the "blood" threshold for land, you have to move... this is quite common when a parent barely meets the threshold and marries someone who is below the threshold, their children grow up Hawaiian and then get thrown off the land as adults.
https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/local-news/2022-12-22/law-would-lower-the-blood-quantum-requirements-needed-for-hawaiian-homelands
And so, I am simply asking who decides?
For me it should not matter who decides, because I don't believe in special treatment based on race or ethnicity, I believe in equal treatment. I also believe if any organization discriminates based on gender or race, they deserve to be sued.
You introduced the concept of "life experience" in determining "race" in our exchange. During the time when affirmative action was still legal for college admissions, a college professor I know said the university was being flooded with people who claimed they were black. No one was going to ask them to submit a 23 and me test or put a "%" on their black ancestry to prove their race. So, they defaulted to "black experience", many people that might have met a "black" DNA threshold were excluded simply because they could not determine if they were "black enough".
What exactly constitutes a "black experience" is hard to define, I guess an admissions officer knows it when he or she sees it... at least most of the time.
My favorite story was an Ivy league student who got accepted as a Native American to Dartmouth. He had zero Native American blood but checked Native American on his college application. When he arrived at college, the school questioned him on his ethnicity. He claimed he thought Native American meant you were born in this country... they did not feel they go throw him out without being obviously racist... but they did take away his "Native American" scholarship. I guess he learned that from Elizabeth Warren.
Do you reject transmen and transwomen since a man will never know what it is to be a woman and the other way around. Don't say that in "woke" places or you will be crucified. Some professors think gender is "fluid". Many conservative women agree with you and many progressive liberal women would call you a bigot. Good luck navigating those waters.
If transwomen can compete in women's sports, do they get to be included under Affirmative Action as women in the workplace or is it okay to discriminate against because they are really men in the eyes of some people?
I prefer to see people as individuals. It is much easier than trying to identify what group they belong in.
But besides the difficulty in the identification process, as mentioned the bigger issues with Affirmative Action is that it is not fair (one can argue it is "equitable" but not fair... it punishes people today, for racism in the past).
I was mugged during the Civil Rights riots of the 60s because of my skin color. Are you responsible for that... should you be accountable for acts you had nothing to do with. There is something fundamentally wrong with the whole idea.
So, while I can see that Affirmative Action was a useful tool at a time our society was plagued with systemic racism and institutional racism, we have much more effective ways that quotas to address racism. Accepting racism to fix racism is no longer necessary and so it is time to move on.
You keep conflating two totally different issues. I said racism occurs at the individual level. That is a reality, and no amount of affirmative action will ever fix that nor was it intended to fix that.
Affirmative action was intended to address systemic and institutional racism, not individual racism. I just don't see that as prevalent in our society and when it does occur, we have laws to address it... as the feminist head of HR found to her chagrin. As an aside, she resigned before she had to add to her resume that she cost her company thousands by exercising her gender preference at work in her hiring.
I think you are a great advocate for African Americans. I try to play it more down the middle, I don't believe in putting fingers on the scales based on skin color. I do believe in giving my grandchildren a "leg up" by teaching them the skills they need to succeed, and I hope they will. I also believe they will encounter racism, no doubt about it... both my black and white and hopefully if my youngest daughters have children, my future Asian grandchildren will encounter racism. We teach them how to navigate that reality also.
But as someone who ran a diverse company of 42,000 employees, I can say with certainty, if someone cannot leave their race or gender at the door, they are doomed. Tomorrow's leaders will lead diverse workforces and if managers need affirmative action to fix their racist tendencies, then they don't deserve to be managers and these days they increasingly won't be.
Lastly, I once thought minorities would have an advantage since as "victims" of racism, they would be less likely to practice it. Sadly, that is not true. Companies, need to avoid hiring people based on skin color and hire people who don't make decisions based on skin color. One reason, I sent my children to public school instead of private and encouraged them to participate in team activities, was to learn to pick their friends based on character and their teammates based on talent.
If you were going to bet on which basketball team would win... one where the best players played or one which used race to choose who played... who would you bet on? With that in mind, the real goal should be to better prepare poor children who are disproportionately minority children to compete, not force them on to the team based on their skin color. Taking the example, one step further, any coach that excludes players based on their skin color won't make it in basketball or business.
