Each of these philosophies has its good points, but how can one implement both at the same time?
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"…and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him."
Equal opportunity does not imply "everyone is treated the same." Equal opportunity implies "treatment so as to level the playing field among individuals" to compensate for past discrimination, etc.
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Kylo's got it right. So, in the way he explained it, equal opportunity implies affirmative action. This company just decided to go out and say it.
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
Equal opportunity would just kind of be a misnomer I guess, but when you look at it with a literal eye, it does appear to be contradictory.
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Is it really equal opportunity if a certain group is getting more of an avantage, though?
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I HAVE BEEN REBORN! http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz325/Mountrussmore/Transformation.jpg
That's the definition of equal opportunity, though. It's giving an advantage specifically to counteract the historical disadvantages and discrimination that has been experienced in the past to allow those who had lesser opportunities (or even -no- opportunities) to compete on (more or less) equal footing with those who don't have those historical disadvantages.
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At any rate, I wish people that would decide whether to create or continue affirmative-action programs based on how well the programs accomplish their intended purpose rather than on ideology. In other words, I wish the controversy about affirmative action was more empirical and less ethical.
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"…and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him."
Eh, the admittance of race is the perpetuation of racism.
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Mark gets it.
What a conundrum that presents.
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Willis, it seems like every other time you post, I need to look up a word that's in the OED or Urban Dictionary but not both.
-Mimir
I disagree. It is possible to acknowledge differences without claiming inferiority.
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"To truly live, one must first be born." ~ Evan [aX]
Paper Mario Social: The Safe Haven of GameFAQs. (Board 2000083)
I think that affirmative action implies inferiority. I'm not black, so I have no stake to be insulted by it, but basically it boils down to, "Sure they're inferior, but we should excuse that because we made them that way."
I don't know if I'd say that affirmative action implies inferiority as much as it acknowledges the fact that systems have/had been set in place to guarantee inferiority, and now are trying to take steps to correct that difference.
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I don't want to say that admitting a difference is a thing that makes inequality. I think that 2 = 2 and 1 + 1 = 2 as well. In the instance of race, however, I think it's too idealistic to think we can have a question like race and not have the issue devolve into racism. It's a far more effective strategy to combat racism, in my opinion, by eliminating the concept of race by ignoring* it rather than bringing attention to it.
* this does not advocate ignoring racism, but rather correcting racism without referencing race at all.
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But is it really possible to correct racism without referencing race? How is it possible to start implementing solutions to a problem without properly being able to reference what it has stemmed from? Rather than race-blindness, I'd rather advocate for race-consciousness, which would be acknowledging and understanding differences between races and then forming policy around that understanding.
And I guess as a full disclaimer, it's really hard for me to buy into an ideology that doesn't reference race when for the greater majority of the years I was growing up, most of the people I encountered on a daily basis (in school, work, etc) wouldn't have known was "Filipino" (or even "Asian") was had I not been there. So I feel pretty strongly about issues and discussions like this. Forgive me if I get a bit 'heated.'
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Society dies and begins anew with every passing generation- racism needn't be corrected if it is simply taken to the grave in the hearts of those who hold it. I think a new generation of kids who don't even see the word "race" anywhere in their daily life, and never see a reference to someone being "african/asian american" or having to fill out a form that finds your race to be just as important as your name and birthdate, yet not your eye color, then I think that new generation of children will never know the difference.
Obviously parents who are racist will perpetuate racist ideas to their children, but then again, positive atmospheres can negate this or at least encourage a child to make their own decision. There will always be bad parents, and bad kids, but I think most of them can fade and will fade in the years to come.
I think when we categorize people into different races and force kids to bubble in whether or not they are black or hispanic, and we pay no attention to their favorite music, we're making a clear statement that says "You are different and that difference is significant" which only serves to bring about the idea of "us" and "them."
You don't need to worry about being heated Kylo, your posts maintain full civility- I don't even see lukewarm* in them yet.
* by which I mean the control of your passions, not that you lack passion on the subject
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What about the idea in social psychology that people spontaneously reason about other people in terms of race because race is a salient category and we generally tend to categorize things? If this theory is true, then racism, of a kind, comes naturally.
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"…and the colonel was certainly not going to waste his time and energy making love to beautiful women unless there was something in it for him."
It's true that the color of someone's skin is probably the most salient thing to come to mind when describing someone. Which is why I don't think describing a person in terms of their skin color, when trying to identify someone, is a bad thing. It makes much more sense to identify the one black person in a crowd, if that's who you mean to identify, by saying it as such, rather than trying to find a bunch of other descriptive words about him.
I don't have any evidence for my thoughts, but I think that kids who don't know what a racial divide is (i.e. discussions of superiority, filling out racial information, or even affirmative-action) will never see one's skin color as anything more than a descriptive word, no different than blond-haired.
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