Redhouse - I never tried to justify positive discrimination. It is wrong, I'll repeat it is wrong. What we need is to remove all discrimination.

Draugnar - the population % shouldn't matter 1 jot. If population split is 50%/50% but applications are 90 black kids apply and 10 white kids apply with identical grades you would expect 50 places to be split 45 black 5 white. If 90 white kids and 10 black kids applied you would expect the reverse.

If you don't accept AA, fair enough, but if you are so concerned AA discriminates against white males surely you should be as concerned that status quo discriminates against ethnic minorities?

The Oxford example is bunk.

Oxford is one of the world's elite university's and, as such, every single British applicant will have top grades. It follows that grades simply cannot be used to determine which candidate is accepted and which is not. How students perform in interviews, university tests, and extra curricular activities are the factors considered. Talking about grades is meaningless.

@Maniac - I am concerned about the status quo. Please read above what I think needs to happen. I admit it's a pipe dream, but equal education at the basic level is first and foremost and is where the US is lacking. Once there, then each person should be judged on their own merits. But discriminating against a class cause some asshooles in power discriminate for that class is no better than the assholes in power doing the discrimination the other way. Two wrongs don't make a right. At least they taught me that in preschool.

@octavious - you may be right that white people just happen to be the better candidates, if so, fine, but it needs looking into closely to ensure no bias. The percentages suggest some discrimination. It may be indirect, of course, which the university may realise if they look at the data objectively.

Draugnar - if we could start with removing inbuilt bias first that would certainly be a start. Note, I have never argued positIVe discrimination is right, it isn't. But sometimes the wrong thing has to be done to achieve the right result. Some would argue that killing is always wrong, but shooting a tyrant would achieve result. 1 death is better than 1000s, but the act of killing someone is still wrong. All I'm saying is sometimes doing the least wrong thing is preferable to allowing the bigger wrong thing to continue.

@ Maniac

I think it's more a case of class than race. Most of our black population came over to fill relatively poorly paid jobs and established themselves in the lower classes. Whilst we have better social mobility than nations such as the USA, our system is not great and the situation has not yet changed a great deal. People who have such backgrounds will have had fewer opportunities to prove themselves, and their schools will have had fewer resources to push them to elite status. It's also likely that a lot of potentially excellent candidates would have refused to even consider Oxford because of personal prejudice against it.

Octavious - I agree with your assessment of the problem. What do you suppose the solution should be. Would you remove AA of the table because it is discriminatory, or would you accept it could be better than the status quo?

I don't think AA is better than the status quo. Whilst I will readily agree that some students from poorer families may well have made excellent candidates if they had had the advantages of their wealthier counterparts, the fact is that they didn't and as such they do not. Placing a student where you think he could have been if he had had certain experiences does not make up for the fact that he hasn't had those experiences.

The difficult issue at the heart of this is one of the principles of the system we have in which we may aquire personal wealth. People wish to work hard and take risks have the opportunity to make a lot of money. What is the point of money if it can't be used to give your family an advantage? What is the point of sacrficing time you could spend having fun with loved ones if it doesn't earn your family a significant boost in the game of life?

I would argue strongly that all children in a civalised nation should have a decent shot in life on the back of a good education, but I would also defend the right of parents with the means to give their children whatever extra help they see fit. As such one would expect the likes of Oxford to have larger numbers of students from wealthy backgrounds with significant numbers of exceptional students from poorer backgrounds. If Oxford and Cambridge were the only decent universities in the country this would be a problem, but they are not and I don't think it is. It may not look great on paper to those who see absolute equality as their ultimate goal, but I think it gets the best results for the students and the country as a whole.

@Maniac - Your analogy is seriously flawed. The tyrrant is killing people, but the people candidates being denied by AA had no direct or even indirect affect on the candidates denied through discrimination. By your analogy, it would be better an innocent mam get the chair than a guilty man go free. I will never ever agree with punishing an innocent person cause they happen to be white. That falls back to what I said: two wrongs do *not* make a right. Eliminating a tyrant isn't wrong because murder is wrong, not killing (the actual translation of the commandment is thou shall not murder) and killing in defense of innocent lives is not only not wrong, but justified and acceptable. Denying an innocent their fair shake is wrong. Period. It doesn't matter that you are trying to "balance the books

Draugnar - if a person defines their own terms as to what is right or wrong then clearly they can always say that the 'second' wrong they are doing is 'right' and therefore your two wrongs not making a right holds. Let me elaborate.

Suppose we agree that driving at 50mph in a 30mph zone is 'wrong'. A child out playing gets run over by a speeding motorist. The child's father rushes him at 50 mph to hospital. Now we could argue that it is still wrong for the father to speed. Wrong + wrong = Wrong. We could argue the end result was right: wrong + wrong = right. Or we could argue the father was right in those circumstances where it was necessary to correct a previous wrong. Wrong + right = right.

My arguement is that discrimination is wrong. AA can have positive results and could be necessary to correct other more deep rooted discrimination. Perhaps it could be used to challange the culture of organisations and will wither on the vine when the just results are acheived.

Doesn't work that way. If discrimination is wrong, it is *always* wrong. So if discriminating against a black person is wrong, then AA (discrimination against a white person) is also wrong. Anyone who claims otherwise has no moral platform to stand on because their morals aren't about fairness and equality.

AA is discrimination. Do you deny this? Discrimination is worng. You said so yourself. Ergo, AA is worng. To say otherwise is fucking bullshit.

As far as your analogy, I covered something similar in Split's rant thread. The difference is that the sppeding father is not worng because the law says speeding is permissible in order to save a life. And there you are weighing the lesser of two evils: the loss of a childs life versus speeding. In AA, the two evils are equal: discriminate or discriminate. Neither are acceptable evils therefore there can be no right in AA.

But on you rfather rushing the child to the hospital, he probably would be better off to call 911 and let air cair or an ambulance rush the kid there. Safer, faster, and with paramedics working on his kid the whole way. So, in effect, the father was wrong. But it isn't a moral issue (speeding isn't morally worng, only legally) and merely a matter of trying to evaluate the best chance at having a positive outcome.

Consider 3 people watching a football game over a fence. One is 7 feet tall, one is 5 feet tall, and one is 3 feet tall. They each have a box that is 2 feet tall. The fence is 6 feet high.

If they all stand on one box (equal rights), the 7 foot guy and the 5 foot guy can see the game, but the 2 foot guy cannot. They are however all treated equally, which in principle makes this seem like the best policy for fairness.

If we choose affirmative action however and give the 2 foot guy one of the boxes from the 7 foot guy, now all the players can enjoy the game properly, which is true equality. Equal results here benefit the group more than equal treatment. Affirmative action is better, prove me wrong.

http://sphotos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/549824_10151294588104442_1073593965_n.jpg

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21576662-governments-should-be-colour-blind-time-scrap-affirmative-action

http://washingtonexaminer.com/economist-scrap-affirmative-action/article/2528228

These two articles say it better than I could ever. Affirmative action ceased being about leveling the playing field and is now about making a legally equal group stronger. It ceased being about fairness and became about vengence for past wrongs, but the victims of AA aren't the people who commited those wrongs.

As far as proving SYnapse wrong... AA is about taking the box from both the 7' and the 5' guy and rasing the fence to 7.5' so only the 2' guy can see over. Prove me wrong.

"now about making a legally equal group"
"equal group"
Lol
What percentage of your felons are black again?

SYnapse, if AA were that simple, you'd be right, but face it: nothing in politics, especially the controversial things, are that simple. Ever.

@SY - So? Blacks commit more crimes. Whites *make* them be drug dealers and gangbangers and make them kill each other in the street? Bullshit. Our prisons have more blacks because blacks commit more crimes.

I can't be bothered to find the statistics to prove you wrong, but needless to say that the percentage of blacks ratio to criminals does not justify the percentage of incarcerated blacks. Your opinion however doesn't affect me personally enough to warrant looking for sources. Thank god I live in a multicultural society

"drug dealers and gangbangers" certified racist comment. I suppose all the Mexicans are gun-running drug dealers as well. And let's not start on the Jews and their tax evasion!!!

First, I did not say all balcks were drug dealers and gang bangers. I also did not say all drug dealers and gang bangers were black. So you can shove your racist comments up your fucking ass!

Now, if you want to discuss it rationally with statistics that show the crime statistics show felony crimes skew distinctly black on black in inner city neighborhoods and that the great majority of felonies commited in the US are in inner city neighborhoods, then we can talk like rational adults. But call me racist again and I will just mute you and be done with your fucking socialist ass.

"Our prisons have more blacks because blacks commit more crimes." ... "I can't be bothered to find the statistics to prove you wrong" ...

I can. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gabriel-sayegh/new-york-marijuana-arrests_b_2910102.html

"NYPD has made 440,000 marijuana possession arrests under Bloomberg, more than mayors Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani combined. Nearly 70 percent of those arrested are younger than 30 years old; these young people receive a permanent criminal arrest record which can be easily found on the internet by employers, banks, schools, landlords, and others. And even though young whites use marijuana at higher rates, over 85 percent of the people arrested and jailed for marijuana possession are black and Latino. And for all this, New York taxpayers spend more than $75 million per year -- that's over $650 million during Mayor Bloomberg's tenure."

Draugnar - you'll win every arguement if you can define you own terms. Sometimes you want to argue morally right and wrong, sometimes legally right and wrong. We both know morals are not universal and the law can change in an instant. Let me give you an example of something that is both legally wrong and morally wrong (to many) but might give the right result.

In 1987 the Herald of Free Enterprise sank wit the lose of 193 lives. At the inquest evidence was heard about a young man who was frozen in fear with just his head above water holding onto a ladder. No other passages could get past this guy until someone ripped him off the ladder. Many passagers who would have drown survived. The young man perished. The hearing desided their was not to be a prosecution even though the act of ripping the young man off the ladder was in their view legally wrong and morally wrong. The greater good didn't make the act right, it was still wrong, but the result was the right result. Prove me wrong (which seems to be trending at the moment).

MArijuana is a misdemeanor. We are talking prison which is for felony convictions.

Draugnar, the fact that we were talking about blacks and somehow the phrase "drug dealers and gangbangers" was mentioned says everything we need to know. Please mute me, +1 bosox VIVA LA REVOLUCION!!!

@Maniac - I disagree with the view that their act was morally wrong. The fellow was endangering the lives of others. His life was forfeit. Nothing morally or legally wrong there. If thorugh action or inaction, one endangers others, then one must be removed. It is back to the lesser of two evils. But it doesn't excuse the abuse and victimization of innocent people in the name of "justice". The sins of the fathers should not be measured upon the sons.

SYnapse just got his wish. I muted him as he requested.

@Draugnar - I respect your view about killing the man was legally right and morally right. It differs from that of the learned Judge but we are allowed to have our own interpretations about such things.

The thing I don't get about your position is you freely accept that killing can be legally and morally right in certain circumstances but you say discrimination is wrong end of. Could you ever give me an example where discrimination is right according to your moral code?

"MArijuana is a misdemeanor. We are talking prison which is for felony convictions."

Dude, did you read it? Don't the words "arrested and jailed" stick out to you? That's prison.