Media sing 'po-po black floks' tune
"Since shortly after the signing of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964-65, and the advent of the Great Society Initiatives, blacks have been systematically stripped of their dignity and converted from self-sufficient, pride-filled, patriotic Americans to wards of a liberal nanny government who are motivated by rage, resentment and animus.
The flames of anger are fanned, vis-à-vis a proscribed polarization based on the color of one's skin, by those who risk the greater loss, if and when blacks come to their senses
Following are examples of a Pew Research Center study and how same is being used to keep dependent on liberals for their dinner at Barmecide's table. The lead paragraph of an article in the liberal Washington Post read, "Nearly half of [blacks] born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near poverty as adults, according to a new study – a perplexing finding that analysts say highlights the fragile nature of middle-class life for many [blacks]."
It continued, "[In] a society where the privileges of class and income perpetuate themselves from generation to generation, black Americans have had more difficulty than whites in transmitting those benefits to their children" ("Middle-class dream eludes African-American families," Nov. 13, 2007).
Space constraints prevent me from an expansive parsing of this flagrant falsity, but suffice it to say the paralyzing effects of the "Great Society" began in the late 1960s. It ushered in the period of the non-consequential abandonment of sobriety (read: morality), as the government stood at the ready with checkbook in hand to reward same. Clean, pridefully maintained public housing neighborhoods became cesspools; mothers were compensated (read: rewarded) by the child, but only if the father was excluded. This period gave rise to pandemics of drugs, crime, social alienation and failing schools. I see nowhere in the article where these factors were considered.
Massies argument should not be taken with great warrant, because it fails to cite how "great society" initiatives led to "pandemics of drugs crime social alienation and failing schools. Rather, here are some statistics that might help us understand the context of the Pew Research Study.
The belief that affirmative action practices have already settled the score and that white youth are made to feel guilty for the injustices of their ancestors, ignores the reality of affirmative action as little more than a principle, with little evidence of enforcement. “According to one highly-place source, the AFL-CIO leadership supported this bill because they believed that a commitment to integration in principle might ward off measures that could bring it about in practice.” (Orfield and Shkinaze, The Closing Door: Conservative Policy and Black Opportunity, pg 58,59) So the principal was enacted, and when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began accepting charges, they were faced with an immediate backlog of 1,000 charges, or complaints, according to their Web site. In the 1980s the EEOC underwent a philosophy revision, without increase in staff or revenues, from a focus on systemic discrimination to thorough individual cases. Studies show "that affirmative action on
employment weakened in the early 1980s, as a result of lax enforcement of
affirmative action regulations in the early years of the Reagan administration." (Holzer, Harry & Neumark, David. "Assessing Affirmative Action." Journal of Economic Literature, 38. 3:2000 pp.483-568)
The AFL-CIO's American Federationalist wrote on affirmative action in August, 1986:
"Despite the fact that the Civil Rights Act is more than 20 years old, many barriers to equal access to jobs, promotions and other employment opportunities still remain. effective affirmative action plans are as necessary now as those plans were in 1964 to ensure that minorities and women take their rightful places in our economic system and to achieve equality and harmony among the races.
The Reagan Administration's record on affirmative action is deplorable. The Administration is leading the reactionary effort in the courts to end affirmative action and is taking steps to weaken Executive Order 11246. This order forbids government contractors from discriminating in employment and requires them to engage in affirmative action. The Administration seeks to use the civil rights laws to thwart the full political and economic participation of women and racial minorities in our society rather than as a means of furthering that goal.
The AFL-CIO has often stated its unwavering support for affirmative action and condemns the Administration's efforts to end such programs. While Title VII protects bona fide, nondiscriminatory seniority systems that provide important ptotection to all workers regardless of race or sex, the Civil Rights Act also permits workers in free collective bargaining to negotiate affirmative action plans, including plans that modify such seniority systems.
The 1984 Supreme Court decision in the Stotts case endorsed the position long held by the AFL-CIO that bona fide nondiscriminatory seniority systems are legal under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as amended. These systems provide valuable and needed protection for all workers regardless of race or sex."
To highlight the effect of the nondiscriminatory seniority system under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which undermined affirmative action, studies found that policies that supportes seniority-based layoffs hurt black workers more than white workers in the 1973-74 recession. "While white males averaged 63 percent of initial employment, they accounted for 78 percent of the employment decline. Since females and minorities typically have lower seniority, they are usually found to suffer disproportionately more during a downturn." (Leondar, Jonathan. "The Impact of Affirmative Action Regulation and Equal Employment Law on Black Employmen." The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 4. 4:1990, pp. 47-63)
Another study cited above assessed over 20 years of research on affirmative action and concluded the effects are ambiguous. (Holzer, Harry & Neumark, David. "Assessing Affirmative Action." Journal of Economic Literature, 38. 3:2000 pp. 483-568)
It concludes:
"Significant labor market discrimination against minorities and women persists, as do other forms of disadvantage for minorities in the attainment of human capital (which some refer to as "societal discrimination"). Affirmative action programs redistribute employment, university admissions, and government business from white males to minorities and women, though the extent of the redistribution may not be large."Futhermore,
"All in all, the evidence suggests to us that it may be possible to generate affirmativeSo, then we see that affirmative action does have some positive impact on the distribribution of employee opportunity and has ambiguous effects on company efficiency and "reverse discrimination." So if to some extent affirmative action does help diversify our workforce, and it's negative effects are a wash, then I find it hard to believe that these programs are the cause of problems facing black communities, and even harder to believe that these programs disadvantage other non-minority members of society, so rather we should take our focus away from affirmative action and look at how our schools are funded, who gets a better education, how our schools are divided, how mortgage loans are distributed, the dynamics of property tax increases and urban development.
action programs that entail relatively little sacrifice of efficiency. Most importantly, there is at this juncture very little compelling evidence of deleterious efficiency effects of affirmative action. This does not imply that such costs do not exist, nor that the studies we review have captured the overall welfare effects of affirmative action. It does imply, though, that the empirical
case against affirmative action on the grounds of efficiency is weak at best.
...Affirmative action offers significant redistribution toward women and minorities, with relatively small efficiency consequences. A major outstanding question that could tip the scales more in the direction of efficiency gains is the extent to which this redistribution increases
efficiency by countering discrimination in the labor market. We have argued that there is evidence of continuing discrimination against women and minorities. In this case it is possible that affirmative action generates additional efficiency gains, although theory does not necessarily imply this."
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