You should always tailor your message to your audience, but insulting those not present stopped being a good idea about the time the telegraph was invented.

True. It was a faux pas on Obama’s part.

Jeffrey,

How are Jews and Asians being strongly discriminated against?

From Epenshade & Chung (2005) [1]:

“African-American applicants receive the equivalent of 230 extra SAT points (on a 1600-point scale), and being Hispanic is worth an additional 185 SAT points. Other things equal, recruited athletes gain an admission bonus worth 200 points, while the preference for legacy candidates is worth 160 points. Asian-American applicants face a loss equivalent to 50 SAT points.”

I trust you’ll be able to find your own reference for affirmative action’s racial discrimination against Jews.

[1] http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/tje/espenshadessqptii.pdf

Galrahn,

What bothers me about his comments is that a presidential candidate of the US describes gun ownership and religious worship as vices to people struggling under hard economic times…

This goes to what was weird about Obama’s line: he was describing attributes, all with negative connotations to his physical audience, as deriving from legitimate grievances. But some of that list has positive connocations to many of his would-be voters (gun ownership, religion, etc.). So either Obama’s insulting the values of others, or else explaining away both the good and bad of others as the result of economic circumstances and institutional molding.

Either way, a misstep.

Seerov,

You’re arguing against a straw-man. Go back to the University of Michigan law school decisions — the justification for affirmative action (at least among liberal elites) is diversity and equality, not redress of grievances.

[1] http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/tje/espenshadessqptii.pdf

I’m talking about political rhetoric here. As the economic opportunities for working class whites becomes even more bleak due to mass immigration, technology, outsourcing, and AA, the opportunity will arise to use this for propaganda reasons. Arguing that “diversity is good” is already laughable but even more so when people can’t find employment.

People also argue for AA to “correct past wrongs.” But no one has ever provided a metric that will alert us to when these past wrongs are corrected. We’re (whites) running out of time. We need to end AA in the next 15 years or we’ll lose the voting numbers to do so. If there’s one thing that whites agree with across party lines its AA. Every state that had an anti-AA referendum, has voted against AA. Even the so called “liberal” states. And this isn’t just old timers, young whites also reject AA. But if we wait too long it will be too late, and life will look like something out of Dr. Zhivago.

The two most important laws to be corrected before whites become a minority is ending AA and reinstating the right to freedom of association. In fact, I would be willing to pay slave reparations if we could correct these two defects.

He is the only man in the country who could even imply that liberties protected by the Bill of Rights are a vice that stupid Americans hold on to and still expect to be president. That he said it isn’t just silly or strange, it’s revealing in a not so good way.

I think I’m too GenX to understand the racial element here. I don’t recall religion or gun ownership being exclusively a white thing when I lived in rural Arkansas. Both were part of the social environment of the community, regardless of race, albeit in different ways.

One of the arguments in America for AA is that white people are too racist and won’t hire blacks unless forced to. If a black man becomes President of the US, then this argument is moot. The fact that “typical-racist-Nazi-whites” will vote a black into office proves that this argument is nonsense.

Perhaps, but it’s a rarely used argument. The ones I actually hear are that racial diversity is a good even without extant racism (for instance, the University of Michigan cases) or that the unique experiences of African Americans require giving them an additional “helping hand.” Neither of these require the existence of racism among whites.

Regarding genetic variation within Africa, cannot find a specific cite at the moment (I’ll continue looking if you want) — both Weber et al. 2000 [1] and this web comment [2] also refer to it. My point is that east and west Africans are so differnet and so many scales, and more specifically African Americans and west African immigrants are so different, that there’s little point in using the success of on member one as a basis for changing the benefits allocated to the other.

Regardless, it’s hard to imagine you won’t see the same charges of “Tokenism” leveled against a President Obama as you have Associate Justice Thomas, Secretary Powell, Secretary Rice, etc.

All in all, the idea that an Obama presidency would result in less affirmative action strikes me as evidence-less wishful thinking.

Jeffrey,

Which AA? Racial or social class based?

Both, though I was, in line with common usage, using “affirmative action” to refer to the existing system of racial preferences that discriminate primarily in favor of blacks, somewhat in favor of hispanics, somewhat against whites, and strongly against jews and asians, in the United States.

[1] http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3659/is_200010/ai_n8924238/pg_5
[2] http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/09/from_crotchgrabbing_to_demogra.php#comment-530840

Main Entry:
affirmative action
Function:
noun
Date:
1965

:an active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups and women; also : a similar effort to promote the rights or progress of other disadvantaged persons

Fact is, no matter who it is legally defined, AA is a broad term that doesn’t refer specifically to this or that program, whether is by racist quotas or programs that react out to communities that are otherwise not pushing their youth towards higher education.

Which AA? Racial or social class based?