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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.politics
Subject: Re: Discrimination and AA
Message-ID: <274@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Jun-85 11:36:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.274
Posted: Tue Jun 25 11:36:33 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Jun-85 07:41:22 EDT
References: <496@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
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Xref: watmath net.women:6086 net.politics:9586

> Barry Fagin writes to the effect that it is ludicrous to suppose that
> anyone has a right to compel an employer to change his hiring
> practices.  But it is ludicrous only on the assumption that the
> Non-Coercion Principle on which Barry's objection is apparently
> based is self-evidently true.  The confidence of libertarians in the
> NCP is matched only by their inability to convince anyone else of it.
> To me it is ludicrous to suppose that employers have the right to
> discriminate against minorities and women because of their irrational
> prejudice against them, and AT THE SAME TIME no one has the right to
> make them stop it.
> 
Tell me, Mr. Carnes, if you don't believe in the non-coercion principle,
what is the basis for your objection to rape? murder? robbery?  If the
objection is based on law, then a government that repeals those laws
has taken away your objections.

> SJ Berry writes:
> 
> > AA is fully implemented, and we can't buy the home of our choice or
> > send our kids to a good school, etc. all because *I*, a WHITE MALE,
> > though completely qualified, can't get a job.  They give them all to
> > equally qualified "minorities".
> 
> I thought of writing a satirical response to this and similar
> postings, but the above already sounds like satire to me, and I would
> need the talents of a Mark Twain to do an adequate job.  I was going
> to say that I was founding the NAAWM and requesting all WM's to send
> me their tax-deductible contributions so that we could fight for the
> rights of this oppressed minority, but lots of you would have taken
> me seriously and sent me your checks -- come to think of it, it might
> be worth a try sometime.  Wake up, fellow white males!  They're
> trying to take away our GOD-GIVEN RIGHT to be on top of the heap!
> Let's organize, march, demonstrate....
> 
Not "our GOD-GIVEN RIGHT to be on top of the heap!"  The right of every
individual to be treated as an individual.  Your comments suggest that
you either aren't reading what people are saying, or you are purposely
and knowingly distorting and twisting the objections to affirmative
action.

> Suppose we abandon AA, or suppose it was never applied.  Then we're
> back to the good old days when many blacks and women, though
> completely qualified, couldn't get a good job or a promotion or a
> good education.  Do you think that the comfortable white males who
> are now howling their outrage about the "discrimination" AA inflicts
> on them were howling as loudly in the good old days about the
> discrimination and oppression inflicted on minorities and women, an
> oppression incomparably more severe than any that white males will
> ever experience?  Take a guess.
> 
The bad old days of discrimination came to an end because a great many
white males were disturbed by it --- EEO came into place from a Congress
dominated by white males.  (You don't really think blacks had enough
political pull to do it by themselves, do you?)

As long as I have held political opinions, I have been loudly opposed to
racism of any form.  I resent your belief that opposition to affirmative
action is racism.

> --Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
> I have striven, not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them,
> nor to hate them, but to understand them. --Spinoza

Spinoza tried to understand, Mr. Carnes --- you don't.