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From: tim@unc.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Moral Arithmetic and AA
Message-ID: <5375@unc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-Jun-83 15:25:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: unc.5375
Posted: Tue Jun 14 15:25:16 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 16-Jun-83 02:30:46 EDT
References: eagle.999
Lines: 59


I haven't been following all the AA discussion,	just the shorter ones.
This one, though, upset	me, and	this being net.flame...

	Before you do any more writing about AA, would you please do
	the following moral sum?

	1. Consider the	pain of	all those whites who have been damaged
	by AA programs.	 Add up	the psychological damage caused	for
	any reason, including perceived	lost opportunities, engendered
	feelings of inferiority, disgruntlement, whatever you care to
	include.  Also include any direct costs	of lower salaries,
	untaken	transfers, and the like.

	2. Now consider	the pain of one	black seven-year-old child in
	your favorite ghetto (say, Newark).  Consider how the child
	feels with a father shot by a cop for no reason, a mother
	whose education	was eliminated by the need to care for her own
	siblings, how the child	feels about going to school without
	breakfast, how the child feels about going to a	school which
	would be condemned in your town, how the child feels about
	supper of Wonder bread and corn	syrup (if that), how the child
	feels with no toys, no place to	play, no new clothes (ever),
	how the	child feels about the world seen in a TV screen,
	visible	but never attainable.  Consider	how the	child feels
	about a	life with no future.

	[paragraph omitted for space reasons]

	By the way, a few of you will dismiss this argument as
	emotional and irrelevant.  Consider whether you	would feel
	that way if the	child were yours.

It's neither overly emotional nor irrelevant; after all, emotions are
what the issue is about.  However, it is very, very incomplete.	 At a
minimum, add in	the amount by which AA discrimination against whites
perpetuates racism.  Remember that from	Brown vs. the Board of
Education?  ANY	racial discrimination perpetuates racism to a certain
extent.	 The question here is whether racism is	more hurt or more
helped by AA.

If this	is too abstract	for you, imagine a racially neutral white man
denied a job which is given to a clearly less qualified	black.	Hey,
guess that helped his attitudes	towards	blacks,	didn't it?  If he's in
a position to dole out jobs later, he's	sure going to give a lot to
them to	blacks over whites, huh?

Another	factor is recognizing its end.	If we embark upon a course of
action which is	clearly	only beneficial	as a temporary measure,	we'd
better be damn sure we have some way of	recognizing when it is no
longer useful, and a graceful way to tell its beneficiaries that
they're	on their own.  Otherwise, it could outlive its usefulness,
becoming that which it strives against,	or alienate so many in its
leaving	that it	does more harm than good.

Where are these	in your	"moral arithmetic"?  Real life is rarely as
simple as a comparison of two numbers, and this	is no exception.

Tim Maroney, still undecided