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Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old

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Re: Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old

#81

Post by rhplus »

arethuza wrote: post #2

I've been fascinated with geology ever since I realised that it is really history on an epic scale (living in Edinburgh also helps) - one book that really opened my eyes to the subject is Richard Fortey's The Earth: An Intimate History : http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Intimate-History-Richard-Fortey/...

I enjoyed "The Map That Changed The World", which is the story of how the study of geology developed during the Industrial period of England. It's the story of William Smith, one of the first people to identify strata formations in coal mines and canal trenches and use them to predict patterns elsewhere.

http://amzn.com/0061767905

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Smith_(geologist)

Re: Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old

#82

Post by javert »

mikeash wrote: post #79
javert wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get from "more black people live in areas where there were more productive plantations" to "we need affirmative action"? (The answer is, you don't.)

> (The answer is, you don't.) You do realize that putting words in other people's mouths like this pretty much destroys any chance of having a productive and useful conversation? What is the point of even asking a question that you're sure you already know the answer to?

I would be putting words in someone's mouth if I wrote, "You said X..." when they did not say X, but rather something that I think (rightly or wrongly) implies X.

What I did is something different, but I agree that it's not obvious how this is conducive to productive and useful conversation. I know, it looks like I'm just trying to "score points." So, let me explain myself.

This kind of dialogue actually is productive and useful.

People reading my comment who were taken by a logical fallacy (including the person who wrote it) get to see that and learn something.

The person who wrote my comment (me) gets to practice writing clearly and concisely, and will get instant feedback if there was a failure or mistake. (Either in exposition or logic - and I readily admit I make logical mistakes all the time.)

As further evidence that what I said is useful, I submit that I have a double digit number of upvotes.

I wish there had been a way to indicate I wasn't just being snarky/trying to score points, but it's hard to convey that online, short of saying "BTW, I'm not just being snarky here, I actually think this is important." Maybe I should have done that. I'm open to suggestions here.

Re: Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old

#83

Post by jivatmanx »

shantanubala wrote: post #49
rayiner wrote: post #41

I think this is a great answer to people who ask why we still need things like affirmative action. Here you have a continuing demographic phenomenon that can be traced directly back to slave ownership patterns hundreds of years ago. It should be noted also that the black belt is also a terribly poor stretch of the country. Unfortunately, it appears that socioeconomic patterns are imprinted more deeply than anyone wou…

Although I agree with you, I get the impression that someone who doesn't think affirmative action should exist even after learning about the gang violence, intense poverty, substance abuse, neglect, and trauma that surrounds children growing up in housing projects and "bad neighborhoods" -- even after all of that, if someone still says no, then you could probably trace this back to the Big Bang and they'll still say…

Why can't we just try to remedy those ills directly? Why does there need to be an association with race?

I'm not denying that these are a result of the U.S's past action, and that we have a responsibility to fix them, but I have doubts that associating them with race is necessary or helpful in any way.

Re: Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old

#84

Post by stickfigure »

Karunamon wrote: post #61
javert wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get from "more black people live in areas where there were more productive plantations" to "we need affirmative action"? (The answer is, you don't.)

You started from the wrong conclusion. The proper way is "patterns ingrained tens, hundreds, thousands of years ago can show tangible effects even in 2012" to "the concept of affirmative action is sound".

The historic chinatowns of San Francisco, New York, and LA are still predominantly populated with ethnic Chinese. At a bigger scale: China is still predominantly populated with ethnic Chinese.

I'm not sure what conclusions you can reasonably draw from this, especially WRT affirmative action.

Re: Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old

#85

Post by shantanubala »

javert wrote: post #77
Karunamon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You started from the wrong conclusion. The proper way is "patterns ingrained tens, hundreds, thousands of years ago can show tangible effects even in 2012" to "the concept of affirmative action is sound".

That's effectively the same as what I stated. It's also still not a valid conclusion. For example, you haven't addressed whether it's worth trying to undo bad things that happened long ago with other injustices, as opposed to simply being just from here on out. For another example, you haven't addressed whether it actually works or not. (Those two examples actually are related, because theory and practice actually ar…

> undo bad things that happened long ago with other injustices

First, you are implying that affirmative action is unjust, which it is not. Affirmative action does not mean that an unqualified worker replaces a qualified worker because of race. Affirmative action means that equally qualified workers are then selected to be as representative of the population as possible. This has the added benefit of making sure civil servants (ie our government) are more accurately representing the dynamics of the population as a whole.

Whether it actually works is a difficult question, and I've only done a little bit of reading on the issue (I have friends who are activists and explained the details to me, but I wasn't able to commit a lot of the specific details and studies to memory). A summary: it's complicated, there's pros and cons, but the pros can outweigh the cons depending on implementation. A quick Google search reveals a few interesting things. A study from Princeton indicated that ending affirmative action would result in a sharp decline in minority students, but it wouldn't actually raise the acceptance rate for non-minority students significantly. But there are also some studies that indicate the opposite (an analysis of law schools, for example, revealed that there would potentially be more black lawyers if affirmative action was not in place).

As always, make the evaluation for yourself, but asking someone to validate affirmative action on HN is quite a task, isn't it? But to reframe the discussion a little bit: it's not a question of whether it's just or fair -- it's a question of whether it's an effective approach to inequality. The idea of "reverse racism" is baloney, and I can explain that opinion further if necessary.

Re: Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old

#86

Post by king_jester »

javert wrote: post #77
Karunamon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You started from the wrong conclusion. The proper way is "patterns ingrained tens, hundreds, thousands of years ago can show tangible effects even in 2012" to "the concept of affirmative action is sound".

That's effectively the same as what I stated. It's also still not a valid conclusion. For example, you haven't addressed whether it's worth trying to undo bad things that happened long ago with other injustices, as opposed to simply being just from here on out. For another example, you haven't addressed whether it actually works or not. (Those two examples actually are related, because theory and practice actually ar…

> For example, you haven't addressed whether it's worth trying to undo bad things that happened long ago...

Um, I hate to break it to you, but racism didn't magically end "long ago", but is alive and well today and is both personal and systemic in western society.

>...with other injustices

Providing help in getting people of color who are actively prohibited from accessing higher education is not an injustice.

Re: Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old

#87

Post by AimHere »

_delirium wrote: post #74
bdunbar wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems you mention were not problems until after affirmative action was implemented.

I don't believe your chronology is correct: affirmative action was first implemented in the U.S. in 1961, with widespread implementation not until the late 1960s, but there were already many poverty-ridden black ghettoes in the 1950s. (And the areas talked about in this article have been full of grinding poverty for their entire existence , with most of their inhabitants being slaves prior to the 1860s, and then desp…

Maybe I'm leaning too much on the 'benefit of the doubt' side, but I parsed the prior post to mean that all those things existed, but they weren't considered problems by, say, white people, or people in power, prior to the 1960s.

The alternative is that some (presumably intelligent) poster on HN stating something completely at odds with the facts, and perhaps even informally suggesting that affirmative action was likely to have caused black people to live in poor, squalid, crime-filled ghettoes.

Re: Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old

#88

Post by pavel_lishin »

andrewtbham wrote: post #23

I live in Birmingham AL and the existence of the black belt is common knowledge here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Belt_(U.S._region) As a kid, I assumed it was called the black belt because of the black people, not knowing it's because the soil is black.

A neighboring town's motto was, "The blackest soil and the whitest people."

Despite people's assurances that "white" in this case simply means "good", I always had mixed feelings about it.

Re: Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old

#89

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

rayiner wrote: post #41

I think this is a great answer to people who ask why we still need things like affirmative action. Here you have a continuing demographic phenomenon that can be traced directly back to slave ownership patterns hundreds of years ago. It should be noted also that the black belt is also a terribly poor stretch of the country. Unfortunately, it appears that socioeconomic patterns are imprinted more deeply than anyone wou…

The problem with affirmative action is that it is based on race. It is racist. In fact it isn't just based on race, it is based on skin colour - since some mixed black-white people with white skin can be discriminated against.

America needs to put race on the sidelines and start thinking in terms of class. You should help the disadvantaged or poor regardless of their great great grandparent's struggles.

Affirmative action should exist; but it should be entirely based on parental income, growing up in a poor area, or other disadvantaged indicators. Not race, not ethnicity, and not gender. These things don't prove you're poor or disadvantaged.

Re: Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old

#90

Post by bfac112 »

mikeash wrote: post #79
javert wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you get from "more black people live in areas where there were more productive plantations" to "we need affirmative action"? (The answer is, you don't.)

> (The answer is, you don't.) You do realize that putting words in other people's mouths like this pretty much destroys any chance of having a productive and useful conversation? What is the point of even asking a question that you're sure you already know the answer to?

Blah blah blah
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