A reminder: people of quality do not fear equality. Whatever your color, sexual orientation,

[Atticus]

gender, country of origin, religion---or lack thereof, rich or poor, whatever your status---you are just as good as---but not one bit better than---everyone you meet.

The fact that one of our major political parties is based upon makers vs. takers, deserving vs. undeserving and "us" vs. "those people" in no way lessens the truth of the above.

[Soleta]

1. While there are clearly people who hate equality

I think a lot of people are more afraid of the process required to build equality, like the chance of failing to get a deserved job or promotion because of affirmative action, or fear that crime will get worse if police feel unable to act due to race.

The process of creating equality will hurt some individuals, and we probably should be sensitive to that fact rather than treat opposition to the process as being motivated only by ego, racism or greed.

[Atticus]

2. If you equate giving up privilege with getting "hurt", what you say may be true.

I don't see providing equality to all as a zero sum game. If we made our laws and set our policies from behind Rawls' "veil of ignorance", we'd all benefit in the long term.

[Soleta]

4. Benefit in the "long term".

Everyone does benefit in the long term, but it doesn't make sense to say that no one individual would lose out during the process. That's mathematically impossible.

In many parts of the country the white privilege is simply to not be as desperately poor as their minority neighbors. I'm merely pointing out that it is hard to convince a family scraping by that they are going to have to make some sacrifices for the greater good.

That's the perception problem with affirmative action - it requires working class people to make the adjustment rather than asking wealthy people to give up something so more working class jobs could be created.


I'm in favor of affirmative action, but I also understand why individual economics play a big role in people's opposition. Painting that opposition as based solely on prejudice or greed is a failure of empathy.

[Atticus]

5. I agree that fear is often the prime motivation for prejudice. You raise some good points.

Thanks for your constructive response.

[llmart]

6. Very thoughtful post...

However, I do think that there are a substantial number of people who are not "working class" who are opposed to affirmative action even though it doesn't affect their personal economic circumstances in any way. In those cases I see it as them having a distorted image of themselves as having achieved their station in life because of some imaginary personal strengths and work ethic that those "others" do not. Human beings have a way of rationalizing their station in life and/or revising their histories to prove how they got to where they are by their own initiative, with no help from others.

[marble falls]

3. The whole concept that afirmative action "hurt" anyone is such BS. All anecdote and no data.