Racial Profiling is Bad!
Calling it “alarming and unconstitutional,” NCLR (National Council of La Raza), the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, today urged Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to veto an anti-immigrant bill that would lead to racial profiling…“Proposals like this one open the door to racial profiling and discrimination against immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.
http://www.nclr.org/content/news/detail/62682/
Racial Profiling is Good!
The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Latino civil rights organization, today called on the Bush Administration to send a clear and strong message in support of Affirmative Action as the Supreme Court prepares later this spring to hear oral arguments in the cases, Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, which challenge the constitutionality of the University of Michigan’s undergraduate and law school Affirmative Action programs.
http://www.nclr.org/content/news/detail/2315/
Definition of racial profiling from dictionary.com: "the consideration of race when developing a profile of suspected criminals; by extension, a form of racism involving police focus on people of certain racial groups when seeking suspected criminals."
ReplyDeleteAffirmative action: not racial profiling. It's offering discriminatory advantages in order to (at least in theory) act as a corrective to past injustice and current deep-seated racist attitudes... not the same thing as racial profiling. Whether or not affirmative action is good and racial profiling bad, it's hardly hypocritical to support one and not the other. Otherwise your argument rebounds,
All you distinction draws attention to is that advocates of identity politics engage in special pleading. They support racial discrimination if it advances the perceived interests of their own race, but oppose racial discrimination if it runs counter to the perceived interests of their own race.
ReplyDeleteFrom all I've read about affirmative action, its proponents don't see it as the final and ultimate good, simply a necessary and temporary corrective. If and when racism ceases and POC have truly equal opportunities, affirmative action will not be necessary - and I haven't seen anyone suggest it should continue beyond that point. In fact, the bloggers I've read on the topic are transparent about considering it a necessary evil.
ReplyDeleteWhat is your solution to the issue, if you are anti-affirmative action? Do you affirm that there is a problem with white people in positions of power giving other white people privileges over POC due to conscious and unconscious biases? Do you agree that being black results in decreased opportunities (AA aside) in education and the workforce regardless of other personal qualities? Do you admit that various races are not on an equal footing in the USA due to decades or centuries of small-scale and systemic racism? Do you think something should be done about this? If so, what? Do you think the current racial discrimination is better than the legalised discrimination that AA mandates, even though the latter has benefits to oppressed people and the former does not? If so, why?