"I certainly agree with the concept of equal opportunity, but the problem with affirmative action is that it uses the very method it is designed to rectify."-johnfoibles
The fact is johnforbes hasn't got a single suggestion to make "equal opportunity" a reality. All he has is faulty reasoning to eliminate the only thing that can accomplish it.
For hundreds of years whites have been given opportunities by denying them to blacks and johnforbes had no problem with that. Now johnforbes has his sensibilities offended that some blacks might catch up by being given opportunities that will inevitably deny them to a few whites. This is because things like top tier University enrollment is a zero sum game. There are only so many spots and when someone wins, someone else loses.
johnforbes pretends that all we have to do is give equal consideration to all FROM NOW ON and everything will be fine. Only it won't, and johnny knows it. Whites have had hundreds of years to accumulate wealth and power at the expense of (and sometimes literally on the backs of) blacks. Whites have run the race unencumbered as blacks were shackled to a 200 pound weight of Jim Crow and red lining and arbitrarily unequal interest rates and poll taxes and substandard schools and rat-infested ghetto housing and job discrimination dragging behind them. It was intentionally made impossible for them to ever be in contention. Whites refused to let them as a matter of law and institutional prejudice.
Now johnny thinks that by simply removing that crippling weight from their ankles (and thus from his conscience,) the race will be fair from now on. johnforbes is willing to finally make this magnanimous philosophical concession to blacks because he knows they are so far behind in the race for power and wealth (hundreds of years behind) that they can never actually catch up and threaten his unearned security. Whites already own all the choice real estate. Whites already control the gerrymandering of voting districts. Whites already control the justice system. Whites already control nearly all major businesses.
The sad fact is that there are only so many Senate and Representative seats and so many major company board chairmanships and so many top tier college openings in this country. If blacks are ever to occupy just a few of them then some whites will have to give up a few of what johnforbes calls whites' "equally valid dreams" of occupying those positions themselves.
This offends johnforbes. "Why shouldn't whites continue to own and run everything if they are qualified?" he asks.
How can you deny a perceived birthright to someone who's qualified?
And the answer is pretty simple-- history.
All johnforbes need do is read his history and learn from it. You can only lord it over the poor and disenfranchised for so long saying "Let them eat cake" before they get angry enough and fed up enough to lop your arrogant head off.
Historically, whenever the power and wealth discrepancies between the wealthiest people and the general population gets wide enough, people rise up violently and say "Well fuck you." And it WILL happen again and it WILL happen to us if things continue as they are.
It's a simple matter of saving your own skin, johnny. Some things will just have to be given up and you'll get nothing in return besides possibly some good will. But I fully expect they will be about as thankful to you as you have been thankful to them all these years. (If that doesn't frighten you, then you've never seen chickens come home to roost.)
We see what whites running everything has led to: the utter absurdity and destructive incompetence of Donald Trump.
He was inevitable in a system like ours where we ignored the warnings of our Founding Fathers against the accumulation of dynastic wealth and power (which is all currently held by whites.)
We need to try something else before it is too late. As Trump said to blacks about voting for him instead of a Democrat during the last presidential campaign, "What have you got to lose?"
Now every black in the country has learned EXACTLY what they've got to lose by voting for Trump; their lives, literally.
Trump has literally threatened to deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil to literally kill them as they stand in the street. He's not just posturing. He'll actually do it.
And you assholes had the gall to call Obama "the Great Divider." No president in U.S. history has divided this country to the extent that Trump has. And that's not just me saying that. Presidential HISTORIANS (both Republican and Democrat) are saying that.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2 ... s-history/
- By Clownkicker