Thats what most Brahmins who can't make the quota do. Thats why most Indian immigrants are from the high caste communities. And not unsurprisingly, they retain the notions of caste they leave with Family Ties and the Entanglements of Caste
It obviously needs to start before the university level if they had to pass on 550 applicants because they were not black. And then - oops - number 551 is also not black. Maybe make public schools for ALL people, regardless of color. Then, hopefully, in a few years the racial mix at the university level will be representative of the population as a whole. BTW - Nobody said it was gonna be easy.
Do all people anywhere have equal opportunity from birth? Granted South Africa has a fucked up history, but the majority has been in control for over 15 years. What are they doing to improve their country? Equal education for all should be top of the list.
Well India has been a democracy for 62 years and although we increased our educational level from 12% to around 50% and elected an untouchable as Prime Minister and one as President, we still haven't been able to do much about the poverty and backwardness 15 years means that the person applying for medical school was born in a bantustan and had a childhood during violent times in SA living through a regime change from apartheid to revolutionaries who were terrorists becoming leaders. So I would say, based on the eradication of slavery, give it a couple of hundred years at least
Changes in human attitudes are generally measured in generations. And the culture of poverty is hard to break, even if opportunity is available. But is holding another segment of the population back really the answer?
I don't think anyone is particularly held back - yeah its sad that she could not get admitted in this particular school, but its not the only medical school in the world and she can apply to another. I know people even in equal opportunity states who apply over and over, for years, to get into particular programs. The problem in SA is that they have to undo the effects of over 6 centuries of chronic discrimination. Thats not just a physical phenomenon, see for example, the "Obama effect" on academic performance - its rebuilding the broken psyche of a people. Anyone who thinks that its not her problem is ignoring the cumulative effect of centuries of slavery and discrimination, not to mention dehumanisation on the people of SA and also ignoring the fact that notions of white supremacism are why this girl does not suffer from the same. So she has benefited from the system there, like it or not and like the rest of the society, she has to contribute to the advantages provided to those "lesser" humans now. I would advise her to try elsewhere. If she is a good student, it will not matter much where she goes to get her degree.
That may be true. But personally, I would think it's to their advantage to try and keep the best educated in the country rather than chasing them away.
Quite possibly, yes. If there had been a comparable history of open, systemic oppression on that basis - going back generations, explicitly barring short/ugly/fat/whatever people from education, housing, etc. - then almost certainly. The point, you should recall, was not that all "systemic disadvantages" need to be corrected (laziness is a "systemic disadvantage"), but that systematic repression needs to be addressed and repaired.
I'm trying to think of a way to correct the injustices in question, without anyone, anywhere paying any costs. And I'm not coming up with anything. Which is to say that you're offering nothing but crocodile tears, there - pretending to be in favor of correcting injustice, but then turning around and rejecting any and all means of doing so as unacceptable. The entire reason that the white applicants to the schools in question show a statistically higher set of qualifications, is exactly that wide-ranging discriminatory policies with that explicit goal were pursued for generations. Fixing that requires a corresponding set of policies to counteract the effects.
I think this is also irrelevant. If they love the country, they will stay or return regardless of the disadvantages. Just look at what the blacks have persisted through It takes time to change minds 1868 - reconstruction era, Chase campaigning for civil rights for blacks Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! 1960s - civil rights era Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And thats with the whites in majority. You think blacks should do better?
Again you have boiled this girl down to a statistic but yet you have shown no evidence that this particular girl benefited from any discrimination against others. Which is the problem with your solution. People aren't the same as a statistic and so your solution doesn't account for the fact that not all Whites were part of the problem, yet you want to treat them like they were.
It also means that the locked-in effects of the generations of past discrimination will extend as long as possible into the future - many more generations. The problem isn't "discrimination" in any general sense. It's racist oppression. Discrimination employed for the limited, justified end of of correcting oppression and advancing social justice is not objectionable. Except that the obvious, logical way to provide "meaningful reparations" to a group of people that has been systematically oppressed and disadvantaged, is to compensate for such in institutional mechanisms of social advancement - school admissions, etc. How would any program of reparations to black South Africans not amount to "institutional discrimination?" Like WillNever, you're claiming to favor social justice and then turning around and declaring any and all mechanisms for achieving such to be unacceptable. The only part where you have a valid point is the "perpetuate" part. Indeed, such reparations should cease once the lasting damage dealt by generations of systematic oppression has been eliminated. But that will take a long time, and I see no credible argument that South Africa, of all places, is anywhere close to that. Have you ever been to South Africa, and seen the level of inequality evident there? It's staggering. That isn't "clear." You haven't provided anything to substantiate that. You're trafficking in naked assertions of dogma. Of course they did - the original issue was exactly an unfair system explicitly designed to ensure that white South Africans - and their white descendents - would be privileged over other South Africans - and their descendents. Quite possibly, yes. Although various other countries are directly involved financially, politically and militarily in that conflict in ways that they are not in the issue of social justice in South Africa. Again, quite possibly yes.
No, of course she didn't. She's only 18 years old. Yes, and now you are having her pay for what the previous generation did. Essentially a variation on the now illegal "Corruption of Blood". http://www.lectlaw.com/def/c315.htm The fact is you should deal with the people who were unfair. The fact is you should work to provide fairness to all going forward. What makes no sense is to institutionalize unfairness to people based on the color of their skin and for things which were done before they were born.
It's not because of an "accident of birth." It's because of the decidedly non-accidental set of explicit policies that systematically disadvantaged everyone born to certain parents, for many generations. Undertaking reasonable, rational measures to fix serious social problems is not equivalent to Apartheid. If white people in South Africa start getting forcibly confined into Bantustans, then you'll have a point. In light of the actual reality, you are advancing a hysterical opposition to simple social justice.
The policies that you are objecting to are exactly efforts to improve the educational system, in terms of equality of opportunity. Supposing, as it seems, that you are insisting that all such improvements need to be undertaken strictly at the primary level in terms of boosted funding and support - that recommendation amounts to big subsidies to predominantly-black schools. I.e., it's a transfer payment from white South Africans to black South Africans, and so exactly subject to all of your complaints about affirmative action in higher education.
