First let me thank Oxygen for offering to share some insights on this one.
Had one caught me during the '98 election season, you would have found me staunchly in support of Affirmative Action in the state of Washington. These days, I can accept that it's gone, and that's not a particularly huge difficulty for me, personally, but a couple of things that have never sat quite right with me are simply:
* Why was Affirmative Action invented in the first place? (Legal precedents and legislative titles are cool, but I'm actually after the condition.)
* Have we solved the conditions that brought us to install AffAct?
The answer to the second question was (and is) most important to me. My primary support of Affirmative Action in Washington's I-200 vote was that nobody would address the question, much less give even the softest of answers. The campaign was bad, essentially an Us vs. Them fight. Essentially, people were upset because their ill-educated children were too stupid to get into highly competitive degree programs. (We have a problem with the word "investment" around here; we use it to justify the spending of money on anything but people ... we can build US$1 billion worth of sports arenas because it's an "investment" on future returns, but we're so bad about "investing" in our educational system that we had to assign the state's credit rating to our school districts in order to finance them.) See, the thing is that the votes up here are extremely predictable. The same communities that, by election, supported I-200 (AffAct cancellation), also routinely vote against school bond and levy issues. Frankly, I see a tie between the decline in quality of student we turn out and anti-Affirmative Action sentiment, though I must restrict that observation to Washington and, perhaps, Oregon. I cannot speak for the remainder of our perverse Union.
Therein lies my problem with cancelling Affirmative Action. Realistically, I'd like to see a world where AffAct isn't even necessary, but all of these opinionated voters with their "rights" can't carry on well enough in their private interactions with people to make that happen. As public sentiment turns against AffAct, I am willing to let it go, because that negative sentiment is what I would hope to prevent.
But in addition to strapping our local schools and then blaming skin color for the problem, there is the campaigners themselves. They are disingenuous ... their rhetoric has been invalidated by their actions since; it makes me wonder if the people who agreed with I-200's sponsors actually feel the same way as said sponsors, which is a scary idea.
The disingenuous Campaigners, if I may call them that, have struck once more in this state, and are preparing their third wolf-as-sheep assault. The man behind these campaigners is Tim Eyman, whom I believe to be the Devil, inasmuch as the Devil can practically walk in Seattle.
Eyman's people supported I-200 with the sentiment that I-200 was a liberal conspiracy against all the good and just people to destabilize the economy and promote a counterracist agenda. Never was it said in so many words, but when you add up the rhetoric, that's about the only phrase to describe it. What they do is push initiatives that reflect their own selfish desires (I'm referring to Eyman's people; as to Affirmative Action itself, I cannot say--perhaps that is the tragedy) and can be masked as something the people want.
* I-200: Even though we haven't spent any proper funds on the schools without bleeding it out of the parents, we should blame our bad educational results on the minorities we're giving a free ride to. (So goes the rhetoric of that specific campaign.) Passed, November, 1998.
* I-695: Eliminated our Vehicle Excise Tax (in which your registration cost a precentage of your vehicles value, as opposed to a flat tax.) Reset the VET to a flat-rate of US$30. Presently the state is operating without its primary funding mechanism; while your Acura costs 1000% less to register, the buses who deliver your food and make your copies can't get to work because the buses no longer have funding .... What's worse is that few of those who voted for the Initiative realize what it brings. In an effort to prevent a state withholding tax (or any new tax)the Initiative also prevented revenue legislation without electoral approval. But that income tax is the only thing they've got so far to replace a respectable portion of the missing revenue. The other aspect of that is that the VET was installed, officially, to stave off a state withholding tax. Passed, November, 1999; electoral approval of revenue overturned March, 2000).
* I-711: Eyman and his people are gathering signatures to put this on the ballot. Essentially, Eyman blames our traffic troubles on carpools. Thus, he seeks to get rid of them. Presently, the Fed has gotten involved, reminding us that HOV (High-Occupancy Vehicle) lanes are federally mandated on that stretch of federal highway. Should we pass this law, the following will occur overnight: 42% more cars on the road during rush hour; loss of federal highway funds for Interstate 5 (we're already out of road money because I-695 wiped out electorally approved dollars for that purpose). Eyman is actually reassuring voters that putting more cars on the road will help our growing traffic troubles.
And what that rant is about is essentially to offer an idea of who exactly is leading our local fight against Affirmative Action. (On that notion, I would look to Mr Eyman and ask about that forty acres and a mule.)
When I say that Washington was duped into cancelling Affirmative Action, I mean they were led astray by a hateful, calculating man. (Yes, it has been rumored that Eyman once got a ticket from a black cop for speeding with expired tabs in the HOV lane, but how tough is it to invent those rumors?) Eyman is simply inventing attractive legislation in the image of his morals, and selling them to voters in the most exploitative regard. Instead of healing AffAct-inspired wounds, he only ground salt in them by polarizing our communities. Furthermore, he's taken a serious swing at the local economic combine and damn near destroyed it. Now he's out to crush what's left of transportation.
It's not the Affirmative Action itself, but that we're hitting it with a public rage that has done nothing to address the questions of why we installed such a system in the first place. I mean, I don't need Jesse Jackson telling me that AffAct has to go before I'll believe it. On the other hand, as is the case of Eyman and his approach, I often wonder when any greedy person (much less a greedy racist) tells me he's working toward my benefit.
We can throw out AffAct if we want. I'd just like it to be for honest reasons. But that's what I meant when I said, duped.
Now ... perhaps this is a little combative, for the idea isn't practical. But I'm still wondering that, if we're going to apply a huge principle to something like Affirmative Action, then it's going to spill into other aspects of our political system. For instance, I referred to the forty acres and a mule. I might also ask who's going to pay back the half-trillion dollars our US government has stolen from legitimately recognized nations (our tribal nations) and "lost"?
I understand that Affirmative Action eventually needs to go. But with Campaigners like Eyman pushing the fight, I'm left wondering if it's because we still hate people for their skin color, or because we actually care about the right thing.
thanx for putting up with it,
Tiassa
------------------
The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur eggs was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. (Good Omens, Gaiman & Pratchett)
Had one caught me during the '98 election season, you would have found me staunchly in support of Affirmative Action in the state of Washington. These days, I can accept that it's gone, and that's not a particularly huge difficulty for me, personally, but a couple of things that have never sat quite right with me are simply:
* Why was Affirmative Action invented in the first place? (Legal precedents and legislative titles are cool, but I'm actually after the condition.)
* Have we solved the conditions that brought us to install AffAct?
The answer to the second question was (and is) most important to me. My primary support of Affirmative Action in Washington's I-200 vote was that nobody would address the question, much less give even the softest of answers. The campaign was bad, essentially an Us vs. Them fight. Essentially, people were upset because their ill-educated children were too stupid to get into highly competitive degree programs. (We have a problem with the word "investment" around here; we use it to justify the spending of money on anything but people ... we can build US$1 billion worth of sports arenas because it's an "investment" on future returns, but we're so bad about "investing" in our educational system that we had to assign the state's credit rating to our school districts in order to finance them.) See, the thing is that the votes up here are extremely predictable. The same communities that, by election, supported I-200 (AffAct cancellation), also routinely vote against school bond and levy issues. Frankly, I see a tie between the decline in quality of student we turn out and anti-Affirmative Action sentiment, though I must restrict that observation to Washington and, perhaps, Oregon. I cannot speak for the remainder of our perverse Union.
Therein lies my problem with cancelling Affirmative Action. Realistically, I'd like to see a world where AffAct isn't even necessary, but all of these opinionated voters with their "rights" can't carry on well enough in their private interactions with people to make that happen. As public sentiment turns against AffAct, I am willing to let it go, because that negative sentiment is what I would hope to prevent.
But in addition to strapping our local schools and then blaming skin color for the problem, there is the campaigners themselves. They are disingenuous ... their rhetoric has been invalidated by their actions since; it makes me wonder if the people who agreed with I-200's sponsors actually feel the same way as said sponsors, which is a scary idea.
The disingenuous Campaigners, if I may call them that, have struck once more in this state, and are preparing their third wolf-as-sheep assault. The man behind these campaigners is Tim Eyman, whom I believe to be the Devil, inasmuch as the Devil can practically walk in Seattle.
Eyman's people supported I-200 with the sentiment that I-200 was a liberal conspiracy against all the good and just people to destabilize the economy and promote a counterracist agenda. Never was it said in so many words, but when you add up the rhetoric, that's about the only phrase to describe it. What they do is push initiatives that reflect their own selfish desires (I'm referring to Eyman's people; as to Affirmative Action itself, I cannot say--perhaps that is the tragedy) and can be masked as something the people want.
* I-200: Even though we haven't spent any proper funds on the schools without bleeding it out of the parents, we should blame our bad educational results on the minorities we're giving a free ride to. (So goes the rhetoric of that specific campaign.) Passed, November, 1998.
* I-695: Eliminated our Vehicle Excise Tax (in which your registration cost a precentage of your vehicles value, as opposed to a flat tax.) Reset the VET to a flat-rate of US$30. Presently the state is operating without its primary funding mechanism; while your Acura costs 1000% less to register, the buses who deliver your food and make your copies can't get to work because the buses no longer have funding .... What's worse is that few of those who voted for the Initiative realize what it brings. In an effort to prevent a state withholding tax (or any new tax)the Initiative also prevented revenue legislation without electoral approval. But that income tax is the only thing they've got so far to replace a respectable portion of the missing revenue. The other aspect of that is that the VET was installed, officially, to stave off a state withholding tax. Passed, November, 1999; electoral approval of revenue overturned March, 2000).
* I-711: Eyman and his people are gathering signatures to put this on the ballot. Essentially, Eyman blames our traffic troubles on carpools. Thus, he seeks to get rid of them. Presently, the Fed has gotten involved, reminding us that HOV (High-Occupancy Vehicle) lanes are federally mandated on that stretch of federal highway. Should we pass this law, the following will occur overnight: 42% more cars on the road during rush hour; loss of federal highway funds for Interstate 5 (we're already out of road money because I-695 wiped out electorally approved dollars for that purpose). Eyman is actually reassuring voters that putting more cars on the road will help our growing traffic troubles.
And what that rant is about is essentially to offer an idea of who exactly is leading our local fight against Affirmative Action. (On that notion, I would look to Mr Eyman and ask about that forty acres and a mule.)
When I say that Washington was duped into cancelling Affirmative Action, I mean they were led astray by a hateful, calculating man. (Yes, it has been rumored that Eyman once got a ticket from a black cop for speeding with expired tabs in the HOV lane, but how tough is it to invent those rumors?) Eyman is simply inventing attractive legislation in the image of his morals, and selling them to voters in the most exploitative regard. Instead of healing AffAct-inspired wounds, he only ground salt in them by polarizing our communities. Furthermore, he's taken a serious swing at the local economic combine and damn near destroyed it. Now he's out to crush what's left of transportation.
It's not the Affirmative Action itself, but that we're hitting it with a public rage that has done nothing to address the questions of why we installed such a system in the first place. I mean, I don't need Jesse Jackson telling me that AffAct has to go before I'll believe it. On the other hand, as is the case of Eyman and his approach, I often wonder when any greedy person (much less a greedy racist) tells me he's working toward my benefit.
We can throw out AffAct if we want. I'd just like it to be for honest reasons. But that's what I meant when I said, duped.
Now ... perhaps this is a little combative, for the idea isn't practical. But I'm still wondering that, if we're going to apply a huge principle to something like Affirmative Action, then it's going to spill into other aspects of our political system. For instance, I referred to the forty acres and a mule. I might also ask who's going to pay back the half-trillion dollars our US government has stolen from legitimately recognized nations (our tribal nations) and "lost"?
I understand that Affirmative Action eventually needs to go. But with Campaigners like Eyman pushing the fight, I'm left wondering if it's because we still hate people for their skin color, or because we actually care about the right thing.
thanx for putting up with it,
Tiassa
------------------
The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur eggs was a joke the paleontologists haven't seen yet. (Good Omens, Gaiman & Pratchett)
