Note: I had originally posted this at my 360. The links should all still work, though. In the poll, thirty-nine people said that white men are discriminated against. Nine people said they are not.
I don't know who voted which way, but I would bet that those nine are either not Caucasian, or not men.
This is a topic that has bothered me at the back of my mind for the last year or so. I'd like to inform you nine that white men are discriminated against. It may not be out loud, but it happens. How about some examples?
The NAACP is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I'm sure you've heard of it.
While the NAACP is well-intentioned, it and organizations like it keep racial discrimination alive. If we want white, blacks, and Latinos to be treated the same, we must not differentiate among them. I believe that if our society wants equal rights, we have to become color-blind.
I read a news story about a crime against a black girl. Unless the crime was racially motivated (I don't believe it was) then race should play no factor. But at the end of the story it said that the NAACP was investigating. Why?
Al Sharpton, while billed as helping the black community, is only helping to further isolate it. He has advocated for and defended many people mainly because they were black. For example, three white Duke lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper. Black victim? White attackers? Al Sharpton is there for that reason. The prosecutor who ran with the charges against the lacrosse players was disbarred last week for falsifying the evidence against them. Has Al Sharpton apologized for his racially motivated conduct? No, nor will he.
Sharpton is what is referred to as a "race baiter ." He frequently plays the race card. While sometimes it is valid, I surmise that he brings it up to gain passionate support for otherwise non-meritorious causes. If a white man were to do that, his character would be burned at the stake.
This brings me back to something else. Remember when there was this talk of doing Survivor teams by race? I don't know if they ever did it, but consider this:
If a black or Latino were in a bar cheering "Go blacks, go blacks!" or "Go Latinos, Go Latinos!” no one would have a second thought. But if I were in a bar yelling, "Go whites, go whites! Beat the blacks! You can win!" I would sound like a Klan member. This wouldn't happen with other races.
Why is there this double-standard?
THIS site describes the arguments for and against Affirmative Action. It outlines that African-Americans are being "repaid" for past mistreatments. While, granted, those mistreatments were done by whites to blacks because they were black, the issue of race isn't prevalent here. It is the fact that they were mistreated. But you can't make the fact that race played an issue just *poof!*, go away.
The point that I'm trying to make is this: giving preferential treatment to blacks because they were mistreated in the past is wrong. They have equal rights; they are equal now. Giving them preferential treatment (say, hiring a black instead of a white because of Affirmative Action) is discrimination against whites. Besides, I did not ever own slaves. No African-Americans I know now are slaves. Why are they being repaid when all the slaves and slaveholders are dead? What more than equal treatment should they really ask for?
The previously mentioned site alleges that "Those who use the term 'reverse discrimination' are actually engaging in moral absolutism, a completely unworkable concept that has never been practiced by any society in history." What I am outlining in the above paragraph is reverse discrimination. By attempting to right a wrong by helping a culture, we inadvertently discriminate against another culture. But this site wrongly labels it moral absolutism.
I wasn't familiar with the concept of moral absolutism until recently. Here is a quote from that website:
"Suppose our society passed a law that says, "No one shall forcefully take a television set from the possession of another." But the next day your neighbor comes over to your house with a gun and forcefully takes your television set from you. Having identified your neighbor, you call the police. The police show up at his door and demand that he surrender the television; he refuses, whereupon they pull out their guns and forcefully take it from him.
"Now, it would be illogical for your neighbor to claim that the police were immoral and broke the law, since they forcefully took a television set from his possession. This is a completely invalid argument, because correcting injustice is neither immoral nor against the law. Only in a world of moral absolutism would an act be condemned in and of itself, without considering its context or its justness. And at any rate, falling back on a defense of moral absolutism is disingenuous. Your neighbor, having acquired the TV set immorally, would now evoke moral absolutism to avoid giving it up -- and act morally outraged in the process. This is nothing more than a weaselly attempt to protect his self-interest through slippery rhetoric. It is certainly not a morally consistent argument."
"Zero Tolerance" is moral absolutism. But so is rewarding a race for past injustices. They are both blanket solutions. It is the job of the criminal justice system to correct criminal injustices. The police are "exempt" from the rule that says a person cannot forcefully deprive another of something in his possession, because that television did not belong to your neighbor. They are giving back what is yours. Besides, they have no intention of keeping the television.
What differentiates the above example from Affirmative Action – taking back what was wrongfully acquired, thereby taking something from someone – is that the television, the person it was stolen from, the thief, and the policing authority are all alive. But in Affirmative Action, the rights, the victim, the thief, and the authority are all new – none were around back then.
This brings me to THIS Internet site. White male professors are at the Northern Arizona University sued for $1.4 million in back-pay and raises. They claim they were discriminated against by the University. The University gave raises of up to $3,000 to women and minorities. Isn't this discrimination?
The point that I am trying to make by bringing up this site is that if the University wanted equality they shouldn't have paid previously discriminated more – thereby discriminating themselves. The simply should have given raises based on ability. This brings me to the settlement and how it was reached:
"The fact-finder in the case, Senior Judge Robert C. Broomfield, of the U.S. District Court for Arizona, agreed with the 40 white male professors that the raises "went beyond attaining a balance" ( The Chronicle, July 16, 2004).
By overcompensating women and members of minority groups, Judge Broomfield ruled, the university had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of race or sex. He ordered a separate trial to decide damages.
Last Wednesday Judge Broomfield decided that the university, which said it had addressed the professors' concerns in the mid-1990s by providing $693,000 in retroactive pay increases to the white professors, had not gone far enough. He instead concluded that the professors were still owed a combined total of $1.4-million.
So, essentially, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which undoubtedly was enacted to protect minorities, is protecting everyone – as laws should. Discrimination works both ways.
THIS site has commentary on THIS story. Apparently, "An English professor at the University of North Carolina illegally subjected a student to "intentional discrimination and harassment" because he was "a white, heterosexual Christian male" who expressed disapproval of homosexuality, the U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights has ruled."
The class was having a discussion and Timothy R. Mertes, a white student, stated that "he was a Christian and felt ‘disgusted, not threatened’ by homosexual behavior." Was his statement covered by the First Amendment? Sure it is, yes. The freedom of speech is in the First Amendment to the Constitution. It’s the first thing listed in the Bill of Rights, those vitally important things. After the discussion, the professor sent an email to the class accusing Mertes of making a "hate speech."
The writer on the first site wonders this: “I wonder if this had been a black lesbian female expressing her displeasure with straight white men, or an [A]rab straight man saying the same as Mr. Mertes and then being harangued in an email by the Professor if the outcome would have ben [sic] different. I believe it would have.”
Sadly, I agree with that author. Would there have been a public outrage against the professor's email if the speaker of the "hate" had been black, lesbian, or Arab? Blacks, lesbians, or Arabs would have been outraged had a professor tried to stifle their speech, but white men are not outraged that one of theirs was called a "hater" for saying something disgusted him. Why is this? He wasn't saying that homosexuals should be banned, discriminated against, or otherwise treated differently. This white man said that the behavior of certain other people "disgusted" him. Those are not words of hate. They are an expression of feeling. His feelings aren't politically correct, though, so he is classified as a hater.
Here is a quote from that Washington Post article:
“The federal ruling comes as Mr. Moeser and UNC administrators at the Chapel Hill campus have moved this month to shut down a male Christian fraternity there, Alpha Iota Omega, on the grounds the student group is violating the university's anti-discrimination policy because it excludes non-Christians and self-professed homosexuals from membership. The fraternity has filed a federal lawsuit against UNC to protect its membership policy from university interference.”
A fraternity refused to allow non-Christians or homosexuals join. Is this discrimination? Yes, it is, but it is the nature of a fraternity to be selective about who joins its ranks. It’s a social organization. What differentiates a fraternity from other organizations is that is selective by its very nature - not everyone is supposed to be invited to join - and why would anyone want to join a purely social club that specifically excludes people like themselves?
Should organizations like the NAACP be dissolved because they continuing racism by differentiating? There is no reciprocal organization to the NAACP. Can you imagine the outrage over a National Association for the Advancement of White People?
This reminds me of a story I read on the Internet a while back.
Read THIS link. It’s quick and just a news story. I’m outraged by it. The Angels gave a red nylon tote bag to the women over 18 on Mother’s Day of last year. A man, Michael Cohn, field an age and sex discrimination lawsuit claiming that “thousands of males and fans under age 18 are entitled to $4,000 in damages each because they were treated unequally at last May's promotion.” He has a reasonable case if you look at it on the surface. Discrimination… women… over 18… But four grand for a dumb tote bag? If I had to guess, I’d say he was suing for emotional damages and stuff like that. I’m sorry, but I’d be more emotionally damaged and humiliated if the old lady at the ticket booth handed me a “Happy Mother’s Day” tote bag when I went to an Angels game…
The man should have sued to get the Angels to hand out, say, beer steins or baseballs or something. Four thousand dollars over a well-intentioned Mother’s Day gift is nuts. They probably give out stuff on Father’s Day, too. Should females sue because they’re excluded from the promotion that celebrated fatherhood? Is this discrimination? In the textbook, it is. But in my eyes, there is a reciprocal holiday for Father’s. Next thing an eight-year-old is going to sue because he isn’t allowed to be a father by nature… Mr. Cohn should attend an Angels game on Father’s Day.
Maybe he’ll get an Angels man-thong.
HERE is a list of all-women’s colleges. Note that there are 68 all-women's colleges in the US. Now let me inform you that there are four all-men’s colleges. They are Wabash College, Deep Springs College, Hampden-Sydney College, and Morehouse College. It should be noted that all colleges that receive government funding are co-ed. The single-sex colleges are private colleges. This is not discrimination because they are private and not government funded. But notice how the numbers match up. Four versus sixty-eight.
Read this quote taken from THIS site:
“Blumrosen ignored the act and its statutory prohibition against regulatory interpretation. He bet that he could get away with rewriting the act because of the courts’ deference to the regulatory agency. Blumrosen redefined discrimination to be statistical disparity or under-utilization of blacks. If an employer’s work force contained a smaller percentage of blacks than blacks comprised of the local population, the company was discriminating. Anything that had disparate impact, such as employment tests, Blumrosen declared to be discriminatory. Having eliminated intent, he was able to shift the act’s focus from specific discrimination against individuals and initiate agency proceedings against employers even in the absence of complaints of discrimination.”
Alfred Blumrosen rewrote “discrimination” as stated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to mean “statistical disparity or under-utilization of blacks.” Discrimination can happen to anyone. Not just blacks. Granted, the law was passed and aimed at blacks, but it did not explicitly say that. He added it later. The site also stated “House Judiciary Committee Chairman Emanuel Celler (D-NY) amended the bill to prevent the EEOC from making any substantive regulatory interpretations of the act.” That basically means that this Celler guy added to the bill an amendment that made it so you couldn’t have regulatory interpretations of the law. A regulatory interpretation is what Blumrosen did.
He helped get us where we are.
“Blumrosen’s redefinition of discrimination created 'reverse discrimination.'” Whites lose opportunities for racial reasons alone. When Brian Weber’s reverse discrimination case came before the Supreme Court in 1979, the Court ruled that Kaiser Aluminum’s discrimination against whites in the company’s training program was “benign discrimination” consistent with the “spirit” of the Civil Rights Act.
“Public universities, being public, are restricted by the Constitution’s equal protection clause from voluntarily adopting racial quotas like private companies. Other rationales have had to be created, such as “a compelling government interest,” “remedying past discrimination,” and “diversity.” No court has yet explained the power granted these concepts to trump the Constitution. But a number of judges, justices, and law professors have assumed that these exemptions to the Constitution’s equal protection clause exist.”
What that’s basically saying is that Blumrosen redefined discrimination, which in turn created that reverse discrimination that we’ve been talking about. When you artificially promote minorities, it ruins chances for the majorities, here whites. Public universities are bound to not discriminate, which is the equal protection the Constitution describes, so they cannot have race quotas. Note the three bolded statements in the second paragraph. These are words used to avoid using words like “reverse discrimination.”
“Another explanation is that elites believe blacks cannot compete with whites on equal terms and can only be rescued by privilege from being a permanent underclass. A third explanation is that elites accept Gunnar Myrdal’s view that all whites are “aversive racists;” therefore, democracy cannot deliver justice to blacks and must be supplemented or superseded with legal coercion.”
That’s an interesting term, “aversive racists.” I’m not sure whether it means that all whites are racists who don’t want confrontation (I doubt that, since I’m not) or that all whites are afraid of race difference and trying to make up for their past mistakes. I don’t see me as that either; I’ve never been racist.
“The common denominator of these answers is that justice for blacks requires whites to become second class citizens in law. Second class citizenship for whites is a definite result of Blumrosen’s rewrite of the Civil Rights Act. Every administration since Nixon’s and every Supreme Court since the Burger Court has diminished the rights of white people. The resurrection of a feudal legal system is occurring without debate. Moreover, it is white elites who are destroying the rights of white people. The vast majority of whites either accept the diminution of their rights or they are unaware of it.”
This paragraph outlines my beliefs in a more eloquent and fact-backed way. White leaders believe the only way that they can make up for past injustices is making blacks better than whites, however I think the proper justice would be equality.
I constantly say that I want people to judge me by my attitude, ability, and personality, not my appearance. I am 100% satisfied by my appearance and I like it. But if I post my picture, you, my friends, in addition to the general public will judge me before you even leave one comment, even if you don't intend to. Is that how we want things?
-Ze Baron
