A question for all you liberals

Tell me yes or no- do you agree with this hiring policy:

[so & so] is an equal opportunity employer, and does not descriminate on the basis of sex, race color, religion, creed, national origin, veteran status, age, disability or on the basis of any other classificationprotected by federal, stae, or local law.


Here's the catch....you can't say you agree with this and be for affirmative action at the same time. Oh, what a catch 22 for the liberal. I'd like to hear some explanations to weasel their way out of this one.


Kris

affirmative action is a bad thing for all. it does just the opposite of what it should be trying to do. but its not just a liberal thing. its a political thing.

As for the Liberals

I have to agree, even as a bleedin' liberal, that affirmative action is (1) unfair to everyone and (2) counter productive. Unfortunately some of my "liberal" friends are just looking for votes from the weak minded. It is similar to an old "Jedi mind trick" played on minorities. We should be judged on abilities and potntial, not on color, religion, national origin etc.


As for those conservative, tight assed Republican babes... I love 'em because they such have tight.... well never mind.

so & so] is an equal opportunity employer, and does not descriminate on the basis of sex, race color, religion, creed, national origin, veteran status, age, disability or on the basis of any other classificationprotected by federal, stae, or local law.


I know you are too young to remember, but affirmative action was enacted because nazis like you refused to adhere to legal policies like the one above. Sometimes drastic action is required to ensure social change.


If this policy was followed, afirmative action would no have been necessary.

Here's a bit of what I was hinting at in the college liberal bias thing below. (No, not you Ratso, you're not guilty of what I am saying.) See, Ratso may be a liberal, but he acknowledges that people can be judged on ability. This means he believes in some standards of conduct and rational standards of performance. Many people who are called "liberals" do not believe in the possibility of any rational standards to differentiate (or discriminate if you can use the term as a non-racist one) between things, people, and cultures. Many of these people can be found on university campuses. Many are professors. They often do not believe people are capable of making any such distinctions. Thus, you get professors who equate pornography with literature, the worst vulgar performance art with Shakespeare, simple drum beating and wailing with Beethoven. The surest way to destroy our culture is to simply say every culture is equal and none have any more value than another. That does not mean racism or genocide is OK, quite the contrary.


And Ratso better watch out. If the liberal professors find out he cherishes conservative women for certain qualities they will send the sensitivity and gender equity police after him for some reeducation.

Well I agree that its bad for BOTH parties (evil white males and minority groups),and that its a political thing, but how many non liberals are in favor of affirmative action? Well the answer is VERY few, hell I can't think of any examples except for those liberals that don't call themselves such but actually are.

Well Ratso, I like yor response but whats up with this love for conservative girls?


Kris

An example of people I know...


Three applicants to medical school from the same undergraduate program:


Applicant #1


Majors: Math, Chemistry

GPA: 4.0/4.0

MCAT score: 35

Extracurriculars: Solid, real involvement.

Results: Rejected by about 12 top schools, accepted to one middle of the road school...gets off the wait list at a good, but not great, school at the last minute.


Student #2


Majors: Biology and maybe some liberal art, I am not sure if there was even a second major.

GPA: ~3.3

MCAT: 23

Extracurriculars: Strong involvement, but less leadership roles in large organizations than the others

Results: Was accepted to a prestegious, top-10 school.


Student #3


Majors: Biochemistry, Biology

GPA: 3.9+

MCAT: 33

Extracurriculars: Highlight is being president of the interfraternity council; nearly 1/2 of male students on campus are fraternity members (and the fraternities on our campus were for the most part good organizations, not drunken fools), other activities as well.

Results: Wait-listed to a number of top 10 schools, as well as NYU, Mt. Sinai, etc..., no acceptances. Currently attending the same school as student A.


This is just not right. And I'm not a Nazi, A is of Indian descent and C is Jewish :-). A is from a fairly well off family. C is from a middle class family. I don't know B well enough to know her backgroud entirely, but I do know that she does not come from a poor family or a depressed area. If you get any medical school applicant to speak honestly, they will tell you that the one thing that will help you most on your application is checking the "black" and "female" boxes. Applicant B is not a dumb girl, and she deserves to go to medical school, but she is by far the least qualified of the three, yet is going to a school that only one of them could even get an interview at. The more ratioinal arguements for affirmative action say that students/employees from a depressed socioeconomic background need to be given a chance, but being black doesn't mean you are from a depressed socioeconomic background. Also, at some point, even the students from poor backgrounds can no longer be favored by anyone reasonable. If a student grows up in the inner-city, and does poorly on the SAT because his public school was crime ridden and inadequate, some consideration should be given to that (but on a case by case basis, not as a policy, and not because of his race). Once he graduates from Harvard, however, he is no longer a victim. No futher action is necessary.

i don't think that art is in the same category as affirmative action. and i do disagree with your idea that some artistic pices are valid and some aren't. maybe they suck, or are bad, or you don't like them, but they are still valid as pieces of art. you may not like, say Pink Floyd, as much as Beethoven (im not sure myself which i like more, i love them both...) but that doesn't mean Floyd is any less valid as artistic representation than Beethoven. Beethoven was playing the spaced-out rock of his time too. so while i do think that affirmative action is self-defeating and unfair, i don't think that you can claim such strict standards on what passes as 'art'.

'once he graduates from harvard he is no longer a victim'... great line.


one point of contention. i grew up in the inner city, but i am a white male, and it is much harder for me to get the same opportunities that a black girl from the burbs would get based on application alone. also, growing up in the inner city does not mean you are underpriveleged. just live in a higher crime rate, with some tougher cats in your gym class...

Just amazing, even when affirmative action tries to do the "right" thing they still royally f-ck up. Haven't the jewish folks been one of the most oppressed people throughout history???? Now through some system that is supposed to help those who are historically oppressed, instead it just continues to oppress even more. God this sh!t just makes my blood boil. I'm not even Jewish and I don't jewish friends (just a coincidence) but goddamn this is so un-American to discriminate against people in this fashion.

By the way Glenn, I like the example you gave as it is a direct exposure of how this whole corrupt idea works- thanks for sharing it here.


One other point that is probably rehashed all the time but it is valid is how affirmative action people never complain when a workforce is almost all black. Look at the NBA, most of the players are black..... well geez I wonder why. It's because they are BETTER ballplayers on average then white guys. Is there anything wrong with this- of course not, this is exactly how it should be, you kick ass you get the job, you slouch you get sent away. Although there is some controversy about salaries and stuff like that in professionl athletics at least they seem to get this right. The best players get signed, the lesser players get waived. Of course in some of these leagues the affirmative action crooks have tried to force teams to hire more blacks in their other departments. I think what it must be is that these folks just don't understand that some people truly ARE more qualified then others at certain jobs. It just may not be readily apparent to somebody on the outside. With athletes it's pretty obvious since we the public get to basically witness every minute of their carreer. Okay well I'll stop ranting, I'm sure some people are going to read this and assume i'm a racist or some crap like that but whatever. If somebody is dumb enough to think that about me then I really don't give a hoot what they think.


Kris

but i can.


i took (mandatory) music theory class in college.


the professors (i wish he were just some guy making some money, but he was a phd) whole philosophy was summed up as (a quote) 'anything can be music'. im pretty sure he even used the example of two rocks banged together.


to quote nixon, this is 'not true'


brad

whenever i get into a disagreement with a friend who is jewish or married to a jew then after a while i just say , hey, well, you know, what do you expect, you killed christ.


that usually ends it right there as we are both cracking up.


brad

The counter arguement is so simple. How can unfair discrimination against one group(s) be right if it is wrong against others? Unfair discrimination in the work place is very bad and certainly it exists which is unfortunate.

Brett,


You wrote: "I know you are too young to remember, but affirmative action was enacted because nazis like you refused to adhere to legal policies like the one above."


Given that the Nazis started mankind's largest and most devastating war and were responsible for the extermination of approximately ten million people (I'm including Poles, Gypsies, and others in addition to the Jews), don't you think you are being a little "loose" with the term "Nazi" here?


~ Rick

Pink Floyd and Betthoven both have validity as art. However, wouldn't you agree that the level of Beethoven's composition is far above Pink Floyd's? In other words both are art, but Betthoven surpasses Pink Floyd in complexity, scope, architecture, beauty, pathos, etc....in virtually every measurement of artistic merit that we can think of. Likewise classical music as a whole surpasses rock. This is not to say that some rock pieces are not indeed great, but if you stack them up against the greatest classical music and it is almost like comparing excellent finger-painting to the works of Van Gogh.

It should be clear that if affirmative action were to be applied fairly in the case of the NBA, they would be forced to hire more white players.


Just an example of how what started out for good reason (probably) has now overlived its usefulness. Time to throw out affirmative action---I don't think the need for it still exists and it has become counterproductive.

Affirmative Action probably did start for good reasons--but I think that by now it has outlived its usefulness.

HDPM,


I think you're painting with a rather broad brush here. I've never heard one college professor claim that a piece of performance art "equals" Shakespeare. However, all sorts of "objects" can be studied, and Hamlet is only one of those objects. Paul Fussell (hardly a radical), for example, has examined objects such as the Boy Scout Manual and form letters sent home by British soldiers during WWI in The Great War and Modern Memory. He has also written one of the best primers on poetry called Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. Critic Hugh Kenner, whose study The Pound Era is one of the finest books written on Modernism, has looked at everything from fractals to Charles Babbage. Even Keats, a poet pretty much cherised by conventional critics, cried out for both Shakspeare and Robin Hood.


I think I know what you're objecting to, though. These "radical" teachers refuse to acknowledge that Hamlet or Lear contain unchangeable, eternal truths about human nature that apply to all people for all time. Every summer, I read Lear--it's a work that moves me in ways that are hard to explain, and, perhaps above any other work, I cherish most. Yet, I simply cannot claim that what I have learned from Lear is valuable for everyone. Perhaps more to the point, I can't claim that what I've learned from Lear will stay the same. I might have to wait until I'm eighty and half mad to better understand this work.


Each age produces its own Shakespeare, and we need only look at the history of Shakespeare criticism to see this. Hamlet, once the apotheosis of the Romantic artist as conceived by Coleridge, has become the performance artist today. (And, the comparison between Hamlet and the performance artist is not really an unreasonable one.) Polish critic Jan Kott has examined Shakespeare from a post-Holocaust point of view. Once you read his book, it's hard to read some of the plays in quite the same way you did before. (Then, of course, we get Ernst Jones's Freudian analysis of Hamlet, which leads to the Mel Gibson film version, which makes you wish that Ernst Jones had never been born.)


I'm hopeful that those teachers who put Shakespeare alongside more "vulgar" art works will illuminate both for students. After all, what do you think Hamlet is talking about when, his head resting in Ophelia's lap, he tells her he's thinking of "country" matters?


Regards,


John

M,


That same Van Gogh who sold, I believe, one painting while alive.


One note: how anyone can sit down and listen to Pink Floyd is beyond me; it's the most depressing, dreary music I know of. Now, if you'd like to compare Mozart and the Supremes . . . .?


John

I am painting with a broad brush. I used the art and literature examples to highlight the danger of the multiculturists and relativists. And it is a question of philosophy. But much that goes on at universities is influenced by shameful philosophies. Modern education is great at eliminating standards for anything and questioning whether anything has any value and if it has value whether people have the cognitive capacity to know it. Of course things have value and we can know they have value. Your King Lear has value. Period. Other people may disagree with you on exactly what value it has. You may change your mind about certain things about it given your in-depth study of the work. And I know you can see a difference between Hamlet speaking of "country" matters and someone self mutilating on stage and spilling AIDS-ridden blood on the audience. Or some guy getting government funds who defecates in a jar for art. There is a difference and you know it. It is not a matter of taste alone.


What this attitude gets us is things like affirmative action. See the post below about medical school admissions. There is a modern university that says one doctor is as good as another. A 3.2 GPA in a softer field and mediocre test scores are just as good as someone obviously smart and competent in hard fields. Both will make equal doctors won't they? I mean, who can judge what a good doctor is? Who can really say what medicine is? Some cultures don't have very good medicine or medical research, so how can we say medicine is valuable? How can we denigrate other cultures by foisting our western white-male view of what medicine is on society as a whole? Maybe medicine is not really a knowable field. Perhaps if we had more intuitive people come in to the field we'd get different perspectives and alternative medicines. Of course all these ideas are ridiculous. But the philosophy of higher education leads in this direction if not to the actual conclusion. (Yet)

What the diversity people do is substitute a non-value (diversity) that can't be judged (what is enough diversity, too much, just right?) with values (excellence) that can be judged. (Somehow. Sometimes standards are inaccurate or unfair. We stand a chance to fix that if we agree standards are possible.) Thus diversity people substitute a big nothing for excellence. This matters a lot when it comes to doing things that can kill other people when done incorrectly like brain surgery.

As you say, I can know what has value for me. No disagreement here. However, I'm not sure that multiculturalism necessarily leads to relatavism or to a loss of standards. Every year thousands of doctors are invited to participate as interns--some are asked to return; others are not. I'm reminded of Richard Selzer's essay in which he talks about a "doctor" from another country, unschooled in the ways of Western medicine. He takes the patient's urine, mixes in some "stuff," stirs it together, and proffers his diagnosis--heart trouble. Seems both doctors diagnosed the same thing.


You simply don't get to be a brain surgeon because a med school decided that a 3.2 GPA was good enough, and I'm sure you know that.


So, what of works of art. Serrano pees in a jar, suspends a crucifix in it, takes a picture, and titles it "Piss Christ." Art? Well, of course you know the outcry from the massess who discovered that works like these have been supported with federal funds. I wonder how many have seen the photograph. (It's really quite beautiful.)


Perhaps some institutions have gone a bit too far, but I don't quite see it as the threat you seem to. We live in a world where some people have been systematically silenced for a long time. Goat sees equal opportunity and affirmative action as exclusive, and maybe they are. But, the world hasn't changed that much, and without affirmative action, without the pressure to include those who have been left on the outside looking in, tell me what the Boston Fire Department or the New York City Police Department would look like today.


John

no, i definitely wouldn't agree!!! Pink Floyd have written and composed some of the most intricate, architecturally sound, well orchestrated music of our time. i don't get why beethoven, who has been considered part of some mystical canon of music, is any better. he wrote music, and other people played it (im not saying he didn't play, but you've never heard him play). he wrote different parts for different instruments, arranged them just so, and boom, you had brilliance. i don't think that this is on any different level than Pink Floyd. they do the same damn thing, but they play their own music!! aside from the elemental nature of the music (i.e. it has violins, it has harmony and melody and counter-melodies, etc. ) what about beethoven separates it from pink floyd except how much you prefer one or the other? and then how can you say that subjectivity has any bearing on the validity of 2 things outside of yourself?

it may be bad music, you may choose not to listen to it, but its still music. otherwise i challenge you to define music.

you keep jumping from art to science, and back again. whether or not we need standards of excellence when admitting students to med schools, and whether or not those standards should be enforced is completely separate from the issue of art and validity. why can't something be art, and then be bad art? nobody is saying that it has to be good. but you aren't even allowing it to be bad because you won't let it be in the first place. the guy crapping in the jar, which i know is your favorite example, is still art. its horrible, stupid, reactionary, based on shock value, etc. etc. and i think it is just plain dumb. but it is still art. by the very nature of having been claimed as art, it becomes art. then we discuss it, it gains more value as somethine of discussion, and we finally judge it to be bad art. not even that hard of a decision. somebody might disagree, but you and i both know that it sucks. but it can't suck if its not art.

i was taught in school (mandatory university humanities class) that black on white crime is not a hate crime because whites have higher social status, but white on black crime is a hate crime and should carry harsher penalties.


also these people who are not too bright totally believe what they are saying.


brad

music is music and not just sound the same way a meal is a meal and not just food (foodstuffs) .


besides, it always bothered me that these are the same people who would mark you down if you didnt totally agree with everything they said, no matter how well your argument may be.


brad

The theory behind affirmative action is that a policy which results in racism discriminates in practice despite its apparent nondiscriminatory theory. For example, if we had a situation where 20% of the population was green, but we had very few or no green doctors, lawyers, congressmen, ceo's, or people earning over minimum wage, we could assume that either A) green people are incapble of being doctors, lawyers, etc. because they are genetically inferior and, as a group, stupid; or B) something else is at work, namely a built in discrimination that keeps green people down.


Equality of opportunity, on paper, looks good. But when equality of results is not achieved, what does result is a racial underclass. Affirmative action is then a reasonable remedy to help us move towards the goal of a truly colorblind society, not just a paper one.

Would you prefer neo-nazis?

Conservatives don't celebrate MLK day. They rue the day the Votings Rights Act of 1965 gave people of color the right to vote.


Conservatives don't believe that people of color are equal to them. Therefore, they assume that applicants of color will be inferior to their lilly white stereotypes. Historically, a person of color had to be twice as qualified to even get an interview.


Your whole post smells of a person of bias.

There is simpy no way that the complexity and depth of Pink Floyd can compare to Beethoven, Mozart, Bach or Handel...simply NO WAY. I know this, and I'm not even a musician. Listening to both and comparing the corresponding architectures is like comparing sand castles to the works of Frank Lloyd Wright.

I'm not saying something is or is not art or music.That's a different question. Shania Twain is music. Beethoven is music. They are not equal. It is not a mere matter of taste. Shania v. Faith Hill is a matter of taste as to which is better. Universities ought not teach that students cannot know the differnce between good and bad, rational or irrational, scientific or mystical. Many do. That is my problem. You know there are professors who say that because two things are art, we cannot discriminate between them with judgment. Some of these philosophies are creeping into hard sciences. Art and science are not completely separate because often both are influenced by various philosophies. Science is much more resistant to a lot of this crap, but not completely. My problem is the philosophy that drives a lot of the situations in higher education. It runs deeper than particular policies.

I agree that if we had never had affirmative action the NYPD would not be the same as it is today, and that affirmative action has its place...I'm just getting the strong feeling that we don't need it anymore and that it currently does more harm than good. I think we as a society have come a long way. I would like to see the non-discrimination in hiring clause that was quoted earlier in this thread, not affirmative action, become the actual basis across-the-board for future hiring policy. Besides, if I were to need serious medical care, I'd want my chances of getting a doctor who had been a "A" student to be as high as possible---and so I think would everyone--and I think this weighs more heavily than any social balancing act affirmative action may indirectly produce.

So are you calling me a nazi or a neo-nazi? I've been called so many names on this forum and quite frankly I find it amusing. So many of you all can't find a way to dispute something somebody says so now they just have to resort to name calling. Well congratulations you're probably twice my age and seemingly not very mature.

By the way go ahead and think I'm a nazi or neo-nazi it just goes to show that you say stupid things about things you don't know anything about. Comments like this remind me of the moron at the poker table who says "oh I KNEW you had that but i had to call anyway". Yeah sure.


Kris

its all subjective, if you are to have any ground in this discussion, in which case there is no argument to be made. stating that there is 'no way' is a copout, and insisting on your opinion being right. im not even a HUGE pink floyd fan, but they serve to represent a band with a whoel lot of depth. there is nothing separating beethoven and pink floyd from being compared and contrasted on an equal level as art. anybody who says different is too old, or to stubborn.

But when coincidentally a race is full of more underachieving people this doesn't mean that there should be some legislation to depress other races abilities to get hired. If a company hires an inferior worker it hurts everybody, from the company down to the consumer of their products. Granted just a few lame workers wont screw everything up but when a lot of inferior workers come into the mix everything gets screwed up and productivity will drop.

Equality is something we should strive to achieve naturally and if it doesn't happen, then so be it life isn't fair. One debateable example would be when the Japanese started busting out some really top quality cars. Now the American car companies were hurt in this process- well that's just too bad. They gotta put out and not just expect that riches be handed to them.


Kris

Historicall you are probably right fo rthe most part, and this is totally wrong. The whole point of my post is that people should be treated EQUALLY. But because the past was screwed up doesn't mean that the current generation should pay for what their grandparents were guilty of. That is just outright silly.

And what is this about conservatives not thinking that blacks are equal to whites and that they rue the day they got ot vote?!?!!? Are you putting me on??? That is truly one of the dumbest things I've ever read. Now you try to call me a person of bias- well I know hypocracy when I see it. You go and pre judge conservatives like that but I'M the biased one....yeah whatever. By the way I do not label myself a conservative, just FYI.


Kris

conservitives do NOT rue "equality", we love nothing more. Simply put a legal utpoia in the conservitive mind is simply no metion of race or creed or gender in ALL LAWS. Everything should be equal to the point it would seem rediculous to ever write a law that had anything to do with only one or two races. i guess that maybe the constitution should have a passage or two saying you can't descriminate against anyone except by ability, but wait!, it's already there! the law that should have the legal recourse to deal with all race issues already exists. so why do we need affermitive action to decriminate against the majority to fix all our woes?

I don't think the analogy applies. Med schools in addition to trying to turn out the best possible doctors are also trying to put together a class that at least somewhat represents the community. Why? Because they realize that med students are more likely to serve the communities where they are from once they get out.


The NBA tries to put the best show it can out there. It doesn't necessarily try to reflect the community. (However, if you don't think its a coincidence that a lot of these seven foot stiffs on the end of most NBA benches are white, you have another thing coming.)

What do you think of med school admissions with respect to reserving seats for people with alumni connections? You know, people whose dad or mom or grandfather went to the school? I find it interesting that so many people who rail against affirmative action have no problem with this seemingly blatant "good old boys" policy that schools have.

You seem to like the paint the world in black and white (no pun intended). Things are no where near as simple as you make them. Jewish people were certainly discriminated against (and viciously so) throughout European and American history. However, you can not make the argument that they are underrepresented in the medical profession. Most of the programs in place today target groups that are underrepresented in the medical field, ie african american latino and native american. The argument here is that people from these ethnic/racial groups will be more likely to serve the communities where they are from. How well this bears out in actuality, I am not sure, but at least that is the argument.


As for major sports, have you ever heard of Al Campanis?In 1988 he was Exec. VP for baseball operations of the LA Dodgers. He went on "nightline" and said that the reason that there weren't more minority hires in the executive ranks of baseball was because they didn't have the tools necessary to do the job. He was subsequently fired. Now, if this guy went on national TV and said this, do you think he was alone in his beliefs? How many others in the hierarchy of various professional sports organizations do you think hold the same view. And if they hold this view, what chance do they have of having fair hiring practices?

I totally agree, and watch nobody will respond because how can any fair thinking person refute this? The lib will just look at this and go blah blah blah "we need to make up for the past and punish evil whitey".


Kris

Well maybe the guy is racist but if the people he happened to come across were not as adept as some white guy would be then oh well. I bet nobody would have complained if he said, "man those black guys are really great executives". You can be racist if it is in a positive sense it seems, but to be racist in a negative sense is always a no-no to many people.

Anyway as for doctors representing communities, what does this mean. I'd rather have the most qualified doctor then some guy who happens to be the same race as me. If the best doctor is white then thats who i want. If the best doctor is black then thats who i want. I couldn't give a sh!t if he has anything to do with my community.

Finally I do agree that it looks as if I'm painting things in black and white, but I don't have 5 hours to keep on typing all kinds of things on this controversial subject....I am simply trying to make the best points I can without writing long drawn out posts :-)


Kris

What's the question?

What race do you think is coincedentally full of underachieving people?

No one is saying that everyone shouldn't be treated equally. But it seems to me that you don't understand that some people were routinely discriminated against for so long that something had to be done to even things out. Whether or not affirmative action is still necessary is another question, but that isn't where you were coming from.


Your statement about certain races being coincidentally underachievers says a lot about your thinking.

NO I'm not too old nor too stubborn, and I'm NOT WRONG on this. If you can't HEAR and VISUALIZE the differences in levels of complexity and depth between the best Classical and the best Rock, well, you're just missing something, and that something is A LOT.


Likewise, anyone who thinks the best modern poets are on a level comparable to Keats, Burns, Shelley, Shakespeare, or Dickinson is simply wrong also. It's not just a matter of TASTE, it's a matter of how RICH is the Art. Even Frost does not match up.

...modern artists, poets, or musicians/composers I just don't know about. However the names I do know of simply have not produced works of matching quality.

M,


It's really hard to compare poets from different ages, but many would certainly consider Frost a major modern poet. His use of rhyme, iambic pentameter, and mastery of the sonnet form are testimony to his skill--and his great poems rank with the best of Keats, Shelley, and Shakespeare. Read the poem "Desert Places" (you can find it on the Net), noting the placement of the dash in the poem, and tell me what you think.


20th century poets you might enjoy are Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Phillip Larkin, and someone who lived almost next door to you in Stonington, James Merrill. For contemporary poets, try Galway Kinnell--I think you'd like his style and wit.


By the way, if we can ever get together down this way, we have tapes of many comtemporary poets who have done readings at our school, with Kinnell, Merrill, and Richard Wilbur among them.


John

Brad,


I'm just marking you down because you don't agree with me.


John

Watch out, Brett,


Goat might whip out his copy of The Bell Curve and reams of research to substantiate his claims.


John

I will look for the poem you mention. I do think Frost highly skilled and a couple of his more famous poems are truly good and have meaning beyond the poem, if it could be put that way. Since you have read more Frost than have I, you are in a better position to judge...I just was somewhat unimpressed with a lot of the other stuff...at least compared to the Classics, Lake Poets and Dickinson. For instance Dickinson had many great poems, as did the others...how many great, not merely very good, poems has Frost produced?

I would consider Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening a great poem, and also The Road Less Traveled, although it has been many years since I have read either. I would guess I might well feel similarly about the poem you suggest, so that would be three. Since so many of his poems didn't really grab me, I haven't delved deeply into Frost--I could be wrong about Frost. However I'm not wrong about Pink Floyd vs. Beethoven.

I just went to read the poem and halfway through (still halfway through) I had a thought and I was going to ask you: do you really think Frost is as good as Dickinson? But when I came back and reread your post, I saw that you hadn't mentioned her--you had only said the best of Frost compares with the best of Keats, Shelley and Shakespeare.


Back to the poem.

It's not just a matter of Al Campanis's contact with a few people (if he indeed even had ANY contact with black baseball executives). It's that his comments indicated he didn't think ANY minorities had the tools necessary to work as a baseball executive. That means both people he has seen, and even people he hasn't seen. Now, again, I ask the question: if you were to interview with this guy and you weren't white, what would you rate your chances of getting a job? Heck, what's the chances of even getting the initial interview?


This is exactly the stuff equal opportunity laws are supposed to work against. Some bonehead manager thinks he can summarily dismiss a group of people based on some preconceived notions. Well, everyone is entitled to their opinions, but you can see how dangerous this can be if these opinions are carried over into hiring practices.


As for the medical school thing, again this is a gross oversimplification of things. Not many medical graduates want to practice medicine on a reservation. Reservations have long been considered areas that receive less than adequate medical care. Now, perhaps if there were more native americans in practice, perhaps more of them would want to practice on a reservation, as opposed to a non native american grad. Same thing goes if you have a large spanish speaking community. You are going to want doctors in that community that are fluent in spanish.


I think you are genuine in your questioning, but it's important to try to look at issues from many different angles, and then formulate your opinions.

Of course, Emily, too.

You are naive if you believe that this generation doesn't experience discrimination.

The Bell Curve is flawed and has about as much respect in the academic community as the Turner Diaries and Mein Kampf.

The Consitution does have a passage that states people of color count as 3/5's of a person. Let's start a 1 million mile running race where one man receives state sponsored training, and is given a 300 year head start. After 300 years, lets take off the shackles from the other man's feet and tell him to start running. Then let's tell him over and over again that everything is equal now. Well, he's only 900,000 miles behind, someting must be wrong with him.

You are comparing the few greatest poems from each, are you not? What about the sum of all good poems from each? I sometimes think that Dickinson may be the greatest poet of all but I really don't get this feeling about Frost.

how fast can he be, hes 300 years old!

subjectivity has no place in this argument. your claims have no substance to them. just because you can 'hear' the 'difference' that you claim is there, doesn't mean that it has any objective meaning. i hear plenty in the music, i hear plenty of depth and complexity in both. if you can't appreciate that both of these have this, thats a matter of taste, and its unfortunate that you can't enjoy it as much as i can. if you can't appreciate the fact that both are equally valid pieces of art, while having vastly different aesthetic elements, and therefore spanning a wide subjective range for the listener, then you are mistaking opinion for fact, and you are placing too much weight on your opinion, which is arrogant. i can hear the difference in beethoven and pink floyd. believe me. i just think that you haven't listened to enough pink floyd to give them credit for as much depth and complexity as they actually have.


when i said you were too old, that was uncool, but it comes from my experience that i am always on the opposite side of this argument with people that are older, and it seems like a mindset that was somehow ingrained in baby boomers and older, and somehow missed my generation. i do think you're stubborn though...

here again, you are saying that they do not produce works of matching quality. Quality of art cannot be measured objectively. subjectivity has no place in qualifying something as valid.

like i said stubborn...

so you will concede that you may not be an expert on frost, and therefore may not have as much room to talk. but you won't concede the same with pink floyd vs. beethoven? like i said, its still a subjective argument, so there really is no right and wrong here, and to assert differently is arrogant. but since you won't conceded any ground to someone who may know more, than i must assume that you know more about pink floyd than you let on? do you?

the problem, then, is not with admitting substandard students to med school because they are native american, and will therefore help the native american community. the problem is the entire structure of medical care in this country. we need doctors in native american communities. we need good doctors in native american communities. how does it do any good to admit substandard students to med school (who for the sake of argument we assume to be sub-excellent as doctors) and then send them to reservations? we are still sending subexcellent medical care to places that need more. doesn't matter if the new doc is native or not, if he/she isn't up to the task, what problem have we solved?

and you are naive if you think that i deserve to pay for the discrimination that other people experience.

so you're saying that educationally, a person whose ancestors were discriminated against for a LOONG time is now that far behind? the collective injustice doesn't add up. put simply: a black kid and a white kid are born and both are given the same opportunities educational and recreational and spiritual, and otherwise. is one behind after 20 or so years, just because his greatgreatgreatgreatgrandma was enslaved, or simply not able to vote? the culture lacks, the individual is slighted, but the offspring have a new hope, and a new chance. if we allow for that, anything above it in terms of restitution is injust, and just as disabling to both sides of the issue. i can't believe you made that analogy...

X,


Didn't you catch the sarcasm in my response to Brett? I said "Goat" might come armed with this tome, not me, and certainly not Brett.


Just wanted to clear this up in case someone, somehow, mistook me for a libertarian (Gasp!) or a conservative (Gasp! Gasp!).


John

You inflict it. You have benefited from it. You are a racist. Go to hell.

baggins,


Let me show you a few poems published in our local newspaper; then, if you dare, tell me it's all a matter of taste when you stop laughing.


John

ok, sorry

No, Marin Luther King did. You are a bigot and a pig. Live horribly,an die slowly.

Best Wishes

and your insults have just ruined any chance of crediblity you had here. if you can not post your opinon without resorting to middle school name calling then please leave

this is also a bad thing since i never had an alumni conection /images/frown.gif. anyway discrimination by any other name...

actually, i bet i can guess your point before you show me. id like to see them though. i had a part in helping to start/run an 'underground' poetry rag on our college campus a few years ago. the whole premise was that everything made it in. it was totally free, and everything ended up being anonymous. it was small, and we had some hookups with a copier machine, so there weren't really that many costs to cover. there was some genuine crap, but it still made it in because it was a valid expression. was a great experience. but the point is that something has to be a poem before it can be a bad poem. or song. or painting. or artistic performance.

great. now you're accusing me of inflicting it, and benefiting from it. if this is where you are going to go, the discussion is absurd. i abstain until you say something of substance.

he's taking his ball and going home...

This has been my objection to Indian Casinos in CA (I don't have first hand knowledge of other states). They don't pay taxes, they collect welfare, and they can act at will against non-native American employees. Just because perhaps my great great great took away some of their great great great's land, doesn't give THIS generation the right to have priveleges that we who have lived by the rules our whole lives don't.

The question was the very first sentence. Are you calling me a nazi or a neo-nazi or both? Or do you just think I'm a racist? Or maybe you'll answer correctly and say that I'm neither.


Kris

I think both are completely valid as works of art.


I think Pink Floyd is complex.


I think Mozart, Betthoven and Bach are more complex than Pink Floyd.


I think whichever one likes better is just a matter of taste, but I don't believe that complexity is just a matter of tase--complexity is something that is somewhat measurable. For instance, wouldn't you agree that PinK Floyd is undoubtedly more complex than Row, Row, Row Your Boat as sung in our schools? So why would you not believe that some compositions may be much more complex than those of Pink Floyd?


I heard a great deal of Pink Floyd in high school. I went to one of their concerts as well. I'm just certain, however, that the architecture of certain Classical symphonies completely surpasses that level of depth and complexity.

I agree that almost all of it is art. I just think that some art is more artistic than other art, and that this is not entirely a matter of taste--while artistic merit can be hard or impossible in many ways to quantify, that doesn't mean that some art is not truly greater than some other art.

baggins,


Yes, we might call this an example of "universal tastelessness." Seriously, I know full well that many people derive pleasure from writing all kinds of poetry. Good, and they should. I'm all for people writing. Keep in mind T.S Eliot's dictum, though: "Poetry is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But one must have a personality to know this."


For most bad poets, the expression of personality seems paramount. Note how bad poets don't really want criticism, either. "Changing my poem would be like, ya know, changing my soul" sort of thing.

Neverheless, I really like people who put in the effort. So, I know you've read many bad poems, but I'm not sure you've read as many bad poems as I have; eventually, they leave you speechless.


John


P.S. Hardest course to teach--creative writing

various races in various categories. Vietmanese folks seem to do exceedingly well in math around here so everybody else would be sort of underachieving right? It's not really a racial thing it's just coincidences that happen. Just like anything things happen and no matter how you slice things you will be able to find biases here and there, jeez I'm already drinking maybe I shouldnt be trying to type right now. Lets see I'm going to a punk show and guess what... none of the people I'm going to the show with are white, so much for peoples racist theory on me. Oh yeah the mexican dude in my band is by far the most talented so he deserves credit for that and he's gonna be an engineer and wont need some affirmative action BS to help him get a job. Okay I better stop I don't think well when i'm getting intoxicated :-)


kris

What does everyone here think of affirmative action in regards to college admissions?

If you'd prefer that I systematically demonstrate that you are a bigot and hound you, then I can. I've learned that it won't change a bigot's views.

You aren't worth the time and frustration. God will deal with you and your type.

Should alumni status and what state/city an applicant is from be considered in terms of college admission?

Alumni - no.


city/state - maybe, if the collage is funded from taxpayer money from a certain state or city then i belive the people footing the bill might have a legitimate case for being prefered for selection

Actually I was talking about the other side of the coin when I mentioned enrolment based on location.

As I recall, there are universities that want a certain number of students to be from places other than the state/city where the college is located.

hmmm, my gut says no, but i also see the counter arugements. a university want's all of it's students to get great jobs so they can make huge alumni donations later ( hey they got to make money). in order to achive this a collage wants to set up an enviroment that nutures freindships which will then lead to contacts to get jobs after collage. thus if everyone is from the same place it isn't so effective, and thus the reason for wanting students from a wider area then just the city or state.