Can someone please tell me...

[jeffncandace]

Originally Posted by RedWingsFan

In closing I'd like to say that I do believe that racism is taught. No doubt. It's been taught in my family for generations, but I've yet to have someone convince me that the other way is the better way. So until that day comes.... :-)

Straight from the horses mouth, to use an old saying. No one will convince you RW, because you are already comfortable with your beliefs, and have no desire to change them. It's a sad state of affairs, but your happy with it, and I guess until you start burning crosses in people's front yards, this is America and you have the right to your beliefs. It's just too bad that no one can convince you that holding enlightenment instead of bigotry in your heart is indeed the better way, but hey--you don't want to be convinced.

[and the]

Originally Posted by reconmark
There once were two boys equal in every way, physically, mentally, intellectually, etc. The only difference was that one was white and the other black. When they were five years old they ran a fifty yard dash against one another, the race was tied so they ran again and the race was tied again.
They were seperated and one boy was given a stride coach,a nutritionist, a physical therapist, everything he needed to become a better runner. The other boy received a pair of cast off shoes, no coach, no nutritionist, and only his determination to run faster.
thirteen years later the same boys meet to race the fifty yard dash, the one boy continually wins the race due to his suppoprt system.
The other boy is told sorry the race was fair you both had to run the same fifty yards, everything was equal.

The answer is to get the black kid a stride coach (I thought that was a type of piano teacher), a nutritionist and a physical thereapist, NOT to take the tennis shoe endorsement deal away from the white kid after he won the race. Or, not to give the gold medal to the black kid, because, although he was beaten by the white kid, he didn't come from a two parent household who went to work every day and sacrificed to pay for the stride coach, piano, nutritionist and physical therapist.

[reconmark]

Originally Posted by and the

The answer is to get the black kid a stride coach (I thought that was a type of piano teacher), a nutritionist and a physical thereapist, NOT to take the tennis shoe endorsement deal away from the white kid after he won the race. Or, not to give the gold medal to the black kid, because, although he was beaten by the white kid, he didn't come from a two parent household who went to work every day and sacrificed to pay for the stride coach, piano, nutritionist and physical therapist.

You are correct to the point of getting the black kid the same support system as the white kid but the point was made to show the educational and societal systems at play and how they are inherently biased for whites and against blacks, do you think this inequality dosen't exist?
I find it interesting that you would attempt to change the entire dynamic from a systemic system of racial preference to a "they don't try as hard or sacrifice like us" direction.
Just to help erase one stereotype that you presented. I have been married for almost a decade to my wife, we have three daughters that we love and invest time in. My wife drives to Ohio monday through friday to attend nursing school, she lives at 6am and isn't home untill 7pm, in addition she works fulltime midnights every other weekend for bon secours. I work fulltime and also attend school part time preparing for nursing school. I dress and get the kids off to school my wife picks them up, on my days off it's family day.
My wife or myself attend every school event and participate whenever needed for school functions.
I have no criminal record, have never used drugs, or any of the other things you suspect that "we" people do.
What may surprise you is that many black men and families live the same life as I do. Don't believe that white people are the only people who sacrifice for a better life or are more moral as a whole.
Even when we do these things we still run into the mindset that you have stated of the "they don't try as hard" belief.
Even as we try to move forward it would be so much easier if my daughters received the same affirmations that society gives to whites as agiven, so untill this society tries harder to have a truely equal and fair system, the "fifty yard" analogy will continually be relived in se mi.

[reconmark]

I'm going to take a breather from this post for awhile. After having spoken to the same things, explained the same things it can become taxing after awhile.
Also it's my day off and the kids want to go to the playground and get ice cream.
Thanks to everyone who took part. Even if I disagree with your viewpoint, maybe through continued dialogue we can become a closer community.

[and the]

You are correct to the point of getting the black kid the same support system as the white kid but the point was made to show the educational and societal systems at play and how they are inherently biased for whites and against blacks, do you think this inequality dosen't exist?
I find it interesting that you would attempt to change the entire dynamic from a systemic system of racial preference to a "they don't try as hard or sacrifice like us" direction.
Just to help erase one stereotype that you presented. I have been married for almost a decade to my wife, we have three daughters that we love and invest time in. My wife drives to Ohio monday through friday to attend nursing school, she lives at 6am and isn't home untill 7pm, in addition she works fulltime midnights every other weekend for bon secours. I work fulltime and also attend school part time preparing for nursing school. I dress and get the kids off to school my wife picks them up, on my days off it's family day.
My wife or myself attend every school event and participate whenever needed for school functions.
I have no criminal record, have never used drugs, or any of the other things you suspect that "we" people do.
What may surprise you is that many black men and families live the same life as I do. Don't believe that white people are the only people who sacrifice for a better life or are more moral as a whole.
Even when we do these things we still run into the mindset that you have stated of the "they don't try as hard" belief.
Even as we try to move forward it would be so much easier if my daughters received the same affirmations that society gives to whites as agiven, so untill this society tries harder to have a truely equal and fair system, the "fifty yard" analogy will continually be relived in se mi.

Sorry, but I infered that your post had nothing to do with the literal dynamics of play, but rather it was a metaphor for affirmative action and why it was justified. That's why I mentioned the 2 family, sacrificing for the coach thing, because whenever the subject of AA comes up as it relates specifically to competitive civil service tests, people who defend it invariably get to the "levelling the playing field" argument and THAT is then justified by the "black people can't compete on the white reading comprehension test because of Detroit public schools, parents who don't care, single family homes, etc...." Sorry if I misunderstood. I didn't come up with that myself by the way, that was how black people rationalized it to me. If you don't see it that way, then God bless you. And given the way you're raising your kids, I don't think they'll need the advantages of affirmative action to compete with all the other two-parent kids of other races on competitive civil service tests.

One little piece of background info on me: Back around 1984 or '85, I took a test for a job with the Department of Corrections at Northwester High School. I was one of few, and I mean VERY few white guys there. I scored 100% on the test. Not 100 points, but 100%. Every question right. I didn't even get an INTERVIEW for the job with a 100% on the test. I finally got someone to admit that I wasn't interviewed because I was of the wrong demographic. So that was one of my first tastes of how AA was going to make our world a better place. I guess I should probably give thanks for AA, because in retrospect, I'm glad someone of some other demographic got that job instead of me, because I would have hated it. I do wonder what their test score was though.....

And while there were a lot of black people in that cafeteria who probably DID score lower than me because my parents worked their asses off to send me to a private school and theirs didn't, the way to make things better was not to steal the job from me. Because that's exactly what happened as far as I'm concerned. To not even get an interview with a perfect test is just plain wrong.

[reconmark]

To "and the"
No offense taken, I'm just glad to see so much civility during this whole topic.

[nickbii]

Originally Posted by RedWingsFan

And the only thing that Affirmative Action has ever done is give people things that they didn't earn on their own merrit. Instead it gives people (not just blacks, but women, and basically everyone but white males) a boost and requires you to hire them even though they may not be the most qualified candidate for the position. In my opinion it's government descrimination and should be illegal. People should get things they earn or happen to be the most qualified candidate for.

Agreed.

That's why we needed affirmative action in the Detroit Police in 1975. At the time DPD had many remarkably creative ways to disqualify black candidates. Most of them were outright fraud. Literally.

This left the Courts with a few options:

1) Let whites keep qualified blacks out of the police force.

2) Oversee every hiring decision DPD made to make sure there were no shinanigans.

3) Institute Affirmative Action.

1) was simply unacceptable, and 2) would cost a hideous amount of money as the folks doing the overseeing would be Federal Judges. Those guys don't work for peanuts. So they picked 3.

Nick

[nickbii]

Originally Posted by and the

I didn't say that at all. I said (in part) and implied (in part) they were recruiting on street corners because they couldn't get enough black candidates who could pass the drug test, background investigation, written test and oral boards as compared to white candidates. In other words, they were desperate to find enough black candidates. Half of one academy class I know of hired in 1985 was fired or in prison before 1995. It's well known in the Detroit PD that the classes in the 80's had a disproportionate number of criminals and screw-ups. It wasn't hard to believe that it was due to the "relaxed" hiring practices.

Well known by whom?

Originally Posted by and the

So what would you call Detroit after Coleman Young? Revenge? Makes no difference to me, I don't live there.

Yes, a city that's 70% black was obviously racist because it hired a majority of black police officers.

Most of Coleman Young's black hires got fired in the early 80s. The city ran out of cash, so Coleman had to fire cops, and the black ones had no seniority.

Of course the black cops sued, but they lost.

Originally Posted by and the

That's not a reasonable assumption at ALL. The written tests were pretty much reading comprehension. You study these books and answer questions based on what you read. We speak and write American English in the country. Would you prefer the tests were given in Ebonics? How would that look in court?

That's the wrong straw man to set up, because it allows me to bring in my most credible source: the Courts.

The Courts ordered the DPD to change hiring practices. Which means a) the ebonics argument looked damn good in court; or b) you're missing something. Such as, say, fake test results.

The Courts are very good for me because we can't argue over what they ultimately determined. If they hadn't decided DPD was racist there would have been no AA program, and we would not even be having this discussion.

And you can't attack their credibility, because they ruled against black cops at least once.

Originally Posted by and the

Naturally, at that time, blacks didn't have the established political machines in place in most large urban areas. So.........civil service came along, whereby everyone would have to take the same test. No more bribes to ward bosses to get a civil service job. The civil service system was established to make hiring more fair. But that wasn't good enough. So if you can't compete on a test, we'll just disregard the test.

Again, you assume the grading was fair.

Originally Posted by and the

I really don't care whether you believe me or not. First you said you didn't believe it happened because I didn't give you a source. I posted all those articles and now you say you don't believe me because I didn't give you a source that said "C.A.Y. paid Cornelius Pitts to represent the perpetrators in the Freedom Fest Robbery and Beatings". Did you pay for all those articles to read the whole thing? One of them may very well say that Coleman paid for their defense. It wasn't a secret, but I'm not going to go any farther out of my way to prove it to you because I KNOW what happened, and I don't really have a need to prove to you what happened. If it's not important enough to you to do your own research, it's certainly not important enough to me to hand it to you.

I did research. The only google results were your posts. This thread was #2, #1 was something from WSU that mentioned both Pitts and Young. Combining the two of them with the Rutherford twins gave no results. Just Pitts and Rutherford gives a few results -- apparently the trial is famous for the code-words both sides used.

Nick

[and the]

Well known by whom?

Anyone who was involved in recruiting or hiring at the time. Ask any cops from back then about the "recruiting mobiles". That's what they called them.

Yes, a city that's 70% black was obviously racist because it hired a majority of black police officers.

Most of Coleman Young's black hires got fired in the early 80s. The city ran out of cash, so Coleman had to fire cops, and the black ones had no seniority.

Of course the black cops sued, but they lost.

Well if that's what you want to base your hiring on, I'd expect you to be the first one in line to defend the suburbs when they start turning down qualified black applicants because "Our city is only 1 percent black, and we already have 1 black guy on our 100 man department, so we're going to turn you down for a white guy who scored 20 points less than you on the test..."

"Coleman Young's hires" as you call them, were not fired, anyone hired after a certain date was laid off and hired back before the next election.

Again, you assume the grading was fair.

So why was AA needed after blacks were in charge of grading the test? Say in the 80's?? Were blacks in on the conspiracy to give whites higher scores on the tests by fraudulently inflating the scores?

I did research. The only google results were your posts. This thread was #2, #1 was something from WSU that mentioned both Pitts and Young. Combining the two of them with the Rutherford twins gave no results. Just Pitts and Rutherford gives a few results -- apparently the trial is famous for the code-words both sides used.

You didn't see the articles I posted in your Google search did you (other than from me posting them)? When I said "Do your research" I didn't mean a 5 second "Google" search.......

[VJBRADLEY]

How Do You Find The Remainder Of An Article?