A rich minority kid now has the same advantage a rich white kid has.

Not sure this is true. For a small group that end up receiving the benefit of Affirmative Action policies, they may be delivered up to the same college as the rich white kid, but that's the end of the line. No unpaid internship on Mommy and Daddy's dime every Summer, and no "Friend of my Dad's" or family business to get you a job upon graduation.

For those of us in the Spanish-speaking community, we have been advocating for an "academic-military draft" in which a "volunteer" would serve three years--50% in the class room and 50% on the military mission. Thus, at honorable discharge, the volunteer will have accumulated sufficient hours to receive an Associate of Arts Degree in General Studies. Thus, the Federal Government would 'guarantee' a loan in order to complete the third and fourth years of academics. Moreover, a more effective and efficient use of taxpayer dollars.

Now, with this in mind, a poor white kid without a high school diploma could 'volunteer' and achieve a GED as well as an Associate's degree prior to being honorably discharged.

As an aside, I used to argue in favor of a better educational effort would lead to smarter people and beneficials to Democrats. Sadly, I don't anymore, given the past ten years.

Of course, making it easier on the parent who currently has to scrimp and save to send a son or daughter to college, would recognize that the son or daughter can do it on his/her behalf. Self-responsibility and all that assorted stuff.

And taking this "idea" a step further, colleges and universities could 'stand down' first and second year academics and ramp up their third and fourth years as well as their graduate schools.

When Senator "Scoop" Jackson used his invaluable skill set as well as his wide-ranging political machinations to eliminate the then existing military draft, America went to hell in a hand basket and quickly.

Consequently, two wars while everyone else was to go out shopping and without regard to the fiction for WMDs, was considered the requisite behavior. And if you don't have any skin in the game, demonizing those who disagree with you, is easily accomplished. And I recall that being called anti-American, un-American and a whole schematic of perjoratives, does not make for a lesser advocate for egalitarianism. To wit, it reinvigorates such behavior for the Big "E".

Jaango

Here's an analogy. A Jew says he is uncomfortable with Germans because of the Holocaust. Is that racism? Is it even anti-German? No, it's just a reflection of history. It's not nice, it's not right, but it is certainly understandable.

That is because of the context. And the context, when it comes to Jews and Germans, is the Holocaust. That is why Germany works so hard at ridding itself of anything that, in any way, smacks of anti-Semitism.

MJ must think Germans only live in Germany.

The issueis also one of power. Blacks have never held power over whites within our society. They have always been in the minority and out of the power structure(how many black presidents, supreme court justices, ceo's, etc).

So, while a black could hold racist sentiment, he had/has no legal mechanism. He is in the minority in every sense of the world.

And just look at the tea party types just seething with anti-black sentiment. The entire questioning of the birthplace of Obama is another example. There was no persistence of the conspiracy theory relating to John McCain in Panama, but everything Obama does is vilified to such an extent that it seems obvious that racism continues against blacks.

It is not that Obama can do no wrong. It is the degree of anti-Obama sentiment which borders on the obscene amongst the right. The single thing the democrats have going for them is the nature of their competition.

Any discussion of this kind is completely useless and gets people nowhere. In fact, it plays right into the hands of the really pernicious bigots and racists of the right.

What we need is opportunity for all people and not to participate in bigotry but to counter it effectively where we do find it regardless of who the bigoted actions or statements are coming from.

Playing this stupid game of who is more agrieved is a dead end. The pain one person feels is no less painful because someone else suffers from even greater pain is it? Of course not.

The whole concept of pitting people against one another by race, gender, ethinicity, etc... (which is exactly what conversations like this set up whther intended or not) is a well worn and very effective trap/diversion from the reality which is that the vast majority of the American people experience all kinds of injustices and inequalities in this society and that it is the people who sit atop the social and economic pyramid who benefit by distracting the underlings into fighting one another over the scraps and crumbs that drop from their table on high down to the floor where all the rest of us are.

Our rulers love to see us squabbling endlessly over this stuff because it reassures them that our gaze will not turn toward those who are responsible for perpetuating the injustices so ubiquitous in our nation which, of course, is them.

I think poor white kids from the country really do get the short end of the stick. I think affirmative action should be based exclusively on family income, not on race... What is "race" really?

I had a girl friend from New York, went to Miss Spence's School, went to Bennington, her mother came from a rich Philadelphia, "main line" family and her father was a Spanish abstract painter that showed at Betty Parson's and she used to get jobs under the Hispanic quota, because she had a Spanish last name... and there are wasp farm boys who are smart and they don't get that treatment, its insane.

Family income (the lack of it) is the only fair affirmative action.

A Jew who is uncomfortable around Germans? OK, this might have worked sixty years ago, and I don't know the last time you went to Germany, but a Jew that seriously segregates themselves from modern ethnic Germans is something not all that far from racist.

Maybe living in Germany the past year has made me sensitive to this, but the overwhelming majority of German citizens are sick of being guilt-tripped constantly about the sins of their grandfathers, and are some of the most tolerant, social, and least nationalist people on earth. Judging a group of people based on some sort of collective guilt that is passed down through generations is getting into "one drop rule" territory.

There are legitimate points embedded within MJ's denunciation of unnamed "anyone"s, but it is a short slippery slope away from the notion that anti-white racism is relatively unimportant. It may or may not be; it depends on the relative context. Reginald Denny, for example, was not a victim of blacks being "uncomfortable" with whites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Denny_incident

I thought this posted earlier (MT error) It may be superfluous now but...

First- what Ben Feddersen said.
I’m sure there is a small army of Fox-Limbaugh-Tea Party protesters who are out and out racists, but if we extrapolate the racism of a relative few (the true lunatic fringe) to the majority of white people, then we are indulging in the same kind of stereotyping we’re criticizing. The anti-Obama thing is a political tactic more than anything. Even though racial fears are being played on by the right (nothin' new there), Reid and Pelosi get their fair share, too. But I don’t think that even Obama is as castigated and condemned as Bill Clinton was. Still, I agree with Oleeb that this is the kind of argument that is lost just by engaging in it.

America has come a long way. I wonder if, given the times and circumstances, Jim Crow wasn't more of a disgrace than slavery. Seems to me, the oppression of minorities today, directly or indirectly, is light years from a mere half century ago. While institutional racism is different in kind and degree, our institutions have improved exponentially on that count(sexism, too). There are still examples of institutional racism, our justice system for example, but it seems as much a consequence of class as it is of race. Following on David Seaton’s idea that affirmative action be based on income, what does it say that this would never happen here (that's socialism dammit) whereas affirmative action for minorities did? Who has a voice and who doesn’t?

It goes without saying, we still have a long way to go. Nationalism, in its extreme xenophobic form, is thinly disguised racism. Where I live most Hispanics have made gains, but there are still Colonias that are worse than some of the slums torn down in the '60s. Proportionally, too many African Americans are still caught in that vortex of poverty. There has been animosity between blacks and Hispanics or Jews and blacks in the past. Was that racism? It all comes down to people jockeying for a voice. I think we've all lost on that count of late. If it weren't for these dang innertubes here, I doubt we'd be heard at all. Hello?

I thought this posted earlier (getting MT errors) It may be redundant now but I'll try again...

First- what Ben Feddersen said.
I’m sure there is a small army of Fox-Limbaugh-Tea Party protesters who are out and out racists, but if we extrapolate the racism of a relative few (the true lunatic fringe) to the majority of white people, then we are indulging in the same kind of stereotyping we’re criticizing. The anti-Obama thing is a political tactic more than anything. Even though racial fears are being played on by the right (nothin' new there), Reid and Pelosi get their fair share, too. But I don’t think that even Obama is as castigated and condemned as Bill Clinton was. Still, I agree with Oleeb that this is the kind of argument that is lost just by engaging in it.

Worse than Breitbart was Megan Kelley on FOX news. She has beaten the black panther story to death. Geesh, you would have thought the black panthers were worse than the KKK. My initial reaction to the "panther video" is it was much ado about nothing.

I think this woman should be asked to stay on if this video is heavily edited and her comments taken out of context. It appears to me her comments were very obviously edited as a kind of lesson learned and then, smack, the editing occurred.

But again, Breitbart and FOX do it, because IT WORKS. It sells. I think Drudge engages in this as well. It is incessant almost subliminal racism. What's especially galling here is that this woman in question seems like quite an honorable person. Sad.

Anti-white racism is relatively common in the United States and no, we *definitely* do not need to imagine ourselves in the Holocaust to see if that plain and obvious truth is valid.

This is a really annoying post -- what you are really saying is that white people are capable of being bigots but blacks (genetically virtually identical) somehow are not.

Why would say a crazy thing like that, to be extra-PC today?