I agree with your point about it needing to be a conversation rather than a lecture, but there's a difference between debate and argumentativeness. Aside from the fact that a government cannot by looking the other way condone racist hiring/firing policies - the idealogical value of your points hold up a lot better in the free market (freedom to be an idiot and hurt your own business) than they do, say, for universities.
Student A is black and came from a high school with textbooks from 1970. He got a 3.2 GPA and is competing for a scholarship (federal funds, mind you) with Student B. Being white, Student B grew up in a school district with a much higher level of tax funding, enjoyed new classrooms, small class sizes, new books, etc. Student B had a GPA of 3.3
Who do you think worked harder for that GPA? There are a lot of generalizations here, but seriously - do you think that tax funding has nothing to do with scholastic performance? What we're talking about with this scholarship is making up at a federal level for what the student did NOT receive at a local level.
Let's just be blunt about it. IN GENERAL, the black kid is going to grow up in a more crowded, less well-funded school because his parents don't have high paying jobs. His parents live in a less-well-to-do school district because - many generations ago - their ancestors were slaves and had no money. It takes a lot of time to build up family wealth. White kids IN GENERAL start from an advantage and don't STATISTICALLY need the grant/scholarship money as much.
Individual exceptions? Sure. But federal policy has nothing to do with individual cases and everything to do with trends. Reversing negative ones. Promoting positive ones. Making the country better, not for you individually, but for you generally.
That's what EO programs mean to me. And I don't think we're anywhere NEAR being ready to drop them because "everything's just fine now".
Re: Tiresome
Student A is black and came from a high school with textbooks from 1970. He got a 3.2 GPA and is competing for a scholarship (federal funds, mind you) with Student B. Being white, Student B grew up in a school district with a much higher level of tax funding, enjoyed new classrooms, small class sizes, new books, etc. Student B had a GPA of 3.3
Who do you think worked harder for that GPA? There are a lot of generalizations here, but seriously - do you think that tax funding has nothing to do with scholastic performance? What we're talking about with this scholarship is making up at a federal level for what the student did NOT receive at a local level.
Let's just be blunt about it. IN GENERAL, the black kid is going to grow up in a more crowded, less well-funded school because his parents don't have high paying jobs. His parents live in a less-well-to-do school district because - many generations ago - their ancestors were slaves and had no money. It takes a lot of time to build up family wealth. White kids IN GENERAL start from an advantage and don't STATISTICALLY need the grant/scholarship money as much.
Individual exceptions? Sure. But federal policy has nothing to do with individual cases and everything to do with trends. Reversing negative ones. Promoting positive ones. Making the country better, not for you individually, but for you generally.
That's what EO programs mean to me. And I don't think we're anywhere NEAR being ready to drop them because "everything's just fine now".