And Brian, affirmative action isn’t “race baiting.” There are certainly arguments against it, but don’t start throwing around inflammatory terms that don’t apply simply because they fit your agenda. I guess you would agree that every Republican who says Condi Rice would be a good nominee because she would get a lot of the traditionally Democratic black vote is “race baiting”?

God forbid you are ethnically Chinese, Korean, or Indian. The government will force Engineering firms and Biotech labs to staff at less than 5% asian nationwide (thats including Hawaii).

Should black owned companies be forced to hire a certain percentage of white people, whom they otherwise wouldn’t due to subconsious bias?

Yes, they should. It should work both ways.

Jimmy, the Brilliant Moderate Voice of the Most Holy Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has held that Affirmative Action won’t be morally wrong for another twenty-five years or so and then the problem will have fixed itself and then it will be morally wrong.

They got tax cuts in the past 6 years, remember?

Fine, a tax cut is not a handout either. Again, money you make belongs to you not to the government by default.

It’s about people being subconsciously biased towards hiring people of their own race and gender

Should black owned companies be forced to hire a certain percentage of white people, whom they otherwise wouldn’t due to subconsious bias?

Affirmative action is morally wrong because it perpetuates racial division. You need to continually identify which individuals belong into which groups, then decide which group is the “oppressed class.” You get nothing but identity politics year after year in our political institutions, resulting in a culture of political correctness which feeds into voluntary social segregation (like a Chocolate city).

The marketplace is not truly free if there is discrimination, either by affirmative action, or subconcious cultural bias. The solution is to make the market more free in both directions; once this is achieved, previously segregated minorities will catch up on their own. Forcing equity before people (or venture capitalists) are have aquired competitiveness is like picking at a wound to make it heal.

Refusing to increase income taxes for the wealthiest Americans is not a handout.

No Jimmy. They got tax cuts in the past 6 years, remember? And cuts on capital gains earnings. Those are handouts since their taxes were lowered. Your “increase” is simply returning it to levels where the same 2% same enormous prosperity in the previous decade.

Affirmative action adresses that bias in an un-libertarian, and racist way. If someone discriminates against hiring you because of your race, sue them! Fix the justice system, not the free-market place.

The free market isn’t a cure all. In fact, it’s designed to be amoral. Given that, sometimes you need to have certain policies in place that give minority populations of any country a little more help. You see this as racist, but I think you’re grossly misusing that term. I never suggested, nor will I ever, that race begats superiority. It’s been shown time and time again that regardless of the race of the person, if you put them in the right environment, they’ll thrive. Affirmative action is a way to do that and overcome the institutional bias that has plagued us as a people for centuries.

And by the way, sue somebody because they didn’t hire you? Obviously, you didn’t understand my point about people’s bias towards wanting to work with somebody like themselves. It’s not about people being racist, i.e. saying “Well, he’s black so he’s not as smart as this white guy.” It’s about people being subconsciously biased towards hiring people of their own race and gender. It happens without one really even realizing it, but it’s their nonetheless. If you want to read a good book about this, pick up Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.

liberals do care a great deal about the poor, regardless of race, culture or creed.

I never said they didn’t, they just care in a different way…by using government as a means to control wealth production and then re-distributing such wealth to individuals who have not earned it.

In this particular case we are not talking about the destitute who legitimately require a safety net, but business owners likely to make millions as venture capitalists.
…and not giving handouts to the wealthiest 2%.
Refusing to increase income taxes for the wealthiest Americans is not a handout. They money that rich entrepreneurs make does not by default belong to society.

But it addresses the inherent bias that we all have to be around those who are more like us.

Affirmative action adresses that bias in an un-libertarian, and racist way. If someone discriminates against hiring you because of your race, sue them! Fix the justice system, not the free-market place.

And yeah, I’ll second Paul’s assessment. Never been anywhere near VC money myself, but I’ve been watching it all closely enough to know Kedrosky is right.

Actually, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve yet to hear anything all that good at all about SBIC. At least, not from anyone who wasn’t a politician.

Equal opportunity is redundant to a liberal. What they are really interested in is equal outcome, and they want it now.

Bash away Jimmy, but do know that you’re only making yourself look bad. Don’t you get that this site is about NOT being the fringe?

But to address your point, liberals do care a great deal about the poor, regardless of race, culture or creed. In a society likes ours where so many have so much, we simply ask for more of a balance. This doesn’t mean Communism, but it does mean setting achievable economic goals, lifting up the middle and lower classes and not giving handouts to the wealthiest 2%. It also means making sure everybody who needs health care has access to it. We’re not there yet, but I’m going to keep pushing for that to be a reality.

And concerning affirmative action, it’s not a perfect system. But it addresses the inherent bias that we all have to be around those who are more like us. One of the reasons why more women and minorities don’t get hired is because white men like hiring other white men. They simply trust somebody more who is like them. That’s just human nature. Affirmative action can help with that, and maybe if some weren’t so eager to vilify it, perhaps it would work better?

In order to achieve this within a free society where each individual has their own talents and motivations, authorities must actively discriminate in favor of those groups deemed “minorities,” and discriminate against those in the majority so as to level the playing field.

liberals subconsciously look upon the poor, brown “other” as a perpetual victim who is incapable of elevating their status on their own over time. That is why affirmative action is inherently racist at its core.

“five-handed, blue-skinned hermaphrodites from Alpha Centauri�

I’ll bet there’s a pron site dedicated to just that…

So in the last month or so we’ve had Democrat race-baiters at:

Kerry in this post
Bryant Gumbel’s idiot comments on the Winter Olympics
Coretta Scott King’s funeral in general
Hillary in a harlem church.

Is this getting really old really fast to anyone else yet? As a member who generally leans towards the GOP on most issues, I have to say, for us all being racists, only the Democrats EVER seem to bring up race, usually in a fashion meant to polarize and divide, with brownie points if they can make Bush look bad while doing it.