>The stigma that comes with it and what the policy implies or
>symbolizes.
>I can't say I disagree with him much on these points. But
>there is the issue of outcomes. Does affirmative action
>produce better outcomes for blacks? Does it allow us to
>overcome a structural hindrance? That needs to be consider as
>well.
>
>
>On the stigma of Affirmative Action: How can a black person
>demonstrate the his/her accomplishment is real? That they
>succeeded on their own merits? As a black person in an AA
>world, there will be doubts that you are as good as your white
>peers, even if you truly are better. How he views his
>experience at Yale illustrates this:
>
>"At Yale, some of Thomas’s classmates would query the
>absence of class rankings and grades. “You do not separate
>cream from cream,” a professor responded. “It is your fate
>as a Yale Law School student to become one of the leaders in
>the legal profession. It will happen, not because of you
>personally, but because you are here. That is what happens to
>Yale Law School students.” But Yale’s black students were
>separated from the cream; indeed, the absence of rankings was
>used to effect that separation. As he approached graduation,
>Thomas tried to secure a position at an élite law firm in
>Atlanta, which had no black associates. One of the marks
>against him was that he had no grades. Even if he came from
>Yale, how could his prospective employers know how good he
>was?"

SO dude was mad that he didn't the fancy law firm job that he initially wanted but his white peers got. Yeah that sucks. But then what happened? He got a government job, yada yada yada, then became a Supreme Court Judge!!! All of that wouldn't have been possible without Yale and AA. SO yeah he can say his Yale degree is only worth 15 cents but it made him who he is today.

I've been there at some point worried about white counterparts not thinking you earned your spot but once you are there you got to show and prove just like everyone else. That goes for school and work. If you got the chops to do the work, youll be fine.



>
>
>
>An on what Affirmative Action symbolizes: that whites view
>blacks as inferior. Some quotes for the article regarding
>this.
>
>
>"According to Thomas, affirmative action is the most recent
>attempt by white people to brand and belittle black people as
>inferior. Affirmative action does not formally mirror the
>tools of white supremacy; for Thomas, it is the literal
>continuation of white supremacy."
>
>"...affirmative action reinforces the stigma that shadows
>African-Americans. Among many whites, blackness signals a
>deficit of intellect, talent, and skill. Even Supreme Court
>Justices, Thomas wrote in one opinion, “assume that anything
>that is predominantly black must be inferior.” When the
>state and social institutions identify African-Americans as
>beings in need of help, they reinforce that stigma. It
>doesn’t matter if some African-Americans succeed without
>affirmative action. In the same way that enslavement marked
>all black people, free

Not if folks recognize that black people are in need of help because of what white people have done to black people. Black people don't need help because we are inferior, we need helped because we have been systematically fucked over by the system that benefits white people to this day.



or slave, as inferior, affirmative
>action—here Thomas borrows directly from the language of
>Plessy v. Ferguson—stamps all African-Americans with “a
>badge of inferiority.”
>
>"In keeping with his conservative black nationalism, Thomas
>sees in such integration real harm to black people. In 1995,
>after a lower court argued that “racial isolation” in
>education—that is, continuing segregation of black and white
>schools, without formal state compulsion—was a
>constitutional injury to black schoolchildren, Thomas took
>offense. “If separation itself is a harm,” he wrote,
>“and if integration therefore is the only way that blacks
>can receive a proper education, then there must be something
>inferior about blacks.” For Thomas, seemingly egalitarian
>policies like integration thus become evidence of racial
>paternalism."
>

I do agree with this. The revisionist history podcast on this is so good.

>
>An finally his views on the goals of Affirmative Action:
>
>
>
>"The second way affirmative action continues white supremacy
>is by elevating whites to the status of benefactors, doling
>out scarce privileges to those black people they deem worthy.
>The most remarkable element of Thomas’s affirmative-action
>jurisprudence, and what makes it unlike that of any other
>Justice on the Supreme Court, is how much attention he devotes
>to whites, not as victims but as perpetrators, the lead actors
>in a racial drama of their own imagination. Put simply, Thomas
>believes that affirmative action is a white program for white
>people."
>
>"Affirmative action, then, is not about racial equality;
>it’s about preserving the prerogatives of white élites,
>allowing them to bestow the blessings of society upon a few
>lucky African-Americans."

I mean you can frame it that way if you want. It's just a super cynical point of view.


>


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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"