DougR, sorry for those things that offended you, I have a juvenile smart-ass streak. I don't understand your logic either.

I didn't mean to imply I think all rich people are going to hell, just that Christian theology raises questions about it.

NicoleC I don't feel sorry for you, but you've made the first case for opposing AA that doesn't sound completely fatuous to me. To argue against it in the name of equality seems fatuous unless one directs some further consideration as to how this equality is going to actually play out. One can reasonably argue that AA is a crude solution, is not ideal, has unwanted side-effects. I'm not convinced there's something better at hand that is going to actually get off the ground anytime soon, that it's time yet to set AA aside, or that helping the blacks who can afford it go to college is such a negligible result. I still think I could make a much stronger case against AA than you have, and yet as a practical matter I support it.

   Sure, it doesn't solve everything for everyone. It hasn't eradicated the problems of the poor who aren't minorities. It wasn't meant to, and when you know how to do that, please don't type it all out, just actually do it, okay? A theory of a program that won't happen might not be better than the little good we can actually do. A better question to ask about AA is whether more blacks went to college than would have without it. The "dumbed-down" remark--there's no getting loose of this popular myth that we really know how to measure human merit, it's like the scarey guy in the horror movie that comes back no matter how many times you kill it. If it weren't for legislation to adjust I.Q. tests, women would still be less intelligent than men. They simply changed the questions. It's a mistake to over-weigh the merit tests, because they too can have inherent biases.

   I'm a white guy. It may be my point of view is tilted by that. I think maybe it should be. The cries of two wrongs don't make a right seem laughable to me--you can't compare it, really. Come on--seriously. Two "systems of discrimination"--for crying out loud, is there no proportion in things? Let's pretend that if we get rid of AA things will be fair, or fairer, that all the poor whites will go to college, without dumbing things down. (Apparently that's just for blacks.) How, exactly? That's what gets me. There has to be a saner way to discuss things. I'm right to make fun of that implication, and really you've just dressed it up to sound more repectable.