zlacker

>>pessim+(OP)
This is what affirmative action should be... helping people out based on their individual situation, not because their skin color or gender.

>>getmei+F5
In the United States, a lot of times the individual situation is correlated to their skin color.

The condition of being descendants of slaves, or people who faced other forms of official discrimination cited in the prevention of intergenerational wealth such as redlining, blockbusting or unfavorable treatment in the GI bill, etc., is ultimately an individual situation for each individual affected.

The idea that you can dismiss that as not an individual hardship -- though it kind of is for those impacted -- strikes me as pretty much a word game, nothing more. Not unlike the word games American laws started to use when they could no longer punish people de jure for their race.

>>asveik+Ja
I don't think anyone here is denying that there is a correlation, but there's a very legitimate question over whether policy should target the correlated trait (skin color) or the hardship itself (poverty) when trying to fix the problem.

>>lolind+rc
The issue is, a lot of problems have been nominally "fixed". But the black community on average has not caught up with the gaps created and re-enforced by these earlier systems. eg. They didn't get to participate as much as white peers in housing booms due to redlining, blockbusting, etc. So if you started out European-American in 1930 [random 20th century year], or having the same wages and being black in that same year, odds are pretty good descendants of the latter are doing poorer, due to multiple racist housing policies.

>>asveik+od
If they haven't caught up, that's presumably true as measured by several concrete metrics, correct? So the question still is: why target skin color (the correlated trait) instead of those metrics?

I'm not staking out a position here, I haven't made up my mind myself. I'm just pointing out that OP raised a valid point which you didn't really address.