Affirmitive Action or Not?

Yesterday I discussed four different news items, today I have two that I want to discuss. This one and this one.

There have always been white people that felt that affirmative action was discriminatory against whites, but the idea was to level the playing field, and, maybe, to make up for past wrongs. Now we have reached the point that a lot of blacks still don't feel that they have actual equal opportunity, but a lot of whites feel that they no longer have equal opportunity, either. As a nation, we are essentially acting as a mother trying to divide some yummy desert between two rival offspring, and no matter how she cuts it, both complain that the other child got an bigger slice of the pie. Personnaly, I think we are closer to achieving Dr. Martin Luther King's dream than we ever have been before, but we aren't there yet. It seems to me that some people think that we have finished, it is equal now, and don't see the fine details that haven't been worked out yet, while others make too much of the rough edges that remain. Time will help to heal the wounds, but there are those among us who won't quit picking at the scabs, even as other problems continue to fester.

As far as school busing, I have heard some things that indicate people don't understand what busing was all about, anyway. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Topeka, Kansas Board of Education made the case for segregated educational facilities with the phrase "separate but equal." The courts ruled that separate was not equal. What the courts didn't say (probably because of the political climate at the time), was that separate could be equal, but the Board of Education hadn't made any real effort to make it equal. It was common practice that, whenever the school system needed new anything, the new stuff went to one or more of the white schools in the district, and the old stuff in the white schools was sent to the black schools. Books, desks, chalkboards, erasers, etc. were, at best, well worn by the time they got to the 'colored' schools, and sometimes the 'new' stuff at those schools arrived already broken. Black kids generally went to whichever school building in the district happened to be the oldest. Equal? hardly. By forcing the schools system to integrate classrooms, the Supreme court ensured that black kids didn't get stuck in the corner somewhere where their education was treated as an afterthought. It would have been nice if the kids had learned to share common experiences and gained the understanding that color is only skin deep, but, for the most part, the kids kept themselves segregated even while in the same classroom.

I still remember an episode of 'Good Times' where Michael was selected as part of the City of Chicago's busing program to be bused to a white school. He didn't want to go, the idea of being around kids that were different from those he was used to was a little scary (it's much easier to stick with people you know). He asked his father, James Evans (played by John Amos) if he ever had to deal with busing when he was in school. Dad's reply was classic: "Yeah, I got bused. By foot. I had to walk past three beautiful white schools to go to one crummy black school." 'Good Times' was a comedy, but there was a lot of truth in it.

The other news item, a young man from a show called 'Grey's Anatomy', claims to have fired for his color. Leading up to this, he was in the news for taunting another actor on the show regarding his sexual preferences. Isaiah Washington has expressed that he is the better actor, and that the homosexual should have been let go. My question is, if he's such a good actor, why couldn't he act as though the other man's lifestyle didn't bother him? From what I understand, none of the rest of the cast had a problem with the other cast member, but several of them felt put off by Washington's intolerance. Maybe there are others who feel the same way, but are reluctant to express it, either due to fear of reprisal, or fear of creating offence amongst other cast members. Either way, if you have a job to do, then you should do your job. If someone else at your job makes you uncomfortable, then either deal with it, or look for another job, unless that person makes you uncomfortable by doing something illegal or against company policy. Generally, there are going to be people that you are going to have to work with, that maybe you don't like their attitude, or their hygienic practices (or lack thereof), or their religion, or their skin color; but, if you get fired because you created a hostile work environment for one of your co-workers, don't cry 'discrimination' when you're the one who started it.