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- Xref: sparky misc.education:5549 soc.culture.african.american:13238
- Newsgroups: misc.education,soc.culture.african.american
- Path: sparky!uunet!think.com!enterpoop.mit.edu!bloom-picayune.mit.edu!athena.mit.edu!solman
- From: solman@athena.mit.edu (Jason W Solinsky)
- Subject: Re: What A White Person Learned in College About AfAm Culture
- Message-ID: <1992Dec24.224317.25542@athena.mit.edu>
- Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: m37-318-2.mit.edu
- Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- References: <14RwVB2w165w@netlink.cts.com> <1992Dec18.045728.27773@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
- Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 22:43:17 GMT
- Lines: 21
-
- In article <1992Dec18.045728.27773@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, ndw2u@curry.edschool.Virginia.EDU (Nicole Danielle Woodard) writes:
- |> I am shocked at what I am reading on this network! It is 1992
- |> and this sounds like the rhetoric of a century ago. If you
- |> know your history so well then you realize that affirmative
- |> action has its roots in the veterans preference programs that
- |> were started after World War I. It was not called affirmative
- |> action merely "preference". This preferential treatment lead
- |> to access to housing, loans, education, jobs, etc. People did
- |> not claim that it was "unfair" for veterans to have access to
- |> these opportunities yet this supposed "unfairness" is the
- |> premise that people use to end affirmative action policies.
-
- The reason for this was that people generally felt that veterans deserved
- to be treated better. The two world wars had a tremendous level of popular
- support, and the men who fought and risked their lives while earning less
- than fair pay were considered above those who didn't. Every single person
- that lost a job because of this preference personally owed the veterans a
- debt. Virtually everybody benefited from the war (or thought they had),
- but only the veterans had to risk their lives.
-
- Jason W. Solinsky
-