France’s interior minister and presidential hopeful, Nicolas Sarkozy, “proposes a form of ‘affirmative action’ to help quell violence.”
… Sarkozy, buoyed by an opinion poll saying his approval rating had soared by 11 points since the rioting started on October 27, told the senate that “some positive discrimination is needed to provide opportunities to France’s young.”
One (but only one) of the problems with “positive discrimination” is that it requires “negative discrimination.” That, in turn, is one of the reasons I never speak, or write, of “reverse” discrimination or “positive” discrimination.
UPDATE
Meanwhile, across the pond, The Guardian is pleased to report:
Diversity appears firmly on the agenda at the civil service after it emerged last month that bosses could lose part of their bonus payments if their departments fail to meet government targets on employing ethnic minorities. But with no similar incentives in the private sector, Britain’s largest companies are lagging behind when it comes to black and brown faces in the upper echelons.
So the message is clear, at least in the public sector: go forth and hire “black and brown faces,” and hope that those faces are accompanied by brains, relevant experience, and skills.
affirmative action won’t solve the problem. the problem is not a civil rights problem. its what has been going on since time began. the real issue is which race, culture, religion is going to win. muslims don’t want better jobs, they want to live in an islamic world just the way that europeans live in a european world. europeans and whites, even conservatives, don’t realize this because they are liberal, in the sense of believing in the transcendence of western values of equality under the law, religious tolerance, individuality and all the rest of it. they can’t imagine that others think differently, so they say oh its jobs, etc. also whites are the successful group and they take that for granted. so they don’t realize to what extent everything around them is the product of western civ. they think that it is “natural”. but to muslims to walk around and see examples of western art everywhere, western religion, just to give one example is very galling. they hate it. and there is nothing that can change this. they want to be where they are king, where their religion and culture are the masters. they are not liberal. this attitude is partly human nature and partly a feature of islam itself. its history is a history of conquest and forced conversion. the feeling they have about their religion is a feeling westerners have not had for centuries. we try to deal with this by blaming ourselves, if only we did this or that. what we do does not matter.
Anita,
I think that is more an issue with white elites. From the French opinion polls and anecdotes I’ve read in the last few days, the French do not want more benefits, special favors, and privileges for rioting “youths”. But the white elites will not care as long as they can shelter themselves from the effects of their policies. Then the choice the voters will be left with is a radical Socialist party that will increasingly get votes only from radicalized North Africans, a wishy-washy Chirac-type or a little more stern Sarkozy who still wants to affirmative action the white middle class (but not the white upper class) out of jobs, and the fascist Le Pen. Then a bunch of the French will vote for Le Pen, the elite white leftists of the world and the UN will decry white racism while ignoring the increasingly intense low-level civil war, and it’ll just keep going on until a massive civil war or an uneasy truce that will further erode the rights of white French.
Anita writes:
>>>”affirmative action won’t solve the problem. the problem is not a civil rights problem. its what has been going on since time began. the real issue is which race, culture, religion is going to win.”
Now, don’t interpret this as anything other than a question, because I want to hear more from you on this concept.
What is this concept of “winning” in regards to “race, culture and religion” you describe?
This is truly fascinating.
–Cobra
the west is based on western culture. western culture is found desirable to everyone in the world to some extent, at least more than other cultures. western ideals of how humans should live are acknowledged to be what everyone should strive for. everyone wants the results of western science. people flock to western and western style universities. people are not flocking to islamic universities or budhist universities or african universities, unless these institutions are western. everything that you say Cobra is based on western ideas of what is due to human beings. these ideas do not exist anywhere else. you and i both can live in the west with more freedom and happiness than we would find in an islamic or african country. there is a genuine brain drain african countries because of all the educated africans that leave to come to the west. this is the reality that we all have to live with. all cultures share the same evils, but they don’t share virtues. of course the west has its faults. because westerners are humans and also because liberalism has inherent limitations. when i say win i mean that all humans want to walk around and see their culture, their kind , their values affirmed. when westerners experience this they think it is just normal life. they don’t realize how different it is from most cultures. what westerners have muslims want. all cultures have been successful in their day. but the success of the west is overwhelming. it produces desire and hatred. the muslims also want all the advantages of the west and none of the disadvantages. they want, for instance, the technology, without the attitudes that bring about the technology. one good thing about the west is that westernization is not a matter of race, though it originated with western, that is, white people. I am a westerner though you might say I am not. at least this is how it has been so far. different peoples adapt in different ways to living in a foreign culture. muslims want everything to be muslim. there is no western style tolerance for them. it is inconceivable that christians could spread and prosletyze in a muslim country the way that they do in the west, to give just one example. i understand how they feel, believe it or not. but i don’t want to live in their culture, or any culture, where my father can force me to marry someone or i can’t get a decent job unless i have a relative there already or i can’t protest something without being imprisoned or worse. only in the west is it possible to work for civil rights for minority groups.