A federal judge in Texas has ruled that the U.S. Minority Business Development Agency, founded during the Nixon administration, must avail itself to disadvantaged entrepreneurs of all races and ethnicities, including whites.
The summary judgment rendered on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman, appointed in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump, was the latest in a recent series of federal court decisions rolling back decades of affirmative action programs aimed at remedying racial discrimination.
Pittman, a judge in the Forth Worth branch of the Northern Texas District, sided with two white businessmen who sued the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), a branch of the Commerce Department, last year after being denied benefits on the basis of race.
The plaintiffs were told they were ineligible for agency assistance because they were not members of any of the races or ethnicities included on a list of qualified minorities presumed to be disadvantaged and thus entitled to services, according to the judge’s summary of the case.
That’s an implementation / corruption issue, then. Fix the root cause, not the symptoms.
Assuming 90% of PoC qualify, and 30% of whites (or whatever the actual numbers are), if everybody has an equal chance at aid based on their wealth, PoC should receive the majority of aid. If that’s not happening, I refer you back to point 1.
The root cause is the racism.
Black people are poorer on average because of systemic racism, and they get shut out of benefits not specifically sectioned for them and them alone because of systemic racism.
Poor whites aren’t poor because of literal centuries of being treated as literal farm animals, complete with actual husbandry programs when importation became illegal.
Poor whites aren’t struggling to find affordable housing because of being specifically excluded from New Deal era housing loans.
Poor whites aren’t facing all that on top of being disproportionately likely to just randomly get murdered by the fucking cops.
Poor Whites can afford to sit the fuck down and let the black folks have what was intended for them.
There is no such thing as the White Race. Slavs and Irish are not the same as WASPs.
Yes, so fix the racism. Get rid of the racist officials. Teaching an entire new generation that racism is acceptable if it’s against the right colour (sound familiar?) is not the way to go about eliminating racism.
By your logic, they obviously didn’t benefit from those policies either. Does it matter WHY they’re poor and struggling? Maybe we could just help everybody who’s deserving?
Oh my god, why didn’t we think about that? I’m gonna go tell everyone. I’m pretty sure you just fixed everything! Thank you!
Next, I think I’ll just stop being sad so I can stop taking my anti-depressants!
GIven your current idea of the best approach is ‘double down on the racism’, I felt I had no choice but to start with the basics.
No, all you’ve shown is a profound ignorance of the situation and why affirmative action programs are a part of the solution.
Lifting marginalized communities and peoples by providing them additional support is not racism. Full stop.
Racism has had multi-generational effects. Fixing racism now doesn’t eleviate the inequality affecting people whose ancestors were enslaved, beaten, and robbed
Oh, that should be easy.
It’s impossible to judge someone’s thoughts and reasons for why they do something, but it’s easy to enforce a set of rules that makes them do something else.
Do you know what systemic racism is? Do you believe it exists?
I’m a Chinese outside China. Believe me when I say I know very well what systemic racism is. I do not however believe the best way to combat it is by encouraging more discrimination, whoever it is against.
I believe you may think you know what it is, but I don’t think you do. Systemic racism is subtle. We likely don’t even recognize a good chunk of it yet. Even if we did, a system that assumes equality of opportunity literally systemically perpetuates the effects of racism.
If a scale has $60 on one side and $100 on the other, you will literally never restore the balance by adding money equally on both sides. The best you can do is obscure the imbalance by adding so much money that the scales start to look balanced from a distance.
Now the value of the money means nothing compared to assets (property, denied to minorities historically through policies like redlining), which will hold their value through inflation. Guess who has all the assets? The side that started with $100… so even that doesn’t work.
Ultimately, there is no way to restore the balance without the $100 side’s feelings getting hurt before because they aren’t getting as much. It’s not like white folks are being told to move out of their home so a black family can move in. Speaking as a white dude, we can stand to suck it up for a bit.
Systemic racism can be subtle. The Chinese version is blatant. I’m absolutely certain that the previous poster knows quite well what blatant state supported systemic racism looks like, they grew up in such a system. I don’t know if that would help or hinder their ability to identify such structures in the subtle ways that the US does it.
Seeing as “white” isn’t a race, there is a fundamental problem with your argument.