Sao Paolo's Gonna Have... a Straight 'Pride' Parade? O_o

[sapphi_snake]

@mantlepiecek:

I think the only thing that is clear is you have some sort of belief that the sufferings of the ancestors can be debted on the people of today.

No. What I'm saying is that the persecution has been continuous throughout history. Minoritites are still persecutes today. It's not as if it has magically disappeared.

Just so that it should be clear, I am not a minority.

So, privileged white kid confirmed.

But I don't really believe in dividing the society at gov level. It shouldn't happen even at social level, but it has already happened.

Pretending  problem doesn't exist won't magically make it go away. Also, society has always been divided on a governmental level.

Oh, and if you can, do tell me why being a minority makes you have special needs? And how is it fullfilled by affirmative action?

I assume that you are aware of things like 'racism', 'religious intolerance', 'homophobia' etc. Minorities don't have a strong presence in society, because well, that's kinda what being a minority entails. Majorities generally dislike anyone who is different than them. They make themselves be the status quo, and anyone who is not like them is a 'deviant'. And they can do that, because their numbers gives them the power to do so (note, not all members of a majoirty are racist, xenophobic etc., it's the conservative/traditional/nationalist part that has such tendencies). Minorities are also called high risk groups, because they're vulnerable to persecution for not being part of the mainstream. Minorities, in order to be able to survive within society without being persecuted by the majority, need laws made especially to protect them. Now, it may seem to you that these laws are discriminatory, but it's really not the case, as minorities are not equal to the majority, and the purpose of the laws is to balance things out.

Now, affirmative action came to be after segregation was over. Segregation might have ended officially, but blacks were still a socio-economic group that was at a huge disadvantage compared to whites. Blacks were poor and uneducated. They also had no access to proper education (because they were poor, and were ghettoized). They also had no chance at changing their financial situations, because of their lack of education, and the fact that whitee business owners were biased against them, and would never give them good positions, regardless of their capabilities (slavery may have ended, but they were still seen as beign suited only for slave-like positions).

Affirmative action fulfilled several functions:

a. Avoiding the underrepresentation of blacks in mainstream society.

b. Assuring that blacks would recieve education, and wind up getting good jobs, thus being able to assure their children recieved the same. This way blacks would rise from the lower class to the middle class and beyond.

c. Blacks that were actually gifted wouldn't be discriminated against due to their skin colour (especially considering the highly subjective admission criteria in US schools/universities).

Now, whether affirmative action still is relevant or outdated, I do not know.