Affirmative Action

[Don John of Austria]

[quote name='dUSt' timestamp='1305678422' post='2243024']
Because they are white.
[/quote]
that doesn't seem racist at all now does it

[MithLuin]

[quote name='jaime (the artist formerly known as hot stuff)' timestamp='1305678599' post='2243026']
and if you are forced to hire a hobbit, that's Tolkienism
[/quote]

I'll admit that, all other criteria being equal, I'd hire the hobbit.

Or a guy with a New Zealand accent.

[MIKolbe]

[quote name='dUSt' timestamp='1305667968' post='2242975']
No, it means that 99.9999999999% of the white people are smarter than you.
[/quote]
shirley, you jest.

[MithLuin]

Don't call me Shirley.

Anthony Hopkins playing Othello was apparently not unusual. It's not clear who the 'Moor of Venice' was meant to be (an Arab or a person from Subsaharan Africa or what.) It was, of course, controversial, because he beat out James Earl Jones for the role ([url=http://stagematters.blogspot.com/2007/11/othello-on-film-hopkins-fishburne.html]the BBC didn't want an American actor[/url]). Thanks to Wikipedia....

[quote]Othello was frequently performed as an Arab Moor during the 19th century. He was first played by a black man on the London stage in 1833, by Ira Aldridge. However, the first major screen production casting a black actor as Othello would not come until 1995 with Laurence Fishburne opposite Kenneth Branagh's Iago (not that there have been many major screen productions of Othello). In the past, Othello would often have been portrayed by a white actor in blackface or in a black mask; more recent actors who chose to ‘blacken up’ include Lawrence Olivier (1965), Anthony Hopkins (1981) and Orson Welles. Ground-breaking black American actor Paul Robeson played the role from 1930-1959. The casting of the role comes with a political subtext. Patrick Stewart played the role in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1997 staging of the play and Thomas Thieme, also white, played Othello in a 2007 Munich Kammerspiele staging at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford. Michael Gambon also took the role in 1980 and 1991; their performances [were] critically acclaimed.
...
In 1997, Patrick Stewart took the role of Othello with the Shakespeare Theatre Company (Washington, D.C.) in a race-bending performance, in a "photo negative" production of a white Othello with an otherwise all-black cast. Stewart had wanted to play the title role since the age of 14, so he and director Jude Kelly inverted the play so Othello became a comment on a white man entering a black society. The interpretation of the role is broadening, with theatre companies casting Othello as a woman or inverting the gender of the whole cast to explore gender questions in Shakespeare's text. Companies also have chosen to share the role between several actors during a performance.[/quote]

Who knew? But again, I mentioned that stage productions tend to treat race a bit more broadly than film.

Not that film can be left out entirely. There's plenty of fake race/ethnicity/nationality going on onscreen. Anthony Hopkins has also played Don Diego in [i]The Mask of Zorro[/i] Check out [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeNationality]TV Tropes[/url] for more examples (warning: this website can smell of elderberries up hours of your time if you aren't careful....)

[add]

opportunity means giving someone a chance, I'm fine with that
don't judge a book by its cover

[Jesus_lol]

perhaps we could all choose another example? as we have kind of been beating the "black guy gets the white guy's job" scenario to death. how about a more recent one? i know in canada that the Residential schools (afaik, ran by vatican and anglican churches) existed up until 1980. the sole real purpose of those institutions was to erase the Native american culture(although, they were pitched more as targeted education), and were infamous for countless cases of institutionalized abuse and molestation, rape, beatings, accidental deaths, harsh conditions, and then the whole forcing children to lose their culture.

those existed until 1980s as i said, so many of the native american people affected by them are still here, along with their parents and grandparents. Very horrifying scenario. that coupled with the isolation and other bad factors in the native reserves has practically destroyed the strength of the native community. now living in ghettos basically, beset by drug abuse and crime.

the canadian government does some affirmative action to help them now, i dont know the extent of it, but it includes cheaper groceries, essentials, scholarships and other programs. your thoughts?

[Socrates]

[quote name='MithLuin' timestamp='1305574756' post='2242439']
Haha, I was waiting for someone to point this out. It only took 25 pages .
[/quote]
I counted 23, but maybe it was my computer

[quote name='dUSt' timestamp='1305574948' post='2242443']
This argument would only hold weight if black people were in the position of social power.
[/quote]
I don't understand a word you just said.

[quote name='Era Might' timestamp='1305576845' post='2242470']
Most professional athletes are out of the league in a few years. The number of players making huge bank is small, and even those players are only useful for a small window frame until their 30s when their bodies break down and they are no longer useful. While professional athlete salaries are relatively large in comparison to "normal" salaries, athlete salaries are not large in the context of professional sports, where the real power is concentrated in the movers and shakers (owners, corporate sponsors, coaches, etc). Black head coaches have increased, but are still less common than black athletes. And I don't know of any black owners. Athletes are like horses: they use up their bodies until they have to be taken out back and shot. Part of historical racism in America was blacks being objects of sport and amusement for white audiences (in sports, blackface comedy, etc). Some people would argue that tradition continues in professional sports. And of course, the audiences in sports arenas are mostly white.

I note all this not in reference to the topic of this thread (affirmative action), but in reference to the idea that professional sports is an example of extensive black success in American society. The actual "stars" (white or black) in professional sports are very few. And there is not much long-term viability in sports...being a professional athlete is like being a celebrity or winning the lottery...a pipedream for the majority of people. Many athletes get a rude awakening once their career is over and they have no idea how to deal with a "normal" life...being a gladiator was all they knew.
[/quote]
Seems everybody missed the point of that post.

My point was simply: Does every case of racial inequality in a profession or business necessarily mean there is racism at work which needs to be remedied by government action?
Were the players drafted on account of their skin color, or on their ball playing ability?

[dUSt]

This thread is racist.

[Laudate_Dominum]

My dog is racist.

[Winchester]

I invented dogs.

[Laudate_Dominum]

This:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bb7FoD2qcE[/media]

Therefore I win.

[Era Might]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ppisOulgG0[/youtube]

I win. Don't even try to top it. Just close the thread in tribute to my pwnage.

[MIKolbe]

I cannot overcome this pwnage. Era wins.

[Groo the Wanderer]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bAN7Ts0xBo&feature=player_detailpage[/media]

Edited May 18, 2011 by Groo the Wanderer

[Winchester]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqzt3T4R38c[/media]