Originally Posted by Indydealmaker (Post 735145)

Possibly you all should clarify your disdain for freebies (which I share). Qualify the freebies as unearned freebies. In other words not scholarships and grants for education which normally require some performance qualifiers.

It is always easy to point out the exception to the rule. The niece, granddaughter, son of a friend, etc. who get a break and climb out of the pit to excel. The reality is that hand outs are not hand ups. If this was invalid we would be buried in data showing the success of all of the welfare programs. Yet, no one trumpets a myriad of such success stories, only hit and miss anecdotes.

Those voting with their hearts have got to dig deep to realize that continued hand outs serve to enslave the recipients. We need to rework public assistance in such a manner that everyone can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Originally Posted by BarryRX (Post 735156)

I actually think that you've made my point. Your Dad couldn't get a job because his name was too ethnic, so he changed his name and had a job within a week. He experienced terrible discrimination and was denied employment he was qualified for because of his ethnicity. But he changed his name and got a job within a week. Now imagine if you will that your Dad was black. Changing his name wouldn't have helped, would it? He would have been denied employment and that just might have had a negative impact on the way your life turned out. According to historian David Oshinsky, on writing about Jonas Salk, "Most of the surrounding medical schools (Cornell, Columbia, Pennsylvania, and Yale) had rigid quotas in place. In 1935 Yale accepted 76 applicants from a pool of 501. About 200 of those applicants were Jewish and only five got in." He notes that the dean's instructions were remarkably precise: "Never admit more than five Jews, take only two Italian Catholics, and take no blacks at all." Jews and Catholics could hide their religion or change their names, but Blacks couldn't change anything. But to return to my original premise, I don't believe that the argument should be whether affirmative action should have ever existed to correct centuries of racial discrimination, but should be whether or not it has accomplished its goal and should now be ended. As I said before, I have seen no metrics that can measure its effectiveness, and I think its time for it to end.