This Is Affirmative Action In Action!

Alright kids, since it's the last week of january  i'm gonna give you a recap of a typical first month of the year week one we still say happy new  year to one another week two a number of people let go of their resolutions in week three martin  luther king jr's legacy will be whitewashed and one of his quotes will be conveniently repeatedly  taken out of context which also means we're a week away from february the month of valentine's  day grocery store shelves have been warning us about this s

ince december 26th but black  history month is coming too and you can expect the usual complaints about affirmative action  black entertainment television hbcus and well a black history month nonetheless just to name  a few with the things that just name being for us by us as you'll see today middle america  has forgotten why they were created in the first place so i would like to provide context  to give them reasons to let it go the x factor in the miseducation of the united states is that  it

could all be so simple i mean the this country elected a black man for president twice how can  america be racist type of person would rather make it hard show them the exit polls from the  2008 and 2012 presidential elections proving that if it were left up to them obama wouldn't be  president in the first place so what are we doing move on i'll elaborate about these later because  i'm assuming i can't explain things away with well all tv was white at one point never mind  a channel and all co

lleges were white too plus there's 12 white history months let's start with  affirmative action stay with me affirmative action has helped white women more than anyone and it's  not like that's a new thing it's been this way for decades there's so much info backing up the  fact that affirmative action benefits white women the most that you would think people would  stop bringing it up in regards to black folk but here we are originally women weren't even included  in the government's attempts to

level the playing field in education and employment this should  be seen as an admission of guilt on the part of america and at first affirmative action  in america was an executive order signed by president kennedy in 1961 requiring that federal  contractors take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and employees are treated  during employment with regards to their race creed color or national origin with that said  it was in 1967 when president johnson changed this to inc

lude sex recognizing that women also  face many discriminatory barriers and hurdles to equal opportunity you know having been kept  from owning property voting not being able to get bank accounts without men and all so if left  up to schools and employers to show that they did their job to ensure not only that hiring and  promotion are handled in a colorblind manner but that good faith efforts are made to include  and promote members of underrepresented groups it should include women veterans di

sabled persons  and of course racial minorities when it comes to the hiring pools and college admissions  if an applicant is qualified bring them in give them a chance if this were happening there  would be no need to have to consider race and other identity factors the focus instead goes  to racial preferences how many studies do we need to see which prove that if you have an ethnic  sounding name like jamal versus a white sounding name such as greg employers are less likely to  call you back e

ven when credentials are equal also black people without criminal records may  be less likely to get callbacks than white people with criminal records we know why affirmative  action is necessary it's still being marketed as a tool used to create the best interest of the  state diversity that doesn't stop people from claiming i remember when i was interviewing for  a law professor job at one point and i was told point blank that i was not likely to get this  job because of my skin color i was ta

ken aback that i would be told that so bluntly by someone  in law school more on this later but shout out to the jamaals of the world for getting that bag  by the way as for college admissions take a look at one of the most famous affirmative action  cases that reach the supreme court for example abigail fisher who sued the university of texas  and was used by edward bloom to kill affirmative action when she didn't get in i'm going to read  this verbatim because it's so good there is ample evide

nce that fisher just wasn't qualified to get  into the university of texas after all her grades weren't that great in the years she applied  for the university admissions were actually more competitive than harvard in its court filings  the university has pointed out that even if fisher received a point for her race she still wouldn't  have met the threshold for admissions yes it is true that in the same year the university of texas  made exceptions it admitted some students with lower grades an

d test scores than fisher five of  those students were black or latino 42 were white she went on to attend lsu and i believe it was  her second choice and i hope she's doing well for herself but again the issue of affirmative action  is made out to be about black people and speaking of harvard that affirmative action case will at  least be heard by the supreme court soon regarding east asian and south asian students allegedly  being discriminated against but if that's the case isn't it for the s

ake of white males trust me  when i say this white boy's self-esteem isn't hurt when they get ahead because of daddy or daddy's  money as we proceed there's this thing called mismatch where opponents of affirmative action say  placing minorities especially black people in say mit despite having lower gpas and sat scores on  average hurts them the idea is that mentally and emotionally we'd be putting these under qualified  students in situations where they are unlikely to succeed but maybe they c

ould if they just attend  less prestigious less selective schools that their less than stellar achievements have earned  them something something something failure rate something something students get turned away  who are more qualified they say they don't want students to feel intellectually inferior and  poorer students to not be challenged in high school but why try if they're only required to  do far less to get where others are who do more i can acknowledge that that could be a problem but

  i'm not even going to look at how prevalent this is because for every case i'm going to wonder if  there's a brilliant black brown or native student poor or not who will never see college campuses  because of difficulties in overcoming social determinants in the zip code they were born in  attending schools with less resources being stuck on a reservation you know things that came about  through intentional policies and indifference let's not make affirmative action about  quotas or unqualifie

d people being hired over qualified people those are largely myths as  a black man while i recognize a need for it i don't even like affirmative action that much or  the idea of it tagging along anything i accomplish also you know who doesn't have to live with this  stigma white women as i alluded to earlier based on what we know why don't we hear more about  legacy admissions in college for white students why don't we hear more about homogeneous hires  just to keep things white we never hear wh

en white women get jobs they weren't supposed to get  no offense to white women hi hi white women nice lululemon leggings in terms of grades in school  white women outperform most american demographics in all age groups including white men and a  growing trend over the last 40 years shows that women attend and graduate from college way  more than men and are improving in stem subjects white women are killing it yet they can still use  some assistance when it comes to managerial roles even furthe

r executive level c-suite positions  in her majority opinion from the 2002 supreme court's decision to maintain affirmative action  at the university of michigan sandra day o'connor wrote that race conscious admissions policies  must be limited in time adding that the court expects that 25 years from now the use of racial  preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today that 25-year mark  is almost six years from now but based on what's going on with harvard it may

not even get  there middle america is only complaining about affirmative action because they either don't know  they're benefiting from it or they don't care and they assume it's for black people the privilege  of it all let it go moving on in 1979 black entertainment television was created by robert  l johnson an entrepreneur who will later become america's first black billionaire who is also  a supporter of reparations for slavery remember that when someone talks about black people wanting  h

andouts and victim mentality bet began with just two hours of weekly programming and before  it featured news political commentary comic view for stand-up comedians in the bet awards  early on its staple was this new thing called music videos apparently you would just visually  perform the songs that one would normally hear which led to the network's popularity and growth  in cable tv's infancy this helped to fill the gap of black talent who were not getting a spotlight  elsewhere an example of

this comes from this one channel called music television and here's david  bowie during an interview interrogating mtv about why they don't play black artists it occurred to  me having watched mtv over the last few months um that it's it's it's got it's a solid enterprise  with it and it's got a lot going for it i'm just flawed by the fact that there's so many so few  black artists featured on it why is that a lot on the there's a one black station on television  that i keep picking up i'm not s

ure which station it's on but there's a there seem to be a lot of  black artists making very good videos that i'm surprised aren't used on mtv you know you messed  up when you got ziggy started us on you by the way is that black station he mentioned bet bob pittman  creator of mtv claimed that their programming was predicated on playing rock and roll specializing  that genre for their sound and at the time mtv was primarily being watched by  suburban america who paid for the channel side note th

e american recording industry used  to distinguish between white rock and black rhythm and blues formerly known as race records  apparently a song like super freak by rick james wasn't considered rock enough for mtv it wasn't  until michael jackson in his video for billie jean that black artist started to get rotational  mtv there's a story that an executive at michael jackson's label forced mcb to play billie jean on  air whether or not that's true even if mtv were racist and discriminating aga

inst black artists  you would have to be stupid to not rush and drop everything and air this video of michael  jackson turning on everything as it goes but think about that the greatest selling album of  all time in its most popular song the one where mj introduces moonwalk is what led mtv to showcase  more black artists with black artists dominating and hip-hop taking over today people could  question the ongoing need for bet think of it as a digital chinatown or a mexican barrio and let it  go

i can see if bet didn't play white artists who played black music by the way but that's not  the case the same thing goes for historically black colleges and universities bringing this  full circle we know why hbcus were created because historically college and universities were  white european americans could be boasting about the fact that the very first hbcu was created by  a white man and you know this and we talked about it before but no no it's why do they exist and  not historically whit

e institutions still today up to 24 percent of the students who attend hbcus  aren't black move on middle america black people aren't doing to you what you do to black people  questioning if bet or hbcus were necessary or are necessary could be answered if they would  take a month one month to learn about black history we're gonna be all right i didn't leave  a lot of time to talk about the creation of black history month but again we know where it came from  and why it came about right no more

false okay