Yes, and Turbans Too

"What? There are Sikhs in France?"

Comments

[Jean Bart]

Yes, there are Sihks in France. One of my best friends in my bac days was a Sihk.

[Jean Bart]

BTW, given its anemic level of support in France, the proposed law appears to be DOA. Recently polling says that 60% oppose it, and a number of influential members of Parliament have attacked it or being cool to it.

[Isaac Bartram]

"The ideal of the secular republican state in which all Frenchmen are equal is so strong that the census does not count people according to race, religion or ethnic origins. Affirmative-action laws do not exist."

Sounds perfect to me. I've always wondered why the US Census Bureau needed to know such things when the only constitutional mandate is to make an enumeration.

Jean Bart, is the above statement correct?

[Jean Bart]

Isaac Bartram,

Yes, it is correct. Now whether there is covert affirmative action I can't say (I suspect that there is), but when instances of it has occurred that have been discovered, people have been fired, etc. The above rule is partly a reaction to the Dreyfus affair, and partly a reaction to the Vichy state. The reasoning is, how can the state persecute people on these grounds if it has no accurate way of knowing who is what?

[ed]

"...how can the state persecute people on these grounds if it has no accurate way of knowing who is what?"

The other side of the coin, of course, is "Who can be given special preferences if we don't know who is what?"

I entered "human" in the "race" box on the 2000 Census. There was no midnight knock on my door.
A friend attempted same on a credit application recently. He was told he had to enter a "legitimate" race. He refused. His application was refused.

[Will Spencer]

I was rejected for a firearms purchase because I put down "Irish" on the form.

Why does the government need to know how many black (white, hispanic, whatever) people buy firearms?

The *current* form has removed the Other box.

American Indian or Alaska Native
Black or African American
Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
Hispanic or Latino
Asian
White

Justice is supposed to be blind.

Affirmative Action is racism.

[Hick American]

It sounds to me like one of those situations where it is hard to judge as an outsider. Without knowing the French culture firsthand, an American could easily think this is an extremely intrusive attempt to limit religous freedom. I say let the French decide what the French want to do without a bunch of second guessing by well meaning but ill-informed busybodies from other countries. By the way, there are some unique strains to the American culture that are regularly misunderstood (rather arrogantly, I might add) by other countries and cultures.

[Mo]

The thing I hate most about those boxes is that the categories are inaccurate. I'm Egyptian, so I'm African. According to the census, I'm white because Middle Easterners are Caucasian. The worst of both worlds.

[Douglas Fletcher]

I am Sikh of France.

I can't believe no one beat me to it.

By the way, I did enjoy France during my short time on the Riviera. Lovely town, Cannes, beautiful harbor and they have the best french bread you'll ever taste. Seriously.

[dhex]

france should do what it wants but this is a total bitch move. and it's only going to bite them in the ass in the end.

there's something sickening about any attempt to homogenize a group, especially when its done with so little shame.

[Wes Ulm]

Those census form categories represent the worst form of obsessive human categorization, that propensity to shoehorn people into pre-ordained pigeonholes that don't necessarily fit them. My biggest gripe with them is the way people of radically disparate heritages and experiences are lumped carelessly together for gov. programs, including AA. I have mixed feelings about affirmative action, but no matter what my feelings about racial preference programs in principle, I'm outraged at the abuses that regularly take place in practice b/c of the boneheaded legerdemains that are allowed with the census classifications. For example, I've seen cases like those in which the blond, half-Cuban, playboy-partying son of a 7-figure/year businessman -- and who speaks not a word of Spanish-- marks Hispanic on some lame census form b/c of Daddy's Havana heritage and, presto!, now he's lumped together with the dirt-poor kids of a Mexican migrant farm worker family that survives on a shoestring in some thorny, snake-infested orange field in So. Cal. And he's entitled to all manner of preference programs in college admissions, hiring, and contracts, well beyond any regard offered the indigent daughter of Vietnamese boat people who fled SE Asia in 1975 or the destitute son of a West Virginia coal miner who was compelled to toil in the mines himself from age 16 to support his ailing father and siblings. Absolute, f*&%ing bullshit!!! This happens all the time, and it's b/c the supposed "caring people" administering the AA programs, claiming to be helping the underdog, in fact are just looking for ways to boost their bean-counting quotas, to claim that they've reached "minority hiring/admissions targets" when in fact all they've done is recruited a bunch of spoiled, already-privileged people who, b/c of idiotic quirks in census classifications, can claim some superficial status as minorities.

The practical effect of this is that (1) poor minorities for whom AA is supposedly intended-- the African-American boy on a Newark street corner or the Guatemalan kid forced to work in a meat-packing factory from age 15-- get royally shafted, b/c they don't have the contacts and the access to exploit the Affirmative Action offers (and the AA administrators sure don't give a rat's ass about them), while (2) rich, already privileged minority kids get a dream ride. The term "Hispanic" is a cultural and ethnic definition, *not* a racial one, and it's outrageous that English-only-speaking rich-kid offspring of wealthy Argentinian or Costa Rican immigrants get to take advantage of a preference system originally designed to aid dirt-poor, discriminated-against blacks. FWIW, if somebody speaks not a word of Spanish or Portuguese, *they should not be able to claim themselves as an underrepresented Hispanic minority*, no matter whether their last name is Garcia or Lopez or Gonzalez-- if they go to Latin America spouting off in English like any "gringo" north of the border, they'd be considered Anglo no matter what their heritage. To be even regarded as "Hispanic" on the census forms and qualify for AA, they should actually, like, speak Spanish or Portuguese *and have grown up under adverse conditions*-- specifically, grinding poverty. Supposedly, the Supreme Court's recent decisions on AA in the UMich case were supposed to refine and retool affirmative action programs to "individualize" them and demand consideration of individual cases sans a blanket point system, to make sure that minorities receiving preferences weren't privileged scions of wealthy families, but street kids who actually had to struggle while young.

Yet the abuses continue. I recently learned of the case of a girl with a Spanish last name (let's just use "Rodriguez" here for the sake of privacy) who qualified for a major grad-school fellowship based on her supposed Hispanic heritage. And the problem with that? She's blonder than Pamela Anderson and hails from a privileged family of emigrants from northern Spain (probably descended from Spanish Visigoths of the 5th century). And she speaks *no Spanish at all*. Yet some idiot in the Census Bureau allows her to label herself as an "underrepresented, underprivileged member of the Hispanic minority." Never mind that she's taking a fellowship spot from some struggling Indian girl from Honduras; the fact that the fools who structure AA programs would allow such an outrage, testifies to the fact that many, if not most, liberal proponents of AA really don't care one whit about providing genuine help for poor minorities.

AA as it?s currently practiced is a racket. To fix it, I?d suggest one of two things. (1) Just base it on socioeconomic status, for crying out loud, w/o regard to race. Of all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, growing up impoverished is a tremendous disadvantage b/c it limits access to everything?easy transportation to and from school, computers, test-prep options, extra courses?that helps boost GPA?s and SAT scores. So don?t worry about race one way or the other; base affirmative action on economic adversity. It will disproportionately aid African-Americans and Hispanics anyway b/c of current income distributions, but it?ll also give a boost to the poor rural white kids or the desperately poor Cambodians or Filipinos who are screwed and ignored under the current scheme. (2) If race/ethnicity absolutely has to be considered for an AA program, *confine the consideration to poor blacks and Native Americans*. These two groups of people have, indeed, been royally screwed throughout US history time and time again and are stuck in squalid conditions that do owe, in part, to their unique historical circumstances. No affirmative action for other ethnic groups and recent immigrants; no affirmative action for wealthy white women or rich silver-spoon-in-mouth sons of well-heeled alumni (including budding George W. Bushes); absolutely no AA for upper-class, English-speaking kids of Venezuelan immigrants who claim, dubiously, to be ?Hispanic? and ride on the coattails of migrant farm workers. Poor blacks and native Americans, only, qualify for AA. If our politicians actually cared about formulating a sensible and effective policy, they?d implement such reforms. But I wouldn?t count on it; they?re too busy scratching each other?s backs and eschewing taxes with their offshore corporate accounts. Screwing the country in the process.

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