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Re:Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old by _casperc on Thursday November 08, 2012 @11:44AM (#4758530)
You are not helping people because of their race, so why use that to select who gets help? There are rich black people as well as there are poor white people.
Re:Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old by rayiner on Thursday November 08, 2012 @02:14PM (#4759347)
Think of this mathematically. We did something very wrong at time T = 0. It is a matter of fact that economic wrongs are self-perpetuating and long-lived. Thus, at time T = 450, you can isolate, statistically, some economic disadvantage in any black person who can trace their lineage back as being affected by that original wrong at T = 0. It doesn't matter how rich they are--they would be incrementally richer had that wrong not occurred.

At the same time, the poor white person benefited from that original wrong, and you can isolate, statistically, some economic advantage to him tracing back to that original wrong. It doesn't matter how poor he is, he would be incrementally poorer had that wrong not occurred.

Re:Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old by iy56 on Thursday November 08, 2012 @05:28PM (#4760240)
The harms and benefits you are talking about are not quantifiable in a commonly-agreed-upon way. I think that's a prerequisite for the kind of analysis you want to do.
Re:Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old by rayiner on Thursday November 08, 2012 @06:24PM (#4760453)
This is a common flaw in reasoning--just because harms or benefits are not easily quantifiable does not mean that they should be assumed to be zero.
Re:Obama's Secret Weapon In The South is 129 Million Years Old by tedunangst on Thursday November 08, 2012 @10:25PM (#4761105)
What percentage of the US population is descended from people who primarily immigrated after 1865?