Sorry,can't resist another comment. You are dreaming. The Democratic witch hunt has begun, and Republicans have only themselves to blame. The Republicans are going to be afraid to bring up reverse discrimination for fear of being tarred racist. The Democrats have been handed a huge Xmas present.

Sorry,can't resist another comment. You are dreaming. The Democratic witch hunt has begun, and Republicans have only themselves to blame. The Republicans are going to be afraid to bring up reverse discrimination for fear of being tarred racist. The Democrats have been handed a huge Xmas present.

The white middle and lower middle class, as well as Asians and a lot of Latinos, hate affirmative action for the same reason they hate school vouchers; it threatens the education of their children.

Dennis - I think you're mistaken. A majority of blacks opposes legislated affirmative action. Experience has refuted the hopes of affirmative action supporters, and shown that it has effects damaging to blacks, for instance it creates a cloud of suspicion around the achievements of successful blacks, while not substantially improving the lot of average blacks. Blacks may be suspicious of Republicans' motives, but they aren't going to be angry over the actual policies Republicans will pursue.



David - people may fear vouchers, but I doubt it has much to do with threats to their childrens' education. Indeed, vouchers would enhance educational opportunities. I think it has more to do with money, in two ways. (1) People expect that vouchers would increase taxes, as it would create one more entitled constituency, in addition to the teachers' unions. (2) Suburbanites fear loss of property values. Property values are high in suburbs because people with children move there to take advantage of good schools. By making quality education available everywhere, vouchers would reduce property values in suburbs. This would be especially upsetting to people with children who recently moved to the suburbs to get good schools.



The benefits of vouchers are large but remote, the costs are small but immediately evident. I think vouchers can be sold, but it will have to be a slow and incremental process.

pj, your analysis of suburbanites assumes

white (or black for that matter) parents would

not object to sending their children to city

schools if the schools were somehow "good."



That's a mighty big assumption.



Besides, the whole voucher issue also assumes

that in places that have lousy schools, the

reason is some ill-defined something (I have

never, ever seen anyone explain why these

schools are bad, except sometimes to complain

that they don't get enough money, which, if

correct, could be fixed by giving them more

tax money) that can be eliminated by privatization.



Not likely. Some social groups are antagonistic

to schooling for one reason or another. Others

might be open to schooling if they saw any

benefit to it, which they don't.



About 35 years ago, a friend was hired to

preach dental hygiene in the Southside of

Virginia. I asked her how it went.



The children, she said, were pleased and

enthusiastic until they got home, where their

parents told them, "Don't bother, everybody

loses their teeth by the time they're 40 anyway."



And until you can show them a lot of mouths

full of 50-year-old teeth, nothing can overcome

that sort of lesson.



A good private school in, say, Compton isn't

going to change anything. Unless you want to

say that the famous Catholic school there isn't

good, which, of course, is what I think. But

if you concede me that, you've conceded the

voucher argument.

BTW, some polls showing black opposition to racial preferences are here
.



Harry - Cultural problems can be great barriers to education. But there are kids from families that value education highly, and other smart kids that want to learn in spite of a lack of home support, who would respond eagerly to strong schools. They don't get the institutional support they should.



As an economist, I think it's a safe bet that any government-run and taxpayer-funded monopoly is going to deliver a lousy quality product - not just in the inner city but in the suburbs too - and that competition among client-funded schools will spawn innovation and improvement until the quality is much higher than present. These schools will find what techniques work.



You ask why we can't just point out why the schools are bad and let the government fix them. Well, that's what defenders of communism said about Soviet industries for decades too. Somehow they never could fix them. In a government monopoly, schools will never have the information or the incentives to adopt best practices. How schools can be improved is precisely what the competitive process discovers.

There is a great danger for a feel-good wimp-out on the part of the Republicans. If they waffle on guns and affirmative action they may still snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I do not trust them on A.A. Those who have gotten by on family and pull don't have a problem with bargaining over unfairness in admissions and hiring. Americans with neither connections nor negritude are watching this issue, as RKBA people are watching the assault rifle ban.

There's a bizarre contradiction to the whole Republicans and race story: they use racism for political advantage but racism is going to hurt them politically?

Orrin: I think your original point is valid but this last post's contradiction is off base. In Georgia there is a great deal of cultural segregation still, much as there is still up north in many cities. But nobody wants to be labelled 'racist' just as blacks don't want to be labelled 'colored' anymore. For some reason it just isn't acceptable. But just because you aren't 'racist' doesn't mean you want to move across town and live on the south (or north) side instead with the 'other folks'.

Tom, where have you been? I was worried.

Almost nobody, from what I hear about Georgia. What

about McKinney?



For the rest, you are there and I hope and believe you are right, Tom. It's a change from when I lived there.



And Orrin disbelieves in progress.

He believes in progress, and regress too.

I don't believe that forward movement in time is the same thing as progress.

Shoot, may as welll go back to slavery, then, Orrin.

There are great swathes of the globe where the average citizen would enjoy a better life as a Confederate slave than they have now

Not really. My grandpappy owned a slave. It was a tough life.



It's doubtful that material conditions of life almost anyplace in the world are as low now as they were for the generality in, say, 1800. One reason why I believe in at least the possibility of progress.



And besides, freedom has some value.

http://www.irinnews.org/AIDSreport.asp?ReportID=1213

Harry: Stone Mountain of KKK cross burning fame is in the middle of McKinney's old district. It used to be surrounded by poor white semi rural neighborhoods, and then was surrounded by white flight from the black half of DeKalb County who supported McKinney's ideological racism, because they were victims of equally obnoxious racism perpetrated by the whites.



But now, McKinney's district is largely split 40% middle class black, 20% poor black, 20% upper-middle class white, and 20% poor white (rich blacks live in Fulton County's Cascade Heights neighborhood, not DeKalb County, which is another example of cultural segregation).



The reason why McKinney got the boot was that the majority of the county is either white and antagonized by her boneheaded extremism or black and not stupidly ignorant of the fact that they now run things. Along with that indigenous voter equation, there is a huge Asian immigrant population which doesn't vote yet, but who economically has done very, very well. Both the whites and blacks see much to emulate in the success of the Cambodians, Indians, and other orientals who find Atlanta's climate positively wonderful. So the blacks anymore don't have much to complain about how the White Man is Keeping them Down, considering how the Pakis own half the 7-11's and gas stations in Atlanta. McKinney's defeat reflected this realization.

Thanks, Tom.



I haven't lived in Atlanta since 1963. Times

have truly changed.