Race card sighting, race card sighting.

[chumdawg]

Do you really "believe (accurately)" that racism is gone for good? I don't think you are being intellectually honest. I think what you mean is something like this: "Racism, or discrimination in general, is no longer legal, as it used to be. Hence, it no longer exists, at least in any form that is worth talking about."

But discrimination does still exist, and you know it. And you know that the government can go only so far in legislating against it. Private entities--down to and including you--can discriminate all they want and the government can't do anything about it. A country club can be all-male if it wants to, all-white if it wants to, all-female if it wants to, all-black if it wants to...nothing the government can do about it. You personally can discriminate against anyone you want to discriminate against, and there is nothing the government can do about it. Let's not act as though government-sponsored affirmative action solved discrimination in our country.

You say "we've had enough affirmative action." In also suggesting that you think the ugly parts of our past are "over," I would guess that you feel affirmative action did the job it was supposed to do. It's good that you recognize the positive effect affirmative action had. After all, the country was, what, 150 or so years old before women finally got the right to vote...but in the last few decades we have, through affirmative action, elevated blacks' status from the vestiges of slavery to the case now where they hold important positions in all areas of our government and industries. Affirmative action was much more effective than letting the natural course of things play out.

But you say enough is enough, and that it is a liberal viewpoint that we haven't finished the job. The "conservative" viewpoint you imply is not actually a conservative viewpoint but rather a reactionary one, a viewpoint that longs for the days of old.

I'm happy not to share that one with you.