In South Africa they all it “black empowerment,” and it appears that this policy has been yielding its natural outcome: Death.
If it were only white babies who were dying, it might be seen as a benefit. But apparently black babies are dying too, and some are people are not pleased. According to Yahoo news:
Cape Town (AFP) – South Africa’s policy of race-based affirmative action is “killing babies” and must be scrapped, the country’s Institute of Race Relations said Friday.
The institute, which spoke out against racial discrimination under apartheid, said black empowerment policies had seen unqualified people appointed to positions where their incompetence hit poor and vulnerable communities.It pointed to the deaths of three babies aged between seven and 13 months in Bloemhof in North West province this week, apparently caused by drinking contaminated tap water. Scores of others were also hospitalised.
“The Bloemhof municipality ‘lost its capacity’ to maintain the sewer plant,” the independent think-tank said in a statement quoting its Chief Executive Frans Cronje that accompanied its paper entitled “Killing Babies”.
“There is no doubt that the officials responsible for these deaths were appointed, at least in part, on grounds of race-based affirmative action and that a direct causal link therefore exists between the policy and the deaths.”
That racial preferences would lead to such results is obvious. There’s no telling how many people have died or been injured due to affirmative action over the course of the several decades it’s been in place. There’s no way to know how many innocent people sit in prison due to incompetent lawyers, how many wrong medications were prescribed, how many operations were less successful, how many businesses failed – because competence took a back seat to “diversity.”
While it’s encouraging that such concerns are now being aired publicly, I doubt they will lead to meaningful change. Instead, the powers that be will, at best, try to replace the least competent affirmative action hires with slightly less incompetent ones.
A recent article, in American Renaissance, makes me question any future travel plans I might have:
Thousands of potential FAA air traffic control trainees, with College Initiative Training (CTI) degrees or previous military experience, have been told by the federal agency they are no longer eligible for job interviews. Instead, the FAA has decided to accept less qualified applicants, apparently to satisfy concerns that the agency needs a more diverse workforce…
The initial hurdle for all applicants was based solely on a new, online biographical questionnaire that gave test takers instant results.
“It didn’t ask me anything about my college experience, my grades, my scores, (and) my ability for the actual job. It asked me what sports I played in high school. What was my least favorite subject in high school. Nothing related to aviation,” remembered Meryhew.
“I get a big red ‘X’ when I applied saying I’m not qualified, but no reason why,” explained Annie Keinholz. “Biographically ineligible.”…
“I believe that the FAA’s motivation is to gain more diversity in the hiring pool,” said Kuhlmann. “But they won’t say it in that way. They will not say it. Even on the teleconference. They’ll just say, ‘We’ve engineered the biographical questionnaire in a way that we think will promote diversity.’”
How can we fight this? I’d like to suggest a course of action. We need to make sure that every flight in the U.S. has at least one black baby on board. That way, when the inevitable midair crash occurs, we can point to the dead black babies and say: “Affirmative action kills babies!” and we can include photos of those babies for added effect.
Heh. And I am spending next winter in South Africa. (Summer there, such nice weather)
I like the photo. Everywhere in the townships you see babies fastened to mum with a towel: inexpensive, easy to clean, and you don’t need to look like a douche with it:
http://www.babybjorn.fi/images/bib-for-baby-carrier-from-babybjorn-2108-w470.jpg
There haven’t been serious black riots in over 20 years, and even the LA riots were something of a crack-fueled fluke. In Western countries, the affirmative action engine is being primarily driven by women, unsatisfied with lawful and dutiful white guys who work hard and earn the highest grades in school. They have nothing but contempt for these “nerds”. Besides, incompetent minorities help create administrative support jobs to aid them, usually filled by women.
I suspect the recent press for women in science is partially a plausibly deniable affirmative action program, but its de facto real intent is to show women to be respectful of “nerd” work that white guys do. Don’t forget that elites are always a couple steps ahead of the general thinking. Usually a couple steps in the wrong direction, but there you go.
Bringing up 1960’s era rhetoric isn’t going to work on white women unless they are hit by affirmative action too, and blacks know better than to target them until the final moment. South Africa might just be getting there…
“Instead, the powers that be will, at best, try to replace the least competent affirmative action hires with slightly less incompetent ones.”
If I know the system in S.Africa, only extreme incompetence will get an AA beneficiary dismissed, and even then only after those dismissals are sweetened with hefty payoffs. More frequently, especially for middle to high-rank corrupt black incompetents, is for them to be “suspended on full pay” “pending an investigation” of which no more is ever heard about. These suspensions usually tend to be “indefinite”. The number of middle/high-ranking blacks who have been “suspended on full pay pending investigation” must be in the thousands – many of them have probably taken other AA jobs in the meantime. Since these are government jobs, it is all paid for by (what most blacks correctly perceive to be) “whitey’s money”.
This highlight the biggest unspoken problem with AA. Normally, when someone is hired for a job they are given it after an interview (or several) during which assessment of their ability takes place. If that assessment later turns out to have been wrong, and the employee proves he does not have the ability to do the job, he/she can be dismissed. However, when rampant AA is in place, as it is in S.Africa, ability is either totally overlooked or (at best) becomes a very secondary consideration to the candidates “blackness”.
The invidiousness of AA thus becomes apparent since an AA candidate cannot easily be dismissed for incompetence since competence was not what the hirer was looking for. The candidates blackness was the main factor and since a black person will remain black (in all senses of the word) then he/she cannot in all fairness be dismissed for a quality (ability) that they were never expected to have in the first place.
I thought the hoops one had to jump through for a commercial flight excessive even before 9/11. So I guess I’m more able to see that white people should not take them.