Garvey's Ghost: Black Talk

The GOP for Quotas

During the first Bush administration, Bush put his half cent in on the Affirmative Action policy of the University of Michigan. He and most "conservatives" are against "quotas." That is they claim that it is discriminatory and wrong to set aside jobs and the like to "certian groups." They say that groups should compete and the market should rule. So it seems odd that the NY Times is reporting that the Bush administration is supporting an idea that Sunni Muslims in Iraq should have some ministries and other governmental positions for them as they are expected to make a poor showing in the upcoming Jan elections.

quote:
An even more radical step, one that a Western diplomat said was raised already with an aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric, is the possibility of adding some of the top vote-getters among the Sunni candidates to the 275-member legislature, even if they lose to non-Sunni candidates.

The diplomat said even some Shiite politicians who were followers of Ayatollah Sistani were concerned that a Pyrrhic victory by Shiites, effectively shutting Sunni Arabs out of power, could alienate Sunnis and lead to more internal strife. Shiites make up about 60 percent of Iraqis and were generally denied power under Saddam Hussein.

No matter what the reasoning, this is clearly Affirmative Action and/or a quota system. One has to wonder why AA and quotas are ok in Iraq but not ok in the US as it concerns Black people. Blacks in the US make up proportionally less of the US population than Sunnis do in Iraq, yet there has never been a suggestion that Blacks, historically denied power in the US, should recieve representation in key areas of government in proportion to their population. In fact in various states, districts have been redrawn specifically to reduce black representation (by cutting up democratic districts).

Of course we will probably never hear a peep by black conservatives who prop the party line about quotas 'cause just like their white counterparts they know that quotas are only a problem as it pertains to black folks.

Links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/26/international/middleeast/26diplo.html?hp&ex=1104037200&en=dc34a08c61975e6d&ei=5094&partner=homepage