The Slaughter-House Cases, 83 U.S. 36 (1873) was the first United States Supreme Court interpretation of the relatively new Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It is viewed as a pivotal case in early civil rights law, reading the Fourteenth Amendment as protecting the “privileges or immunities” conferred by virtue of the federal United States citizenship to all individuals of all states within it, but not those privileges or immunities incident to citizenship of a state.The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities clause affected only rights of United States citizenship and not state citizenship. Therefore the butchers’ Fourteenth Amendment rights had not been violated. At the time, the Court viewed due process in a procedural light rather than substantively. The Court further held that the amendment was primarily intended to protect former slaves and so could not be broadly applied.

This is a ruling that need to be challenged.

Achievements are independent of race and gender and eventually, we all have to take this lesson on or suffer at our own hands.

A human being who wins a race wins the race because that person wins the race. They don’t win the race because they are black, or white, or male, or female. To suggest otherwise is completely absurd and delusional.

That person won the race because he or she trained harder, worked harder, pushed him or herself harder than the rest of the competition and emerged victorious.

There is an old saying: “Someone is always rising and falling in America.”

This is a land where the individual can make it to any great height and achieve any dream he or she aspires to, as long as her or she is willing to put in the work, the dedication, the loyalty, the hours, the effort, the time.

Affirmative Action creates an invisible enemy within our own borders and subverts the American Dream that so many chase day in and day out.That invisible enemy is men in general and, as a sub-category, white men.

Affirmative Action, I would assert, achieves nothing but the disempowerment of the very groups its purports to assist by creating spiteful and hateful dialog around those groups activities and desires to achieve: i.e. women and people of races other than white who want to become CEOs or company leaders or what have you.

One responder to this thread said that racism is as old as time. S/He’s probably right.

Here is something else that is as old as time: Competition. Remember competition? Before medals for 9th place were passed out in public schools?

Affirmative action and political correctness are completely unrealistic ideological constructs that fail to reflect the clear reality: that there are a limited number of resources on planet Earth and there are billions of people competing for those resources. That’s all there is. The rest is just static, hurt feelings, noise, and the whinnies of people, white and of color, who are too lazy to get of their own rear-ends and be at the center of causing something to shift in their own lives.

Until we human beings shift our vision from one of mere survival to one of actually living and working in peace and prosperity, our probable, almost certain future is this same conversation: one in which the minorities are these oppressed figures and males in general and white males in particular are the evil oppressors; one in which Democrats whine for liberal values and a forced and false sense of “fair” and one in which Republicans bang the drums of war and corporate values.

There is a another way… there is a clearer way… to recognize that we are human first and whatever color we are second. To see one another for who we truly are: human beings, creators, capable of anything, no matter what our circumstances are. What would it be like in America if we were to let go of the notion of race altogether? What would it be like if we were to let go of the whole “men vs. women” conversation and transform that to a “men and women” conversation?

It would take a measure of goodwill, kindness, generosity, and patience that I, as one American, refuse to believe in entirely dead, despite the circumstances in the world.

Present to the flame of unity, would be able to shift the conversation from unproductive and repetitive drivel where we paint each other to be one another’s enemies to a conversation of action orienting us as members of the same team with a united purpose: rebuilding the economy of this great land and restoring the American Dream for one and all.

May peace, abundance, prosperity, and kindness be yours, my fellow American.

Affirmative action has been misused or misapplied, and even used to divide and conquer inter and intra identified groups.

Many advocates are no strangers to special interest group lobbyists and the politics of local funding and other outside pressures.
Too many are not legally skilled or other wise properly trained and qualified, so even good intentions pave the road well,but in the wrong direction.

Many of us who see whats wrong have no non conflicted place ot reaport and are blacklisted for bringing it up to boot.

There are solutions but who is available to listen and act?

Ps: Is there a better term for black listed as that term makes me uncomfortable!