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Notes -
Do you seriously think that affirmative action poses any genuine threat to the material condition of the average working class person? Maybe there are some outliers at the margins, but there are tens or even hundreds of more compelling issues at the moment.
credentialism probably a bigger problem than AA
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Objectively yes. You have to have way better test results to be accepted into an AA university than a person of a favored race.
And you can use the same "there are hundreds of more important issues" argument to abolish AA entirely.
While the working class mostly thinks AA is stupid, they have an accurate assessment that this is essentially intra elite fighting anyways. Very, very few working class kids would be going to an Ivy League or a UC school unless helped along by affirmative action, and virtually no one minimally qualified gets denied admission to podunk state.
Affirmative action covers more than colleges. It covers employment and contracting as well. That affects the white working class.
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Most working class people won't go to AA universities, by definition elite unis must only comprise a small proportion of students, and most of those will be middle or upper-middle class
This wasn't a statement about the advisability of the policy, just pointing out that it shouldn't really govern anyone's voting behaviour (on either side as it happens but the discussion here was about working class Republicans)
And as more and more racialized politics becomes the mainstream the less there will be any possibility for them to enter. Don't really see how voting for the party that wants them as second class citizens is in their interests.
What issue do you think should be more important to the working class white that would compel them to vote Blue?
Obviously I'm not saying there is some defined set of Objectively Important issues to care about, but the following I would say are patently more significant than AA to the material condition of the average WWC person;
Taxation structure, welfare provision, healthcare, housing and planning, transit (plenty of WWC live in cities despite the stereotypes) and road safety, consumer protection, minimum wages, union laws, public services in general, education (i.e. funding for schools and the like, not irrelevant culture war crap) etc. etc. etc.
Schools: The left wants teachers and schools to trans my kids.
Infrastructure in General/Public Services: The left defends dangerous hobos, one can't even defend himself from them or risk going to jail like with the Neely case.
Taxation (Total fiscal policy if you will): Fucking Biden, Inflation is eating me alive and his stooges in congress just want to spend more and make the situation worse (BTW Fuck McCArthy, useless piece of shit.).
Welfare State: I don't have anything for this one, but maybe can be linked with the taxation and inflation one.
I imagine those are more or less what they think when they contemplate the left's policies. Something more direct to them, like getting rejected from University or their kids being rejected while Jamal or Tyrone gets in with worse grades would be more important, as getting into a prestigious University (or their children doing it) in their minds, is equivalent to upward mobility and a way to avoid several of the disadvantages of being poor like the enumerated points above.
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