Putting yourself in someone's shoes is a literal hypothetical argument and is not BS as you so eloquently describe. Empathy and sympathy are merely constructs. I can be empathic all damned day and sympathetic to your plight - it doesn't change one damn thing. You are still in your plight and I am not.

*I feel sorry for you and your closed and selfish world views.*

Whatevah! Hope, change giddy-up!

Donna said, "*I urge you to try to envision yourself in someone else's shoes.*"

Hypothetical arguments are useless in these situations. All you end up doing is poorly approximating based on your own reference points of reality.

WillieOsi, what exactly would you like to see "reparations" achieve? They won't make certain peoples more equal or less inferior or more superior. State-sponsored terrorism? Hardly. To consider that peonage continues because of the actions of a government that ended ~150 years ago is ludicrous. How much do you want? What is it that you want? To take and take and take without appropriate merit from those who have achieved based on merit is insanity.

Donna, you wrote earlier, "That's an absurd statement, js1976, and extremely elitist. So you're saying that young people with less-than-stellar "qualifications" (compared to others in the poll) shouldn't be admitted to college!?!" He maybe didn't say it, but I will. Yes, if that person's qualifications pale in comparison to someone else, then they shouldn't be admitted. Not everyone who graduates high school (JPS or St. Andrews or Dallas Country Day) deserve to go to college. It is a privilege that should be earned. Yes, Ronni and Donna, there are those whose parents "paid" little Johnny's way into Harvard. In an ideal world, he would've been summarily rejected.

The point being (all off-topic rhetoric above, aside) is that to preferentially pick students based on factors not of the student's choice (age, sex, ethnicity) is inherently wrong and prejudicial. Did little miss-what's-her-name deserve to get into UT? Maybe, maybe not. Did others get admitted over her for non-academic reasons? If so, then SCOTUS handed down the correct opinion.

And, can we please stop the "reparations" argument? Everyone, at some point, has been harmed by unfair practices either individually or as a group. "I didn't get into Moo U because I'm (insert race, age, sex, SAT, blah blah)." Boo Hoo! Not every department store carries the brand of boxers I prefer. I find another store. It's not unfair - it's life.

Oh, and I look forward to Donna's oration and just what obligation a government-run university has to "...attempt to make up for years of discrimination against non-whites, women, etc., because the discrimination was, in effect, social engineering that has affected entire communities and their ability to achieve parity and wealth." As my east Mississippi ancestors would say, "that's a fer (spelling to the best of my aural approximation) stretch."

Bravo, js1976. The only factors that should be deciding college admissions are intellect and ability.

Donna, I admit that I just vurped a little. How, pray tell, does one put money in the pockets of the poor without not putting it in the pockets of thosevwho, most likely, worked to earn it?

Donna, *seriously*? I would think that Mr. Nave's quote from Secretary Hosemann would be self-explanatory. After plus-minus 50 years, Mississippi is free of (some of) the shackles that the majority of the Union enjoys.

*Free at last, free at last...*

Finally, can Mississippi join the rest of the Union, please?

As credible an economic theory as ujamaa, espoused by an unabashed socialist. Point being, redistribution for redistribution's sake is wrong, period.

Quotas are, quite simply, wrong. When the advancement of an ideal/project is rooted in race or disproportionate impact (*First off, you have to put money into the pockets of the poor. You have to make them not poor," Lumumba told the Jackson Free Press during an April interview. "What that does is that creates a better economy for everybody.*) doom is certain. My goodness, has no one read *The Fountainhead*?