Should they be able? They are able! Barack Obama makes the same salary as George W. did. This question ought to ask, should black people have access to the same opportunities as white people? Or better yet, should poor people have access to the same opportunities as rich people?

Should educational institutions allow preferential treatment by admissions staff of children/families of alumni?

Should public schools be granted vastly different budgets depending on the socioeconomic status of the populations being served?

Should early childhood education be a free publicly provided service for all parents?

Of Course! This question shouldn't even need to be asked!

Why is this even a debate?! Obviously, for the same job, black people should be paid the same as white people.

Well I geuss you must still be jet lagged from your trip to 1945, black people, white people, tan, asian, every race ( excluding purple people ) get paid the same already.

Black people should get paid more than white people because they spend more time working and less time trying to get a tan ;)

Well...., the ones that work any way ;)

UH DUH, Whoever came up with this topic should be banned from this site... Why wouldn't or should I say shouldn't a black American be able to make just as much or more than a Caucasian fellow? We work as hard or just as hard as they do. My question back is, this really an equal opportunity country was there really reason for asking this question?

Of course they should and I would hope they do in this day and age. There's not one reason I can think of where a black person doesn't deserve the same salary for the same job as a white person.

Yes, of course, no reason not to. They are human begins like the rest of us, none different than white people other than past culture and skin color.

what the hell! thats not even a question. These aren't arguments and you need to get a life. and yes i knew this question was sarcastic but look at his fat unibrow.

Yes because black people are no different from white people so why waste time?

wow, what an original and new topic... my mind has officially been blown by the depth of analysis required to even begin to digest the complexities of the issue... should black people be treated equal...

(I hope someone detects the sarcasm, I'm laying it on pretty thick)

Perhaps the question was supposed to be "are they" paid as much.

In which case, it depends. (disclaimer, I gradutaed with a minor in Anthropoly in 2003, so some specifics may have been updated, but I believe the general synopsis as we know it so far is accurate.)

First I would like to put the world in a little bit of perspective. Human beings are by instinct a pack animal. Through evolution we've been bread to cluster in groups who share similar characteristics. According to the oldest fossils available, the first "modern" humans were actually black, (so if there were an Adam and Eve, which there wasn't, guess what, they would have been black.)

Genetically all humans, from a midget white woman to Shaq, are 99.8% identical, however within that 2% we've found the varience from one African to another African to be greater than that from one caucasion, asian, Indian, hispanic etc.

The greater the varience within a group, the older the group. Alligators have been here longer than any of us, they have a greater varience.

All that said though, human is one race actually. Like a siamese cat is a siamese cat, regardless of the fur patches. It's not even the difference from say a golden retriever to a labrador, comparitively we're all one kind of animal, we're all labradors with different fur, more or less.

And like dogs, for centuries we hung out with who looked like us, starting in Africa...

White people didn't spawn in Europe, Natives didn't spawn in the Americas, Asians didn't spawn in Asia, etc. We were all chillin in Africa, similar to dogs, we likely grouped with those with similar outward appearance, the stronger groups took the resources there, the weeker groups had to immigrate elsewhere.

Whether in Africa people started to look similar to what would today be say a white person is unknown, it could have been we all looked african then, then over hundreds of thousands of years, took on characteristics helpful for whatever reason in whatever region we were located in. The other possibility is that some smaller differences had begun to form because of the packs we ran with, making it easier to identify different packs, at which point the stronger group maintained African characteristics and stayed where they were, while the other groups were forced to look for resources elsewhere, furthering of course the superficial differences in appearance due to the limited reproductive opportunities.

Either way, groups were forced out of Africa.

Unfortunately for those groups, outside of Africa was a harder life. Hence necessity required advances in "technology" so to speak, just to survive. Cattle was raised, people started planting stuff instead of just looking for it, villages were built, etc.

Hence why society developed different in different areas. Had Europe been the Utopia Africa was,

I gaurantee the question today would be should white people be able to get paid as much as black people

and perhaps we would have just elected the first white president or something.

Circumstance. That is the only difference one group to another.

Everything else is society. As funny as the black comedians who point out the "inherent" differences are, as hateful as supremists are, as ignorant as the ignorant are, raise two people exactly the same, with the exact same societal influences, they will come out very similar regardless of physical differences.

But back to the breaking off of different bands of peoples, that was hundreds of thousands of years ago, and you will be hard pressed to find anyone who does not have multiple cultures in their relatively recent ancestory.

So, to the question, are black people paid as much

No they are not. In this country, and in most of the world, people who look white have most of the power. And to some degree even in the most benevolent individual, a pack instinct remains. A black CEO is likely to get a smaller bonus. Without affirmative action, a hiring manager given two identically qualified applicants, is more likely to hire the one who looks most like them, and usually the guy hiring is a white male. Instinct, there you have it.

Which is why programs like affirmative action are still very necessary and a good thing overall for a society such as ours, even if it means an occassional injustice going the other way. It will remain necessary until minorities have the same oportunities as everyone else, which they do not from birth.

The hardest part will be determining at what point it is no longer necessary, then once it is no longer necessary, not reverting to the subconscious tendency to treat ones who don't look like us differently.

But it will happen, maybe it will take a couple hundred thousand years more.

Messages above sadden me further.

However, I feel blessed to have not been brainwashed like you Americans.

Well, here in the U.S. everyone has the opportunity to get rich. And as far as race goes, it is equal.

Rofl, what a rude question to ask.

Should they be paid same as white people?

They shouldn't even get paid. -.- If this message get reported or voted down, then u can expect a massacre later on. Oh and dont act stupidly please.