This is one of the more bizarre “diversity” stories I’ve read.
To help ensure “minority representation,” Nettleton Middle School in Nettleton, Mississippi, designated which race could run for certain class officer positions. Only whites could run for class president in all three grades—sixth, seventh, and eighth. In sixth grade, blacks could run only for the reporter position. In seventh, they could run only for secretary-treasurer. In eighth, they could run only for vice president and reporter.
It’s important to note that some article commenters claim the middle school alternated the set up annually. For this school year, the above schedule applied. The year before, things were switched around. Only blacks could run for president of each class, for example. Now this, if true, is less bizarre, and it helps me understand why the black principal and vice-principal (and parents) allowed this 30-year-old practice to continue.
People are outraged, naturally, but this is a consequence of the diversity obsession. Rather than allowing students to choose all class officers from among the general student body, the school opted for set-asides. Apparently, the white-majority school feared black students wouldn’t win elections to any office, so it rigged the process to ensure blacks would hold at least one office per grade.
The jig is up. A mother of mixed-race children filed a complaint after her daughter was told she couldn’t run for sixth-grade class reporter because she was the wrong race. According to the article, the mother took issue with the black/white dichotomy, as Hispanics and other races attend the school. An excerpt of the article:
By Friday afternoon, Superintendent Russell Taylor posted a statement on the school’s website, saying the policy had been in place for 30 years, dating back to a time when school districts across Mississippi came under close scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department over desegregation.
“It is the belief of the current administration that these procedures were implemented to help ensure minority representation and involvement in the student body,” the statement said. “It is our hope and desire that these practices and procedures are no longer needed.”
“‘Therefore, beginning immediately, student elections at Nettleton School District will no longer have a classification of ethnicity,” it added. “It is our intent that each student has equal opportunity to seek election for any student office.”
…
Springer’s plight demonstrates the complexities faced not only by interracial families, but by school officials trying to achieve racial equality in a state known for tensions between blacks and whites. The school district also manipulated prom and homecoming elections so that the outcome is an equal division of blacks and whites.
Racial preferences supporters in the audience, are you outraged over the school’s attempt to make sure black students had an opportunity to hold office?
(Photo credit: Randy Springer)
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010,
by La Shawn Barber,
Filed under: Quotas| |
1 Comment
Earlier this year, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) filed suit against the Philadelphia School District, alleging “deliberate and discriminatory indifference” after groups of mostly blacks students at South Philadelphia High School (designated “persistently dangerous”) beat up students of Asian descent.
Although the district suspended about 10 students, the AALDEF claimed the school covered up and downplayed the attacks. A retired federal judge named Judge James T. Giles released a report in which he concluded that in some instances, the Asian students “were randomly attacked or attacked because someone in their group was identified or misidentified as being connected to the earlier events,” and he apparently found no evidence of a cover-up but recommended the school ban hoodies (yep, you read it right), put more cameras in the school, and set up an anonymous tip hotline for students.
The U.S. Department of Justice found merit in AALDEF’s claims and advised the district to fix the problem.
So, how will the schools go about it? If they get rid of the worst troublemakers, they’ll be accused of racial discrimination (by disproportionately expelling black students). If they do nothing, they’ll be accused of racial discrimination (by failing to protect Asian students).
One word for parents who don’t want to put up with this nonsense either way: homeschool.
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010,
by La Shawn Barber,
Filed under: General| |
No Comments
In a recent column, George Will hints at a link between the academic achievement gap and out-of-wedlock birth rate among blacks. An excerpt (emphasis added):
“Because changes in laws and mores have lowered barriers, the black middle class has been able to leave inner cities, which have become, [Nathan] Glazer says, ‘concentrations of the poor, the poorly educated, the unemployed and unemployable.’ High out-of-wedlock birthrates mean a constantly renewed cohort of adolescent males without male parenting, which means disorderly neighborhoods and schools. Glazer thinks it is possible that for some young black men, ‘acting white’ — trying to excel in school — is considered ‘a betrayal of their group culture.’ This severely limits opportunities in an increasingly service-based economy where working with people matters more than working with things in manufacturing.”
(Back in my day, black kids ragged on other black kids for “talking proper,” that is, speaking standard English.)
Will comments on the newly released Educational Testing Service report, “The Black-White Achievement Gap: When Progress Stopped.” (PDF) According to the report, whatever progress was made in narrowing the gap occurred in the 1970s and 1980s. Did the rising illegitimacy rate play a role in the present lack of progress?
Will lists the problems associated with family instability, which includes poverty, and quotes from the report:
“It is very hard to imagine progress resuming in reducing the education attainment and achievement gap without turning these family trends around — i.e., increasing marriage rates, and getting fathers back into the business of nurturing children…It is similarly difficult to envision direct policy levers” that will make it happen.
Considering that an individual’s decision to have a child without the benefit of marriage and a stable home life is not subject to government interference, how does the government go about “fixing” the high illegitimacy rate among black Americans? I argue that the government can’t fix the problem. But it wouldn’t be its big, old bloated self if it didn’t try.
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010,
by La Shawn Barber,
Filed under: Achievement Gap| |
1 Comment
The American Civil Rights Foundation (ACRF) has dropped a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) after it dropped a race-based teacher assignment and transfer policy as part of a settlement. (Source)
Ward Connerly, spokesman for ACRF and president of the American Civil Rights Institute, said the race-based practice “grossly shortchanges the taxpayers, not to mention our students, when teachers are assigned on the basis of race, gender, and ethnic politics rather than competence. This legal settlement and the merit-based teaching that it encourages in the LAUSD are major benefits of Proposition 209.”
Considering that LAUSD’s practice was blatantly illegal, and the state is strapped for cash, it makes sense LAUSD decided to settle.
The ACRF may want to look into the Berkeley school district’s burgeoning effort to close the achievement gap and to improve relations between “mostly white and middle-class teachers and administrators” and minority parents and students. The worrywarts apparently believe black and Hispanic students perform poorly because there’s a subcultural* chasm between them and their white teachers. (Why not blame it on the rain, too?)
If that’s the case, how do they account for Hispanics performing better than black students? Is the subcultural chasm between whites and Hispanics, whose first language may or may not be English, narrower?
Race-based government policy supporters need to ask themselves such questions. Instead of comparing blacks with whites, compare blacks with Hispanics. Compare Hispanics with Asians, or blacks with Asians, specifically low-income Asians. Compare whites with Asians. Something, beyond having mostly white teachers and administrators, is afoot.
*We are part of the American culture. Groups within this culture with distinctive traits are subcultures.
Thursday, August 26th, 2010,
by La Shawn Barber,
Filed under: General| |
Comments off
I’m surprised there aren’t more articles on the web like this one. The New American Foundation’s Michael Lind, who used to be conservative but converted to liberalism, argues that racial preferences are wrong. The most important part of his article is in bold:
The diversity theory is now invoked by university administrations to justify informal racial discrimination in admissions against ‘over-represented’ Chinese- and Indian-Americans on behalf of ‘under-represented’ Mexican-Americans. If the diversity rationale is to be taken seriously, then it should be cause for concern that Protestants, who make up 50 percent of the American population, are grossly ‘under-represented’ on the Supreme Court, where there are now six Catholics and three Jews.
Lind the liberal has acknowledged that racial preferences are racially discriminatory.
That’s a fact, not an opinion. However, preferences supporters typically downplay or ignore this fact. A preference based on race is inherently racially discriminatory.
Lind recounts Senator James Webb’s Wall Street Journal article, in which the Democrat called for an end to government racial preferences, and notes that preferences proponents often cite President Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 Howard University graduation speech to bolster their support for government racial discrimination. But they’re wrong. As I and others have stated, discriminating against non-blacks to help blacks wasn’t an idea Johnson intended to convey. He envisioned blacks receiving the training and education they needed to compete, not to be handed unearned benefits.
Race-neutral government policy was the key goal of the civil rights movement. After generations of second-class treatment, black Americans demanded their constitutional right to be treated equally before the law, partaking in the American bounty as full citizens.
Lind makes an important point that the white working class don’t consider themselves recipients of “white privilege” and won’t support policies that penalize them or their progeny, for diversity’s sake or to redress past wrongs. In fact, no black American should support policies that penalize whites.
It is a dangerous proposition that black Americans “deserve” special treatment based on a perceived disadvantage. The sword has two edges. At this point, the solution to narrowing disparities and improving quality of life must begin at the most basic level: the individual. Race-based entitlements are a poor substitute for motivation and drive, and no substitute to acquiring the skills and education needed to compete with everyone else.
In theory and in practice, racial preferences are divisive, demeaning, unfair, and wrong. The practice patronizes blacks and penalizes whites. We stand on this common ground in the fight for race-neutral government policy.
Thursday, August 26th, 2010,
by La Shawn Barber,
Filed under: General| |
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Ann Killenbeck, a professor at the University of Arkansas, offers a fresh perspective on Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the University of Michigan law school’s use of race in admissions was narrowly tailored to further a compelling interest in “obtaining the educational benefits that flow from” a racially diverse student body.
Killenbeck’s article, published in an academic journal, focuses on a rarely discussed aspect of Grutter, which she calls Bakke with teeth. From the press release:
“In Grutter, the court acknowledges that each institution has the right to adopt a mission and policies that embrace diversity as a central element of its educational objectives, Killenbeck said. But the proper use of admission criteria with this objective in mind will succeed only if an institution can show that use of such criteria reflects its mission and that benefits from diversifying its student body are actually occurring. In other words, simply adding admission criteria based on race preference, especially without being able to demonstrate relevant programming or outcomes, does not shield institutions and programs from legal challenges. Killenbeck said she would like to see a shift of perspective in which diversity is defined as the broad spectrum of characteristics, perspectives, values and assumptions associated with personal identity, rather than something that focuses solely on race and ethnicity. She argues that programs and policies that reduce people to a single denominator are unfortunate and shortsighted.
“She also argues, based on social science research, that it is not enough to simply admit a diverse group of students. Rather, institutions must engage in proactive programming designed to ensure that the values associated with diversity are actually realized. That is, what scholars call ’structural diversity,’ simply having the right mix of students, is a first step in pursuing sound educational policies and practices that will benefit all students.”
Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote the majority opinion in Grutter, raised the legal standard for defending against challenges to racial preferences policies. Under University of California v. Bakke, the landmark racial preferences case before Grutter, schools had more wiggle room to justify the practice. Grutter requires schools to show real, rather than theoretical, educational benefits that justify accepting and denying students based on race.
Did Justice O’Connor intend to raise the legal bar for racial preferences?
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010,
by La Shawn Barber,
Filed under: Diversity, Judiciary| |
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Judah Bellin, a junior at Cornell University, addresses the stigma and academic consequences of racial preferences in the pursuit for skin deep-only diversity.
“The most potent critique of affirmative action is that it brings students to universities they’re unprepared for. As UCLA law professor Richard Sander showed in a comprehensive study of American law schools, the affirmative action regime has forced universities of every caliber to accept minority students with lower standardized test scores and grades than the average of the entering class. This leads to devastating results: Almost half of black law students place in the bottom tenth of their graduating classes. Furthermore, entering black law students were 135 percent more likely than whites to not complete their law degree.
“Worse, even the students who can succeed in these environments are always suspected of benefiting from preferential treatment. Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas can certainly attest to that.”
Somewhere along the way, the idea of skin color “diversity” took hold and became an all-important goal, one I believe is based on emotionalism and misplaced guilt. What is the basis for the belief that adding more brown faces to the campus produces an educational benefit that justifies lowering standards for owners of those brown faces? FYI, it’s disingenuous to argue that preferences don’t entail lowered standards.
This is how “affirmative action” works in theory: an admissions committee faced with a black and a white applicant with equivalent grades and scores would select the black applicant. (Justifications include remedying past discrimination.) The black applicant is given a special but small advantage over the white applicant, and that advantage is his race.
But that’s not how it actually works. Studies have shown – and common sense dictates – that “affirmative action” admittees have lower grades and scores than their Hispanic, white, and Asian counterparts, and they graduate at lower rates. This indicates a widespread thumb-on-the-scale phenomenon.
Who gains the most from the obsessive quest for skin deep-only diversity?
“We often forget that the argument for diversity is just a little bit presumptuous,” Bellin writes. “Essentially, proponents can often argue something like this: We should bring in disadvantaged or minority students so that we can gain something from them. They’re just pawns in our nice little game of self-awareness. So who really cares about the consequences they face? At least we’re learning.”
My main problem with racial preferences is that the practice gives the government power to make hiring, contracting, and admissions decisions based on race. Once upon a time, that was considered odious. Why is acceptable now? Running a close second is the lowered-standards aspect of racial preferences. If blacks in America want to unburden themselves of the inferior stigma and consequent negative stereotypes, they must take a stand against any government policy that implicitly reinforces that stigma and perpetuates those stereotypes. Racial preferences do both.
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010,
by La Shawn Barber,
Filed under: Diversity| |
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“Should women and minorities be given a little nudge upwards when it comes to government contracts and university admissions? … That’s a question voters will get to answer in the November general election.” (Source)
Voters in Arizona will decide whether to amend the state constitution to bar their government from discriminating against or granting preferences to individuals based on race in employment, education, or contracting. The author of Arizona’s immigration enforcement law, Senator Russell Pearce, also authored Proposition 107.
Barbara Atwood, a race and sex preferences proponent who teaches at the University of Arizona, gives an example of what Prop. 107 would bar. “Any efforts in the college of nursing to recruit men so that there would be some better representation of men in the nursing field would be gone.”
The obvious question is, why should men be better represented in nursing? Why the obsession with group representation? Regardless, recruiting more men, women, blacks, or Asians, because they’re men, women, black, or Asian means denying someone else placement based on race or sex. Does the ostensibly noble pursuit of “more representation” justify allowing the government to treat individuals differently based on these factors?
People who opposed measures like Prop. 107 also claim such bans would affect programs that help mostly women and children, like domestic violence assistance.
“It’s completely false,” Jennifer Gratz told the KOLD. “The opponents know that’s just a scare tactic to try to keep people from voting for it.”
Measures like Prop. 107 are carefully crafted and precisely worded. The language clearly applies to government employment, contracting, and education, with the purpose of preventing the government from making race or sex a job or admissions qualification.
Domestic violence shelters don’t fall into these categories. Even if they did, Jennifer Gratz told me, there would be an exception for bone fide qualifications based on sex. The four states that ban preferences still have domestic violence shelters.
Nice try, Ms. Atwood.
Addendum: I think “bone fide qualifications based on sex” is worth exploring. To be continued…
Friday, August 20th, 2010,
by La Shawn Barber,
Filed under: AzCRI| |
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From “Big Gaps In Two Big Gap Studies” at Minding the Campus:
“Last week both the Chronicle of Higher Education (‘Reports Highlight Disparities in Graduation Rates Among White and Minority Students’) and Inside Higher Ed (‘Gaps Are Not Inevitable’) reported on two large studies by The Education Trust of the graduation rate gap between white and African-American students and between whites and Hispanics. Even aside from the fact that the Asian gap was apparently not studied, there is a Big Gap in both gap studies.
“Noting in its press release that ‘60 percent of whites but only 49 percent of Latinos and 40 percent of African Americans who start college hold bachelor’s degrees six years later,” The Education Trust said their studies “dig beneath national college-graduation averages and examine disaggregated six-year graduation rates at hundreds of the nation’s public and private institutions.’ That deep digging produced evidence — hold your hat!—that minorities do better at some institutions than others.
We identify public and private four-year institutions that appear to serve their black and white students equally well—that is, where both groups graduate at similar rates. We also identify public and private institutions that have a lot of work to do to catch up: Their graduation rate gaps are among the largest in the country.
“Exactly why that is true is never explained — unless you regard quoting statements such as UNC-Greensboro Vice Provost Alan Boyette’s explanation that minority success “is part of our mission. We don’t just want to provide access, we want our students to succeed” as an explanation.
“Both studies, however, reflect the belief that the explanation lies with the institutions, not with the students.”
Friday, August 20th, 2010,
by La Shawn Barber,
Filed under: Achievement Gap| |
Comments off
Stories like this are a hoot, and I’m always glad to see a comment section. Common sense injected into obsessive nonsense. Look at all those numbers. Racial bean-counting at its worst.
The freshman class at the University of Georgia at Athens (UGA) is still “mostly white,” (since the U.S. is still mostly white, isn’t this to be expected?) reads the article, but the number of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians (typically a non-preferred minority group) is increasing.
Commenters to the article raise the issue whether UGA uses racial preferences to increase skin deep-only diversity on campus. Does UGA consider race an admissions factor? From the web site:
The proportion of students of color (African American, Latino, Asian American and Native American) at the University of Georgia is small enough that those students are likely to be a “solo minority” or part of a very small group of students, particularly in the small non-lecture-format classes where their contributions to discussion are most valuable. As Gudeman has pointed out, research in social psychology has demonstrated that “a solo is more likely to be objectified and treated as a representative of a category than as a unique person.”
We have a statement from the faculty, posted in the admissions section, implying that a racial minority might feel weird being the only minority in class, because he’s “more likely” to be objectified and perceived as a representative of his racial group, and not as a “unique person.”
Forget about what’s “more likely” to happen. An admissions committee that considers an applicant’s race an admissions qualification definitely is objectifying the minority and treating him as a representative of his group. And why assume a minority’s contributions to the class discussion will be “valuable” based on the color of his skin? Stereotype much? Unbelievable. But they get a pass. Stereotyping is okay when it involves positive traits.
Race neutral alternatives at the University of Georgia have failed to achieve the critical mass of racially and ethnically diverse students to achieve a rich learning environment in our academic community. The University rejects quotas and other mechanical approaches that treat any single factor as a defining feature of an applicant’s file. Nevertheless, it has compelling interest in considering race and ethnicity as one among many factors in consideration for admission.
Nevertheless, it has compelling interest in considering race and ethnicity as one among many factors in consideration for admission.
The answer is yes, UGA considers race an admissions factor. In 2001, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found UGA’s racial preferences policy unconstitutional. If that’s the case, why is the school still considering race in admissions? Old-fashioned sleight of hand. The court struck down UGA’s point system, as the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the University of Michigan’s undergraduate point system in Gratz v. Bollinger. UGA continues to use race in admissions, based on the court’s ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger.
The problem with the racial preferences policy, aside from the obvious, is the odor left in its wake. Even if a black student was admitted based on his outstanding and competitive record, with no regard whatsoever for his race, he’s still perceived as an “affirmative action” student. It doesn’t matter how wrong or unfair the perception is. That’s the consequence of racial bean-counting polices. Get rid of them and practice race-neutral admissions, and the odor will dissipate.
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010,
by La Shawn Barber,
Filed under: Diversity, Judiciary| |
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