Archive for November, 2008
Nebraskans voted to end state and local government discrimination and preferential treatment on November 4, 2008, as 58 percent said YES on Initiative 424.
Nebraska TV reports on the aftermath. Government-funded programs with racial and sex classifications must rewrite policies and begin hiring and recruiting without regard to skin color and sex. Colleges and universities in Nebraska with so-called affirmative action programs will have to consider factors other than race or sex when making admissions decisions. Government-funded scholarships and grants must be race- and gender-neutral.
Government entities with so-called affirmative action programs will no longer be allowed to deny someone a job because of his or her race or sex, nor can the government entity show preferential treatment to someone based on these factors.
University of Nebraska president J.B. Milliken said the new law “might affect our ability to do outreach and recruitment.” Not necessarily. Expanding outreach and recruitment efforts to blacks is not illegal under the new law. That is affirmative action. Applying different standards of hiring, contracting, and admissions to blacks is illegal. That is a racial preference, a practice that should be just as odious now as it was 50 years ago. If the university offers “outreach” funds in a racially neutral manner, the law will have no impact.
It’s not complicated, though the opposition tries to make it seem so. Read the FAQ on Initiative 424 to find out exactly what it means and what institutions and programs are affected.
As expected, the new law faces legal challenges.
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“Racial disparities persist despite Obama election” shouts an Associated Press headline.
I’m sure many people had high hopes that the presence of a black man (biracial, to be precise) in the White House would mean the end of the belief that racism is an ever-burning fire in America. Sorry to dash your hopes. As I’ve written before, it’s human nature to blame others for our failures. (But we tend to credit ourselves for success. Convenient, eh?)
Even if all branches of federal, state, and local governments were headed by black people, we’d be reading headlines like this:
“Racial disparities persist despite blacks running the country”
As expected, people quoted in the article erroneously attribute racial disparities to racism, that phantom-like, elusive practice no one can define. For some people, a certain look or fairly innocuous remarks can be perceived as racism. In 2008, you’ll rarely hear an example of actual racist behavior toward blacks: forcing them to sit at the rear of public conveyances, preventing them from voting, assigning them to separate schools based on race, etc.
We’re left with a wishy-washy definition for what passes as racism in 2008: the cause of any kind of negative difference that exists between blacks and everyone else.
A scenario: a black child who grows up without a father, and his mother works or exists on welfare. The child lives in an unstable home where he’s never taught the value of education, good morals, right conduct…he grows up influenced by the wrong element and likely will end up in the criminal justice system. Can we blame his life’s outcome on racist white people or bad parenting and bad values?
As the article notes, whites are more likely to hold college degrees and less likely than blacks to end up in prison. Black males kill one another at exorbitant rates. Black women kill their babies at three times the rate of white women. Almost three-quarters of black babies are born outside wedlock. We’re to believe that “racism” is responsible for these disparities?
Search for racism under any rock, and you’re sure to find something or someone to blame for your underachievement.
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The people have spoken.
On November 4, 2008, 51 percent of Colorado voters defeated a measure that would have ended state and local government race- and sex-based discrimination and preferences in hiring, contracting, and admissions. Fifty-eight percent of Nebraska voters passed a similar measure, and 53 percent of the nation’s voters chose Barack Obama over John McCain to be president of the United States.
The biracial Obama has risen through the political ranks very quickly. Does his win signal the end of government-sanctioned race preferences?
Read the rest at Townhall.com.
Filed under: Barack Obama, Column | |2 Comments
Read this updated version of a 1996 essay that purports to debunk 10 myths about “affirmative action.”
It includes such “myths” as “The public doesn’t support affirmative action anymore,” “A large percentage of White workers will lose out if affirmative action is continued,” and “You can’t cure discrimination with discrimination.”
But there’s a flaw. The compiler of the list, as is typical of most race preference proponents, uses the term affirmative action when he really means race preferences, though he believes he’s distinguishing the terms. His “debunking” of the first myth clearly reveals this.
By now you ought to be able to recite the history. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order that called for the federal government to take “affirmative action” to ensure that no person was denied employment based on skin color. Thanks to a Republican president, Richard M. Nixon, this policy evolved into a quota system. In 1971, he authorized the Department of Labor to set specific goals and timetables to correct the “underutilization” of blacks by federal contractors. Consequently, some people are denied employment based on skin color.
The fatal flaw with the “Ten Myths About Affirmative Action” is that affirmative action is not in view here. Affirmative action is reaching out to and recruiting qualified individuals from minority groups historically excluded from good jobs and good schools. Affirmative action requires the government to take measures to protect people from discrimination. Race preferences do just the opposite.
Today, government entities covertly or blatantly factor in an applicant’s race for hiring, contracting, and admissions. Despite the obvious legal and moral problems with such a practice, it’s done in the name of that almighty god called diversity.
As Larry Purdy writes in his new book, Getting Under the Skin of “Diversity” (emphases in original):
“It was a young president’s unambiguous directive that race be removed rather than added as a factor in government employment. Yet today, nearly 50 years after President Kennedy issued his order, affirmative action has been politically redefined by those who practice raw racial politics, a group which in 2003 included five justices sitting on our nation’s highest court. The policies spawned in the name of affirmative action now mock the phrase’s original meaning.”
Supreme Court cases have been tried over this issue. It’s been proven that when the University of Michigan’s undergraduate and law schools took race into account when admitting students, they assessed black students by a lower standard. Government agencies that take race into account when hiring black applicants in order to fill a certain percentage of vacant posts assess black candidates by a lower standard. As a result, better qualified whites and Asians are denied admissions and jobs to accommodate “affirmative action” policies. Color it any way you want, but it’s still called discrimination.
“Ten Myths About Affirmative Action” should be titled, “Ten Myths About Race Preferences.” Viewing it through the correct lens, it makes sense that “80% of the public felt ‘affirmative action programs for minorities and women should be continued at some level’.” But the original meaning and intent of the policy was lost a long time ago.
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Lowered standards supporter (although he says he isn’t) and columnist “of color” Ruben Navarette thinks it’s absurd to think Barack Obama’s election signals the end of race preferences. (Source)
“That kind of thinking starts with the epidemic of Americans patting themselves on the back for being enlightened enough to elect an African-American president.”
Using the misnomer “affirmative action” to describe race preferences, as proponents often do, Navarrette is under the impression that the practice is not discriminatory. It makes institutions stronger by encouraging skin color diversity, and it provides a wider variety of people with opportunities. If only it did more of the latter and less of the former! Skin color diversity isn’t a bad thing per se, but when the government gives preferential treatment to people and deny benefits to others based on that skin color, there’s a problem.
Obama’s presidency was good for Obama, contends Navarrette. Society still puts up barriers against us poor victimized black folks, though he acknowledges “most of the barriers we face in life are self-imposed, and so we can remove them.”
Hmmm…which is it? Does society block our paths to success, or do we sabotage our own success? Navarrette seems to want it both ways.
Since Navarrette doesn’t seem to grasp the differences between affirmative action and race preferences or can’t decide whether “society” or individuals are responsible for their successes, I can’t make heads or tails of what he really believes. You?
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Writing in the Sacramento Bee, the American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly reflects on Barack Obama’s election, what it means for black Americans, and what it means for the entire country.
Obama’s win serves as validation for blacks who’ve had to endure demeaning treatment and discrimination in America. Connerly believes his victory “represents a potentially profound changing of the guard about the direction of our country.” An excerpt:
It would be naïve and wrong-headed to suggest that all racism, from whatever source, has ended because of the symbolism of this one election. Yet what a symbol it is upon which we can have a new racial beginning, a beginning that accepts the dignity of every individual! For my fellow blacks, this is a time not just to celebrate, but to reflect upon where we go from here.
Throughout our history, we have allowed ourselves to be depicted as helpless and subject to the mercy of what others would do for us. “Affirmative action” is a classic example of that way of thinking. I consider that self-defeating and a betrayal of the enormous contributions that we have made to our country and to the considerable talents that reside within us. Liberation from this debilitating paradigm is now possible. Indeed, it is essential.
Current laws and practices that allow lowered standards for blacks are just as demeaning as laws and practices designed to keep blacks “in their place” back in the day. So-called affirmative action, as practiced in 2008, is, as Connerly writes, self-defeating. It says to future generations that our contributions of the past don’t count and the talents we possess don’t matter.
A majority of voters chose Barack Obama to run the country for the next four years. Connerly says his faith in Americans’ fairness has been validated with the election of a biracial candidate. Like Connerly, I hope Obama will help all Americans understand that focusing on race should reside where it belongs: in the past.
Filed under: Barack Obama, Ward Connerly | |1 Comment
Dennis Byrne, writing for the Chicago Tribune, recounts a incident in the South in 1967. When the former teacher told a class of mostly black students they could be anything they wanted to be, a student expressed a sentiment probably typical in its day: Yeah, right!
It was the middle of the civil rights movement. Fast forward to 2008. The nation just elected its first black president. Such was unimaginable 41 years ago.
“This towering achievement begs us to honestly and humbly reconsider affirmative action,” Byrne writes.
He posits that Barack Obama gained office without the lowering of standards associated with race preferences. Obama’s victory wasn’t just symbolic. It is very real. In order to achieve the kind of “unity” Obama spoke of during his campaign, perhaps it’s time for America to rethink race preferences policies.
Byrne asks the question many anti-preferences folks ask: “For how long is discrimination against one race required to compensate for past levels of discrimination against another?” Discrimination against one group in an effort to “catch up” another group is sloppy thinking and unsound policy. I’ve said many times that if the government starts discriminating against blacks once again, those who support race preferences will not be able to make a consistent and logically sound argument why it’s wrong.
Bryne calls for a “rational and calm re-examination” of race preferences in light of the new regime in Washington. Good luck with that!
In the 2005 Supreme Court decision Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor contended that “affirmative action” would be unnecessary in 25 years. Why 25 years as opposed to 10 or 50? It’s difficult to determine how she came to that number. If having a black president in the White House isn’t enough to convince people it’s time to do away with this odious policy, what will?
Bryne’s op-ed is worth reading, as are reader comments that follow.
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Dr. Alvin Poussaint, professor of psychiatry and former consultant for “The Cosby Show,” was interviewed by Diverse magazine. He made the usual remarks about what a great moment this is for “African-Americans,” who probably wondered whether whites would vote for a black man for president.
Poussaint noted that black Americans’ “psychological boost” might be moderated by economic uncertainty. Based on his response to a question about Obama’s Father’s Day speech, Poussaint seems to believe the economy is a more pressing concern for black Americans than “pushing personal responsibility.” In that speech, Obama highlighted a series of sad statistics: over half of black children live in one-parent homes, and kids without residential fathers are five times more likely to be poor and commit crimes, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up behind bars. Poussaint’s response:
I think it’s going to be tempered by the fact he’s going to know the realities of the high rate of unemployment, removal of services and how they’re affecting poor people across the board — whether, Latino, White, but disproportionately African-Americans and Latinos. He’s going to know that one of the things he has to do, which he’s working on, is shore up the economy and get people back to work before he starts pushing personal responsibility. It’s one thing to say that when jobs are available you can compete for, but it’s another thing to say that when there are no jobs … It does put a strain on them to take the high road when they’re being pushed out of the work force and being denied social services that they require.
It’s the economy, stupid.
Perhaps Obama’s presidency will give some black Americans a “psychological boost.” More important, I hope they’ll see his presidency as proof America no longer needs nor should desire racial preferences. Allowing a government to prefer some over others based on race is dangerous.
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President-Elect Barack Obama has hinted at supporting some form of economic affirmative action. (Why the hint? He doesn’t want to commit!) During the campaign, he criticized John McCain for supporting the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative, but said privileged children like his daughters didn’t need race preferences.
Although 51 percent of voters in Colorado rejected Amendment 46, a measure that would have put state and local governments out of the skin color business, 49 percent wanted to end racial discrimination and preferences. That’s a lot people. But 51 percent decided that Colorado may continue preferring one group over another.
Obama will have to face the issue of preferences sometime during his presidency. Perhaps he will propose replacing race and sex preferences with socioeconomic affirmative action, which would help people of all races and of both sexes. That would be a fair compromise, and it would avoid lowering standards for certain groups and discriminating against and essentially penalizing other groups.
Some believe the election of Barack Obama to the nation’s highest office signals the end of race-based preferences. I am not one of those people. As I’ve stated on this blog, humans will always look for the easy way out and put as little effort into improving themselves as possible. It’s much easier to point fingers, blame third parties, make excuses, and demand unearned benefits.
Maybe Obama can use his influence to get the ball rolling on a system to help the disadvantaged while keeping racial discrimination at bay. That’s the kind of change I can believe in!
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has voided a law that established a five percent quota to award defense contracts to so-called disadvantaged small business owners. According to Government Executive, the decision may invalidate 8(a) of the Small Business Act contracting programs.
Under the provision, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and American Indians were presumed to be “socially disadvantaged,” whether individual owners are actually disadvantaged or not.
The court contended that the quota requirement violates the Equal Protection clause “because it authorizes the Defense Department to afford preferential treatment on the basis of race and does not meet a ’strict scrutiny’ standard…Under this requirement, the government must prove that the preference is ‘narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest.’”
Bravo to the court for applying the Equal Protection clause to people of all races, as it was intended. Setting aside government contracts for someone based on skin color obviously is wrong, although it would be more obvious to some if set-asides harmed blacks. Consistency is the key. Racial discrimination, no matter who benefits, is wrong.
Filed under: Judiciary, Quotas | |Comments off
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