The Center for Equal Opportunity’s Roger Clegg blogs about goings-on at the U.S. Naval Academy in a post cheekily titled, “Rum, Sodomy, the Lash, and Racial Discrimination.”
The academy’s Board of Visitors urges members of Congress to nominate “top-notch” black candidates as officers and to help attract more black students. (Source)
How exactly does the board propose that members of the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses achieve the goal? Expanding the recruitment net or lowering standards? If it’s the former, great! Knock yourselves out.
It’s worth noting that 28 percent of the class of 2012 are racial minorities, the highest percent ever at the academy. Together, blacks and Hispanics make up a quarter of the U.S. population. They are, by all accounts, proportionately represented in the class of 2012 at least. More, more, more!
“Maybe it’s just me,” Clegg writes, “but I’d prefer that our naval officers be chosen on the basis of, say, merit rather than, say, skin color. But maybe their duties are so unimportant that it doesn’t really matter.”
Young Mr. Clegg’s naïveté is refreshing!
Seriously, though, what can you do? Ward Connerly’s mission to ban state and local governments across the country from discriminating and granting preferences on the basis of race is a step in the right direction. There won’t be a nationwide uproar over preferences until governments revert to discriminating against blacks. Only then will people get it.
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I’m a USNA grad.
A young black teen at my church was mentioning how much he enjoyed playing basketball.
My efforts to coax him into a trip over to Annapolis to check out the campus failed; he was more interested in the NBA.
He’d have needed to go to the prep school to buff up his academics, no doubt. But then so did I.
Have to keep trying.
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