Archive for November, 2009
So says a federal judge.
Over a dozen white firefighters and one Hispanic scored high enough on a promotions exam to qualify for promotions. Because no blacks scored high enough to qualify, however, the city threw out everyone’s test results for fear of disparate impact lawsuits. The Supreme Court called foul and said the move was unconstitutional.
Last week, the firefighters requested promotions, and black firefighters tried to block them. Despite the Supreme Court’s decision, they contended, they still had the right to challenge the test’s validity.
Maybe so, but in the meantime, New Haven must promote 14 qualifying firefighters. Six will become captains, and eight will become lieutenants.
Filed under: Judiciary | |Comments off
The Wall Steet Journal’s James Taranto, who I met a couple years ago when we (and other bloggers) had dinner with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, weighs in on liberals’ obsession with diversity. He cites Grutter v. Bollinger, a case in which the Supreme Court barred racial quotas but allowed some racial considerations in admissions.
Without offering proof or even a logically sound rationale for the so-called educational benefits of diversity, the court decided that racial discrimination was okay after all, despite what anyone claimed during the civil rights movement.
“But there is reason to doubt whether ‘diversity,’ as practiced by American higher education today, has any educational benefits at all–never mind whether those benefits are sufficient to justify discrimination,” Taranto writes. “Whatever its benefits in theory, diversity in practice is often anti-intellectual, replacing reasoned debate with ritualized expressions of phony emotion.”
Read the full article here.
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Voters in Westchester County, New York, kicked Democrat Andy Spano out of the county executive’s office and replaced him with Republican Rob Astorino. Before the November election, Spano pushed through a so-called desegregation agreement his constituents didn’t want, because he said delaying the order would make his county “a symbol of racism.”
You may recall that Westchester County is under order to create low-income housing in majority white communities and actively seek out minorities to move into the housing. Writing in the City Journal, Walter Olson notes that the government coercion “cuts deeply into the county’s tradition of suburban home rule on development issues,” and comments on HUD deputy secretary Ron Sims’s radial vision of racial Utopia. Like other social engineering types, Sims implies that one’s preference to live in an affluent, low-crime area — and complaints about being forced to subsidize housing for people who can’t afford to live in the area — are wrong.
Olson cites Howard Husock’s article, which we also cited in a September post. Husock made the case that if blacks who could afford to live in wealthier areas of Westchester County are intentionally kept out, the settlement would make sense. But that’s not what’s happening. Blacks are “only slightly underrepresented” even in “super-wealthy” areas of the county.
To satisfy an arbitrary diversity goal, taxpayers in Westchester County are forced to subsidize lifestyle upgrades. To what end? Husock said moving low-income children to “better” neighborhoods doesn’t close the academic achievement gap, improve health, or any other magical thing, and the better policy is using tax money to upgrade areas in which the poor already live.
Westchester County voters spoke at the polls. Sixty-three percent chose Barack Obama to serve as president, but 58 percent selected a Republican to serve their county. It’s not about racism; it’s about electing someone who’ll push for local taxpayers rights over “diversity” goals and playing the race card.
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In Ricci v. DeStefano, the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New Haven discriminated against Hispanic and white firefighters when it tossed the results of a promotions test. No blacks scored high enough to qualify for promotions, and the city feared disparate impact lawsuits.
Now, the firefighters who qualified for promotions want those promotions. They recently filed the necessary papers to get the ball rolling. As expected, black firefighters want to block the promotion considerations. In responding documents, the losing group said it still had a right to challenge the test’s validity, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling. (Source)
Listen to the black firefighters’ weird reasoning:
“If the city makes such promotions without inquiring into the exams’ validity, then it is making a race-conscious decision to promote those whites who used their skin color as a central, divisive basis for their lawsuit. Regardless, at this juncture, it is clear that the city has used race as a strawman in all sorts of ways to attempt to benefit itself, to the detriment of others.”
The black firefighters seem to imply that skin color is an illegitimate basis for a lawsuit. Racial discrimination claims, by definition, are based on allegations that a person or an entity infringed on the plaintiff’s rights because of the plaintiff’s skin color. In fact, the black firefighters are using their skin color as a central, divisive basis for their lawsuit. There are laws against racial discrimination, so when one is discriminated against based on race, race will be central to the lawsuit.
And lawsuits, by definition, are divisive. So what? The legal system is adversarial.
Sounds silly to me.
Filed under: Judiciary | |2 Comments
Finally, a racial preferences proponent admits, publicly, exactly what the policy is. James P. Sterba, author of Affirmative Action for the Future, says (emphasis added):
“Affirmative action is a policy of favoring qualified women, minority, or economically disadvantaged candidates over qualified men, nonminority or economically advantaged candidates respectively with the immediate goals of outreach, remedying discrimination, or achieving diversity, and the ultimate goals of attaining a colorblind (racially just), a gender-free (sexually just) and equal opportunity (economically just) society.”
Interviewed by InsideHigherEd.com, Sterba says, in so many words, that it’s okay to discriminate against white men doing well for themselves. This is called “good” discrimination. Any other kind is bad, bad, bad.
Regarding the “outreach” goal, affirmative action, as conceived, was about reaching out to people previously left out of the process intentionally (No blacks need apply) or unintentionally (those “We’re hiring” flyers weren’t widely distributed). The definition of this non-discriminatory practice expanded to the point of absurdity, until its new and proper name was applied: preferences, or lowering standards for certain racial minorities most of the time and for women some of the time.
The “remedying discrimination” goal is fuzzy and faces limitations. For instance, the Supreme Court contended in Ricci v. DeStefano that when actions intended to remedy past discrimination are based on discrimination, there must be a “strong basis in evidence” that the remedial actions are necessary.
The “attaining a colorblind” society justification for racial discrimination is plainly ludicrous. The argument is, we discriminated in the past, so if we discriminate in the present, we’ll end up with a colorblind society in the future. On what level does that make sense?
As I’ve said many times, colorblindness among individuals may be a worthy goal. Either way, it makes little difference to me. What matters is whether government policy is colorblind. Such a policy treats people as individuals without regard to race. Individual, private citizens may hold prejudices and biases for whatever reason, but those prejudices and biases are held in check by a government whose duty is to protect everyone’s rights.
An individual is free to think whatever he wishes about me because I’m black, for example, but neither he nor my government may interfere with me because I’m black.
It’s not rocket surgery.
Roger Clegg comments on Sterba’s interview. An excerpt:
“But even if you think there are some benefits to affirmative discrimination, one must weigh them against the undeniable costs of such discrimination, and of course there is no mention of them here: It is personally unfair, passes over better qualified students, and sets a disturbing legal, political, and moral precedent in allowing racial discrimination; it creates resentment; it stigmatizes the so-called beneficiaries in the eyes of their classmates, teachers, and themselves…it papers over the real social problem of why so many [blacks] and Latinos are academically uncompetitive; and it gets states and schools involved in unsavory activities like deciding which racial and ethnic minorities will be favored and which ones not, and how much blood is needed to establish group membership.”
Filed under: Diversity, Quotas | |Comments off
According to the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), the sixth circuit court of appeals is hearing arguments today in Cincinnati in suits filed by the pro-racial preferences group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) and its allies challenging the MCRI.
In 2006, 58 percent of voters passed MCRI (as Proposal 2), which barred Michigan from discriminating against or preferring individuals or groups in hiring, contracting, and admissions based on factors like race.
Jennifer Gratz (of Gratz v. Bollinger), Executive Director of the 2006 MCRI campaign and Director of State and Local Initiatives with the American Civil Rights Coalition said, “It is mind boggling that anyone could argue with a straight face that eliminating the use of race and gender in decision making for university admissions, government jobs, and public contracts is actually discrimination.”
…
“I am thankful that Attorney General Cox is fighting to make sure that the will of the people is upheld and that everyone is treated equally by Michigan’s government regardless of race or gender.”
BAMN continues its efforts to circumvent the will of the people and to convince the court to allow the state to discriminate against and prefer citizens based on skin color. In March 2008, U.S. District Court Judge David Lawson dismissed all claims against MCRI and ruled the law constitutional. In December 2008, the same judge denied the ACLU’s motion to amend or modify his March 2008 ruling.
(Pictured: Jennifer Gratz, hounded by BAMN protesters in Michigan)
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Thomas Espenshade, author of a study that showed students of Asian descent are discriminated against at elite colleges and universities, thinks he’s come up with a bold new plan to close the racial achievement gap.
Calling it a project “with the same scale, urgency, and sense of importance as the original Manhattan Project,” Espenshade proposes to monitor the lives of up to 50,000 children from birth to age eighteen to try to determine what causes the racial gap and how parents, schools, neighborhoods, and the government can work together to close it. (Source)
Good luck with that.
Espenshade’s research shows the extent of lowered standards for blacks in higher education. For instance, black students admitted to elite colleges and universities receive the equivalent of a 310 SAT-point boost. Talk about a thumb on the scale. Hispanics receive a 130-point boost. Standards for black applicants whose ancestors were American slaves are lowered more than those for blacks of multiracial background or who are first- or second-generation immigrants.
Regarding the mismatch theory — the idea that black students admitted under preferences are ill-matched to colleges and universities they attend — Espenshade says blacks admitted under preferences are more likely to graduate, go to grad school, and have higher lifetime incomes, but they tend to graduate at the low end of the class as selectivity rises.
“On balance, we conclude that a higher graduation rate and the other advantages of attending a more selective institution more than outweigh the potential disadvantages of lower class rank at graduation.”
I wonder if blacks graduating at the bottom of their classes would agree. Let’s say most would agree. Fine, but we must call the thing by its name. It isn’t “affirmative action”; it’s lowering the bar. If black Americans don’t have a problem with that, okay. But don’t use a euphemism and pretend it’s something else.
Finally, Espenshade announces what most already know: racial preferences exist because of the achievement gap between the races. But for lowered standards, elite schools (and probably non-elites, too) would see fewer blacks on campus.
“What we see at selective colleges and universities is just the tip of the iceberg,” he writes. “It is symptomatic of a much broader societal phenomenon. Racial gaps in academic skills and knowledge begin to develop soon after birth. They are reflected initially in children’s inventories of vocabulary words and later in tests of math and reading. By the time of kindergarten entry, black children lag about one year behind whites. Gaps continue to grow throughout the elementary and secondary school years in a pattern of cumulative advantage and disadvantage.”
Espenshade notes the far-reaching implications of the gap, as it manifests itself in high school and extends to the workforce. The “Manhattan Project” solution to the problem isn’t nearly as bold or as innovative as he believes it is. It’s just another grandiose and expensive-sounding proposal that tip-toes around a factor that exacerbates disparities between the races: illegitimacy. Or more precisely, fatherlessness.
I concur with Roger Clegg’s comment on the article (emphases added):
“Earlier this year, the National Center for Health Statistics came out with its latest numbers on illegitimacy (final data for 2006). By population subgroup, the percentage of children born out of wedlock is 70.7 percent for non-Hispanic blacks, 64.6 percent for American Indians/Alaska Natives, 49.9 percent for Hispanics, 26.6 percent for non-Hispanic whites, and 16.5 percent for Asians/Pacific Islanders. Notice any connection between those numbers and how academically competitive the members of the group are likely to be come college admissions time?
“The fact is that kids who grow up in two-parent homes are much more likely to get the support and help they need to perform well academically. Conversely, illegitimacy correlates with just about any social problem you can name (poverty, crime, dropping out of school, substance abuse, etc.), and it — not discrimination — is the principal cause of racial disparities in all these areas. See my National Review Online column here.
“And you will not be surprised to hear that I do not believe this problem will be solved by giving racial preferences in college admissions to middle- and upper-class African Americans.
“This is a cultural and moral problem, and I don’t have a proposed silver bullet to solve it. I would say only that, while there may be a limited role for government, most of the heavy lifting will probably have to be done by the little platoons.
“(BTW, please don’t bother arguing that illegitimacy is caused by racism. The percentage of out-of-wedlock births for African Americans has actually gotten much, much higher as discrimination has diminished.)”
John Rosenberg at Discriminations has more.
Filed under: Achievement Gap | |2 Comments
Some students at Columbia University are in a tizzy over ethnic cleansing of a sort. Schools are subject to a new federal survey that lumps people of North African and Middle Eastern descent into the “White” category. (Source)
Students must choose among five race/ethnicity categories: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, black or African American, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and white. Which box does the quarter black/quarter American Indian/quarter Pakistani/quarter Chinese student check?
Arab student Yasmina Raiani wrote that the regulation “clumps individuals of North African and Middle Eastern descent into ‘white,’ which is not only superficially inaccurate—in that the actual skin tone range of North African and Middle Eastern peoples is more akin to that of Hispanics/Latinos than it is to Caucasians—but also historically insensitive…To identify Arabs as ‘white’ is to disregard our history as members of the colonized world and to dismiss all acts of racial discrimination against our community.’”
The U.S. Census includes such categories as Asian Indian, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and Samoan. Plain old “American” won’t do. The simplest solution to the which-box-do-I-check problem is to eliminate the race box altogether. Why does it still exist?
Discussing the U.S. Census on the “Uncommon Knowledge” show in 2002, the American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly said, “I think that we need to reach the point where the census doesn’t even ask you about race.” (Source)
Connerly added that race “is a political phenomenon essentially that’s been used to divide people, to segregate people and to engage in all other kinds of societal mischief. And I think that the more people are aware of the fact that this purity of races is kind of like the Nuremberg laws and is something that America should get away from.”
If only we could! But the government won’t allow it. I’d vote for the removal of race/ethnicity boxes from all government applications.
Filed under: General | |3 Comments
Last month I blogged about discrimination against Americans of Asian descent at elite colleges and universities. A Princeton study showed these students were much more likely to be rejected than other students. A black student with 1150s and a white student with 1460s had the same chances of getting in as an Asian student with 1600s, top scores.
The Northwest Asian Weekly reports that Americans of Asian descent face discrimination in government contracting as well. According to a UCLA study by Dr. Paul Ong, Asian business owners snag the fewest contracts in minority set-aside programs. As most people know, Asians typically aren’t part of the preferred minority brigade.
“Korean Americans have the highest self-employment rate among Asian Americans, but they still do not earn as much as their non-Latino white counterparts, even after controlling for education and other characteristics.”
It would be helpful to know whether “Asian American” business owners are going after government contracts at rates comparable to other minorities. Earning less money may have little to do with race, and disparities don’t prove discrimination. Based on the tone of the article, however, race-related reasons are assumed.
The study will be released later this month, so we’ll have to wait until then for more information.
Filed under: General | |Comments off
I’m sure you’ve heard about colleges removing white faces from brochures and catalogs and photoshopping in blacks or women for “diversity.” Comical.
It seems the Naval Academy performed some real-life photoshopping. Academy leaders removed two white men from the color guard line-up for a performance at the recent World Series and replaced them with a “non-white” man and a white woman for purposes of diversity. (Source)
But here’s the twist: the “non-white” man forgot part of his uniform and had to be replaced. The line-up was all-white, anyway, and the Naval Academy ended up with bad PR.
Other midshipmen and alumni complained about the apparent diversity shuffle. After the requisite he said/he said exchanges, where an academy spokesman denied that the school pulled the men because they were white, despite a press release apparently contradicting him, brigade commanders issued a gag order forbidding midshipmen to talk about the controversy to outsiders.
The Washington Post has more.
(Photo source: Naval Academy Color Guard on Facebook)
Filed under: Diversity | |2 Comments
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