Archive for January, 2010
If you’ve been living in a Wi-Fi-bereft cave for the last few days, you probably missed the Harry Reid uproar. The senator said something rather innocuous about our biracial president during the campaign. He described Barack Obama as a “light-skinned” black man with “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”
As expected, bedlam broke out. Now I, as a black woman, was not offended by Reid’s remarks. People on the right, however, are calling for Reid’s resignation as Senate Majority Leader. They cite the left’s hypocritical reaction to Trent Lott’s remarks about Senator Strom, which I’ve blogged about several times. An excerpt of a book review:
On December 5, 2002, Republican senator Trent Lott toasted 100-year-old Republican senator Strom Thurmond, a former segregationist, at a private birthday party, saying that if the rest of the country had voted for Thurmond for president as he had (Thurmond ran in 1948 as a Dixiecrat), “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.”
About a year and a half later, on the Senate floor (and on taxpayers’ time), Democrat Chris Dodd said that Democrat Robert Byrd (who said on cable TV a few years earlier that he’d seen a lot of “white niggers” in his time), a former segregationist and KKK recruiter, would have been “a great senator” during America’s founding, crafting of the Constitution, and the Civil War.
The backlash against Lott was fierce. He apologized and groveled on Black Entertainment Television (BET) but was eventually drummed out of his leadership post. The backlash against Dodd? Non-existent. He neither prostrated himself before the PC gods nor played the fool on BET.
Republicans are upset because of the double standard. If a Republican had said what Reid said, he’d be toast. But Reid’s a Democrat, with the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus. He can’t be touched.
The American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly wrote about the topic in the Wall Street Journal. I agree with Connerly about the substance of Reid’s comment, and not just because I blog for ACRI:
“For my part, I am having a difficult time determining what it was that Mr. Reid said that was so offensive…Was it because he suggested that lighter-skinned blacks fare better in American life than their darker brothers and sisters? If so, ask blacks whether they find this to be true. Even the lighter-skinned ones, if they are honest with themselves, will agree that there is a different level of acceptance.
“Was it because he used the politically incorrect term ‘negro’? If so, it should be noted that there are many blacks of my generation who continue to embrace this term. In fact, ‘negro’ is an option along with ‘black’ and ‘African-American’ on the 2010 Census.
…
“Or, finally, could it be viewed as offensive that Mr. Reid suggested that blacks often have a distinctive way of speaking? If that is, indeed, the offense, then I will offend a lot of individuals when I assert that I can tell in probably 90% of the cases whether an individual is black merely by talking to him on the telephone.
“In short, this incident does not rise to the level that it prompts me to join the parade of those who urge Mr. Reid to resign because of it. There are far more substantive matters over which the Senate majority leader’s performance should be judged—and I find his performance seriously flawed on any number of them.”
Republicans usually are the ones groveling and apologizing for “offending” someone at the mere mention of race, while the left typically gets a pass. That’s politics and plain old human nature. With the Congressional Black Caucus behind him, Harry Reid won’t lose his leadership post. And I don’t think what he said rises to that level, just as I didn’t think Lott’s comments warranted his stepping down.
Can we move on to substantive issues?
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Yesterday I blogged about the city of Youngstown, Ohio, hiring people for police officer and firefighter jobs from two separate lists: one for white men and one for minorities and women.
The publication I quoted, Vindy.com, published an editorial about the issue. Mayor Jay Williams wants to change the two-list hiring practice and use one list for everyone who passed the exam. The city council was supposed to vote yesterday whether to approve his request, but wants more information before voting. (Fear of disparate impact lawsuits). The mayor also seeks to hire nine to 11 firefighters from the two lists once more, because some employees recently retired and resigned.
An excerpt of the editorial:
“It is a reflection of changing times that the bifurcated eligibility lists that were the creation of a federal court as a response to what was then viewed as the unconstitutional exclusion of minorities from public employment are now themselves seen as unconstitutional. The dual lists grew out of a time when affirmative action was seen as a reasonable response to the systemic underrepresentation of minorities in public employment. In recent years, the Supreme Court of the United States has turned affirmative action policies on their head, finding that nonminorities — principally white males — were being discriminated against when minority men and women received preferential treatment in matters of educational opportunities, employment and being awarded public contracts.”
The problem with policies designed to remedy the effects past discrimination is that, inevitably, they end up discriminating against whites and non-preferred minorities. It isn’t a matter of hiring practices that negatively impact but don’t intentionally discriminate against blacks, as is the case when minorities disproportionately score too low on a promotions test. It’s a matter of intentional discrimination against whites or non-preferred minorities who did score high enough, but are passed over in the name of skin deep- and preferred minority-only diversity.
The conflict flows from the Civil Rights Act itself. Title VII contains disparate impact and disparate treatment (although the term is not used, disparate treatment means intentional discrimination) provisions. An entity can be liable for both, and complying with one provision may end up violating the other. For instance, in Ricci v. DeStefano, the city of New Haven tried to avoid disparate impact lawsuits and ended up getting sued for disparate treatment.
The Supreme Court waded through arguments and claims and decided, narrowly, that employers may avoid disparate treatment liability if they have a “strong basis in evidence” to believe they would be liable for disparate impact. Talk about pressure.
If blacks disproportionately fail employment or promotions tests, those agencies and companies may face disparate impact liability, despite a genuine effort to diversify the workforce.
Employers have an “out.” If the exam is job related, consistent with business necessity, and if there isn’t an equally valid, less discriminatory test the employer can use, he may escape disparate impact liability…but not the cost of defending such suits.
Should Congress rewrite those provisions of the law? Should employers eliminate exams altogether?
Back to the editorial. Shockingly, the writer suggests minorities themselves bear some responsibility:
“Regardless of how the numbers game plays out, having a diverse public payroll is a legitimate goal. But some of the responsibility for achieving that diversity falls on the minority community itself. Those who value diversity most highly should be pursuing a proactive agenda in which minority candidates for Civil Service jobs are recruited, beginning at an early age in schools and colleges. Tutoring programs and assistance in studying for the tests given prospective police officers and firefighters should be held at community centers and churches, with the assistance of minority employees and retirees from the departments.”
The Center for Equal Opportunity’s Roger Clegg adds in comments:
“Reasonable people can differ about the extent to which qualifications other than test scores ought to be weighed and how. But there is no reason to weigh skin color or national origin — and doing so is not only unfair and divisive, it’s illegal. If the city engages in such discrimination, it is indeed asking for a lawsuit.”
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Matt Waters writes about the American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly on Townhall.
“Thirteen years ago one man challenged the political establishment—of both parties—and won,” Waters writes. “His issue? Ending racial preferences. The man? Ward Connerly. Connerly, a Sacramento-based businessman, made the case why all Americans, black and white, should oppose racial preferences. At their core, racial preferences were meant to assist the disadvantaged, those who had a lesser education or who were born into impoverished conditions. What was created was a system that cheated thousands of hard working Americans of all races and classes, and coddled some Americans based solely on their race or gender.”
I reviewed Connerly’s first book, Creating Equal: My Fight Against Race Preferences, a few years before I met him. Check it out.
Waters notes the anger of groups opposed to equal treatment, such as ACORN, which tried to stop petitioners collecting signatures for measures that banned government preferences and discrimination in hiring, contracting, and admitting.
“Blocking and harassing petition circulators isn’t the only challenge facing the American Civil Rights Coalition as it attempts to get its initiative on the ballot in states across the nation. According to Connerly, ‘The other challenge comes in the form of lawsuits like the one the ACLU recently filed against our effort in Missouri. A judge there barred our initiative from appearing on the ballot based on a technicality. But this is the second time we have been blocked from gathering signatures by fraudulent ballot language written by the ACORN-backed Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan.’”
Read the full text of the article here.
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Try to follow this. The city of Youngstown, Ohio, hires police officers and firefighters from two separate lists: one for white men and one for minorities and women. Taxpayers are funding their government’s discriminatory practices that apply different standards to groups based on race and sex. (Source)
How do I know the standards are different, therefore, discriminatory? Let’s use common sense. If “all are qualified,” why would the city need to hire one minority or woman from the list for every two white men hired from the list? Are minorities and women seeking jobs as police officers and firefighters less qualified than the white men? If not, why does the city have two separate lists of people, distinguished by race and sex?
It’s called inferring. The numbers usually confirm the inference.
The practice is coming to an end, however. A federal court ruled that such lists used in Shreveport, Louisiana, to hire employees were unconstitutional. According to the article, Youngstown will cease and desist. (See Dean v. City of Shreveport)
Youngstown’s mayor Jay Williams is hoping to hire more firefighters from both lists one more time. “All are qualified,” he said, “and we’ll do this in a constitutional method. We want to maintain our high standard of employees and give consideration to all applicants.”
Mayor Williams may want to glance at Dean v. City of Shreveport before proceeding. Among other things, the court agreed with the plaintiff’s claim that using different cutoff scores for hiring based on race and sex violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. “One more time” may be one time too many.
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I recently blogged about Thomas Espenshade, author of a Princeton University study that showed students of Asian descent are discriminated against at elite colleges and universities.
He came up with what he probably thinks is a bold plan to close the racial academic 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.
Instead of spending massive resources on such a project, he should spend some time with students and teachers at KIPP and related schools.
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. Hispanics receive a 130-point boost. Standards for black applicants whose ancestors were American slaves are lower than those for blacks of multiracial background or who are first- or second-generation immigrants.
Espenshade is back in the news, as it were. A columnist for the New Jersey Star-Ledger blogged about Espenshade’s Manhattan Project-like proposal for improving the performance of minorities. Apparently his research shows that Princeton contributes to racial “inequality” because the school favors “affluent, advantaged students.” Yet, his research also shows how selective schools lower standards for minorities.
Racial preferences aren’t enough, says Espenshade, because the practice takes too long, and states are banning preferences in government admissions. But he’ll take them.
“If preferences for minority students were eliminated, acceptance especially for black applicants would be dramatically reduced,” reads the study. “The acceptance rates for blacks could be expected to fall from 31 percent under current policy to 13 percent, reducing the number of black students admitted by more than half.”
The study also notes that race-neutral admissions polices would reduce white acceptance rates, too. On average, students who descend from certain Asian countries outperform whites.
Sounds like a plan. Adopt race-neutral admissions, and let under- and over-representation fall where they may. That way, bureaucrats, teachers, and parents can adopt old-school teaching methods that worked well for minorities in the past, and understand why current methods and policies aren’t working. I recommend you read Thomas Sowell’s Black Rednecks and White Liberals.
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