Archive for General
This CNN story reveals some of the complications that crop up when the government asks people to state their race on government forms.
According to a new government report, some Census workers “incorrectly communicated” questions about race during face-to-face interviews, and others made assumptions about the race of interviewees based on appearance.
The story frames the problem as miscommunication and incorrect assumptions (one-drop rule redux?) about interviewees. The real problem is the government asking Americans to state their race. Not only should the government not ask about race, the more multiracial America becomes, the more difficult it will be to classify people along rigid racial or ethnic lines.
One of the Census Bureau’s frequently asked questions is why the Census asks about race. The answer (PDF):
“Information on race is required for many federal programs and is critical in making policy decisions, particularly for civil rights. States use these data to meet legislative redistricting principles. Race data also are used to promote equal employment opportunities and to assess racial disparities in health and environmental risks.”
Why is race critical in making policy decisions, and how does checking a box on a form “promote equal employment opportunities”? Government policy is supposed to be colorblind, and the law protects the rights of all individuals, regardless of race. If someone faces racial discrimination, he may seek redress. Checking a box on a government form doesn’t protect his rights.
As to racial disparities, they are not proof of discrimination. The government too often uses the existence of disparities as an excuse to grant preferences to people based on race. As some races are more susceptible to certain diseases, however, collecting race for medical data may be legitimate. But this exception doesn’t require people to check race boxes on forms unrelated to medical data collection.
Why haven’t “we the people” demanded our government stop the race-box practice? If you’re as frustrated about it as I am, sign the Decline to State Race petition, and let’s try to turn the project into a national movement. Government policy should be colorblind, but America won’t accomplish the goal unless we retire the government from the race business.
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A non-English-speaking woman living in an English-speaking city in an English-speaking country was robbed. She couldn’t find a cop who spoke Spanish. Someone in the Boston Police Department told her she needed to speak English. (Source)
From this anecdote, which the woman shared at a city council meeting, we get this:
“The executive director of the advocacy group, Oíste, Negretti blamed the experience on a shortage of blacks and Latinos in higher positions and specialized units on the Boston Police Dept. Negretti contends the shortage hurts performance and perception, even hampering the ability to combat youth violence.”
How about hiring Spanish-speaking officers of any color to translate for Spanish speakers? Would that qualify as a diversity effort, or would the police department be coerced to hire based on race?
Police Commissioner Ed Davis seized the opportunity at the city council meeting to complain about the pencil-and-paper civil service exams on which hiring and promoting decisions are based. He said the exams are barriers to minority hiring and aren’t valid for measuring an applicant’s or candidate’s skills in any case. Davis also said, “I will not change my standards. I will not pick people based on race. They have to do the job.”
According to the article, minorities account for 40 percent of the appointed (by Davis) command staff, “above the levels when the department still used race-based hiring,” but for positions in which a civil service exam is required, the numbers are lower.
Draw your own conclusions.
Complaints lodged and lawsuits filed against the use of objective, valid employment exams signify a slow march toward their extinction. It’s ironic. Civil service exams were implemented to prevent race- and politically based decisions. Now, people claim the exams are discriminatory. Whether one considers the exams valid or not, dropping the requirement would mean that police departments lowered standards instead of challenging people to rise up against expectations.
Some people call that progress.
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Admitting individuals to college based only on factors like grades, scores, and extracurricular activities seems a naïve notion, I admit. We must “remedy” past discrimination, they say. But when our government makes assumptions about individuals, and we authorize the government to make judgments based on those assumptions, we’re in dangerous territory.
At Minding the Campus, Charlotte Allen writes about preferences for men in college admissions to “remedy” the imbalance between men and women on campuses. Some schools are lowering standards to admit more men, and Allen says Title IX of the Civil Rights Act allows it.
“Title IX contains an exemption that specifically allows private colleges that aren’t professional or technical institutions to prefer one sex over the other in undergraduate admissions. Militant feminists and principled opponents of affirmative action might complain about the discrimination against women that Title IX permits, but for many second- and third-tier liberal arts colleges lacking male educational magnets such as engineering and business programs, the exemption may be a lifesaver, preventing those smaller and less prestigious schools from turning into de facto women’s colleges that few young people of either sex might want to attend.” [emphasis added]
Sex-based preferences are illegal in public colleges and universities, however. I oppose sex preferences, particularly if they involve lowered standards. Preferring a male applicant over a female applicant means the female applicant has been denied admission because she’s a woman.
Allen notes that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is investigating several schools, public and private, to determine whether they’re discriminating against women to admit more men. Allen makes a couple of discussion-worthy points about whether preferences based on sex should be viewed differently from preferences based on race.
“It ought to be possible to argue that gender is different from race or ethnicity as a human category, the latter being a product of genetic drift, cultural isolation and religious differences, and the former an essential element in every human being’s identity. Sexual dimorphism, with the very real physical and psychological differences between the sexes that it entails, isn’t a cultural construct but the very machine of human reproduction and the passing on of human civilization: mating, the making of families, and the raising of children, which is arguably the most important of all human activities. The desire of many high school seniors to spend four years of their young adulthood in a setting like that in real life where neither sex outnumbers the other—and their willingness to vote with their feet if the setting proves otherwise—is different in kind from the discomfort that some might feel where there are ‘too many’ Jews or blacks or Asians. Many college administrators are well aware of this and have quietly adjusted their admissions policies accordingly. And it’s hard to see what’s wrong with that, especially when they’re dealing with borderline applicants who can’t be said to qualify for the freshman class strictly on their merits.”
Of course, some would argue that race and ethnicity are also essential elements in every human being’s identity, and that various racial/ethnic groups have “very real physical and psychological differences.”
Regardless of the commission’s findings, one thing is certain: sex-based preferences don’t quite rile people up the way race-based preferences do, do they?
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This is strange. Last month, state education officials in Washington asked for public comments on how to implement House Bill 3026, which bars government school districts from discriminating based on race and other factors.
But voters have spoken on this issue. In 1998, 58 percent passed I-200, which barred the state from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment in government employment, education, or contracting based on race and other factors. For 12 years, government school districts have been prohibited from doing what the new law purports to prohibit. An excerpt:
“In 1975, Washington passed a law prohibiting discrimination in public schools based on gender. Although many state and federal laws ban discrimination on the basis of other factors, state laws did not expressly include those factors for public schools until the new law was passed. The law brings all of Washington state’s protected classes to the same level. For public school staff members, it bans employment discrimination; for students, it extends protections to counseling and guidance services, recreational and athletic activities, and access to course offerings, and in textbooks and other instructional materials.”
There’s no mention of the existing law that bars discrimination and preferences. It’s as though it doesn’t exist.
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Last week I blogged about the Phoenix city council’s intent to change its 17-year-old Minority, Women, and Small Business Enterprise Program, to remove race and sex from the city contract equation. The city will set aside up to 10 percent of government contracts for small businesses, regardless of owners’ race or sex. Officials said the program is no longer needed, and it’s vulnerable to legal challenges.
Mark Flatten of the Goldwater Institute wrote an article for the Tucson Sentinel that sheds further light on the program. Last October, the institute published an article, “High Fliers: How Political Insiders Gained an Edge in Sky Harbor Concessions,” which exposed political favors in the racial preferences program at the Sky Harbor International Airport. An excerpt from the Tucson Sentinel:
“The beneficiaries include Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox [who is Hispanic], who was brought in as a partner in a Chili’s restaurant concession to meet city-imposed requirements for minority participation. Supervisor Wilcox did not take an active role in running the business, as required in federal law.
…
“Phoenix, which owns and operates Sky Harbor, suspended its use of racial preferences in 2006 [city council apparently wants to make it official], after a federal court ruling in Washington state imposed tighter standards for such programs. But the existing concession contracts using racial preferences have been extended each year since then.”
That non-minority-owned businesses bring in a woman or a racial minority to take advantage of set-asides isn’t shocking. Minority set-aside programs are exploitable.
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Echoing yesterday’s post, should a homeowner be allowed to sell his property to only whites? A “Caucasian Only” real estate advertisement has created a buzz in Massachusetts. A holdover from Jim Crow, the covenant stipulates that the property “shall not be sold, leased or rented to any person other than of the Caucasian race or to any entity of which any person other than of said race shall be a member, stockholder, officer or director.”
Restrictive covenants are deed restrictions put in place by the original developer that apply to a group of lots that are part of a development or subdivision. For example, a restrictive covenant may stipulate the type of material used to build a house, how small or large the house may be, etc. Some restrictive covenants back in the day prohibited the homeowner from selling his house to blacks specifically or to anyone other than whites.
In the mid-40s, a white couple in Missouri sued to keep a black couple from moving into their neighborhood. The property was governed by a racially restrictive covenant that stipulated the owners could sell only to whites. The state’s highest court ruled the covenant enforceable against the black couple, because it was a private agreement between the original parties. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court held that although the covenant didn’t violate anyone’s rights, the white couple couldn’t seek judicial enforcement, because such enforcement would be considered state action.
So what if it was state action, you ask? Well, the Fourteenth Amendment applies to states, not to individuals. (You wouldn’t know that in 2010 unless you paid attention in history class.) While racially restrictive covenants between individuals don’t violate the Equal Protection Clause, enforcement of such covenants by the state would violate the clause.
Contrary to common belief, the Supreme Court didn’t declare racially restrictive covenants illegal; the court declared them unenforceable.
Addendum: Eight years before the Shelly v. Kraemer case, the Supreme Court decided Hansberry v. Lee (parents of playwright Lorraine Hansberry) on procedural grounds. Homeowners agreed not to sell to blacks, effective only if signed by 95 percent of the owners. The covenant had been upheld in an earlier class action suit. Although only 54 percent of the homeowners had signed the agreement, the owners invoked res judicata (the matter had already been judged) based on the earlier suit.
The Hansberrys, who bought the property from an original party to the agreement and knew about the restriction, challenged the restriction. They claimed they were not parties to the original agreement, and being barred from litigating the matter would violate their Fourteenth Amendment rights. The court agreed.
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Libertarian Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for a Kentucky U.S. Senate seat, stirred the race relations pot last week when he made supposedly controversial statements about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Paul said that although he would have voted for the law and doesn’t support repealing it, he takes issue with the section that prohibits private businesses from discriminating on the basis of race.
In other words, Paul doesn’t believe the federal government should tell private businesses who to serve. It comes down to constitutionally protected freedom of association. Instead of federal government interference, economics and public pressure would provide better incentives to private entities to change their policies.
A. Barton Hinkle, writing in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, touches on what is acceptable and unacceptable discrimination. The consensus seems to be, if you believe mainstream media, that minority-based scholarships, set-asides, and other forms of preferential treatment, for example, are acceptable forms of discrimination; refusing to serve blacks is unacceptable.
“What about the scholarships offered exclusively to racial minorities — such as the Ford Foundation’s Diversity Fellowships, the Southern Regional Education Board’s Doctoral Scholars Program, the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, and the literally thousands of others like them? If Paul is flatly wrong, then those programs, which perpetuate private — and even public — racial discrimination, should be outlawed.”
I suppose it comes down to invidious (harmful, injurious) discrimination, versus innocuous (inoffensive) discrimination. Although discriminating on the basis of race and sex is illegal, the courts have applied different levels of scrutiny to each. As expected, race receives the highest level of scrutiny under judicial review, while sex merits only intermediate. Discriminating against people based on their membership in a racial group just strikes people as odious, considering America’s history of slavery and Jim Crow.
Almost everyone would agree that racial discrimination against blacks is wrong. Why doesn’t racial discrimination against whites or Asians merit the same concern? A blacks-only scholarship is a relatively minor form of discrimination to preferences proponents, but it’s still racial discrimination. Everyone who is not black is excluded from applying for the scholarship.
The government may not do it; that much is clear. But should private businesses and private colleges have the freedom of association to serve or award scholarships to people based on their membership in a racial group?
If—and this is a big If—we don’t want the government to force blacks to sit in the back of a public bus, it’s hypocritical to support a public college offering money to only blacks or only whites or only Asians. Agree or disagree?
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National Association of Scholars’ Ashley Thorne posted race-based graduation celebration announcements from Chico State University’s web site, for Asians, Latinos, and blacks. These ceremonies are not separate from the school, but endorsed by the school.
Par for the course. What would impress me is a “White-European Graduation Celebration.” That would stir things up.
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Last week I blogged about the Arizona legislature passing a bill that would ban “a school district or charter school from including courses or classes that either promote the overthrow of the United States government or promote resentment toward a race or class of people.”
State Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Horne said, “Traditionally, the American public school system has brought together students from different backgrounds and taught them to be Americans and to treat each other as individuals, and not on the basis of their ethnic backgrounds. This is consistent with the fundamental American value that we are all individuals, not exemplars of whatever ethnic groups we were born into. Ethnic studies programs teach the opposite, and are designed to promote ethnic chauvinism.”
Yesterday, Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill into law.
Last month, the government signed into a law a measure that requires police to check the citizenship or residency status of anyone they reasonably suspect might be an illegal alien. Under the new law, it’s also a crime to transport illegal aliens or hire day laborers.
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I’m a little behind the curve on this one. Last week, a principal at an elementary school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, organized a black students-only field trip to see a black “rocket scientist.” In this racial climate, Mike Madison made an obvious mistake. He has plenty of excuses, though. From AnnArbor.com:
“In hindsight, this field trip could have been approached and arranged in a better way. But as I reflect upon the look of excitement, enthusiasm and energy that I saw in these children’s eyes as they stood in the presence of a renowned African American rocket scientist in a very successful position, it gave the kids an opportunity to see this type of achievement is possible for even them.
“It was not a wasted venture for I know one day they might want to aspire to be the first astronaut or scientist standing on the Planet Mars.
…
“The intent of our field trip was not to segregate or exclude students as has been reported, but rather to address the societal issues, roadblocks and challenges that our African American children will face as they pursue a successful academic education here in our community.”
Let’s give Madison the benefit of the doubt. The trip was part of the school’s Lunch Bunch program, for black students only. That explains why he thought nothing of organizing a black students-only trip. The question is, how did the school get away with the Lunch Bunch program for so long? Regardless, the program is no more.
If Mike Madison and school administrators wish to expose black children to high-achieving black professionals, they could accomplish the goal by encouraging black parents to take their children to see them, rather than conducting such trips under the auspices of the government. Or they can include all students, so that all students may benefit.
For the record, Michigan voters barred their government from granting preferences to and discriminating against individuals or groups based on skin color in 2006.
(Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com)
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