Archive for General
The assumptions some folks on the left make never cease to amaze. For instance, if whites leave loud, dirty, and expensive cities for quieter, cleaner, and cheaper suburbs, they’re racists. If they remove their children from mediocre government schools and send them to better government schools, they’re racists. If taxpayers in low-crime areas oppose Section 8 housing in their neighborhood, they’re racists.
Are racial minorities racist when they do the same thing?
Hartford Courant reporter Rick Green implies that Republicans are sending coded messages to “white folks like” him. The Republican Board of Education, which opposes government discrimination and preferential treatment, is targeting like-minded voters. The board’s goal is to appeal to parents of any color who oppose racial bean-counting and sending their kids to schools across town to satisfy someone’s idea of skin deep-only diversity.
Green quotes two men who support and oppose such practices. Supporter John Brittain, who led a desegregation case, said “our neighborhood schools” is code aimed directly at white people.
The Center for Equal Opportunity’s Roger Clegg commented on the post:
“Well, if children are assigned to schools on the basis of race, that IS racial discrimination (and the Supreme Court did strike down such racial balancing in the Seattle and Louisville cases). And if ‘neighborhood schools’ is a ‘code word’ for the preservation of whiteness, what phrase would be better to convey the fact that many (most) parents prefer that their kids go to nearby schools? I suspect that whatever phrase is chosen, those who want racial balancing will criticize it as code-worded racism.”
What irritates me about white liberals like Green is their assumption that all racial minorities support so-called desegregation efforts and have no problem sending their children across town. One commenter writes:
“I love it when idiots like Brittain claim real words/phrases are code words for sinister purposes…As a minority, I want my children to go to our neighborhood schools. The idea my children might be shipped across town so that white students can see what a Mexican kid looks like is disgusting to me.”
More like him, please.
The racial balancing issue has more to do with misplaced white guilt and coercion than concern for minority kids. It is my fervent wish that more minority parents speak out against such condescending practices. In the U.S., people have a right to live wherever they wish and for whatever reason. If this right results in taxpayers of a certain color flocking to districts with better schools, so be it.
The government has no business barring children from certain schools based on the color of their skin. Local lawmakers (and judges) should (re)read Brown v. Board of Education.
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What right-leaning “person of color” among us can’t relate to Ruben Navarrette’s latest column, Ugly Racial Litmus Test?
I’ve noticed a phenomenon articulated by John McWhorter in Authentically Black: Essays for the Silent Black Majority. He wrote about a “double consciousness” whereby blacks speak of empowerment and individual responsibility in private, but they play the victim in front of whites and constantly remind them of America’s “racist” ways. Whites, says McWhorter, must be kept “on the hook.”
The black person who refuses to hold this attitude faces “intra-racial” charges of self-hater, hater of black people, and the like. Ironically, the racial authenticity of the black person who opposes lowering standards for blacks and insists blacks can and should compete against everyone also is questioned.
The Hispanic Navarrette faces similar charges. “Some people of color have this ridiculous and destructive habit of judging each other’s racial and ethnic authenticity,” he writes. “It’s both comical and sad, since the people who do it often have deep insecurities about their racial and ethnic credentials.”
Navarrette, who says he opposes lowering standards for racial minorities, has been called a sellout, a Republican thug, a coconut (similar to “Oreo”), and a fake Hispanic “all, no doubt, to the delight of white liberals who prefer that Latinos like me refrain from thinking for ourselves.”
Navarrette mentions a CNN segment in which Syracuse University professor Boyce Watkins referred to FOX News analyst Juan Williams as a “happy Negro.” I had the misfortune of being the person Watkins was sparring against during that segment. He purportedly was upset because Bill O’Reilly made a comment on his radio show about how well-behaved patrons were in a black-owned restaurant, where he dined with Al Sharpton. A media storm ensued, and O’Reilly was called ignorant and a racist.
Detractors tend to leave out the conversation’s context. O’Reilly and Juan Williams were discussing the contrast between how television plays up negative stereotypes about blacks and what O’Reilly experienced in the restaurant. He made the point that whites who don’t interact much with blacks may believe all or most blacks play to type.
Out of the entire conversation, this sentence stirred up the media storm: “There wasn’t one person in Sylvia’s who was screaming, ‘M-Fer, I want more iced tea.’”
I agreed to appear on CNN to criticize the media-created storm, not necessarily to defend O’Reilly. After Watkins made his “happy Negro” remark, I promptly admonished him and accused him of doing the same thing he’d accused O’Reilly of doing.
But in the scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. People will believe what they want to believe and say what they want to say. The best way to deal with the name-calling is to develop a very thick skin. If you strongly believe your principles and values are right, and you feel compelled to share them, you’ll need courage to face the consequences.
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John McWhorter, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of such books as Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America and Authentically Black, has written a must-read article on Minding the Campus about the state of so-called African American studies departments.
The first African American studies department was created forty years ago. McWhorter questions whether what is taught can be called education.
What should the mission of a truly modern African-American Studies department be?…The answer common in such departments is that the principal mission is to teach students about the eternal power of racism past and present. Certainly it should be part of a liberal arts education to learn that racism is more than face-to-face abuse, and that social inequality is endemic to American society. However, too often the curriculum of African-American Studies departments gives the impression that racism and disadvantage are the most important things to note and study about being black.
One would assume African American studies would transcend oppression and victimhood and give equal or greater time to the “bootstraps” and “self-help” attitudes that seemed more prevalent among blacks when they faced actual racial discrimination, and not perceived personal slights. What do the courses focus on?
Typical is the curriculum of one African-American Studies department in a solid, selective state school west of the Mississippi. In this department, racism is, essentially, everything…Following from this glum desperation is a fetishization of radical politics as blacks’ only constructive allegiance. One would never know the marginal import of radicalism to most black lives from its centrality to so many African-American Studies department syllabi. One course analyzes “the tradition of radical thought and the relevance of this thought to the needs and interests of the black community” – but what does the “relevance” consist of except intellectually? Yet the same department also offers a course on, more specifically, black Marxism.
Why is academia so much more radicalized that the “real world”? McWhorter provides examples of African American studies courses at several schools, and concludes radical indoctrination is not education. He recommends departments revise what they teach to reflect that racism against blacks “is receding, and to such a degree that the race’s challenges today are vastly different than they were forty years ago”; and offer at least one course on black conservative thought as an alternative argument. Along with men like Booker T. Washington, include the work of people like Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Debra Dickerson, and Stanley Crouch.
There is an argument hardly unfamiliar in the halls of ivy that black writers of this ilk are irrelevant to serious discussion because they are traitors to the race. Those charges must be permitted as free speech – but have no place in any brand of academic inquiry. All of the writers I have listed are careful thinkers deeply concerned with the fate of black America. It will not do to tar them as “not scholarly” because they do not all write in academic format or publish in obscure scholarly journals. Writings typically assigned by James Baldwin, Cornel West or even most of the others in this school are not written in this format either.
He suggests additional conservative writers and thinkers. In other words, African American studies departments should allow students to reflect on both sides of the argument. That is what produces true “liberal arts enlightenment.” I can’t say it better than McWhorter.
(Photo by Robert Holmgren)
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The lead investigator on a show I watch is a woman. Although thin-boned and shorter than the men she supervises, she’s a tough gal. She chases down bad guys, who manage to trip at just the right moment, and she pounces on them, slapping on handcuffs. When she does encounter a man she can’t bring down, her male subordinates conveniently pop up just in time for some serious man-handling.
Watch any program with a female cop/detective/investigator, and you’d think physical differences between men and women were trivial. But that’s TV. Real life works differently.
The Center for Equal Opportunity’s Linda Chavez writes about what happens in real life. Last week, the Department of Justice sued the Department of Corrections for discriminating against women applying for jobs as prison guards. Chavez writes:
“So what exactly constitutes this discrimination? Apparently, female prison guard applicants have a more difficult time passing a required physical abilities test (PAT) than their male counterparts, which is unacceptable to the Obama Justice Department.’
‘Bringing an end to practices that have a discriminatory impact on the basis of sex,’ says the press release touting the suit, ‘is a major priority of the Justice Department and Civil Rights Division’…It wasn’t all that long ago that the very idea of hiring women to guard violent men — even if they were behind bars — would have been thought unwise if not downright crazy. But we’ve learned that women can do non-traditional jobs, even excel at them. And we’ve been reassured by feminists that women would ultimately demonstrate they could perform these jobs just as well as men.”
Apparently, the issue isn’t whether women can pass the test; it’s whether the test itself is “job related and consistent with business necessity.” Our bloated Byzantine system permits claims against government agencies that weed out candidates based on physical strength in a profession that requires physical strength.
You don’t have to be particularly knowledgeable about the inner workings of a male prison to conclude that it’s safer for all involved to have big strong men guarding and handling other big strong and violent men. Common sense goes a long way. Alas, politically correct pabulum trumps common sense.
You may recall that in 2005, violent criminal Brian Nichols overpowered his female handler, attacked her, took her gun, and killed a judge, a deputy sheriff, and a court reporter. The woman was escorting Nichols, who was facing rape charges. The powers that be thought it was a splendid idea to assign a shorter, weaker woman (five feet) to guard a taller, stronger man who’d been caught with concealed weapons days before. (Source)
Yes, Nichols could have just as easily overpowered a man. Beside the point.
Women are disparately impacted by the PAT, because they are, on average, smaller and weaker than the average man. To remove the discriminatory effect, the agency would have to lower strength standards for women, which would defeat the purpose of having standards in the first place.
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I had to comment on a HuffPost blog post by David A. Wilson, founder of NBC Universal’s The Grio, a “video-centric news community site devoted to providing African Americans with stories and perspectives that appeal to them but are underrepresented in existing national news outlets,” if for no other reason than to clarify what most conservatives mean by colorblindness.
Wilson says it’s better to be racist than colorblind. What does he mean?
“To claim color blindness ignores this very human truth. We can no more be color blind than be unconscious of height, weight, age or sex. We can easily and openly describe any of those human characteristics; however we whisper or try to find creative ways to describe someone’s race in conversation. Of course the reasons behind this discomfort are rooted in an ugly history that held race as the primary marker for our discrimination.”
I agree. Achieving colorblindness may be a worthy goal, but we perceive differences. That’s a fact, and it’s morally neutral. It’s neither good nor bad. I’ll take it a step further: avoiding certain people based on differences isn’t a bad thing, either, although politically correct society tries to condition the sheep to believe it is.
Here is where liberal types misunderstand conservative types like myself. I don’t care whether someone dislikes me because of my skin color. That’s his/her problem, not mine. But it becomes my problem if the person infringes on my rights because of the color of my skin. If the government does it, the infringement is worse. Government policy must be colorblind. If individuals want to give it a try, more power to them.
Colorblind government policy is that which treats its citizens as individuals without regard to race. Government was instituted to protect our civil rights, that is, our individual rights, and it’s necessary for the existence of a civilized society. Its function isn’t to control people’s lives, but to allow people to live freely without interference from others. 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 wants to think about me because I’m black, but neither he nor my government may interfere with me because I’m black.
That, Mr. Wilson, is why conservatives advocate colorblind policy.
“We give weight to the idea of race being negative by considering it taboo. The more we avoid the topic, the discussion, the word, the more power we lend it. To bring race into casual conversation is to treat it as it should be treated — as a non-issue.
“Now is the time to accept our human nature and admit that no matter who we are, there’s a little racist living inside. To face our racist and look to battle its biases every day should be a personal and life long struggle for each of us against the very worst of our human nature. As any recovering addict can attest, the first step to recovery is admitting the problem.”
I disagree with him, to a point. Perceiving and acknowledging differences does not mean someone is a racist. If that were the case, the whole world’s racist. I also disagree that individuals necessarily should battle biases. Hold them all you like! Hate people of different races, if that’s your thing. But if you infringe on someone’s rights, because of race, sex, or whether the wind blows east, that’s another matter.
Let’s focus more on protecting individuals’ rights and keeping the government in check and less on trying to change the way people think.
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One problem with legislation created during the civil rights era to protect blacks from discrimination is that its present-day application typically is condescending.
For example, Georgia tried to protect the integrity of the voting process by requiring voters to present state-issued identification. I was under the impression that this was standard practice, but groups cried discrimination and compared this requirement to poll taxes and literacy tests, which whites used against poor and illiterate blacks to keep them from voting. Detractors claimed the ID requirement was discriminatory to old, low-income, and black people. Black legislators in Georgia even walked out of the state capital building in protest after the law passed.
I can’t help but think of the Stepin Fetchit character, and how little regard these black politicians had for their own people—too ignorant and/or too lazy to go down to the DMV and get a state-issued ID card, which was free if they couldn’t afford it.
I’m probably in the minority of blacks who sees the stark patronizing and condescending attitude people have toward black Americans, or at least one of a few to publicly talk about it.
Writing in National Review Online, Hans A. von Spakovsky, a former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, writes about an example of the Voting Rights Act’s Section 5 application. This law is a holdover from the civil rights era that requires certain states to seek federal approval to make changes in voting procedures. Regarding the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division:
“These highly partisan bureaucrats…typically exhibit a disturbingly patronizing attitude towards [black Americans]…The latest example of this transparent political mischief has, unfortunately, gone largely unreported by the media. It’s an outrageous objection by the Civil Rights Division to a voting change in the small town of Kinston, N.C. The case involved a referendum by the residents of Kinston to change the elections for city council from partisan to nonpartisan. The referendum passed overwhelmingly in November 2008. But the Justice Department recently refused to pre-clear it, claiming that it discriminates against minorities.
“The department’s decision is as offensive as it is inexplicable. Consider that, at the time of the November 2008 election, Kinston had about 15,000 registered voters, of whom 65 percent were black. This is actually a higher registration rate than one would expect, since the 2000 census showed that the black voting-age population is just 58.8 percent of the total population. Moreover, on the town’s five-member city council (elected at large), two of the councilmen are black and all five are Democrats. Although the current mayor is white, the longtime prior mayor was black.”
Von Spakovsky adds that DOJ lawyers use the Voting Rights Act to benefit Democrats. I certainly can believe that, as 90 percent of black Americans vote for Democrats. But partisanship aside, the government believes blacks need hand-holding and special treatment, cannot be expected to use discernment or be responsible for their choices, or deal with the consequences of those choices.
Hence, the existence of such policies as racial preferences, which hold blacks to a lesser standard.
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The student newspaper for the University of California at Irvine published an editorial in 2003 about a racial preferences bake sale hosted by the College Republicans as a protest against racial preferences and to encourage students to vote for the Racial Privacy Initiative. The measure, which failed to pass, would have amended the California constitution to bar state and local governments from classifying residents by race.
Although the editorial’s six years old, I wanted to address the author’s erroneous conclusion, because I’m sure other opponents of such sales make the same claim.
A typical “affirmative action” bake sale: items are priced based on race. For instance, students of Asian descent are charged the most for baked goods and black students charged the least. The goal is to illustrate the inherent unfairness and offensiveness of lowering standards for certain races while keeping standards high for others.
The school’s dean asked the group to shut down the sale.
The editorial writer agreed with the dean. “Under the First Amendment, people are given the freedom of speech and the right to espouse whatever opinions they wish. However, selling doughnuts was an action.”
The First Amendment prohibits the government from making laws that curtail the freedom of speech; however, the Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment to restrict such speech as obscenity. The court also has interpreted the amendment to extend protection to expression, and included in this category is “symbolic speech.” This category of speech is typically, though not always, non-verbal. Racial preference bake sales, actions that express an idea, can be classified as symbolic speech.
In 1974, the Supreme Court held in Spence v. Washington that displaying an American flag upside down (in protest of the Vietnam War) is protected expression, or symbolic speech. In affirmative action bake sales, students are expressing disapproval of a school policy they believe is discriminatory.
One may disagree with the court’s interpretation or my applying Spence to affirmative action bake sales on college campuses. The point is, certain actions may be considered protected forms of expression. The editorial writer’s comment that “selling doughnuts was an action” does not exclude the action from First Amendment protection.
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Back in June, The Valley Club in Pennsylvania turned away a group of 56 black day camp kids (some sources cite 65, which includes Hispanics) who came to use the private club’s swimming pool. The club gave the camp a refund.
Naturally, accusations of “racism” flew, especially when some of the children said they heard a club member ask why the black kids were there. Employees say the incident wasn’t racially motivated – too many kids, some of whom couldn’t swim, not enough bodyguards on duty, etc.
Although the club is private, turning away a group of racial minorities was bound to cause a ruckus. Last week, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission found probable cause of racial discrimination. The Valley Club may have to pony up $50,000 in civil penalties. (Source)
How does a private club fall under the jurisdiction of a government agency? The commission’s 33-page report (PDF) doesn’t answer the question. After reading the report, my view still holds: the group was too large and disruptive, and dues-paying members complained. The evidence of discrimination is pretty thin. Because the kids were mostly black, however, and some heard a club member – not an employee of the club – mentioning race, it became a racial issue.
The Valley Club may appeal the decision. I suggest the club changes its policy to expressly prohibit groups over a certain size from using the facilities or designate certain days for day camp swimming while giving dues-paying members advance notice of the schedule.
Update: John Hudson, who’s comment was deleted as spam (text retrieved), wrote:
“You indicated that you did not see how a private club could fall under the jurisdiction of this commission. Findings 10 and 11 state that the club allowed its facilities to be used by non-members on a fee for use basis. This makes it a business open to the public and not a private club for this purpose. As a result it is subject to the same anti-discrimination laws as any other business open to the public. The mere fact that it also use of its facilities based on membership does not alter the fact that it also rented out its facilities to the public and was therefore a public accommodation. If you want to have a private club that bars non-whites you have a constitutional right to do so under the freedom of association that the Supreme Court has implied into the First Amendment. However, an accommodation open to the general public is not an exercise of that right to choose your associates.”
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In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of white firefighters and against the city of New Haven in Ricci v DeStefano. The city had thrown out the results of a promotions test because no blacks scored high enough to qualify for promotions. The city claimed that had it certified the test results, it could have been sued by black firefighters under the disparate impact theory.
In a 5-4 decision split along party lines, the Supreme Court held that the city violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act when it discarded the test. The decision was based on an analysis of Title VII’s provisions on disparate treatment and disparate impact. New Haven intentionally discriminated against white firefighters (disparate treatment) to avoid liability for unintentional discrimination against black firefighters (disparate impact).
Years ago, in an effort to make the test more “black-friendly,” New Haven hired a consulting firm to create an easier test. Since blacks disproportionately failed to qualify for promotions with the new test, government entities and test consulting firms are “more confused about compliance with the nation’s discrimination laws.” (Source) Unfortunately, many fear to simply hire people based on objective scores, as disparate impact lawsuits usually result. What are their post-Ricci options?
Some defend multiple choice civil service tests and say they “test job knowledge in many professions, including medicine and law.” Detractors cite racial disparities as evidence that the tests are unreliable.
Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. Government entities may be able to reduce disparate impact claims by doing away with paper-and-pencil or computerized multiple choice tests altogether (instead of spending money hiring firms to constantly rewrite them) and assess candidates and employees on such factors as…
No, wouldn’t work. Whatever factors hiring and promotions are based on, racial differences will become apparent, and suits will follow.
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A white cop was put on desk duty and ordered to stay off the street, because he came to work with braided hair. Although “dozens” of black cops in Philadelphia wear cornrows on the street while on duty, Officer Thomas Strain apparently looked ridiculous enough to warrant action.
It should go without saying that if police departments allow black male officers to wear their hair in braids on the street, pulling Officer Strain because he wore braids on the street is racially discriminatory. (Source)
It’s unknown whether the officers allowed to wear braids are females, who police departments give more leeway when it comes to hairstyles.
An unnamed officer said, “It’s absolutely discriminatory. Strain’s cornrows ‘do was neat. It was above his collar. It’s not like he shaved a Nazi sign or something anti-black or anti-Hispanic on his head. It’s just cornrows. I don’t know what the problem is.”
I suspect the department thought black residents and black fellow officers would consider Strain’s cornrows offensive, a sort of “That’s our hairstyle. Are you making fun of us?” attitude.
Look to the Constitution! If blacks are allowed to look ridiculous and unprofessional on the job, whites should be allowed to look ridiculous and unprofessional on the job.
It’s a different matter altogether, however, if “dozens” of black male cops are wearing braids while undercover to better “infiltrate” target groups, and Strain wasn’t undercover.
Clarification: If it’s not clear in my post, I’ll make it clear now: I don’t like cornrows on men, especially for the workplace. On women…whatever.
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