Archive for General
At National Review’s The Corner blog, Victor David Hanson writes about a phenomenon most of us probably have experienced. “Beneficiaries” of racial preferences, those whose race was a factor in their admissions to colleges and universities, complain when others stigmatize them because race was a factor in their admissions.
Hanson writes:
“So Michelle Obama describes the fear that Sotomayor felt at Princeton — and its lasting effects to this day — and then compares it, of course, to Michelle’s own ambiguous feelings toward the same Princeton campus (cf. Michelle’s thesis for the details), that one is willing to put up with for the education and prestige it gave, but does not really like for the presence of apparently so many stuck-up, rich, preppy kids and their ubiquitous exclusive campus culture.”
It’s sad that minorities tend to see everything through a racial lens. As Hanson points out, the first year of college is often terrifying for everyone, but people like Michelle Obama and Sonia Sotomayor reduce it race. I went to an historically black college, and I was scared and uncertain about what to expect. I spent the next four years dealing with “stuck-up” kids and others who didn’t like me for whatever reason. Regardless of race, we all go through uncertainty and feelings of exclusion. But at a black college, I couldn’t play the race card the way minorites like Michelle Obama and Sonia Sotomayor can.
An inevitable consequence of feeling separate from others, as Hanson points out, is separatism and identification with the “tribe.” Such students may end up joining race- or ethnicity-focused groups, defeating the whole “diversity” effort in the process.
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The Pew Research Institute released a survey last month that revealed 58 percent of blacks agree that minorities should receive preferential treatment. Not a surprise. Only 22 percent of whites agree. Among Democrats, 45 percent agree that minorities should receive preferential treatment, in contrast to only 13 percent of Republicans. Twenty-eight percent of independents agree.
Here’s the surprise: 44 percent of people younger than 30 believe “every effort should be made to improve the position of minorities,” which we may assume includes racial preferences. One would think younger people, who didn’t live through Jim Crow (and whose parents may not have been alive during Jim Crow, either), would oppose preferences now that barriers have been torn down, and the only evidence of “racism” they’ve experienced is a white sales clerk following them around in a store or people looking at them “funny.”
To support preferential treatment is to support lowered standards. There’s no other way around it. Employing racial preferences involves lowering the bar for individuals who are members of certain racial groups.
And some people call that progress.
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“One of the unexpected results of the Sotomayor nomination is a refocusing on the politics of racial identity and the fossilized institutions of affirmative action-or the belief that the U.S. government should use its vast power to ensure an equality of result rather than a fairness of opportunity.” (Source)
So begins an excellent op-ed by Victor Davis Hanson. He summarizes what we anti-preference folks have been saying for many years and in many different ways: given varying levels of talent, drive, and motivation among individuals, it is impossible – impossible – to ensure that everyone ends up with the same stuff. The best we can hope for in our wonderfully free and wealthy society is to ensure that individuals have opportunities to succeed. The process cannot be forced, and failure to succeed is not proof of racism.
Hanson points out the glaringly obvious. With America’s multiracial make-up, who is considered black enough to qualify for preferences? If someone has a white parent and a black parent and checks the “non-Hispanic White” box, he doesn’t qualify for special treatment. If he chooses to self-identity as black, he receives preferences. Right? (He could always check “Other” or write in “American” just to be rebellious.)
Hanson asks, “[W]hat constitutes racial authenticity? Lack of income? An absence of success in the American rat race? Is the fourth generation upper-class Cuban an ‘Hispanic’ who should qualify for affirmative action because his name is Hillario Gonzalez? Does the one-quarter aristocratic Jamaican qualify for American redress on account of his partial blackness?”
See how muddled it gets? It’s rather distasteful to have the government making these determinations to begin with. We were naive to think the civil rights movement ended such practices. The government is still up to its eyeballs in racial categorization.
Hanson does an admirable job illustrating the absurdity of racial preferences by asking a series of rhetorical questions to figure out why preferences exist. Past discrimination against a collective? Then Barack Obama, born of a white mother and Kenyan father, should not have received preferences. Present racism against an individual? Do dark-skinned, non-blacks who face discrimination qualify for “affirmative action”? Is poverty a criterion? Then poor whites should benefit from preferences, right?
The slope becomes more slippery.
“Indeed, creating, recreating, and emphasizing racial identity, especially among elites, currently involves so many contortions that it has descended from the absurd to the outright pernicious-and is becoming a sort of racism itself.”
And lowering standards for blacks instead of expecting them to compete with everyone else is also a sort of racism.
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Rod Paige, George Bush’s former secretary of education, says the academic achievement gap between the races must be closed. How does he proposed to do that? (Source)
Paige has some interesting things to say. For instance, he said racial discrimination and injustice are “now episodic and much less of a barrier to success,” to which I wholeheartedly agree, but I want to get to the heart of the matter. He notes that the typical black 17-year-old reads and does math at the level of a typical white 13-year-old. Again, how do we close the gap?
“Political leaders must be open to support a broader array of instructional modalities including charter schools, private schools, parochial schools and virtual learning systems. They must resist the urging of the guardians of the status quo. Parents must help children understand the power of education to improve life’s circumstances and encourage them to do their best in school. Community leaders must mount after-school and Saturday morning programs and other initiatives that help children catch up on skills they have missed. Churches must expand their education programs and create better coordination with schools. Organizations like the NAACP, LULAC, the Urban League and others must work more forcefully with social organizations on educational initiatives. In other words, closing the education achievement gap will require a total community effort.”
And these will help close the achievement gap? Call me skeptical. Paige’s general suggestions are well intentioned and oft-repeated. The reward for better educated children is huge, but the task of better educating them is also huge.
Racial preferences, i.e., lowering standards, is one consequence of the academic achievement gap. Apparently, there aren’t enough minorities with the grades and scores to compete with everyone else, so schools drop standards (but only for minorities) in order to admit an arbitrary percentage of them for purposes of skin deep-only diversity.
If readers who think I’m off-base have another explantion for lowered standards, I’m all ears.
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Texas developed a way to get around explicit use of race in admissions by crafting the Ten Percent Plan, which guarantees Texas high school students graduating in the top 10 percent of their class admission to public colleges and universities in the state.
Last month, the Texas Senate voted 24 to 7 to modify the law to remove the admissions guarantee and cap admissions at 50 percent. On Monday, the Texas House approved a compromise bill that would cap students admitted under the plan to 75 percent, effective 2011. The law expires after six years, so the legislature can examine the changes. (Source)
The Texas Ten Percent Plan was developed after a federal appeals court ruled that Texas colleges could not use race as a factor in admissions. In order to attract and admit more minority students, the state came up with a way to achieve “diversity” without using race explicitly. The only reason the plan is being modified is capacity problems. UT President William Powers recently complained that his school would run out of room for students not admitted under the plan. Will a 75 percent admissions cap alleviate the problem?
According to the Dallas Morning News, some say the 10 percent plan has caused a “brain drain” at UT, because students who may have had the grades and scores but didn’t land in the top 10 percent of their schools went to different colleges. To put it another way, underqualified students who placed in the top 10 percent of their high schools were admitted over more qualified students who did not, even though the latter attended high schools with higher academic standards.
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You don’t read about this every day. A white man sued a grocery store because he was fired for being white (or for not being Hispanic). The store replaced him with a preferred Hispanic worker.
The Virginia Business Litigation Lawyer Blog links to the complaint filed by Robert Bruce (any relation?) against Compare Foods. The company has agreed to settle with Bruce in the amount of $30,000, and, among other things, it will craft an anti-discrimination policy.
Download the five-page complaint (PDF).
This isn’t Compare Foods’ first time at the discrimination rodeo. According to the Charlotte Business Journal, the store previously fired three non-Hispanic workers because of their race. The store settled that lawsuit as well. You’d think hiring/firing managers at Compare Foods had more sense by now.
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Richard Thompson Ford, author of The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, makes the case that America needs to leave behind the old-style civil rights approach in fighting so-called racial discrimination, where it was overt, in favor of a subtler approach. Ford believes the decline of inner-city neighborhoods and isolation of inner-city poor are main causes of inequality between the races. (Source)
In 2009, black Americans are free to live wherever they can afford, visit any restaurant they desire, and ride in the front of planes, trains, and buses. They may seize opportunity and work hard to take care of their families and enjoy the benefits of living in the wealthiest country on the planet. The bias and bigotry of white people are no longer impediments for blacks who want to get ahead. The biggest impediment in 2009 is the ghetto, says Ford.
[M]any of the reforms needed to improve the ghettos – job creation, more effective schools, better public infrastructure – would benefit poor and working class people of all races, striking a blow against class stratification as well as racial inequality.
…
If we confront and overcome these last vestiges of America’s racist past, if we can break the cycle of poverty and dysfunctional behavior, we can not only turn the corner on America’s shameful racist history; we can also turn millions of people who now drain resources in our jails and on public assistance rolls into productive citizens who will contribute to a vibrant economy and healthy civic culture.
Ford makes good points, but I don’t agree with the entire piece. For example, I believe the moral component of marrying before having children and doing whatever it takes to stick around and raise the children one sires shouldn’t be left out of the discussion. Regardless of the country’s economic condition or where we live, we are moral agents who ought to be responsible for the choices we make and ready to face the consequences of those choices. Ford’s “Deprived of legitimate job opportunities, many hustle in the quasi-legal gray market” excuse is part of the problem, not a cause of the problem.
I am convinced that family structure (or lack thereof), and not bigotry, overt or otherwise, is integral to whether children end up poor and underachieving and/or in the criminal justice system.
But I digress.
Ford strikes a balance between casting blame on whites and blacks for racial inequalities, though he clearly believes forces outside oneself – and not individual fortitude – has the greater bearing on one’s life outcome. He contends that inequality must be overcome not by focusing on white bigotry (although he doesn’t use the word white) but on creating job opportunities in the inner-city, improving schools, and overhauling drug laws.
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Daphne Eviatar, writing for The Washington Independent, unintentionally makes the case for race-blind laws. Eviatar provides background on the Ricci v. DeStefano case and points out the obvious: our government isn’t colorblind; therefore, it was permissible for the city of New Haven to deny promotions based on race.
If the reverse were true, however, New Haven’s actions would not be seen as permissible.
To prevent lawsuits like the one in Ricci and instances of racial discrimination in general, the government must adopt a colorblind stance. People perceive and are influenced by differences. It’s human nature. But governments are instituted to protect citizens from the darkest elements of human nature through laws and by penalizing those who break laws. It is essential for the government to treat citizens equally as individuals before the law, regardless of race, even if its race-focused intentions are good.
One of the problems with race-based laws are the unintentional consequences. In a case like Ricci, for example, black firefighters who failed to qualify for promotions could sue the city under the disparate impact theory. New Haven pre-empted such a lawsuit by intentionally discriminating against those who qualified for promotions, based on race. The first instance of “discrimination” isn’t discrimination at all, while the second one clearly is discrimination.
Whites like Frank Ricci who’ve been discriminated against should fight back. It’s a double standard to view discrimination against minorities as bad, while discrimination against whites is “good” or necessary to prevent racial disparities.
It’s a vicious cycle. How do we end it? By demanding a colorblind goverment.
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Legal segregation in America ended almost two generations ago. Black Americans have access to good schools and well-paying jobs. The so-called American Dream is within their grasp, if they dare seize it, as many have. Racial barriers have been removed, and opportunities abound. While people tend to self-segregate on a social level, we are living in a fully integrated society where minorities may participate in mainstream institutions.
Back in the days when the government sanctioned, and in some cases mandated, the separation of people by race, black colleges, black hospitals, and the like made sense. But do they make sense today?
The Sacramento Bee published a story about black beauty pageants. The question is, do pageants like Miss Black Sacramento have a role in society today? Naturally, people fall on both sides of the issue. The American Civil Right Institute’s Ward Connerly says no:
“We are not divided by language. We have the same culture, for the most part…Those events really need to go by the wayside. I guarantee you there will be people who will say, ‘What if we had a white pageant.’”
Conservative blogger Janet Shan said, “I really don’t think in 2009 we need a black miss anything or a white miss anything…There are pockets of racism in this country, but that is not enough to hold us back. We are not in the Jim Crow days.”
Angel Stewart, a co-director of the Miss Black Sacramento pageant, believes there is a place for such segregated events.
On the whole, the article seems slanted toward the obsolescence of black beauty pageants, which is surprising for a mainstream publication.
Isn’t it ironic that people who say America is racist or bigoted strive to keep race front and center?
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Paul Mirengoff of the Power Line blog has an op-ed in the Washington Times about the Obama administration’s selection of people who will all but ensure continued racial discrimination. Thomas Perez has been nominated to head the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Justice. Among other things, he believes in lowering standards for minority medical school applicants. See Obama Nominee Suggests Lower Quality Doctors for Minorities for more information.
Mirengoff writes:
Mr. Perez …is best-known for his efforts to develop cutting-edge theories with which to defend discrimination in favor of blacks and other minority groups.
In a 2006 article in the University of Maryland’s Journal of Health Care Law and Policy, Mr. Perez argued for the preferential treatment of minority applicants for medical school admission on the theory that minority medical school graduates are significantly more likely than their white counterparts to provide care to the poor.
…
However, Mr. Perez’s analysis is not intellectually honest because it fails to acknowledge that those admitted through racial preferences also are disproportionately likely to do poorly in medical school and, thereafter, disproportionately less likely to obtain important board certifications. In other words, lowering admission standards for minority applicants reduces the number of well-qualified doctors.
Mirengoff takes the analysis a step further by offering this insight: that black doctors serve the poor disproportionately may be the result of fewer options because of lesser qualifications (and not necessarily because of an altruistic impulse). Poorer communities are therefore being served by doctors admitted to medical schools under race preferences and are, by definition, less qualified than doctors who had to compete with everyone else.
Perez believes and advocates such a practice. If confirmed, he’ll continue advocating lower standards for minority medical school applicants. Occupying a high position in the Justice Department, he’d have a powerful platform from which to spread his ideas of “medical apartheid,” as Linda Chavez correctly calls it.
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