Legal Commentary
Discriminations 
who? Discriminations is the joint production of John and Jessie Rosenberg. John is one of the world's older grad students, now completing a 30-year overdue dissertation at Stanford on discrimination. Jessie is a 16 year old junior at Bryn Mawr College majoring in physics. Post Frequency: 2.5/day Last Entry: November 20, 2009 at 10:23:39 Recent Entries: 795
\r\nwhat? John's focus, not surprisingly, will be on the theory and practice of discrimination, and how it is reported and analyzed.
\r\nJessie's will be discriminating thoughts on ... whatever catches her fancy or attracts her attention. (Email: jrosenbe@brynmawr.edu)
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Faltering Defense Of ?Diversity??
Posted on November 20, 2009Prof. John L. Jackson, Jr., whom we have encountered many times here as the Chronicle of Higher Education?s designated BOC (Blogger Of Color [my term, not the Chronicle?s]), is troubled today by the increasingly ineffective (I would say pathetic) defenses of ?diversity...
Narcissist In Chief
Posted on November 19, 2009Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe begins a recent perceptive, deeply troubling column about our president?s seemingly boundless narcissism by relating how Obama, who couldn?t be bothered to attend the celebrations in Germany marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, nevertheless managed to make his videotaped remarks about the historic event about ...
Are There Really No Asians In Virginia?
Posted on November 19, 2009According to latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2008 Asians were 4.9% of Virginia?s population, slightly higher than the 4.5% for the nation as a whole. But to Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine and a Washington Post staff writer, they apparently don?t exist...
Devastating Criticism Of Affirmative Action Vapidity
Posted on November 19, 2009Something dramatic appeared on Inside Higher Ed today, but it was not the Q & A interview with Notre Dame philosophy professor James P. Sterba about this new book, Affirmative Action For the Future. Indeed, Sterba?s answers to Inside Higher Ed?s pedestrian questions were so vapid that ? even though I argue about this stuff daily as an avocation ? I couldn?t work myself up to criticize it...
Taking A Flier On Health Care ?Reform?
Posted on November 18, 2009?Take a flyer? Idiom Meaning ? To Take a chance or a risk Jeffrey S. Flier, the dean of Harvard Medical School,? give health care ?reform? a ?failing grade? in today?s Wall Street Journal. In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it...
6th Circuit To Hear Appeal On Michigan?s Ban Of Race Preferences
Posted on November 17, 2009LANSING, Mich. (AP)- A federal appeals court is set to consider a lawsuit challenging Michigan's ban against racial preferences in public university admissions and government hiring. Nineteen University of Michigan students, faculty and applicants say the 2006 anti-affirmative action ballot measure approved by voters is unconstitutional...
Rep. Tom Perriello (D, VA House of Representatives)
Posted on November 17, 2009Freshman Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello of Virginia?s 5th Congressional district defeated a veteran incumbent in 2008 by about 700 votes. The district went narrowly for McCain but heavily for Republican Governor-elect Bob McDonnell and his running mates two weeks ago, which, along with his votes for the stimulus, cap and trade, and the House health care bill, places Perriello at or near the top of the list of endangered Democrats in the House...
The Health Cost Of Immigration Reform?
Posted on November 16, 2009On Friday Homeland Security Security Janet Napolitano announced that ?[t]he Obama administration will insist on measures to give legal status to an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants as it pushes early next year for legislation to overhaul the immigration system...
More ?Diversity? Pap
Posted on November 12, 2009?UW-La Crosse looks to diversity faculty,? reports the La Crosse Tribune. Why? Well, because ?[s]tudents have told Professor Jearold Holland he is the first black teacher they?ve had in high school or college,? and Prof. Holland is ?not surprised.? UW-L has launched two initiatives this year to recruit more diverse faculty and staff, said Carmen Wilson, special assistant to the chancellor and affirmative action officer...
UPDATE!
Posted on November 12, 2009This post on the Army?s liability for the Fort Hood massacre has been UPDATED.
Racial Classification ...
Posted on November 12, 2009... begets hypersensitivity to race. From today?s Columbia Spectator (sent by a reader), about new federal requirements for the collection of racial data from educational institutions: Now, members of some campus groups are dismayed to see their complex ethnic identities boiled down to a simple box, one they say is both demeaning and inaccurate...
Is The Army Liable For Hasan?s Crimes?
Posted on November 12, 2009[NOTE: This post has been UPDATED] James Alan Fox and Jack Levin, criminologists at Boston?s Northeastern University, argue in USA Today that the Fort Hood ?tragedy? is ?typical workplace violence.? .... In many respects the Fort Hood massacre stands as a textbook case of workplace murder, even though a military base would seem to be an unusual location...
The Persistence Of Racial Achievement Gaps
Posted on November 12, 2009Inside Higher Ed has an article today by Prof. Thomas Espenshade of Princeton and Alexandra Radford, a research associate in postsecondary education with MPR Associates Inc. in Washington, calling for ?a new Marshall Plan? to study and address the persistence of large racial achievement gaps...
Mark Twain?s Cat & The Threat Of Islamic Terrorism
Posted on November 11, 2009The most perceptive comment about learning (or not) the lessons of history is not George Santayana?s famous observation, ?Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.? It is from Mark Twain: The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again...
The Meaning Of Virginia
Posted on November 04, 2009Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics gets almost everything right almost all of the time, but I believe he missed a little in his analysis today of What the Voters Told Us Last Night. Here?s what he says they told us: The following points are what we know for certain: 1...
Preferential Treatment Based on Sex (Or Gender?)
Posted on November 02, 2009Feminists almost uniformly support affirmative action, arguing that women benefit from preferential treatment. In the campaigns to require states to treat their citizens ?without regard? to race or sex (Prop. 209 in California and the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative being prime examples), they have argued vociferously (I?m tempted to say ?shrilly,? which is both accurate and politically incorrect) that official gender blindness would work to the detriment of women...
Democrats: Lying Or Stupid?
Posted on November 01, 2009Robert Robb, an Arizona Republic columnist writing on RealClearPolitics today, is not quite sure whether Democratic claims that their proposed health care reform will not lead to higher premiums and is not intended to lead to a single-payer system are lies are stupidity, but he leans toward stupidity...
Liberals And Marxists
Posted on November 01, 2009Jonah Goldberg writes: A lot of conservatives today are too quick to think that because liberals have some affinity for Marxist sentiments that they are actual Marxists. Liberals often make the same mistakes as Marxists, but they?re not Marxists. In the 1960s, the distinctions between Marxists and liberals was much more apparent and it?s worth remembering that the radicals often hated the liberals more than they hated the conservatives...
Hunting For Diversity
Posted on October 29, 2009The Chronicle of Higher Education, and presumably its academic readership, thinks it newsworthy that a professor of environmental studies at Amherst College, Jan Dizard, is also a hunter. Mr. Dizard, who was instrumental in creating the environmental-studies major at Amherst, says he is the only professor at the college who hunts...
Aren?t You Glad Obama Has Ushered In Post-Racial America?
Posted on October 29, 2009Don?t you wish someone would tell the Democratic office holders in East St. Louis, Missouri? (HatTip: Drudge) EAST ST. LOUIS ? City officials seeking a new police chief passed up the former director of the Florida Highway Patrol, who formerly was a top commander of the Illinois State Police, because he is white, two former members of a city board claim...
UPDATE!
Posted on October 28, 2009Hair Trigger Hat Trick, my post from a few days ago on Sen. Snowe?s ?trigger? (hair trigger? tripwire?), has been UPDATED.
Don?t Believe Everything You Read
Posted on October 28, 2009Recently we have seen the fabrication of false quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh, and swallowed hook, line, and sinker by those in the media who are predisposed to believe him a raving racist. That sort of thing has, unfortunately, become not quite common but also far from rare, as the line between incompetence and partisan maliciousness has become almost indistinguishable across the media landscape...
Shear Partisanship In The Washington Post
Posted on October 26, 2009Michael Shear is identified as a ?Washington Post Staff Writer,? but as we last saw here, his news articles are often indistinguishable from Washington Post editorials. A few days ago Shear wrote that The White House is moving aggressively to remove the U...
Friends And Enemies
Posted on October 26, 2009First, let me introduce you (if you don?t already know him) to a friend, Joseph C. Phillips. You?ve probably seen him many times, even if you don?t remember: he played the role of, Lt. Martin Kendall, Bill Cosby?s son-in-law, on ?The Cosby Show.? More recently, and more relevant to our current concerns, he has become a prolific commentator and author (I recommend his book), and now a regular on Townhall...
Health Care Hat Trick?
Posted on October 24, 2009Ostensibly Republican Senator Olympia Snowe has taken her stand, such as it is, objecting to the ?public option? but offering what is billed as a compromise: a ?trigger? provision that will allow the creation of some sort (what sort?) of public option in the future if insurance premiums remain too (how?) high...
Peggy Noonan Misses The Turn To McCarthyism...
Posted on October 23, 2009Peggy Noonan gets most things right, with verve and wit, and even when she?s wrong her writing is often impressive enough to pull along even disagreeing readers. She usually hits the slow pitches of idiocy and offensiveness thrown by our politics out of the park, but today she strikes out on Obama?s Fox war...
Red Beats Blue!
Posted on October 22, 2009News we hope we can use from the Chronicle of Higher Education: Observing that athletes who wore red uniforms in the 2004 Olympics were more likely to win when competing against athletes wearing blue uniforms, researchers at the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, in Romania, decided to pit the two colors against each other...
One More Victim Of Illinois Preferential Treatment Policy
Posted on October 22, 2009[NOTE: This post has been UPDATED] Last month I asked whether the Chicago Tribune was purposefully misleading or merely incompetent for running an article under this headline: New U. of I. board eliminates preferential admissions. ?The assertion in the headline is, of course, not true,? I noted...
Obama?s Department Of (Black) Justice
Posted on October 20, 2009InstaPundit points this morning to an article in the Washington Times about a truly mind-boggling new race-based decision out of the Department of Justice. KINSTON, N.C. | Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party...
Academic Performance And Race (Or Not)
Posted on October 18, 2009Patrick Welsh, who has been teaching English at Alexandria, Virginia?s, T.C. Williams High School (the school featured in Remember the Titans) since right after the earth cooled, has another of his periodic Washington Post columns today reporting from the school front lines...
False ?Hope?
Posted on October 17, 2009Shepard Fairey, creator of the iconic ?Hope? poster of candidate Obama (a revealing variant of which is discussed here), has admitted in court that he knowingly submitted false images and deleted others in the legal proceedings, in an attempt to conceal the fact that the AP had correctly identified the photo that Fairey had used as a reference for his ?Hope? poster of then-Sen...
Do The Dems Project ?An Aura Of Fiscal Responsibility??
Posted on October 17, 2009David M. Herszenhorn and Robert Pear, writing of course in the New York Times, seem to think so. My favorite sentence from their Thursday, Oct. 15, article, discussing the Dems recent proposal to spend an additional $240 billion to shield doctors from cuts in Medicare that, er, the same Dems are proposing elsewhere...
Extreme Partisan Divide On Health Care
Posted on October 16, 2009From Zogby: UTICA, New York ? U.S. adults of different political ideologies have extremely different views about the nation's healthcare system, according to a new Zogby International interactive poll. Overall 63% rate the U.S. healthcare system as excellent or good, but only 43% give those combined high marks to the system's value...
It Takes One To Know One...
Posted on October 15, 2009[NOTE: Formerly bad link now fixed.] Today's Washington Post (!) has an editorial that provides a sympathetic platform for a devastating critique of Obama by an Iranian Nobel Prize winner.
Public Option Conspiracy?
Posted on October 15, 2009Is the health care reform that is likely to come out of the ongoing Congressional deliberations involve a conspiracy to force a ?public option? on an unwilling public? Normally conspiracies are hidden, carried out in secrecy, but the Democrats pathway to a public option is so well-lighted and well marked that it?s hard to call it a conspiracy, even though many participants in the process appear to be blind to it...
Congress Is Kittywampus, Cokee, Uncentered
Posted on October 14, 2009From the Urban Dictionary: uncentered isn't defined yet, but these are close: kittywampus crazy word from south-western wisconsin meaning-off-balanced, uncentered, or a general state of confusion. cokee Trinidadian term meaning messed up or uncentered...
Why Is ?Diversity? Good?
Posted on October 13, 2009?Diversity? in college admissions, and the racial preference necessary to produce it, is defended because ... because ... well, because everybody whose opinion counts knows that ?diversity? is a Good Thing. Something about whites and Asians learning from others who are ?different...
Who?d A Thunk? ?Racial Quotas ... Inflame Passions?
Posted on October 13, 2009But the debate over the quota system ? racial quotas in particular ? continues to inflame passions in a country that has long considered itself a racial democracy. That country could not be the United States, because our media and academic standard setters and the leaders of our governing party never tire of telling us that (and apologizing to the world because) we suffer from endemic, pervasive structural racism...
Baucus Backers Can?t Get Their Story Straight
Posted on October 13, 2009By now most of you know that a new report by the insurance industry claiming the Baucus ?Bill? could raise a typical middle class family?s insurance premium by $4000 has the Democrats furious and scrambling to reply. In fact, the Baucus backers seem to be in such a tizzy that some of them are unwittingly undermining their previous, well-scripted arguments...
The Virginia AG?s Race
Posted on October 12, 2009Because (along with New Jersey) Virginia is one of only two states electing a governor next month, the election here is garnering a great deal of attention, as it should. But there is more than the governor?s office at stake, and some of the other races are also fascinating, one of which is the election for attorney general...
Now For Something Unfunny About The Nobel...
Posted on October 11, 2009Much derisive humor and sarcasm has, justifiably, been directed toward I, Barack?s Nobel (such as here, here, and here). But the more I think about it, there?s something seriously unfunny about this award. Most of the humor has pointed to the Prize Winner?s lack of accomplishments to date, but the fact is that He has done many things already...
More Nobel Humor & Sarcasm...
Posted on October 11, 2009Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times Obama remains a powerful voice of hope and change for many Europeans, not only because of his eloquence and his reassertion of America's role as a leader of international diplomacy, but also because he physically embodies change as progress...
I, Barack (?But It?s Not About Me...?)
Posted on October 10, 2009No, ?I, Barack? is not a quote from taking the oath of office, or from anything else. To see what it, you?ll have to read this, my take on the Nobel news. In Rose Garden remarks accepting the Prize on Friday Obama said he was ?deeply humbled.? But, he continued: Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations...
Hennessey!
Posted on October 09, 2009I have not blogged much on the details of the various health care bills, the CBO scoring, etc., because so many people have followed that issue much closer than I have. One of those people is Keith Hennessey, and from what I have read it seems to me that it would be difficult for anyone to be deeply informed of where the health debate is now without reading this post of his today...
The Washington Post?s Confusing (But Obama-Flattering) Coverage Of The New Iranian ?Revelations?
Posted on September 27, 2009I must be missing something (and that chorus in the background shouting ?Not for the first time!? can pipe down now). It is not unusual for me to disagree with the Washington Post?s editorializing (both on its editorial pages and, not infrequently, in news articles), but I rarely find its coverage incoherent...
No Good Deeds (Really) ...
Posted on September 26, 2009Those of you interested in Virginia's gubernatorial race, and the level of the Washington Post's coverage of it, may find this letter in today's Post of interest.
More Required ?Not Required? Reading
Posted on September 25, 2009Those of you who remember this may find this vaguely familiar, but I hope you will still find it interesting.
Minority Math: More = More
Posted on September 23, 2009You will have gathered from this post?s titile, I hope, that minority math is indistinguishable from non-minority math, a point that is strangely absent from the Chronicle of Higher Education?s article this morning, ?Minority Students Needed in Math and Science to Combat 'Brain Drain,' Professors Say,? and the professors quoted there...
Exposing Fears
Posted on September 22, 2009Take a look at the masterful job Scott Johnson of Power Line has done in exposing the ?disgusting? performance of the Washington Post and its reporters, Darryl Fears and Carol Leonnig, in ?sliming? James O?Keefe, the ACORN slayer. I especially appreciate his generous acknowledgment of my various Fears pieces in the second of those posts.
The Soft Bigotry Of Low Expectations?
Posted on September 22, 2009The Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning that the Department of Education ?has made little progress in monitoring,? i.e., knows little or nothing about, ?what happens to the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants given to minority-serving institutions and colleges that enroll a large proportion of low-income students...
Deficit-Reduction Idea
Posted on September 21, 2009Here?s an idea that would go a long way toward reducing the federal deficit: A presidential fib tax on Obama every time he says something that?s not true. Over this just past media-blitz weekend, for example, Obama said that fining people who do not buy health insurance is not a tax...
?Racial Apologetics??
Posted on September 21, 2009The silliest thing (although it is a close call) in John L. Jackson Jr.?s ?Brainstorm? entry titled ?Racial Apologetics? on the Chronicle of Higher Education blog is that it was organized around the incident of Rep. Joe Wilson shouting ?You lie!? at President Obama in frustrated response to Obama?s now well-documented (even by MSNBC!), well, misrepresentation of the facts about health care coverage of illegal immigrants...
Is MSNBC A News Organization?
Posted on September 21, 2009As I write (about 8:40AM Monday morning) MSNBC?s ?Morning Joe? is playing in the background. A moment ago Helene (the Discriminating Wife) just screamed, and when I ran in to see what had provoked it (a mouse? the cat throwing up on the bed?) it turned out to be Andrea Mitchell saying in response to a question that she didn?t know ACORN had been accused of (and often indicted for) extensive voter fraud.
?Diversity? At The University Of Virginia?
Posted on September 21, 2009The Cavalier Daily sported an entire newspaper page today of ?Students and administrators reflect[ing] on the Office of Diversity and Equity?s efforts to create a more welcoming, inclusive University community.? It?s a pretty weak reflection; nothing much shows up...
Obama On ACORN: ?What?s ACORN??
Posted on September 20, 2009Well, almost. When ABC?s George Stephanopolous asked Obama, ?How about funding ACORN?? Obama replied: You know, if ? frankly, it's not really something I've followed closely. I didn't even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money. Instapundit seems to doubt Obama?s veracity here, but I don?t...
MegalObamania?
Posted on September 19, 2009Maybe we need to coin a new word to cover the chutzpah of our chief executive: megalObamaniac. How else would you describe his remark to students at the University of Maryland that the effort to pass his health care reform ?will be remembered as one of the defining moments in the nation?s history?? Obama?s still non-existent ?plan? (or maybe one of the House?s 1000 page plans) is thus presumably right up there with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Lincoln?s first and second inaugural addresses and his Gettysburg Address...
David Brooks Condescendingly Bestows Absolution...
Posted on September 18, 2009Well, now we can rest easy (or maybe just easier). David Brooks, the house conservative at the New York Times, has just absolved us of racism. But this absolution didn?t come cheap, since he does convict our ?populist backlash? against Obama of being ?ill mannered, conspiratorial and over the top...
Did Obama Really Deny That Race Motivates His Critics?
Posted on September 18, 2009The Associated Press is running a story on the first spate of President Obama?s weekend flurry of appearances under the headline, ?Obama: Health care anger not motivated by his race,? but is that really what he said? Here?s what, according to the AP article, he told CNN: ?Are there people out there who don?t like me because of race? I?m sure there are,? Obama told CNN...
Curent Health Care System Is Bad For ... Women?
Posted on September 18, 2009Michelle Obama told a gathering of women?s groups today that the treatment of women under our current health care system is ?unacceptable.? Michelle Obama said women are being ?crushed by the current structure of our health care? because they often are responsible for taking care of family illnesses, arranging checkups and monitoring follow-up care...
The Obama Justice Dept.: Civil Rights For Some, Not All
Posted on September 16, 2009Jennifer Rubin has a very disturbing report arguing that the Obama Justice Department has, from the Attorney General on down through the career lawyers working in civil rights, rejected the view that civil rights laws protect everyone equally. The notion that civil rights laws apply to all citizens, and are not on the books merely to protect minority groups or to pursue white racists, is an anathema to the liberal civil rights establishment and their sympathetic partners in the Justice Department...
Black Journalist Peers Into The Brains Of Obama Critics, Finds Racist, Damaged Psyches
Posted on September 16, 2009According to today?s column by the always entertaining Derrick Z. Jackson, Rep. Joe Wilson?s ?You Lie!? outburst was a double-barreled blast. One was a shout out for white Americans who somewhere in their psyche cannot respect a black president. The other, since it came as Obama said undocumented people would not be covered under his health care proposals, was a political bullet aimed at immigrants south of our borders, who mostly happen to be brown...
Required Reading Re ?Required?
Posted on September 16, 2009The White House has been changing its tune with increasing frequency on some matters related to health care reform. One, which I discussed several days ago, concerned whether or not the House legislation contained truck-wide loopholes that would have allowed coverage of illegal immigrants...
Rasmussen: Most Democrats Believe Most Obamacare Critics Are Or May Be Racist
Posted on September 16, 2009[NOTE: This post has been updated, twice] In the past few days besieged Obamanauts have been hurling charges of racism against Obamacare critics with increasing ferocity and, yes, unwitting, unintentionally self-indicting humor, such as Maureen Dowd?s unembarrassed admission that when she heard Rep...
Obama Speech To Wall Street!
Posted on September 15, 2009Something remarkable almost happened yesterday: I found myself agreeing, at least for a moment, both with the underlying vision and actual policy proposed in a speech by President Obama. I happened to be walking by a TV report of his speech and thought I heard him say We will not go back to the days of reckless behavior and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis ...
With Health Care Analysis Like This, Who Needs Cartoons?
Posted on September 15, 2009From ?Fox News Sunday?: CHRIS WALLACE (host): Senator McCaskill, do you really believe that that?s possible, that you can take hundreds of billions of dollars out of Medicare without cutting services to seniors? SEN. CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D-MO.): Well, I don?t know how many ads you?ve seen for scooters on cable TV, but I see a lot of them...
Invisible Whites And The Meaning Of ?Diversity?
Posted on September 15, 2009Ralph Ellison would be amazed at the new color of invisibility. In ?Diversity Increases at Public Historically Black Colleges,? the Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning: Public historically black colleges and universities have become increasingly diverse over a 20-year period, according to a new report by the Thurgood Marshall College Fund...
Roger Clegg?s Excellent Letter, Release 2.0
Posted on September 14, 2009About a week ago I posted a link to Roger Clegg?s Excellent Letter .... Now he?s gone and written another one, and once again some ?obviously sleeping? mainstream media editor let it slip by. Don?t let it go to waste; read it.
Phooey On Biased AP Story
Posted on September 14, 2009In an Associated Press article worrying over ?Election trouble brewing for House Dems in 2010,? reporter Beth Fouhy points to the likelihood of a highly motivated GOP base confused by the president's proposed health care plan and angry at what they consider reckless spending and high debt...
Black Chamber Of Commerce Leader Urges ?Ugly Stuff? In Street
Posted on September 13, 2009HAMMOND [Indiana]| The leader of the Washington, D.C.-based National Black Chamber of Commerce on Friday issued a rallying cry for minority-owned business to take to the streets and shut down big cities if necessary to get their slice of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds...
Crossing The Finish Line... Or Not
Posted on September 12, 2009Those of you who follow these things (and most of you must, or you wouldn?t be here) will have noticed the appearance of a new book by former Princeton president William Bowen, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities ...
If Joe Wilson Lied When He Said Obama Lied ...
Posted on September 12, 2009... Why is the White House providing what MSNBC cutely calls ?clarification? of its position on health care for illegal immigrants? (?Clarification,? for those of you whose Washington-speak vocabulary is weak, means abandoning one?s previous position...
Chicago Tribune: Purposefully Misleading Or Merely Incompetent?
Posted on September 12, 2009Yesterday the Chicago Tribune ran an article under this headline: New U. of I. board eliminates preferential admissions. The assertion in the headline is, of course, not true. What the new board eliminated was only the preferential admission of friends of politicians and other well-connected people, as discussed here and here...
Word Wars
Posted on September 11, 2009Jonah Goldberg calls attention to new Rasmussen findings on the declining popularity of the terms ?liberal? and ?progressive? with American voters: ?Progressive? is becoming more of a dirty word, but all political labels ? except ?being like Ronald Reagan? - are falling into disfavor with many U...
Could Obama Have Survived Appointment In Another Administration?
Posted on September 11, 2009The last two Democratic administrations, Obama?s and Clinton?s, have a similar interesting embarrassment in common: both appointed or attempted to appoint intelligent, articulate, very highly regarded black graduates of an elite Ivy League law school, Yale, and both had to be thrown under the bus after their radical views came under scrutiny...
Speech Note II & A Suggestion
Posted on September 10, 2009A couple of excerpts from The Speech ... we?ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system ? a system that is currently full of waste and abuse.... Now, because Medicare is such a big part of the health care system, making the program more efficient can help usher in changes in the way we deliver health care that can reduce costs for everybody...
Liar! Liar!
Posted on September 10, 2009I have no reason to suspect that Rep. Joe Wilson, the loudmouthed heckler from South Carolina, is on the payroll of the Democrats, but if he is he?d have done just what he did last night. The Dems and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) are already milking Wilson for all he?s worth to confirm what I?ve described, here and here, as the new Conventional Wisdom that Obama critics are all so rabidly unreasonable that none of us need be listened to, justifying Obama in moving ahead with a health care reform based only on Democratic votes...
What Happened To the ?Post-Partisan? Obama?
Posted on September 10, 2009There is a new Conventional Wisdom hardening the already hard intellectual arteries of the mainstream media, and it is revealed, nicely if unwittingly, by the John F. Harris & Jonathan Martin Politico article today. They begin: This summer marked the fifth anniversary of the Democratic Party?s swoon for Barack Obama, who thrilled millions of people hearing the young state senator for the first time with words that set his image as a dazzling unifier in an age of mean and divisive politics: ?Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes,? Obama told the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston...
Obama?s ?I? Talk To School Kids
Posted on September 09, 2009I haven?t said anything about Obama?s controversial talk to school kids today because of a bad case of one-the-one-hand-on-the-other-handism ? on the one hand, I?ve been less bothered by it than most of those who are bothered, but on the other I was more bothered by his invitation to the students to write letters laying how they could help him in his mighty tasks (an invitation subsequently withdrawn) than were those people who were not bothered...
Speech Note
Posted on September 09, 2009Since I don?t know what Obama was trying to do in his speech tonight (rally his base? persuade the unpersuaded?), I obviously have no idea whether or not it will succeed. But I do nevertheless have one observation: If he did intend to give a partisan speech that was sure to insult, anger, and energize those who oppose his approach, so that he could then point to us and say, ?See, these right wingers are so negative you can?t reason with them and so we?ll just have to pass a bill with only Democratic support,? he would have given exactly the speech he did.
From The Providence Journal?s ?Diversity Calendar
Posted on September 08, 2009Diversity Calendar: Sept. 7 The Rhode Island Affirmative Action Professionals is looking for people to join in a meeting to talk about creative ways to recruit people of color for jobs in the public and private sectors. The meeting is at 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, Sept...
The Left And The Democrats: The Van-guard Of The Revolution
Posted on September 08, 2009There?s been so much written about the past, present, and passing of Van Jones that I hesitate to add to it, but I think this is, as someone else said recently in a different context, a ?teachable moment,? and the lesson needs to be drummed home. That lesson is what today?s left looks like, and it?s not a pretty picture...
Roger Clegg?s Excellent Letter ...
Posted on September 08, 2009... slipped by obviously sleeping New York Times editors and (and this vacationing blogger, until today) and appeared on Sept. 4. If it slipped by you, too, you should read it now. For background and more depth, see this post of his on NRO last week (and for another bite of the same apple, this one from a less distinguished source).
?See Baby Discriminate?
Posted on September 07, 2009According to this long research-reporting article in Newsweek, even babies discriminate (HatTip to reader Hube). I don?t have a strong enough grounding in psychological social science research to have anything worthwhile to say about the research fondly reported here, which for all I know may be penetrating and profound ? but if it is it will be in spite of the pervasive politically correct contemporary liberal bias that drips from the Newsweek article...
Two Questions For The Presidential Mouthpiece...
Posted on September 06, 2009... that the mainstream media will never ask: 1. Mr. Gibbs, is Van Jones the only communist the president has appointed to an influential position, or are there others? 2. Mr. Gibbs, was the president familiar with Van Jones?s racist, radical past when he appointed him green jobs czar? If not, has he appointed any other czars wits whose record he is equally unfamiliar?
Conflict Of Interest?
Posted on September 06, 2009The doubt I have about whether Congressmen are even capable of having conflicts of interest was reinforced by Instapundit?s link today to this New York Post editorial about Rep. Charlie Rangel?s gifts to three members of the House Ethics Committee, which will eventually judge his tax and reporting evasions...
San Francisco Recruits Blacks
Posted on September 05, 2009Helene and I went to San Francisco?s de Young Museum today for the the King Tut exhibit, and while there we picked up this San Francisco Examiner supplement about the exhibit. Imagine my surprise when, browsing through it, I saw this ad for the San Francisco Housing Development Authority?s effort to recruit blacks for assisted housing...
Health ?Disparities?
Posted on September 04, 2009The Black Caucus has warned President Obama that he better express his ?unwavering support? for progressive health care reform in his upcoming speech. According to Politico?s report, the letter from CBC chair Barbara Lee stated [W]e are deeply concerned about the current discussions surrounding health care reform and the possibility that current components of the bill ? such as a robust public option and myriad health disparity elimination provisions ? may be stricken in order to lower its cost to about $500 billion...
Surprise! Race Mavens Insist ?Race Still Matters?!
Posted on September 03, 2009Remember that movie from a few years back, A Day Without A Mexican? People fight in grocery stores as local vegetables become a hot commodity. Affluent families have to ? gasp ? actually mow their own lawns and take care of their own children. Hollywood has to resort to using latino-looking actors to play the role of ?Hood No...
Scene & Herd In San Francisco
Posted on September 03, 2009As I?ve mentioned, my wife, Helene, and I are house-sitting in San Francisco, a wonderful, quirky city but also home pond to Nancy Pelosi and other odd ducks. Following are a few random sightings and quotes that provide a small whiff of the atmosphere here, such as the fact that there are so many Priuses here with Obama bumper stickers that I now suspect that all the cars Toyota shipped to San Francisco last year came with the Obama stickers built into the bumpers at the factory...
Racial Politics In The New (Old?) South
Posted on September 02, 2009A minority candidate has a real shot at being elected the next mayor of Atlanta, and the prospect has the majority so worried that it is resorting to the old tactic of calling for racial bloc voting. As someone who grew up in the segregated South, I find this new/old call for racial solidarity both familiar and depressing.
Political Correctness Knows No National Borders
Posted on September 02, 2009Inside Higher Ed reports today that Oxford, ?Citing Racism, Won't Let Tories Use University Name.? The University of Oxford is barring the student affiliate of the Conservative Party from using ?Oxford? in its name, following an incident in which racist jokes were told at an event for would-be officers of the organization, who were asked to tell ?the most inappropriate joke you have ever told...
Civil Rights Division Reshaped And Directed To Pursue Disparate Impact Cases Aggressively
Posted on September 01, 2009Fulfilling the wet dreams of liberals and the worst fears of conservatives, the Obama Justice Department is hiring 50 additional lawyers in the Civil Rights Division while shifting its focus to disparate impact enforcement. ?As part of this shift,? the New York Times reports, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly...
Is The National Research Council Racist?
Posted on August 31, 2009Racist? Maybe, maybe not, but this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education accuses its prestigious Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States of suffering at least from ?a form of implicit bias.? The NRC assessment ?stands as the authoritative source on the quality of American doctoral programs,? and, at least on the surface, appears to be thorough and definitive...
Immoral Imperative?
Posted on August 31, 2009The Democrats (or their pollsters) seem to have decided that the way to sell health care reform is to describe it not as a money-saver but as a ?moral imperative.? After the funeral for Ted Kennedy, former President Bill Clinton and former Vice-president Al Gore spoke at the Tennessee Democratic Party?s annual Jackson Day dinner...
More On Women In Science (Or Not)
Posted on August 29, 2009It?s now been several days since I?ve stood on Roger Clegg?s shoulders to post something, and regular readers are no doubt missing him. Not to worry: here he is (or was a couple of days ago), deftly skewering yet another ?Diversity in Science? report, this one from Grinnell College...
Profiling?
Posted on August 29, 2009Profiling in the woods? DENVER (AP) - A federal warning to beware of campers in national forests who eat tortillas, drink Tecate beer and play Spanish music because they could be armed marijuana growers is racial profiling, an advocate for Hispanic rights said Friday...
?The Least Surprising Correlation Of All Time?
Posted on August 28, 2009Greg Mankiw, Harvard economist, finds the inference often made (such as by the New York Times Economix Blog) from the correlation shown on a graph between parental income and SAT scores ?The Least Surprising Correlation of All Time.? It tells us nothing, he says, ?about the causal impact of income on test scores...
What Bob McDonnell Should Do
Posted on August 26, 2009Helene and I are now enjoying the pleasures (and political annoyances) of San Francisco, house-sitting once again (we?ve done this for several summers) for an old Stanford friend of mine. (For those of you who remember and are concerned about Mosby The Wonderdog, don?t worry...
Police Victims Of Discrimination Win Retroactive Promotions
Posted on August 23, 2009Here?s another blow to affirmative action: In a recent court settlement, four police officers who were denied promotion five years ago were vindicated on all the points of their complaint, with retroactive effect.... The legal proceedings had been instituted by four forensic scientists and on Monday the case was settled by granting all the requests they asked for back in November 2004: immediate promotion, which was formerly refused due to the colour of their skin, as well as full compensation with retroactive effect, as if they had indeed been promoted at that time...
Interests? What Interests?
Posted on August 23, 2009The Washington Post?s Dan Balz reports today on the left?s growing doubts about Obama. The ?immediate cause for the rebellion,? he writes, is fear that the public option will be sacrificed, but that has given way to ?broader criticisms,? such as: ?Is Obama tough enough to defeat the interests arrayed against health-care legislation?? What ?interests? would those be? The AMA? Hospitals? Big Pharma? The AARP? Last time I looked (about 30 seconds ago), all the ?interests? I could think of were supporting Obama?s proposals (whatever they are)...
Fear Of Health-Care Rationing ?Not Entirely Irrational??
Posted on August 22, 2009In an oh so gingerly fashion, Robert Pear of the New York Times describes a number of reasons why a reasonable person might believe that President Obama?s health-care/insurance (or whatever) reform would probably lead to rationing of services, especially to the old...
Whose Misperceptions II, Or : There He Goes Again ... And Again
Posted on August 21, 2009President Obama repeated twice ? once in his interview on Michael Smerconish radio show and again in his pep talk to partisans at the DNC ? that it is a ?misconception? to claim that his proposed health-care reform (or health insurance reform, or whatever it is) would cover illegal immigrants...
How Stupid Do Obama And The Democrats Think We Are?
Posted on August 21, 2009According to Rich Lowry, pretty damn stupid. Read the whole thing to see 22 leading examples
Misperceptions? Whose Misperceptions?
Posted on August 20, 2009MSNBC reports a NBC poll that, it claims, finds that ?Misperceptions abound on president's health overhaul initiative.? Leaving aside the problem of how there can be misperceptions of a proposal that does not yet actually exist, what does NBC/MSNBC think these misconceptions are? Here are some of the presumed misconceptions mentioned in the article: ?A plurality believes Obama?s health plan would worsen the quality of health care?; ?Forty-five percent think the reform proposals would allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care for the elderly?; ?Majorities in the poll believe the plans would give health insurance coverage to illegal immigrants...
Obamaphobia?
Posted on August 19, 2009In ?The Rising Stakes of Obamaphobia? our old target, Penn anthropologist John L. Jackson Jr., argues that much antagonism to Obama is, well, phobic. Not all of it, you understand, but the criticism offered by (like that offered by?) Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, et...
And Meanwhile, In Charlottesville...
Posted on August 18, 2009... some of you may be interested in this perceptive letter that recently appeared in the Daily Progress.
Helene On Glenn Beck!
Posted on August 18, 2009My wife, Helene, was on Glenn Beck at 5:00 PM today talking about how the AARP has betrayed its members by supporting (its denial notwithstanding) Obamacare. I think the program will be repeated in many markets at some ungodly hour (2:00 AM?) and maybe again over the weekend...
White House/AARP Spam
Posted on August 17, 2009My wife, Helene, is one of an apparently quite large number of people who received a surprising, unsolicited, and hence disturbing email from David Axelrod attempting to extol the virtues of President Obama?s proposed health care health insurance reform, whatever it is at the moment...
Another Unkeepable Obama Promise...
Posted on August 17, 2009Now even the Washington Post reports that the Obamamantra ? ?If you like your doctor ... if you like your current health plan...? ? is a promise that can?t be kept, no matter how often it is repeated. President Obama promises that, if health-care reform is enacted, people will be able to keep their current coverage...
Health Care As A Civil Right?
Posted on August 16, 2009In Obama at Portsmouth: ?Civil Rights? for the Sick I criticized President Obama?s constant refrain about insurance company ?discrimination,? noting that [t]his charge of insurance company discrimination is intended, no doubt, to make health care reform ? now presented as merely health insurance reform ? seem like simply another anti-discrimination law, a civil rights law for the sick Now, almost as though I had invented him, comes Jonathan Alter of Newsweek with a simplistic argument that Obama needs to ?reframe the debate? and sell ?Health Care As A Civil Right...
Explicit Criticism Of The Implicit Association Test
Posted on August 16, 2009The Implicit Association Test (IAT) purports to prove what all liberals already know: all of us are biased, whether we think so or not. Now comes a new study, Strong Claims and Weak Evidence: Reassessing the Predictive Validity of the IAT, challenging the reliability of the IAT, at least as its been interpreted (HatTip to reader Linda Seebach, via Marginal Revolution).
The Boston Globe Opposes Preferences!
Posted on August 15, 2009Reader Fred Ray points to a hard-hitting attack by Jules Crittenden against an editorial opposing preferential treatment in the Boston Globe, which Crittenden calls a ?Lefty Rag? and others refer to simply as the New York Times outpost in New England...
?Death Panels?: Hyperbole? Yes. A Lie? I Don?t Think So
Posted on August 15, 2009For better or worse much of the debate over health care health insurance reform has concerned ?death panels,? which opponents of the president?s reform proposals think notorious and supporters think non-existent. Sarah Palin?s attack on these alleged ?death panels? on Facebook ratcheted up the debate, and her criticism has brought renewed attention to Dr...
Obama At Portsmouth: ?Civil Rights? For The Sick
Posted on August 13, 2009Here?s another article on Pajamas Media that I really like. I encourage you to read it.
?Illegal Immigrants Spend Millions Extra On Tuition?
Posted on August 11, 2009Amazing! A state law banning illegal immigrants from in-state tuition actually seems to work! In 2006 over 70% of Arizona voters passed Prop. 300, ?rendering undocumented Arizona students ineligible for in-state tuition rates or state scholarships.? Now comes the Arizona Republic with a report documenting that the new law is working as intended, to the dismay of those who opposed it, and, it appears, the author of the Republic?s report...
Ain?t Choice A Bitch?
Posted on August 10, 2009Well, sociologists have finally discovered something we argued in the Sears case over thirty years ago. (My long discussion of EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck and Co., 628 F. Supp. 1264 (1986), 839 F.2d 302 (1988), can be found in the last three-fourths of this post...
Is ?Nobody? Talking Too Much?
Posted on August 09, 2009At a fundraiser for Virginia Democratic candidate for governor Creigh Deeds last Thursday, President Obama told his critics to shut up and get out of his way. ?I don?t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking,? he said. ?I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess...
Backroom Deal With Lobbyists? What Deal?
Posted on August 08, 2009Having come into office promising unprecedented transparency, having bills online for days before signing to give the public a chance to respond, unprecedented distance from lobbyists, etc., the Obama administration, according to a report in the New York Times, made a back-door, secret deal with the pharmaceutical industry to limit its costs in return for its early support of healthcare reform, but did not prevent House and Senate committees from ignoring that deal in their draft legislation, which led Big Pharma to threaten to abandon its support unless the White House reaffirmed its original deal, with the result that ?White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion,? as a result of which ?House and Senate Democrats loudly protested that they would not be bound by any such agreement to remove clauses allowing government negotiation of drug prices under Medicare ? something Democrats have sought for years,? following which ?Several Senate Democrats said Friday that, in a private meeting, White House officials had told them there was no such deal, sowing yet more confusion,? which led the White House to contend for two days that ?the Senate Democrats had misunderstood the White House aide?s comments,? after which ?the White House appeared Friday night to back away,? claiming later Friday that it ?had not intended to confirm that the deal ruled out price negotiations...
Hooligans
Posted on August 08, 2009Writing in his column in the New York Times, Charles Blow huffed that ?Belligerence is the currency of the intellectually bankrupt.? Do you think he was referring to Speaker Pelosi?s charge that vociferous Obamacare opponents are a Swastika-wearing mob? To President Obama?s recent command to critics to shut up and get out of his way? ?I don?t want the folks who created the mess [to] do a lot of talking,? Obama said...
How Does This Create Jobs?
Posted on August 07, 2009Inside Higher Ed reported yesterday that the University of Maine and a GWI, a telecommunications partner, are applying for $32 million of federal stimulus money to expand its high-speed network to 10 sites not now on its system. Great, you think. Maine no doubt needs the expanded network, and building it will put people to work...
Another Amazing Argument!
Posted on August 07, 2009Day before yesterday I began a discussion of ?An Amazing ?Structural Inequality? Argument by noting that I?ve been writing this blog quite a while now, and one of the effects of that is that I?m rarely surprised any more by extreme or even bizarre arguments in favor of racial preferences, special treatment based on race, etc...
An Amazing ?Structural Inequality? Argument
Posted on August 06, 2009I?ve been writing this blog quite a while now, and one of the effects of that is that I?m rarely surprised any more by extreme or even bizarre arguments in favor of racial preferences, special treatment based on race, etc. But I?m about to share with you a justification of criminal behavior, and an official pass given to that behavior, based on an argument of ?structural inequality? (as discussed at length here and here) that had even me gasping in disbelief...
UPDATE!
Posted on August 06, 2009Does Your Health Care Suffer From Limited English Proficiency? has been UPDATED.
Are Asians Victims Of ?Structural Inequality? Or Just Plain Discrimination?
Posted on August 06, 2009A reader, ?E,? sent the following, which seems worth posting as is. In the game of elite college admissions with race preferences, Asian Americans pay the highest ?bill? or price by being the only non-preferred group in the schema of race based Affirmative Action used by the politically correct racist admissions committees in their discrimination against Asian American applicants...
Gates Opposes Race-Based Affirmative Action?
Posted on August 05, 2009Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has not returned to his Cambridge house after his fateful encounter with Sgt. Crowley, retreating instead to his house on Martha?s Vineyard. On Sunday he spoke to the Martha?s Vineyard Book Festival, and according to this report in the Vineyard Haven Gazette today he had some interesting things to say...
Unprecedented!
Posted on August 05, 2009Stuart Taylor demolishes the argument that Sotomayor and her panel?s decision denying the promotions they?d earned to Frank Ricci et. al. was required by Second Circuit and other precedents. He doesn?t merely disagree with the argument, or refute it, or argue with it; he demolishes it.
?Structural Inequality,? ?Barriers? to Equality, and the (Un)teachable Moment
Posted on August 05, 2009Take a look at this article that just went up on Pajamas Media. I rather like it.
Justifications For Preferential Treatment
Posted on August 04, 2009Consider the following common justifications for preferential admissions: The students admitted ... were qualified (variant: they can ?do the work.? Only a small number of students were admitted ... (variant #1: ?they only get a little push?; variant #2 ?only if all else was equal?)...
A Taxing Question
Posted on August 03, 20092 Obama administration officials can't guarantee middle-class Americans won't see tax hike WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama?s treasury secretary said Sunday he cannot rule out higher taxes to help tame an exploding budget deficit, and his chief economic adviser would not dismiss raising them on middle-class Americans as part of a health care overhaul...
Does Your Health Care Suffer From Limited English Proficiency?
Posted on August 02, 2009A few days ago, noting some of the provisions in one of the pending health care bills I asked, Is Your Health Care Culturally Incompetent?. Now, looking at the 1018 page bill just passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on a 31-28 vote, I have one question: Was it written by anthropologists? I ask this because of the bill?s pervasive concern with ?culturally and linguistically appropriate services? (page 91), ?EFFECTIVE CULTURALLY AND LINGUISTICALLY APPROPRIATE COMMUNICATION? (page 106), ?DEMONSTRATION TO PROMOTE ACCESS FOR MEDICARE BENEFICIARIES WITH LIMITED ENGLISH PROFICIENCY BY PROVIDING REIMBURSEMENT FOR CULTURALLY AND LINGUISTICALLY APPROPRIATE SERVICES,? (page 405), concern with ?the effect of delivering culturally and linguistically appropriate services on beneficiary access to care, utilization of services, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of health care delivery, patient satisfaction, and select health outcomes? (page 415), with the ?COORDINATION OF DIVERSITY AND CULTURAL COMPETENCY PROGRAMS? (page 914), with ?CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC COMPETENCY TRAINING FOR HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS? (page 915) Pausing for a moment on this coordination of diversity and cultural competency programs, be reassured that in giving grants to meet this goal, the Secretary shall give preference to entities that have a demonstrated record of the following: (1) Addressing, or partnering with an entity with experience addressing, the cultural and linguistic competency needs of the population to be served through the grant or contract...
Swain, Again
Posted on August 02, 2009I have pointed with enthusiasm to the work of Carol Swain several times before, such as here and here. Now it?s time to do so again, for her comments in a long Nashville Tennessean article that interviewed several local worthies (she teaches at Vanderbilt) exploring ?how we arrived at White House ?beer summit...
Gates-Keepers To Racial Preference
Posted on August 02, 2009Lurita Doan has a thing or two to tell Harvard, and she does it very well in her Los Angeles Times OpEd, ?On Race, Harvard Still Must Learn.? Her father, Lucien Alexis Jr. (Harvard, 1942). Was the only black member of Harvard?s lacrosse team. When he and fellow team members arrived in Annapolis for a match with the Naval Academy in 1941, the Academy demanded that he be removed from the field, ?declaring that no midshipman would take the field with a colored man...
A New Role For Obama
Posted on August 01, 2009On several different occasions during the past presidential campaign I made the following observation: What a fascinating show future president Obama is putting on! It will be even more fascinating to discover whether he is: a) Jimmy Stewart, in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; b) Robert Redford, in The Candidate; c) Peter Sellers (Chauncey Gardner), in Being There; or d) Laurence Harvey, in The Manchurian Candidate...
Hot News! Merit-Based Aid Produces More Bright Students! Too Bad....
Posted on July 31, 2009Who?d a thunk? Well, those doubters among you, a new study has found that ?the adoption of merit aid by private colleges may achieve something for colleges that care about SAT averages.? Really? Positively? Yes, ?[o]ver all [sic], SAT medians go up after the introduction of merit aid...
New Haven Firemen May Help Extinguish Smoldering University Discrimination
Posted on July 30, 2009My title is a bad take off on Roger Clegg?s more eloquent Dousing the Fires of Racial Discrimination, in which he argues persuasively that Ricci v. DeStefano poses a substantial threat to standard ?diversity? hiring discrimination practiced by universities...
Surprise! Civil Rights Leader Supports Equal Opportunity?
Posted on July 30, 2009Inside Higher Ed reports today that a gathering of ?scholars and activists? who met yesterday at the Howard University Law School sang the praises of Google?s ambitions book digitization project. Here at the historically black university, panel members applauded Google?s plan to scan and index 10 million books for the Web...
Henry Louis Gates Jr. And His Dirty Inkwell
Posted on July 28, 2009Inside Higher Ed summarizes and links to a devastating report on the Inkwell Foundation, created by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in ProPublica (?journalism in the public interest?). Inkwell, ProPublica reports, [a]charity headed by star Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr...
Is Your Health Care Culturally Incompetent?
Posted on July 27, 2009If so, don?t worry. Help may be on the way. HR3200, the health care reform bill introduced in the House, provides, in two places, for the ?COORDINATION OF DIVERSITY AND CULTURAL COMPETENCY PROGRAMS.? It provides ?CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC COMPETENCY TRAINING FOR HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/24/AR2009072400451.html?hpid=topnews
Posted on July 25, 20091. Of all the things that reasonable people can say about the confrontation between Sgt. Crowley and Prof. Gates, racial profiling is not one of them. The police responded to a report of a break-in at Prof. Gates? home; no profiling was involved. It?s possible that Sgt...
Wanted: More WIS (Women In Science)
Posted on July 23, 2009There they go again, falling ass over teakettle into the gender gap in science. WASHINGTON -- The landscape of scientists and engineers is certainly a lot more diverse than it was 20 years ago, but serious gender gaps remain. That was the consensus here at a hearing of the House Committee on Science and Technology?s Subcommittee on Research and Science Education Tuesday...
Sotomayor: 14th Amendment Requires Affirmative Action!
Posted on July 21, 2009On Saturday Carol Iannone pointed to a revealing exchange between Sen. Kohl (D-Wis) and Judge Sotomayor. From the transcript: SEN. KOHL: .... I'd like to ask you questions about a few issues that have generated much discussion. First, affirmative action...
The Availability Of Funds
Posted on July 21, 2009I bought my first house way back when Jimmy Carter was president. As I recall interest rates were around 20%, and so I came up with the bright idea of leaving the cash I needed for the down payment in an interest bearing account until the last possible minute...
A Buchanan-Like Dump On Affirmative Action Critics
Posted on July 20, 2009It?s been several months since I?ve been provoked enough to criticize one of the offerings of the Chronicle of Higher Education?s designated ?diversity? hitter, Penn anthropologist John L. Jackson, Jr. (here, which links here, another example that cites five earlier examples)...
Sotomayor: Judge Or Advocate?
Posted on July 18, 2009Politico obtained the audio of oral arguments of five cases heard by Judge Sotomayor?s panels on the Second Circuit. These tapes, Politico reports, reveal a blunt judge who talks as much or more than her (often equally combative) colleagues; who makes no bones about interrupting or even, in one case, laughing at lawyers; and who goes to no great length to disguise her quarrel with an argument or her point of view...
Obama: Still Not Black Enough?
Posted on July 18, 2009Remember way back when there was much discussion about whether Obama was ?black enough,? when that well-known black leader, Ralph Nader, said Obama talks white and ignores black issues? You don?t hear that so much any more, since President Obama continues to embrace race preferences and has elevated identity politics to the Supreme Court...
?Structural Inequalities? And The ?Barriers? To Racial Equality
Posted on July 17, 2009I have a simple question: How will we know if and when racial equality ever arrives? I believe there are two equally simple but strikingly different answers to this question, answers that lead to different and even conflicting policies. One answer is that racial equality will have arrived when discrimination on the basis of race has disappeared; the other is that racial equality will have arrived when the races are equal or proportional in everything measurable...
The Dark And Poisonous Well Of Identity Politics
Posted on July 16, 2009Linda Chavez, chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, testifies against Sonia Sonomayor today. Her written testimony is here (click on the View Testimony link); read the whole thing. It begins as follows: My message today is straightforward, Mr...
Recovery Choices (Or Not)
Posted on July 16, 2009Hot Air links to a new Diageo/Hotline poll finding ?Decreased Confidence in Stimulus Spending and Concerns Over Deficit; Double-Digit Increase in Percentage of Voters Saying Country Is On the ?Wrong Track.?? Read the whole report of the poll results; they?re fascinating...
Does Sotomayor Believe What She Said? What She Says? Either?
Posted on July 16, 2009In his questioning today Sen. Cornyn asked Judge Sotomayor about a number of contradictions between what she has said in various speeches over the years and her answers to questions before the Judiciary Committee. (HatTip to Jonathan Adler) Here?s my favorite question and response, dealing with with Sotomayor?s initial disagreement but now claimed agreement with the well-known observation of Justice O?Connor that ?a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases...
If More People Wrote Letters Like This...
Posted on July 15, 2009... there would be less need for letters like this. The indefatigable Linda Seebach, formerly of the former Rocky Mountain News, recently sent the following letter to the head of the communications department at DePaul University: I listen to WFMT (streaming on the Web), and recently DePaul has been running ads focusing on a professor in the Chemistry Department named Quinnetta Shelby...
Rampant Dishonesty
Posted on July 15, 2009The Sotomayor hearings are proving to be far more interesting than I?d expected. I have assumed that Sotomayor is smart, a quick study, and that she would be well prepped to deflect and defuse the many embarrassing questions provided by her long record of highly controversial assertions...
The Washington Post: For Or Against Wealth Tax? Both!
Posted on July 15, 2009The Washington Post has a curious, almost humorous, editorial today arguing that ?there is no case to be made for the House Democratic majority's proposal to fund health-care legislation through an ad hoc income tax surcharge for top-earning households...
Colorblindness Anyone?
Posted on July 15, 2009On Volokh, David Bernstein proposed a question for Sotomayor: In his dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote, ?Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.? Do you agree? I sent him an email, which I reproduce below out of a conviction that the benefit of good emails should not be restricted to the lucky recipient (that, and his post didn?t allow comments): Great question! I've been arguing for years that preferentialists actually agree with the principle underlying the holding in Plessy, not Harlan?s dissent, just as they agree with the racist ?moderates? who successfully blocked the ?radicals?? effort to include colorblind language in the 14th Amendment...
Another Fish Tale
Posted on July 14, 2009George Will, showing admirable restraint and even generosity, once described Stanley Fish as ?an intellectual provocateur with a taste for safe targets? who, using ?slippery language,? wraps himself in the mantle of bravery while attacking ?straw men? and who, while enjoying ?seeming to be naughty, tamely opts for dogmatic denial? that the twin icons on ?today?s academic altar,? race and gender, pose any threats to academic integrity...
Where Do The Find These People
Posted on July 13, 2009Harold Jackson is identified as an opinion columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Based on this column maybe that?s appropriate, for he certainly seems to have far more opinions than facts. Here are some of them: 1. Affirmative action was and is justified because, well, just look at him...
Whither The NAACP?
Posted on July 13, 2009The NAACP was born 100 years ago to promote equal justice under law. For its first 60 or 70 years, during which it saw its greatest triumphs, that meant fighting not only segregation but all discrimination based on race. That goal was abandoned when it turned, like most liberal organizations, from opposing preferential treatment of whites to supporting preferential treatment of blacks, a policy that has so far failed to attract a satisfactory justifying theory or principle...
Mickey Kaus I And II
Posted on July 13, 2009A few days ago Mickey Kaus linked to a recent post of mine critical of disparate impact as part of his own criticism of the ?smug, reified apocalypticism? of Stanford law professor Richard Thompson Ford?s Chicken Little overreaction to the Ricci decision...
Recovery As Distraction
Posted on July 12, 2009It has long seemed to me that President Obama has no interest in economic recovery, except for his recognition that double-digit unemployment poses a threat to his re-election. His interest is in transforming the country, not restoring it to what it was...
Judging Sotomayor?s Judgment
Posted on July 11, 2009The National Journal?s Stuart Taylor Jr. has an important post on how the three-judge panel of the Second Circuit, one of whom was Judge Sonia Sotomayor, almost succeeded in hiding the Ricci case from their colleagues, perhaps violating a 2nd Circuit rule in the process...
Lani Guinier And Susan Sturm, Trying To Put Out The Fire
Posted on July 11, 2009More sturm and drang (?in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion [are] given free expression in response to the confines of rationalism...?) on disparate impact. Or more accurately, Sturm and Guinier. Who knew that Lani Guinier was an expert on firefighting and the methods fire departments should use to staff their leadership ranks? Actually we all should have known, since Harvard law professor Guinier and Columbia law professor Susan Sturm, her co-author of today?s New York Times OpEd on ?Trial by Firefighters,? co-authored a book, Who?s Qualified?, that purports to tell all organizations how they should go about hiring and promoting (or more accurately, how they should not ? by using tests)...
Merit?
Posted on July 08, 2009Many critics of affirmative action based their criticism ? too heavily, in my opinion ? on its affront to merit, just as too many supporters mistakenly assume that affection for merit provides the only basis for criticism. I have argued with this merit mania many times, such as here...
?Rights For Some People??
Posted on July 08, 2009I wonder whether the title of an article on Inside Higher Ed this morning, Rights For Some People, was wittingly or unwittingly ironic. It begins: Should someone who teaches human rights back human rights for all people? That?s the question being raised by some students at New York University?s law school, who are upset that a visiting professor in the fall semester, slated to teach human rights law, is Thio Li-ann of the National University of Singapore, an outspoken opponent of gay rights...
UPDATE!
Posted on July 06, 2009Please take a look at the UPDATE to Obama?s Beliefs ... Or Not, where I draw upon the wisdom of no less an authority on liberalism than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Secession, Democratic Movements, And American Anti-Americanism
Posted on July 05, 2009Ilya Somin?s two recent Volokh Conspiracy posts on secession led me to reread a similar one of my own from several years ago, Secession, Then And Now, which began as follows: In a remarkable OpEd in the Washington Post yesterday, Anne Applebaum lambasted ?The Freedom Haters,? by which she meant a part of the Western left ? or rather the Western far left ? [that] is now so anti-American, or so anti-Bush, that it actually prefers authoritarian or totalitarian leaders to any government that would be friendly to the United States...
More Ricci Fallout...
Posted on July 05, 2009The estimable Mickey Kaus, citing the estimable Walter Olson, worries about employers who will get sued if they ignore the results of tests that have a disparate impact ... and sued if they don?t, but he goes on to argue that ... Justice Anthony Kennedy?s solution to this problem in the Ricci case ? that a city can?t throw out a job test that winds up promoting whites and no blacks unless there is a ?strong basis in evidence? that it would lose a subsequent discrimination lawsuit ? seems an unsatisfying solution to the litigation vise...
Obama?s Beliefs ... Or Not
Posted on July 03, 2009In an interview yesterday with the Associated Press, President Obama attempted to explain (or disguise) his views on affirmative action. ?I don't think that hiring on the basis of race ... alone is constitutionally possible.? Obama, a former teacher of constitutional law, said, ?I?ve always believe[d] that affirmative action was less of an issue or should be less of an issue than it has been made out to be in news reports...
Does Disproportionate Always Equal Racist?
Posted on June 29, 2009According to new material delivered to the Senate, when Sonia Sotomayor was on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (now called LatinoJustice PRLDEF), she and two other directors signed a memo that argued against reinstating the death penalty in New York state, making the case that capital punishment is racist because it is disproportionately imposed on minorities...
Ricci et al. Vindicated; Ricci Reversed!
Posted on June 29, 2009The Supreme Court has reversed the Sotomayor-sitting Second Circuit and ruled in favor of Frank Ricci and his fellow New Haven firemen who would have been promoted but for their race. In doing so it rejected the argument of the Obama administration, and favored by the four dissenting Justices (See Footnote 10 of Justice Ginsburg?s dissent, quoted here), that would have vacated the Second Circuit?s decision and remanded the case to the District Court for fact-finding on the city?s intent in refusing to act on the results of its test...
Would Congress Pass The Diversity Requirement The ABA Imposes On Law Schools (And Colleges Impose On Themselves)?
Posted on June 26, 2009U.S. Capitol is too white, say critics
Surprise! If The Government Gives People Money ...
Posted on June 26, 2009... people have more money. WASHINGTON -- The income of Americans soared in May because of the government?s economic stimulus.... Disposable personal income in May -- income after taxes -- jumped 1.6%, driven by the aid package President Barack Obama signed in February to spur the economy...
Does Accreditation Have A Disparate Impact?
Posted on June 26, 2009Several years ago I discussed on a number of occasions (many of them linked here) controversy over an American Bar Association accreditation standard that virtually requires law schools to employ racial preferences in admissions in order to promote ?diversity...
ACRI On The Ballot!
Posted on June 23, 2009Both houses of the Arizona legislature have now approved the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative, which will appear on the ballot in 2010! If voters approve the measure, Arizona will join the voters of California, Washington, Michigan, and Nebraska, all of whom have amended their state constitutions to prohibit the state from discriminating against, or giving preference to, anyone based on race, ethnicity, or gender...
Supremes Preserve But Gut, Or At Least Limit, Section 5
Posted on June 23, 2009Attentive readers will (I hope) have noticed that I?ve not posted much lately. My wife and I have been in California visiting our daughter (who, by the way, has just had an important article accepted by a major journal; more on that some time later), and I?ve fallen behind...
Gross Coverage
Posted on June 19, 2009To be fair, my title should be ?Gross Coverage,? since I am referring to the sadly typical press coverage of the recently released Supreme Court decision in Gross v. FBL Financial Services (08-441), an age discrimination case under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act...
Ricci In Depth
Posted on June 14, 2009Anyone who wants greater knowledge of the facts of Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Have firefighter case, should read Stuart Taylor?s latest column and the deeply informed comments (here, here, here on ?Guest In the Know? on Jonathan Adler?s recent post, ?What Really Happened? in Ricci.
When In A Hole...
Posted on June 14, 2009?The reckless fiscal policies of the past have left us in a very deep hole,? Obama said last week. ?And digging our way out of it will take time, patience and some tough choices.? Given the enormous deficits and debt Obama is determined to multiply and increase, apparently one of those ?tough choices? is not to stop digging.
Sotomayor: Racist? Racialist? Run Of The Mill Multicultist?
Posted on June 12, 2009Jonathan Alter, in a Volokh Conspiracy post on Anti-Anti Sotomayor, argued that ?it is inaccurate and unfair to argue, on the basis of this and other speeches, that Sotomayor is a ?racist?? and that ?calling her a ?racialist is just as bad.? To acknowledge, Alter continues, ?that ethnic background and personal experience can and should influence judicial behavior, even while disparaging the ideal of judicial objectivity, is not to embrace racial bigotry...
Sotomayor: Where?s The Beef?
Posted on June 12, 2009In his widely-read ?In The Loop? political insider gossip column in today?s Washington Post, Al Kamen notes that Sonia Sotomayor, with more than six years of district court and more than 10 years of appeals court experience, goes before the committee with more years of total experience in the federal courts than any Supreme Court justice since ...
Two Views Of Republicans And National Security: 1) The New Republic?s; 2) The American People?s
Posted on June 11, 2009From The New Republic, June 11: How The Gop Lost Its Edge On National Security, by Ruy Teixeira From Rasmussen Reports, June 8: For the eighth straight month, Republicans lead on national security. The GOP now holds a 51% to 36% lead on the issue, up from a seven-point lead in May...
Uproar Over Preferential Admissions In Illinois
Posted on June 11, 2009In a long series of articles the Chicago Tribune has ignited a major firestorm over preferential admissions at the University of Illinois. Not the sort of preferential admissions we usually follow here, but preferential admissions nevertheless. As summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education, The articles, which examined university e-mail and records dating to 2005, detail the existence of a ?Category I? list at the university for applicants who have been recommended by lawmakers, trustees, or other politically connected people...
Voting Rights ... And Wrongs
Posted on June 10, 2009IN THE MAIL: From Abigail Thernstrom, Voting Rights ? And Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections. I?ve started reading this, and it is superb. (Although I should say ?re-reading,? since an old professor of mine once observed that scholars never admit to reading anything; they always re-read...
Sotomayor: No Adjectives Of Spanish
Posted on June 10, 2009I pointed out, here, the incredible silliness of Sonia Sotomayor?s 1996 pronouncement in a speech to Princeton students that ?in Spanish we do not have adjectives. A noun is described with a preposition.? Now the grammar of this self-taught grammarian has been noted on National Review Online?s Bench Memos...
Ruth Marcus Tries To Rescue Sotomayor From Ricci
Posted on June 10, 2009In the Washington Post this morning Ruth Marcus attempts to rescue Sonia Sotomayor from her decision to deny Frank Ricci, the white New Haven firefighter, the promotion he had earned. Sotomayor is not a ?quota queen,? she argues, because the real culprit is disparate impact law itself...
Left and Right, Together
Posted on June 10, 2009Drudge is reporting that the gunman who killed the security guard at the Holocaust Museum is an ?89 Year Old White Supremacist? and also that ?Obama's Former Pastor Resurfaces: ?Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me ....? The far left and far right, it seems, still have something in common...
Liberals Flee From Success...
Posted on June 09, 2009It is often said that success has many fathers but failure is an orphan. Our liberals, however have reversed this truism. On The Weekly Standard?s blog today Michael Goldfarb makes an excellent point (HatTip to Robert VerBruggen): Sotomayor?s supporters ? most of whom support racial preferences ? insist that Sotomayor is so smart and capable she would have succeeded regardless of any affirmative action policies...
Eating Its Own Tail, Disparate Impact Itself Has A Disparate Impact
Posted on June 08, 2009On the surface the disparate impact theory of discrimination seems plausible enough (even if not ultimately persuasive) ? why shouldn?t any policy or practice that has a disproportionately adverse impact on one racial or ethnic group be prohibited unless a very, very strong justification for it can be produced? In practice, however, as applied, it often amounts either to a lowering of standards for everyone (as when employers are prevented from using tests to measure qualifications for hiring or promotion) or to being no more than a fancy lawyer-created artifice for plain old-fashioned disparate treatment discrimination...
Sotomayor Held That To ?Cut Slack? For Chinese ESL Students On A Written Exam Was Racial Discrimination Against A Black Student
Posted on June 07, 2009Recently the Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article noting that ?Supreme Court Nominee Was on the Side of Minorities in Key Cases,? one of which supported ?an individual student who challenged a grading policy as discriminatory.? In that case, Tolbert v...
Is Sonia Sotomayor A ?Wise Latina??
Posted on June 05, 2009As everyone knows by now, a great deal of attention has been paid to Sonia Sotomayor?s belief (despite the fact that she call?s it a ?hope?) that ?a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life...
New Poll: Overwhelming Opposition To Race Preferences, ?Affirmative Action? When It Results In Race Preferences, Sotomayor?s Support Of New Haven?s Refusal To Promote Firemen Who Passed Exam...
Posted on June 04, 2009Quinnipiac University has released dramatic new poll results on affirmative action. From the summary: American voters say 55 ? 36 percent that affirmative action should be abolished, and disagree 71 ? 19 percent with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's ruling in the New Haven firefighters' case, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today...
Sotomayor: No Spanish Adjectives?
Posted on June 03, 2009On the National Journal?s new Ninth Justice blog yesterday Stuart Taylor passed on Brooklyn College history professor K.C. Johnson?s generally favorable comments on Sonia Sonomayor?s Princeton senior thesis, though Johnson did note a few discordant trendy leftist notes from the 1970s (such as her insistence on calling the U...
Taking Issue With More Sotomayor Coverage ? From Right, Left, and Center
Posted on May 30, 2009Judge Sonia Sotomayor?s nomination to the Supreme Court, and especially her provocative assertion (which she misleadingly labels a ?hope?) that ?a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn?t lived that life,? continues to excite commentators ? Right, Left, and Center...
A Blank SLATE Re Title VII
Posted on May 28, 2009Yesterday Emily Bazelon, one of SLATE?s liberal legal writers, wrote that Ricci v. Stefano, the case of the New Haven firefighters who were denied promotions because no blacks passed the promotion exam (see here, citing a bunch of earlier posts), ?is a hard case with bad facts?a case that could do serious damage to Title VII, one of Congress' landmark civil rights laws...
Does ?Equal Opportunity? Require The ?Without Regard? Principle? Let?s Ask Former Yale Law Dean Harold Hongju Koh
Posted on May 28, 2009Yesterday I discussed (here) the ACLU?s attempt to prevent Quinnipiac University from eliminating its women?s volleyball team, along with two men?s teams, in an effort to cut costs, the sort of decision one might think possessing some academic freedom protections...
What?s ?Empathy?? Easy. It?s Being ?On The Side Of? Minorities
Posted on May 27, 2009If you?ve been wondering what President Obama means by ?empathy,? wonder no longer. The Chronicle of Higher Education makes it clear this morning, in ?Supreme Court Nominee Was on the Side of Minorities in Key Cases.? President Obama?s nominee for the U...
Quinnipiac Univ. Women Have A Right To ... Volleyball?
Posted on May 26, 2009Well, yes, according to the ACLU, which is attempting, so far successfully, to block Quinnipiac from eliminating its women?s volleyball team. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports today: A federal judge told Quinnipiac University today that it may not eliminate its women?s volleyball team ? or cut spending on any women?s team ? while the court hears a gender-equity lawsuit over the university?s plans to cut the volleyball team...
Update!
Posted on May 24, 2009Stuart Taylor Skewers Sotomayor?s Identity Politics ... Sort Of has been UPDATED three times.
Will On Wayward Liberals
Posted on May 24, 2009In his Washington Post column this morning George Will writes: For several decades, most of the ingenuity that liberal academics have invested in First Amendment analysis has aimed to justify limiting the core activity that the amendment was written to protect ? political speech...
The ?Bloody Shirt? Still Waves. Does It Fly In The White House?
Posted on May 24, 2009I have had, or in any event taken, several opportunities to discuss both the original and modern versions of ?waving the bloody shirt,? described here as the popular Republican tactic for more than a generation after the Civil War to remind voters of the Democrats? sympathies with the South...
Not Just In New Haven...
Posted on May 22, 2009You?re all familiar by now with the New Haven Fire Department, which decided not to promote anyone to lieutenant or captain because no blacks passed the promotion exam. (See here, citing a bunch of earlier discussions of Ricci v. DeStefano.) But you probably haven?t heard about the police department that left senior positions unfilled rather than promote whites...
Your Dept. of Justice: Busy Putting Out Fires Putting Down Fire Departments In Virginia
Posted on May 22, 2009Back in March the Department of Justice settled a lawsuit against the Portsmouth, Virginia, fire department for allegedly discriminating black applicants for entry-level firefighter positions. (I missed this when it happened, and would have continued to miss it if the ever-watchful Roger Clegg had not brought it to my attention...
Stuart Taylor Skewers Sotomayor?s Identity Politics ... Sort Of
Posted on May 22, 2009How could I not like Stuart Taylor?s masterful dissection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor?s identity politics in his current National Journal column? After all, much of it echoes what I argued here and here, only better. ?So accustomed have we become to identity politics,? Taylor writes, that it barely causes a ripple when a highly touted Supreme Court candidate, who sits on the federal Appeals Court in New York, has seriously suggested that Latina women like her make better judges than white males...
Affirmative Action Bites The Dust ...
Posted on May 21, 2009... in Malaysia. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has outlined plans to dismantle the decades-old preferment system for ethnic Malays. He told newspapers in Singapore that the long-term benefits of ending the scheme would outweigh the ?pain?.... In an interview for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, Mr Najib said that ethnic quotas damaged his country's competitiveness and ran counter to global trends...
Dems Urge A Race-Based Bailout
Posted on May 20, 2009According to an article in The Hill yesterday, High-ranking House Democrats are urging the Treasury Department to prop up minority-owned broadcasters suffering from a lack of capital and lost advertising revenue amid the economic slump. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S...
Where Will This End?
Posted on May 19, 2009We?ve seen (most recently here, citing six earlier discussions) that the New Haven Fire Department refused to promote anyone to lieutenant or captain because no blacks passed the required exam. Now, thanks to Roger Clegg?s note on NRO?s Bench Memos, I see from an article in the Washington Post that the College Board has dropped an Advanced Placement exam in Latin, explaining that its decision ?was related to the number of minority students taking the exam...
?Diversity? As Racial Balancing
Posted on May 18, 2009Can anyone explain to me the difference between ?diversity,? as actually practiced (which distinguishes it from promoting actual diversity), and ?racial balancing?? It?s an important, even crucial, distinction, since the Supreme Court has repeatedly made it clear that racial balancing ?for its own sake? is impermissible...
What To Make Of Obama?s Warning That Our Debt Is ?Unsustainable??
Posted on May 15, 2009Some behavior is so vile that it is described as beneath contempt (?It's so contemptible that it doesn?t even rise to the level of contemptibility. Contemptible is too flattering a designation for anything so contemptible?.) How then do you describe comments that provide such a bizarrely, breathtakingly audacious indictment of the speaker's own policies as to leave critics tongue-tied, incapable of coherent criticism? I am thinking, of course, of President Obama?s warning yesterday that our long-term debt is ?unsustainable?: May 14 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending ?unsustainable,? warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U...
NJ Med Student Expelled For Calling Himself ?White African American?
Posted on May 14, 2009ABC News reported yesterday that University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey medical student Paolo Serodio was called into the dean?s office several times, forced to undergo a psychiatric exam, and finally expelled for responding to a question by ?identifying himself during a class cultural exercise as a ?white African-American...
Should Supreme Court Justices Be Selected On The Basis Of Looks?
Posted on May 13, 2009Apparently so, at least in part, according to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the only woman currently on the Court. Before O?Connor?s retirement three years ago, Ginsburg said in a speech last month at Ohio State, ?people could see that women came in all sizes and shapes, we didn?t look alike, and we didn?t talk alike...
Diversity Pointers, Poynter?s Diversity
Posted on May 12, 2009The Poynter Institute is a combination post-graduate school, standard setter, and ethics and diversity watchdog for American journalism, perhaps the most influential such center in the country. Although its hope to instill a ?recognition of the value of diversity in the newsroom and in life? is only one of nine items listed on its Mission Statement, it doesn?t take much time exploring the content and links of its various web pages to determine that preaching ?diversity? is pervasive at Poynter...
Elites Out Of Touch? Who Knew!
Posted on May 11, 2009The estimable Michael Barone writes today that ?On Guns and Climate, The Elites Are Out of Touch,? and he cites compelling polling data to support that conclusion. Many years ago, political scientists came up with a theory that elites lead public opinion...
A Good Argument For Diversity
Posted on May 11, 2009Donald A. Downs, a professor of many things at the University of Wisconsin (politics, law, journalism), makes a good argument for diversity in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Some of you will have noticed that here I?m not putting ?diversity? in quotes (though I just did, to mark the word)...
The Moonbeamish Argument Of Calif. AG Jerry Brown
Posted on May 10, 2009Governor Moonbeam is back, reincarnated as California?s Attorney General. ?During two terms as Governor of California and two failed bids for the presidency,? Time Magazine wrote back in 1989, at the beginning of his political rebirth, Jerry Brown, to some, symbolized visionary political leadership...
Is Judge Sotomayor ?A Wise Latina Woman??
Posted on May 10, 2009I?m a little late to the party of looking at Judge Sonia Sotomayer, who seems to be on everyone?s short list as a possible replacement for Justice Souter. But, better late than never. Actually after the reporting of Verum Serum, who unearthed the original article in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal (S...
Testing ... Testing ....
Posted on May 08, 2009[NOTE: An ADDENDUM was added to this post at 7:55AM Today] Another controversy over testing has broken out in New England. (For the mother of all testing controversies, recently argued in the Supreme Court, see here, here, here, here, and here.) Governor Deval Patrick, who once headed the Civil Rights Division of the US Justice Department, plans to appeal a federal court ruling that allows minority police officers to pursue a civil rights lawsuit challenging the state's promotional exam...
Racialism At The FCC: Un-Diverse ?Diversity? Committee, Unbalanced Support For Balance?
Posted on May 07, 2009Two days ago Fox News reported a growing controversy over an un-diverse ?diversity? committee at the Federal Communications Commission (HatTip to InstaPundit). A diversity committee at the Federal Communications Commission is raising the hackles of conservative watchdogs who say its ideological makeup is hardly diverse...
Empathy And Colorblindness
Posted on May 06, 2009In July 2007 candidate Obama clearly announced what his standard would be for nominating judges: We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old...
Another Obama Promise Bites The Dust...
Posted on May 06, 2009The lede from an article today in USA Today: WASHINGTON ? Although President Obama has vowed that citizens will be able to track ?every dime? of the $787 billion stimulus bill, a government website dedicated to the spending won?t have details on contracts and grants until October and may not be complete until next spring ? halfway through the program, administration officials said...
The Specter Specter
Posted on May 04, 2009spec·ter n. 1. A ghostly apparition; a phantom. 2. A haunting or disturbing image or prospect: the terrible specter of nuclear war Darlin? Arlen gave a hilarious imitation of himself as Ponderous Senator on Meet The Press yesterday. When David Gregory asked him what kind of justice President Obama should pick to replace retiring Justice David Souter, Specter replied: He should be looking for someone with a strong academic and professional background...
My 15 Minutes (Actually, 45) Of Fame...
Posted on May 04, 2009I was a guest today on Rob Schilling?s Charlottesville radio talk show today. Podcast can be found here. I?ve written about Rob several times before, such as The Intolerance Of Virginia Bluebloods on March 6, 2006: No, I don?t mean the bluebloods you?re probably thinking of ? aristocrats or descendants of aristocrats or aristocrat wannabes...
SAT Hypocrisy?
Posted on May 02, 2009I?ve just read a fascinating, impressive article on the SAT by Charles Murray, who argues, perhaps surprisingly, that it should be abolished. Briefly, he argues for getting rid of the SAT because it?s ?a red herring? with a bad (though wholly undeserved) reputation, and that nothing of value would be lost since the SAT II/Achievement tests are equally useful at predicting college grades...
The Continuing ?Diversity? Debate In The Virginia State Bar
Posted on May 01, 2009The Continuing ?Diversity? Debate In The Virginia State Bar Back in March I had a long post on a raging debate inside the Virginia State Bar over ?diversity,? and I encourage you to read it (or better, re-read it) before reading below about the continuation of this controversy that appears in the April 2009 issue of Virginia Lawyer with a new round of ?diversity? critiques and defenses...
Section 5 As The New ?Bloody Shirt?
Posted on April 30, 2009I have written before, such as here, that just as Republicans waved the ?bloody shirt? for a generation after the Civil War in an attempt to keep the Democrats branded as the party of slaveholders and rebellion, it is a staple of liberal and Democratic argument today to refer almost continuously to the Nixon/Reagan ?Southern Strategy? in an attempt to reinforce black, liberal, and independent rejection of current Republicans...
Good News: Rick Hasen Is Worried The Supremes May ?Kill The Voting Rights Act?!
Posted on April 29, 2009Loyala Law School Professor Rick Hasen, who writes the Election Law Blog and is a highly regarded authority on, you guessed it, election law, has an article on SLATE today expressing his concern, even fear, that the Supreme Court may invalidate a key section of the Voting Rights Law...
Hole In The Poll
Posted on April 27, 2009The New York Times/CBS Poll released today found that Barack Obama?s presidency seems to be altering the public perception of race relations in the United States. Two-thirds of Americans now say race relations are generally good and the percentage of blacks who say so has doubled since last July...
Diversity And Excellence: ?Additives,? Not Alternatives?
Posted on April 26, 2009Michèle Lamont is a professor of just about everything at Harvard (Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies, and Senior Adviser on Faculty Development and Diversity, Faculty of Arts and Sciences)...
Rickety Ricci IV: A Dilly From Philly
Posted on April 23, 2009I thought I was through writing about Ricci (see here, here, and here). After all, the Supremes just heard the argument, and nothing more will happen until the case is decided. But then I just saw Editorial: Racism in the firehouse in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and it deserves comment...
Are We Really Becoming More ?Diverse?? Does It Really Matter?
Posted on April 23, 2009This morning Inside Higher Ed notes the publication of yet another report calling for more ?diversity? in higher education, this one from the Council of Graduate Schools. ?Our nation is becoming increasingly diverse, yet Hispanic and African American students are highly underrepresented in graduate schools, particularly in fields such as science and engineering, where each group makes up less than 10 percent of graduate enrollment and approximately 5 percent of new Ph...
California Att?y Gen Says Non-Discrimination Is Unconstitutional
Posted on April 23, 2009Jerry Brown (remember him?) ? once California governor, now California Attorney General, and possible future California governor ? says in a letter to the California Supreme Court that the prohibition against preferential treatment based on race or gender that was added to the California Constitution by Prop...
Grasping At (Non-) Discriminatory Straws At UVa (And Ignoring Real Discrimination)
Posted on April 22, 2009?Responding to recent incidents of alleged discrimination targeting University students,? the University of Virginia?s Cavalier Daily reports this morning, the Sikh Student Association, in conjunction with 11 other student organizations, organized a ?Unite Against Discrimination? rally, scheduled to kick off this afternoon...
Rickety Ricci III
Posted on April 22, 2009Today the Supremes heard oral argument in Ricci v. DeStefano, a case brought by 17 white and 1 Hispanic New Haven firefighters whose successful promotion exams were tossed out for racial reasons that I discussed earlier here and here. In their excellent summary and preview of the case in the Wall Street Journal this morning, Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom present the core question clearly: The issue in Ricci was simply stated by Judge José Cabranes, dissenting from a cursory, unenlightening opinion by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals...
Jay Cost On ?Race, Realignment, and the Election of 1948?
Posted on April 22, 2009Jay Cost gave an impressive talk on (you guessed it) ?Race, Realignment, and the Election of 1948,? and posted it on Real Clear Politics. Like everything Cost does on RCP, this piece is quite good, and I encourage you to read it. I think he nails the significance of 1948 for the modern Democratic Party quite well...
L?État C?est Obama...
Posted on April 21, 2009Obama received much deserved criticism during and after the campaign for his narcissistic self-regard bordering on (or crossing the border of) messianic. Obamessiah, etc. Alas, evidence of that tendency continues to manifest itself. At the recent ?Summit of the Americas,? for example, another episode may be even more revealing than his warm embrace of dictator Chavez, which has received more attention...
Another Dogeared Page
Posted on April 21, 2009Here I wrote that ?[i]n the past I have dogeared a number of Pages (columns by Clarence Page, that is) as good examples of the thinking (or lack thereof) of mainstream liberal columnists/talking heads,? and I then provided links to seven examples. A few days ago he committed another one...
Rickety Ricci II
Posted on April 21, 2009Last week I discussed A Rickety Argument In Ricci, referring to Ricci v. DeStefano, a case the Supreme Court will hear tomorrow involving, as I noted in my post, ?a complaint by 17 white and one Hispanic firemen that the New Haven Fire Department set aside the results of a promotional exam because it didn?t like the racial distribution of those who would have been promoted if the results had been honored (too many whites, not enough blacks)...
More California Claptrap From Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O?Connell
Posted on April 19, 2009We last encountered California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O?Connell back in 2007, in The Supe Is Nuts: Just When You Thought California Schools Couldn?t Get Any Worse.... There we saw that he was alarmed at the dramatic racial and ethnic achievement gaps, but his response ? attributing the gaps to ?cultural ignorance? in the schools ? was, at least to me, as alarming as the gaps...
A Perverse ?Diverse? Perspective On Virginia Tech?s ?Diversity? Dilemma
Posted on April 17, 2009For the past several months you?ve been spared exposure to the Chronicle of Higher Education?s commentator on all things ?diverse,? Penn anthropologist John L. Jackson Jr., at least via my criticisms of his columns (the last one was here, citing five earlier ones)...
A Rickety Argument In Ricci
Posted on April 16, 2009rick?et?y 1. likely to fall or collapse; shaky... 2. feeble in the joints; tottering; infirm.... Around three months ago I discussed, here, an important case that the Supreme Court will hear next week, Ricci v. DeStefano. That post linked a number of more thorough discussions by others, and because the case is so important you should read (or re-read) those linked analyses...
Charlottesville Tea Party!
Posted on April 16, 2009Even though Charlottesville is solid blue, and even though the weather yesterday was cold and rainy, ?[m]ore than 1,500 people flooded the pavilion in downtown Charlottesville Wednesday for the city?s first ever Tax Day Tea Party.? Charlottesville?s may have been the only Tea Party in the country whose keynote address was delivered by a former Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger...
Pot Calling The Kettle Black [White?]?
Posted on April 16, 2009Earl Ofari Hutchinson, the black political columnist last encountered here who writes almost exclusively about race issues and thus glass-house dweller, throws a rock at Rush Limbaugh because of his alleged ?obsession? with race. He just can't seem to stay away from it...
Another Victory For Title IX
Posted on April 15, 2009InsideHigherEd reports this morning that the University of Tennessee?Martin, a Division 1 school in the Ohio Valley Conference, is dropping its men?s tennis team. Phil Dane, athletics director, cited the ?high cost of out-of-state scholarships? and the team?s ?relatively small roster? as the reasoning for its suspension...
?Diversity? Test At Virginia Tech Gets F.I.R.E.d
Posted on April 15, 2009Under pressure, in the form of ridicule and exposure, from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the National Association of Scholars, Virginia Tech President Charles Steger has announced that the mandated reporting of contributions to ?diversity? for tenure candidates, discussed here, is no longer being considered...
A Good Use For Sampling?
Posted on April 13, 2009As you will recall, there was a huge debate over the use of statistical sampling in the 2000 census as a possible way of correcting what is presumed to be a large undercount of minorities. That debate resurfaced with President Obama?s now abandoned intention of moving the Census Bureau out of the Commerce Department and putting it under the control of political operatives in the White House, and now it has resurfaced again with his recent nomination of University of Michigan sociologist Robert Groves to head the Census Bureau...
Mount Holyoke Discriminates Against Hispanics, Asians...
Posted on April 13, 2009On a number of occasions I have discussed (not favorably, as you can imagine) college recruitment and orientation programs that segregate students by race. (Examples: here, here, here, here, here, and most recently here) Now Mount Holyoke College has bravely taken this segregative approach to practicing and preaching ?diversity? to its next logical step, as reported this morning at Inside Higher Ed: Mount Holyoke College, which has for many years had a voluntary program for minority students in advance of the general orientation, plans this year to start a special section at the same time, also voluntary, for white students from the United States...
Farfetched Step ?n Fetchit Complaint
Posted on April 13, 2009A couple of months ago denizens of the Democratic Underground had a serious discussion (or what passes for a serious discussion on Democratic Underground) of whether it would always be racist to describe someone as a Step ?n Fetchit, or whether there might be people who deserve that label...
UC Berkeley Admissions Admission: Obvious But Still Shocking
Posted on April 12, 200917% of the 13,000 students offered admission to next year?s entering class at Berkeley are black, Latino, or American Indian, the same percentage as last year. As a result, ?[p]rotesters are claiming that the university is discriminating against Latina/o, black and Native American students by imposing a ceiling on the number of underrepresented minority students they admit...
Eagleburger At Charlottesville Tea Party
Posted on April 12, 2009Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger is scheduled to speak at the Charlottesville Tea Party on April 15. Check back afterwards; I should have pictures.
Obama And The ?Moderate Pirate Community?
Posted on April 11, 2009John Hinderaker is probably correct that, although ?it is easy and tempting to ridicule the Obama administration's inability to take decisive action? against the Pirates who have kidnapped an American sea captain, ?there is no good solution to a hostage situation, and patience is probably as good a virtue as any, at least for now...
Ledbetter Lies Redux
Posted on April 10, 2009I?ve recently posted, twice (here and here), discussions of the sad spectacle of President Obama and the Congressional Democrats mischaracterizing a Supreme Court opinion in order to pass a disturbing new ?equal pay? law whose only saving grace is its wholly unintended consequence of doing away with time limit restrictions on employees (and former employees and retired employees) claiming that they have been victims of what is popularly known as ?reverse discrimination...
Bow. Wow!
Posted on April 10, 2009What I find most interesting about all the barking and biting about President Obama bowing to the Saudi monarch is that the White House denies what everyone can see on the video: ?a full-blooded and deeply reverential half-body bow,? as described in the London Telegraph...
Obama: ?We Do Not Consider Ourselves A Christian Nation...?
Posted on April 10, 2009At a news conference in Turkey several days ago President Obama declared: We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values. I agree with the essential truth of this assertion, although Obama?s oddly awkward phrasing (where?s the teleprompter when it?s really needed?) clouds that truth with a demonstrable untruth: contrary to Obama, most Americans do in fact consider the United States to be ?a Christian nation? (71% according to this recent Pew poll)...
?Diversity,? The Liberal Orthodoxy
Posted on April 08, 2009The University of Virginia is as good as any place on earth to observe that ?diversity? has become the opiate of the liberal elites and their followers, deadening thought and dumbing down analysis. Accusations today of ?soft on ?diversity?!? echo the ?soft on communism!? accusations and innuendos of McCarthyism, and serve the same silencing, orthodoxy-reinforcing function...
Deeds? Words
Posted on April 06, 2009Politics is often at its most entertaining when politicians rant indignantly about some allegedly outrageous offense that is not only not offensive but is in fact a statement of the obvious. A humorous case in point is the current hissy being thrown by Virginia state senator Creigh Deeds over a remark made by Mike Huckabee at a fundraiser in Tazewell County, in Southwestern Virginia, for Republican Bob McDonnell...
UPDATE!
Posted on April 06, 2009At UVa Asians Are Now ?Diverse? (At Least For A Day)... has been UPDATED.
Charlottesville Partners With UVa To Launch ?Diversity?-Induced Discrimination Programs
Posted on April 06, 2009Charlottesville, like the University of Virginia that it hosts, simply can?t get enough of ?diversity.? (Well, that?s not exactly true. As discussed in Old Dominion Dems Decry Diversity! and Charlottesville, The Capital Of Blue Virginia..., one Republican on a five-member city council provided entirely too much diversity, and had to be replaced several years ago in an election in which the Dems ?retook? the council...
At UVa Asians Are Now ?Diverse? (At Least For A Day), AND Chief Diversity Officer Puts Foot In Mouth
Posted on April 04, 2009In higher education ?diverse? almost always means black, Hispanic, or Native American, but yesterday at the University of Virginia meeting of its Board of Visitors it meant Asian. ?Officials discuss Asian faculty diversity concerns,? the headline of the front page article in the Cavalier Daily today announces...
Head In Sand ... Or Sand In Head?
Posted on April 03, 2009Professor Mark Peterson, associate professor and department chair of political science at Washburn University, recently delivered a lecture at Kansas State University defending affirmative action. His defense was typical, and thus, oddly, both depressing and encouraging...
Cap-And-Trade = Smoke-And-Mirrors
Posted on April 03, 2009First, the Euphemism of the Day: as quoted in the Washington Post this morning: Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) called cap-and-trade ?the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time,? and said it would be difficult to pass without reconciliation because Democrats would be forced to accommodate a handful of Republicans as they did in the debate over the president's stimulus package...
White Devils? Black Devils? Brown Devils? Yellow Devils? Red Devils?
Posted on April 02, 2009Duke University, of all places, should know better. Given the devotion to ?diversity? that pervades that institution (see Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case if you have any doubts), you?d think that by now Duke would have recognized that it comprises not one but many communities, that it borders on racial arrogance to insist on categorizing all its students as ?Blue Devils,? as though they were all fundamentally alike...
Narcissist In Chief
Posted on April 02, 2009So it?s true. The new über CEO of General Motors (which makes the soon to be revived O?smobile) really did give the Queen an iPod containing, along with a bunch of show tunes, some of his speeches, including the one he made to the Democratic convention in 2004 when he was still a state senator in Illinois...
Not Enough Race Boxes On UCLA Application (Where It It Is Illegal To Take Race Into Account)
Posted on March 31, 2009Roger Clegg discusses what he aptly calls ?an odd article? in the Los Angeles Times today ?about the tragic shortage of racial boxes on the UCLA admissions form, and in particular the lack of any ?Middle Eastern? boxes.? This concern is odd, of course, since ?UCLA is not supposed to be considering race or ethnicity at all...
Race And The 2008 Election
Posted on March 31, 2009The Next Right notes the ?most underreported fact of the 2008 election,? from this CNN exit poll (HatTip to InstaPundit: Those who said race was an important factor voted 55 percent to 44 percent in favor of Obama. Insofar as race is a continuing problem in the United States, whose problem is it?
O'smobile?
Posted on March 30, 2009Since Oldsmobile died an untimely death in 2004, perhaps the name can be revived and applied (in slightly modified form), O?smobile, to the new General Motors. Or perhaps it will be sufficient simply to refer to GM from now on as BM (Barack Motors). UPDATE In his statement this morning President Obama said: ...
Blue-Eyed, Brown-Eyed Bunkum
Posted on March 30, 2009Corina Knoll is a young Korean-American journalist at the Los Angeles Times who recently interviewed and wrote a revealing appreciation of Jane Elliott, an Iowa teacher who made, first, headlines and then, fame and at least some fortune, with a controversial method she developed of teaching whites how racist they are...
Another ?Diversity? Loyalty Oath In Virginia
Posted on March 26, 2009Last month I discussed (here) the Student Bar Association at the University of Virginia encouraging students to sign a pledge of allegiance to ?diversity.? Now comes news, from the Chronicle of Higher Education today, of a new set of guidelines at Virginia Tech that, critics say, ?appear to require faculty members to show a commitment to diversity as part of their bids for tenure and promotion...
Post-Partisanship? I Finally Figured It Out!
Posted on March 25, 2009One of the most prominent planks in Obama?s campaign platform was his promise to move beyond (or above) partisanship.Many observers have thus been confused or disappointed by the currently unfolding reality of President Obama?s economic agenda for the nation, consisting as it does of the conversion of one liberal wish list after another into government policy with little, often no, input from Republicans...
?Massey Resistance?: Wrong In Theory And Practice, Part II
Posted on March 24, 2009The first part of my discussion of Princeton Prof. Douglas Massey?s most recent defense of affirmative action appears immediately below, or, if you somehow stumbled on this continuation first, here. Part I dealt with the first of what are claimed to be only ?three basic charges? we critics level against affirmative action, that it ?constitutes reverse discrimination, lowering the chance of admission for better-qualified white students? and, further, that ?affirmative action generally has had only small and insignificant effects on the admission prospects of white students...
Racial Bean-Counting Gets Harder...
Posted on March 23, 2009... in part because there are too many multicolored beans. Thus, the Washington Post reports today, Public schools in the Washington region and elsewhere are abandoning their check-one-box approach to gathering information about race and ethnicity in an effort to develop a more accurate portrait of classrooms transformed by immigration and interracial marriage...
?Massey Resistance?: Wrong In Theory And Practice, Part I
Posted on March 23, 2009[NOTE! This post has been UPDATED] Virginia under the Byrd Machine engaged in ?massive resistance? to attacks on state-supported racial discrimination. For a while now Prof. Douglas Massey, a sociologist at Princeton, has been engaged in scholarly resistance to attacks on the racial discrimination at the core of affirmative action in higher education...
We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate...
Posted on March 22, 2009Politico: ?Obama struggles as communicator? Of all the pitfalls Barack Obama might face in the presidency, here is one not many people predicted: He is struggling as a public communicator.... New York Times: ?Weekend Opinionator: Obama?s Communication Breakdown? From giving contradictory statements on the economy to making gaffes about the Special Olympics, team Obama has lost the communications magic that propelled it to the White House...
Has Dodd Gone Dotty?
Posted on March 21, 2009... Or maybe he?s always been dotty. In either case, it is well known by now that the Administration, Democratic leaders, and their followers on both sides of the aisle rushed through the ?stimulus? bill so fast they didn?t have time to read it, and so were and are blissfully unaware of many of its provisions...
Ideological Exclusion
Posted on March 20, 2009The Chronicle of Higher Education has two interesting pieces today on free speech and openness to alien ideas (or not). In the longer and more analytical of the two staff writer Peter Schmidt begins on a metaphorical (or is it allegorical?) note: Imagine a world where people can say whatever they want but are forced to wear earplugs at all times...
Is Bernanke Playing Chinese Checkers?
Posted on March 19, 2009Asia Times, ?Dollar Crisis in the Making, Part 3? There is mounting evidence that China's central bank is undertaking the process of divesting itself of longer-dated US Treasuries in favor of shorter-dated ones. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System: To provide greater support to mortgage lending and housing markets, the Committee decided today to increase the size of the Federal Reserve?s balance sheet further by purchasing up to an additional $750 billion of agency mortgage-backed securities, bringing its total purchases of these securities to up to $1...
Voting Discrimination: The Real Thing
Posted on March 18, 2009Since debates over voting discrimination today usually involves arcane notions of ?vote dilution,? ?majority-minority districts,? ?pre-clearance? of even mundane changes in voting rules or procedures, etc., it is sometimes difficult to remember what real, unadulterated voting discrimination was like in the old days...
Gilding The Lilly: Not A Tax, But...
Posted on March 18, 2009As I noted here last month, the first bill President Obama signed into law dramatically expanded the protection offered by (and the prospects of employer liability under) Title VII?s prohibition of job discrimination. I quoted the following (and more) from Stuart Taylor: The new law will virtually wipe out the 300-day time limit (180 days in Alabama and some other states) during which employees can file claims of discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act...
Polluted Waters
Posted on March 18, 2009I?m almost surprised that this Los Angeles Times column by Tim Rutten on ?Rep. [Maxine] Waters' troubling ties? hasn?t received more attention. I suspect it would have had it not appeared in the middle of a flurry of fallout over the AIG bailout. In fact, I think what Rutten both reveals and reminds us of is worthy of more anger than the AIG bonuses, but maybe news that minority politicians are more interested in feathering racial nests (including their own) is no longer considered newsworthy in elite political circles...
The Beauty of One-Party Government ...
Posted on March 18, 2009... is that you don?t have to put up with messy, time-consuming, embarrassing dissent. Bloomberg reports today (HatTip to Drudge): President Barack Obama may try to push through Congress a health-care overhaul, energy proposals and tax increases by using a partisan tactic that would thwart Republican efforts to block the measures...
Diversity?s New Proxy (Or, Proxy By Proxy)
Posted on March 18, 2009According to the libs, as we all know, race is a valid proxy for all sorts of wonderful (but no bad) ?differences.? That?s why schools and colleges are so determined to jiggle their admissions requirements, lowering them where necessary, to assign or admit students from the approved racial groups: so that all their same students can be exposed to a few different students...
Racial Silence
Posted on March 18, 2009Politico has a long article today on Obama?s continuing reluctance to talk about race, noting that today is the anniversary of the important speech in Philadelphia in which candidate Obama, trying to deflect criticism of his long association with Rev...
The ?Overrepresentation? Of Immigrant Blacks
Posted on March 17, 2009Inside Higher Ed reports this morning on a new study?s finding that among high school graduates, ?immigrant blacks? ? defined as those who immigrated to the United States or their children ? are significantly more likely than other black Americans to attend selective colleges...
Men And Boys Need Not Apply: Obama Wants Fairness For ?Women And Girls?
Posted on March 16, 2009President Obama wants to be fair to women and girls (men and boys are presumably on their own.). Toward that end last week he signed an Executive Order creating a new White House Council on Women and Girls. Its mission, an accompanying White House statement said, ?will be to provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women and girls and to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families,? something that by implication has been heretofore ignored...
Sorry State Of Affairs (Affairs Of State?) When You Can?t Define ?State?
Posted on March 15, 2009It all depends on what the meaning of ?state? is. You?d think by now, after over two hundred years of experience with those pesky sovereign (or not) units, we?d know what a state is, but as Bush v. Gore and several subsequent controversies have reminded us, we don?t...
Seek And Ye Shall ... A) Find, B) Discriminate...
Posted on March 15, 2009According to this article in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the ?Rochester Police Department is seeking more minorities.? (HatTip to reader Mike Bertolone) Recruitment Officer Jesse Green said anyone can apply to take the test since city residency is not required when applying...
?Civil Liberties For Our Side Only?
Posted on March 14, 2009Tom Maguire skewers liberals Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias for ?their unsteady commitment to civil liberties.? ?The topic,? Maguire writes, is the right of Deborah Weinsig, a Citigroup equity analyst who covers retail stocks, to explain to her clients why she thinks that card check will be bad for WalMart...
The Boy President
Posted on March 12, 2009President Obama?s performance in his first months in office has reinforced my belief that it would be a big mistake to elect a boy to do a man?s (or woman?s) job. Note to the politically correct language police: I am very much aware that ?Boy? was long a racist, insulting, demeaning term used, especially in the South, to refer to black men...
Supreme Courts ?Refuses To Expand? Or ?Narrows? Voting Rights
Posted on March 09, 2009In an important decision handed down today the Supreme Court, according to the Associated Press, ?refuses to expand voting rights.? The 5-4 decision, with the court's conservatives in the majority, could make it harder for southern Democrats to draw friendly boundaries after the 2010 Census...
Dahlia Lithwick: Switch Hitter
Posted on March 09, 2009Dahlia Lithwick writes cute, sassy legal analysis for SLATE. As I noted here (and liked the description so well that I used it again here), she is ?known more for the sizzle than the steak of her columns.? Although she is reluctantly willing to prick a liberal balloon or two on occasion, what heavy artillery she has is always reliably aimed at conservatives...
Quotas Come To Charities
Posted on March 08, 2009It?s not enough that more of rich people?s income will, thanks to President Yes-We-Can!, be given to the IRS and that the deductions allowed for giving to charity will now be reduced, starving charities of funds they would formerly have received. Now, according to this disturbing article by Naomi Schaefer Riley in the Wall Street Journal (HatTip to InstaPundit), the ?diversity? police are demanding that private ?public interest? organizations, i...
No We Can?t! (Or Won?t!)
Posted on March 08, 2009Carol Swain, the impressive Vanderbilt law professor we first encountered here, points out that our new ?Yes We Can!? president ?has lofty goals. Under his tutelage,? she wrote recently in the Nashville Tennessean, ?we will cure cancer, end our dependence on foreign oil, reform health care and guarantee higher education to everyone who wants it...
Peremptory Racial Nonsense
Posted on March 06, 2009The more I think about what the current conventional liberal wisdom (pardon the oxymoron) regarding racial discrimination, especially as that wisdom defends racial preference policies, the more it strikes me as incoherent peremptory nonsense, as in: per?emp?to?ry adjective (esp...
Virginia Admissions Conflicts: Residence, Region, ?Diversity?
Posted on February 26, 2009Admissions to very selective public universities like the University of Virginia (or at least nominally public; UVa receives only 8% or so of its operating budget from the state) are trickier and more fraught with conflict than admission to selective private institutions...
Affirmative Action No Longer Needed?
Posted on February 24, 2009Conventional wisdom has it that Obama?s election has shown that affirmative action is no longer necessary, but according to Rasmussen?s surveys more people think it necessary now than thought so before his election. In a survey taken last August, ?46% [said] such programs are no longer necessary...
Law School Admissions: Not Colorblind, Not Blind-Friendly
Posted on February 23, 2009Law school admissions, as readers of DISCRIMINATIONS know all too well, is not colorblind, but according to a new lawsuit it is completely blind to the needs of one group, the blind. Inside Higher Ed reports this morning: The National Federation of the Blind and a blind law school applicant sued the Law School Admission Council last week, charging that its Web site, essential to those preparing for the Law School Admission Test, is inaccessible to blind people, effectively blocking them from law school...
The Washington Post: Chimp Chump
Posted on February 23, 2009In its Sunday Magazine section yesterday the Washington Post ran a perfectly innocuous (and not very funny) humor column, ?Below The Beltway,? by Gene Weingarten on the sexual appetites of men and women. It began: In a study described recently in the New York Times, men and women were shown various types of sexually explicit videos, and sensors were attached to their private parts to measure their physical arousal...
?Bending The Curve? Or Breaking The Bank?
Posted on February 22, 2009Regarding President Obama?s upcoming budget, Politico reports today: Obama?s aides now talk about ?bending the curve? ? that is, changing the rate of increase of the deficit ? rather than balancing the budget. The plan released this week will ?seek to restore the nation to a sustainable fiscal trajectory over of [sic] five-to-ten year window,? Orszag said...
Alter-nate Reality
Posted on February 22, 2009Newsweek is the magazine that recently informed us in its cover story that ?We Are All Socialists Now.? Now one of its quintessential Alter-nate reality writers, Jonathan Alter, tells us ?How Obama Can Talk Us Out Of The Recession.? That, actually, was Real Clear Politics? headline for Alter?s story...
Why Do We Need Affirmative Action? Ebonics!
Posted on February 22, 2009Rachel Steindel is the ?Language Columnist? for the Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina. In a recent column she argues that some students admitted under affirmative action are ?at a disadvantage? because ?they speak a different language...
Fear Of Massive Deficits And Tax Increases Is ?Insensitive?
Posted on February 22, 2009Hauling out the most overworked and overheated rhetorical weapon in the Democrats? arsenal, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and others accused the Republican governors who are threatening to refuse some of the ?stimulus? funds for their states as, you guessed it, insenstive...
A Conscious Bias Against ?Unconscious Bias?
Posted on February 22, 2009Yes, I?m biased. I have a conscious bias against the very idea, or at least the uses of the idea, of ?unconscious bias,? a faddish notion lovingly surveyed and endorsed in this New York Times piece in which Charles M. Blow writes that he ?take[s] exception to Holder?s language, but not his line of reasoning? in his ?A Nation of Cowards? speech (discussed here )...
I Finally Figured It Out...
Posted on February 20, 2009I admit it. I?ve had a hard time figuring out how zealously borrowing and spending and subsidizing the unsuccessful is supposed to get us out of an economic crisis caused in large part by overly zealous borrowing and spending and encouraging the unsuccessful to take on obligations they couldn?t meet...
?You Can?t Do Those Things Anymore?
Posted on February 20, 2009Angela Cela, a student from Guam (making her, in census terminology, a ?Pacific Islander?), has sued historically black Tennessee State University in Nashville for racial discrimination, claiming that she was denied a graduate student financial grant because she?s not black...
?A Nation Of Cowards??
Posted on February 18, 2009In longwinded remarks at the Department of Justice commemorating Black History Month, Attorney General Eric Holder called us ?essentially a nation of cowards? because ?we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.? We commemorated five years ago, the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v...
What Are The Benefits (If Any) Of ?Diversity??
Posted on February 17, 2009The always perceptive Peter Schmidt has an interview today in the Chronicle of Higher Education with James Sidanius, a professor of psychology and of African and African-American studies at Harvard University, whose research interests are ?the political psychology of gender, group conflict, institutional discrimination and the evolutionary psychology of intergroup prejudice...
States To Be Stimulated, Whether They Need It Or Not
Posted on February 16, 2009The Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning that Some States Get Stimulus Whether They Need or Want It. A pot of money in Congress's economic-stimulus bill is primarily intended to help buffer colleges and schools from state budget cuts. But some of the states slated to get the most money from that measure are not necessarily facing the greatest budget gaps or even proposing the sharpest reductions for higher education...
Politicizing Science And ...
Posted on February 15, 2009One of Candidate Obama?s most characteristic and common criticisms of President Bush was that he had politicized science, or elevated politics over science in his administration. This played well with an audience that ridiculed Bush as a rube and adored Obama as an Ivy League intellectual...
?The Opacity Of Hope?
Posted on February 15, 2009From the London Sunday Times: How would the Treasury secretary invest the hundreds of billions earmarked to ?rescue? the housing market? ?We will announce details in the next few weeks.? How, exactly would he construct the announced $1 trillion public-private partnership to absorb the banks? ?toxic debts?? ?We are not going to put out details until we have the right structure...
Tiger Woods!
Posted on February 15, 2009My brother just pointed me to Tiger Woods? remarkable speech during Obama?s inauguration, which I had missed. Woods has generally stayed aloof from politics and before the election he refused to say whether he would vote for Obama or McCain, but after Obama?s victory he told CNBC that ?"I think it's absolutely incredible...
?We Live In Racially Interesting Times...?
Posted on February 15, 2009If you can, i.e., if you are a subscriber to the Claremont Review of Books, be sure to read Abigail Thernstrom?s perceptive review essay of three interesting books: The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, by Richard Thompson Ford; Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal, by Randall Kennedy; and A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can?t Win, by Shelby Steele...
Another Broken Vow
Posted on February 15, 2009On November 25, 2008, Reuters reported that ?Obama vows to slash wasteful spending.? (HatTip to the Center For Individual Freedom) In his news conference on Tuesday Obama vowed to run a cost-effective and efficient government. ?If we?re going to make the investments we need, we must also be willing to shed the spending we don?t...
Promises, Promises
Posted on February 14, 2009There must be a site, or sites, somewhere monitoring the fate of Obama?s campaign promises. I?d appreciate pointers to the best of them. Off the top of my head, and not trying at the moment to source and cite each one, here are a few that come to mind: 1...
Obama Admin. Chooses Not To Appeal Anti-Quota Decision
Posted on February 13, 2009From a Pacific Legal Foundation press release: The U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Defense will not seek Supreme Court review of a November, 2008, federal appeals court ruling that struck down the Defense Department?s racial quota program in contracts...
Hope?
Posted on February 13, 2009Fortune editor Nina Easton reports today that Austan Goolsbee, staff director and chief economist of President Obama?s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, has, well, interesting hopes for the the success of the stimulus bill. ?Within six months, for sure, you want to see that the recovery package is doing things...
More Virginia ?Diversity?
Posted on February 10, 2009Two days I ago I discussed (here) the Student Bar Association at the University of Virginia encouraging students to sign a pledge of allegiance to ?diversity.? And today, because of this recent article in the student-run Cavalier Daily, I find it necessary to discuss ?diversity? at UVa one more time...
First They Came For Welfare Reform, And Then...
Posted on February 10, 2009Mickey Kaus has pointed out that the ?stimulus? bill working its way through Congress would reverse one of the most significant domestic accomplishments of the Clinton administration, welfare reform. It would do so by paying states to expand their welfare roles and allowing them to avoid welfare reform?s work requirements...
Affirmative Action: The Nation Banked On It
Posted on February 08, 2009As I have pointed out too many times to cite, when ?affirmative action? was first imposed on the federal government by presidential executive orders (Kennedy?s 10925 in 1961; Johnson?s 11246 in 1965) government agencies and contractors were barred from discriminating against ?any employee or applicant ...
Is Justice ?Diverse?? Release 2.0...
Posted on February 08, 2009A little over a week ago, discussing a report from a liberal organization at a liberal law school lamenting the lack of ?diversity? among state court judges, I asked, ?Is Justice ?Diverse??.? Today this long article in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Argus prompts me to return to that question, if for no other reason than this revealing introductory non-sequitur: In a state where more than 8 percent of the citizens and 25 percent of the male prison population are Native American, many are watching as Gov...
Racial Equality: ?People Are Realizing It?s Not The End Of The World?
Posted on February 08, 2009To the stated surprise of many diversiphiles, the sky hasn?t fallen on Nebraska, despite the fact that a substantial majority of its citizens passed a constitutional amendment barring the state and its agencies from continuing to practice racial favoritism...
UVa Law?s Pledge Of Allegiance To Diversity
Posted on February 07, 2009Karin Agness reports (on NRO?s Phi Beta Cons) that the Student Bar Association at the University of Virginia law school is encouraging all students to sign the ?2009 Diversity Pledge.? She quotes the entire Pledge, which I encourage you to read, but I will limit my comments here to its first paragraph: Every person has worth as an individual...
More Entertainment From California
Posted on February 06, 2009Everyone knows that entertainment is perhaps California?s most important export, but most are under the mistaken impression that it comes primarily from Hollywood. It doesn?t. It comes from UCLA, Berkeley, and other precincts where liberals manufacture more and more zany attempts to evade Prop...
Does Obama Think Republicans Are Un-American?
Posted on February 06, 2009The president, who campaigned on the promise of bringing an end to bitter partisanship, made a highly partisan speech to House Democrats who were on a ?retreat? in Williamsburg last night. Politico called that retreat ?a partisan love fest.? In a ?fired-up? speech to the House Dems on Thursday night, writes Politico?s Jonathan Martin, Obama accused his Republican critics of wanting to return to ?the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin...
All The Fit That?s News To Print...
Posted on February 05, 2009Cathy Trower is research director and Anne Gallagher is assistant director of Harvard University's Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (Coache). In the Chronicle of Higher Education they report (Feb. 4) the findings of a Coache study ?on what assistant professors want and need to be successful in academe...
This $15 Billion Will Stimulate ... What?
Posted on February 05, 2009Education Week reports a little pot of gold stashed away in the pending ?stimulus? bill that I hadn?t noticed, or seen discussed, before. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says he is eager to use a proposed $15 billion federal incentive-grant fund in part to reward states, districts, and even nonprofit organizations that have set high standards for the students they serve...
Black Acceptance Rates
Posted on February 04, 2009The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education has recently published its useful survey of the first year enrollment figures for blacks at 20 of the nation's top rated universities, public and private, for 2008. Nothing too surprising in the data. Brown, for example, admitted a little over 13% of all applicants but 22% of black applicants...
Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber: Where The Rubber Meets The Road, Or ... Bring On The Unintended Consequences!
Posted on February 03, 2009Whether or not you recognize it by name, most of you by now have read about Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. That?s the case in which the horrible, right-wing, run-amok activist Roberts Supreme Court, via right-wing Justice Alito, held that when Congress wrote, in the Equal Pay Act of 1963, that anyone feeling he or she has been the victim of pay discrimination must file a complaint within 180 days (in Alabama and a few other states; 300 days in others), Congress actually meant what it said...
Liberals And Free Speech
Posted on January 31, 2009In an interesting post today, Ilya Somin criticizes President Obama?s assertion, in his inaugural address, that ?The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.? Here?s Somin: This is a commonly heard argument in response to concerns about the growth of government...
Duties Of A ?Diversity Provost??
Posted on January 30, 2009Ever wonder what a ?Diversity Provost? does? Purdue University, which is looking for one, apparently isn?t too sure (HatTip to a vigilant reader). Purdue University invites nominations and applications for the position of Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion (VPDI)...
Democrats And Equality
Posted on January 29, 2009Referring to a host of Inaugural balls that sported exclusive VIP sections, Mickey Kaus asked, ?how can a party claim to want all Americans treated equally if, you know, the party doesn't treat them equally?? Easy. The same way a party can claim to oppose quotas but require them in the selection and seating of delegates to its presidential nominating conventions, not to mention statements such as this one by the nominee of its last convention.
Istook Is Not Mistook
Posted on January 28, 2009Ernest Istook, who describes himself in this interesting piece (HatTip to Roger Clegg) as ?now recovering after 14 years in Congress,? has some good advice for President Obama. What began as affirmative action has transformed into reverse discrimination...
Is Justice ?Diverse??
Posted on January 28, 2009An academic friend who prefers to remain anonymous (you would, too, if you taught where he does) pointed me to a new report, Improving Judicial Diversity, recently published by the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU Law School. Given the degree of diversity of political opinion in most elite law schools like NYU, you will have already confidently (and accurately) predicted that the report finds a woeful lack of ?diversity? among state court judges...
More ?Sensible Prescriptions? From Roger Clegg
Posted on January 27, 2009Yesterday I discussed (here) what I termed a few ?Sensible Prescriptions For Change We Can Believe In? that Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, had posted on National Review Online. NRO?s John Derbyshire posted some surprisingly lame criticism?s of Clegg?s comments here, and Clegg posted an unsurprisingly strong reply here...
Improving The Education Of All Students Is Unfair!
Posted on January 26, 2009Because of my daily wanderings through the museum of contemporary liberalism ? especially its attitudes regarding race, discrimination, etc. (whose ever-changing but always familiar exhibits are on display in politics and in the mainstream, academic, and specialized media), I have long since lost whatever capacity I might have had in the past to be shocked or surprised by even the strangest and most outlandish artifacts produced by this increasingly alien culture as it strays farther and farther from traditional American values...
Sensible Prescriptions For Change We Can Believe In...
Posted on January 26, 2009Roger Clegg writes today that ?[a] realistic goal? for our race relations ?would be for being black to be roughly analogous to being Irish.? Now, if I didn?t know and admire Roger I would worry about that prescription. I would worry that he meant that Irish-Americans (and, by extension, Luso-Americans, Jews, Catholics, etc...
Roger Clegg Objects To Bean-Counting
Posted on January 22, 2009The following is a Guest Post from Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center For Equal Opportunity. NOW THAT BARACK OBAMA IS PRESIDENT, MAY WE PLEASE STOP THE BEAN-COUNTING? The Washington Post had an editorial last month, ?Bean Counting, 2008,? about the relative ease with which President-elect Obama is putting together an administration that ?look[s] like America? ? to quote, as the Post does, Bill Clinton?s promise to do so when he was President-elect...
The Politics Of Obama?s Religion
Posted on January 19, 2009Mark Tooley, who directs the United Methodist Church program at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, asks, ?Where Will The Obamas Worship?? His answer seems to be, at the site that, ?after careful political contemplations,? sees the most politically efficacious...
Yet Another Study...
Posted on January 15, 2009Inside Higher Ed discusses yet another study finding that eliminating affirmative action would be bad bad bad. The authors, economists and a business school professor, applying no doubt sophisticated statistical techniques, found (sit down and prepare yourself for a shock) that eliminating racial preferences would lead to a ?dramatic [35%] drop in the enrollment of students from underrepresented minority groups at the most competitive colleges...
Is The Washington Press Corps Too White, Or Too ... ?
Posted on January 14, 2009Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post is worried (and he claims others are worried) that too many members of the Washington press corps look like him. He probably doesn?t mean that they?re not Hollywood-handsome, or even that too many of them are Jewish (which I assume he is, and if he hasn?t checked to see how many Jews there are, how can he be sure that?s not what he calls a ?cause for concern??)...
Disparate Impact Returns To The Supreme Court
Posted on January 10, 2009The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Ricci v. DeStafano, the Los Angeles Times reports today. New Haven, Connecticut, seeking to maintain diversity in its fire department, scrapped a civil-service test after it became clear the white firefighters had the best scores...
Another ?We?re All Racist!? Study, With A Faux-Lincoln Gloss From Time
Posted on January 09, 2009Time Magazine celebrates yet another study arguing that we?re all racist, that if we think we?re not racist we?re wrong, that our efforts to be tolerant crash inexorably against the rocks of our deeply ?ingrained? racial biases. Here?s the abstract of the study from Science: Contemporary race relations are marked by an apparent paradox: Overt prejudice is strongly condemned, yet acts of blatant racism still frequently occur...
Burris And Blago, Race Cards And Cynical Race Cards
Posted on January 07, 2009?There is little legal justification for the Democrats to stop Roland Burris from taking Barack Obama?s Senate seat,? writes Prof. John L. Jackson, the Chronicle of Higher Education?s designated anthropologist and ?diverse? commentator. ?But just because there?s nothing technically illegal about the nomination (and Burris isn?t one of the people invoked as part of that alleged ?pay-to-play? scheme),? he continues, doesn?t mean that Burris should have accepted it...
Change?
Posted on January 06, 2009They told me that if I voted for John McCain we would have four more years of what candidate Obama decried, in a March 2 2008, interview with the Washington Post, as ?the politicization of intelligence in [the Bush] administration.? They were right...
Blaming The Victims (What Victims?)?
Posted on January 05, 2009Madera, California, a city of about 55,000, is more than two-thirds Latino. The Madera Unified School District is 82% Latino. ?Yet just one Latino sits on its seven-member school board.? The predictable result? A lawsuit claiming that the at-large election system for school board members violates the California Voting Rights Act...
Taxing Good Behavior
Posted on January 04, 2009Back in 2002 Charlottesville was afflicted with a severe drought. Faced with a dangerous water shortage, the city government and community leaders launched a vigorous campaign to promote water conservation, and the good citizens of Charlottesville, devoted environmentalists that they all are, complied with a vengeance...
Shouldn?t Conservatives Emphasize Equal Rights?
Posted on January 02, 2009I am always impressed by the writings of Peter Berkowitz (see here, here, here, and here for examples), and his OpEd piece today in the Wall Street Journal is no exception. He urges both libertarian and social conservatives to embrace moderation, to recognize that they need each other, and argues that a ?constitutional conservatism? provides a principled common ground...
Washington Post Article ?Rankles? Good Sense
Posted on January 02, 2009Today?s Washington Post has an article by reporter Carol Leonnig, ?Obama's Team Rankles the Right: To Some Conservatives, Advisers Are Alarmingly Liberal,? that gives prominent and unchallenged voice to arguments that should rankle anyone who believes the news pages of the mainstream media have an obligation to be at least somewhat fair and balanced in their presentation of political disagreements...
A Burris Under The Saddle...
Posted on January 02, 2009It?s almost as much fun watching the law professors disagree over whether the Senate has the right to refuse to seat Roland Burris (it does; it doesn?t; etc.) as it is to watch Senate Democrats try to balance appearing to oppose corruption with not appearing to exclude a black appointee...
Guns Abroad, Guns At Home
Posted on January 01, 2009I?ve just been reading (HatTip to Andy McCarthy) an outstanding article on the laws of war (or lack thereof) by David Rivkin and Lee Casey. I highly recommend the whole (long) article, but, sucker for ironies, contradictions, hypocrisies that I am, I was especially struck by Rivkin?s and Casey?s discussion of one of the reasons the United States has steadfastly refused to sign on to the Protocol I Amendments (1977) to the Geneva Convention (1949)...
Blago?s Choice: Parallels Converging...
Posted on December 30, 2008Illinois Gov. Rod (?Pay To Play?) Blagojevich has defiantly named Barack Obama?s Senate replacement, former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, both of them no doubt believing that Burris?s blackness will blunt opposition from Democrats and others who have recently developed ethical sensitivities regarding the practice of politics in Chicago...
Kwanzaa?s True Believers
Posted on December 27, 2008Michael Eric Dyson speaks for and to Kwanzaa?s true believers, whether they identify with ?pan-Africanist? or ?Diasporic? values: while the former voices common African values and a black homecoming, the latter speaks of lack, exile and migration ? in short, a loss of home and what it means to black identity and the rituals that sustain it...
If ?Preferential Treatment? Is Bad...
Posted on December 27, 2008As has been widely reported, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd received ?preferential interest rates on two mortgages from Countrywide Financial Corp.? (HatTip to InstaPundit) Dodd acknowledged that Countrywide placed him in a ?VIP section,? but he denied he knew he was getting a special deal and said he was not friends with Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo...
Political Analysis, Washington Post Style
Posted on December 23, 2008Chris Cillizza has been writing The Fix, a Washington Post political blog for several years. Back during the late and unlamented primaries he ran a series of ?Case For/Case Against? articles on the various candidates, and he has decided that ?now seems like the right time to dust off that oldie but goodie to make the argument for why Gov...
Affirmative Action As Quota-Based Race Norming
Posted on December 22, 2008Affirmative action supporters generally insist that they do not support quotas and that affirmative action does not employ them. Nor, they nearly always assert, does it involve ?Race norming? ? putting applicants into racial pools where they compete only against others in their pool ? which has been illegal since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991...
Did Obama Hold A Black Senate Seat?
Posted on December 22, 2008Did Barack Obama?s election to the Senate from Illinois mean that his seat thus became black, and must be occupied by a black from now on? Laura Washington, whose argument suggests that she occupies a black journalist?s seat at the Chicago Sun Times, thinks so...
Are Constitutions Unamendable?
Posted on December 21, 2008Usually liberals believe that constitutions are easily amendable, and without going through such troublesome and difficult procedures as the U.S. Constitution?s Article V process. Many judges, to judge by their practices, believe they have the authority to ?construe? certain rights right out of the text, or others (think ?emanations and penumbra?) into it...
The Bill Of Rights? Not Applicable In Chicago & Illinois...
Posted on December 19, 2008Whatever one may think of the recent Heller decision holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual, not a collective, right to own and bear arms, and thus that Washington D.C.?s sweeping gun ban was unconstitutional (I like it, even if George Will and Judge J...
Card Check, Early Virginia Style
Posted on December 19, 2008One of the Democrats? most controversial proposals (a writer in Forbes calls it ?the most radical revision of labor law since 1935?) is to do away with the secret ballot in union elections, known as ?card check.? Since the debate over this proposal is likely to be heated, it is worth pointing out that the secret ballot is a more recent invention than is commonly recognized...
Cultural (In)Competence
Posted on December 16, 2008Jennifer Kabbany, a columnist for the North County Times, caustically observes that ?cultural competency training? is coming to Chaparal High School in Temecula (Calif.). Last week, the Temecula school board approved a $15,000 contract for a consultant to come to the campus for five days next semester and teach educators how to better understand where their students are coming from ---- on a cultural level ---- in an attempt to improve their grades...
Can We COPE?
Posted on December 16, 2008In South Africa the ruling African National Congress is facing growing discontent with the former liberation movement, prompting party leaders to breakaway and form a new political party that many think will be the ANC?s first serious challenge at the polls...
Shocked! Shocked!
Posted on December 10, 2008Last spring, after beginning this post on ?The Real Barack Obama?? by quoting E.J. Dionne?s observation ? The result of the 2008 election may come down to how voters decide to define Barack Obama. Is he Adlai Stevenson or John F. Kennedy? ? I continued: Note well that this formulation of the central question of the election does not deign to ask who Obama really is, emphasizing instead that ?almost all of the turns in this contest have been driven by how Obama presented himself and how voters perceived him...
UPDATE!
Posted on December 09, 2008This recent post, criticizing Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson?s critique of the Heller decision, which held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own and bear arms, has been UPDATED with a link to an article that offers a far more substantial critique.
Jobs For Whom?
Posted on December 07, 2008Bloomberg reports that in his Saturday radio address President-elect Barack Obama said he?ll make the ?single largest new investment? in roads, bridges and public buildings since the Eisenhower Administration to lift the sagging economy and create jobs...
Parting Shot Or Crime Prevention?
Posted on December 07, 2008?Campers may now pack heat along with their sleeping bags when they travel to national parks,? the San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday in a clever imitation of a news story. By ?heat? the reporter/comic, Peter Fimrite, did not mean electric socks...
The New Identity Politics
Posted on December 07, 2008Many blacks voted for Obama because he looks like them. Many liberal (or if you prefer, progressive) whites voted for Obama because he doesn?t look like them. Intellectuals are above that sort of crass, superficial identity politics. They voted for Obama because he talks like them...
Minority Faculty Dissatisfaction
Posted on December 05, 2008?Minority professors on the tenure track aren't as satisfied with their academic workplace as their white counterparts are,? the Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning, based on a new study published by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education at the Harvard School of Education...
Rue II
Posted on December 04, 2008In the immediately preceding post I discussed higher education officials ruing the lack of ?diversity? in science and engineering. ?Diversity,? of course, is lacking all over, at least enough of it to satisfy the diversifiers. For example, both men and minorities (presumably of both genders) are woefully ?underrepresented? in study abroad...
Why Rue?
Posted on December 04, 2008In ?What Universities Can Do to Graduate More Minority Ph.D.?s? the Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning that Universities have long rued the stark disparity between minority students? share of the population and their share of Ph.D.?s, especially in engineering and the sciences...
Just Words III
Posted on December 01, 2008When Hillary Clinton criticized Obama during the primaries for having a campaign built on little more than speechifying, for a candidacy that is ?about words? (often not his own) and little else, Obama replied, either feeling or feigning anger: ?Don?t tell me that words don?t matter!? Now that he?s going to be president, apparently they?re going to matter more than ever ? not because of speeches, but because they may represent the core of our new national security policy...
Revising Obama
Posted on November 30, 2008Revisionist interpretations of the Obama phenomenon are already appearing ... even before there is an Obama administration. ÜberBlogger Glenn Reynolds points to a Washington Post article today proclaiming that Obama?s ?Not Black,? and observes: Hmm...
Will/Wilkinson Wrong
Posted on November 28, 2008Yes, even George Will can be wrong, even when he is agreeing with someone who is as seldom wrong as Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the Fourth Circuit. In a recent column Will praises Wilkinson for damning ? in a Virginia Law Review article ? the Supreme Court?s Heller decision of last June, which held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own and bear arms...
Will Cleans Fish
Posted on November 27, 2008If you stay tuned, or check back later, you will discover that I am on the verge of doing something I don?t usually do: criticizing George Will. (Unusual, but not unheard of; see here.) Before getting to that post, however, I want to say in this one that one of the things we have to be thankful for this Thanksgiving day is ...
Veto-Proof Majority: Why?
Posted on November 23, 2008According to this report, Democrats ?are pouring millions of dollars as we speak in Georgia to win this special election and elect the liberal Democratic candidate Jim Martin.? The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Obama is keeping 25 of his Georgia field offices open for Martin, leaving most of his in-state paid staff on the ground here and importing about 100 field operatives from Southern states to help Martin, according to Matt Canter, a spokesman for Martin?s campaign...
The Revival Of Elian Gonzalez
Posted on November 22, 2008Many observers have noted that Obama?s selection of Eric Holder as Attorney General and Greg Craig as White House Counsel has brought the deportation of young Elian Gonzalez to Cuba back into the news. Holder was deputy attorney general when federal agents broke down the door of Elian?s relatives in Miami and seized the boy at gunpoint...
?The Meaning Of Obama??
Posted on November 20, 2008During the recent election the Right was often accused of waging a campaign of unmitigated hate against Obama. Whether hateful or not, I certainly posted a good deal of criticism of Obama here. Thus I thought it might be useful (even fair and balanced) to listen in for a moment on what the Left is saying...
SAT Predicts Graduation Rates Better Than High School GPA
Posted on November 19, 2008Peter Salins, provost of the State University of New York, the country?s largest comprehensive university system, from 1997 to 2006 and now a professor of political science at SUNY Stony Brook, argues in a compelling New York Times OpEd that the SAT predicts the likelihood of students to graduate within six years better than their high school grades...
The Misunderstanding Of Civil Rights At The Gretna Breeze
Posted on November 19, 2008Gretna, Nebraska, a city of 2355 souls (in 2000) in Sarpy County, Nebraska, is the fastest growing city in Nebraska. Unfortunately, this growth in size does not seem to have been accompanied by a comparable growth in understanding civil rights at the Gretna Breeze...
Implicit Bias
Posted on November 18, 2008As the evidence mounts that racial bias of whites has declined dramatically over recent decades, bias researchers (biased researchers?) have begun to emphasize a new research tool, the Implicit Association Test (I.A.T.), to argue that whites may no longer express biased beliefs and attitudes and may not think they?re biased but, deep down, they really are...
What?s The ?Difference??
Posted on November 16, 2008Sometimes liberals like ?difference,? and sometimes they don?t. Insofar as ?diversity? provides a coherent justification for treating people differently based on their race or ethnicity, it is that we benefit from being exposed to people different from us...
Disproportionate Representation
Posted on November 16, 2008The Greenlining Institute, according to its web site, is a multi-ethnic advocacy, research, leadership development, and public policy organization whose ultimate goal is to increase the role that low-income and minority Californians play in the civic arena in order to create equitable policies and improve quality of life for all communities...
Obama's "Potential" To Move Away From ?Stale? Affirmative Action
Posted on November 15, 2008The Boston Globe editorializes tomorrow that Obama?s election creates the ?potential? for the nation to ?mov[e] away from stale notions of affirmative action.? The BG implies that Obama is ready to seize this potential, noting that Obama has said that his daughters, who are privileged, don?t deserve to benefit from it...
Colleges Must Want To Lose...
Posted on November 13, 2008The Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning that black college football coaches are increasing the pressure to hire more ... black college football coaches. The Black Coaches and Administrators organization turned up the heat on colleges today in an effort to increase minority hiring in big-time football programs...
A Guardedly Hopeful View Of Obama
Posted on November 13, 2008I somehow missed Roger Clegg?s excellent OpEd in the New York Post last Friday appealing to the better angels of Obama?s nature, his political and legal astuteness, the words and logic of his speeches, and especially to his very identity in laying the foundation for hoping that the new administration will move away from racial preferences...
Affirmative Action Voting
Posted on November 11, 2008Racial preference in college admissions, hiring, contracting, etc., is based on the assumption (or in many cases, a quasi-religious faith) that blacks and Hispanics cannot compete on equal terms with whites and Hispanics ? either because they are damaged goods, handicapped (or disabled, if you prefer the politically correct term) by centuries of racist oppression or because of current, ongoing racial discrimination...
Prescience ... Or Wishful Thinking?
Posted on November 10, 2008Juan Williams, who often has thoughtful thinks to say, writes in the Wall Street Journal today that Obama?s election brings ?the end of an era for black politics.? he idea of black politics now tilts away from leadership based on voicing grievance, and identity politics based on victimization and anger...
Obamanation: A Small Collection Of Wise Comments
Posted on November 09, 2008Following are some almost randomly collected comments on Obama?s election that I found of interest. You may want to check this post periodically, if this post interests you, since I?ll probably be adding to it as new pithy, or whatever, comments pop up...
Obama Derangement Syndrome
Posted on November 05, 2008Barack Obama is an opposite of George Bush in many ways (one or two of them good), and so it should be no surprise that Obama Derangement Syndrome is an opposite of Bush Derangement Syndrome. People afflicted with BDS (mainly intellectuals, academics, journalists, etc...
Colorado, Nebraska Initiatives
Posted on November 04, 2008Nov. 4, 11:10 P.M. According to the Omaha World-Telegram, ?Nebraska voters approved a constitutional amendment that would ban race- and gender-based affirmative action programs.? The vote total was not provided; I?ll add it later. A court challenge to the initiative is also still pending...
Is UCLA Cheating?
Posted on October 28, 2008Californians amended their constitution in 1996 via Prop. 209, which provided that The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting...
Scion Of The Times: Elect Obama, Get Two Two-Fers ... Or Maybe An Asian ?Compromise?
Posted on October 27, 2008According to this article in Sunday?s The Hill newspaper, the leading candidates to replace Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the Senate, should they be elected president and vice president, are Jessie Jackson?s son, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., and Joe Biden?s son, Beau Biden...
The Obama Question
Posted on October 26, 2008Steve Chapman, the Chicago Tribune columnist, attended a large Obama rally in Indiana seeking an answer to the ?puzzle? of how a youngish first-term senator with so many disadvantages ? a slight resume, a foreign-sounding name, an exotic background, a professorial manner, a thoroughly liberal voting record, and a skin color unlike any previous president ? has come so far, and even leads in national polls with less than two weeks to go? And he found it...
Why Virginia May Be Turning Blue
Posted on October 24, 2008If Virginia turns blue, at least part of the reason may be what Hans Bader reports: In Virginia?s liberal Fairfax County, officials are illegally discarding absentee ballots cast by members of the military based on a technical requirement that is preempted by federal law...
Why Should Fulbright Scholars Be ?Diverse??
Posted on October 24, 2008The U.S. Department of State, according to this recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, ?has been concerned in recent years about the lack of diversity among American applicants.? This year, for example, only seven of the nearly 760 American scholars come from community colleges, and only 10...
Fat Cat Democrats
Posted on October 22, 2008If McCain, like Obama, had broken his promise and opted to avoid the public campaign financing that he foisted upon us and had raised a fraction of the cast Obama has raised, there would be loud chorus of ?Obscene!? emanating from the mainstream press...
Speaking In Code
Posted on October 22, 2008Ever since the United States divided into Red and Blue states, it has been common to observe that increasingly Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives, are more like tribes belonging to different cultures than simple partisan or ideological groupings...
Will The Real Obama Please Stand Up? (Is There A Real Obama?)
Posted on October 20, 2008Mickey Kaus recently wrote:If (like me) you want to feel better about Barack Obama, try reading conservative Bradford Berenson's Frontline comments on Obama's performance at the Harvard Law Review. Berenson was a conservative member of the Review, and his comments portrayed Obama as ?an honest broker,? as someone who did ?not let ideology or politics blind him to the enduring institutional interests of the Review...
Obama Set ?To Change The World?
Posted on October 18, 2008With the modesty and self-deprecating humor for which he has become known, Barack Obama told a crowd of adoring acolytes in New Hampshire today that ?we're going to change the country and change the world.? Perhaps as evidence of Obama?s trans-national vision and ambition, the national anthem and pledge of allegiance were scratched from the rally?s program...
Lack Of Diversity In Newsrooms
Posted on October 18, 2008To be sure, racial and ethnic minorities and women tend to be well-represented in newsrooms, but look at the large, prominent portion of the population that is not there. (HatTip to InstaPundit)
Alabama: More Voters Than Voting Age Residents In Six Counties
Posted on October 17, 2008From the front page of today?s Birmingham News: MONTGOMERY - Six Alabama counties have more people on their voting rolls than they do people of voting age, according to voter registration numbers and U.S. Census Bureau estimates. The curious statistic could be the result of a surge in new registrations added to voter rolls that have not been purged of people who moved, said local election officials...
ACORN And Other Democratic Nuts
Posted on October 17, 2008In response to the growing criticism of ACORN and its policy of hiring people who submit what appear to be thousands of fraudulent voter registrations, the Dems have hauled out their quadrennial perennial: that opposition to voting fraud is itself voting fraud...
More Obamanaut Lessons In Civil Liberties
Posted on October 16, 2008Back in the McCarthite days when ?guilt by association? was real ? unlike now, when it is a partisan slur hurled at Republicans who dare to question Obama?s choices of friends, associates, mentors ? the practice by which the guilty party?s associations were exposed was universally known as naming names...
Frenzied Raceocrats
Posted on October 16, 2008I have written a number of times about the absurd lengths, or depths, Democrats, liberals, journalists, editorial writers (but I repeat myself) will go to in order to find racism in the Republican campaign. I believe many of these examples will live on, after this campaign is over, in the annals of political derangement, or perhaps collections of unintended political humor...
Rotten ACORNS
Posted on October 15, 2008ACORNS were popping all over Ohio today. In the most significant development the full Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a decision made last week by a three-member panel that itself had overturned a federal district court opinion requiring a reluctant (Democratic) Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, to verify the identity of newly registered voters...
Stigma?
Posted on October 10, 2008The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a new survey of students at seven law schools that purports to show that beneficiaries of affirmative action preferences do not feel stigmatized. The article points out, at least to my satisfaction, that there were too few respondents for the results to be meaningful: 42 percent of students at the four law schools in the study that used affirmative-action preferences in admissions, and 27 percent of students at three law schools that did not...
?American Hero?
Posted on October 10, 2008Peter Robinson has a very nice, and very much deserved, tribute to Ward Connerly in this week?s Forbes.
Impending Voter Fraud In Virginia
Posted on October 10, 2008Hans Bader is on the case ? see here and here ? of growing voter fraud in Virginia, aided and abetted by liberal Democratic Governor Tim Kaine and the ACLU. It?s not a pretty picture.
Just When You Thought You?d Heard It All ...
Posted on October 10, 2008... regarding America?s racist white voters and how they?ll never elect a black president, here comes Penn Prof. John L. Jackson, Jr., the Chronicle of Higher Education?s anthroblogogist (as an anthropologist he ?spends a lot of time, ?he modestly tells us, ?listening to people talk about their hopes and dreams, their complicated pasts, and uncharted futures?) to report that the increasing likelihood Obama will be elected is making some blacks ?more ? not less ? cynical about how race operates in contemporary America...
Arizona And Nebraska
Posted on October 09, 2008The invaluable Center for Equal Opportunity has recently released studies documenting the degree of preference given to minority applicants to law schools in Arizona and Nebraska. As I?ve written to my friend Roger Clegg, CEO?s president and general counsel, he publishes important reports faster than I can read them...
Taxing Questions
Posted on October 08, 2008In defending his proposed tax increase in last night?s debate, Sen. Obama said, as he has said on numerous occasions, Only a few percent of small businesses make more than $250,000 a year. So the vast majority of small businesses would get a tax cut under my plan...
The Race-On-The Brain Delusional Dems
Posted on October 07, 2008In my last post I called the Associated Press ?delusional? for writing, in what was presented as news ?analysis,? that Sarah Palin?s criticism of Obama for palling around with unrepentant former terrorists, both white, was racist. No, that was not in a Saturday Night Live skit; it was in what was to all intents and purposes a real Associated Press article...
The Delusional Associated Press
Posted on October 05, 2008Douglass K. Daniel (henceforth known as ?...ass?), a writer and editor in the Washington bureau of The Associated Press, claims that Sarah Palin?s recent criticism of Obama for ?palling around? with a couple of white former terrorist radicals ?carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret...
University Of Northern Colorado Opposes Equality
Posted on October 04, 2008The board of trustees of the University of Northern Colorado opposes treating its applicants and students without regard to their race or ethnicity, voting unanimously to urge defeat of Amendment 46, the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative. "We really think that the amendment, if passed, would jeopardize the ability of the university and universities across the state to attract and foster diverse student populations,? said Jim Chavez, UNC trustee and director of the Latin American Education Foundation...
Who Won The Debate?
Posted on October 03, 2008These staged political debates would be so much more interesting if the airwaves weren?t clogged afterwards with legions of self-important pundits telling us what to think about what we just saw. They all remind me of stewardesses who welcome me to wherever after the plane lands ? who are they to welcome me, since they arrived the same time I did? Moreover, most of what passes for post-debate analysis is worse than malarkey; it?s useless nonsense...
Double-Standard Journalism Starts Early...
Posted on October 02, 2008Gawker reports, via Fashionista, about a major journalistic organization that has been ?quietly paying interns ? but only if they?re of a ?minority.?? Commenters immediately called out Hearst, which, what do you know, we called them up and it turns out that like myriad other media organizations recruits local minority interns through a separate internship program with special terms and specifications...
Why No ?Blue Slip??
Posted on October 02, 2008Did the House?s commitment to ?blue slip? any revenue or appropriation bill originating in the Senate slip the House?s mind? (That question, assumes, of course, that the House has a mind.) The ?Origination Clause,? Article I, Section 7, of the Constitution grants the House the sole authority to originate revenue legislation, which the House interprets to mean to mean both raising and appropriating revenue...
The Genuis Of Nancy Pelosi
Posted on September 30, 2008Mickey Kaus asks, ?If Nancy Pelosi had wanted to screw Sen. McCain, could she have done a better job?? Good question. Although she and her consigliere Barney Frank are now quick to blame Republicans, they apparently did nothing to secure votes for this ?essential? legislation from their own caucus...
OutSteynding!
Posted on September 30, 2008Mark Steyn, sounding positively Burkean, on the origins of the financial crisis: ... isn?t it the case that we?re in this mess because US politicians previously subordinated ?the general reason of the whole? to ?local interests? and ?local prejudices?? That?s to say, with their usual casual destructiveness dressed up in the baby talk of ?diversity?, they chose to turn the mortgage industry into just another branch of the affirmative-action racket...
Good Advice, Bad Advice
Posted on September 29, 2008On the Forbes magazine web site Shikha Dalmia, identified as a senior analyst at the Libertarian Reason Foundation, has some advice for Barack Obama: he should reverse course (it wouldn?t be the first, or sixth, time) and come out against both racial preferences and legacy preferences...
Where ?Taking Race Into Account? Is Not Illegitimate
Posted on September 28, 2008I have written many times that I believe it is almost always illegitimate for the state to ?take race into account,? to use the current euphemism for employing racial preferences. Indeed, the only acceptable (to me) exception to such a prohibition I?ve found is the legitimacy of assigning, say, black police officers to go undercover to penetrate a black gang...
Palin Comparison
Posted on September 27, 2008If you?ve hung around these precincts long enough you will know that I?ve had, and taken, many opportunities to poke fun at SLATE?s legal style writer, fellow Charlottesvillian Dahlia Lithwick who, as I wrote here, is ?known more for the sizzle than the steak of her columns...
Democrats Run For Cover
Posted on September 26, 2008[This post has been UPDATED twice three times.] Readers will not be surprised, or disappointed, that I haven?t added my two cents to the apparently ongoing conversation about our financial crisis. As a former graduate student, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that?s not my field...
De- Or Re-Stereotypes?
Posted on September 25, 2008The University of Virginia, according to this report, has just enjoyed its third annual ?de-stereotype day.? The University of Virginia continues to work on fixing race issues on grounds. They have dealt with housing, and political cartoons, and Wednesday, it was stereotypes...
Poll Tacks
Posted on September 25, 2008Since I?ve waited a few days to discuss it, by now most of you are probably already familiar with the new AP/Yahoo poll on the role race is likely to play in the election. The gist of it, and the nature of most of the coverage it has received, is nicely captured by the Chicago Sun Times headline on this widely read Associated Press article by Ron Fournier and Trevor Thompson, ?Bigoted white Dems could doom Obama's effort...
Has Title VI Been Deep-Sixed?
Posted on September 22, 2008In its Overview of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Department of Justice states: Title VI, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., was enacted as part of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance...
Affirmative Action In Action
Posted on September 21, 2008Since it is widely believed, at least in some circles, that affirmative action is threatened exclusively by Ward Connerly and his friends, the evil racist Republicans and the right-wing judges they appoint, it may be useful to note that the bureaucrats and politicians who manage affirmative action programs have also contributed a great deal to the justified disgust increasing numbers of people have for these programs...
Obama An Empty Suit?
Posted on September 20, 2008I've often described Obama as an empty suit, but thanks to this excellent column by Rex Murphy (HatTip to InstaPundit) I now think that clothes him with too fixed and substantial an identity. He has a quicksilver quality. Even after two autobiographies, Mr...
More Racial Idiocy
Posted on September 19, 2008[NOTE: This post has been Updated, twice] Every time I see another charge that one or another of McCain?s ads is racist for making fun of Obama as an empty-suit celebrity or calling attention to his woeful lack of experience or accomplishment (this amounts to calling him ?uppity,? it is said), I think these ridiculous, overly sensitive politically correct objections can?t get any dumber...
UPDATE!
Posted on September 19, 2008This recent post has been Updated to acknowledge the unusual perspicacity (a big word meaning he agrees with me) of Roger Clegg.
So That Explains It...
Posted on September 19, 2008Some political scientists, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning, are exploring what they believe are genetic influences on political behavior. If conservatives and liberals can?t see eye to eye, it may be because their brains are wired differently from birth, according to researchers who have for the first time found a link between people?s political leanings and their physiology...
NPR Joins The ?Uppity,? Racist Parade
Posted on September 18, 2008Dick Meyer has an NPR blog called ?Against The Grain.? He describes himself ?director of Digital Media at NPR.org ,? and he describes ?Against The Grain? as ?a mix of sarcastic sociology and comic moral philosophy that occasionally descends into political commentary...
What Is CNN?
Posted on September 17, 2008In my post yesterday I was unsure whether a glaring omission in a CNN news story was based on ?sloppiness or bias.? But after looking at Jack Cafferty?s CNN article today, I?m not even sure what CNN is. I always thought it was a news organization, but this piece is much more like a bad opinion piece than news...
CNN Ad Article: Sloppy Or Biased?
Posted on September 16, 2008Gianna Jessen survived a botched abortion in 1977. Now she is featured in an independent ad criticizing Obama?s four votes against legislation protecting infants, like her, who were accidentally born alive. ?If Barack Obama had his way,? she says, ?I wouldn't be here...
Race War II
Posted on September 16, 2008About two weeks ago I noted (following Drudge) the prediction of Fatimah Ali, Obamanut and Philadelphia Daily News columnist, that [i]f McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness ? and hopelessness! Now she?s back, standing by her prediction, which, however, has become ?metaphorical,? whatever that may mean in this context...
Unthinking Dimwits
Posted on September 15, 2008Bob Herbert of the New York Times is scared, and he thinks we too should be very afraid. While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I?ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U...
Walter Shapiro: Bad Mood, No Tense, Dubious Fact
Posted on September 15, 2008The reliably liberal Walter Shapiro has an interesting article in Salon today on the race (and the role of race in the race) in Ohio. But I don?t want to discuss most of his evidence or argument now. Instead, consider he says here: A striking feature of the University of Cincinnati's Ohio Poll, which was released Friday, was that while McCain is winning the support of 90 percent of Republican voters, Obama is only picking up 82 percent of the Democrats...
More Mismatch
Posted on September 15, 2008On Friday the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a public briefing on affirmative action in the STEM fields ? science, technology, engineering , math. I attended, but rather than subject you to a report based on an attempt to make sense of my notes I will refer you instead to two summaries published this morning ? this one, by Peter Schmidt in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and this one, by Jack Stripling on InsideHigherEd...
More Mainstream Media Swallowing Obama Line...
Posted on September 13, 2008Have I mentioned lately that much of the mainstream press is not only biased but also incompetent? A few days ago I did criticize an article in the New York Times for claiming that [a]t the Democratic convention in Denver, the party?s platform was indeed expanded to embrace anti-abortion views...
Lipstick And Double Standards
Posted on September 11, 2008[NOTE: This post has been Updated] I?ve just had a very bad experience, and the worst part of it is that I asked for it. Twice. Last night I watched MSNBC?s Chris Matthews spend an entire hour on Hardball last night defending Obama?s innocence of any innuendo in his ?lipstick? remark and attacking McCain and the Republicans for making an issue of it...
Another Feel-Good Diversity Study
Posted on September 10, 2008The Journal of the American Medical Association has an article summarizing a new study lauding the benefits of ?diversity? in medical association. The study set out ?[t]o determine whether student body racial and ethnic diversity is associated with diversity-related outcomes among US medical students...
Not In My Back Yard: A Biden Gaffe ... Or Revealing Honesty?
Posted on September 10, 2008Speaking in Virginia Beach last week, Sen. Joe Biden charged that Republicans believe prosperity depends on the Federal Government providing national defense and raising money for that purpose only....What happens in your back yard is your problem and your problem alone...
UPDATE!
Posted on September 10, 2008The Old (Young) Biden vs. The New (Old) Biden I has been Updated.
The Old (Young) Biden vs. The New (Old) Biden I
Posted on September 09, 2008An Irish-Catholic politician, born in Scranton, Pa., blessed with the gift of gab, an influential leader of his party with a very progressive record but someone with a strong appeal to Reagan Democrats, union members, blue collar workers.... You might think I?m describing Joe Biden ? selected as Obama?s VP, according to the Los Angeles Times and others, because of his ?potential appeal to white, blue-collar Democrats? ? but I?m not...
Dems Continue To See Racism In Every Criticism
Posted on September 09, 2008Today it was New York Governor David Patterson?s turn to enter the sweepstakes for the most inane sighting of racism in criticism of Obama. New York Gov. David Paterson said Tuesday that there were racial overtones in the Republican presidential ticket?s criticism of Democrat Barack Obama?s work as a community organizer...
The Dems Turn Nasty
Posted on September 09, 2008At 7:00 A.M this morning Victor Davis Hanson made a perspicacious prediction: Expect Obama/Biden to get a little desperate and resort to more and more negative campaigning.... In this cycle of the see-saw race, expect Obama to take a risk and go really negative as he falls into a gripey, cranky mode...
Clarence Thomas On Affirmative Action Today...
Posted on September 09, 2008It is not news that Clarence Thomas opposes affirmative action, but he does seem to be even more outspoken about it now. WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Tuesday that African-Americans are better served by colorblind programs than affirmative action...
?Diversity? vs. ?Artificial Communities? At UVA
Posted on September 08, 2008Sometimes ?diversity? doublespeak is so extreme it?s a wonder the diversiphiles don?t choke on their words. They would be ashamed and embarrassed, I think, if they realized what they were saying, but of course they aren?t because they don?t. A good example is a recent decision by the University of Virginia to limit the housing choices available to incoming first year students, a decision dictated by the demands of ?diversity? since two of the first year dorms had developed unfortunate (which means accurate) racial ?stereotypes...
Obama, The Victim
Posted on September 08, 2008Obama continues to complain that Republicans will try to make voters afraid of him with false and even ridiculous descriptions and accusations. Thus at a recent campaign appearance in Duryea, PA: ?I know that I?m not your typical presidential candidate,? Sen...
Liberals, Palin, And Quail (Not Quayle)
Posted on September 06, 2008When I was a boy growing up in south Alabama the passion of my life was quail hunting. (And when I say quail, I mean the classic American bobwhite quail, of course.) It was, and I suppose still is, a sport characterized by ritual and clearly defined rules for all participants ? hunters, dogs, and birds...
Change, Small Change, Exchange?
Posted on September 05, 2008Four days ago, half -way between Sarah Palin?s Friday debut as vice presidential nominee and her smashing Wednesday night address to the Republican Convention (and 37 million viewers), I wrote the following, in a post titled Change Who Can Believe In?: It seems to me that if Obama is elected change (or should that be Change!) will consist entirely of replacing Republicans with Democrats...
More Race Politics From the Un-Post-Racial Candidate
Posted on September 03, 2008Jonah Goldberg reminds us that Obama supports the ?horrid? Akaka bill, which would create separate race-based governmental programs for those, as I pointed out here and elsewhere, ?with a drop of Hawaiian blood.? Peter Kirsanow of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has a good description of this bad bill, from last fall...
CNNsorship?
Posted on September 03, 2008Gathering after the speeches last night by Lieberman and Thompson, the CNN ?political team? gathered to tell viewers what was wrong with what they said. No surprises there, except perhaps when Campbell Brown professed herself to be ?surprised by the political nature? of the Bushes? speeches...
Obamanut Predicts Race War If McCainWins
Posted on September 02, 2008Fatimah Ali, who is described as ?a regular contributor? to the Philadelphia Daily News, writes today (HatTip To Drudge) that If McCain wins, look for a full-fledged race and class war, fueled by a deflated and depressed country, soaring crime, homelessness ? and hopelessness! I would like to see this column distributed widely, since I believe it would impel many voters to support McCain just to deflate such pompous offensiveness.
Change Who Can Believe In?
Posted on September 01, 2008It seems to me that if Obama is elected change (or should that be Change!) will consist entirely of replacing Republicans with Democrats. There?s nothing wrong with that, and if you?re a Democrat that?s probably all you want. But there?s nothing in Obama?s past (insofar as he has a past), in his campaign to date, or in his programatic acceptance speech to suggest there will be anything new or different about the nature of the Democratic agenda he will pursue...
Two Visions Of Equality
Posted on September 01, 2008[NOTE: This post has been Updated] Here are the visions of equality contained in the new platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties. One of them is clear and principled; the other is gauzy, ambiguous, obfuscatory, and disingenuous. See if you can tell which is which...
Now We Can Have A Real Culture War!
Posted on August 31, 2008Thank goodness for Maureen Dowd. If she didn?t exist, and the New York Times hadn?t found her, we?d have had to invent her in order to have a proper mouthpiece for the haughtily condescending, superior, superciliously snide view our bi-coastal betters have of us benighted (and if conservative, evil) middle Americans who live in small towns...
Abraham Obama
Posted on August 30, 2008At the Democratic Convention Al Gore, never given to understatement, compared Obama to Abraham Lincoln. Gore praised Obama as a great orator with the power to inspire others, and suggested he shared the finest characteristics of another Illinois politician now generally considered to be America?s greatest president...
Is Obama ?Uppity??
Posted on August 30, 2008One of the most dramatically ridiculous example of the ?race cards? played several weeks ago ? or, if you?re a Democrat, one of the most sensitive, perceptive, and erudite deconstructions and translations of evil, dirty, Republican racist code words ? came from all-around expert on everything (just ask him), David Gergen, former advisor to everyone...
Prof Charges UCLA Admissions Cheating, Resigns From Committee
Posted on August 29, 2008On National Review?s phi beta cons blog, Robert VerBruggen points to a devastating 89 page report by political science professor Tim Groseclose criticizing admissions cheating by UCLA officials. I shall probably have more to say about this report once I?ve had time to read the whole thing...
Robinson Redux
Posted on August 29, 2008There he goes again. Long time, or even short time, readers will know that I often have some fun at the expense of Washington Post affirmative action columnist, and one of MSNBC?s talking head Obamanauts, Eugene Robinson. See here for a recent example, citing a number of earlier ones...
Obama: Today, Rorshach Inkblot; Tomorrow, ?
Posted on August 29, 2008Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom ask a series of penetrating questions whose answers will determine whether President Obama will work to heal our racial divide ... or exacerbate it. Sen. Obama?s words were very pretty Thursday ? and reassuring. But if believes, as most African Americans do, that American society today is fundamentally warped by racism, he will appoint judges committed to race-conscious policies and propose a host of radical policies designed to promote ?racial justice...
Juan Williams? Plea To Obama
Posted on August 28, 2008Juan Williams has an eloquent ? although, I?m afraid, futile ? plea to Obama to, finally, ?take a stand? on race issues. After paying hopeful homage to the promise he sees in Obama?s biracial background, Williams writes: Yet given this central racial dynamic, it is incredible that on any issue of racial consequence Mr...
Obama Tries To Censor Critical Ad
Posted on August 26, 2008The Associated Press reports that the Obama campaign is trying to force broadcast stations not to air an ad critical of of Obama?s ties with unrepentant 60s domestic terrorist William Ayers. Barack Obama is striking back fiercely and swiftly to stamp out an ad that links him to a 1960s radical, eager to demonstrate a far more aggressive response to attacks than John Kerry did when faced with the 2004 ?Swift Boat? campaign...
Excuses, Excuses
Posted on August 24, 2008Here?s another chorus of the liberals? racism refrain, this time bleated by Jacob Weisberg of SLATE. ?If Obama loses,? he wails, ?racism is the only reason....? If Obama loses, he repeats, he will do so ?for a simple reason: the color of his skin.? Refuting this myopia by pointing to all the reasons millions of people, of all hues, will vote against Obama that have nothing to do with ?the color of his skin? would be about as fruitful as pointing out the various hues in a vista of brilliant Fall foliage to a blind man...
Big Bang Biden?
Posted on August 24, 2008Barack Obama has often been accused of being too full of himself, of looking in the mirror and seeing not simply a future president but a profile for the next carving on Mount Rushmore. His infatuation with himself, seemingly buying into the myth of Barack as The One, the new Messiah, has been fueled by rhetoric such as the unfortunate example I quoted recently (here), where, referring in a speech to his impending nomination, he stated that he was absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick, and good jobs for the jobless...
Class War?
Posted on August 22, 2008Michael Kinsley opposes ?class war,? which he thinks would result from substituting affirmative action based on class for affirmative action based on race. Although he recognizes that ?racial affirmative action is ... a raw sore on our body politic,? he does not explain why he believes class-based affirmative action would lead to ?blood in the streets resentments? but race-based affirmative action leads only to ?a raw sore,? presumably treatable with sufficient applications of liberal rhetorical balm...
ACRI Offers $10,000 Reward For Proof Of Fraud
Posted on August 22, 2008While the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative is headed for ballot approval (see post immediately below), the struggle continues in Arizona, where BAMN, ACORN, and others have engaged in a massive, paid effort to disrupt the signature-gathering process ?by any means necessary...
NCRI Headed For The Ballot!
Posted on August 22, 2008The Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative has been informed by the Secretary of State that it submitted ?more than enough? valid signatures to qualify for the November ballot. The formal announcement should come this afternoon. Congratulations, Doug Tietz, director, and everyone who worked on the petition drive...
Is The Coverup Of A Coverup Worse Than The Coverup Of A Crime?
Posted on August 20, 2008Every since Watergate it has been a truism that the coverup is worse than the crime. But I wonder if now we don?t need an Obama/New York Times (ObamaTimes? The New York Tobama?) corollary: the coverup of the coverup is even worse than the coverup of the crime...
California Dreamin (Of Quotas)
Posted on August 20, 2008Caltrans, the California state transportation agency, remains addicted to quotas, even after the passage of Prop. 209 a number of years ago should have forced it to go cold turkey. The agency tried to do without quotas for a couple of years but went into a deep funk when a ?disparity study? purported to reveal ?underrepresentation? of, for example, certain subsets of Asian American contractors (actually, it found only an ?inference of disparity,? but that was enough for government work), and it consequently asked the U...
The Kiss of Nuance
Posted on August 18, 2008Liberals like nuance (?a refined or subtle distinction in ideas?), in part, I suspect, because they think they are smart enough, and conservatives too dumb, to appreciate it. Sally Quinn likes nuance; she swoons over Obama because she thinks he is ?nuanced...
The Obamessiah: Prophet Of Chiliastic Millenarianism
Posted on August 17, 2008Drop whatever you?re doing (well, finish this post first) and proceed post-haste to read this fine article by Michael Paul Beran on some truly scary aspects, dimensions, implications of what he identifies as Obama?s charisma. (It was reprinted on the Wall Street Journal site over the weekend, here...
Who?s ?Ignorant About Affirmative Action??
Posted on August 16, 2008George Curry, a prominent black journalist, writing in New America Media (?Expanding The News Lens Through Ethnic Media?), after quoting one of McCain?s many statements that he opposes quotas, writes that Obviously, John McCain is ignorant about affirmative action...
Spoof? I Need Proof
Posted on August 16, 2008Some of you may know The Spoof as a site that features (allegedly) funny but entirely bogus headlines and news stories. A recent story, ?Obama Considered Ending Affirmative Action in Quest for National Unity, White Vote,? however, makes me wonder if someone didn?t spoof The Spoof, submitting a real story instead of a fictional one...
Good Advice, Incredibly Dumb Argument
Posted on August 13, 2008First, let me say that everything written by Peter Beinart, an Editor-at-Large of The New Republic and currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is not dumb. Second, the advice he gives Obama in a Washington Post OpEd today to abandon race-based for class-based affirmative action is good ? good for Obama, good for the country...
McCain, Obama Respond To NAACP
Posted on August 12, 2008Roger Clegg points to the very revealing responses from McCain and Obama to a questionnaire from the NAACP. McCain was refreshingly straightforward, direct, and hard-hitting. Noting that ?[t]he affirmative action remedies designed forty years ago should be re-examined,? he identified himself completely not only with the philosophy of ?without regard? colorblind equality but also with the actual language of the pending anti-preference state initiatives: I believe that government should ?not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, and individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting...
Change We Can Believe In: McCain Should Take The Initiative...
Posted on August 11, 2008No, make that the initiatives, as in the initiatives that will be on the ballots of Colorado, Nebraska, and Arizona in November that would prohibit those states from awarding preferential treatment based on race. As I argued here (and many other places), McCain could gain additional support in several highly contested ?battleground? states ? including, as it happens, Colorado, as well as Michigan (which passed a similar initiative by a wide margin in 2006) and Virginia ? is he would take a strong stand in favor of colorblind equal treatment...
Is It An Insult To Call Obama An Affirmative Action Candidate?
Posted on August 05, 2008I always get a kick out of the columns, and now talking head (on MSNBC) commentary, of Washington Post Obamanut Eugene Robinson. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here for some representative examples.) I would say that he?s such a perfect affirmative action columnist (by which I mean, mainly, that he writes often about affirmative action) that if he didn?t exist we?d need to invent him, but that?s not really true since so many other affirmative action columnists say pretty much the same things...
Evidence Of Racism (Or Not)
Posted on August 05, 2008Politico reports this morning that ?Race-card flap reopens Clinton camp wounds.? ?I am not a racist,? Clinton said Monday in a testy interview with ABC News in Monrovia, Liberia, in response to a question that wasn?t quite related to that subject. ?I?ve never made a racist comment and I never attacked [Obama] personally...
Althouse: Half Right
Posted on August 03, 2008I?m a big fan of Ann Althouse?s blog, even when I disagree with her, which is about half the time. This post is a good example, both of her strengths and my reaction to them. Regarding the current ?look like? controversy over ?playing the race card,? she effectively ridicules the Obamanaut arguments that the Obama campaign is ?fighting back? against the Republicans injecting race into the campaign...
Best Article On Obama
Posted on August 03, 2008This article by Stanley Kurtz in The Weekly Standard is the best thing I?ve read on Obama anywhere ? in papers mainstream and otherwise, magazines, and blogs (including this one). I?ll have more to say about it presently, but since it?s long and since you?re required by official DISCRIMINATIONS edict to read the whole thing I wanted to mention it now so you so you can get started...
Obama DOES Look Like He?s From Central Casting...
Posted on August 02, 2008According to reporter Michael Powell?s article in the New York Times today, ?Senator Barack Obama is a man of few rhetorical stumbles.? Perhaps Powell and his editor were on vacation when Obama described small town whites as ?bitter? and ?clinging? to guns and God; when he characterized Rev...
Response To McCain ?Switch?
Posted on August 01, 2008DISCRIMINATIONS reader and frequent commenter, Michael Bertolone, has an excellent letter in today?s USA TODAY. He?s given permission to post it here: McCain switches sides for the better Michael A. Bertolone - Rochester, N.Y. Barack Obama said he was disappointed with John McCain?s change of heart on affirmative action, but I find it encouraging (?McCain sides with ban on affirmative action,? News, Monday)...
Al-Obama
Posted on July 31, 2008Now it is apparently safe, at least for celebrity humorists, to make fun of The Obamessiah. On Tuesday, the nationally televised comedian David Letterman offered a ?Top Ten Signs Barack Obama Is Overconfident.? One, he said, was Obama?s proposing to change the name of Oklahoma to ?Oklobama?; another, ?measuring his head for Mount Rushmore...
Obama Plays The Race Card, Again
Posted on July 31, 2008[NOTE: This post has been UPDATED twice three times.] It?s been said that every time a United States Senator looks in the mirror he or she sees someone who should be president. In this regard Obama is no different from any other Senator, or any other presidential candidate...
Where, If Anywhere, Does McCain Stand On Preferences?
Posted on July 30, 2008McCain has already punctured the balloon of optimism from his supporters that rose over the weekend when he indicated his support for the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative. He seems stuck in a time warp, fumbling to announce his opposition to ?quotas? at every opportunity, as though ?quotas? had some connection to the current effort to eliminate racial preference programs...
Is McCain Already Backtracking?
Posted on July 29, 2008The left?s predictable attacks on McCain for his ?divisive? support of the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative banning racial preferences ? and the enthusiastic applause of his supporters for the same stand ? had hardly begun to trail off when the Arizona Senator gave a confused, and disturbing, reply to CNN?s Wolf Blitzer about the identical initiative in Colorado...
Obama Supports Quotas As Well As Preferences
Posted on July 28, 2008In his first speech and talk with reporters back in the U.S. after his campaign swing through Europe, Obama said, ?I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when it is properly structured, so that it is not just a quota, but acknowledging or taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties communities of color have experienced and continue to experience...
Sins Of Commission And Omission By The Mainstream Media
Posted on July 28, 2008I have just reported (see post immediately below) that Barack Obama said over the weekend that he supports quotas ? more specifically, that he supports affirmative action ?when it is properly structured, so that it is not just a quota....? He will, of course, deny that he said that, but since there is a CNN video confirming it he will no doubt fall back on clarifications and emendations to the effect that he misspoke, or that somehow the CNN video recorder misrecorded what he actually meant...
A Fund?amental Analysis Of Opposition To Direct Democracy
Posted on July 27, 2008John Fund has has a must-read article in Saturday?s Wall Street Journal on ?The Far Left?s War on Direct Democracy.? If I were you, I?d stop reading me discussing it right now and go read it. By ?direct democracy? he means the initiative process, a reform born out of the Progressive Era, when there was general agreement that powerful interests had too much influence over legislators...
McCain, Finally, Supports Colorblind Equality!
Posted on July 27, 2008In an interview with George Stephanopoulus finally stepped away from (?abandoned? might be too strong) his ridiculous refusal to endorse colorblind equality and announced that, after all, and his previous reluctance to the contrary, he really does believe the state should treat its citizens without regard to race, ethnicity, or sex...
Pure Racialism In The New York Times
Posted on July 27, 2008The headline of an article by Jim Rutenberg on the front page of the New York Times this morning is ?Black Radio on Obama Is Left?s Answer to Limbaugh.? The article reflects as pure an example of racialism ? an ideology that regards race as the fundamental building block of personal identity and social reality ? that I recall seeing in the mainstream press...
Colorado University: Equality Requirement Would Have ?Big Impact?
Posted on July 25, 2008Opponents of civil rights initiatives ? proposals pending in three states that would require treating individuals without regard to race, ethnicity, or gender ? often say that such a requirement isn?t needed because the discrimination these initiatives claim to prohibit is already illegal and that no such targeted preferential treatment programs actually exist...
Mighty Corruption From Little ACORN Grows
Posted on July 25, 2008Might oaks, in the old proverb, may from little acorns grow, but in the case of ACORN (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) what sprouts ? planted, fertilized, and nourished with abundant federal tax dollars ? is fraud, corruption, and voter intimidation...
Is Colorblind Equality A Winning Issue For McCain?
Posted on July 23, 2008This article on Pajamas Media today is eerily similar to this post here a few days ago.
Shelby Steele Gets Obama Exactly Right, Almost...
Posted on July 22, 2008In the Wall Street Journal today Shelby Steele explains why and how Obama ?is the nullification of Jesse Jackson ? the anti-Jackson.? Mr. Jackson was always a challenger. He confronted American institutions (especially wealthy corporations) with the shame of America?s racist past and demanded redress...
When Will The Blackmail Threats Begin?
Posted on July 21, 2008Obama is already sending not-so-coded messages to the civil rights establishment that his election will not reduce the need, and his support, for continued race preference policies. As Gregory Rodriguez writes today: A Barack Obama presidency could end the Iraq war, transform our national energy policy, revive America?s standing in the world -- but please don?t expect the first black man in the Oval Office to move us above and beyond the civil rights era...
Is Obama A Muslim?
Posted on July 20, 2008One of the reasons the New Yorker cover showing fist-bumping Obamas in Muslim garb caused such a ruckus is that its appearance coincided with the release of a Pew Research Center report showing that 12% of Americans (interestingly, 12% of both Democrats and Republicans) still believe Obama is in fact a Muslim...
Does McCain Want To Win?
Posted on July 17, 2008You?d think any presidential candidate wants to win ? otherwise, why go to the trouble? ? but McCain?s continuing failure to come out forcefully for colorblind equality suggests, at least to me, that he may not (and even if he does want to, that he won?t)...
Depressing Poll (And Pollsters) On Racial Divide
Posted on July 16, 2008The most recent CBS/New York Times poll on the racial divide in the U.S. (actually, more like a chasm) is depressing, as is the NYT?s article about the poll. You?ll need to read the article/poll for yourself. They stop just short of portraying a stark racial divide on absolutely everything...
The Best Reason To Support Obama?
Posted on July 16, 2008Bonnie Erbe, a U.S. News and World Report columnist who claims to have covered Washington politics ?since God was a baby,? argues that Obama?s election ?would kill affirmative action.? What could do more damage to the argument that African-Americans deserve racial preferences than a majority of Americans voting to put an African-American in the White House? Little, from where I sit...
Some Good News For Liberals
Posted on July 16, 2008In the past week or so Obamaphiles have been dismayed to see their messiah?s candidate?s lead in the polls diminish dramatically. (See Rasmussen daily tracking polls here.) Most observers attribute this decline to a highly publicized series of rapid flip-flops on major issues, nicely summarized by Dick Morris here: ? After vowing to eschew private fundraising and take public financing, he has now refused public money...
The Declining Reputation Of Affirmative Action
Posted on July 15, 2008Missouri, you will recall, is the state where obstructionism by the Democratic Secretary of State and Attorney General, later declared illegal, and thuggish intimidation of petition signers succeeded in keeping the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative off the ballot this year...
Princeton Receives Weekly Chutzpah Award
Posted on July 13, 2008?What weekly chutzpah award?? you may well ask. You?re right. At the moment DISCRIMINATIONS doesn?t bestow a weekly chutzpah award, but if it did this week?s would go to Princeton. Regular readers will be aware of Jian Li?s complaint that Princeton discriminates against Asian applicants by holding them to a higher standard than others, a case I discussed here...
Rocky Mountain Non-News
Posted on July 12, 2008The Rocky Mountain News more often than not gets things right. Yesterday, however, it did not. Here is the piece in its entirety: Initiative backers plan to file complaint Organizers of an initiative to eliminate most affirmative action programs in Colorado say they will file a fraud complaint against their opponents, whom they charge with lying...
Bader Late Than Never
Posted on July 11, 2008Some readers may have noticed (and even cheered) the drop in my blog posting (blog output? blogput?) for the past ten days or so. We?re in California for a while, house-sitting in San Francisco, traveling around the greater (and lesser) Bay Area, heading for Pasadena and Southern California in a week or so...
July 4th, Revisited
Posted on July 04, 2008July 4th is a holiday for all Americans, of whatever persuasion, to celebrate America, but we live in a time when Left and Right increasingly view each other as un-American. Like many others on the Right, I came from the Left (whether or not I really am on the Right is a question I?ll let pass for now, but it?s clear that many of my friends ? and many more of my former friends ? think I am), and so, once again, I think it in order for me to revisit/recycle/reprint perhaps the last occasion in which I appeared in print with my former colleagues...
Let?s Give Helms A Hand
Posted on July 04, 2008Jesse Helms, known both affectionately and with hostility as ?Senator No,? is dead today at 86. There will be many obituaries, but this is not one of them. I?ve come to praise Helms, not bury him. I certainly did not agree with everything he said or did, but, burnishing and brandishing my qualification for elite membership in the esteemed DISCRIMINATIONS Minority of One Club, I would like to on record, again (see here and here), to offer my commendation of Helms for the one thing he did that earned him bitter, visceral enmity (which will not die with him) from all liberals and Democrats, and not a few others: his infamous ?white hands? ad from his 1990 race against Harvey Gantt...
Obama: The Refined, Artful Candidate
Posted on July 04, 2008In two impressive columns, last week and this week, Charles Krauthammer has chronicled a large number (but not all) of Obama?s reversals of field, changes of direction, modifications of principle, etc., on major issues. In the fall, he opposed retroactive immunity for telecom companies who assisted in anti-terrorist monitoring, even threatening to filibuster...
Racial Preferences In Community Colleges?
Posted on July 03, 2008Apparently community colleges in Nebraska are permeated with policies that discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, individuals based on their race, ethnicity, or gender. At least that is the claim of the Board of Governors of Southeast Community College, which has campuses in Beatrice, Lincoln, and Milford, which opposes the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative that would ban such programs...
Arizona Civil Rights Initiative Submits Signatures
Posted on July 03, 2008The Arizona Civil Rights Initiative has submitted 334,658 signatures with the Secretary of State's office, 100,000 more than the number required to qualify for the ballot. BAMN has filed suit to keep the initiative off the ballot because, as national director Shanta Driver explained, ?she fears a majority of Arizonans will vote for it...
Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative Submits Signatures
Posted on July 03, 2008Today the Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative submitted more than 167,000 signatures to place the initiative on the November ballot. To qualify for the ballot Nebraska requires the submission of signatures from 10% of the registered voters in the state, 113,000 signatures...
More Driver Drivel
Posted on July 03, 2008One of the downsides of my ?job? (I use the term loosely) providing your peephole/telescopic/microscopic view into the wonderful world of discrimination (not to mention my filter/sieve service, separating the chaff from the really bad chaff) is that I have to read so much offensive, militant nonsense from know-nothings like Shanta Driver, national chairpersonwoman of By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), the battering ram used by the Democrats to do the dirty work of supporting racial preferences, such as disrupting meetings and sending out threatening ?blockers? to intimidate petition-signers...
Schmidt: Universities Living ?A Diversity Lie?
Posted on July 01, 2008Regular readers (and even irregular readers who?ve visited here more than a few times) know that I have a high regard for the work of Peter Schmidt, who covers affirmative action and other mind-numbing topics for the Chronicle of Higher Education (sorry for that endorsement, Peter; I know it?ll get you in trouble with most of your readers)...
A Decision That Smells Like Rotten Fish
Posted on June 28, 2008Is this where we?re headed? Where President Obama will take us if he can? The ?this? to which I refer is a recent decision by the Supreme Court of Canada holding that ?[g]iving exclusive commercial fishing licences to aboriginal groups? does not discriminate against non-aboriginal fishermen...
Eagleburger: Obama Playing Race Card Is ?Despicable?
Posted on June 27, 2008Several posts ago, here, I criticized Obama for playing the race and bigot card when he accused unnamed Republicans of planning to ?make [voters] afraid of me? because of his funny name, inexperience, ?... and did I mention he?s black?? My criticism may have been strong ? I hope it was ? but it was the very picture of modest, restrained diplomatic understatement compared to what former Secretary of State (and eminent Charlottesvillian) Lawrence Eagleburger said today in a letter to the Charlottesville Daily Progress, ?Obama Is Making Race An Issue...
Duplicitous Anti-Equality Protesters
Posted on June 27, 2008An article about the anti-equality protesters in Arizona has all the usual drivel we have come to expect from them ? outraged (and outrageous) charges that the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative is a ?fraud?; would be ?a setback for civil rights?; etc. ? but it is nevertheless noteworthy, for three reasons: 1) one of the misrepresentations from the anti-equality protesters is unintentionally but revealingly humorous; 2) one of the misrepresentations is perhaps the most egregious I?ve seen in the long, sordid history of the pro-preference crowd; and 3), and perhaps most astounding of all, one of the Arizona protesters actually said something that is almost true...
Obama Targets Blacks, Felons
Posted on June 23, 2008The candidate who once said, to support from even surprising quarters, that There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America is now targeting voters from black America. Hillary Clinton got into a heap of trouble when she said, quoting an Associated Press article, that Sen...
Lame Brain
Posted on June 23, 2008Some of you may recall my criticisms of Emory University psychologist Drew Westen and his new instruction book for Democrats, THE POLITICAL BRAIN: THE ROLE OF EMOTION IN DECIDING THE FATE OF THE NATION. (See here, here, and here.) If you don?t, the gist (actually, the entire substance) of his argument is nicely conveyed in this passage from an unintentionally hilarious article about the book in the Los Angeles Times, which I quoted in the first ?here? above: ...
?Affirmative Action,? Or Not?
Posted on June 22, 2008The Kansas City, Kansas, Community College (KCKCC) is launching a new program to hire minorities, but for some reason it is reluctant to call this program ?affirmative action.? Kansas City Kansas Community College announced this week they would actively seek qualified minorities to fill open positions at the college...
Michelle II
Posted on June 21, 2008According to this article in the New York Times, Obama?s campaign is attempting to give Michelle?s image ?a subtle makeover,? making her available to to such stalwart, critical interviewers as Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg on The View. The intent is to bury what the Times is pleased to call ?the caricatures of Mrs...
Common Cause Or Common Joke?
Posted on June 21, 2008Common Cause for years has seemed like a one-trick (if that) pony, issuing press releases and other pontifications calling for campaign finance reform. You would thus expect it to be outraged at Obama?s recent flip-flop, supporting public financing up to the point it was no longer in his interest to do so...
Obama Plays Race And Bigot Cards
Posted on June 21, 2008Even NPR is now blasting Obama for his hypocrisy over campaign finance and even for playing the race and bigot cards. In a Jacksonville fund raiser (why does he still need fund rasiers?), he accused his opponent of preparing to run a racist and bigoted campaign...
Is There A Pattern Here? If So, Is There A Name For It?
Posted on June 20, 2008Barack Obama opposes school vouchers for poor families but sends his own children to a private school; supports ?campaign finance reform? but opts out of public financing since he can raise more money privately under the old, presumably corrupt system; attests to the centrality of his religious experience in shaping his identity but regards others, who are less privileged and culturally and politically different, as ?clinging? to religion; promises an end to bitter partisanship even though his own record (what there is of it) is one of the most partisan in the Senate and his opponent?s is one of the most bi-partisan; promises to transcend race even though he a) married, sat passively for 20 years in the pews of, and raised his children in a church led by and permeated with a militant afro-centrism that often found expression in parnoid (they invented AIDS to kill us), anti-white (?greedy whites? etc...
Chinese Are Black? Who Knew?
Posted on June 18, 2008A reader has alerted me that the BBC reports today that ?The High Court in South Africa has ruled that Chinese South Africans are to be reclassified as black people.? It made the order so that ethnic Chinese can benefit from government policies aimed at ending white domination in the private sector...
EXTRA!! Michigan Sky Did Not Fall!
Posted on June 18, 2008Yesterday, in the post immediately below, I took the editors of the Michigan Daily to task for their rejection of the principle of colorblind equality, for their implication that minorities are afraid to compete on a level playing field, and for encouraging the UM administration to violate the law...
All About The Beat
Posted on June 16, 2008Anyone interested in the politics of hip-hop, or John McWhorter?s new book on it, may want to take a look at this review.
Michigan Daily Fears Equality, Implies Minorities Fear Equality, Encourages Lawlessness
Posted on June 16, 2008An unsigned editorial in today?s Michigan Daily sets out to ?talley[] the damage? imposed racial equality has had at the University of Michigan. The edit is sadly revealing. First, it is disappointing that presumably bright college students would regard the legal obligation to treat all applicants without regard to their race, ethnicity, or gender as ?damage? to be assessed, an ?unnecessary restriction? on the university?s freedom to discriminate to produce ?diversity...
Will Black (And Other) Conservatives Abandon McCain Because Of Race
Posted on June 16, 2008Many people have been attracted to Obama ? or at least to the idea of Obama, to the image of Obama created by his biracial campaign biography, etc. ? because of their belief (more like a hope) that his biracialism embodies the prospect of moving beyond race, of transcending the racial divide...
Obama Supporters, Like Obama, Support/Oppose Race Preferences
Posted on June 15, 2008Yesterday?s Wall Street Journal has a long article, ?Fair Enough,? on the disagreements over affirmative action, mainly among Obama supporters. One McCain spokesperson, whose comment I?ll discuss below, makes a brief, cameo appearance, but in general McCain has no presence in this article, which pretty accurately reflects what he?s said about the issue so far...
Obama?s Brain: Not Just A New Politics But A New Epistemology
Posted on June 12, 2008I?m beginning to think that many critics ? and I certainly include myself in this group ? may have done Rev. Wright a grave injustice. I?m not referring to the denunciation he so richly deserves for his rants against AmeriKKKa, AIDS as purposeful genocide, 9/11 as deserved retribution, etc...
Blind Faith In Colorado
Posted on June 11, 2008Predictably, the Colorado Council of Churches is opposing the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, Amendment 46, that would bar the state from engaging in preferential treatment based on race, sex, or ethnicity. The group says Amendment 46 would eliminate things like science and math tutoring for young women and closing the gender gap in pay...
Democratic Defections
Posted on June 11, 2008Jonathan Martin reports on Politico that Oklahoma Democratic Rep. Dan Boren, the only Democrat in the delegation and the son of former Sen. David Boren, regards Obama as too liberal to endorse. In a similar vein, Michael Ubbens, co-chair of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans, pointed me to these mentions of an influential member of the George Washington University College Democrats stating his intention to support Sen...
Obama Opposes Colorblindness, Supports Preferences
Posted on June 11, 2008Sen. Obama has reassured pro-preference columnist DeWayne Wickham that he has not wavered in his support for racial preferences. ?In response to a question I put to him,? Wickham writes, Obama answered that he opposes efforts to pass constitutional amendments this year in Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska to ban affirmative action in state contracting and college admissions...
What Senator McCain Should Say
Posted on June 08, 2008An article by Jonathan Kaufman appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal discussing the ways race will hurt, or help, Obama in the coming election. Kaufman refers to the usual evidence suggesting that some whites will vote against Obama because of his race, virtually ignores the mounds of evidence suggesting that some whites and large numbers of blacks will vote for him because of his race, and mentions the somewhat less familiar argument that Obama?s race may insulate him from some criticism...
UPDATE!
Posted on June 08, 2008Once more, alas, Prof. Evelyn Hu-DeHart of Brown has been heard from, and so once more there is an UPDATE to this post.
?Diversity? And Political Correctness At Brown
Posted on June 05, 2008In a recent post I discussed a speech criticizing college ?diversity? officials by Prof. Evelyn Hu-DeHart of Brown, whose point was that they only gave their colleges the appearance of caring about ?diversity? when in fact they weren?t doing nearly enough...
Rev. Pfleger As A Modern John Brown
Posted on June 03, 2008I was tempted to describe Mary Mitchell as a Chicago Sun Times columnist who sees Barack Obama as the Second Coming, but upon re-reading her column today it strikes me that she may well see him as the First. Her heart goes out to the eight thousand congregants of Rev...
A Diversiphile Dumps On The ?Diversity? Industry
Posted on June 02, 2008About a year ago, in a post discussing a blistering speech the Chronicle of Higher Education?s Peter Schmidt delivered to a gathering of education apparatchiks concerned about ?diversity,? etc., I noted that ?I would like to have had the Tums or Rolaid concession outside the door to that luncheon...
Is Racial Preference Merely ?Differently Negotiating? The Job Market?
Posted on June 02, 2008Once again Penn Prof. John L. Jackson Jr. brings his keen anthropological insight to the Chronicle of Higher Education?s ?Brainstorm? blog (earlier examples are here, here, and here), this time discussing, in ?Graduating While Black,? hiring preferences for black PhDs...
Michelle?s Mouth: News Or Rumor?
Posted on June 02, 2008I concluded my last post by noting that, given Obama?s proclivity for throwing overboard family members and long-time, close associates who become liabilities to his campaign, ?if I were Michelle, I?d watch my mouth from now on.? Apparently a lot of other people have been watching it as well, and there?s now a loud buzz around the blogosphere that news of Michelle making Wright-like remarks (railing against ?Whitey,? etc...
Amen
Posted on June 01, 2008Let?s see. Barry Obama was a bi-racial boy raised primarily by his white grandparents. As a young man he abandoned his bi-racialism for blackness, became Barack, and was nurtured in the bosom of Rev. Wright?s militantly black Trinity church. In the process of explaining why his long, close association with Wright and his church was not wrong, Obama said many times that his church was nothing to get excited about, that he had never heard or heard of anything ?particularly controversial in Reverend Wright?s statements,? that he is ?proud of his pastor and his church,? that Trinity Church is ?conventional,? ?a very traditional African-American church? that ?embodies the black community...
What He Said
Posted on May 30, 2008Regular readers will know that Peter Schmidt of the Chronicle of Higher Education is one of the few journalists who cover affirmative action whose work I respect, and that is true even though I often disagree with what he writes. He?s often wrong, in my view, but never devious, duplicitous, or dumb...
Social Downgrading: The Logic Of Affirmative Action
Posted on May 29, 2008A blockade by thousands of protesters from India?s Gujjar tribe brought Delhi to a standstill today, paralysing trains by squatting on tracks and setting up a ring of burning tyres around the perimeter of the city. The Gujjars, traditionally nomadic farmers, are demanding to be socially downgraded in order to gain government jobs and university places...
Broder Broods
Posted on May 29, 2008Drawing on a 27-year old interview with the recently deceased Hamilton Jordan, Jimmy Carter?s chief of staff, David Broder worries about some troubling parallels between Carter and the new would-be outsider come to clean up Washington, Obama. Both have relied on splintering and ideological division inside the Democratic Party...
Enough Is Enough ... Isn?t It?
Posted on May 27, 2008Peter Schmidt has an important and typically thorough article today in the Chronicle of Higher Education on a new lawsuit against the University of Texas?s ?top 10%? plan that could have far-reaching implications for the future of race preferences in higher education...
The Color Of Stale
Posted on May 26, 2008Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell is quite pleased with the ideological diversity of the paper?s op-ed page. She thinks the offerings are nicely balanced between liberals and conservatives ? she lists the usual suspects among the regulars ? but the quality of her judgment here is reflected by the fact that she accepts regular Colby King?s self-description as an independent curmudgeon ?with little tolerance for ideologues of any stripe...
Dems Snub Minority Bloggers ... Then Repent
Posted on May 22, 2008It appears that the Democratic Party officials in charge of selecting the 55 bloggers who will make up the ?State Blogger Corps? at the party convention in Denver violated on of the party?s core principles: they (can you believe it!) evaluated the candidates according to a set of criteria that did not include race! Party leaders said the factors in determining state bloggers were readership, Internet ratings and focus on local and state politics, not race Since the Dems have specific racial, ethnic, and gender ?goal and timetables? (quotas, to the naked eye) for the actual delegates to their convention (as I discussed here, here, and here), one can readily understand why minority bloggers felt they were being discriminated against because they were not singled out for preferential treatment...
?Abuzz? With Social Science Race Talk
Posted on May 22, 2008Prof. John L. Jackson Jr., an anthropologist and newest member of the Chronicle of Higher Education panel of regulars on its ?Brainstorm? blog (first and last encountered here and here), reports today on his participation on a race and religion panel at Harvard...
White South Africans Adjust To Affirmative Action...
Posted on May 21, 2008A Google search on ?affirmative action? these days turns up as many (sometimes more) articles from around the world as from the United States. For some reason this interesting report from The Pretoria News on whites adapting to affirmative action turned up today, even though it is several years old...
Obama?s Manager?s ?Solution? To An Interesting Problem
Posted on May 20, 2008Roger Simon is an astute political writer, but, perhaps because of his long friendship with David Axelrod, Obama?s campaign manager, I think he was a bit tone deaf this morning to the sound of one bit of evidence he provides of Axelrod?s style. When he was running Paul Simon?s successful U...
Turn This Page Down
Posted on May 19, 2008In the past I have dogeared a number of Pages (columns by Clarence Page, that is) as good examples of the thinking (or lack thereof) of mainstream liberal columnists/talking heads. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Today?s column, however, goes so far beyond his earlier attempts, however, that I?m tempted to characterize it not as political analysis but humor, intended or otherwise...
Is Obama Familiar With The ... United States?
Posted on May 19, 2008We know that Obama lived as a boy in Hawaii and Indonesia, attained his education in New York City and Cambridge, and selected Chicago to launch his political career, but the evidence mounts that his familiarity with the layout of the United States leaves something to be desired...
Energy Diet: Is Obama Channeling Jimmy Carter?
Posted on May 18, 2008Obama, in Oregon, on energy: ?We can?t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,? Obama said. ?That?s not leadership. That?s not going to happen,? he added...
Morehouse And The Myth Of ?Diversity?
Posted on May 18, 2008Morehouse College in Atlanta, alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr. and widely regarded as one of the top colleges in the country, and the best for black men, has just made the news by graduating the first white valedictorian in its 141 year history. (HatTip to reader Fred Ray) I?m not sure how many non-black students were enrolled at Morehouse this year, but I?m sure there weren?t many...
A Day Without An Anthropologist Is Like ...
Posted on May 16, 2008What would we do without anthropologists? (No, don?t tell me. That question was rhetorical.) I had a professor in college who defined an anthropologist as ?a sociologist in a tent,? but then he was a sociologist and may simply have been presenting his latest survey findings...
We The People ... Or We The Courts?
Posted on May 16, 2008There they go again. Once again a liberal court has injected a contentious social issue into the middle of a political campaign, and in so doing has, no doubt unintentionally, handed the Republicans a hot-button issue. That injection (perhaps a transfusion for the Republicans) came from the California Supreme Court, striking down two state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman, [which] ruled on Thursday that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry...
Deafening Silence From The Dog Who Didn?t Bark
Posted on May 15, 2008Howard Fineman of Newsweek Magazine has done what I would have thought impossible, even for someone who divides his time pontificating on talk television and writing for a slick mainstream publication: he was written an article pontificating about race in the current campaign, and assigning blame here and there for the role it has come to play, without once mentioning Rev...
NObama
Posted on May 15, 2008Over 90% of black Democrats support Obama. So, asks Cinque Henderson in a must-read New Republic article, What the hell is up with that other 10 percent? Are they stupid? Do they hate their own race? Do they not understand the historical import of the moment? I can shed some insight on this demographic anomaly...
More On ?Madness? At Susquehanna U.
Posted on May 15, 2008I?ve written before about the frantic lengths diversity czars at Susquehanna University went to in order to ?balance? the appearance there of Joseph C. Phillips, a prominent black critic of racial preferences. Now Phillips himself tells the story of his visit, and much better than I did...
Yes, But What Is ?Equality??
Posted on May 14, 2008USA Today has an informative article today on the raft of litigation that has emerged around Title IX. Although the article is concerned almost entirely with claims of retribution filed by women?s coaches who complained about their institutions? failure to comply with Title IX, and all but neglects the numerous complaints that Title IX has led many men?s sports programs to be eliminated in order to produce more (or the appearance of more) ?gender equity,? the article is a useful summary of some current controversies...
Discrimination Doublespeak At The University Of Oregon
Posted on May 13, 2008Last June I wrote: If there were a prize for the most ridiculous rationale for racial discrimination, it would surely go to the University of Oregon. I was referring to the university?s almost hilarious defense of its ?Underrepresented Minority Recruitment Program,? under which departments are rewarded handsomely for hiring ethnically ?underrepresened? applicants...
Black Chamber Of Commerce Opposes Effort To End Race Preference
Posted on May 13, 2008Here?s a real dog bites man story: The Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce announced its opposition Monday to a ballot initiative that would eliminate affirmative action in state hiring, contracting and education. Imagine that! A group opposes the attempt to deprive its members of preferential treatment! If this becomes a trend, pretty soon labor unions will come out for higher wages; teachers? unions will oppose school vouchers; illegal immigrants will oppose efforts to curtail illegal immigration; and Minister Farrakhan and Rev...
Obama On Affirmative Action: A Class Act?
Posted on May 13, 2008Richard Kahlenberg, who?s been campaigning for class-based affirmative action for years, has an article on InsideHigherEd yesterday arguing, quite persuasively, that nothing could carry more potent symbolic value with Reagan Democrats than for Obama to end the Democratic Party?s 40 years of support for racial preferences and to argue, instead, for preferences ? in college admissions and elsewhere ? based on economic status...
Obama And The Emerging Tradition Of Emotive, Non-Rational Liberalism
Posted on May 11, 2008Lately I?ve been trying to get a handle on what is widely said to be our enduring, endemic, pervasive racism, but a racism so ?underground, hidden, subtle? that it is visible only to highly trained social scientists (such as the one discussed here) who, to skeptics, resemble nothing so much as dowsers claiming to have near-magical powers to find underground water with forked sticks...
?Institutional Racism?
Posted on May 08, 2008Earlier today I indicated (here) some skepticism about underground, hidden, subtle ?institutional and structural? racism. Whether because of luck or co-incidence or simply a terribly confused contact list, I just received an email notice from an assistant editor at Ms...
Animus And Affirmative Action
Posted on May 08, 2008Opponents of racial preference (I of course include myself) oppose it because we believe discrimination on the basis of race is wrong in principle and practice. Supporters of racial preference support it because they believe that however appealing colorblind racial neutrality may be in principle, in practice it is wrong...
Racial Paranoia?
Posted on May 08, 2008John Jackson Jr., an associate professor of communications and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, has a confused and confusing article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on ?Racial Paranoia and Jeremiah Wright.? ?In the 1950s and 1960s,? he begins, ?consensus historians? such as Richard Hofstadter argued that large swaths of the American public displayed a ?paranoid style? of political analysis that made them incapable of fully participating in rational debate...
The Bad Guys Win Another One
Posted on May 06, 2008Opponents of colorblind racial equality in Missouri, led by elected Democratic state officials and supported by roving gangs of intimidators who disrupted petition gathering, have succeeded in keeping the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative off the ballot...
Another Pitts Stop
Posted on May 06, 2008I have written, not favorably, about the columnist Leonard Pitts more than a few times, such as here, here, here, here, and here. But now he has written something I can completely endorse. Writing critically of Rev. Wright, Pitts argues with great force: If you condemn bigotry when it is turned against people like you, but tolerate it when people like you turn it against someone else, you forfeit all claim to the moral high ground...
The Unrepresentative Rev. Wright
Posted on May 06, 2008I have written several times (such as here and, most recently, here) that Rev. Wright was wrong to say, in effect, ?The Black Church, c?est moi!? Now Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom have made that point much better than I did. In his recent incendiary remarks, the Rev...
A Rare Noonan Flub
Posted on May 05, 2008I almost couldn?t believe it. It was so unbelievable, in fact, that I put off writing about it. ?It? is something I thought I?d never see, a truly bad column by Peggy Noonan. In fact, I put off writing about it (the column appeared May 2) so long that now I don?t have to...
Dialog Anyone?
Posted on May 05, 2008From the emerging Obamian Dictionary: di?a?log Noun I speak; you listen. My Philadelphia Speech was the beginning, and end, of a much-needed national dialog on race. ORIGIN Modern Elite American English, born in cites, rich suburbs, academic villages (Hyde Park, Cambridge, etc...
UPDATE: Obama, Loyalty, And Betrayal
Posted on May 04, 2008Please re-read this post, on your way to reading the new UPDATE to it.
Want More ?Diversity?? Minimize Test Scores
Posted on May 02, 2008In the Chronicle of Higher Education this morning Peter Schmidt reports on two new studies that conclude colleges could increase their pigmentary ?diversity? without resorting to race preferences by simply minimizing the weight they attach to SAT scores...
UPDATE
Posted on May 01, 2008Thanks to F.I.R.E., reading in public is no longer as racial harassment at Indiana University -Purdue University.
Google Sex Discrimination
Posted on May 01, 2008No, no. My title is neither an instruction nor a request to google ?sex discrimination.? But if you did you should, but won?t, find what I am in fact referring to, which is this report in the Chronicle of Higher Education about Google?s own sex discrimination, which of course was not described as sex discrimination in either the Chronicle report or Google?s announcement of its sex-restricted scholarship program: The U...
Little (?) Wright Lies...
Posted on April 29, 2008Prevarication often leads to contradiction. When you don?t tell the truth, it?s hard to keep your story straight. Rev. Wright on Bill Moyers show last Friday: BILL MOYERS: You know, you mentioned Senator Obama. In the 20 years that you?ve been your [sic] pastor, have you ever heard him repeat any of your controversial statements as his opinion? REVEREND WRIGHT: No...
Computerized Race Norming
Posted on April 29, 2008One of the dirtiest little (or big) secrets of the race preference industry is that it depends on the practice of ?race norming,? selecting the most attractive applicants from various approved racial or ethnic groups. One of the least objectionable aspects of this practice is that it is flatly illegal, at least in employment...
Rev. Wright At The National Press Club
Posted on April 28, 2008As I write I?ve just been listening to Rev. Wright at the National Press Club. I?ll probably have more to say after he completes his speech and a transcript becomes available, but I was struck enough by something he said early on to blog it now. The attack on him, he said, was not personal, not against Rev...
What Is A ?Level Playing Field??
Posted on April 27, 2008One of the most common arguments in support of racial preferences is that they are needed to ?level the playing field,? or sometimes ?until the playing field is level.? Or sometimes both, as in the following statement by Brandon Davis, political director of the regional chapter of the Service Employees International Union: We think until we have a level playing field, affirmative action must remain in place as one of the most effective tools to level the playing field for women and minorities In pursuit of this elusive and undefined goal of the level playing field, SEIU has joined with others in Missouri to send out roving bands of intimidators to disrupt signature-gathering for the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative...
Time Klein Indicts Mainstream Media
Posted on April 24, 2008Joe Klein of Time Magazine, who was not a Weatherman but is a weathervane of liberal Democratic opinion, blasts the irresponsibility of the mainstream media! Discussing what the Pennsylvania primary did to Obama, ?who entered the primary as a fresh breeze and left it stale, battered and embittered,? Klein writes: In the course of six weeks, the American people learned that he was a member of a church whose pastor gave angry, anti-American sermons, that he was "friendly" with an American terrorist who had bombed buildings during the Vietnam era, and that he seemed to look on the ceremonies of working-class life ? bowling, hunting, churchgoing and the fervent consumption of greasy food ? as his anthropologist mother might have, with a mixture of cool detachment and utter bemusement...
The Real Barack Obama?
Posted on April 22, 2008This morning E.J. Dionne writes: The result of the 2008 election may come down to how voters decide to define Barack Obama. Is he Adlai Stevenson or John F. Kennedy? Note well that this formulation of the central question of the election does not deign to ask who Obama really is, emphasizing instead that ?almost all of the turns in this contest have been driven by how Obama presented himself and how voters perceived him...
UPDATE To ?Emendations Upon Clarifications...?
Posted on April 21, 2008I have added an UPDATE to my Emendations Upon Clarifications (Of Obama on Affirmative Action).
OAMI Whammy
Posted on April 21, 2008One of the contradictions in the defense of ?diversity? at many institutions is that those same institutions often practice the opposite of what they preach, sponsoring racially and ethnically separate dorms, clubs, graduation ceremonies, and even academic majors (Black Studies, Chicano Studies, etc...
Currying Favor With Affirmative Actionists
Posted on April 20, 2008As I discussed here, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a terrific piece two days ago by Kevin Ferris. Today, perhaps in a misguided attempt to be balanced, it ran an atrocious one by George Curry on the ?Continuing relevance of affirmative action.? Before I discuss Curry?s article, however, I can?t resist telling you more than you want to know about ?currying favor...
Just Goes To Show You...
Posted on April 20, 2008... that newspapers in major cities can be fair if they put their mind to it. The Lincoln Journal-Star published a Q&A about the proposed Nebraska Civil Rights Initiative that is fair, balanced, and neutral. What a shame such coverage is so rare.
Emendations Upon Clarifications (Of Obama on Affirmative Action)
Posted on April 19, 2008Several posts below (here) I discussed Obama?s comments on affirmative action in the recent Philadelphia debate, finding them a continuation of the obfuscatory waffling I?d criticized in earlier posts cited there. Two close observers I highly respect, however, Mickey Kaus and Roger Clegg, were far more optimistic (I discussed their views in UPDATES to my recent post), as was Chet Zarko, a frequent commenter here whose views I also respect (in this comment to the above post)...
Here?s A New One...
Posted on April 18, 2008I?m always looking for new arguments supporting racial, ethnic, gender preferences, arguments, that is, that oppose requiring the state to treat all individuals ?without regard? to their race. New arguments like that are hard to find, but here?s an amusing one by Dana Goldstein in Tapped, the group blog of The American Prospect...
More Sad Than, Well, Bitter...
Posted on April 18, 2008Read Kevin Ferris?s superb OpEd in the Philadelphia Inquirer. ?Sadness,? Ferris writes, ?is the right response to Barack Obama's now famous riff on small-town America.? Not because he?s no longer walking on water. The Messiah of Change image started sinking when Obama lied about hearing incendiary comments from his pastor, the Rev...
Paving The Way For Diversity On (In?) The Road...
Posted on April 18, 2008Reader Alex Bensky sends word of this article urging the state of Michigan to do more to ensure that more ?Disadvantaged Business Enterprises? (aka DBEs, aka firms owned or apparently owned by minorities) get state contracts for highway construction. We should all applaud this effort, as does Alex, who writes: I can tell you, John, I?m with them on this one...
UPDATE!
Posted on April 18, 2008In what seems to be my current role as extinguisher of all optimism falsely generated by seemingly deviationist comments on race by Democrats, I have UPDATEd this post on Obama?s preference waffle in Philly once again.
Obama Attempts To Clarify His Stance On Race Preferences
Posted on April 17, 2008Regular readers will know that I have criticized Obama?s various pronouncements on affirmative action as waffling obfuscation, muddled, lacking any commitment to his own announced vision, to name a few of my reservations. Thus I was quite interested in his attempt at clarifying his views last night in the Philadelphia debate with Sen...
Go To Missouri! Gather Signatures!
Posted on April 17, 2008You will noticed the ad in the right column, seeking signature gatherers for the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative. To see why you should volunteer, read the post immediately below. To find out more, click on the ad and send an inquiry.
Where Are The Liberals When You Need Them? Not In Missouri...
Posted on April 17, 2008At their best, liberals have defended free speech for those with whom they disagree; defended the rights of workers to organize even when they didn?t like the unions the workers were likely to choose; and defended voter registration drives even if they suspected the newly registered voters would support candidates the liberals opposed...
Live By The Word ...
Posted on April 17, 2008How odd. Barack Obama, whose whole appeal rests on his eloquent speeches, who said not long ago It's true I give a good speech. What can I do? Nothing wrong with that? and who shouted ?Don?t tell me that words don?t matter!? now complains that ?some people spend way too much time ?obsessing? about some of the things he and others have actually said...
Madison Avenue Backbone
Posted on April 17, 2008No, this post isn?t really about backbone on Madison Avenue. If it were, I would have already written too much, since that would be shortest post ever written. Instead, what follows is about lack of backbone on Madison Avenue. By way of preface, I?ve written before (here and here), about two years ago, about a witch hunt ?diversity probe? of New York ad agencies by New York City?s Commission on Human Rights, which was shocked that right there in diversity city there weren?t more minorities working in the big advertising firms...
Michelle: Me And Barack Aren?t Elitists...
Posted on April 17, 2008I was beginning to wonder what they?d done with Michelle, but yesterday she turned up in Indiana, rejecting the elitist label that had been pinned on her husband and herself. EVANSVILLE, Ind. (AP) - Michelle Obama said Wednesday she is a product of a working-class background and rejected characterizations of her and her husband as elitist...
Offensive, Left-Field Editorializing In New York Times Article
Posted on April 16, 2008Perhaps New York Times editors and reporters, bitter over impending layoffs caused by declining numbers of newspaper readers and ad revenues and hence clinging to comfortable ideological bromides, cannot resist disparaging those who are different from themselves...
More Fraud In Colorado
Posted on April 15, 2008Opponents of state civil rights initiatives always complain about fraud by initiative supporters, by which they mean petition gatherers describing as a civil rights measure a proposal that would prohibit the state from treating some people better and others worse because of their race ...
Holy Holistic, Batman! It Works!
Posted on April 15, 2008The new University of California admissions statistic are now out, and UCLA is pleased as punch to announce that the ?holistic? system it devised to admit more blacks and Hispanics (and, correspondingly, fewer Asians and whites) actually admitted more blacks and Hispanics and fewer Asians and whites...
Cling-Gate: Hard For Polman To Gauge...
Posted on April 14, 2008Dick Polman, the celebrated Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, offers a plague on both their houses analysis of cling-gate on his blog. He scores some points against Obama ... and Clinton ... and McCain, but there?s a lesson here other judgmental reporters should heed: if you?re going to cleverly zing Hillary (or anyone) by humorously (but also snidely) noting that I half expect to see her marching in the Lehigh Valley, clad in a bowling shirt, with a ...
Democrats Add A Dose Of Bitters To Their Campaign
Posted on April 14, 2008[NOTE: This post has been UPDATed Twice] According to an entry in Wikipedia, A bitters is a preparation of herbs and citrus dissolved in alcohol or glycerine with a bitter or bittersweet flavor. The various brands of bitters, once numerous, were formerly manufactured as patent medicines...
Are Poor Rubes Free To Subordinate Economics To Culture?
Posted on April 14, 2008James Taranto makes a very good point: Underlying [Obama?s] criticism is a curious normative premise: that the nonaffluent ought to prioritize their material interests over moral and cultural concerns. ?Workers of the world, unite!? meets ?The Virtue of Selfishness...
Maybe There Was Fraud In Colorado...
Posted on April 14, 2008Not long ago I discussed (here) the predictable charges of ?fraud? emerging in Colorado by people stepping forward to claim that they were duped into signing a petition for the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative. The assumed, they claimed, that the initiative was in favor of civil rights and opposed discrimination only to discover to their horror that it in fact ...
Obama?s Frank Analysis Of Delusional Small-Town America
Posted on April 13, 2008(You think ?Delusional? is too strong? Perhaps you?re right. Substitute ?Irrational? or even ?Misguided? if you prefer.) One of the virtues of being late to the feast of devouring Obama?s latest misstep ? his condescending dismissal of the rubes in small-town America ? is that you all already know what I?m talking about...
Prescription For Quotas
Posted on April 11, 2008If I weren?t a product of both undergraduate and graduate programs at Stanford, I would be critical of this report (?Latinos underrepresented in medical profession?) of quota-mongering at the Stanford Medical School (HatTip to reader Ed Chin). But since I am, I am both ashamed and embarrassed as well as critical...
Too Many Asians Hmong Us, Or Not Enough?
Posted on April 10, 2008I hesitate to get you even more upset than you already are about the blatant ?underrepresentation? of so many groups in so many areas of American life, but you can?t fret about this blight on our democracy as effectively as you should unless you know what I?m about to report to you (based on this report of this report) ? that ?fewer than 0...
Even In The Guardian ... !
Posted on April 10, 2008Michael Lind has an excellent piece in the Guardian opposing race-based affirmative action. (Yes, you read that right, the Guardian.) Read it. Lind has always been a young man in a hurry ? at times, apparently in a hurry to try on the outfits of as many different political persuasions as possible...
?I Like Obama. So I Am A Good, Racism-Free Person?
Posted on April 10, 2008According to Andrew Kohut, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that people who supported Obama did so in part because he made them feel good about themselves. [HatTip to Jim Geraghty] His article was titled ?That?s What I Like About Me,? and the findings he reports remind me of those bumper stickers proclaiming that ?My Child Is An Honor Student At [Whatever] Middle School...
?Diversity? For Thee, But Not For Me
Posted on April 10, 2008A freshman at the University of North Texas, responding to an earlier article in the school paper, makes a good point regarding the idea that a diverse faculty is good for exposing students to different ways of thinking. While I agree, a later statement in favor of diversity goes completely against it...
Monkey Business In The Obama Campaign
Posted on April 09, 2008Linda Ramirez Sliwinski is a Trustee of the Village of Carpentersville, Illinois. She has received a $75 citation for ?disorderly conduct,? and probably won?t stand for reelection. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, Ramirez Sliwinski said she saw two boys climbing a tree next door to her home about 1 p...
Interesting New Challenge To Preferential Admissions
Posted on April 09, 2008In Hopwood v. Texas 78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir. 1996) the University of Texas and other schools in the Fifth Circuit were barred from using race in admissions. In response, Texas adopted the ?Top 10%? plan guaranteeing admission to high school graduates in the top 10% of their class...
Race Consciousness? Race Baiting?
Posted on April 09, 2008Howell Raines, the former New York Times editor who resigned in disgrace after the Jason Jayson Blair affair, has no doubt continued to think about the role of race in American society. Based on this evidence, however, he doesn?t seem to have made much progress...
?We Need More White People!? For Michelle Obama
Posted on April 09, 2008Organizers for a Michelle Obama appearance at Carnegie Mellon University were careful to engineer their preferred version of ?diversity? in the visible audience, a ?diversity? that apparently had no room for an Asian student. (HatTip to Drudge) While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs...
?Demography? Does In Computer Science Advanced Placement
Posted on April 09, 2008As part of temporary access to Education Week that I?ve been enjoying recently, I receive a weekly email notice of articles, etc., of interest. The most recent notice invited me to Check out the brand new issue of Technology Counts 2008: STEM: The Push to Improve Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics...
Fears No Evil
Posted on April 08, 2008The Washington Post?s coverage of civil rights issues has been marred by the pronounced bias of its reporter covering that beat, Darryl Fears, more times that I have been able to write about, and I have written about his coverage more times than I have time to cite here...
Bad News (Oklahoma) And Good News (Michigan)
Posted on April 08, 2008The bad news is that the Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative has filed a request with the state supreme court to withdraw the initiative because it believes that it did not gather enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. Maybe next time. The good news ? no, make that great news ? is this article by Terry Pell of the Center For Individual Rights that just appeared on the web site of the National Association of Scholars...
The DeKlein Of Time
Posted on April 07, 2008Time Magazine used to be pretty good. Now it features articles by Joe Klein filled with partisan bombast (Bush ?clearly unfit to lead?) or humorous, clueless contradictions. In the latter category, last week Klein proclaimed that liberals are more patriotic than conservatives...
An Editorial In Favor Of Civil Rights!
Posted on April 06, 2008Editorials like this one in the Colorado Springs Gazette in favor of non-discriminatory civil rights are rare, and hence to be savored. Discussing the claims of some signers of the Colorado Civil Rights Coalition that they were deceived, the editorial states, in part: It?s difficult to understand how they could feel deceived...
Utah Conservatives Not To Blame For All Inequality...
Posted on April 06, 2008Rebecca Walsh, a columnist at the Salt Lake Tribune, is liberal-minded. She acknowledges that the inequality that permeates the University of Utah Medical School is not ?all? the fault of one ?Republican state senator,? other ?Conservative lawmakers,? and their ?fit of regressive policy-making...
Wolff At The Door: Do Race Preferences In Admissions Require Race Preferences In Graduation?
Posted on April 04, 2008According to the ?mismatch? phenomenon analyzed by UCLA law professor Richard Sander (and discussed here too many times to cite), applicants to law schools who are preferentially admitted with much lower grades and test scores than others in their entering classes tend to cluster near the bottom of their classes, graduate at a much lower rate, and pass the bar at a much lower rate...
The Color Of Disrespect
Posted on April 03, 2008Philosophy professor Laurence Thomas has caused a ruckus at Syracuse University. If [he] catches a student sending text messages or reading a newspaper in class, he?ll end the class on the spot and walk out. It doesn?t matter if there is but one texter in a large lecture of hundreds of students...
UPDATE! Attempted Deception By The ACLU
Posted on April 03, 2008My post below questioning charges of deception against proponents of the state initiatives that would prohibit states from practicing racial preferences has been UPDATED with an example of a real attempt to deceive ? by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Liberal Manifesto II
Posted on April 03, 2008In 1956, in their famous Southern Manifesto (discussed and brought up to date here), 19 Senators and 77 Representatives from the Southern states declared, among other things in opposition to colorblind equality and defense of local control of their schools, that: Without regard to the consent of the governed, outside agitators are threatening immediate and revolutionary changes in our public school systems...
Hard To Be A Despised Minority On Campus...
Posted on April 02, 2008I?m speaking, of course, of college Republicans, on whom on most campuses there is an open season and no limit. A case in point involves the College Republicans at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. They decided to invite a speaker to campus to talk about affirmative action, someone you will have seen and possibly even read ? the well-known (The Cosby Show, and many others) actor and commentator, Joseph C...
Hampshire Students Demand ?Diversity,? Segregation...
Posted on April 01, 2008According to this report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Hampshire College students walked out of class today to protest the administration?s ?insufficient commitment to fighting racism.? Among other things, the students were calling for additional faculty and staff positions in multicultural affairs, mandatory ?anti-oppression training? for all employees, and residence halls exclusively for students of color and for ?queer-identified? students...
Last Wrights?
Posted on April 01, 2008Should the disputes over Rev. Wright?s rants, and Obama?s enabling them, be allowed ?to die,? as Kevin Drum and other liberals would like? Victor Davis Hanson thinks not.
Deception?
Posted on April 01, 2008The New York Times has a surprisingly fair and balanced article this morning on ?charges of deception? leveled at the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative. Prominently displayed is picture of a black woman, Freddie Whitney with a caption stating that she ?signed what she was told was an antidiscrimination petition in this Denver parking lot...
The Dawn Of ?Post-Affirmative Action America?!
Posted on March 31, 2008On a number of occasions I have criticized Theodore Shaw, the Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense Education Fund (see here, here, here, here, here, and here for examples), but for once I hope he?s right about something. Next Thursday he will be giving the keynote address at a symposium at the Indiana University Law School entitled ?The Place of Race in Post-Affirmative Action America...
A Left-Wing Slant On The Downside Of Diversity
Posted on March 31, 2008I have written a number of times about Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam?s recent conclusions that diversity turns Americans into ?turtles? and generally makes them isolated and distrustful. Now comes Eduardo Porter, writing an ?Editorial Observer? piece in the New York Times, ? Race and the Social Contract,? that without citing Putnam makes some very similar points...
Academic Unions, Red Herrings, And The ?Affirmative Action Syndrome?
Posted on March 31, 2008According to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education today, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are elevating the issue of faculty ?diversity? to one of their primary ?bread and butter? issues. I was struck by the discussion of one professor?s research...
What He Said
Posted on March 30, 2008I don?t agree with everything Pat Buchanan says, by a long shot. But I do agree with everything he says here.
UPDATE!
Posted on March 30, 2008?An Equal Playing Field?? has been UPDATED. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to determine whether the UPDATE is serious or a joke.
Double-Reverse Discrimination?
Posted on March 30, 2008Regular readers will know that I don?t believe there is any such thing as ?reverse discrimination.? A policy or practice is either discriminatory, or it isn?t. My beliefs aside, I wonder what people who do believe that ?reverse discrimination? is distinguishable in a meaningful way from ordinary, garden variety discrimination would make of the following recent development in Louisville...
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Posted on March 30, 2008From Wikipedia: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, variously translated as ?Who watches the watchmen??, ?Who watches the watchers??, ?Who will guard the guards?? ?Who shall watch the watchers themselves??......
Joey Gonzalez: Great American!
Posted on March 29, 2008Read this review of this book. From the review... Soon after landing a newspaper job in my early 20s, an editor asked if my parents were really proud of me. The question perplexed me, and it was only years later that I understood the implication. What the editor meant was ?Hey, you?ve graduated from college and have a good job as a journalist, AND you?re a Hispanic woman...
UPDATE! [29 March]
Posted on March 29, 2008I have added to and UPDATED my post below about Newsweek?s handling of race issues.
An ?Equal Playing Field??
Posted on March 29, 2008Most defenders of racial preference insist, against all available current evidence, that they believe in the ideal of colorblind equality, in the principle that everyone should be treated ?without regard? to race, ethnicity, etc., but they immediately set their professed dedication to that principle aside by maintaining that it is impractical to implement that principle because ?the playing field is not level...
Newsweek: Obama Can?t Dodge State Civil Rights Initiatives
Posted on March 28, 2008Newsweek has an article, ?Obama?s Postracial Test,? discussing the impact the campaign to pass initiatives in five state barring racial preferences will have on Obama?s claim to be a post-racial candidate. The article is afflicted by all the usual liberal biases...
NOW He Says He ?Would Have Left...?
Posted on March 28, 2008Obama now says he would have left Trinity United if Rev. Wright had not retired and if did not apologize. ?Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn?t have felt comfortable staying at the church,? Obama said Thursday during a taping of the ABC talk show, ?The View...
Wash. Post Article (Editorial?) Opposes Equal Treatment
Posted on March 27, 2008Peter Slevin, a self-described ?staff writer? at the Washington Post, a self-described ?newspaper,? wrote an editorial yesterday, in the form of a news article, about efforts to promote what Slevin was pleased to call ?[Ward] Connerly?s self-described ?civil rights initiative...
Man Of Steele
Posted on March 27, 2008Judged by the power of his analysis in several books that are almost breathtaking in their perception, Shelby Steele really is an intellectual Superman. I have mentioned his most recent, and most timely, book, Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can?t Win, several times (here, here, here)...
More Breathtaking Educational Research...
Posted on March 26, 2008If your heart is weak or you?re easily shocked you may want to take two aspirin and sit down before reading the following, but two education researchers recently presented another dose (here?s the first one I discussed) of shocking, shocking findings at the convention of the American Education Research Association...
The Blogs On Barack
Posted on March 25, 2008Mark Paul, an old friend (don?t hold that against him), has a fair and balanced survey of the blogosphere?s reaction to The Speech on his blog, Moonbats and Wingnuts, that, well, surveys blog reactions to various issues. UPDATE Some of you may be interested in some comments I just emailed to Mark...
Critical Race Humor
Posted on March 25, 2008One thing can be said with confidence about much of the research that wafts up like malodorous mist from the swamp of our schools of education: it never ceases to amuse. Take a recent study (Please!) of 43 colleges? 30-second recruiting videotapes, described by Peter Schmidt in the Chronicle of Higher Education, based on a paper summarizing the study recently presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association...
Preferentialists Prefer Plessy
Posted on March 24, 2008On a number of occasions I?ve asked, Do Preferentialists Prefer Plessy? And my answer is always the same: yes. As I wrote here: It is one of the many ironies in the strange career of racial equality that in order to defend racial preferences liberals today rely on purposefully ambiguous language resulting from the desire of the framers of the 14th Amendment to preserve segregation and states rights, while the critics of racial preferences, who are usually viewed as conservatives, echo the radicals who wanted to proscribe all racial distinctions...
Rodriguez: ?Obama?s Brilliant Bad Speech?
Posted on March 24, 2008Gregory Rodriguez, the almost always interesting syndicated columnist, gets it exactly right in today?s Los Angeles Times: His rhetoric entangled him in race in exactly the wrong way. In some ways, Barack Obama?s speech on race last week was as brilliant as it was nuanced...
Has Barack Obama Become Jesse Jackson?
Posted on March 24, 2008After the South Carolina primary Jack Tapper of ABC News headlined one of his blog posts: ?Bubba: Obama Is Just Like Jesse Jackson,? referring to the following comment of Bill Clinton that was widely regarded as a race-injecting put-down: Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in ?84 and ?88...
What Obama Didn?t Say
Posted on March 23, 2008Most of the discussion of what Obama didn?t say in The Speech concerns, reasonably enough, his relationship with Rev. Wright. But there?s also a good deal more that he didn?t say, and insofar as one believes potential leaders should address important matters of policy in a presidential election, at least one of those other omissions, on affirmative action, may prove to be much more revealing than his eloquence on slavery and the roots of black anger...
Are Initiatives Un-Democratic?
Posted on March 23, 2008According to Marci Hamilton, a respected law professor at Yeshiva University (spending this year at Princeton), the provision for state initiative, which allow citizens to directly enact law or change their constitutions, is not a good idea. In a thoughtful and interesting article she describes how the anger, bitterness, and bad behavior of a group of BAMN demonstrators at a Federalist Society panel at the University of Michigan supports her dislike of direct democracy...
And You Wondered Why Obama Stuck With His Church
Posted on March 22, 2008Over the years I?ve discussed the work of Colbert King, a deputy editor at the Washington Post, on a number of occasions (one, two, three, four, five, six). But his column today may be the prizewinner, answering as it does the question that everyone has been asking: ?Why Obama Stands With His Church...
More Obamanut Racial Inanity
Posted on March 21, 2008You know we?re getting overloaded with racial inanity when even I am getting tired of it. Yesterday, only two days after AOS (After Obama?s Speech), we had a double dose. In Dose 1, after all but calling his grandmother a racist in The Speech, Obama described her as ?a typical white person...
Race, The ?Great Alibi,? And The ?Treasury Of Virtue?
Posted on March 21, 2008Discussing The Speech this morning, Charles Krauthammer wrote that it played on ?white guilt.? Obama?s purpose in the speech was to put Wright?s outrages in context. By context, Obama means history. And by history, he means the history of white racism...
Krazy Kristof
Posted on March 20, 2008Nicholas Kristof?s OpEd?s are almost useful barometers of which way the winds are blowing in liberal America (or at least liberal Manhattan, often but not always the same). Today?s column suggests that the biggest disagreements among liberals over Obama?s speech is whether it was the greatest oration since the Sermon on the Mount or only since Martin Luther King?s ?I Have a Dream...
Liberal Conceit
Posted on March 20, 2008Katharine Seelye?s article in today?s New York Times looks at Pennsylvania in asking, ?Did Obama?s Speech Reach the Voters He Needs?? Her answer seems to be, probably not, but what I found most interesting was the following quote from former member of Congress from Philadelphia, and current Clinton-supporting Penn professor, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who praised the speech...
Judge Upholds Michigan?s Prop. 2!
Posted on March 18, 2008BAMN and friends never abandoned their effort to find some court, somewhere, that would tell the citizens of Michigan that they lack the authority to prohibit their state, through a constitutional amendment, from discriminating on the basis of race. Now they have failed one more time...
Obama?s Speech
Posted on March 18, 2008Read it here. It?s much better than my partial draft. I think it was a great speech, and if a speech can save his candidacy my bet is that this one will. It left some questions unanswered, such as why he dissembled in implying that he didn?t know of Wright?s ?incendiary? remarks until he began his campaign, or why he said (I believe falsely) that ?typical? black churches applaud ministers telling congregations to sing ?God Damn American,? and a few other decidedly un-new politics of hope evasions and misdirections, but I suspect these will be forgiven...
Two editorial writers for the Kansas
Posted on March 17, 2008Two editorial writers for the Kansas City Star ask how the wreck of Wright will affect some important endorsers of Obama in the midwest. Two of Barack Obama?s most important endorsements from America?s Heartland are from Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill and Kansas Gov...
Are Mainstream Black Churches Hotbeds Of Vituperative Anti-Americanism?
Posted on March 17, 2008It may well be that the most disturbing defamation brought to light in the controversy surrounding Rev. Jeremiah Wright was not one of Wright?s many slanders against the United States but what I think is a slander against black churches in the United States by Barack Obama...
Here?s What Obama Should Say
Posted on March 17, 2008In an attempt to put the Wright wreck behind him Obama plans to give a speech tomorrow on ?the larger issue of race in this campaign.? Here?s a part of what he could say to redeem himself and his campaign: My desire to see our country transcend old racial antagonisms, and my belief that I could help bring about that transcendence, was my primary motive for entering this campaign...
Is Robert Novak Blind?
Posted on March 17, 2008In an otherwise good column on the Ferraro affair, Robert Novak writes that Obama, as the first African-American with a real chance to become president, has exposed an ugly racial divide in what was supposed to be a colorblind Democratic Party. Assuming he actually believes this astounding misunderstanding, Robert Novak must be the only person in America who believes today?s Democratic Party thinks it is ?supposed to be colorblind...
Stupidest Wright Wreck Comment (So Far)
Posted on March 17, 2008Thomas Edsall, political editor of the Huffington Post, appears to think that the most important political fact about the Wright wreck is that it has made conservatives angry. Thus, his attempt to gauge the amount of damage is to survey the liberal reaction to the ?explosion of commentary in the conservative blogosphere...
Stark Democrats
Posted on March 17, 2008Kristina Wilfore is executive director of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which supports ?progressive? ballot initiatives. In an address to the Take Back America conference in Washington (presumably they are trying to take back America from the people who are trying to take back their states via initiatives BISC doesn?t like), she described supporters of initiatives prohibiting racial preference as mere pawns of a right-wing agenda...
What Did Obama Know, And When Did He Know It?
Posted on March 16, 2008Obama has said that he only learned of the ?controversial? nature of some of Rev. Jeremiah Wright?s sermons on the eve of his presidential campaign, an assertion that has led many to wonder how he could have been oblivious to Wright?s extreme views during the first 19 years of his membership in Wright?s Trinity United Church of Christ...
The ?Affirmative Action Candidate?
Posted on March 15, 2008Someone should tell Susan Estrich, former Dukakis campaign manager and continuing Democratic talking head, that when in a hole one should stop digging. Offering her 1¢ worth on the Ferraro firestorm (originally it was 2¢ worth, but I devalued it based on content), Estrich writes: I don't think she in any way meant to put Obama down by pointing to his race as an essential element of his appeal...
Judgment?
Posted on March 15, 2008Most of the comment I?ve seen about Obama?s relationship with his ranting, raving minister misses the point, as do his various replies yesterday. The point isn?t whether he agrees with Rev. Jeremiah Wright?s anti-American, Farrakhanian fulminations; it?s his judgment in choosing him as a pastor and mentor and remaining in close association with him for 20 years, until he realized the association might cause him political problems...
?How Mismatches Devastate Minority Students?
Posted on March 15, 2008Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego, is a new member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Her Statement accompanying the Commission?s report on affirmative action in law schools is a very good summary of UCLA law professor Richard Sander?s ?mismatch? research, and its implications, on which the report is largely based.
Why Is Obama Unique?
Posted on March 14, 2008With so many black members of Congress, why have there been so few black senators and why is Obama the first black candidate with a real chance to be president? According to a fascinating article in today?s Wall Street Journal, Abigail Thernstrom argues with great force that a great deal of the blame must be laid at the feet of the Voting Rights Act...
The Blinding, Self-Defeating Arrogance Of Preferentialists
Posted on March 14, 2008ColorLines has a long article about the campaign to eliminate racial preferences that, even with its undisguised pro-preference biases, is better than one might expect. One of the things that makes it interesting is that the preferentialists it approvingly quotes, recognizing a friendly forum, are a bit less guarded and circumspect than when they are talking to the mainstream press...
UPATE!
Posted on March 14, 2008I have now [14 March 9:45 p.m.] UPDATED Ferocious Response To Ferraro?s Remarks for the fourth time. Please read that UPDATE (and the previous three) if you haven?t.
?The Malaise Of Enforced Inequality?
Posted on March 11, 2008?We live side by side but not together.? That?s how one person recently described ?the fallout from decades of race-based affirmative action policies.? People, she said, ?were fed up.? Those people are in Malaysia, which just handed the governing party a surprise rebuke that was based heavily on a long-simmering rejection of Malaysia?s ?affirmative action? policies...
Ferocious Response To Ferraro?s Remarks
Posted on March 11, 2008By now everyone knows that Geraldine Ferraro, former Vice Presidential candidate, recently said that if Obama was a white man he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is...
?Diversity? Means Being ?Uncomfortable? And Saying You?re Sorry
Posted on March 11, 2008?In diversity,? says Terryl J. Ross, director of Oregon State University?s office of community and diversity, ?maybe the two most important words are ?I?m sorry.?? And LaVonda Wagner, who became Oregon State?s women?s basketball coach despite her concerns about OSU?s lack of ?diversity,? said at a recent Martin Luther King breakfast meeting that ?in dealing with issues of race, Oregon State needed to ?get comfortable being uncomfortable...
What?s Black And White And Red All Over?
Posted on March 11, 2008According to eminent Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson in a New York Times OpEd today, it?s the red phone in Hillary?s 3 a.m. ad. After ?[r]epeated watching of the ad on YouTube,? Patterson writes, I realized that I had only too often in my study of America?s racial history seen images much like these, and the sentiments to which they allude...
Democrats : Rules :: Oil : Water
Posted on March 10, 2008Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama nor any elected, appointed, or self-appointed Democrat that I recall raised any objection when the Democratic National Committee voted to deprive Michigan and Florida of their convention delegates if they violated the DNC ?rule? against moving up their primaries...
What Is It With Brits And Horror Films?
Posted on March 09, 2008Mark Steyn: Well, we will have Hillary Clinton to kick around some more, at least for another few weeks. The Mummy (as my radio pal Hugh Hewitt calls her) kicked open the sarcophagus door and, despite the rotting bandages dating back to Iowa, began staggering around terrorizing folks all over again...
Is This Any Way To ?Transcend? Race?
Posted on March 08, 2008Writing in the Weekly Standard this week, Stephen Hayes gets it exactly right. In the speech that launched his meteoric rise in national politics, the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama called for a politics of hope, denounced ?those who are preparing to divide us,? and offered a direct challenge...
Harvard: ?Affirmative Action?s Damning Downsides?
Posted on March 07, 2008This interesting Harvard Crimson article argues that ?one undeniable downside? of affirmative action at Harvard is ?the element of disrespect it introduces onto our campus.?
Krauthammer?s Near Miss
Posted on March 07, 2008Charles Krauthammer almost always gets almost everything right. His column today, however, contained an uncharacteristic near miss. His basic point ? that Obama?s promise to transcend race, rise above the old politics, and unite us once again as one nation is contradicted by his own performance in the Senate ? is certainly true, but Krauthammer misses what I think is the most fundamental and telling evidence of that contradiction: Obama?s utterly conventional, utterly partisan, utter old Democratic orthodoxy on racial preferences...
Reading As Racial Harassment
Posted on March 06, 2008Keith John Sampson, in his early 50s, does janitorial work at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), where he has been accumulating credits toward a degree in communications studies. I