Legal Commentary

The Color Of Stale

Posted on May 26, 2008
Washington 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, 2008
It 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, 2008
Prof. 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, 2008
A 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...

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Obama?s Manager?s ?Solution? To An Interesting Problem

Posted on May 20, 2008
Roger 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, 2008
In 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, 2008
We 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, 2008
Obama, 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, 2008
Morehouse 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, 2008
What 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, 2008
There 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, 2008
Howard 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, 2008
Over 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, 2008
I?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, 2008
USA 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, 2008
Last 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, 2008
Here?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, 2008
Richard 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, 2008
Lately 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, 2008
Earlier 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, 2008
Opponents 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, 2008
John 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, 2008
Opponents 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, 2008
I 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, 2008
I 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, 2008
I 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, 2008
From 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, 2008
Please re-read this post, on your way to reading the new UPDATE to it.

Want More ?Diversity?? Minimize Test Scores

Posted on May 02, 2008
In 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, 2008
Thanks to F.I.R.E., reading in public is no longer as racial harassment at Indiana University -Purdue University.

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