In his much-discussed recent Wall Street Journal op ed, Virginia Senator James Webb makes some good points about affirmative action and race, but also some key mistakes and omissions. On the plus side, Webb’s article highlights the contradictions between the “diversity” and compensatory justice rationales for affirmative action. He also correctly suggests that slavery and segregation inflicted considerable harm on southern whites as well as blacks; it is therefore a mistake to view these injustices as primarily a transfer of ill-gotten wealth from one race to another. On the negative side, Webb is very unclear as to his own position on affirmative action. He also seems to blame racism and the historic economic backwardness of the South on the machinations of a small elite. The reality was more complicated. Low-income southern whites were often much more supportive of racism and segregation than economic elites were, and Jim Crow might have been less virulent without their support.
I. Competing Rationales for Affirmative Action.
One of Webb’s best points is that affirmative action has resulted in preferences for groups that cannot claim to be victims of massive, systematic injustices inflicted in the United States:
In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived….
The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all “people of color”—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites….
This state of affairs highlights the contradictions between the compensatory justice and “diversity” rationales for affirmative action, which I previously discussed here, here, and here. Under the latter, it may be permissible to give preferences to any group with a supposedly different or unique perspective. Under the former, recent immigrants and other minorities who have not been victims of massive large-scale discrimination in the US should not get preferences. Even among black beneficiaries of affirmative action at elite universities, a significant percentage are recent West Indian and African immigrants.
Like Webb, I tend to be skeptical about the “diversity” rationale and at least somewhat sympathetic to the compensatory justice argument. Unfortunately, Webb doesn’t make clear whether his position is that affirmative action preferences should be abolished entirely or limited to African-Americans. If the latter, should they be limited to descendants of victims of slavery and Jim Crow, or should recent immigrants continue to be included (as they usually are now)?
II. Jim Crow Racism as a Negative-Sum Game.
Webb’s other good point is that whites are not a “monolith,” emphasizing that the historic economic backwardness of the South greatly harmed southern whites as well as blacks. He could have made this point stronger by noting that that backwardness was in large part the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. As economic historians have documented, these institutions prevented the South from fully utilizing the abilities of some one third of its population and tended to deter economic innovation and outside investment. It’s no accident that the economic rise of the “New South” really took off only after the Jim Crow system was eliminated in the 1960s.
Slavery and Jim Crow are sometimes seen as a massive transfer of wealth from blacks to whites, a kind of zero-sum game where one group plundered the other. Advocates of reparations argue that the beneficiaries of injustice must therefore compensate the former by returning their ill-gotten gains. There is no doubt that some whites benefited from the system. Overall, however, slavery and Jim Crow were negative-sum games that harmed both groups (albeit blacks suffered much more). The net impact of slavery and segregation on southern white wealth was almost certainly negative, once we take into account the harm caused by the resulting economic backwardness, the expenses associated with repressing blacks, and the massive destruction wrought by the Civil War.
III. Webb and the Role of Poor Whites.
Unfortunately, Webb seems to treat poorer whites as passive victims “dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power.” In reality, poorer southern whites tended to be strong supporters of slavery and segregation. In the Jim Crow era, they often supported the system much more strongly than wealthier whites and business interests did. For as far back as we have survey data, support for racism and segregation among whites was inversely correlated with income and education. When Jim Crow laws were first established in the late 19th century, elite business interests often opposed the system because they feared it might damage their economic interests. Populist political pressure overcame that opposition. Populist racism often led political elites to take more segregationist positions than they personally preferred. For example, George Wallace’s biographer Dan Carter documents how Wallace started out his career as a relative racial moderate, but switched to a hard-line segregationist position after he got “outniggered” (as Wallace put it) by a more segregationist opponent in his first campaign for governor.
The racism of low-income whites was in part the result of indoctrination by elites and state governments. It was also partly the result of rational political ignorance and irrationality. Still, the fact remains that that racism, Jim Crow, and southern economic backwardness were not just the result of manipulation by evil elites. The masses had a hand too.
PlugInMonster says:
Wow – so basically let’s continue the endless racial quotas…
July 24, 2010, 7:45 pmIlya Somin says:
Wow — so basically let’s continue the endless racial quotas…
Nowhere in the post did I say any such thing. The bad behavior of many poor whites 50 or 100 years ago says little about the proper role of affirmative action today.
July 24, 2010, 7:57 pmPlugInMonster says:
I don’t see what’s the point of bringing up past bad behavior of poor whites in 2010. Unless you’re trying to justify racial quotas and demonize the Tea Party.
July 24, 2010, 8:01 pmbillo says:
It may be that Webb means it more in terms of etiology. There is a wonderful book by Alan Taylor called “The American Colonies:The Settling of North America.” In it he points out how *very* different the various colonies really were — something we forget in today’s homogenized society. While a rather casual racism is fairly universal among all peoples, why, he asks was it so pronounced in the South — particularly in contrast to the relative lack of it in the North?
The answer, according to Taylor, is that poor whites in the South did not have the opportunities that they had in the North. In particular, in contrast to the small holdings of the North, the Southern colonies were mostly held by very large landholders and planters, often second sons of plantation owners in the West Indies. This meant that, unlike the North, in spite of trackless wilderness, there was actually almost no land available for homesteading. Correspondingly, wealth in the South was much more concentrated in its aristocracy. Further, many of the poor whites in the South were bound in some way to the land and could not easily move north. While poor whites in the North could go the west and build a homestead, the poor whites in the South were essentially doomed to a life of servitude. Add that to the extraordinarily high mortality in the South (early settlers suffered an almost 25% five-year mortality, due primarily to diseases not common in the North), the life of the poor Southern white was pretty desperate.
Given a rather large oppressed population of free whites, the planters feared a violent upheaval of white free men more than they did a slave rebellion. What could the gentry do? The answer was simple. They promulgated a race-based caste system, fundamentally telling poor whites “Hey, your life sucks, but at least you’re not black.” This served two excellent purposes. First, it provided a buffer between the aristocracy and the enslaved. Second, provided a sense of status to the oppressed whites and of connection a fraternity with their wealthy white oppressors.
The finding then, that racism became increasingly virulent the poorer people were is hardly surprising. As you take away more and more from these folks, they have to rely more and more on this artificial and institutionalized caste system for their sense of worth and a vicarious sense of aristocracy.
July 24, 2010, 8:06 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
billo is 150% correct.
It’s not just race in the south, it’s class, in a big way.
PlugInMonster, there is a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis, TN, in a city-owned park named after him. Tell me that all that racial stuff is past. Yes, I know the previous black mayor discouraged a move to rename the park and put the statue back in Elmwood Cemetary where it belongs. As we know, one way to stay in power is to encourage grievances among your constituency.
July 24, 2010, 8:12 pmPlugInMonster says:
I really would like to know why I as a Russian Jew am to be held accountable for Southern white racism. Please explain the impeccable logic there. Oh yeah because I’m white. Fuck liberals, every last one of them.
July 24, 2010, 8:13 pmcboldt says:
Just tossing in a couple of bombs, because I don’t have a solution to the problem from the point of government policy. I think affirmative action is morally wrong and bad for society; but there is no way politics permits it to be shut off without lots of talk.
July 24, 2010, 8:16 pmI recall Justice O’Connor’s remarks in the Bakke case (I think), roughly that 25 years more, and then using race as a factor might be unconstitutional.
And I recall Alan Keyes radical proposal to provide reparations (same issues above, which people are entitled?), in the form of a one or two generation exclusion from income tax. This has obvious problems, one being that quite a few don’t pay income tax anyway, so the reparation is -0-. But the proposal does have the property of being time-limited.
Laura(southernxyl) says:
PIM, I am a white southerner whose family goes back here as far as we can trace (which ain’t far b/c we were those aforementioned poor white).
I do not feel that I am being held accountable for Southern white racism.
It’s a lot easier to let go of the defensiveness and agree that people have been SOBs to each other, here and elsewhere since the dawn of time.
Just agree that slavery and Jim Crow were evil and that racism of every kind is crap, and get on with it. No one’s asking you to do a personal mea culpa for anything.
July 24, 2010, 8:17 pmPlugInMonster says:
Except I get the privilege of being called a racist because I oppose Obama and the Democrats. You think it’s ok for Chucky Schumer to say “Teabaggers” and for the NAACP to tell the TPers to denounce racists when there is no national tea party? Where is the media on this? Oh yeah JOURNOLIST….
July 24, 2010, 8:20 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
PIM, sticks and stones.
People with no ethics say all kinds of things to try to get their agenda accomplished. Why rent that room in your brain? And for pete’s sake, why let that kind of person have any input at all into your moral compass? I don’t care if fifty people line up and tell me, to my face, that as a white person I must be a racist. I know that I have to please God and my conscience. I am accountable to no one else for what’s in my heart.
July 24, 2010, 8:24 pmcboldt says:
While I’m sure they aren’t workable solutions, I’ve expressed one radical idea that put opposing interests in tension, in a way that gives each “entitled” person a choice.
July 24, 2010, 8:34 pmEarned Income Credit (or any other form of government assistance), or vote. Pick one or the other. This shuts off the ability to vote money for yourself.
I’m interested in the public reaction to Webb’s remarks. The conservative reaction, so far, is that it’s election-season talk (he’s worried about his seat), and that his voting record is not aligned with his rhetoric. I wonder if he’ll get pushback from the other direction.
Patent Lawyer says:
Actually, there’s a good, conservative/libertarian reason to bring it up–the narrative Webb is pushing, that poor whites were just victims stirred into racist nuttiness by evil puppetmaster elites, is one which encourages the replacement of race warfare with class warfare. This isn’t surprising, coming from a liberal Democrat, but is something that should be resisted. The remaining points of Webb’s article argue against continued affirmative action and race-based policies; this particular point argues for continued redistribution of income and an alliance of poor whites and poor blacks against rich and middle class whites. I don’t think you want that.
July 24, 2010, 8:35 pmKevin the prole says:
My comment for the thread below won’t post, but would be relevant here so here’s a try:
Thomas J. Webb: “There’s a cost to society when it fails to be a hospitable place for young creatives. And — news flash — American Blacks have been finding a place in Islam for the very reason that they have been marginalized for almost a century now.”
There probably are precious few places in the solar system more hospitable and affording more opportunity to creative youth, to include Blacks, these days than here in the USA.
Are we thinking that American Blacks are still being marginalized, though? I can’t keep up with the latest version of history (or non-march of, apparently, over the past 100 years.) All I know is that I have a black President, US Attorney General, mayor, city councilmen, police chief, Senator, neighbors, lawyer, and contractors. I should be so marginalized.
That said, there are still too many young people, especially urban blacks, who are vulnerable to the drug culture and incarceration (draconian drug law) and who live in a subculture of hyper sexism, gangs, learning is white attitudes and single-parent poor households. Opportunities are there but it’s difficult to get some to care about them. Other young blacks own their lives and flourish, despite destructive circumstances and values around them.
I’ve seen some marvelous kids who don’t look like me or you. We all have on TV, the net, sports, music, science, schools and in the news. Politicians and community leaders too often harp on why these kids have it so bad instead of showing them where to reach so that they can achieve for themselves.
July 24, 2010, 8:37 pmBT says:
Plug In, I am with Laura on this one. I, too, have been called racist for the very same reasons you have. Don’t let them get into your head and don’t expect any help from the popular culture or news media as they have too much at stake making us out to be the bad guys. I know how I live my life and what I think and feel and more importantly how I treat others who are different than me. As long as those things are in good order, I don’t worry about what others think. It ain’t worth the time or energy.
July 24, 2010, 8:44 pmPlugInMonster says:
There are practical consequences for not fighting back against the left-wing racists. I believe a full blown racial war is on.
July 24, 2010, 8:53 pmAlanDownunder says:
No-one abhors reverse racism like an unreverse racist.
The one genuine example of “political correctness” in US politics is the one that decries using the word “racist” to describe racism when there’s no doubt that’s what it is.
Purists who genuinely abhor all forms of racism still tend not to sweat the small stuff.
July 24, 2010, 8:55 pmcboldt says:
On one hand, Webb seems to be saying “end affirmative action.” But then he says this:
Maybe he’ll clarify his ultimate conclusion with some specifics.
July 24, 2010, 8:59 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
PIM, what exactly do you mean by “full blown”? And “racial war”? Is it us against the black folks, is that it?
July 24, 2010, 9:00 pmPES says:
Frankly, f— you right back. How is it possibly consistent in your mind to rant against the evils of typecasting and over-generalization, while simultaneously typecasting and over-generalizing? Yes, all liberals play the race card, all the time.
July 24, 2010, 9:02 pmwolfefan says:
Jim Webb, one of my Senators, is a pretty conservative Democrat based on his votes – link below. Reagan didn’t seem to think he was too liberal either. http://www.voteview.org/senrank.asp
July 24, 2010, 9:09 pmZoolbia says:
It was rational for lower-class Southern whites to fear blacks the most, since liberated blacks would compete first against the lower tranches of the white population. Upper-class whites had less to fear from black liberation, so naturally they feared it less.
Look, suppose you’re white but not that bright and definitely not rich. Jim Crow keeps you in the upper half of the population, but if there were open competition you would sink to the bottom quartile. Now, do you favor abolishing Jim Crow?
It’s a different thing if you’re white in the top quartile and expect to stay there (or if you’re black in the bottom quartile and want to move up to the middle).
NB: It was wrong– a crime– to maintain Jim Crow. The US was right to abolish it at long last. But it was good for some people (most crimes benefit those who commit them so long as retribution never comes– which it often doesn’t).
July 24, 2010, 9:11 pmleo marvin says:
Ilya,
Didn’t you mean to include the highlighted word?
July 24, 2010, 9:19 pmcboldt says:
Ugh .. not Bakke. Grutter v. Bollinger
This is a constitutional issue, not a statutory one. What does Webb propose Congress to do?
July 24, 2010, 9:20 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I don’t think that 25 years is a hard deadline. It may be treated as such, since it came from Justice O’Connor, but I don’t think she meant it that way.
July 24, 2010, 9:22 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Because a black man is President? Good thinking.
July 24, 2010, 9:24 pmPersonFromPorlock says:
A point I’ve raised on several threads recently: if we’re going to take the claimed importance of racial diversity to education seriously, shouldn’t we be thinking about reinstating anti-miscegenation laws? There’s not going to be a lot of racial diversity around once everybody looks like Tiger Woods, and education – surely a compelling government interest! – must therefore suffer.
It’s hard lines when the only school in the country that’s acting to preserve the future of quality education is Bob Jones University. And I believe even they have crawfished now.
Of course, we could also wonder just how important ‘diversity’ really is to education….
July 24, 2010, 9:25 pmSuperSkeptic says:
I would suggest that this attitude is alive and well today – even in the North.
July 24, 2010, 9:27 pmbill says:
Why is that again? Black and Hispanics receiving moderate bonuses in college admissions=race war?
July 24, 2010, 9:28 pmCornellian says:
The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed. But the extrapolation of this logic to all “people of color”—especially since 1965, when new immigration laws dramatically altered the demographic makeup of the U.S.—moved affirmative action away from remediation and toward discrimination, this time against whites.
This always struck me as one of the worst aspects of affirmative action, not just the completely superfluous “mission creep” but also the somewhat insulting notion that the only two categories that exist are White and Non-White. This failure to recognize any diversity among the circumstances of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians etc., to say nothing of people of multi-racial ancestry, or the differences between American Blacks and Black immigrants from Africa (for example) is an ironic outcome for those who champion affirmative action in the name of diversity.
If you don’t buy the currently popular diversity rationale for affirmative action, it’s hard to see any justification for affirmative action other than in certain limited circumstances for African Americans and possibly Native Americans.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind promoting diversity by getting rid of affirmative action for White people, namely legacy admissions to elite universities. That would free up a lot of freshman slots for people who actually deserve them.
July 24, 2010, 9:32 pmJoshN1 says:
I am shocked by Jim Webb’s article. He obviously has no clue what it means to a minority in America. Does Webb seriously believe that Benjamin Rein Brady will not face serious obstacles in life given his Latin American ancestory?
July 24, 2010, 9:33 pmCornellian says:
There are practical consequences for not fighting back against the left-wing racists. I believe a full blown racial war is on.
To the extent that conservative talk radio and Republican campaign rhetoric caters to that viewpoint, they’re committing demographic suicide. They may be able to win the 2012 election with that platform, but at the cost of losing pretty much every national election from about 2020 forwards.
July 24, 2010, 9:35 pmPlugInMonster says:
Yes ALL liberals play the race card, without exception.
July 24, 2010, 9:36 pmPlugInMonster says:
What utter nonsense.
July 24, 2010, 9:37 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
For certain eccentric definitions of the term “liberals”.
July 24, 2010, 9:39 pmMnZ says:
I think the racial spoils system will collapse around that time anyway. There are only so many spoils to give out. Asian-Americans have already been cut off. My guess is that white Latin Americans will be next.
July 24, 2010, 9:41 pmRoscoe says:
It pains me to speak ill of Mr. Webb, who was a hero to young Marine officers back in the seventies as well as being the author of one of the Greatest Books Ever Written. That being said, the hypocrisy here is fairly remarkable. Here Mr. Webb gives us high minded talk about how the government should ensure “that artificial distinctions such as race do not determine outcomes.” Yet not too long ago he was a crucial vote in the passage of a financial reform bill that installs an “Office of Minority and Woman Inclusion” in 20 separate federal agencies.
July 24, 2010, 9:43 pmcboldt says:
– I don’t think that 25 years is a hard deadline. –
July 24, 2010, 9:44 pmNeither do I. I thought (and still think) it was an absurd statement. “It’s constitutional now, but it won’t be in 25 years”
bill says:
And that surely has soured Asians on the Democratic Party… oh wait, the outright racism of the Republican Party his driven them to support the Democrats.
July 24, 2010, 9:49 pmrpt says:
The “Tea Party” demonizes itself.
July 24, 2010, 9:51 pmrpt says:
How have you suffered here?
July 24, 2010, 9:52 pmMalvolio says:
You mean, because of Forrest’s association with the KKK? FDR ordered the establishment of massive concentration camps for ethnic minorities. Do statues of FDR mean that anti-Asian prejudice is alive and well?
July 24, 2010, 9:53 pmleo marvin says:
PlugInMonster,
Careful. If your head explodes, the liberals will blame white people.
July 24, 2010, 9:55 pmrpt says:
There is more commonality between poor blacks and white and the diminishing middle class of all races than between the white middle class and the rich, using your term.
July 24, 2010, 9:56 pmbill says:
No. FDR’s other contributions to society (whether you agree with them or not) are a lot more important than Bedford’s tactical innovations/role as a general. Good attempt at throwing criticism of FDR into the debate though.
July 24, 2010, 9:59 pm1040 says:
are you advocating rampant sodomy with the enemy? did you check with your masters that that’s ok?
July 24, 2010, 9:59 pmathEIst says:
Hey, Plug-In Monster, YOU came to America and became an American. We have a history. You buy into that. Otherwise, go home. Russia has a much worse history. Enjoy it!
July 24, 2010, 10:00 pm1040 says:
also, all liberals are male, scottish, and true.
July 24, 2010, 10:03 pmJay says:
He’s not up for re-election until 2012.
July 24, 2010, 10:07 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
How about Forrest being a general in the military of a country that was at war with the USA? A country in which, from its conception to its demise, black people had no, not just civil, but human rights? Black folks in Memphis who drive down Union Avenue have to see that every day. You want to tell them all that bad stuff is in the past?
July 24, 2010, 10:09 pmThe Awful Truth says:
And that surely has soured Asians on the Democratic Party… oh wait, the outright racism of the Republican Party his driven them to support the Democrats.
Nikki Haley says hi.
Do you really think the GOP’s share of the Asian voter will go down in 2010? Care to wager on that?
July 24, 2010, 10:12 pmA. says:
YFWGI.
July 24, 2010, 10:13 pmbill says:
First, citing a single Asian politician doesn’t exactly mean much. Second, I’m referring to changes in voting patterns among Asian-Americans over the last 20 years, that have occurred largely as a result of Republican demagoguery on immigration and religion. In 2010, I suspect the difference between the Dems share of the Asian vote and of the overall vote will be similar to what it was in 2006 and 2008.
July 24, 2010, 10:36 pmThe Awful Truth says:
To the extent that conservative talk radio and Republican campaign rhetoric caters to that viewpoint, they’re committing demographic suicide. They may be able to win the 2012 election with that platform, but at the cost of losing pretty much every national election from about 2020 forwards.
You’ve made this argument before and seem to think changing demographics are magic converyor belt guaranteeing future Democratic electoral supremacy.
I think this position is naive for two reasons:
1) The predominant driver of demographic change is the increased Mexican immigrant population. In order for this to have its full political impact, an immigration amnesty would have to been enacted. It has been widely assumed that amnesty was inevitable. (I assumed this myself up until recently, and I’m an opponent of amnesty)
I think any honest analysis would have conclude that after the experience of the last four years that amnesty is not inevitable, but in fact politically impossible. Under Bush, you had the combination of liberal majorities in both houses of congress with a strongly pro-amnesty Republican President. This was just about the ideal political situation for passing amnesty, but it failed miserably. Since 2009, you have liberal supermajorities in congress with most liberal President since… Johnson? FDR? Maybe ever? Still total, abject failure. If amnesty can’t pass in these circumstances it never will.
Without amnesty, the magic conveyor belt breaks down.
2) You assume the increased Hispanic (mostly Mexican) population will not create additional political changes. This is certain to be false.
If Mexican voters become the largest single block in the Democratic party, they will become more assertive. They will expect the party to reflect their concerns and these concerns are not the same as the rest of the members of the party.
For example Mexicans tend to be socially conservative. So demographically social liberalism is doomed in the Democratic party. They care less about environmental issues then bread and butter social welfare concerns. What will people like you do when you have no outlet for your social and environmental views inside the Democrats? Form a Green Party probably.
July 24, 2010, 10:43 pmThomas J. Webb says:
It’s common for intellectuals, especially on the left, to give common people too much credit. I’ve always seen this as one of Chomps’ biggest flaws. For example (not related to Chompsky but to giving too much credit to common people), we often hear the story that the Catholic church is to fault for anti-semitism in Europe. The story, naturally, is much more complex with the Catholic church first showing resistance to people disliking Jesus’ people then later using the pre-existing racism for their own benefit.
One thing I must say in defense of the poor southern White is that you have to go back in time a little further. While there was slavery, it was the rich Whites who benefited from slavery who wanted the most to keep it alive. Due to folk economic beliefs, poor southern Whites might have feared Blacks entering the workforce, but the fact that they suffered from having to compete with slave labor must have not escaped at least some of them.
(and yes, I am related to Jim Webb)
July 24, 2010, 10:50 pmThe Awful Truth says:
Bobby Jindall says hi too.
July 24, 2010, 10:55 pmbill says:
First off, your point on demographics is dubious. Even if you discount illegal immigration (which is probably wrong- you say amnesty is unlikely, what do you think will happen to the 13 million illegal immigrants here instead?), over the long run the groups that make up the Democratic Party’s base (aside from blacks) will become more significant politically while those that make up the Republican Party’s base will decline in significance.
Second, your point on cultural issues rather ignores the evidence. African-Americans are considerably more socially conservative than Hispanics (look at Prop 8 exit polls, Gallup and other surveys of religious belief and such for evidence), but that social conservatism has had very little effect on the Democratic Party. Also, Asians (a fast growing demographic that strongly supports the Dems) are, on the issues that define American cultural politics, far to the left of the general population.
July 24, 2010, 10:56 pmThomas J. Webb says:
Two more quick points
Firstly, Jim Webb has stated elsewhere that affirmative action should either A) only apply to Blacks or B) if it is to apply to “people of color”, it should also apply to traditionally disadvantaged White groups (e.g., Hill People, to use the politically correct term for hillbillies)
Secondly, I am also guilty of giving the common people too much credit. I think recognizing rational ignorance is a way to give them credit without giving their views on complex issues too much credit, however.
July 24, 2010, 11:01 pmbill says:
Let me save you the trouble of listing Anh Cao, Charles Djou and Steve Austria. Obviously there are some Asian Republicans. Given that in 08, a good year for the Democrats, around 33% of Asians voted Republican, it would be rather bizarre if there were no Asians Republicans between the House and the state governorships. That doesn’t address my point at all though.
July 24, 2010, 11:04 pmDavid M. Nieporent says:
I guess that depends whether you view the economy as a zero-sum game, such that it’s more important what “quartile” you’re in than how wealthy you are.
July 24, 2010, 11:08 pmHarvey says:
The nation-state is a racial concept. The collapse of racial solidarity has left patriotism without its true foundation. The Old South was the bulwark protecting us all from the New World Order, the ultimate in “diversity.” The invading hordes love not the Constitutional Republic created by dead white men. After us shall come the deluge.
July 24, 2010, 11:12 pmyankee says:
Wow, not just one but two Republican politicians who aren’t white. Talk about winning the diversity Olympics!
July 24, 2010, 11:14 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
David, there’s also the psychological issue of “I may be poor and live in a trailor, but at least I’m white.” If there’s always somebody worse off than you, then you’re not rock-bottom. Like the “thank God for Mississippi” phenomenon when education issues in other southern states are discussed.
July 24, 2010, 11:15 pmbill says:
Well, utility isn’t just determined by absolute wealth. People’s happiness changes depending on the wealth of other people and that isn’t something you can brush off with the typical disparaging “not a zero sum game” argument that gets trotted out ad nauseum.
July 24, 2010, 11:15 pmyankee says:
If you’re like most people, there’s going to be a lot of truth to that. People like status!
July 24, 2010, 11:23 pmMnZ says:
Bill…that fits nicely into my racial spoils point. Asians in America continued to vote Democratic given their views on cultural issues. However, the make-up of Asians is changing in the country due to immigration (i.e., becoming more Indian). It remains to be seen what effects this immigration has on Asians cultural views.
Anyway, Latinos and African Americans tend to be more conservative on social issues. Polls that I have seen indicate that one of the main driving factors for Latinos and Blacks for voting Democratic is (unsurprisingly) that Democrats are viewed as bigger supporters of the interests of their group. I question how stable this coalition is given the conflicting aims of Latinos and African Americans (e.g., immigration). Moreover, Latinos as a voting bloc will probably become more fragmented over time given the diversity in the group (e.g., “inauthentic Latinos” such as Miguel Estrada).
July 24, 2010, 11:26 pmThomas J. Webb says:
Just like Republicans took poor Southern Whites, they very well can do the same to [poor] Blacks and Hispanics. All groups are poor, socially conservative (point for Republicans) and economically populist (point for Democrats).
July 24, 2010, 11:33 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I had a black coworker back in Memphis who had extremely harsh views about homosexuality. She also had harsh views about women on welfare, and complained bitterly about taxes. And was genuinely horrified when I jokingly told her she was going to have to start voting Republican. Social conservatism isn’t going to be sufficient to get the black, Hispanic, or anything else vote for Republicans as long as people think they are supposed to vote Democrat.
July 24, 2010, 11:39 pmLumpy says:
Are you a “Russian Jew” or are you white?
July 24, 2010, 11:40 pmMnZ says:
Remember that a lot of affirmative action programs are targeted at middle class and upper class minorities. For example, the University of Michigan point system was structured such that only middle class and rich minorities benefited from the inclusion of race as a factor. Similarly, government contracts targeted at minority-owned businesses directly benefit middle class and rich minorities.
If there are children and business owners in her family, can you blame her?
July 24, 2010, 11:53 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I can blame anybody who votes in what they believe to be their interest at the expense of others.
July 24, 2010, 11:59 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
…To be fair, I don’t think she thought that far. I think she thought that black people are supposed to vote Democrat, period. She told me once that it’s really sad when a black person loses their identity. What does that even mean? I asked her. She couldn’t tell me.
July 25, 2010, 12:01 amThe Awful Truth says:
I note that you provide no argument fo how amnesty is going to get passed. Probably because there are no reasonable scenarios for its enactment. What’s going to happen to the illegals with no amnesty? They’ll stay here illegally, be deported or go home. (That was an easy question)
You say that the groups making up the Democratic base are becoming larger. You ignore the most important current group: secular white liberals. This group has the lowest birth rate in the country. So social liberalism is doomed if you believe demographics are destiny.
African Americans have swallowed social positions they disagree for two reasons: 1) They’re not the biggest bloc in the Democratic party 2) They’re getting lots of economic liberal and affirmative action programs that they like.
But Mexican voters will become the most important bloc in the Dems, and they won’t have to follow the lead of the dying white liberals on social issues. The latent social conservatism of the African American voters will just reinforce this.
To put things bluntly, if white social liberals become a minority within the Democratic party, why do you think they will still be running it?
As to the social liberalism of Asian voters, they voted 54/46 for Prop 8, higher than the overall % of CA voters.
Asian voters are unlikely to stay in the Democratic party as the become the most dramatic victims of affirmative action policies.
There was a view in conservative circles similar to the current liberal magic conveyor belt theory. The GOP would increase its share of the vote of social conservative voters, and when this was added to traditional Republican voters, the GOP would have a permanent 60% of voters. Every election would be like 1984.
Of course it didn’t turn out that way. The GOP share of social conservatives did increase, but this also increased their power within the GOP. They reached for the steerin wheel of the party, driving out a lot of suburban Republicans.
The same dynamic is likely to play out within the Dems over the next 20 years. You don’t really expect minority voters to remain sepoys obedientally loyal to their white liberal officers do you? A great mutiny is in the offing.
You can’t have a big shift in poltical demographics without a lot of secondary shifts in reaction to it. There’s only so much power to go around.
July 25, 2010, 12:03 amStrict says:
“Advocates of reparations argue that the beneficiaries of injustice must therefore compensate the former by returning their ill-gotten gains. There is no doubt that some whites benefited from the system. Overall, however, slavery and Jim Crow were negative-sum games that harmed both groups (albeit blacks suffered much more).”
I don’t think the fact that it was a negative-sum game goes against the argument that beneficiaries of injustice must compensate the victims by returning ill-gotten gains.
Germany made reparations to Israel, World Jewish Congress, Claims Conference, German Government Ghetto Fund, German Pensions for Work in Ghettos, and individuals directly, despite the fact that the Nazi system was a zero-sum game that harmed “both” groups (albeit Jews suffered much more]. It would’ve been ridiculous for post-WWII Germany [including Germany today] to argue “hey, overall we Germans suffered in the end so we’re not going to pay for all that slave labor because we the slavers overall ended up crushed.”
350+ years of slavery of hundreds of millions of black people was a true plundering and a massive unjust accession to wealth.
There’s no “contradiction” between the diversity and remedy rationales for programs that benefit black people. They are just different rationales; they are not mutually exclusive, and in fact may overlap. Unless you mean “contradiction” in some Maoist or Marxist sense that you haven’t explained.
July 25, 2010, 12:24 amRandy says:
“The nation-state is a racial concept. The collapse of racial solidarity has left patriotism without its true foundation. The Old South was the bulwark protecting us all from the New World Order, the ultimate in “diversity.” The invading hordes love not the Constitutional Republic created by dead white men. After us shall come the deluge.”
Hello to you, Pat Buchanan!
But yes, billo is, as Laura says, 150% correct. They easiest way to feel good about yourself is to stomp on someone else. You can’t believe you are an inherently superior person unless you believe that others are inherently inferior. It’s the same whether the issue is sexism, racism, homophobia, or something else like saying all people of a certain belief system (liberals, conservatives, or muslims, for instance) are inherently evil.
July 25, 2010, 12:25 amrpt says:
Who are the “un-common people” in your view?
July 25, 2010, 12:43 amHarry Eagar says:
‘it is therefore a mistake to view these injustices as primarily a transfer of ill-gotten wealth from one race to another’
On the contrary, if black people are required to perform uncompensated labor for white people for 300 years, that is primarily a transfer of ill-gotten wealth from one race to another.
If not all members of the privileged race got in on the plunder, that doesn’t magically change the capital flows. Agricultural labor produced whatever wealth was in the South, and the black people didn’t end up possessing much of it.
July 25, 2010, 12:47 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
I don’t know about Thomas J. Webb, but in my view, the un-common people are people who think for themselves.
July 25, 2010, 12:56 amAllan Walstad says:
I strongly suggest Thomas Sowell’s essay “Black Rednecks and White Liberals,” the lead-off chapter in his book by the same title. Sowell has gone back through historical literature to show that the southern white redneck culture came with immigrants from specific parts of the British Isles where that culture (touchy, violent, irresponsible, unproductive) was prevalent at the time, although it has dissipated in those locations since then. Black slaves were exposed to that culture for generations after their abduction from Africa. It lives on as the ghetto culture glorified in rap music. Redneck whites were as much a victim of their own culture as blacks. The key to progress is to ditch that culture in favor of what has worked — for Japanese Americans, who were subject to discrimination to the point of being interned in WWII, and for black immigrants from the West Indies, who, as Sowell pointed out long ago, arrive in this country dirt-poor but achieve the same level of affluence as whites within a couple of generations. What works is self-improvement, entrepreneurship, enthusiastic participation in the market economy, saving and forward thinking instead of immediate gratification. The sort of thing that drags people back down is the denigration of conscientious schoolwork as “acting white.” Sowell’s writing is wall-to-wall myth-busting, with important implications. Read some.
The notion of “reparations” from whites to blacks falls flat for any number of reasons. Here are three: 1) How were black slaves acquired? Blacks in Africa were sold into slavery by other blacks. Should African blacks be required to compensate American blacks, or does the principle somehow only apply to whites? Either way, the idea is absurd. 2) For what are blacks today to be compensated? Most, surely, are vastly better off than if their ancestors had remained in Africa. Yes, their ancestors were grievously wronged, though not only by whites; but both the wrong-doers and their victims are long dead. 3) Assuming, as many would like to, that the Civil War was fought to end slavery, 600,000 people were killed for that cause, the overwhelming majority of them surely whites. And surely that is enough.
July 25, 2010, 1:00 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Harry Eager, what about people who self-identify as black but have significant white ancestry? What about people like that, who are wealthy, as well?
There are some real technical problems with reparations that weren’t applicable to Germans compensating Jews.
July 25, 2010, 1:01 amyankee says:
It still leaves you with a century of oppression after the Civil War, which is probably a much bigger contributing factor to the problems faced by African Americans today than slavery per se. If black Americans had been granted full legal de jure and de facto equality
July 25, 2010, 1:16 amThe Awful Truth says:
College affirmative action programs primarily benefit middle and upper class African Americans and Hispanics, and primarily harm lower class and rural whites and all Asians.
Higher income whites suffer litttle disadvantage from affirmative programs. So the descendants of the plantation owners and bankers who were the beneficiaries of slavery have transferred the cost to the descendants of the people who did not benefit from it.
The web of irrationalities and injustices in affirmative action that all seem to benefit the most politically well organized and powerful, would come as no surprise to anyone who has read Mancur Olson.
July 25, 2010, 1:20 amrpt says:
My reaction is that this comment calls for a theological reply, but it’s too late to do one now. People who think only for themselves can be dangerous.
July 25, 2010, 1:21 amyankee says:
It still leaves you with a century of oppression after the Civil War, which is probably a much bigger contributing factor to the problems faced by African Americans today than slavery per se. If black Americans had been granted true legal equality backed up with equality in implementation they’d probably be much better off than they are now.
July 25, 2010, 1:21 amJohn says:
The problem with this is that it refers wrongs done to person a by person b, yet person x wants person y to compensate them for this wrong.
July 25, 2010, 1:21 amricky says:
God, white people are so dumb. Getting all philosophical when every other group just asks “Does this hurt us or benefit us?” No wonder we’re going extinct.
Anyway, the comparison group for American blacks is not other Americans, it’s African blacks. And compared to them, American blacks hit the jackpot. Discussion over.
July 25, 2010, 1:22 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
You realize I said people who think “for” themselves, not “of” themselves. I mean people who make observations and draw their own conclusions, rather than letting anyone else – whether that’s Sharpton or Limbaugh – tell them what to think. You think that’s dangerous?
July 25, 2010, 1:23 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Wow. I totally disagree with this.
July 25, 2010, 1:28 amThe Awful Truth says:
If were going to pay reparations for discrimation where do I as a descendant of Irish immigrants go for reparations? I should be able to double dip from the US and UK, right?
I’m part Scottish too, so I’d also like reparations from the Italians for the Roman invasion and from Mel Gibson.
July 25, 2010, 1:30 amricky says:
To be clarify my last comment, I believe the status of American blacks should be compared to African blacks not because of a belief in hereditarianism or anything like that, but because without slavery blacks never would have been brought to America. So whatever injustice blacks have suffered in America has to be weighed against the benefit they’ve derived from living in America rather than Africa, especially for the most recent generations.
July 25, 2010, 1:31 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Ricky, to me the bottom line is that a black child living in the inner city has exactly as much right to live the American dream as a white chid does. While there are wealthy black people, and “black” people who are mostly white, complicating the idea of reparations; I think it’s absurd to pretend that that black child really has an equal crack at it.
July 25, 2010, 1:38 amathEIst says:
The Civil War was fought to enrich northern industrialists as any study of tariff rates for the twenty years before the Civil War and the sixty years after will reveal. Thus was born the “Gilded Age.”
July 25, 2010, 1:41 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
To continue my thought, a large part of that is in fact the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
July 25, 2010, 1:41 amricky says:
“right to live the American dream”
This is a ridiculous concept. I hope you’re not suggesting that we should legislate this “right” into existence.
July 25, 2010, 1:42 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Holy cow. Why don’t you refrain from putting words in my mouth.
July 25, 2010, 1:44 amyankee says:
I’m not an advocate of either slavery reparations or post-slavery-oppression reparations, but I was referring specifically to oppression of American blacks by the government. I don’t think Irish immigrants were ever subjected to a level of government oppression remotely comparable to what happened in the Jim Crow South.
I agree that the consequences of private racism are extremely serious, but even the slavery reparations people don’t advocate the payment of reparations for private racism.
July 25, 2010, 1:52 amThe Awful Truth says:
So the American dream is now to recieve reparations.
The problem with educational affirmative action is not that it is complicated, the problem is that it’s a racket.
July 25, 2010, 1:53 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Is that what it is for white kids?
July 25, 2010, 1:55 amyankee says:
This is like saying that if I kidnap and rape you, and while I’ve got you locked up your home is blown up by terrorists at a time of day you would have been there, it’s all good because hey, better kidnapped and raped than blown up, right?
July 25, 2010, 1:59 amricky says:
Yankee you pretty much defeated yourself there. If it’s better to be kidnapped and raped then blown up then, yes, one should be grateful that they were kidnapped and raped rather than blown up. Because not being kidnapped and raped and still not being blown up was not on the table, just like not being enslaved and still being brought to America was not on the table. But I’ve seen enough of your comments to know that you’re too dumb and dense to be capable of understanding this.
July 25, 2010, 2:05 amSteve Sailer says:
Dear Professor Somin:
I think you are missing Senator Webb’s point, which is: “Where should we go from here? Beyond our continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end.”
He’s not focusing on blacks, but on non-blacks who benefit from diversity programs, such as Indian immigrants who qualify for minority set asides on government contracts and low-interest Small Business Administration loans, or illegal aliens who benefit from disparate impact lawsuits.
For years, I’ve been pointing out that it’s self-defeating to attack racial preferences where the moral justification is strongest: the descendants of American slaves. Make exceptions for the benefit of American blacks and for American Indians, and get rid of the government counting by race for everybody else, just as the Census Bureau decided in 1956 not to count by religion, which is why there are no religious quotas or disparate impact discrimination lawsuits.
July 25, 2010, 2:11 amricky says:
And for the record, I would fully support a program for African-Americans who wish their ancestors had not been brought here to provide them with a one-way ticket to the African country of their choice, and full Department of State resources to help them acquire permanent resident status there.
July 25, 2010, 2:11 amporterhouse says:
The point Webb makes about diversity needs some perspective. Obama was raised by his white mother’s family (apparently his ancestors owned slaves) in Hawaii, his grandfather benefited from the GI Bill and the post-war economic boom, and his Kenyan father went to Harvard. The African side of his family was never the victim of any kind of institutional racism in the US. I believe Obama is an example of an African-American that should NOT benefit from affirmative action programs pursuant Webb’s proposal (Henry Louis Gates and Clarence Page have also stated that excluding people like Obama should be considered).
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/education/24AFFI.final.html
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/03/black_immigrants_an_invisible.html
Here is the rub, what about legacy and geographic affirmative action? George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were the beneficiaries of affirmative action–legacy and geographic affirmative action…and Cheney FAILED out of Yale. Cheney was bright, but couldn’t hack it away from home and was not nearly as prepared as the other students. Luckily, his high school sweetheart pushed him to go back to school and he graduated from the University of Wyoming and the rest is history. Obama could have been a beneficiary of geographic affirmative action like Cheney (which is a form of diversity) and I would bet Hawaii (just like Cheney’s Wyoming) is underrepresented at Ivy League schools. George W. Bush championed a form of geographic affirmative action/diversity in Texas in the form of the “top 10% rule”.
My question is…is legacy and geographic affirmative action acceptable? I personally believe legacy at state universities is unacceptable and Defense Secretary Gates agrees with me,
http://www.thebatt.com/2.8485/gates-ends-legacy-role-in-admissions-1.1207693
July 25, 2010, 2:32 amJohn says:
Ricky,
You present a false choice. Imagine the situation where a liberal tells you, well you can either pay 90 tax rate or the State department will work provide you a one way ticket to Somalia which has a zero effective tax rate because it has no effective government. Would that be satisfactory to you? Or would you agree that what your offering is pure hyperbole?
July 25, 2010, 2:51 amThe Awful Truth says:
The problem with talking about legacies,geogrpahy, unusual cases recieving affirmative action like Obama, is that it’s focusing on two or three turds in an Augean stable.
College admissions has become a complete joke. It’s a tangle of game playing and special priveleges. If were really serious about fixing and establishing a truly fair system we need to address all of the following:
Early admissions (favors the middle/upper class students over less well informed plugged in lower class kids)
SAT prep courses (see above)
Fake learning disabilities
Viewpoint discrimination. Try listing ROTC or a religious activity on your Harvard application. Good luck with that.
Bogus after school activities.
Colleges actively seeking students with rich parents, legacies or not, as donor prospects.
And yes racial quotas.
How many people going to top schools would get if the playing field were really level? I don’t know, but a lot of them probably wouldn’t be there.
PS I went to U of Chicago, so this isn’t sour grapes. Early admissions was my scam. What was yours?
July 25, 2010, 3:01 amJohn says:
Porterhouse,
Obama is an excellent example of the increasing difficulty in assigning reparations or benefits to individuals or groups based on wrongs done to their ancestors. As individuals move further in time from that point, the likelihood of their ancestors being on both ends of the spectrum increases. How do we treat an individual whose mother’s ancestors were white slave owners, but whose father’s ancestors were slaves?
In response to legacy advantages, the biggest reason for universities to have legacy advantages is to increase the reasons for graduates to contribute money and prestige to their Alma Mater. You may find it unfair to the individual, but it is a beneficial to the institution and therefore it continues.
July 25, 2010, 3:01 amricky says:
“You present a false choice. Imagine the situation where a liberal tells you, well you can either pay 90 tax rate or the State department will work provide you a one way ticket to Somalia which has a zero effective tax rate because it has no effective government. Would that be satisfactory to you? Or would you agree that what your offering is pure hyperbole?”
No, it’s not a “false choice”. I’m talking about concrete historical facts, you’re talking about a future hypothetical.
July 25, 2010, 3:45 amPerseus says:
That benefit is very tangible, and makes it possible for the university to do things like admit more students–including more poor/disadvantaged students–than it otherwise would. So it is not necessarily as unfair as it might appear.
July 25, 2010, 4:39 amThe Awful Truth says:
Harvard has $26 billion endowment. Yale $15 billion, Stanford $12 billion and Princeton $11 billion. Do these four institutions really need legacy students?
July 25, 2010, 4:56 amJohn says:
What concrete historical facts are those? That citizens of of the United States were mistreated and wronged by state and federal governments? And that the lot of those individuals and/or their descendants being better then what it might have been makes that mistreatment okay? How is my “hypothetical” different then what you suggest?
I don’t support reparations for this conduct because I think such reparations are both politically unfeasible and would cause more problems then it would solve. That does not make the mistreatment suffered any less worse. My use of a hypothetical to try and explain the point is simply an attempt to establish what appears to me to be a very bright line. Slave owners and post civil war segregationists who ran state and federal governments were not intent on “helping” black Americans or their descendants through their evil actions. And to pretend that their actions were helpful is to add insult to the injury they did.
July 25, 2010, 5:03 amStephen Lathrop says:
Perhaps so. But any such gratitude is in no way owed to the people doing the kidnapping and raping. They remain fully guilty of their crimes.
Listening to ricky is like having a time machine to take you back and hear first-hand from 19-century slavery apologists. Time has complicated the issue of guilt and reparations over slavery, but maybe not in ricky’s case. For ricky, it’s 1850 right now. You will never hear classic American racism more purely presented than ricky is doing here. One difference, though. What ricky is doing is done with the full knowledge of consequences afforded by history. The slavery apologists lacked that, giving them a moral advantage compared to ricky. Remarkable.
July 25, 2010, 5:04 amJohn says:
Per Wikipedia there are 4300 colleges and universities in the United States. While the four with the largest endowments don’t “need” legacy students they got to be on top using them, and I suspect aim to stay at the top as well. The others want to be like those four and so work hard to establish their own “brand” to achieve something similar.
July 25, 2010, 5:09 amThe Awful Truth says:
PlugInMonster, there is a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis, TN, in a city-owned park named after him. Tell me that all that racial stuff is past.
July 25, 2010, 5:22 amStephen Lathrop says:
Moral whitewash comes in various strengths, and that’s the weak stuff. You’ve got Confederate battle deaths in your role of honor there. Not that Confederates didn’t die honorably, but not to end slavery. Nor can civil war casualties do much to expiate Jim Crow. That came after.
July 25, 2010, 5:22 amAngus says:
For anyone wondering why black voters refuse to consider the Republican party, all you have to do is look at the postings of PlugInMonster and Rick. One declares a race war against black people, and the other declares that slavery was/is good for blacks.
July 25, 2010, 6:11 amcboldt says:
Steve Sailer: — He’s not focusing on blacks, but on non-blacks who benefit from diversity programs, such as Indian immigrants who qualify for minority set asides on government contracts and low-interest Small Business Administration loans, or illegal aliens who benefit from disparate impact lawsuits. … just as the Census Bureau decided in 1956 not to count by religion, which is why there are no religious quotas or disparate impact discrimination lawsuits.
You touched on the same “where we go from here” statement that puzzles me. I like your comparison to religion. The question isn’t asked. Webb may be saying that the government will have two check-boxes for “race” or whatever, rather than multiple choice.
July 25, 2010, 6:13 amThat makes the most sense. And likewise, the impact plays in government programs that have applications demanding to know “race,” with government selection criteria being based, in part, on the racial identity of the applicant, so that the pool of “grants” has the statutory amount of diversity. All that would be the same, except only two racial categories. Affirmative action lives on.
I’m not clear that’s his intention, but it seems a plausible take.
Lou Gots says:
The diversity argument is straight-up racism. It’s like prescribing the percentage of Aryans to be admitted to the University of Heidelburg. It was a last-ditch, desperate argument to perpetuate the racial spoils syestem beyond the impending expiration of its compensatory rationale.
It’s weakness is that, before the law, it is no more than a permissible justification for racial discrimination. It has not been enshrined as a basis for discrimination as a court-ordered remedy. Thus, it is a sword the quota-mongers may die by as well as live by.
July 25, 2010, 7:44 amHarvey says:
True justice demands that the entire western hemisphere be returned post haste to descendants its aboriginal inhabitants. 99% of all comments here are just plain hypocritical. The great Obama presides over “Indian reservations” while a proud Ellis Islander scolds Johnny Reb. What a farce!
July 25, 2010, 7:57 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
That person wondering would look at me arguing with them, and still be left to wonder.
July 25, 2010, 8:13 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
…I mean, it’s not like nobody in the Dem group ever said anything stupid.
July 25, 2010, 8:14 amMnZ says:
Yes…they are the leaders of the Republican Party apparently…
July 25, 2010, 8:19 amcboldt says:
yankee: — even the slavery reparations people don’t advocate the payment of reparations for private racism. –
July 25, 2010, 8:32 amTwo sets of remarks on that. What do you mean by “private racism?” For example, were actors doing blackface practicing “private racism?”
The other point is that slavery was, for the most part, a private affair, was it not? The government regulated it and permitted it, but the slave traders and owners could forgo the activity. My understanding is that reparations advocates would compensate, at the very least, ancestors of slaves. Put another way, I don’t know of any slaves imported by the government – maybe they were, but even so, it doesn’t change my point. Certainly, not ALL slaves were imported by the government.
And if the test admits compensation to ancestors of those disadvantaged by government policy, then we’re going to be having the same argument over those disadvantaged by today’s affirmative action / racial preference system; at least who can show they would have had the benefit but for their race.
cboldt says:
Angus: — PlugInMonster … declares a race war against black people –
July 25, 2010, 8:38 amThat is a despicable and incendiary accusation that does not follow, at all, from what PIM has written here.
You may disagree with the observation (I do), that the country is in or on the cusp of a race war. But that is distinctly different from making a declaration of racially motivated war.
Laura(southernxyl) says:
What will a race war look like? Black people and white people with guns facing each other down in streets across America?
July 25, 2010, 8:43 amcboldt says:
– What will a race war look like? –
July 25, 2010, 8:55 amit’s when a significant faction of the population perpetrates “hate crime” based on their perception of the race of the target. Similar to radical islamic terrorism, but with race instead of religion as the justification to attempt to kill the target.
Angus’s accusation is in the nature of “PIM says whites should kill blackie, kill blackie mothers so they can’t make any more blackie babies. Whites are justified in killing blacks, for being black.” That’s what making a declaration of racial war might look like.
Angus’s accusation against ricky is false and inflammatory too.
Laura(southernxyl) says:
OK, like if the New Black Panther guy’s “gonna have to kill some crackers” ever went mainstream.
July 25, 2010, 9:25 amrpt says:
I understand. That’s why it takes a longer reply.
July 25, 2010, 9:30 amcboldt says:
– like if the New Black Panther guy’s “gonna have to kill some crackers” ever went mainstream. –
July 25, 2010, 9:35 amWell, there’s the declaration, and there’s the war. There’s talk, and there’s action. And in a war, the practical issue of obtaining a sufficient number of like-minded actors.
Jeff S. says:
Re Gutter v. Bollinger: I find it hilarious to hear a University espousing diversity in it’s preferential admissions policy while simultaneously, defending pure competition in their sports programs. USSC should have given UoM a choice. Diversity in ALL programs including sports or none. I’d love to hear the alumni after they find AA means more asian and hispanic basketball/football players. Screw the chances of a sports title for diversity… Heh, heh… I’m sure that will happen ANY day now.
July 25, 2010, 9:37 amAmerican Inidans says:
The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed.
We’d like to have a word with you, Prof. Somin.
July 25, 2010, 9:43 amHoratio says:
There is no proper role for affirmative action unless you believe in the notion that government has to actively promote that concept that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
July 25, 2010, 9:45 amOwen H. says:
People tend to forget that, while that case was working its way through the system no one talked much about other policies the school had, such as giving “legacy” applicants more points that being a minority did. And guess what ethnic group that benefited?
July 25, 2010, 9:52 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Horatio, that probably depends on the definition of AA.
I agree with you regarding quotas.
But I don’t think it’s a bad thing if AA causes a person with economic power or power of some other kind, to look at statistics in order to see whether there might be a group disparity in opportunity, whether that disparity is the result of overt sexism or racism, or just people subconsciously excluding black people or women from the pool of candidates.
For instance, if a university offered a program for smart high schoolers, and if somebody associated with the program noted that all of the participating students were white, from majority-white schools, that person might take the step of making sure that the guidance counselors at majority-black schools were aware of the program and of how the smart kids at those schools could get in. That’s an affirmative action that hurts no one.
July 25, 2010, 9:56 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Owen, I saw that discussed PLENTY. If a black kid brought suit alleging that legacy admits hurt his chances, I missed it. Jennifer G. argued her case not the case of everybody else in the country.
July 25, 2010, 9:58 amAllan Walstad says:
Stephen Lathrop:
I’m not sure I get your logic as to why Confederate battle deaths should count less than Union ones. Southern whites paid a fairly huge price in the Civil War, and, you might say, deservedly so. Northerners paid a huge price, which you might say was to their honor. Anyway, 600,000 deaths was 2% of the population of the entire country at the time. Just to put it in perspective, 2% of today’s population would be over 6 million, which is more than 2,000 times the number who died in the 9/11 attacks. (Understand, I’m well aware that Lincoln by his own statements did not pursue that ghastly war for the purpose of ending slavery; the argument is aimed at those who persist in believing he did.)
In any event, it is completely absurd to suggest that white people who had nothing to do with slavery or Jim Crow somehow owe a debt to blacks for their ancestors’ sufferings. The thing that still holds many blacks back today is dysfunctional culture, a culture absorbed from whites long ago. It may seem tangential to the discussion, but I think the most useful step that can be taken to stop the perpetuation of that culture is to end drug prohibition. That pulls the economic rug out from under drug gangs, the one array of institutions within which that culture is, ironically, functional.
July 25, 2010, 10:09 amHoratio says:
It will hurt someone if a policy is in place to decide that there must be some balance to accommodate race to the detriment of “smarts” – the typical “let’s accept the black student because we don’t have enough blacks in the school despite the fact that the white or Asian student has much better overall grades.”
July 25, 2010, 10:11 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Horatio, do you have a problem with my example as far as it goes?
My daughter attended a public school in Memphis with a program that you had to have pretty high test scores to get into. The kids in the program were heavily white and Asian. But it wsn’t a “competitive” program in which the kids had to compete with each other to get in. Every kid who qualified and wanted a spot got it. This meant a certain amount of crowding and spilling over into the elementary school building next door, but they shoehorned them all in. Not everything is a zero-sum, if X wins Y lost, situation.
July 25, 2010, 10:16 amcboldt says:
– It will hurt someone if a policy is in place to decide that there must be some balance to accommodate race to the detriment of “smarts” –
July 25, 2010, 10:16 amLaura(southernxyl)’s hypothetical was to make sure everybody was aware of the opportunity to apply; and presupposed that the admissions policy was race-blind.
Ricardo says:
Nobody said it was at least when it comes to apologists and accuse-makers. But Forrest was a slave trader, a general in the officially racist Confederate States of America, presided over the massacre of black Union prisoners of war, and was unquestionably a supporter and member of the KKK when it carried out a terrorist campaign in the South in the last 1860s. There is nothing good or praiseworthy about Forrest at all.
Robeson’s support of Stalin is inexcusable. However, Robeson was not a murderer and is celebrated chiefly for his other life achievements. If you take down the Robeson statue, you also have to stop publicly celebrating Wagner.
By contrast, take down the Forrest statue and we have to take down all the other statues of murderers, war criminals, traitors and terrorists that are out there. That sounds right.
July 25, 2010, 10:23 amSarcastro says:
Maybe the race war can just be a war of rhetoric, like the culture war! That way everyone wins the victim sweepstakes!
July 25, 2010, 10:23 amMark Field says:
This is as silly as the attempted comparison to FDR earlier. In Robeson’s case, as in FDR’s, there are other reasons to honor them. That’s not true when it comes to Forrest.
Edit: Ricardo said it better.
Some of us, at least, are appreciating your contributions to this thread.
July 25, 2010, 10:26 amMnZ says:
That is false. Legacy admits received 5 points at most. Underrepresented minority individuals received 20 points (except if he or she was already receiving 20 points for being poor).
July 25, 2010, 10:27 amMnZ says:
Owen, I would add this: Assuming that giving 5 points legacy admits is a bad thing, how does giving 20 points to underrepresented groups address that issue? Who comes out the worst under this “logic”? (Hint: Jim Webb mentioned them in his article.)
July 25, 2010, 10:38 amEconRob says:
Racism makes one stupid. Evidence Obama in the Cambridge incident and Ms Sherrod in identifying opposition to ObamaCare(tm). Ms Sherrod claims opposition to ObamaCare(tm) is because he is black. If so why was there opposition to HillaryCare(tm) in the 90s and RomneyCare(tm) now? Stupid.
July 25, 2010, 10:42 amtysmwest says:
So since my family history is one of poor families coming to this country in blocks from 1650s to 1920s….fighting in the Revolutionary War to free the Country..fighting for the Union to free the slaves…and since I personally was a small child and teenager during the 50s and 60s..and as a junior adult in the 70s (and powerless) and subject to the diversity and reverse discrimination of the 80s 90s and today…therefore not being in any way, shape or form responsible for any of the alleged harm to any ethinc group caused by slavery or civil rights denial..I demand reparations from those who have made me pay a price in lost status, opportunity, promotion and emotional duress caused by “white Guilt”. NAACP – SHOW ME THE MONEY! RACISTS!
July 25, 2010, 10:55 amEconRob says:
I am not in favor of legacy points but what does that have to do with racism. Giving even one point based on race IS racism. You may say it is good racism vs. bad-racism, but it is racism. PERIOD. To argue in favor of affirmative action is an argument in favor of racism. No way around it.
July 25, 2010, 10:55 amRyan says:
With regards to the discrimination against Irish, to say it wasn’t at the very least as severe or more than any you can claim against hispanics or women, who are one of the ‘protected classes’ that liberals push is absurd. “No Irish need apply” signs, there were cartoons comparing the Irish to apes. . . really, before you pipe up about that time period you should really do at least a minimal study of history.
As far as ‘reparations” how do you decide reparations for someone who is a combination of Irish/Black/African American/whatever current politically correct term is insisted upon)/Cherokee/’Hispanic’(Although the difference between, in this case a Cuban and say a Mexican makes it a joke that they are stuck in the same category)/English?
Should portions of me be paying reparations to other portions of me? Do I owe myself money? Should I be passed over for a job for someone who happens to be more ‘Racially pure’? This whole reparations scene was symbolized for me by someone I knew in high school. His name was Monte Claudt. He was as German as they come, German parents, German accent, ate German foods at home. . . but he was one eighth Cherokee and was technically classified as “Native american.” Which is almost impossibly silly.
And the aforementioned ‘Hispanic” Calling Guatemalans the same as Mexicans/the same as Colombians/the same as Brazilians/the same as Cubans/THe same as the large number of DIFFERENT ethnic groups from Mexico itself which are distinctly different: Such as the MEstizos, the Nahua, the Maya, Zaoptecs, Mixtecs, Totanacs and Purepechas. . .
All of these are lumped into one ethic group which is patently absurd. They are only a growing ‘majority’ if you count them as one group.
Likewise, counting Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean as belonging to the same group is absurd. Frankly, the Census office should be forbidden from even ASKING ethnic background in any way, shape or form. Its NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS.
July 25, 2010, 10:57 amMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Ricardo,
Robeson’s support of Stalin is inexcusable. However, Robeson was not a murderer
No, merely another Duranty. He merely visited the USSR at the height of the Terror and came home to assure everyone that all was well, and all those rumors of oppression were so much hooey. I can’t imagine how that could possibly have harmed anyone.
and is celebrated chiefly for his other life achievements.
You mean the way Forrest is celebrated as a brilliant general? I doubt that Memphis thinks it’s honoring him for leading the KKK.
If you take down the Robeson statue, you also have to stop publicly celebrating Wagner.
Wagner was an anti-Semite, but to my knowledge he never put a smiley face on political terror and mass murder. Robeson did, and he had a lot of artistically gifted company in the middle of the last century (I’m looking at you, Neruda and Kahlo and as many others as you care to name).
July 25, 2010, 11:06 amNRWO says:
Personally, I wouldn’t mind promoting diversity by getting rid of affirmative action for White people, namely legacy admissions to elite universities. That would free up a lot of freshman slots for people who actually deserve them
Legacy admissions are race neutral: A black kid whose parents are alums at a university are just as likely (or perhaps more likely, actually, given AA) to benefit from legacy admissions as a white kid whose parents are alums at the same university.
AA preferences in admissions are definitely not race neutral or competitive: A kid who is not in a favored category can’t benefit from AA admissions policies.
With regard to the comment, “That would free up a lot of freshman slots for people who actually deserve them”. The problem is “who actually deserve them”: If objective measures of academic achievement (standardized test scores) were consistently applied across races and were used as the primary criterion for admission, far fewer blacks (and far more whites), would be accepted to our most prestigious universities. Whether this is a problem depends largely on whether you believe objective measures (e.g., test scores) predict academic achievement (e.g., grades, grad rates, time to completion) more accurately and better than alternative measures, notably SES (reflecting parents’ education, income, occupational status). Unfortunately for proponents of using SES (in addition to, or in lieu of, test scores), there is Paul Sackett’s recent Psych Bull meta-analysis:
Does socioeconomic status explain the relationship between admissions tests and post-secondary academic performance?.By Sackett, Paul R.; Kuncel, Nathan R.; Arneson, Justin J.; Cooper, Sara R.; Waters, Shonna D.
July 25, 2010, 11:16 amPsychological Bulletin, Vol 135(1), Jan 2009, 1-22.
Abstract
Critics of educational admissions tests assert that tests measure nothing more than socioeconomic status (SES) and that their apparent validity in predicting academic performance is an artifact of SES. The authors examined multiple large data sets containing data on admissions and related tests, SES, and grades showing that (a) SES is related to test scores (r = .42 among the population of SAT takers), (b) test scores are predictive of academic performance, and (c) statistically controlling for SES reduces the estimated test?grade correlation from r = .47 to r = .44. Thus, the vast majority of the test?academic performance relationship was independent of SES
Laura(southernxyl) says:
Michelle, if Forrest was a brilliant general it was in the context of fighting against the USA. I can see a statue of MacArthur. I can’t see a statue of Tojo.
What do you imagine that Memphis is honoring Forrest for?
July 25, 2010, 11:22 amKen Arromdee says:
What actually happens is that someone notices that even after making sure the black schools know about them, the people who get in are disproportionately white. Then the university realizes since the program recruits students who are disproportionately white, the law will presume discrimination, so it decides to determine “smart student” by giving extra points to blacks. Remember the Sotomeyer firefighter case?
July 25, 2010, 11:24 amMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Re: Robeson, Wikipedia has this:
When Robeson was given the news of Stalin’s 1939 non aggression pact with Hitler, also known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, he saw the agreement as having been forced on Russia by the unwillingness of the French and British forces “to collaborate with the Soviet Union in a real policy of collective security”-personally writing in his journal that an Anglo-Russian pact “would have stopped Nazi aggression”-thus leaving the USSR with no alternative choices in shoring up its borders.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is my own acid test for American Communists and Communist sympathizers. If you can stand with the USSR after that, you can stomach anything. The CPUSA (of which Robeson was, I think, not a member) was the most egregious; but the number of others who shrugged this little detail off is sickening.
July 25, 2010, 11:26 amJoe says:
With regards to the discrimination against Irish, to say it wasn’t at the very least as severe or more than any you can claim against Hispanics or women, who are one of the ‘protected classes’ that liberals push is absurd.
OTOH, the Irish could vote before 1920, had lots of political power before then too, were not second class citizens in numerous ways (down to not being able to run a bar by themselves in many areas) until after WWII, subject to marital rape in many jurisdictions without relief past 1970, etc. Unless they were Irish women. A look at history, which is helpful, also suggests Hispanics were subject to discrimination for longer as well.
As to definitions, race is largely a social construct, and socially, “Hispanics” as such were discriminated against, even if there are lots of differences between them.
Overall, putting that aside, at least three things come to mind.
(1) Diversity rationales are valid particularly when they are truly concerned with diversity. Sandy Levinson has written about this topic, including in “Wrestling with Diversity.” For instance, he speaks of religion, military vets, regional diversity and other groups.
(2) It is not the only reason for AA, but the Supreme Court (wrongly imho) said in Bakke that “societal discrimination” or the like was too diffuse to be grounds for a program. This is both dubious and not accepted by many, including those who shove a round peg in a square hole of diversity to get around it.
(3) Some middle path is important here, even if can be messy and somewhat unprincipled in practice. Since, that is how it will likely work anyways. For instance, in Adarand, Stevens notes that the program struck down took into consideration the financially need, so it wasn’t just racial. And, both rationales can work together to take in other groups too — new immigrants are discriminated against too. “Racism” is the problem — like a parable of Jesus, the fact it is suffered by newcomers over those descendants of slaves doesn’t change that. An African immigrant was accidentally killed in an infamous NYC police case. Just one example.
As to our poor put upon friend above, being part of this society includes dealing with its past. If I marry into a family who has a responsibility to deal with past wrongs, I can’t say “well, don’t ask for my contribution, I didn’t do anything.” It’s like Scalia saying his dad never benefited from racism. Please. Racism made whites a favored class and all whites benefited in various respects.
I said a lot but not much. Sen. Webb said more, and like me, probably said something wrong. But, it’s good he is brave enough to talk about the issue.
July 25, 2010, 11:31 amMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
Laura(southernxyl),
Me, I would avoid statues of Ku Kluxers, just as I would statues of Nazis and Stalinists. If Tojo had been a native of Tennessee, it would not surprise me to see some sort of recognition; it’d be singularly offensive, but the impulse would be there.
Do you feel about monuments to Lee in the same way you do about monuments to Forrest? I don’t, though both men were distinguished by using military genius against the United States. But I am not a Southerner, and I don’t know whether in the South the two men belong in the same conceptual bin, or not.
July 25, 2010, 11:32 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Ken, that never happened in the optional program my daughter was in.
The school system even had a written policy that a kid couuld not transfer out of a school where he would be a racial majority, into a school where he would be a minority. They tacitly set that aside for this program, which had the more reasonable standard that if you scored high enough and had acceptable behavior and attendance, you got in. It’s moot now, b/c the school as a whole is majority black; it was 49% white by the time my daughter hit her senior year.
July 25, 2010, 11:33 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Michelle, I think the important thing is to get the evil past behind us as much as we possibly can. I don’t see how a monument to any Confederate serves that purpose.
If Tojo were a native Tennessean, he’d be rightly viewed as a traitor and it would not occur to anyone to put up a statue to him.
July 25, 2010, 11:38 amsbron says:
One must look to California to see where the insane preference regime is heading. First, speaking of “minorities” in CA is meaningless — no identifiable ethnic or racial group is a majority. Among K-12 students, fewer than 30% are white (whatever that means, everyone from Icelanders to Armenians are considered “white”.) However 50% of the K-12 cohort is Latino. Affirmative action/preferences in California are directed almost entirely to Latinos, indeed there is a hysteria shared both by the white elites and Raza organizations to increase the Latino percentage in higher education and government. Certainly within a generation a majority, if not supermajority of Californians will be Latino.
Thus, affirmative action in California will mirror past preferences for whites. The Latino majority will receive government protection, hiring and educational preferences while whites and Asians are discriminated against. Will such a system be anymore morally defensible than past preferentialist regimes?
July 25, 2010, 11:38 amJoe says:
Let me add that though I think it’s true that legacy admissions etc. show that mere academic merit is not the only thing that decides things — and these other things are sometimes unfair — that is not really the “so there” some people make them out to be. Use of race in this country, and under our laws, is particularly “suspect” and touchy.
Doesn’t mean necessarily it is wrong or necessary in certain concepts, but it is not the same thing.
July 25, 2010, 11:39 amMike Giles says:
In an odd historical twist that all Americans see but few can understand, many programs allow recently arrived immigrants to move ahead of similarly situated whites whose families have been in the country for generations. These programs have damaged racial harmony. And the more they have grown, the less they have actually helped African-Americans, the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action as it was originally conceived….
Even more. AA programs allow the descendants of the African slave merchants (today’s Africans) – who sold blacks to white traders in the first place – to benefit from the struggles of those black descendants of those very same slaves, to overcome the heritage those slave merchants were instrumental in creating.
BTW, on another point. Black support of Obama also has to do with the understanding that, in this country, any one black man’s failure is all black men’s failure. It’s along the lines of how we always hear of black crime – as if the huge majority of black Americans aren’t simply honest citizens going about their lives – and ALL blacks have some sort of “crime gene”. Note I said failure. Success never seems to translate in the same manner.
July 25, 2010, 11:40 amyankee says:
I don’t like statutes of Lee either; I see no reason to idolize people who committed treason in service of one of the most evil institutions in human history. But I see statutes of Forrest as considerably worse than statutes of Lee. Lee at least hung up his sword and became a loyal American, while treason wasn’t enough for Forrest: having failed to defend black slavery, he turned to anti-black terrorism.
July 25, 2010, 11:47 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
I don’t think quotas would ever have gotten the toehold they have, if classic white-on-black or white-on-Hispanic or man-on-woman discrimination hadn’t been so damned persistent.
You can say the cure is worse than the disease (and I’d think you were incorrect if you did) but that doesn’t change the fact that the disease had to be addressed some kind of way, and it was extraordinarily resistant to being cured.
July 25, 2010, 11:49 amTcobb says:
Let us cut the Gordian knot here. If I were to sue X because his grandfather did some wrong to my grandfather before X and I were ever born few if any people would say such an action was just. But somehow this argument is supposed to have credence when its applied to “groups.” Bullshit.
The only valid argument for “reparations” is to take from the ones who benefited on a personal level to give to the ones who were harmed on a personal level. The idea of punishing the son for the sins of his father is a notion which Western civilization attempted to extinguish long ago, but like Freddy Krueger it just keeps rising back up from the dead.
Affirmative Action has been in place for a generation. Let me repeat, a generation. It was based upon the rather flawed notion that in order to do justice we must commit injustice. If anyone is due reparations it is the white males, Jews, and Asians who should get it from the historical beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. Both the victims and those who profited from it are still alive.
But the best thing to do is just to agree that it was a mistake and never should have been put into practice, and that it should end forever.
July 25, 2010, 11:52 ambill says:
I would say that mass murder and forced impoverishment are a lot worse than signing a treaty to get someone who wants to attack you off your back. The idea that the unwillingness of France and Britain to sign a ‘triple allinace’ pact with the USSR was indeed the cause of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact- though of course Britain wasn’t exactly being unreasonable by not allying itself to USSR.
July 25, 2010, 11:52 amAngus says:
My mistake for taking PIM and Ricky exactly at the words they typed, I guess.
Nothing in there about “on the cusp” or a war of words. “Full blown racial war” to mean means mass killing of other races
As for my supposedly “inflammatory” comment about Ricky saying slavery was good for black people:
Nope, no possible way to interpret “slavery” and “hit the jackpot” to mean Ricky was arguing that slavery was good for black people…
July 25, 2010, 11:54 amMark Field says:
How dim-witted of us not to see that.
I wouldn’t be too sure of that.
Sure, in the same way the law of France was neutral regarding who got to sleep under the bridges of the Seine.
Wow. A whole generation?? Slavery and segregation pale in comparison. Pun very definitely intended.
July 25, 2010, 12:03 pmcboldt says:
– My mistake for taking PIM and Ricky exactly at the words they typed, I guess. –
July 25, 2010, 12:12 pmNo. Your mistake for acting in extreme bad faith, and showing prejudice (on your part). Observing that “a war is on” (and one can disagree with that observation, I do) is not the same as “declaring war on blacks,” which is what you accused PIM of doing.
And now you have the audacity to defend your twisting of PIM’s point of view into PIM asserting a declaration of war against blacks!
Knock off the sophomoric bomb-throwing bullshit, and act like an adult. You are giving the class of people referred to as “liberals” a bad name. See too, the poster “none,” on this or a different recent thread.
mockmook says:
Wow, a statue is oppressing people…
July 25, 2010, 12:16 pmAllan Walstad says:
Joe
Thanks for the typical example of collectivist thinking. To the contrary, people are individuals. Some white people in the past did some awful things to some black people. (Set aside the fact that blacks were sold into slavery by other blacks in Africa, or that slavery existed around the world and down through history with few people batting an eyelash until the latter 1700′s when it became a moral issue in Britain — among white people — upon which the British, having brought slavery to America, became the main force for its abolition around the world.) The notion that their guilt is transmitted through the generations to all white people, or those who live in the US now, is precisely the notion that people are to be treated not as individuals but as members of their race. It’s a racist notion, Joe. Yes, you heard that right. Think about it.
By the way, your “marry into a family” analogy is lame, not least because there’s no comparison between being born and choosing a marriage partner. Why not drop the blame-mongering, the resentment-nurturing and pointless seeking of redress for wrongs committed long ago by dead people against dead people — and consider what actually proves to work for advancement. As Sowell pointed out long ago, black immigrants from the West Indies arrive here dirt-poor and reach the same affluence level as whites within a couple of generations. How? Not by political agitation for special treatment.
July 25, 2010, 12:16 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
mockmook, it’s a damn shame, isn’t it?
July 25, 2010, 12:17 pmmockmook says:
So, do you pretend the past never happened, just erase it?
You were essentially a different country for a short time, get over it. Remember it, but get over it; enough with the grievance mongering.
July 25, 2010, 12:21 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
BINGO.
The people who do not get this but who tell black people to quit whining about the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, etc, are beyond stupid.
July 25, 2010, 12:24 pmConor says:
Couple of comments:
The school system here in Mississippi is largely a function of the great social engineering experiment of desegregation of the schools back in 1969. Now we have a system of successful private schools started by parents who cared for their childrens’ education and didn’t want to bus their children across town to a bad school. More black families continue to move into historically white neighborhoods (a function of improved economic status). The desegregation of the schools would have happened organically and no one would have cared. Instead, in some areas, we have a school system segregated by economics.
There are exceptions, namely the Madison schools, which are public, very racially diverse, and some of the best in the state. Interestingly, this school system was barely around in 1969. It has grown as more people have moved away from the crime, bad roads, and poor schools of Jackson. Black, white, Latin, Asian, everybody gets along just fine. And they go well in school.
Another thought: my family dates back to the first families of Virginia, going back to Jamestown. They suffered incredible hardship, and without those intrepid settlers, we may not have been here today.
So where’s my finder’s fee? Don’t my forefathers deserve some compensation for having gotten us all here? They were by no means people of wealth.
But let’s go back before that. , my lineage goes back to the French Huguenots, Calvinists who openly defied the Catholic church. They were persecuted from the beginning of the Reformation. Seventy thousand Huguenots were killed in the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. Ultimately, Huguenots were driven from France and some ended up in England.
Is somebody going to compensate my family for that?
Of course not. It’s an absurd concept. And this is the problem. EVERYBODY has a story! And it is impossible to pick winners and losers. To do so requires redistribution that is inherently a political process with an arbitrary line that separates the haves from the have-nots.
The health reform legislation proves the point. Families with income up to 125% of poverty level get essentially free health care. If you are at 126%, sorry, you are forced to buy insurance or else pay a fine.
The only solution to all of these issues is freedom for all people, not sociopolitical engineering. Free markets. Constitutional freedom as intended by our founding fathers (Thank God for Clarence Thomas)>
July 25, 2010, 12:24 pmAmor de Cosmos says:
When will any of the things that Senator Webb addressed happen? The fifth of Never. Why? Because this racial spoils system we have enacted draws political support to a political party whose supporters use the mere questioning of its justice and logic as a cudgel to beat those who have the temerity to be doubtful. Much easier to just tag someone “racist” than listen to them.
There was a saying when the United States used tariffs as a protectionist measure: “Them who the tariff looks after, will look after the tariff”. That is true of affirmative action as well. The whole “diversity” industry thrives on the set aside. Without it there would be little need for these consultants.
When the national cemetary for burying the Federal war dead was being laid out in Chattanooga, General George Thomas was asked whether the fallen should be arranged by state. His response: “No. Mix them up, I’m tired of States Rights.”
July 25, 2010, 12:39 pmWell, I am tired of this whole division by race in America. We are so much more than skin color or where we were born or our ancestors. It does nothing for the solidarity of the country except get certain people incented to start looking for their “cut” of the government largesse.
George Volski says:
I teach science in a state university that was ordered 15 years ago (roughly) to increase the enrollment of African-Americans. The result is we have blacks from all over the US. In my classes I get African-Americans from time to time. Due to the fact they chose the best university they can get to, they usually are at the bottom of the class (I had a sprinter once who was the best though). Statistically speaking, am I a racist who almost always puts African-Americans down? How should I protect my assets once I get sued for racism?
July 25, 2010, 12:40 pmI get students with disabilities from time to time. Their problems are handled by a special office that administers tests for them (those tests are usually longer by 50%) and that is all I have to do, so no problem. With African-Americans I usually get an email that they need B or B+ as otherwise they may lose a scholarship.
I did not come to this country to discriminate against anybody. It really offends me that there is a group of people who think I owe them special treatment. And I am pi***d off big time.
porterhouse says:
Obama is not an unusual case, from the NY Times article I linked to earlier,
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/education/24AFFI.final.html
Geographic diversity is not unusual either, Texas employs the “top 10% rule” in admissions which hurts suburban students and helps rural and urban students,
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5634400.html
July 25, 2010, 12:44 pmporterhouse says:
You make a good point, I just want to point out that none of Obama’s African family has ever been impacted by institutional racism in the US–his father moved to the US as a student in 1959 and ended up studying at Harvard, his father then moved back to Kenya. There is no evidence that President Obama, born in Hawaii in 1961, suffered from institutional racism.
Also, Kenya (or that part of Africa) was not really involved in the Atlantic slave trade, that region of Africa was impacted by the Indian Ocean slave trade.
July 25, 2010, 12:54 pmAmor de Cosmos says:
Jim Crow was enacted by the very Democratic Party you unthinkingly support. The legacy of bigotry and hatred are artefacts of the party of White Supremecy. Why is that statue of Forrest in Shelby County? Because that was the home of the SOB. It was also the political base of the racists in this state who controlled its political offices for generations and wanted to honor their “hero”.
But so I may understand, can you tell me the ways that the legacy of Jim Crow have personally affected you? These laws have not been in effect for two generations.
July 25, 2010, 12:55 pmMark Field says:
I guess that means all those statues of Stalin get to stay. And those New Yorkers who pulled down the statue of George III and melted into bullets need to rebuild it.
July 25, 2010, 12:55 pmricky says:
“Jim Crow was enacted by the very Democratic Party you unthinkingly support. The legacy of bigotry and hatred are artefacts of the party of White Supremecy.”
Laura may be a bit of a holier-than-thou PC type, but I’m pretty sure she’s not a Democrat.
July 25, 2010, 1:01 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
George, I would probably respond to that email by saying that whoever sent it needs to make sure the A-A student understands that, and understands what they will need to do to get that B. I might, if necessary, include the text of Douglass’s “do nothing with the negro!” speech. I realize that if I were not tenured, that might get me fired.
I think that if there were someone whose job it was to increase the minority graduation rate, it would be appropriate for them to identify those minority students who are the first in their family ever to go to college, and make sure they aren’t missing vital bits of information like what they have to do to keep their scholarships, and that they must go to class, do their work, form study groups if necessary, etc. But emailing you in that way, IMO, is highly inappropriate.
July 25, 2010, 1:03 pmcboldt says:
George Volski: — It really offends me that there is a group of people who think I owe them special treatment. –
July 25, 2010, 1:03 pmIt is individuals who think they are owed special treatment.
Amor de Cosmos says:
I wonder, is it possible to be PC and not be a self-righteous bore?
(And this is not aimed at Miss Laura, in particular)
July 25, 2010, 1:06 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Ricky, do you think I hold the views I do because I think I’m supposed to? You don’t give me credit for thinking these things through and reaching conclusions that simply are at odds with yours?
PC is a great term. I’d like to see it reserved for people who turn off their brains and say whatever gets them approval from the spirit of the age, and never dare to think for themselves.
I’m pro-life, for instance – how PC is that?
July 25, 2010, 1:10 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
(You’re right, I’m not a Democrat.)
July 25, 2010, 1:11 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Amor, the comment pages here conveniently put the names of commenters at the top of each of their comments, so that any commenter who bores you can be skipped right over before you waste a moment of your time on her. I suggest that you take advantage of this feature. I certainly do.
July 25, 2010, 1:14 pmA. Criminal says:
That’s true of all (or is it merely ‘almost all’?) European, especially English, or Euro-derived countries, not just the US; and for all non-European people (except the Japanese and possibly Koreans), not just blacks. Which is why immigration is from the-rest-of-the-world and into those countries rather than out of them. Is that a ‘hate-fact’?
FWIW, there’s more racism coming soon to a theater near you in the form of the new health and banking bills, with shiny new unsubstantiated rationales that go far beyond antiquated ideas like ‘reparations’. It’s exciting!
For example, a love letter to congress from The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: http://www.usccr.gov/correspd/Letter2House_03-15-10.pdf
+++
March 15, 2010
The Honorable[sic] Nancy Pelosi
…etc…
Dear Distinguished Members of Congress:
We write to bring to your attention racially discriminatory provisions in H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (“Senate Health Care Bill”), which is currently under consideration by the House of Representatives.
These provisions are apparently included in the bill because it is thought that racial health care disparities are caused by a lack of minority health care professionals or by a deficiency in the “cultural competency” of these professionals. Testimony provided to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (“Commission”), however, calls this assumption into serious doubt. Racial preferences in the Senate Health Care Bill, in addition to being unconstitutional, will not improve health care outcomes for minority patients. The policy and legal problems with the racially discriminatory provisions in H.R. 3590 were described in more detail in a letter from the Commission to President Obama and Senate Leaders on December 11, 2009, which we submit for your consideration (see attached).
We urge Congress to re-examine the racially discriminatory provisions in the Senate Health Care Bill and to consider proven methods of improving health care outcomes for minority patients.
+++
It ain’t going away soon.
July 25, 2010, 1:18 pmricky says:
Laura, I said you’re “a bit” PC. Just my observation, okay? I think wanting to airbrush over the Confederacy is evidence enough of that. It’s okay though, somebody’s gotta look out for peoples’ feelings.
July 25, 2010, 1:23 pmGeorge Volski says:
Yes, I consider it extremely inappropriate. Interestingly, we have sexual harassment workshops to alert us what we cannot do with female students. How is it not a harassment when I get emails about B needed on the last day of classes (these guys do not ask me about likelihood of B the whole semester)?
July 25, 2010, 1:24 pmAlso, I doubt a university could help me much in becoming a ballet dancer – similarly, no help with study groups may help some to learn physics.
Arthur Kirkland says:
Republicans seem destined to learn the hard way about being seen (properly) as the party for crabby whites in a country becoming more tolerant and less white, and they will have no one to blame but themselves.
Decades ago, that would have been something to regret. When Republicans promoted competence, tolerance and fiscal responsibility, they were strong contributors to our society’s progress. When those values were swamped by intolerance, backwardness, deficit-building and military adventurism, however, Republicans lost much of their standing.
I root for Republicans to get their mojo back; our country needs that. Until then — so long as resentful whites, religious nanny-staters and warmongers are prominent, budget-busting voices in the Republican Party — Republican failure is American success.
July 25, 2010, 1:25 pmAllan Walstad says:
George Volski
Exactly. An example of the unintended consequences of collectivist thinking, which, again, I originally learned about from Thomas Sowell. If there is a push to increase the number of blacks (or any chosen group) in colleges, the result will be systematically to draw them into institutions where they are less able to compete. The most elite schools will bring in extra blacks who, though very capable, are not as talented or well-prepared as the other students at those schools. The next tier of colleges, at which those students might have succeeded quite well, will in turn have to dip lower into the pool. And so it goes, on down the line.
July 25, 2010, 1:25 pmStrict says:
Mr. Volski, this isn’t exactly the best place to air your grievances. Maybe you should see a therapist?
It’s interesting that in a discussion of university admissions programs, no one has mentioned need blind / need sensitive policies.
Most schools are not need blind. That is, you get points toward admission merely by virtue of being rich [i.e. high expected family contribution].
That is, schools have, for a very long time, always considered things aside from pure merit.
Also, across the nation universities are silently employing gender favoritism. Aside from ACT/SAT scores, girls are beating boys in every relevant admissions metric, including high school grades, extracurriculars, admissions essays, and interview skills. Almost every co-ed university strives for a 50/50 gender ratio. I know for a fact that some schools, had they looked at their applicants based solely on merit, would have 75/25 female to male ratios. Schools are not achieving 50/50 gender ratios magically or coincidentally. Boys are also favored in getting athletic scholarships. Boys are given points towards admission simply because they are boys. Legacies are given points towards admission simply because their parents went there. Rich people are given points towards admission simply because they will not need financial aid.
And AA didn’t “inject” race into the admissions process – it had always been there.
Anyway, my opinion is that AA would be more effective at achieving its stated goals if it focused less on race and more on
(1) family educational history
July 25, 2010, 1:30 pm(2) family wealth
(3) geographical diversity
SongDog says:
The article mentions that southern poverty and ignorance were the result of not utilizing the human potential of the blacks living there. Perhaps, but the devastation of the civil war was so great it dwarfs any possible impact of Jim Crow.
It’s questionable in my mind whether the end of Jim Crow had much immediate effect on the southern states’ economies. If you will look at the actual facts as to when the south began to boom, you will see an uncanny relationship with the advent of affordable air conditioning. This occured in the 50′s and early 60′s, well before any possible impact of Brown v. Board of Education and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The author also mentions that lower class whites were encouraged to discriminate against blacks. No doubt true, but lower class whites also feared the blacks as competitors for jobs on the low end of the economic scale, and for the impact on the schools in communities which could barely afford to educate the white kids, let alone the blacks who were regarded as far behind the whites in educational attainment and as contributing little to teh community in teh way of taxes. The elities, both north and south, might have felt mostly pity and a desire to help the blacks in the south, but lower class southern whites knew that integration would have its greatest impact upon them, and not all to the good.
I speak as one who has personally experienced southern living for 60+ years and I am able to remember personally how things were.
July 25, 2010, 1:32 pmricky says:
And the award for content-free cut and paste partisan political sniper of the year goes to…
the envelope please…
Arthur Kirkland! Here’s your Golden Broken Record and a complimentary DNC pager so you’ll never be caught without the latest talking points!
July 25, 2010, 1:35 pmAllan Walstad says:
Arthur Kirkland:
I dunno, Arthur, it seems no matter what the topic, it’s just another opportunity for you to spout off about Republicans. I’m sure you must have had a more on-topic comment earlier in the thread, though.
Seems to me that the left-liberals (Dems?) have been engaged is at least as much racial resentment-mongering as the Repubs. This society has come so far — and yet many on the left still push a “white-racist-under-every-bed” mentality.
July 25, 2010, 1:38 pmStrict says:
“Republican failure is American success.”
Failure of Republicans to gain power, maybe. But not when the Republicans are in charge. Then, their failures are everyone’s failures.
Everyone remembers Limbaugh’s absurd “I hope Obama fails.” People [correctly] attacked that because an Obama failure becomes everyone’s failure.
July 25, 2010, 1:40 pmporterhouse says:
That is why I used Dick Cheney as an example of affirmative action policies having a negative impact. Cheney was very bright, but a Wyoming public school education was simply no match for the prep schools of the Northeast, and the other students at Yale also would have been accustomed to living away from their family. Cheney couldn’t hack it at Yale, and he almost lost interest in school.
That said, George W. Bush might be an example of an affirmative action success story. He graduated from Yale and HBS while benefiting from affirmative action. His brother, Jeb, did not benefit from affirmative action and he has also been quite successful. Yale began admitting women and de-emphasizing legacy when Jeb graduated from high school and he went to UT-Austin.
I would study CCNY in post-war NYC in order to create a model of how to provide a quality education without affirmative action programs.
July 25, 2010, 1:47 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
But for some, it might make a difference. I’m thinking of kids who start out at a disadvantage, not because they’re unintelligent, but because they didn’t get the example and all the little bits of training at home that, for instance, my daughter got.
July 25, 2010, 1:47 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Ricky, if you don’t take people’s feelings into account, you’ll never understand their behavior.
July 25, 2010, 1:50 pmSarcastro's Little Brother says:
Yeah, because passing the Obama agenda has been so great for the country. $1.4 trillion and counting, baby. And card check wlll be hunky dory too along with cap-n-trade and every other wet dream on the Democrats’ agenda.
[seriously, this is a prime example of context -- and the taking of things out of context for political purposes. Limbaugh has explained that what he meant is that he hoped that Obama's policy proposals would fail to pass because he thought they would damage the country. But thank you for playing, along with Arthur Kirkland, "DNC Talking Point of the Day".]
July 25, 2010, 1:52 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
SLB, but I’m sure Strict wanted President Bush to have his way on everything he wanted during his entire 8-year presidency. Otherwise, he would have been wanting the country to fail. How unpatriotic would that have been.
July 25, 2010, 1:55 pmMark Field says:
I know holier than thou PC types. Laura’s not one of them. What she is, is sane.
July 25, 2010, 1:59 pmsol vason says:
You Russians are 10 times as racist as any US Southern born Jim Crow! Your lower class were serfs just like lower class US Southern Whites. But you Russians with your Mongul blood subjected the Poles and the Baltic races to far worse slavery than ever endured by Africans in America. Indeed, you named all the races from Russian to the Mediteranean “Slavs” because they were Russia’s main source of slaves. Russian serfs invented dances about raping Slavic women that your Bolshoi still dances today.
We whipped your Mongul ass at the gates of Vienna and we don’t need your Stalinist ideas on rape, race or economics. You’re no more a Jew than V.I. Ulianov and you write like a Stalinist provacateur. You guys lost your country. The USSR is dead.
Hopefully the new Rus will rebuild on its best pre-Mongul tradition. You can start by respecting your neighbors and treating oak trees with reverence.
July 25, 2010, 1:59 pmRob says:
My white English ancestors were poor serfs in the 14th century England and were unjustifiably abused and maltreated by elite manor-owners and French-speaking British royals! Should I sue United Kingdom and the Windsors for reparations for my ancestors’ pain and suffering?!
July 25, 2010, 2:03 pmHarry Eagar says:
I didn’t say anything about reparations. The idea that black people benefited from being slaves is so absurd that I felt it necessary to point that out. It’s a crazy world we live in when you have to argue that slavery was a bad thing.
July 25, 2010, 2:06 pmImHappynBP says:
If there was any one thing I believed, it was that education led to the “Good Life”. Without an education terrible things would happen. Exactly what those terrible things were, I did not know, I just knew they were terrible. I pounded my belief and fear into my children.
July 25, 2010, 2:08 pmHeather, the oldest, suffered the greatest because of this belief. By the time she started High School I was in full scale Rant mode. I never missed the opportunity to tell her what I believed would be her best course through high school.
“You must Letter is some sport. And, capture any school office. Every college recruiter looks for these things when deciding on which student to give a scholarship. Naturally, you have to be one of the top ten students in academics. Every class counts…one C and your whole High School career can be destroyed!”
I pounded this mantra into her for four years. No dinner passed without some portion of this plan going unsaid. I threatened her, offered her rewards, withheld love, or lavished her with praise, all based on how she was conforming to the plan that I knew would lead her to a scholarship.
She did her part. Heather lettered in four sports: tennis, cross-country, track, & field hockey. Perhaps more difficult than the sports was drawing attention to herself. Naturally shy, she did not like competing for popularity, but the Plan had its demands. She ran for the office of Treasure of the Senior Class, and won. She also became president of the Honor Society and won the same title in the local chapter of CSF, the California Scholarship Society.
Grades were the easiest thing to measure. The GPA was calculated every semester, though the math was pretty simple when each grade was an A. It all came down to a Chemistry class in the senior year. All the top students were in the same class. Not all of them could get an A. Finally, it came down to one last test.
Fourteen “Full Boat” scholarships were given out that year, in addition more than a dozen major cash awards. Heather was forth in the class of graduates. While Heather was focusing on that last exam in Chemistry, the nation was focusing on bigger issues. The past injustices done to minorities were being righted by a policy called Affirmative Action. If possible, any leg up was to be given to a minority. The grade in Chemistry was nowhere near as important as skin coloring. The fourteen “Full Boat” scholarships and the dozen or so financial scholarships all went to people with darker skins.
There was a small scholarship given out by the Baldwin Park Women’s Club. Heather’s grandmother was a member of this club and had recommended her for the club’s annual scholarship. It was for $50. On the way home from the graduation ceremonies Heather had only this fifty dollar check in her hand. I was driving the car and Heather and Holly were in the back seat. Heather looked at the check and said, “You know, out of the four years of High School, I could have made $50 by working one weekend at McDonalds”
I did not say anything. We both knew I had lied to her.
Strict says:
Lou Gotts: “It [AA} was a last-ditch, desperate argument to perpetuate the racial spoils syestem beyond the impending expiration of its compensatory rationale.”
University of Alabama was founded in 1831. The first black students to go there James Hood and Vivian Jones in 1963. 1963! And they went in the face of death threats and arrests from private individuals and government officials.
University of Mississippi was founded in 1848. The first black student to go there was James Meredith in 1962 – in the face of death threats and threats of arrest from private individuals and government officials alike! There were many universities across the nation which had never once admitted a black student, and most had never admitted any significant number of black students. This is in the 1960s.
James Meredith was then shot in the neck, legs, head, and torso by white snipers. Affirmative action for university admissions began right around then.
The whole idea that AA was started long, long after its rationale had expired is complete BS. The whole white victimhood screed is nauseating. Racial spoils system? Seriously?
July 25, 2010, 2:09 pmSammy Finkelman says:
IS> Unfortunately, Webb doesn’t make clear whether his position is that affirmative action preferences should be abolished entirely or limited to African-Americans.
Jim Webb isn’t trying to be clear. He’s trying to finesse that question.
July 25, 2010, 2:14 pmmol says:
“Unfortunately, Webb seems to treat poorer whites as passive victims “dominated by white elites who manipulated racial tensions in order to retain power.” In reality, poorer southern whites tended to be strong supporters of slavery and segregation. In the Jim Crow era, they often supported the system much more strongly than wealthier whites and business interests did.”
That’s exactly what he is referring to. Wealthy white southerners did(do) not care directly about suppressing blacks (anymore) or immigrants for that matter who are no threat to them. Rather, they use the racial threat to convince poor whites join in a an electoral coalition to enact the policies that do benefit their interests. Affirmative action provides fuel for this agenda, which is why Webb is right. Poor whites may seem to be the strongest supporters of racist policies but ultimately play a very passive role in this process.
July 25, 2010, 2:15 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
bill,
I would say that mass murder and forced impoverishment are a lot worse than signing a treaty to get someone who wants to attack you off your back.
Given that the “someone” was Nazi Germany, whose nature was not exactly a secret in 1939 (yes, the full horrors came later, but really)? If Stalin merely wanted to be left alone, he could have fortified his own existing borders rather than make a meal of half of Poland and all the Balkans. Yes?
Do you remember how the CPUSA reacted? The Allies were imperialist whatnots; US aid to Britain was only aid to the slavery of the oppressed; &c. Until mid-June 1941, when suddenly there was this mysterious change of emphasis…
I repeat that anyone who followed the CPUSA line over the course of the war forfeits the claim to be a naive idealist. As for Robeson, as I understand it, fellow artists whom he met in 1937 pleaded with him to get the word out about their plight, and he kept his mouth firmly shut.
July 25, 2010, 2:16 pmStrict says:
“Strict wanted President Bush to have his way on everything he wanted during his entire 8-year presidency. ”
No, I did not. But at the same time I did not want the things that he did do to fail. I did not want his economic plans to fail. I did not want his war efforts to fail. I did not want his counterterrorism efforts to fail.
There is a big difference between wanting someone to not always have his way on everything and wanting that person to fail on the things he does do.
July 25, 2010, 2:17 pmricky says:
“The idea that black people benefited from being slaves is so absurd that I felt it necessary to point that out. It’s a crazy world we live in when you have to argue that slavery was a bad thing.”
It’s a stupid world we live in when people think that “black people benefited from slavery” and “slavery was a bad thing” are mutually exclusive statements.
July 25, 2010, 2:18 pmNRWO says:
Anyway, my opinion is that AA would be more effective at achieving its stated goals if it focused less on race and more on
(1) family educational history
(2) family wealth
(3) geographical diversity
Putting aside geography, family educational history and family wealth are proxies of SES. They only indirectly indicate academic ability, and they don’t seem to matter much (compared to academic ability) in predicting achievement when controlled for (see my last statement).
Why should we give a poor kid with low ability (as assessed by objective measures such as test scores) a leg up? That kid is statistically likely to flounder in a competitive academic environment. He’s also going to displace an abler kid (based on objective measures), who is statistically more likely to be successful.
Similarly – and relevant to legacy admits — why should we give a low-ability rich kid a leg up? That kid is also statistically likely to flounder. (The rational basis for giving a rich kid a leg up is that his parents will donate money to the school so that all kids – including poor ones – can benefit from the enhanced environment.)
Most people are much more sympathetic to the first kid (poor, low ability) than to the second one (rich, low ability, too) – with the usual argument being that kids don’t choose their parents and shouldn’t be responsible for their parents’ shortcomings.
But sibling pair studies show that SES doesn’t much matter in the game of life: When two siblings are reared in the same household (and thus have the same SES and parents), the higher ability sib typically achieves higher levels of success. (e.g., Charles Murray’s chapter in, “The causes and consequences of increasing inequality”, edited by Finis Welch.)
July 25, 2010, 2:22 pmSammy Finkelman says:
Didn’t this happen more in states, where there wasn’t such racial hostility, like Texas and Florida? And weren’t things by that time, looking up, so people weer not avoiding those states, esecially if they moved to places like Chapel Hill?
Maybe they feared that – but were they right?? What do the statistics show?
July 25, 2010, 2:23 pmStrict says:
Arthur Kirkland is a sniper?
We still remember Medgar Evers. We remember Martin Luther King. We remember Louis Allen. We remember JFK. We remember Herbert Lee [who was shot and killed by a member of the Mississippi Legislature in 1961!].
They were killed by real snipers. KKK snipers. White snipers.
You wanna talk about snipers and whine about being a white victim?
July 25, 2010, 2:24 pmDave N. says:
I see no reason to whitewash the past, as the Soviets did in trying to make history disappear down a rat hole. The best example of this was the Soviet Encyclopedia sending everyone a very, very long article on the Bering Sea to paste into the appropriate volume to cover another entry since Laventry Beria had become a “nonperson.”
That said, there is also no reason to continue to honor in any fashion those whose actions are beyond any form of redemption, and Nathan Bedford Forrest comes singularly to mind in that regard.
July 25, 2010, 2:27 pmSammy Finkelman says:
No, a lot of them will become legal, through one process or another, although that costs a lot of money, and carries risks, and is getting harder and harder. Marriage if determined to be genuine, often is the road. But i think now they may be required to leave the country, which causes many not to apply, ad their whole life is like a demonic lottery.
If arrested – and not too many are – they may apply for hardship exception, which I think has to be hardship for other family members. Some others may seek a waiver of ineligibility for immigration after deportation.
Of course anyway the net generation is legal, and “home” isn’t
home for many of them.
maybe jeb Bush will be elected in 2012 and they’ll pass something.
July 25, 2010, 2:36 pmStrict says:
“Why should we give a poor kid with low ability (as assessed by objective measures such as test scores) a leg up?”
Poor kids of any ability are given a leg down because most schools are not need blind. If you are poor, that is counted against you in the admissions process. You lose points simply by virtue of being poor. Being poor is directly and openly considered as a factor weighing against admission.
No one says that ability should not be a factor or even the primary factor in deciding admission.
July 25, 2010, 2:40 pmStrict says:
Sammy, I never said that. That’s a quote from someone else.
July 25, 2010, 2:41 pmCareless says:
“The Espenshade/Radford study draws from a new data set, the National Study of College Experience (NSCE), which was gathered from eight highly competitive public and private colleges and universities (entering freshmen SAT scores: 1360). Data was collected on over 245,000 applicants from three separate application years, and over 9,000 enrolled students filled out extensive questionnaires….
To have the same chances of gaining admission as a black student with an SAT score of 1100, an Hispanic student otherwise equally matched in background characteristics would have to have a 1230, a white student a 1410, and an Asian student a 1550. ”
1550 to 1100 is Harvard to San Diego State. A moderate difference.
July 25, 2010, 2:43 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Would you prefer the point-by-point demolition of the racist and low-grade thinking exhibited by those who depict whites as aggrieved, test scores as objective measures and the Confederate flag as a benign symbol? It would add a couple of hundred posts to this thread without making a dent in your opinions, so I thought I would spare everyone.
July 25, 2010, 2:47 pmDiane says:
I think everyone is just too darn sensitive about race. Each of us should be judged on our contributions to society, period. Currently, one gets the best rating if he/she is a tax consumer,,,,which seems upside down to me.
July 25, 2010, 2:49 pmJK says:
On a whole Lee is certainly a more sympathetic figure particularly after the war, and I think we honor him in part as a symbol of post war reconciliation. Forrest was the opposite, not only did he make war against the US, but after the war he led gorilla groups bent on destabilizing the peace, preventing reconciliation, and most of all perpetuation violent racism. We have applied, I think understandably, a sort of amnesty to southerners who reconciled with the US after the war. Forrest never reconciled and died a traitor.
July 25, 2010, 2:54 pmThomas J. Webb says:
Depending on the issue, people who are experts on said issue. Of course, the standard Republican response is to get people to vote not on issues (e.g. “Values Votes” where people vote based on irrelevant factors, like church attendance of candidate). My response would be to say we should harness peoples’ expertise in managing their own affairs and let experts give suggestions, not mandates (e.g., Consumer Reports article warning against eating trans fats vs. anti-trans fats law).
July 25, 2010, 3:00 pmStrict says:
Careless,
I’m not sure that looking at who was enrolled is predictive of who will be enrolled.
Average SAT score is a big factor in school ranking.
Take a year. Say a school of 200 students, with an average SAT score of 1400, admitted 2 black students with SAT scores of 1100. All that means is that it admitted 2 black students with below-average [for that school] SAT scores.
It does not mean that if 200 black students with SAT scores of 1100 apply, then all 200 will be admitted. That would drop the average SAT score to 1100 and would seriously harm the school’s rankings. Probably, the school would admit, say, 2 of them [even though all 200 were equally qualified based on SAT scores].
That is, looking at who the school admitted does not actually say much about the chances of getting admitted.
Also, there are elements of randomness in school admissions. I was rejected at schools that my brother got into, and accepted at schools where my brother was rejected. I was rejected by lower ranked schools but accepted at better ranked schools, etc.
July 25, 2010, 3:00 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Careless, was that all other things being equal? Because if poverty gives you a leg up, and black people are disproportionately poor, then they will be admitted with lower scores, but not solely because they’re black.
July 25, 2010, 3:09 pmNRWO says:
Poor kids of any ability are given a leg down because most schools are not need blind. If you are poor, that is counted against you in the admissions process. You lose points simply by virtue of being poor. Being poor is directly and openly considered as a factor weighing against admission.
No one says that ability should not be a factor or even the primary factor in deciding admission.
I was responding to another commenter, who argued that we should focus not on race but on SES (an indirect indicator of ability).
My point was that if ability can be measured directly (using test scores), then why use indirect indicators of ability (e.g., SES). My other point was that SES doesn’t matter much in predicting later achievement when controlled for.
In Texas, coming from a low SES family (and therefore being relatively poor) can actually be a benefit — even if you’re low ability (in terms of test scores). Texas has a “top 10% rule”, which guarantees admission to top universities to the top 10% of students at their schools — regardless of whether the schools are in poor or rich neighborhoods and regardless of whether your test scores are high or low.
So, being poor and low ability (compared to, say, suburban kids) need not be a mark against you, at least when it comes to getting into top universities in Texas.
In any case, my original points still hold: If ability can be measured directly, and SES doesn’t matter much in predicting later achievement, why use SES (or SES proxies like the top 10%)? Just measure ability directly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_House_Bill_588
July 25, 2010, 3:25 pmGeorge Volski says:
Thank you very much for your comment! It made me think my message was right on target to provoke your response. I cannot wait to upset more people like you.
July 25, 2010, 3:28 pmCareless says:
Yes, that’s controlling for SES and various other factors. sorry, here’s the link
The reason that these scores are so low is because the potential pool of high scorers is small. There simply do not exist another 200 African American students with 1400 SAT scores for them to admit. These schools decide on a minimum number to admit and then see how far down the SAT ladder they have to reach to meet it. The same thing is going on with the admission of males these days.
In other words, yes, it is predictive because 1100 is an average so some are lower. Introduce another 1100 and it will boot someone under 1100 from the schools.
July 25, 2010, 3:30 pmStrict says:
Volski,
You didn’t upset me at all. I’m just saying that if you are upset about all the stupid and entitled black students in your class, you should talk to someone about it privately instead of posting it publicly. If you have anger problems, see a therapist. If you want to say racist things and keep your job, do it privately.
July 25, 2010, 3:40 pmTTT says:
Two facts :
a) Contrary to what Webb and others keep saying, Asians do NOT get affirmative action. Indians and Chinese do NOT get any lowered bars for them. Quite the opposite, in fact.
b) Blacks will never, ever achieve income parity with whites, anywhere in the world. This is a fact, that no amount of taxpayer money will solve.
July 25, 2010, 3:43 pmporterhouse says:
In Texas geographic diversity is practiced because of a law passed by the legislature. The office of admissions in Texas has essentially been outsourced to the Texas legislature, and the rural and urban representatives want their constituents to have access to UT-Austin and Texas A&M, so the representatives support the “top 10% rule” and this handcuff admissions.
Btw, Governor George W. Bush championed the “top 10% rule” after Hopwood (1996). Hopwood prevented UT Law School from using race as a factor in order to achieve a diverse student body. Grutter v. Bollinger overruled the Fifth Circuit Hopwood decision in 2003, but Texas still has the “top 10% rule”.
July 25, 2010, 3:45 pmNRWO says:
TTT: a) Contrary to what Webb and others keep saying, Asians do NOT get affirmative action. Indians and Chinese do NOT get any lowered bars for them. Quite the opposite, in fact.
It really is “quite the opposite,” as noted in Careless’s comment about a recent study of the issue:
Careless: To have the same chances of gaining admission as a black student with an SAT score of 1100, an Hispanic student otherwise equally matched in background characteristics would have to have a 1230, a white student a 1410, and an Asian student a 1550.
Conclusion: Asians have to have even higher test scores than whites to have the same chances of gaining admission to prestigious universities (compared to a black student with scores of 1100).
July 25, 2010, 3:53 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
The thing about SES is that a kid from a low SES background who has an average SAT score probably has a whole lot more on the ball than a kid with a high SES background with the same score. Especially if that first kid is the first in his family to aspire to college so he wouldn’t have had an example set at home.
July 25, 2010, 4:01 pmAndy McGill says:
The problem is that there is no Constitutional rationale for race preferences. The idea of it being a “remedy for past wrongs” cannot go past a generation, else America becomes a land of inherited rights. Forty years, two generations, of racial preferences is a national sore that will continue to fester.
July 25, 2010, 4:16 pmGeorge Volski says:
Do you ever read what you post?
July 25, 2010, 4:23 pmYes, I should keep all my experiences private so that you can continue your social engineering unopposed and you can continue benefit from it politically (sarcasm here, if you did not detect it).
Hey, I even got to be called a racist for pointing out what your social engineering amounts results in. Keep using this accusation as often as you can – great job (at least from my point of view).
Jay says:
In my experience growing up and living in the south, it’s not liberal or “PC types” who want to “airbrush” the Confederacy.
July 25, 2010, 4:25 pmporterhouse says:
Let me clarify something, the “top 10% rule” only applies to undergraduate state universities in Texas and mostly impacts UT-Austin…I have no idea about the UT Law School admission policies. Basically, UT is no longer comprised of the best students it can get from the state of Texas, the university is now about serving students that graduate in the top 10% of their high school class. Now, obviously many of these students in the top 10% of their class would make it into UT without the rule, but many good students from competitive high schools are denied admission due to their class rank.
I do not know the motives of the people that originally instituted the “top 10% rule”, but going forward the rule has very little to do with political correctness and diversity…the rule has more to do with representative democracy and representatives looking out for the interests of their constituents.
July 25, 2010, 4:26 pmCaptain Obvious says:
It is a mistake to assume we don’t have Jim Crow laws now. Just because we call them “affirmative action” doesn’t mean they aren’t the same thing. Before we had black schools and white schools. Now we have white qualifying college scores and black qualifying scores. Before racists stood in the school house door and defied the law. Now they run college admission offices and defy the law. The people who support such things are no better in any way than those who supported the original Jim Crow laws. They just choose to make victims of a different group. Their sin is the same and I am confident history will view it as such.
Saying we will use affirmative action to rectify a wrong done to a person by harming a third unrelated person who shares some negligible and irrelevant characteristic with the original offender is like saying if someone named man rapes a woman then the government can go out and grant some random woman the right to rape some random man… all unrelated to the original parties. It doesn’t work that way. That is superstitious tribal thinking and it is antithetical to any civilized society based on the right of the individual. It is stupidity writ large. Imagine if we totaled up crimes of violence by race and then issued punishment at random to whichever group came out on the short end of the stick. That is essentially affirmative action in a nutshell. The only purpose of affirmative action or any other race based program is to keep the hatred stirred up by ensuring there will always be a fresh supply of victims.
Luckily, Obama has been such a complete, utter and massive failure on every level that people are losing their taste for promoting based on race. In an ironic way he may end up composing the death knell for white guilt which is the first prerequisite to getting the elites and progressives to quit clinging so bitterly to their racism. If $82 trillion dollars of debt and unfunded mandates, and a justice department intent on seeing only one color of victim isn’t enough to expiate our sins then nothing is. Hell, increasingly, they aren’t even our sins. They are the sins of our forefathers.
July 25, 2010, 4:28 pmMark Field says:
Absolutely right. And that’s assuming standardized test scores are actually measuring “merit” in some way, which is dubious. There’s a great deal more merit in overcoming poverty than there is in a test score.
July 25, 2010, 4:40 pmNRWO says:
The thing about SES is that a kid from a low SES background who has an average SAT score probably has a whole lot more on the ball than a kid with a high SES background with the same score. Especially if that first kid is the first in his family to aspire to college so he wouldn’t have had an example set at home.
I want to root for the underdog – e.g., the first gen student whose grit and persistence propels his achievement – just as much as the next person.
However, the jury is out on whether noncognitive factors – which include drive, conscientiousness, and persistence (or, in your words, being a “whole lot more on the ball” compared to others) or parental encouragement or discouragement – are more important than ability.
I’m heartened, however, that:
a) Certain personality factors (e.g., conscientiousness and openness) moderately predict academic achievement (e.g., Furnham at U College London), although such factors are related to ability and may not uniquely predict achievement.
(b) ETS will begin making available to GRE test takers the “Personal Potential Index”, which is designed to measure noncognitive predictors of academic achievement. This should spur additional research on the influence of noncognitive factors.
On the other hand — to throw into the mix a relevant datum — the best predictor of adopted kids’ Ability and Ed level (A and E) in adulthood is not their adoptive parents’ A and E (i.e., their rearing SES) but their biological parents’ A and E. This seems to me to suggest that rearing SES has limited influence on academic achievement, at least when compared to genetically influenced factors transmitted by birth parents. (Sandra Scarr and Bouchard have done the classic work here.)
July 25, 2010, 4:53 pmporterhouse says:
The problem with using SES in a place like Texas is that many students come from recent immigrant families in which their parents do not speak English as a first language and their parents do not have a high level of education (I am not discussing intelligence, but facts about education levels). So SES status is a product of immigration…and NOT historical discrimination. Basically, these students will benefit from the fact that their parents immigrated to the US…is this a good thing to give immigrants an advantage over people who happen to have parents born in the US? I want the admissions process to focus on merit and admitting the best students, I do not want students being discriminated against because of family history.
The US has a long history of immigration and dealing with people that come from families that do not speak English and came from poorer nations…CCNY provided children of immigrants with outstanding educations for decades. I want everyone to have access to quality higher education, I personally believe affirmative action takes our eye off that goal.
One correction, CCNY was providing quality educations to immigrants before WWII.
July 25, 2010, 5:08 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Take off the word “higher” so that your statement applies to K-12, and I will cosign. I think at some point we have to ask why black kids are needing that help getting into college. Before we decide that it’s race and always will be race, we have to assure outselves that our public schools are doing the best they can for every student. I doubt anyone here would suggest that they are. Fixing the problem on the back end by artificially adjusting scores just leaves more underserved kids coming through the pipeline.
July 25, 2010, 5:14 pmAllan Walstad says:
TTT
Why not? Black immigrants from the West Indies regularly do so, here in the US, within a couple of generations. Nor is it clear to me that any taxpayer money was needed at all.
July 25, 2010, 5:26 pmAllan Walstad says:
Strict:
Strict, what I think Volski is concerned about, and I certainly am, is the way the push for higher black enrollments tends systematically to get them matched up with the wrong colleges. This is a legitimate point that you are not going to make go away with snotty comments.
July 25, 2010, 5:29 pmleo marvin says:
Unless you’re Borris’ sock puppet, I smell a trademark action (or maybe Lanham Act).
July 25, 2010, 5:32 pmGeorge Volski says:
It is possible low economic literacy in US prevents people to understand that matching home-owners with wrong homes (a big factor in the recent housing bubble) is similar to matching students with wrong universities. Is it difficult to understand subsidizing X will lead to more market distortion of X? Well, the higher education bubble is next, so let’s sit and “enjoy” the fallout of it soon.
I sure hope Thomas Sowell will investigate the impact of affirmative action on higher ed bubble if he has not already done so.
Allan, thanks for helping me with Strict. Unfortunately, I am at the stage I welcome “critics” like Strict a lot (kind of Alinsky strategy). He/she/it plays right into what I am trying to say and confirms what I am saying is right at this moment of time.
July 25, 2010, 5:42 pmsbron says:
Liberatarians like Prof. Somin justify open borders and mass illegal and legal immigration because they believe immigrants are harder working and more intelligent than native-born whites.
Senator Webb wants to continue preferences for blacks. A primary question he is raising is the need for preferences for new immigrants and their descendants. If immigrants (unless they are white) are automatically smarter and more energetic than American whites, why do such immigrants require affirmative action preferences?
July 25, 2010, 5:51 pmArthur Kirkland says:
How should our society match students with appropriate universities, George? I agree that, as American citizens are forced to compete on a more level playing field around the globe, failure to match opportunity with merit will become a luxury our society is increasingly unable to afford.
July 25, 2010, 5:53 pmsbron says:
It should also be emphasized that affirmative action actually hurts many Asian immigrants and their descendants. I recall that a UCLA Professor, who was nevertheless pro-AA, resigned from the campus AA committee in disgust at the blatant discrimination against Asian applicants. He observed that the ethnic/racial group most discriminated against in UCLA admissions were the Vietnamese.
July 25, 2010, 5:54 pmcboldt says:
– Unless you’re Borris’ sock puppet, I smell a trademark action –
July 25, 2010, 6:10 pmBorris is an infringer, too.
Liberal actress says tea parties were racist – Washington Times, April 17, 2009
George Volski says:
I am definitely in favor of competent engineers when it comes to deep-water drilling. I could care less about affirmative action in urban studies or women studies. I believe AA hurts US in STEM (science, engineering, technology, math).
My current thinking is that I am not interested in society doing much. If NAACP is willing to get money from its members and create scholarships that way, fine. But coercing people (via taxes) to fund all kinds of activities is not my cup of tea. I am in favor of private groups doing stuff people want, not in favor of trading votes for money. It is a form of corruption and will result in some unpleasant events in the future. The moment we have big economic problems, I see trouble.
Give me students of any color willing to study science (but not just wanting to get A for extra crap), and I am willing to work 2 days a week for free and help them. Unfortunately, I am unwilling to work in any government-sponsored program aimed at inner-city youth as most of those weasels (officials) are not interested in real learning.
July 25, 2010, 6:13 pmcboldt says:
– as American citizens are forced to compete on a more level playing field around the globe … –
July 25, 2010, 6:18 pmIt ought to be obvious, and go without being said. Doling out preference and benefits on criteria other than ability is in diametric opposition to “forced to compete.”
leo marvin says:
Though it would be unfair to tar you and most Republicans with Ricky and PIM’s views, that doesn’t negate Angus’ point. It’s sensible for African-Americans to reject a political party whose views on race, even if they include yours, also accommodate Ricky’s and PIM’s.
Let’s analogize to the Democratic Party and taxes. Ricky and PIM’s Democratic analog might be someone who supports restoring top marginal tax rates to Eisenhower-era levels, your Democratic analog might be Ben Nelson, who opposes just about any conceivable tax increase, and most Democrats would fall somewhere in between. It would be wrong and unfair to say, as many Republicans do, that the guy who favors Eisenhower-era tax rates reflects the views of most Democrats. Nonetheless it would be perfectly reasonable for an anti-tax absolutist to decide that any party whose views on taxes have a place for someone who supports 90% marginal rates is a party he wants no part of. And that same perfectly reasonable line of thought is what’s going to keep 90% of African-Americans voting Democratic for the foreseeable future.
July 25, 2010, 6:29 pmArthur Kirkland says:
How should our society identify or measure ability?
July 25, 2010, 6:31 pmcboldt says:
– How should our society identify or measure ability? –
July 25, 2010, 6:43 pmI don’t pretend to know the answer to that, except to say that I don’t think, for intellectual activities, race has a darn thing to do with an individual’s ability. Get rid of the “race” checkboxes.
My abilities and interests were summarized in report cards, awards, and results of standardized tests – the usual standardized tests, and a few that most students don’t take.
cboldt says:
I meant to acknowledge and agree with your sentiment, by the way, “failure to match opportunity with merit will become a luxury our society is increasingly unable to afford.”
July 25, 2010, 6:45 pmAssuming that “merit” has a strong connotation of ability, drive, and a sound moral and ethical foundation.
Strict says:
Porterhouse,
Do you think being bilingual is a merit that should be considered in admissions?
I would think so.
July 25, 2010, 6:49 pmcboldt says:
leo marvin: — It’s sensible for African-Americans to reject a political party whose views on race, even if they include yours, also accommodate Ricky’s and PIM’s. –
July 25, 2010, 6:49 pmYou are working off a false accusation. My sense of PIM and ricky’s core value is that they are color-blind. If that quality is objectionable, why don’t you come right out and say so. Blacks object to a color-blind society, is that your point? Democrats object to a color-blind society, is that your point?
billo says:
Then you need to read your history a bit more carefully. Lots of groups suffered severe oppression. In many cases the difference was one of location and duration rather than degree. Sweat shops and plantations had a great deal in common. If you really want to play the oppressor/victim game, we all get to have cards on the table. The reparations argument falls apart when the people playing the victim card have to say “Nobody’s historic oppression counts except mine.”
July 25, 2010, 6:55 pmbillo says:
You must be a Democrat. Perhaps “ability” should not be judged by the government, but by the market. Provide something somebody else is willing to pay for.
July 25, 2010, 6:58 pmBrian G. says:
What’s the big deal? Less than 17 years to go before affirmative action is no longer needed. Just ask Justice O’Connor.
July 25, 2010, 7:00 pmNRWO says:
Arthur Kirkland says:
cboldt: It ought to be obvious, and go without being said. Doling out preference and benefits on criteria other than ability is in diametric opposition to “forced to compete.”
How should our society identify or measure ability?
Society could let companies decide for themselves how to define ability — so long as the definition is race neutral and in compliance with the law. My own sense is that we ought to ban words like intelligence and IQ from the lexicon. They do little to advance understanding of mental ability and its implications, and often conjure up schemas that distract from understanding.
As to measurement, it’s pretty clear that general mental ability (GMA) tests (g-loaded tests) predict job and school outcomes better than a host of alternative measures — particularly over the long haul, when it’s difficult to predict the new skills people will have to learn in school or on the job. The classic paper in I/O psychology is Schmidt and Hunter, Psychological Bulletin. I believe the title includes the phrase “85 years of research…”
And, with respect to race differences, it’s beyond dispute in the technical literature that GMA tests:
(a) show no predictive bias for blacks and whites (i.e., whites and blacks with the same GMA scores show similar levels of later achievement at school and work).
(b) show no item bias for black and whites (i.e., the item difficulty rankings for whites and blacks on GMA tests are extremely high — typically correlated beyond .90 for the most widely used GMA tests, such as SAT, Wonderlic, and Wechsler Scales).
The classic reference on test bias is Jensen, 1980, “Bias in Mental Testing,” which, though, 30 years old, still provides simple, straighforward explanations of test bias.
The easier read is Jensen’s “Straight Talk About Mental Tests.” All policy makers should read Straight Talk before propounding sanctimonious drivel about test bias.
The legal problem, for those in the know, is related to Griggs v. Duke. The result, at least in the employment sector, is that businesses have effectively outsourced assessment of ability to college and universities.
July 25, 2010, 7:01 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Do you mean, color-blind except for the “I see a race war” part?
July 25, 2010, 7:04 pmElliot says:
Would it be perfectly reasonable for people to reject a civil rights movement that has a place for Minister King Samir Shabazz’s call to kill white babies? The NBP has a place for the Minister, and the civil rights movement has a place for the NBP.
July 25, 2010, 7:05 pmArthur Kirkland says:
And, to be charitable, perhaps most of your attention is being diverted to other pressing matters. The issue was identification of ability by those determining which candidate(s) merit an opportunity.
July 25, 2010, 7:09 pmPlugInMonster says:
It’s your side that’s initiated the race war, not mine. White liberals have been egging on blacks for 40 years.
July 25, 2010, 7:10 pmtioedong says:
Webb speaks of his own southern white ethinic group.
Ah, but what about poor ethnic whites, who for years were discriminated against for their religion and ethnicity? (Jews, Irish, Italian, Polish)?
And what about Asians, who are still being discriminated against for their hard work in school? When I lived in Boston, even my Hispanic sons were considered “White” for having a “white” last name.
40 years ago, it might have made sense.
Before they started the affirmative action policy, we only had one black in my medical school class, but we also only had 8 percent women, and one Asian, and 25 percent Jewish. In other words, quotas, and not just against blacks.
I wouldn’t have minded affirmative action, except my scholarship was cut to help these “needy students”, whose families often were more affluent than my working class inner city family.
A good example of this is Barack Obama. He was the child of a PhD, grandchild of a bank Vice President, but given affirmative action. Do you think if his father was Mr. Soldaro not Mr. Obama he would have gotten all that money and become president?
July 25, 2010, 7:11 pmcboldt says:
– Do you mean, color-blind except for the “I see a race war” part? –
July 25, 2010, 7:14 pmAssuming I am wrong about PIM and ricky (although I am not wrong that the accusations Angus threw are baseless), my questions still stand. Is it the position of blacks and/or the Democratic party that “color-blind” is an undesirable quality? That it is preferable to be color-conscious, and to make decisions based, in part, on race?
bill says:
You can use the exact same type of internet “x is friends with x” logic to “prove” that the Tea Party a neo-nazi movement/sympathetic to neo-nazism.
July 25, 2010, 7:16 pmcboldt says:
– You can use the exact same type of internet “x is friends with x” logic to “prove” that the Tea Party a neo-nazi movement/sympathetic to neo-nazism. –
July 25, 2010, 7:23 pmThe better answer, and I hope it’s true, is that the NBPP is unwelcome in the civil rights movement.
JE says:
So because a small minority of white people today are descendants of white slave owners or ancestors in favor of Jim Crow laws, that justifies racism today against all white people. Why aren’t we still enemies with the English in that case?
July 25, 2010, 7:31 pmArthur Kirkland says:
I believe colorblindness is an admirable aspiration but far from a reliable assumption in today’s America, in substantial part because of an unattractive and long record of color-consciousness.
July 25, 2010, 7:32 pmleo marvin says:
I think color-blindness is a terrific goal, but not when it’s trumpeted by people who conveniently discovered its virtues late in a game in which color bias gave them a commanding lead.
[Edit: Well, I see Arther beat me to it. :o]
July 25, 2010, 7:36 pmMark Field says:
Anyone equating treatment of the Irish with Jim Crow is the one who needs to read more history. The Irish were certainly discriminated against, but not anywhere near that level.
AFAIK, there’s no confirmation that he did. Assuming he did though, this seems to me to cut very strongly against your position.
July 25, 2010, 7:37 pmElliot says:
Sure you could. That’s my point. The Game of Association is a subset of the Game of Race. Extra points for imaginative linkages, with the most points awarded for the most direct link to Hitler. Age is taking a toll, but any direct link to Hitler without using neo-nazis is worthy of Platimun Status. Time is running out.
July 25, 2010, 7:40 pmJohn says:
What is the long term goal of AA? This is the question that I find troubling? Is it a penance that must be done by the country/society that wrong a racial group? If so, for how long? Or is it to help equalize the playing field between those individuals who were disadvantaged? Something else I’m not getting?
Equalizing the playing field seems a worthy goal (though perhaps you can persuade me another goal is more worthy), but if that is the case, what need for race to be a part of the equation? Why can’t it be a means based system? Or should Affirmative Action continue once the individuals have been firmly established in the middle class? What about upper middle class?
July 25, 2010, 7:43 pmleo marvin says:
I believe that is true, but I’d still respond to Elliot that if he thinks black on white racism is more damaging than white on black, the two NBPP members in Philadelphia are a plausible reason for him to prefer the Republican Party. And though the vast majority of Democrats want no part of the NBPP — I’d be happy to see those two idiots in jail — it’s safe to say most of us believe white on black racism continues to do a lot more harm in this country than black on white.
July 25, 2010, 8:00 pmStrict says:
JE,
Affirmative action is not racism against all white people.
Billo: The reparations argument falls apart when the people playing the victim card have to say “Nobody’s historic oppression counts except mine.”
Except no one actually says that. Caricatures that you invent do. In fact, proponents of black reparations often point to other historic examples. For one, the US Government paid out $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who were interred and to their descendents. That is, Japanese Americans who themselves were never directly oppressed in that way received reparations.
Volski,
You make several errors.
First, you assume that the African Americans in your class are enrolled due to affirmative action. You don’t know that.
Second, you are arguing that because they are in the bottom of the class, that they are matched with the wrong college. That is faulty. Every class has a bottom. If the bottom of every class should be cut because they shouldn’t be there, you’d simply be left with classes of 1. Just because you are in the bottom tier in a class does not mean you shouldn’t be there or don’t deserve to be there.
Third, when someone e-mails you saying the need to get a certain grade in order to keep their scholarship, that’s immature and it’s grade-grade grubbing. But it’s not an example of someone demanding special treatment because of race. I assume the e-mails are “Please I need a good grade or else I lose my scholarship,” not “I should get a good grade because I’m black and you owe me things because you are white.”
Fourth, a single e-mail to a professor inquiring about grades is not harassment in any sense of the word. Are there threats?
You are a self-described angry person. You expressed a fear of being sued for your racism. I gave you two honest suggestions for both these problems. I suggested that you should speak to someone who can actually help you with your anger, and I suggested that if you don’t want to get in trouble then you should speak in private to someone about the race issues. Making a public post about how pissed off you are at all the stupid, harassing, and entitled black students you have that shouldn’t be there in the first place is not exactly a great idea.
July 25, 2010, 8:01 pmStrict says:
John: “Why can’t it be a means based system?”
It probably should be, at some point.
The problem with universities is that for a long time they specifically excluded blacks, all blacks of all means. Many universities that had been around for hundreds of years didn’t allow their first black students until the 1960s – and not even voluntarily so. Admissions programs persistently and specifically denied black candidates in favor of white ones. The University of Louisiania at Lafayette didn’t allow in any black candidates until after Brown v. Board. So in a way, it was a black-specific problem that transcended means. AA helped counteract personal biases in admissions offices by forcing them to seriously consider black candidates. They couldn’t get away with just summarily denying black candidates like they used to.
July 25, 2010, 8:09 pmcboldt says:
Arthur Kirkland: –I believe colorblindness is an admirable aspiration but far from a reliable assumption in today’s America, in substantial part because of an unattractive and long record of color-consciousness. –
July 25, 2010, 8:15 pmMy questions weren’t intended to elicit an answer that described the state of current affairs. Although it’s entirely possible I just don’t understand your answer.
Affirmative action is not color blind. Does the Democratic party object to color-blindness? This “unattractive and long record of color consciousness” you mention, should it continue?
leo marvin: — I think color-blindness is a terrific goal, but not when it’s trumpeted by people who conveniently discovered its virtues late in a game in which color bias gave them a commanding lead. –
If you sincerely hold that color-blindness is a terrific goal, why would you reject a person trumpeting the virtues of it? What is this “lead?” Some sort of economic or political advantage?
I also don’t see an answer to whether or not the Democratic Party should be for or against affirmative action, mindful that affirmative action is, by definition, absence of color-blindness.
I have the impression that both of you hold the position that Republicans are at a disadvantage because advocating color-blind represents a political disadvantage. That one reason Republicans don’t get many votes from blacks, is that many blacks prefer affirmative action to a color-blind society.
rpt says:
What is your explanation for b)?
July 25, 2010, 8:30 pmcboldt says:
– You are a self-described angry person. You expressed a fear of being sued for your racism. –
July 25, 2010, 8:30 pmHe didn’t say he was a racist.! The fear expressed was being sued for the actual performance of the student body. The accusation of racism would be based on the observation that the average scores for blacks taking his class are “at the bottom,” for his class – and that this scoring derives from the professor’s racial bias.
I wouldn’t read much into the “I’m pissed” remark. I’m pissed at Scalia for the Heller and Raich decisions, and at Congress for lots of reasons. He’s pissed at a cohort of students that seems to expect academic favors. I get pissed at kids and old farts that cut in front of me in the check-out line. Etc.
Strict says:
Cboldt, OK. He expressed a fear of being sued for alleged racism, or more accurately, of losing the lawsuit [How do i protect my assets?]. It was a completely irrational fear, and coupled with the expression of anger and the subjective feelings of victimhood [I'm being harassed], my suggestion that he talk to someone about it was earnest and not snotty or retaliatory.
July 25, 2010, 8:37 pmGeorge Volski says:
Yes, I know. I simply ask them where are they from. ALL of them are struggling and not from my state (and reluctant to admit that). Do you believe a struggling student can afford out-of state tuition? Clearly, they are brought in to fulfill a court order to increase African-American enrollment. And clearly the university does not want it to be known publicly.
Keep up your work with psycho-analyzing me. It is a music to my ears. And keep posting how indifferent you are to what I am saying. You made my day today.
July 25, 2010, 8:38 pmPlugInMonster says:
Ah under this reasoning, AA can continue FOREVER. Well, the American people have had ENOUGH.
July 25, 2010, 8:46 pmcboldt says:
– It was a completely irrational fear –
July 25, 2010, 8:53 pmWell, that would have been a foundation for a decent answer. Tell him, no sweat, score the students per their performance, and don’t sweat. Be nice to the kids who think they are entitled, but don’t cut ‘em any academic slack, because you are there to teach, and honestly report their performance.
Here, let me wing it …
Q: Statistically speaking, am I a racist who almost always puts African-Americans down? How should I protect my assets once I get sued for racism?
A: As long as you are fair and objective in your grading, you are not a racist. If you can, arrange a “blind grading” system. As long as you are working within the scope of what you were hired to do, the school is obliged to pay for any legal defense and satisfy any adverse judgment. “You’re covered, as long as you’re in the employ of the school.”
Q: With African-Americans I usually get an email that they need B or B+ as otherwise they may lose a scholarship.
A: You should provide extra help, or guide the student to outside resources, and not let their expectations affect your objective judgment in grading. You have an ethical responsibility to the profession that transcends the expectations of any individual student.
Q: I did not come to this country to discriminate against anybody. It really offends me that there is a group of people who think I owe them special treatment. And I am pi***d off big time.
A: Don’t sweat the bad attitude and entitlement mentality that some people have. From the sounds of it, you don’t discriminate, and you care about your students. You should be damn proud.
Kmg says:
Thanks for this post. Although I’m far to the left of most of the authors of this post and diagree often, it’s about the one place I can find very intelligent conversation and consistently great writing from a more conservative perspective. I regularly tell liberal friends who are prospective law students that they really need to check out George Mason because of the possibility of intellectual debate there, evidenced by the GMU authors on this blog.
July 25, 2010, 8:53 pmGeorge Volski says:
cbolt, you seem to be reading me correctly (your knowledge of psychoanalysis is better than that of Strict). OK, let me explain precisely what I am pissed of at. I grew up in a communist country and I witnessed discrimination against groups of people there. The difference between communists and US government is that communists did discrimination on their own. I was never asked to join them. In US the gov is asking me to discriminate by giving preferential treatment to their favorite groups. And if I do not, I am called a racist by ever-helpful Strict. Yes, I am pissed of as hell. I grew up on stories of fair America and here I am being dragged into sh**t by my own government. No effing way I will do that. Yes, I am angry as hell. I intend to treat all my students equally regardless what the effing politicians think.
Mr./Ms/Mrs.Strict, do the discrimination yourself. Don’t you dare trying to get me to join you by talking about lofty ideas on what society should do and labeling everybody disagreeing with you as racist.
July 25, 2010, 8:55 pmStrict says:
Volski,
The idea that an affirmative action court order is kept secret and away from the public is very interesting. [Most court orders are public. Are you just making stuff up now?]
It appears you do not know what psychoanalysis is. I have not psychoanalyzed you at all.
I never claimed to be indifferent to what you are saying. I obviously care about what you say because I’m responding to it. I claimed I was not upset – and I’m not.
And no, you don’t know which students were enrolled due to affirmative action. That was one of Justice Thomas’ criticisms of affirmative action. Because you don’t know which students get in because of affirmative action, there’s ambiguity. This ambiguity leads people to assume that all minority students are affirmative action admits:
It’s a good criticism. The fact that AA causes white people to feel racial resentment and victimhood is another good criticism of AA.
July 25, 2010, 9:06 pmNick056 says:
So among a group of people who know about the crimes of Che Guevara (witness a previous Somin thread), when Nathan Forrest gets brought up, commenters liken him to …. FDR and Paul Robeson.
But it’s crazy for people to ever wonder what goes on with some of the right and race.
July 25, 2010, 9:09 pmMnZ says:
What do you mean by “a long time”? It is sometimes difficult to know when the first African American student was admitted to a university if it had no official racial policy. However, I have been able to find the following:
I could go on, but I do not have the time to do the research. I also cannot exclude the possibility that these universities willfully held down African American enrollments. I am open to examining the evidence if you have any.
July 25, 2010, 9:11 pmStrict says:
Volski: “In US the gov is asking me to discriminate by giving preferential treatment to their favorite groups.”
Oh, are you an admissions officer? I could see an admissions officer being upset about being forced to participate in AA.
I thought you were a teacher. The government is not asking teachers to discriminate by giving preferential treatment to minorities. The government is, however, asking [some] admissions officers to discriminate by giving preferential treatment to [some] minorities.
Really though, has the government asked you to give favorable treatment to your minority students over other students? If so that’s fairly scandalous, and probably illegal, and I had no idea that is what you were talking about.
July 25, 2010, 9:11 pmBruce Hayden says:
NOT to jump into the real racial argument, at least not yet, but I felt compelled to make a couple of points after having lived through the college admission process a couple of years ago.
First, for a lot of schools, legacy admissions, per se, are rapidly disappearing. Instead of looking where the parents, grandparents, etc. went to school, the schools are looking more and more at how much money they can expect to gain from admitting some prospective students. The admissions offices most often communicate quite closely with the development offices. So, that I had not given much to my alma mater meant that my kid wouldn’t have gained an edge. But kids with very rich parents did, even if the parents hadn’t graduated from that college. I know one father who was the third generation to have graduated from Dartmoth be told that his kid wouldn’t get any preferences and shouldn’t bother applying. He didn’t, and ended up at a very good school, but just not as competitive, somewhere where he was in the middle, instead of the pack, and not below there. He was smart enough to have been able to graduate there, just not to excel. On the other hand, I know some kids close to the middle of their prep school classes who were admitted to much better schools than kids with much better credentials just because their parents had a lot of money.
So, please, let’s quit beating the legacy issue when it comes to AA. Its on its way out.
What I did see with admissions from a racial/ethnic point was that Blacks, regardless of their heritage benefited the most. Which meant that the kids from recent immigrants, who worked hard, did fairly well, were being actively recruited by schools a couple of notches above where they could expect to be admitted if they weren’t at least partially Black. Probably because we were in the middle of the country, the discrimination against east-Asians wasn’t as obvious. Not as I think that you would see from the west coast, and I think that there was almost none for schools in the middle of the country, and not nearly as much as west coast on the east coast. Still there, but not overwhelming. And, I think maybe even a small advantage to one girl going back east.
And, yes, almost as noticeable as the discrimination in favor of Blacks, is that against females. Time and time again, I saw a boy get in a college that a better qualified girl was rejected from. But, being male, my response was that if K-12 hadn’t been redesigned over the last 40 years or so to the benefit of girls, and the way that they learn and excel, this might not have been an issue.
July 25, 2010, 9:12 pmcboldt says:
– In US the gov is asking me to discriminate by giving preferential treatment to their favorite groups. And if I do not, I am called a racist by ever-helpful Strict. –
July 25, 2010, 9:13 pmStrict is small beans, don’t sweat him either. He’s just electrons hitting your computer screen.
While your school administration no doubt feels some pressure and concern about student performance, a substantial part of their concern is, unfortunately, just churning students through the mill so the school can get money. In other words, don’t necessarily expect a sympathetic ear from your boss – although you might find one there, I don’t know.
As for your students, tell them you are a tough but fair teacher. Their grade will be based on XYZ, or whatever. This is university, you will treat them as adults, and that if they feel they aren’t getting it, it is up to them to ask for help.
As for the US getting to be more like communism, imagine how pissed we natives are!! Still, do your job well, help the kids learn (they deserve to learn, some probably need a kick in the pants from time to time), show your enthusiasm for the subject (I teach adults some very DRY subjects, it’s hard to keep them attentive!), let their chips fall where they may, and you enjoy your life.
Bruce Hayden says:
Another thought. One of Web’s core constituencies is, I believe, are the Jacksonians, who are more likely to be poor whites than descended from rich slave owners. I see this as an attempt to keep them on-board the Democratic party, as it becomes ever more racist in its actions and pronouncements. The problem he faces is that this constituency is turned on by the tea party movement, and turned off by the sort of racism that is more and more evident in this Administration. He is giving them an excuse to keep voting for Democrats in general, and himself in particular. He is essentially saying that, yes, a lot of southern whites were racists, but it wasn’t our people’s fault. It was those aristocratic plantation owners. Never mind that during the Jim Crow regime, much of the overt racism was practiced by the poor whites, who would have otherwise had to compete more ferociously with Blacks. And that they constituted the bulk of the Klan.
July 25, 2010, 9:24 pmStrict says:
Mnz,
There’s a lot of interesting historical data. The University of South Carolina was founded as all-white in 1801. After it was commandeered by the Radical Republicans, it admitted its first black student in 1873. But it wasn’t really a school anymore – almost all funding had been cut in rebellion to the mandate to admit blacks, and the student body was a total of 8 students – the black guy and 7 children of professors. The school shut down completely soon after. When it re-opened it was again all-white. Black students instead went to Claflin or South Carolina State or elsewhere.
So while it’s true that the University of South Carolina had its first black student in 1873, it wouldn’t be fair to say that it has been admitting black students since then. It had, for a long time, specifically excluded blacks of all means.
July 25, 2010, 9:27 pmStrict says:
“He is essentially saying that, yes, a lot of southern whites were racists, but it wasn’t our people’s fault. It was those aristocratic plantation owners.”
My impression [correct me if I'm wrong] is that slavery in the south was predominantly by small farmers. The big plantations were big, but accounted for only a small percent [anyone know?] of the overall slavery.
There’s a lot of discussion of slavery & Jim Crow here, but no mention of the Black Codes. Black Codes played a big role in the historic oppression of black people in America.
July 25, 2010, 9:31 pmMnZ says:
I am familiar with the University of South Carolina story. It is yet tradegy suffered after Reconstruction in the South.
My more general point is that I would posit that there are universities with affirmative action programs with no history of institutionalized racial exclusion. The justification for affirmative action becomes rather unclear at universities such as these.
July 25, 2010, 9:41 pmPerseus says:
You should avoid such suits by issuing even more ironic grades like Harvey Mansfield, who attributes grade inflation in part to affirmative action (“Grade Inflation: It’s Time to Face the Facts”)
July 25, 2010, 9:59 pmzxsdwelsrjghiu says:
The problem with the false accusations of racism we have heard by Dean and by jurnolistas, and the NAACP, and Obama himself (regarding the Cambridge police) is more than just an an unfair attack on conservatives intended to affect elections. It harms minorities and it harms race relations in society.
Blacks and Hispanics now hear about racism every time they turn on the news. They are faced with a seemingly hostile society that hates them – but that view is inaccurately based on invented political smears.
White people hear these smears and know from their own self knowledge that the accusations of racism are baseless and begin to form resentment. And, minorities begin to resent those supposed racists. Now we have a bigger race problem due to lying political operatives.
(Every person, even those who who once supported Obama, who is now tarred with the label “racist” because they reject liberal policies, should note who is smearing them and remember it this November and all future Novermbers, and when they purchase media products, and wen they make donations to charitable organizations.)
Liberals claim and may think they are trying to make a better world by foisting their ideology on the rest of us. These people want to be leaders. A country led by deceivers and dividers will certainly not be the liberal utopia they claim to envision for us. A group of dishonest, race baiter’s who cultivate social divisions might be capable of forming totalitarian system of oppression but certainly not a utopia.
July 25, 2010, 10:05 pmSeattle Law Student says:
No where else to post this. Not gonna lie, I’m kinda sad there’s no Sunday song lyric today.
July 25, 2010, 10:24 pmmattski says:
That’s some impressive self knowledge there.
July 25, 2010, 10:41 pmPlugInMonster says:
What does he have to do with anyone else? If he’s a racist that’s his problem. Your attempt to smear others will fail.
July 25, 2010, 10:44 pmElliot says:
Hey, if you are going to play the Game of Race with a Game of Association option, then play fair. I get credit for playing the “Kill White Babies” card, not for worring about Philadelphia polling places.
July 25, 2010, 10:51 pmRandy says:
Songdog: “. If you will look at the actual facts as to when the south began to boom, you will see an uncanny relationship with the advent of affordable air conditioning. This occured in the 50’s and early 60’s, well before any possible impact of Brown v. Board of Education and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”
True. In addition to that, northern companies realized that the south had cheaper labor, no unions, lax employment regulations and environmental laws, and so moved their factories and HQs to the south.
Nick: “So among a group of people who know about the crimes of Che Guevara (witness a previous Somin thread), when Nathan Forrest gets brought up, commenters liken him to …. FDR and Paul Robeson.”
Yeah, and everyone always forgets that our fifth president, Andrew Jackson, established a policy of genocide against native americans, and yet no one has a problem with him being honored on the 20 dollar bill.
I only wish those who are so upset with Paul Robeson would be as upset with Jackson. But that’s one they conveniently ignore.
July 25, 2010, 10:55 pmM. Simon says:
If we need to use some one to maintain the attitude how about North Koreans?
July 25, 2010, 10:58 pmArthur Kirkland says:
To commemorate today’s coordinated publication of tens of thousands of records illuminating the 2004-2009 Afghan-Pakistani quagmire, Bob Dylan’s Masters of War seems appropriate:
Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks
You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain
You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people’s blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud
You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I’m young
You might say I’m unlearned
But there’s one thing I know
Though I’m younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
And I hope that you die
July 25, 2010, 11:18 pmAnd your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
’Til I’m sure that you’re dead
PlugInMonster says:
One has to wonder when white Democrats are going to get sick of the endless race baiting.
July 25, 2010, 11:20 pmMark Field says:
I would disagree with this. If the policy is justified, then any resentment would be unjustified and no basis to eliminate the policy. Of course, if the policy is NOT justified, that alone is reason to end it and feelings of resentment don’t enter into it.
Only about 25% of white Southerners owned slaves or belonged to a slaveowning family. Of those who did own slaves, 72 % owned fewer than 10. Source: David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage, pp. 197-8. Slave ownership was very much a class system, with the white oligarchy being the real beneficiaries.
July 25, 2010, 11:22 pmJK says:
I for one am going to wait out this race war of your’s before making any major moves, and then proclaim to have always been on the side of the winner.
July 25, 2010, 11:47 pmStrict says:
“I would disagree with this. If the policy is justified, then any resentment would be unjustified and no basis to eliminate the policy.”
I understand this point of view, but I wouldn’t carry it out to the extreme. My statement was more of a realpolitikal stance. If a justified policy is going to cause huge problems, even problems that are unjustified or irrational, then in some situations it’s overall a greater good to scrap the policy.
For example, India wanted to establish Hindi as the sole national language. It was more symbolic than practical [and was arguably justified], but people in Tamil Nadu [who variably wanted to speak only Tamil, or both Tamil and English, but not Hindi at all] were furious and almost rebelled from the nation, which very well could have led to the dissolution of the entire nation of India and widespread civil war.
As a compromise, the government agreed to temporarily recognize English as a quasi-official language. As the temporary period was ending [1965], again the Tamils threatened secession and massive violence erupted. Ultimately the government scrapped the Hindi-only policy. This had been a lingering problem for over 40 years!
If scrapping AA alleviates racism and racial tension in America, maybe it would be worth if. It’s certainly a factor to consider, regardless if the white resentment is unfair. If scrapping AA would prevent an actual civil war, it would definitely be worth it, regardless of whether the people threatening the civil war are irrational, unjustified, and/or totally racist.
I think southern governments should remove confederate flags from their government buildings. A policy ordering removal would be justified, but if the reaction was an earnest threat of secession or war, then maybe it would be wiser to scrap the removal policy and just move on…
July 25, 2010, 11:49 pmJK says:
That’s a fair point, but practically affirmative action seems more like a battle in a larger “culture war” (to indulge in the cliche), and victory in a battle rarely causes a war effort to lose steam. That’s the problem with realpolitik thinking, without grounding in principle a mistake can be doubly bad: loss of principle and loss of tactical ground.
July 25, 2010, 11:58 pmporterhouse says:
Webb’s piece does not really concern African-Americans, the column is about recent immigrants…most African-Americans are from families that have been in the US longer than most white families (once again, Obama is an exception and thus Webb’s column concerns him).
The 1965 Immigration Act was crafted by a problem drinker that was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and the act changed America for the better…thank you Teddy! Of course, Ted Kennedy did not intend to change the face of America…but when Americans elect 30 year old legacy candidates to the Senate people should expect uneven results (Ted Kennedy benefited from affirmative action). Obviously, MLK deserves a great deal of the credit for the change in immigration patterns. Without his heroic efforts many Asians may have not believed they could get a fair shake in the USA.
July 25, 2010, 11:59 pmStrict says:
“Without his heroic efforts many Asians may have not believed they could get a fair shake in the USA.”
I wonder about the impact of MLK’s 1959 visit to India, and if he inspired any Indians to emigrate to the US.
July 26, 2010, 12:27 amricky says:
“The 1965 Immigration Act was crafted by a problem drinker that was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and the act changed America for the better.”
There are a lot of people who disagree about that. It certainly was an effective power-grab for the Democrats, though.
July 26, 2010, 12:51 amricky says:
And as sort of evidence I’ll offer these three points:
The law was, as you acknowledge, passed on false premises (that it would not substantially and irreversibly alter the makeup of the United States population)
Few (if any?) of the countries whose citizens have benefited from the USA opening its doors have returned the favor or enacted similar policies
As Webb points out, new immigrant groups have aggressively demanded and received privileges over the historical population
July 26, 2010, 1:00 amStrict says:
It’s pretty cynical to call the 1965 Immigration Act a power grab.
I assume you mean because the Act led to [relatively] more Asian and other non-white immigrants, who ended up [but weren't necessarily predisposed to] voting in favor of Democrats. By 1965 European immigration to the US had already died down considerably [most of the post-WWII German and Italian immigration had already occurred; more importantly, the Soviets had locked down everyone].
Most of the post-1975 Vietnamese immigrants vote Republican. But I could see that changing in the next 10 or 20 years, depending on how much the Republican party alienates them.
The Democrats have done well to appeal to Asian Americans, while the Republicans have done well to alienate them. Take the 2008 Presidential election, where the Democrats ran a candidate with Asian roots. The Republicans, by contrast, ran a candidate who is famous for running 23 missions dropping explosive, incendiary, and chemical weapons on Asians during an indiscriminate and failed bombing operation. A candidate who had previously said something like “I will always hate the gooks” on the campaign trail.
July 26, 2010, 1:32 amporterhouse says:
I agree with you, but I would like to add some recent developments and I also believe ricky might be conflating two distinct issues: one is illegal immigration that has increased in recent years, and the other is legal immigration as a result of the 1965 Act. Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley are most likely products of the 1965 Act, Joseph Cao might also be, but Vietnam might be a special situation like Cuba…I am not sure. These three people are all Republican politicians. I grew up with many people like Jindal, Haley, and Cao–they make our nation a better nation.
Illegal immigration is a separate issue, and this may be a Democratic power-grab. However, Rove and Bush believe they can get Latinos to vote Republican…remember, the heir to the Bush political legacy is George P. Bush–his mother is from Mexico, he lives in Texas, and he will run for governor in the not too distant future.
The 2007 comprehensive immigration reform would have de-emphasized extended family chain migration.
July 26, 2010, 2:05 amricky says:
“It’s pretty cynical to call the 1965 Immigration Act a power grab.”
No, if I was being cynical I’d call it a suicidal nation-dissolving Faustian bargain.
July 26, 2010, 2:09 amStrict says:
“Illegal immigration is a separate issue, and this may be a Democratic power-grab.”
I think a power-grab has to be something active, and something fairly quick. Passive inaction to Mexicans entering the United States over the past 200 years isn’t a power-grab. And it’s not specific to the Democrats. There are many causes of illegal Mexican immigration. Better job opportunities in America, corruption in Mexico, crime in Mexico, inefficiencies in the naturalization/greencard/work permit/visa systems, poor border security, poor regulation of employers, birthright citizenship, failure of deportation enforcement at all levels of government especially in the non-border interior, family reunification, lower tax rates for low-income individuals…
July 26, 2010, 2:50 amRobbie says:
Most Americans- Black or White, rich or poor weren’t even born when the Civil Rights Act was passed. Only about 12% of today’s living Americans were old enough to vote at the time.
July 26, 2010, 4:30 ammattski says:
On the “random dude—person of influence” scale he was “not just anybody.”
And here’s a suggestion: try concentrating harder before you accuse someone of “smearing others.” Reporting on the actual statements a person—a prominent person—makes does not constitute a smear.
July 26, 2010, 5:54 amcboldt says:
– And here’s a suggestion: try concentrating harder before you accuse someone of “smearing others.” –
July 26, 2010, 6:18 amThat’s rich irony.
cboldt says:
leo marvin: — it’s safe to say most of us [progressive/liberals - Democrats (?)] believe white on black racism continues to do a lot more harm in this country than black on white. –
July 26, 2010, 6:41 amQuite evident, given the frequency of leveling the charge of “racist.”
Can you articulate the forms of harm being perpetrated by white on black racism? You assert the presence of “a lot more harm,” but “harm” is an imprecise metric.
Arthur Kirkland says:
No, this is irony:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
July 26, 2010, 6:43 amYour huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Ricardo says:
Napoleon and Erwin Rommel were pretty legendary military commanders as well — where are their statues in Memphis? The one thing that makes Forrest a noteworthy individual is his military prowess. That he chose to use that one skill in the service of an indefensible cause makes the statues themselves indefensible. You can’t really say, “oh, that guy was a brilliant general so we should honor him” with no regard for the side he fought on. And someone looking for anything else to honor in his life would very quickly hit a dead end: he was known as being a pretty dubious person who was a slave-trader and a dueler who committed war crimes against black people during the Civil War and later joined a domestic terrorist organization.
Paul Robeson is known as being a renaissance man of significant accomplishment in a time when many black people could not hope to graduate from high school. Even if he had never engaged in any political activism at all, he still would have been an important figure as a very visible and impressive member of the black elite. Many of the movers and shakers of the civil rights movement were involved in leftist politics to various degrees. If you purge them all from the history books, you wind up with the completely inaccurate, revisionist history that says it was all MLK and the NAACP.
So are you suggesting a purge of all of these figures from any kind of praise or recognition of their artistic and literary talents? If not, it seems to me Wagner, Robeson, Neruda, and the others stay.
July 26, 2010, 6:51 amRicardo says:
I’m not sure about Jindal’s and Haley’s parents specifically, but a disproportionate number of Indian immigrants come to the U.S. on H1B visas or the equivalent to become engineers, tech workers, doctors, professors and the like. Indians are not eligible for the green card lottery.
But if you like people like Jindal and Haley, that’s an argument in favor of scrapping the current highly dysfunctional H1B program and replacing it with a better skilled immigration visa program. The H1B is basically a fraud — in order to qualify for the visa, you are supposed to convince a consular official that you intend to return to your country after the visa expires. I’m not sure what the actual rate of people leaving the U.S. when the visa expires is but I suspect it is quite low.
July 26, 2010, 7:09 amcboldt says:
Arthur Kirkland: — No, [Emma Lazarus's poem, "The New Colossus"] is irony –
July 26, 2010, 7:12 amWhat you wrote is, without more, shifting the subject. Perhaps you could augment your remark, to indicate its relationship to the subject at hand.
My mocking of mattski was based on noticing that he/she failed to practice the very same thing he/she suggests PIM brush up on, “concentrating harder before making an accusation.” I was going to call hypocrite, but that’s overkill here. “Not concentrating before accusing” suffices.
Ricardo says:
Can you name a specific country, what exactly its policies are and how they differ from America’s policies towards that country’s own immigrants? Mexico does not count as many immigrants from that country are not legal. I think Mexico certainly allows foreign citizens with relatives who are Mexican citizens and residents to move to Mexico just as the U.S. does. There are enough American expats living and working in Mexico that it cannot be much more difficult to secure a work permit and visa in Mexico than in the U.S.
Among developed countries, it’s probably easier for an American to move to Australia, Canada or the U.K. than vice versa. In short, I don’t know what this lack of reciprocity is that you are referring to.
July 26, 2010, 7:22 amcboldt says:
I mean, I see the discussion is on the subject of immigration, but I don’t see how “The New Colossus” is ironic.
July 26, 2010, 7:22 amPerhaps you mean to imply that the Democratic Party is superior on account of tapping into obtaining [immigrant] votes by doling out money and preferences and opening immigration policy. The party that doles out the most money/unearned-favors wins! If so, that’s nothing new, and I daresay, nothing an American should be proud of.
Robbie says:
July 26, 2010, 8:40 amRobbie says:
The U.S. accepts more legal immigrants each year than all other countries of the world combined. About 60% from Mexico, the other 40% from the 200+ other nations.
If one wishes to emigrate to Mexico and become a Mexican citizen, one must first deposit in a Mexican bank the equivalent of “X” number of hours of the Mexican minimum wage. I believe it is now about $240,000 USD. Even if you manage to obtain Mexican citizenship, the fact that you are foreign born means you can never vote or participate in any political activity whatever. Doing so may result in arrest, felony conviction, imprisonment and deportation. That BTW is the same punishment for illegally entering, living in, working or using social services in Mexico.
Mexico is rather serious about their immigration law.
July 26, 2010, 9:11 ambillo says:
No. “Society” should not be in the business of “doling out preferences.” “Society” should not be telling one group they can have an opportunity and another that they cannot. My “Democrat” comment derives from the underlying assumption that it is the government who should dictate who does and does not succeed — that the discussion is properly only about what criteria the government should use when it dictates our futures, not whether or not it should be in the business of doing that at all.
July 26, 2010, 9:12 ambill-tb says:
Isn’t it about time we junk all the old racial quotas, like those now installed in our federal government, and the resulting caste system? I mean what do racial preferences really do except assuage so old hatreds for colonialism, that apparently people like Obama will never get beyond in the post=racial world.
Reparations just makes people want more handouts, instead of doing their own thing. It’s such a worn out concept of giving handouts to poor people for votes … The moo has fallen off our moo-saih, makes those Styrofoam Temples act look so dumb in hindsight.
July 26, 2010, 9:36 amArthur Kirkland says:
Does a university’s affirmative action program constitute ‘government dictating who does and does not succeed’? How should a university determine whom to admit?
July 26, 2010, 9:50 amscattergood says:
AA is, in a word, idiotic. It is collective punishment writ large with no actual logic or end in sight. It treats individuals in the most dehumanizing way and takes out individual choices and preferences in favor of racial preferences.
Let’s ask some basic questions:
1) When does affirmative action end? What is the mechanism by which we as a society say, ‘Ok, we have done enough, let’s stop AA now’? There is no articulated method of ending AA and thus it becomes a never ending cycle of distributing rewards and resources from one ethnic group to another for political reasons.
2) Sports is a great area to look at to see how truly stupid and idiotic AA is. Blacks are wildly over represented over their % of population in the NBA and NFL players. Why is there not AA for Whites, Asians, or Pacific Islanders? The average NBA salary is $3.4M, clearly it is a highly lucrative and coveted job, aren’t short, nonathletic, uncoordinated people being discriminated against? Of course they are.
People who support AA want to control and determine the outcomes of society and decisions. People who don’t support AA believe that the process of getting to those outcomes is more important.
Of course there was discrimination in the past and of course there is discrimination now. But we should battle the discrimination itself, press our fingers on the scales of life and say, ‘now it is fair’.
July 26, 2010, 9:52 amOrson Buggeigh says:
Arthur Kirkland
How about basing university admittance on proven academic ability – a test showing the applicant is ready to perform at a college level. Before dismissing this idea out of hand, note that New York State was able to make this work rather well sixty years ago. Students graduating from high school had to take and pass a standardized exam. If they passed, they were considered ready for college. Many New York city high school graduates who passed the exam then went to college at nearly free City University of New York. The catch was, they didn’t have open admissions. You had to demonstrate actual academic ability before they admitted you.
Affirmative action really has no legitimate academic purpose, despite all the prattling about the value of diversity from some faculty. The only reason for admitting anyone to a university should be their ability to perform university studies successfully.
July 26, 2010, 10:14 amJohnson says:
All I know is that I have a black President, US Attorney General, mayor, city councilmen, police chief, Senator, neighbors (two of whom are professors, another a journalist), lawyer, and contractors. I should be so marginalized.
We have anti-discrimination law in place and private and public sector minorities who can hire other minorities. (White) racism is no longer a dominant ethos in society, indeed most of us cringe at unequal treatment or racial insult. After decades of affirmative action, preferential admissions and hiring, it’s time to take the training wheels off minorities’ lives and let them compete in the open marketplace of preparation, qualifications, talent and luck.
Continued government and corporate bean-counting is handicapping the minorities it sets out to help by disincentivizing performance in some cases, by making “quota” students and hirees appear less qualified than others (and sometimes they are), and, worst of all, by diminishing those minorities who do qualify for positions not based on race, because the assumption on others’ part will often be that their minority status trumps all.
The ideal of equal opportunity has metastasized into compulsory Diversity and a fixation on race leading to political resentment voting blocs, tortured hiring formulas and difficult employer law and institutional bias against others often better qualified. If AA policy was intended to incentivize the best schooling and work performance of minority applicants, why is it their communities still need the handicapping after all these years?
After a quarter century of AA, it’s time to wean minorities off the idea of special consideration because of History and encourage them and all of us to compete in a color-gender-orientation blind market. It’s time the Democrats get over the lucrative vote-getter and bureaucracy building of government collective white guilt and “positive discrimination” programs.
This is the next century already. Let’s have faith we can fix ourselves and communities and cut it in our remarkably free and accessible market and mobile society. Minorities will prove themselves as people and not as perennial victims or members of a race and grievance group.
July 26, 2010, 10:22 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
I find it interesting that no one has a problem with German reparations to children of Holocaust victims. I would have thought, under the “logic” presented to oppose affirmative action, that German liability was extinguished when Hitler died.
July 26, 2010, 10:23 amyankee says:
::raises hand::
July 26, 2010, 10:24 amcboldt says:
– I find it interesting that no one has a problem with German reparations to children of Holocaust victims. –
July 26, 2010, 10:31 amI wonder if this is a flavor of Godwin’s Law?
– I would have thought, under the “logic” presented to oppose affirmative action, that German liability was extinguished when Hitler died. –
I just finished reading a concise summary of the harms that either are or arguably might be caused by persisting in affirmative action; and not ONE of those arguments was based on “the north won.”
But, out of curiosity, I may go see what sort of justification, extent, and pushback revolve around the German reparations. I suspect your wonderment collapses there, too, on substantive differences between the German experience and the American one.
cboldt says:
To clarify – there was an argument presented (but not in the list of current practical negative effects) that the debt was extinguished with the blood of union soldiers. But since we are, at this point, past that by the operation of AA for many years, an argument based on “blood of soldiers and no more” is moot.
July 26, 2010, 10:35 amKen Arromdee says:
It was also written when we had almost nothing in the way of social programs for immigrants to use, and immigrants were expected to learn English and adopt American culture.
July 26, 2010, 10:40 amyankee says:
Preferences for underrepresented minorities in university admissions and some special Small Business Administration programs constitute a caste system? Seriously?
July 26, 2010, 10:42 amcboldt says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_Agreement_between_Israel_and_West_Germany
Criminey. I don’t think THAT’s a good parallel, at all. It would set up a separate country! And oy, the opposition?
Not to say there aren’t perhaps some good lessons that could be adapted. I think the idea of transfer payments to a government, for infrastructure, for example, is better than payments to individuals. Provide the means and tools to success, but personal success is obtained the same way for all (no guarantees, hard work, some luck, etc.).
July 26, 2010, 10:50 amJL Novak says:
The diversity framework that undergirds contemporary thought and the policies Sen. Webb criticizes rests on some awfully clumsy assumptions about “whiteness.” The 20th Century “white”-on-”white” body count was >130MM (62.9MM USSR democide; 21MM National Socialist Germany democide; 1.5MM Communist Poland democide; 1MM Communist Yugoslavia democide — on top of 16MM WWI fatalities and 28MM WWII fatalities). That history is more recent. It’s also the relevant history to a significant portion of “white” America. Justice Scalia captured this in a bromide some years ago: “Not only had [his father] never profited from the sweat of any black man’s brow, I don’t think he had ever seen a black man [before immigrating to America].” http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,984811-3,00.html#ixzz0unfI00Ci
July 26, 2010, 10:52 amcurious says:
Yankee says: “Preferences for underrepresented minorities in university admissions and some special Small Business Administration programs constitute a caste system? Seriously?”
What does “underrepresented” mean? Is there some ideal mix of race, gender, orientation, age and disability that every unit of society should strive for each year?
Sounds kinda grayish to me (apologies to the AARP
July 26, 2010, 10:54 amgrievance grouplobby) and not at all diverse.yankee says:
Straw man much? I was talking about race-based affirmative action programs in university admissions, not some five-category representation metric in “every unit of society.”
Are you defending bill-tb’s contention that university admissions preferences (and SBA programs!) constitute a caste system? That kind of histrionic overreaction trivializes the injustices perpetuated by real caste systems. It’s like equating an amputation and a paper cut.
July 26, 2010, 11:09 amcurious says:
OK, Yankee.
What does “underrepresented” mean? Is there some ideal mix of race
, gender, orientation, age and disabilitythatevery unit of societyuniversities [and SPB programs] should strive for each year?Sounds kinda grayish to me (apologies to the AARP grievance grouplobby) and not at all diverse.
July 26, 2010, 11:30 amJoe says:
Thanks for the typical example of collectivist thinking. To the contrary, people are individuals.
I don’t see where the “to the contrary” comes in … I said that historically, there was a period where whites were treated as a favored class. For instance, in the South, they had the ability to vote in various areas, while blacks generally could not in actual point of fact. This made them an favored class.
Some white people in the past did some awful things to some black people.
I didn’t say all whites were bad; I said whites as a whole was a favored class. I think that having special rights in practice, such as the ability to vote or run for public office across the state, is a favored status as compared to those who could not have them. In smaller ways as well, whites had a net benefit from the resulting situation, one where whites were a de facto favored class in society as a whole.
(Set aside the fact that blacks were sold into slavery by other blacks in Africa, or that slavery existed around the world and down through history with few people batting an eyelash until the latter 1700’s when it became a moral issue in Britain — among white people — upon which the British, having brought slavery to America, became the main force for its abolition around the world.)
Slavery “through history” was of different kinds, and the black slavery in the U.S. and other areas (it was even a more cruel sort in other areas, slaves in effect worked to death) had special difficulties. But, again, this is a strawman, since I’m not saying whites are all bad, blacks all good or anything.
The notion that their guilt is transmitted through the generations to all white people, or those who live in the US now, is precisely the notion that people are to be treated not as individuals but as members of their race. It’s a racist notion, Joe. Yes, you heard that right. Think about it.
I didn’t say that the guilt was transmitted like original sin. I said that we as a society have an obligation to deal with the problems of the past, including those whose effects continue on. Again, this is more a sign of your apparent biases and assumptions than what I actually said.
By the way, your “marry into a family” analogy is lame, not least because there’s no comparison between being born and choosing a marriage partner.
It is not a matter of “being born,” but of being part of a society and community. We voluntarily are part of this society as we are voluntarily part of a marriage. We cannot shove off the responsibilities of the family we marry into since “we had no part” in the problems involved or even if blame can be shifted around. Compensatory negligence doesn’t get one off, so that too is a canard.
Why not drop the blame-mongering, the resentment-nurturing and pointless seeking of redress for wrongs committed long ago by dead people against dead people — and consider what actually proves to work for advancement.
It is not “blame” but trying to obtain understanding; it is not “redress” but a matter of trying to deal with problems of today. It is not ‘long ago,’ but continuing problems and concerns. If we fail to understand the past, and realize how it affects the present, we can’t deal with the future.
As Sowell pointed out long ago, black immigrants from the West Indies arrive here dirt-poor and reach the same affluence level as whites within a couple of generations. How? Not by political agitation for special treatment.
Actually, immigrants have over the years used their numbers and political power (including in respect to citizens among the group in question) to push for special treatment and services to handle their transition. For instance, bilingual services in Florida in poll places et. al. help French immigrants from the West Indes.
Of course, new immigrants don’t have to deal with the legacy of racism and slavery in quite the same way, though as blacks et. al. they are affected by it in many ways. To ignore the past, and its negative effects — I doubt Sowell didn’t cover this too, if only to show how it negatively affected blacks — is folly.
July 26, 2010, 11:39 amGeorge Volski says:
Since Webb’s article points out that AA (affirmative action) benefits now mostly recent immigrants and since most comments here are from lawyers/historians/etc (people with degrees in humanities) who are interested in facts of the type “in which year did university U accept the first black person”, let me point out mechanisms originated by AA that are related to immigration.
In short: AA was a little butterfly (just to help a bit a portion of US population) that turns out to create hurricanes that destroy US education.
For whatever reasons, US lacks natives with PhD degrees in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). So we import them by tons. Suppose you are a young assistant professor at U of State and you know your teaching will be a factor in tenure deliberations. You were really hired for your research and you are aware that students in US know how to play the “game”. At the tenure time students are ask to write about your teaching. Do you want to risk a few letters claiming you are sexist or racist? In STEM the minority students (blacks and females) are not the best of their groups as finances/business offer much more $$ per hour of studying, so finances/business syphon off the best of them. Well, the solution is to give as many A’s as possible. Do you think those professors will change their ways after tenure? All they are really interested in is research. Why would they waste their time fending off barbaric groups of ignoramuses who think they deserve better treatment because of the color of their skins or gender?
The way AA benefits immigrants in STEM areas is as follows: suppose a dean breathes down your neck to hire minorities. OK, it can be done but he/she is from Nigeria or Jamaica. Anybody with brains in US goes immediately into administration if he/she is classified as minorities, so AA creates the shortage of minorities at professorial level instead of decreasing those shortages. Watch Ms Sherrod negotiating a nice job after all this brouhaha we witnessed a few days ago. How come she has not accepted a new job yet? She is not a professor but the game is similar.
July 26, 2010, 11:48 amArthur Kirkland says:
How well did it work for blacks, women and other disfavored Americans 60 years ago?
I wonder whether a suitable test existed in 1950, because I am not sure it exists today.
July 26, 2010, 11:49 amcurious says:
Identity groups, victimization and spoils fights: the new bore. And sure to be a political loser this next election.
Americans need to get motivated to do for themselves without the hysterical racial hand-wringing and hand-holding. We can’t afford to wallow in pity parties and guilt fests over the past, to obsess over constructing PC rainbows as an end unto itself, if we’re going to get this moribund economy on track anytime soon.
And no one, absolutely no one has to be admitted into We are the World University in Denver, Seattle or Cambridge in order to make it in this country. There are too many colleges in need of any warm body and it’s also bogus that a college education is the only ticket to success.
July 26, 2010, 11:53 amArthur Kirkland says:
July 26, 2010, 11:53 amElliot says:
How about university admissions based only on test scores? Tests would be both aptitude and achievement. A variety of achievement test would be available to recognize differing high school curriculums. All applicants would apply through the company that runs the SAT. Send the SAT company the university application fee, and they forward the fee and data to the school. Universities would not know gender, race, location or national origin, so it would be impossible to discriminate on those characteristics.
July 26, 2010, 12:04 pmRicardo says:
Because lots of people want to come to the U.S. and the U.S. makes it possible for enough people to get visas. There are several countries with higher rates of immigration per capita than the U.S. (like Canada). It’s worth keeping in mind that there are millions of Filipinos and Indians living and working in the Middle East. Most of them would jump at the first chance to move to the U.S. but it is simply impossible for them to get visas without a relative there already.
That’s naturalization rather than immigration law. The U.S. gives investors’ visas to people who want to invest $1 million or so to start a business. Some people with no relatives and no job qualifications for any other visa category but who have money do this. It’s not really clear whether this is the one and only way to become a naturalized Mexican citizen and what else is required so I’m not sure what we are supposed to be comparing this to. If you are a foreigner with only $500,000, no relatives and no job qualifications, you aren’t going to be able to immigrate to the U.S. unless you qualify for the diversity lottery.
July 26, 2010, 12:30 pmGeorge Volski says:
I am assuming any sufficiently large group in US has the same distribution of talent with respect to any field of study X (not assuming so is called racism, I think but it is better to check with Lawrence Henry Summers). Yet in STEM certain groups are underrepresented and under-performing. So what is the explanation other than the best talent went somewhere else? Are we free to explore scientifically what those explanations are (again, Lawrence Henry Summers is a better source than me when it comes to questions of that type)?
July 26, 2010, 12:40 pmcurious says:
The ideal UNiversity is a little UN. Admissions acceptance scoring should aim for high percentages of non-Caucasians and women, along with a couple of Peruvian Yanomamo descendents and a token transgendered Aleut.
Because… it’s not what’s taught to meritorious students but which students get taught that meritorious isn’t the point?
July 26, 2010, 12:58 pmStrict says:
“I think the idea of transfer payments to a government, for infrastructure, for example, is better than payments to individuals. Provide the means and tools to success”
Cboldt, that’s exactly what most proponents want. Very few people, except the caricatures invented by white people opposed to reparations, advocate sending out cash to individuals based on skin color.
Proponents have said the money should go to community schools, community gyms, community health care centers, afterschool programs, scholarship funds.
There are implementation problems with the proposals.
The money would have to come from the federal government – otherwise there’d be an issue of which states should participate, what to do about states which refuse to participate, etc. The federal government is already running a huge deficit. Maybe sometime in the future, during good times, the feds will have enough money to spent a boatload on a reparations project. Yes, this means all federal taxpayers would be contributing, including black people. Otherwise, there would be an impossible problem of sorting out who must pay and who is exempt. No one would have to eat the blame. Simple is better.
The infrastructure programs would have to target black areas, but they would have to serve and benefit all who live there, not just black people. Any other solution that focuses exclusively on black people would run into huge problems of defining the beneficiary class. Simple is better.
I think it’s too late to do land redistribution. Post Civil War, there was a lot of redistribution pursuant to the 40 Acres and a Mule mandate, but it was quickly undone and the land was returned back to the plantation owners. It would be too late to do it now.
July 26, 2010, 1:00 pmcurious says:
Strict and others, we have all that and more which blacks can take advantage of. There are some pathologies in especially urban neighborhoods which white America can no longer own, except via our imparting a soft racist attitude of it’s not their fault and a Hollywood and music industry which make big bucks off of reveling in urban differentness and dysfunction.
Blacks need to own themselves.
July 26, 2010, 1:12 pmcboldt says:
– Cboldt, that’s exactly what most proponents want. Very few people, except the caricatures invented by white people opposed to reparations, advocate sending out cash to individuals based on skin color. –
July 26, 2010, 1:23 pmYou are in favor of reparations, based on the prevailing skin color of a community. Color me unsurprised.
porterhouse says:
Colin Powell, whose parents immigrated to NYC from Jamaica, graduated from City College of NY in 1958…we have a model that worked for decades, let’s study that model.
July 26, 2010, 1:41 pmClayton E. Cramer says:
The quote you are missing is from Governor Berkeley, with respect to Bacon’s Rebellion: “How miserable that man is that Governs a People where six parts of seven at least are Poor Endebted Discontented and Armed.” While subjugation of blacks was already well under way at the start of Bacon’s Rebellion (which include both blacks and whites in rebellion against a government perceived as too friendly to the Indians), the problem greatly accelerates afterwards, and for the reasons you mention.
July 26, 2010, 1:42 pmporterhouse says:
Jindal and Haley are most likely products of the 1965 Act. I stated that I favored the 2007 immigration reform which would have de-emphasized family chain migration and emphasized skill based immigration.
July 26, 2010, 1:50 pmHarryEagar says:
Hmmm. Are you suggesting that BP was using diversity hires?
(Besides, the problem wasn’t the engineering, it was the management.)
Anyhow, I get what you are.
July 26, 2010, 2:09 pmklp85 says:
Elliot,
I wouldn’t object to placing more emphasis on a standardized entrance process. Assuming for the purposes of this comment that test scores are the best way to do this, though, I don’t think that one sitting of the SAT would suffice. I wouldn’t mind a test that combined elements of the SAT, the ACT, the LSAT, and the GRE, to be taken over 2-3 days, with the option of subject-specific exams. This is because even eliminating “gender, race, location or national origin” from consideration, at least the following questions should be considered:
1. What role would other skills play in admissions? Someone above mentioned bilingualism, but there are a number of other practical skills. Of two potential computer science majors, should the applicant with the 1450/1600 (M+V using the old SAT) who already knows a few computer languages be preferred to the 1550 student who’s very bright but has a far less experience with languages?
2. What role would performance on subsections/subject areas play? Given two prospective math majors, would the 780M/670V (1450 total) be preferred to the 740M/740V (1480 total) student, or would the latter’s higher overall score prevail?
3. How does one deal with statistically close cases? The LSAT presents students with score bands (representing, I believe, where a given student would have been expected to score 68% of the time). It’s far from clear that between students who got (say) 172 and 174 on the LSAT on a given sitting of the LSAT (or even the 1450/1480 students given as an example in #2), the latter has definitively more “merit.”
The latter two issues would be resolved in large degree by something along the lines of my suggestions at the beginning, but all three underlying issues are subjective.
Perhaps a system where schools “invite” students to apply (with the fee very low or waived) after getting their scores, in which schools can then make more subjective judgments, might work? Within a school’s expected range of takers, score differences would, one would hope, be insignificant. With schools seeking applicants blind to race, gender, etc., and unable to charge high fees, there would be little incentive for most schools to broaden their prospect pool and engage in engineering to so great a degree that the statistical problem would come into play.
July 26, 2010, 2:11 pmporterhouse says:
Let me clarify, I think some people believe the influx of immigrants will help their political party, and others just want the short-term benefits of cheap labor that leads to higher profits. The pace of immigration from Mexico has accelerated over the last several decades, so most Latinos living in the US have never been the victim of institutional racism in the US.
Since 1981, we have had a string of presidents that have favored illegal immigration for cheap labor, and they hailed from states that gave them a much higher level of understanding about the positive impacts for businesses. Clinton knew how much illegal immigration meant for Wal-Mart (illegal immigrants are not on their payroll, but most of the small businesses they contract out to most likely employ illegals in states such as Texas). George W. Bush and Karl Rove had the greatest understanding, and they both honestly believe Latinos will vote for Republicans and they understand the benefits for their donors, and their policies are consistent with those beliefs.
July 26, 2010, 2:13 pmGeorge Volski says:
I am suggesting that if you lower expectations for one group of people, eventually those new standards apply to all people. If you create special majors for football players (urban studies), it spills to general population eventually. And teaching/grading from urban studies spill to hard sciences as well.
BP disaster was a result of turning off warning equipment (in case of build-up of gasses). Is that management problem?
Thank you very much: I know who you are as well =:) It is lovely to get to know each other on this site. Feel free to call me Georgie.
July 26, 2010, 2:22 pmMark Field says:
Only if by “worked” you mean “generally succeeded in excluding blacks and Hispanics”.
July 26, 2010, 3:35 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Very good for students who naturally test well, or prepare for the test well (perhaps with prep courses), and students who possess the cultural background of those fashioning the test, and those not required to work during the school year, and those in better schools, and those able to take the test more than once.
Not so good, however, for a society increasingly reliant on matching opportunity with merit (rather than class, or inheritance).
July 26, 2010, 3:42 pmArthur Kirkland says:
That line of argument resembles advocating purchase of a lottery ticket as a sound pension investment plan, then claiming vindication if the ticket wins.
July 26, 2010, 3:46 pmporterhouse says:
Colin Powell did NOT excel in high school or in college, he only started excelling in the military. That said, CCNY gave him a pretty good foundation to build on. The list of CCNY alums from immigrant families that excelled is very impressive. Here is the list from Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_City_College_of_New_York_people
I guess all those people got lucky and won the “lottery” by attending CCNY and not an Ivy League undergraduate school.
July 26, 2010, 4:19 pmHarryEagar says:
I guess that explains why a dullard like George W. Bush got into college — expectations for legacy enrollees were just about zero — but what the hell does it have to do with the oil well engineers?
July 26, 2010, 4:20 pmporterhouse says:
Webb’s column is not really about African-Americans…I am discussing immigrants, lumping Latinos, many of whom are from families of recent immigrants, with African-Americans does not make much sense when discussing historical discrimination. I suggest you read Webb’s column–Somin links to the column in his post.
July 26, 2010, 4:32 pmlibarbarian says:
1) Why are so many white people so scared of “reparations”? They AREN’T GOING TO HAPPEN. There is simply no way that there will ever be anything close to a majority behind such a hairy concept. Jesus guys – they don’t even have majority support in the AfAm community. It’s just not going to happen. Yes, a few people “advocate” for them, but it’s never going to be the law of the land and it’s totally NOT worth getting scared over.
2) race war? I’ll just say the same thing I always say when I hear this nonsense – Be prepared to find a lot of “your kind” opposing you.
July 26, 2010, 4:35 pmGeorge Volski says:
It is not just oil engineers. It is also bridge engineers in Minnesota and US Army engineers in New Orleans. Not to mention NASA engineers sending probes to Mars that crash due to a confusion of the metric system with whatever is being normally used here.
This discussion is likely dominated by lawyers, so the question of who gets admitted to college X is very important to you. I think it is much more important what happens after students get admitted to college X. I am not aware of any special classes created for legacy students. Students George W.Bush or Albert Gore (speaking of legacy dullards) get admitted, take regular classes, get their C’s or D’s, and then run for POTUS.
The problem with affirmative action (or lucrative college sports teams) is that students admitted based on AA (or 4.5s 50m dash) need high maintenance the whole 4 years (or more) of school. The result is special majors created for those students or pressure on professors to lower standards (a dean of business school called a friend of mine once to discuss the class taken by the starting quarterback – the class was being taught by that friend and was not in business school). In a situation where teaching is evaluated mostly by teaching evaluations filled out by students, 30 years of constant drip-drip creates what we have now: the only decent hard science schools are Cal Tech and MIT. My high-school in Vitebsk had better (theoretical, not experimental) math+physics classes than the rest of universities in USA now.
It is possible that AA damaged law schools in US as well (I understand B.Obama was a constitutional law professor at U of Chicago) but I think the main damage occurred in hard sciences at a time this country can afford it the least (I may change this view after B.Obama and his SCOTUS nominees are done with “interpreting” of the US Constitution and the full scope of damage is known).
The curiosity is that even in communist countries there was a way to admit “correct” students (party members and their offspring). Yet, in hard sciences, there was no special treatment of them and theoretical physics there flourished.
July 26, 2010, 5:15 pmArthur Kirkland says:
BINGO! That paragraph cost you any lingering benefit of doubt, George, concerning your certification as a bitter bigot whose mutterings deserve no benefit of doubt.
July 26, 2010, 5:52 pmPeter says:
So I spent my morning reading this instead of working and a couple minor comments as most of what I would have said has already said and better than I would have :)
“and primarily harm lower class and rural whites and all Asians.”
Don’t forget the rest of the Semites (and please don’t lump Arab, North African, or Persian in with *Asians*)
> That is false. Legacy admits received 5 points at most. Underrepresented minority individuals received 20 points (except if he or she was already receiving 20 points for being poor).
I’m really curious how that is figured out and applied on a non-arbitrary basis. I mean given all the major minorities are overrepresented in the major universities based on their actual general populace numbers, who get’s these 20 points? Amerindians (which btw shouldn’t get jack being *sovereign* and all that) as I have a hard time thinking of any other official minority that would qualify based on being underrepresented.
> Do you think being bilingual is a merit that should be considered in admissions?
No as it’s biased against the vast majority of American’s.
> The problem with universities is that for a long time they specifically excluded blacks, all blacks of all means.
And? The Freedom of Association implies the Freedom to Exclude.
> I find it interesting that no one has a problem with German reparations to children of Holocaust victims.
Move to German and talk to the masses, lots of folk had a problem with it and still do, just not in pubic. Ditto with South African repreations (see how well that is going btw).
> Slavery “through history” was of different kinds, and the black slavery in the U.S. and other areas (it was even a more cruel sort in other areas, slaves in effect worked to death) had special difficulties
No and no. Chattel hereditary slavery was the norm throughout history as was working slaves to death. You are falling prey here to American exceptionalism and the white guilt/black mediocrity complex.
July 26, 2010, 5:57 pmElliot says:
Aptitude tests measure probability of success in school. Subject tests in various subjects measure achievements. That’s merit.
Cultural background? OK. Let blacks develop a test, identify it as a black developed test, then let anyone take it. Whites and Asians who took that test would be taking a test developed by someone with a cultural background different from theirs. For example, anyone could take the black developed math test.
The objective would be to have a variety of tests available. Students could take any or all, and the SAT company would submit all of them to universities.
I read somewhere that Cal Tech used only test scores for admission. Anyone know if that is true?
July 26, 2010, 6:25 pmElliot says:
I picture those galley slaves changing into their best loin cloths and taking a stroll on the Lido Deck between shifts.
July 26, 2010, 6:32 pmGeorge Volski says:
From Wikipedia:
A bigot is a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices. The correct use of the term requires the elements of intolerance, irrationality, and animosity toward those of differing beliefs.
The term has evolved to refer to persons hostile to people of differing race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation and religion in modern English usage.
If I am opposed to affirmative action (discrimination, really), then clearly I am opposed to the policies of Mr.Obama, hence the paragraph you are citing is superfluous at best and I am “surprised” you are using it to claim I am a bigot.
I think your post is typical of Obama’s supporters strategy of deflecting attention from issues by yelling “racism”, “bigotry”, etc.
Concentrate to counteract my main arguments, do not undermine them that I am against Mr.Obama’s policies. The best I can do is to start future posts by “I love Mr.Obama to death but …”. Will that work for you?
July 26, 2010, 7:26 pmArthur Kirkland says:
The problem isn’t opposition to Obama’s policies, George. The problem is your objection to his occupancy of a faculty position at the University of Chicago, an essentially inexplicable position outside the realm of racism. Which illuminates, to your detriment, your position concerning black students at the school at which you say you teach. And your position with respect to blacks at educational institutions in general. You went one step too far into the light.
July 26, 2010, 10:04 pmmattski says:
Sorry I missed you, cboldt. Catch you on the flip side.
:^)
July 27, 2010, 6:52 amcboldt says:
I’m still here. I think the comment facility remains open for 5 days from the timestamp of the OP.
July 27, 2010, 8:43 amKen Arromdee says:
Because reparations aren’t being demanded in a vacuum. First of all, they’re just one point on a spectrum and limited support for reparations implies somewhat less limited support for ideas that are somewhat less extreme than reparations, but may still be extreme enough to be worrisome. Second, a demand for reparations implies an attitude “since we’re not getting reparations, the white man will just continue to owe us forever, so we’re going to make endless demands and anything we demand is justified”.
July 27, 2010, 10:19 amGeorge Volski says:
Mr.Kirkland, you are spinning things with the grace of a member of the Journolist!
If anyone wants to trace the impact of affirmative actio