Leaders of the Maryland NAACP, worried that a Baltimore mayor’s criminal conviction could result in the appointment of a white or Republican leader who may not fully represent the majority black and Democratic city, are asking state lawmakers to strip the governor of authority to permanently fill the office.
[...]
“There is that possibility of a conviction, and we want to know those protocols that are in place,” said Elbridge James, the political action chairman of the state National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “If it looks like it is going to rain, I am going to buy an umbrella.”
[...]
Marvin L. Cheatham, the president of the Baltimore Chapter of the NAACP, introduced the resolution because he heard an attorney on a radio program discussing a lack of clarity on succession if [Baltimore’s mayor] were to be convicted and sentenced.
“Our concern is who would the governor appoint?” Cheatham said. “Here you have a predominantly African-American city. What if the governor appointed somebody white? ... Would he appoint someone Irish to be the mayor?”
[...]
The resolution passed “nearly unanimously” with little debate from the 150 or so delegates who attended the meeting, James said.
7 July 2009 >>
Fredric U. Dicker—regarded as the pre-eminent political reporter in New York’s state capital—recently published a column decrying the complete breakdown of the state legislature, which has been unable to conduct business for the past month.
Buried way down in Dicker’s piece, starting at the 19th paragraph, we learn:
During the first five months of this year, with the Senate under the control of its first African-American majority leader, [State Senator Malcolm] Smith, top Democrats bemoaned the lack of minority Senate staffers.
But instead of trying to recruit new hires, they fired nearly 200 almost exclusively white workers and replaced them with a large number of minority employees, many of whom were seen by their fellow workers to be unskilled at their new jobs.
The move produced severe racial tensions, made worse by the fact that, as a high-level Democratic staffer confided, “We’ve been told to only hire minorities.'’
So, nearly 200 people lose their jobs in New York State because of their race? And not at the hands of some evil corporation, but our own elected officials?
It’s quite telling that, in our political age, mass firings can still happen because of one’s race. It’s even more telling that—the only time I’ve seen this story get any coverage at all—it was in the 19th paragraph of an otherwise unrelated column.
3 June 2009 @ 8:49AM >>
Joe Paladino of Lake Mary, Florida e-mailed in response to my piece on President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor. And, no, the reason I’m posting this is not because of the first paragraph... I keep telling myself.
Joe writes:
First off, let me say that I love your site. There have been very few times were I seem to disagree with your posts. But what I like most is that you seem fair with the issues you write about and present all facts, then state your opinion. And still have time acknowledge the letters of those who disagree with you, even though there have been instances when they don’t seem worthy of anyone’s time. That is far more than I can expect from many other sources.
But for this most recent post, I have to express opinion. To most people, this nomination seems to clearly be a case of affirmative action. Understand that I’m certainly not doubting her qualifications, which may be sufficient. Of course that is to be decided during the Senate confirmation hearing. However, what infuriates me (and should disturb her as well) is that Sotomayor was only considered on the luck that she is female, and better yet, Hispanic. I believe it is safe to say that a majority of this country has no problem working and going to school with whoever desires to be there, so long as they deserve to be there. And by that I don’t mean because a college Dean or the President of the United States wants to even things out a bit.
This inforrmation you provide about her outrage while in college concerning the lack of hispanic students on campus is ridiculous. How is it anyone’s fault that only 66 Puerto Ricans applied to Princeton that year? Perhaps her time would have be better spent encouraging the potential students to consider Princeton as the college of choice. To support my argument I’m going to quote a great man who’s influence is still seen today though the messge is often passed over.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.—Martin Luther King, Jr.
I think it is safe to say that the way our colleges, and appearently supreme courts, are run is not exactly what Dr. King had in mind. It’s common sense that we should judge all people by their character. But it is absurd that in the year 2009 people still want racial equality, unless of course you are white. We already had our run.
But I don’t suppose I can blame her. It would take a extraordinary person turn down such an incredible opportunity and immense honor.
But a black man now holds the highest office in the land. While that certainly does not undo all of the racial oppression this country has seen, it does show that Americans are ready to move forward. Unfortunately, there are some who still think that things just aren’t fair yet.
1 June 2009 @ 7:41AM >>
In the mid-1970s, Sonia Sotomayor—President Obama’s nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court—was a student at Princeton. Back then, when Sotomayor led a group called Acción Puertoricaño, she was an “outspoken activist” well-versed in the language of leftism and identity group grievance politics.
In a letter to the Daily Princetonian published 10 May 1974, she describes a complaint from “the Puerto Rican and Chicano students of Princeton”:
The facts of the complaint are these: 1) There is not one Puerto Rican or Chicano administrator or faculty member in the university; 2) There are two million Puerto Ricans in the United States and two and a half million more on the island itself. Yet there were only 66 Puerto Rican applicants this year, and only 31 Puerto Rican students on campus. While there are 12 million Chicanos in the United States, there were only 111 Chicano applicants and 27 students on campus this year; 3) Not one permanent course in this university now deals in any notable detail with the Puerto Rican or Chicano cultures.
Although she herself was a Puerto Rican student receiving a free ride on a full scholarship, Sotomayor concluded that a “lack of commitment on the part of the university to the Puerto Rican or Chicano heritage seems self-evident” and that it “reflect[s] the total absence of regard, concern and respect for an entire people and their culture.”
Hyperbole comes naturally to the college-aged, so I’m willing to believe that the Sotomayor of the Woodstock era is not the woman who sits on the court today because, as she might say, I would hope that an older Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a young Puerto Rican girl who hasn’t lived that life.
Legal blogger Tom Goldstein conducted a survey of her record on the court of appeals, where he says “Sotomayor has decided 96 race-related cases.” Sotomayor has been on the United States Court of Appeals since 1998, where she serves on panels of (typically) 3 judges that hear each case. Goldstein’s survey found:
Of the 96 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous.
If that’s true and is reflective of her record being better than her rhetoric, then that’s a bit of a relief. And although there is at least one highly-controversial racial discrimination decision in the record Goldstein cites, the fact is, Republicans don’t have the political juice to oppose her anyway. So, barring Obama withdrawing her for some reason or a new fact emerging that moves enough Democrats to vote against her, Sotomayor will be confirmed.
Nevertheless, her seeming inevitability doesn’t mean that Sotomayor should get a pass for her rhetoric or her fierce support of affirmative action and racial preferences in hiring. Her philosophy on racial preferences and “social justice” should be questioned thoroughly during her Senate confirmation hearings.
Since Sotomayor endorses the idea that a judge’s ethnic background affects judicial decision-making, shouldn’t we know how her heritage has influenced her thinking in cases she’s judged? Could she point to specific cases where “being a Latina woman” lead her to a “better” decision than a “white male” would have made?
I don’t expect the Democratic majority to ask these questions, so Republicans should. That is the minimal duty of an opposition party. We’ll see if they have the stomach to do it.
27 April 2009 >>
Pick your brackets and put down your money!
We now have brewing an epic battle that will determine the relative importance of three different groups: Jews, Muslims and Mexicans.
You see, in the Hierarchy of Multiculturalism, when the interests of different identity groups conflict, the arbiters of political correctness must decide which group has the most victim cred. That’s how such disputes are settled: to the victim go the spoils.
Today’s battle involves the name of the influenza virus that’s currently causing worldwide panic. “Swine flu.” Say it with me: swine flu.
Do you feel a little dirty? No? How insensitive of you!
The term “swine flu” is apparently offensive to both Muslims and Jews, a pretty impressive bank-shot of an insult if you ask me.
So to alleviate this grave injustice of nomenclature, an Israeli health official proposes renaming the virus “Mexican flu.”
Now you see the conflict.
Try to use your knowledge of multiculturalism and political correctness to determine how this conflict gets resolved. Which identity group wins? And why?
Be careful, though! Improper thinking may result in being labeled a xenophobe, an anti-Semite, a racist, an Islamophobe, or some combination thereof.
Yes, this decision is fraught with peril—your views may mark you as a potential domestic terrorist—but this mental exercise will prepare you well for the New Era of Hope & Change.
...but perhaps we should all be pushing for the name to remain “swine flu.”
You got any better ideas for uniting Muslims and Jews?
8 January 2009 >>
Liberal political comedian Baratunde Thurston attended Washington D.C.’s prestigious Sidwell Friends School, where he often found himself as the only black student in the classroom.
Now that Barack and Michelle Obama are sending their kids to Sidwell, Thurston decided to share his experience in an open letter of advice to the incoming First Family:
Sidwell will assuredly meet the challenges of educating and providing security for the first daughters. Back in my day, Sidwell parents included three senators, the publishers of both The New York Times and Washington Post and, oh yeah, Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose pubescent progeny was two years behind me. The Roosevelts, Nixons, and Gores also sent their kids to Sidwell.
But what may prove more challenging is the burden Malia and Sasha will face, not as first daughters, but as plain ol’ black girls. They already represent the United States of America, but in a school like Sidwell, even though it may have a greater representation of minorities than in my time, they also will be expected to represent the United States of Black America, as I was.
They’ll be The Black Friend. They’ll suffer through many a white person wanting to touch their hair. (I strongly recommend Sasha and Malia avoid cornrows.) And they will likely be viewed as both exceptions to and spokespeople for their race. This means they should be prepared when fellow students and even teachers turn to them for “expertise” when the curriculum touches on anything black.
Black Sidwell students are often likely to end up being the only black kid in a classroom. When this happens, we are automatically deputized as a sort of Assistant Professor X. During a discussion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Hurricane Katrina, or even Black Lung, all eyes swivel toward us as everyone expects us to break out our copy of The Negropedia: A Comprehensive Guide to All Black Knowledge for the Edification of White Folks. Let your daughters know this moment is coming. Drill them on black facts. Make them memorize Roots. This way, they can prepare their lesson plans in advance.
[...]
I joined Sidwell in seventh grade. My first day at school, a black student who’d attended since kindergarten pulled me aside and asked if I knew what an Oreo was. “Yeah,” I answered. “It’s a cream-filled chocolate wafer manufactured by the Nabisco Corporation since 1952, and it’s mad tasty.” He corrected me: “No, an Oreo is somebody who’s black on the outside and white on the inside.” He then pointed across the room. “See Darryl? He’s an Oreo.”
What I saw was a slightly nerdy black kid hanging out with some white friends. What I failed to see was the problem. Being nerdy was practically a prerequisite for admission, and with the small number of black kids at Sidwell, it’d be a pretty lonely life for a kid with no white friends. Besides, isn’t the point of being black at an elite prep school to collect as many white friends as possible for later use?
[...]
Be prepared to hear “I’m not racist. I voted for you!” as an excuse for such closed-mindedness, ignorance, or worse. Mark my words, this will be our era’s equivalent of “I’m not racist. I have a black friend.”
The assumption that any given individual is a natural spokesman for an entire race is a manifestation of an underlying belief that people of that race are essentially interchangeable.
It’s also the belief that leads to racial preference systems like Affirmative Action, which makes the assumption that white=privileged and black=oppressed, an equation that’s equally insulting to both races because it fails to recognize the fact that individuals are different—even individuals of the same race! (Shocking, I know.)
A lot of people would love to be as oppressed as the Obama family.
11 December 2008 >>
Australia’s southeastern state of Victoria may soon encourage so-called “positive” discrimination against white males, according to Australia’s Herald-Sun:
DISCRIMINATION against dominant white males will soon be encouraged in a bid to boost the status of women, the disabled and cultural and religious minorities.
Such positive discrimination — treating people differently in order to obtain equality for marginalised groups — is set to be legalised under planned changes to the Equal Opportunity Act foreshadowed last week by state Attorney-General Rob Hulls.
[...]
Equal Opportunity Commission CEO Dr Helen Szoke said males had “been the big success story in business and goods and services”.
“Clearly, they will have their position changed because they will be competing in a different way with these people who have been traditionally marginalised,” she said.
“Let’s open it up so everyone can have a fair go.”
[...]
At present, individuals or bodies wanting to single out any race or gender for special treatment must gain an exemption from [the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal].
Companies and public bodies accused of discrimination can only be held to account after a complaint has been made.
But the proposed changes go much further, allowing the commission to inquire into discrimination, seize documents and search and enter premises after attempts to bring about change have failed.
Businesses and individuals would be required to change their ways even if a complaint had not been received.
While such an idea may seem foreign, discrimination against whites and males in the United States has been legal for quite some time under the government-sanctioned racial and gender preference system known as “affirmative action.”
Of course, even if you support the idea in theory, the election of Barack Obama to the presidency makes such a concept seem antiquated. Nevertheless, because of the color of their skin, affirmative action assumes that Barack Obama’s children are more disadvantaged than, say, those of a white welfare recipient living in Appalachia. As a result, under affirmative action, Malia and Natasha Obama will always be favored over the children of a white welfare recipient.
Race is an increasingly poor proxy for socioeconomic status. It’s time to end affirmative action, because if we want a society that doesn’t discriminate, we won’t get there by writing discrimination into the law.
Instead of raising money to fight an illness that only affects oppressors, a reader from New Orleans suggests a novel way to bring the races closer together:
There has long been a glaring disparity between blacks and whites in longevity. I think this calls for nothing less than a moratorium on all life-saving medical services for white people. It would also be helpful to remove seatbelts and airbags from their automobiles and police protection from their neighborhoods. Eventually this would lead to equality in longevity, thus contributing to peace and harmony between the races.
6 October 2008 @ 9:31AM >>
In a report that isn’t labeled an editorial, the Associated Press contends that criticizing Senator Barack Obama for his connections to unapologetic domestic terrorist Bill Ayers amounts to racism. (Or, in the exact words of AP, pointing out the ties between Obama and Ayers “carrie[s] a racially tinged subtext.”)
The article objects to the following statement from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin:
“Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country. This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America.”
The very first fundraiser of Barack Obama’s political career was held at the house of Ayers and his co-conspirator wife Bernardine Dorhn, two of the leaders of the Weather Underground. For years, the Weathermen terrorized Americans by bombing the U.S. Capital, the Pentagon, military recruiting stations and dozens of other locations, leading to several deaths. The Weathermen also killed a guard during an attempt to rob an armored car.
In addition to kicking off his political career at Ayers’s house, Obama was also tapped to lead an organization set up by Ayers to bring his goals for radicalizing education to Chicago public schools. Ayers, you see, is one of those folks who believes that, in order to be effective, indoctrination must start a lot sooner than college. And Obama worked to further the Ayers agenda for years.
But in the eyes of the establishment media, which has taken great pains to ignore the ties between Obama and Ayers, these years-long connections amount to nothing worth exploring. If one were to judge by the volume of coverage, Sarah Palin’s daughter’s pregnancy is much more relevant to the presidential election, it seems.
As for the argument that discussing Ayers and Obama’s work for his organization is somehow “racist,” well, the AP’s logic isn’t quite clear:
Palin’s words avoid repulsing voters with overt racism. But is there another subtext for creating the false image of a black presidential nominee “palling around” with terrorists while assuring a predominantly white audience that he doesn’t see their America?
In a post-Sept. 11 America, terrorists are envisioned as dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown anarchists of Ayers’ day 40 years ago.
Huh? So pointing out Obama’s ties to a white terrorist is somehow racist because we’re supposed to assume that all terrorists are “dark-skinned radical Muslims”? I thought it wasn’t politically correct to assume that. If anything, the AP should be congratulating Palin for pointing out that not all nutjobs who adhere to a murderous ideology are Muslim.
It doesn’t matter, though. Apparently, any criticism of Obama is inherently racist. We’re all just supposed to shut up and get out of the way so the media’s candidate can win the election and rule without opposition.
At the Crain’s Business Forum this morning, Paterson drew attention to a phrase used numerous times by speakers at the Republican National Convention to describe Barack Obama’s leadership experience: community organizer.
“I think the Republican Party is too smart to call Barack Obama ‘black’ in a sense that it would be a negative. But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican Convention - a ‘community organizer.’ They kept saying it, they kept laughing,” he said.
Paterson referred to McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin who compared her work experience to Obama’s.
“So I suppose a small town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except with real responsibilities,” she said at the convention.
Paterson sees the repeated use of the words “community organizer” as Republican code for “black”.
“I think where there are overtones is when there are uses of language that are designed to inhibit other people’s progress with a subtle reference to their race,” he said.
So does that make Barack Obama’s repeated references to his former job some form of reflexive racism? Or is it acceptable for Obama to talk about his career history but not his opponents?
Any criticism of Senator Obama is a sign of racism, it seems.
31 July 2008 @ 6:06PM >>
...at least that what Senator Barack Obama is implying.
Once again, the post-racial messiah, the guy who refers to his own grandmother as a “typical white person,” is playing the race card, effectively accusing the McCain team of using Obama’s race to try to scare voters. Of course, Saint Obama can’t point to any instances of this actually happening, and because he can’t, he is at least clever enough to use the future tense:
“Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”
This isn’t the first time Obama has pre-emptively accused his opponents of future bigotry. It’s becoming a pattern.
I’m beginning to dread an Obama presidency where every policy disagreement is a sign of racism and every press conference ends in standing ovations from the media. It’s already getting old.
8 July 2008 >>The Economist noticed something interesting about Senator Barack Obama’s website. Most of the pages on the site—like this one—display a navigation bar showing the main sections of the site:
The “people” section on [Obama’s] website divides Americans into 17 categories: Latinos, women, First Americans, environmentalists, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, Americans with disabilities, Asian-Americans and Pacific islanders and so on. There is no mention of whites, or men.
According to the Obama campaign, this is the exhaustive list of people that matter:
In the inclusive world of the post-racial messiah, heterosexual white males have been ethnically cyber-cleansed, and I’m probably a bigot for mentioning it.
23 June 2008 @ 9:09AM >>
Saint Barack Obama, the post-racial candidate sent from on high to redeem the racist American nation, is now engaging in the healing politics of Hope and Change by preemptively accusing his opponents of racism:
Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Friday he expects Republicans to highlight the fact that he is black as part of an effort to make voters afraid of him.
[...]
“They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”
I admired Barack Obama back when he was the first black presidential candidate not to play the race card. But after learning about Reverend Wright and witnessing Obama’s feeble efforts to explain why he spent 20 years eagerly lapping up sermons from Chicago’s version of Al Sharpton, it became clear that Obama wasn’t some new kind of post-racial healer. He’s just better at hiding who he really is.
And now that he’s saying Republicans will attack his race before it has even happened, Obama shows that he’s not above playing the race card whenever it suits him.
6 February 2008 >>
If Senator Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination and goes on to lose the general election, there will undoubtedly be those who argue that his loss is a sign of racism among American voters.
So, after a primary fight in which Senator Hillary Clinton’s husband repeatedly and clumsily steered attention to Obama’s race, if Democrats subsequently reject Obama, is that a sign of racism among Democrats?
The race among Democrats is still very close, and Obama racked up some important wins last night. But it seems that Obama tends to do better in polls than he has in actual elections. He could have pulled into a commanding lead yesterday, but instead he finds himself nearly tied with Hillary in the delegate count.
Late polls had him winning last month’s New Hampshire primary and yesterday’s California contest by what, 8-13 points? Then he loses, and not by razor-thin margins. Are some Democrats lying to pollsters about their choice? And if so, why would that be?
Throughout the night, reporters on both CNN and Fox News cited exit polling data showing that Obama does much better among white male voters than he does among women, Asians or Hispanics, who support Hillary overwhelmingly.
If Hillary is nominated, it may be that identity politics prevented a black man from moving into the White House.
Who would have guessed that the one group that couldn’t be blamed for such a scenario would be white male Republicans?
Some argue that blacks should vote for Clinton because her husband was good to us. That’s not true. He did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky.Rev. Jeremiah Wright Trinity United Church of Christ
Now, in the interest of fairness, I should balance that critique of America’s First Black President with a few words in support of his wife:
Three Chinese parents in Brooklyn are expected to file a federal lawsuit today challenging a popular city-run tutoring program on the grounds it discriminates against Asians, The Post has learned.
The Specialized High School Institute preps gifted but “underrepresented” minorities to ace the competitive exam to get into top city high schools like Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech.
But the parents say it is unfair - and illegal - for the Department of Education to limit eligibility to blacks and Latinos.
“The program only selects certain kinds of minorities and unfortunately my daughter didn’t fall into that category,” said Peggy Foo-Ching, 47, a mom from Bensonhurst who said her 12-year-old daughter’s application last year was ignored.
[...]
A Department of Education internal memo obtained by lawyers trying the case indicated that eligibility criteria excludes whites and Asians.
“What this memo reveals is blatant and categorical discrimination by race. If you are white or Asian, you’re not supposed to get an application,” said Christopher Hajec, an attorney with the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative advocacy group.
“It’s not the business of the government of New York City to be counting up the Asians or whites in, say, Stuyvesant High School and concluding there are too many of them.”
[...]
The father who initiated the suit, Stanley Ng, said he understood how controversial his challenge may be viewed.
“It’s not something that I take lightly,” he said. “There are many Asian and white kids in this district who can’t pay for tutoring. What is their recourse?”
On affirmative action, Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate, said he thinks that someday when his two young daughters apply to college, they “should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged” and there is nothing wrong with that.
“I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and been brought up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed,” he added. “There are a lot of African-American kids who are still struggling.”
Obama said that “if we have done what needs to be done to ensure that kids who are qualified to go to college can afford it, that affirmative action becomes a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society.”
If Obama actually opposes race-based affirmative action outright, I’d consider it an act of political courage. Supporting racial preferences is a default Democratic position, and given the current state of American racial politics, it is a position that black Democratic candidates in particular are expected to take. To demonstrate that you don’t always take the default party position can be refreshing to people, especially when doing so runs the risk of getting you labeled as a traitor to your race.
But does Obama really oppose racial preferences? When he was running for Senate four years ago, Obama wrote a letter to Black Commentator addressing a number of topics, including affirmative action:
I favor affirmative action, but I’m still going after the votes of white union members who oppose affirmative action, because I think I can convince them that it’s Bush’s economic agenda, and not affirmative action, that is eroding their job security and stagnating their wages.
So, there you have it. Obama recently hinted that he opposed affirmative action, but four years ago, he he opposed it quite explicitly. Unless he just-as-explicitly says he has since changed his mind, I take the more definitively worded position (”I favor affirmative action”) to represent his actual beliefs.
Maybe Obama’s recent statement is just an example of his “going after white union members who oppose affirmative action.”
If he now speaks out against race-based affirmative action, he would be applauded by many people, including me. A viable black presidential candidate opposing affirmative action would be a milestone in American racial politics. Will it be Obama?
23 February 2007 @ 8:16AM >>
Jesse Jackson is taking Hollywood to task for not being diverse enough. (Diverse in terms of skin color, that is. The lack of ideological diversity in Hollywood is not a concern of Jackson’s, I would assume.) Now, on a certain level, I sympathize with Jackson’s criticisms. As someone who has become bored by the fact that widely distributed films with political overtones invariably espouse a leftist worldview, I know that it can be frustrating when the industry ignores your market segment.
If certain segments are not being served, that reflects an inefficiency in the industry and presents a market opportunity for enterprising folks who can fill that void by delivering a different product. (In the film business, things are a bit trickier since there are a limited number of movie screens, owned by a small number of companies that typically only deal with major Hollywood distributors.)
So while I think Jackson may have a legitimate complaint about Hollywood in general, he does himself a disservice by relying on statistics that don’t show the problem he decries. One of Jackson’s “areas of concern,” according to Variety, is that “[c]asting of minority actors remains a problem.” Jackson cited “a UCLA study by Russell Robinson” that found “69 percent of Hollywood roles were reserved for white actors.”
First of all, were those roles actually reserved for or merely filled by white actors? If the former were true, then Jackson would be bringing lawsuits, not issuing press statements. (Or maybe not; such lawsuits would have to argue that racial set-asides are illegal and/or immoral—arguments that undermine affirmative action.)
Regardless, 69% of roles being filled by white actors isn’t damning statistic, considering that the most recent census statistics show that 69.4% of the country is classified as “non-Hispanic white.” According to the census and the study that Jackson cites, whites are ever-so-slightly underrepresented in Hollywood. That doesn’t exactly bolster Jackson’s argument.
If you’re going to engage in racial bean-counting, Jesse, at least pick a pile of beans worth complaining about.
9 October 2006 >>
If you set foot on a college campus these days, you’ll be bombarded with feel-good buzzwords intended to convince you of how caring and inclusive the environment is.
The words “tolerance” and “diversity” are drilled into students’ heads from orientation on, but it doesn’t take savvy students long to figure out just how empty those concepts are in academia these days.
The concept of diversity is only skin deep; everyone is welcomed regardless of color or sexual orientation—as long as they don’t deviate from the narrow ideological framework that dominates many college campuses. Diversity of thought—presumably the most important type of diversity in an institution whose purpose is to enrich the mind—is not valued. And tolerance never seems to extend to those who reject the worldview that schools attempt to impose.
Students stormed the stage at Columbia University’s Roone auditorium yesterday, knocking over chairs and tables and attacking Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen, a group that patrols the border between America and Mexico.
Mr. Gilchrist and Marvin Stewart, another member of his group, were in the process of giving a speech at the invitation of the Columbia College Republicans. They were escorted off the stage unharmed and exited the auditorium by a back door.
[...]
The student protesters, who attended the event clad in white as a sign of dissent, booed and shouted the speakers down throughout. They interrupted Mr. Stewart, who is African-American, when he referred to the Declaration of Independence’s self-evident truth that “All men are created equal,” calling him a racist, a sellout, and a black white supremacist.
A student’s demand that Mr. Stewart speak in Spanish elicited thundering applause and brought the protesters to their feet. The protesters remained standing, turned their backs on Mr. Stewart for the remainder of his remarks, and drowned him out by chanting, “Wrap it up, wrap it up!” Mr. Stewart appeared unfazed by their behavior. He simply smiled and bellowed, “No wonder you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“These are racist individuals heading a project that terrorizes immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border,” Ryan Fukumori, a Columbia junior who took part in the protest, told The New York Sun. “They have no right to be able to speak here.”
As of now, the Columbia administration has taken absolutely no disciplinary action launched an investigation.
If it infuriates you to read this, then you may want to be sure you’ve taken your medications before watching the video.
Update: Columbia University president Lee Bollinger released a statement on the incident, which I’ve excerpted:
The disruption on Wednesday night that resulted in the termination of an event organized by the Columbia College Republicans in Lerner Hall represents, in my judgment, one of the most serious breaches of academic faith that can occur in a university such as ours.
Of course, the University is thoroughly investigating the incident, and it is critically important not to prejudge the outcome of that inquiry with respect to individuals. But, as we made clear in our University statements on both Wednesday night and Thursday, we must speak out to deplore a disruption that threatens the central principle to which we are institutionally dedicated, namely to respect the rights of others to express their views.
This is not complicated: Students and faculty have rights to invite speakers to the campus. Others have rights to hear them. Those who wish to protest have rights to do so. No one, however, shall have the right or the power to use the cover of protest to silence speakers. This is a sacrosanct and inviolable principle.
It is unacceptable to seek to deprive another person of his or her right of expression through actions such as taking a stage and interrupting the speech. We rightly have a visceral rejection of this behavior, because we all sense how easy it is to slide from our collective commitment to the hard work of intellectual confrontation to the easy path of physical brutishness. When the latter happens, we know instinctively we are all threatened.
These are reassuring words. And I hope Mr. Bollinger intends to stand by them and see that the principles therein are enforced at Columbia. I’ll believe it when I see it, though; Columbia doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to these politically-charged investigations.
8 June 2006 @ 5:07PM >>
In mid-April, I reported on a website operated by the Seattle public school system that defined racism in such a way that only whites can be considered racist.
An outpouring of criticism forced Seattle public schools on Thursday to pull a Web site that viewed planning for the future, emphasizing individualism and defining standard English as examples of cultural racism.
The message had appeared under an “equity and race relations” section of the district’s Web site and was mentioned Thursday in an opinion piece by a Libertarian writer in the Seattle P-I. Criticism of the site has been building in the world of blogs for weeks.
In its place Thursday was a message that the site will be revised to “provide more context to reader around the work that Seattle public schools is doing to address institutional racism.”
So, in other words, the school system pulled the website not because it defined racism as a white-only phenomenon or because it defined individualism as a form of racism, but because the website didn’t describe what the school system was doing to fight those racist individualists and their institutions.
I don’t think that statement resolves the situation; if anything, it proves that the critics of the school system are correct in believing that Seattle schools are pushing a political agenda.
The “explanation” offered by the Seattle public school system isn’t satisfying Andrew Coulson of the CATO Institute, either. A recent critic of Seattle’s educrats, Coulson commented on the new developments:
“It’s a non-apology apology,” said Coulson, an education history scholar and author of “Market Education: The Unknown History.”
“My sense was that the definition was extremely offensive, but there was not much sympathy for those who were offended ...,” he said. “The harm that can come from the Web site is the tarring of the ideal of individualism as racist, while the ideal of individualism is a central principle on which our nation was founded. Liberty is individual, not collective. So for our school district — our official school organ of the state — to tell children it’s racist to believe in a principle on which our nation was founded — is troubling.”
6 June 2006 >>
I generally support the idea of charter schools. They allow educational experimentation, which is usually beneficial in an otherwise bureaucracy-strangled public school system.
The downside to the leniency is that it has a way of devolving into complete lack of oversight. Nothing else would explain how Marcos Aguilar ended up running the taxpayer-funded La Academia Semillas del Pueblo charter school in Los Angeles.
Principal Aguilar, who also founded school, seems proud of his contributions in the field of education. But as far as I can tell, he’s using his position to preach the cause of racial separatism:
We don’t necessarily want to go to White schools. What we want to do is teach ourselves, teach our children the way we have of teaching. We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don’t need a White water fountain. So the whole issue of segregation and the whole issue of the Civil Rights Movement is all within the box of White culture and White supremacy. We should not still be fighting for what they have. We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger. And ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction. And so it isn’t about an argument of joining neo liberalism, it’s about us being able, as human beings, to surpass the barrier.
Self-sufficiency is admirable, but rejecting every institution that exists in your country just to prove self-sufficiency is childish. Some of our institutions have worked quite well over time: capitalism and democracy, free markets and classical liberal governments; the fact that the United States has consistently been one of the most prosperous patches of land on the planet is no accident. Students might benefit from learning such things. Understanding what leads to success might actually help kids later in life. It’s too bad Principal Aguilar’s students won’t be learning anything like that at his school.
19 May 2006 @ 9:02AM >>
Yesterday, the Senate voted 63-34 to adopt English as the “national language” of the United States. The move, which doesn’t call for any changes in the way government business is conducted, was largely symbolic. Nevertheless, the Associated Press reports that a top Democrat threw down the race card to denounce the measure:
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada [said,] “I really believe this amendment is racist.”
I’ve written before about the danger posed by hate speech laws. Harry Reid is yet more proof. If declaring English the national language of the United States is racist, then speaking out in favor of it could be considered hate speech.
What if the United States had a hate speech law? What if Harry Reid were the Democratic Senate Majority Leader instead of the Minority Leader? And what if someone who shared Reid’s view occupied the White House? An in-power political coalition could conceivably use hate speech laws to criminally prosecute its opposition.
As far-fetched as that might sound, it’s already happening on college campuses. And even though college campuses tend to be rather extreme when compared to your average American town, there are many municipalities that are similarly extreme: San Francisco, Berkeley, Seattle, Ann Arbor, Portland, etc.
There is a movement brewing for local hate speech laws. And you can expect them to be used just as speech codes are on college campuses: as a club with which to beat political enemies into submission.
17 May 2006 >>
Only white people can be racist, at least according to the Seattle public school system. Here’s how they define racism:
The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites).
By this definition, if a white person were murdered simply for being white, it could not be considered a racist act.
The school system also says that “emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology” is a form of “cultural racism.” In other words, if you believe that group privileges should not be placed above the rights of individuals, you are a racist. The only way not to be a racist is to embrace a “collective ideology,” which throughout history has been better known as communism or socialism.
I’m sure if you asked the teachers in Seattle whether they were indoctrinating their students, they would deny it adamantly. But all you need to do is read their definition of racism to see how they’re steering students into their preferred ideology. Individualism is bad. Collectivism is good. Only whites can be racist.
I wonder what Seattle’s educrats would make of this quote:
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
Ayn Rand
According to the definitions above, speaking in favor of capitalism or individual rights can be considered racist speech. If the Seattle teachers’ union were in a position to decide what constitutes hate speech, a large part of America would be found guilty.
Now you know why I oppose hate speech laws so strongly. The result will not be to stamp out hate, but to impose thought conformity. Hate can’t be eradicated by decree; it can only be eliminated by an awakening of the heart. And I don’t think that teaching a generation of students that only white people can be racist is a good formula for reducing whatever number of truly racist honkies there might be in this country.
The three are running on similar platforms of lower taxes, smaller government, and opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, but they come to their contests with different credentials. [Ohio Gubernatorial candidate Kenneth] Blackwell has a long resume in elective office and conservative causes. [Maryland candidate for governor Michael] Steele is a former state party chairman but has never been elected on his own. [Pennsylvania governor hopeful Lynn] Swann is a true political novice, albeit one with the star quality of a Hall of Fame wide receiver.
It must take quite a lot of guts to promote ideas you believe in knowing full well that doing so will get you excommunicated from your own racial group by the arbiters of What It Is To Be Black.
9 May 2006 >>
Southern Methodist University professor Steve Denson has branded the Young Conservatives of Texas, a student-run campus organization with a presence at a number of schools in the state, as “the Junior League of the KKK.”
Why? Well, it appears that Professor Denson doesn’t like YCT’s positions on illegal immigration and the school’s use of racial preferences to set aside seats in the student senate for certain minority groups.
Interestingly, Professor Denson is also the Director of Diversity at SMU’s business school. I would assume that if Denson equates opposition to his preferred political views with sympathy for the KKK, he might not be terribly interested in promoting diversity of the intellectual variety. In fact, it sounds like if he had his way, the conservatives would be banned from campus altogether. After all, who wants to share a community with a bunch of Klansmen?
Denson seems to have two primary functions in his job as diversity enforcer:
To ensure that everybody looks different, and
To ensure that everybody thinks the same.
In other words, Denson’s job is to prevent diversity as much as it is to promote it.
2 May 2006 @ 4:07PM >>
Stuart Browning, one of my partners in On The Fence Films, took his video camera to the May Day protest in San Francisco yesterday. For now, he’s got a series of stills from the rally; in a few days, he’ll be posting a video covering multiple cities.
Also, documentarian Andrew Marcus leads a multi-city team in covering the protests in conjunction with PowerLine and Pajamas Media. He’s got a few scenes from the protests, and will also be following up with more footage later this week.
21 April 2006 @ 9:43AM >>
Thomas Sowell points out how amnesty for illegal aliens will make them “more than equal” when compared to many life-long Americans:
Amnesty would mean, for many illegal immigrants, that they would not merely have the same rights as American citizens, but special privileges as well.
Affirmative action laws and policies already apply to some immigrants. Members of a multimillionaire Cuban family have already received government contracts set aside for minority businesses. During one period, an absolute majority of the money paid to construction companies in Washington, D.C., went to Portuguese businessmen under the same preferences.
Immigrant members of Latino, Asian, or other minority groups are legally entitled to the same preferential benefits accorded native-born members of minority groups.
The moment they set foot on American soil, they are entitled to receive benefits created originally with the rationale that these benefits were to compensate for the injustices minorities had suffered in this country.
The illegal status of many “undocumented workers” can at least make them reluctant to claim these privileges. But, take away the illegality and they become not only equal to American citizens, but more than equal.
18 April 2006 >>
Maybe I’m strange, but I love getting hate mail. There’s something satisfying about getting under the skin of someone who abhors my views. Don’t get me wrong; I like praise, too, but the bitter mail tends to be more creative. And for some reason, these last few days have brought me quite a bilious bounty. One of the more tame e-mails is from a guy named Rick:
From: Rick <ismore@spiritone.com> Subject: the complete video set Date: April 16, 2006 3:51:53 AM EDT To: Evan Coyne Maloney
just picked up a copy of your video from the local library.
found it to be very amateurish.
you have a long way to go to become the “conservative Micheal Moore”.
where’s the humor?
what’s the point?
conservatives control the white house,
congress,
the senate,
the supreme court,
and virtually all major media outlets,
yet, your all white male crew seems to be whining about being disadvantaged.
anyone with money can make a movie,
and I think it’s safe to say that conservatives control most of that too.
it takes brains (and humor) to make a good movie.
so maybe you should sell the camera,
join the army,
move to Iraq,
and fight the good fight.
you’d look good in camo.
I rarely post e-mails that don’t address a specific argument I’ve made, but in this case, what I find interesting is Rick’s assumption that I use an “all white male crew.” (You forgot to critique the sexual orientation of the crew, Rick!)
The people who’ve helped me on my various videos are neither all white nor all male, but Rick wouldn’t know that because the crew has never been shown on camera.
Rick just assumes that, because I am white and male, everyone who works with me must be as well. There must be something about Rick’s world that would cause him to assume that white males don’t associate with anyone else. Perhaps Rick is a white male, and if so, I’d argue that his thinking is a form of psychological projection, where he takes his own internal mindset and assumes that everyone else in the world has the same prejudices. But I don’t know Rick, so who am I to assume that he is white or even male?
What’s also interesting is that Rick seems to think that the racial and gender makeup of the people who work with me on shoots has some relation to our political outlook. To Rick, only white males are allowed to be conservatives. People from other groups may only hold Rick-approved views. He must be ignorant of a number of powerfulthinkerswho areneither white nor male nor straight.
Rick must hate that, all those uppity non-white-males daring to think differently from how he believes they should. The funny thing is, this guy probably thinks I’m a racist.
