Just like any member of the human race, blacks can be quite hypocritical. Back in the day when skin color discrimination harmed blacks, they righteously rebelled against it. Today, skin color discrimination benefits blacks, and they hypocritically embrace it and demand even more. David Gelernter calls affirmative action “good cheating.”
In practice, affirmative action means cheating in a good cause. (But all cheating, for any cause, gnaws at a nation’s moral innards like termites.) Affirmative action means a plus factor in university admissions, job hiring and promotion for candidates from protected groups, in the interests of “diversity.” (But why should “diversity” mean official “minorities” and women but not libertarians, farmers, Mormons, Texans, children of soldiers, aspiring Catholic priests, etc.?)Affirmative action is highly unpopular: A 2003 Washington Post-Harvard-Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 92% of the public (86% of blacks) agreed that admissions, hiring and promotion decisions “should be based strictly on merit and qualifications other than race/ethnicity.” Only bureaucrats and intellectuals (species that are more closely related than they seem) love affirmative action.
Is it really “cheating”? In 2003, Linda Chavez, the head of the Center for Equal Opportunity, described University of Michigan freshman admissions as they stood in the mid-1990s: “We found that the odds ratio favoring admission of a black applicant with identical grades and test scores to a white applicant was 174 to 1.” The high court struck down that admissions procedure, but it’s a frightening reminder of what people can do in the name of fairness. (Source)
So if affirmative action is so unpopular, why does it exist? In theory, most people believe in merit-based gain. But in practice, we want more than we have, and we falsely believe we deserve what others have.
Diversity, a word white liberals use for political leverage, is one reason why individuals will never be truly equal to other individuals. We are of diverse ideas (some ideas are better than others), talent, skill, motivation, and drive. The irony is lost on most.
A gotta-get-mine attitude is simply a natural manifestation of our fallen nature, which means we all possess it at various times about certain things. But when blacks chose to embrace race-based privileges to “get theirs,” all semblance of pride and dignity was lost for generations, and the history of the Civil Rights struggle was turned on its head.
I can say with 99.9 percent certainty that those who endured billy club beatings, lynchings, firehose spray, and dog bites didn’t do it so that one day their children and grandchildren could be deemed pitiable, too inferior for equal treatment, and too dumb to strive for the American dream on their own merits.
With black complicity, misguided white social engineers bearing unwarranted guilt created social policies that will continue to stifle our achievement through the use of lowered standards for generations to come.
And black liberals call me a sell-out?
(Image from Civil Rights Movement Veterans)
Update: Let me clear up a common misconception. This blog is a forum for my views. It’s not my intent to “win” arguments. The reason I update this site almost every day is to publish my opinions. At my privilege, revocable at any time, readers may comment.
Think of LBC as a benevolent dictatorship, not a democracy or open forum. If you believe this is unfair, such is life. Instead of pontificating on my site about “debating the issues” and flinging silly charges of “censorship,” do what I’ve done: build your own readership on your own blog and have all the “debates” you want. Yes, it’s hard work, but with consistent, interesting blogging and time, you’ll soon have a blog frequented by people telling you how to run it, just as I do.
Questions? See the comment policy.
Update II: I’ll be appearing on the CORE Hour (on Right Talk) on Tuesday around 3:20 p.m. with Niger Innis to talk about another demeaning policy: the mainstreaming of black slang, also known as substandard English, also known as “ebonics.” I’ll post a reminder.
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Amen!
Ditto…
AMEN!
I endured nothing compared with those billy club beatings, lynchings, firehose spray, and dog bites, but I was out there during the ’60s. I thought it was important. But I was working for civil rights and equality, not for any sort of this “good cheating” that makes a mockery of both equality and civility.
In Florida where I live, the abolition of affirmative action has led to admissions for Black students to the top law and medical schools dropping by a third. This reduction means fewer Black lawyers and doctors, lawyers and doctors who on average choose to serve the communities from which they came, communities that are often sorely in need of the services of doctors and lawyers .
In the long run these changes will result in a poorer quality of life for African-American communities across my state, and an increased reliance on socialized medicine and legal services.
I’m not impressed with the black conservative perspective which champions a point of view that amounts to an increased number of privileged white students being admitted to the top tier schools, and after acquiring their credentials, more often than not, choose to serve areas that have a large surplus of lawyers and doctors. Lawyers and doctors whose first priority is often the acquisition of their first Porsche or Donze, instead of providing their services to the people who are most in need.
Somehow I have very little sympathy for these students who heaven forbid might have to go with their second choice of schools as a result of affirmative action.
Aaron,
“In Florida where I live, the abolition of affirmative action has led to admissions for Black students to the top law and medical schools dropping by a third. This reduction means fewer Black lawyers and doctors, lawyers and doctors who on average choose to serve the communities from which they came, communities that are often sorely in need of the services of doctors and lawyers .”
So why has it dropped? Is it because their qualifications “do NOT stack up” on par with the standards that others are forced to adhere too? What proof do you have that the rate drop is because they are black and not because the scores don’t cut it?
Too follow your lead, I am not impressed with black liberal standards that say that blacks are too stupid to compete with whites or any other group for that matter.
Renée
It’s all about the substandard primary education that African-Americans receive across my state. After 12 years of substandard primary education how can you be expected to compete on an equal footing with students of wealth and privilege. This disparity is why affirmative action seeks to address. That’s why it’s still a necessity.
I have to ask all those who feel “being Black” should be a qualification for school attendance, jobs etc…
Do you use that standard when picking a doctor or more importantly, someone to take care of your children? Or do you just not care about qualifications or experience, just a color? How backwards is that?
Aaron,
Are you a teacher? Interestingly many teachers (three in my family) in these so called “sub standard” education systems point out that half of the problem is also student and parent involvement in their childs education. You might want to do some research and you will find that many universities and spending more money on REMEDIAL training for all college students (so substandard education and child/parent involvement is starting to go across the board).
And guess what…
Affrimative Action can’t fix “my peoples” (to quote Steven from yesterday) parenting skills.
LaShawn Barber is a true American leader – a moral giant striding through a bog of hucksters and snake-oil salesmen
Aaron,
Hate to break it to you, but the privileged kids were getting in regardless of any affirmative action programs.
If you have the money or influence to get you child into a school with sub-par grades, you already do.
No, the “privledged white kids” that are getting in to school to take the seats freed up by unqualified minorities (who have a very high drop out rate that serves nobody) are the lower middle class and lower class kids that can’t afford the school either, but get in because of good grades and scores.
You’re convinced that lower admission means a lower number of doctors and lawyers in the black community. Your logic doesn’t hold up.
How many of those admitted under AA go on to graduate and succeed? How many of those that couldn’t cut it at Harvard would have thrived at the local community or state college?
The fact that you assume blacks need skin color preferences to succeed is offensive to me, Aaron. I consider such attitudes racism at its highest level. I’m fed up with bored liberal bloggers polluting this site. Long before you posted them, I read the articles you linked to, so you’re not educating or correcting anybody. But here’s an idea: Get a discussion going on your OWN blog so you can “school” all the people you want about the necessity of skin color privileges for us dumb Negroes. – Admin
I’m glad you wrote about this because just yesterday Dennis Prager on the radio had a BRILLIANT idea. It would be a great topic to discuss and get the groundswell going and people talking about it.
Since it’s now acceptable practice to sue companies that benefited from slavery and/or kept slavery going with it’s business, we need to sue the Democrat party for their involvement in keeping slavery going and fighting President Lincoln and the Republicans.
We need to shout this loudly and proudly until someone with the money takes up the lawsuit against the Democrat party.
I’m tired of the Democrat party and their accusations and nevery working with the Republicans towards positive solutions and putting conservatives on the defensive. And I’m tired of Republicans caving into the affirmative action idea and not standing on principle towards eliminating all racial preferences and discrimination.
Sue the Democrats. Sue the Democrats.
And thank you Dennis Prager for the superb idea. I’ll do my part to spread the idea.
Aaron won’t be discussing anything here, readers, so you may want to visit his site or e-mail him to continue the discussion.
Aaron,
Read Ward Connerly’s book Creating Equal.
He addresses the problem you talk about. The solution involves helping people who are economically or socially disadvantaged (and not based on race).
If we are to create such programs that give people help we need to help all races that are economically or socially disadvantaged. There is never a time for racism or leaving someone behind based on race or helping someone based on race.
Just askin’……….if your life depended on an open heart surgery and you were given a choice between a doctor that was schooled via affirmative action and one who was not, “who ya gonna’ call?”
OOps. Just saw #14.
Do you like the Dennis Prager idea in #13?
I feel the same frustration (as the host)…
sometimes you can only talk to brick walls for so long until you have to tell them to just go away and get a clue
You know I sometimes wonder if the white elites that were fighting against the original civil rights movememt didn’t just switch sides and take up liberalism as a new strategy to hold back minorities. Nothing could have been more effective at harming minorities than the government and social policy of the last forty years . I’m not talking about your everyday joe schmo bigots. I mean the real power players that run things behind the scenes. I mean how better to create foot soldiers for racism, than to play up to their good intentions. I know so many white folks that continue to defend these horrendous policies even though you would have to be willfully blind not to see the destruction they have wrought. Also, how better to get minorities to go along with policy that is both insulting and destructive, than to play on old injustices and feelings of resentment. Sometimes I really think that might be what is happening here. Then again I have been reading some of the lefty blogs and it might just be the moonbatty, tinfoil hat syndrom rubbing off.
Independent, I have often thought that myself…
I am always reminded of a Hitler, when I think of the social engineers in America:
“people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
Baklava, Can you just see an orgainized protest of millions marching on Washington with a team of lawyers yelling, “End Liberal Racism NOW!” It would take a few tractor trailers to hold all the documented evidence and copies of testimonials. Yhea, I like the idea of sueing the Democratic Party, for both past obstruction of real civil rights legislation and the present policy of blatant racism. Take it all the way to the Supreme Court and let the nation know what evil they have wrought.
“….with consistent, interesting blogging and time, you’ll soon have a blog frequented by people telling you how to run it, just as I do.”
That’s incentive enough to QUIT blogging!
Of course I kid.
Oh, in the name equal opportunity, Al Qaeda blew up some buildings–and their occupants–in Egypt.
“people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.â€
Yep, like Republicans believe in small government.
Colin Powell.
Justice Thomas.
Condi Rice.
Ward Connerlly.
All benefited from AA. I probably did as well.
There are a lot of Black people who worked for AT&T who benefitted as well. Some of them created their own businesses after working for Ma Bell. The same with people who worked for IBM. I know a late uncle started his business after leaving IBM.
As for the doctor question, I have a question along those same lines: Did you know that half of all doctors finish in the bottom 50% of their class? The question is, do you ask about class standing when you interview doctors?
DS, you and I have had this discussion about Ward Connerly. Tell us when and how he benefited from affirmative action. In school? His business? I asked him point blank about his business, and he says he has never accepted a minority set-aside contract or any privilege related to his skin color, nor would he ever.
While I have sometimes enjoyed our little “debates” back and forth, I won’t put up with you defaming Connerly. Or do you just assume he’s gotten where he is, a successful black businessman, because of skin color preferences? Therein lies the problem. Such policies lead to those assumptions.
Thank the Lord for AA (tongue in cheek). I mean what did out ancestors ever do without it? DS, you might keep in mind had it not been for the hard work some of our ancestors did WITHOUT AA, you and I would not be here at all …
For all of those who happen to be Black (just for arguments sake)…
can you imagine where you would be if AA, welfare, have gotten would have been implemented in yout grand parents day? Hmmm…
Aaron’s conclusion about primary education was flawed at its core, in that it assumed black kids were getting a separate, and worse, education as compared to white kids. Last time I looked, schools in Florida were integrated. They sure were when my two kids attended K through 12.
Some schools are better than others. Some are far worse. And some are outright failures. Why? Ask our idiot politicians. That’s a very lengthy subject for another day.
But in our experience, the disparity in quality had nothing to do with race. My oldest son attended a dismal middle school devoid of teaching talent. His English teacher could not conjugate a verb, his history teacher thought the Spanish-American War was fought in the first half of the 19th Century, and his principal sent out official school notices which always contained gross misspellings and poor grammar. This meant that every kid in the student body (50% black and 50% white) was treated to an equally inferior education.
The question for parents then was how to handle the problem as best we could. In order to make sure our kid had the basic skills to go on to high school, my wife and I had to tutor him at home to fill in the gaping holes in his education. Sad, but true. But it took no great knowledge or talent on our part; it only took our interest and our time to direct his energies toward the proper reading materials and study habits. Any parent can do that.
DarkStar,
There are a lot of Whiite people that benifited from Jim Crow laws too. Racism is racism. It doesn’t matter how you dress it up or justify it. Those that participate in racist policy; be them the legislatures, the executives, or the benificiaries, are all degrading themselves by particapating in unjust laws. Is short term gain for a few worth selling out a people’s pride and a nation’s integrity?
Mistype:
can you imagine where you would be if AA, welfare, and all the other nice social “gifts” social engineers bestowed upon us would have been implemented in our grand parents day? Hmmm…
That’s better:)
Oh, and DarkStar, just so you’ll know….. my mother, when being readied for a serious operation, did ask for the scholastic records of her surgeon and her anesthesiologist. I’d say that was being an informed consumer. LOL LOL
DS, you can choose your doctor based on any stats (taken from where?)you want. Good luck!
Aaron should read Thomas Sowell’s description of Paul Dunbar high school in DC where the black kids performed phenomenally, outperforming every other school in DC (and most in the US). To say that black kids are inherently less capable is an appallingly racist view. Yet, so many liberals seem to hold this view. People should be asking questions of the educators, particularly in urban areas. Rod Paige, when testifying before a hearing lamented the horrible quality of teacher colleges, and the number of teachers emerging who could not pass very low level certification exams.To be kind, they are given multiple chances to pass. Many of these teachers are the products of ‘compassionate’ (yuck) affirmative action programs themselves. Why in the world does any liberal think it is compassionate to foist a failing teacher on a whole classroom of children who desperately need to learn? Why do liberal teacher’s unions get away with spending less than forty cents of every dollar in the classroom? Why do so many families place so little emphasis on education? My kids went to a tiny one room school house in Ireland for two years. They had to clean bathrooms, pick up trash, and sweep floors. The school was very, very poor, yet it was three years ahead of US schools. Why? Black kids don’t need affirmative action. They need an education! By the way, the white and Asian kids that lose their spots to affirmative action applicants are NOT the privileged kids. Yet, Stephen Carter, in ‘Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby’ says that very often, those who are the recipients of affirmative action are middle class and had every opportunity to be successful.Read the stats. How can one justify this? Also, studies are increasingly demonstrating that affirmative action often corrupts the system, results in a two tier grading system, and results in a lowered standard, which is bad for everyone. Lastly, affirmative action tarnishes the very real accomplishments of those who ‘made it on their own’, as people often question their achievements. That’s a reality, and a sad consequence of affirmative action that many find abhorrent.
“My kids went to a tiny one room school house in Ireland for two years. They had to clean bathrooms, pick up trash, and sweep floors.”
Jan, you know the liberals call that “degrading” and “demoralizing work” for kids these days. There at school to learn about “My two Moms”, “How to have safe sex with anybody you want and not get pregnant” and “How to have an abortion witout your parents finding out”… not reading, writing, math, and how to have respect for themselves
I once had a group of kids on the playground for snack. Several students threw their trash on the ground (two white and one black). I noted who they were and told them they would be spending the rest of recess cleaning up the playground of ALL liter as a lesson. Understand, this is something we had talked about often. The children complied and we went on with our day. The black student’s mother called me that night and told me off with very colorful language. Apparently, I was “treating her baby like a f#%@ing slave!” Understand, this is the end result of liberal brainwashing. How do you help instill values and good social skills when you are fighting this type of “whitey is out to get you” propoganda?
I’m a Conservative Democrat who enjoys reading your site, even if I do disagree with you most of the time. I find you to be articulate, succinct, insightful and often times pretty funny. With that said, using the simplistic theme you used for Black men in prison (“stop committing crimes”), I say to all those who want to put an end to affirmative action: just end institutional racism and sexism. There, it’s that simple.
Whether so-called institutional racism exists or not, it’s not a justification for the government to bestow skin color privileges on some of its citizens. That is what’s known as “unconstitutional.” It’s also known as “demeaning.” Having said that, for you to attempt to analogize voluntary and volitional criminal acts with actual racism, not what disgruntled blacks or patronizing, bigoted whites call racism, is vomit-inducing.
So a black man can’t think for himself, be responsible for his actions, and decide to live a decent life in spite of what white people think of him or even how they treat him? It shows your contempt, not concern, for blacks. A man’s character, good or bad, is what he decides it will be, and a black man’s character is not dependent on what any white person may say or do to him. To hold the contrary view is sickening!
My solution may be simple to you, but that doesn’t render it false or invalid. I’m 99 percent certain you’d be singing a different tune if some “victimized” hoodlum broke into your house and raped your wife because no one ended “institutional racism.”
La Shawn,
You just gave me my best laugh for the day
But Roy, I enjoy sexism.
Just finished reading James Webb’s Born Fighting, a book on the Scots-Irish. In it he discusses the “double-colonialism” that held back poor white Southerners to the benefit of Northerners and upper class Southerners. Then he says good things about the New Deal and WW2 bringing to the South tax-financed jobs. Many of these jobs could have been created in the North, but a paternalistic and politically opportunistic government put them in the South. Regardless, the poor Southerners benefitted. Webb goes on to denounce AA but without acknowledging it was a net plus for poor white Southerners earlier. I point this out not to criticize Webb, who wrote a highly commendable book, but to observe that giving some people a break isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Other references: Luke 14.12-14; Matt 25.32-45. True, Jesus was talking about food rather than jobs, but is it not applicable to jobs? More to the point He was talking about individuals and not institutions, but should we not infuse our institutions with Christ’s commands?
Why can’t people understand that it is WRONG to give people government benefits because they are BLACK while discriminating against people who are white???? Giving people a break is NOT what this is about. It is about institutionalized SKIN COLOR PREFERENCES for black people.
But you think this has something to do with Christ and helping people in need?
Good grief. Why did I blog today? Why couldn’t I take a day off like a normal blogger…
Can someone poke me in the eye with a pencil now?
#4: “In Florida where I live, the abolition of affirmative action has led to admissions for Black students to the top law and medical schools dropping by a third. This reduction means fewer Black lawyers and doctors, lawyers and doctors who on average choose to serve the communities from which they came, communities that are often sorely in need of the services of doctors and lawyers .
In the long run these changes will result in a poorer quality of life for African-American communities across my state, and an increased reliance on socialized medicine and legal services.”
Good heavens! I heard this blather 25 years ago, from my community college Sociology professor. I recall almost his exact words: “We have to have affirmative action and quotas, or else we’d never have doctors to work in poor neighborhoods.” Although, at the time, I was a young skull full of mush, who knew nothing of affirmative action and quotas, it rang false.
Twenty five years later, it rings even more false.
Others have already pointed out the flaws in Aaron’s, “argument,” so let me just say, “I concur.”
George, are you equating the black population with the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind? Isn’t that rather negative and unfair?
George, did you ever notice how the South lags behind nearly all other regions in so many categories? It would seem AA is a destructive force for both races and regions.
And very unbiblical too Redbeard (but then I think they teach that in the liberal circles…they even use the same verses but amazingly skip over a whole bunch of other ones that show their analogy doens’t work).
“Did you know that half of all doctors finish in the bottom 50% of their class?”
I’m glad someone is better than me in math!
LaShawn,
In 1958 when Colin Powell became a 2nd Lt. in the
Army, there was no affirmative action. He served two tours of duty in Viet Nam and was wounded both times. Do you think our enemies in Viet Nam would not try to wound or kill any US soldier? After getting married, he studied for GRE and passed. At the end of his career, Barbara Bush (wife of George H. W. Bush) could have well been the push from general to chairman of joint chiefs.
Dr. Rice was helped greatly by her mother and father. Her mother was science and music teacher and her father was guidance counselor in school in which Alma Johnson Powell’s father was principal. Yes, her father was pastor at church also. You had to have more than one job to support family in middle class style, 45 years ago in Birmingham, AL. Dunbar High was in operation in 1950 when I was in elementary school in the DC area. It did not have as good of facilities and yet students excelled.
James M. Barber
I am glad you posted that James. I was just thinking how many today seem to think we (Blacks) never existed and accomplished ANYTHING prior to affirmative action. My grandfather worked two or three jobs his entire life to support his family also. He and my grandmother sent two children to college (prior to AA) and according to my mother, my grandmother never missed a parent teacher meeting or any other school event and WOE to any of her children who dared pulled any of the stunts some kids pull today in school (it would have been better if they were not born). And I thank the Lord for both of them everyday and the example they set.
LB,
You did hit it on the head. It is about getting ahead and getting what someone else has, irregardless of whether you deserve it or not. Affirmative action has conferred upon minorities the belief that they are OWED something by the system. There’s something else that is misunderstood in this equation. This revenge, vindictiveness, or whatever emotion you want to call it is fleeting. Then, once someone has “gotten theirs”, how are they really going to feel? Any sense of accomplishment? Nah, just as crappy as they were before they got anything. But I’m sure there are plenty that could care less about that sense of satisfaction and are happy they “got one over on whitey.”
Let’s look at the argument another way. Slavery and Jim Crow placed a scar upon our society. By conferring special status on those groups because of that act, does it also mean that anyone here who has been victim of oppression deserves affirmative action too?
Maybe this is a little different slant. I am so white, there is no question or confusion. I once had an afternoon of debate with a sitting justice (the remaining female) of the SCOTUS.
I told her that I am claiming to be black and that I am coming after the goodies that Affirmative Action affords.
Her solution to the crazy claim I had set up was nothing more than the old fractional parts of “black” blood in a claimants veins to settle the issue.
When I suggested that Louisiana had long used the same procedure to segregate and deprive and that Hitler’s folks perfected it for rounding up Jews, she was more than agitated.
This whole Affirmative Action thing is without defense. Look, folks, real Africans who have moved here in the last 50 years are an impressive part of our population. Are we going to Affirmative Action them? Oh, and Lord help us if some band of Durbins actually gets a “reparations for slavery” package going.
My son-in-law, who is very successful by dint of effort and is, incidentally, black, proposes a 50 years “sunset law” on all gripes. That is to say, if you want to whine and cry about the way it was in 1955, you better hurry up, because on January 1, 2006, the sunsets on that period and you have to get back on your feet and move on.
LaShawn and Renee,
How many of our parents and grandparents worked extremely hard to get an education. My father had to feed a coal furnace to work his way through college. Are students, K through college, less inclined to work hard today versus fifty or seventy years ago. Thomas Sowell recently became 75 years of age and seems to be writing more about race and society than he ever did forty years ago. If you are under forty, you have it hard to see what life was 50 years ago and more.
James M. Barber
Renee;
I hadn’t even thought about it, but you’re so right. Liberals would cringe at our kids being asked to pick up trash and sweep. Unless, of course, they were paid union wages…..Also, I love your smile face.
Independent,
Teaching under those circumstances must be really really tough sometimes. Thank God for people like you who care.
James,
I have a young cousin in PA (17) who dropped out of school. The school district is actually very good (one of the better in the state in the burbs of outisde of Philly). Last time I talked with him (there were a few of us who tried) about going back to school and the negatives to not going back, he infomred us he was going to get a job, so we aske where… after he hmmm’d and huh’d about it, someone suggested he start at McDonald’s… here is the brilliant response we got… “it doesn’t pay enough, I can’t work there” (this coming from a highschool dropout)…
of course there are other factors that contributed to this situation (lack of parental guidance for one)
and that’s the mentality we have today among a large number of our youth … go figure
Heliotrope, Your son-in-law makes a lot of sense.
“Her solution to the crazy claim I had set up was nothing more than the old fractional parts of “black†blood in a claimants veins to settle the issue.”
Dividing human beings up based on a percentage of ethnicity to determine what rights and privledges they deserve under the law…Yes, we’ve come a long way. (Dripping sarcasm all over my keyboard)
Have we considered what the racist conservative whiteys might actually be doing? By getting rid of affirmative action, they may force minority communities to become more innovative and come up with more of their own solutions. Isn’t that something? Actually inducing people to become innovative, creative and self-respecting. Geez, what a lost concept.
What ever happened to saying “No thank you, I want to do it myself, no matter what barriers may come my way?”
Q: Why did I blog today?
A1: Because we want you to…
A2: We hang on your every word…
A3: We need to get our fix…
A4: We would go through withdrawals…
A5: We’re sick…
Answer 100: Because your education is what liberals need !
A6: To give the more recalcitrant among us something to do other than to go down to the local biker saloon and start a fight by calling Snake Jorgenson a nancy-boy. Not that I would ever do such things anyway, but……..
I like A100…
now add on behind it “and my real education is what liberals fear”
La Shawn,
Your words and ideals are sound. You are attacked for the effects of what is right, not over whether it’s righteous. I’m with you – I’d rather do the right thing than just get as much as I can out of whomever. Your stance is a courageous one braving the onslaughts of the hateful. I really have great admiration for you.
DS, you and I have had this discussion about Ward Connerly. Tell us when and how he benefited from affirmative action. In school? His business? I asked him point blank about his business, and he says he has never accepted a minority set-aside contract or any privilege related to his skin color, nor would he ever.
In business. He first said he did and then later said he didn’t. When he first went into business, he went into business with a relative. The relative said that they took advantage of set aside contracts.
Or do you just assume he’s gotten where he is, a successful black businessman, because of skin color preferences?
I never make such assumptions.
In 1958 when Colin Powell became a 2nd Lt. in the Army, there was no affirmative action.
Followed by…
I am glad you posted that James. I was just thinking how many today seem to think we (Blacks) never existed and accomplished ANYTHING prior to affirmative action.
To that I say, Powell said he had benefitted by affirmative action. Powell said that a list of candidates for promotion was given to whomever. The person noticed no Blacks on the list and told the subordinate to redo the list to make sure it was more “inclusive”. Powell said it.
Condi Rice said she believes in affirmative action. Once someone gets the job, its up to them to succeed or fail. That’s the camp I fall in.
Armstrong Williams said that when he helped Justice Thomas look for clerks, they expanded the pool by going to schools other than the Ivy League. When Justice Renquist (or was it Scalia?), said that he couldn’t find a qualified minority candidate, Williams wrote an article blasting the justice. He said the biggest impact on not finding a minority clerk was not finding one who was not qualified, it was finding one who was willing to accept the lower pay compared to other job offers.
Oh…
I was just thinking how many today seem to think we (Blacks) never existed and accomplished ANYTHING prior to affirmative action.
And I’ve never said that nor do I believe it. I just don’t discount that some may have benefited from it.
If I have, so be it. I took advantage of the situation and excelled.
Did you know that half of all doctors finish in the bottom 50% of their class? -Ds
Half of all fields were in the bottom 50% of their class… by definition. This also has nothing to do with who started down the path and fell by the side.
Glad you’ve mastered arithmatic.
A7: because you’re a force that your attackers are trying to silence.
Chris (in comment #48) touched upon the “reality” of AA. It’s not really about getting ahead, it’s about getting even.
One thing I know for sure is that an organization that hires on the basis of affirmative action will never be as good as it could be if it hired on the basis of selecting the most qualified. In a highly competive business arena, that can be a significant disadvantage.
A8: Because God works in mysterious ways… sometimes it’s through talented people wearing bathrobes.
djb, In an institution where qualifications can literally mean the difference between the future success and failure for children (education), AA is also a significant disadvantage.
There is something horribly wrong when literacy rates in the Black community were higher prior to Brown v. Board than they are now.
Has anyone read Thomas Sowell’s “White Liberals and Black Rednecks”?
Good comments here. I can vouch that there was a lot of moving and shaking going on in the Birmingham, AL Black community before AA reared it’s ugly head to supercede Jim Crow.
My grandfather was born a son of recently freed slaves in 1875. He sharecropped and after some time, moved to the Birhmingham, AL working first in the coal mines, learned his 3 Rs on the side, eventually became one of the union stewards in the bi-racial union, married, had 5 children.
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Sidenote: The democrats thot the coal-miners union was getting too uppity with that bi-racial cooperation in spite of the Jim Crow laws in effect. They cracked down on the union time and time again.
For those who insist we wouldn’t have what we take for granted today w/o MLK and the sequence of events leading to CRA is just a whistling Dixie. Change was a’coming one way or another and Birmingham was a big player on the racial scene.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3880/is_200007/ai_n8911443
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During that time, he and others in the Fairfield community got together and helped found Miles College. His wife died while the kids were teens and after about 10 years, he married my grandmother and had 4 more kids. Around 1930, he started working the steel mills.
Later on, the family pitched in and built an AME church, not too far from Miles College. The point is that Blacks were doing and educating themselves quite well without “help” from the liberal elites. Where there was a perceived need, the community pitched in to provide for that need. They didn’t need a bureaucrat to decide what needed to be where based on some inane social calculator.
I concur with the suggestion that the dems switched tactics from overt hatred and violence to a strategy to destroy them with the bigotry of low expectations by using the govt to take over with the intent to undermine the Negro societal infrastructure and leadership.
I recently came across An Oral History with
Umoja Kwanguvu.
“Born William Jones, and the first of nine children, Mr. Umoja Kwanguvu started his life in 1925, in Birmingham, Alabama. He was reared in Birmingham, and was graduated from Miles College there with a major in English. In 1944, during World War II, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. During his tenure in the Army, he was a cargo checker on U.S. ships in England and the Philippines. In 1945, he was honorably discharged.
Returning to Birmingham, Mr. Kwanguvu attended business college for a year. Because of strict racial segregation and discrimination, he could not find work commensurate with his abilities. Moreover, he could not adjust to or accept his “place” as a second-class citizen in the oppressive South.”
Read more about this interesting smart-alecky activist at
http://www.lib.usm.edu/~spcol/crda/oh/kwanguvu.htm
Speaking of Condoleeza Rice check out her “African-Americans Were Also Founders of America” speech:
“… To the audience’s laughter and applause Rice continued “And my family has been Presbyterian and college-educated ever since.
“So black Americans, African-Americans, have always depended on faith and family and education. In the most hostile times, in the most difficult times, that’s what saw us through. But something else saw us through. And that was a belief in America and its values and its principles — even when America didn’t believe in us.”
Speaking of African-American civil rights leaders, she said black Americans’ belief in America and its faith and its principles “was so strong that [the great black 19th century abolitionist] Frederick Douglass didn’t appeal outside of America’s principles and values, he appealed to America’s principles and values for America to be true to itself. It was such that Martin Luther King didn’t appeal outside of America’s principles and values, he appealed to America to be true to itself in [promoting] progress for black Americans.
“It was true that people like Dr. Dorothy Height, the only woman among the ‘big six’ [social activists] appealed not outside of America’s values but to America’s values to challenge America to be true to itself.” Height, a tiny woman who will be 93 in March, beamed from the stage where she sat with two other speakers.
“That should remind each and every one of us, African American, European American, whatever we are, that the important thing that the Founders left to us, was not a perfect America by any means, but an America that had principles that allowed impatient patriots to appeal to those principles and to tell America to be true to itself,” Rice said.
“And now as we talk about the spread of freedom and liberty to places where it has not yet been known, we need to remember that human beings are by their very nature imperfect and therefore human institutions will be imperfect,” she continued. …”
Read it all at
http://usinfo.state.gov/af/Archive/2005/Feb/22-549282.html
Until I see proof of what Connerly supposedly said, DS…
No offense, but I don’t find you more credible than Connerly. Your hearsay, third-hand, “he said” assertion is repugnant.
I benefited from skin color preferences, and I hate that I did. I don’t consider myself a hypocrite for speaking out against it now that I know better and see preferences for what they really are.
CBI,
I have not read it but I will check it out and again another great fact from the past (in regards ot literacy prior to the Borwn decision and the many “gifts” we got in its aftermath).
Andy,
GREAT STUFF!!!!!!
Lest we despair, the education elites are slowly but surely being relegated to the history of foolish polices. They’ve had 40 plus years of taking us into the pits of education while promising to take us to the mountaintops. In spite of repeated failures, they insist ‘if only more money was spent…’.
In spite of their best efforts, research continues to trickle in exposing their bigotry of low expectations. I truly hope that with the next election cycle or two, we will say enough is enough and take back local control of our education systems.
Anyone who comes out touting that it takes a village (gubmint) to raise a child, we need to send them packing!!!
Check this out:
““Communities fix schools,” David Mathews said, “Not politicians.” Addressing the Stockton Five Arts Club in January of 2000 on the occasion of their 75th anniversary, he added, “In modern times citizens are likely to abandon involvement in schools once their own children are grown…and to feel little or no responsibility for their continued improvement.” The Bay Minette Public Library’s Alabama Athenaeum was co-sponsor for the event and as Director of Library Services, I attended. The more he talked, the more he grabbed my attention.
Mathews pointed to the fact that virtually all early public schools in Alabama were conceived, built and overseen by private citizens and organizations, including the first public school in Alabama built near Boat Yard Lake in Tensaw in Baldwin County 200 years ago. Drawing from his research on historical Alabama, Mathews commented on the connection between early schools and the communities that built them.
In the book Why Public Schools? Whose Public Schools?, Mathews explores the necessary link between communities and their schools, shedding light on the need for cooperation to resolve today’s crisis in education. Examining history of 19th-century Mobile, Baldwin, Washington, Clarke, Monroe and Choctaw counties in Alabama, Mathews examines how communities once acted together to create schools for all citizens.
“There are no easy answers,” said David Mathews, a Grove Hill native who serve in the Ford Administration as Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare,. “Trying to make the schools yours is absolutely essential. Not trying, giving up, is a guarantee of failure.”
[SNIP]
Conventional wisdom says that the majority of Americans are basically apathetic about government. One popular textbook insists that “the American masses do not lead, they follow.†A 1991 study of how people feel about politics — and why they feel as they do — showed that a great many Americans are not apathetic at all; they are angry. The study went beneath the surface of the usual complaints about government and politicians to uncover strong feelings of powerlessness and exclusion, coupled with an untapped sense of civic duty. The people who participated in the study had a clear sense of their civic responsibilities. They cared so deeply that their frustration ran to cynicism — a cynicism they worried would infect their children. These Americans felt they had been displaced by a professional political class of powerful lobbyists, incumbent politicians, slick campaign managers, and an elite media. They saw the system as one in which votes no longer made any difference because money ruled.”
More at
http://www.southernscribe.com/zine/authors/Mathews_David.htm
DS, that’s the VERY article I’m talking about. I contacted Connerly about that article because a liberal editor repeated those assertions to me in an e-mail. Connerly told me that the San Francisco Chronicle got it WRONG. He never accepted skin color preferences for his business, and the Chronicle later corrected the story. But people continue to quote the original story. – Admin
Let me give you an example of how lowered standards and AA are damaging. In my home in the rural south many people of all races speak with a deep accent. Blacks have the added speech pattern of saying dat (that) and dey (they). The /th/ sound just doesn’t exist. Also, scraw for staw, etc. There are many nonstandard English components to the black dialect. However, many black parents I know would jerk a knot in their child if they heard them speak in such a way. This is certainly not a universal problem for all blacks in my area. Unfortunately, about ninety percent of the black educators in my school system speak in this manner. Imagine being a young child trying to get the hang of phonics when your teacher is saying a different sound than your learning in your home or in the teaching materials for that matter. Can you imagine how confusing that is in a process as difficult as language acquisition and reading development. Now these folks sit across the desk from an interviewer ;speaking like this, and they still get hired to teach READING.
Last year, several parents got together to complain after seventy percent of one first grade classroom failed a spelling quiz. The students spelled the word “they” as “day.” It’s not hard to figure out why. The whole problem with unqualified teachers was being raised to the fore in our area. The complaint made it as far as the superintendents office, but the NAACP got involved and threatened a lawsuit on behalf of the black teachers. They claimed that black students had a right to be taught in their “authentic language.” AUTHENTIC LANGUAGE…Agggg! The whole thing came to a quiet and quick end and those same teachers are in the classroom talking about “scrawberries” and “danksgiving.”
I had a student (I retired from teaching for nearly 40 years in a high school) who was very capable and had been accepted at (at least) two fine colleges. One was a strong “black” college and the other was a top-notch univeristy. She literally cried on my shoulder. She was so worried that her university acceptance was an Affirmative Action move and that she was not being judged fairly.
I told her to go to the university with her head high and to make it her goal to finish in the top 10% in all her endeavors.
I will never forget her dread that her “skin” was her entre.
We are still in regular contact after 25 years and she has “Dr.” in front of her name and is a highly repected professor at the university she attended.
Why the heck did she have to go there with the Affirmative Action baggage?
Believe me, she has been equally tough on the achievement of all of her students, without regard to their claims for special consideration. She has also been recognized several times by her students as an outstanding professor.
We had supper not long ago and I told her that the one who needed Affirmative Action should pay the bill. She laughed and said: “We’ll split it, if you will let me leave the tip.”
Here’s a long list of Black accomplishments in education. I did spot a few errors and omissions — in particular Deaf education and what? No Fredrick Douglass???
What’s telling is that the years 1731 – 1950 overwhelms the remaining years by 201 to 13 events but whaddya expect for a website that considers Cornell West & Michael Eric Dyson to be ‘heroes’?
.
http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/category/1/Education
Independent
It’s not funny but you gave me a small chuckle with that one. My Grandma used to say ‘electwicity’. Brought back memories.
Michael Eric Dyson
UGH!!!!
Re: Ebonics
“If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten.”
Just which “ebonics” speaking trust officer do you expect me to invest my savings with?
or
“Excuse me, doctor, how many of what when?”
Don’t forget light skin vs. dark skin!
Heliotrope, too true.
Somehow I get the feeling that the adage “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” doesn’t apply here. I wonder why??? /sarcasm
I make a small post, I leave to do some work and this is what I come back to!
LSB: Why can’t people understand that it is WRONG to give people government benefits because they are BLACK while discriminating against people who are white? Giving people a break is NOT what this is about. It is about institutionalized SKIN COLOR PREFERENCES for black people. But you think this has something to do with Christ and helping people in need? Good grief. Why did I blog today? Why couldn’t I take a day off like a normal blogger…
1) Because there are only so many seats at UM law school, they have to be allocated among equally qualified somehow. (2) You can’t take the day off because you’re not a normal blogger — you’re a great blogger, which is why you have lots of readers.
George, are you equating the black population with the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind? Isn’t that rather negative and unfair? Comment by RedBeard — 07.23.05 @ 6:30 pm
Oh, of course that’s what I was doing! Boy, did you nail me!
George, did you ever notice how the South lags behind nearly all other regions in so many categories? It would seem AA is a destructive force for both races and regions. Comment by Independent — 07.23.05 @ 6:31 pm
Indy, did you ever notice that the South lagged long before AA. There is no question –among those who read census data, anyway — that the Southern economy began to improve when tax subsidized jobs were directed there by the New Deal and the WW2 effort.
And very unbiblical too Redbeard (but then I think they teach that in the liberal circles…they even use the same verses but amazingly skip over a whole bunch of other ones that show their analogy doens’t work). Comment by Renee — 07.23.05 @ 6:32 pm
The gospels of Luke and Matthew are unbiblical? Maybe that’s what you were taught in your liberal circles, but us fundies try not to skip over the bible passages that don’t fit our politics. While LSB may be correct that it’s inappropriate for government to codify preference in resource allocation by skin color, I may be correct to say that it’s appropriate to help someone who may be at a disadvantage because his parents lacked the ability or motivation to push them. I do know that when I returned from Viet Nam I was hired, after months of rejections in part because of a lack of social skills, by a guy who was also a vet. In other words, I got points from him for being a fellow vet. No doubt many of you disapprove of that, but I appreciate it even to this day. And when I was in a position to hire and promote people, I realized that ability and potential are not purely functions of college class ranking or social talents.
Now, will someone help Renee with her request?
Can someone poke me in the eye with a pencil now? Comment by Renee — 07.23.05 @ 6:27 pm
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