(President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964)
Monday, June 19: Mike S. Adams makes a contribution to educational racism.
Thursday, June 15: I sympathize with anybody who has to sit through mind-numbing “diversity training.” I attended one such “training” session at the former day job. Watching grass grow is more productive. I hate it when people tell me how to think.
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In a decision that reflects the true spirit of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal judge in Phoenix, Arizona, ruled that 40 white male professors are entitled to $1.4 million in back pay based on a discrimination claim. (Source – Hit “cancel” when window pops us)
A couple of years ago, a federal judge found that Northern Arizona University violated the men’s civil rights when it issued pay increases to minorities and women while issuing no such increases to the men:
U.S. District Judge Robert Broomfield said the 1993 pay plan enacted by then-NAU President Eugene Hughes violated federal anti-discrimination laws by overcompensating women and minority faculty members…The result, Broomfield said, was that Hughes’ effort to wipe out salary inequities with $207,000 in raises actually created new inequities – with white men as the victims. (Source)
Social engineers seem not to realize that the Act was designed to protect all races from discrimination. In theory, the Civil Rights Act removes skin color from the equation. In practice, it’s a social redistribution system that illegally takes from one class of citizens and gives to another. This race-based practice will never withstand legal or moral scrutiny, no matter what the Supreme Court says.
Expect more lawsuits, and expect to see more plaintiffs to prevail.
Have you ever been the target (I don’t like the word victim) of reverse [satisfied?] racial discrimination? Tell us about it.
(Hat tip: John at Discriminations)
Addendum: Forgot to mention this. White parents filed suit against two government school systems that use race to place students. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear both cases. Also see Equitable racial balance sought. I’ll sure be glad when the government gets out of the skin color bean counting business. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was such a good idea, wasn’t it? 
Related:
- The End of Skin Color-Based Scholarships? (post)
- “Good” Discrimination (post)
- Firefighters Win Reverse Discrimination Lawsuit
- Waukegan schools settle reverse-discrimination suit
- Camden police hiring policy assailed
- DeKalb police union charges whites held back
- Whites File Bias Suit Against Black College
- White Police Officers Claim Discrimination
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Oh, my gosh! Do tell! We need a “fairness” amendment to the Constitution to straighten this out. I nominate Jimmah Cahtah, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Cynthia McKinney, and Jacques Chirac to draft it.
Oh, yeah, and Michael Moore too.
“Have you ever been the target (I don’t like the word victim) of reverse discrimination?”
I wonder what does ‘reverse’ discrimination actually mean? It sounds like a politically correct made-up word. I’m not saying La Shawn, that you made it up, or even approve of it, as I’ve heard it often enough. Puzzling word.
Discrimination is discrimination. There is no such thing as reverse discrimination.
Yeah I once asked this girl out and she said “I’d rather go out with Tom instead.”
So I sued her.
Well, not really. Remember discrimination isn’t neccessarily a bad thing. In fact, being a discriminating person used to be a compliment. Discrimination is only bad if you are doing so based on ignorance, fear, or hate.
La Shawn:
Sen Barry Goldwater predicted the future when he did NOT vote for the Civil Rights Act. Which is why he did NOT vote for it in it’s form at the time.
Many honest Black people were deceived by the Johnson lie machine, which labled Goldwater, and the entire Republican Party, as Racist.
If you remembered your manners while you were in my “house,” I’d allow you to participate in the discussion. Since you haven’t, I won’t. Try again. If you get it right, I’ll approve the comment. – Admin
La Shawn, I noticed you deleted ‘reverse’ (discrimination) in the update…is this because you too disagree with the usefulness or take issue with the meaning of such a phrase? Or did you change it grudgingly because of us nitpickers?
“not by the color of their skin but the content of their character” (paraphase I think) beautiful words…
Ms. Barber, do you get as much satisfaction when the laws enacted to remedy the impact of Jim Crow and other acts of White supremacy are used for their proper purpose as you do when they are perverted? The playing field was not level in 1964. It was strongly tilted against blacks (oh how I hate rehashing simple history!), and whites showed a strong ambivalence to ending the structural injustice that was a part of the U.S. political and economic system.
If the purpose of the original raises was to make salaries equal for the same work, what basis did the judge use? Since I haven’t seen the actual information, I am dependent upon your explication of the case. At the time that the university gave raises to the minority professors, was their salary lower than the white professors, with everything else being equal? If such was the case, then this judge’s decision was a slap in the face; if not then it was a just decision. I will withhold judgment until I see the facts…and I will be looking further into this.
Have no clue what you mean by “satisfaction.” Once again, I’ve covered this on my blog many times. (oh how I hate rehashing previous blog posts!) Affirmative action as originally conceived was not about skin color preferences. The idea of “casting a wide net” was meant to include more blacks into the hiring or admissions pool, not set aside certain slots for them or judge their credentials only against other blacks. Affirmative action became the monster it is today. There is no way in heck skin color preferences can be defended on moral grounds. As long as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 exists, they can’t be defended on legal grounds, either. All I want is SIMPLE honesty. I want people to call AA what it is and stop pretending it’s about “leveling the playing field.” That’s a crock. It is a racial spoils system, nothing more and nothing less. – Admin
Now that I have read the entire article, plus some additional info, it appears that there already was an attempt to remedy any alleged injury. Of course, it would have ben nice to see how much of a diference in tenure, etc. actually existed. For example, did the tenure differences exist because the white professors just happenned to get hired earlier, or because they were prevented from gretting tenure?
Perhaps you never have been affected in employment by racism; if so, I am happy for you. Some of us have not been so blessed. This country is a country that was created for the benefit of European Protestants. It’s historical development has tended to continue that pattern, and its legacy is still being rooted out.
My five year old son, in sunny southern CA, still has experienced the sting of white supremacy. It is still more difficult for blacks to advance consistantly in society. While things may be better for individuals, until the day comes when no black child says to his or her parent, “I wish we were white,” the struggle will not be over.
I am the target of “reverse discrimination” every time I take a flight. (Which is more than a minor annoyance, since I fly a lot for work.) You know how they have to pick people out “at random” to give the pat-down and take out all the stuff from their suitcase? So that no 15-40 year old men of Middle Eastern descent get their precious feelings hurt about being singled out, the policy appears to be: “Whoever else we pull, let’s be sure to yank the middle aged white woman with the blonde hair and blue eyes.”
I literally lose sleep over our society’s obsession with political correctness. I have to wake up two hours earlier to budget for the time to get pulled from the line and then have to repack all my stuff. Lately, in the interest of efficiency, I don’t pack carefully at home, just fling the stuff in there, knowing that I get a mandatory do-over AT THE AIRPORT anyway. That’s the round of packing that I do carefully. Let them bloody well wait while I fold and smooth.
I can’t say that I have ever experienced “reverse” discrimination. The only thing I can think of goes back to when I graduated from engineering school. In the student’s lounge, we had sheet posted where each student wrote in their job offers, including the company and annual pay. There was one black young lady in our class, and she had all the top offers, despite being an average student. But there were plenty of jobs available for everyone, at reasonable pay. She was obviously in demand due to being a female (a rarity for engineers in those days) AND black. I hope she did well.
When I was in high school my dad owned his own business, and in the summer I would work there. Probably the employees expected me to, and also expected me to receive preferential treatment. Personally, I HATED the thought that the only reason I was there was because I was the owner’s son. So I busted my tail to prove that I deserved to work there.
So really I felt sorry for the young black lady in our class. I think she was a little embarrassed about it. I wonder if she felt the burden to prove that she was worth the money.
You can probably tell that I really struggle with the Prodigal Son parable. Can you guess which son I relate to?
>>…until the day comes when no black child says to his or her parent, “I wish we were white,†the struggle will not be over.>>
Then the struggle will never be over. When I was a teen, I envied the beautiful black hair and olive skin of the daughters of family friends (they werre Jewish). I learned later that they envied me my almost red hair, fair skin and freckles. Why anyone would _want_ freckles is still beyond me, but I do understand the concept that “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence”.
When will black people stop giving themselves so many excuses to fail? Yes, racism is an issue, but are we to allow it to what careers to aspire to or how we raise our children? Delwyn, the “struggle” will never be over because “our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” Racism is a SIN, and sin will not be destroyed until the Redeemer returns. As an Christian woman who happens to be black, I am compelled to live my life for the sake of Christ, without worrying about the opinion of others. THAT is what we should teach our children. Maybe if we remind them that they are fearfully and wonderfully made no matter the color of their skin, they will be a little less willing to be like someone else.
Ahnivah you took the words right out of my mouth, well said.
La Shawn, Yes, I have been a victim of reverse discrimination, but not in a job setting. In my younger years, I was a skinny girl and I heard the epithet “skinny white *itc*” thrown my way plenty of times. The black men were into me, but the black women hated me. They perceived me as something that they were told was holding them back, and I was dehumanized and seen as a ‘thing’ rather than a person. Little did they know that what they believed of me was not even close to the truth.
I’m majoring in computer science at a decent sized university, and almost all internships are for “disadvantaged minorities.”
A similar scenario played out at Ernst & Young when my brother worked there. He would tell me about the enormous bonuses that minorities would get so that the company could meet diversity goals. A friend of his at the company had personal issues with a black woman who worked there. She began saying that he’d made racist comments to her, which he hadn’t, and got him fired.
Another time that discrimination has (indirectly) affected me (not to mention everyone else in the city) was last year’s dismissal of the majority of white employees of the DA’s office here in New Orleans. The black DA ended up losing the suit, but those years of experience in the DA’s office are now lost making it that much harder to prosecute criminals in New Orleans.
I was robbed at gunpoint last year (not sure if the two black guys picked me because I was white), and I’ve had an Asst. DA tell me before the storm that it significantly affected the performance of the department.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-3/111225255336540.xml
On one hand, while in so much of the country Whites held the power, it seemed affirmative action was needed for a time to give Blacks the chance to catch up. On the other hand, it’s well known that despite segregation and other forms of legalized racism, Black neighborhoods held some of the classiest and best restaurants, clubs and stores to be found. In fact, Whites would sneak in to try and enjoy some of the high quality business to be found.
I have often wondered if desegregation was the destroyer of those fine neighborhoods, but I finally realized that it wasn’t desegregation but the handouts which followed. Give, give, give, and watch the receiver self-destruct in the majority of cases. Here is something I wrote on this topic a little while ago.
http://marklaroi.blogspot.com/2006/05/when-giving-stops-helping-and-starts.html
Then, with the easily and often abused Affirmative Action came an atmosphere in which color was everything. You deserved it because you were this color, you didn’t deserve it because you were that color. Meanwhile in the public eye, personal responsibility came to mean less and less because everybody owed somebody something.
Whites owed reparations economic, social and emotional to Blacks, Blacks owed other Blacks the debt of never doing anything perceived as non-Black, everybody dumped on Yellow, and Brown was virtually ignored.
In the midst of all this it somehow became not only fashionable, but required that Blacks be proud and vociferous in appreciation of their color, but Whites were forbidden to do any such thing. Thoughts on that led to this post.
http://marklaroi.blogspot.com/2006/06/black-people-always-do-thati-saw-it-on.html
AA easily transforms from “You cannot deny due to ____” to “You must due to _____” and the failure to differentiate between the two is the fine line between love and hate in a very real way.
(La Shawn, I hope you don’t mind me adding these links; I don’t mean to self-promote but this topic has been on my mind a lot.)
To my last comment, add this sentence:
This has resulted in the entire city being less safe due to a less experienced DA’s office. Indeed, this is one case where black on white discrimination hurst blacks because they’re also more likely to be the victim of a crime if the DA is less successful at prosecuting criminals.
Anyone remember “I’m OK, You’re OK” from the 1970’s?
Although I agree that affirmative action has gotten out of hand, I’m still searching for an answer to this question…how do you remedy contemporary disparities that are inextricably linked to past injustices?
First of all you’d need to define “past injustices” that “inextricably” link to whatever deficiencies you’re trying to remedy now. Affirmative action became the spoils system it is today because of fuzzy terms like “past injustices.” There could be other explanations. But it’s easier to judge blacks by lower standards than it is to maintain high standards, improve performances, and encourage people to seize opportunities. That’s a shame…
I wasn’t really a victim of discrimination, except that I had to pick up the slack for some incompetent and lazy people that our boss was too timid to fire because they were minorities. (It practically takes an act of congress to fire a civil servant anyway, and if they’re a minority it’s twice as hard.)
One guy in particular had a pattern of screwing a project up completely, then when he was rotated out to sea someone else would get the project and have to finish it up. The guy’s name was Curtis, and it happened so often that one of my co-workers started referring to it as “Curtis Interuptus.”
There is another kind of “reverse discrimination” due to AA.
As a black engineer in a research job at an ivy league university I was constantly in the position of being looked upon as if I was GIVEN the job rather than having EARNED it and capable of doing said job.
AA is insidious any way you look at it.
One would have to assume that white males were simply given jobs they were not qualified to do in the first place to justify doing the same thing for minorities. It is a twisted logic.
Historically, it was a Republican legislature that fought hard for a civil rights initiative if not a bill itself, in a situation that can only be termed as a deal of the devil, Johnson signed it to gain some backroom cred about the Vietnam War.
To look at AA from the standpoint of “discrimination” or “reverse discrimination” or any other race’s viewpoint is to not see the forest for the trees, it is simply bad policy from any standpoint, actually worse than the problem it was designed to fix, for that problem was never written into law like this one is.
Before AA, the US never had a law nor regulation that forced hiring by race, creed or color.
Can a law change peoples’ hearts?
I’ve always looked at AA like a cast for a broken leg. It may be necessary to put the cast on while the bone heals, but:
(1) The person with the cast is never going to run as fast as the person with a good leg.
(2) Once the bone has healed you have to take the cast off to complete the healing process, otherwise the muscles atrophy.
(3) When the cast does come off it’s painful and takes a while to get the muscles back in shape.
Doctors have hundreds of years of empirical evidence saying how long it takes to heal a broken leg… we don’t have any idea how long it takes to heal a broken society. We’ve probably left the cast on too long but it’s coming off. I’ve seen a lot of scaling back of AA in the last 10 years, and more and more voices in the black community like La Shawn and Baldilocks that reject (or at least question) the need for it.
The Machine: While I agree with most of what you said (I’ve seen black co-workers feel the need to prove they deserved the job) I have a bit of a problem with this bit:
“…that problem was never written into law…”
Jim Crow?
Frankly, I think the future looks pretty good. Then again, I grew up believing the USA and USSR were going to destroy the world in a nuclear war any day now, so any future looks pretty good.
I wrote, “never written into law like this one is,
Not just “never written into law” — as implied.
Meaning that while the country did indeed have a mishmash of federal and local laws and statutes on the books that all fall under the general heading known as “Jim Crow Laws” there was never a single federally mandated Act, Bill or law specifically named “The Jim Crow” law.
“Affirmative Action” on the other hand, is indeed a single federally enforced piece of legislation.
In that respect, the newer arrival may just prove to be the harder of the two to eradicate.
Especially considering how many still erroneously view AA as a desirable mandate.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough in the original post.
.
Past injustices are easy to define: the economic subjugation of Jim Crow. Furthermore in Ira Katznelson’s “When Affirmative Action was White” he clearly outlines the pro-white discrimination of New Deal Programs that helped exacerbate the racial wealth gap. In essence, because of states rights, racist southern governments denied blacks access to the same programs that helped lift millions of whites out of poverty in the aftermath of the Depression, including many of the benefits of the G.I. Bill. Considering that the black poverty rate is currently 3 times the white poverty rate, it seems that those past injustices have not been alleviated. Lowering standards through affirmative action may not be the best approach but neither is standing by idly and not doing anything.
There’s tons of empirical literature on this that opponents of racial reconciliation are either unaware of, or choose to ignore.
Its about time this happened i mean why should just the minorities have special privileges?
Blow that oat you ear JESSIE JACKASSON and NAACP now you have hell to pay
I think it speaks well of our nation when you have to go back atleast 40 years to find instances of institutionalized racism. King’s dream is being realized today, and many people are taking advantage of it. Unfortunately, there will always those who choose to ignore the opportunities before them, and those kinds of people will find all kinds of scapegoats for their failures.
LaShawn,
LBJ did more damage to race relations and the GOP – not to mention the free speech of many religious people and organizations – than any other person in the past fifty years.
Why people still esteem the man amazes me. It doesn’t matter that he signed the Civil Rights Act. He was a consummate politician, like certain other guy who likes to have himself called “the first black president.”
“The Machine”, above, has it pretty much right. When I (a very obviously white and very obviously male individual) have to make a hiring recommendation (in an ultra-technical engineering field) based only on a resume – a lousy way to hire, of course, but I can’t always set the rules – I have to assume that the white male or Asian male applicant had fewer opportunities (scholarships, supplemental/remedial courses, internships, etc – I’m not even getting into grade inflation) thrown at him than did a black male or female applicant. This is a good working definition of AA, isn’t it? So if the white or Asian resume is as good as the black or female one, I have to figure that the white or Asian guy must be a veritable wizard in order to have done so well. I am in an industry which is not dominated by huge companies with personnel departments obsessed with filling those ol’ quotas – we can afford to hire based on ability (or promise of ability) and little else. Indeed, we can hardly afford to do otherwise. So guess who gets the recommendation – wizards are far more valuable to us than ordinary types.
In individual cases none of that may be true, but I can only play the odds as they’re presented.
How anyone can think that this situation benefits anyone, “minority”, “disadvantaged”, or otherwise, is a mystery. A degree (or any similar credentials) awarded to one of our officially-approved “disadvantaged” types simply isn’t as valuable as the same thing awarded to someone not on the official handout list. It’s a second-class degree and we all know it (including, usually, the person who has it). The burden of second-class credentials has to be borne for the rest of the holder’s career. And what, exactly, did this individual do to deserve such a burden? Only be a member of an officially recognized and subsidized group – as good a definition of racism or sexism as I know.
This is a national disgrace, and we owe it all to the current institutional incarnation of AA. Forget about going back to the Spartans to try to rationalize AA – it’s screwing people over right now.
Incidentally, the best resume I ever saw belonged to an Indonesian fellow – it reminded me a lot of mine when I was his age, and made me realize what I wasn’t seeing in run-of-the-mill resumes.
i have to say, conservatives are absolutely wrong on this issue.
sorry, but the market place places a higher premium on a black law school professor. thats why they usually need to be offered more.
Frank> Past injustices are easy to define: the economic subjugation of Jim Crow. Furthermore in Ira Katznelson’s “When Affirmative Action was White†he clearly outlines the pro-white discrimination of New Deal Programs that helped exacerbate the racial wealth gap. In essence, because of states rights, racist southern governments denied blacks access
Frank, idiotic statements like yours are so easily kicked to the curb, that I have difficulty believing that you’ve ever tested your own beliefs or attempted to apply logic to them.
For example, by your own admission, these Jim Crow laws, and your claimed selective nature of New Deal programs took place mostly in the south, esp Jim Crow.
So, if they were indeed the cause, then the IMPACT would be concentrated in the south. Which means that either there exists now a SIGNIFIGANT (statistically) difference between north and south employment/poverty/etc rates, or else you have some ’splainin to do.
Game over. Now don’t you feel stupid for not examining your beliefs for weaknesses before opening your mouth on the internet?
P.S. How long is enough? No one still alive remembers the freeing of the slaves or a time when women could not vote, and very few still alive experienced segregation. When they are all dead, is that long enough that minorities/women have to have government enforce quotas? If not, how about 5 years from that day?
10?
20?
Fifty years?
75?
A Century?
Never?
So, if they were indeed the cause, then the IMPACT would be concentrated in the south. Which means that either there exists now a SIGNIFIGANT (statistically) difference between north and south employment/poverty/etc rates, or else you have some ’splainin to do.
Ryan. The vast majority of blacks nationwide have fairly recent roots in the south. Have you not read the writings of Thomas Sowell? Before the mass migration of blacks to the north, the fewer northern blacks were SIGNIFICANTLY better educated and better off economically than southern blacks.
“very few still alive experienced segregation.”
Roughly 20% of the population is over 60.
government enforce quotas?
Quotas are illegal. Thus, adding “government enforced” to it is an oxymoron.
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