Update (9/11): Some readers are under the mistaken impression that I attended the HBCU conference. I didn’t.
The photo below of me and Justice Thomas was taken last October at the Heritage Foundation. Thomas spoke about his experiences and signed copies of his memoir, My Grandfather’s Son.
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At the recent Annual Conference of the White House Initiative on National Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said it was “not acceptable” that there aren’t more black people in her meetings at the State Department. (Source)
Based on the context of the entire speech, which I read, she wasn’t insinuating “racism” had anything to do with it. It sounded like she was encouraging blacks to become involved in Foreign Service.
There’s nothing wrong with encouraging blacks to consider certain careers, but it sounds too much like pandering to me. If I were giving a speech in front of a black audience (which I hope to do on my book tour), I wouldn’t complain about the paucity of blacks at blog conferences. Who cares?
No matter what the topic, I’d take time to address substantive issues that blacks, not the government, need to fix, like the outrageous levels of illegitimacy and crime among blacks. That is not acceptable. There are more pressing concerns than not seeing other blacks at a conference or in meetings. I wouldn’t waste time, not one second, “lamenting” that there aren’t more people “who look like me.”
Rice believes it’s OK for colleges to consider race when admitting an applicant (I’m wondering if she thinks it’s OK for colleges to also admit white students based on race), so I hope she isn’t advocating using race preferences to recruit more blacks to the State Department. With her level of education and experience, she should be more circumspect.
Contrast Rice’s remarks with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s to the same group. He “benefited” from race preferences, as I have, and we both bear the stigma of and aversion to this odious practice. An excerpt:
A longtime opponent of race-based preferences in hiring and school admissions, Thomas said, “Just from a constitutional standpoint, I think we’re going to run into problems if we say the Constitution says we can consider race sometimes.”
Thomas, 60, has voted on the court to outlaw the use of race in college admissions and in determining which public schools students will attend. He wrote with evident resentment in his autobiography “My Grandfather’s Son” that he felt he was allowed to attend Yale Law School in the 1970s because of his race and took a tough course load to prove he was as able as his white classmates.
“My suggestion would be to stop the buzz words and to focus more on the practical effect of what we’re doing,” he said Tuesday.
“What we’re doing” when we allow the government to prefer one person over another based on race, practically speaking, is giving government the power to discriminate based on race, the battle cry of the entire civil rights movement! You see, people don’t want to know the truth. They get it twisted in their minds, deluding themselves into believing lowering the bar for blacks is a good thing or that race preferences have nothing to do with lesser qualifications. (See The True Meaning of “Black Pride”)
Not being good enough to get accepted to a school or hired for a job is one thing. I can study more and get better grades or acquire the necessary skills and experience, or move on to a school or job for which I’m qualified. But when someone implies that I should receive some unearned benefit because I can’t do any better on account of my race, well, those are fighting words.
I would guess that most people don’t care about race preferences. This demeaning policy likely does not affect their daily lives, so it’s low on the priority list. We all should care about it. Think about that grainy black and white film footage you’ve seen from the 1960s: cops turning hoses and dogs on black protesters, Democrats standing in school doors to prevent black kids from entering, whites shouting at black students as they walked to school, etc. To get the government out of the skin color business, this country engaged in a tense struggle for equal treatment. Race preferences make a mockery of that struggle.
It’s 2008, and the government is still in the skin color business. Blacks are “benefiting” from it these days, and that’s why they support it. But one day, the government might revert to its former practice. When that happens, what legal and moral leg will blacks have to stand on?
None.
How have you been helped or harmed by preferences?
{ 29 comments }
Great post! My mother was one of those who lived the struggle at Ole Miss and she brought me up to judge people on their character and actions. Seeing how twisted things have gotten with race and racism is quite discouraging.
If people wouldn’t BEHAVE and be complicit in ungodly behaviors, they wouldn’t be accused of anything.
It’s a spiritual problem, and a mature believer would know it has nothing to do with the government.
This spiritual problem plagues MANKIND, not just those despicable “blacks”.
La Shawn:
My son Scott was rejected from medical school applications 3 times.
He had a 34 score on the MCAT exams; I know Blacks get in with low 20 scores.
Do I need to say more?
You may know SOME “blacks” who get in with low 20 scores, but not all.
I know for a fact that there are 147 “blacks” who scored 23 on the MCAT and had to go through 3 rounds of the Princeton Review to get their scores up to at least 30 before they got accepted.
So don’t even try it.
See.. this is what I’m talking about with people!
Walter E. Williams has a pair of articles about the effects of race preferences on minority law students and Law Schools in general.
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/09/03/academic_mismatch_i
http://townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/09/10/academic_mismatch_ii
TBD: “I know for a fact that there are 147 “blacks” who scored 23 on the MCAT and had to go through 3 rounds of the Princeton Review to get their scores up to at least 30 before they got accepted.
So don’t even try it.
See.. this is what I’m talking about with people!”
Nobody who comments here can grasp what you are saying.
It’s gone from “it all being whitey’s fault (for about 30 years), to now “it’s all ours again.” Neither is correct, but most people can only see and chose one side.
I know how Secretary Rice feels. It is shameful and at times sad to look around a room and not see faces like mine – Black – or talk to people from similar backgrounds – working class poor.
Not denying that we need to do for ourselves, but I’m tired of ALWAYS being the minority in my field – science, academia. It does need to be addressed and remedied, by encouraging more students of color and those from urban areas to take advanced math and science courses, pursue studies in math and science. And it makes a big difference to all of the students to see a professor of color or a woman or someone not from New England teach an advanced level college science course. It communicates to them that anyone from anywhere and achieve anything.
They would grasp it, if they had a judicial conscience David.
And I don’t play that “whitey” this or that game. No redeemed person should even be letting that fall outta their mouth.
My response was to Frank, anyhow. Read what he wrote and then my response, in CONTEXT.
A 34 on the MCAT is a outstanding score for ANYONE. If he got a 34 and some “black” got a low 20, then he doesn’t want to be in that school anyhow.
You can also check the AAMC to see the demographics for schools for each entering class to see what’s up.
Getting into Med School is HARD. Low 20’s will not and SHOULD not get ANYBODY accepted, and I don’t believe it unless it was some offshore school. You can’t get into ANY SCHOOL in Ohio, NY, Chicago, California, Texas, Washington State, Maryland, and Rhode Island with low 20 score. Bull!
A 25 or less in those states and you’re advised to take the Princeton Review again if you really want to get in.
Urban Scientist – I also know how she feels (and you, too – I’ve experienced the-only-black-there situation) but I still think she engaged in a bit of pandering with that “not acceptable” remark. The only thing that would be unacceptable is if the government’s keeping blacks out of Foreign Service. Otherwise it’s about choices, interest, exposure, opportunity, and qualifications.
Urban Scientist,
I’m the only non-white network Engineer on a team of 13 at my company, and it has been like that for 9 years. The very first Engineer on the team at it’s inception was a non-white woman. She moved on shortly after I was hired after being the senior member for 15 years.
No matter how qualified you are when you got the position, you will always be suspect as far as how you got there. It’s not what people THINK that is of concern, but it’s how they BEHAVE towards you that is most telling.
There could be a number of reasons why Secretary Rice is saying the things she is saying now. Not long ago she said that our dealings with “race” was our national birth defect.
Either Secretary Rice is playing the role NOW, or she has decided to STOP playing the role. Who knows? I pray that Father Yahweh helps her to reconcile whatever role she has had in the ungodly behaviors and choices that has been made while she has been in her position.
La Shawn Barber, you said:
“so I hope she isn’t advocating using race preferences to recruit more blacks to the State Department.”
I’m afraid that this has already happened. When one takes the Foreign Service Exam, one is put into a category based upon race and gender. Your exam score is graded on a curve, not with all exam takers, but only with those in the same race-and-gender-based category. This allows for those who are in a smaller category to get “adjusted” scores that are possibly higher than if their scores were compared against all exam takers.
Adjusted scores are needed because there are so few Foreign Service openings compared to the number of applicants. And, while I can understand that it can be desirable, superficially anyway, to have a Foreign Service that “looks” like the United States; But, this way of adjusting exam scores (using race and gender)does not work well for getting the best Foreign Service for the United States – not to mention that it smacks of unfairness to the individual.
I have not bothered to look up any links to support what I am saying here – why? Because I have lived it. I spent 4 years in college and another 4 years living overseas to prepare myself for the Foreign Service (it was a dream of mine since I was in High School) only to see the Foreign Service Exam cancelled the first year I signed up to take it (back in the early 1980s) It was cancelled by court order because the State Department was sued for “discrimination.” The next year (it was only given once a year back then) I took it and passed everything with “raw” (i.e. unadjusted) scores in the 90s, well above the scores need to get into the next phase of the hiring process – interviewing; yet my adjusted scores did not allow for me to be invited an interview. I did, however, personally know a few people who scored lower than me on their raw scores who were invited to interviews because their adjusted scores pushed them into a higher score.
Fair? Not at all, but this is what happens when some believe that two wrongs make a right.
Am I bitter about the whole experience? Yes, after 12 years of preparing and trying to get into the Foreign Service I gave up and consider myself to have had a quite successful career as a corporate trainer instead. My gain, my country’s loss. I also (here comes the bitter part) cannot help but wonder how many Foreign Service blunders the U.S. makes today are because of “lower” standards for entrance into the Foreign Service and other Government agencies?
La Shawn, Thanks for alowing me to have my say.
Great article. This old white conservative engineer listened carefully to Dr. Reverend Luther King’s I HAVE A DREAM speech in full on my long drive to work every January. His vision for us all was the correct one–I think it came directly from God-like reading from the Bible.
My two sons are both doctors–the older one had problems with some Black losers in high school–he said that the Black people had bad attitudes. I reminded him of the nice Black lady at our church who loved him and had her Mexican baseball league pitcher son tutor him in pitching when he was on the school baseball team. He said, “But when I’m with their family I don’t see them as Black. We must all try to reach this point in our relations with all people–we must see them as individuals worthy of our trust and respect–all with their good and bad characteristics.
Rocketman
MLK Jr’s dream: “…where they’ll not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Yet the “Establishment” now judges by skin color. “Multi-Culturalism” is not only the “gold-standard”, but anyone who dares to challenge it is dismissed/censured as a “bigot”. That gets us back to the Presidential race, where we WILL have a black or a woman in office, and where the pundits and the press are all over Palin being a woman (and are carefully avoiding Obama being black). [Disclaimer: I have a problem with blacks I've known demanding to be called "African-American" but not having any idea about "Africa" being separate nations, separate people groups. I like Whoopie Goldberg's comment: "I've been to Africa, and I ain't no African." I've had some very good friends who are African, and they're really different from American blacks. I prefer to stick with "black", and I hope nobody here takes offense. Please listen to my meaning, not my individual words. Sorry--moving on.]
As Rodney King famously said, “Can’t we all just get along?” Can’t we see each other as individuals, instead of depersonalizing by putting each other into groups?
If I call the fire department, I want the best firefighters or paramedics to come to my aid. If I go to the doctor, I want the most skilled and most caring doctor I can get. When I go out to eat, I want a competent waitperson who will get me what I want and make my dining experience pleasant. If I take my car for repairs, I want a competent mechanic, preferably the best to be had, to fix it.
I DON’T CARE ABOUT RACE OR GENDER OR EVEN RELIGIOUS BELIEFS! Not in this context (I definitely care about religious beliefs in many contexts.) [For the record: my PC doctor is Chinese, my neurologist is a practicing Muslim woman, my main mechanic is Armenian, my heating repair guy is a white woman (at the start of the day)--they were all the best I could find. I am white male.]
I also want the best public servants. I want someone as President who is wise enough to get the best advice and take the best action. I’d vote in a hot second for Colin Powell, probably for Ms. Rice, never for Hillary or Obama. I’m almost certainly going to vote for Palin and whatsisface.
Let’s let the best candidates into our medical schools and law schools, and let’s flunk them out if they don’t make the grade. Same with foreign service (so that we don’t have the likes of Muhammed Ali representing us–remember that fiasco?).
This is the approach that was taken from the beginning at the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (where my g-g-grandmother was chair of gynecology): demanding standards, turning out the best doctors possible.
Would you want anything less if you were the patient?
I believe I have been both helped and harmed by preferences. In fact I believe everyone has been both helped and harmed.
As long as our government is [hu]man-led it will continue to adjust “[un]fairness” to what it deems will level the playing field. How can fairness ever be understood with people of a fallen nature.
After carefully re-reading the speech – I am not so sure that SOS Rice was pandering. Perhaps, but I think she was moreso encouraging blacks to consider a career within the State Dept. Perhaps she just wanted to talk about the things she was well-versed. Perhaps Ms. Rice doesn’t feel its her role to address those things “we need to fix.” I know if I went to hear/see Ms. Rice I certainly would want her to speak about her experiences while working in/with the State Dept. I think if I was in the audience I have probably avoided or have successfully maneuvered past the many things that plague the black community – so why are you [Ms. Rice] addressing those things to this audience. If I was at a conference about the State of the Community – and she was the keynote speaker, then yeah.
Dooz,
So is your point that you don’t want to be CONSIDERED a bigot, regardless of how you BEHAVE?
“As long as our government is [hu]man-led it will continue to adjust “[un]fairness” to what it deems will level the playing field. How can fairness ever be understood with people of a fallen nature.”
Bravo, zipla. That’s it. You also spoke to it very well here:
“I think if I was in the audience I have probably avoided or have successfully maneuvered past the many things that plague the black community – so why are you [Ms. Rice] addressing those things to this audience. If I was at a conference about the State of the Community – and she was the keynote speaker, then yeah.”
This is like a non-white person going on Fox News degrading and disparaging “blacks”. Who there is going to care or offer rebuff. You’d likely get kudos or ^5’s.
As well, when I go to minister to the inner city, I don’t extol the virtues or non-virtues of, say, the Orthodox Jews that I work with so they might believe on Y’Shua as the Son of Yahweh, the logos, rhema, and dumanis. They likely don’t give a hoot about what Jews believe.
You address the people who need to be addressed in the company of those who have sincere and godly compassion and accountability for that subject matter and whatever fruits it may bear. In that vein, why Secretary Rice choose that venue is beyond me. Only she knows.
I have seen blacks who are so EAGER for
titles and positions that they will accept
them when they don’t remotely have the
qualifications for them — and the inevitable
SCORN that they receive from whites sometimes
destroys any chance that a QUALIFIED black
will ever be considered for the position.
I have also seen blacks who play the HECK out
of the system to get what they want, then,
as H. L. Mencken predicted, immediately try
to bar other blacks, REGARDLESS OF THEIR
QUALIFICATIONS, from intruding on their
“spook who sat by the door” exclusivity.
The greatest tragedy of the last 40 years
for blacks is that they didn’t take advantage
of the freedoms that they won to BUILD THEIR
OWN INSTITUTIONS, starting with the most basic,
which is the FAMILY, next their NEIGHBORHOOD (and I mean that literally — their block, then their street, and next the community), and finally “the world”. What blacks have become is a caricature of this money worshipping society, ready to just fall down and WORHIP money (in the case of little Prosperity Pimp ministers — LITERALLY). When people value MONEY over all other values in life, they are not apt to have the HONOR to seek or accept a title only when they have earned it.
That is the gratest complaint that i have against those blacks who constantly bombard me with this OBAMA WORSHIP — I have NEVER voted for the GOP, and in the last 3 elections I have
voted LIBERTARIAN. Obama is an egotistical little back bencher who hasn’t been in the Senate long enough to know where the men’s room is. With the greatest gall (and to his credit no small measure of organizaional savvy) he is manipulated his way to a run for the presidency.
He is woefully unqualified — but SO WAS GEORGE W. BUSH. If George W. Bush were the son of a truck driver or a plumber he NEVER would have gotten into Yale; he would have served in Vietnam as a grunt (like so many other working class men of his generation); he would have been rejected for Harvard Business School (as was Warren Buffett), and he would NEVER have become president of the USA.
ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE GAME THE SYSTEM — blacks who think that their ability to do so based on quotas and AA, will do well to realize THAT game has just about PLAYED OUT.
Hey LaShawn.. remember THIS thread?
Look at comment #44.
Then look at THIS thread.
As a white woman, I’ve definitely experienced sexism, mostly back in the early 80s. As for harm from preferences, I was a state employee for 10 years before changing careers and moving into IT.
I do think I would have had more job opportunity in state government if I had been a minority. State government definitely has and uses preferences and there were several people I worked with who’s skills were poor enough that I don’t think they could have gotten the job without the preferences.
I also saw a glaring difference between working for the government and working for private companies in IT. In government, the staff was very racially diverse. In IT, the racial mix has always been mostly white, quite a few Indians, and quite a few native-born Europeans. I can count on one hand the number of black people I’ve worked with in IT, same for Hispanic. Gender-wise, it’s mostly men, especially in the technical areas. I’m frequently the only woman on a team. Most women in IT are the multi-tasking manager types (the “Mom” roles).
Part of all of that I think is simply interest, or lack of it. I certainly haven’t been interested in the more technical work. Could it be that without racial and gender preferences, hiring is based on skill and experience alone? It could be geographic, the Denver area doesn’t have the black population that the southern and eastern cities do. But even at one of my clients in Atlanta, only one of the team members was black. And Denver certainly has a large Hispanic population, where are they in IT? Maybe kids aren’t exposed to the career in school so have no interest.
My nephew is half black and half white. What will his future be? I wish skin color didn’t matter so much after all this time, but it seems to.
Ward Connerly’s non-discrimination amendment is on our ballot this fall. It bases “affirmative action” on financial need, as it should be. I’ll be voting for it.
THEBIGDODDY, #15:
Huh?! Where did you get that from?!
Please, anybody! Did anybody else read me that way?
I probably benefited from affirmative action. My SAT and ACT scores were above the median and average scores to get into UVa, but I was accepted on the spot after a review of my application. But I was in a dorm floor with people whose friends were wait listed.
I graduated in 4 years, even as an athlete. Did I care? Nope. But I should have done 5 years. My grades would have been higher, but I paid for the education.
The first 3 jobs I probably got help from AA. Did I care? Nope. Except in one job, I know I’d be hired back in a heart beat if the people I worked with were still around. On the one job where I wouldn’t, I burned bridges, on purpose, even though in my “specialized field” where you see the same people over and over again, most likely at different companies.
Do I care? Nope. And given my income, the government dang sure is happy. And if my daughter lives up to her potential, something I had some hand in, the government will be happy at her income as well.
Well, woo-hoo, Darkstar doesn’t feel bad that someone may have lost an opportunity to Darkstar BECAUSE Darkstar was successful, ultimately.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm!
Perhaps the person who worked for years, outscored Darkstar [perhaps under even more socio-economically adverse circumstances] would have given EVEN MORE bang for the buck. But hey, why worry about the blood, sweat, and tears of another human being who may have spent their lives working towards a goal, only to see it snatched out from under their feet by government fiat.
Meanwhile, folks like Darkstar think it is their just desserts [you know, slavery and all that] Well, rational folks ask what slavery has to do with those who had the same opportunity as others?
While it is mandatory that every white person is labeled as a “person of privilege” despite the fact that whites have LESS access to early childhood education AND often grow up in rural areas that do not even offer AP courses, and certainly don’t come from urban areas with community organizers offering summer jobs and leadership organizations, the truth is that in 2008, the privilege thing is wearing thin.
As for Asians, the privilege notion is a travesty.
So, good on you, Darkstar, that you feel good about your success. As for me, I would feel a tad queasy wondering whether I had taken the opportunity away from someone who had worked harder and been more deserving. I don’t want something I have not earned in the objective sense. In real life, one can’t simply look at someone who made the best of their opportunity and categorically declare that it was worth it, because one has NO way to know whether the person who deserved it more would have made the the best of THEIR opportunity had it been offered.
My brother got perfect scores on his SATs, was a gifted athlete, worked full time through highchool, and grew up in poverty.
To me, it is a travesty that someone like Michelle Obama got into Harvard and my brother did not.
Yeah, he is a success now, a high profile neurologist and an electrical engineer…….BUT, there is no doubt that he earned the opportunities that the Obamas were handed on a silver platter [and are bitter about, no less].
So, yeah, it would be facile to say that no one wants to hear a white person talk about victimhood. After all, whites oughta get to experience the tragedy of black history. As we all know, two wrongs make a right. After all, who cares that someone scratched their way out of poverty, and achieved at extraordinary levels only to see their place given to someone who had simply not-made-the-grade.
Alright, to me, being a victim says that one is a failure because of others. That hardly describes the scenario I am presenting.
Make no mistake…I am NOT presenting a VICTIMOLOGY template.
In my scenario, the truth is that those who were denied opportunities succeeded IN SPITE of seeing their earned positions snatched by others. They are hardly victims. They are true successes.
But to say that their story cannot be told is a bastardization of history and free speech and reality.
SO, let’s tell the whole story which is that affirmative action largely benefits privileged blacks at the expense of poor Asians and to a lesser extent, poor whites.
In what universe does this make sense?????????
So, you go, Darkstar…savor every minute of your success. But, take a moment to think about kids that were smarter, worked harder, and came from worse socio-economic circumstances that saw their dreams drift away so that you could have opportunities they only dreamt about. Woo hooo!
When I speak to blacks, I don’t focus on racism or even the problems that exist among us. I place more emphasis on the positives and little on the negatives. For too long, blacks have generally been pessimistic about the state of black America whether its the Jesse Jackson types or the Jesse Lee Petersons. We are also bombarded with what’s wrong with black America. What we need is to pay more attention to what’s going well instead of gloom and doom. If improvements are needed, we can make them.
Good golly. The hospital I serve has every form of color, gender, transgender, ethnicity, religion, etc, I can imagine. We hire on the basis of skill. We fire on the basis of breach of honesty, integrity or teamwork. The enormous engineering company my son works for is the same.
I suppose that the State Department has dealings with some nations where a black face would serve the US better than a white one. Although I am not sure that is really how we should behave. Other than that reason, I would assume that Condi is talking about a general lack of interest among black students to pursue a career at State. But so what? There is no “wall” keeping blacks from State. Condi would be the first to spot it and hear about it. Colin Powell would have told her.
I don’t know any racial, decent person who would tell anyone or an institution that they should accept persons who are far below the criteria, no matter how badly they may want a diverse work/school place.
But I do believe in advertising to and encouraging people from non-traditional groups to participate in under-representative fields. I think institutions should seriously consider programs that prepare attract and retain such people and I am a BIG proponent of programs that adequately prepare such individuals to fully compete for those work/school spots.
For me the preparation to take advantage of an opportunity is the BIGGEST issue. And the sad fact is that our nation’s public education system does not equally prepare students. Students from lower socioeconomic rungs are consistently under-prepared. I can’t tell you how many bright, eager, but just-plain skills lacking students I have come across. In truth, it is a SES/class issue, but in this complex nation of ours, race and class issues overlap so much it is at time difficult to tease them apart.
I meant to spell rational – not racial.
La Shawn,
Fifty and sixty years ago, yes I was alive, most leaders said that the playing field should be level. This means that the same tests with the same scoring should be for everyone. The idea of affirmative action started in the late sixties in the Nixon administration. That public schools should be “separate and equal” was the norm in southern and border states. Schools varied state to state and much within a state. However, I heard that nowhere that claimed separate and equal really existed. Some states such as New Hampshire never had separate schools for blacks versus whites. Both Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams have written against the practice of affirmative action and people claim that they made it before affirmative actions became popular. John McWhorter said that those “grown up and adults’ in 1965 had different views then most of current “civil rights leaders”.
James Barber
Hopewood vs. Texas Law School.
Hopewood, somehow, won even though there were white students who got into the law school with scores lower than hers and even though she graduated from a school that wasn’t accredited and even though she turned in her paperwork after the deadlines.
Wasn’t bad, except for that gratuitous remark about me. Just discovered me, have you? Most haters who want to join the discussion have learned to be clever about their La Shawn-hate. Rein it in, or be content reading these snarky “Admin” edits. – Admin
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