Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the firefighters and against New Haven. (Also see video)

Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, was one of the judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit who sided with New Haven. In other words, she ruled against the firefighters denied promotions because of skin color.

A developing meme is that the Supreme Court reversed Sotomayor. Will it make a difference during confirmation hearings? I’m not hopeful Sotomayor-reversed will generate much steam. I doubt Republicans have the heart to grill Sotomayor the way they should. They’re not of stout heart.

For a little light reading, download the 93-page opinion. (PDF)

Earlier this month, Bucknell University closed down such a demonstration because of a technicality. Deans Commerford and Marrara cited a discrepancy between prices at the time of application and at the time of sale.

Hideously stupid, but when the Bucknell University Conservatives Club (BUCC) applied for a second demonstration, the school decided to suppress free speech altogether. The school said no dice. From the article:

“I concluded that this activity was a discriminatory fundraising event, which violates our stated, and legally required, nondiscrimination policy that is applicable to all sponsored or authorized events,” said Gerald Commerford, associate dean of students.

The BUCC’s choice to file another sales and solicitation form was an attempt “to test the University’s commitment to the issue of free speech,” Roesch said. He doubted that the only reason the original sale was shut down was because of a paperwork issue.

After this incident, Commerford said the rationale behind the decision to stop the event is consistent in both cases.

“When I closed the club’s prior event, I did so because their registration form was incorrectly filled out.

Right, Dean Commerford. Then he covers his politically correct butt:

However, upon reflection and review after taking that action, I concluded that even with a correctly completed registration form, the affirmative action bake sale was not a fundraising activity and is in violation of the University’s nondiscrimination policy,” Commerford said.

Bucknell is a private university, but students have free speech rights. Students ought to be allowed to demonstrate the unfairness and ridiculousness of race-based admissions, which I assume their school practices, by conducting race-based bake sales. One is offensive and the other isn’t?

Keep bucking the system, BUCC. As a black American turned totally off by government-sanctioned lowered preferences for blacks, I unequivocally side with you.

Is FIRE on top of this? Good.

Firefighter Frank Ricci and others (one hispanic and more than a dozen whites) who scored high on the test sued the city, citing equal protection violations. After a district court judge dismissed the case, a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court affirmed the dismissal. Conservative judges on the court sought to have it re-heard. Judge Jose Cabranes defined the issue this way:

“May a municipal employer disregard the results of a qualifying examination, which was carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality, on the ground that the results of that examination yielded too many qualified applicants of one race and not enough of another?”

The appeals court declined to hear the case by a vote of 7 to 6. Download the 72-page opinion (PDF).

Ricci petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, and last week, the court agreed to hear the case.

I’ve written about this issue before. A few years ago, I spent an hour on a conference call with three people at a consulting firm hired by the Denver Fire Department to water down the test so black applicants could pass it at higher rates. They told me, somewhat proudly, they’d been hired to create watered down tests for fire departments in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties in Maryland, too. I asked them repeatedly what changing the test would entail: more pictures, fewer words, no math…what? I just got jargon. No straight answers. My request for a copy of a sample test was denied.

According to the firm’s web site, the new test would measure a “broader range of job related abilities than traditional written tests” to identify “well-rounded, motivated, and qualified” applicants. In other words, the goal was to play down what apparently made blacks look bad — abstract reasoning ability — and play up “interpersonal” skills.

I also blogged about a fire department that eliminated a swimming test because too many black applicants can’t swim. Can you believe it? Instead of eliminating non-swimming applicants or even doing the paternal thing – sending them to swimming lessons like dependent children – the department eliminates an important requirement for the job!

I wish blacks would protest in the streets and burn cars over this. How much more demeaning can you get? Lowering standards for black applicants? What happened to “We shall overcome” and being treated equally? And all that talk about being given a chance, the same chance as everyone else? Black America should be in an uproar over being perceived as stupid and incapable.

But, no. Government-wide lowered standards for blacks don’t raise anyone’s blood pressure but mine.

Ricci v. DeStefano is an important case. Even if the Supreme Court sides with Ricci and rules that throwing out the test results because too many whites would get promotions is unconstitutional, however, the practice won’t disappear altogether. In some form or another, the government will find a way, any way, to lower the bar for blacks and keep it raised high for everybody else.

Those who fought and died during the civil rights movement must be so proud.

I’m at a loss for words, but here’s one, repeated three times: shame, shame, shame.

Ah! More words. If I were a betting woman, I’d wager that the New Haven Fire Department already watered down the test, ala New York City and Denver.

I don’t know why these things happen. I just blog and link (and provide reams of commentary!).

For those who do care, let me ease your mind. As confusing as it may be, you shouldn’t be surprised. That is, if you know anything about Colin Powell.

Did you know Colin Powell is pro-choice? He believes women have a right to choose to have their unborn babies slaughtered in the womb.

Did you know Colin Powell believes colleges and universities should admit and reject applicants based on the color of their skin? Race should play a role in admissions, he thinks, an idea totally contrary to the very spirit of the civil rights movement.

(Incidentally, black Republican Condoleezza Rice is also pro-choice and pro-race preferences.)

I would not be surprised if I learned Colin Powell opposes California’s Proposition 8, a measure that would amend the constitution to define marriage as between only one man and one woman.

Colin Powell, endorser of BHO, is a Republican, but he’s not socially conservative. That should clear up any confusion or answer most questions you have about why he did such a thing.

Update: Speaking of race preferences, check out the American Civil Rights Institute’s (ACRI) new blog. If you’re interested in reading about ACRI’s efforts to end race- and sex-based preferences in government hiring, contracting, and admissions, bookmark it or subscribe via RSS or e-mail.

Thanks to Ward Connerly’s efforts, voters in Colorado and Nebraska will decide on November 4 whether their state and local governments may continue discriminating against and granting preferences to people based on race and sex.

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?

Asked point-blank whether he supported the ballot initiative, McCain said, “Yes, I do…I’ve always opposed quotas.” (Source)

(Michelle Malkin is skeptical of McCain’s endorsement.)

Activist Ward Connerly is on a mission to ban preferences from hiring, contracting, and admissions in state governments. His efforts have proved fruitful in three states so far. Californians approved a ban on preferences with 54 percent of the vote in 1996. Voters in Washington state approved a similar measure by 58.3 percent in 1998, and Michigan voters approved the ban by 58 percent in 2006.

As expected, Barack Obama believes governments should treat people differently based on skin color. In response to McCain’s comments, BHO said:

“I think in the past he’d [McCain] been opposed to these Ward Connerly initiatives as divisive. And I think he’s right. These are not designed to solve a big problem, but they’re all too often designed to drive a wedge between people.”

I echo Roger Clegg. Race is divisive, and yes, BHO, these issues drive a wedge between people, as they should.

The whole point of the civil rights movement was to bar the government from preferring one citizen over another based on factors like race. But our government continues this odious practice, and I can think of nothing more unfair or divisive, no matter which race or sex benefits from the discrimination. A government with the power to discriminate in favor of blacks has the power to discriminate against blacks. Dolts.

Here is something that grates on my nerves as much as the term “African American”: People use the terms “affirmative action” and “race preferences” interchangeably, but they are not even synonymous.

Affirmative action was a policy designed to provide qualified blacks with opportunities to compete with others for jobs. The “cast a wider net” imagery described the process. The goal was to include more qualified blacks into the hiring pool. Affirmative action as conceived quickly became what’s known today as race preferences. Under this standard, blacks are not expected to compete against whites, only against one another. Public colleges and universities are notorious for unofficial separate admissions tracks, for example. It is truly tasteless.

But people like BHO support such tackiness and call it “equality.”

I spent two days last week with folks like Roger Clegg discussing these issues, and it’s sort of a let-down coming back to a place where I’m surrounded by lowered-standards-for-blacks supporters. I suspect I’ll live, though.

John McCain, disappointingly weak candidate that he is, did himself a huge favor by coming out in favor of the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative. Even if he really doesn’t mean it. If you believe the media hype surrounding the Obamassiah, he should be leading McCain by 15 to 20 points. Why hasn’t he blown the Vietnam vet out of the water?

If I were working for McCain, I’d advise him to come out strong against racially divisive government policies and at the same time, play the race card that Obama himself threw on the table. Obama’s got a weak hand, and McCain needs to call his bluff. But he won’t, which is why he’ll lose in November.

I count myself among many Americans who loathe race preferences, known in politically correct jargon as affirmative action. I join like-minded others to eradicate this demeaning, unfair, and unconstitutional practice from state government policies across the country.

Rest easy, everybody, and thanks for reading LBC.

Related:

• Dreaming California
• Federal Anti-Race Preferences Amendment Passes House
• Colorblind Bind
• Colorblind Thuggery

The Secretary of State has determined that the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative has received enough signatures to be placed on the November ballot. Said Ward Connerly, the man behind the anti-preferences machine:

“The people in Colorado who have the desire to end race and gender preferences are to be commended for their success. I am delighted that the Super-Tuesday for Equal Rights effort has achieved another milestone towards success in November.”

The Colorado Civil Rights Initiative, a state constitutional amendment, will appear on the ballot as Amendment 46. Vote YES on Amendment 46 to bar the state from hiring, contracting, and admitting people based on skin color or genitalia. The push for equal treatment continues in states like Arizona, Missouri, and Oklahoma.

Connerly, of the American Civil Rights Institute, spearheaded campaigns against race and sex preferences in several states. Liberal Californians voted against preferences in government hiring, contracting, and admissions by 54 percent in 1996. So did 58.3 percent of voters in Washington state in 1998 and 58 percent of Michigan voters in 2006.

Related posts:

• Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
• The True Meaning of “Black Pride”
• Asians: The Non-Preferred Minority
• Colorblind Bind
• Colorblind Thuggery

You can dredge up the horrors of American slavery. You can keep stirring the Jim Crow pot, constantly reminding everyone how horrible it was that a country forcibly segregated its citizens by race and discriminated against blacks because they were black. You can wail and gnash teeth all day long, wallowing in abject bitterness because others have more than you do: looks, money, influence, opportunity, or whatever.

But you cannot, even if you lived 1,000 lifetimes, make a coherent and logically sound argument in favor of racial discrimination in the other direction. Nothing, not even the most heinous act committed against a black person by our government, justifies discriminating against other races in favor of blacks.

Let me put it this way: I have yet to read or hear a coherent and logically sound argument in favor of so-called reverse discrimination. Perhaps one exists. If you’ve read or heard such an argument, do let me know.

This post was inspired by a blogger I met last summer, John Rosenberg, who blogs about racial discrimination. John is just as anti-skin color preferences as I am. He picked apart a pro-skin color preferences editorial in the Muskogee Phoenix, a community newspaper in Oklahoma.

As you may recall, Ward Connerly, of the American Civil Rights Institute, is trying to get anti-preferences language on the November ballot in several more states, including Oklahoma. Connerly spearheaded successful campaigns in California (54 percent voted against government race preferences), Washington state (58.3 voted against), and Michigan (58 percent voted against).

The unnamed editorial writer in the Muskogee Phoenix begins with what I consider an incoherent and unsupportable faux righteous statement: Our public work force should mirror the racial, ethnic and gender makeup of our state.

Why? The writer offers no reasons. He/she adds that government contracts shouldn’t be “tied to affirmative action” but on “best services or products at the best price.” Then he/she inexplicably contends that employment within state agencies should be tied to skin color for “groups that, for one reason or another, are disadvantaged or in the minority.”

Why the distinction? What’s wrong with hiring people through contracts or for agency employment based on qualifications, regardless of skin color or perceived disadvantages? Again, the writer doesn’t tell us. But he/she does prop up a straw man:

“Public employment is not just for one race, cultural group or gender.”

As John asked in his post, who said public employment was just for one race, cultural group or gender? You see, when you try to defend something as obviously and offensively unfair as skin color preferences, you must suspend rational argument. Too childish for words, that editorial, though I managed to scrape up a few.

What say you?

Related article and posts:

• The “other Super Tuesday” will focus on stopping official bias
• Super Post for Super Tuesday of Equality
• The True Meaning of “Black Pride”
• Fighting for Mediocrity in Michigan
• Holistic Review Exposed
• Asians: The Non-Preferred Minority

This is sad.

Turns out that a black firefighter in Baltimore who said he found a noose and “threatening note” in the fire station last month planted both himself. (Source)

Why did he do it? Let’s speculate.

If you read this blog regularly, you may know that fire departments have been pressured to “revamp” employment tests because too many blacks and hispanics were failing them. Anyone with half a brain knows that “revamp” is a euphemism for “dumbed down.” For whatever reason, blacks as a group don’t perform as well as whites on tests that measure general intelligence (designated as g).

In order to narrow the test gap, the test’s g-load is reduced. The result? More blacks pass the test. I suspect that Donald Maynard, who admitted writing the threatening note (typo and all), was bitter about his own subpar job performance (which I inferred from the story) as a firefighter-paramedic apprentice. (Additionally, the city’s inspector general uncovered a cheating scandal. Five black firefighters cheated on a promotions exam. As expected, they cried, “Racism!” when they got caught.)

In a misguided effort to mask his incompetence and blow off steam about perceived racism and a sense of his own inferiority, Maynard planted the noose and note. He knew exactly what the reaction would be: a national outcry, followed by unrighteous indignation, preening, and prancing by various racial grievance groups, a federal investigation, and sympathy for himself and black co-workers.

Maynard’s heinous actions contributed to what I’m certain was existing racial tension. Stephan Fugate, head of the union, wants an apology from black mayor Sheila Dixon, the local NAACP, and a group representing black firefighters.

Good luck with all that.

Here are my suggestions for reducing racial tension in fire departments:

1) I have no proof, but I doubt the new, dumbed down employment test adequately evaluates an applicant’s reading comprehension and reasoning ability. If the test is easier to pass, that means it’s been watered down. Go back to the old test, even if it means a workforce of fewer blacks. Minorities hired under the dumbed down standard will be perceived as…dumb. That’s just the way it is. I didn’t say it was fair. Black firefighters hired under the same standards as everyone else can be proud of their performance, which would reduce feelings of inferiority, and white firefighters will have more respect for them, reducing tension all around;

2) The next time someone reports seeing a noose hanging anywhere, treat the report with healthy skepticism. Don’t be intimidated by the NAACP or loud-mouth black politicians. Let that yappy dog bark its head off. Your fear gives it power. (This is good advice for anyone afraid of being called a racist. The dog’s bark is worse than its bite.)

What are your suggestions for reducing racial tension in the workplace?

Related posts:

• DOJ Sues FDNY
• Denver Fire Department to Dumb Down Test
• Racist Firefighters Exam

Given this country’s sordid racial history, the promise of equal treatment without regard to race, and the inherent unfairness of being judged as a member of a group instead of as an individual, it’s imperative that our government is forced, if necessary, to get out and stay out of the skin color business.

In response to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and strong resistance to race-neutral school assigning, courts across the country ordered school districts to desegregate. They were required to dismantle official and unofficial race-based school assignment policies. But in a strange Alice-in-Wonderland interpretation of the case, school districts continued to use race to assign students (to achieve a racial “balance”), despite the wording of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (emphases added):

“Desegregation” means the assignment of students to public schools and within such schools without regard to their race, color, religion, or national origin, but “desegregation” shall not mean the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance.

For the past 40 years, school districts have assigned students to schools based on race in order to “desegregate,” a direct violation of the law. Some people mistakenly believe that Brown authorized the government to continue racial bean counting, to coerce parents into sending kids to schools across town to maintain an arbitrary racial balance. A fair reading of Brown would quickly dispel this notion.

In recent years, courts have lifted decades-old desegregation orders. The latest occurred in Cincinnati last week. The city ended its so-called racial integration program. Students on a magnet school waiting list will be chosen on a “first-come, first-served” basis, without regard for the color of their skin. As you may know, the Supreme Court declared Seattle’s and Jefferson County, Kentucky’s race-based school assignment programs unconstitutional last summer.

It would be a great leap forward if children were taught and learned to expect equal treatment (as opposed to equal outcomes) without regard to race. But too many grow up learning how to see themselves as members of a racial group first. Too many are taught that group membership trumps individuality. They’re conditioned to believe that race is destiny and that people are out to get them because they’re black.

Race preferences are a source of contention for me, and I have a category of over 100 posts laying out my objections and arguments.

Clarification: The UC System has a two-tiered approach in admitting students. First, they must be eligible, based on grades, scores, and a set of required courses, to enter the UC System. Second, once a student is deemed eligible to enter the system, comprehensive review of his file determines on which campus he’s placed (Berkeley, UCLA, San Diego, etc.). This is the selection portion of the process. The Board of Admissions proposes to extend comprehensive review to the eligibility portion, de-emphasizing grades, scores, and required courses. Again, despite the convoluted explanation in the 17-page proposal, UC is attempting to get around state law by factoring in an applicant’s race. From the proposal (emphasis in original):

BOARS recommends that the present practice of providing a guarantee of admission to all students who meet a narrow set of criteria based on course-taking, GPA, test taking, and test scores be replaced. The new policy would guarantee not admission, but consideration for admission through a comprehensive review at each campus of application, to all students who meet certain basic criteria of academic achievement.

Sounds good in theory, doesn’t it? But wait and see what happens. Suddenly, the number of black and hispanic students will rise, but the grade and score gaps will remain the same. If comprehensive review is applied equally across the board to all who apply, why would it disproportionately benefit blacks and hispanics (as I predict it will) and not, say, Asian students with high grades and scores (or low grades and scores) with hard-luck stories of their own? If applied to all students equally, wouldn’t a higher number of white students who would not have made the cut under the old criteria be admitted under the proposed relaxed standard?

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In 1996, 54 percent of California voters passed a measure that outlawed the use of race in public hiring, contracting, and admissions. Ward Connerly, former University of California regent and man behind the proposition, knew that some schools would try to get around the law by using other factors as a proxy for race.

The University of California System (UCS) has come up with such a proxy. Under “comprehensive review,” admissions officers will consider a student’s “extracurricular achievements, community service and handicaps overcome,” in addition to grades and scores. (Source – sign in with username sacbee4949 and password sacbee)

Download a PDF copy of the 17-page Proposal to Reform UCS Freshman Eligibility Policy.

Now, if this worked the way it’s supposed to work, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. If every single student who applied to the UCS was judged under comprehensive review equally, the process would be fair, for lack of a better word. But that’s not what’s going to happen. So-called comprehensive review, much like the ridiculously-named “holistic review” adopted by UCLA and the University of Wisconsin System, simply is an underhanded and not-so-clever way to admit lesser qualified black students.

Think about it. If most people applying to the UCS system are white and Asian, whites and Asians would benefit the most from comprehensive review, yes? If you relaxed standards for all applicants, more whites and Asians would be admitted. I explain it all here, via Charles Murray (You must use the same rules by which European figures and events were included…).

But here’s the sleight of hand: Admissions officers will use a heavy hand when applying comprehensive review to black students and a much lighter hand when applying it to others, especially Asians. The goal is to maintain or increase the percentage of “minorities,” and that just wouldn’t happen if standards are dropped for all applicants regardless of race.

I don’t care how cleverly someone tries to explain “comprehensive” and “holistic” review to you, don’t believe it. These policies merely are ill-fitting disguises for skin color preferences.

(Hat tip: Discriminations)

Related posts:

• Individuality
• Urban: The Race Preference Loophole
• Florida’s Lower IQ Scheme Doomed to Fail

As long as I live, I will never understand why more blacks aren’t spitting mad about race preferences. In their minds, I suppose, it’s not a preference; it’s “affirmative action.”

The confusion stems from not defining terms. In its purest form, affirmative action is simply taking positive steps toward including more historically excluded people — blacks and women — in a hiring or admissions pool. Their inclusion presumes they’re as qualified as other applicants. But somewhere along the way, affirmative action turned into a quota system, whereby a certain percentage of women or blacks, even the less qualified, had to be hired in order to meet some arbitrary balance.

This, despite what naysayers say, is called a preference. Specifically, when a black person or a woman who is not as qualified is admitted or hired over a non-black person or a man who is more qualified, the black person or woman was given a preference over the more qualified person. From my perspective, too many blacks are satisfied with this practice and see nothing wrong with it whatsoever. The most glaring problem is that blacks who came before us fought to get rid of this kind of thing when it benefited whites.

Consistency is important in debate and discourse. If you believe racial discrimination is objectively wrong, it remains wrong even if your racial group benefits from the discrimination.

To me, there is nothing quite as dignified as knowing I’ve earned something based on my performance or by using whatever talents God gave me, not based on the hue of my skin. It is offensive to me beyond words that any white person, liberal or conservative, believes that I need remedial help or that I cannot be held to the same standards to which they (and employers or admission committees) hold themselves.

If, by being held to the same standards, I fall short, so be it. I move on to something else. It’s called life. I’m better at some things than others, and part of my journey in life is to make the most of the talents I have, try to improve them, and constantly learn new things. I see life as a great, though sometimes disappointing, adventure. All I ask is to be treated with dignity and respect. I don’t care if you can’t stand me or think I’m as dumb as a box of hammers. I couldn’t care less about what’s in your mind. Your behavior toward me is my only concern. And you can keep your crummy table scraps, too. I’ll dine on far better fare.

I’ll repeat myself: As long as I live, I will never understand why more blacks aren’t spitting mad about race preferences.

Now, I’ll get to the point of this post. As you may know, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative became Proposal 2, a measure that outlawed the use of preferences in government hiring and admissions in Michigan. Fifty-eight percent of Michigan voters barred their state government from discriminating against people on the basis of race, sex, etc. Last year, a Clinton-appointed federal judge, while ruling in favor of allowing MCRI on the November 2006 ballot, seized the opportunity to smear and accuse the organization behind it of committing fraud to get people to sign the petition.

Judge Arthur Tarnow not only accused MCRI of “systematic voter fraud,” he maligned state courts and agencies in his opinion (PDF). By implication, he believes the current law barring race preferences is somehow tainted because a handful of petition signers claimed they were “misled” about what they were signing. I suppose actually reading something before signing it is too high a standard for certain people.

For more info, check out my latest Townhall column, Judge Tarnow’s Political Axe.

Other sources:

• 6th Circuit court says affirmative action appeal is moot
• Michigan’s Tarnow, 6th Circuit voters have final say
• By Any Means Necessary: A federal judge plays politics in Michigan

I guest-hosted “The Casey Lartigue Shop” on XM satellite radio earlier this year with host and friend Casey Lartigue. I’ve known the former Cato education analyst since 2003. I quoted one of his studies in my one and so-far-only Washington Post clip, and we’ve been pals ever since.

(Also see I’m A Libertarian on Education)

Casey told me a couple of months ago he’d been dumped by his radio station. As he told me his story, I wasn’t surprised. I had a bad experience with that particular channel. During an interview, the black liberal host, who didn’t like me, started yelling at me. On the air. I lost my cool, yelled back, and ended up hanging up on him. I hated that I’d lost control like that. Bad form. Weeks later, a producer called and apologized on behalf of the host, and asked me to return to the show. Not in a 1,000 lifetimes, honey. Casey later told me that for a couple of weeks after that show, the station played a clip (as the show’s intro) of me and the host going at it.

Last month, Casey and I appeared on NPR’s black bloggers roundtable, and he told me afterward he was writing a piece about his firing for the Washington Post. He and co-host Eliot Morgan exposed a conspiracy theory that former President Jimmy Carter issued a memorandum back in the day, which purportedly outlined a strategy to undermine black “leaders” in America and “sow discord with Africans abroad,” as a lie.

Casey and Eliot learned that Carter’s actual memo was “a bland call for a bureaucratic review of U.S. policy toward Central American issues.”

“[I]f you think that was the end of the story, you don’t know the world of black talk radio,” they write. “These are the airwaves in which the first president of the United States was a black man, in which AIDS was cooked up in a government laboratory to decimate the black population and in which major corporations lace their food with chemicals to make black men sterile.”

Check out Talk Radio Can’t Handle the Truth.

Marrying White

Anti-miscegenists will hate it. Black women ready for a change will love it. And everybody else, well…

Featured in an Associated Press article are black women who’ve crossed the color line in the dating and marriage field. The article is about how difficult it can be for black women to find marriage-worthy black men. Black men date and marry outside their race at a higher rate than black women, and some of these women are waking up to the possibility themselves.

Quoted in the article is Evia Moore, creator of Black Female Interracial Marriage. Check it out. I blogged about her blog a few months ago.

Natural Allies

In my latest Townhall column, Blacks and Hispanics Natural Allies?, I outline why these two “oppressed” groups are not “natural allies.” Fighting over limited resources and petty concerns is not conducive to an alliance. But joining together for the common goal of keeping America great, that’s a different story. This is The Economist article I cited in the column.

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