Affirmative Action Is Going Down—And It’s A Good Thing Too

 

Sorry, Harvard, but 'visual diversity'—having a campus that looks like a Benetton ad—isn't a compelling state interest.

Years ago, in preparing to send their oldest son through the gauntlet of Manhattan private-school admissions (for which I had to write a recommendation letter for a four-year-old!), my Asian-American cousin and her white husband talked to an “admissions consultant.” The consultant told them that elite preschools value “diversity.” My cousin excitedly told the consultant that she’s from the Philippines, her husband’s from Australia, and their son at his tender age had already lived in multiple countries and been exposed to many different cultures and languages.

“I’m sorry,” the smiling consultant said to them about their white-looking son, “but that’s not what these schools are looking for. Your child does not offer visual diversity.”

Visual diversity. That sad, shallow, hollowed-out vision of “diversity” is exactly the kind of diversity that Harvard, UNC, and other educational institutions are obsessed with. That’s the kind of diversity these schools are seeking by giving pluses to applicants who “check the box.” Checking the “Black” box doesn’t guarantee a “Black” experience: the descendant of former slaves, the child of the Nigerian tycoon, and our son Harlan have had very different life experiences, and as a result, they probably hold very different worldviews too. But here’s the one thing that all three of them can reliably deliver, thanks to their darker skin: visual diversity.

So in the end, what Harvard and UNC are arguing is that visual diversity is a compelling state interest. Having classrooms and admissions brochures that look like Benetton ads can justify resorting to racial classifications that we have justifiably banned in pretty much every other area of American life. The idea would be laughable if it weren’t so wrong.3

The Supremes Want You to Shut Up and Sit Down and Doesn't Want to Tell You Again

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 14–981

A WYATT MAN, PETITIONER v. UNIVERSITY OF DIVERSITY, ET AL.

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

JUSTICE KENNEDY delivered the opinion of the Court.

Dear dumb white shits,

We have attempted to mollify your persistent bleating with the sort of sweeping rhetoric that has so often rendered you insensate to the ongoing defenestration of your national interests. Thus it was hoped we could evade the necessity of settling this issue with uncomfortable candor. Yet your determined inability to absorb politely oblique guidance has rendered that aspiration impractical. As a result, the court is obliged to speak loudly.

THE CONSTITUTION IS MERELY THE GAUZE THROUGH WHICH OUR PERSONAL POLITICS ARE FILTERED. THAT OF WHICH WE APPROVE IS CONSTITUTIONAL AS THAT WHICH WE DO NOT ISN’T. SEEK, IF YOU MUST, LOGICAL CONSISTENCY BEYOND THIS. BUT DO SO WITHOUT HOPE OF SUCCESS. AS A RESULT, YOU WILL BE RACIALLY DISCRIMINATED AGAINST, AND BLACKS WILL NOT.

UNDERSTAND THIS CLEARLY AND DON’T FUCKING BOTHER US WITH THE MATTER AGAIN.

It is so ordered.

Colleges and universities have grown bloated and dysfunctional

American colleges and universities, long thought to be the glory of the nation, are in more than a little trouble. I've written before of their shameful practices — the racial quotas and preferences at selective schools (Harvard is being sued by Asian-American organizations), the kangaroo courts that try students accused of rape and sexual assault without legal representation or presumption of innocence, and speech codes that make campuses the least rather than the most free venues in American society.

In following these policies, the burgeoning phalanxes of university and college administrators must systematically lie, insisting against all the evidence that they are racially nondiscriminatory, devoted to due process and upholders of free speech. The resulting intellectual corruption would have been understood by George Orwell.

The old college model has worked well for the hard sciences, but the humanities and social sciences have made the university a cancer on American culture. Graduates from these courses have worthless degrees outside of academia, creating a demand inside the higher education bubble for ever more social science slots teaching more social science majors in an endless cycle, creating a cohort who believe that George Orwell wrote a "how to" manual.

The residential college model, with its bloated ranks of coddler/administrators, has become hugely expensive and increasingly dysfunctional. It's overdue for significant downsizing.

The Ph.D. university model is also metastasizing. A plethora of humanities and social science Ph.D. theses are produced every year, many if not most written in unreadable academic jargon and devoid of scholarly worth. Most will probably be read by only a handful of people, with no loss to society. But some worthy scholarship will be overlooked and go unappreciated.

A glut of Ph.D.s and an ever-increasing army of administrators have produced downward pressure on faculty pay. Universities increasingly hire Ph.D.s as underpaid adjuncts, with low wages and no job security.

Which brings us to  newly hired Boston University professor Saida Grundy.  You could not find a more perfect example of what we're talking about. 

Here's how Boston University describes it's new hire:

Saida Grundy is a sociologist of race, class, and gender and received her Ph.D. (2014) in the Joint Program in Sociology & Women's Studies at the University of Michigan.

The Democrats War on Women as Demonstrated by Feminist Democrats

 Via Stacy McCain

The implicit assumption of the Democrat Party’s “War on Women” meme is that the sexist misogyny by which all women are allegedly victimized is officially endorsed by The Republican Party. Never mind the fact — as the viral video ironically demonstrated — that women’s victimization is quite often perpetrated by constituencies of the Democrat Party coalition. Feminism is a left-wing political ideology that serves the partisan interests of the Democrat Party and, when feminists aren’t busy offering to provide oral sex to Democrat men, they are busy accusing Republicans of being The Party of Rape.

It does not really matter whether you are male or female, black or white, straight or gay. The only thing liberals really care about is whether you vote Democrat, because the liberal’s sense of self-esteem is dependent on his belief that, by voting Democrat and encouraging you to do likewise, he proves himself worthy as one of Our Moral Superiors. (Thomas Sowell’s book The Vision of the Anointed explains this brilliantly.)

Race, Medicine, and Political Correctness

If a drug is found that's effective on black patients, but not on whites, (or vice versa) should it be approved?  You may be surprised by the answer.

But let us return to Dr. Zuger’s comments, made in the context of reviewing a book about a cardiac drug called BiDil, which was approved in the United States in 2005 specifically for black patients (although it can be prescribed off-label for anyone). Due to the lack of evidence of efficacy in early clinical trials, the drug, which is actually a combination of two proven cardiac medicines (the vasodilators hydralazine and isosorbide dinitrate), had been rejected by the FDA nine years previously for approval for patients of all races. But because analysis of the data in various subgroups revealed a suggestion of benefit to black patients, another trial was performed on 1,050 self-identified black patients with severe heart failure who had already been treated with—but had not responded to—the best available therapy.

The results were so striking—43 percent reduction in mortality and 39 percent decrease in hospital visits among patients who received BiDil—

Find out what happened, and what some people thought about it.

Toward a Post-Racial Society — or Maybe Not

Frank J Fleming:

So a lot of people — even those who didn’t vote for him — had hoped that with the election of Barack Obama as president, we’d be moving to a post-racial society.

How’d that work out?

If anything, it seems that the election (and re-election) of the first black president has actually aggravated racial issues in America. If you want my opinion on why — and you probably don’t — it’s because we specifically elected a black president instead of a president who happens to be black — i.e., his election was more because of racism than a triumph over it.

I have been blogging about race for a while and have stuck my neck out a mile, but at my age it matters somewhat less. In my view, Frank J. is right about Obama: he was elected because he is black, not despite it. It's actually a great insight into the racial views of the white population of the US. The proportion of white people who will go to the privacy of the voting booth and vote for the black guy because he's black vs. those who will vote against him because he's black heavily favors the former over the latter. It appears that the indoctrination that Frank J. in school has had its effect.

And I’m just speaking from my own experience here. My generation is one that everyone was going to do all they could to make sure wasn’t racist. As far as I remember, my first three years of American history in grade school were nothing but Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King. And it really ingrained in me that racism was bad… while at the same time not exactly making me colorblind. I remember there was a time when I was really young and blissfully unaware of race and didn’t know to think differently of anyone, but then in school I was taught, “Remember: Black people have faced lots of discrimination. So when you see black people, think discrimination.”

The lesson is to vote for the black guy because he's black and it's a vote against discrimination. But that's a lousy way of choosing elected officials for the country. That way you get an affirmative action president, and how's that working out for you?

Frank J. mixes humor and commentary but there's more than a kernel of truth in this:

I think a big part of it is that no one really understands the racism of today. It’s not the blatantly evil racism of the Jim Crow south; it’s the racism of a country that elected a black president thinking that would solve everything. It’s a weirder, sillier racism that none of us quite understand well enough to discuss intelligently. So I’m going to propose a new tactic: Instead of a national conversation on race, let’s try a national shutting up on race. ...Also, not talking about race will be a bigger adjustment for some than for others. Presumably, Al Sharpton will starve to death. But his will hopefully be a sacrifice toward a better, more functional society.

It's true. There are no more separate-but-equal schools (except for the blacks schools that black students, teachers and "leaders" want to remain black), water fountains (heck, everyone drinks bottled water anyway), bus seats, neighborhoods, you name it. Now, to keep their income the race hustlers tell us the about the indignity of hearing car doors lock. The claim is now that racism is as invisible and omnipresent as air. It's about nothing you, as a white person did, so much as the fact that you exist wearing pale skin, a badge of "privilege."   It's about bullshit. 

That's why a great "shut up" about race would be an improvement. But then how would the Justice Brothers make their next million?  

The Decline of the Civil-Rights Establishment

Shelby Steele (who is black enough to comment) talks about the Civil-Rights establishment and its foot-stomping tantrum because it was not able to intimidate the jury into convicting George Zimmerman.

The verdict that declared George Zimmerman not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin was a traumatic event for America's civil-rights establishment, and for many black elites across the media, government and academia. When you have grown used to American institutions being so intimidated by the prospect of black wrath that they invent mushy ideas like "diversity" and "inclusiveness" simply to escape that wrath, then the crisp reading of the law that the Zimmerman jury displayed comes as a shock.

On television in recent weeks you could see black leaders from every background congealing into a chorus of umbrage and complaint. But they weren't so much outraged at a horrible injustice as they were affronted by the disregard of their own authority. The jury effectively said to them, "You won't call the tune here. We will work within the law."

[snip]

Why did the civil-rights leadership use its greatly depleted moral authority to support Trayvon Martin? This young man was, after all, no Rosa Parks—a figure of indisputable human dignity set upon by the rank evil of white supremacy. Trayvon threw the first punch and then continued pummeling the much smaller Zimmerman. Yes, Trayvon was a kid, but he was also something of a menace. The larger tragedy is that his death will come to very little. There was no important principle or coherent protest implied in that first nose-breaking punch. It was just dumb bravado, a tough-guy punch.

The civil-rights leadership rallied to Trayvon's cause (and not to the cause of those hundreds of black kids slain in America's inner cities this very year) to keep alive a certain cultural "truth" that is the sole source of the leadership's dwindling power. Put bluntly, this leadership rather easily tolerates black kids killing other black kids. But it cannot abide a white person (and Mr. Zimmerman, with his Hispanic background, was pushed into a white identity by the media over his objections) getting away with killing a black person without undermining the leadership's very reason for being.

The purpose of today's civil-rights establishment is not to seek justice, but to seek power for blacks in American life based on the presumption that they are still, in a thousand subtle ways, victimized by white racism. This idea of victimization is an example of what I call a "poetic truth." Like poetic license, it bends the actual truth in order to put forward a larger and more essential truth—one that, of course, serves one's cause. Poetic truths succeed by casting themselves as perfectly obvious: "America is a racist nation"; "the immigration debate is driven by racism"; "Zimmerman racially stereotyped Trayvon." And we say, "Yes, of course," lest we seem to be racist. Poetic truths work by moral intimidation, not reason.

Read the whole thing.

Report: US hasn't seen expected 'Great Recovery'

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The expected U.S. "Great Recovery" hasn't materialized and the economy has fallen short of even normal growth, according to a forecast released Wednesday....

"It's not a recovery. It's not even normal growth. It's bad," he wrote.

Yeah, well what do you expect.  This is the Age of Obama; the "one we have been waiting for."

Idiots. 

What do you expect when you elect an affirmative action President.

Detroit Heads to the Pawn Shop

Russell Mead on the result of corrupt and stupidity that defined the ruling Democrats of Detroit.

Last week, Emergency Manager (and bankruptcy lawyer) Kevyn Orr decided to list the holdings of the Detroit Institute of Arts among the city’s assets in preparation for a possible bankruptcy. If the city goes through with it, it could be forced to sell off any of its assets—which now include the museum’s collection.

Museum administrators are outraged, but the choice may be keeping the art or paying for vital public services. According to Orr, the city has “long-term obligations of at least $15 billion, unsustainable cash flow shortages and miserably low credit ratings that make it difficult to borrow.” But as the WSJ reports, the city may not have a choice...

The collection, which include treasures by Bruegel, Rodin and van Gogh as well as Diego Rivera’s famous “Detroit Industry” murals, is ostensibly worth billions of dollars, but those measures can’t really capture what such artistic treasures mean to a community.

Unfortunately the city is already struggling to keep the lights on. Local businesses recently had to step in to buy the city police cars and ambulances. Meanwhile, Detroit has closed nearly a quarter of the city’s firehouses, and the department’s equipment is beginning to fall apart. At this point, the city may need the money more than it needs the art.

This is another grim reminder of just how destructive Detroit’s corrupt machine politics have been. At one time, Detroit was the manufacturing capital of America and one of the country’s great cities; today it’s trying to stave off a kind of modern-day bonfire of the vanities.

Every time Detroit seems like it’s about to hit rock bottom, a trap door opens to reveal yet another howling abyss.

There are many parasites that live off their hosts. It takes a particularly stupid parasite to kill it's host. It looks like the Democrats fit that description.  They have taken to manufacturing capital of Michigan, in fact the manufacturing capital of the country ; the fountainhead of the auto industry and reduced it to rubble as surely as if they had declared war and lost. Detroit today is a third world country due to the corruption, the venality and the rank stupidity of the Democrats that ran it into the ground and sowed salt on the ruins.

Those racist Liberals at the Virginian Pilot

 

It should now be apparent to even the blind that Liberalism is drenched in racism. Hiding behind their crocodile tears for the black community is the implicit assumption that blacks are inferior. After all, what are decades of “affirmative action” but assumptions that people with black skin can’t make it on their own. George Bush called it the soft bigotry of low expectations.

 

Barack Obama is our first affirmative action president; Liberals voted for him because he is – in Joe Biden’s memorable phrase – “clean and articulate” and voting for the first black president made them feel good about themselves. Chris Matthews once said “For an hour, I forgot that Obama was black.”

 

So to the racists at the Virginian Pilot, Rev. E. W. Jackson is a godsend. They finally have a black man they can attack with all the venom for people with black skin that have withheld for so long. The editorial pages, the Op-Eds and the letters to the editor will be filled with hate and ridicule for this good man up to and after the election for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. Finally, a black Republican; finally a black man they can openly hate. What a relief.

"Racist" Terms

Glenn Reynolds links to an article about the reason that fried chicken is now a racist term.

WHO DOESN’T LIKE FRIED CHICKEN? Why remarks about race and fried chicken elicit such raw feelings.

The article Culinary Racism gives various explanations going back to slavery.

The most obvious explanation derives from the historical fact that fried chicken dishes were popular in slave homes on Southern plantations. In many cases, chickens were the only livestock animals that slaves were permitted to raise on their own, and—given that Scots founded much of the American South—there’s speculation that African-Americans tweaked and perfected their masters’ imported tradition of frying birds.

But there's a problem with this because lots of people like fried chicken: A lot of it is regional: people in the South are perceived to like friend chicken more than their northern counterparts. The South is poorer than the North and chicken is less expensive than beef so the fondness for chicken could be explained by relative wealth. I'm a Dutch immigrant and I love fried chicken; does that make me Black? Should I avoid serving friend chicken at any gathering where Blacks are present? If my Black friends serve friend chicken are they self-hating?

Let me propose an alternative explanation. The fried chicken=racist equation was created by the very powerful Race Industry. As an illustration of how these associations are created we need only refer to some of the Liberal race hustlers of today who tell us that:

• Lazy=racists
• Colored=racist (ever since the RI invented other terms)
• Negro=racist  (ever since the RI invented other terms)
• Niggardly=racist (out of ignorance a perfectly good word was outlawed)
• Boy=racist
• Cotton pickin’=racist
• Urban=racist  (this really is a euphemism when used by the "good people")
• “shuck and jive”=racist (except when Chris Matthews or Andrew Coumo uses it)
• “this president”=racist
• Chicago=racist
• References to golf (if played by Obama)=racist
• Whitewash=racist
• Limbaugh=racist (just because)

Before this list gets too long, let’s just go with the Chris Matthews definition of racist to include any criticism of Barack Obama. In fact, it is fair to broaden that to include any criticism of Blacks (can I say that; is that still the accepted term?) as racist. That’s why I was so shocked to see the Miami police department preparing for an "Urban Beach Weekend" without being accused of blatant racism. Now that it’s been pointed out, expect the “Justice Brothers” to hop on a plane and lead the demonstrations.

Clarence Thomas: Obama 'Approved By The Elites' Because He Says What They 'Expect From A Black Person'

Q: Did you ever expect to see an African American president during your lifetime?

THOMAS: Oh yeah, I guess I’ve always thought there would be black coaches, heads of universities -- maybe again as I said I’m naïve but the thing I always knew is that it would have to be a black president who was approved by the elites and the media because anybody that they didn’t agree with, they would take apart. And that will happen with virtually -- you pick your person, any black person who says something that is not the prescribed things that they expect from a black person will be picked apart. You can pick anybody, don’t pick me, pick anyone who has decided not to go along with it; there’s a price to pay. So, I always assumed it would be somebody the media had to agree with.

Elizabeth Warren was not the first fake Indian

Via Harvard Law School is Bogus

This blog post announces the results of the vote taken yesterday by the members of HLU. Inspired by Nick Gillespie’s blog post on famous “fake Indians” — and even more by John J. Miller’s 2006 National Review essay, “Honest Injun?” — we set out to determine, looking at all those who have been caught during the last century pretending to be of Native American ancestry, just who is the most egregious perpetrator of this particular type of fraud — in the vernacular, the most “dishonest injun.”

From a large number of initial candidates, we agreed on three qualifications necessary to make the final ballot. To be a finalist, someone must: (1) have no Native American ancestors; (2) have sought professional advancement via affirmative representations of Native American status; and (3) have asserted that status in at least one published book.

Below is our Letterman-style list of the five most “dishonest injuns,” arranged from lowest to highest total votes. By a wide margin, the two top vote-getters were the only professors among the finalists. We readily reached a consensus that their actions are especially dishonest because professors, given their high level of education, are especially aware of their legal and ethical obligation not to commit ethnic fraud for professional advancement.

5. "Grey Owl" (Archibald Belaney)
4.  "Iron Eyes Cody" (Espera Oscar de Corti)
3. "Little Tree"  ( Asa Earl Carter)
2. Ward Churchill
1. Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren and the Cherokee

Via Legal Insurrection.