Said Edward Blum, responding to a question about why he's involved in so many different cases, from affirmative action to gerrymandering. He's quoted in "He Worked for Years to Overturn Affirmative Action and Finally Won. He’s Not Done. Edward Blum’s latest victory at the Supreme Court is the culmination of a long fight to take race out of college admissions. Is the workplace next?" (NYT).
The NYT interviewer, Lulu Garica-Navarro, pushes him about his Jewishness: "I know you were raised in a liberal Jewish family. What made you break from the way that you had been brought up?" That question contains an assumption, and Blum doesn't accept it. He puts it very politely, like someone who knows not to take bait: "It’s easy to characterize someone like me, who is against racial preferences and classifications, as someone who has broken with standard Jewish philosophy and Jewish heritage. I disagree with that."
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21 comments:
"Is the workplace next?"
That's what they're really afraid of. Corporate America is chock full of Kentanji "whatsawoman" Browns and other various wise Latinas.
He is nicer than I would have been- I would have asked Lulu Garica-Navarro what made her join the fascist corporate media.
My God! Overturn affirmative action in the workplace and it will be necessary to judge people by their competence and the content of their character. Radical.
Once again, when Repulicans copy exactly what Democrats have done for ages to advance a political issue, somehow only one side ever gets questioned on the methodology.
I dont see how we can look at affirmative action as if it is in a vacuum outside of immigration policy.
The Asians being kept out of Harvard are mostly first-gen Americans or infant immigrants.
The blacks being admitted instead of them are frequently immigrants or the children of immigrants as well.
The whites, blacks and hispanics not getting in are often suffering from the diversion of public school resources to illegal immigrants: TESL instead of music, AP Econ, or other enrichment activities.
If the applicant base consisted of pre-1925 whites, pre-1865 blacks, and pre-1846 Hispanics, there would be a lot less agita about admissions.
If we fix our immigration problem, then we’d be able to redress our original sins. Bringing in more people so we dont have to deal with blacks and American hispanics is not the way to do it.
JSM
I think racial and skin color check boxes on any government or non-government application should be against the law.
He is correct. When I went to Yale College 40+ years ago, Jewish students made up probably 30% of the class. Many of the other Ivies were similar. Today, other than Brown, Jewish students make up 10% or less of the class. It seems that most of the decrease has occurred fairly recently, at the same time that Jewish presidents have led these institutions. My sense is that this change is intentional -- disparate treatment, not just disparate impact. I suspect that the faculty has been similar transformed.
The Jews I knew in college were -- and remain -- incredibly diverse in terms of height, weight, where they grew up, where they live, what they do, whom they support politically, how much they earn, for which sports teams they root, and every other possible measure. The Jewish students with whom my son went to college belong to a monoculture. That is what happens when you treat skin color as a proxy for diversity.
HBTPFH writes, "...racial and skin color checkboxes on any government or non-government application should be against the law."
Whenever you're told the information being collected is for statistical purposes only, you have been lied to. Governments have an unquenchable thirst for information because information is the currency of power.
Who cares what this guy thinks or why? “Like the vast majority of Americans, I believe that an individual’s race and ethnicity should not be used to help them or harm them in their life’s endeavors.” That’s nice. So what? It’s a normative statement that doesn’t reflect the reality that race and ethnicity are used to help and harm in life’s endeavors. A “should” can’t be made into an “is” just because he got his taken-over court to decide a case according to his argument.
Cases are now being filed that would strike down “legacy” preferences on the basis that they’re also racially discriminatory. Of course that won’t happen either, and the deep thinkers in the peanut gallery here are fine with that. Pre-existing privileges and disadvantages are exactly the form of right-wing social engineering that they and the court like.
People should just admit that they prefer the whiter, less representative institutions that result when this happens. Or that they don’t care and see the disparities (harms and privileges) resulting from it as neutral, or even good. My view is actually somewhere along the lines of Glenn Lourie’s or even John McWhorter’s and I’m probably sympathetic to the stronger arguments that won. Racial/ethnic representation efforts are a distracting and messy smorgasbord that do ignore reasonable timelines, expectations of impermanence and what the relevance even is as more applicants start falling into multiple categories and what meaning of them should even remain over time.
But there is a downside both socially and economically to chucking diversity outreach in favor of the conformity and uniformity which remains the alternative and it would be nice if these so-called true-believers in the cause would just admit that and own the consequences. But of course they won’t. Being a conservative means washing your hands of the consequences of your actions and beliefs.
He's saying that he doesn't vote like a Puerto Rican.
Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker is of course, correct. The very notion that our government plays Collectivist In Chief is anathema to the basis for this country's founding- that of the rights of the individual. The first thing they do is remove your troublesome individuality and lump you into a group that is much more maneuverable.
The Left cannot fathom Jews who don't stay on the Plantation with the others. It happens a lot, actually, and it's happening more and more these days.
What Hubert said.
It should all just be scrapped in favor of outreach and diversifying by class anyway. Some of the most selective institutions are actually totally need-blind and have a sliding scale for tuition costs.
I think it’s funny how much the deep thinking commenters complain about higher education, disparage learning (or even factual outlooks) and yet nit pick over college admissions policies. Attacking academia has been a right-wing pastime since Nixon. Trump loves the poorly educated - he lies to them so easily. If they believe that all useful knowledge is intuitively held by “traditionalist” demographics and college is useless they should just say so. But of course that would just betray their class consciousness. At heart a conservative wants nothing more than a wealthy aristocrat to kiss up to, or to become one so that they can boss around a poorer underling. But they resent that colleges are a part of that. The idea that they can or even care to instill “fairness” into the hierarchies they embrace by controlling admissions decisions is funny.
My God! Overturn affirmative action in the workplace and it will be necessary to judge people by their competence and the content of their character. Radical.
I know. It worked so well prior to the Civil Rights Acts, too! Talk about radical.
You should start an organization called “Conservatives Against History.” Rewrite the whole American experience and sell it in private viewings to Leonard Leo. Or to Harlan Crow. I hear he pays well for his time. Do you like taking very luxurious vacations on other people’s dime?
Spoiler alert: Yente the Matchmaker was a failure. That’s what the whole play/movie was about. Her match for the eldest daughter to the widower butcher was a disaster and formed the entire plot line as she pursues her self-sought match instead to the tailor. Then she stayed out of it for the younger two who also married for love to a revolutionary and a Russian. She disappears until the end when she wanted to line up a couple of twin boys to the remaining girls who weren’t even of age. So I can see why this lawyer likens himself to the failed right-wing social engineer matchmaker in that movie. It’s like they give themselves away without even intending to. Yep, he’s a yenta, lining up failed matches for society. The theocrats on the court love it.
Isn't this "ambulance chasing"?
Or champerty? I thought Champerty was illegal.
Lots of it going on. Lots of non-profits are thinly disguised law firms with specialized practices according to Michael Crichton in one of his books. Or Perhaps it was John Grisham. The organization National Whatsit Council goes out looking for lawsuits to file, often against the government. They sue on behalf of an individual or class, win a settlement or agree to one and then collect their legal fees.
Sometimes they specialize. Coca-Cola has been using polar bears in their advertising for 100 years or so. WWF collects large amounts of money from Coke and makes a lot of noise about protecting polar bears. Chesapeake Energy is one of the big natural gas players and competes against coal. Sierra Club gets (or used to get?) 25% or more of its annual budget from Chesapeake and makes a lot of noise against coal.
One can wonder whether WWF/SC support polar bears and natural gas because of the money or whether Coke/Chesapeake give the money because of WWF/SC programs. Doesn't matter much which. It is a nice symbiotic relationship that makes money for both.
John Henry
If I had a clue what ethnic group Lulu Garcia-Navarro might have originated from, I would ask her a demeaning question about it.
"It’s easy to characterize someone like me, who is against racial preferences and classifications, as someone who has broken with standard Jewish philosophy and Jewish heritage. I disagree with that."
As he should. After all, Jews being regarded as a corrupted race of people goes way back in history, well before the Nazis decided that a 'final solution' was called for. That, of course, was 'negative racism,' unlike the 'positive racism' we now call 'affirmative action.' But racism doesn't have good forms and bad forms, it's all bad, all the time. Nothing about being Jewish makes that fact hard to understand. Except, apparently, for Lulu Garcia-Navarro, NYT reporter (and previously, NPR host).
"My God! Overturn affirmative action in the workplace and it will be necessary to judge people by their competence and the content of their character."
Old joke:
A white family was moving out of their neighborhood as it becomes more 'vibrant'. One of the neighbors suspects the family is racist and decides to confront them. "So black people start moving in and you're moving out, huh?" Says the neighbor.
The father of the family replies, "Nonsense! We're not moving because of the color of their skin, we're moving because of the content of their character!"
Judaism isn't a branch of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. A lot of people make that assumption including many reformed Jews. The substantial drop in Jewish students at the top universities isn't the result of much better qualified affirmative action admissions but rather the quiet imposition of the Jew quotas.
Typical interviewer with a pre-conceived notion, stating as fact his/her opinion...
Example: "What made you decide to support the legal challenges that came from Trump's lies about the election?"
We need more Jordan Peterson-type replies to Cathy Newman's re-framing or stating false representations of her interviewees positions.
MarcusB. THEOLDMAN
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