Emailed lawprof Sanford V. Levinson to Thomas V. Edsall and quoted in Edsall's NYT column "The Liberal Agenda of the 1960s Has Reached a Fork in the Road."
The column is about "the strikingly different public responses to two recent Supreme Court rulings, one on abortion, the other on affirmative action." The idea of a "fork in the road" suggests a need to pick one or the other option, but liberals could forefront both issues. They're not mutually exclusive. They've simply chosen to use the abortion issue and forget about affirmative action, and the reason is obvious. Polls show that a big majority of Americans — including a big majority of Democrats — support what the Court did with affirmative action.
I just wanted to pull out that Levinson quote, because I remember thinking — for a brief while, back in the 1990s — that affirmative action "would ultimately be done in by the sheer collapse of the categories." But I couldn't seem to find other lawprofs who saw that problem. Applicants identified themselves by race, and we took their word for it. Then there's no "impossibility of clearly defining who counts" as what. It's completely clear: You are what you say you are. What could go wrong?
About that "fork" (if there is a fork):
And "Fork in the road" has a Wikipedia article. Excerpt:
• There is a common motif in Russian folk tales, where a vityaz (Russian knight) comes to a fork in the road and sees a menhir with an inscription that reads: "If you ride to the left, you will lose your horse, if you ride to the right, you will lose your head."
• The phrase appears in the Book of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 21:19–23 NRSV).
"Mortal, mark out two roads for the sword of the king of Babylon to come; both of them shall issue from the same land. And make a signpost, make it for a fork in the road leading to a city; mark out the road for the sword to come to Rabbah of the Ammonites or to Judah and to Jerusalem the fortified.
• A fork in the road is mused upon by Robert Frost in his poem "The Road Not Taken", which begins, "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."
• Malapropist extraordinaire Yogi Berra's saying "When you come to a fork in the road, take it" made the title of his book When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!....
पोस्ट्स
८२ टिप्पण्या:
I think blacks are always done in by everybody else trying to step over us. As far as I knew, affirmative action was supposed to be about blacks and slavery. How we started talking about other "categories" I do not know.
But what if it's more of a baby than a fork?
The 'collapse' has been real, but so has all the 'propping up'.
Affirmative Action was always political policy making by “well intentioned” idiots. Supreme Court should have shut it down long long ago. But so called conservative justices kept on with the wishy washy mealy mouthed opinions when they should have been upholding the constitution.
Abortion was the same. Political policy making. Solomon splitting a political baby instead of upholding the constitution.
Sad. Human failings. Our best and brightest…
A fork in the road is one thing. I worry more about the sporks that must be faced in life.
Another reason, a spork if you will, that affirmative action has lost public support is the use of its privileges by those eminently non-qualified, such as Rachel Dolezal and Senator Warren.
One problem with the categories doing in “affirmative action” has been the effort to increase the number of categories. Self-ID efforts not only ask you to identify race (by which they really mean skin color), but also country of birth, sexual preference, religious preference, gender, and preferred pronouns. In many ways, this could do in “affirmative action” by overloading system with unique choices, but it wasn’t. It became clear that affirmative action was simply used to further bias against unwanted people based on ugly stereotypes.
What is being forgotten or ignored here is bureaucratic inertia and the Iron Rice Bowl. You set up a system and pay people to administer and operate it. Can't be surprised that they are strongly motivated to "grow the business". Versus most people for whom the issue is not relevant to their daily lives.
The moral principle behind affirmative action is that two wrongs make a right: one group of persons have been wronged by discrimination, so now we will remedy things by wronging some other blameless group via discrimination. It's a remedial principle. But the Supreme Court has held that remediation is not good enough to justify race (or sex) discrimination, but "diversity" is. So there has always been a disingenuousness about the practice intuit the people implementing it are motivated by remediation, but have to dress it up as diversity.
The racial categorizers on the left are trapped by an Anglo-American parochialism. There are now 8 billion humans, and the racialist left needs to categorize every single one of them into at least one racial group -- but they can't even say how many races there are, or what differentiates them. You can see them fudging things by using terms like black-and-brown-people (not a race) or indigenous -- as if Navajos, Ainus, and Maoris are all in one group. They want to say Palestinians, Syrians, Turks, Persians, Armenians, and Pathans are brown people on an international scale; but once any of them come to America and have children reading at or above grade level, they are white, with "white privilege" and should pay reparations to Sasha and Malia Obama.
"How we started talking about other "categories" I do not know."
It was my impression, way back when, that it started with women wanting in on the distribution of special goodies that were originally designated for blacks.
Black women get abortions at a considerably higher rate than any other group. So, I suppose Democrats maximizing abortion could be seen as supporting black rights. It's the kind of subtle argument that Biden is masterful at.
Diversity, Inequity, Exclusion (DIE). Liberalism is a philosophy of divergence with progressive forks. Throw another baby on the barbie, she... he... they're not viable.
"How we started talking about other "categories" I do not know."
You may as well be confused by this.
I have long advocated that people choose any category on forms for ethnicity other than the one they are. Civil disobedience is the way to put a complete end to affirmative action policies.
@ The Crack Emcee - Intersectionality says that everyone except white males is oppressed. So everyone but white males can get affirmative action.
Positive racism is still racism.
The famous Yankees catcher may have been guilty of the occasional malapropism, however, the cited example about road forks is not one of them. ”When you come to a fork in the road, take it!” is an Irish bull, a quite different linguistic kettle of questionable fish.
Its reached the bottom out part over the edge of the cliff. On both issues the policies place incentives in all the wrong places and reward extremism in preparation for a compromise that never comes.
You 60s agenda people are all fuck ups. We could see that from high school in the 80s. Now contemplating death it’s only taken you this long for you to see it. Some of you never will…
"If you ride to the left, you will lose your horse, if you ride to the right, you will lose your head."
I must admit I laughed at this one, because it sounds like the bleakness I expect from the Russian mindset.
Blacks were doing so well in the 50s that it wouldn't take long to get them up to speed. So they gave them free stuff to speed it along, "for slavery." It turned out then that a chip on their shoulder brought easier progress than assimilation ("white values").
" As far as I knew, affirmative action was supposed to be about blacks and slavery. How we started talking about other "categories" I do not know."
As far as I can tell (based on a quick scan), none of the legal actions (executive orders, laws, court decisions) associated with affirmative action ever specifically call out blacks alone. In fact, they appear to make it as broad as possible; I keep seeing "...without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin.". So why would you be surprised when groups other than blacks decide it applies to them as well?
So, we can stick a fork in affirmative action now?
Berra was right on as usual.
Don't just stand there, do something!
Malapropism is the misuse of a word in context based on the word being an approximate homophone of the correct word. In Mrs. Malaprop's description of her ward, Ludia Languish, "as adamant as an allegory on the banks of the Nile", the joke is her substitution of alligator by allegory. (Never mind the dearth of alligators in Africa, that may be a joke on Sheridan.)
An Irish bull is a humourous lapse in the internal logic of a statement, a classic example being attributed to Sir Boyle Roche, an 18th-century Irish soldier and politician, “The cup of Ireland’s misery has been overflowing for a century and is not yet half full.” There's a curious thing about Irish bulls, though strictly nonsensical they can nevertheless be profound, in an Irish sort of way, whereas a malapropism is just a cheap joke. I doubt Mr. Shakespeare applied much thought to Dogberry. Yogi Berra's infamous remark can be interpreted to mean when faced with a compulsory choice, treated it boldly as an adventure.
It could have been affirmative action to aid integration, but it diverged and progressed as affirmative discrimination under diversity taxonomy.
The Yogi Berra fork is actually justified, if you believe the story. Yogi lived at 19 Highland Avenue, Montclair, New Jersey. He was giving someone directions on how to get to his house. He instructed the person to go from Upper Mountain Avenue to Edgewood Road, then when you come to the fork, take it. No matter if you go left or right, the road ends at Highland Avenue after a short distance (a couple of houses). To get to his house, you make a left regardless. It is one of the most pointless forks you will ever encounter, though I suppose there was some logic behind it.
There's a Yogi Berra marker at the fork. You can find it on Google Maps.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yogi+Berra's+Fork+In+The+Road/@40.8292212,-74.2224768,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x89c3000042778d39:0xf341371062bd54c2!8m2!3d40.8292212!4d-74.2199019!16s%2Fg%2F11c1s3ksd9?entry=ttu
As far as I knew, affirmative action was supposed to be about blacks and slavery.
I think you can blame critical race theory. Once the diagnosed problem became racism in general, with racism defined as discrimination+power and racial categories defined as "white, regardless of personal circumstances" and "everybody else, regardless of personal circumstances," the prescribed solution became "everybody else gets a leg up."
This is a separate question from whether affirmative action is now or ever was a good policy. My personal opinion: it's definitely toxic now, to society as a whole, to those who supposedly benefit from it, and to those who at least perceive a loss from it. But in the 1970s, although it was far from ideal (ideal, to me, would have been waving a magic wand and making everyone on the benefactor side lose their prejudices about people of ethnic minorities, plus making everyone on the desired-beneficiary side too proud to take charity, so to speak), I tend to think it had some temporary utility.
Interesting that both Sanford V. Levinson and Thomas V. Edsall have names that sound like court cases and became law professors. Nominative determinism in action.
I remember believing around the same time (early '90s) that essentially all discussion of race would become moot by virtue of America's becoming mixed-race, as in South America. What I obviously didn't figure on was that so many blacks, especially black leaders, would come to reject MLK's vision of a colorblind society, insist that everyone "see my race," and basically regard their being black as the most important and essential fact defining who they are as people.
"As far as I knew, affirmative action was supposed to be about blacks and slavery."
When the Supreme Court first encountered the issue in Bakke (1978), it rejected the idea of affirmative action as a compensation for past wrongs. That did not meet the strict scrutiny needed to permit race discrimination. The only accepted basis was "diversity," a kind of benefit to the entire student body, based on trusting the admissions people to assemble a group of students who would have differences that made classroom discussions better. So, you're wrong if we're talking about understanding Supreme Court case law.
Of course, many proponents of affirmative action don't even think there should be strict scrutiny for race discrimination that is considered benevolent, but that could include everything that isn't in favor of white people. I think the most common pro-affirmative action idea is that the student body should have the same percentages of the different groups that exist in the population in general. But the Supreme Court rejected that in Bakke.
“a fork in the road”… well, that’s one weak way of saying it.
I prefer, “a brick wall”, or “a timely end”… or even, “a dire shortage of soft heads”…
To discuss the subject of Affirmative Action, The Crack Emcee is generally correct. The whole point was discrimination against blacks was grossly unfair. However, we lost the plot somewhere. The problem was not, say, that blacks were being accepted to elite schools at a lower percentage than white people. The problem was blacks were not being accepted at all, sometimes literally blocked by law. When an institution is acting in such an irrational and prejudiced manner, there is justification to force them to do it and not be subtle about it. It is not like they could be trusted with any discretion.
The problem is this morphed from "you must treat them equally" to "when in doubt you must give this candidate an edge over that candidate" to "anything that is not exact same outcomes is de facto racism." The latter only makes sense if all races, as they are subjectively categorized, are exactly the same in all ways, which is almost certainly not true for all sorts of reasons. It is not fair to block a black person from a school he or she is well qualified. It is also not fair to accept an unqualified black person to a school that he or she is definitely not qualified. Actually, the latter is probably worse for the candidate as the person will probably either flunk out instead of going to a lesser school and getting a useful degree, or they will be pushed through, not actually earn the degree, and come across as unqualified in the job market, which is bad for both the student and racial stereotypes.
At one time, affirmative action meant going to some extra trouble to find or help people from disadvantaged backgrounds (most often African-Americans) who had the ability and aptitude to meet the qualifications for a job or school but weren't coming up in the normal recruiting processes. As such, it was very broadly supported.
Now it has morphed into "equity" - the idea that everyone's outcomes in life should be the same, regardless of ability, aptitude, standards and discipline, or anything else. As such, it has become one of many delusions of Cloud-Cuckoo-Land Progressives and is generally disapproved of by pretty much everyone else (except those who still think in terms of the old definition).
"As far as I can tell (based on a quick scan), none of the legal actions (executive orders, laws, court decisions) associated with affirmative action ever specifically call out blacks alone. In fact, they appear to make it as broad as possible; I keep seeing "...without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin.". So why would you be surprised when groups other than blacks decide it applies to them as well?"
That's because, IMO, explicit benefits for one race is so obviously wrong they had to obfuscate the intent. The resulting outcome was inevitable.
Slavery was resolved through the sacrifice of blood and treasure. Diversity (e.g. racism, sexism, political congruence or "=", human rites) is resolved through mitigating liberal progress (e.g. affirmative discrimination).
I think the most common pro-affirmative action idea is that the student body should have the same percentages of the different groups that exist in the population in general
Oh that’s rich….
Maybe affirmative action may have been sold as a way to compensate blacks for slavery, but that rationale seems to be losing its hold on the American mindset. The traditional assumption was that all groups would achieve in equal measures in the absence of discrimination. But the relative successes of both Jews and Asians in relation to (non-Jewish) whites kind of destroys that myth, doesn't it? Both Jews and Asians suffered a great deal of discrimination in this country, yet they now out-perform whites in many ways. Clearly, historical discrimination is not the determining factor many Americans believed it to be when AA first came into vogue.
"It's completely clear: You are what you say you are. What could go wrong?"
Well, actually, not what you're suggesting. At least, if large numbers of people claimed to be something other than what they actually are, I'm not aware of any problem resulting, other than the presence of Liawatha in the US Senate. The real problem with affirmative action is that it worked as designed. Letitia James. Alvin Bragg. Kim Gardner. Marilyn Mosby. Kim Foxx. None of them ever pretended to be anything other than what they are -- half-bright race-hustlers.
When you come to a fork in the road the chances of a flat increases.
"I think blacks are always done in by everybody else trying to step over us. As far as I knew, affirmative action was supposed to be about blacks and slavery. How we started talking about other "categories" I do not know."
Isn't it a bitch when everyone else gets in on your grift?
If there's money to be made, Asians, Hispanics, and yes, even whites will get in on the action.
This should not surprise you.
Re: Fork in the Road.
Now do Hobson's Choice.
Almost everyone gets it wrong...
"The only accepted basis was "diversity," a kind of benefit to the entire student body, based on trusting the admissions people to assemble a group of students who would have differences that made classroom discussions better."
The "petting zoo" justification. Only they get upset if you want to touch their hair. So what the Hell are they good for?
If you think of affirmative action as grift, you'll see why more 'groups' want part of that action.
"The only accepted basis was "diversity," a kind of benefit to the entire student body, based on trusting the admissions people to assemble a group of students who would have differences that made classroom discussions better."
Is there any actual evidence that that happened? It's my impression that it only made them more contentious.
The university should have the same percentages of different groups in the population as exist with the required IQ. That would be Oberlin in the 50s. Not many blacks but those there were smart.
i think the issue with Affirmative Action today, isn't a "fork in the road"..
it's a KNIFE in the road. When your white child is knifed (or beaten) to DEATH in the road by Blacks..
BECAUSE he was white; you tend to doubt the wisdom of Affirmative Action
Jonathan Lewis died after he was severely beaten by a group of around 15 attackers.
I wonder how much "reparations" Jonathan's family is "entitled" to??
Ann wrote: "I think the most common pro-affirmative action idea is that the student body should have the same percentages of the different groups that exist in the population in general."
It's hard to believe that even the most ardent proponent of affirmative action would see that as a practical approach. There are an awful lot of different groups that would need to be accounted for (and awarded slots) in such a scheme, depending on how various races and ethnicities were combined or separated out from one another for counting purposes. Then presumably you'd have to make sure each ethnic/racial subgroup was comprised of the right number of men, women, and "other"; and of disabled people, etc., within that group. I can't imagine that this system would even be achievable, putting aside that it's so obviously unconstitutional.
To the contrary, the most common idea for implementing affirmative action is what universities did for years in the wake of Bakke, which was simply treat the fact of an applicant's belonging to a particular racial group as either a plus factor or a minus factor in evaluating their qualifications. Being black automatically might entitle you to a boost equivalent to a few hundred SAT points. Being Asian might have the exact opposite effect on your application. Although doing it this way also unconstitutional, at least it was fairly workable from an administrative standpoint.
Ann Althouse said...
As far as I knew, affirmative action was supposed to be about blacks and slavery.
"You're wrong if we're talking about understanding Supreme Court case law."
How you can twist the words "as far as I knew" - and especially "I don't know" - to somehow come out meaning I'm "wrong" will probably keep me up late into the night. I said I know NewAge a few days ago and (with no qualifications of your own, including years devoted to studying it critically, as I have) you said I'm wrong. Now I said I DON'T know this, and you also take the time to say I'm wrong: Should I start getting the impression that you're determined to belittle me? You're being pretty consistent. I mean, 43 comments, some of them premised on the assumption of race - look at Lucien's two paragraphs - but you didn't go after them. Nope. You had to tell Mr. I Don't Know he's wrong. Hmm.
I'm starting to wonder about this blog, and the whole conservative project.
“As far as I can tell (based on a quick scan), none of the legal actions (executive orders, laws, court decisions) associated with affirmative action ever specifically call out blacks alone. In fact, they appear to make it as broad as possible; I keep seeing "...without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin.". So why would you be surprised when groups other than blacks decide it applies to them as well?”
The way that I see it is that Affirmative Action was, from the start, a way to legally allocate the spoils of government to groups based on their representation. No surprise, that this is very much how the Democratic Party has operated, at least for the last century. Different interest groups, which very often meant different ethnic groups, had a seat at the table based on their support of the party. This is most vividly seen in how big cities, like Chicago, operated probably as early as the Civil War. And we see the same thing in how Babinet posts were divied up in the Obama and FJB Administrations. Back then, it was the Irish, Italians, Jews, etc getting their proportion of the city jobs. Later, it was Hispanics, feminists, gays, school teachers, etc taking their share of the spoils, as the Irish and Italians moved towards the Republicans, as they successfully assimilated.
The problem for the Democrats (and leftists) was that, as originally envisioned, AA, etc were for the purpose of helping Blacks (possibly in atonement by the party of slavery, KKK, and Jim Crow). That didn’t sit well with the other ethnic groups sitting at the table, esp since that often meant that the rewards would come out of their slice of the pie. Esp with Hispanics, now a larger ethic group, and were the ones often losing positions to the Blacks. So, Hispanics were added to the category of oppressed, in need of govt help, and the door was now open for most every other Dem party constituency to get their fair share of the spoils.
By now, the entire edifice is so top heavy that it is ready to collapse. Every major Dem party constituency gets their place at the table, and merit no longer has little, if any bearing on assignment of government power. So, we have a Sec of Transportation who knows nothing of his subject area, doesn’t care, but got the job through being gay. And a Senator who got tenure at HLS by pretending to be American Indian. And now, even cheating, like Liawatha did, is sanctioned, because what you identify as, is deemed more important than what you actually are. So, the left thinks that fully functioning males are fine in female sports, prisons, and restrooms, as long as they identify as female. So, why not do as Yancey suggests - pick whatever demographic slices you find most advantageous, and identify as such.
Of course, a distinct majority of Americans appear to think that this whole thing is wrong, and many of us think it to be gravely wrong. The American dream is a melting pot, where everyone can rise based on their talents and hard work. Many, if not most, of our immigrants believe in that ideal. It worked for the Irish, Italians, Jews, etc. And it is working for Hispanics, and working esp. well for Asians.
"The problem was blacks were not being accepted at all, sometimes literally blocked by law."
If you're talking about Jim Crow laws, that's all on democrats.
In 1978, no blacks were being blocked from employment or education 'by law' anywhere in the US...
'The university should have the same percentages of different groups in the population as exist with the required IQ. That would be Oberlin in the 50s. Not many blacks but those there were smart.'
Kind of like a country club I belonged to years ago.
Nobody cared if you were black, Jewish, handicapped, Martian, whatever.
As long as you could afford the dues and weren't an asshole, everybody was fine with it.
There's a well-known story that adding protection for women to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the result of a poison pill maneuver by a righwing, segregationist member of Congress who was attempting to demonstrate the absurdity of trying to legislate equality. I'd always believed that story, but it turns out that the true story is much more complicated. See Caroline Fredrickson's "How the Most Important U.S. Civil Rights Law Came to Include Women" in the NYU Review of Law & Social Change.
https://socialchangenyu.com/harbinger/how-the-most-important-u-s-civil-rights-law-came-to-include-women/#:~:text=But%20on%20February%208%2C%201964,%2C%20with%20%E2%80%9Csex%E2%80%9D%20included.
The racial makeup of athletes in major league sports doesn't match that of the population in general. Of the NFL, NBA and NHL, only one of these sports seems to be making any noises about that. Want to guess which one, and why?
Abortion and affirmative action don't share much beyond a plethora of "A's." Affirmative action is just arbitrary labeling and allocation of privilege. People who lose out don't get obliterated, they can stick around and complain. Or bully their way back, on their own say-so, into the favored group.
In contrast, abortion is, for those who lose out, terminal.
I suspect voter attitudes reflect that existential and irreducible difference. Getting rid of Roe v. Wade doesn't make the issue go away.
Michael said: t one time, affirmative action meant going to some extra trouble to find or help people from disadvantaged backgrounds (most often African-Americans) who had the ability and aptitude to meet the qualifications for a job or school but weren't coming up in the normal recruiting processes.
The legal standard for non-educational institutions has long been that. You reach out to the underrepresented groups to make them aware of job openings. One company I worked for had recruiting trips to HBCUs, made sure some community groups got emails about job openings, etc.
So, you do recruiting efforts. When it comes time to make a hiring decision, you can't take race, sex, veteran status, etc. into account EXCEPT when you have a tie among candidates. It can then be used to break the tie. Anything else is considered illegal discrimination.
However, activists inside the Federal Government keep trying to make it about "equity" and being sure that employment stats match population stats.
@ Ann Althouse 11/15/23, 11:24 AM - Of course, the political reason(s) for affirmative action and the Supreme Court justification are different.
The reason they gave for why it is not unconstitutional (strict scrutiny was met by "'diversity,' a kind of benefit to the entire student body, based on trusting the admissions people to assemble a group of students who would have differences that made classroom discussions better") is so ridiculous and unrealistic that it satisfies the Orwellian characterization "so stupid only a really smart person could believe it".
I'm curious where the idea came from. A Justice? One of the clerks? A law professor? I'm guessing the latter (see previous paragraph). Of course, law professors being lawyers, they may not actually believe the rationale. They are just zealously representing their cause, getting AA declared constitutional.
Daniel Greenfield described the"Minority Victim Value Index" roughly a decade ago -- and its affected categories have only expanded since then.
If pleading special considerations gets somewone a few steps ahead of the competition, or obtains special benefits, then the tendencies toward envy & greed in human nature will inevitably encourage more and more "victims" to plead thusly.
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2012/08/the-minority-victim-value-index.html
Diversity of individuals, minority of one. Everything else is a class-disordered ideology with benefits. That said, men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature.
Civilization forked... diverged... liberalized with indulgence of diversity of color and class bigotry, adoption of the principle of political congruence, and establishment of the ethical Pro-Choice religion.
Frost's fork in the road was actually mocking the seriousness that was attached to it.
Leftists are certain that blacks would get nowhere without their help. If blacks start to leave the plantation, all hell will break loose.
I think that most Americans THINK that affirmative action was originally created for the descendants of those brought here as slaves not because that's actually true (sadly) but because that's the only form of affirmative action more than a small fraction of the population has ever supported (and even that is contentious).
I've said this a few times, so sorry for repetition: Affirmative Action, as now practiced in higher education, have very little to do with the descendants of people brought to the U.S. as slaves and much more to do with eliminating objective, merit-based systems of admission so that universities can get the maximum benefit from each seat in their entering classes. Sometimes that means selling them to the highest bidder in plain old dollars, but there are other benefits.
If you threw out all the other racial and categories, gender (which is ridiculous given the current demographics of higher ed), as well as the de facto sexuality categories, you could just HAND black students 12% of the seats in any school (through whatever b.s. admissions Calvinball system you came up with) and things would still be 100 times better than they are today. The problem is not that 12% of the seats are distributed by taking race into account, but that close to 95% of the seats are distributed without taking merit into account.
What is holding the whole rotten system together at the moment is the reticence of normal Americans to lie about race on their applications, mostly because a plurality mostly still does believe in the idea that black students on average have things tougher than on average other ethnic groups, and so it wouldn't just be a lie to some authority figure (we're Americans; that wouldn't stop us) but a lie that is actually wrong.
There's a parallel with gender-related goodies and programs and set-asides: the reticence of most men about putting on a dress to get perks is the only thing keeping those afloat, and obviously that regime is starting to crumble as well.
The collapse will be ugly, and people are going to be hurt by it in a multitude of ways, but it has to happen since the current system is unsustainable in every possible way.
I think I just saw Buridan's ass carrying a load of fpoons to Morton's Fork.
Lydia Languish, dammit. And here am I, an acclaimed Lucius O'Trigger.
Sanford V. Levinson (82) to Thomas [B]. Edsall (82).
I wonder if either gentleman ever lost an opportunity due to AA.
"So, you do recruiting efforts."
Give kids IQ tests when they're young like they used to do.*
Back in the day, we took those tests (it involved much more than a single test) in 3rd grade.
Nurture the high achievers and give extra help to the low achievers.
*AFAIK, there is still a blanket ban on giving IQ tests to black students in California. I believe it can still be done, but only by request of the parents.
Joe Smith said...
"If you're talking about Jim Crow laws, that's all on democrats."
If you were black, you wouldn't give a damn who it's on.
"In 1978, no blacks were being blocked from employment or education 'by law' anywhere in the US..."
And you have no idea how embarrassing that is, do you?
The Crack Emcee said...
"I think blacks are always done in by everybody else trying to step over us. As far as I knew, affirmative action was supposed to be about blacks and slavery. How we started talking about other "categories" I do not know."
Affirmative action didn't really exist until the 1960s. So it was really about all the minorities that were considered disadvantaged. (Since slavery had ended almost a century earlier.)
Just look at California. Latinos make up 39% of the population. (more than whites at 35%) and blacks only make up 5% of the population. And many Latinos in California have gotten a really bad deal over the decades. But for some reason, the Democrats here want to give reparations to blacks even though California was never a slave state. (Maybe it's because it's cheaper to give reparations to 5% instead of 39% of the population.)
My dad was a very dark skinned Latino. He grew up speaking Spanish as his primary language and his nickname in his East L.A. neighborhood was "Blackie." Did he have run ins with the cops? You bet he did. But you know else he did, he went into law enforcement and eventually was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to be the United States Marshal for the Central District of California.
'If you were black, you wouldn't give a damn who it's on.'
You should give a damn. Voting for the racist democrats who fucked you over isn't the best move. You may not vote for them, but your fellow black citizens do. In droves.
'And you have no idea how embarrassing that is, do you?'
Was Bryant an asshole? No idea. Maybe he was.
This has nothing to do with my point.
Try again.
affirmative action meant going to some extra trouble to find or help people from disadvantaged backgrounds (most often African-Americans) who had the ability and aptitude to meet the qualifications for a job or school but weren't coming up in the normal recruiting processes
Yea, affirmative action that could not be considered discrimination, let alone a model of diversity (i.e. color judgment, class bigotry).
I have a stash of popcorn solely dedicated to those instances where trans "women" complain about being oppressed by the Patriarchy.
Affirmative Action was a sinister "proof" of racial superiority. People couldn't hrlp but notice, no matter how you tried to handicap Whites, they kept winning.
Like putting 50# ankle weights on Deon Sanders and he STILL leads the NFL in interceptions.
Then Whites acquired these mystical abilities to be "systemic" - always there but not there. Black police officers were somehow being brainwashed to beat down black suspects.
Can someone ask white men how to fix inflation? I bet they know.
"Leftists are certain that blacks would get nowhere without their help.".
My most recent fav moment in that regard was when Lefties tried to lecture the African American community about their reluctance to trust the government re COVID vaccines.
They were confused by the murmur in the back pews of our church.
tuh·skee·gee
tuh·skee·gee
tuh·skee·gee
No my dear, we're not rapping during your presentation
I don't know why I'm doing this... I guess it's because I don't want to lose Crack's voice here, even though he can be a broken record on some subjects.
Ok. Crack. Your claim was that, AFAYK, affirmative action was for blacks and because of slavery. Althouse corrected you on the legal merits. Why are you mad? Do you have a legal argument to make? If not, why be upset that our blog host, who rarely deigns to address any of us personally, stooped to recognize you?
Dude. You got Althouse's attention. She responded directly to you, pointing out that according to jurisprudence, you're mistaken. This isn't a call-out of you as a person - she was saying that your "AFAIK" is mistaken. Take it and move on.
Her comment, furthermore, applies to everyone who put forth blackness and slavery as foundations for AA, including me. But while our views of the pretexts for AA may be legally unsupportable, that doesn't mean they weren't in the minds of those trying to put it into place - but a constitutionally acceptable explanation had to be found or manufactured (see also: Roe v Wade).
But THIS post is about the quandary of "liberals" who don't know which hill to die on - AA or abortion - but believe it's got to be one or the other, AND recognize that the AA hill is unpopular and thorny to implement. What's your thought on that?
Mine is that in a sane world, they've lost both battles - affirmative action has been defeated as a strategy to "lift" the downtrodden magically into the ranks of the... untrodden-upon, and abortion has been rather successfully remanded to the States, as far as their side is concerned. Neither of which will matter, because they'll always have Trump. Darn it.
"I'm starting to wonder about this blog, and the whole conservative project."
There is no "conservative thing" here. Most people here would be considered classic liberals. Concerned with how our current situation weighs against our constitution.
You got a problem wit dat?
Jamie said...
"Ok. Crack. Your claim was that, AFAYK, affirmative action was for blacks and because of slavery. Althouse corrected you,..."
You just skipped over the words "I don't know" too. How desperate are you to insult me?
I was sure that anybody would be able to see me shrugging in that first comment about affirmative action. No one here has ever heard me advocate for affirmative action. I never said I studied affirmative action. I never said I knew anything about affirmative action other than I was not in favor of it. I couched the only statement I said about it in the words "as far as I know," and I ended with "I don't know." I thought I was pretty clear just speaking colloquially.
I still have no idea how anyone would think I needed to be corrected or called "wrong" when I was so non-committal.
Rusty said...
"Most people here would be considered classic liberals."
So San Francisco isn't the only place that has racist fucked up liberals. Good to know.
Rusty said...
"Most people here would be considered classic liberals."
Oligonicella said,...
"I'll take screaming kids over pissy cotton-heads any day."
Just a bunch of white classical liberal racists.
“So what did we see with the first iteration of the Ferguson Effect? The largest two year increase in homicide in this nation’s history, up 15, 16%. Thousands more black lives are being taken in drive by shootings. And then after the George Floyd murder, we had either Ferguson effect 2.0 or the Minneapolis effect, and an even greater falling away of proactive policing. You had massive resignations. The attrition rate out of, out of police departments is huge. Hiring is over, and 2020 saw the largest one year increase in homicide in this nation’s history of 29%. I mean, that’s a, that’s a statistical charge. And in response to viewers, we have a large Black Lives Matter banner here. I agree that Black Lives matter. And I would like to see, and we are told to say the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Donte Wright, and Freddie Gray. Okay. Well, I. I would love to hear the names of law, Davian Garrett, Trinity, Trinity Artisan Smith, Aniya Allen. Legend Taliaferro. Jocelyn Adams. Mickie James. Tyrone Patton. Zachariah Turner. These are children between the ages of less than one year and ten who have had their brains blown out in drive-by shootings that were part of the mass of slaughter that was unleashed after the George Floyd murder when police backed off.
There are dozens and dozens of black children who have been gunned down in their parents car, in their front yards, and in their back porches, jumping on trampolines, that I never hear them being commemorated. So I think that the movement for Black Lives Matter has somewhat of a blindspot to the way that black children after George Floyd, black juveniles now are shot at 100 times the rate of white juveniles, one hundred times the rate. That’s a civil rights problem. Blacks between the ages of ten and twenty-four die of gun homicide at twenty-four times the rate of whites between the ages of ten and twenty-four. That’s a problem. And they are not being killed by the police. They’re not being killed by whites. They’re being killed by kids that have not been socialized, that are engaging in these insane drive by shootings about white supremacy that come with that question. Okay. So, anyway, that’s what happened, that I think the narrative that whites are under, that blacks, rather, are dying from white supremacy has led to the drop off in any sense of possibility of racial harmony. Yeah. So let me try and give a version, at least one version. I think there are multiple ones, that one version of an explanation or challenging analysis of this, and well, actually, let me give a particular example that I think on point.”
—- Heather MacDonald
“Well, the book is an argument against the dominant narrative of our time, which is that racial disparities in any institution are, by definition, evidence of racial discrimination. So any institution that does not have a proportional number of blacks, if it’s a meritocratic institution, so that if, if Google has 2% black engineers working for it, that is proof of discrimination, and Google must be discriminating against qualified blacks. I argue that’s not the case, but that is now the only allowable explanation for any underrepresentation of, of blacks in an institution. If, if Covington Burling or, you know, Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher does not have 13% black partners, it is by definition because those firms are discriminating against qualified black associates or qualified black law school graduates. And in the case of overrepresentation in the, in the criminal justice system, the overrepresentation of blacks in the criminal justice system, so that the prison population is about a third black, even though blacks are 13% of the nation’s population. That disparity, that overrepresentation of blacks, is also, per se, evidence of a racist criminal justice system. That is not allowed to be said in, in, in explanation of those disparities, is the academic skills gap; which makes it impossible to be both diverse and meritocratic, or, or the crime gap of which is why blacks are dying at such extraordinarily higher rates than other groups, is because blacks are committing crime at higher rates. You’re not allowed to say that. The only allowable explanation is the police are gratuitously, without grounds, arresting blacks and, and the system is gratuitous, seen without grounds, putting them into prison.”
—- Heather MacDonald
“Ok. Crack. Your claim was that, AFAYK, affirmative action was for blacks and because of slavery. Althouse corrected you on the legal merits. Why are you mad? Do you have a legal argument to make? If not, why be upset that our blog host, who rarely deigns to address any of us personally, stooped to recognize you?”
I don’t think that it was a legal argument, but rather a moral one. Legally, AA, esp just for Blacks, was always legally suspect under the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amdt. The Democrats, for a century after that, kept their former slaves, and their descendants, in thrall through Jim Crow laws, and brutal intimidation by the KKK. Many believe that they were owed a debt for that.
All I can do is state facts. I take no responsibility on how those facts are interpreted.
You do you Crack.
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