In a way it was predictable — and I won’t deny that, on some level, I probably knew the issue would be broached — but yesterday’s post in the provocateurism series wended its way, in exchanges between author and commenters / commenters and commenters, to the subject of race-based affirmative action, a dubious practice of late saved, against (in my opinion) the clear intention of certain Constitutional prohibitions, by the eight-hundred pound gorilla in the room, namely, the social push (created out of whole cloth and standing against the theoretical underpinnings of individualism that animate the classical liberalism upon which this country was structured) toward a carefully manufactured “ideal” of diversity that, not to put too fine a point on it, is to actual diversity, in the context in which it is being promoted, what today’s calls for “tolerance” are to free speech.
That Justice Kennedy sided with an idea for social engineering that is, at base, quite literally un-American (in the strictest sense of that term), is a testament to the power of the diversity movement, and to its ability to gull even those whose ostensible purpose it is to uphold Constitutional principle.
In his book Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, Peter Wood speaks at length about what he calls “diversity metaphors”:
Diversity is said to be, among other things, a rainbow, a quilt, a rich stew, a box of crayons, a Noah’s ark.
Diversiphiles turn to metaphor not just to popularize their ideas but to cover over the contradiction that would be hard to hide in plain speech: the contradiction between the diversiphiles’ insistence that the differences among cultural traditions are vast and irreconcilable, and their simultaneous assertion that diversity is a path to overcoming division and achieving national (or pan-national) unity.
The favored metaphors of rainbows, quilts, stews, crayons, and arks are easily visualized images of many-ness in unity, but they fail in one key way: All of them smuggle in the underlying commonality that the doctrine of diversity usually attacks. The parts of the rainbow are all spectra of visible light; the quilt is stitched from swatches of fabric; the stew comprises edible foodstuffs; the crayons are part of a palate of colors; and the ark has on board the fauna that will inhabit the postdiluvian earth. What’s missing is the radical separateness of each of the parts: the color that does not want to be part of the rainbow, the fabric that dangles outside the quilt. Those diversiphiles who respond to Martin Luther King’s image of the “single garment of destiny” by bringing up “loose threads” are, in their way, closer to the metaphoric mark.
To get all the way to a satisfactory image of diversity, we would have to construct some metaphor in which each component possesses its own autonomy and insists on its own importance, and the whole would be overseen by a power who simultaneously credits and ignores each part’s claim to precedence. The town dump seems to me to be the ideal form of a conglomerate unity where completely unrelated things of disparate origin end up side by side, kept in their place by the apotheosis of the modern multicultural teacher, the guy who drives the bulldozer.
[…] the town dump is full of aesthetic wonders and useful stuff. The moralist can find worthy lessons there, and the materialist a bit of plunder. It is, however, a place that speaks constantly of the past, and is more melancholy than any graveyard. The dump is where the unmemorial odds and ends of our lives end up. Dumps tell our history, but not in the way that we would like to remember it.
I must admit that the town dump will probably not catch on as the metaphor of choice among diversidacts in the schools. They would resist the metaphoric implication, even as they embrace the hard reality that diversity is a way of situating children amidst the debris of broken dreams and spent lives.
Diversidacts and diversiphiles of all sorts prefer a more upbeat imagery of unity. When the Advisory Board of President Clinton’s Initiative on Race issued its final report in September 1998, it was characteristically titled One America in the Twenty-first Century: Forging a New Future. The title is meant seriously. Although the Initiative on Race has often served only to elevate and accentuate racial and ethnic differences, Chairman John Hope Franklin and his colleagues saw nothing odd in proclaiming their work a step toward “One America.”
Appendix H of One American in the Twenty-first Century lists hundreds of organizations across the nation that the Advisory Board of the Initiative on Race considered as offering “promising practices.” The annotated list amounts to a kind of encyclopedia of multiculturalism’s institutional presence as of 1998, and diversity metaphors abound.
Voices United in Miami, Florida, “empowers young people to cultivate solutions to community problems and to promote intercultural appreciation and understanding”; We’re All on the Same Team Cultural Diversity Education Program in Phoenix, Arizona, promotes “the value of cultural diversity and [creates] opportunities for positive exchange among diverse groups of people”; Interfaith Bridge Builders Coalition in Utica, New York, “celebrates and upholds he cultural and ethnic diversity in the community and promotes racial reconciliation”; Mosaic Harmony, a choir in Washington, D.C., “believes that the rich and inspiring tones of gospel music can bridge racial and ethnic barriers” and brings “a message of unity and diversity to the community.” And the Color Me Human Program in Hixson, Tennessee, “encourages organizations to use the Color Me Human logo and products as a symbol that the organization is supportive of diversity issues.” The list is rich with common destinies, common grounds and other commonalities, and offers numerous kinds of togetherness, oneness and unity — all in the name of helping us celebrate difference.
To secure its place on the national agenda, diversity relies to an extraordinary degree on images and metaphors. But We’re-All-on-the-Same-Team/Bridge Builders/Mosaic Harmony/Color-Me-Human diversity; diversity with its rainbows, patchwork quilts, rich gumbos and Noah’s arks; the diversity of One America in the Twenty-first Century — all these diversities are, in the end, species of illusion. They pump life and energy into the assertion of the radical separateness of all the parts, and then childishly prate about the unity that is sure to follow.
Wood’s point, which is of a kind keeping with argument I’ve made here on numerous occasions, is that it is, from a strategic standpoint — with the unspoken goal being an end to racial animus — patently ridiculous to believe that the way to get beyond racial divisions is to encourage and promote them, even if you manage to do so by packaging such a multiculturalist worldview in the feel-good packaging of a Benetton ad.
All of which I bring up for a particular reason. In the comments to yesterday’s post, thor spends a good deal of time defending race-based affirmative action, and in doing so he uses the reasoning that many defenders of the practice use. To wit:
I stand by affirmative action as a flawed but useful remedy of compromise. Rebalancing your logic, I think you too will get over your pain, someday, even if it’s the day flowers are placed on your grave; it will pass.
— the idea being that, if some people have to suffer now in order to balance the scales of a history that they had no part in, so be it. Then, later, to drive home the point:
[…] There’s no simple explanation for tragedy, and there’s no necessity to befit all darkened consequences, and it’s all endless compromise for sake of itself, either that or we’re a Nation struggling onward.
I have a real bum’s eye for grace, compromised solutions, and fashion, and didn’t I ask that you fashion something better?
thor’s challenge — that we “fashion something better” than the current system, is what put me in mind of a series of debates I had with Steve Sailer and Aaron Hawkins (who has since passed on).
As I noted in my response to thor, I spent my academic career, and much of my “public†career here on the web, agitating for something that I do believe to be better, namely, a cultural and intellectual push to declare race a false and flawed scientific category (which it is), at least as it is currently understood.
Ironically, in my experience in the university culture, it was the students who were most accepting of such a solution  to many of them, race has never been much of a consideration, until they received the requisite leftwing “consciousness raising”  while it was the university that spent much of its time tut-tutting student willingness to “forget†about racial differences, as well as “correct” their innate refusal to Balkanize.
And I suspect that such a curricula has to do with the sad fact that, after years of catering to race and “diversity” issues, too many careers are on the line to let intellectual rigor, which involves at least the willingness to consider a change in strategy, get in the way of a professional status quo, and a lifelong defense of what it turns out was a remarkably simplistic and dangerous multiculturalist worldview.
When I debated Steve Sailer on this, he, too, (to be fair) dismissed my points  opting instead for his own kind of polemic, an in-your-face racialism aimed at the pomo theorists of race that, as I tried to explain to him, he was completely mislabeling in order to retake certain political ground. From a scientific perspective, however, his idea of “race,” as he himself admits, is a different animal altogether than the idea of “race” that has caused (and continues to cause) so much social ill and division.
The solution thor asks for, it seems to me, is simple in theory — though of course difficult in practice: marginalize the very concept of “race,” because as it has been used in this country and elsewhere, it is and always will be bad science. Holding onto it out of some sort of habit is a brand of “conservatism†being practiced by guilty whites, Marxists, race hustlers, a permanent victim class, and opportunistic politicos looking to take advantage of coalition politics. “Race” is mythology. But it is, as we’ve learned in other contexts, a useful fiction — and one that has been milked by a variety of people with a variety of agendas for far too long.
“Diversity” — inasmuch as it remains committed to the superficial — is simply an extension of bad racial politics, and sadly, it is a clownish idea that has now gotten its big floppy shoe into the doorway of US jurisprudence at the highest level.
The end result can only be a gradual diminution of classical liberalism and the kind of foregrounding of individualism upon which this country was born.
Plus, we argued over the nature of the word “even.” It was a grand day!
Ok. Which one of you guys is Spartacus?
Diversity for diversity sake is a waste of time and energy.
There is only one race of humans. Everything else is B.S. All these humans look for an advantage and the believers in “race” on either side of the issue are merely doing what comes naturally to individual humans if given the opportunity. While I agree it would be nice to solve these problems and I once defended AA in Thor’s manner, I have come to agree with Jeff that AA is not the answer but more of the problem. One race is the only answer.
The framers of the 13th-15th amendments clearly did not intend them to prohibit racial preferences. Reconstruction in the south was full of state-sanctioned racial preferences. There is no argument against affirmative action from an original intent position.
Diversity, insofar as it means you have interesting choices of where to go to lunch, is a good thing, and there’s absolutely nothing silly about that. People just extrapolate this idea too far is all. Don’t listen to them. You should be able to go to lunch with whoever you want without nobody judging you I think.
I have a real bum’s eye for grace, compromised solutions, and fashion, and didn’t I ask that you fashion something better?
We donn’t need to. We just need to adhere to the one we created: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
All else is reverse racism, punishing the living for the alleged sins of the dead. Even worse; punishing those living today that had nothing to do with injustices committed in the past and rewarding some who haven’t earned it and don’t deserve it otherwise.
Smedley: ” The framers of the 13th-15th amendments clearly did not intend them to prohibit racial preferences.”
Spoken as someone who hasn’t actually read the amendments in question. It’s not that you’re explicitly incorrect per se, it is that the Amendments don’t discuss the matter at all. That said, the 15th Amendment does not permit discrimination with regard to race where the franchise is concerned. Now, definitionally, affirmative action / racial favoritism would not fly per the 15th Amendment.
15th Amendment text
“Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
I wanna be Spartacus this time. I never get to be Spartacus.
The first couple of weeks of college, all of us lost sheep little freshmen wandered about aimlessly and innocent. The definition of clueless. I had grew up in a very white rural environment, and was found myself hanging out with some black dudes from a rural area a few counties from where I was from. We laughed that culturally we had more in common and felt more comfortable with each other than our respective racial groups from urban areas, or from areas other than appalachia.
After being educated and domesticated and taught to behave in a more worldly manner, by my senior year we barely nodded in passing and never spoke or hung out. They ate on the black side of the cafeteria, I ate on the white, they lived on a black floor, I on a white.
It makes me sad to think of it now.
This issue of Provocateurism shows a great maturity in branching out from J. Goldberg’s latest book. It’s good to see the author showing us that he’s read more than one book. Eventhough he obviously didn’t understand any of the words printed on the page. We hold hope for the next issue.
/Wolcott
The reactionary left: moving from eugenics and racial seperation to….eugenics and racial seperation??????!?!?!?!!!
B,
I grew up in a very rural area of New England. At the orientation for U of Rhode Island, everyone there for the orientation was herded into a lecture hall and we were all “asked” to stand up when a label applied to us. That was many years ago, I still wonder at the contradiction that had us mixed in with people and doing “friend” building exercises and whatnot and then pointing out the differences between us.
Did anyone stop and think – ‘maybe we’re sending mixed messages to the kids?’
– Being a Northern boy, I had to learn all I needed to know about “racism” in a single trip to S. Carolina, and an unfortunate episode on a bus.
“Ironically, in my experience in the university culture, it was the students who were most accepting of such a solution  to many of them, race has never been much of a consideration, until they received the requisite leftwing “consciousness raising† while it was the university that spent much of its time tut-tutting student willingness to “forget†about racial differences, as well as “correct†their innate refusal to Balkanize.”
– You can’t have a inspirational movement, designed to break up the status quo and provide a canvass to paint the next great faux “cause” upon, (We have a terrible social situation, and you all need to listen to us and do as we say, because obviously we’re the experts in this situation since we discovered it, and oh by the way that means we get to set all the rules and define you and the working lexicon as we see fit) if no one practices your core grievances. Thus it is necessary to manufacture as many new racists as possible, even teach them how to balkanize if they are simply to green or raised with to many good standards to hate out of hand. Historical revisionism is always available to prop up the race war meme, and for anything discordant we can just rewrite the narrative to suit the end goal.
It always amazes me that issues about race tend to degrade to a binary equation: whites and blacks. You never hear of blacks having to learn tolerance towards Hispanics or Asians, do you? Or Koreans having to learn to tolerate Chinese. Or Vietnamese having to learn to tolerate Laotians?
Minorities. We whiteys oppress them all indiscriminately. That’s why it doesn’t matter if THEY get along.
Well, we really couldn’t avoid diversity, even if we wanted to, could we? We’re a nation of immigrants, as even the lefties will acknowledge, and that multiplicity will continue until the last days.
So ‘diversity’ as an ideal is redundant b/c reality has already assured us of diversity.
But someday someone will come to the fore and notice exactly that, then make a great, popular call for UNITY. Thats when the fat lady sings, I think.
My best work friend is hanging onto his job mostly cause they already let go too many pigmenty people relatively recently. So, that’s pretty cool I think.
But someday someone will come to the fore and notice exactly that, then make a great, popular call for UNITY
Yeah, that’d be so cool! Like a modern day Messiah. A Uniter, a Bringer of Hope! A Chosen One! Heck, THE ONE! If we could only live long enough to witness such man…huh? What’s that? He’s here? Really?
Not so provocative, as it turns out…
I’m still waiting to those who support this idea to explain to me how justice can be achieved by punishing the innocent.
“What’s that? He’s here? Really?”
– Yes. But you may not like him. He doesn’t look like the other faces on the bills.
I just think it says something if these stupid people can get along just fine just cause the expectation is there.
“So ‘diversity’ as an ideal is redundant b/c reality has already assured us of diversity.”
If someone takes a snapshot of a group and there aren’t any black faces it’s not a diverse group. Just ask the county I worked at for 30 years. “Diversity” is just affirmative action renamed to give it a softer tone.
– feets, even in prison its always the Cults, and their urgent need to establish “differences” so they can train their sycophants to hate, that generally cause all the problems.
– The idle minds theme never rang truer in society than with the intelligentsia. But its generally true with any bored group of humans. Same theme, just more complexities with the Elite constructs versus the criminal clicks.
No. Diversity is so you don’t get sued.
oh. that was at #24. brb
[…] Peter Wood […]
We have always been ‘diverse’. Many citizens lived in ethnic enclaves,spoke their own languages there, celebrated religious holidays, etc. However, they also saw themselves as being Americans, and for most, loyal to this country and not the land of their birth or ancestry.
The diversity merchants don’t see that as sufficient, and from where I sit they want to remove that loyalty to America from its primary position and make loyalty to the diversities – nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender, etc. – the primary loyalty.
Why? From where I sit it will take the USA down a big, and give the diversity merchants more power and influence. If there are a lot of ponds, then many more frogs can be ‘the big frog’; if there are only a few ponds, then only a few frogs can be ‘the big frog’.
IIRC, between the Tripolitan War and the War of 1812 the US Navy re-rigged a number of schonners to make them brigs because a brig would require a commander as the commanding officer, whereas a schooner only required a lieutenant commander. I think I read that in Chappelle’s The History of the American Sailing Navy.
#25 BBH:
you’ve Got To Be Taught
to Hate And Fear,
you’ve Got To Be Taught
from Year To Year,
it’s Got To Be Drummed
in Your Dear Little Ear
you’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.
you’ve Got To Be Taught To Be Afraid
of People Whose Eyes Are Oddly Made,
and People Whose Skin Is A Diff’rent Shade,
you’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.
you’ve Got To Be Taught Before It’s Too Late,
before You Are Six Or Seven Or Eight,
to Hate All The People Your Relatives Hate,
you’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught!
BTW:
I believe I quoted those lyrics before during the discussions of Reverend Wright and TUCC.
Doesn’t matter, silly. We’re talking about original intent, not textualism. Different interpretive frameworks. Thomas versus Scalia.
I would have thought Cthulhu would be a bit sharper. Pity.
– Yes. But you may not like him. He doesn’t look like the other faces on the bills.
Oh, I don’t know, BBH I think he’s got the perfect face for a three dollar bill. Legal tender of a shyster.
This shouldn’t be provacative, Jeff, it should be screamingly obvious to any sentient being. But here in Bizzarro World, it just ain’t so.
It’s good that you’re in the ring on sanity’s behalf.
Given that a week or so ago neither thor or SEK could, when directly challenged, provide moral or intellectual underpinning or substance for the great “progressive” thrust for what amounts to regressive collectivism and social conformity, I’m not surprised that no other proponent of that intended Orwellian homogenization can point to an authority that empowers government — in this case the pre-hallowed, presumptive Obama Administration, to-be bastion of what Wood identifies as nothing more than fanciful wish and imagination — to undertake such things in the first place.
IOW, thor argues for an outcome history has yet to produce by such means or by any means. In doing so, however, he and others must first end-run the constraints on power imposed by an original system expressly designed to itemize only very limited powers, none of them social reconfiguring on the basis of perceived moral outcomes. In another time social reconfiguring on the basis of perceived moral outcomes was precisely what the Founders rejected.
How best for the “progressive” to avoid such barriers? Ignore the underlying structure and it’s intents, and engage rather in the vague subjectivities that eventually call into play, it’s hoped and as frequently comes to pass, what amounts to a simple voting majority. The first rule of that fight club is to never talk about how it really operates, which is to deny the primary subject of a decided lack of constitutional authority.
Arguing on perceived merits is folly and I’d continue to promote the notion that doing so is, in the end, dangerous and should prove unnecessary. Should. Arguing on grounds of there being no constitutional authority to erect visibly wronging social institutions by way of central government policy — which is, as I say, originally unenumerated and therefore improper — more effectively short-circuits such madness.
Not that any of that matters when all you need to do these days as acquire that simple majority.
Smedley —
I’ve written of Scalia’s textualism, intentionalism, and Stanley Fish’s criticism of Scalia’s own misunderstanding of what he’s doing from the perspective of identifying the correct name for his interpretive procedure. Do a search for “dumpling.”
As it is, though, original intent in instances such as Amendments has to do with the intent of those who ratify it — meaning that the intent can incorporate a number of different viewpoints into its breadth, even a few conflicting viewpoints.
Unfortunately for the author, intent is to be gleaned from the words in the text. That is where the rules of statutory construction go, which at least one state court (Michigan) follows.
Constitutional interpretation is whole ‘nother game altogether.
(BTW – do not go into an appellate court and argue that the words they wrote in an opinion don’t mean what they mean. I’ve heard it can get pretty rough for the attorney arguing that tack. Usually, attorneys who are trying to argue their way around case law argue that the factual situation is different, therefore a different result should be reached.
If you love words, the law is fun.)
I am not against AA in absolute terms, because generations can and do affect each other. I am against it as it stands today. Is the son of a rich black doctor to be given more consideration than the son of a poor white janitor? Under the current state of AA, the answer to that question is Yes, and under the current methodology of it’s defense you are branded a racist to even ask how anyone can defend such an insanely flawed practice.
It’s a losing battle in any case, the language becomes more solidified and then becomes entrenched in how we think about such things. Words like ‘reverse racism’ and ‘reverse victimization’ and ‘social justice’ are thrown around as if they should be accepted on their face. That they hide a deeper, more pernicious meaning gets lost and with it the battle for actual equality and actual justice.
You fight a good fight against this Jeff, but you aren’t winning.
In my office there is a Pakistani and a Latina and a white guy and another white guy that’s a lot more handsome than the other white guy and two short guys, one white, one pakistani, and also one woman. And there’s only four of us here.
– I submit that all cult movements are born from a combination of boredom + someone decides they’re not getting enough of the pie.
– The only thing somewhat “different” about the post modern Progessives is their dreamweave of entitlement.
– Which I suppose is a natural outgrowth from the fact they somehow escaped the abortionists drill, and are therefore entitled to lucky survival prizes.
– Has the group figured out which one of you is the women yet feets?
Take what you can, give nothing back.
— The Code
Perhaps ridding ourselves of deadweight, counterproductive concepts is a sort of giving something back, in a reciprocal-altruistic way.
Yup. It’s New Girl!
I work on Tuesdays. I’m only good for drive-by comments. I can’t commit to a “JEFF” post.
Alls I know is, I fucking HATE star bellied sneetches. Anything we can do to keep the fkers down is FINE by me.
The science fiction author Jack Vance argues in several of his novels of the Sixties and early Seventies[*] for something called the “Simîc Principle.” The [**] Gaean[***] philosopher Andrés Simîc notes that human beings evolved in conditions that included thunder, lightning, earthquakes, and saber-toothed tigers, and thus lived in continual danger and therefore fear. As with any environmental constant, evolution incorporated that fear into people’s makeup, and like trace elements, dietary supplements, and the like, fear is a necessary factor for human health.
This, I think, is the ultimate source of bungee jumping, downhill skiing, and going to titty bars on business trips. The human organism, craving redress of fear-deficiency, goes to places or acts in ways that will generate terror, in the same way a sick person might crave fresh fruit.
But I also think that this sort of controversy arises from the same basic source. Proto- and early humans lived in tribes who were in constant contention for resources, and that conflict got incorporated into our very being. We therefore manufacture controversy, contention, and conflict, because it is a necessary component of our health. It isn’t hard at all to extend this sort of thing into real, physical danger for its advocates on both sides. I think, too, that the Simîc principle, as extended, is the ultimate downfall of all Utopias, particularly communitarian ones. Socialists imagine that we can all live together in peace. This, I think, is unlikely, because the members of a thoroughly peaceful society would find their health deteriorating, and would then stir up controversy in order to satisfy their craving for danger and conflict. I think all of us have been members of relatively homogeneous groups with no real reason for contention, but broke up over matters that engendered hate, discontent, and physical violence, but that an outside observer would unhesitatingly declare trivial (and we might, as well, in retrospect).
“Simîc” proposed that a truly prudent ruler would provide his subjects with the fear they require, in order to keep them happy, healthy, and contented. He jocularly proposed a corps of dedicated public servants, the Ferocifers, whose job it is to severely frighten each citizen from time to time, as their health requires. One can sometimes see rulers groping toward such an arrangement, but so far no one has done so in a formal, regular fashion. Perhaps it’s time. If we were truly frightened about something, we’d be less likely to get into these silly contretémps over nothing.
Regards,
Ric
[*]Actually, in the footnotes.
[**] fictional, of course
[***] the human-settled portion of the Galaxy is “The Gaean Reach”; it is not a polity
Which is a pity, since they don’t have a good record of getting along with them.
– #45
– We’re crushed. Your hard driving analysis is always refreshing, particularly when you make the entire cult disappear.
He jocularly proposed a corps of dedicated public servants, the Ferocifers, whose job it is to severely frighten each citizen from time to time, as their health requires.
BOO!
Do I get the job?
It isn’t a silly contention, Ric. Humans are the ultimate predator (which other predator has ever tried to save another from extinction)? Perhaps duelling was just a way of bleeding off competitive, agressive pressures within a socially sanctioned set of rules? And ladies would always find a champion (its in the best stories!).
Duelling: Better than a blood-feud or civil war to thin out the hot-headed young.
– #47
– That idea would go a long way to explain Amusement parks (thrill rides), and Feminism (fear of baby diapers and penises).
BTW: Where does professional sports fall in all that? I’ve often said soccer riots are how Europeans get rid of excess energy without resorting to a general war.
particularly when you make the entire cult disappear.
Ok, now you lost me.
Has the group figured out which one of you is the women yet feets?
A guy in my wife’s company is presently “transitioning” from male to female. Wife comes home with interesting stories, like forgetting to refer to “him” as “her” in meetings, and having “her” remind her that “she’s” no longer “him,” (even though “she” still has “his” “equipment” at this point).
If provocation is what you want, you could argue that “diversity” is exemplary of a reactionary tendency among the urban and East Coastal white power structure and its Toms (or whatever phrasing you prefer) to stand athwart the end of racism yelling “Stop,” to shore up their waning power against the tide of not-giving-a-fuck-about-race rolling in from the West, the rural South, and exurbia everywhere — that racism in its current form, as a “consciousness” that displaces individuality (or class consciousness, if you like) to keep the board stable for elite manipulation, would, if not for its institutional spread, be confined only to the U.S.’s most Euro-similar and -aspirant regions.
And if you happened to know, say, a mixed group of young clubbers from any “blue” city in “red” America, you could quote them saying that they have to migrate to the suburbs every weekend to be socially allowed to dance together — because that’s what they’d say. The as-yet-“uneducated” will reliably hit this theme — because they’re as yet uninvested in the “educated” narrative.
The case can be made — well-made, too — and the usual suspects can’t figure out how to argue against it without sounding like the warriors for Whitey that they actually are. That’s funny.
It changes nothing and no one, though, as arguments always don’t. There are no philosophical battles, only duels of self-images-as-philosophical. Arguments are occasions for retrenchment. It’s probably best to regard that as funny, too.
What is sort of interesting, is that if you want to see more interracial couples than anywhere else, go to a lower middle class neighborhoods. Usually non-college educated populations- certainly not liberal elite. I don’t know if I feel comfortable expanding on this theory. But, I just want to note it.
>>A guy in my wife’s company is presently “transitioning†from male to female.
I run acrost this a lot-ish in my County job* and its a damnably tricky one at times.
*you know how the Health Dept checks restaurants? I do the same thing …for hookers. srsly.
Orange County is big on the whole interracial love thing. That and Skechers.
#57 –
Yes. Its a downward-trending class-wise move for whites, typically, but upward-trending for blacks, mostly.
Doesn’t apply in the same degree for other mixed-race couples though. Like Asian/white mixed isn’t looked down on at all until you get into really blueblood areas, sometimes not even then. Unless, y’know, they’re conservatives or whatever, like M. Malkin.
How about a video featuring a couple of “pigmenty” types who aren’t voting for O!
The Vote Reaper. It’s a bit long, but there’s lots of hand-to-hand and light saber combat to break any tedium.
h/t Anchoress
Can someone tell me what it means to “celebrate our differences”? I mean, other than having a pot-luck where people bring their native dishes or wear their native garb.
Jeff, I think that if you’re going to play the role of Provocateur, you’re going to have to use the term “liberal fascist” in each post heading, whether Goldberg is involved or not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbW64215HA8&eurl
Cripes, I thought I got the tags right.
– On a wing, and a wing, and a wing, and a prayer.
– Animal protection people reported that a Goose with three wings was discovered on a golf course in Hollywood Florida. The bird seemed normal otherwise, but had trouble tripping on the extra wing. Veterinarians say they will probably be able to surgically remove the extra appendage.
– Handlers named the bird O-bird, because of its tendency to try to fly in all directions at once.
Smedley
Governments are instituted, not to grant rights but to secure them. The franchise is a right of all adult citizens.
A job is not. An education is not. An ice cream cone on a hot summer’s day is not.
Slavery and its aftermath was based, with a few exceptions, on race. The kernel of any remedy, if one chooses to fashion one, should be partly race-based at least. To assume we should move past race-based remedies based on rethinking of race will take time and agreement. That’s moving to the future but the current debate is shifting AA to a economic class-based priority system, or ending it all together.
I don’t stand in disagreement with you other than I don’t believe we can, in my opinion, move the debate that far that fast as of now.
Slavery and its aftermath was based, with a few exceptions, on race.
No, it was based on availability
Slaves were always the conquerored people of the day. The first slaves into the new world were Irish, victims of Cromwell, those not slaughtered – thousands of young men and women (strong backs for labor, tight pussies for British soldiers)…but Ireland didn’t have a huge population to begin with and Cromwell could only send so many after slaughtering 30-40% of the indigenous Irish.
Not one “white” slave trader ever went into Africa and captured slaves. Africa was plentiful, of people and warring tribes, so … just as Willy Sutton robbed banks because that was where the money was, so slave traders went to bargain with the Arab and Black African dynasties that had other captured blacks for sale.
While “race” provided an excuse later to differentiate between peoples and to make chattel slavery a permanent condition for the slave (as opposed to slavery that one could “earn” their way out of), it was the raison d’etre.
errr… it was NOT the raison d’etre
I think I have done my job on this thread for the day.
Slavery and its aftermath was based, with a few exceptions, on race.
Bullshit. The majority of slaves were African because slavery was widespread in Africa and that is where the slave markets were.
The kernel of any remedy, if one chooses to fashion one, should be partly race-based at least.
This was the remedy:
AMENDMENT XIII
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.
Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment.
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
No where does it mention race.
I don’t stand in disagreement with you other than I don’t believe we can, in my opinion, move the debate that far that fast as of now.
Do you really think anyone here gives a flying fuck what your opinion is?
In me you won’t find social deconstruction theory’s spokesperson, no matter how hard you bitterly cling to your thor-is-my-enemy notion.
– Yeh Mikey, I concur. Theres not much left to do here and when thor starts intentionally agreeing with you the thread is pretty much bongos.
– But at least I got one good Goose in.
Thor, you wrote:
“The kernel of any remedy, if one chooses to fashion one, should be partly race-based at least.” Does that mean that slavery and Jim crow continue now? How does one remedy something that has already been cured?
Wait a second… You mean PAYBACK! Like in a blood feud. I get it now. Sort of like in a Scorsese film. That’s what AA is truly about. Because all of the principals involved in slavery are long dead.
Keep hate alive!
Slavery was not primarily based on race until the Arabs started taking blacks out of Africa. Roman slaves, for example, had some limited rights and also had at least the possibility of buying their way to freedom. The US experience of slavery is an exception, not the rule.
Wait a second… You mean PAYBACK! Like in a blood feud. I get it now.
Or like how some Christians in the antebellum south rationalized slavery by calling blacks one of the exiled tribes of the Old Testament, slavery was their payback for denying God.
Kind of ironic, that whole punishing the children for the sins of father business.
Furthermore, European ships were captured along the Barbary coast in the 1700s and prior, and the passengers were carried into slavery in Africa. It didn’t stop until Jefferson went after them until they stopped.
BTW, thor, should Obama get any race-based preferences? Given that his father was never a slave and all that.
The whole idea of giving preferences to a class of people that were never slaves, and whose parents were never slaves, to the detriment of a group of people who never owned slaves, and whose parents never owned slaves, just seems a bit …. I cannot put my finger on the word I am looking for.
Racists.
BMoe – Punishing the kids for the sins of their father’s father’s father’s father, more like.
Given that his father was never a slave and all that.
I wonder if any of his father’s ancestors were slave traders? Wouldn’t that be a hoot.
Bullshit. The majority of slaves were African because slavery was widespread in Africa and that is where the slave markets were.
Yes and no, B Moe. African slaves were much more handy than the European varieties, because it was much, MUCH more difficult for them to melt into the 100% white local populace. A black man alone in the world was an escaped slave, for the most part. I believe the racial aspects of it came later, as a way to rationalize the perpetuation of slavery.
Indentured servants weren’t exactly slaves, but they were cheap. It was fairly easy for them to escape, and their bond was in any case limited. When they finished their indenture, they could then set up shop and compete directly with their former masters. African slavery killed at least two birds.
Riddle me this, thor:
In 1930, a young black man wants to attend med school. He’s bright, dedicated, and has a wonderful attitude. He’s read every book about medicine he can get his hands on, and even got a job mopping floors in a clinic so he could learn as much as possible.
But he is refused entry to med school for one reason only: African ancestry.
So please tell me why the remedy for this kind of bigotry is to lower academic standards for those of African ancestry? Wouldn’t it have been better to eliminate the “Race” field on the application form, thus to prevent people from taking that into consideration?
See, I taught classes at Cornell, and the black students were either at the top of the class or at the bottom, and the ones that were at the bottom were in way over their heads. Some were gamely trying to do the work anyway; others had plain tuned out. Others had dropped out in discouragement.
Did we do those students a favor, to put them somewhere they weren’t ready to handle? Because by lowering the academic bar to allow more pigmenty people in, you get “diversity” on paper, and the administrators get all warm and fuzzy.
But because their intentions are to alleviate guilt instead of to actually give people a hand up, they won’t examine the unintended consequences of their policy. And by giving people a hand up, sometimes you end up with bitter, resentful people like Michelle Obama.
Think about it, won’t you?
Only the ones whose skin is of a certain hue, mind you.
Jeff,
Another great post.
Anyone who graduated high school before the left started destroying our educational system (early 70’s, I would say), just kind of innately knows that the left is full of …whatever. You say it more eloquently than I ever could, but what it all comes down to is that we are being hustled by people who care not one whit for the Constitution, or the values that have made this amazing nation great.
The previous “Provacateurism” thread makes this glaringly obvious. I really don’t think that thor, Penny, et al. have any idea of what I (and my generation) grew up knowing about real freedom. They have no patience for anyone who disagrees. Though I must admit, they are nowhere near as whacked as the HuffPost, DU, and Kos people.
It seems to me that they are willing to throw their freedom over the wall because they have no idea what it is, and consider it to be a burden! And once it’s thrown away, you can’t call the trash hauling company to get it back.
The left has managed to convince a whole generation (plus they are working on the next one) that freedom means submission to their dictates. It makes no sense to me, but I see it with my own eyes, and hear it with my own ears, every day.
This new generation has grown up with their heads being stuffed with disguised Marxism, and they don’t even know what we old farts mean by the word “freedom”. To them, “freedom” means racism, sexism, and a plethora of “…phobes”.
So they must alter it. We need to kiss the butt of anyone with a grievance, because our ancestors were so evil. Mine didn’t even arrive here until 1898, but I am still in the cross hairs – just because I was born white! I am an automatic dickhead for expressing an opinion other than the “accepted” one that these little pinheads believe in.
It’s frustrating as hell, but there isn’t much I can do about it but raise a ruckus. The problem is that the people in this country who have been educated in the “new” leftist government schools honestly have no idea what freedom means, and how much sacrifice is involved in keeping it.
How do you explain the concept of “freedom” to so many people who have been brainwashed into thinking that freedom can exist in the absence of facts and logic, and without blood, sweat, and tears? And especially without personal responsibility.
I have some major problems in my life at the moment, but it’s not the government’s fault, or the fault of some straw man ethnic group. My problems exist because I made some bad choices. They are my problems, and I am not busting thor’s balls to solve them for me. It’s up to me to straighten it out!. It’s not</i? the governments function, or at least shouldn’t be.
“Dumbed-down” just doesn’t cover it. The first amendment is toast, and this is one of the main reasons I can’t stand McQuackQuack. I am trying to sound like an adult here, but my perennial question is: “What the fuck is the matter with this man’s brain? Is he unable to read?”
I will hold my nose and vote for him, but only because Obama is probably the stupidest, least qualified presidential candidate in American history, I think he would make the Jimmuh Cartuh years look like a picnic. Obama is just plain not qualified or smart enough to be president. He terrifies me. He is a product of the leftists 40 year push to destroy what this country has always been about.
But, to pull this together, I really believe that the left is within spitting distance of it’s goal to make Americans so stupid that they will put these fascists in power, and they will destroy what little is left of freedom in this country.
I want to be upbeat, but just the fact that O! is the Democratic nominee (and even has a shot at winning) makes my skin crawl. In the sixties, he would have been laughed off the stage, and rightly ridiculed for even thinking that he is qualified to be president..
This isn’t the America that I knew. Or even want to know…
– TLD, take a deep breath. Mr. Barrack Hussein “I ain’t no Muslim” Obama has a looooonng way to go before he gets to paint the White house Socialist pink.
Ric,
If the fear thing is true, we could just live in commines with really wicked roller coasters, and all would be well.
What I found in communes was that I, and about two or three other people, did all the work, and the stoners would show up at dinner time asking “What time is dinner?” Sometimes they would ask: “Got any pot?”, but I don’t see a lot of difference between the two questions.
Sounds almost like welfare, doesn’t it?
Bullshit. The American remedy was found in the Civil War, which was not race based. Neither was the problem race based. Slavers just bought who was for sale, them being blacks sold by blacks.
It’s been a damned long time since American slavery needed a remedy, what with everyone who ever had any experience with it being long dead.
Oh, look. It’s thor the victim. You’re not my enemy, cupcake. You’re just a misguided asshole. I kinda pity you.
I don’t know about that, but the slavers in his family tree were on his mother’s side. Fucking typical white devil.
My family (Click) was sold out of England’s debtor’s prison, dragged to the New World and sold to work on a Virginian plantation in 1697. It was more than 60 years until the family bought their freedom.
I think that qualifies me as a descendent of slaves.
Where is the AA for ME and my daughters of pallor?
BBH,
I am beginning to think that O! doesn’t really have a chance, but it won’t be that long before someone like him will have a chance.
And that’s some scary stuff. I really do belive that my (our?) generation is the last one to actually know what “freedom” really means. From what I have seen, most of the younger people that I know really believe that the government is here to take care of people. As opposed to people taking care of themselves.
I’ve said this before, but when I was growing up, the community and the churches took care of their own. If you were poor or not well educated, you were ashamed of it, and busted your butt to change that.
Now, there is no shame, and no incentive to move along. The government and the media have made heroes out of people who have no pride, no shame, and in too many cases, no functional brain.
To me, the death of shame in this country was a watershed in our lunge to the left.
[…] Jeff Goldstein is back at Protein Wisdom and blogging about diversity (it’s called inclusion these days, Jeff, get it right): The solution thor asks for, it seems to me, is simple in theory  though of course difficult in practice: marginalize the very concept of “race,†because as it has been used in this country and elsewhere, it is and always will be bad science. Holding onto it out of some sort of habit is a brand of “conservatism†being practiced by guilty whites, Marxists, race hustlers, a permanent victim class, and opportunistic politicos looking to take advantage of coalition politics. “Race†is mythology. But it is, as we’ve learned in other contexts, a useful fiction  and one that has been milked by a variety of people with a variety of agendas for far too long. […]
Any job offers yet?
It’s a little late for me, so let em see if I’ve got it so far:
I can’t move beyond race in my personal relations because if I forget about someone’s race and treat him as I would treat another white or even my own children, I will be contantly reminded that we are, in fact different, and I will be expected to treat that person differently, for better or for worse. A post-racial society cannot start to happen in my lifetime if the proggs set the rules for racial relations in America.
My God, a cavalcade of sputtering morons. Psycho, I’ll pay heed.
That’s no way to refer to proggs, cynn.
Tolerance!
Seriously, cynn, in #80 is dicentra a sputtering moron for outlining the unintended consequences of foolish collective social policy? Who then?
My God, a cavalcade of sputtering morons.
Your God is a cavalcade of sputtering morons?
Huh.
Sputtering is pretty much all cynn brings to the game.
A little more is expected, here, cynn.
No, JHoward, I think that all things being equal, things are best in this best of all possible worlds.
The problem with AA is that it targets all whites whether they were actual slaveholding families or not. Your ancestors moved here between 1876-1882 from a country where slavery was illegal? Too bad, they were white and now you have to pay. Your family was in Union Indiana and not Confederate Louisiana? Too bad, they were white, so now you have to pay.
Pay for what, I’m not so sure. Same problem with the Reparations thing. What the hell am I paying for and WHY?
Thank you Professor Pangloss
Anyone else in need of a cynn-to-what-the-fuck translation? I know I am.
Slart
I raise my hand (I read #98 3 times and w.t.f.)
…you know, on the off chance that cynn is actually saying something intelligent. I rather doubt it, though, because intelligent people can find a way to get their point across, eventually.
I guess I’m assuming there is a point.
Think about it, won’t you?
Dicentra, you ask too much of our Thor. The best he can do is bang a black college coed. That’s how he “thinks.”
Sorry, guys. It’s been one of those incontinent bitch boss days. Mucho sorry.
Cynn, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.
Honestly, I’m sorta drunk and I still can’t figure out #98.
I hear ya. I spent the last five hours with my dad in ER. Came home to a (very) messy kitchen. So, I headed straight to the wine and PW. Breath in, breath out.
Carin
sorry to hear about your dad! good thoughts your way.
aw, I wondered why you were still up, Carin. I hope he’s okay.
Carin: I called in every last chip, spiritual and otherwise, to your benefit. God bless and protect you.
Thanks, Aldo, for the least shout out.
“I raise my hand (I read #98 3 times and w.t.f.)”
“The best of all possible worlds…”
The left’s plaintive cry for submission, I think.
And it just occurred to mr. Provacatourism reminds me of Las Vegas.
That is all.
Quit staring at cynn’s tits when she posts. It’ll help you concentrate.
So, how’s that paper on the very heart and soul of leftism coming, thor? Gotta love self-evidence: That pig practically writes itself!
Apparently still is. And for which the side thanks you.
Passing out imaginary writing assignments in your final foggy days?
Directing long streams of piss at invisible leftists is generally done by men who enjoy gripping their cocks. Little old for that, ain’t ya?
So AA is reparartions for slavery? Good. We got that overwith. Now how are we going to accomodate the downbeaten red man and yellowman that the whiteman has oppressed for so long? Where is their AA?
How’s your overcoming of your addiction coming , cynn?
“What do you not get about Jackie Robinson?”
Baseball player. A great one.
Broke the race barrier in the major leagues.
Suffered much abuse, on the field and off.
Hero.
Never looked back.
He was a good “Never looked back” Negro, my ass.
Quotes from the legendary Jackie Robinson:
“The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.”
“But if Mr. Rickey hadn’t signed me, I wouldn’t have played another year in the black league. It was too difficult. The travel was brutal. Financially, there was no reward. It took everything you make to live off.”
“But as I write these words now I cannot stand and sing the National Anthem. I have learned that I remain a black in a white world.”
“I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… all I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”
“I guess you’d call me an independent since I’ve never identified myself with one party or another in politics. I always decide my vote by taking as careful a look as I can at the actual candidates and issues themselves, no matter what the party label.”
Know of him before you pretend to speak for Jackie, the man, the legend, the gold posada!
Thor can only argue about the why for AA, as if the evils it was intended to remedy were in some doubt. What you won’t see him argue about is the effect of these policies, and the effect that this sort of policy is having on the language we use and the way that affects our thinking. My suspicion, given how many of his comments are all about his feelings is that to do so would make him too uncomfortable.
I hope we got some early round draft picks with him, because to my mind, his ability to argue the points is lacking.
Plus his outside jump shot. Non-existent.
How do you think Jackie would have felt about sub-par black athletes being given jobs in the Majors, just because they were black, thor?
the effect that this sort of policy is having on the language
I’m fairly certain payback is a bitch still means payback is a bitch.
My suspicion, given how many of his comments are all about his feelings is that to do so would make him too uncomfortable.
POETIST!
Probably the same way, B Moe, that he felt as he watched sub-par whites being given jobs in the Majors simply because they weren’t black.
So AA for you then isn’t about helping blacks as much as punishing whites.
Reminds me of Obama’s Capital Gains Tax philosophy.
Probably the same way, B Moe, that he felt as he watched sub-par whites being given jobs in the Majors simply because they weren’t black.
Bingo.
All true. And a couple of other things are worth noting, not the least of which is that Branch Rickey had just as much to do with breaking the color barrier as Jackie did. Leo Durocher and Ford Frick also played significant parts in making it happen. All three men are white.
Despite all the abuse he took, Jackie never took the bait. But abuse wasn’t all he got. In his first season with the Dodgers he won Rookie of the Year honors from the white men responsible for making that selection. In his third season he was voted the league’s MVP, again by white men. By his fourth season, he had become the highest paid player in Dodger history, that salary being paid by a white man, not because Jackie was black, but because he was one hell of a ballplayer. He was a 6 time All Star, again voted in by white men.
Jackie faced many challenges and he met them. He rose above race and he excelled on his merit. He proved that a black man can make it big in America. He proved that America is a land of opportunity for all and that if you persevere you can succeed, no matter the color of your skin.
What do you not get about Jackie Robinson, thor?
He died when I was 2 years old. By then, he’d been in the Baseball Hall of Fame for a decade. His nine-year career in Major League baseball was over before my oldest brother — 12 years older than myself — was even born.
So why are you acting like it just happened? When does history become history, rather than a weight to hang around the necks of people who weren’t there?
No, but you do it anyway.
I’m fairly certain payback is a bitch still means payback is a bitch.
To be payback you have to target correctly. Would you like someone to send you a dictionary thor, because you seem confused by the meaning of words.
A practice that ended long ago. So why the fuck should people born long after its end be punished for it?
“I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… all I ask is that you respect me as a human being.â€Â
Case proved, thor.
Hey, did you guys know that there’s a black guy with a 50/50 shot at becoming the President of the United States? True fact. In fact, most places lay the odds at a little better than that.
But what does that matter, when the wind whispers about being whipped?
Hey, did you guys know that there’s a black guy with a 50/50 shot at becoming the President of the United States?
Not a chance after this bombshell drops.
Heh.
OMFG! I just peed myself. Thanks, Lisa! That is genius.
Right there it is, boys: Muslem as all Hell.
lmao.
Thor:
I get the why about AA, I even agree with the sentiment behind it. However, we’re 30+ years into the program, and something that was designed as a single generational shift has not produced the results that could have been expected in that time. At what point do we examine the program itself as problematic? In another ten years, fifty years, hundred years?
I’d suspect that the fact that any government policy to enforce coddling of a segment of society kinda softens up that part of society. Course, I’m the sort that believes competition is a good thing and something of a necessity of human nature. I suppose if I were a totalitarian sort, I might try to enforce the coddliness to try to keep everyone else soft. Easier to control that way, yaknow.
“Captivatingly Kenyan”
Bwaa HaHa! Nice pickup. Lisa!
I dunno Lisa, that looks like something that
Hillarythe VRWC mighta faked. I mean I want to believe, but I’ve been burned by African government officials so many times on the internet that I’m wary.thor
if you think all bond slaves were “voluntary”, then you’re as myopic on this topic as any other.
For the umpteenth time… I am the descendent of slaves … INVOLUNTARY bond slaves.
And you know, I love, not resent, being an American, even if my family was indentured for over 60 years.
I don’t get that you think white people should have a medal pinned on their chest for letting Jackie Robinson finally get to play in the Majors.
Your intellectual cowardice is another thing I don’t get.
Jackie Robinson didn’t need to get an MVP award to know he was the best baseball player in America. He freakin’ knew that before he got to the Majors, as did every black man in America. Jackie Robinson should have never been barred from the Majors in the first place, should have never been playing in a Negro league to begin with. He should have been the highest paid player long before he actually was the highest paid player. Is that obviousness an affront to your delicate perfect-world Christian/Judaic sensibilities?
And yet you remain willfully ignorant in trying to make Jackie Ronbinson a symbol of white American righteousness. “Fuck You,” if I may borrow the phrase from Rob Crawford.
Jackie Robinson didn’t need to get an MVP award to know he was the best baseball player in America. He freakin’ knew that before he got to the Majors, as did every black man in America.
More bullshit, thor. Read some about a gentleman named Satchel Paige, and then explain to me how your comment at 127 doesn’t completely destroy the concept of affirmative action.
If you can get your emotions under control enough to actually reason something out. It must be a burden to feel so very deeply.
Spreading the beatdown on defanged wingers is a delicacy in many cultures.
That delusion is so delicious you should bottle it and sell it thor. It’s bound to prove a better escape from reality than any drug on the market today.
Thor do you put one of those torture devices around your leg like in the Da Vinci Code so you can feel the pain of Jesus?
Thor
The longer AA has lasted, the more it has become a tool of racist Leftists … people who deep down believe blacks just aren’t as good as whites and therefore need the Blessed and Benevolent Hand of Their Superiors to “boost” them up. And as a great “twofer”, Leftists then expect the humbled and grateful Black to be their fodder in the culture war to beat down Evil Running Dog Capitalists and Mythical Merit-based Ideology.
You don’t get it because I never said it, fool.
That’s your incoherence shining through. Why don’t you tell us about something you actually have a grip on, like your dick?
But he got one anyway, and it told America that he was the best ballplayer in the league. Of course Jackie already knew it.
Right, because they were all watching ESPN in 1947. Fool.
And Rocky should have beat Apollo Creed the first time around.
No, I embrace the fact that he persevered and reached the top. I don’t see a perfect America, nor do I see a completely fucked up America. that binary business is your schtick. Well, that and the incoherent ranting.
While you fashion him as a slave in chains. But he wasn’t that, ever. And for a time, he was the undisputed king of his profession here in America, land that you hate. Fuck you too, fool.
Mmmm…tastes like watermelon.
Who said that?
No, it’s not. And, yes, he should never have been kept out of the Major Leagues simply because of the color of his skin. But people finally came to their senses and hired him, 61 years ago.
Do you understand that? 61 years ago. Anyone of voting age then is retired now. Most of the people alive in the US now weren’t even born then.
It’s history. A shameful part of history, but it’s history. Clinging onto it and demanding people who weren’t involved be punished will just make things worse.
Minor quibble, Rob. 61 years ago was when the situation was corrected. Aside from that, spot on.
Good point, Pablo.
Remember when you were 10 and you stole that pack of gum from the store and your mom caught you and made you take it back and apologize to the manager? I bet you though that was the end of that. It wasn’t. It turns out the only way to ensure that crime was duly paid for is to wait until 14 years after you are dead and then go punch Gordon Jones of 124 East Frank st, Lansing MI in the balls.
“I’m fairly certain payback is a bitch still means payback is a bitch.”
thor –
And just what the fuck is it that I did to anybody that I have to pay them back for?
Your Sunday suit looks real nice, but I certainly don’t want to be seen in public with you.
In any case, quite beside the point of AA is the idea that we have a society that is teaching entire generations of young people that only those with “power” can be racist. I’m sure that will end well for all that are involved.
That is the question, when is AA no longer necessary. Obama is already calling for it to be based on economic class and not solely race.
I’m putting the beatdown on the denialists and so-what’ers who think AA is just some Leftist wet-dream of forced universality. AA is what it is because even where laws and protections didn’t exist, black were denied. In other words Jackie Robinson had no constitutional right to play in the Majors, but America allowed a system based on race to dictate and limit so many opportunities. We shouldn’t deny it. We shouldn’t deny that had they been protected from such discrimination that they would have acquired the wealth necessary to send their deserving kids to Harvard, to pass that wealth down through their future generations.
We sytematically fucked ’em economically far more than any other group, and that handicapped ’em going forward, and for generations to come. That’s the logic.
This has nothing to do with your great, great, great, great Irish uncles. Everyone got a taste of the shit sandwich, no denying that. But we can adjust things for awhile until blacks can get economically unfucked.
AA is not helping blacks get unfucked.
You know what does help them, though? Hard work. Perseverance. Setting goals and pursuing them.
Strangely enough, the same things that help everybody else raise their economic stature help blacks do it too. Whoda thunk that the world would work the same way for them as it does for everyone else?
Some black peoples need affirmative actions more than others. For real the ones that need it should aspire to be the ones what don’t need it I think. I feel sorry for people that need affirmative actions.
You’re implication is blacks need to work hard and persevere, set goals and sit upright and the dinner table.
Meaning you’re denying that blacks already do that and did that.
Obama did what to Hillary Clinton? How?
Baracky made Hillary Clinton cry. You know he did, even if she never showed it.
Alicia Sacramone needs a lovely parting gift I think.
You’re implication is blacks need to work hard and persevere, set goals and sit upright and the dinner table.
That only works when you looks the lens that everyone of us is racist. Thor. Because, blacks that work hard and persevere DO succeed. And, the once that drop out of high school to sell drugs (24% graduation rate in Detroit) don’t do so great. Of course, Detroit white male graduation rate is 17%.
Because of the HATE.
Ok, I don’t think anybody’s picked it up, so I’ll ask:
If the original problem one set out to correct was based on singling out people based on their “race” (despite the fact that it has no substantive basis), then wouldn’t you go about redressing that problem by selecting that same set of people using a similar tool? Of course it is approximate, but it’s a rule of thumb.
Past that, given the idea that even if we aren’t doing anything bad now, if one had a situation in which arbitrary group X were forbidden from, let’s say, learning to read, then wouldn’t it take a bit more than just saying “Well, go ahead and be smart and educated” to actually get them up to some sort of reasonably passable starting point. This isn’t to say that they all have to do well, but rather the extent to which we want to penalize the children of parents with low educational attainment when that attainment can be traced back to a proximate societal ban on high educational attainment by that group?
Actually, I was staring at your tits, thor. Really, you should be wearing some sort of foundation garment.
You do realize that if you were to change AA to encompass economic factors then we would just be setting up a massive government system of control and mandated redistribution of wealth that would never end? In no future will everyone make the same amount of money and come from the same economic class. That is just never going to happen. Other unintended consequences are that this would greatly reenforce class envy and hatred, something the left has been pushing for years. AA that would factor the household earning of your parents would be a socialists wet dream.
Everyone would have an “unequal” shot at jobs and colleges, due to what economic classes the government dictated them into. Think about parents trying to send their kids to college as an example. Would they deliberatly take jobs making less money, or find a way to make money off the books, just so they could get their kids into nice colleges and jobs. If Harvard is 100 grand a year lets say, why would someone making 100 grand a year not want to take a job paying 50k a year but then not have to cover his childrens college or have him get accepted with lesser test scores? Would these economic factors be decided by the standard income of where you lived? Well wouldn’t that provide incentives for citizens to move back to cities, or away from them depending on how the government dicted their economic status? I do not think proponents of economic based AA are actually examining what the effects will be.
Interesting. Who are those people, and where are they? Because I can’t see anyone here denying that Jim Crow existed.
Honestly, it looks like you’re “putting the beat-down” on people who exist solely in your imagination. Again.
No, I said it works when they do it, which indicates that they have done it. In fact, I just spent some time pointing out that Jackie Robinson did it. Wake up, fool.
Give ’em credit for seeing that a Detroit ISD education ain’t worth shit. Ha.
Seeing as you might agree with Jeff, that race is a false marker, sounds like you need to start convincing some of your fellow humans that an education is worth working toward. You’re part of the community are you not? It takes a village, ha!
And since you love bagging on Barack, I don’t see you as one who applauds his choice to pursue an education to the highest level.
thor is putting the beatdown on a whole army of strawmen. When he dies, he’ll doubtless be the subject of many a drinking song in Valhalla.
College-educated blacks aren’t exactly unusual anymore. Haven’t been for decades.
That you think they are says a lot about you.
ITYM “Strawhalla”.
Funny thing how my veterans preferences count as less points toward a government job than being born of certain parents. That always makes me smile when I think about it.
That I help them Haitians and Africans appreciate poetry, as well as help them with their resumes says a lot more about me.
It’s all in mi ridd’m, live and direct.
Yes, all the blacks need to go get fancy college educations so they can become successful and then promptly denounced as “affirmative action candidates” by emotionally disturbed people like Andrew Schlafly, who himself would have zero visibility if it weren’t for his mommy.
I don’t remember a lot of talk from the conservatives about the problem with Bush being a “legacy candidate.” Incidentally, the Democrats weren’t all too worried about Gore being a legacy candidate, either.
So much in common! Unity ’08!
Strawhalla is definitely getting stolen, Rob.
That’s nice, Barrette. Why don’t you go talk to Schlafly if you have a beef with him?
No problem, Slart. If I see it elsewhere, it’ll just make me smile.
I’m sure you’ve got a point in there, Barrett. Good on ‘ya!
“I’m sure you’ve got a point in there, Barrett. Good on ‘ya!”
Likewise, I’m sure that this was a very clever thing for you to write!
Likewise!
10 Lather, rinse.
Goto 10
“Why don’t you go talk to Schlafly if you have a beef with him?”
Don’t want to interrupt the breastfeeding. I’m very polite.
Give ‘em credit for seeing that a Detroit ISD education ain’t worth shit. Ha.
I’ll give them no such thing. They drop out so they can sell drugs and break into houses during the day (while people are at work.) Oh, and they “hang out”. Education takes EFFORT. Detroit does have magnet schools and what not, but even in the crappiest of crap Detroit schools you can learn the basics.
Seeing as you might agree with Jeff, that race is a false marker, sounds like you need to start convincing some of your fellow humans that an education is worth working toward. You’re part of the community are you not? It takes a village, ha!
Yes, I’d love to start lecturing parents about the importance of their child’s education- and how THEIR ROLE is more important than the teacher’s. And, how they need to enforce rules at home that insure success in their kids. And, that the greatest thing they could do is get married – and raise a child together … Of course, they may call me a busybody, but if you think it will work, thor …. I’m all for this village thing.
And since you love bagging on Barack, I don’t see you as one who applauds his choice to pursue an education to the highest level.
Sure, bagging on O! is a bit of a hobby. I get my kicks where I can. If you’re making some sort of racial comment about whether or not I believe blacks should peruse higher education, I think you’re looking for nishi for that discussion. But, if you want my opinion, I would say that I think urban blacks do have a problem with an “all or nothing” mentality regarding education – and I think this is an after-affect of all the racial bullshit. The numbers show that they either drop completely out, or push for college. My husband hires working class types – truck drivers, warehouse laborers- but high school graduates. You know how many black men apply for jobs with him?? You know how many have worked out? Zero. He hired one black person, and by the second day they said the work was too hard and left.
In all the years of having work done to my house – simply pulling out the yellow pages and using whoever served locally – how many black, blue-collar workers showed up at my house? I think ONE plumber was black. And, I had a lot of plumbing work done to my house. Oye.
thor’s hammer in #117, so, how’s that paper on the very heart and soul of leftism (still) coming?
Right back at you. Fraud. Your intellectual cowardice is a thing I get. Poseur. Liar.
So, how’s that paper on the very heart and soul of leftism coming? Fraud. Maybe just copy/past the Manifesto. thor The Evader.
Oh, and I left out how many apply – hardly any. At least not serious ones. I screened applications for him once, and the majority were OBVIOUSLY the non-serious, I gotta do this for my unemployment-check stuff.
Come on thor, write something of substance, just once. Give it a whirl. Go all philosophical. It’s not as hard as it (evidently) looks.
The first step is always to ditch the ego.
How’s your dissertation on the sexual deviance of R-wingers coming along?
You’re weird, dude.
“10 Lather, rinse.
Goto 10”
Can you redo this in Python? It’ll save me a lot of work.
Aw, thor. Defeat suits you.
Actually, Barney Frank probably suits you, but you get my drift.
Possibly.
thor, never forget that the longest journey (to Utopia) begins with a single step.
Having trouble picking a retort, there, Comrade Howard?
Let’s get you started, thor:
I hear Obama has this huge airplane…
Ok, so I’m not sure I necessarily buy all of Jeff’s point on race:
If the original problem one set out to correct was based on singling out people based on their “race†(despite the fact that the concept has no substantive basis), then wouldn’t you go about redressing that problem by selecting that same set of people using a similar tool? Of course it is approximate, but it’s a rule of thumb. But what other mechanisms would be good choices for finding the folks who are put (at least theoretically) at some lingering disadvantage?
With possibilities the mind, it reels, BB. I could do this all day.
Done. You’re welcome. But you’re no John Cleese.
Do you have a point, Barrett? Or are you just being an ass again?
Check it out, thor:
Me, I’m kinda liking numbers five and ten, but there’s so much to choose from. Check out that trio in 7-9. Imagination! And that #2 and 3. Yeah baby!
Actually, my question was not when is AA no longer necessary, my question was more along the lines of, “When is it okay to question whether AA is failing at its goal of achieving statistical equality between disparate racial groups?” because that answer seems to be “Shut up, racist.”
“Done. You’re welcome.”
Wow, I walked right the fuck into that one, didn’t I? Consider me suitably chastened.
“Do you have a point, Barrett? Or are you just being an ass again?”
Both.
BRD,
“…If the original problem one set out to correct was based on singling out people based on their “race†(despite the fact that the concept has no substantive basis), then wouldn’t you go about redressing that problem by selecting that same set of people using a similar tool?…”
Doesn’t this amount to smuggling the discredited concept along with the “problem”? If the “problem” is definitionaly corrupted by the false concept, wouldn’t we want to re-examine the “problem”?
The disadvantages that are most correctable through social intervention are financial, though those aren’t exclusive to any ethnic group. What works is to offer assistance based on a combination of need and merit. Pigmentation is irrelevant, and handouts based solely on it or on attempting to create some perfect diversity of pigmentation are counterproductive.
That libercontarianism works. Something.
Damn.
Typing faster than I ought to, again.
The first tool you need in your kit to get a gauge on what a Vintage Guitar is worth is to get the 2008 Official Vintage Guitar Magazine Price Guide.
“The first tool you need in your kit to get a gauge on what a Vintage Guitar is worth is to get the 2008 Official Vintage Guitar Magazine Price Guide.”
Typical reactionary tripe. I hereby denounce you as a fascist, Mr. Guitar.
But what other mechanisms would be good choices for finding the folks who are put (at least theoretically)
Umh .. how about “ugly fat women”? Or short, prematurely balding men?
Pablo,
Mr. Pink touches on a problem with that here
Sdferr, with respect to smuggling the problem, I would tend to think of it more along the lines of a class action lawsuit, and the mechanism for determining who is eligible.
Slart, the argument here being that this was not just any sort of wuss-grade discrimination, but something that we have a tangible benchmark for – legislation and regulation.
Listen, thos, take your guilty whitemans bullshit and stick up your ass, you fucking greivance monger.
Thor do the Africans that you teach to read poetry ever look at you, with their eyes full of past suffering and pain, and say “Thank you”? I would hope that they would.
“…Sdferr, with respect to smuggling the problem, I would tend to think of it more along the lines of a class action lawsuit, and the mechanism for determining who is eligible. …”
Will you expand upon this theme BRD? I take it you don’t mean this in a metaphorical sense, but rather in a real world practical exercise of the power of citizens to bring suit. Would you sketch the outlines of the wrong as you think the plaintiffs would do and their proposed remedy?
“Jackie Robinson should have never been barred from the Majors in the first place, should have never been playing in a Negro league to begin with.”
Wow, thor finally gets a whiff of a hint of a scent of a Clueâ„¢.
“I’m putting the beatdown on the denialists and so-what’ers who think AA is just some Leftist wet-dream of forced universality.”
Cancel my previous post.
BRD, if it were done strictly on an economic basis, that would a definite problem. The world is always going to have poor people and many of them are going to be not very bright. Some folks are not destined for greatness and the world is always going to need menial laborers.
By incorporating merit (demonstrated ability and determination/willingness to work) you can get to a place where those who would excel if not for their economic status can get a hand up and fulfill their potential which is a benefit both to the individual and to society.
For the record, I’m not necessarily advocating this as I don’t think it’s the government’s business, but if you’re looking to level the playing field in an effective fashion, that makes as much or more sense than anything else I can think of.
Sdferr,
I am not going to tackle the entire thing all in one fell swoop, and as a caveat, I’m simply exploring this solution space to see if there is an interesting kernel here – I don’t know that this is a way to go.
But to start, how do you determine eligibility for a class-action suit? I’m not a lawyer, so this is a lot of guesswork on my part, but I think you basically identify some group of people that has been tangibly wronged. Kind of like absetos or implant calss-action lawsuits.
In this particular case, I think the assertion would be that X many generations ago, an event (or series of events) occurred that had a lasting multi-generation impact. Given statistics about the effect of parent’s educational attainment on the achievements of their children, one could make a case that it is a problem that gets handed down from generation to generation.
I’m not sure of good ways to attempt redress, but I’m just thinking out loud here.
Or – to map it on to a approximately similar problem, what if a given group of people, let’s say frequent drinkers of Mountain Dew, all suffered irreparable genetic damage that was undetected at the time. Several generations later, the reason that there is a whole cadre of Mountain Dew drinking idiots comes to light. How do you tackle this?
BRD
Does Government have a legitimate interest in “leveling the playing field” to begin with Pablo? How did that idea insinuate itself into our political discourse to begin with?
Sdferr, there is also the issue of a statute of limitations involved in a civil lawsuit. Usually, this is less than ten years.
How long is the statute of limitations on racial grievances? Anyone asked the greeks how they feel about turks lately?
Catholics weren’t discriminated against in a minor way, nor were Huguenots. Sometimes they persecuted each other, which looks to be similar to thor’s solution.
Addendum to #218: I also wouldn’t see such assistance as an ongoing thing in any given case, and I wouldn’t consider using universal outcomes as any sort of measure. The people who would be beneficiaries of the program I envision wouldn’t want or need that. They’d get some help getting into the race, but it would be up to them to sink or swim.
Basically, it would make it easier for someone of a lower class to propel themselves into a higher one, but it would be on them to stay there once they’d gotten such help. I’m seeing a “Teach a man to fish” sort of thing, and if that man can’t bring himself to drop a line in the water, then to hell with him.
“Comment by Barrett Brown on 8/13 @ 9:58 am #
“The first tool you need in your kit to get a gauge on what a Vintage Guitar is worth is to get the 2008 Official Vintage Guitar Magazine Price Guide.â€Â
Typical reactionary tripe. I hereby denounce you as a fascist, Mr. Guitar.”
Guitars are leftists?
Who knew?
In terms of levelling the playing field, it does matter whether or not you mean equalizing things at the finish line or starting line or even being able to run on the same track as the other athletes. One might be able to make an argument that putting all the runners on the same field is part of securing an inalienable right, such as the pursuit of happiness. But this is all corner bar barristry on my part.
By incorporating merit (demonstrated ability and determination/willingness to work) you can get to a place where those who would excel if not for their economic status can get a hand up and fulfill their potential which is a benefit both to the individual and to society.
If you work hard and are reasonably intelligent in this country you WILL excel. Maybe this might be just my opinion but I do believe that to be a fact, except in the cases of catastrophic illness or injury. If someone can show me where I am wrong I will gladly eat my words.
You’re implication is blacks need to work hard and persevere, set goals and sit upright and the dinner table.
Meaning you’re denying that blacks already do that and did that.
Word. That always annoys me when people say that – the implication being that black folk are fucking around waiting for someone to helpfully suggest that they get to work.
(goes back to her afternoon nap – JD, bring me my peeled grapes please)
BRD,
But then who do you sue?
You sue PepsiCo.
Sdferr,
Good questions. My answer to the first is no, being an Originalist. But I understand that this is probably a minority view and if we’re determined to do something it ought to at least be something that will produce the intended benefit. I think the answer to the second is with FDR.
I understand your attempts as a good faith effort BRD to get a handle on the “problem” and wouldn’t presume to hold you to a detailed and comprehensive ennuciation of same.
Just to be sure we are in agreement, you are aiming at the “problem” Affirmative Action has been seeking to solve, yes? I am not a historian and frankly don’t know what the mechanism for taking this problem on was, nor its justification at the time. It was all well intended, I’d be willing to grant,(but coming), but could it have been an over-reach of Government?
The only person here who has said that is the guy you just quoted, Lisa.
I like this, fromt NRO’s The Corner:
“Inside the Obama Bunker [Ramesh Ponnuru]
According to John Heilemann, Obama isn’t doing better because of white racism. Using “anti-affirmative action lingo” is racist. Obama needs to reprise his “superb race speech in March in Philadelphia.” And what the country really needsâ€â€is to have a “conversation” about race. Reading the piece, I began to see the outlines of a grand cross-ideological bargain: Conservatives get to deny Obama the presidency, and in return liberals get to call their fellow citizens racists for the next twenty years. I’ll take the deal. “
I suppose it bears mentioning that the government already has a program that does basically what I’m talking about above and it has the added attraction of deriving a direct benefit from those it helps up.
Sdferr,
Most of the time, I am of the “Life Sucks, Get a Helmet” school of constitutional interpretation. I personally don’t think that there is any good practical way to tackle the first order problem of AA, however, there is some hope of tackling the second order problem – which is that of extending the lifespan of racial/ethnic grievances (see also ‘Balkans, The’).
The thing that prompted me to speak up in this case, was the possibility that ‘race-based’ anything might be a bad idea, but still might be a valuable tool in tackling this specific grievance.
BRD
Just as long as they are aware who it is they are calling racist. It would be the liberals (who would have failed to support Obama to the necessary degree) and moderates.
Thanks for your last Pablo. I wonder if when you propose “…if we’re determined to do something it ought to at least be something that will produce the intended benefit. …” you haven’t already ceded the field to what we may later (under the premise of Jeff’s post, already now) determine to be a false category or class, again carrying surreptitiously along with the “problem” an empty concept and hence prolonging the illusion we set out to eliminate?
Your last=228, sorry.
And how did we get to the point where the evidence of bureaucracies and industries that intentionally sprang up to immerse themselves in the unintended consequences of social policy must be pushed aside? Approved narratives maybe?
Yet one can probably argue as strong a case against the real damage caused by any social program as for its presumed successes.
Sdferr, a couple of things. The “class” I refer to could reasonably be called the “gifted poor”, and they do exist. A more leftward sort would remove the “gifted qualifier” and replace it with “oppressed” of some sort. But then the question of whose responsibility they are remains which ever way you slice it. I wouldn’t say I’m ceding the field, I’d say that I’m recognizing that the field has long ago been taken and plotting to reclaim it the same way it was taken, incrementally. Class is real and always will be. Race is truly irrelevant and God willing, we’ll all soon recognize that.
“Conservatives get to deny Obama the presidency, and in return liberals get to call their fellow citizens racists for the next twenty years. I’ll take the deal.”
Do conservatives still get to call liberals fascists? You ought to keep the diplomatic channels open so that this can be worked out. We don’t want one side jumping the gun and setting off the most disingenuous blogo-war in history.
If liberals still get to call Conservatives fascists, I don’t see why not.
the motto is E Pluribus Unum …out of many, one ….rather than diversity’s motto …out of one, many.
Slartibartfast wrote:
The “beatdown” looks more like that scene from Spaceballs when Dark Helmet is acting out his fantasies with his private Spaceballs: The Action Figure set. Sadly, Colonel Sanders hasn’t rudely interrupted thor’s playtime yet.
Otherwise, I think “thor” picked the wrong Norse god for a moniker. “Loki” appears to be a much better match.
“If liberals still get to call Conservatives fascists, I don’t see why not.”
This can be one of the six points to be discussed at the big e-conference. A compromise can probably be worked out whereby both sides get to point out that the other side is keen on a particular sort of statism but not others, and that people who are actually concerned with human liberty ought not to trust people who downplay their preferred party’s tendency towards statism, and you’ll both be right for once. Then you can kiss and it will be all gay and stuff.
Class is real and always will be. Race is truly irrelevant and God willing, we’ll all soon recognize that.
Except for communists, right? They make the classes disappear.
On the serious side, social problems that are pigeonholed into “racial” issues more accurately can be described as issues of class complicated by race.Inner city whites end up with pretty much the same problems as inner city blacks.
“On the serious side, social problems that are pigeonholed into “racial†issues more accurately can be described as issues of class complicated by race.”
Most reasonable thing I’ve heard all day.
Who is this “you” you speak of, Barrett? Didn’t you chastise someone for making a similar assumption here a few days back?
Patrick,
You might be thinking of the Norse god “Dorki”
BRD
“…I’d say that I’m recognizing that the field has long ago been taken and plotting to reclaim it the same way it was taken, incrementally…”
I think you are quite right to refer to what you (we) understand as the current state of affairs as yet another problem to be solved. Whether it ought to done by “plotting” and in particular mirroring the way it was brought about to begin with, I’m not so sure. I mean, it might be that the best way to go about the change we wish to see involves an indirection even we don’t see clearly from the beginning, like say the idea Jeff has proposed in his post or way more generally put, eliminating conceptual falsehoods under which we ordinarily operate.
Yeah, I’m Loki.
Dorki, the God of fuckwittery. I like it.
“Didn’t you chastise someone for making a similar assumption here a few days back?”
No.
To that end, removing the falsehood of race and replacing it with the reality of merit would be a move in the right direction.
Yes, “replacing it with the reality of merit” yes again yes. But how is merit to be determined? Are we willing to say something as radical as “evolutionarily”? Who’s doing the determining? How about “no-one” as a positive answer? No-one (nobody, Odysseus’ name to Polyphemos). Sneaky bastard Odysseus.
“Do conservatives still get to call liberals fascists?”
Sure.
Because they are.
In mulling this over a bit more, it would seem that the bigger problems with AA are actually tied to implementation. The validity of the concept of race doesn’t (at least to my mind) key to whether or not it is a useful or meaningful approach.
Or, as Jonah put it, “Champions of liberty get called fascists by champions of statism”
The irony, it burn, it burns.
To Pablo in #252, just wait until a Dem Congress — and all it’s legions of social activists — sets about defining “merit”…
“sets about defining “meritâ€Â…”
Yeah, they’ll probably write books with titles like The Book of Merit and The Children’s Book of Merit and then gamble away all the royalties. Silly Democrats.
Hobby horse makes for some sweet sweet dressage alright.
“Yeah, they’ll probably write books with titles like The Book of Merit and The Children’s Book of Merit and then gamble away all the royalties. Silly Democrats.”
But they’ll use other peoples money to gamble with, not their own.
“Hobby horse makes for some sweet sweet dressage alright.”
Well, let’s define our terms here.
“But they’ll use other peoples money to gamble with, not their own.”
Whereas Bennett only used other people’s money to lock those other people up for consensual “crimes.” Huzzah!
…..to continue…..
which is the difference between a conservative and a reactionary leftist.
Barrett’s apparently decided to strive for the minimum-effort approach to blog comments. It’s not really a minimum effort yet, though; that would entail no participation at all. I personally would like to cheer him in one direction or another, so that we get get either more thoughtful comments, or none at all.
Performance. We do that all the time now, including in areas such as college admissions/scholarships. Of course, we also use some foolish factors in those things, like race, but we have some good measures. Academic performance, athletics, entrepreneurship, independent study, internship, invention. We also do it in the workplace, though not as much as we used to for fear of discrimination suits. Favoritism has become a dirty word, but it shouldn’t be if it’s based on merit. I favor the guy who works his ass off for me and does a good job over the lazy slug who doesn’t give a shit.
“Whereas Bennett only used other people’s money to lock those other people up for consensual “crimes.†Huzzah!”
Take it up with Congress.
Idiot.
Okay so I was talking to a guy on the train who is an Orthodox Jew from Great Britain (he is new on campus – nice guy). He was interested in why we are so defensive as a nation about discussing the African Diaspora. He is an archivist and professor who says he once taught classes on the Jewish Diaspora at Gratz. He expressed how deeply offended he would be if someone told him he should just put the history of the Jews behind him and move on (which would suck being that his job is to catalogue, dissect, and study the letters and documents relevant to the history of the Jews). I really didn’t know what to say to that. What is up with that anyway?
Bill Bennett’s book compiled stories of virtue. He aspires to it. It didn’t say he epitomized it.
Yes, yes they do.
My best ever was a girl named Alexandra. Haitian, beautifully squatty, large eyes and a quite smile.
I was asked ever so politely, because if she was anything she was polite to a fault, to help her write a very important prospect letter and resume to send to a company that had formerly employed her as an unpaid intern. Her dad probably worked as grave digger, her Mom had died, and her sisters were all much younger. If you’re familiar with the cadence of patois and its syllabic flow then you can probably guess how her original letter read. “I wish for the day to be the good person for you. The award you give me for intern who trying the hardest make my sister and father cry, etc…” I still have that letter and I certainly don’t do it justice in mimicking it, but it’s on an old computer.
Alexandra’s letter was corrected for grammar and a little of this and that. But I broke the rules, ya mon, none of the “at your earliest convenience” shit did I add. Her letter was exactly her. Most honest letter I’ve ever read, as in a letter meant to ask for an interview.
Of course she got the interview, and the job. Her college education and a job as a financial analyst meant more to her than I care to reveal, other than poverty would no longer be in her future. And no, she wasn’t a brilliant student, she was just a kid who was much nicer than life, in general, was to her.
Merit=the square root of the color of your skin (S) multiplied by the combined income of your parents (I) divided by the median income of your zip code (Z) plus 1.
Merit = SxI
___
Z
“Favoritism has become a dirty word, but it shouldn’t be if it’s based on merit.”
Lucianne Goldberg’s site Lucianne.com is one of the best news portals on the web.
In the early days, someone complained (whether tounge-in-cheek or not was hard to say) about someone posting a link to a piece by Jonah Goldberg, her son. Her reply: “It ain’t nepotism if it’s your Nep.”
“Barrett’s apparently decided to strive for the minimum-effort approach to blog comments. It’s not really a minimum effort yet, though; that would entail no participation at all. I personally would like to cheer him in one direction or another, so that we get get either more thoughtful comments, or none at all.”
I look forward to seeing you admonish your comrades here for writing comments that consist only of taunts.
I’ve got no problem discussing it, Lisa. I do tend to get annoyed with people who blame me, personally for things that happened a century and a half ago. Why does that make folks so uncomfortable, that I hold myself blameless for something I did not do?
Oh, and Whip Inflation Now! Woo Hoo!
Comment by Barrett Brown on 8/13 @ 11:38 am #
But it’s so easy.
I’m interested in how he arrived at the conclusion that we are defensive about discussing slavery. Honestly, how much MORE discussing should we be doing? I home school, so I’m sure my children hear less of it than the kids at school, but they’ve read about it endlessly. We even have a museum dedicated to it (basically) in Detroit.
I find this line of thinking interesting. There are many subjects which school children are TOTALLY and completely ignorant (like the crimes of communism), yet the “discussion” is why we don’t talk about slavery as much. There ARE actual things we don’t discuss.
/rant off.
I admonish who I please, when I please. I am not an equal opportunity admonisher.
“I am not an equal opportunity admonisher.”
Most people aren’t.
On the serious side, social problems that are pigeonholed into “racial†issues more accurately can be described as issues of class complicated by race.Inner city whites end up with pretty much the same problems as inner city blacks.
True. Unfortunately, people under pressure tend to look over and try to figure out whose fault it is that they are under this tremendous pressure. Their ire usually lights on the lazy, shiftless, resource-hogging, traitorous, dangerous [insert convenient group here].
Since humans have been at that kind of shit for as long as their have been groups of people doing their hair differently than others – and getting persecuted for it – I don’t have any hope that we will ever “realize that we are all the same”. I think we will just move on to some other group that annoys us more.
But who blames you personally? I have yet to see anyone blaming anyone for slavery yet the minute that it comes up everyone covers their titties and says “I didn’t do it!!! Leave me alone! Shut up!”
You claim to be better than us, so show the way.
Spend some time in the military. Skin color loses all the meaning it doesn’t have in the first place pretty quickly. Of course people pretty much dress the same and do their hair the same too.
I don’t have any hope that we will ever “realize that we are all the sameâ€Â
It doesn’t help that the government and other institutions actually classify us as different. Get rid of that and there is a chance.
Carin but the lovely professor was wondering why no one complains about the devotion (which,obviously he supports) that we allow to the Holocaust – museums, books, diaries, movies….he just wondered why we are so hesitant to full throatedly devote ourselves to the African American Diaspora in a similar fashion – without the reluctance and resentment.
It was an interesting perspective.
And another in Cincinnati.
everyone covers their titties and says
I only cover my titties when I catch men staring.
Well, my dad was in the military for 42 years. He entered when it was one branch and still segregated. The military did the right thing before anyone else. But at one time they made embarassing racial distinctions too.
LOL Carin.
I don’t believe I would disagree with you on successful performance as a basis for judging merit, Pablo, but then we will have both begged the question, won’t we? What gets to be counted as merit? Excellence, we answer! uh-oh.
The problem, it seems to me, poses one interest against another, if only because there is always someone deciding (carrying along with him his own interest) and someone being decided upon (having another personal interest possibly, but not necessarily, at odds with the decision maker).
Wasn’t it last thread where someone, I forget her name, spoke of white people rioting and killing minorities, in a recent thread? I think that someone was you, Lisa.
I think I’m one of “white people”, Lisa.
Oh, and sometimes those minorities are also white people. Probably they too are titty-covering.
I promise to only glance furtively, Carin.
“You claim to be better than us, so show the way.”
Eat plenty of fruit and take fish oil pills. Make sure you’re also eating enough protein-rich foods like tuna. Basically, if you live on a diet that consists largely of bananas and tuna fish sandwiches, you’ll pretty much live forever.
he just wondered why we are so hesitant to full throatedly devote ourselves to the African American Diaspora in a similar fashion – without the reluctance and resentment.
I would say that we devote ourselves rather full-throatedly as it is, but so often discussions of slavery is accompanied by it’s little friend “the evil white man.” You wanna see people NOT talk about Nazi history? Go to Germany. They didn’t talk about that for decades over there. I’ve never had my German mil speak ONE word about it, and her parents lived through it. They don’t talk about it.
Regardless, there are more stories in life besides those of jews in Germany and blacks on a plantation. If I do a search, how many titles of books and movies do you think I would find? The question I have isn’t why don’t we hear about them MORE, but why there are so many tragic pages from history that we actually – you know- NEVER hear about.
Who doesn’t know some of the intimate stories of slavery? This isn’t a hidden history.
Lisa
Out of curiosity, what would a full throated devotion of the African American Diaspora be like?
I promise to only glance furtively, Carin.
As long as you’re subtle. I swear, at the gym the other day … oye. I’m 40 years old, but I think I was blushing like a school girl.
Lisa,
There is one article I ran across years ago that I thought was pretty thought provoking and has some bearing on the subject here. It’s by a Person-of-Prominent-Pigmentation but the basic ideas seem to ring reasonably true. Thoughts?
Regards,
BRD
Slart, so if I say something about a historic even involving white people killing folks, you take offense? Come on. If I took offense every time someone said something negative about black folks, I would have exploded into a million tiny particles from being in that Deep and Perpetually Offended State. I don’t think I go one day without someone expressing some really negative stereotype about black people. Most of it I ignore. Sometimes I say something. But I sure as hell don’t spend a lot of time taking it personally.
You people (wink) just aren’t used to the shoe being on the other foot so you are inordinantly sensitive. Come sit at my knee, my friend and let me school you on this…
JHoward,
They’ve already done it, except they don’t use the word merit. But they’ve decided who is deserving and who isn’t.
Tuna has lots of mercury though. Mostly it’s China’s fault.
Education Guy: I don’t know. Really.
I’m gonna agree with Happyfeet. That much tuna can’t be good for you. Replace the tuna with soy, though, and I think you’re good to go.
Unless you’re a guy, because I think then too much soy is related to a loss of testosterone? Am I remembering that right?
Lisa,
Basically, part of the reason is that because of all this Great Big Nonsense many generations ago (and to a lesser extent the Very Big But Not Quite Great Big Nonsense of generations gone past recently), any discussion of slavery explicitly and implicitly makes People-of-Profound-Pallor racist, and therefore just as culpable of the moral wrong. It gets back to the whole construct of “racism=prejudice+institutions”. You can get a clearer sense of this from things like the White Privilege Thingy which basically goes about the business of arguing that the simple fact of being white in this country makes one a racist. If you have the stomach for it, you can find folks prattling on about this at length here.
BRD
It hasn’t been one branch for more than 200 years.
Right. They were the first segment of society to really figure out that race doesn’t matter. It’s a good example and it offers hope for the rest of us.
Carin I heard about that, but I am not sure it was true or not.
But it would totally explain Sting and John Tesh.
Thusly Bennett singlehandedly dismantled an entire intellectual movement, darnit.
Oh, that’s good — that and the dramatic pause, BB.
Soy is emasculating, yes. Go figure, really.
There’s always going to be someone making decisions, and there is no foolproof way to be sure that they’re made without bias. But we can define the parameters by which they ought to be made when we’re talking about spending the taxpayer dollar and we can look at the records of those decision being made to see whether those parameters are being adhered to. And when they’re not, fire that decider.
It gots estrogen. No titties
for on me thanks.On the question Jeff raises Lisa, don’t African-Americans argue with one another as to the qualifying characteristics of “blackness” as in “is Barack black enough?” And aren’t the answers proposed kind of confusing at times? Or maybe not.
As to history, who would eliminate that? If false categories were used in historical accounts we would likely agree to see them go the way of a (really big) footnote, wouldn’t we?
I asked a fellow monikered MFMouseQuake the impertinent question (I was seeking, very clumsily, no, stupidly, to start the conversation) “Just what thing gets to be “a Black Man†and how do we know it when we see it?” and got in response the quite sensible answer “How you do know? This country has been built on how YOU see a Black Man, Latino Man, Asian Man and the lot. Remember the Priest [Father Phleger] is Caucasian… Did you ask him how did he know if he was a Black Man?…”
I went on, to my shame, to taunt this fellow as though he were a machine answering mechanically. (I think, if I remember correctly, that I was angry that he accused me personally “…YOU see a Black Man…” of building the country so.) But I was wrong about this. He was right. It likely wasn’t me personally he intended. He intended the past and our inherited history which did create the concept “the Black Man” as we find it today. (Studying Attic Greek at school, we had a jokey saying about the difficulties we had: “We’re not free [to make it be what we want it to be, namely, easier] cause they’re all dead.”)
Sorry before the air force (which he eventually retired from).
What branch are you in, Pablo? Just curious.
I was in the Air Force, back in my yoot, though well after it was the Army Air Corps.
Yay, the Air Force RULES!
“There’s always going to be someone making decisions, and there is no foolproof way to be sure that they’re made without bias. But we can define the parameters by which they ought to be made when we’re talking about spending the taxpayer dollar and we can look at the records of those decision being made to see whether those parameters are being adhered to. And when they’re not, fire that decider.”
Or eliminate the opportunity for a Government to make any decision on a given question in the first place, while simultaneously reducing the expenditure of taxpayer funds. Boils down nicely to “get your nose out of our business, Ms. Government agency person. Leave people alone to take care of their own affairs, as they would know what those are better than you and will bear the consequences of their actions directly, be they good or ill.” Of course this means permitting failure on a massive scale relative to the imagined successes of the busybodies.
Yes, from above. :) Air superiority is the bestest.
I thought it was called it the Chair Force?
Was my last comment even legible? Jesus I need to go back to elementary school.
Again, I’m with you in principle. But it’s awfully lonely in the Libertarian Party, ain’t it? That simply isn’t going to happen anytime soon. I can say the same about the NIH. The Founders didn’t see us spending $28 billion a year of taxpayer money on medical research. And yet here we are, and I do some work for them anyway, despite a fundamental conflict over whether it should exist. It isn’t going away. Congress isn’t going to kill it. The electorate isn’t going to kill it. It is what it is and we won’t live long enough to see any fundamental changes in the way our government operates.
The rent-seeking ratchet and pawl wins every time. Fie!
But would it win more frequently or assuredly if you and I just shut up about it? Maybe so. After all that Coburn guy isn’t exactly an endearing sort of fellow, I guess.
Basically, if you live on a diet that consists largely of bananas and tuna fish sandwiches, you’ll pretty much live forever.
I hope to God I never use the elevator after you, BB.
You’d have to have a large contingent of society to dismantle the current paradigm. I think that would be a great thing, and I don’t mind saying so. Yet we’re a long way from having enough like minded people to get it done. Most people like that we do stuff the Founders never imagined.
On the question Jeff raises Lisa, don’t African-Americans argue with one another as to the qualifying characteristics of “blackness†as in “is Barack black enough?†And aren’t the answers proposed kind of confusing at times? Or maybe not.
I remember that ridiculous debate (it rages on – primarily the people who enjoy thinking they can define Blackness – are really pissed off about B-Smoove). It does fit with the Perfesser’s premise that the Diversity “movement” is a tool in the struggle of the quasi-fascists to be able to be the Definers of Meaning. “I will tell you what being black means – and it ain’t you, because I dont approve of you.”
This ridiculous Liberal Fascism book would have been a lot easier to read if Goldstein rather than Goldberg had written it. Or any of the clever PWers. I actually agree (mostly) with the Perfesser’s ongoing discussion of the book. But Goldberg is a craptacularly craptastic writer and I am having a hard time slogging through it. But I can’t argue the contents of the book without reading the turd. (But I am enjoying discussing your ongoing critiques with you all, folks.)
I am however, convinced that the folks who have been glowingly analyzing the book are a hell of a lot smarter than the author and damned sure would have written a better book.
Laughs hard at (and agrees with) Silver Whistle.
I haven’t read Goldberg’s book Lisa, though perhaps I should. I have read a lot of excerpts of and commentary on it though.
BTW, I had to put down Liberal Fascism to read the latest Teenage Vampire novel by that Mormon chick. I am so ashamed (but it was delightful).
Sdferr: Based on my enjoyment of your commentary, I wish you had written it.
I am pretty sure that I would not have ‘gotten’ this book without the long, wonderful discussions/arguments I have had on PW before ordering it.
Yoiks. You shouldn’t want that, since when it comes to craptacularly craptastic writers I’m your man.
LISA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How goes it, sugartits?
No, not if it’s historic. If it’s just some wide, sweeping generalization that happens to clash with my tradition of not throwing the first punch, yes, I do tend to get a little touchy.
But you have taken offense at such things. Sometimes, without people even saying them. And of course you’d be justified in taking offense at some blanket statement of tendencies, rather than specific historical events. Tendencies are prejudicial, whereas events are data.
BTW, I had to put down Liberal Fascism to read the latest Teenage Vampire novel by that Mormon chick. I am so ashamed (but it was delightful).
Those books were delicious. Did you read her SciFi adult book “The Host”? I read that first, and enjoyed myself so much reading it, I had to read her YA books.
#297 Lisa –
You people (wink) just aren’t used to the shoe being on the other foot so you are inordinantly sensitive. Come sit at my knee, my friend and let me school you on this…
LOL Try this one:
“In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.”
Guess who….
A couple of things…
First off, I cannot believe we actually had to give up Karl for…Hammer Boy? Lefturd dispenser number 1? The Obamamessiah’s leading fellator? Entropy is definitely catching up with the Interwebtubes…
And yes, Carin. I will look at your boobs. But I will be subtle about it…:)
Lisa,
I think your professor friend, being from the UK and all, doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, vis a vis the “African Diaspora”. For one thing, I’m 54 and for as long as I can remember I’ve been having history as it relates to blacks, slavery, etc, rammed down my throat and up my ass by all and sundry. And I have no doubt that I’m not the only person of pallor who has had this experience.
If anyone of us e-vil white racists are getting a little tired of the discussion, it’s probably something along the lines of “been there, done that, got multiple tee shirts, can we change the fucking subject now, or should we all just go commit collective hari-kiri to atone for the fact that some of us had ancestors who owned slaves 150 years or more ago.”
Hyperbole, yes. But at what point do we get to stop being expected to self-flagellate ourselves over this subject? And make no mistake, this is exactly what some people do expect.
At least the Holocaust occurred within living memory. Slavery, not so much…
I don’t know who all else is still reading this, but it does rather get my goat that I am, whether or not I like it, definitionally considered racist by virtue of being born to a historically poor pigment producing population. I have no real say in the matter. As far as the folks who study this stuff go, being born white in America axiomatically makes one a racist.
Quite possibly seriously Off Topic:
“…I’d say there’s a reason those who believe strongly in the intentional stance affiliate more readily with Biblical literalists,…”
SEK commenting in Provoc. 6
For some reason, I can’t rid myself of the bizarro image of Daniel Dennett and Pat Robertson, arms linked, skipping (marching?) down the yellow brick road to truthiness.
Thus to tyrants who would insist on truth, I guess. They must have something in common after all (no matter their utter differences). But let them protest, right SEK?, we’ve sussed them out.
“…I’d say there’s a reason those who believe strongly in the intentional stance affiliate more readily with Biblical literalists,…â€Â
I missed that one. Quite an assertion indeed, and almost completely wrong as far as this crowd is concerned, I would venture.
hf, SarahW, MikeyNTH, and JeffG (thrice) replied at the time, but mostly in the context of SEK’s other assertions. Linky here.
Funny you mention this. When I was at the School of Crit and Theory at Cornell, someone (can’t remember who; prominent scholar, but the name escapes me) gave a lecture on identity and memory, a very hot subfield in the humanities at the time (and one that has moved into more mainstream ideas concerning identity, much to my chagrin). The topic happened to be the Holocaust and “remembering it.”
At the end of the lecture during the Q&A, I brought up the episode of “Seinfeld” where Jerry is making out during Schindler’s List, and how his parents, when they found out, treated that almost as a sacrilege. But I was curious: under what description was it necessary that Jerry feel guilty about not giving his undivided attention to a movie about a certain topic important to Jews? And how did this affect his claim to Judaism? After all, if he is a Jew and could care less about what Spielberg had to say about WWII and Jews, then that itself gets folded into the Jewish experience, which — the way it SHOULD work — expands to take on the actions of Jews. Whereas some people seem to think your Judaism is defined by your willingness to pretend you care about certain nodal points in the narrative of Judaism.
The point being, this professor of which you speak is perfectly entitled to explore the Jewish diaspora, etc., and — if he wishes, try to use it, as the lecturer to whom I was responding did, as a way toward fashioning authenticity in identity.
Scholars of the African diaspora are free, of course, to do the same. But the point here is, at what point do we begin speaking of such things historically, and not as if they are ongoing events — forcing those to whom they “belong” to either adopt them or face scrutiny and, in some cases, excommunication?
It is my position that by continuing to address race the way we do in this country, we are trading the “right” we have to do so for a rather harmful return on the investment. Race — as it has long been used in this country — is based around bad science and myth, and it is astounds me how many people think that, simply because we at one time promoted bad science, we are compelled to continue doing so.
Then again, I can see the connection between such a worldview and one in which reparations make sense.
But then, I’m a bit wacky. I think outside of the box sometimes.
You aren’t ‘wacky’ on this subject, Jeff. There is a difference between treating any diaspora as a historicalevent to be studied, and using that historical event for political gain now.
After the Battle of Culloden, many Highland Scots were forcibly removed to Britain’s American colonies. The Potato Famine drove many Irish out of Ireland.
BTW, I had to put down Liberal Fascism to read the latest Teenage Vampire novel by that Mormon chick. I am so ashamed (but it was delightful).
Never be ashamed about reading for enjoyment. I have found that it is good to take a break like that because the more weighty issues have time to percolate without me continuously watching them. And sometimes I find that the lighter work will give me an insight that I hadn’t thought of before, let alone explored.
It is like coming up for air.
#327
Why, thank you, Lisa.
And might I say your breasts appear more firm and perky than usual today.
On matters of race, Steve Sailer is the acceptable edge of the unacceptable stuff. Just.
Cite?
“But who blames you personally? I have yet to see anyone blaming anyone for slavery yet the minute that it comes up everyone covers their titties and says “I didn’t do it!!! Leave me alone! Shut up!—
If I’m asked to personally ‘pay’ for it through Affirmative Action, then yes, I am being blamed ‘personally’.
I think that qualifies me as a descendent of slaves.
Where is the AA for ME and my daughters of pallor?
My family came (on one side) from German slave labor camps (not Jews).
My mother, once the typical liberal, was not too happy to find out that her son was automatically a step down from other people on college admissions simply because of respective skin colors (and completely disonnected from family history).
It’s racism, pure and simple, and needs to be called such. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who supports it has no business criticizing segregation on a moral basis, their issue is with whose ox is getting gored.
The problem is that nowadays people fear thinking and speaking freely, lest the real racists begin projecting.
“I think that qualifies me as a descendent of slaves.
Where is the AA for ME and my daughters of pallor?”
Above was a quote, not mine.
The end result of affirmative action is the establishment of a neverending racial spoils system, pitting group against group, and forfeiting all pretense of equal treatment under the law. Today this group, tomorrow perhaps that group, and another. Once the initial step is taken from completely colorblind administration it’s almost impossible to go back, as each group gets a taste of both the carrot and stick and wants it’s fair share of the prize. For now it’s merely legal and information competition, but there’s no guarentee it’ll remain so, particularly if bad times reduce the overall spoils.
“Comment by Rusty on 8/13 @ 6:27 pm #
#327
Why, thank you, Lisa.
And might I say your breasts appear more firm and perky than usual today.”
Fuck you and your ratshit remarks. Oh so funny and just edgy enough to avoid absolute prickism. Because it’s all in good fun!! Fark much?
Jeff, that’s an awfully big windmill you got there.
I, for one, am saddling up my burro…
cynn
shut up and go to bed
Dulcinea thanks you, David.
The filthy whore.
OK Cynn. Yours are perky too.
Rusty, just don’t tell her they’re more perky than usual.
I’m not certain I agree in totality with your bad science descriptor, but I agree that race being no factor in the future is a better future. Then there’s the question of how will we know when we’re at that better future. The only answer, thoughtfully speaking, is when a brown-skinned man can get a table dance any goddamn time he wants his lap shined, dat’s right, no more having to waive a gold credit card to get a bitch’s attention, when them titty swinging hos throw down and back-it-up with a smile just like they do for the crackers.
Sounds like cynn needs to get laid. By a guy this time…:)
I denounce myself preemptively, just on account…
How about Brown vs. The Board of Education, that ring in memory bells, tard?
Brown vs. The Board of Education was a win, 9-0 in fact. Tard.
What was that, 40 years ago? Fool.
We’ll know we’re there when we stop worrying about it. One day you’ll catch up.
No, I don’t think he will catch up.
How many people did the Court slaughter in Brown v. Board of Education, Thor? Just so I know exactly what comparison you’re trying to draw.
First he’ll have to grow up.
McGehee, remember when we killed Jackie Robinson after making him pick cotton in chains? Yeah, me neither.
And why wasn’t Jackie allowed to play ball, remind us, because Cave Bear’s living memory is a not-so-much.
He wasn’t allowed to and then he was. For some reason you keep forgetting that second part.
Not being allowed to play baseball in the major leagues is exactly like being exterminated with six million of your closest friends, eh Thor?
The dirty secrets that Lava couldn’t scrub, Faulkner’s screams from the trees, the rusting shackles and the heat of the sun, when the lull was over in Detroit, when greed and fear gave in to temptation, when a race was gathered in and swallowed whole, well I really don’t want to twist your arm, but the time for charm is like musical chairs and broken down mares – sometimes it’s just not there when you need it and sometimes it’s long past.
Don’t insult the dead with gross fuckin’ stupidity, McGehee.
Nice. Meaningless, but nice.
You do it, why can’t everyone else? Or are you saying that not being allowed to play in the Major Leagues is just like six million people murdered?
Actually, the only thing thor ever says is “I’m an asshole”. He just uses varying numbers of words to say it.
If you want thor, I’ll burp that one out for you later. After I’m done with my flag waving that is.
Shmedley: “Doesn’t matter, silly. We’re talking about original intent, not textualism. Different interpretive frameworks. Thomas versus Scalia.
I would have thought Cthulhu would be a bit sharper. Pity.”
So your best riposte is a cheap shot and obfuscation. Your misplaced belief that you can used unrelated Amendments to support racial discrimination — and, yes, that is what racial preferences amount to, is absurd on its face.
Your monniker is appropo — how is Tennessee Tuxedo these days?
Hyperbole, yes. But at what point do we get to stop being expected to self-flagellate ourselves over this subject? And make no mistake, this is exactly what some people do expect.
True. And I think the Europeans (including my lovely professor friend whom I referenced earlier) are freakishly servile/obsequious when discussing race. They make me nervous. I don’t think it serves anyone to condition people to be like that – it is actually very creepy.
Hi JD!!!!
Lisa: “And I think the Europeans (including my lovely professor friend whom I referenced earlier) are freakishly servile/obsequious when discussing race. They make me nervous.”
Ironically, they are obsequious probably because *THEY* are nervous, fearing y’all are gonna go Cinque on them at the drop of an ill-turned phrase.
Yeah, that’s your gig, ain’t it, fool?
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Kinda like Cynn’s freak-out over the commenter’s admiration of Lisa’s perky Sugartits™.
Sometimes a tit is just a tit. Or something, I may be confusing that with another quote.
Ironically, they are obsequious probably because *THEY* are nervous, fearing y’all are gonna go Cinque on them at the drop of an ill-turned phrase.
Well, you do know that all us people of pallor are FRIGHTENED by and of black folk.
(old joke from Ace’s)
Yes, ma’am. It most certainly is. Counterproductive, too.
That’s why you’re bitter, clingy and taking target practice for Jesus.
O!
Carin: “Well, you do know that all us people of pallor are FRIGHTENED by and of black folk. ”
My hyperbole aside, they are afraid of a scene being made and being accused, both publicly and loudly, of being a racist.
And looking at my urban neighbor, I would have to say that the ugly stereotype of the swarthier sets has a nasty kernal of truth — when you can’t even get a West Indian day parade down the street without a body-count, then something is rotten in Denmark…
Thor’s still on Cemetery Ridge, waiting for Pickett’s charge. He doesn’t know what the outcome will be. Reading the verdict of Brown vs Board of Ed, or watching a ball game didn’t give him a clue.
poppa india: “Thor’s still on Cemetery Ridge, waiting for Pickett’s charge. He doesn’t know what the outcome will be. Reading the verdict of Brown vs Board of Ed, or watching a ball game didn’t give him a clue.”
Someone give him the transcripts from Sharpe James trial and catch him up to date.
Comment by thor on 8/14 @ 9:03 am #
Comment by Cave Bear on 8/13 @ 3:04 pm #
At least the Holocaust occurred within living memory. Slavery, not so much…
How about Brown vs. The Board of Education, that ring in memory bells, tard?
********
See? This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. We gave up Karl for this turd-of-a-barking-moonbat?
Look, numbnuts. We were talking about S-L-A-V-E-R-Y. Google it, since you claim to be such a fucking expert. And while school segregation was a noxious situation, to put it on the same level as the Holocaust is moronic beyond belief.
Of course, moronic statements are all we have come to expect from the Fellator-in-Chief…
Carin: “Well, you do know that all us people of pallor are FRIGHTENED by and of black folk. â€Â
My hyperbole aside, they are afraid of a scene being made and being accused, both publicly and loudly, of being a racist.
Well, it is a stereotype, held by blacks, of whites. I’ve told before of when I was running through my neighborhood, and two 13-ish black girls yelled at me “Run, Forest, Run … Run from the NIGGER.”
And, on my return jog, I did stop and talk to a parental figure, who was embarrassed and promised it wouldn’t happen again.
It is, honestly, one of those half-understood truths. Since young blacks have adopted a “gangster” look as hip, walking down the street they DO look menacing. I do get nervous. Just about as nervous I get when a white boy (or girl, now-a-days) is walking near similarly dressed.
As a famous man once said (and I’m paraphrasing”) ‘Judge not by the color of my skin, but by the percentage of my boxers shorts/butt hanging out of my pants and the hoodie obscuring most of my face.’
Again, I may have messed up the quote.
Carin: “Well, it is a stereotype, held by blacks, of whites. ”
Which, that whites are racist or whites are afraid of being accused of being racist?
Carin: “As a famous man once said (and I’m paraphrasingâ€Â) ‘Judge not by the color of my skin, but by the percentage of my boxers shorts/butt hanging out of my pants and the hoodie obscuring most of my face.’ ”
Yea, verily, even the Revrund JACK-sun feeleth relief when, whilst walking down a dark street and, hearing someone behindhim, turneth and seeth a pallid complexion.
Lisa,
Comment by Dread Cthulhu on 8/14 @ 11:11 am #
Carin: “Well, you do know that all us people of pallor are FRIGHTENED by and of black folk. â€Â
My hyperbole aside, they are afraid of a scene being made and being accused, both publicly and loudly, of being a racist.
**************
Our resident Dark Force nails it here. I’ve seen this happen. Truth is, between the schools and the media in it’s various forms, most “people of pallor” are like whipped pups when it comes to this subject, afraid to say anything lest they put a word wrong and be attacked.
Of course, I would never dream of addressing you as “Sugartits”, either, and for similar reasons.
Sometimes a tit is just a tit.
Carin, only someone who has their own set to play with could possibly say something like that. You are denounced for your anti-collectivist stance. The punishment will be up to the proletariat.
Silver whistle – ha.
Carin: “Well, it is a stereotype, held by blacks, of whites. â€Â
Which, that whites are racist or whites are afraid of being accused of being racist?
No, that whites are afraid of blacks. Perhaps it is just an inner city thing, but I’ve run into that attitude a lot.
But, the other is true as well – that whites often are afraid of being accused of racism. And, Ive seen people go out of their way to “prove” that they weren’t, when in truth they were motivated not by colorblind motivations, but a desire to demonstrate how “fair” they are.
I never compared one to the other, sperm-burper.
And watch your mouth, ya airheaded dope.
Still sore from the fact-beating you took on the other thread? You should be. I nailed you good.
Carin: “No, that whites are afraid of blacks. Perhaps it is just an inner city thing, but I’ve run into that attitude a lot.”
Realize that most whites who dwell in cities are unarmed and generally not what I would call an assertive lot in most ways. If you’re unarmed and the cops are near useless and the gov’t kowtows to minorities, lest the minorities protest. Black “leaders” have made careers out of white guilt and white fear. Sharpton’s daughters go to private schools based on that guilt and fear… well, that and a few tax law violations.
Comment by thor on 8/14 @ 12:10 pm #
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Comment by Cave Bear on 8/14 @ 11:22 am #
At least the Holocaust occurred within living memory. Slavery, not so much…
How about Brown vs. The Board of Education, that ring in memory bells, tard?
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Look, numbnuts. We were talking about S-L-A-V-E-R-Y. Google it, since you claim to be such a fucking expert. And while school segregation was a noxious situation, to put it on the same level as the Holocaust is moronic beyond belief.
Of course, moronic statements are all we have come to expect from the Fellator-in-Chief…
I never compared one to the other, sperm-burper.
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You are the one who brought it up, Hammer Boy (Brown v Board of Education, compared to the Holocaust). Tap dance all you want, but your own word damn you.
“Sperm burper” Is THAT the best you can do?
******
And watch your mouth, ya airheaded dope.
******
Or what? You gonna come down here and confront me? I’d advise against that, else I might have to teach you a lesson your daddy should have taught you long ago.
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Comment by thor on 8/14 @ 12:15 pm #
Comment by Pablo on 8/14 @ 11:00 am #
Yeah, that’s your gig, ain’t it, fool?
Still sore from the fact-beating you took on the other thread? You should be. I nailed you good.
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You “nailed (pablo) good?” BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!
Got a news flash for you, Ace. The day has yet to dawn when you have “nailed” anyone, most especially here. The sum total of your schtick is to spout the same old leftie memes, and scream RACIST! RACIST! RACIST! at anyone who dares contradict you. That’s why no one takes you seriously. Deal with it.
My-my, you just don’t read that many solipsistic renderings of judgment such as this nowadays.
Bring it O!
The fact you offered up the Brown decision in response to a Holocaust reference, even excerpting said reference for the purpose, was purely a coincidence, right?
I’m not even breaking a sweat.
And soon enough you too will get yourself nailed like a religious icon to Trinity United’s prayer room wall. You’re monster truck-sized overconfident. That “Obama-fellator” banal word play ain’t all that clever.
The comparative reference was that of memory, underarm sniffer.
Admit it thor, you’re one of those who picks his crack in order to add flavor to his finger. The memory of which is akin to the sweet smell of Hyacinth according to your comparative guidelines.
“We” didn’t give up anything. “We” have no say in the matter.
Karl left on his own accord because I didn’t want to ban a longtime commenter and site participant who was close with another guest blogger. He put me an awkward position, and I made the call that I believe was the correct one, given the ultimatum.
It wasn’t easy — and it eventually led to my decision to keep the site solely under my control — but I made it.
Period.
“We†didn’t give up anything. “We†have no say in the matter.
Karl left on his own accord because I didn’t want to ban a longtime commenter and site participant who was close with another guest blogger. He put me an awkward position, and I made the call that I believe was the correct one, given the ultimatum.
It wasn’t easy  and it eventually led to my decision to keep the site solely under my control  but I made it.
Period.
How long is the Perfesser going to have to repeat that?
“I only cover my titties when I catch men staring.”
I swear Carin, I was only looking at that pendant you’re wearing…was kinda hypnotic, you know?
WHAT? no pendant? sorry…..
How long is the Perfesser going to have to repeat that?
Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. What did you say?
“Come sit at my knee, my friend and let me school you on this…”
Lisa? I will be the first to take you up on your offer. Full disclosure? I’m so pasty white that my nom de plume should be albino. However? My dad left a LONG time before I can remember, and was raised by my moms boyfriend (A WW2 Marine) and my Uncle Lee (A black man that served in the Navy in Vietnam from SC)
Please Lisa, Tell me about your hardships…You, sugartits,were in a military family. Military families are not so much known for their racist attitudes. Well, not since around the 70’s anyway…HOW do I know this? I grew up there too for a while.
PLEASE Lisa…I’m at your knee…Teach me?
“The dirty secrets that Lava couldn’t scrub, Faulkner’s screams from the trees, the rusting shackles and the heat of the sun, when the lull was over in Detroit, when greed and fear gave in to temptation, when a race was gathered in and swallowed whole, well I really don’t want to twist your arm, but the time for charm is like musical chairs and broken down mares – sometimes it’s just not there when you need it and sometimes it’s long past.”
Ah, the good old days… when you could lord it over Loki and even bring Odin to his knees with your hammer of privilege guilt…
El Jeffe’s bringin’ the Gotterdammerung on your pimply Nordic ass. Have fun in Valhalla!
My liege,
Dulcinea’s your whore, boss. Be gentle.
Keep on tilting. We need to inspiration.
“I have always been prone to coloured descriptions of unimportant phenomena.”
Isaiah Berlin
the inspiration, even
apologies. I’m hispanish, my anglosh not so good.
Oh, no. It won’t be Cave Bear nailed to the Trinity wall. It will be O!
If you’re going to have a second coming of The Messiah, a crucifixion naturally follows. You might as well get loaded to denounce Reverend Wright as a racist. Or, join the club as we like to say.
Who plays Caiaphas in our new passion play? Jerome Corsi? Stanley Kurtz? Republican voters stand in for the Jewish population, while the mainstream media take on the role of…Pontius Pilate. Michelle plays the Messiah’s close friend Mary Magdalene, Nancy Pelosi his mother Mary. The Democrat Party is the group of faithful disciples of course, carrying the fallen Messiah’s story onward to the great unwashed. Rev. Wright is unfortunately consigned to play Judas Iscariot, such is his love of the truth. John McCain fills a cameo role as Barabbas. Independent voters? How about they take on the identity of Roman Centurions, what with the taunting and spear-stabbing, they can handle that.
The core problems with your argument are that race is not a construct but a biological fact, and that conservatism is virulently antipathic to both classic liberalism and libertarianism.
The bellcurve, the hapmap, the principles of evolutionary biology and theory of evolution of culture, scientific and technological advances, all are memetic poison to conservative thought.
Shut up, nishit
You simply can’t hold back the wave, the inexorable tide of technological advance.
In the end conservative thought will be deader than the dodo, unless it can find an accomodation with Science.
le singularity menace
the tsunami of Science and technology will simply whelm the frail “judeo-xian bulwark” of antique morality.
better build an Ark for conservatives.
Then it ought to be very easy to define, oughtn’t it? Please start us off with a definition, if you would be so kind.
Technological advancement without some grounding in morality will only lead to a shop of horrors nishi. It is funny that you continue to pretend that you are on the vanguard of some imaginary techno army fighting some vast horde of conservative religious zombies trying to hold you back, but you aren’t. You’re just full of shit.
That would be a much less glamorous thing to be, though, so that possibility will get zero consideration.
Just a prediction.
heres a prediction for you.
conservatism will gradually become extinct.
Conservatism has nothing to do with classic liberalism.
Conservatism clings to the status quo, to the old methodology, the old paradigms.
Conservatism resists change and, by its very nature, discovery.
That is why all this resistance to the hapmap, the bellcurve, and the biological basis of behavoir.
Like Steve Sailer says, race is an extended family.
There are incontrovertable, significant and substantial between-group differences.
Within-group variation does nothing to negate that.
That’s nice. We might frame that and put in in Wikipedia, as an illustration for “wishful thinking”. Not necessarily because you’re wrong, but because you’ve given no reason at all for me to suspect that you even believe it, yourself.
You, on the other hand, insist on discarding ideas and methodologies solely because they’re old. Which I’m sure must rationalize itself, because you’ve never once managed to do so.
Science is conservative. By rejecting all of conservatism, you’re rejecting the rigor part of science. Which probably doesn’t bother you much, because after all you can’t have rigor mortis without rigor.
Steve Sailer is an idiot for saying that. For one thing, because there’s absolutely no science behind it.
Oh, and you’re an idiot for using an idiotic quote as an answer. Lastly, you’re an idiot for imagining that Steve Sailer’s views on race are credible or useful.
Correction: Sailer isn’t _necessarily_ an idiot for saying it, but you’re certainly an idiot for quoting him. Race is an extended family is not a useable definition of race.
pfft
im reading Reihan and Douthat’s Grand New Party.
what id like to see Jeff do is project a way for conservative ideology to be viable into the 21st century and beyond.
conservatism is the anti-progessivism, sure, but what is the alternative to progress?
Regression to the stoneage?
The rejection by conservatives of scientific and technological progess is simply a Loozer Strategy.
Can’t stop the signal, lol.
The only wa6y conservatism will ever gom extinct, is not gradually. It will wink out of existence along with all the other things that define humanity for good or ill — at the moment the last living human dies.
To say that conservatism will go extinct is to misapprehend what it is, where it comes from, and why it’s been a part of humanity for all these millennia, from the very beginning.
Typos won’t go extinct gradually either.
Progressivism.
Congress. Yeah, it’s George Carlin.
Oh, way to completely avoid responding, nishi.
My point is that you hold completely unscientific notions regarding race. When confronted with that, you waffle and change the subject. Why do you hate science, nishi?