A Must Read

The Diversity Recession, or How Affirmative Action Helped Cause the Housing Crisis

Rather than make the fundamental reforms needed to help the bottom half actually become economically productive and domestically stable enough to afford to buy a home, the government tried to juice the home-ownership rate directly.

In a nutshell, rather than making any attempt to address the problem of poverty itself (and what the government should be responsible in that regard, of course, is up to much debate), any system of "objective measurements" was considered racist and discriminatory, and the Feds encouraged riskier business practices to make the system more inclusive. In other words, common sense and thoughtful, objective business practices were to blame, not actual individuals personal responsibility and incomes.

This is completely analogous to how affirmative action thinking has warped the education system. Objective measures like GPA and test scores are increasingly considered racist, and the responsibility for achievement has shifted from individual students to the institutions themselves. Rather than address any problems with academic preparation prior to college, whether with the students or the K-12 schools, universities are expected to create a level playing field, shifting the blame to an objective system, vilifying real success, diluting the quality of education for all, and creating unfairness all around.

Something to keep in mind as the Federal government, both Democrats and Republicans alike, contemplate a $700 Billion dollar bailout, at least.

Also, Michelle Malkin notes that:

"Student loans, car loans, and credit card debt have been snuck into the bailout proposal."

Myths and Facts About Affirmative Action, Deconstructed

Recently, race-baiting, irrational co-workers and the Affirmative Action Office at the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) condemned a janitor for reading a history book during his break about the KKK. This book, mind you, was nothing promoting the Klan in any fashion, but simply a book about one struggle against the Klan. Yet, African American employees and their kindred knee-jerkists at the AAO found the very subject of the book, regardless of content, and the very act of innocently reading the book (despite the fact that keeping aware of the unsavory aspects of American history is often encouraged by supporters of events like Black History Month), to be an incident of racial harassment. This insanity was compounded by the fact that this janitor was never given the benefit of the doubt (they even ignored his attempts to explain what the book was really about), and assumed guilty without any sort of fair hearing and in complete disregard of his own civil rights.

Now anyone familiar with the activities of affirmative action advocates and the Orwellian left-wing indoctrination techniques common today in higher education will hardly be surprised - outraged, for sure - but not shocked. The Big Brother of the diversity movement has become increasingly totalitarian and outright fascist in its desire to control and punish Caucasians for being white, and to expand power over individual thought and opinion.

What sort of justification do these bigot-nazis give for their behavior and strong-arm tactics? Take a look, for instance, at this wretched document on the website of the AAO of IUPUI, entitled The Myths and Facts about Affirmative Action, to gain some insight in their irrational thinking.

For example, they claim:

MYTH: Affirmative action is reverse discrimination, it gives preferential treatment to people of color and women.

FACT: Racism is power plus discrimination.

Using the "to be" verb does not make it so. Racism is defined as "a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others." Discrimination, or more specifically racial discrimination, is the practice of applying that attitude by the use of power via policy and/or oppression. Racism is the attitude that, with power, can lead to discrimination. But the attitude can exist regardless of discriminating behavior or application of power.

The parameters of discrimination based on race are distinguished by the power dynamics. Reverse racism is not, therefore a reality if people of color are not in positions of power and perpetrating the discrimination. An Urban Institute study shows that less that 100 of 3000 cases could be considered reverse discrimination. Less that six of those cases were deemed by the court to be substantiated.

The last two sentences here completely annihilate the assertion made in the sentences preceding them. Regardless of how accurate or up-to-date the findings of this vaguely referred to study may or may not be - showing that "reverse racism" is not as prevalent as "forward racism" (for lack of a better term) is in no way equivalent to showing that it does not exist at all. The implication that "people of color are not in positions of power" is of course a bogus point, as there are people of color (to use their phrase) in power over others not of the same ethnicity as themselves, even whites. And, the study only seems to address non-institutionalized, direct discrimination, rather than affirmative action as institutionalized discrimination. So, the AAO is using a study that already assumes that affirmative action is not reverse discrimination to prove that there is no reverse discrimination. Convenient.

Affirmative action has been mislabeled "preferential treatment" for certain members of society. ... Affirmative action is an attempt to facilitate a more level playing field.

The level playing field metaphor is an old chestnut amongst affirmative action advocates - but the problem here is that it is just that - metaphor. These people's conceptions of what constitutes a level playing field can only be described as nothing but "preferential treatment" for certain groups. It is not enough to provide equal opportunity, in their eyes, which is all a level playing field really is. Affirmative action supporters wish to rearrange the rules of the game played on the field so that one team is favored, and to do so in a manner in which individual talent, training and hard work are disregarded in favor of team preference and membership. A "level playing field" would not assume all players must play at the same level - only that the rules do not favor one team or another. They don't want a level playing field - they merely want to switch which team is favored.

Affirmative action recognizes the interconnectedness of race, class, gender. Many of the symbolic gates are beyond reach due to economic disparity which in turn is one of the effects of racism. We cannot divorce these interconnected issues from one another.

But one must, if one is truly to be equal and fair. The fact of the matter is that economic disparity is not solely caused by racial discrimination, past or present, and affirmative action only assigns group blame and preferential treatment on this one potential cause out of many for poverty. In such a systematically racist approach, all people of one race are given extra credit for their ethnic or gender status, regardless of whether or not they are of a low income. And, people of another race are assigned blame, and are punished for their status, regardless of whether or not they had any hand personally in ever engaging in any sort of racial discrimination, and, even worse, regardless of their own economic status. Poor whites - who may or may not be in that boat for racial reasons - are not given the special consideration rich blacks are. If economic disparity is truly unfair, it should only be judged on the level of the individual. Assumptions cannot be made as to who benefits and who does not based on race.

How do you divorce all these issues from one another? By treating people as individuals rather than as members of groups. Asserting connectedness based on race only furthers a racist, or group-membership, mentality.

In the UC system, race and ethnicity are not solely considered for admissions.

For the past decade, thanks to a change in California law, race and ethnicity are not considered at all for admissions - although the quota mentality is still prevalent amongst UC administrators who look for back-door alterations in the admissions process in order to achieve ethnic quota goals - using now alternative, "holistic" (i.e., bullshit) criteria to put academic success and individual achievement on the back-burner in favor of squishy "background characteristics."

Other criteria such as socio-economic level, state residency, special abilities, disabilities, familial ties and athletic ability are used in determining admissions. These supplemental criteria benefit everyone, not only people of color.

Such criteria hardly benefits everyone - but of course, equating every group with every individual is the bigotted, racist failing of most supporters of affirmative action. These criteria benefit those who fall into all those specific categories. Just because they're not race-based does not mean they benefit everyone - they merely benefit a few from all ethnic groups. That's a very big difference. They're confusing subsets for the whole.

MYTH: I have a friend/brother/sister/____(fill in the blank) who was qualified for the job/college but didn't get it because the position went to a person of color or a woman.

FACT: Many of us have heard this statement or made it ourselves. It's a logical error to apply what happens to a few individuals to the entire society.

Of course, statements such as these are made to highlight the effects of societal policies upon real-world individuals - to reveal the injustice faced by real people as a result of what the entire society does.

Oddly, though, the AAO does not apply this same logical standard that they present to their own justifications for affirmative action programs. It would be a logical error, by their own claim, to assign the blame for discrimination, when it does occur, to the entire society - in other words, it is illogical to create policies that assign blame to everyone rather than anyone who directly discriminates.

When it comes right down to it, affirmative action supporters cannot see the individual, and have no regard for a person's rights - they are as racist as the Klan, seeing people only as segments of a "group," where all groups members are to be accountable for the actions of the others, and oppressed accordingly.

How Affirmative Action, Beyond Being Intrinsically Racist, Breeds Disrespect and Doubt

From an article in the Harvard Crimson:

Whatever the benefits of affirmative action, one undeniable downside is the element of disrespect it introduces onto our campus.

This week’s appointment of Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies Evelynn M. Hammonds as Dean of Harvard College was greeted mostly with disinterest; students tend to ignore the vicissitudes of administrative hiring.

But on one Harvard mailing list to which I subscribe, an impassioned 28-message e-brawl broke out. The subject was the relevance of the most visible attributes of our new dean—her race and gender—to her appointment.

“Who…is Evelyn Hammonds?” the provocative e-mail began, “I’ve never seen her even mentioned in connection with undergraduate affairs, and it seems…crazy that they passed over people like [Harvard College Professor] Jay [M.] Harris to choose her.”

This was followed by a coda intended to provoke: “Wait, hold the phone, she’s black? And a woman? Oh, nevermind then.”

A reply arrived within six minutes. “Right, you know nothing about her, ergo it’s affirmative action. Why don’t you try engaging on substance instead of crass identity politics?”

It is interesting to see how those that advocate affirmative action in hiring and university admissions hypocritically turn around and consider any mention of these often institutionalized and legislated practices "crass" and taboo when discussing specific hires. If one sees affirmative action as a necessity of some sort, then why decry mention of such standards when they may benefit a particular candidate? They want elements such as race, gender and orientation to be considered, yet fail to see how logic dictates that if group status is not only a legitimate but in many cases a required factor in the selection process, then it is hardly unreasonable to conclude that such may well have played a role in the final decision.

Of course, despite institutionalized affirmative action, or even just non-regulated external pressures to make decisions that "promote diversity," one should not assume, without concrete evidence, that in any particular case group status is ever the sole reason for a decision, or even the deciding factor. But what affirmative action and "diversity" advocacy do, since the process is never entirely transparent, is generate suspicion about the validity and fairness of the process. This in turn leads to a disrespect of the system and misgivings about the decision-makers. It is misguided to simply assume Hammonds was hired because she was a black female - but it is no way misguided to question whether or not her race and gender played a role when advocates and often regulations suggest they should.

Corruption & Lies: Typical at the University of California & Amongst Champions of "Diversity"

Anyone familiar with the University of California is probably quite aware that the system has been plagued by examples of dishonesty, corruption and anti-white/anti-American bias in recent years. Fairness, responsibility and integrity have taken a backseat to personal gain, political correctness and special privilege by the UC administration through various scandals and policies.

Top administrators have been basically stealing tax-payer money and lining their own pockets. Professors are allowed to insult patriots by burning American flags in classrooms and are protected by administrators under the guise of "academic freedom," but student newspapers printing satires and criticisms of Islamic jihadism are labeled "hate speech" and "bias incidents." Caucasians are currently under-represented in the student population in comparison to California population proportions, so the admissions and outreach officers stopped using "under-representation" as a justification for racial bias and special privilege based on ethnicity and began using the phrase "traditionally under-represented" (ie, historically rather than currently) so that they could continue their programs aimed at non-whites and completely ignore both the new statistics and the fact that the system was anything BUT biased against "minorities." Admissions policies have shifted away from quantifiable and verifiable criteria like SAT scores and High School GPA and moved into the realm of the "holistic," where students are awarded points for "community service" and "personal disadvantage," all of which goes utterly unchecked, so that application fraud cannot be caught and combated. California voters passed a law ending racial bias in the state admissions policies, yet UC administrators circumvent this by aiming special outreach programs at targeted ethnic groups, completely ignoring the letter of the law.

In light of all the unethical behavior and hypocrisy, is it any surprise that a charter school on the University of California, San Diego campus, the Preuss School, has been accused of handing out false grades to students in order to falsely inflate their own statistics and reputation? It should not be. When voters in California passed Proposition 209, the University of California, frustrated and angered that the California citizens who pay for the campus's existence and their salaries, dared to choose fairness and colorblindness over race-based affirmative action programs and special privileges for minorities, altered their admissions policies, but at the same time sank more energy into reaching pre-college minorities. This was at first done with "outreach" programs targeting specific races, completely ignoring the fact that voters called for the UC and the state to "not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race." But somehow the preferential treatment in outreach policies was OK to college administrators, because the will of the voter was suspect. Then, an institution charged with providing HIGHER EDUCATION decided to get into the business of 6th-12th grade education, working with the San Diego Unified School District to establish a charter school focusing on low-income children in the hopes that this would lead to greater "diversity" at the college level.

On the surface, Preuss seemed a model of educational excellence, proving that when you do away with many of the rules, statues and regulations forced upon other forms of public schools by a liberal and intrusive government, you can more successfully provide a top-notch education. In a nutshell, rather than the socialistic idea that you provide the same education to all students, you provide a high-end education only to those willing and capable of doing the work. As noted in the linked article, though, "a 2005 study by UCSD showed that Preuss students earned state test scores and grade-point averages that were no higher than their peers who applied to the charter school but weren't chosen in the admissions lottery. " Here's the simple secret of this charter school - it selects, by lottery, those students who are already college-bound in their outlook. Those students in low-income neighborhoods that don't already have an intention to go to college don't bother applying. Isn't it amazing how great your school looks if you don't have to play by the same rules as other public institutions and basically get a top-notch batch of students hand picked for you?

In any case, Newsweek named Preuss one of the top 10 high schools in the United States. But now, with these allegations of grade tampering, which if true puts their entire grading system in doubt, we are now left to wonder if Newsweek was being hasty in its evaluation. If administrators were willing to give out grades for classes not even attended, then grade inflation could be a serious problem as well - especially for a school whose administration is more concerned with promoting the image of the school rather than the business of actual education.

In principle, the charter model is a decent one - one more closely aligned to the ideal model, a privatized system, where tax-payers are no longer held responsible for funding the education of other people's children, and where merit and individual achievement is rewarded rather than thwarted. If we are to have private education funded by our taxes, we should expect a less socialist system, and one based more on rewarding success and hard work. The idea of education being a "right" should be dismissed, and we should remind ourselves that education is a privilege. Those that abuse that privilege, or fail themselves to take full advantage of it, should be removed from the system - or at least provided with an education that suits their particular skills and talents (trade schools for instance), and those that succeed should be rewarded and it should be recognized that they have earned access to the next step. A tiered education system, where 6-12 students who have proven themselves successful move on to college-preparatory schools, and those who are not move on to others sorts of training, would be highly preferable to the unmanageable mish-mash system we have now, where kids on the track to universities are paired with losers and gang-bangers.

The important thing in any system is accountability. The flaw with the charter system it seems is that is still open to the same piss-poor management and underhandedness we see in other public institutions and bureaucracies. But, hopefully, the trend of holding students responsible for their own successes and failures will eventually work its way to educators and administrators as well.

Supreme Court Limits Affirmative Action in Schools

Today the Supreme Court "rejected diversity plans in two major school districts that take race into account in assigning students but left the door open for using race in limited circumstances." (AP) The case involved two school districts which utilized programs to assign students from black and white neighbors to schools which were often far from their homes in order to artificially attain some sort of nebulous "diversity" within individual facilities.

In the majority opinion, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the following:

"Simply because the school districts may seek a worthy goal doesn't mean that they are free to discriminate on the basis of race to achieve it."

An eloquent point, and a highly intelligent one, made in this debate over means and ends. For quite awhile, those blinded by their focus on the ends have ignored the gross hypocrisy in their support of means so similar to the very evil they were fighting against: discrimination. Can one, in good conscience, use discrimination to reverse discrimination? Especially discrimination against individuals whose only "fault" is to share an ethnicity with people who may have discriminated against people who share your own ethnicity? This game of racial guilt, blame and perceived privilege is in itself simply another form of bigotry, another form of prejudice, another form of ugly racism, as individuals would be rewarded or punished based on skin-color rather than personal belief, action, guilt or achievement. All affirmative action has done is to institutionalize discrimination and promote tribalism over individuality. Affirmative action has been a ill-conceived assault on personal liberty and responsibility.

In a moment evoking Yogi Berra, Roberts also put forth these words of wisdom:

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

While somewhat obvious, this is a point often lost or intentionally ignored in the discussion. You cannot battle the practice of racial discrimination and privilege with a different form of racial discrimination and special privilege. If it is wrong to judge and discriminate against blacks based on their race, then it is equally wrong to do the same to whites. The anti-affirmative action argument is not suggesting the wrongness of discrimination against blacks, as many times as proponents would like to race-bait and toss the word 'racist' around; it argues that discrimination of any sort, for whatever "lofty goal," is wrong. The affirmative actionists have merely attempted to argue that one form of discrimination is worse than another, depending on who are the victims, again attempting to create some sort of race-based (ie, bigoted) hierarchy of worthiness of victimhood.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the only black person on the Supreme Court, wrote this in a separate opinion endorsing the majority ruling:

“What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today. The plans before us base school assignment decisions on students’ race. Because ‘our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,’ such race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional.”

I would go even further to say that plans which incorporate any consideration of ethnicity, any attempt to artificially "promote diversity", or alter ethnic proportions within a group, are equally discriminatory, whether or not they do so directly. Thomas also wrote:

"Every time the government uses racial criteria to 'bring the races together,' someone gets excluded, and the person excluded suffers an injury solely because of his or her race."