Cobb

01 19 06

Interesting perspectives here Cobb. Some of your essay is rooted in idealism, while other parts are totally real. A nice dash of happiness is always needed in writing about such matters;) In the scheme of things, I think that economic divisions will cause far more schisms than racial ones in the upcoming years. My husband was a frat boy at San Diego State in the 80s. When we went to Socal last month, we saw his old buddies in Carlsbad and San Diego and they all have good qualities of life. We all get along quite well and they are all White. But class and upbringing is more similar so we have lots of stuff in common. When my husband and I went to West Oakland to a 24hr Burger stand, these women said a few derogatory things about "Buppies" and so forth. So ah...I guess thats the point. Great post.

I may be the only person on the planet who thinks reverse discrimination is a bad policy, on the one hand, but constitutional, on the other. I think it's bad policy for the same reason most of my fellow conservatives do; colorblindedness ought to be the goal. But I don't think the Constitution mandates that, in the sense that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment is only aimed at invidious discrimination, not against well-meaning but misguided efforts to bring someone into the fold.

I think you've kind of nailed it. So the question of balance ought not to be so much about righting historical wrongs, because they simply won't be righted, but having some kind of political presence for the goals the majority of Americans feel - which is that we ought to do something about segregation.

For all of his inarticulateness, Ray Nagin is right. What you get when you mix white and brown is chocolatey and sweet. But it takes agitation. So I have a problem saying that Affirmative Action (maybe an overbroad term) is 'reverse discrimination' it is a racial preference given for the purposes of racial integration. It's not about keeping whites out, as it is about getting others in who otherwise would not consider themselves invited. It is this matter of invitation that makes the whole premise of 'diversity' acceptable.

What's misguided about certain Affirmative Actions is not about stigma. That's just marketing spin. It's about the quality and responsiveness of the institution to its community. Huge subject. Don't want to rant. Bottom line is that 'political correctness' which is social and actually not political is not unconstitutional. Our problem is that our 'political correctness' is shallow and often unethical. There is an ethical, social way to achieve racial integration without legislating racial preferences. We are simply incompetent to discipline ourselves to it. Therefore our politics are more racial than they need be.

I never had a huge problem with Nagin's comment, which strume me more as lame than offensive. It would be different if he had said "New Orleans will always be a chocolate city, and I don't mean none of that wimpy 'milk chocolate,' either; I mean good old fashion Hershey's Special Dark, without a trace of milk whatsoever. Dammit." It seemed clear enough to me that he was saying New Orleans would retain is traditional character, not announcing some new ethnic cleansing program.

As to the phrase "reverse-discrimination," I think any time a preference is given in favor of one trait vs. another, that is discrimination. Not all forms of discrimination are bad, of course, and not all bad forms are equally bad. Discriminating against incompetent job applicants and in favor of competent ones is just common sense. Discriminating by race in hopes of righting past wrongs or making one's work force "look like America" is a rather dumb idea in my view, but it's hardly the equivalent of Jim Crow, unlesss it is taken to unusual extremes (e.g., a target quota for one particular race that is so large that it effectively shuts out everyone else.). But it is discrimination, nonetheless, and if memory serves, its proponents in England even call it "positive discrimination."

"Affirmative action," however, is a more slippery term, whose meaning can vary significantly depending on what "affirmative act" one has in mind. In modern usage, that affirmative act is usually some form of reverse-discrimination, ranging from nebulous "plus" factors, at one end of the spectrum, to flat-out quotas, on the other. Historically, however, it hasn't always been that way. In the Nixon (Johnson?) days, the affirmative act government contractors were expected to take was not to "positively discriminate" but to take proactive steps in ensuring that no one got any better or worse treatement on account of his race. IOW, the "negative action" opposed by the new policy was not one of colorblindedness, but of a "see no evil" policy among upper management, which did not actively encourage racial discrimination at lower levels in the company, but didn't seem to be trying very hard to stop it, either.

A certain disgraced former Chairman/CEO of a certain document company used BWF like a club to bring the number of blacks in that company down from 25% to 13% of the workforce. He even announced (in so many words) that he would at the first national conference of that company's black employees.

Have you checked out little Stevie Sailer and the Pioneer Fund boys? They want race to matter in a big way, and more and more respectable white folks are joining in.

My read on their program is that they want to force upwardly mobile black folks out of white workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. Maybe I'm paranoid, but it looks to me like we're headed for a big showdown.

Sailer is a pleasant jackass, and a racialist of the first order. I'm not entirely clear about his motivations, but I find most of his conclusions offensive and morally suspect.

I wrote about him last in September.
http://www.mdcbowen.org/cobb/archives/004604.html