0 comment Tuesday, November 25, 2014 | admin
Rick Sanchez, affirmative-action reporter on CNN, thinks that minorities who work for Fox News are 'sellouts.'
I've wondered about just what Sanchez's ancestry may be, since he appears 100 percent European. I guessed he was probably of (White) Cuban descent, meaning mostly Spanish, and I was correct, according to Wikipedia.
The son of Cuban political exiles who came to the United States in the 1950s from Cuba, Sanchez grew up in the city of Hialeah, Florida. He graduated from Hialeah High School in 1977 and accepted a football scholarship to Minnesota State University Moorhead. He transferred to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on a CBS/WCCO Journalism Scholarship in 1979."
There you go, another one of those arch-conservative Cuban-Americans of whom the Republicans like to brag, like Bob Menendez who is also a liberal son of Cuban immigrants. So much for that myth, right? No, I am sure the Republicans will cling to it, just like they cling to the idea of the precious Hispanic vote on which they are staking their political fortunes.
Sanchez has apparently been taking potshots at Fox News lately, as ''reporters'' on those ultra-left news channels do regularly, and it's rather absurd, really, since Fox is almost, very nearly, as politically correct as CNN, MSNBC, or any of the others. They certainly abide by the rules of PC and slavishly seek 'diversity' in hiring on-air personalities.
I notice they now prominently feature more black faces and minorities in general than in the past, no doubt partly in response to CNN's sniping, and the most popular one on Fox is the FReepers' pinup, replacing the blonde Laurie Dhue, is Julie Banderas.
Miss Banderas does not look like most Hispanics I've met; she looks more like an Anglo-American with a dark tan, and acording to her biography, her birth name was Julie Bidwell, and she is a descendant of John Bidwell, a prominent pioneer.
Went by her birth name Julie Bidwell while at WHSV-TV in Harrisonburg, Virginia and at WBRE-TV in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She is a paternal descendent of John Bidwell. Her father's name is Howard D. Bidwell. She is partially of Colombian descent, henceforth the use of the Spanish name.
The biography of Miss Banderas says she is 'partially' Colombian, so I wonder why she chose to drop her birth name in favor of a Hispanic name. I suppose it certainly does not hurt one's career to claim minority ancestry these days. I suspect we will see a lot more of that, as this country becomes majority nonwhite, and Hispanics become the majority. I expect many White Americans will emphasize any ethnic ancestry they may have so as to escape the stigma of being White-bread, and if they have any Hispanic ancestry, even just Spanish, as Linda Sanchez the 'conservative' has, they will pick that as their identity for practical reasons.
Miss Banderas has replied to Sanchez:
As a wise Latina woman, I have no comment other than to say if I were Rick Sanchez, I wouldn�t look in the mirror, period.''
It does seem an ironclad law that just about anybody with one-quarter or more nonwhite ancestry identifies with their minority side; I see it all the time in real life too. I can't think of any exceptions, offhand.
The mainstream 'conservatives' hold to their faith that ''Democrats are the real racists, and they are keeping the minorities on the plantation. But one day they will wake up and see that Republicans are their real friends!"
Sometimes I think the mainstream conservative types are more lost than the liberals. They come right to the brink of understanding, and pull back every time.
Fox News helps keep them in the dark.
I've wondered about just what Sanchez's ancestry may be, since he appears 100 percent European. I guessed he was probably of (White) Cuban descent, meaning mostly Spanish, and I was correct, according to Wikipedia.
The son of Cuban political exiles who came to the United States in the 1950s from Cuba, Sanchez grew up in the city of Hialeah, Florida. He graduated from Hialeah High School in 1977 and accepted a football scholarship to Minnesota State University Moorhead. He transferred to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on a CBS/WCCO Journalism Scholarship in 1979."
There you go, another one of those arch-conservative Cuban-Americans of whom the Republicans like to brag, like Bob Menendez who is also a liberal son of Cuban immigrants. So much for that myth, right? No, I am sure the Republicans will cling to it, just like they cling to the idea of the precious Hispanic vote on which they are staking their political fortunes.
Sanchez has apparently been taking potshots at Fox News lately, as ''reporters'' on those ultra-left news channels do regularly, and it's rather absurd, really, since Fox is almost, very nearly, as politically correct as CNN, MSNBC, or any of the others. They certainly abide by the rules of PC and slavishly seek 'diversity' in hiring on-air personalities.
I notice they now prominently feature more black faces and minorities in general than in the past, no doubt partly in response to CNN's sniping, and the most popular one on Fox is the FReepers' pinup, replacing the blonde Laurie Dhue, is Julie Banderas.
Miss Banderas does not look like most Hispanics I've met; she looks more like an Anglo-American with a dark tan, and acording to her biography, her birth name was Julie Bidwell, and she is a descendant of John Bidwell, a prominent pioneer.
Went by her birth name Julie Bidwell while at WHSV-TV in Harrisonburg, Virginia and at WBRE-TV in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She is a paternal descendent of John Bidwell. Her father's name is Howard D. Bidwell. She is partially of Colombian descent, henceforth the use of the Spanish name.
The biography of Miss Banderas says she is 'partially' Colombian, so I wonder why she chose to drop her birth name in favor of a Hispanic name. I suppose it certainly does not hurt one's career to claim minority ancestry these days. I suspect we will see a lot more of that, as this country becomes majority nonwhite, and Hispanics become the majority. I expect many White Americans will emphasize any ethnic ancestry they may have so as to escape the stigma of being White-bread, and if they have any Hispanic ancestry, even just Spanish, as Linda Sanchez the 'conservative' has, they will pick that as their identity for practical reasons.
Miss Banderas has replied to Sanchez:
As a wise Latina woman, I have no comment other than to say if I were Rick Sanchez, I wouldn�t look in the mirror, period.''
It does seem an ironclad law that just about anybody with one-quarter or more nonwhite ancestry identifies with their minority side; I see it all the time in real life too. I can't think of any exceptions, offhand.
The mainstream 'conservatives' hold to their faith that ''Democrats are the real racists, and they are keeping the minorities on the plantation. But one day they will wake up and see that Republicans are their real friends!"
Sometimes I think the mainstream conservative types are more lost than the liberals. They come right to the brink of understanding, and pull back every time.
Fox News helps keep them in the dark.
Labels: Affirmative Action, American Diversity, Ethnic Identity, Fox News, Media Bias, Old Media
0 comment Tuesday, November 11, 2014 | admin
Selwyn Duke, always interesting, has a new piece up at American Thinker about 'cultural affirmative action.'
In a way, I prefer the old, overt affirmative action. While it was government-sanctioned discrimination, at least it was, in some measure, more honest than our cultural affirmative action. There is such a thing. It's when people in the market and media privilege others -- sometimes unconsciously -- based upon the latter's identification with a "victim group."
Probably a majority of Americans in some degree or other practice cultural affirmative action. They have the best of intentions, many feeling an obligation to right history's wrongs. And they point to continuing disparities disadvantaging blacks as a group. So they make an extra effort to be sensitive and maybe once in awhile the ones with power even let their thumb rest on the scale when it comes to redressing past grievances.''
Duke quotes a Financial Times piece by Christopher Caldwell about a new book, called Racial Paranoia:
''...In Racial Paranoia (Basic Books, $26/�15.99), the University of Pennsylvania anthropologist John L. Jackson Jr suggests that extravagant theories of white racism - from the widespread Aids rumour to Louis Farrakhan's allegation that the US actually blew up the levees to cause the deadly New Orleans floods during Hurricane Katrina - have their roots in the decorous language that mostly white leaders have invented for talking about race.
The US has not managed to eliminate racism, Mr Jackson thinks, but it has succeeded in eliminating racist talk. Remarks the slightest bit "insensitive" draw draconian punishment. White people, because they feel thoroughly oppressed by this regime, assume that it must be some kind of "gift" to minorities, especially blacks.
It is not. It is more like a torment. It renders the power structure more opaque to blacks than it has ever been, leaving what Mr Jackson calls a "scary disconnect between the specifics of what gets said and the hazy possibilities of what kinds of things are truly meant". If the historic enemies of your people suddenly began talking about you in what can fairly be called a secret code, how inclined would you be to trust in their protestations of generosity?''
Duke talks about how most politically correct people choose to lie to themselves rather than be faced with the uncomfortable choice of telling dangerous and unpopular truths, or feigning belief in them (and thus being hypocritical). It makes more sense to talk oneself into believing the platitudes on race, thus avoiding a real and painful examination of the issue.
Duke makes a lot of sense here, although I am not certain that I quite understand the point Christopher Caldwell is making in the quote above.
But if I understand Duke's idea of ''cultural affirmative action", I take it to mean the kind of extra consideration and leeway most well-intentioned people give to minorities. I've done it, and many if not most of you probably have, too.
Ever since the 60s and the Civil Rights revolution, and even before then, there was a perception that black people and other minorities, to a lesser extent, had it hard, and that they needed to be treated rather more charitably than fellow whites. These days, it's almost never condescension which motivates this kind of exaggerated politeness and saccharine niceness, but it's a genuine admiration on the part of many people who really do see minorities, particularly blacks, as being better than the rest of us in some ways, according to the trendy popular 'wisdom' of our day. Blacks, supposedly, have more style; they can dance. They are funnier. They are more expressive, whereas we are inhibited, stiff, and uptight. They have more verve and more hipness. And then there's the victimhood thing, which in our strange age is seen as an attractive quality; victimhood confers a kind of aura of nobility and worth to the victim. They are by definition good and innocent, and put-upon by evil people -- which in this context is us, or at least our racial brethren. Some people assuage their own sense of guilt by scolding and condemning their fellow whites so as to distance themselves and establish their own moral superiority. So pride and vanity play a part in this; it isn't all altruism or conspicuous generosity towards ones' lessers.
I think this exaggerated solicitude for minorities has roots in the idea that they really are in fact not our equals, but yet it's reassuring somehow to think that if only WE did more to 'help' them, their lives would be improved. The fact that they are not in every way our equals, economically or socially, is seen as our fault. So this in effect makes us feel that we have power over their circumstances; if we caused their ''plight'' then we can correct it also. We are again in a superior position. I wonder if liberals ever stop and think about it from that angle? I doubt it.
I can think of a number of cases when, as a liberal, I practiced this kind of 'affirmative action' towards blacks. When I had black employees under my supervision and authority, I tended to cut them more slack, and to be less likely to reprimand or 'crack down' on them. I wanted to be seen as a decent person and of course that meant leaning over backward to establish that I was not racist, but in fact their 'friend.' Was my leniency and preferential treatment appreciated? No; I was in fact taken advantage of because of it. I was viewed as something of a target, someone whose foolish good nature was to be exploited. I knew it and allowed it to happen because I was so indoctrinated.
Yet it took me years to acknowledge it.
Earlier, in the late 60s when I was a student, there were suddenly many black students in college because of outreach efforts, and many of them were not college material -- just as many of all races these days are not.
I had a black female classmate with a pronounced 'attitude' who constantly complained, loudly, that whites had everything easy, had everything handed to them, while Negroes (that was the accepted word then) had to struggle for everything. Whenever I got an A on a test, she would say it was because of my color, whereas her D's were because of her color. She asked, eventually, to cheat off my exam papers -- and, more fool me, I allowed her to. Why? Was it guilt? I really and truly did not feel guilty, and even less did I believe that anybody 'handed' everything to me; I knew I worked and studied for my A's, and I could see that she was not an A student; it wasn't ''prejudice'' that caused her low grades. But I suppose I felt sorry for her, because I knew she would have a tough time finishing college -- and maybe that is ''racism'' -- or is it realism?
But I was exhibiting racial bias when I let her cheat off my exam paper; I would never have let a white student do that. I was showing pro-black bias. And I'm not the only one to have done so. It's even more rife, this pro-minority bias, today than it was then.
When I hear the constant cries of racism, I find it ironic, because the most common form of racism exhibited by white people is the racial favoritism and altruism they show toward blacks. I have seen far more fawning over blacks than I have ever seen gratuitous unkindness toward blacks. I've witnessed far more white people, say, in retail settings, being excessively, fulsomely friendly towards blacks, while being indifferent or even rude toward their fellow whites. I've seen plenty of whites engaging in arguments with fellow whites over racial matters, and siding with minorities against their own fellow whites. This is the most common form of racial bias I see: anti-white, pro-minority racial bias. I see many whites who can scarcely say a good word about their fellow whites but who can only fawn over blacks and other minorities. It carries no social stigma to discriminate against fellow whites in favor of minorities, whereas any careless word to or about minorities risks considerable consequences. And the more 'multicultural' and open we are, the more social prestige accrues to us.
Why, then, do blacks and other minorities perceive so much rudeness and discrimination in their interactions with whites? How can it be that I see whites being ingratiating and smarmy towards minorities, while minorities claim that whitey is usually rude and insulting to them?
In my own personal experience, I've seen instances where the casual rudeness of a retail clerk, for example, is perceived subjectively as being racially motivated, even when it is utterly impersonal. I knew a woman who was convinced that a snooty clerk was condescending to her specifically because of her race, although there was no indication that race was a factor at all. As I tried to tell her: the offending woman was simply ill-mannered. We all encounter such people. But when you see the world completely through a racial prism, and imagine that every unpleasant thing that happens in life is due to ''racism'' then you will see racism everywhere. I think much, if not most, of the complaints of 'bias' and 'racism' are rooted in nothing more than the random rudeness we all have to deal with in our increasingly uncivil society. I wonder if blacks really believe that they and only they have to deal with incivility or casual rudeness? I think in their fantasies about ''white privilege'' they believe that whites truly have a red carpet laid out for them wherever they go, and that life is all smooth sailing for whites.
I think whites, too, have come to believe in the idea of 'white privilege' and they are forever overcompensating for this imagined privilege. Maybe when we are fully second- or third-class citizens (after blacks and Hispanics) in our own country will people feel that the 'playing field has been leveled.'
And those whites who are motivated by a feeling of pity because of the disparities between the races, as I was in my misguided youth, have to come to a realization as I did that life is inherently unfair, and that above all, we are not responsible for everybody. It is not in our power to be godlike and make everybody equal to everybody else. We can't remove all the obstacles that life puts in the paths of minorities; it is not possible for us to make things easy and comfortable for the entire world. The best we can do is to take care of ourselves and those nearest to us should they need help. We are not superhuman. People who truly believe in 'equality' as an ideal should recognize that we are at least equal in our lack of omnipotence. None of us can eliminate life's travails, and to acknowledge our common human limitations would be a first step towards getting over our liberal god complex.
In a way, I prefer the old, overt affirmative action. While it was government-sanctioned discrimination, at least it was, in some measure, more honest than our cultural affirmative action. There is such a thing. It's when people in the market and media privilege others -- sometimes unconsciously -- based upon the latter's identification with a "victim group."
Probably a majority of Americans in some degree or other practice cultural affirmative action. They have the best of intentions, many feeling an obligation to right history's wrongs. And they point to continuing disparities disadvantaging blacks as a group. So they make an extra effort to be sensitive and maybe once in awhile the ones with power even let their thumb rest on the scale when it comes to redressing past grievances.''
Duke quotes a Financial Times piece by Christopher Caldwell about a new book, called Racial Paranoia:
''...In Racial Paranoia (Basic Books, $26/�15.99), the University of Pennsylvania anthropologist John L. Jackson Jr suggests that extravagant theories of white racism - from the widespread Aids rumour to Louis Farrakhan's allegation that the US actually blew up the levees to cause the deadly New Orleans floods during Hurricane Katrina - have their roots in the decorous language that mostly white leaders have invented for talking about race.
The US has not managed to eliminate racism, Mr Jackson thinks, but it has succeeded in eliminating racist talk. Remarks the slightest bit "insensitive" draw draconian punishment. White people, because they feel thoroughly oppressed by this regime, assume that it must be some kind of "gift" to minorities, especially blacks.
It is not. It is more like a torment. It renders the power structure more opaque to blacks than it has ever been, leaving what Mr Jackson calls a "scary disconnect between the specifics of what gets said and the hazy possibilities of what kinds of things are truly meant". If the historic enemies of your people suddenly began talking about you in what can fairly be called a secret code, how inclined would you be to trust in their protestations of generosity?''
Duke talks about how most politically correct people choose to lie to themselves rather than be faced with the uncomfortable choice of telling dangerous and unpopular truths, or feigning belief in them (and thus being hypocritical). It makes more sense to talk oneself into believing the platitudes on race, thus avoiding a real and painful examination of the issue.
Duke makes a lot of sense here, although I am not certain that I quite understand the point Christopher Caldwell is making in the quote above.
But if I understand Duke's idea of ''cultural affirmative action", I take it to mean the kind of extra consideration and leeway most well-intentioned people give to minorities. I've done it, and many if not most of you probably have, too.
Ever since the 60s and the Civil Rights revolution, and even before then, there was a perception that black people and other minorities, to a lesser extent, had it hard, and that they needed to be treated rather more charitably than fellow whites. These days, it's almost never condescension which motivates this kind of exaggerated politeness and saccharine niceness, but it's a genuine admiration on the part of many people who really do see minorities, particularly blacks, as being better than the rest of us in some ways, according to the trendy popular 'wisdom' of our day. Blacks, supposedly, have more style; they can dance. They are funnier. They are more expressive, whereas we are inhibited, stiff, and uptight. They have more verve and more hipness. And then there's the victimhood thing, which in our strange age is seen as an attractive quality; victimhood confers a kind of aura of nobility and worth to the victim. They are by definition good and innocent, and put-upon by evil people -- which in this context is us, or at least our racial brethren. Some people assuage their own sense of guilt by scolding and condemning their fellow whites so as to distance themselves and establish their own moral superiority. So pride and vanity play a part in this; it isn't all altruism or conspicuous generosity towards ones' lessers.
I think this exaggerated solicitude for minorities has roots in the idea that they really are in fact not our equals, but yet it's reassuring somehow to think that if only WE did more to 'help' them, their lives would be improved. The fact that they are not in every way our equals, economically or socially, is seen as our fault. So this in effect makes us feel that we have power over their circumstances; if we caused their ''plight'' then we can correct it also. We are again in a superior position. I wonder if liberals ever stop and think about it from that angle? I doubt it.
I can think of a number of cases when, as a liberal, I practiced this kind of 'affirmative action' towards blacks. When I had black employees under my supervision and authority, I tended to cut them more slack, and to be less likely to reprimand or 'crack down' on them. I wanted to be seen as a decent person and of course that meant leaning over backward to establish that I was not racist, but in fact their 'friend.' Was my leniency and preferential treatment appreciated? No; I was in fact taken advantage of because of it. I was viewed as something of a target, someone whose foolish good nature was to be exploited. I knew it and allowed it to happen because I was so indoctrinated.
Yet it took me years to acknowledge it.
Earlier, in the late 60s when I was a student, there were suddenly many black students in college because of outreach efforts, and many of them were not college material -- just as many of all races these days are not.
I had a black female classmate with a pronounced 'attitude' who constantly complained, loudly, that whites had everything easy, had everything handed to them, while Negroes (that was the accepted word then) had to struggle for everything. Whenever I got an A on a test, she would say it was because of my color, whereas her D's were because of her color. She asked, eventually, to cheat off my exam papers -- and, more fool me, I allowed her to. Why? Was it guilt? I really and truly did not feel guilty, and even less did I believe that anybody 'handed' everything to me; I knew I worked and studied for my A's, and I could see that she was not an A student; it wasn't ''prejudice'' that caused her low grades. But I suppose I felt sorry for her, because I knew she would have a tough time finishing college -- and maybe that is ''racism'' -- or is it realism?
But I was exhibiting racial bias when I let her cheat off my exam paper; I would never have let a white student do that. I was showing pro-black bias. And I'm not the only one to have done so. It's even more rife, this pro-minority bias, today than it was then.
When I hear the constant cries of racism, I find it ironic, because the most common form of racism exhibited by white people is the racial favoritism and altruism they show toward blacks. I have seen far more fawning over blacks than I have ever seen gratuitous unkindness toward blacks. I've witnessed far more white people, say, in retail settings, being excessively, fulsomely friendly towards blacks, while being indifferent or even rude toward their fellow whites. I've seen plenty of whites engaging in arguments with fellow whites over racial matters, and siding with minorities against their own fellow whites. This is the most common form of racial bias I see: anti-white, pro-minority racial bias. I see many whites who can scarcely say a good word about their fellow whites but who can only fawn over blacks and other minorities. It carries no social stigma to discriminate against fellow whites in favor of minorities, whereas any careless word to or about minorities risks considerable consequences. And the more 'multicultural' and open we are, the more social prestige accrues to us.
Why, then, do blacks and other minorities perceive so much rudeness and discrimination in their interactions with whites? How can it be that I see whites being ingratiating and smarmy towards minorities, while minorities claim that whitey is usually rude and insulting to them?
In my own personal experience, I've seen instances where the casual rudeness of a retail clerk, for example, is perceived subjectively as being racially motivated, even when it is utterly impersonal. I knew a woman who was convinced that a snooty clerk was condescending to her specifically because of her race, although there was no indication that race was a factor at all. As I tried to tell her: the offending woman was simply ill-mannered. We all encounter such people. But when you see the world completely through a racial prism, and imagine that every unpleasant thing that happens in life is due to ''racism'' then you will see racism everywhere. I think much, if not most, of the complaints of 'bias' and 'racism' are rooted in nothing more than the random rudeness we all have to deal with in our increasingly uncivil society. I wonder if blacks really believe that they and only they have to deal with incivility or casual rudeness? I think in their fantasies about ''white privilege'' they believe that whites truly have a red carpet laid out for them wherever they go, and that life is all smooth sailing for whites.
I think whites, too, have come to believe in the idea of 'white privilege' and they are forever overcompensating for this imagined privilege. Maybe when we are fully second- or third-class citizens (after blacks and Hispanics) in our own country will people feel that the 'playing field has been leveled.'
And those whites who are motivated by a feeling of pity because of the disparities between the races, as I was in my misguided youth, have to come to a realization as I did that life is inherently unfair, and that above all, we are not responsible for everybody. It is not in our power to be godlike and make everybody equal to everybody else. We can't remove all the obstacles that life puts in the paths of minorities; it is not possible for us to make things easy and comfortable for the entire world. The best we can do is to take care of ourselves and those nearest to us should they need help. We are not superhuman. People who truly believe in 'equality' as an ideal should recognize that we are at least equal in our lack of omnipotence. None of us can eliminate life's travails, and to acknowledge our common human limitations would be a first step towards getting over our liberal god complex.
Labels: Affirmative Action, Cultural Marxism, Egalitarianism, Political Correctness
0 comment Wednesday, October 8, 2014 | admin
Further to my recent entry about the latest outbreak of PC mania at a university, this comment thread on the story at the David Thompson blog yielded this rather amusing link about 'Victimhood Poker'.
Victimhood Poker (VP) can trace its roots all the way back to the admissions department at Harvard University, where its constituent parts were invented back in 1978 following the U.S. Supreme Court's Bakke decision. In the interest of fairness and in order circumvent arbitrary admissions criteria such as scholastic performance and standardized test scores, sociologists at Harvard devised a brilliant system of using cards to assign a numerical value/ranking to applicants' physical features, sexual preference, religion, and/or gender. By enabling the University to avoid making admissions judgments tinged with ingrained and systemic Western racism/sexism/homophobia, the card-based admissions system was a huge success and it soon spread to other Ivy League schools such as Yale, Columbia, Brown, and Princeton.
[...]
One fateful day in 1996, a group of intoxicated freshman at the State University of New York- Oneonta broke into that college's admissions office looking for rolling papers and Doritos. Instead, they found the deck of victimization cards. Unsure what they were or what to do with them, the drunk freshmen stole the cards and took them back to their dorm. As legend has it, later that night over a carton of Marlboro light cigarettes and a case of warm Miller Genuine Draft, the freshman engaged in the first ever game of Victimhood Poker.''
We've all heard of the playing of the race card, and you can see the whole race deck at the link above.
It's amusing, but the fact is, real people's lives are affected by the use of this bogus system of penalizing the majority and rewarding 'underrepresented minorities' strictly based on their skin pigmentation. (Hey, I'm only repeating what I've been told so many times over the last 40 or so years: that race is only 'skin color' and nothing more. So why reward someone strictly for pigment in their skin? Isn't judging the content of their character supposedly desirable, according to a saint of the politically correct church?)
The value of the cards in the 'victimhood deck' displayed on the blog is based on the spoils system established by Harvard, which awarded points based on race and sexual orientation as well as sex, male or female. However, the hierarchy they established by that points system is not exactly analogous to the de facto hierarchy of victimhood. If I had to re-order the list, I would say that black trumps all, with Hispanic second these days, followed by Moslems, an up-and-coming contender for the crown. The rest of the hierarchy I would leave as it is, considering that it seems to reflect the real-life value accorded to the various victim groups, and their position on the PC totem pole.
American Indians take a fairly low position on the totem pole (irony intended), perhaps indicating their relative fewness in number, compared to the ever-burgeoning Hispanic population and the very vocal black population with their practiced shakedown artists like Jackson and Sharpton. Despite silly controversies like the recurring one over sports mascots with Indian names (polls have shown that most Indians don't care), Indians are just not very active in the victimhood competition. Moslems, by contrast, are among the more vocal groups when they smell an opportunity to cry victimhood and extort some kind of apology or concession. So they are fast moving up in the pack of victims.
Those who strictly adhere to the pecking order among various competing victim groups must have some tough choices to make these days; the difficulty of choosing who to afford the most sympathy to must be severe for the true believers in academia or the media these days; their agony is almost palpable when they are forced to choose a 'good guy victim' in stories like those of the riots in recent years between blacks and Hispanics, mainly in California. What do the media do in reporting those stories? One suspects that since the media are heavily dominated by 'diversity' these days, with many reporters having obviously Hispanic names, they must simply go with their own. But for the white liberal journalist the choice must not be so easy; do they pick the most downtrodden victim and champion him or her? Do they toss a coin? Or is there some kind of written guideline that comes along with the templates used by these professional journalists' associations, which are politically correct to the max?
Or are the leftists and the professional victims smarter than we think, and purposely trying to create a backlash which might work in their favor? The left works that way; they look to provoke violence so as to make themselves appear to be put-upon victims of 'hateful' right-wingers and racists. Then they stand back and feign innocence, while those they goaded are blamed and punished.
This latest affront, with the re-education classes and the 'all whites are racists' nonsense is, I believe, an overplaying of the leftists' and race-baiters' hand. I think they are causing a great deal of resentment and ultimately a backlash to their agenda. They just don't know when enough is enough.
Victimhood Poker (VP) can trace its roots all the way back to the admissions department at Harvard University, where its constituent parts were invented back in 1978 following the U.S. Supreme Court's Bakke decision. In the interest of fairness and in order circumvent arbitrary admissions criteria such as scholastic performance and standardized test scores, sociologists at Harvard devised a brilliant system of using cards to assign a numerical value/ranking to applicants' physical features, sexual preference, religion, and/or gender. By enabling the University to avoid making admissions judgments tinged with ingrained and systemic Western racism/sexism/homophobia, the card-based admissions system was a huge success and it soon spread to other Ivy League schools such as Yale, Columbia, Brown, and Princeton.
[...]
One fateful day in 1996, a group of intoxicated freshman at the State University of New York- Oneonta broke into that college's admissions office looking for rolling papers and Doritos. Instead, they found the deck of victimization cards. Unsure what they were or what to do with them, the drunk freshmen stole the cards and took them back to their dorm. As legend has it, later that night over a carton of Marlboro light cigarettes and a case of warm Miller Genuine Draft, the freshman engaged in the first ever game of Victimhood Poker.''
We've all heard of the playing of the race card, and you can see the whole race deck at the link above.
It's amusing, but the fact is, real people's lives are affected by the use of this bogus system of penalizing the majority and rewarding 'underrepresented minorities' strictly based on their skin pigmentation. (Hey, I'm only repeating what I've been told so many times over the last 40 or so years: that race is only 'skin color' and nothing more. So why reward someone strictly for pigment in their skin? Isn't judging the content of their character supposedly desirable, according to a saint of the politically correct church?)
The value of the cards in the 'victimhood deck' displayed on the blog is based on the spoils system established by Harvard, which awarded points based on race and sexual orientation as well as sex, male or female. However, the hierarchy they established by that points system is not exactly analogous to the de facto hierarchy of victimhood. If I had to re-order the list, I would say that black trumps all, with Hispanic second these days, followed by Moslems, an up-and-coming contender for the crown. The rest of the hierarchy I would leave as it is, considering that it seems to reflect the real-life value accorded to the various victim groups, and their position on the PC totem pole.
American Indians take a fairly low position on the totem pole (irony intended), perhaps indicating their relative fewness in number, compared to the ever-burgeoning Hispanic population and the very vocal black population with their practiced shakedown artists like Jackson and Sharpton. Despite silly controversies like the recurring one over sports mascots with Indian names (polls have shown that most Indians don't care), Indians are just not very active in the victimhood competition. Moslems, by contrast, are among the more vocal groups when they smell an opportunity to cry victimhood and extort some kind of apology or concession. So they are fast moving up in the pack of victims.
Those who strictly adhere to the pecking order among various competing victim groups must have some tough choices to make these days; the difficulty of choosing who to afford the most sympathy to must be severe for the true believers in academia or the media these days; their agony is almost palpable when they are forced to choose a 'good guy victim' in stories like those of the riots in recent years between blacks and Hispanics, mainly in California. What do the media do in reporting those stories? One suspects that since the media are heavily dominated by 'diversity' these days, with many reporters having obviously Hispanic names, they must simply go with their own. But for the white liberal journalist the choice must not be so easy; do they pick the most downtrodden victim and champion him or her? Do they toss a coin? Or is there some kind of written guideline that comes along with the templates used by these professional journalists' associations, which are politically correct to the max?
Or are the leftists and the professional victims smarter than we think, and purposely trying to create a backlash which might work in their favor? The left works that way; they look to provoke violence so as to make themselves appear to be put-upon victims of 'hateful' right-wingers and racists. Then they stand back and feign innocence, while those they goaded are blamed and punished.
This latest affront, with the re-education classes and the 'all whites are racists' nonsense is, I believe, an overplaying of the leftists' and race-baiters' hand. I think they are causing a great deal of resentment and ultimately a backlash to their agenda. They just don't know when enough is enough.
Labels: Affirmative Action, Cultural Marxism, Leftism, Political Correctness
0 comment Tuesday, August 12, 2014 | admin
Court rules for White firefighters in discrimination case
WASHINGTON � The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a group of white firefighters in Connecticut were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision endorsed by high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
The 5-4 ruling poses a potential complication to Sotomayor's nomination, with confirmation hearings set to start in July. Already, supporters and critics of Sotomayor are seizing on the decision in an effort to defend their stance.
In the high-profile, controversial case, white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., argued they were discriminated against when the city tossed out the results of a promotion exam because too few minorities scored high enough on it.
Justice Anthony Kennedy authored the opinion in favor of Frank Ricci and his fellow firefighters who sued the city of New Haven.''
Some on the right are hailing this as a huge victory, and while it's true that we should be happy for good news wherever we find it, it does not seem clear that this is as decisive as some are indicating.
Here is Jared Taylor's take on it, which is somewhat less celebratory than that of most conservative commentators so far:
Conservatives are heralding the Supreme Court�s decision in the Ricci case as a great victory�and it is true that the results of the New Haven firemen�s exam will be accepted and several whites will be promoted to lieutenant and captain. However, as Justice Anthony Kennedy conceded in his majority decision, the court dodged the central question of whether it is constitutional to discriminate against white people in the name of "fairness" for non-whites. This decision is not even half a loaf for whites�it�s more like a few crumbs.
As Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out in a concurring opinion, today�s decision "merely postpones the evil day on which the Court will have to confront the [real] question," namely whether "disparate impact" is legitimate grounds for throwing out employment standards.
[...]
The Court did one useful thing, however. It made it harder to junk test results because of "disparate impact" by saying there had to be a "strong basis in evidence" that the harm this did to whites was justified. But as Justice Ruth Ginsberg pointed out correctly�in what was otherwise a nasty dissent�all this does is set up yet another murky standard that will make it hard for employers to know what is legal and what is not.''
Earlier today I was saying that perhaps these jobs should be assigned by throwing names into a hat, that being the only truly 'fair' way. I thought I was being ironic, but according to Steve Sailer, that kind of thing is already a reality in Chicago, where a lottery is used:
'...lotteries are exactly what cities such as Chicago are already doing with the results of firefighter tests, in an attempt to comply with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission�s "Four-Fifths Rule". This regulation puts the burden of proof in discrimination cases on employers when blacks aren�t hired or promoted at least 80 percent as often as whites.
There�s a reason you don�t see much in the newspapers about cities hiring firefighters by lottery: this method is terrifying to anybody who might someday be trapped in a burning building. So politicians don�t explain too vividly to the public what exactly they are up to.''
Truth is stranger than fiction.
We had a fire last year, and though it was minor, it was unsettling when a group of firefighters arrived, one of their number being a diminutive girl of about 23.
According to some people, seeing a female firefighter should have been comforting to me:
Firefighters say diversity can be especially important in emergencies. Victims may feel more comfortable when they see first responders who look similar to them or understand their neighborhoods, they say.
White members of Engine Company 60 on the South Side of Chicago see it differently. The mention of New Haven drew a cluster of firefighters who said they have seen examples of reverse discrimination and voiced concern that procedures used to increase diversity in the higher ranks may harm the public.''
I agree with the guys of Engine Company 60. I told a family member that I demand to have strapping 6-foot-4 men arriving to fight the fire, rather than a petite girl. The idea of hiring anybody less than the most qualified and the fittest to do these jobs is an affront to society and a risk to human life.
But the Ricci case of course goes far beyond who is hired to fight fires. At issue is the whole affirmative action farce, and the widespread effect on our society of placing people in jobs based on skin color or gender rather than choosing the best and the smartest.
And it has to do with the whole tortured issue of ''fairness'', which the left likes to talk about. To them, ''fair'' seems to mean exacting an eye for an eye. They insist that rampant racial favoritism kept Whites dominant for many years in this country, and to believe this, they must deny that actual racial differences exist. And they believe that 'affirmative action' is a legitimate way to exact revenge or payback.
It's politically unacceptable for them to acknowledge that in the old days, people were generally hired on merit, and the best man usually won. To make merit the main criterion would, unfortunately for the left and their minority clients, mean that the latter would have to compete with Whites on a truly equal basis, and they are afraid this would mean a return to the bad old days.
Obviously, too, this SCOTUS decision does not reflect well on Sonia Sotomayor, as her opinion is again repudiated by the Supreme Court. But this will not deter her supporters, who will spin in in some way to deflect any criticism of her by Republicans.
WASHINGTON � The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a group of white firefighters in Connecticut were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision endorsed by high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
The 5-4 ruling poses a potential complication to Sotomayor's nomination, with confirmation hearings set to start in July. Already, supporters and critics of Sotomayor are seizing on the decision in an effort to defend their stance.
In the high-profile, controversial case, white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., argued they were discriminated against when the city tossed out the results of a promotion exam because too few minorities scored high enough on it.
Justice Anthony Kennedy authored the opinion in favor of Frank Ricci and his fellow firefighters who sued the city of New Haven.''
Some on the right are hailing this as a huge victory, and while it's true that we should be happy for good news wherever we find it, it does not seem clear that this is as decisive as some are indicating.
Here is Jared Taylor's take on it, which is somewhat less celebratory than that of most conservative commentators so far:
Conservatives are heralding the Supreme Court�s decision in the Ricci case as a great victory�and it is true that the results of the New Haven firemen�s exam will be accepted and several whites will be promoted to lieutenant and captain. However, as Justice Anthony Kennedy conceded in his majority decision, the court dodged the central question of whether it is constitutional to discriminate against white people in the name of "fairness" for non-whites. This decision is not even half a loaf for whites�it�s more like a few crumbs.
As Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out in a concurring opinion, today�s decision "merely postpones the evil day on which the Court will have to confront the [real] question," namely whether "disparate impact" is legitimate grounds for throwing out employment standards.
[...]
The Court did one useful thing, however. It made it harder to junk test results because of "disparate impact" by saying there had to be a "strong basis in evidence" that the harm this did to whites was justified. But as Justice Ruth Ginsberg pointed out correctly�in what was otherwise a nasty dissent�all this does is set up yet another murky standard that will make it hard for employers to know what is legal and what is not.''
Earlier today I was saying that perhaps these jobs should be assigned by throwing names into a hat, that being the only truly 'fair' way. I thought I was being ironic, but according to Steve Sailer, that kind of thing is already a reality in Chicago, where a lottery is used:
'...lotteries are exactly what cities such as Chicago are already doing with the results of firefighter tests, in an attempt to comply with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission�s "Four-Fifths Rule". This regulation puts the burden of proof in discrimination cases on employers when blacks aren�t hired or promoted at least 80 percent as often as whites.
There�s a reason you don�t see much in the newspapers about cities hiring firefighters by lottery: this method is terrifying to anybody who might someday be trapped in a burning building. So politicians don�t explain too vividly to the public what exactly they are up to.''
Truth is stranger than fiction.
We had a fire last year, and though it was minor, it was unsettling when a group of firefighters arrived, one of their number being a diminutive girl of about 23.
According to some people, seeing a female firefighter should have been comforting to me:
Firefighters say diversity can be especially important in emergencies. Victims may feel more comfortable when they see first responders who look similar to them or understand their neighborhoods, they say.
White members of Engine Company 60 on the South Side of Chicago see it differently. The mention of New Haven drew a cluster of firefighters who said they have seen examples of reverse discrimination and voiced concern that procedures used to increase diversity in the higher ranks may harm the public.''
I agree with the guys of Engine Company 60. I told a family member that I demand to have strapping 6-foot-4 men arriving to fight the fire, rather than a petite girl. The idea of hiring anybody less than the most qualified and the fittest to do these jobs is an affront to society and a risk to human life.
But the Ricci case of course goes far beyond who is hired to fight fires. At issue is the whole affirmative action farce, and the widespread effect on our society of placing people in jobs based on skin color or gender rather than choosing the best and the smartest.
And it has to do with the whole tortured issue of ''fairness'', which the left likes to talk about. To them, ''fair'' seems to mean exacting an eye for an eye. They insist that rampant racial favoritism kept Whites dominant for many years in this country, and to believe this, they must deny that actual racial differences exist. And they believe that 'affirmative action' is a legitimate way to exact revenge or payback.
It's politically unacceptable for them to acknowledge that in the old days, people were generally hired on merit, and the best man usually won. To make merit the main criterion would, unfortunately for the left and their minority clients, mean that the latter would have to compete with Whites on a truly equal basis, and they are afraid this would mean a return to the bad old days.
Obviously, too, this SCOTUS decision does not reflect well on Sonia Sotomayor, as her opinion is again repudiated by the Supreme Court. But this will not deter her supporters, who will spin in in some way to deflect any criticism of her by Republicans.
Labels: Affirmative Action, Judicial System, Racial Bias, Racial Division, Racial Quotas, Supreme Court