It was so worth watching the last half-hour of the MHP show this morning for this discussion on affirmative action, and especially for Elon James White taking Reasonoid emperor Matt Welch’s lunch money, buying a milkshake with it, then then drinking it all up in front of him.
Elon also had a nice exchange with Nona Willis Aronowitz from GOOD Magazine on this too, and he was having none of the Glibertarian nonsense at. All.
I’m loving this show more and more.
Open thread, also too.
c u n d gulag
I wouldn’t know.
That festering postule on the anus of humanity, the Fascist shrimp, Jim Dolan, and his rancid cable company, Cablevision, won’t show MSNBC without paying extra for the converter box.
I can get all of the FOX I want without a box.
And all of the CNN I can stomach – with Wolf’s “Worst F*cking Political F*cking Team In The F*cking History Of F*cking Broadcast F*cking Mass F*cking Mediums.”
But not MSNBC!
So, thanks for the link – I’ll watch it later tonight on my laptop.
Btw – have I mentioned recently what I think of that festering postule on the anus of humanity, Jim Dolan?
Peter
I have long thought it advisable for progressives to argue that government should get out of the business of classifying people on the basis of race, however benign. The problem to be tackled is entrenched institutional racism — viz. the highly inequitable distribution of economic opportunities and goods (and incarceration rates) as it correlates with race. Conservatives would deny that this is a problem, that there can be “racism without racists.” This type of obscurantism should be derided at every turn. However, I think it far superior for progressives to advocate comprehensive and positive governmental action on behalf of the economically disadvantaged. This would not only be more equitable but would by its nature disproportionately favor people of color.
ren
Yes it was nice to see an attempt to hash out an untypical subject for a cable yak-fest. But they mostly aired-out their views and talked a bit past each other. Also, good to see a predominantly vagina-american panel.
No lunch was served or milkshakes consumed.
Billy Beane
Who are those people and why should I care?
Of course when you bring a Glibertarian on any of these shows there is going to be an exchange. That is exactly what everyone is hoping for. To me it’s all just semi-staged boring.
Yawn, time to go watch LaserBlast. I hear it’s a good movie.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I looked up Irshad Manji. It’s interesting taking her story – according to the wikipedia page which reads like it was written by her:
– and that she doesn’t have the context of the 200+ years of US history first hand. The analogy White used viewing this as a race is one I have been using since the O’Connor ruling.
wvng
You can watch all the msnbc shows (with some delay) on the web.
pecola
“How dare you talk about fairness, this is America” might be one of my favorite lines ever uttered on television
Knockabout
I see you ignored Welch’s much better discussion on the power of the state and its ability to coerce citizens, which both parties are certaInly guilty of and this President in particular is to a frightening degree. Maybe you should be less worried about keeping score and more concerned with the issues.
Also, what exactly was wrong with what Welch said in the above segment and when did James “drink his milkshake?”
Corner Stone
Drones in my pants!
baldheadeddork
If you are not listening to Elon James White’s podcasts Blacking It Up and Afterblack, you are missing out. Fucking hilarious, smart, and there is great comic chemistry with his co-hosts. Go. Get it now.
http://twibiu.thisweekinblackness.com/
BO_Bill
Affirmative action is very important.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
God, I love Elon James White so goddamn much. XD
BGinCHI
Anyone else been over at Wash Monthly’s Political Animal this weekend? It’s Benen’s old gig. Ed Kilgore has taken over for him, but they also have a new weekend blogger, Matthew Zeitlin.
Here’s who he is:
“Hey all, I’m Matthew Zeitlin and I will be occupying Political Animal for the weekend. Ed’s introduction yesterday, has all the important stuff: I’m a senior at Northwestern University and I’ve done some writing for The Daily, The New Republic, and the Atlantic. Yesterday was my 22nd birthday.”
His posts are smart and amazingly mature (so far). Anyone else feeling old??
jl
I thought it was a pretty good discussion. Welch didn’t talk that much, so not sure how much lunch he offered to be eaten. I notice he could not keep the libertarian hobby horse of ‘public equals bad’ when he said public universities had a problem with white legacy students. I guess the virtuous free enterprise private universities never ever did that.
The white man who comes off as the biggest fool in that clip is Supreme Court Justice John Roberts with the idiot quote that I paraphrase as: the way to get rid of discrimination based on race is to get rid of discrimination based on race. As I remember, and the google search on commentary on that case reminds me, that quote (which would be fine as a joke even on such a august blog as Balloon Juice) was a summary of his logic, and not a joke.
I think affirmative action that takes into account racial/ethnic prejudice in society is necessary today because there is obvious inequality in opportunity in education all the way from K through HS. I think it would be nice of socioeconomic proxies could be found that would serve broader goals, and deal with urban/rural issues and white poverty as well. It would be a more rational approach and be more popular with the public. The problem is that for African Americans, Hispanics and some Asian/Pacific Islander groups, it is not clear that adequate proxies exist.
In the academic and professional job market, I have seen the problems of current affirmative action policies. Some groups, who from a distance and to careless and lazy hirers look the same, are actually not treated the same since their particular subgroup may not be a protected class (or whatever the official term is) for official box checking purposes. So I think even though affirmative action that takes race/ethnicity into account is still needed, I think it does involve some arbitrariness, and unfairness, and the policy has to be adjusted constantly.
My big problem is that I believe, from my own experience in dealing with supposedly race/ethnicity blind non affirmative action policies in CA, that the opponents of affirmative action act in bad faith.
In my experience, they are liars. Despite their statements in CA that they would not go on a witch hung to snoop out any trivial and harmless shade of anti white anti richy rich affirmative action and reverse discrimination in every single fart and comma of outreach, admissions, and placement policy, that is exactly what they have done.
Even implementing the most innocent seeming outreach program to Middle Schools and HS is a bureaucratic nightmare because of their snooping and officious intermeddling. You have to do a damn peer review journal level statistical analysis of what you are doing where, so that if you do an outreach program to some poor ass broke down school with a lot of racial/ethnic minority students, you give equal treatment to the richiest richy rich HS in town.
My experience is that, like the anti choice forces, they are bad faith liars who need to be exposed and destroyed as a political force. Then there will be room for reasonable people, and the public (most of which I think do have good intentions on the issue and will live with reasonable policies) can hash out policies that are effective and fair.
And, oh yeah, get rid of frauds on the Supreme Court like Scalia and Roberts, or swamp them with good judges.
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
Matt Welch is really good at portraying the boring white guy legacy. Its like he was invited to prove that affirmative action is necessary. While his point on legacies is correct, it had nothing to do with what they were addressing.
BGinCHI
@BO_Bill: We use the Troll Quota System here.
Corner Stone
@efgoldman: Ummm…yes?
Corner Stone
I’ve been assured General Franco is as dead as OBL. Both for some certain lengths of time now.
Knockabout
Drones are nothing more than sophomoric fun for this crew. It’s not like people die or anything. Hey, there’s that issue of the coercive power of the state again and its ability to use lethal force without recourse from citizens. How very progressive of this President and his supporters.
lol
So Brewer’s going to endorse someone tomorrow. Get ready for maximum lulz if she endorses the shit stain.
Felanius Kootea
I was actually pleasantly surprised to hear Welch bring up the issue of legacy admissions.
I agree with Elon that the problem of poor public schools with few resources is still being largely ignored. Does any other country fund its public schools based on how wealthy school neighborhoods are/how much property taxes are paid in a neighborhood?
The Texas top ten percent from all schools approach intrigues me. Has anyone studied how much catching up those who are in the top ten percent from a failing school in a poor district need? Is anyone looking to fundamentally change the way public schools are funded?
I remember clearly that when my family immigrated to the US (New York), a neighbor told my mom flat out that if she sent my younger brother to the local public school, he’d never go to college, no matter how well he did (I’d already applied to college before we moved to the states and got in). She ponied up for private school. I’ve always wondered what happened to the smartest kids from that failing New York school.
BGinCHI
@lol: A dollar says she freezes up and blurts out “Herbert Hoover.” She’ll just go with the guy who was president when she was in high school.
pragmatism
Progressive purity troll is pure.
The Moar You Know
@Knockabout: WyldPirate may have a brand-new name, but he’s got nothing but the same ol’ tired shit to dish up.
James E. Powell
@Knockabout:
You’re right. Our only sane option is to make sure we get rid of “this President” and elect “another President” who has even worse views on the very issues you claim to be paramount. I get it. No, wait. I really do not get it.
Violet
@lol: No way. She’ll be endorsing Romney. He’s ahead in AZ so it’s a a safe move for her to endorse him at this point.
jl
@Felanius Kootea:
Yes, that was a good point.
Also seldom mentioned is that the problems and dilemmas creates by affirmative action are made worse, and adverse consequences are more severe, when there number of seats in schools and colleges, and the number of good jobs for graduates, are not keeping up with population growth and are often even going down.
Calouste
@efgoldman:
The Spaniards have been taking down Franco’s statues. I don’t think Franco had any palaces build himself. In a country with close to a millenium of a pretty rich monarchy, you think there would be a few palaces spare here or there that any self-respecting generalissimo could use.
BO_Bill
So anyway, the all you can eat lunch buffet is over. Some very nice lady runs it. She is married to a fireman. I do not particularly care for firemen. This one crashed his fire truck and is fat. Now, most Americans who crashed a fire truck would feel some embarrassment over the incident, and guilt for wrecking a million dollar public piece of equipment.
Not this one.
He was wearing a seat belt, and did not die, you see. So the fire crew took a picture of themselves with shit-eating grins, and the crashed fire truck, and there is the slogan ‘Seatbelts save Lives. They Saved Ours.’ This sign is hanging on the wall. The pizza is, however, good. This is why I eat here.
BGinCHI
@Calouste: No one expects the Spanish demolition.
Yutsano
@BO_Bill: Why do you make the brick ovens cry?
BGinCHI
@BO_Bill:
Lost me….
BO_Bill
I missed you during my enforced month absence Yutsano. I now have a Facebook page. So perhaps we can be Facebook friends and flirt even when Cole bans me.
arguingwithsignposts
@BO_Bill: Oh, great. It’s back.
Corner Stone
“I do believe there’s a ‘Squatch in these woods.”
Doubt about reliability of Afghan partners in war
“The shooting deaths of two U.S. military advisers in the Afghan capital and the quick decision to pull coalition personnel from all government ministries injected a sobering measure of doubt about the reliability of the most important U.S. ally in the war.”
A “sobering measure of doubt”.
Marc
@Knockabout:
I wonder how we got to the place where bombs from planes are somehow different from drones or bullets. The fixations of the Greenwald cultists, I guess, are not things that mere mortals are supposed to be able to understand.
Corner Stone
@Marc: We understand you don’t care how people who aren’t you die, as long as they dead. And that you don’t much care how that determination came to pass.
Corner Stone
It’s like the rightwing trope where every argument can be trumped by the screaming and/or drooling invocation of “SOROS!!”.
Benjamin Franklin
@Knockabout:
He’s a moderate. You know, like Feingold.
Chuck Butcher
@Marc:
Well, to be fair about it, short swords do make you put some skin in the game…
WereBear
It is indeed a most wonderful show; very much the intellectual approach, too, which is durn rare.
Benjamin Franklin
@Corner Stone:
Yet someone doesn’t want Obama to pull out of Afghanistan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/secret-us-cable-warned-of-pakistani-havens/2012/02/24/gIQAgMnYYR_print.html
Yutsano
@Chuck Butcher: No wonder the French regarded English longbows as cheating. They didn’t face their deaths like true knights should!
(hey if Little Ricky want to take us back to the Middle Ages, no sense in being half-assed about it.)
Chuck Butcher
@Yutsano:
trebuchets were cheating, Alexander may be closer
Long bows really weren’t much use at punching holes in armor but certainly played hell with ground troops.
TooManyJens
@baldheadeddork: Seconded. Thank God I work alone, because some days I am *crying* with laughter at my desk. Especially during Afterblack, where they can do the not-safe-for-radio material.
Yutsano
@Chuck Butcher: You can pry my trebuchet from my cold dead hands. :)
Chuck Butcher
@Chuck Butcher:
In regard to ground troops, breaking their lines was the real purpose of mounted heavy armor, so the real cheats were the ones who hamstrung the mounts. The reason mounted knights ever fought each other on a battlefield was to prevent that crash into ground troops. (kinda like tank battles)
scav
@Chuck Butcher: Drat, now I’ve got to go back and check if it was long-bow or a cross-bow that shot the arrow through the plate mail. Definitely one of Terry Jones efforts (yes, that one). I think they were tweaking with the shape of the arrowhead at the time.
Sly
@Knockabout:
I really can’t speak for anyone else, but I know my day isn’t complete unless I get to indiscriminately incinerate a bunch of people in a foreign country from the air while twirling my moustache and cackling with malevolent glee. If only I had a secret underground lair and an invisible jet, I’d be like a pig in shit.
Chuck Butcher
@scav:
A cross bow at quite short range – pretty useless once you consider how fast that horse is covering ground. You need mass, velocity, and projectile integrity to accomplish such an end. The doom of armor was gun powder en-mass.
TooManyJens
@baldheadeddork: Holy shit, MHP shouted out the chat room at the end of the show!
Benjamin Franklin
@Sly:
To be fair; they’re not cackling. They’re spackling.
Knockabout
Not that the Republicans would be any better on the blood and treasure front, but let’s drop the ludicrous pretense that the Democrats aren’t bloody warmongers who fully use the power of the state to coerce, punish, and yes, kill citizens.
Knockabout
And in that opening discussion between Harris-Perry and Welch, both of them agreed that there was something to Newt Gingrich’s argument that the state does coerce, force, punish and kill citizens. When government has a monopoly on institutionalized violence, why would anyone be surprised at what we told you this President would do with that monopoly, and how he would be no different in that respect? But hey, we need to make more stupid drone jokes to cover up the fact that we kill people with them, and that some of the people we kill with them are American citizens.
BO_Bill
A long bow is indeed a formidable weapon, as is the AK. However, never underestimate the destructive power of a fire-truck driven by a member of a public sector union.
These are very comparable to Hannibal’s elephants. Terrifying.
scav
@Chuck Butcher: Not arguing that from a really practical viewpoint. I’m just suddenly wondering about the example shown in Terry Jones thing as a minor theoretical technical point (not that the exceptions can’t prove important in single engagements with lucky shots). It’s part of a long arms-racy example from the Romans on to at least gun-powder and I thought I had it pretty well in my head only now I’m fuzzy on a few order of events. I’ve lost where the belly bow came in too, oh! horrors! of trivial minutiae!
BGinCHI
@BO_Bill: If your house catches on fire you’ll probably sing a different tune. But don’t worry, we’ll take care of the grown-up stuff. You just run along and play dumbass.
Marc
@Knockabout:
Let’s drop the pretense that you’re anything but a fringe extremist ranting on the internet.
Obama withdrew from Iraq. Bush invaded Iraq. You can compare Bush / Iraq to Obama / Iran to see the difference between someone whipping up a war frenzy and someone trying to prevent one. Or you can make believe that all non-pacifists are the same.
Rita R.
From Robert Wuhl’s “Assume the Position,” since you’re talking longbows:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu5swvXXblU&feature=related
TooManyJens
@Knockabout: No. You don’t get to pull this false equivalence shit. Bloody warmongers are the people who start wholly unjust and unnecessary wars because they want war. They want to look tough, they want to flex their muscles, they want to “pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”
There are some of that type in the Democratic Party, but Barack Obama is not one of them. He is entirely willing to use force if he deems it necessary, and he may deem it necessary at times or in ways that you or I consider wrong, but he’s not out there looking for a fight. I honestly believe he derives no pleasure from using military force and sees it as a duty rather than an expression of his manhood. There’s a goddamned difference between that and Bush/Cheney cowboyism, and you can pretend otherwise if you want, but spare us the notion that your pretense gives you some kind of high moral standing.
BGinCHI
@Marc:
WALTER: You know Dude, I myself dabbled with pacifism at one point. Not in Nam, of course–
DUDE: And you know Smokey has emotional problems!
WALTER: You mean–beyond pacifism?
Zandar
@Knockabout:
I love how Glibertarians are always redefining every discussion to fit the narrowest of flimsy arguments, then declaring VICTORY because the opposition’s refusal to accept your complete hogwash pretense as fact means they are close-minded bigots.
Move along home, please.
Mnemosyne
Ah, the libertarian call sign. I would probably take their cries of “liberty!” more seriously if they wouldn’t insist that their civil liberties include the right to ignore the Civil Rights Act.
Absolutely no one is surprised that you would come into a thread about civil rights and try to change the conversation. There’s nothing you guys hate more than being reminded that sometimes the government needs to protect its citizens from one another.
BO_Bill
BGinCHI; You have clearly never had a chance to work among firefighters. Before I enlighten you, please understand that some of my best friends are firefighters. So therefore you know that I am not a close-minded bigot. But these guys are basically wanna-be heros, who either couldn’t pass the Army test (the one Cole passed), or didn’t want to get hurt.
I had a fire in my neighborhood, the fire truck got lost, and the house was totaled. This is why I practice good fire safety.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: Related to that notion…
The next step has to be the N word. This is about as close as I’ve seen anyone come so far.
Shawn in ShowMe
@TooManyJens:
When Progressive Jeebus comes back don’t you want to be among the select who kept the faith? For lo there will be many false prophets before the day of reckoning. Only by remaining ideologically pure and purging the Kenyan moderates from thy midst will you have life in my name.
Gospel of FDR 4:39-4:40
BGinCHI
@BO_Bill: Father: fireman. Grandfather: fireman.
I’m not defending all firefighters everywhere, just the concept that we need to have a system that protects the public from, say, fire. Incompetent firefighters should be dealt with just like incompetent airline pilots or mortgage brokers.
Knockabout
Zandar: You’re the one boiling down 20 minutes of discussion to “He drank his milkshake”. You simply don’t get to play the “narrow definition of victory” card, son.
Mnemosyne: And yet the state’s definition of recompense for racism and discrimination has been, for 45 years now, racism and discrimination. At what point do we finally agree that it’s not working, and that the remedy is at best perpetuating institutionalized bigotry and at worst actually even more detrimental and divisive?
butler
So in one thread we have a troll questioning the very existence of government and another impugning the bravery and motives of firefighters.
Anyone want to try and top that? Maybe kick a puppy or question the usefulness of the sun?
IM
@Knockabout:
So you oppose the monopoly of violence of the state?
Why?
TooManyJens
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Let’s just say, that seems exactly as probable to me as any other savior coming along to rescue us from a compromised world and take us to Paradise.
BO_Bill
Personally, I would support grinding them up, mixing them with corn by-products, and forming them into dog food pellets. This would make dogs happy, reduce pension liabilities, increase highway safety, and reduce carbon emissions. The resulting dog waste could then be used to fertilize organic gardens.
Now I have to go. I am very pleased to be allowed to once again comment on Balloon Juice. See you Yutsano ;)
Mnemosyne
Yep, I was pretty sure that was your game. I know, it’s so meeeeaaaan for the government to tell you that you can’t refuse to hire or promote someone based on their race.
If you own a restaurant and a black guy sits down at a table, you should be able to call the cops and have him thrown out for trespassing. Funny how you guys never see that as “government coercion.”
Zandar
@Knockabout:
And in not one but two separate arguments, you prove my entire point.
Also, the one man who can call me son? You’re not him. Don’t presume to do so again.
Knockabout
Zandar: I was about to say the same thing about your “argument” but you’ve more than impeached yourself.
Mnemosyne: No. What you’re describing is three wrongs trying to make a right instead of the existing two that countering racism with more racism entails. Get the government out of racism and the rest gets dealt with by people voting with their wallets and their support.
Yutsano
@Knockabout:
LOLWUT? Do you even know how affirmative action got created in the first place?
BGinCHI
@Yutsano: Government-run, nationalized plantations kidnapped Africans and enslaved them so that their Union thug overseers could lay around and collect fat paychecks and pensions. If there had only been free enterprise, private individuals would have employed these slaves at wages the market would bear, thereby giving them dignity and freeing society of its specter of racism.
butler
There’s a first time for everything I guess.
Benjamin Franklin
Thus sprach the spackle
dun…
jl
@BGinCHI: When there was slavery, and Jim Crow, the government was merely enforcing property rights? When it turned out enslaved Native Americans died off at too high a rate to be profitable, that was a individually based, rather than a coercive state policy?
I’m just trying to see both sides here…
Maybe there is a stronger argument. I’d like to see it.
I guess if African American, and Hispanic, and for some mysterious reason Filipinos/Hmongs, etc. where just dumber than the rest of us smarty smart pants people, there would be no socioeconomic proxies to craft a nicer Affirmative Action program, so they should get what they deserve? Of course, if their disadvantages were the result of policies that were a product of racially/ethnically targeted discrimination, there would be no proxies either.
So, that other side needs more work, but I’ll go with the property rights gimmick to get the government out of old tymey discrimination. That might convince some people.
jl
Maybe if we just got rid of the state monopoly on institutionalized violence, everything would work out better, and we would all patch up our differences and be friends.
Give it a try, huh?
IM
Yes, libertarians are anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
Chuck Butcher
@butler:
You’d think after years of being shown empirical data that says despite the lovliness of their theory it doesn’t work that way; that they’d stick with folks who agree anyhow.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Mnemosyne:
Granting access to the highest achievers amongst discriminated people to resources that were once the exclusive domain of white folks is going to result in some white folks getting shafted. Resources are not unlimited. But that’s the price that has to paid when a country is built on a legacy of theft, slavery and genocide. Compared to that, forcing Jim to settle for his safety school so another kid can get a chance is akin to jaywalking.
Contrary to their rhetoric, the idea of a level playing field is a glibertarian’s worst nightmare. Of course they want an end to affirmative action — their 400 year head start has been narrowed to 50 years in only a couple of generations. Better to lock in their substantial lead while they still have one.
Jewish Steel
@jl: The State Violence store is out of my way coming home from work. And try to get some violence after 11am on Sunday? Forget it.
jrg
@Knockabout: Don’t bother arguing. You’ll be here all night, listening to people claim that white people do better socioeconomically because of “white privilege”, then five minutes later claim that AA benefits white people over Asians.
“What explains that disparity?”, you might ask… Asian privilege, presumably.
Certainly not less anti-intellectualism in the Asian population than other minority populations. Suggest something like that, you might as well join the Klan.
Omnes Omnibus
@jl: An armed society is a polite society. Amirite?
BGinCHI
@jl: The Glibs have an amazing talent at having everything both ways. Their logic is perfect unless you think about it. Like teenagers who rebel against having to do what their parents tell them but can’t imagine doing laundry or paying bills.
BGinCHI
I think Libertarians would fit nicely into the model of Jeffrey Lebowski’s Urban Achievers.
The Big Lebowski is one of the great critiques of libertarianism ever penned/shot.
jl
Also, too, the ‘two wrongs doesn’t make a right’ argument is based on a mistaken assumption. Namely, that affirmative action interferes with some ideal race/ethnicity neutral admissions policy that is a function only of unbiased perfect objective measures the applicant’s individual merit.
In real life, since I have to deal with various kinds of program admissions from time to time, the reality is that every program practices all sorts of discrimination in admissions that have nothing to do with an individual student’s merit. Like, match with programs resources and strengths and weaknesses, availability of appropriate faculty, mix of backgrounds needed for a good educational environment, as seen from the program’s point of view. Every program discriminates in these ways and more.
What affirmative action tries to do is counteract factors from the past, and ongoing social prejudices, that result in systematic discrimination based solely on race/ethnicity separate from all other considerations.
I cannot get all warm and fuzzy over affirmative action. Some aspects of it are a huge pain in the butt. But I think using some arbitrary and ahistorical notion that using measures like standardized test scores as the sole criterion for fairness results in a system that is very unfair.
There are some things in life that present difficult dilemmas. A long history of arbitrary prejudice based on race/ethnicity that pervades all aspects of life from womb to grave is one those things.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yutsano:
Yes. Bet you $10,000 it’ll happen before the GOP Tampa convention. Don’t know when, don’t know where, don’t know by whom — but there will be an Nwordgate episode in the next few months, of that I am sure.
jl
@Jewish Steel:
‘ The State Violence store is out of my way coming home from work. And try to get some violence after 11am on Sunday? Forget it. ‘
Dammed gummint zonong laws.
OK, we need to get rid of the state monopoly on institutionalized violence, AND those damn zoning laws that prevent free market institutionalized corner kwik stops from serving our institutionalized violence needs.
Yglesias would have another policy crusade, too.
SiubhanDuinne
@Benjamin Franklin:
Jewish Steel
@BGinCHI:
I have already stolen this line.
SiubhanDuinne
FYWP. I might try that again, my edit didn’t take.
BGinCHI
@Jewish Steel: I left the comma after “play” out on purpose, imagining a game called Dumbass that folks like BoB could play. In fact, they are playing it.
IM
@SiubhanDuinne:
Sprakel is supposed to be german? Sounds like one of these good jiddish insults , though.
Joel
The notable part of that clip is that awkward interaction between Alex Witt and Melissa Harris-Parry. Paraphrased: “I assume that the Help is your pick for Best Picture?”
smintheus
@jl: I’ve been appalled at what I’ve seen of affirmative action in academia since the ’70s. Have seen far too many instances of wealthy minorities of middling achievement on full scholarships while very smart but poor whites have to hustle multiple jobs just to stay afloat in college. And the effects on academic job searches are far too often bizarre and repulsive; people will do backflips to avoid having to hire a white male, and even take pride in their ingenuity in circumventing established law in order to favor minority and women candidates.
Back in the ’80s the affirmative-action committee of my professional organization did a study of job hiring practices, and found that male candidates were getting interviews at less than half the rate as women, and white candidates at a ridiculously lower rater than minorities. And the grandees of this committee expressed their dissatisfaction, nay indignation, at the figures. They demanded that colleagues redouble their efforts to make those figures even more uneven because women candidates in particular were not being favored sufficiently in their opinion.
Hell, I’ve been told multiple times on job interviews that the interviewers were determined to hire either a woman or minority for the job they were pretending to interview me for. One interview even opened with a demand that I explain why they should consider my candidacy any further, given that I was neither a woman nor a minority. That pretty much sums up my impression of how affirmative action ran amok in academia.
BGinCHI
@smintheus: Big fucking can of worms here, but one thing: I agree that hiring practices have sometimes swung pretty far in the opposite direction, but at the same time, you have to admit that white men dominated the profession, treated people like shit, and held the line on letting things change for a long time. I’m not saying two wrongs make a right; just pointing out that a lot of damage was done and that means setting it right is never going to be easy. Unless of course you believe in an entirely free market…..
ETA: I don’t mean all white men, of course. Hard not to generalize a bit here without writing a gigantic post.
Jewish Steel
@BGinCHI: That’s just how I read it.
Joel
@smintheus: I work in academia, and I have to say that my particular discipline is about as lily white as they come. Sure, there’s a sprinkling of asian minorities here and there. But the monochrome is striking enough that people joke pretty openly about it.
jl
@smintheus: Yes, you have seem some disgusting stuff, but looks like you are in a field where it is OK to get away with stuff that illegal even under affirmative action.
Did you stop that job interview right then and there?
I have seen objectionable stuff with affirmative action. But then in grad school I did some tutoring in inner city schools. There are groups have been systematically discriminated against from birth. I think it is at least as unfair to leave that unaddressed as anything I have seen with affirmative action. But you have seen crud done under affirmative action that I have not, so I can understand your bitterness.
So, yeah sure, affirmative action, like any policy in the real world is imperfect, there is always room for improvement, and better alternative methods should be adopted as soon as they are workable.
But one thing I am absolutist on is that the forces bringing the court cases, initiatives, etc, to repeal the policies act in bad faith if the CA experience is any guide. Their policies, in actual practice, go beyond the advertized issues of the white person who does not quite make the cut for a seat versus the minority person who does not quite make the cut at some admissions dept at some university. I think these policies as implemented in CA turn into schemes to enshrine current socioeconomic and racial hierarchies, just disguised as self righteous ranting about an arbitrary definition of fairness. Get those people out of the room, and I’m willing to talk about ways to improve the system.
Calouste
@Chuck Butcher:
Full plate armor was developed as a reaction to longbows. During the early part of the 100 year war, when most of the major battles involving longbows took place, chain mail was the common armor, which was effective against the blows of swords and axes but not as much against longbow arrows.
Mnemosyne
@jrg:
So what do you call it when Princeton deliberately restricts the number of Asians they admit so they have enough white students?
If you’re going to insist that schools go strictly by test scores, isn’t it unfair to turn down Asian-American students with higher scores so you can admit white students with lower scores? Or is racial balance a worthy enough goal that some people will suffer through no fault of their own?
If you can’t see the white privilege involved in restricting the number of minority admissions so more white students can be admitted, I really can’t help you there.
jl
And… due to the wash of rather poorly trained and just maybe non to swift themselves white guys who got jobs and tenure during the boom years of higher ed employment, I have seen minority and white applicants put up with clueless hiring committees that were not a whole lot better than the average graduate.
jrg
@Mnemosyne: You’re missing the point. If the “white privilege” augment wasn’t bullshit, they wouldn’t have to “turn down Asian-American students with higher scores”, would they?
Also:
If you’re going to insist that schools go strictly by test scores, isn’t it unfair to turn down white students with higher scores so you can admit black students with lower scores? Or is racial balance a worthy enough goal that some people will suffer through no fault of their own?
…I just wanted to see what that paragraph would look like with some minor adjustments.
jl
@Mnemosyne: Problem in discussing Asians is that the name does not refer to a homogenous group, and specific nationalities and ethnic groups differ along many dimensions, from ‘traditional respect for education’ to child, to socioeconomic status, and perceptions of their respectability and social class the eyes of the local power structure.
When I mentioned the arbitrariness of the bureaucratic official box checking and reporting side of affirmative action, and effect it had on real lives, I was thinking mostly of various groups that fall under ‘Asian’, not all of which are treated the same by affirmative action policies.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
And the very smart but poor Latinos and African-Americans? Were they anywhere in that world, or were they never admitted in the first place?
I do actually agree that an admissions policy that leans more towards socioeconomic status than strictly racial status might end up being more fair but, as jl pointed out, the forces working against affirmative action aren’t interested in making admissions more fair across the board. They’re interested in maintaining a status quo where upper-class white kids have a leg up over everyone else, including lower-class white kids.
But I will admit that I haven’t worked in a strictly academic environment, so maybe things are different there. When I worked for UCLA Medical Center, they did have affirmative action policies that required you to show that you had interviewed X number of people from different groups. Not necessarily that you had hired a person from any specific group, but that you had at least given everyone an equal chance at the interview stage. That’s probably why I worked under an Asian-American department head with a Latino second-in-command, but they were good at their jobs, so I’m not sure why anyone would complain.
Lynn Dee
I see Irshad Manji is every bit as insufferable as the last time I saw her speak.
Mnemosyne
@jrg:
Uh, it’s the turning down of the students with higher test scores that’s the manifestation of white privilege. It’s going back to the original quota systems where only X number of, say, Jewish students would be admitted.
Yes, I was hoping you would do that so we could have the terms of discussion out in the open. I’ve noticed that anti-affirmative action people aren’t quite as vocal about how we need to make test scores the primary criteron now that Asian-Americans have been outscoring whites. All of a sudden we’re supposed to be taking other things into account now that white students don’t automatically have the higher test scores. Funny, that.
As I said above, I think there are fairer ways to construct affirmative action programs so that the people who truly need the extra assistance get it. I don’t think that the way to do that is to eliminate them all and turn it back into a system where upper-class white kids have an advantage over everyone else.
jrg
I agree with this 100%. But, in my view, AA gives the Palins of the world (and the hick white resentment that fuels right-wing populism) the kind of ammunition that winds up hurting education opportunities for everyone.
This (along with the “white privilege” BS that could be used to justify almost anything), is my problem with AA.
Joel
@jrg: What is this “bullshit” argument that you’re refuting? That non-whites have been at the receiving end of a long history of discrimination, and that this history creates inherent inequalities?
TooManyJens
@Joel:
That was AMAZING. At first I thought it was a slightly weak attempt at snark, but then she seemed genuinely surprised that Harris-Perry’s answer was “Um, no.”
jrg
@Joel: Certain Asian populations do better on test scores, and are equal or higher in terms of socioeconomic status than whites.
If “white privilege” was the reason for higher socioeconomic status, this would not be true.
Mnemosyne
@jrg:
So does any civil rights legislation, frankly. If you read Nixonland, you know that the breaking point for a lot of people to go to the Republican side was not employment, but non-discrimination in housing. Johnson could have backed off on that, but he didn’t, and Nixon won the next election thanks largely to the Southern Strategy of winning racists to the Republican side.
Racists are always going to have something they’re pissed off about, because they always feel that making the playing field level is unfair to them. Their opinions shouldn’t influence policy.
jrg
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I’m not the biggest fan of standardized testing, either, but it’s still a better predictor of success in higher ed than race is. The fact is that people are neither color coded, nor accurately described by a number.
Anyhow, Gotta run… Making dinner for the lady. Have a good night.
jl
@jrg: I don’t get your argument. Yes, some Asian populations, due to their culture, power structures in their ancestral countries, and various historical accidents, have higher socioeconomic status, and better academic performance than the average of whites in their communities.
But, I am not sure those groups are a majority even among all Asians, even if they are numerous enough to fill up a lot of seats at UC Berkeley and Ivy League schools.
What does that have to do with all the reasons the vast majority of whites in this country have a higher socioeconomic status than most racial/ethnic minorities?
smintheus
@BGinCHI: Those same senior white men, once they’d decided to wave the banner of affirmative action (they had their tenured jobs after all), were in the forefront in treating me like dirt as an applicant. Some of them took such pride in discriminating against young white males that they were eager for me to know it; seemed to think it was a badge of honor, to the point where they were indifferent to any danger that they might be sued for violating civil rights law.
The reason affirmative action got so out of control so quickly was that the people doing the hiring had almost nothing to lose and often much to gain by running amok.
At one place I taught (Univ. of Vermont), the (lily white, and utterly vile…but that’s another story) administration was pushing affirmative action so aggressively that they developed elaborate systems to bribe departments to hire minorities rather than whites. For ex., they’d permanently boost a department’s budget for research/conference expenses if it hired a minority.
smintheus
@Joel: My field is largely white as well. As a result, any time a minority even just a couple years into a PhD program showed up at our annual convention, he/she would become the center of a feeding frenzy. I’ve seen faculty running around jabbering about who would get to hire so and so (qualifications? pffft…who cares), or calling up their Deans asking for a new FTE designated specifically for this person. Bizarre behavior would be putting it mildly. White males almost never got job offers until any available minorities had been scooped up, and everyone knew it.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Mnemosyne: I don’t see where jrg is arguing that whites should get preferential treatment over Asians, but that blacks shouldn’t get preferential treatment over whites. The point was just that you can’t complain about whites being favored over Asians while insisting that blacks be favored over whites.
Also, I don’t understand jl’s statement that California has enshrined a socio-economic and racial hierarchy in its university system, where more than 40% of the students at Berkeley are Asian. Are Asians now considered at the top of the hierarchy? If so, what head start did they get?
Egg Berry
@jl:
Has anyone mentioned that the same applies to blacks?
Edit: or hispanic/latinos?
jl
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Asians are not a homogenous group. Some groups that go under the ‘Asians’ moniker have lost ground in CA. See my commments above on different Asian groups.
Edit: and even in CA, Asians less than 20 percent of population, and only about ten percent for whole country. So not sure how experiences of that group apply to African American, Hispanic, white situations.
smintheus
@jl:
No I didn’t; if I’d had more experience of in-your-face discrimination at that point, I would have. But we all knew that any candidate who objected to obnoxious hiring practices, especially blatant discrimination like this, could kiss any chance of a career goodbye. In public at least, all senior academics in our field stood foursquare with even the most extreme affirmative action outrages.
I have tried to put a stop to a variety of discriminatory policies when sitting on the opposite side of the hiring table. And for my efforts, I’ve generally been tarred. And fwiw, these have shown that the extremism is not limited to my field.
For ex., a Dean once convoked a colloquium of college faculty to discuss how we could make the college more diverse. The Psych Dept. proudly explained how they had circumvented the problem that most of their best applicants were usually white by the (to them clever) device of piling on fictitious job duties in the advertisement, which were meant to signal that white applicants shouldn’t bother applying and gave a pretext for rejecting any that did. These clowns urged all the other depts. to adopt their scheme, and this met with universal approbation…until I pointed out it was illegal under CRA. That was the beginning of the end of my job at that college; the Dean became quite hostile and asked around for any complaints about me that would justify firing me. She got her way in the end, though she always refused to explain why exactly I’d been canned.
So, in my experience that’s how open affirmative-action’s staunchest advocates are to anybody who doesn’t fall in line.
jl
@smintheus: All I can say is that I have not had the same experiences in CA before Prop 209 got rid of affirmative action in state government and agencies. Not on the job market, and not on the other side.
It is true that when you are a new grad, you have to be very careful in calling BS on the bigshots, and sometimes best not to.
baldheadeddork
@TooManyJens: Of course she did. She knows what’s hot in the streets.
smintheus
@jl: Oh, and I carry no brief for the political crowd in CA that pushed (and rode) the anti-affirmative-action agenda.
Also, the issue of college admissions has all manner of factors to weigh, and any one-size-fits-all approach is going to make a mess of things. It’s rather different from the problem in job hiring, where qualifications are relatively more clear cut and where in any case there is clear, established, comprehensive law; the problem is that those laws are proudly flouted when they should be enforced.
I’m not unaware of how badly the poor and immigrants are treated in the US. I too did tutoring as an undergrad in an impoverished school. But I don’t think the solution to the inequities built into affirmative action is to wait until all the bad actors walk off the stage. I think the solution is more simple: recast admissions preferences by applying them to all underprivileged students, and just plain stop trampling upon the CRA in job hiring.
smintheus
@Mnemosyne:
Yes of course. Why do you ask? Do you suppose that makes showering money on wealthy and undeserving students any less crazy?
I never argued that all AA policies everywhere are oppressive, so counter-examples of non-lunatic practices don’t alter my opinion that there are seriously negative aspects of AA nationwide.
jl
@smintheus:
Problem is in CA that I have seen, is that have been cases where state schools have tried to do that (Edit: craft socioeconomic criteria) in admissions and hiring, they got hassled by the prop 209 crowd and accused of trying to reinstitute affirmative action by other means.
So, the administrators are spooked, and trying to do anything that addresses any inequities at all becomes a nightmare. You are hassled by somebody or other.
I have to admit I saw some weird things when on job market long ago, that were probably related to affirmative action. And got some feedback on an ‘unsuccessful’ job application process (in quotes because I wasn’t that hot on the job anyway) where I was basically told I would have gotten the job except for some ‘demographics’ problems.
Affirmative action is not a perfect system, by any means.
jl
Also, the discrimination in many fields was unrelenting and absolute. Brilliant African Americans need not apply to math and statistics departments, for example.
David Blackwell (one of the most accomplished theoretical statisticians and probabilists in 20th century) was African American. He was bounced out of his first nomination (which was supported by Jerzy Neyman, another of he most prominent theoretical statisticians in 20th century) for UC Berkeley job because he was black, even after he had proved himself to be an eminent mathematician. Years later, he finally got a post at Berkeley (in the dirty dirty beatnik 50s, that ruined everything)
In interviews, Blackwell said that African American scholars would often not even bother looking for a job at a ‘white’ school. And he said there was a lot of self selection, he claims he knew lots of African Americans who had the potential for strong academic careers who went into business or professions instead of academics, because they thought that had zero chance in academics, just because of their race.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Blackwell
Marc
@smintheus:
I hope that you’re aware that affirmative action is now needed for male students in a lot of disciplines and in a lot of selective schools. Ivy League schools would be overwhelmingly female if you just did an arbitrary cutoff in grades for admissions.
If you think that natural talent is evenly distributed across the gene pool then you account for other things besides raw grades when admitting people.
There is some sort of make-believe idea that there is some absolute objective criterion for things like admission to colleges. Sorry; not so. For example, art and music students are skilled at different things than humanities students. And you get other pathologies with a grade-based scoring system, or with standardized tests (which can be significantly impacted by expensive tutoring, available only to the wealthy…)
smintheus
@jl: “Not a perfect system” is putting it mildly. I’ve only scratched the surface of the many unedifying stories I have about affirmative action. I’ve seen more ugly stuff than 20 people combined should ever have to witness. Of course by no means all the obnoxious and stupid things I’ve seen in job searches are related to AA, but it does provide most of the worst examples.
smintheus
@Marc: Basically you’re telling me what I said above: that there are many factors to be weighed in admissions, and that every school will have reasons to balance them differently.
And having taught some of the lower achieving males admitted in recent years to strike a better gender balance, I’m generally opposed to making such concessions to male applicants…not that admissions people care what I think.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
So, basically, the white men in power were hiring minorities to make themselves look better without having to give up any actual power. My question is, how many of those minorities are now in those power positions and how many of them have had their careers frozen in place?
Given the stories I’ve heard from (white) women in academia, the glass ceiling is still very strong. I had a friend in Linguistics who was told flat-out that she had destroyed her career by having a baby because there was no way she would get tenure after that. And she was at UCLA, which is ostensibly a “liberal” school.
The fact that the power structure was abusing AA to maintain their own power isn’t necessarily an indictment of AA.
Anya
Am I the only one who thinks Irshad Manji is more insufferable and gilbertarian than Matt Welch.
Speaking of Irshad Manji, I knew her before she figured out that a Muslim Native Informant who validated anti-Muslim bigots’ views on Islam and Muslims was so lucrative to the point of landing you a teaching job at an Ivy league university, even with only a BA and no other qualification.
That was when I was in high school in Toronto. I did my community service hours with a community organization that specialized in “race relations,” where Ms. Manji was some sort of a community educator (not really sure what her role was). She did workshops on civic participation. I worked with her on two workshops. She was really nice and she spoke highly of Canada’s multicultural policy and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. I guess that kind of talk does not work with her new gilbertarian friendly believes.
Egg Berry
@smintheus:
Like people having to walk miles to their deaths because they are native Americans? Or people traded like chattel?
Honestly, you haven’t seen shit.
Collin
I’ve heard in a speech by MLK (pardon me if I’m quoting it wrong), that we must lay low the mountains and fill in the valleys. I believe we should follow that algebraically. Remember that the qualification measured by an entrance exam is not a scientific quantity. It’s a social construct, and if we declare it should be independent of race, it’s our right as Americans to make that an exact statistical independence.
The problem with the current adjustment system is that it’s wrong to discriminate against any person based on race. This means that an adjustment that’s applied in some way other than the current per-person basis won’t have this problem.
I refer here to the concept of “opposite categories”, which I encourage you to research. An entrance exam is usually thought of as the category of people who pass or fail a certain subset of the exercises that make up the exam. I’ve never heard anyone mention the opposite category: the exercises that are passed or failed by a certain subset of the population.
In vector algebra, there is an exact definition of the correlation between two lists of statistics. And there are methods for minimizing that correlation. It would be possible to establish a standard formula by which a specific term’s exam results, classified by race, could be used to minimize the racial disparity by adjusting the score given to each exercise. The key is to find these adjustments after all the students have been accepted or rejected by the scoring of that term. Then the new scoring is applied to the next term.
This means that the preference for or against a student doesn’t depend on that same student’s race, but rather on aggregate data from the entire population. And it isn’t even clear whether the preference works for or against a student in the first place.
Corner Stone
@Egg Berry: I, for one, hope you will be donating your journals to local libraries for the benefit of history.
smintheus
@Corner Stone: To paraphrase Maxwell Smart’s mother: I had no idea the academic job market was so competitive!
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Anya:
No.