Discriminations

Playing Percentages - The Chronicle of Higher Education has a new article (link requires subscription) touting the benefits of the plans adopted, so far, by California, Texas, and Florida that guarantee admission to the state university system to the top graduates (top 4%, 10%, and 20% respectively) of each high school in the state. These plans were adopted to move away from race-based affirmative action while preserving what is seen as the latter's diversity-enhancing effects.

The two authors do argue that percentage plans should not be seen as a substitute for affirmative action, which the continue to support.

For example, critics of percentage plans argue that they disadvantage outstanding minority students who graduate from competitive, integrated high schools and barely miss being in the top 10 percent. Affirmative action would allow universities to recognize the special contribution that such students can make.

This is of course true, but it begs the question of fairness (which in turn is based on our understanding of equality) that is at the core of debates over affirmative because percentage plans also disadvantage non-minority students from strong schools who barely miss being in the top 10%. Making these strong students, both minority and non-minority, stand in line behind students in the top 10% of their classes at weaker schools is, after all, why percentage plans tend to lower the academic quality of entering students.

The authors actually criticize the California and Florida plans because they, out of concern with the point mentioned above, do not guarantee admission to the flagship campuses, only to the system as as whole.

California's 4-percent plan, like Florida's 20-percent plan, suffers from a fundamental deficiency: It guarantees admission only to the university at large, not to its elite institutions. That defect has helped perpetuate a two-tier educational system in California, whereby students, often underrepresented minorities, are steered, or "cascade," to lower-ranked colleges and universities. Not only have flagship campuses remained largely closed to black and Hispanic students, but many of those who might be admitted remain deterred because financial aid is not tied to admissions.

Query: What is it that makes elite campuses elite and flagship campuses flagship? Whatever it is, will they remain elite and flagship if they accept larger numbers of students whose academic credentials are weaker than those they formerly accepted? That is, insofar as the attraction of elite and flagship campuses is that they are, well, elite and flagship, do not admissions schemes that tamper with what made them elite and flagship in the first place risk implementing an academic version of Groucho Marx's famous quip ("I would not want to join any club that would have me")?

Posted by John Rosenberg at 6:09 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

More Bias From the New York Times - Andrew Sullivan wrote over the weekend that "[i]t's gotten to the point now that I always check the actual poll when reading the New York Times' version." The particular poll that occasioned this latest barb from Sullivan was in an AP story, but Sullivan found that "the Times headline is a complete distortion of the poll numbers."

Today the Times has two stories from the AP on polling results in two governor's races (in Hawaii and New Mexico), and the way the results are slanted in the Times headlines confirms the bias Sullivan describes.

The Times headline over the story from Honolulu reads, Lead Narrows in Hawaii Gov. Race. The article itself says that Republican Linda Lingle leads Democrat Mazie Hirono by 47% to 39%, a comfortable 8 points. Lingle had a 15 point lead in early June. Since Hawaii hasn't had a Republican governor since 1962 and the Republican candidate still leads by 8%, the Times headline seems like wishful thinking. The reduction in the Republican's lead over the past four months hardly seems like it's the most newsworthy item in the story.

By contrast, the Times headline over the story from Santa Fe reads, Poll: Richardson Leads Sanchez. Here, however, the article reveals that Democrat Bill Richardson's lead over Republican John Sanchez has shrunk from 14% to 9% in the past month.

Where a heavily favored Democrat's lead has dropped in a month, the Times headline proclaims him ahead. Where an underdog Republican is still holding on to an 8% lead after slow tapering in the lead since early June, the Times headline proclaims "Lead Narrows."

One can easily see why Sullivan concludes: "Lies, damned lies, and the New York Times!" In any event, you shouldn't buy a used poll from these guys without kicking the tires and looking carefully under the hood.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:52 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The New York Times Contradicts Itself, Blasts McConnell, Mangles Bob Jones - Criticizing the Bush administration because it "has made ideology the primary consideration in picking judges," the New York Times today called upon the Senate to ... make ideology the primary consideration in picking judges. "Senators are shirking their responsibility," editorialized the NYT, if they approve nominees "who have not demonstrated ... that their judicial philosophies will take the country in the right direction."

I will leave for another day a discussion of the NYT's unappealing notion that it is judges who should determine the direction of the country. What concerns me today is that in its apparent zeal to torpedo McConnell the Times sloppily mischaracterized a Supreme Court case, a case in which it was so blinded by its approval of the result that it failed to see the disturbing -- and threatening implications for the Times's own sometime values -- of its reasoning. In other words, it judged the case the same way it judges McConnell: with a hasty, superficial, and misguided concern only for the immediate political result. Such are the pitfalls of a result-oriented instead of a principled jurisprudence.

According the NYT editorial,

Mr. McConnell disapproves of the Supreme Court's decision in the 1983 Bob Jones University case in which the justices rightly decided that banning interracial dating among the college's students was racial discrimination. He would require the government to subsidize, through tax deductions, schools like Bob Jones.

The plain text supported Bob Jones. The qualifying categories are linked with the disjunctive "or," not the conjunctive "and," which at least as a grammatical matter means that an organization could qualify if it were any one of the three, not that it would have to be two or more. But courts are often unrestrained by the apparent limitations placed by plain language, and that was the case with the Supremes here, in large part because the IRS made a persuasive argument that the whole nature, purpose, and structure of the tax exemption scheme was suffused with the general requirement that some "public benefit" be served, and it was not frivolous to maintain that even preaching discrimination served no public benefit.

But there is much more to Bob Jones (the case, not the school) than the public benefits of interracial dancing. Among other things, this decision resulted in reducing the power of Congress, which wrote the statute, and the courts, which interpret it, in favor of the executive agency with the responsibility of enforcing it. The New York Times does not generally celebrate the deference of Congress and courts to the enforcement whims of the executive branch.

Much more ominously, the Court, unnecessarily, went far beyond allowing the executive branch to withhold tax exemptions to any organization whose "public benefit" it questioned. In addition to requiring that tax-exempt organizations must provide some "public benefit," the Court went further and also held that their purposes must not conflict with "common community standards," that they be in harmony with the "common community conscience." And the content of that conscience will be determined by the executive branch acting through the IRS.

Thus the Times, mindful only of the immediate result of the bad guy Bob Jones losing, has mindlessly embraced -- and indeed held out as a litmus test for judicial appointment -- a sweeping expansion of executive authority whose reasoning and rationale would support the IRS, if in its judgment their principles or practices violated "public policy," revoking the tax exemptions of, for example:

• a museum that displayed the work of Robert Mapplethorpe;

• Planned Parenthood, and other organizations that advocate or perform abortions;

• non-profit organizations that advocate peace in a time of war;

• private universities and foundations, such as the Bill Gates Foundation, that give awards and grants restricted by race.

Michael McConnell would be a much better defender of the principles the New York Times occasionally and selectively trumpets than is the Times itself.

* * * * *

ADDENDUM 1 - I neglected to address the editorial's assertion that McConnell "would require the government to subsidize, through tax deductions, schools like Bob Jones." I am tempted to respond polemically, which is all this comment deserves, but I will restrain myself and say only that this charge is nothing more than ad hominem horsefeathers.

With some difficulty I will also refrain from a long discussion of whether the government's decision not to tax something amounts to a government subsidy. Reasonable people can disagree about this, but in my view tax restraint does not amount to a subsidy. To day it does is to say that the government is subsidizing every church, synagogue, and mosque in the country. Much to the chagrin of some, the government simply can't tax every financial transaction that takes place, and it makes no sense to say that it subsidizes all activities it doesn't tax. If a father gives a daughter $50 to attend a Gay Pride event, is the government subsidizing the promotion of homosexuality because it (so far) has refrained from taxing that gift? My wife, Jessie, and I are spending an ungodly amount of money for Jessie to attend Bryn Mawr (which, in its wisdom, does not offer merit aid). If the Times were right, we should thank our government for subsidizing us since, in its beneficent generosity, it has so far refrained from taking all of our assets in taxes.

I can't speak for Prof. McConnell, but I'm confident that he would find the charge that he would require the government to subsidize Bob Jones et. al. risible. I suspect, however, that he would give Congress, not the courts or the executive branch, the responsibility for writing tax legislation. I'm also confident that as a judge he would be reluctant to hand over to the IRS, without Congressional authorization, the authority to deny tax exemptions to all organizations that it thought violated public policy or offended the community conscience. I strongly suspect the Times would support Judge McConnell in this reluctance the first time the IRS, acting on principles the Times now endorses, moved to take away the tax exemption from an organization it likes.

ADDENDUM 2 - I also posted a discussion of Bob Jones back in June, here. One thing I noted there was that a group of Congressmen had attempted to overturn the IRS ruling denying exemptions to discriminatory schools. One of them was Al Gore.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:01 PM | Permalink | Say What? (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Two Ubiquitous Affirmative Action Fallacies - I'm tempted to say that if someone can show me a defense of preferential admissions that does not contain these fallacies I'll give him or her an autographed copy of my next book ... or ten cents in coin.

I discussed a typical example just two days ago, here. And now here's another example of the same thing (See what I mean? It's everywhere), from a review in today's New York Times Book Review of The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, by James Shulman and William G. Bowen:

"The Game of Life," by James Shulman, a researcher and administrator at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and William Bowen, president of the foundation and formerly president of Princeton, marshals the evidence that high athletic ability -- the kind that gets high school children onto the wish lists submitted by college coaches to admissions committees -- confers advantage in the admissions scramble. Supporters of affirmative action cogently point out that this sort of "affirmative action" for athletes (as well as for alumni children) has never, at least until now, elicited cries of foul on the ground that it violates meritocratic principles. Somehow that kind of indignation seems to arise only in response to the putative advantages of minority candidates. (Emphasis added)

For some reason, every time this point is made -- and it is made in virtually every defense of racial preferences -- it is always made with a sort of breathless sense of discovery, as though the author had just come up with an unanswerable "gotcha!" that will drive the final nail into the coffin of racist or redneck or Republican (but, from a liberal point of view, I repeat myself) objections to affirmative action.

Here are the two fallacies on which that argument depends:

1. The Merit Fallacy
I'm sorely tempted to call this one The Meretricious Fallacy (Meretricious: "tawrdrily and falsely attractive"; "superficially significant" -- Merriam-Webster Collegiate Online). Anyway, this is an argument that no one who accepts the legitimacy of criteria based on anything other than merit can make a principled criticism of racial preferences. It is a fallacy because it wrongly assumes that the only criticism of racial preferences is that they offend the merit principle. That is not true. They also offend, and more fundamentally, the principle that no person should be rewarded or punished based on race or religion. For example, merit is totally irrelevant to the illegitimacy of an admissions office in a public institution giving preferences to Presbyterians. (And preferences to Jews or Catholics or wiccans would have been equally illegitimate, even if the rationale were to compensate for past discrimination.)

2. The Fallacy of Fungible Discriminations
This is the argument that all discrimination is alike; if you can discriminate for one reason, you can discriminate for any reason. Thus if it's acceptable to give preferences based on athletic or musical ability or the alumni status of parents, it's also legitimate to give preferences based on race or religion. Preferences, in short, are preferences; if one is O.K., all are O.K.

In some respects No. 2 is simply the other side of the coin of No. 1. The Merit Fallacy says that if you accept any exception to merit you have no principled basis to criticize any discrimination, and The Fallacy of Fungible Discriminations says all discriminations are on the same moral plane. But they are not. Because of our history, and the core values that have emerged from it, race and religion are in a special, protected category. We allow, even require, the state to impose benefits and burdens on us based on a whole host of criteria -- but not race or religion, which are or should be off limits to government control. As I wrote two days ago making this same point against the same fallacies, no Constitutional prohibition bars discrimination for or against tight ends or tuba players. That hardly means, as defenders of racial preferences must maintain, that discrimination based on race or religion is also acceptable.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 2:06 AM | Permalink | Say What? (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Sweet Home Alabama - My wife and I went to see the new movie Sweet Home Alabama this afternoon. I was going to let it go unblogged, but then I noticed the recent spate of movie criticism and response that has been provoked by the good Reverends Shaprton and Jackson and their objections to Barbershop (see here for example) and I thought, "if them, why not me too?"

It's the story of a poor Southern girl with a hidden past who makes good in the Big Apple, becomes engaged to a very appealing fellow whose Mom is the Mayor from Hell, and returns home to Alabama (except it seems to have been filmed in Georgia and Florida, or some unknown place where they have lightening bugs in the fall) to secure a divorce from her long-abandoned good ole boy husband. You can probably figure out the rest.

Although the Alabamians were a little hickier and even weirder than we natives think we are, they were at least portrayed sympathetically (or what Hollywood thinks of as sympathetically). I actually liked it and would recommend it (though you should keep in mind that I'm not too far removed from hick myself, and am the type who likes movies much better than films). Still, there was one line in it that grates: after Reese Witherspoon had been back in Alabama a day or so and begun to fit back in a bit, her estranged husband says, "Well, at least you've got your accent back."

I can guarantee you that no good ole boy (even a secretly cool one, as the husband turns out to be) would have said that. He'd have said, "Well, at least you've lost your accent."

UPDATE - I never should have started down this road, but now that I have I should point you to other, less charitable reviews in the New York Times ("a ball of fluff ... that peddles a faux populist sentimentality" -- don't you just love it when movie reviewers act like they know what populism is?) and the Washington Post. In fact, the WaPo disliked it so much that it had to run three reviews: here ("mostly stereotypes and cliches"), here ("tiredly familiar"), and here. This last one was a doozy. After mixing breakfast metaphors every which way from Sunday -- "These Grits Don't Ring True" [!] plus "thin gruel," it also asserts somewhat churlishly that the movie managed to "elide the vexing issues of sexuality and race that tug at the film's edges." Only a very small tweak to the vocabulary -- adopting the mandatory mantra of "race, class, gender" and this review would have been right at home in a History Dept. seminar.

If I might adopt the faux persona (as the reviewers would say) of a character from the movie (something easy for me to do since I was born and raised -- or should I say "reared"? -- in Alabama), I would point out that all these reviews are about what you'd expect some pointy-headed Yankees to say.

And there's even news about those who got me started down this misbegotten path: the good Reverends Jackson and Sharpton. The New York Times reports today of still-roiling controversy over Barbershop. What I found most interesting, however, was not the continuing huff and puff of the aggrieved Reverends but that the NYT, as it often does, managed once again to find an expert who knows even less than the writer. (Come on, be fair. This is an AP story. All the NYT did was run it.) Here's the line the article takes:

The flap over the popular movie has exposed a generational rift between civil rights activists and younger blacks who have no memory of the days of bus boycotts, freedom rides and lunch counter sit-ins, some scholars say.

Some scholars? Unfortunately, one of them (are there more?) is quoted:

"You have some individuals from the civil rights movement, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who are utterly offended that some of their icons have been criticized," said Todd Boyd, an associate professor at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television.

"You have another generation who finds no problem whatever in criticizing anyone who they deem appropriate for criticism. They have rejected this idea of the sacred cow."

Al Sharpton is a lot of things, but veteran of the civil rights movement is not one of them. He was born in 1954, and thus was one year old when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery bus; six years old when Greensboro students first sat-in at a lunch counter, launching the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee; nine years old when Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech; and fourteen years old when King was killed. True, Jesse Jackson did hire him in 1969, at 15, to help shake down companies that hadn't hired enough blacks, but shortly after that he was off on the road with James Brown and then working with Don King, the fight promoter.

Jackson and Sharpton may be offended that Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks have been "disrespected" by one character in a movie. I am offended that they are mentioned in the same sentence/paragraph/story with King and Parks.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ideology-blindness? - Democrats oppose color-, ethnicity-, and gender-blindness, but they appear to favor politics-blindness (except, of course, when gerrymandering electoral districts). How else can we interpret the furor from their side of the aisle over the possibility that Miguel Estrada may have asked candidates for a clerkship with Justice Kennedy questions that one of them is said to have viewed as an "ideological litmus test"?

What am I missing here? Has it now become a civil rights violation for a Supreme Court Justice to select clerks he or she believes will be sympathetic to the justice's interpretive approach and constitutional values?

If it is illegitimate for judges to be concerned with judicial philosophy in the selection of their clerks, why is it legitimate for Sen. Schumer (D, Interest Groups) to flaunt his concern for it in the selection of judges? Or perhaps it was some other New York Senator Charles E. Schumer who issued a press release whose headline is: "SCHUMER SAYS ROLE OF IDEOLOGY IN JUDICIAL CONFIRMATION PROCESS SHOULD BE LEGITIMIZED AND CONSIDERED IN EVALUATION OF JUDICIAL NOMINEES "

UPDATE - The following appears in what must be that other Senator Schumer's press release cited above:

For whatever reason, possibly senatorial fears of being labeled partisan, legitimate considerations of ideological beliefs seem to have been driven underground. It's not that we don't consider ideology, we just don't talk about it openly.

And, unfortunately, this unwillingness to openly examine ideology has sometimes led Senators who oppose a nominee to seek out non-ideological disqualifying factors, like small financial improprieties from long ago, to justify their opposition. This in turn has led to an escalating war of gotcha politics that has warped the Senate's confirmation process and harmed the Senate's reputation.

And some Senators who are unwilling "to openly examine ideology," i.e., admit that they would oppose any conservative nominee, have even been known to seek out and make a disqualifying "gotcha" out of the nominee's openly examining ideology in his role assisting in the selection of, not judges but judges' clerks!

I indicated yesterday (here) that People for the American Way believes the Supreme Court guilty of discrimination, but I had no idea the problem was as pervasive as Democrats must think it is.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Race-Baiting in Maryland - In their first debate, sponsored by the NAACP at primarily black Morgan State University "before a vocally partisan crowd of 2,100 people who booed Ehrlich into silence as he sought to make his opening statement," Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Kennedy Townsend made this enlightening comment on the sensitive subject of race:

"He opposes affirmative action based on race," she said. "Well, let me tell you, slavery was based on race. Lynching was based on race. Discrimination is based on race. Jim Crow was based on race. And affirmative action should be based on race."

Hmmm. I would have thought that slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, etc. had pretty well established that discrimination based on race is wrong. I guess not. Ms. Townsend obviously thinks that the only way to fight racial discrimination is with ... racial discrimination. That's strikes me as rather like burning a village in order to save it.

UPDATE - I've just seen that MediaMinded has teed off on the same offensive Townsend quote. Check him out.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Say What? (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Gephardt: Hoist On His Own Canard - So, former and future (?) Speaker Gephardt thinks we should "Defend the Country, Not the Party"? To see him whistling another tune, please see my post from yesterday, "Politics and War," and the update to it I've just added.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Iraq Trained(s?) Al Qaeda - A few minutes ago CBS News reporter Lesley Stahl, speaking with Don Imus on the latter's morning show, announced that this Sunday 60 Minutes will air an important segment revealing evidence that Iraq has been intimately involved in harboring and training Al Qaeda. Apparently the Israelis captured an extensive collection of Palestinian documents in Ramallah, and Stahl was shown material that she said proved the close connection between Iraq, Al Qaeda, and Palestinian terrorists. Should be interesting.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Race a "Specialized Talent"? - Joanne Jacobs links to an interesting dialog about elite college admissions at The Atlantic Online between James Fallows and Jacques Steinberg, author of The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College (Viking).

So far there are only two (long) entries, but this is good reading for anyone interested in what goes on behind the closed doors of elite admissions offices. I would, however, like to take issue with Steinberg's one brief comment (so far) about the lower requirements for minorities:

And I would argue that one can't criticize the arguably lower standard against which a minority candidate might be judged (especially one whose parents had not attended college, who would be coded as "NCP," or "non-college parent," in admissions lingo) without also looking at the standards against which other applicants with specialized talents are held.

Actually, one can, and I will. Race is not a "specialized talent." Racial discrimination, i.e., distributing benefits or burdens based on race, is not the same as discriminating on the basis of athletic or musical ability or the alumni status of one's parents. There is no Constitutional prohibition that bars discrimination for or against tight ends or tuba players. All discrimination, in short, is not the same; the fact that preferences for some reasons are acceptable does not mean that preferences for any reason are.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:36 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Extreme Right, Republican, Whatever - New blogger Kaimi Wenger has several interesting posts on the Estrada nomination. He was especially struck by a quote from Nan Aron, head of the Alliance for Justice, in The Nation article by Jack Newfield that was relied on by Estrada's critics in the Thursday hearing.

Aron claimed that "the extreme right already controls seven of the thirteen circuit appeal courts." Wenger did some checking, spoke to a researcher at the Alliance for Justice, and confirmed that in AFJ's "methodology" any circuit with more judges appointed by Republicans than Democrats is under the control of the "extreme right."

Now that same "methodology" has appeared in Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times.

The political right has been relentless in its campaign to control the federal courts, and that campaign is getting awfully close to an absolute victory. Seven of the 13 circuit courts are already controlled by Republican appointees, and it is possible that within two years that control will extend to as many as 12, and maybe all 13 circuits.

Now we know how to keep the courts from being dominated by the "extreme right" (Alliance for Justice) or "political right" (Herbert): defeat all Republican nominees.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Politics and War - No, not that war (the coming war with Iraq), this war (the one between Daschle/Democrats and the president over that war). ABC's influential The Note says "today is likely to be about trying to determine the political impact of yesterday's explosion." What explosion? Why "Tom Daschle's long bomb" accusing the president of politicizing the war.

I will leave it to others wiser than I to thrash this out, but while the Gore/Daschle/Democratic charges of making national security a political issue are being examined I thought a very short trip down memory lane might throw some helpful light on the subject. I refer to the last time Democrats in Congress were faced with what the Washington Post described as "one of the most important votes they will ever cast in their careers." War? Well, not exactly. It was the vote over whether "to open an inquiry of impeachment against a popular president from their own party." (For Minority Leader, A Matter of Consensus; Inquiry Vote Tests Gephardt's Skills, October 8, 1998, Section A, p. 18)

I know, I know. We've all "moved on" and "put that behind us." Still, history's there, and occasionally it can be enlightening. I was struck at the time (which is why I saved the reference) by the reverence and sense of gravity with which the House Minority Leader, Richard Gephardt, faced his grave Constitutional duty to determine whether high crimes and misdemeanors sufficient to justify removal of the president from office had been committed.

What guiding principle did Gephardt bring to this awesome and historic task?

"My first and prime responsibility is to the [House Democratic] caucus," he said in an interview. "I want to get members elected and win more seats. That's what they want to do, and that's what they want me to do."

UPDATE (27 Sept.) - Playing catch-up to Daschle and Gore, the once and wannabe Speaker has now added his discordant note to the current chorus of sanctimony. In an OpEd in today's New York Times, Gephardt writes that

President Bush himself has decided to play politics with the safety and security of the American people.... This is not how a great nation should debate issues of war and peace.

Of course not. Playing politics should be limited to such pedestrian matters as deciding whether a president has committed impeachable offenses, where it is perfectly O.K. to adopt whatever position will most improve the prospects of House Democrats in an upcoming election.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

People for the American Way Says the Supreme Court Discriminates - In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee opposing Miguel Estrada (link via Howard Bashman), People for the American Way mentions an interview in which Estrada, a former clerk to Justice Kennedy, is said to have minimized the significance of the relatively small number of minority law clerks at the Supreme Court. According to PFAW:

Mr. Estrada reportedly dismissed the numbers, stating that “if there was some reason for underrepresentation, it would be something to look into,” but concluded that he did not “have any reason to think it’s anything other than a reflection of trends in society.” USA Today (March 13, 1998). Mr. Estrada’s statements suggest a troubling disregard or lack of awareness about the role of present and past discrimination in limiting the ability of minorities to obtain such important positions, including the role of the vestiges of past discrimination in creating and perpetuating “trends in society.”

Since PFAW believes that one of the reasons there aren't more minority Supreme Court clerks is "present" discrimination, it apparently believes the Supreme Court justices discriminate in hiring.

Then, in one of the funniest examples I can recall of the pot calling the kettle black (perhaps that should be modified here to various official Hispanic pots calling Estrada not brown enough), PFAW has the gall to bring up the comments of a candidate for a clerkship with Justice Kennedy who complained that Estrada "asked me a lot of unfair, ideological questions," adding that "I felt like was being subjected to an ideological litmus test."

Apparently unaware of the contradiction, PFAW concluded the paragraph immediately preceding the one complaining about ideological litmus tests by demanding:

Mr. Estrada should be questioned closely about his views concerning the continuing effects of discrimination and concerning Supreme Court decisions that have approved affirmative action to help solve those problems.

Oh, I get it. Litmus tests are what the other side uses. All we demand is adherence to "the American Way."

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

33 "Realist" Scholars Oppose War - The academic petitions against war in Iraq continue to pile up. Now come 33 international relations scholars of the "realist" persuasion who, according to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (link requires subscription), are about to take out an ad in the New York Times claiming that a military attack on Iraq "would be profound and costly mistake."

The statement is said to make four points:

There is no evidence that the Iraqi regime is in league with Al Qaeda.

The Iraqi regime would not dare use nuclear weapons, because it fears retaliation from the United States or Israel.

A war in Iraq could be very costly in terms of U.S. casualties and regional instability.

Postwar Iraq would be extremely difficult to occupy and govern.

Unlike the last academic anti-war petition, at least all of the signatories to this one can claim professional involvement with their subject.

"What we tried to do here," said Mr. Mearsheimer [Univ. of Chicago, one of the organizers] in an interview, "was to restrict the list to scholars who focus on international-security affairs, and to scholars who believe that power matters in international politics -- that it's sometimes necessary for the United States to go to war to defend its national interests. This is not a group that could be identified as left-wing or dovish."

Still, I wonder how they know there is "no evidence" of Iraqi co-operation with Al Qaeda or what Saddam "would not dare" do.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

OOPS! - The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which has just announced its opposition to Miguel Estrada, as of this writing has forgotten to update its web site, which lists its past support of ... Miguel Estrada.

This is the "Statement of Purpose on the Recruitment and Support of Judicial Nominees" of their "Hispanic Judiciary Initiative":

Political leadership, particularly in the federal government, benefits from a diversity of thought and action. In an effort to promote this diversity, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus promotes and encourages Hispanic representation at all levels and in every branch of government. In order to ensure that the Judicial branch more accurately reflects the communities that it serves, the CHC will actively work to identify and recommend qualified Hispanic candidates to fill federal court vacancies. As with all positions, the CHC strives to find judicial candidates who are qualified, experienced, have a demonstrated commitment to the Hispanic community and who will enhance diversity on our courts by contributing under-represented perspectives.

Judicial Candidates of Interest to the CHC

• Jose Martinez, nominated to the U.S. District Court, Southern Florida District. Link to CHC letter to the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

• Miguel Estrada, nominated to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit

According to today's Washington Post,

Rep. Robert Menendez (N.J.) said that during an interview with caucus members in June, Estrada appeared to have "a very short fuse. . . . I don't think he has the judicial temperament that is necessary to be a judge."

Perhaps, but that conclusion never reached the Home Page of the CHC, which says that its site was last updated August 15, 2002.

UPDATE - The Board of Directors of The Latino Coalition issued a news release today condemning the decision of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (all of whose 18 members are Democrats) to oppose Miguel Estrada as "a slap in the face of U.S. Latinos."

"Today is a sad day in Hispanic America. Our Latino political leaders have decided to put partisan politics over the benefit of our community simply to satisfy the needs of their party bosses," said TLC President Robert Deposada. "Sacrificing the nomination of the first Latino to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, just to lend credibility to an obviously partisan lynching of an extremely well qualified and decent Latino, like Miguel Estrada, is an act of betrayal and corruption to millions of Latinos across this country."

"It's so sad that the only Latinos opposing Estrada's nomination are those who are controlled by partisan bosses who are looking to score political points at the expense of our community," Deposada added. "Not a single Hispanic organization has opposed Mr. Estrada's nomination. So what other reason other than partisan obligation, would they have for doing this? The members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus need to make a simple decision, whether they are partisan leaders or community leaders? And after this decision, we are convinced they already chose party over community."

Posted by John Rosenberg at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"P.G." is not PC - "P.G," Prince Georges County, Maryland, a rich, black-majority Washington, D.C., suburb, is both the subject and the title of a new novel by Connie Briscoe. "Touted," exclaims the Washington Post, "as an African-American 'Peyton Place,'" P.G. County tells the story of the richest African-American county in the country.

Briscoe's P.G. County is an alternate universe in which one character refers to Atlanta's Morehouse as an Ivy League college -- a misnomer that makes perfect sense in a world in which the elite for generations have been proud products of historically black colleges. But it is also depicted as a county with a chip on its shoulder. "I sense an inferiority complex there," Briscoe says.

That inferiority complex has been on display.

The book's title, for starters, will no doubt produce a great deal of teeth-gnashing and eye-rolls. Years ago, Prince George's County Executive Wayne Curry's administration successfully crusaded to make The Washington Post avoid the practice of abbreviating the county's name in headlines. Many residents, the administration argued, saw it as a sign of derision, disrespect.

Briscoe doesn't see it as an affront. Although she grew up in this area always referring to the county as "P.G.," she is sensitive to the issue and unsuccessfully tried to persuade her publishers to lengthen the title. She says they wanted to keep it P.G. County because it was snappier, easier to remember.

Briscoe deals with the abbreviation issue in the book by having all of the county residents say "Prince George's." Those characters living outside the county, particularly the snarky old money "Gold Coast" Washington families from upper 16th Street, snidely say "P.G." The characters generally stick to that rule, but "even they may slip up sometimes," she says.

No one seems to have complained, so far, that one of the main characters is "the black-sheep daughter" of one of the old money black families there. Nevertheless, watch your mouth when you're tempted to say "P.G." County ("D.C." still seems to be O.K.); otherwise, you might be branded as the sort of person who calls San Francisco "'Frisco."

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:56 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

LIBERALS OPPOSE PREFERENCES!!! - EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA!
You heard it here first, folks. It has now become clear, due to their opposition to the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, that liberals favor color-blindness and oppose ethnic preferences!

They think no conservative -- no exceptions for race, sex, or ethnicity -- should be appointed to appellate courts.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Say What? (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Worth v. Martinez - InstaPundit links to an excellent article by Stuart Taylor in National Journal about Worth v. Martinez, an important new attack on affirmative action in the federal government filed by the indomitable Center for Individual Rights. Go read the Taylor article.

This case is of potentially vital importance for two reasons: it threatens to put the final nail into the coffin of racial/gender preferences in government hiring, and perhaps of affirmative action in general; and it may make it impossible for the Bush administration to continue avoiding affirmative action, since it now has the obligation to defend the indefensible practices outlined in the complaint and surrounding materials.

Now if I may be so bold as to engage in some shameless ownblog-promotion, let me point out that a few of you already read about that case here, where I wrote that

CIR's lawsuit, Worth v. Martinez, threatens to do to the employment practices of the federal government, the nation's largest employer, what its suits against the University of Michigan's preferential admissions policies may do to college admissions (depending on what, if anything, the Supremes do with the latter).

Well, not totally shameless; I feel guilty enough about blowing our own horn to point out that my post really didn't do much more than point readers to Stanley Kurtz's impressively thorough discussion of CIR's argument in Worth v. Martinez here and to CIR's powerful discussion of the issues in the case here. I did not link it directly before, but CIR's statistical table demonstrating how dramatically white males are "underrepresented" in the federal work force is also worth checking.

Returning now to the shameless self-promotion, I do think one thing I pointed out in my earlier post bears repeating here (lesson: the more you blog, the more opportunities you can find, or create, to quote yourself!):

Despite the protests of many defenders of preferences that they do not believe in quotas or proportional representation, CIR's evidence demonstrates that the EEOC and those administering employment at HUD believe that "underrepresentation" of any group except white males is not evidence of discrimination; it is discrimination. (In a crucial distinction, the CIR makes clear that its complaint is not with the vast and pervasive "underrepresentation" of white males in the federal workforce but with the discriminatory policies and practices responsible for it.)

Donning once again the garb of good blogcitizen, I will close by pointing out that two other excellent articles from last month on Worth v. Martinez can be found here, by the indispensable Roger Clegg, and here, by Terry Eastland, publisher of The Weekly Standard.

Keep your eyes on this case.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Is Indoctrination O.K.? - The Chronicle of Higher Education has begun a colloquy (link requires registration, I think) based on the question of whether it is "appropriate for professors to distribute class-discussion guidelines stating that students should acknowledge the role of sexism, racism, and heterosexism in society?" Really. Well, I suppose the fact that there's at least some disagreement over the propriety of indoctrination is a hopeful sign.

Here's a taste of the discussion to date -- the question followed by a few of the responses (each paragraph is from a different discussant; I omitted their names):

THOUGHT CONTROL? This past spring, a professor at the University of South Carolina at Columbia was surprised to find herself in a controversy over guidelines she distributed that called for students in her courses to "acknowledge that racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, and other institutionalized forms of oppression exist" and to "assume that people -- both the groups we study and the members of the class -- always do the best they can." The guidelines are widely used in courses in women's studies, sociology, and some other disciplines, and faculty members who use such guidelines say that they encourage open and full participation by students. But critics say the guidelines amount to inappropriate intimidation of students who may disagree with the professor's views. Are such guidelines appropriate?

Among the comments so far:

I have chosen not to use them, largely because I feel that a semester is not long enough for a group of often resistant students to do the work that is necessary to struggle together with how to create a truly anti-oppressive classroom environment.... I see this reaction against [the] guidelines as a backlash against the extremely limited/partial efforts made by progressive university educators during the last 30 years. I think that progressive faculty need to look at the larger structures in which the supposedly free classroom is embedded....These institutions are not the allies of social justice.

I understand the desire to create “safe environments” to discuss politically and personally charged issues, but I question whether telling students what to believe ultimately creates a “safe environment”.

It's interesting that there is such a focus on [the] guidelines, but there is no discussion about professors who create an atmosphere that is far more harmful. Shouldn't we be looking at the student's [sic] and if they felt it had a political agenda?

Sure, you want open discussion without certain political positions being stipulated as beyond question. But there are sexist, racist, and classist structures of power in society that make your "open discussion" a ruse. The poor, black women in the class are oppressed. And all of you are programmed to be sexist, racist, and classist, so your open discussion will merely perpetuate oppressive structures of power.

The primary goal of liberal arts education is no longer the expansion of horizons, the enlightenment of the mind, or the enrichment of the spirit. Rather, it is to rant and rave about all that has gone wrong and rotten in human societies....

Looking at some academics, how leisurely is their life, how out to lunch they are about the real world, how drawn to perversity, like moths to fire they are, and how imature they are in their social interactions, I get outraged at the thought that with their salaries three costodians could be hired to keep the place clean.

Let's see if I've got this right. Now "heterosexism" is wrong? So, I guess if you're straight; believe in merit rather than affirmative action; believe people can get ahead through hard work rather than government fiat; and believe that just saying you don't like someone's attitude doesn't make you a racist, then according to this female teacher something is wrong with you.

The funniest response so far (I guess) was from someone who, after apologies for being "combative" and protests that he (I'll return to how I know he is a he) "is not trying to indulge in chop-logic," is forced to take issue with the part of the guidelines assuming that people always do the best they can.

If it is true that none of us use our full brain capacity (ever, but let us suppose that we do not use our full brain capacity all of the time) and if it is true that each and every one of us does, at one time or another, exhibit laziness (both of which assumptions I take to be beyond dispute), then the notion that all of us (members of groups or participants in Dr. Weber's class) are ALWAYS doing THE BEST that we can is preposterous.

Unintentionally proving his point, this contributor to the colloquy signed his entry "Anonymous," but the email address he provided reveals his name and institutional affiliation.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You Get What You Pay For - Merit aid actually allows colleges to enroll larger numbers of high-ranking students? Wow! These college planners have actually figured out that if you reward something you tend to get more of it? Amazing. Even more amazing is that so many self-consciously elite colleges, ostensibly devoted to excellence, refuse to give merit aid.

You'll have to pardon my sarcasm, but as the father of a daughter at a very expensive college that proudly if perversely refuses to give any merit aid (despite dispensing funds from the bequests of long-dead dowagers who bequeathed money for that purpose), I was painfully interested in the comments on that subject in an article by Daniel Levin, a Vice President of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, about the influence of college guides, such as the famous one by U.S. News & World Report, in Sunday's Washington Post.

"After studying factors that influence the rankings," according to Levin, some colleges have

accepted more students in early-decision programs or offered more financial aid on the basis of merit -- usually at the expense of aid for needy students. Such decisions generally enable colleges to enroll greater numbers of higher-achieving students, which may lead to a higher ranking but also can lead to questions about who gets in, why, and with how much financial aid.

Of course many colleges, especially public ones, have various laudable goals other than attracting the best students. Nevertheless, I find it interesting that rewarding academic excellence should be so controversial in elite higher education circles.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 3:16 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Opposition to "One Florida" Plan: Process or Substance? - In a long front-page article today on Jeb Bush, David von Drehle writes in the Washington Post that

Jeb Bush and his brother have acted to replace affirmative action programs with open admission policies at state universities. The "One Florida" policy guarantees a place at a Florida college to every student in the top 20 percent of his or her class. But Jeb's brusque implementation of the program helped energize an enormous backlash among black voters against his brother's presidential campaign in 2000.

On the contrary, my strong impression is that blacks opposed the "One Florida" plan primarily for substantive reasons, not because they were angry about its "brusque implementation." They object to its abandoning overt racial preferences in favor of a plan that is color-blind.

(For evidence that the "One Florida" plan has not undermined minority enrollments, see here, here, here, and here.)

Posted by John Rosenberg at 2:31 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The National Organization of (Democratic) Women - Faced with a choice between a respected 16-year incumbent in Congress who is pro-abortion, leader of the successful fight to enact legislation protecting battered women, endorsed by leading national labor, environmental, gay rights, and anti-gun groups, and who is also a woman, and a young challenger who agrees with her on all the issues, you would think the National Organization of Women would support the woman incumbent, wouldn't you?

You should know better. Connie Morella, the incumbent, you see, has an almost fatal flaw: she's a Republican. NO(D)W, which switched positions on sexual harassment when the Harrasser-in-Chief was a Democrat, is for all practical purposes an appendage of the Democratic Party.

According to an article in today's Washington Post, NOW seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place (not to be confused with being caught between Iraq and a hard place; I'm sure they're not ambivalent about that).

"I would say that there's some real hand-wringing going on among our activists," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, which remains uncommitted to either candidate. "It's always a difficult position when you've got an incumbent who is good on your issues and a challenger who is very good."

Really? Imagine how long NOW would wring its hands if Morella were a Democrat and Van Hollen, her male challenger, were a Republican. About a split NOW nanosecond.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 7:09 PM | Permalink | Say What? (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Two Severe Dumps on the Dems - The Democratic Party has just been subjected to severe criticism from two important sources that, in one case, nearly always supports it and, in the other, is known for his usually serene, non-judgmental manner.

David Broder, perhaps the dean of political columnists, accuses the Dems of putting "Politics Over Principle," the title of his column in Sunday's Washington Post:

The Democratic leaders in Congress, in both the House and Senate, largely have abandoned principle and long-term strategy for the short-term tactics they think will help them in this November's election.

Tom Daschle's desire to hold the one-vote margin in the Senate and Dick Gephardt's hope to pick up the six additional seats that would switch control of the House are driving decisions -- even on large and consequential matters.

Similarly, in a long editorial entitled "Bystanders," the editors of The New Republic -- which endorsed Gore and which virtually always supports Democrats -- wrote that

[i]t has been a long time since this journal felt so despondent about the Democratic Party. The United States is today engaged in perhaps the most important foreign policy debate in a generation.... And yet with the possible exception of Joe Lieberman, the leaders of the Democratic Party have nothing serious to say.

.... No one today can honestly say he or she is a Democrat because of what the party believes about the greatest threat facing the United States. The Democrats are a party of bystanders, a party without a position on the issue that matters most.

With friends like these....

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Historical Chutzpah II - On 9/11 of this year I posted an item about the chutzpah of 1100 American historians signing a petition to Congress (they planned to deliver it Sept. 17) demanding that Congress debate and pass a declaration of war before any attack on Iraq. Failure to do so, they asserted with all their assembled professional authority, would be "in clear violation of the Constitution," presumably like all other American military actions since 1941, the last time Congress passed a declaration of war.

My complaint was not with the substance of their argument (although I am less sure of the Constitutional necessity of a formal declaration of war than I once was) or with their right to petition Congress. My concern, rather, was that they tried to pump up the weight of their argument by wrapping it with heavy banners of professional expertise. As I wrote last time:

Some of the authority claimed by the signatories ... is ... questionable, since many of them have no claim to professional expertise on what the Constitution requires in the making of war. Civil War historians or women's historians or economic historians may be brilliant, and may be outstanding in their fields, but their recommendations as to what we should do, or not do, regarding Iraq are due no special deference. As citizens they have every right to express their opinions -- and again, those opinions may well be persuasive -- but they did not offer their opinions as citizens but as "the undersigned American historians."

It should be noted that in the jargon of the trade "American historians" are not historians who work in America, but historians whose field is American history. That professional expertise was expected to add gravity to an argument that otherwise might appear political. (Just as there are said to be no atheists in foxholes, it would appear that their are no post-modernists on petitions.)

I shall return to this matter of expertise in a moment, but first I should explain why I am revisiting this matter at all. There are several reasons. The date of delivery to Congress is now scheduled for Sept. 25, and the organizers now claim over 1200 signatures. (The petition itself and list of signers can be found here.) More important, as a result of President Bush's powerful speech at the United Nations and his decision to seek Congressional approval, the petition organizers have become more shrill in their rhetoric.

Earlier, the petitioners demanded only a vote in Congress; they adopted a studied indifference to the outcome of such a vote. That veneer has now been stripped away as they have subsequently been forced to argue that a Congressional resolution is insufficient; it must be a formal declaration of war. As Joyce Appleby and Ellen DuBois, the UCLA historians who organized the petition, recently argued:

After weeks of resistance, the president finally said he would consult Congress and seek a resolution authorizing the use of military force. The announcement quieted many critics and media commentators, but it should not have. It is a deceptive distraction. A resolution might be only a vaguely worded affirmation of the dangers of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. By contrast, a vote on a declaration of war would involve Congress in a sober assessment of the costs, risks, and wisdom of a preemptive strike at Iraq.

Inadequate as mere consultation is, President Bush has undercut even its limited value by telling audiences he doesn't expect any debate on Capital Hill to alter his position. This imperious response does not sound like a man who once swore to uphold the Constitution.... Congress must debate whether or not to declare war and then take a vote. A resolution that is less than a declaration of war might satisfy those people who think Congress should have a say in the matter, but it would not satisfy the Constitution.

The petition's organizers and spokesmen are also outspoken opponents of the doctrine of pre-emption, going so far as to label it un-American. Writing in Newsday and the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 18, Appleby and DuBois assert that

[t]he trauma of the Sept. 11 attacks may have numbed the public to how unprecedented a preemptive attack from the United States would be. It would violate every principle this country has stood for.

But after a drought of public discourse, who realizes this? Historians do. They cultivate the memory of their nation's principles and practices.

Writing on TomPaine.com, Appleby and DuBois made it appear that we are standing at Armageddon.

We stand at a historical crossroads -- the nation will either return to its constitutional provision for making war or continue the baleful practices of the Cold War and its for-us-or-against-us mentality, its imperial presidency, and the suppression of dissent.

It is quite possible that some of the signers of the petition do not share these apocalyptic visions, for they are not included in the document itself and appeared in print after virtually all had signed. But since the signers, through their spokesmen, claim to be the custodians of the nation's Constitutional conscience, it may be worthwhile to pay some attention to who they are.

As I mentioned in my first post on this matter, I must emphasize that there are many deservedly eminent historians on this list. I will not name names here, but anyone familiar with the field of American history these days will recognize the names of some of its finest practitioners. That said, and reiterated, it must also be said again that many signatories have no more professional expertise in what the Constitution requires regarding going to war than any well-informed citizen (some of them perhaps less), and the claim that the opinions expressed in the petition deserve deference because of the professional expertise of 1200 practicing American historians is, not to put too fine a point on it, bogus.

Who Are These People?

I googled more or less randomly some of the names on the list that I did not recognize. The results were certainly not a scientific or statistically valid sample, but what I found was nevertheless interesting.

First, among the 15 or 20 names I searched there were a couple graduate students. How many of the 1200 are graduate students? Who knows. These students will presumably become professional historians, but they weren't yet. One person is deputy executive director of a Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. At least one person signed twice (unless there are two Mary Todds at Concordia University). There were also a few law professors (wannabe historians?) and a few who were professors of some history other than American. One was chairman of his university's Portuguese Studies program; another's web site lists his specialty as:

Early China: seven centuries of Warring States through Eastern Han (475 BC-AD 220), with an emphasis on the sociopolitical context; aesthetic theories and material culture; and belief.

Presumably because the petition organizers, Professors Appleby and DuBois, have written extensively in women's history, there appears to be a heavy representation of practitioners in that area. Aside from the large number of women's historians, however, the impression I got was of a fairly wide cross-section of American historians, which is to say people who were not specialists in Constitutional history or values. Their opinions may be informed, even profound, but it is not because of their professional expertise. There is, in short, a truth in packaging isssue here.

Here are some typical examples of what I found, taken from departmental web sites:

Interests in science, race, cultural encounters, and environmental history in colonial America. She is working on book-length studies of science and colonization in the eighteenth century and on Benjamin Franklin's science. [Found here]

works in women's history, gender history, twentieth-century cultural history, and the history of sexuality (especially lesbian history).... Her current project is a book on the history of sexuality in the United States since World War II. She is also an associate editor for the Encyclopedia of American Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History & Culture forthcoming from Scribner's in 2003. [Found here]

Interested in social and cultural history, she has published a book on religious sects in colonial Massachusetts, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (1991). Her current research focuses on the 17th century Anglo-Atlantic, expanding beyond New England to include all the colonies established by the English in the Americas. [Found here]

I began as a German historian, moved to British history and then began to be interested in age relations, marriage, memory, and the cultures of European and American family life. At the moment, I am moving offshore, writing about Atlantic islands and the prominent place they have had in the western imaginary since the Ancients. [Found here]

Her Ph.D. is in U.S. history, and major fields of interest include women's history, Jewish women's history and culture, the history of education, and history as theater. She is the author or editor of eight books, including most recently The Journey Home: How Jewish Women Shaped Modern America and Talking Back: Images of Jewish Women in American Popular Culture. [Found here]

*AMST 423a, SEX, GENDER, AND LEGAL SPECTACLE IN MODERN AMERICAN CULTURE. M 1.30-3.20 Not CR/D/F II or III(0) A critical examination of the intersections of sex, gender, and law in the formation of American culture from the early nineteenth century to the present as evidenced in a series of sensational civil and criminal cases, each concerned with some form of sexual(ized) violence or violation. Themes include the gendered nature of sexual transgression; the correspondence of sex and violence; and the mutually constitutive nature of sexual meanings, identities, and practices. [Found here]

She is a cultural historian of the twentieth century whose scholarly field of interest is the introduction of new technologies, particularly those related to popular culture. [Found here]

... has worked in the cultural heritage and historic preservation fields as a scholar, teacher, and consultant. Educated in cultural geography and urban planning, he wrote a doctoral dissertation at Columbia University on collective memory, urban development, and the roots of the American preservation movement. [Found here]

Current Research Activities Social history of adolescent boys and violence in the 19th and 20th century, specifically boys who murdered; the changing historical experience of female adolescence (continuing). The perspective is interdisciplinary but the methodology is primarily historical; the analysis is based on U.S. census materials, diaries, letters and family papers, institutional and organizational records, periodical literature, and medical case records. [Found here]

Again, I make no claim that the above examples are representative of the 1200 names on the petition; there are many distinguished scholars in such traditional fields as the Civil War or Colonial America and some Constitutional historians as well. Nevertheless, I do not think it is unfair to suspect that this list, taken as a whole is much more representative of political opinion on campus than of any scholarly consensus among American historians who have professional experience that would add weight to their views about Constitutional war powers.

Their views are certainly worth no less than yours or mine (and as I said in my first post, I actually tend to agree with them to a certain extent), but they are also no better. Upon close inspection (or at least my casual, brief inspection), the fancy garb of professional expertise in which those views are dressed looks all too much like the emperor's new clothes.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 2:42 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Is It "Insensitive" To Call Republicans Nazis? - Yes. According to a front page story in the Washington Post today, "Townsend [Dem. candidate for governor of Maryland] Fires New Strategist for 'Nazi' Remark."

The remarks:

"Bobby Ehrlich is a Nazi. His record is horrible, atrocious," [Julius] Henson said in a telephone interview. "In Prince George's County, we'll define him as the Nazi that he is. Once we do that, I think people will vote for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.... He should be running in Germany in 1942, not Maryland in 2002," Henson said.

That definitely wasn't a nice -- or, as it turned out, politic -- thing to say, but -- call me perverse [I've been called worse] -- I find the comments of the Democrats in firing Henson about as offensive as his offense.

First, Townsend's campaign spokesman, Peter Hamm, labeled Henson's remarks "insensitive and irresponsible." Insensitive??? That strikes me as expressing all the outrage of, say, calling the WTC terrorists "insensitive" for killing so many people, or at least so many women, children, and minorities. On the other hand, Hamm is a Democratic operative, and insensitivity is about the worst sin in the Democrats' moral code.

Next, Karen White, director of Henson's actual employer, something called the Democrats' coordinated campaign, issued the following blistering denunciation: "Those comments are unfortunate, and we will not be able to consider Mr. Henson for employment at this time." Maybe later. The incompletely closed door on Henson's employment with the Democrats suggests that Ms. White may have found the storm caused by the reporting of his comments more bothersome than the actual comments.

Finally, there is influential Democratic Maryland Congressman Albert Wynn. Wynn,

who initially recommended Henson as "probably the best field guy in the state," said he is encouraging White to reconsider the decision to fire Henson. "I think she should keep him," Wynn said. "Perhaps an apology to Mr. Ehrlich is in order."

But perhaps not. Ehrlich, after all, is a Republican, and all Henson did was call him a Nazi. That's not much, if any, worse than what the Democrats paid Henson to say about Ellen Sauerbrey, the Republican candidate for governor, four years ago. Perhaps if Wynn reflected upon the fact that Republicans in Maryland are an embattled minority (Gore carried the state by 17%), he might be more, well, sensitive.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Say What? (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tar Baby - Is this letter that appeared in the Washington Post today a parody? You decide.

I am extremely upset about the use of the word "tar baby" in George F. Will's Sept. 19 op-ed column. In case your paper and Will have forgotten, this is an offensive, racist term for African Americans. For you to display this article so prominently reinforces to me that you couldn't care less about the sensitivities of your subscribers. Further, to apply this racist slur to the United Nations, an organization composed of multiple races and cultures, is doubly insulting. This shows a lack of respect for basic human dignity.

[Notes: 1) Will's column, "Stuck to the U.N. Tar Baby," warned Bush about getting entangled with the U.N. 2) I raised a question the other day about the propriety of republishing "entire articles" on one's blog without permission, but I'm not sure a letter to the editor qualifies as an article. I would have contacted the author for permission, but no contact information was given. I assume that most letter writers would like to have their letters distributed as widely as possible, but if this author is upset at my republishing her letter I would be glad to turn over to her all the royalties I derive from it.]

I am sure that "tar baby" is occasionally used in a pejorative manner, as here. It is my impression, however, that its connotations are far more complex than our outraged writer recognizes.

See, for example, this somewhat stilted lit-crit discussion from a University of Virginia site:

In many ways, the racial characterization is as blurred as the moral characterization. If the tale is to be read as the depiction of one race triumphing over another, who is the victor in Tar-Baby? Contemporary literary critics, like Houston Baker, have suggested that the trickster figure--Brer Rabbit--frequently represents the way slaves saw themselves--getting along in a white plantation culture through subversion and cleverness. If this is the case, then why does Brer rabbit assume a superior attitude when dealing with the unresponsive Tar-Baby. Certainly his reaction may be attributed to pride, but Harris may also be documenting the subtleties of race relations. Is Brer Rabbit asserting his own superiority over one who is lower than he is one the social order? Does the silent Tar-Baby represent the lowest tier of plantation culture--the slave who has neither the education or the desire to assert himself in a white dominated world?

When Brer Rabbit is caught in the sticky substance of the Tar-Baby, the social implications of the tale shift. Instead of lording his "respectubbleness" over the Tar-Baby, Brer Rabbit is at the mercy of the Tar-Baby and its creator--Brer Fox. Is this a subtle reminder from the slave tradition of the dangers of assuming a position of superiority in a culture that hinges on the relationship between the dominant and the subordinate? Was the tale intended to function as a commentary of the plantation culture? Or, were they as Harris suggested--pithy anecdotes passed down for entertainment value?

Or see "Tar Baby and Womanist Theology," by Karen Baker-Fletcher, an assistant professor of Theology and Culture at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, which analyzes Toni Morrison's well-known novel (you guessed it), Tar Baby:

"Tar has funky qualities. It is thick, black, sticky, shiny, and powerful in its ability to hold things together. It is a symbol of black women's cohesive power. There is something very earthy about tar. It has body. Tar comes from the earth and is ancient. It has an elemental quality... One might employ Morrison's 'tar baby' metaphor to represent black women as the tar women of the church, who hold churches together." ....

In Tar Baby, Morrison reenvisions the African origins of the Southern folk tale of Br'er Rabbit. She explores the wealth of black women's spiritual and creative heritage. According to Morrison, the "tar baby" of Southern folklore originates from a myth of a "tar lady" in ancient Africa. She was originally a powerful symbol of black womanhood. For Morrison, the tar lady is a black woman who holds things together; she is a builder and cohesive force. If a mythological, pre-Christian ancestor of black women was a "tar lady," what is the meaning of such mythology for black womanhood? Morrison suggests that myths that are African in origin have been reinvented from one period of history to the next by blacks and whites, so that we must uncover the original meaning of myths to consider seriously possible meanings for today's world. [Footnotes omitted]

Now, if you don't mind, I will emulate Br'er Fox and lay low....

Posted by John Rosenberg at 3:44 PM | Permalink | Say What? (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Bush the Messiah? - Is President Bush the new Messiah? The Washington Post apparently thinks so.

In a front page "news" article ostensibly about the new National Security Strategy the Administration just sent to Congress, Karen DeYoung and Mike Allen say the plan "gives the United States a nearly messianic role in making the world 'not just safer but better.'"

Fair and balanced? You decide.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 2:22 PM | Permalink | Say What? (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Non-University Diversity Perversity - It has often been pointed out -- here and here and elsewhere -- that "diversity" is often merely a polite term, or fig leaf, for raw ethnic politics or even an ethnic spoils system. A particularly revealing example of this is the response in the official Hispanic community, i.e., the interest groups, to the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit, nicely described in an article by Tony Mauro on law.com. (Link via the all-seeing Howard Bashman)

Many official Hispanics support Estrada because he is Hispanic (he emigrated from Honduras as a teenager), but many others oppose him because he's conservative. They do not want a "Hispanic Clarence Thomas," according to a report by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund. (I did not see a report on Estrada on the PRLDF web site, but ironically there is a new report listed there on "Opening the Courthouse Doors: The Need for More Hispanic Judges"!)

As the Tony Mauro article makes clear, what official Hispanics want is not simply "more Hispanic Judges," but more Hispanic judges of a certain persuasion. When push comes to shove, they prefer the proper persuasion to the prescribed ethnicity -- just as liberal women and official blacks oppose women and blacks with politics they don't approve.

Indeed, whenever a Hispanic or black or woman who does not toe the party line is in line for some appointment, "diversity" quickly flies out the window, replaced by its opposite: the need to enforce ideological conformity within the group. The usual method is to insist that the offender isn't "really" a black (thus Thomas is an Uncle Tom or an "oreo"), woman (that one's more of a stretch, but possible because gender is "socially constructed"), or Hispanic. True to form, PRLDEF said Estrada should be rejected "because of his lack of ties to the lives and concerns of fellow Hispanics."

Countering the White House portrayal, the fund said that Estrada was the son of a lawyer and a bank vice president in Honduras, giving him a considerable leg up when he arrived in America at age 16. "Mr. Estrada has not lived the educationally or economically disadvantaged life his proponents would have others believe," the PRLDEF report states.

Estrada, according to PRLDEF, has a privileged background and a "clear lack of any connection whatsoever" to the lives and policy concerns of Hispanics, including affirmative action and the rights of criminal defendants.

. . . .

When Estrada achieved success as a lawyer, the report also claims, Estrada left his roots behind. "Once he made it, he both disappeared from and never became connected or committed to the Hispanic community," PRLDEF asserts. "As a result, we believe that he lacks the sensitivity and perspectives shared by the majority of Hispanic-Americans in our country."

It will probably come as a surprise to many unofficial Hispanics to learn that at the core of their identity is a devotion to affirmative action and a high solicitude for the rights of criminal defendants. Apparently, no "real" Hondurans are bankers or lawyers. According to the party line of the official Hispanics, if you're not "educationally or economically disadvantaged" you can't be a representative of the Hispanic community.

This has nothing to do with "diversity" and everything to do with political conformity.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Congress Unnecessary - Robert F. Turner, who founded the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia Law School and worked in the Senate and the State and Defense departments, makes a strong argument "Why the President Does Not Legally Need Congress's Permission to Go to War (But Is Wise to Seek It)."

UPDATE - Turner argues, in part, that our treaty obligations approving the U.N. Charter give the U.S. all the legal authority it needs (and may even impose an obligation) to attack Iraq. In an OpEd in today's New York Times, Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman (of un-Article V amendment fame, i.e., that various "Constitutional moments" have actually amended the Constitution) argues the opposite. An interesting post on OxBlog takes issue with Ackerman. (OxBlog link via Howard Bashman)

Posted by John Rosenberg at 8:09 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Iraqi Gun Control - In an interesting article, Don Kates asks, "Shouldn't People Who Favor Gun Control Favor War in Iraq?"

You decide.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 8:02 PM | Permalink | Say What? (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Un-Appealing - According to this report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the University of Michigan will request the Supremes not to hear an appeal of last May's Sixth Circuit decision upholding racial preferences in admissions to its law school. (Link requires subscription)

It is of course not surprising for a winning party to attempt to sit on its victory and not risk reversal in an appeal. Even where great principles are involved -- here, preferentially induced diversity vs. the principle of non-discrimination -- it is not so surprising for even so high-minded an institution as a university to prefer protecting its own precious programs and prerogatives instead of risking them for the possible reward of having the Supreme Court impose their preferences on the entire country. (The Sixth Circuit ruling applies only to Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The Fifth Circuit, including Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, has reached the opposite conclusion, barring racial preferences.)

I find it noteworthy, however, that virtually all of Michigan's supporters in the higher education arena are endorsing its decision to protect its own preferences rather than invite the Supreme Court to protect them across the nation.

Thirty-eight education associations that had co-signed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Michigan's case before the appeals court, back the university's current move, said Sheldon E. Steinbach, vice president and general counsel at the American Council on Education. The university would be unwise to risk its appeals-court triumph, he said. "They have a Big Ten victory, and there's no reason to go for an NCAA championship."

One of Michigan's allies, though, will file its own request for the Supreme Court to hear the case. Miranda K.S. Massie is lead counsel for a group of third-party students who joined the case at the lower-court level. She said that racial integration in higher education has suffered under a number of recent court decisions, and that while the Sixth Circuit's decision was correct, the Supreme Court should review the case to make affirmative action legal nationwide.

The Supreme Court may well decide to hear an appeal despite Michigan's opposition, and perhaps the widespread fear of what it might decide should be taken as a hopeful omen.

For now, I eagerly await the Bash-Man's take on this.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Will Power - I think George Will is one of the consistently most interesting and impressive columnists writing today, but occasionally his Hamiltonian pro-Federalist persuasion, reinforced no doubt by his imbibing of "Land of Lincoln" Republicanism from his upbringing in Illinois, clouds his vision and prevents his seeing any merit in the competing anti-Federalist, Jeffersonian tradition. Today's column is a case in point.

Chief Justice Marshall, a great definer of American nationhood, was opposed by Jeffersonians, with their anti-nationalist vision of the nation as only a confederation produced by a compact (implicitly revocable; see 1861) among states. Today Bush's defense of American national autonomy is opposed, among Americans, mainly by members of the party that traces its lineage to Jefferson.

Many Democrats have more than a merely banal political reason -- they believe they prosper when focusing on domestic matters -- for pushing this nation deeper into the tar baby's embrace. Their desire is to avoid having to assert what many of them believe: that the use of U.S. force in preemptive self-defense requires permission from the not altogether savory collection of regimes that is misnamed the United Nations.

This could be the beginning of a very interesting argument, and I half expected Will to note the irony of liberals, who throughout most of the 20th century prided themselves on being internationalists, using their reliance on the UN and general "multilateralism" increasingly to become functional isolationists today. They oppose action in defense of our security unless sanctioned by the UN and/or we are accompanied by a grand coalition, which often means we should just stay home -- which was the conclusion the old isolationists always preferred. But Will did not go that way.

I believe his Hamiltonian pro-federalism also prevented him from seeing another irony: that in many respects Bush's argument for the pre-emptive defense of American national security, which Will favors, has much in common with the Jeffersonian Anti-Federalism that Will abhors. Anti-Federalists and Jeffersonians favored de-centralized local government (where government was necessary at all) over distant centralized government, in large part because they thought smaller local governments, being close to the people, were more responsive to them and larger, distant government more likely to come under the control of un-responsive elites.

In our current situation, a vigorous defense of American interests has more in common with Jeffersonian states rights (in part because they are both rooted in similar constitutional values) than it does with the Hamiltonian preference for more uniform and centralized power. Indeed, although there are exceptions -- such as big city Democratic mayors who do not like to defer to state governments, particularly when the latter are dominated by Republicans -- a pretty good argument can be made that beginning in the 20th Century it is the Democrats who have been the centripetal party, favoring the centralization of authority -- whether in Washington or the U.N. -- while the Republicans have been centrifugal, favoring decentralization -- favoring power in the states as opposed to Washington, and in the nation state (at least our nation state) as opposed to the U.N.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 2:52 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Black-Jew Rift Widens" - Fox News has a depressing article about the apparently increasing anger in the Congressional Black Caucus against Jews as a result of the defeats of Earl Hilliard and Cynthia McKinney by black challengers who received extensive Jewish support. (Link via Darmon Thornton)

"People were talking retaliation," said Ron Walters, the director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, of last week's CBC events in Washington. "They were saying [presidential hopeful] Sen. Joe Lieberman is dead in the water, and so on and so forth."

. . . .

Walters said [Hilliard's and McKinney's] defeats were payback from the wealthy Jewish lobby.

"When you unseat two black candidates, it's not a freak thing, it's a strategy. It took black candidates by surprise, and it's made them very angry," he said. "Why the leadership of the party didn't do anything, that's the big mystery."

It took "black candidates" by surprise??? What color were the challengers, purple?

Posted by John Rosenberg at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Copyright Curiosity - O.K., weblegaleagles (Reynolds, Volokh[s], Bashman, Buck, et. al.), does copyright law smile or frown upon republishing whole articles on one's blog?

This question is prompted by two recent links on InstaPundit to others who have included the whole texts of articles in their posts about them. The first is to a Brad DeLong post that provides the full text of an article from the Washington Post accusing the Bush adminstration of manipulating science advisory panels to get the advice it wants. To DeLong, of course, this is simply "MORE BAD NEWS ABOUT HOW THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WORKS." I may have more to say about this article and controversy directly, but now I'd like to hear more informed views than mine about the propriety of republishing entire articles on one's blog.

The second InstaPundit link is to John Scalzi, who posts an entire 14,000 word article by Ted Rall (arguing that that our war against the Taliban was "really" about oil), complete with copyright symbol at top, in order to Fisk it.

Is republishing whole articles legal? If it's legal, is it kosher? If it's both legal and kosher I suppose it's blogworthy, but if not....

UPDATE - Blogfather Glenn Reynolds responded right away with the excellent suggestion that I email my copyright query to DeLong and Scalzi. John Scalzi replied almost instantly: "Ted put me on the distribution list announcing the article and did give me explicit permission to publish it, on the condition it was published without condensation or alteration, save for clearing up grammatical errors."

Posted by John Rosenberg at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Multicultural Exchange Program?? - Do you think this is a parody or for real?

NORFOLK -- A group of Norfolk State University students and a physical education teacher will spend a few days at the University of Utah this week soaking up West Coast culture and discussing race. When they return, a group from Utah will visit the predominantly black university and participate in frank sessions about their cultural differences.

The trips are aimed at teaching aspiring physical education and fitness trainers about cultural differences in health.

Kara A. Witzke doesn't want her 18 physical education students to perpetuate stereotypes in their classrooms and gyms when they graduate from NSU. Two of her students will be heading to Utah today.

Janet M. Shaw wants her senior exercise science students in Utah to know that some cultures believe that overweight is beautiful.

A parody, right? I bet you thought I made this too easy by saying the Norfolk State students would be "soaking up West Coast culture" in their visit to the University of Utah. Wrong! Not only is this for real, but according to the article in the (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot in which the above quotes actually appear, taxpayers are even subsidizing it (Also look here for more discussion of this breathtaking program).

Witzke and Shaw submitted grant proposals to their universities to fund the first-time multicultural exchange program. NSU awarded Witzke $2,700. Shaw received $1,560.

I would say, let's hope the visiting Utahans don't O.D. on all that fried chicken, fatback, and watermelon and that the NSU visitors to Salt Lake City (that hotbed of "West Coast culture") escape the clutches of Mormonism with their religion intact, but that sort of comment would be playing to racist stereotypes. Wouldn't it?

Posted by John Rosenberg at 2:58 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Prop 209 and "Culture Shift" - The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article on how California is coping with the desire for diversity since Proposition 209 banned the consideration of race. (Link via Howard Bashman.)

The most encouraging thing in the article is a comment by someone who appears to be a critic of Prop. 209 who believes the new diversity-enhancing "comprehensive review" measures (extra points for overcoming adversity, demographic disadvantage, etc.) are a poor substitute for taking race into account.

Students at the Latino academic union on a recent day had never heard of comprehensive review. Lisa Walker, who went to Berkeley before the ban and now works here to foster cross-cultural interaction, feels that ban on affirmative action remains more potent than any admissions change.

"People don't talk about race anymore," says Ms. Walker. "The changes in numbers haven't changed the culture shift that happened after 209."

I hope she's right.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 2:02 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hispanics, Jews, and Equality - Jimmy Smits, the star who played Detective Bobby Simone on "NYPD Blue" for several years, has an "Hispanic Mission."

According to a brief notice in the Washington Post,

heartthrob actor Jimmy Smits thinks Latinos "should have more influence on the popular culture -- not only as performers but also as writers, directors and producers. What I would want to strive for is equal influence, commensurate with the population."

This notion that equality requires, even means, proportional representation in every sphere of life is increasingly popular, and hence increasingly pernicious. It is unappealing morally and unworkable practically. What, for example, is the justification for "Latino" influence that would not also justify, say, Mexican-American influence? Another story in the same issue of the Post reveals that 58.5% of Hispanics in the U.S. originally came from Mexico, while 9.6% are Puerto Rican, 4.8% Central American, 3.8% South American (does that include Argentineans of Italian and German origin?), and 3.5% Cuban. [Note: the table from which these numbers are taken does not seem to be online; it appears on p. C14 of the paper Post.] Can Mexican-Americans stand in for Argentineans or Portuguese-speaking Brazilians on the scales of equality? In the Washington, D.C., area, however, only 14.8% of Hispanics are Mexican-Americans while 28.9% are Central Americans. Does equality thus require something different in Washington from other places? Is one Spanish-speaking person -- or rather, one person with an "Hispanic" surname who may or may not speak Spanish -- pretty much the same as another? Is the notion that Latinos are culturally fungible any more appealing than the notion that all Asians look alike?

Yet another article in the same issue of the Post, on religious affiliation, indicates that Jews now make up 2.2% of the population. Will Smits's "mission" to achieve "equal influence" for Latinos be incomplete until Jewish representation in the arts is reduced to that number? I suppose it could be protested that, well, Jews make up more than 2.2% of the population in Hollywood, or in the pool of qualified, er, arts workers, but defenders of preferences will spot the flaw in that protest: the current population distribution simply reflects historical patterns of discrimination, or at least of the absence of equality, and must be corrected by affirmative action.

There is one remaining fly in the ointment of Smits's "mission." The "Names and Faces" entry that discusses his project states that Smits "is of Dutch and Puerto Rican ancestry," which raises the question of what exactly is a Latino, and how we can tell. Do those percentages quoted above, for example, reflect the numbers of what might be termed "half-Hispanics" like Smits? Who knows.

How much simpler, and better, it would be to regard us all as simply Americans and to treat us all as individuals.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 8:37 PM | Permalink | Say What? (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Counterfactual History - Geitner Simmons has an interesting post on his Regions of Mind today about "what if..." the Supremes had invalidated voting discrimination before school segregation. He quotes a thoughtful email from one of his readers suggesting that the course of recent Southern history would have been better, because the transformations in the South would have been brought about more from internal pressure than outside legal and political force. Simmons himself is somewhat skeptical.

Food for thought. But while we're on this counterfactual diet, I'd like to suggest one more item to consider. If the Southern segregationists had been smarter, i.e., had not responded with "massive resistance" but with the more muted and flexible resistance followed occasionally in North Carolina and Virginia, integration would have been held at bay much longer, and the South and nation spared much trauma. Now, there's nothing original about this observation, and because massive resistance gave us not only eventual integration, once it was forced by the courts, but also the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, it's a good thing ultimately that they were as self-defeatingly dumb as they were.

The above observation, as I said, is not original and probably not very controversial. However, let me take it one step further. If there had been no massive resistance to school integration, busing would not have emerged as a court-ordered response. And busing was the first civil rights remedy to "take race into account." In many respects the later arguments for affirmative action and race preferences merely expanded upon the arguments that were used to justify busing (hiring preferences have been described as "economic busing").

Thus, in this scenario: no massive resistance, no affirmative action.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Politics, the Washington Post, and War - Two items in the Washington Post today add to the growing list of examples of partisan editorializing invading its news stories.

Item One - Dana Milbank, the former New Republic writer, has a front page story that could have been a press release from the Democrats: "Democrats Question Iraq Timing: Talk of War Distracts From Election Issues." The headline nicely reveals the fuzziness of the story's line between what the Democrats say (they question timing) and what Milbank says (war talk distracts from election issues [or what he thinks should be election issues?]). The large continuation headline on p. A6 is "White House Denies Iraq War is Wag-the-Dog Ploy." The Democrats, aided by stories like this, would apparently like to shift the debate from Iraq to the Administration's motives and timing.

Let us assume, for the same of argument, something the Administration heatedly denies, that politics does figure into the desire for Congressional authorization before the November elections. Should we not then also assume that politics plays a similar role in the Democrats' desire, as the article quotes Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden (D, Del), that Iraq "should be taken as far out of the realm of politics as possible"? That is, if the Republicans are playing politics with national security in seeking early Congressional authorization, are not the Democrats doing the same thing in seeking to delay it?

. . . Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Va, chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, made an Iraq vote explicitly political, saying, "People are going to want to know, before the elections, where their representatives stand."

That infuriated Democrats. "It only reinforces skepticism about the timing," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic operative who was Al Gore's campaign spokesman....

A more interesting question is why war talk hurts the Democrats, since it was Bush pere and the Republicans who left Saddam in power. Perhaps it is the Democrats' position, or confusion over their position, and not the timing that hurts them.

Aside from the politics, what of the merits? Should matters of war be taken out of politics? Did today's Bidens and Daschles think that it was inappropriate to make a political issue of war when Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern challenged our policies in Vietnam? I don't recall their doing so, but then my memory's not what it used to be.

Item Two - Helen Dewar has a half-page story on p. A4 about the changing of the guard among Senate Republicans as old war horses such as Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm exit the stage and a new generation of conservatives moves to the fore.

Dewar quotes Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, one of the newer conservative leaders in the Senate, on the new, smoother style.

"President Bush's brand of compassionate conservatism is really the definitive theme of conservatism today," Brownback said, citing issues such as help for faith-based charities. "It's not hard-edged," he said. "It's caring."

But to the all-knowing Dewar, this new conservativism is nothing but a clever fraud, a rhetorical fog intended to disguise conservatism's true colors. For support, she turns to that well-know source of expertise on the nature of conservatism, the liberal Brookings Institution (presumably no one was available to enlighten her about the new conservatism from the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage, or Cato):

Thomas E. Mann, who watches Congress from the Brookings Institution, agreed with Brownback that the new-breed conservatives have a lot in common with Bush. "They reflect the president, who is a very conservative man on things like taxes, missile defense and social issues but has figured a way to ... appear more moderate than he is," Mann said. "They have the same firm commitment to core conservative principles and policies, but they pursue them with more soothing rhetoric and a seemingly more accommodating style."

There is of course nothing wrong with the Washington Post, or any newspaper, publishing a piece arguing that Bush and the new generation of conservative leaders are frauds attempting to disguise their true colors. That's what opinion pages are for. There is something wrong, in my opinion, with putting it in the news section and thus pretending that it's by a reporter reporting the news.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Say What? (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Quote of Note - From Gerald A. Reynolds, Assistant Secretary of Education, Office of Civil Rights:

Discrimination is going to always be an issue. There always is going to be a knucklehead out there who will make a decision based on race or gender. We need the tools to go after those people."

In the old days, such a statement would have been seen as supportive of civl rights, but not now.

"The NAACP finds Reynolds's stated view on equal opportunity programs, such as affirmative action, to be appalling," said Hilary O. Shelton, the civil rights group's chief Washington lobbyist."

That's because, these days, so many of the knuckleheads who favor making decisions based on race or gender are in the "civil rights groups."

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Oppie a Commie? Interesting new book by Gregg Herken, The Brotherhood of the Bomb (Henry Holt). Its most explosive (pardon the pun) finding: Oppenheimer lied when he denied every having been a member of the Communist Party. (Herken also argues, however, that O. was neither a spy nor disloyal.)

It is interesting to note the contrasting ways this point was handled in two leading reviews today. In the Washington Post, Jennet Conant, author of Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science that Changed the Course of World War II, ended her review by noting:

The most controversial part of the book is bound to be Herken's assertion that Oppenheimer -- despite his repeated denials -- was in fact a card-carrying member of the American Communist Party during the 1930s and early '40s and, furthermore, was involved with a secret propaganda cell at Berkeley.

In the New York Times, eminent Berkeley historian David Hollinger begins his review by stating that "J. Robert Oppenheimer was once much closer to the Communist Party than he ever admitted."

Posted by John Rosenberg at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(Beach) Food for Thought - We're still at Chincoteague, and have about worn ruts in the (paved) bike paths, although we have seen different ponies each time. Given the absence of a phone in our cottage and the necessity to pay a phone fee, albeit minimal (no local access number for Earthlink on the island, but their 800 number doesn't charge much), when I accept the Comfort Inn's generosity in letting me use their conference room to check email etc. (can't download and/or compose easily from the library's occasionally available computer), I've been having some trouble keeping up with both the real world and the blog world. But then, that's what vacations are for.

Anyway, I've been enjoying Yale law prof Stephen Carter's new novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park, and have run across a couple of passages that, especially given my limited access at the moment to other material, seem worth sharing.

For those of you who haven't read it or the reviews, the protagonist, Talcott Garland, is a young middle-aged, tenured black (or as he would put it, member of the "darker nation") prof at an Ivy League law school that eerily resembles Yale. Garland's father, the Judge, who dies in possibly mysterious circumstances shortly after the book opens, was a well-known conservative judge whose appointment to the Supreme Court by Reagan was Borked, which embittered him and turned him even more rightward. He resigned from his district court judgeship and became a staple on the circuit of "Rightpacs," the conservative public interest groups. His son, the protagonist, is bitter about both left and right.

Two excerpts:

Last year I greatly upset the students in my seminar on Law and Social Movements by suggesting to them the following proposition: Any white person who truly believes in affirmative action should be willing to pledge that, if his or her child is admitted to a Harvard or a Princeton, he or she will at once write to the school saying, "My child will not be attending. Please hold the slot for a member of a minority group." The consternation among my students confirmed my belief that few white people, even among the most liberal, support affirmative action when it actually costs them something. They like it precisely because they can tell themselves that they are working for racial justice while pretending that the costs do not exist. But it is not their fault: who believes in sacrifice these days? [pp. 182-183]

. . . .

Little time.... He used those words often in his speeches, in trying to explain to his friends in the Rightpacs why they needed . . . well, racial diversity. The median American, he loved to tell his eager audiences, is socially conservative. The median black American, the Judge would add, is even more conservative. Look at the data on any question, he would rumble. School prayer? Black Americans favor it more than whites do. Abortion? Black Americans are more pro-life than whites. Vouchers? Black Americans support them more strongly than whites. Gay rights? Black Americans are more skeptical than whites. The applause would roll across his (overwhelmingly white) audience. Then he would hit them with the big windup: Conservatives are the last people who can afford to be racist. Because the future of conservatism is black America! They would go wild for him. I never saw it in person, but I saw it, often, on C-SPAN. And whichever Rightpac he was speaking to would march out to try to recruit black members, because, he would insist, there is little time . . . and, almost always, the recruitment effort would fail . . . quite abysmally. Because there were a few little details the Judge always left out. Like the fact that it was conservatives who fought against just about every civil rights law ever proposed. Like the fact that many of the wealthy men who paid for his expensive speeches would not have him in their clubs. Like the fact that it was the great conservative hero Ronald Reagan who kicked off his campaign by talking about states' rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a location with a certain resonance in the darker nation, and who, as President, backed tax exemptions for the South's many segregation academies. The Judge was surely right to insist that the time has come for black Americans to stop trusting white liberals, who are far more comfortable telling us what we need than asking us what we want, but he never did come up with a particularly persuasive reason for us to start trusting white conservatives instead. [pp. 205-206]

Correction - The Judge, the protagonist's father, had been a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, not a district court judge as I stated in my summary above.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Colgate White - No, not the tooth paste, the college. There is a depressing essay (link requires subscription) in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the sorry state of affirmative action-induced integration at Colgate University, a selective "junior ivy" in upstate New York, by Phillip Richards, a black associate professor of English who has taught there since 1988.

At Colgate -- like other small, competitive liberal-arts colleges with overwhelmingly white, suburban cultures -- the truth of its racial exclusivity, so basic to its social life, is rarely mentioned overtly. Yet colleges like mine seem to reproduce the inequalities of American society in ways that they can't avoid, despite their best intentions. Perhaps it's time to stop pretending otherwise and deceiving minority applicants into thinking that they will achieve the same academic and social success as their white counterparts -- or even be held to similar standards.

Last fall, an unexpected incident shattered that pretense at Colgate. . . .

The uproar began when Barry Shain, a tenured white political scientist at Colgate, wrote in an e-mail message to a female black student that minority students were often seduced into unchallenging courses where liberal professors, who were "sensitive" to their needs, gave them inflated grades. That practice, Shain continued, harmed black students, who were generally less well prepared academically than their white peers. He further complained that a growing number of courses encouraged students to examine their feelings as a way to explore racial issues.

Shain's message was widely distributed (without his permission), and an uproar followed by much soul-searching ensued. According to Richards,

The specific charges in Shain's message created less of a stir than his breach of the university's racial etiquette. He had publicly exposed the tacit assumption that black students hold a subordinate academic status at Colgate. The violation of that silent code predictably upset many black students, who resented the attack on their academic credentials. The claim that liberal professors gave them inflated grades distressed them much less than the implication that their teachers saw them as academically inferior. . . . The most thoughtful black students remarked, however, that Shain had simply aired a long-hidden truth about life at the college, that they were just being confronted with the reality of their stigma as black students at Colgate and in a predominantly white society. Unfortunately, I had to agree with them. . . .

The double standard leaves its mark on black students long after graduation. . . .

Colgate's separate tracks of expectation, performance, and success for black students have been the most disheartening aspect of my experience here -- especially as those disparities have persisted over the years. Although every professor I know has observed it, the institution has done little to deal openly with the problem within the faculty as a whole. Public discussion focuses on multiculturalism and diversity -- not the problem of inadequate black intellectual achievement at a prestigious academic institution.

Richards concludes by questioning, and rejecting, the widespread, optimistic assumption of "the necessary connection between a Colgate education and social mobility, especially for poor and working-class students." Colgate, he finds, simply reflects and, despite its best intentions and with too few exceptions, reinforces the social chasm separating its black and white students.

Given the unrelenting bleakness of the social and academic landscape Richards so unsparingly describes, his recommendations are almost pitifully lame. He really offers only two suggestions. First:

At the very least, colleges like Colgate should no longer recruit black students without alerting them to the nature of life in an academically competitive, rigorously white upper-class environment. Black students should understand such institutions' academic and social milieu from the beginning. High-school students who visit the campuses should not be sold a bill of goods: that they will live in a world of close social and intellectual relationships between students of different classes and racial backgrounds.

The depth of his pessimism is reflected by his only other recommendation:

[Colleges like Colgate] may also be able to solve some of the problem by recruiting black students who have already succeeded in the integrated social and academic worlds of prep schools or elite suburban high schools.

Richards recognizes that a racial double standard is the root of Colgate's problems, but his two recommendations, even if followed, would leave it undisturbed.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Say What? (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Blacks and Republicans - Writing in the New York Times Magazine last Sunday, James Traub analyzes emerging political trends in the black community and concludes -- hold your hats -- that blacks, even the new generation of moderate black leaders who eschew the old concentration on race, continue to reject the Republican Party in overwhelming numbers because ... they prefer the Democrats.

This nearly unanimous black rejection of the Republicans is, of course, the Republicans' fault. "Why has the new generation of black leaders spurned the new Republican party?" Traub asks. Not because most black voters are Democrats. On the contrary, "[T]he problem lies with contemporary Republican culture and principles." What about the pronounced inclusiveness of the last Republican convention? "Stage-managed," says Traub. Well, then, what about the fact that President Bush appointed blacks to unprecedentedly high positions in his cabinet and staff? It may be, Traub says, "that as foreign policy figures" Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleeza Rice "have less symbolic value than comparably placed figures in domestic policy would."

Could Traub possibly be saying that blacks have a higher regard for "symbolic value" than for real power? Or could it be that Republicans get no credit for appointing blacks when the appointments are made without regard to race? But then, former President Bush got nothing but grief when he appointed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, an appointment that was widely regarded by critics, and others, as explainable only by race.

"The problem," in Traub's view, is that Republicans are, well, you know, Republicans. "There are few black voters, and few black leaders, who do not view the state as a mighty instrument for social justice and economic progress," Traub writes, while Republicans, by largely rejecting this notion, "have squeezed themselves into a narrow ... sectarian space ... occupying the territory of moral absolutism that moderate black politicians are abandoning." Left unexplained is why skepticism of state power is sectarian moral absolutism while uniform belief in it throughout all sectors of the black community, allegedly leading to loyalty to Democrats hovering slightly below 100%, is pragmatic and moderate.

My analysis assumes, of course, something Traub may question, which is that the black community, like other communities, has differences within it. In other communities these internal differences lead to partisan differences as well, but not so with blacks. Indeed, black voters have become so synonymous with Democratic voters that in their last stab at the redistricting issue, Hunt v. Cromartie (2001), the Supremes held that where "racial identification is highly correlated with political affiliation" it is nearly impossible to separate racial from partisan motives. Since blacks vote overwhelming for Democrats in most places, and since partisan gerrymandering is legitimate, this opinion may have given a green light to redistricting that is, in fact and in effect, race-based. In other situations making race a proxy for certain attitudes, behaviors, or beliefs is rightfully condemned as stereotyping, and in still others policies that are adopted with non-racial motives but that have a racially disparate impact are said by liberals to violate civil rights laws.

In short, what Traub is really saying is that the only way Republicans can appeal to blacks -- and not just liberal blacks, but all blacks: anti-abortion blacks, pro-gun blacks, pro-school voucher blacks, rural Baptist blacks, urban Catholic blacks, etc. -- is to cease being Republicans. Well, O.K. I have no trouble with the argument, or the fact, that blacks vote for Democrats because they agree with them, but I do have a great deal of trouble with the apparent inability to apply that striking insight to both sides of the political spectrum. Every time a black Democrat loses to a white Republican, for example, the immediate and obvious and largely unquestioned explanation is race.

When North Carolina elected Sen. Jesse Helms, twice rejecting black Democratic challenger Harvey Gantt, it was obviously because of race. It couldn't have been because a majority actually preferred a conservative Republican to a moderate/liberal Democrat. That assumption is still so pervasive as to be invisible, which is a not bad working definition of common knowledge. Thus in a recent otherwise thoughtful article on the just concluded Democratic primary for the Senate in North Carolina, David Broder discusses why some blacks favored Erskine Bowles over Dan Blue, the black former speaker of the legislature.

... African Americans such as Barbara K. Phillips, who attended the Bowles rally here, said that after Harvey Gantt's two losing Senate campaigns against Helms, "it's clear we have to bring the state along further before we can elect a minority member to this kind of office."

Thus, by definition neighboring Virginia (my state), usually thought to be the epitome of conservatism, either has been brought "along further" than North Carolina ("the valley of democracy between two mountains of conceit")... or Douglas Wilder, a black who was elected governor here a good while ago, is a potted plant.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Title IX Nonsense - Sneaking Suspicions has a very thoughtful and thorough post on a thoroughly disappointing Sixth Circuit opinion on Title IX.

Among the several gems in Judge Alice Batchelder's opinion was the following:

If a university cannot afford to add sports teams in order to provide equal athletic opportunity for men and women, it may be forced to subtract in order to equalize. It is anomalous in an allegedly free society to accomplish equality of opportunity by decreasing rather than increasing opportunities, but in the real world of finite resources, this approach may be the only way for an educational institution to comply with Title IX ....

"May be" may be a bit disingenous, as Judge Batchelder upheld Miami University of Ohio's decision to eliminate men's tennis, wrestling, and soccer teams in order to raise the percentage of athletes who are women. She must think that appropriate for a society that is only "allegedly" free.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Historical Chutzpah - I refer to the latest example of politicized historians sharing their wisdom with us in the form of a petition, viewable on the History News Network and signed so far by over 1100 historians.

When last heard from, 400 or so historians (many of whose names appear this time as well) who felt compelled to teach us a history lesson revealed a seldom seen sympathy for originalism -- they called themselves "Historians in Defense of the Constitution" -- by telling us in no uncertain terms, and on their authority as professional historians, that the Founding Fathers would have opposed Clinton's impeachment. Less covered in the press and unnoticed by Congress, and now largely forgotten, another 250 or so historians signed a petition opposing impeachment for the Monica-related perjury, obstruction of justice, etc., but favoring impeachment "for the illegal bombing of Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan." (See Nat Hentoff Oped, Washington Post, 3/6/1999, p. A21.)

Now, over 1100 historians have signed another petition, and plan to deliver it on Sept. 17, urging members of Congress "to assume their Constitutional responsibility to debate and vote on whether or not to declare war on Iraq."

We ask our representatives to do this because Congress has not asserted its authority to declare war for over half a century, leaving the president solely in control of war powers to the detriment of our democracy and in clear violation of the Constitution."

I will leave to scholars more competent than I (many of whose names, by the way, appear on the petition) the discussion of whether all of our military actions in the past half century have been "in clear violation of the Constitution." What troubles me about the signers of the petition is not their historical argument but their chutzpah: their assumption that Congress, and presumably the rest of us, should accord special weight to their views on the "clear" meaning of the Constitution because they are professional historians. It is, in other words, an argument from authority.

Some of the authority is well-earned. There are some eminent and many accomplished historians among the signatories. Still, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that they were impelled to go public less by the obligation to speak truth to power ("truth" being in short supply in academia these days, outside of petitions) than by their political preferences. The petition demanded a Congressional vote to authorize any war with Iraq, but it did not state an opinion on what that vote should be. Thus there may well have been some signers who support the overthrow of Saddam. But I doubt there were many. Although the profession of history has been less infected by post-modernism than some other fields, it is troubling to see how easily and often so many historians always find confirmation of their political preferences for the present and future when they look to the past.

Some of the authority claimed by the signatories, however, is more questionable, since many of them have no claim to professional expertise on what the Constitution requires in the making of war. Civil War historians or women's historians or economic historians may be brilliant, and may be outstanding in their fields, but their recommendations as to what we should do, or not do, regarding Iraq are due no special deference. As citizens they have every right to express their opinions -- and again, those opinions may well be persuasive -- but they did not offer their opinions as citizens but as "the undersigned American historians."

Especially given the academic scandals that plagued the history profession in the past year, a little humility would be in order. In that regard, historians would be well-served to recall the comments of one of their number during the impeachment controversy. The eminent Constitutional historian Forrest McDonald opened his impeachment testimony before the House as follows:

At the outset, let me say that I shall offer here no policy recommendations. Unlike the 400 historians who signed the recent statement in the New York Times, and which we've heard about today, I recognize that historians have no more qualifications for advising statesmen on current issues, than do, say, plumbers or radiologists. Our province is the past, not the present. And the past is what I, for one, am qualified to talk about. [Testimony 11/9/1998, found in Federal News Service transcript on Nexis.]

Posted by John Rosenberg at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Temporarily Unplugged - Now that Jessie's back at Bryn Mawr my wife and I have taken a short vacation from our normally vacation-like life and rented a cottage for a week on Chincoteague island. (Misty is gone, but her descendants are still here; we saw several on on a bike ride today.) I didn't realize until we arrived that our cottage has no phone, and not even a phone line, which will put a crimp in my posting habits (not to mention the raging blog-withdrawal it has induced). The local library, where I am now, does have a connection, so I can at least observe, and maybe even post a short item or two like this. But I shall return...

Posted by John Rosenberg at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Freedom of (or from ?) Confederate Flags - Back in April Eugene Volokh posted an interesting discussion (as is his wont) of the First Amendment implications of allowing/banning displays of the Confederate flag.

The occasion for his comments was a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down Virginia's refusal to allow the Sons of Confederate Veterans to design a custom license plate that featured the Confederate flag. Eugene pointed out that this was not an easy case, for the government had several good arguments on its side -- that when it "spoke" it should have wide latitude in saying, or not saying, whatever it wanted and that agreeing to the Sons' logo would give it the commonwealth's stamp of approval. On balance, however, Eugene concluded the court was right since in its operation Virginia's custom license program was an open forum and thus not allowing the Confederate flag was viewpoint discrimination.

A similar flap occurred in Washington back in 1993. The Senate was all set to renew, as a matter of routine, the "design patent" of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, as it had done a number of times in the past. Senator Carol Mosely-Braun of Ill. (subsequently defeated, alas not over this) objected on all the predictable grounds, and the Senate, embarrassed, backed down and refused to renew. All the issues Eugene mentioned re flags on license plates were present then -- govt speech, govt "endorsement," awarding an honor, etc., as well as the same selective censorship/First Amendment issues. Although I thought (and think) the arguments on the politically correct side were not frivolous, I also thought (and think) the free speech argument was stronger, except that nobody really made it.

Anyone wishing to pursue this matter can find an official summary here. Anyone wanting to pursue the matter on a more theoretical, as well as historical, level would be well advised to read the book by my friend Sandy Levinson, a professor of law at the University of Texas. Sandy is a dear friend, but I should warn you that he endorses the trashing of symbols, statues, etc., once what they stood for becomes sufficiently unpopular. He's a native North Carolinian, but if he had a bulldozer, the skill, and time he'd raze all those "Lest We Forget" monuments that anchor Southern squares.

Why bring all this up now? some of you must be asking. Because Geitner Simmons of emerging Regions of Mind fame has just brought to my attention an article from Greensboro, N.C, about the United Daughters of the Confederacy being compared to the Ku Klux Klan by a middle school principle as he withdrew the school's participation in the UDC's annual essay contest. He then was forced to issue an abject apology.

No doubt about it: the Confederate flag is a controversial, divisive symbol, and groups that honor it are not popular. I would not display it in my house if I knew it offended family or guests. But lest we leap to accept this as an acceptable standard for exclusion from public spaces, recall that at Berkeley these days the American flag (for Southerners who remain unreconstructed: the Union flag) is itself unpopular and banned (or so some said) from certain events. See discussion here. It is also worth pondering what standard would dictate exclusion of the UDC from the schools that would not also exclude the Daughters of the American Revolution. Surely not favoring rebellion against established authority, justifying slavery, etc. Oh, so you want to exclude both? Then who would you allow in?

Perhaps we should take some lessons from our own past and re-learn the ones that teach that toleration is not the same as endorsement and that our core values (including "diversity," properly understood) favor the widest possible boundaries for expression, and participation in public life, that are consistent with public safety.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What Do We Want When We Want Equality? - I have become increasingly convinced that a good deal of the conflict over equality comes from confusion over what it means, over what it is we want when we want equality. As usual, this confusion is nicely revealed in California, in two otherwise unrelated events (actually, one case and one condition) at opposite ends of the state.

The California Supreme Court just invalidated the school transfer policy of the Huntington Beach school district, in Orange County. That policy was designed to maintain an appropriate racial balance. As the appellate court said in holding that this plan violated the California constitution (thanks to Proposition 209),

To prevent an "inappropriate" racial and ethnic balance, the District restricts transfers to and from Westminster High School. If you are white and you live inside the high school's attendance area, you cannot transfer out unless another white student is willing to transfer in and take your place. If you are non-white and you live outside the high school's attendance area, you cannot transfer in unless another non-white student is willing to transfer out and you take that student's place. [The appellate opinion can be found here. The Calif. Supreme Court just upheld that judgment, but without issuing an opinion. An article discussing the Supreme Court's decision, from which I quote below, can be found here.]

This opinion is not so noteworthy in itself (except for its demonstration of the teeth in Prop. 202); most other courts have reached the same conclusion. (See, for example, Eisenberg v. Montgomery County [Md.]) What I found revealingly noteworthy, however, was the comment of Joanne Lowe, one of the (losing) lawyers for the state dept. of education. "We don't want [Westminster High School] to become any more racially isolated than it already is," she said. "To allow that would be to violate the rights of kids to get an equal education" (My emphasis; quoted in Los Angeles Times article linked above.) At the time, according to the appellate court opinion, the school was 45% Asian American (of whom nearly all were Vietnamese), 30.5% Hispanic, and 16% white.

It is undisputed that the invalidated transfer policy was designed to prevent whites from leaving. But it is less than clear how their voluntarily leaving would violate anyone's right to an equal education. A more symmetrical racial balance may be more desirable than racial imbalance, but the school district and state argued not that racial balance was desirable but that its absence was a violation of rights. Indeed, they even argued, unsuccessfully, that "the transfer policy is required under the equal protection clause of the Constitution of the United States."

Undefined though it is, this is a most peculiar and unappealing view of equality. The highly controversial efforts to bus students in order to achieve racial balance have been abandoned for a good while now, but many devotees of ethnic micromanagement obviously think it is acceptable, even mandatory, to forbid student movement in order to achieve racial balance. In suburban Montgomery County, Maryland, for example (not the Eisenberg case cited above), the school district attempted "to prevent two Asian American kindergartners from transferring to a one-of-a-kind French immersion school in Rockville because of their race." (Washington Post, 11/15/1995, p. D1) There were too few Asian Americans in their base school, the school board argued, and hence letting them go would deprive the other kindergartners of the degree of diversity they required. Why don't more liberals object to this as the grossest form of using people, as turning them into racially essential objects to satisfy the (amorphous and possibly non-existent) desires of others?

From the other end of California comes a most depressing article about Berkeley High School: "Top-Notch School Fails to Close 'Achievement Gap': Berkeley High tried to lift urban black and Latino pupils to the level of high-performing Asians and whites. But a sizable divide persists." (Actually, the article comes from the Los Angeles Times, but Berkeley High School is in, er, Berkeley, in northern California.)

Here in one of the best-educated corners of America, this city's sole public high school suffers a split personality: One exhibits a steady stream of National Merit Scholars, the other an undercurrent of failure....

Berkeley was one of the first high schools in the country to implement a plan to voluntarily desegregate, and its hallways teem with the children of liberal intellectuals. Yet the school has struggled, without much success, to close the so-called achievement gap separating white and Asian students from less well-prepared blacks and Latinos.

Oddly, Berkeley High is described as "among the nation's most diverse high schools" when the more apt term would seem not to be diverse but racially balanced: it is 37% white, 32% black, 11% Latino, 9% Asian, and 11% multiethnic. Residence requirements were waived for heavily black nearby Richmond and Oakland, which partially explains why the racial mix at Berkeley High does not at all reflect the composition of Berkeley's population, which is 59.2% white, 13.6% black, 16.4% Asian, and 9.7% Hispanic. (Census data on Berkeley can be found here.)

Again, what I find distinctive here is not the "Tale of Two Cities"-like division at Berkeley High, which except perhaps for its extremes is not unusual, but rather the goal and the analysis of the problems that reigns in the school system. In 1996 the school entered a partnership with neighboring UC Berkeley to analyze its "culture of education."

Researchers found a campus with polarized academic cultures; one in which many black transfer students felt lost in a competitive sink-or-swim atmosphere with few role models and little guidance; and another with ambitious white students whose parents and teachers made sure they got the advanced placement classes they needed to graduate to the finest colleges.

The resulting four-year Diversity Report, released in 2000, concluded that Berkeley's 3,200 students suffered "apartheid-like segregation." Though white Berkeley students scored in the top 15th percentile nationally, blacks scored in the bottom 40th.

Just 3% of black and Latino students are enrolled in advanced placement classes, compared with 33% of whites. Black students also experienced much higher dropout and discipline rates, the report found.

Only people who know nothing of either apartheid or segregation could describe Berkeley High as suffering from "apartheid-like segregation." Or, for that matter, think the problems fall under the rubric of "diversity." But then, everything does.

One of the few bright spots in this dreary picture, in my opinion, is that the school board has not been successful in implementing its vision. Listen to school board president Shirley Issel:

In desegregating schools in 1968, we thought all we had to do was mix everybody up to assure equality. We were so naive. To achieve the dream of public education as the great equalizer, we have to work a lot harder than we thought. [Emphasis added]

In a school characterized by an enormous gap between significant numbers of students performing at the very top and at the very bottom, equalizing their performance -- which, if words mean anything, means raising the worst and lowering the best -- should be the last thing on anybody's mind.

Not surprisingly, that does not appear to be what black parents want. As the Los Angeles Times reported,

some minority parents say the school fails to aggressively challenge students of color and hold them to the same academic standards as others.

Schools can never help us achieve equality so long as they are run by people with such warped notions of what equality is.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ethnic Lock Boxes - This morning, while I was reading another of those ethnically informative articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Report on Latino-American Students Notes High College-Enrollment Rate, Lower Graduation Rate" (find it here if you have a subscription), I realized I didn't really see why we should care about the relative rate of Latino-American entrance to/graduation from college. Let me hasten to add (I may be politically incorrect, but I'm neither racist, nor ethnicist, nor totally insensitive) that my own disinterest has nothing to do with any attitudes toward Latino-Americans. Indeed, I don't think I have any attitudes at all toward Latino-Americans, and I would be equally un-interested in the entrance/exit rates of Scandinavian-Americans, or Arab-Americans, or African-Americans.

My concern is that we've locked ourselves into such mental ethnic lock boxes that we automatically think of everything in terms of ethnicity these days, and we've gotten to the point where that limits rather than enhances our understanding of what's going on -- not to mention perpetuating divisions that we should be more concerned about eliminating.

Assuming for the sake of argument that both attending and remaining in college are good things for all high school graduates, why should we always look at this data (at least it seems like always) only through ethnic lenses? Sure, that tells us something that may be worth knowing, but it also prevents us from knowing other things that may be equally or more important. What about the rates for urban vs. rural, or that division that attained prominence after the 2000 election, Red vs. Blue? Or attendance/graduation rates by household income? Or occupation? Or religion?

In fact, the study from the Pew Hispanic Center that is the subject of the Chronicle article includes data suggesting that ethnicity may not provide the best approach to enrollment data:

• Enrollment in two-year colleges varies considerably by national origin. Some 46 percent of Mexican college students in the 18- to 24-year-old group attend two-year institutions compared to about 31 percent of Puerto Ricans and Cubans.

• Cubans have by far the highest rate of college attendance of any Latino national origin group with nearly 45 percent of 18- to 24-year-old high school graduates enrolled. For Mexicans, the comparable figure is 33 percent and for Puerto Ricans, 30 percent.

• Income and Gender: The patterns in college enrollment among Latino populations match up fairly closely with their socioeconomic profile. Cubans as well as Central and South Americans tend to be among the better-off Latino households with average household incomes above $40,000. Mexican origin and Puerto Rican households tend to be less well-off, with average household incomes below $37,000, which is below the average household income level of African Americans (Bean et al., 2001). Similarly, native-born Latino households tend to be substantially richer than foreign-born households. Mexican-origin Latinos have the lowest average household income among the native born at $42,000, but this is well above the African American average household income. Thus, among Hispanics, as with the U.S. population overall, the children from higher income families are more successful in obtaining a college education.

It has been said often, and accurately, that when all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. It's getting to the point that our only analytical tools seem to be ethnic so we continue to hammer out reams of ethnic data.

It is past time to start emphasizing what comes after the hyphen for all those hyphenated-Americans. Or better yet, drop the hyphens altogether. When those planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon their targets were not Latino-Americans or African-Americans or even Jewish-Americans but just Americans. Wouldn't it be nice if our college and job applications could be equally clear.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Revolt(ing) History - What with the plagiarism debacles of Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, the autobiographical in class lying of Joseph Ellis, and the ongoing debate over whether Michael Bellesiles is guilty of fraud or incompetence (not to mention the earlier mad if temporary rush to originalism as liberal historians raced to the defense of Bill Clinton in his impeachment troubles), the history profession has not looked very good lately. It may be about to look worse. Much worse.

I refer to the remarkable work of Michael P. Johnson, Professor of History at Johns Hopkins, who is well on his way to proving that the famous Denmark Vesey slave conspiracy in Charleston in 1822 never happened. The above link is to Johnson's long article, "Denmark Vesey and His Co-Conspirators," William and Mary Quarterly 58 (Oct. 2001), 915-976, a substantial precursor to his impending book, Conjuring Conspiracies. An equally substantial forum with eight comments on Johnson's dramatic charges, with a reply by Johnson, appeared in the WMQ's issue of January 2002. (All these comments are available through the preceding link. My page references are to the printed text.) This was the eagerly awaited issue that also contained the assessments of Bellesiles' Arming America, and the fireworks from that controversy have tended to overshadow and obscure the significance -- which is potentially far greater for the profession of history as a whole -- of Johnson's work on the way historians have treated slave revolts.

With only one or two exceptions, until now historians have accepted as a matter of faith that Denmark Vesey masterminded what would have been a major slave revolt had he and his co-conspirators not been captured and executed. As Johnson writes in his opening paragraph,

IN the pantheon of rebels against slavery in the United States, Denmark Vesey stands exalted. Historians celebrate this free black carpenter who organized slaves to emancipate themselves in 1822 by setting fire to the city of Charleston, South Carolina, slaying all whites, and sailing off to the black republic of Haiti. A free man who identified with slaves, a black man who claimed the human rights monopolized by whites, an urban artisan who prepared to lead an army of rural field hands, a man of African descent who built a coalition of native Africans and country-born creoles, a religious man who melded the Christianity of Europe with the spiritual consciousness of Africa, a diasporic man inspired by the black Atlantic's legacy of rebellion and sovereignty, a radical man who wielded the ideals of the Age of Revolution against white oppression and hypocrisy, a militant man who scorned compromise and relished redemptive killing, a brave man unintimidated by the long odds against liberation, a loyal man who refused to name his co-conspirators when informants betrayed his scheme at the last minute, a stoic man who died on the gallows without giving his executioners the satisfaction of remorse or confession--Denmark Vesey was a bold insurrectionist determined to free his people or die trying. (p. 915)

Alas, Johnson demonstrates, it never happened. The concluding paragraph of his article:

Unanswered questions about Vesey and his co-conspirators abound. But this much is clear: Vesey and the other condemned black men were victims of an insurrection conspiracy conjured into being in 1822 by the court, its cooperative black witnesses, and its numerous white supporters and kept alive ever since by historians eager to accept the court's judgments while rejecting its morality. Surely it is time to pay attention to the "not guilty" pleas of almost all the men who went to the gallows, to their near silence in the court records, to their refusal to name names in order to save themselves. These men were heroes not because they were about to launch an insurrection but because they risked and accepted death rather than collaborate with the conspiratorial court and its cooperative witnesses. Surely it is time to read the court's Official Report and the witnesses' testimony with the skepticism they richly deserve and to respect the integrity of a past that sometimes confounds the reassuring expectations generated by our present-day convictions about the evil of slavery and the legitimacy of blacks' claims to freedom and justice. Surely it is time to bring the court's conspiracy against Denmark Vesey and other black Charlestonians to an end. (p. 971)

Over the course of the pages between these paragraphs Johnson does much more than demolish the Denmark Vesey myth. He provides a model analysis of the conspiracy trial (should be required reading for anyone interested in conspiracies, alleged or real), demonstrating how virtually all other historians have ignored or distorted the archival record. In fact, his major accomplishment is probably not his retroactive acquittal of Vesey but his stinging indictment of how so much history is written today.

In short, there was a conspiracy, but it was not Vesey's. It was the Charleston court's, and it has been aided and abetted by historians over the years. From the first paragraph of Johnson's reply to his critics:

The members of the Charleston Court of Magistrates and Freeholders who executed Vesey and thirty-four other black men claimed that the conspiracy involved stealthy recruitment of rebels, long lists of committed insurrectionists, stockpiles of deadly weapons, cunning military organization, meticulous tactical planning, and a collective determination to burn the city, slay the whites, and sail away to the free shores of Haiti. Nearly all historians of the subject have endorsed the court's conclusions. Both the court and latter-day historians based these claims on uncritical readings of the testimony of intimidated and coerced witnesses who told the court what it wanted to hear: that an insurrectionary Armageddon had been narrowly averted by the vigilance of officials who preempted the uprising with a formidable mobilization of militia. In collaboration with cooperative black witnesses, the court crafted a conspiracy against Vesey and the other convicted men, in my view. Historians have abetted the court's conspiracy by incautious readings of the witnesses' testimony and the court's Official Report. The result has been that the court's reading of the Vesey conspiracy has prevailed since 1822. That reading, I tried to show, falsified court procedures and testimony, turned a deaf ear to what witnesses really said (at least what was recorded in the manuscript court records), and certainly did not reflect the views of the alleged conspirators--the men convicted, executed, and exiled--almost all of whom either entered not guilty pleas or, like Vesey, said nothing whatever.

Philip Morgan, former editor of the WMQ and one of the commentators in the January 2002 issue, is right on point when he writes that

[i]n fact, the truly haunting aspect of Michael P. Johnson's extraordinary tour de force on the Denmark Vesey slave conspiracy is the complicity of historians in accepting the corrupt verdict of the kangaroo court. (pp. 159-160)

Indeed, it is beyond irony to see contemporary historians -- liberals and radicals all -- defending the accuracy and even the integrity of the racist, elitist Charleston court that railroaded Vesey and his fellows to the gallows. Politics is said to make strange bedfellows, but History would appear to make stranger ones: modern liberal historians accepting the judgment of a racist pro-slavery court, rather than the brave testimony of slaves themselves who protested their innocence, in order to confirm their view that rebellion and resistance simply had to be about to erupt at any time under slavery. Hard as it is to believe, modern historians even defend that court's reliance on informers who were beaten until they said what was required of them, crediting that testimony more than the denials -- or in Vesey's own case, silence -- of those who refused to confess despite the coercion. It's as though western liberals and anti-communists had pointed to Stalin's show trials not as evidence of his cruelty and corruption but as proof of widespread resistance to communism.

You think Johnson or I must exaggerate? Consider just two examples from the commentators:

Torture has a foundational association with slavery in Western culture as a requisite means of disgorging truth from slaves other subaltern people who lacked, as Aristotle put it, "the deliberative faculty." (p. 187)

[Johnson] finds it "chilling" ... to believe that testimony obtained under torture "is not by definition spurious" (p. 919). The only chilling fact here is that for centuries Western courts relied on physical torment to force the accused provide evidence against themselves and others. Coerced deposition may be false, but they may also be true. If historians had to rely only on statements willingly made to officials in open, democratic courts that lacked any racial or class bias -- as if such a venue has ever existed in any society -- the available scholarship on the law and popular resistance to it would be thin indeed. (p. 146)

Johnson notes quite correctly that his critics "argue that the court's use of beatings, intimidation, and the threat of death to elicit testimony provides little reason to doubt the veracity of the witnesses." They point to the fact that those who plead not guilty were subject to the same coercion but nevertheless conclude that "not guilty pleas are no more nor less credible than the testimony of witnesses who named names and saved their own necks." This line of argument, Johnson notes with admirable restraint,

"ignores a common rule of thumb employed by judges, lawyers, and juries then now: testimony that is manifestly not in a witness's interest is more likely to be true than testimony that is clearly in a witness's interest. (p. 194)

As Winthrop Jordan, the influential historian of racism, observed in his comment,

Well, there goes another firm fact of life. We have here both an object lesson and a dramatic exposure of an outrageous professional scandal. (p. 175)

This controversy does bear some unfortunate similarities to the Bellesiles affair, since the initial occasion for Johnson's engagement here was an assignment to review some books on Vesey, including an edited version of the trial transcript, that proved, on his close examination, to be utterly untrustworthy. Although Johnson charges "unrelenting carelessness" rather than purposeful distortion, this part of the controversy will sound familiar to those familiar with the battles over Bellesiles. As Winthrop Jordan points out:

Ordinarily, scholars expect to and are able to rely implicitly on the accuracy of quoted material. Especially is this the case with the printing of lengthy manuscripts. Professional exchange among historians would be rendered impossible if they had always to check whether some historian has quoted, say, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson correctly, since the internal logic of such an inquiry would require ascertaining Julian Boyd [the editor] got the matter right in the first place. We simply cannot run around constantly checking such materials. (p. 175)

Finally, however, the scandal Johnson has unearthed is not so much the "unrelenting carelessness" of so many historians re the documentary evidence that he discovered. It is that, in practice if not in theory, many historians have succumbed to the post-modernist claptrap of Fishian "metahistorian" Hayden White, cited by Johnson, who argues "that historians who go to the archives engage in meaningless ritual since what they find there only fits their preconceptions and what they write is, in any case personal invention." (p. 200).

By diligent archival research and clear-headed analysis, Johnson has provided a compelling "object lesson" in the value of traditional, old fashioned, pre-post modern historical research. In doing so, however, he has revealed the pervasiveness and power of certain ideological preconceptions that are much more troubling for the history profession as a whole than its failure to properly police Bellesiles' footnotes.

Update - And speaking of incompetent and untrustworthy transcribing, unreliable sources, etc., Denmark Veysey that I wrote originally is actually, i.e., accurately, spelled Denmark Vesey. I knew that, especially since I had the WMQ right in front of me. Alas, my fingers were doing the typing, not my head, and they know nothing. Seems that "unrelenting carelessness" is all over the place. Thanks to the ever-vigilant Eugene Volokh for catching this. (Now, if he'd only agree to proof my posts before publication....) I have corrected the spelling in the text.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 12:21 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guilty Southern White Men - MediaMinded has an interesting addition to the ongoing discussion of GSWMs (Guilty Southern White Men), initiated by Andrew Sullivan and carried on ably by InstaPundit and kausfiles (I'm not linking; you read them already, or should), who remind us (actually, you) that Southerners who opposed racism and segregation were in fact on the side of angels and so somewhat understandably assume that they remain there no matter what issue they take up.

I heartily second MediaMinded's enthusiasm for Albert Murray's SOUTH TO A VERY OLD PLACE. Another unsung book by a deservedly famouse Southerner also has something to say to the issue of guilty white Southerners. I refer to Robert Penn Warren's thin little book, more a long essay, really: THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR, Random House, (1961). In it, RPW argues that the most lasting legacy of the late unpleasantness was that it gave the South a "Great Alibi" for whatever was wrong, and it gave the North a "Treasury of Virtue." Whatever the North's failings, it had freed the slaves etc. and hence could do no wrong, or rather any wrong it might do must be excused because of its heroic accomplishent of freeing the slaves.

Many Southern liberals who became leftists (I was one, too) have, alas, inherited that same confidence that they have a bottomless treasury of virtue to draw on forever.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Anti-Choice - As Byron York in particular and the media in general pointed out, the Democratic majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee has once again on a 10-9 party line vote defeated a Bush judicial nominee, Priscilla Owen.

Democrats objected primarily to her vote on the Texas Supreme Court in favor of enforcing Texas's parental notification (not permission, just notification) requirement for teenagers seeking an abortion. California Democrat Diane Feinstein said that this was her "most difficult vote," but "the issue of choice...is extraordinarily important."

Not really. Or rather, only some choices are important to Senator Feinstein. Feinstein and her like-minded fellows also refused to send the nomination out of committee with no recommendation or even with a negative recommendation because it is clear that Owen would have had the support of enough Democrats to win approval if her nomination had been allowed to reach the Senate floor. But Feinstein et. al. obviously have little regard for "the issue of choice" of a majority of her Senate colleagues or their constitutents who sent them there. Her choice is important, not theirs.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 8:27 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Versions of Diversity - Stuart Buck links to an intersting story about a man who is "by birth, African-Lebanese," who "[i]n the American shorthand, some might refer to ... as a black man," but who was denied a position at Loyola College in Baltimore because, he says was told by the vice president in charge of hiring, the college needed to hire someone who was more visibly black.

This raises the interesting question of whether there is or can be a difference between diversity and the appearance of diversity. Assume for a moment (but only for a moment) that diversity is upheld by the Supremes as a legitimate justification for racial preferences in university admissions and hiring. Would the "not black enough" standard then also be justified? Could a wholly American black who lost out to a blacker American black claim discrimination? Conversely, could an admissions or hiring committee reject a black in favor of a lighter-skinned black if the latter were deemed to be underrepresented?

If, as the racial essentialists claim, all blacks are the same, then those passed over because they are too dark or too light would seem to have a good discrimination claim, since they are "as black" as those of the more favored shade. But if all blacks are not the same, as those of us who reject racial essentialism maintain, then what is the justification for race-based diversity in the first place?

If we are to continue giving racial preferences at some point we will be forced to define race and perhaps even require official racial identity on drivers licenses, social security cards, etc.

So, let's don't.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Affirmative Action...In Israel - The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (link requires subscription) this morning that "Israel's Hebrew U. Starts Affirmative-Action Program, and Sets Off Controversy."

The plan, now under attack, was to admit 400 students from low-income neighborhoods into the humanities and social sciences division. They would be required to have high school diplomas but would not be required to take the standardized tests other applicants must take for admission to Israel's elite research university.

Some of the controversy is uniquely Israeli, having to do with the power of the Finance Minister to promote the plan. But other parts are all too familiar. Silvan Shalom, the Finance Minister, described his plan as a "social revolution."

As a parliamentarian, before being appointed finance minister last year, Mr. Shalom was a vocal advocate of open admissions at Israel's public universities. He has been particularly critical of the standardized admissions exam, which he says discriminates against disadvantaged students. Most disadvantaged students in Israel are, like Mr. Shalom, the descendants of Jews who came to Israel from the Islamic world.

I find it interesting that the Israeli plan is structured and presented in economic terms ("low income neighborhoods") even though its apparent purpose is at least partially ethnic (if that's the right term): to help Jews who immigrated from Islamic countries as opposed to Europe or Russia.

It is not clear from the article whether the Israelis use the term "affirmative action" or whether the Chronicle, the leading newspaper of record for higher education in the U.S., applied it to the Israeli debate for the benefit of its American readers. But in either event, to me the most significant thing about the article is how unconsciously but pervasively "affirmative action" has come to be regarded as synonymous with lowered standards.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Identity - Hanah Metchis has a REALLY nice post on "Constructing a Historical Identity." Although she compellingly resists being identified with any group (or perhaps more accurately, having her identity derived from membership in any group), I would like to respectfully suggest that her desire to escape the dictates of the past and create her own identity (which her post and other evidence confirm that she has done both successfully and appealingly) is in fact highly characteristic of one group whose clutches she probably cannot evade and whose brand she could not altogether erase even if she tried. I refer to that historically distinctive and idiosyncratic group known as Americans.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:05 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yet Another New York Times "Misstatement" - Isn't one a day enough (see post immediately below)? Apparently not. See this, from veteran Timesman Richard Berke's lead story in the "Week in Review":

No one thinks the president or his aides are slacking in their determination to help Republicans preserve their slim 12-member advantage in the House and retake the Senate....

Most close observers (and even others) of the national scene, including the NYT's own Adam Nagourney in his lead article on page one today, find that "Republicans have a six-seat edge in the House."

Twelve, six, whatever....

Posted by John Rosenberg at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Misstatement" in the New York Times - What I regard as another misleading statement in Sunday's NYT caught my eye this morning. In a profile of a dozen close "races to watch" in the next Congressional election, the NYT had this to say about liberal Republican Constance Morella's race in Maryland's 8th District:

As a Republican, Ms. Morella has represented one of the most Democratic districts in the nation for eight terms. The district, in the Washington suburbs, has become increasingly Democratic in the past two years, raising Democrats' hopes.

To say the district "has become increasingly Democratic in the past two years" implies some impersonal demographic trend -- a trend, moreover, that the Democrats were happy to discover and from which they hoped to benefit. Lucky Democrats! In fact, the district became "increasingly Democratic" overnight due to the very human actions of those very same Democrats, who gerrymandered her district so that Ms. Morella would have to run in district whose Democratic numbers they quite purposefully increased.

When I got home tonight I was all set to call this peculiar description of the Maryland 8th to your attention, but when I went online to get the URL this is what I found:

MARYLAND 8 -- Eight-term Republican Rep. Connie Morella is party's [sic] most vulnerable incumbent after redistricting left her liberal suburban Washington district even more Democratic.

Does this revision mean a conscientious editor finally got around to reading the copy? For the original, printed version, find a paper copy and look at "As Campaign Season Heats Up, Some Races to Watch," 9/1/2002, p. 24.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back to Bryn Mawr - Sorry I've been out of commission for a coupla days. We had to take Jessie and a surprising amount of her stuff (where did it all come from over the summer?) back to Bryn Mawr.

The good news is that she has a wonderful room, in a turret at the top of her dorm and on a floor with only 10 girls, er, women (one of whom is her good buddy Hanah), their own common room, kitchen, and laundry. Of course, there are no bad rooms at Bryn Mawr. The bad new is that it's on the fourth floor, and as I said there was a LOT of stuff to take up. But the good news is that there is a big dumb waiter to haul up boxes, etc. But the bad news is that it only goes as far as the third floor. So I'm bushed....

Posted by John Rosenberg at 10:50 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)