A reader called my attention to a nice discussion of “liberal DNA” by Marianne M. Jennings on Townhall.com.
“My DNA theory came to me one evening,” she writes
as I listened to Greta Van Susteren…. She had a ranting, angry liberal as a guest against the backdrop of the Republican convention. Said liberal complained of white males, Republicans, and the dominance of the former in the latter. Ms. Susteren pointed out that Mr. Bush had Colin Powell, Rod Paige, and Condi Rice in his cabinet. Undaunted, the liberal DNA kicked in, “Bush just picked them and they happened to be black. He didn’t pick them because they were black.” Blacks who are chosen for their competence don’t count as true blacks? Or is it unless you choose someone because he/she is black, your motives are not pure? What is the line of reasoning here? That’s DNA talking. Synapses misfire. Reason dissipates.
Just one more example of how, for many liberals, racial consciousness and racial preferences have come to be regarded as the essence of civil rights.
How sad.
What is funny is that I have heard all sides of the argument from the same group of liberals. At one point I was told he picked them because they were black and would do their best “yes massah” to anything Bush said (as said by one supposed celebrity,”house n*****s”). Then I was told they were not the “right” blacks, in other words they weren’t “real” blacks (“real blacks are Democrats”). Then I was told they were picked for some other reason than being black (finally the truth).
One thing I have noticed is that I hear very little from them about Rice. Could that be because she is a brilliant black woman who underwent the Civil Rights struggle firsthand? Condi is a very hard person to just dismiss, although a few have tried by casting around disparaging remarks about her looks. When Bush wins this election, watch for her to become the rising star in the party. If she were to run and make sure to highlight her intimate knowledge of the real Civil Rights struggle, she would have no problem winning in 2008.
Well, Bush pere picked Clarence Thomas–who was picked as he’s black. What do these Dems want?
Well, Bush pere picked Clarence Thomas–who was picked as he’s black. What do these Dems want?
I thought the most QUALIFIED was supposed to get the position? Was Clarence Thomas THE MOST QUALIFIED?
C’mon.
Tokenism is NOT true diversity.
Steve has really distilled the essence of the liberal view — to be a “real” black (or any minority, including women), you must be incompetent and working a job you are unqualified for but for your minority status.
And Cobra, remember that Thomas was replacing Thurgood Marshall, who also was not the best qualified person out there (superb litigator, crappy judge) — and the replacement of Marshall by anyone except another black was not politically possible (he/she would not be confirmed). Therefore race WAS a bona fide qualification, due to the demands of the liberal democrats that controlled the Senate at the time.
ThePrecinctChair,
So you’re saying Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court QUOTA appointment?
Interesting.
–Cobra
Not exactly. Thomas was (and is) certainly qualified for the position. Whether or not he was the MOST qualified persson is a different question — and I would answer in the negative (in my opinion Lawrence Tribe was objectively the MOST qualified person, but as a white liberal would have been unselectable and unconfirmable — two important criteria). Once one factors in those two political realities, Thomas became the top candidate.
Does that make him an affirmative action or quota appointment? That is a harder question. Since any non-black was politically un-confirmable, does the appointment of a black constitute adhering to a quota? If it does, who imposed the quota — the White House or Senate Democrats?
Tokenism is NOT true diversity.
Completely false. Tokenism and diversity are indistinguishable.
Interesting that a discussion that was not about Clarence Thomas was immediately hijacked and made into a discussion about Justice Thomas.
Mr. Thomas was qualified for the job and he got it, despite a vicious campaign of personal assassination.
The real issue was that Mr. Thomas dared to marry a white woman. This is even further proof that he is not “really” black. Black men are supposed to have an obligation to marry black women. Anita Hill was infuriated that she was rejected in favor of a white woman.
Oddly, whites are supposed to prove that they are tolerant by marrying blacks. White men are castigated as the most vicious racists if they opposed the marriage of white women to black men. And, in the black community, black men are condemned as racial traitors if they do not marry black women.
Cobra, you are driving yourself crazy with the mental acrobatics. Do you have anything on your mind besides this persistent determination to discover racism in every human endeavor? Do you ever even think about anything else?
I guess our friend Cobra must have been bitterly disappointed that Robert Bork was not confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. He was the most distinguished attorney/jurist nominated for the Supreme Court in at least the last 50 years. As for Larry Tribe, he is a law professor and epitomizes the saying that those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.
Stephen,
No. The thread was NOT hijacked. It is the very ESSENCE of this thread to discuss Clarence Thomas, a beneficiary of Affirmative Action who now opposes it. As far as his living in the state of Virginia with his white wife, any student of history KNOWS that this act was a FELONY up until Loving vs. The State of Virginia in 1969. I didn’t write the anti-miscegenation laws, Stephen. White legislators did. Blaming ME for their segregationist nonsense is fool-hardy. I won’t get into the miniscule amount of black/white marriages because that would TRULY be off-thread topic.
MJ,
There is a vast difference between tokenism and diversity. My anti-affirmative action friends here constantly remind me that “diversity of thoughts and ideas” is more important than having a “diversity of ethnicity.”
In other words, to many posters in here, an all-white, all-male group can be every bit as “diverse” as an interracial or intergender group.
CSG Steve,
Condolezza Rice’s field of expertise is Russia. She would’ve been the perfect selection for President Bush’s FATHER in 1988, when there was still a cold war. Do you think, that with the NEW threat being Middle Eastern terrorism, she is still the best qualified to be National Security Advisor?
Also Steve, for what reason would she be such a good candidate in 2008? She is NOT popular among African Americans, and there are a number of white male candidates (McCain, Pataki, Giuliani, Jeb Bush and maybe Swartzenegger) who would dominate the white male base vote of the GOP. What’s your logic, here?
–Cobra
Did you ever have to make up your mind?
It’s not often easy, and not often kind, if you’re a 21st-century liberal; the contemporary liberal mindset, says Marianne M. Jennings, is hard-coded into its holders’ DNA, and the results…
Cobra,
The points people make about “diversity” as supported by liberals reflect that liberals aren’t interested in diversity at all. If they were, they would support actual diversity. Liberals are interested in having more blacks in whatever positions they are discussing, and if they have to throw in other races to enable that goal, that’s ok. But if other races create a problem, such as Asians in the university admissions process, diversity will be redefined yet again to exclude them.
This is all perfectly obvious when paying the slightest attention to political life in America. There was recently a speech given in front of a 90+% black crowd by a liberal of note, and he started by praising the “diversity” of the crowd. There are examples around us every day, and asking us to pretend otherwise is asking us to lie.
Refer to the post. Isn’t that tokenism? The commenter said “Bush just picked them and they happened to be black. He didn’t pick them because they were black.”, as if that were a bad thing. Picking someone because they’re black sure sounds like tokenism to me.
You said “I thought the most QUALIFIED was supposed to get the position?”. Well, I thought so too. So why are you against this principle until a black you don’t like benefits?
I suspect you’re just for whatever helps Democrats/liberals and against whatever hurts them. That’s the only philosophy consistent with your various positions. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, but you have to realize anyone interested in principle rather than party isn’t going to grant your arguements any weight.
Cobra,
There is a vast difference between tokenism and diversity. My anti-affirmative action friends here constantly remind me that “diversity of thoughts and ideas” is more important than having a “diversity of ethnicity.” In other words, to many posters in here, an all-white, all-male group can be every bit as “diverse” as an interracial or intergender group.
The reason “many posters” say that is that the “diversity” arguments made by universities in favor of affirmative action explicitly treat racial/ethnic diversity as only a proxy for “diversity of thoughts and ideas.” That is the claim: that drawing in students from different racial or ethnic groups will produce a wider variety of perspectives. The odd thing is that no one seems anxious to check whether it’s true — you know, by actually surveying students of different races at elite schools with robust AA programs, and seeing whether the various groups materially differ from one another. I find this strange.
(Well, actually, I don’t; I find this indicative of the fact that no one actually thinks AA exists for the purpose of promoting “viewpoint diversity.”)
Do I think an all-white-male group can be more “diverse” than . . . how did you put it? oh, yes, “an interracial or intergender group”? Of course I do. The student bodies of elite universities with robust AA programs comprise the top students from the top high schools in the country, race-normed to some degree. But they are almost all children of educated parents, almost all urban and suburban, almost all well-off. They go to the same schools, they have the same friends, they do the same things, they breathe the same ideological air.
You want diversity, as in real differences in background and perspective, you do something like the various 10% plans, and throw in a boost for students not born in this country, whether they are now citizens or not, and further incentives for foreign students from countries that don’t ordinarily send many students to study here. The results of that would be very interesting. I do not think you would like them much.
Re Condi Rice, I think your comments about the “white male base” (why “male”? Do you really think that there aren’t Republican women in somewhat the same strength as Republican men, or that the women, but not the men, don’t bother to vote in primaries?) are wildly off-target. The Republican “base” would be delighted to shove a finger in the eye of the Democrats by nominating an articulate, educated Black woman. I don’t think it will happen in 2008, because (as you point out) there are McCain and Giuliani, who both have a lot more governing experience than Rice does. Pataki is really unlikely. Schwarzenegger, of course, cannot even run for President absent a Constitutional amendment, as he was born a national of a foreign state.
But I do think that the first woman nominated for President by a major party is going to be a Republican; and probably the first Black, too. The Democrats seriously have too many “Democrats-from-birth” still in the ranks that would balk at either or both to risk them.
MJ writes:
>>>Liberals are interested in having more blacks in whatever positions they are discussing, and if they have to throw in other races to enable that goal, that’s ok.>>You want diversity, as in real differences in background and perspective, you do something like the various 10% plans, and throw in a boost for students not born in this country, whether they are now citizens or not, and further incentives for foreign students from countries that don’t ordinarily send many students to study here. The results of that would be very interesting. I do not think you would like them much.
Cobra, you failed to answer my most important question. Why does divining racism in every human situation so obsess you? You have absolutely nothing else on your mind, as far as I can see.
So, I’ll answer for you. You are doing this to justify black gang violence. You are arguing endlessly that blacks are under attack and that they, therefore, have the right to use gang violence in return. I know this, because you instantly accuse anybody who opposes your racial obsession of being in league with the KKK.
Every political faction has people like you within it. The existence of gangs and gang violence can be explained by this phenomena. Every political faction is convinced that it is in immediate danger of attack and thus entitled to retaliatory violence. The KKK exists because there are white people who are obsessed with the notion that the white race is under attack. Black gangs exist because there are black people who are obsessed with the notion that the black race is under attack.
A pox on both.
Cobra,
All the “merit only” Anti-affirmative action types can’t possibly support a 10% plan, because lesser qualified students will still supplant the “qualified suburban white kids”, which is the root cause of all this civil rights revisionism.
The point is that the 10% plans come closer to measuring “merit” in the sense of “excelling in whatever environment you happen to be stuck in” than the de facto race-norming that is conventional AA does. There are problems with these setups — the biggest being that there are schools so bad that even their top 10% aren’t really ready for college-level work — but at least they are obviously designed to adjust for existing disadvantage. And they are clearly much more likely to produce a student body with a variety of perspectives and experiences than would conventional AA. And that is now the (alleged) point of AA in education, yes?
Re Rice, I’m sure you’re right that
[w]e have plenty of educated, articulate[d] (as if that’s shocking) African American women out there who are on the side of Liberals[,]
but why aren’t they prominent? The two liberal African American women in politics that got national attention most recently were Cynthia McKinney and Carol Moseley Braun. Sorry, but that’s not a good situation. I think smart Black women are just staying well away from politics for the moment.
(And oh, do I miss Barbara Jordan!)
Michelle,
How about we compare and contrast the level of articulation between Carol Moseley Braun and George W. Bush?
–Cobra
Cobra,
Could you please clarify:
Do you wish to compare Braun vs. Bush on the basis of who is more articulate, or more articulated?
;-)
Cobra;
I suppose ad hominem attacks are what I should have expected. You lack the intellect to deal with issues and so must always return to baseless charges of racism. Having an intelligent philosophical disuccsion with you was clearly impossible, so I accept this as as the inevitable consequence of not simply ignoring you.
It’s a mistake I won’t make again.
“We have plenty of … articulated … African American women out there …”
An articulated African American woman–now that I’ve never seen. Probably because “articulated”–as an adjective–means “consisting of segments held together by joints.”
Choose your words carefully, Cobra.
~Gyp
People,
You can attack me on my choice of words, or spelling errors. That’s fine. I expect to be attacked on an anti-affirmative action blog. However, whether I use “articulate” or “articulation”, my choice of language is far superior than that of your cult leader, George W. Bush.
I eagerly await your defense of “Bushisms”.
–Cobra
Cobra,
Compare and contrast your actions and their consequences and those of Pres Bush. He beats you right, left and center. You can talk all you want. Clinton did that, but Clinton did not act on what was going on and we are still paying for his inaction. Bush says what he will do and then does it. You can believe in what he says. I will take that kind of Bushism over you any day of the week.
Dick,
The results of my actions don’t result in records deficits, rampant poverty, middle east destabilization, thousands of US troop casualties, and thousands of dead Iraqi citizens. If you’re in favor of those kinds of things, you’re entitled.
It’s a free country, right?
–Cobra
Cobra sez-
We have plenty of educated, articulated (as if that’s shocking) African American women out there who are on the side of Liberals.
It’s articulate. Once these women enter the halls of the Liberal Plantation they abandon all of those qualities. Liberals only want to see blacks that are ghetto blacks. To them that is a genuine black man or women. Articulate, thoughtful or aspiring black people are conservative toads.
At least my candidate (Bush) isn’t a shape-shifter like Kerry. Ever think of casting him in a Terminator movie?
Richard,
Explain how I can exist as an African-American liberal? Explain to me why I should support a political party that promotes white conservative ideology?
And explain to me what a “ghetto black” is?
–Cobra
“will try to use spell check from now on, since obviously that’s the only argument my opponents have against me on this particular thread”