Discriminations

A good deal of attention has been devoted to Kerry's characteristically off key comments on Meet The Press yesterday -- his warning not to "overhype" the election or "to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can't vote and doesn't vote." But those weren't his only, well, odd observations.

For example, there was his dependence on/rejection of polls.

KERRY: I believe that 9/11 was the central deciding issue in this race. And the [Osama] tape -- we were rising in the polls up until the last day when the tape appeared. We flat-lined the day the tape appeared and went down on Monday.

KERRY: Well, Tim, if you ask me about polls today, you're going to get one of the sort of quick and easy dismissals of all politics, because I'm a poll expert. And if you'll recall, every poll in the country eliminated me from the race in December prior to Iowa, and I turned around and won. And every poll eliminated me two or three times from even making the race close.

So I think polls today are almost irrelevant, and I just don't pay any attention to them.

And then there was his very odd reduction of the country to the battleground states. Consider:

... if you add up the popular vote in the battleground states, I won the popular vote in the battleground states by 2 percentage points. We just didn't distribute it correctly in Ohio.

Some critics said it was a sign of poor planning that he finished the campaign with a surplus, but Kerry said that his battleground-state campaigns got all the money they needed.

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The trouble with much of the writing about higher education is that so much of it sounds like a parody that it's hard to know what, if anything, should be taken seriously, and this is even more likely to be true of items written by people associated with schools of education. A case in point is "The Academic Elite Goes to Washington, and to War," an article in Academe, a publication of the AAUP, that attempts to refute the notion that higher education these days is a swamp of lefty political correctness. I thought it was rather funny until I realized that it wasn't trying to be.

The author, Lionel Lewis, an emeritus professor of sociology and adjunct professor of higher education at the State University of New York at Buffalo, argues that "the conventional wisdom that a decidedly left-wing slant influences what students are taught at elite colleges and universities in America" is all wrong. "The facts," he writes, "have never supported such fanciful claims." On the contrary, he claims, "History shows that academia has roosted a flock of hawks."

His evidence? Many of the war mongers who have managed American foreign policy since World War II graduated from Ivy League institutions. Really.

Many ... who have taught and been taught at elite universities have helped develop America's aggressive and confrontational foreign policy (a policy resting on the premise that the nation's strength should be felt around the world) while serving as secretary of defense or as national security adviser....

... among the fifteen individuals serving as secretary of defense under ten presidents—from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush—eleven had at least one degree from an elite university.... [T]wo of the six leading members of President George W. Bush's foreign policy team who most vigorously promoted the invasion of Iraq in 2003 have undergraduate degrees from Ivy League institutions....

Of the seventeen national security advisers serving ten American presidents (half of whom themselves earned degrees from Harvard or Yale)....

In fact, almost all of those closely identified with crafting the post-World War II U.S. policy of containing and confronting communism around the globe have Ivy League degrees.

This "History" argument is, as I've said, Lewis's only substantive argument, and he devotes the great bulk of his article to it. But at the end he does, seemingly as an afterthought, put forward one more: So What? He argues, in short, that it doesn't really matter if faculties are overwhelmingly left wing because students aren't influenced by them anyway. Even if there is "a decidedly left-wing slant," it doesn't influence what students learn. Again, really.

Indeed, it has long been known that it hardly matters what professors teach students. What matters is what they come away with—and that is pretty much what they bring with them when they first set foot on campus. The broadest range of ideas can be found on all but the most doctrinal campuses, and students can readily find a niche without having to change their beliefs. Research spanning six decades has shown that the effect of college on the attitudes, values, religiosity, and political views of students, on elite campuses and elsewhere, is almost nil. In light of this research, it hardly makes a difference if the professoriate is mostly liberal or conservative, teaching Leo Tolstoy or Leon Trotsky.

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Jonah Goldberg has a very good column on bi-partisan racial hypocrisy. He's absolutely right, though he could have made the point even stronger by including a mention of racial gerrymandering. The Republicans created majority-minority (which is to say, majority black) districts in a successful ploy to herd Democrats into fewer districts. That was, and is, offensive. The Democrats went along with that, and now argue that not putting enough blacks into a district is racist AND putting in more than enough to elect a Democrat is racist. That is mind-bogglingly offensive. (See my older discussion of partisan hypocrisy).

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A few days ago I discussed a suggestion by House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas that blacks, because of their higher mortality rates, were short-changed by social security (and an inane response from Meet The Press host Tim Russert). Now comes New York Times calumnist Paul Krugman with an especially vicious, even for him, attack on President Bush making the same argument.

President Bush recently repeated earlier arguments that the lower life expectancy of blacks means that they receive less benefits from social security than whites. Krugman disagrees. The crux of his argument is that

Mr. Bush's remarks on African-Americans perpetuate a crude misunderstanding about what life expectancy means. It's true that the current life expectancy for black males at birth is only 68.8 years - but that doesn't mean that a black man who has worked all his life can expect to die after collecting only a few years' worth of Social Security benefits. Blacks' low life expectancy is largely due to high death rates in childhood and young adulthood. African-American men who make it to age 65 can expect to live, and collect benefits, for an additional 14.6 years - not that far short of the 16.6-year figure for white men.

But now listen to someone who is an actuary: meep, who comments on this site frequently (and well), has this comment on another discussion of Krugman:

Using the U.S. Life Tables, 2002 (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/life2002.pdf), I calculated the following probabilities:
Probability of living to age 65, given you're 25 years old now:
white males: 82%
black males: 68%
white females: 89%
black females: 80%
....
How about survival probabilities at later ages?
Probability of living to age 80, given you're now age 55:
White Males: 51%
Black Males: 37%
White Females: 64%
Black Females: 54%

• According to Social Security expert David John of the Heritage Foundation, one-fifth of white males die between the ages of 50 and 70. But one-third of black males die between those ages. If you die before you reach the age of 62, you have no chance of collecting benefits, and if you die shortly thereafter, you will not recoup the payroll taxes you paid into the system.

• ... assume that a 30-year-old black man and a 30-year-old white man each earns $30,000 per year over his working lifetime. By the time they retire, they will both have paid $136,740 in Social Security taxes and will be entitled to monthly benefits of $1,162. However, the white man can expect to live until age 81. If he does, he will receive $189,389 in total Social Security benefits. The black man, in contrast, with a life expectancy of 79, can expect to receive $161,750.

  This may actually understate the unfairness of the current system, since it is based on life expectancies at age 65. If both are aged 30 today, the life expectancy for the white man is 76; for the black man, 70. According to those projections, the black man can expect to receive nearly $100,000 less in lifetime Social Security benefits than his white counterpart, receiving less than half of what he actually paid into the program.
  
  

• a 20-year-old black male can expect a real rate of return of only 0.73 percent, while a white male can expect a return of 1.82 percent.... White 20-year-old males can expect 47 cents in benefits for every $1 they pay in taxes; 20-year old black males can expect to receive only 34 cents....

  In general, African Americans are over-represented among taxpayers and under-represented among beneficiaries. So one way to see Social Security is as a system in which African American workers subsidize the retirements of longer-living whites.(Report by National Center for Policy Analysis]

• Ron Walters, a professor at the University of Maryland and one of America's best-known black political scientists, has called Social Security "a form of 'reverse reparations.' "
  

Indeed, Krugman's offensive transgression is not that he's wrong -- although I think he is -- but his increasingly shrill insistence that the president, and in fact anyone who disagrees, is guilty of "fundamental dishonesty," is "shameful," is telling "black lies" by "playing the race card," and is doing so because of "bigotry." What I think is shameful is that the New York Times has allowed itself to be a platform for the dissemination of such discourse-coarsening tripe.

I've just said that Krugman similarly slanders "anyone who disagrees" with him, but that is perhaps too kind inasmuch as he is not only a hack but a partisan hack. Otherwise he would have to denounce Sen. Moynihan in the same terms, since, as JustOneMinute points out, Moynihan made the same argument in the 2001 Bush Commission final report.

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The New York Times today published an obituary of retired federal district court judge, William Bootle, who died Tuesday at 102. (Hat Tip to Howard Bashman)

Although many of you will not recognize his name, Judge Bootle was one of the courageous Southern judges who upheld the principle of equality when it was, er, considerably less than popular in that time and place to do so. He was the judge who integrated the University of Georgia in 1961 in a case brought by Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter, who became well known as the journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

On Jan. 6, 1961, Judge Bootle ruled that the two students were "fully qualified for immediate admission," adding that they "would already have been admitted had it not been for their race and color."

... applicants with the same GPA 2 score and ACT/SAT score were subject to different admissions outcomes based upon their racial or ethnic status. For example, as a Caucasian in-state applicant, Gratz’s GPA 2 score and ACT score placed her within a cell calling for a postponed decision on her application. An in-state or out-of-state minority applicant with Gratz’s scores would have fallen within a cell calling for admission.

That was Jennifer Gratz's and Barbara Grutter's plea as well.

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Drudge reports this morning that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has refused to endorse Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General.

There is, of course, nothing surprising about this. The Black Caucus did not support Clarence Thomas or, more recently, the nomination of California Supreme Court justice Janice Rogers Brown to a position on U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

This now commonplace refusal of Hispanic groups to support Hispanics, black groups to support blacks, and women's groups to support women is, I believe, a little noticed (or at least under-appreciated) GOOD THING. It shows that even they themselves don't believe what say about the controlling relevance of race, ethnicity, gender.

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This morning the Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a new study from the National Center for Education Statistics that contains, among other things, graduation rates of students who enrolled in four year colleges in 1996.

The Chronicle reports that "women were more likely than men to complete their degrees."

In terms of race or ethnicity, students who identified themselves as Asian or Pacific Islander had the highest rate of completion, with 62.6 percent finishing within six years. Non-Hispanic black students had the lowest completion rate, 32.3 percent.

The highest rate (66.2%) was achieved by Asian/Pacific Islander women, the lowest (32.3%) by non-Hispanic black males.

Some missing data that would have been useful in this report:

• A comparison of the graduation rates of black male athletes with non-athletes;
• A comparison of the graduation rates of minorities at colleges (such as the Univ. of California system) that eliminated racial preferences, both before and after the elimination;
• A comparison of the graduation rates of students who received legacy preferences with those who did not.

UPDATE [11:25AM]

DISCRIMINATIONS gets results! The Chronicle of Higher Education has corrected its article. The paragraph I quoted above now reads:

In terms of race or ethnicity, students who identified themselves as Asian or Pacific Islander had the highest rate of completion, with 62.6 percent finishing within six years. American Indian and Alaska Native students had the lowest completion rate, 36.7 percent.

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Julian Bond, speaking at Franklin & Marshall College:

The quest for political and economic equality is still unfulfilled, Bond said. Citing a recent movement to end affirmative action, Bond warned of the "right-wing conspiracy" that "controls the administration, both houses of Congress, a majority of the judiciary and much of the media."

Those trying to abolish affirmative action claim there's a stigma attached to all African-Americans because of the program, Bond said.

"Why don't they say that about white people who get into Harvard or Yale because Dad was an alumnus? Why don't they say that about people who got a job because Dad was president of the company? Or president of the United States?"

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Adding insult to injury to the nearly uniform addiction to racial preferences in higher education, Texas A&M is standing firm with its refusal to re-instate preferences and, unlike many preference-giving institutions (Michigan, Ohio State, among others) that have seen their minority enrollments decline, has substantially increased the number of minorities in its entering class.

[Texas A&M President Robert] Gates came under intense criticism for his decision, but by last fall his university had set itself apart in another respect: While many other colleges, including some staunch advocates of race-conscious admissions, were suffering declines in their minority enrollment, Texas A&M's numbers were way up. In one year, the number of black freshmen had jumped by 35 percent, from 158 to 213 in a class of 7,068, while the number of Hispanic freshmen had climbed by nearly 26 percent, from 692 to 865.

Not surprisingly, A&M's commitment to colorblind racial equality has infuriated those who no longer believe in that principle.

Several minority lawmakers expressed outrage. State Sen. Rodney Ellis and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, both black Democrats from Houston, threatened to call for a federal civil-rights investigation if the campus failed to become more racially diverse.

"students at Texas A&M should be admitted as individuals, on personal merit -- and not other basis."
....
One of his goals in retaining race-blind admissions was ensuring "that every student here knew that every other student was here on the same basis," Mr. Gates says.

I am no longer surprised but I remain saddened by the spectacle of liberal Democrats shouting "civil rights violation!" every time someone proposes treating -- or worse, actually does treat -- blacks and whites the same.

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Courtland Milloy, the Metro editor of the Washington Post, admits that he's racially biased.

So now it can be told:

"Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for Black relative to White," the summary of my test results said.

For some readers, no doubt, this is confirmation -- if any was needed -- that I am a "reverse racist." But the last thing I wanted was to end up in that group of African Americans who showed a pro-white, or anti-black, bias. I'm talking about 48 percent of black test takers who have internalized the same biases as a majority of white people: Black is bad; white is good.

By linking together words and images, the race bias test measures what associations come most easily to mind. People who take the Web version are asked to classify a series of faces into two categories, black American and white American. Then they are asked to mentally associate the white and black faces with words such as 'joy' and 'failure.' Under time pressure, many Americans find it easier to group words such as 'failure' with black faces, and words such as 'joy' with white faces.

Many Americans believe they are not prejudiced. Now a new test provides powerful evidence that a majority of us really are.

88 percent of white people had a pro-white or anti-black implicit bias; nearly 83 percent of heterosexuals showed implicit biases for straight people over gays and lesbians; and more than two-thirds of non-Arab, non-Muslim volunteers displayed implicit biases against Arab Muslims.

Her office decor attested to her passion for civil rights -- as a senior activist at a national gay rights organization, and as a lesbian herself, fighting bias and discrimination is what gets her out of bed every morning. A rainbow flag rested in a mug on her desk.

The woman brought up a test on her computer from a Harvard University Web site. It was really very simple: All it asked her to do was distinguish between a series of black and white faces. When she saw a black face she was to hit a key on the left, when she saw a white face she was to hit a key on the right. Next, she was asked to distinguish between a series of positive and negative words. Words such as "glorious" and "wonderful" required a left key, words such as "nasty" and "awful" required a right key. The test remained simple when two categories were combined: The activist hit the left key if she saw either a white face or a positive word, and hit the right key if she saw either a black face or a negative word.

Then the groupings were reversed. The woman's index fingers hovered over her keyboard. The test now required her to group black faces with positive words, and white faces with negative words. She leaned forward intently. She made no mistakes, but it took her longer to correctly sort the words and images.

Her result appeared on the screen, and the activist became very silent. The test found she had a bias for whites over blacks.

"It surprises me I have any preferences at all," she said. "By the work I do, by my education, my background. I'm progressive, and I think I have no bias. Being a minority myself, I don't feel I should or would have biases."

Although the activist had initially agreed to be identified, she and a male colleague who volunteered to take the tests requested anonymity after seeing their results. The man, who also is gay, did not show a race bias. But a second test found that both activists held biases against homosexuals -- they more quickly associated words such as "humiliate" and "painful" with gays and words such as "beautiful" and "glorious" with heterosexuals.

If anything, both activists reasoned, they ought to have shown a bias in favor of gay people. The man's social life, his professional circle and his work revolve around gay culture. His home, he said, is in Washington's "gayborhood."

"I'm surprised," the woman said. She bit her lip. "And disappointed."

[Her] test came up on the screen. Joni's fingers, trained for many years on the piano, flew as she classified a number of words such as "husband," "father," "mother" and "wife" between "male" and "female" groups. She then grouped words such as "chemistry," "history," "astronomy" and "music" under "science" or "liberal arts." The computer then asked her to group "male" with "science" and "female" with "liberal arts."

When the groupings were reversed, Joni had to group "male" words with "liberal arts," and "female" words with various disciplines in science. She made a mistake in classifying "uncle." She hesitated over "astronomy" and made a second mistake in classifying "physics."

The results popped up: "Your data show a strong association between science and Male relative to Female."

Joni's fingers tapped the table in frustration. "I fought for women to be scientists all my life," she said, incredulous

In his column in today's Washington Post (about the Summers affair, not this test), Robert Samuelson points out that

Women now constitute nearly half the labor force (46.8 percent in 2003), but they represent only 9 percent of civil engineers, 11 percent of aerospace engineers, 6 percent of mechanical engineers, and 8 percent of physicists and astronomers.

Even more far-fetched are the policy implications that are commonly drawn from this implausible notion of pervasive bias. Listen, for example, to Courtland Milloy today:

Last year, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor predicted that affirmative action for minorities would no longer be needed in 25 years. Judging from the MIT study [of alleged discrimination against job applicants with black-sounding names], the only affirmative action currently being practiced is for whites.

The Implicit Association Test exposes bias that is deep-seated.

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In 1998, by a substantial 58% majority, voters in Washington state passed Initiative I-200. It barred all governmental entities

from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to individuals or groups based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, or public contracting.

For the past four years, the Seattle Times reports,

the city of Seattle tried to counteract the anti-affirmative-action constraints of Initiative 200 through the Boost program, spending $1.7 million to get minority contractors just 1.4 percent of the work on seven large city construction projects.

The City Council quietly killed the program late last year as it drafted a 2005 city budget, deeming Boost a bust.

Now Seattle mayor Greg Nicklels is proposing another end-run around I-200. Among its provisions are those that:

• Try to make city departments and contractors more aggressively solicit bids from women- and minority-owned businesses.

• Allow city contracts to set numerical goals for the share of contracts that should go to women- and minority-owned business.

• Prohibit the city from contracting with companies that do not try to hire women- and minority-owned businesses.

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Stephen Thomas, who comments here frequently (as "Stephen," not surprisingly) has a new blog: Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars. Check it out.

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On Meet The Press yesterday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas suggested a "need to look at," to "discuss," the possibility of adjusting Social Security payments on the basis of race and gender.

RUSSERT: "A gender adjustment--what does that mean?"

REP. THOMAS:

We also need to examine, frankly, Tim, the question of race in terms of how many years of retirement do you get based upon your race?  And you ought not to just leave gender off the table because that would be a factor.

Do you think Congress, Mr. Chairman, would accept any formula that said that people would be treated differently because of their gender or their race?

Those who favor racial preferences almost always object to the term "racial preferences," preferring such euphemisms as "race sensitive admissions," etc. I suspect that the only question Rep. Thomas's suggestion will raise is whether or not it is discriminatory, a question that is increasingly hard to answer coherently once you've abandoned the principle of race and gender neutrality.

Thus one of Russert's questions to Thomas -- "So if someone is a woman and they live longer, they would get less per year?" -- suggests that women may regard the proposal as discrimination against them. But what, then, about race? When Thomas emphasizes the need to look at "the question of race in terms of how many years of retirement do you get based upon your race?" he implies, doesn't he, that since whites live longer their payments should be reduced?

It will be interesting to see how the "civil rights" community reacts to this proposal.

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See-it-all reader Fred Ray sends word of more comment on the Summers controversy (which I discussed here). The Boston Globe, for example, reports that President Summers, completing his cave in, has invited the Radcliffe Institute "to oversee a new initiative designed to quickly identify new ways to recruit and support women at Harvard." Far from burying the issue in yet another committee,

the new undertaking is being put on a fast track -- an unusual step in the often-ponderous Ivory Tower. Summers said that task forces would be appointed next week, and that the university would begin implementing their recommendations by the end of the semester.

I've certainly learned a great deal. I've certainly been reminded of what's most important, which is that we need more women in science and engineering in America and in the world.

Even the president of Harvard.

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I don't think so, but apparently Boalt Hall (University of California, Berkeley) law school dean Christopher Edley does.

A good while ago I described Edley, then a Harvard law professor, as follows:

... former White House aide, co-author of President Clinton's "mend it, don't end it" review of affirmative action policies, advisor to Clinton's race commission, fervent advocate of racial preferences (he described Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom's America in Black and White as "a crime against humanity"), and advisor to the Gore campaign....

Sander presented regents with a succession of graphs and charts to support his findings that blacks admitted by affirmative action struggle. He argued that if those students had gone to lower-tiered law schools without affirmative action they would have done better with the net result that more would have passed the bar.

Edley, the first black to serve as dean of a major U.S. law school, took issue with Sander's findings. He said the elimination of affirmative action would result in far fewer blacks going to law school and questioned the assumption that blacks not admitted to the school of their choice would be willing to go elsewhere.

Lower-tier law schools tend to be in places like Montana and Wyoming, Edley said, "places that are remarkably - What's the word I'm looking for? - white."

Edley also said that judicial openings and other important jobs tend to be filled by students from top colleges. "All of that would be in jeopardy and we would face a resegregation of those institutions at a time when the door is just beginning to open," he said.

Edley's comment does, however, have the virtue of revealing how little the demand for preferences has to do with "diversity" and how much it resembles the discarded policy of busing to promote integration. "Diversity" admissions are nothing more than busing graduated and gone to college.

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The New York Times reports this morning that the American Civil Liberties Union will debate whether to sanction two of its board members for criticizing some of the ACLU's recent actions in conversations with reporters. (Hat Tip to Orin Kerr)

Although the NYT article doesn't mention it, this is not the first time the ACLU has been accused of attempting to muzzle the speech of its officers. In 1976 Charles Morgan Jr., director of the ACLU's Washington office, resigned in a huff after the ACLU executive director complained about his public support (but in his personal capacity) for Jimmy Carter, an old friend. (Link is to a summary of an April 12, 1976, Washington Post article.)

Morgan said that he did not surrender his First Amendment rights when he joined the ACLU. Aryeh Neier, then the executive director of the ACLU (and now head of George Soros's foundation), has a different take in his memoir, Taking Liberties.

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One could almost be forgiven for thinking that, at least at the Washington Post, the notion is gaining ground that elections don't settle anything and in fact are merely diversions from the polls. Such is the implication, at any rate, of the page A1 story two days ago whose head announced breathlessly that "Political Divisions Persist After Election." Who'd a thunk?

The now to-be-expected announcement that "President Bush will begin his second term in office without a clear mandate to lead the nation" is no longer surprising. Did the Post and its pollsters make similar announcements after Clinton's and Carter's elections? I don't recall, and am too lazy to search. What struck me as exceptionally odd, however, and an indication that presidential elections really amount to no more than unreliable polls was the following question

Do you think the country should go in the direction George W. Bush wants to lead it, go in the direction the Democrats in Congress want to lead it, or what?

Similarly, responding to the Democrats' increasingly frustrated demands for some apologies from the administration, Pres. Bush told the Post last week that "Well, we had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election."

"Democrats," the Post reported -- reported? No, make that editorialized in its news story -- "naturally are fuming." Naturally! As in, well, of course any reasonable person would be fuming at such an answer.

In the same vein, in the second paragraph of his story today on Rice's nomination hearing, Glenn Kessler reports that despite acknowledging some bad decisions Rice "still hewed closely to the administration's policies...." Excuse me, but when did it become news that the National Security Advisor, now nominated to be Secretary of State, "hewed closely" to the policies of the administration she has served for the past four years?

But if there were a contest for the most ridiculous comment about election results, the cake taker would be newly minted Senator and media favorite Barack Obama.

Obama urged Rice to demonstrate independence from the White House line, much as Powell had during his troubled tenure, when he was often at odds with Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "I think that people felt that he was speaking on behalf of the American people and not simply being a mouthpiece for the administration," Obama said.

It would be delightful to hear Obama's theory of personal, party, and cabinet responsibility in a democratic republic.

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Looking to Apply Lessons Learned, p. A1

President Bush is a politician with large ambitions and few doubts, someone not easily given to mea culpas. But in the run-up to today's inauguration, he has at least hinted at some of the lessons learned in office. From his relations with Democrats in Congress to his approach to the rest of the world, Bush has suggested he will try to strike a different tone -- without abandoning principles or policies.

President Bush and his Cabinet nominees have been sending a firm message as they kick off a second term: no mistakes, no regret, no comment

Perhaps if the Washington Post did a little more reporting and a little less interpreting and analyzing, its news stories might contain more, well, news and less interpretation.

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President Lawrence Summers of Harvard has stirred up another hornet's nest of criticism on the discrimination front. (An earlier example is discussed here) This time, his transgression was to discuss some explanations of why there are fewer women in science and math than ... well, than there should be.

About 50 people attended the conference, sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research and titled "Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce: Women, Underrepresented Minorities, and Their S&E Careers," at which Mr. Summers gave a luncheon talk. While no transcript of his remarks exists, conference attendees say he discussed several possible hypotheses for why fewer women than men are in the top ranks in science and math at elite universities.

He discussed the theory that women with children are reluctant to work the 80-hour weeks that are required to succeed in those fields. Conference attendees said Mr. Summers then discussed the possibility that men and women may have different innate abilities that were previously attributed to socialization.

When Ms. Hopkins heard that, she said, "I was profoundly upset."

"That kind of discrimination holds people back," she said.

Not hiring or admitting a particular woman because women in general are thought to be less interested in or talented at math and science would be discriminatory. Discussing studies of the possibility that women are less interested in or talented at math or science, though quite possibly (in my opinion, quite probably) false, is not.

To the degree that professors respond to evidence or discussion they don't like in the manner of Prof. Hopkins, i.e., walking away in disgust, higher education would begin to resemble the picture of it drawn by those who see political correctness everywhere.

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In his column today William Raspberry argues, persuasively, that Bill Cosby's crusade for more responsibility in the black community is carrying on the tradition of Martin Luther King.

Adjusting for the fact that one is a comic and the other was an unusually eloquent preacher, Cosby was saying what King said a generation ago when he demanded that we be judged not by what we are but by how we behave -- "by the content of our character."

King, obviously hoping white people were listening, was saying: If we do what we have to do to limit our behavior-spawned problems, then you must learn to look beyond our skin and see our behavior. Cosby, whose target is low-income black America, is saying: White people can't save you if you won't try to save yourselves.

King wouldn't have argued that black people had overcome the problems associated with what we used to call the "culture of poverty," only that white people must learn to see us as individuals. Cosby wouldn't argue that white America has laid its racism to rest, only that today what we do is a more powerful determinant of our success than what is done to us.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Say What? (17) | TrackBacks (2)

In past posts I have complained that the Washington Post's point man on civil rights issues, Darryl Fears, equates civil rights with affirmative action (so that no one who opposes the latter can really support the former) and asserts that what minorities in the U.S. have in common is their victimization.

Now he -- and by reasonable extension, the WaPo itself -- is at it again. In a profile this morning of Gerald Reynolds, the new chairman of the Civil Rights Commission, Fears writes that Reynolds

is an outspoken opponent of race-based college admission policies for minorities, even though before the civil rights movement, colleges commonly discriminated against African Americans and other minorities by not allowing them in. [Emphasis added]

Since I'm writing this on Martin Luther King Day, allow me an additional comment about journalism and civil rights. I grew up in Alabama during the days of the most virulent, often violent opposition to the Brown decision and civil rights. Most newspapers reflected, when they did not actually incite, this overheated insistence on holding on to a system based on racial preferences -- for whites. Fortunately, those editors and reporters are for the most part long gone and largely forgotten.

But not forgotten -- indeed, now widely regarded as heroes -- is that small band of intrepid Southern editors who wrote against the prejudices of most of their readers, who supported racial equality when doing so was dangerous, not just unpopular: Ralph McGill in Atlanta; Harry Ashmore in Little Rock; Hodding Carter in Greenville, Miss.; P.D. East in Petal, Miss. (Many of you may not have heard of P.D. East and his Petal Paper, but he is definitely worth remembering.)

To put it mildly, the Washington Post is definitely not challenging the prejudices of its readers, who voted about 10 to 1 for Kerry and who presumably share, to about that degree, the support of racial preferences that appear undisguised in the WaPo's news columns as well as editorials.

I'm not accusing the WaPo of unprincipled pandering (though no one could reasonably describe its coverage of civil rights as courageous). Its editors presumably believe what they and their reporters write. But I don't think it's too much to suggest that their editorializing be recognized for what it is and, further, to suggest (even though this would require a radical change) that it be limited to the editorial and opinion pages.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Say What? (32) | TrackBacks (1)

The Sunday Outlook section of today's Washington Post has an article on Martin Luther King's "Letter From A Birmingham Jail" by W. Ralph Eubanks, author of Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi's Dark Past.

It's a good article, and I agree with the author's insistence that King's Birmingham letter should be remembered along with his more famous "I Have A Dream" speech. I do, however, have a problem with the following paragraph, whose sentiment may at first seem so commonplace as to be unexceptionable:

Times have changed, but many of the issues King tackled still play a role in our daily lives. Racism has not been eradicated from American culture today. It lingers in the shadows rather than showing its face in the light of day as it did on the streets of Birmingham in 1963. It has also morphed into issues of class and ethnicity as well as race. These are all issues young people need to discuss openly today, because they will be facing them throughout adulthood.

First, where does racism still reside in "American culture"? No doubt some individual racists remain, but does "American culture" still harbor racism? Where are those "shadows" in the culture where it still lives? Those who believe so ought to point it out.

But if racism has "morphed into issues of class and ethnicity," doesn't that imply that it's not racism any more but something else? Morph, after all, means something like transform. Can something remain the same and "also morph"?

Morphed or not, are the issues of "class and ethnicity" really so similar to the racial discrimination that Dr.King fought? To argue, as I would, that they are not is not to say they are not important, or even that Dr. King was not concerned about them, or that we shouldn't discuss them with young people. What I would suggest, however, is a bit of caution before attempting to surround all of today's liberal causes with the moral authority of Martin Luther King.

Segregation was evil -- in large part because it was an excrescence from racial discrimination -- but it does not necessarily follow that tax policy should be more redistributionist, that bilingual education programs should be expanded, or that racial preferences should be continued (even if MLK would have supported them).

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Really. Well, not intentionally. More like a Freudian slip on the keyboard. But still, it just goes to show how tricky it can be to show that you oppose racial discrimination without implying that you, well, oppose racial discrimination.

In an article about South Africa ten years after the demise of what it calls "the system of legal racism known as apartheid," Newsweek says the following:

Rolling back the legacy of apartheid—essentially an affirmative-action program for the white minority—was the African National Congress's top priority when it took power in 1994. But now the ANC's own affirmative-action campaign is under siege.

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The Los Angeles Times has a long article today on Condoleeza Rice's tenure as provost at Stanford.

I'm not sure whether it's a failed hatchet job (Note the head and subhead: Not Always Diplomatic in Her First Major Post: Condoleeza Rice, about to become secretary of State, was a divisive figure while at Stanford) or a rare LAT attempt to be fair and balanced that succeeds. Whatever the intent, I believe she comes off looking better than her many quoted Stanford critics.

That is not to say that all her positions at Stanford were appealing. In Stanford's politically correct, left-leaning culture she was regarded as practically a racial reactionary when in fact her position, according to the LAT, was "nuanced." (But then, didn't the LAT think Kerry was nuanced?)

As provost, Rice took a nuanced position on affirmative action, saying she supported special treatment at the time of hiring but not when it came to granting tenure, with its promise of prestige, higher pay and guaranteed job security. Race was a factor to weigh in creating campus diversity, she suggested, but not evaluating job performance.

"I am myself a beneficiary of a Stanford strategy that took affirmative action seriously, that took a risk in taking a young PhD from the University of Denver," Rice said during a contentious May 1998 meeting of the Faculty Senate, referring to her initial hiring.

Asked at that time why she was departing from the practice of applying affirmative action to tenure decisions, Rice responded, "I'm the chief academic officer now" and firmly restated her position.

You can imagine her confronting a State Department culture that will have some similarities to what she presided over here at Stanford. A culture very traditional, very set in its ways, very consensual and consultative in manner,'' said David Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian.

"She's tremendously smart and quick on the uptake, analytically very gifted," said Kennedy, who served as Rice's first boss when she came to Stanford in 1981 to teach political science. "But I wouldn't be surprised if, despite that veneer of utter graciousness, in practice she doesn't cut against the grain of the State Department culture to some degree."

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Marvin Krislov, vice president and general counsel of the University of Michigan and one of the leaders of its defense of racial preferences, recently spoke to the Muskegon County Unity Breakfast.

He quoted Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's expressed hope that in 25 years there would be no need for what she called "racial preference" to remedy past and present racial discrimination. [Emphasis added. Should she have called racial preferences something else?]

"Those of you who look at the numbers might say she's an optimist," Krislov said. "But if nothing else, her statement should be taken as a call to action to narrow the gap so we do not have to continue to rely on affirmative action indefinitely in the future."

Indeed, instead of ending the racial regulation of college admissions, shouldn't that regulation be extended into realms where it has not yet reached? Why, for example, should not lending institutions and realtors be required to promote residential "diversity" by rewarding minorities with favorable rates etc. until all neighborhoods are properly "diverse"?

Posted by John Rosenberg at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Say What? (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Reader Dave Mckissak brings to my attention this post on Protein Wisdom about an article by Terry Eastland in The Weekly Standard on the Richard Sander Stanford Law Review article (discussed here, here, here, and here) arguing that affirmative action, among other maladies, reduces the number of black lawyers. Both the post and the article are worth reading.

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I don't think so, unless the woman in question is Judy McGovern, managing editor of the Ann Arbor News. Ms. McGovern published a signed editorial several days ago criticizing the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which as most of you know is leading an effort to amend the Michigan constitution to prohibit all state entities from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to any individual "based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin."

Ms. McGovern fears this would be bad for the ladies. MCRI, she writes, is not

speaking out about the sorry condition of health care in Michigan, where women are more apt to die from breast and lung cancer than women in most other states; or about the similarly dismal state of mental health, where - according to a census-based report "The Status of Women in Michigan" issued late last year - only one other state performs as poorly.

“This proposal deals with three areas: contracts, education and employment,” Gratz said. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with those other issues. But this is what we expect them (MCRI opponents) to do. They'll try to confuse the issue. That's been the standard rhetoric in the other states where this was done - it didn't work in those states and it won't work here.”

If there were a prize for attempting to change the subject, Ms. McGovern would probably win, but she would have some stiff competition from David Waymire of Waymire Advocacy, a PR firm that has been hired by the opponents of MCRI. In the Jan. 12 MIRS newsletter Waymire is quoted as saying that "this [MCRI] is not about a policy that would help poor people. This is about making $1 million for Ward Connerly."

The Jan. 13 issue carried this response from Connerly:

Mr. David Waymire ... has repeatedly questioned my commitment to the cause of ending preferences based on race, skin color, ethnicity, gender and national origin. He portrays himself as a defender of women's rights and preferences for "minorities."

Moreover, he has stated publicly that I am only involved in this battle to achieve personal gain for myself. The soon-to-be-released campaign reports of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative will reveal that I have contributed $465,000 to MCRI, as evidence of my personal commitment to eliminate preferences and to support the principle of equality for all.

I wonder how much of the millions in fees and commissions that Mr. Waymire has received from Indian Tribes and from big corporations to preserve race preferences has he contributed back to the causes for which he has been retained. I challenge him to match my contributions, past and prospectively, to the MCRI campaign. For every dollar that he personally contributes to defeat MCRI, I will contribute a matching dollar to promote it. Put up or shut up, Mr. Waymire! I am even willing to relieve you of responsibility of half of what I have already proudly contributed. Thus, you only need to come up with $232,500.

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Clayton Cramer blogs a particularly virulent form of multicuralism that, according to this article, has infected the math curriculum of Newton, Mass. (Hat Tip to reader Nels Nelson)

Between 1999 and 2001, the article reports, Superintendent Young and Assistant Superintendent Wyatt, "and an assortment of other well-paid school administrators,"

defined the new number-one priority for teaching mathematics, as documented in the curriculum benchmarks, "Respect for Human Differences - students will live out the system wide core of 'Respect for Human Differences' by demonstrating anti-racist/anti-bias behaviors." It continues, "Students will: Consistently analyze their experiences and the curriculum for bias and discrimination; Take effective anti-bias action when bias or discrimination is identified; Work with people of different backgrounds and tell how the experience affected them; Demonstrate how their membership in different groups has advantages and disadvantages that affect how they see the world and the way they are perceived by others..." [Emphasis added]

Perhaps this decline could be reversed if Newton re-introduced math into the math curriculum.

UPDATE

Re Massachusetts Math (my term), eminent edu-blogger Joanne Jacobs writes:

If I wanted to keep poor, minority kids at the bottom of the social and educational ladder, I could find no better way than to devote class time to teaching them to see prejudice everywhere, rather than teaching them to add, multiply and find the common denominator.

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Demonstrating once again that no topic is off limits to humor, The Onion has some fun with Martin Luther King Day. (Thanks to reader Mike McKeown for bringing to my attention.)

Where else could one learn that in a Louisville McDonald's "Blacks, Whites Put Differences Aside, Work Together To Make Better Burger,," or that in Burbank "Racial Harmony Achieved By Casting Of Black Actor As Teen Computer Whiz.," or that "In a historic triumph for Zambia's African-African community, Bilikisu Adewale, a 49-year-old black man, was elected president Monday."

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A year or so ago I found myself attempting to swat down so many attempts to argue that discrimination on the basis of race or religions was no different from discrimination on any other basis -- residency, musical talent, athletic ability, legacy status -- that I gave this argument a name, IUNS (for Invidious Ubiquitous Non-Sequitur). You can actually search on that term here.

Really, the idea that all discrimination is fungible -- equally good or equally bad -- is ridiculous, or worse, as is accompanying argument that anyone who opposes racial discrimination who does not also oppose, say, preferences to athletes or musicians is a hypocrite. That might be true for someone who argues that academic merit should be the only criterion used for college admissions, but most thoughtful anti-preferentialists do not make that argument. All they, we, say is that colleges should be free to use whatever admissions criterial they want -- except race, religion, ethnicity.

Now the Chronicle of Higher Education is trying to stir up this debate again. First in an article, and next in a "Colloquy" that begins Thursday, which looks at the practice (oh horrors) that many colleges give preferences to the children of professors.

In the description of the upcoming Colloquy, it asks:

Should critics of race-based affirmative action and "legacy" preferences be just as outraged by employee-based affirmative action? If not, why not?

Now as a matter of policy one can quite reasonably oppose legacy/offspring preferences, but to speak of them in the same breath as racial discrimination trivializes the latter.

If racial discrimination really should not be distinguished from any other imaginable form of discrimination, then lets move quickly to abolish all our civil rights laws. For if it is really so trivial, who needs them?

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Opponents of the Michigan Civil Rights Inititative are in the unenviable position of having to convince voters that the proposed ban on racial preferences would violate civil rights. It is a task made no easier by rhetoric such as the following:

“Any time in American history when you’ve given the American electorate the chance to vote for black equality or, conversely, to vote for white privilege, and you have a majority white state, white privilege usually wins out,” BAMN national spokeswoman Shanta Driver said.

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There he goes again. William Stuntz, the Harvard law professor who has recently published a couple of unusually provocative essays (discussed here) has just published another one, this one taking conservative judges to task for adhering to mistaken theories of originalism, federalism, and formalism that render their opinions, in Stuntz's view, unconservative. [Hat Tip to InstaPundit]

Read, as they say, the whole thing -- first, because it's worth it; and second, because my responses here will be narrow and limited. Briefly, I respectfully disagree.

Take originalism (O.K., I'll take it, or at least a version of it.)

Dangerous as constitutional federalism is, originalism -- the idea that constitutional language should be read the way James Madison and his friends would have read it -- is worse. Begin with a proposition that originalists usually ignore: No one really knows what Madison would think about, say, the constitutionality of federal environmental laws. Madison had a vision of what "commerce among the several states" might mean, but his vision did not extend centuries into the future. (Those among us who believe in divinely inspired texts should not confuse Madison with Moses.) Racial profiling, Roe v. Wade, and gay rights were, to put it mildly, not part of his legal imagination. Figuring out how he would apply eighteenth-century texts to those questions is not just hard. It's impossible.

In a recent post discussing some of the fallout from Martin Luther King’s birthday, I asked “What Do We Honor When We Honor Doctor King? (And Who Are “We”?) There had been many protests of President Bush laying a wreath on King’s grave, nearly all of them criticizing him for betraying King by his opposition to racial preferences. Indeed, nothing seems to send preferentialists around the bend and over the top faster than critics of preferences quoting King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, as we always do.

And they always respond with one version or another of “if King were alive today” he would be a strong advocate of racial preferences. I have some reservations about this assertion, but on balance I suspect it’s true. After all, all King’s followers, the NAACP (which had advocated a strong version of colorblindness in court for decade after decade), and virtually the entire Democratic party did an about face on colorblindness starting in the late 1960s, and there is no compelling reason to suppose that King himself would have stood against this trend.

Taking a page from the original meaning book, however, we can see that the proper response to the posthumous King’s probable position is, “So what?” King’s specific intent does not determine the meaning of the principle he evoked, either for his contemporaries or for subsequent generations. [P.S. It is also worth noting, however, as Randy [Barnett] did in his talk [to which I referred in my post], that when we play the “if X were alive today ...” game, we are not talking about actual intent but predicted intent, which is far different.] Of course in this case the text in question is not so dense and opaque, like “due process” or even “equal protection.” What part of wanting people to be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin is so difficult to understand? [Have the meaning of those words changed since King gave his famous speech? I don't thinks so.]

Now King’s speech is not a part of the Constitution (at least not of its text), but it has achieved a well-deserved iconic stature. It gave voice to an understanding of equality that traces it roots back at least to some of the abolitionists, that achieved partial but limited success in the Reconstruction Amendments, and that, finally, was embedded in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the year following King’s delivery on the Mall.

Thus I beg to differ with a commenter on my King’s birthday post linked above. Begrudgingly, “[f]or argument’s sake,” she was willing to “admit the possibility that one can disagree with another's ideals while still honoring the person.” I believe those of us who continue to resent benefits or burdens being based on skin color are honoring the meaning of Martin Luther King’s ideals much more fully than preferentialists who argue that if he were alive today he would agree with them.

Originalist lawyers and judges might respond as follows: We may not know what Madison thought about any particular issue, but we do know what abstract principles he held dear, and we can apply those principles to the issue at hand. This is a verbal trick. One can believe in freedom and limited government and come out either way on the questions raised in the preceding paragraph. So, in practice, originalism ends up resting on the following logical progression: Madison never told us what he thought of gay marriage. But we know that Madison was a smart and decent guy. I'm a smart and decent guy. So Madison would think about gay marriage pretty much the way I do. That is originalist judging in a nutshell: judges writing their own views into the Constitution, all the while pretending that Madison's hand holds the pen. That process has all the vices of the old Warren and Brennan style of judicial decisionmaking, with a dose of hypocrisy added to the stew. If judges are going to exercise judgment, better that they should admit whose judgment they're exercising.

These propositions, of course, are debatable, which means among other things that evidence can be adduced to support or oppose them, but they -- and others like them -- are considerably more substantial than the "Madison would agree with me" fluff to which Stuntz reduces originalism.

If judicial activism can result in judicial tyranny, as indeed it can, it is no less true that critiques of judicial activism (whether from the left or right) can imply, as I believe Stuntz does here, that the best Constitution is the one that constrains least. A parliamentary system, i.e., legislative supremacy, has much to commend it, but it may be useful to recall a comment Calvin Trillin once made about any barbecue not from Kansas City: it may be good ... but it's not barbecue.

A parliamentary system may be good, but it's not American.

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In the current issue of his newsletter political guru and newsletter editor Charlie Cook, after summarizing everything that has gone right for the Democrats in the past several elections (fund raising, organization, etc.), observes that "No doubt a big part of the Democrats' problem has been in candidate selection."

Isn't this rather like saying that a big part of the Democrats' problem is ... Democrats? But wait, there's more:

Given the narrowness of the Democrats' two losses in 2000 and 2004, one wonders how the party might have fared had they not nominated stiff, aloof candidates who would be uncomfortable at backyard barbecues in all but the very finest of homes....

John Kerry's inadequacies as a candidate were hardly a shock to his Democratic Senate colleagues, many of who have always seen Kerry as a distant figure and questioned his ability to relate well to rank-and-file voters. One would imagine that in the days of the smoke-filled room, the judgment of peers would have carried more weight in this particular case.

While many speak of the importance of a party picking a nominee quickly to allow time for nomination battle wounds to heal and to prepare for the general election, the pendulum has swung way too far in that direction. In 2004, the nominating process seemed to end almost as soon as it started. It is extremely important for two inexpensive, touch-the-flesh, retail campaign states like Iowa and New Hampshire to begin the process, but they should not also be the end of that process.

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In the old days -- that is, before the 2004 election -- polls were used to predict how elections would turn out. Now, at least for the Democrats, it appears that elections are to be judged by their effect on the polls.

A front page article in this morning's Washington Post about the Democrats intention to block and obstruct President Bush's initiatives points out that one of the main things that "has emboldened Democrats to resist" are

polls showing that Bush gained little ground in public opinion with his victory. "What's been clear and somewhat surprising in the weeks after the election is that Bush got virtually no bounce and no honeymoon from his victory," said Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin. "What seems pretty clear is that there was nothing particularly healing about Bush's victory."

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No, I'm not referring to the late unpleasantness otherwise known as the 2004 election. I'm referring to the June 2003 Supreme Court decisions rejecting racial bonus points in undergraduate admissions (Gratz) but allowing race preferences in a "holistic" individualized review for law school admissions (Grutter).

This is also the question asked by this article from today's online Chronicle of Higher Education: Who Won Michigan? Colleges' cautious reaction to the Supreme Court's affirmative-action decisions may have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Chronicle article chronicles (no surprise there) the frustration many felt by many preference proponents that after Grutter preference opponents didn't simply fold up their tents and slink away in the night. Not only did they not slink, but as Roger Clegg of one of the primary non-slinking organizations, the Center for Equal Opportunity, explains here, they remained on the offensive, with quite a bit of success.

As Clegg cogently explains, the popular impression that the Supremes handed the pro-preference forces an unambiguous victory in the Michigan cases is far from accurate. In fact, he writes, the pro-preference position came out of those cases worse than it went in:

Except in the three states making up the federal Fifth Circuit -- Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas -- where the court of appeals ha[d] banned preferences outright, the law is actually now a little tougher on preferences than it was when colleges and universities could claim Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr.'s 1978 opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke as their guide. Not only have preferences been struck down in Gratz, but in Grutter the court established new rules for determining when the use of preferences is "narrowly tailored."

The continuing decline of preferences and their lack of political support demonstrate that treating students differently on the basis of their race or ethnicity is unpopular among the vast majority of Americans -- and for good reason. The use of preferences has undeniable costs: It is personally unfair, passes over better qualified students, and sets a disturbing legal, political, and moral precedent in allowing racial discrimination. It involves states and colleges in unsavory activities like deciding which racial and ethnic minority groups will be favored and which ones not, and how much blood is needed to establish group membership. It stigmatizes the so-called beneficiaries, reinforcing old stereotypes of black intellectual inferiority. It fosters a victim mind-set, removes the incentive for academic excellence, and encourages separatism. It compromises the academic mission of the university, creates pressure to discriminate in grading and graduation, and lowers the overall academic quality of the student body. It mismatches students and institutions, guaranteeing failure for many of the former. And it sweeps under the rug the real social problems of the poor academic performance of so many African-American and Latino students.

As discussed in yet another article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, the Sander study was a hot topic at the recent annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. At least as presented in this article, the quality of the criticism seems extraordinarily strained. For example:

Marta Tienda, a professor of demographic studies at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, vigorously disputed Mr. Sander's methodology, and argued that he had not proved a causal link between black students' lower grades on enrollment and their subsequent difficulties graduating and passing the bar.

"Is this the kind of science upon which we want to predicate public policy?" she challenged.

But at least Prof. Tienda believes in the relevance of data, which it would appear some Sander critics do not.

Vernellia R. Randall, a professor of law at the University of Dayton, said she found [Sander's] conclusions patronizing.

"It's all about statistics -- it's not about people," said Ms. Randall, who is black. "How does he know what's bad for me if he's never even talked to me?"

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Graying men in handcuffs and prison jumpsuits, unrepentant of their pasts even as their limbs stiffen with age, have become a kind of modern archetype of the southern fringe. A bleak procession of them, a few only months away from death, trickled through courthouses across the region over the past decade, sometimes fingered as killers by aging prosecution witnesses dragging oxygen tanks.

The whole article is worth reading, but I confess that I was most struck by an unintentional revelation it contained of how much things have changed since the heady civil rights summer of 1964. Edgar Ray Killen, now 79, is on trial, the article says, for "the 1964 murder of three young men who had come to his home town to tell black people that they should have the same rights as whites."

Now, of course, anyone who claims that that rights and privileges should not be distributed on the basis of race is regarded as a reactionary racist.

I had the same reaction in reading the following sentence in this article from the Chronicle of Education today about the surprising (to some) success anti-preference organizations have continued to have even after their apparent defeat in Grutter (discussed in more detail above, here):

The groups have found a sympathetic ear at the Office for Civil Rights, which has been more forceful in looking into racial-discrimination complaints than during the Clinton administration.

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As Jennifer Gratz, director of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative effort, commented below in this post, MCRI has just submitted 508,000 signatures to the Michigan secretary of state, 200,000 more than necessary to place the proposal to end racial preferences in Michigan on the ballot.

Supporters of racial preferences continue to attempt to obfuscate what this measure is designed to do. For example:

U-M President Mary Sue Coleman said in a statement Thursday that the constitutional amendment would be detrimental.

"I believe that this proposal, despite its name, does not further the cause of civil rights in Michigan. It is about closing the door to higher education for many of our citizens," she said.

Coleman said it would prohibit such programs as those that encourage girls to study science.

Nor is Coleman's "closing the door" metaphor apt. There is no question that the door to the University of Michigan is closed to many deserving students, but there is a serious question as to whether the door should be wider for students of some races and ethnicities than others.

And then there's this canard: According to the Ann Arbor News article linked above:

Opponents of the initiative - including universities, civil rights groups, labor and business groups - said it will end affirmative action programs that promote diversity and help stop discrimination against minorities and women.

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Paul Gilroy, who is professor of sociology and chairman of African American Studies at Yale, has an article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, compares the racial disorders and neuroses of Britain and the United States and, as I read it, somehow manages to find each one worse than the other, except that Gilroy finds some hope in Britain's de facto multiculturalism.

In Britain, writes Gilroy, loss of empire and global status has produced "fears," "anxieties," "melancholia," "noxious, violent racism," and "xenophobia," among other problems of just getting along.

[The] continuing antipathy [of white workers] toward immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees cannot be concealed, but the idea that it has anything to do with noxious, violent racism or neo-fascist ultranationalism still seems like a shocking revelation that induces discomfort and guilt. In the grip of melancholia and xenophobia, Britain can quietly concede that it doesn't much like aliens, blacks, foreigners, Muslims, and other interlopers, but then become uncomfortable because it doesn't like the things it learns about itself when it gives vent to long-submerged feelings of hostility and hatred.

contemporary melancholia is a neurotic development that blocks the vitality of culture, diverting it instead into the morbid pleasures of military fantasy and other dead ends for which culture and identity supply the watchwords. It becomes impossible to get away from the painful and exhilarating romance of empire and to move beyond the disabling sense that the nation can only restore solidarity and promote healing when at war. Winston Churchill's godlike presence has presided over these strange festivities, which have supplied the backdrop to the Blair government's adventures in Iraq and help explain why the prime minister's personal attachment to the policies of George W. Bush has been so pronounced.

Civic life has been endowed with a vibrant multiculture. We Britons do not always value it, use it wisely, or celebrate it as we should. But it represents an alternative to Britain's postcolonial melancholy and to American recipes for racial identity circulating through McWorld on the backs of hip-hop, basketball, and MTV.

Conviviality seems a better name for this alternative than multiculturalism because, in Britain, there has been no ideology of multiculturalism for at least two decades.

In the United States, despite the prominence of individuals from visible and underrepresented minority groups in the Bush administration, it would be hard to argue that the goals of the civil-rights movement have been attained or that the founding African-American experience of "double consciousness," as outlined by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1903, has been overcome or reconciled in the hawkish achievements of Condoleezza Rice and her ilk. Statistics outlining the disproportionate presence of African-Americans in prisons, racial differences in literacy rates, and significant disparities in health along racial lines need not be rehearsed here. The segregation of dwelling space and increasing inequality make the picture of failure clear and urgent.

ADDENDUM: Whites Need Not Walk

An attentive reader just sent a link to this article. I wonder if it describes what Gilroy means by the new "conviviality"?

The Lake District, England's largest national park,

is facing mass resignations by its volunteer rangers over a decision to scrap free guided walks in the national park because they do not attract enough people from ethnic minority communities.

Ranger-led walks are among 900 Lake District events planned for 2005-06 that are to be dropped because they appeal mostly to “white, middle-class, middle-aged people”.

The cost-cutting move is part of a strategy that hopes to win extra government and European Union funding for the park by meeting targets to attract more young, urban, black, Asian and disabled people. Some people have accused the authority, which is due to ratify the decision today, of saying that white people are no longer welcome in the Lake District....

Mick Casey, a media officer for the authority, said that the events programme was used by only 35,000 of the 14 million people who visit the Lake District annually. “The majority who do the walks are white, middle-class, middle-aged people,” he said. “The Government is encouraging national parks to appeal to young people, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.”

Posted by John Rosenberg at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Say What? (4) | TrackBacks (1)

For an extraordinarily high level and civil debate over equal protection and
original intent, take a look at this series of exchanges between Prof. Stephen Presser of the Northwestern law school and Prof. Samuel Marcosson of the University of Louisville.

My sympathies are with Prof. Presser, but as I've stated here many times (such as here, here, and here), one cannot be a pure originalist, at least not of the "original intent" variety (original meaning is a different matter, as discussed here) and at the same time believe that the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause embodies a requirement of neutral colorblindness. In the fight over the form the 14th Amendment would take, the Radical Republicans such as Wendell Philips who wanted a clear requirement of colorblindness were defeated by the "moderates' who wanted to protect the ability to engage in discrimination, such as segregating schools, that they thought reasonable. How ironic that the heirs of those dead moderates are today's preferentialists, who must defend Plessy in order to justify preferences. Nevertheless, I think Prof. Marcosson succeeds in scoring some points in this regard against Justice Thomas as a sometime originalist.

It is clear that Marcosson thinks Brown was correctly decided, but, since he denies that the Equal Protection Clause requires colorbind treatment, it's not clear why. Moreover, since he is at great pains to argue that the Supreme Court can amend the Constitution as and when it sees fit, he would seem to be at a loss to offer a principled objection if the Warren court had, instead, reaffirmed Plessy.

Over the past generation liberals -- like their forebears, the Reconstruction "moderates" -- abandoned the principle of colorblindness in order to justify discrimination that they deem reasonable. When, predictably, a future Court has different ideas about reasonableness, they can hardly be heard to complain.

UPDATE [8 January 1:30PM]

The final exchanges between Professors Presser and Marcosson, which appeared after my post, reinforce my suggestion that you go read the whole thing. You would be hard put to find a more eloquent, incisive, civil debate between advocates for a "living" and a dead Constitution (though I hasten to add that I don't presume to claim that Prof. Presser himself would say that the Constitution he defends is dead. His essential point is that it cannot, or should not, be amended by the living (which includes most current Supreme Court justices) except as provided for in Article V.)

As I mentioned originally, Prof. Marcosson scores some points early on against Justice Thomas, and at least indirectly against Prof. Presser insofar as the defends Thomas. The most recent exchanges, however, reveal quite clearly (at least to me) the deeply troubling aspects of Prof. Marcosson's approach.

It may be overreaching a bit to say that Prof. Marcosson approves of the Supreme Court "transforming" the Constitution, i.e., amending it, when he approves of the outcome, but not when he doesn't. But I don't think it is. You decide. The following is from his Jan. 7 8:23AM comment:

... to clarify what I like the Court to be doing, the "transformation" Justice Thomas sought to work in Hamdi did two very dangerous things: it usurped a clear, textual power of Congress (to suspend, or not, habeas corpus — Scalia's point); and it abdicated the Judiciary's own responsibility to determine whether the Executive branch has overstepped constitutional limits in executing the laws. If I've given indication that I approve of that, let me be clear: I don't.

That sort of fundamental shifting of powers between the branches, which is both directly contrary to the existing text and allows government abuse of individual freedoms to go unchecked, requires Article V-style amendment if it's going to happen at all. It bears no resemblance to the Court expanding the scope of the Constitution's protections in cases like Brown or Lawrence or VMI.

Prof. Presser skewers Marcosson's point very effectively in his Jan. 7 2:49PM reply:

You propose a standard, suggesting that the Court's equal protection decisions (especially Brown, Loving, VMI, Lawrence) instead of rewriting the constitution, "made equal protection more real for more Americans through plausible transformative interpretation of the existing text." You propose a "plausible transformative interpretation" standard for when constitutional amendment is OK, and a "fundamental alteration" standard for when it is not. Alas, one persons "plausible transformative interpretation" is another's "fundamental alteration."

Prof. Marcosson's version of Constitutional interpretation is a nice variation on the venerable "civil liberties for our side only" approach to the First Amendment. It generously grants the Supreme Court the authority to amend the Constitution ... so long as the amending is an expansion of rights. But if the Court has the power to expand rights, on the basis of what principle does it not also have the authority to constrict rights? And who's to say what's an expansion and what's a constriction?

If the answer to that is "the people," acting through the political process, then why not just stick with the official, already approved Article V procedures for amendments?

Posted by John Rosenberg at 2:04 AM | Permalink | Say What? (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Five weeks ago Prof. William Stuntz of the Harvard Law School wrote an influential article (David Brooks of the NYT called it one of the ten most important articles of 2004), "Faculty Clubs and Church Pews," that made a plausible, and appealing, case for an alliance between academic intellectuals and evangelical Christians (both of which Stuntz is). Now he has a sequel that is even more impressive. (Hat Tip to Instapundit)

Read the whole thing, since I'm going to discuss here only one of his intriguing observations:

When the culture is sharply divided on some kind of behavior, the side that wins the law's endorsement tends to lose ground, culturally and politically.

It's a very good point, and worth pondering. As part of that pondering, I'd like to extend Stuntz's argument to an example that he does not address and that may be thought to qualify or even contradict him, the Brown decision. I would argue, however, that Brown is the exception that proves Stuntz's rule.

It's the exception because the Court was a bit ahead of popular opinion but the decision was nevertheless quickly and widely accepted (even in parts of the South, until the backlash set in). It proved the rule, however, when its central message -- that discrimination based on race is wrong -- was misinterpreted and misapplied to require race-based policies to ensure what would now be called "diversity," i.e., busing, which produced a backlash that undid much of the good of Brown and from which we still haven't recovered. Racial preferences in admissions and employment for the most part simply reprise the busing debate.

Although it is too soon to say for sure, there is some evidence already that the Supremes' Grutter decision, allowing narrowly circumscribed (at least in theory) race prefereces in admissions, may also prove Stuntz's point, as Michigan seems likely to pass an anti-preferences constitutional amendment modeled on similar ones in Calif. and Washington.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Say What? (8) | TrackBacks (0)

The Michigan Supreme Court has just refused to review an appeals court ruling that (Surprise!) barring the state from engaging in racial discrimination does not change the meaning of the state constitution's requirement of equal protection, as MCRI critics had claimed.

As quoted in a recent MCRI press release, the appeals court held that

"Plaintiffs’ argument that the equal protection clause is altered or abrograted by the proposed amendment is meritless." The Court addressed a continuing theme of the opposition’s public arguments when it wrote, "In addition, we find that there is simply no merit to plaintiffs’ contention that the language is ‘propaganda’ or misleading."

It seems to me that liberals are increasingly stumbling over a large obstacle that they themselves have put in their path -- namely, the self-evident silliness of some of their arguments. Going into court, not to mention the court of public opinion, to argue that a bar against racial discrimination would change the meaning of equal protection is ... well, it's as silly as Senate Democrats arguing that judicial nominees who have been approved by the ABA and would receive clear majority votes are "out of the mainstream."

Posted by John Rosenberg at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Say What? (18) | TrackBacks (0)

From today's Boston Globe:

Seventeen police and fire departments in 12 cities and towns around Massachusetts fall short of the race-based hiring goals ordered 30 years ago by the federal courts, with many of the departments struggling to keep up with the fast-growing minority populations they serve, a Globe analysis has found.

Chelsea, Lawrence, and Holyoke -- with minority populations ranging from 45 to 65 percent -- remain the furthest from the goal of two mid-1970s consent decrees, which called for police and fire departments to reach ''parity" with the black and Hispanic populations in their cities. The police and fire departments in those three cities are about 20 percent minority.

Meanwhile, four other departments -- fire departments in Cambridge and Newton, and police departments in New Bedford and Winthrop -- have reached racial parity, but are still following the consent decrees and hiring based on race....

'I don't think it's as simple as having a decree that has fulfilled its mission and now everyone can go back to doing business as they did before the consent decree," said Nadine Cohen, an attorney with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who has closely monitored the Boston cases. ''It's an ongoing obligation to keep a diverse police and fire department. If we're not vigilant about it . . . the 30 or so years progress we've made can all be done away with rather quickly."

But the important question -- unanswered because it is unasked -- is, why should minority hiring be "a priority"?

It shouldn't. What should be a priority is non-discriminatory hiring.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Say What? (12) | TrackBacks (0)

In yet another "whither the NAACP?" discussion, an article in the Knight Ridder newspapers quotes J. Whyatt Mondesire, president of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP:

"It's devastating to lose a leadership voice at the beginning of Bush's second term, when we'll see an all-out drive to work against the civil rights agenda and appoint three or four new members of the Supreme Court."

One sign of how unwelcoming the national political arena has become for the NAACP is the recent change in the chairmanship of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Bush replaced Mary Frances Berry, a black liberal, with Gerald Reynolds, a black conservative who opposes affirmative action.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Say What? (13) | TrackBacks (0)