Helen Zille, spokesman for the opposition Democratic Alliance in South Africa, has denounced an education bill now before the Parliament (Thanks to tip from reader). According to Ms. Zille,
The key clauses in the Bill made race the most important criterion in the appointment of teachers, and actually prevented schools from appointing the best candidate for vacant teaching posts….
The Bill required governing bodies to recommend three applicants, in order of preference, for each vacancy at the school but required the head of the Provincial Department to override this recommendation if it was not based on the criteria of “equity, redress and representivity”.
The Bill made no mention of factors such as competence, quality or ability, Zille said.
Meanwhile, in New Delhi,
India’s Supreme Court ruled last week that colleges that do not receive government aid are not required to use state admission quotas for students from minority groups and lower castes.
The ruling also held that unaided private colleges have complete autonomy to admit students of their choice in medicine, engineering, and other professional fields.
Imagine that. No required quotas for private institutions, who are given the right “to admit students of their choice.”
To me, however, the most interesting things in Shailaja Neelakantan’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education were her statement that “[a]dmission quotas are popular in India” (with everyone, or just the beneficiaries?) and her very first sentence, in which she describes the India Supreme Court opinion as “a judgment that could limit access to professional education” rather than, say, one that frees private schools from the obligation to discriminate or one that allows private schools the right to rank merit over tribe or caste in their admissions.
UPDATE
If you thought tribal quotas and classifications happened only overseas, you’d be wrong.
In the Wall Street Journal today, two former Senators, Slade Gorton from Washington and Hank Brown from Colorado, claim that
The Senate is poised to sanction the creation of a racially exclusive government by and for Native Hawaiians who satisfy a blood test. The new race-based sovereign that would be summoned into being by the so-called Akaka Bill would operate outside the U.S. Constitution and the nation’s most cherished civil rights statutes. Indeed, the champions of the proposed legislation boast that the new Native Hawaiian entity could secede from the Union like the Confederacy, but without the necessity of shelling Fort Sumter.
The Akaka Bill classifies citizens by race, defying the express provisions of the 14th Amendment. It also rests on a betrayal of express commitments made by its sponsors a decade ago, and asserts as true many false statements about the history of Hawaii. It should be defeated.
Read, as they say, the Whole Thing.
South Africa will end up like the Congo. It will just take longer since the SA’s were left an infrastructure in good shape. Tempus Fugit.
The Senate is poised to sanction the creation of a racially exclusive government by and for Native Hawaiians who satisfy a blood test. The new race-based sovereign that would be summoned into being by the so-called Akaka Bill would operate outside the U.S. Constitution and the nation’s most cherished civil rights statutes.
Don’t worry if Congress passes it, it will be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court – 25 years from now.
If the congress can sanction a bill that ignores the Constitution can we wonder why the courts are content to legislate as well? Any bets that the Supreme Court won’t over turn this?
I think Texans should now pass similar legislation.
Well, who would have thought Separate but equal would be in fashion again?
96% of Hawaiians voted to join the Union. I say replace them w/Alberta, they’re talking succession, too.
Instead of race based, they should just have the same sovereign ancestry based treatment that native americans get.
actus thinks Hawaiians (the native blood-based Hawaiians, that is) should be treated like native americans. Fine. Let’s withdraw statehood (reverse secession?), sign a treaty with the natives recognizing a limited sovereignty, and turn Hawaii into a reservation. Or, in the alternative, let’s treat it as a state equal to other states, and with the same obligations to provide all its citizens, not just the ones with certain amounts of certain kinds of “blood,” with the equal protection of the laws and other Constitutional protections.
“Let’s withdraw statehood (reverse secession?), sign a treaty with the natives recognizing a limited sovereignty, and turn Hawaii into a reservation.”
I don’t see why we have to withdraw statehood. Other reservations in the mainland are within states.
For the first time ever, I think Actus is on the rightish track. What is being proposed in Hawaii is no worse than the “reservation” system we already have.
I suggest we get rid of the “reservation” system completely. We should buy off the “natives” with money and/or land, and make them full and equal citizens. I think it is disgusting that our government is categorizing people according to their racial purity.
The South African bill is Animal Farm revisited…
LTEC expresses a valid sentiment, however, I suspect it is politically impossible. The existence of the sovereign mainland reservations provides cover for an “equal sovereignty” movement in Hawaii and even for other types of preferences that are more racially based.
The appropriate compromise might be to allow the Native Hawaiians whatever institutions that were privately in place in 1959 (ie – the Kam school, and probably a few others) to continue to exist, perhaps in a quasi-sovereign state of being, but to keep the sovereignty limited to only those institutions that existed at the time of statehood, not to “re-create” a sovereign Hawaiian nation and new reservation where one hasn’t existed for a century.
These are just ideas – I haven’t fully formed an opinion on this.
This policy paper provides a pretty good overview of why the Akaka Native Hawaiian bill is both unconstitutional and terrible public policy:
http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/Jun2205NatHawSD.pdf
The South African bill shows what affirmative action really comes to. ITs proponents don’t care about the best person for the job or even about competence. This is how much of the world is run, which is why African and Latin American countries are in such bad shape. People get jobs on the basis of tribal affiliations or relatives. They don’t care much about standards. Just give me the piece of paper or the title is the attitude. I know nepotism and racism exist here, but people do care about doing things right. This is why things work here as opposed to other places, where the simplest things can’t be done or done very badly. We don’t feel the effects of this here, at least not yet. I don’t know if its because our work or educational standards ensure that even the beneficiares of affirmative action are competent, or whether it’s because only a small group of people get affirmative action. But what you can do really does matter. In many culture, people don’t think so. They don’t realize wealth has to be created by what people do. THey think it just somehow appears. It does matter that people who we call doctors or engineers or plumbers or anyone with a degree can do what the degree say they can do. As for the Hawaii proposals, in other countries those kinds of measures have led to bloodshed in the streets. Yes, there is racism. But to put this kind of thing into law is not the way to counter it, if that is the intent. It’s a big mistake.
Anita writes:
>>>”Yes, there is racism. But to put this kind of thing into law is not the way to counter it, if that is the intent. It’s a big mistake.”
I enjoyed your post. You make very valid points, but I would like to know what YOUR solution would be for countering racism, if these types of laws are “big mistakes.”
–Cobra
How to counter racism – I think we have all the laws that we need. We just have to keep on keeping on, as my grandpa would say. Fight against racism when you find it. Sue, demonstrate, shame people, if they can be shamed. But a law that gives prefence to one group over another is wrong. It’s an ongoing task. It may never end, given what human nature. But I believe we have to stick to the idea that color does not matter. It’s the ideal that we have to strive for. the problem with Affirmative action is that it’s based on giving preference to those who don’t meet the standards that are supposed to govern others. If affirmative action said here, blacks have as good grades and test scores, and you’re discriminating against them, so you should let X% in I would support that. But not if the grades and scores are below that of the whites and asians that are admitted. The fact that whites did this does not mean blacks should do it. Any law that prefers one group over another is wrong. And the sad truth is the wrongness can’t be remedied by reversing the situation.