Jennifer Gratz sends word of this article in the Michigan Daily about the controversy caused by its publishing of this cartoon.
First, look at the cartoon, since it would be silly for me to try to describe it when you can see it; then read the article.
The debate reminds me of the argument over whether or not truth is a defense to libel (or is it slander?).
Query: if it is “racist” for a cartoon to portray minority students but not a white student as beneficiaries of preferential treatment, what do you call a policy that gives preferences to minority but not white students?
UPDATE [7 Dec.]
See Hube’s excellent additional comments on LaShawn Barber’s Corner (and I don’t say that because of nice comments about me there … or at least not only because of them….
“Fair urged the Daily
>>>”Bien said she wanted to portray a variety of races in the cartoon but did not know how to draw certain other ethnic groups. She said children in the cartoon with dark faces were meant to represent many minority groups and not just blacks.”
Which was the point of contention by Fair. The way the cartoon is depicted, Affirmative Action IS portrayed as a black-white only issue, whether that was the intention of the artist or not.
That’s the problem with cartoons. They’re subject to unintended interpretations, sometimes due to the style or skill level of the artist.
Believe me, I’ve taken my fair share of criticism over the years.
Doesn’t stop me, though.
AA Bake Sales
–Cobra
The cartoon appears to me to be ruthlessly accurate. The child singled out by the teacher as not accorded a place in the quota system appears to be a white boy. And, yes, as the critics point out (if you read the statement in the reverse), the quota system is meant specifically to exclude the white boy.
And, Cobra, it is a black/white issue, in addition to being a pigpile on the hate white male. No way in the world you should be getting preference in a quota system over a white male.
There is not such thing as Affirmative Action. This little rhetorical ruse is a lie. There is a racial quota system. And that, Cobra, is racism, pure and simple. (And I don’t care whether you want to grandfather yourself into slavery.)
One silly thing the NAACP representative says is that AA is not just about blacks but also about other minorities and women. While he’s right about other minoroties, in this context he’s wrong about women. To the extent that gender is a bias in college admissions, it is men who benefit. There are contexts, such as public contracting and graduate education in the hard sciences, where women benefit from AA, but in the specific case of college admissions they do not and the NAACP representative’s assumption that they do seems to show a certain verbal tic.
Maybe if the cartoonist had added an Asian??????????????
Guts and Kudos to the paper to print it.
How accurate.
Non-existant.
This type of outrage used to surprise me, but not any more. Here is the rule: pointing out the effects and purposes of preferences is only acceptable to supporters of AA if it comes from those who are also supporters of AA. Comments from any other parties are considered hostile and potentially offensive.
To illustrate, if a supporter of AA stated that an institution should admit a black member to its ranks for the sake of diversity because it has no black members, that would be acceptable. If, however, the institution was not a public supporter of AA but stated that it was admitting a black member because it lacked any black members and needed to add one for the sake of diversity, that would be offensive (in fact, it would probably be offensive to the person offered admission to the institution).
That is why the cartoon in question is offensive to the NAACP. Conversely, if the a supporter of AA had made the point that the black students in the school should receive preferences but not the sole white student, there would have been no reason to object. It is an easy rule to remember.
Wednesday
It’s amazing. The rules of political correctness have become so convoluted that they’re now entirely arbitrary and meaningless. Racism is anything that ever makes any black or Hispanic person emotionally uncomfortable. Sexism is anything that ever makes any woman emotionally uncomfortable. The only bottom line is that the feelings of certain groups are always more important than any set of facts.
This all reminds me of a recent article in the LA Times about a huge flap at a local high school over the achievement gap. The school principal was making a huge deal about the results of the latest standardized tests, in which the black and Hispanic students had incrementally closed the gap in math and English scores between themselves and the Asian students. An Asian student wrote an article in the school paper about the principal’s announcement. All he did was ask “why is the gap there in the first place?” For that, he was totally excoriated as the worst kind of racist imaginable.
The fact is that there is a significant gap in math and English scores between Asians on the one hand, and blacks and Hispanics on the other. And that’s after you control for all the common variables except family environment: Asian kids who live in the same neighborhoods, in the same social and economic conditions, and who go to the same schools, with the same teachers, consistently do dramatically better at math and English than the black and Hispanic kids. And the schools have a whole system of denials set up whereby they stubbornly refuse to face up to that reality. The standard response to anyone who raises the issue of the achievement gap is as follows:
1. There is no achievement gap.
2. To the extent that there is one, it is entirely due to societal racism.
3. You’re a racist for asking the question in the first place.
The Times article went to great lengths to depict the hurt feelings of the black and Hispanic students, and focused on one Hispanic girl in particular as an example. She (and her mother) admitted that she’d been getting Cs and Ds in math and English, but she (and her mother) were really proud of the fact that she’d been getting As in Drama. That pretty much says it all…
…except for this footnote: the Hispanic girl in the article ended up going to East LA Community College after high school. Meanwhile, the Asian kid who wrote the article got into Stanford.
It was probably entirely due to societal and institutional racism.
It’s pretty obvious that we’re at the point (and have been at the point) where even accurately (if unfavorably) describing political policies is considered racism. Shameless.
Racist cartoon?
Hube here again!
Via the man whom I consider my “blogfather,” John Rosenberg and his awesome site Discriminations, comes word of a possible NAACP boycott of The Michigan Daily, the University of Michigan’s student newspaper, because…
They may not like the POV but I don’t understand the racism part. Unless those two are interchangeable now.
Cobra,
The way the cartoon is depicted, Affirmative Action IS portrayed as a black-white only issue, whether that was the intention of the artist or not.
Cobra, is that not how you’ve constantly portrayed it yourself? You can be reminded of the existence of other races occasionally, but in general you write as though Blacks and whites are all there is. Hispanics get thrown in as an afterthought, Asian-Americans as a very grudging afterthought. Native Americans have not made your cut at all, IIRC.
Just out of curiosity, what would you have done if one of the preferred students in the cartoon had had stereotypical slanty eyes? Protested the “racist” depiction, or protested that Asian-American students don’t benefit from affirmative action, so that the cartoon would be factually inaccurate?
Michelle writes:
>>>”Cobra, is that not how you’ve constantly portrayed it yourself? You can be reminded of the existence of other races occasionally, but in general you write as though Blacks and whites are all there is.”
Truth be told, Michelle, I can see where somebody could read one of my posts out of context and get that impression. I freely admit the black-white dynamic makes up a large portion of my argument because Affirmative Action, racism and discrimination is more than a philosophical debate for me…it’s very personal and real.
>>>”Just out of curiosity, what would you have done if one of the preferred students in the cartoon had had stereotypical slanty eyes? Protested the “racist” depiction, or protested that Asian-American students don’t benefit from affirmative action, so that the cartoon would be factually inaccurate?”
Which Asian-Americans have stereotypically slanty eyes anyway? You see, you’re missing the fact that many Asian-Americans receive Affirmative Action in other areas…hiring, contracts, etc. I’ve repeatedly posted examples of such, especially in California.
Moreover, as a cartoonist, I certainly didn’t “protest” anything the artist did here. I know how it feels to get flack for drawing things some find offensive. Full disclosure, some of my college cartoons were so far “out there” it’s the main reason I started using the “Cobra” pen-name. It’s also frustrating sometimes to find your intentions misinterpreted, as I believe Bien even admits to in this case.
–Cobra
Cobra,
You see, you’re missing the fact that many Asian-Americans receive Affirmative Action in other areas … hiring, contracts, etc. I’ve repeatedly posted examples of such, especially in California.
Oh, of course. The relevence to a cartoon about college admissions is still eluding me. If Asian-Americans are actually on the receiving end of affirmative action in college admissions, it comes as news to me, and doubtless to them also. I suppose it’s all OK if completely different people are getting preferences in bidding for machinists’ contracts because the owner of the company is Asian-American. Evens it all out, doesn’t it?
Cobra, I will do you justice: Even you do not believe that.
Can you just answer this: if there’s a daughter of Chinese immigrants who has had to learn English from scratch, and a daughter of Mexican immigrants who has had to learn English from scratch, and the parents of each are of roughly the same background and make roughly the same income, is there any reason at all that one of these women should get a boost into any university, and the other not?
I leave it to you to guess which is likely to get the boost.
Cobra,
You’re missing another point. Race is obviously the primary characteristic that gets used in university admissions. The NAACP says it is racist because it didn’t include women (the alleged primary beneficiary of preferences) — its “racist” because they are trying to change the terms of the debate away from race, the primary characteristic.
The zinger truth is that women are not the primary beneficiaries. Sure, some programs benefit women so that the political coalition can expand – but Jennifer Gratz, Barbara Grutter, and a whole class of other female applicants were women. U-M’s system didn’t give points to women (and it wouldn’t make sense). The tilt is primarily for race – women are a political afterthougt that the NAACP desperately … desperately needs to bring on board as (yet another) group.
Second, this particular cartoon could be interpreted (as the article says, “many interpretations”, why assume the racist ones, even though their argument that not mentioning women is racist is deeply flawed logically) as a microcosm of truth. It depicts a very real possibility – the inner-city classroom of Detroit, where blacks are 87% of the population, could contain exactly such a scene. Everyone in the room receiving preferences except the white student ——– now presumably, the reason, according to “social justice”, we should give preferences to those minorities is that the schools are grossly underfunded and the situation where they grew up “merits” some consideration of the difficulties overcame. Yet, if this argument is valid, and I think the “merit” argument for socio-economic preference has some validity, which is why I suppose some consideration of conditions as a form of merit, then would it not be logical to give that white student, accurately depicted in this microcosm cartoon, the same preference as the blacks in that class room. Indeed, the white “minority” in Detroit may overcome greater obstacles in their community than even black “minorities” who constitute the majority in their community. This cartoon is a QED for geographic outreach — not against “affirmative action,” indeed, in favor of a more expansive vision.
This cartoon is absolutely on. For more, see my blog.
‘That’s the problem with cartoons. They’re subject to unintended interpretations’
I don’t think the KKK on the girls sweater in your cartoon is either unintended or misinterpreted.
Chetly writes:
>>>”It depicts a very real possibility – the inner-city classroom of Detroit, where blacks are 87% of the population, could contain exactly such a scene. Everyone in the room receiving preferences except the white student ——– now presumably, the reason, according to “social justice”, we should give preferences to those minorities is that the schools are grossly underfunded and the situation where they grew up “merits” some consideration of the difficulties overcame.”
Now, I would beg to differ with you here. As you well know, the point system previously employed by the U of M outlined that a white student who attended a “majority minority” high school was entitled to the SAME AMOUNT OF BONUS POINTS on his or her application as his or her underrepresented minority classmates (20).
This is point I have made consistantly over the years here. Now, is Bien, the cartoonist, trying to say that the white student in the predominantly minority setting SHOULDN’T get bonus points, as the prior system granted…because it appears the cartoon doesn’t denote this fact.
Jack writes:
>>>”I don’t think the KKK on the girls sweater in your cartoon is either unintended or misinterpreted.”
That’s because it’s intentional.
–Cobra
Cobra,
At first I didn’t believe you, but a little Googling brought up the old UMich policy:
Applicants receive up to 40 points for other factors that indicate an applicant’s potential contribution to LSA. They may receive 20 points for one of the following: membership in an underrepresented minority group, socioeconomic disadvantage, attendance at a predominantly minority high school, athletics, or at the Provost’s discretion.
I do admire the “Provost’s discretion” bit, and wonder why no one has mentioned this before. (Gee, we can just add an extra twenty points for any candidate whenever we feel like it, and don’t have to explain why!) And I wonder whether a “predominantly minority” high school would include a predominantly-Asian-American one. Not sure there is such a thing in Michigan, but there would be in SF if the city were not so damn keen on busing Chinese-American kids halfway across the city from schools they could walk to from home, so that . . . well, it’s not exactly clear. Are the Chinese-American kids supposed to be benefiting from contact with the non-Asian kids? Are the non-Asian kids supposed to be benefiting from contact with the Chinese-American kids? Is MUNI supposed to be benefiting from all the extra bus fares? No one appears to understand this program any more, and the one certain thing about it is that a lot of children who used to attend local schools are now shoved all over the city for reasons of “racial balance.”
Cobra,
One other point. I think it’s fair to say that not every Michigan high-schooler applies only to UMich, so if the apparent question is whether Michigan students will be evaluated under affirmative-action rules, UMich’s own policies are not the whole story. There are other colleges. Some not even in Michigan.
Michelle writes:
>>>”I think it’s fair to say that not every Michigan high-schooler applies only to UMich, so if the apparent question is whether Michigan students will be evaluated under affirmative-action rules, UMich’s own policies are not the whole story. There are other colleges. Some not even in Michigan.”
Which is one of the points I brought to the attention of Jennifer Gratz, who for some reason she has not stated, ONLY applied to UMich.
–Cobra
Michelle:
And I wonder whether a “predominantly minority” high school would include a predominantly-Asian-American one.
First, I would be surprised (actually, more) if the University of Michigan ever gave a 20 point bonus to a white student who attended a majority-black high school. Cobra, if you have evidence of this ever being done, even once, please supply it.
Second, as Michelle supposed, Asians were and are given no preferences in admission to the Univ. of Michigan. Indeed, not even all “Hispanic” are given preferences, since the policy there defines Hispanic to mean Mexican-Americans or Puerto Ricans born on the U.S. mainland. Go figure.