Eugene Robinson, who in all liklihood owes his regular appearances on the editorial pages of the Washington Post to affirmative action, regards Clarence Thomas’s presence on the Supreme Court as a good argument against affirmative action.
I believe in affirmative action, but I have to acknowledge there are arguments against it. One of the more cogent is the presence of Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t prescribe sauce for the goose unless they’re willing to eat crow themselves….
John Rosenberg writes:
>>>”Eugene Robinson, who in all liklihood owes his regular appearances on the editorial pages of the Washington Post to affirmative action, regards Clarence Thomas’s presence on the Supreme Court as a good argument against affirmative action.
>>>’I believe in affirmative action, but I have to acknowledge there are arguments against it. One of the more cogent is the presence of Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court.’
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t prescribe sauce for the goose unless they’re willing to eat crow themselves….”
Why do you believe that “in all likelihood” Eugene Robinson “owes his appearances on the Washington Post Editorial Pages to Affirmative Action?”
What in his educational background, or journalistic career would lead you to harbor this notion?
Well, let’s take a little look-see for ourselves–
You know…just to be “sure”, ok?
Education:
>>>” He was educated at Orangeburg High School, where he was one of a handful of black students on the previously all-white campus; and the University of Michigan, where during his senior year he was the first black student to be named co-editor-in-chief of the award-winning student newspaper, The Michigan Daily.”
http://www.postwritersgroup.com/robinson.htm
>>>”During the 1987-88 academic year, on leave from The Post, Robinson was a Neiman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University, where he studied Latin American history and politics and the Spanish language.”
Career:
>>>”In 1976 he began his journalism career at the San Francisco Chronicle, where he covered the trial of publishing heiress Patty Hearst.
He joined the Washington Post in 1980, and worked his way up the ranks…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Robinson_(journalist)
>>>”Eugene Robinson is an Associate Editor and twice-weekly columnist for The Washington Post. His column appears on Tuesdays and Fridays.
In a 25-year career at The Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s award-winning Style section. In 2005, he started writing a column for the Op-Ed page. He is the author of “Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race” (1999) and “Last Dance in Havana” (2004).
Robinson is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and has received numerous journalism awards.”
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/eugene+robinson/
Honors and Awards:
>>>”In January 1999, Robinson became an assistant managing editor of The Post, in charge of the groundbreaking Style section, which during his tenure won two Pulitzer Prizes and two Missouri Lifestyle Awards as the best newspaper feature section in the nation…”
http://www.wmscholars.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=sections.view§ionid=5CA1BEFD-1125-AADA-EABAC5DA6FC59330
Ummm…Ok–
John, I’ll ask you again…
What in Eugene Robinson’s educational background, or journalistic career would lead you to harbor the notion–that after a distinguished, 31 year career in journalism from the ground up; including 27 years at the Washington Post, earning two Pulitzers for sections under his supervision–that somehow, Affirmative Action is why he gets to write a twice weekly opinion collumn?
Are you, with a straight face, going to look at THAT biography, and claim that Eugene Robinson isn’t “qualified enough” to write a twice-weekly collumn in the Washington Post without a racial preference being applied?
And Clarence Thomas?
…
CLARENCE THOMAS???!?
LOL…how can you argue “qualifications” and “race not being a factor…” on THIS blog…and even DARE mention the name “Clarence Thomas”?
Eugene Robinson writes:
>>>”Back to affirmative action, which Thomas famously opposes: He was 43 and had ONE YEAR of judicial experience when Bush the Elder nominated him to replace Thurgood Marshall on the court. Even Thomas can’t seriously believe Bush’s claim that he was the “most qualified” candidate.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/01/AR2007100101332.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
IMHO, Clarence Thomas is beyond Affirmative Action…
He’s the most blatant “racial quota hire” in the history of the America.
Another duly qualified, award-winning African-American op-ed collumnist, NY Times’ Bob Herbert, put it this way:
>>>”In 1991, the first President Bush poked a finger in the eye of black America by selecting the egregious Clarence Thomas for the seat on the Supreme Court that had been held by the revered Thurgood Marshall. The fact that there is a rigid quota on the court, permitting one black and one black only to serve at a time, is itself racist.
Mr. Bush seemed to be saying, “All right, you want your black on the court? Boy, have I got one for you.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/opinion/25herbert.html?_r=1&bl&ex=1190865600&en=048d8a564c519141&ei=5087&oref=slogin
–Cobra
Are you, with a straight face, going to look at THAT biography, and claim that Eugene Robinson isn’t “qualified enough” to write a twice-weekly collumn in the Washington Post without a racial preference being applied? etc.
I’ve never said that people who receive affirmative action preferences aren’t qualified, but that, if they do receive preferential treatment, they probably aren’t as qualified as some applicants who did not receive preferential treatment. If that weren’t the case, they wouldn’t have needed the preference. In Eugene Robinson’s case, I did not research his biography. My suspicion grew out of merely reading his columns.
Fortunately for Mr. Robinson and his admirers, however, my suspicion, and the similar suspicion of any others who may share it, can be easily dismissed since all right-thinking (which is to say, left-thinking) people know for a fact that the presence of widespread racial preferences in journalism and other professions over the past generation has done nothing whatsoever to tarnish or even call into question the achievements of those who benefitted (or who may not have benefitted) from them.
Eugene Robinson and Clarence Thomas are both quota hires.
Quota hiring is now rampant in all sectors of the US economy. Cobra, you wouldn’t know because you have no direct involvement in hiring and promotions in these sectors.
One of the tricks played by the racist hiring managers is to say that all these quota hires are “qualified,” as in they graduated high school, etc.
Well, the most important jobs usually get 100 to 1000 applicants (in my experience on the inside) who are “minimally qualified.” Yes, they breath oxygen, and, yes, the hiring company won’t get sued for hiring any one of them. The point is that hiring companies usually give low minimum qualifications simply to account for the case of getting a genius who happened not to take the usual route (Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard….). Then, if they are racists, they can also make quota hires, like Eugene Robinson.
The idea that AA tarnishes everyone is not a good argument against AA, it seems to me; there are many that are much more effective. But in this case, I have to admit that when I read about the “Neiman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University”, I just assumed he got that because he was Black. I did that throughout Cobra’s comment. Holding up awards to prove a Black man is qualified over and above AA doesn’t seem to work. It’s unfair, I know, but I bet it happens a lot.
I didn’t think Thomas was qualified when he was nominated, but I hated the attack against him, and I think everyone can agree that he has shown himself to be very intelligent. Did you see him on 60 minutes?
If racial affirmative action became a relic of the past, the suspicion would disappear – because the practice would no longer be there.
It is JUST these kind of snide “well, I suppose he/she got there due to affirmative action” kind of thinking that demonstrates how pernicious racial affirmative action is.
“People who live in glass houses shouldn’t prescribe sauce for the goose unless they’re willing to eat crow themselves…”
Now that there’s funny I don’t care who you are!
(Larry the Cable Guy)
I’ll probably “lift” it myself at some appropriate point in addressing hoisted victims of “womans” rights petards.
, with a link for credit of course.
“If racial affirmative action became a relic of the past”
We shouldn’t conflate affirmative action and racial preferences. The two have different meanings and vastly different effects. RP can be considered a subset of AA, but they are not the same.
In my opinion, laws requiring affirmative action are largely unnecessary. Firstly because most institutions (especially large ones) engage in these activites voluntarily. Secondly because the world is far more organizationally integrated than it used to be. The original AA supportive talking points were that AA included activites such as advertising jobs and college scholarships in minority targeted media. This makes a certain amount of sense and is not particulary objectionable, especially for public entities. If you live in an area (as I do) where “minorities” outnumber whites, you know that the mainstream media is targeted at minorites in a way that was not the case 40 years ago, so I’m not sure how much the additional targeting adds. But that something is unnecessary is not a reason to fight it to the death.
Racial preference on the other hand is against the US Constitution, violates individual civil rights, and is against the will of at least 60% of the population. Speaking as if the two are interchangeable allows dishonest leftists to propogate the idea that anyone anti-RP is really objecting to including blacks (based on the above example of AA) and is therefore advocating a return to Jim Crow.
If you want to win the racial preference argument, be specific about what you object to.
Whenever anyone says that Clarence Thomas benefited from racial preferences they are unwittingly undermining their own arguments. Suggesting (true or not) that he would not be where he is were it not for some sort of preference given to him demeans his personal accomplishment as it does all successful blacks. Therein lies part of the harm of these programs.
The answers on this thread are PERFECT examples of why we still need Affirmative Action in America.
ACF writes:
>>>”One of the tricks played by the racist hiring managers is to say that all these quota hires are “qualified,” as in they graduated high school, etc.
Well, the most important jobs usually get 100 to 1000 applicants (in my experience on the inside) who are “minimally qualified.” ”
The problem with your statement is that Eugene Robinson wasn’t hired by the Washington Post to be in his current postion as Assistant Editor and twice weekly Opinion Collumnist.
That’s the reason I took the time to point out, that he was Co-Editor in Chief of Michigan University’s “The Michigan Daily”,(funny how this school keeps popping up here, huh?) which was surely enough qualification to be hired as an entry level reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976. It took him 27 YEARS to get to the position he’s currently in now, earning PULITZER Prizes along the way.
Which is the cue for Richard Palmer’s line:
>>>”Suggesting (true or not) that he would not be where he is were it not for some sort of preference given to him demeans his personal accomplishment as it does all successful blacks. Therein lies part of the harm of these programs.”
But Richard, don’t you get it yet?
Affirmative Action’s only been around since Nixon–it’s not even 40 years old.
The “demeaning” of the personal accomplishments of successful blacks was going on LOOONG before Affirmative Action, and will continue even if Affirmative Action is ended.
Peg disagrees with me here:
>>>”If racial affirmative action became a relic of the past, the suspicion would disappear – because the practice would no longer be there.
It is JUST these kind of snide “well, I suppose he/she got there due to affirmative action” kind of thinking that demonstrates how pernicious racial affirmative action is.”
Perhaps if you could show me, through examples in American History, where you would get this idea from? You’re telling me that in Washington, California, and now Michigan, everybody has embraced this “color-blind meritocracy” ethos?
I’m not from Missouri, but you’re still going to have to SHOW me.
Which brings me to Dom, who backs me up here…
>>>”Holding up awards to prove a Black man is qualified over and above AA doesn’t seem to work. It’s unfair, I know, but I bet it happens a lot.”
Of course the successes and accomplishments of African-Americans are demeaned, besmirched and discredited. That’s what happens in minorities in the WMPS. Although Black conservative pundits and Republican Candidates, often get an EZ Pass–(is there any group of people more LOVED on Fox News, Hate Radio & even Discriminations than Blacks who are AGAINST Affirmative Action?)–for the most part, any successful black must pay a unique disparagement TOLL for their endeavors.
Dom, I’m not attacking you by saying this, by any means. I APPRECIATE your willingness to voice what I believe many in America feel.
There is old saying still expressed today by African-American elders–that if you’re black, you have to work TWICE as hard to prove yourself, and succeed because of racism.
–Cobra
Cobra,
Winning a Pulitzer Prize, or many other accolades, is influenced by being black. Again, I have served on these types of committees.
If you want to get rid of this doubt, then get rid of non-merit based decisions.
ACF
I agree with ACF.
Even getting elected as the President of the Harvard Law Review is full of “doubt”, since membership in the Harvard Law Review is determined by spots open to blacks based on the race of the Harvard Law students as a determing factor for “diversity”. The position of the President of Law Review is an elected and political one, tinged with “political correctness”. Remember that Obama was elected as President of the Harvard Law Review.
I guess the next awards to to go the way of political correctness and race based AA are the Nobel Prizes in the Sciences and Economics (a pseudo-science). Maybe the Lasker Awards in medical research will also be determined by race based Affrimative Action. God help us all if this happens.
ACF writes:
You keep making my arguments easier. The Pulitzer Prize has been around since 1917. There were African-American Pulitzer Prize winners PRIOR to Nixon’s installation of Affirmative Action in the early 1970′s.
By impugning black success or any achievement ACROSS THE BOARD–calling it “tainted” by Affirmative-Action–you’re simply another choir member of the WMPS chorus–singing right alongside Steve Sailer, Charles Murray, Dinesh D’souza, Al Campanis, and others.
The African-American Elders are RIGHT…if you’re black, you have to work twice as hard, and be twice as good, because no matter what you accomplish in life, or how high you climb, you’re still a minority, and in the eyes of many in the WMPS, that means you’re LESS.
–Cobra
Cobra,
That some blacks CAN win accolades based on merit doesn’t mean that all blacks who do win them do so based on merit.
Again, as I have repeatedely said to you, I am actually involved in these decisions.
At the present time, these types of awards, hiring/promotions in government, Fortune 500 businesses, law firms, academia, TV news broadcasting, etc. all are more easily attained if you are black or female.
In the majority of cases in which I have been involved, being black or female gives you a much greater chance of success, sometimes catipulting you from not having a chance at all to being the top candidate. This is what affirmative discrimination does.
Now, given that I see the majority of black/women hires/promotions being made because of skin color and the shape of one’s genitals, I am suspect when I hear that a black/female person in these fields was hired/promoted based on merit.
So, what are you saying? Are you saying that I have not witnessed these things in the majority of cases, in which case I am simply lying? Or, are you saying that we should pretend that they are not happening? If these things are happening, aren’t you happy because affirmative discrimination is working?
So, to turn your blanket statement on its head, if you are black you have to work half (at best) as hard as anyone else. Of course, your merit would (and should) be questioned. Congratulations to your affirmative discrimination!
ACF writes:
>>>”That some blacks CAN win accolades based on merit doesn’t mean that all blacks who do win them do so based on merit.”
Again, you’re making my points for me.
OF COURSE many Whites in America question the qualifications, accomplishments and achievements of African-Americans.
They’ve been doing that for CENTURIES. You and E aren’t breaking any new ground by tearing down any Black who strives to achieve something in this country. As I said before, this knee-jerk disparagement of black competancy (which pre-supposes a notion that every White Male walking is somehow above reproach and criticism) was around LONG before Nixon and Affirmative Action, and will stick around if Affirmative Action is eliminated.
ACF writes:
>>>”At the present time, these types of awards, hiring/promotions in government, Fortune 500 businesses, law firms, academia, TV news broadcasting, etc. all are more easily attained if you are black or female.”
Which means according to your theory, that BEFORE Nixon and Affirmative Action, all that laundry list you provided was more easily attained if you were a WHITE MALE.
Now, needless for me to say that in ALL of the areas you mention, in 2007, White Males still DOMINATE, but I will concede to you that
back in those “good ol’ Jim Crow” Days before the CRA of 1964, and Affirmative Action around 5 years later, America was certainly a big “White Party” that even P.Diddy wouldn’t get an invite to.
E writes:
>>>”Even getting elected as the President of the Harvard Law Review is full of “doubt”, since membership in the Harvard Law Review is determined by spots open to blacks based on the race of the Harvard Law students as a determing factor for “diversity”. The position of the President of Law Review is an elected and political one, tinged with “political correctness”. Remember that Obama was elected as President of the Harvard Law Review.”
Come on now…Senator Obama?
Senator Barack Obama?
This guy…?
>>>”Barack Obama received his bachelor of arts degree in political science from Columbia in 1983, and his J.D., MAGNA CUM LAUDE, from Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he served as the president of the Harvard Law Review.”
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/obama
Thank you again, E for providing another PERFECT example.
Discriminations readers, I don’t think I can top this one. Like I said before…if you’re Black in America, no amount of success or achievement will innoculate you from the CONTEMPT and DERISION of the WMPS.
–Cobra
Cobra writes,
“Come on now…Senator Obama?
Senator Barack Obama?
This guy…?”
“Barack Obama received his bachelor of arts degree in political science from Columbia in 1983, and his J.D., MAGNA CUM LAUDE, from Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he served as the president of the Harvard Law Review.
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/obama
Thank you again, E for providing another PERFECT example.”
=============================
SO WHAT, Cobra?
Obama is an Affirmative Action baby! I will prove it to you.
Cobra, you missed my point completely, because at Harvard Law School, membership in Harvard Law Review is also determined, in part, by racial preferences with RACIAL DE FACTO QUOTAS, as well as grades. Harvard Law Review uses RACE as a huge admissions factor. There is RACE BASED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR MEMBERSHIP IN HARVARD LAW REVIEW FOR HONOR STUDENTS AT HLS AS WELL, WHICH GIVES BLACK MAGNA CUM LAUDE HARVARD LAW STUDENTS A LEG UP AND A HUGE BOOST OVER THE OTHER MAGNA CUM LAUDE STUDENTS LAW STUDENTS WHO ARE NOT PREFERRED RACIAL AND ETHNIC MINORITIES. These black magna cum laude students are certainly *QUALIFIED*, but they are not as *EQUALLY QUALIFIED*, ON THE AVERAGE AS A GROUP, as the summa cum laude students or other higher ranked non race and ethnic group preferred magna cum laude students, who are whites/Asians. These whites/Asians were the ones who were denied membership in Harvard Law Review because of their race or ethnicity. BTW, Asians are OVERREPRESENTED at Harvard Law School at 10% its students. Asians are 4% of the American population
Therefore, in the ZERO SUM GAME of admissions to Harvard Law Review, not all Harvard Law magna cum laude students are able to attain membership. Being magna cum laude may be a minimal qualification for Harvard Law Review. Not all HLS students, who are magna cum laude, are admitted to Harvard Law Review, because of the limited number of spots available. If one is black, and a magna cum laude, one IS GIVEN A RACIAL PREFERENCE OVER OTHER non-black and non-preferred higher ranked students (whites/Asians) who are even summa cum laude students or other higher ranked magna cum laude students. On the average, these higher ranked summa cum laude white/Asian students at Harvard Law, who were denied admission into Harvard Law Review, were displaced by the lower ranked black magna cum laude Harvard Law students, such as Obama, with the use of racial preferences for admissions into Harvard Law Review, thereby tainting the admissions process into Harvard Law Review for honor Harvard Law students.
Admissions into Harvard Law Review and being “qualified” are all relative. For one of any race and ethnicity, being magna cum laude at Harvard Law School may be a minimal qualification for membership into Harvard Law Review. Being black and magna cum at Harvard Law School is WORTH MORE than being non-black and a member of a non-preferred racial group (white/Asian) in the ZERO SUM game of admissions into Harvard Law Review.
Cobra, that’s a very simple concept to understand.
Of course, being President of Harvard Law Review, a political position attained by election via campaigning is due more to Obama’s political skills than his academic skills among his colleagues at the Harvard Law Review.
Again, with use of racial preferences and race based Affirmative Action in admissions to elite institutions and groups, as in admissions to the Harvard Law Review, being “qualified” or “minimally qualified” DOES NOT MEAN being “equally qualified”, on the average. This is a most important point that you, Cobra, seemed unable to grasp.
Another point is that the Latin honors of cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude, at least at Harvard College, were given to over the vast majority of the graduating classes. I don’t know what percentage of the Harvard Law students receive Latin honors upon their graduation. I will ask some of the graduates of Harvard Law School to find the answer. As far as I know, Obama, did not receive Latin honors upon graduation from Columbia College, and academically, he certainly did not graduate at the top or even near the top of his class, and yet he received an admission to Harvard Law School, a feat usually given to top students from the undergraduate colleges, including the Ivy, Columbia College. Obama was also given racial preferences in his admission to Columbia College, a feat usually given to top high school students and a few top few college transfer students. Obama transferred into Columbia from Occidental College and he admitted he was not a top student from his previous schools. Obama was given racial preferences in ALL his admissions and he is an Affirmative Action bady, by receiving a leg up and a tremendous boost solely based on his “black race” The irony is that Obama is one half white.
E writes, after a lengthy, predictable attack on Sen. Barack Obama:
>>>”Obama was given racial preferences in ALL his admissions and he is an Affirmative Action bady, by receiving a leg up and a tremendous boost solely based on his “black race” The irony is that Obama is one half white.”
Well, if he’s only “half-black”, shouldn’t you only be criticizing him “half” as much for racial preferences? By your theory, Obama deserves only “half” of your contempt, because technically, he’s “half” white, and therefore, at least half of him “deserved” a spot, and was “entitled” to be at Harvard with the other white kids?
You see what I’m saying, readers of Discriminations?
–Cobra
Cobra,
Please read the following previous post.
Obama, himself, is a beneficiary of race based AA in his admissions to Columbia, Harvard Law and the Law Review. Harvard Law Review President is an elected and political position at the Harvard Law School for honor students. Many of the top honor law student do not even opt for Law Review or its presidency.
The following excerpt is rom Columbia College Today, the alumni magazine of Columbia College in the City of New York, Obama’s alma mater to which he transferred from Occidental College in California. He received race based AA on admission, as well as on his admission to Harvard Law, since there is no mention of him being in or even anywhere near the top of his class at Columbia, which is usually required for admission to Harvard Law. He was certainly not a stellar student in high school according to the following.
http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/jan05/cover.php
Obama was born in 1961 in Hawaii to a white woman from Kansas and a black man who came from Kenya to study at the University of Hawaii, where the two met in 1960. They were married for a brief time. His father, also named Barack, went on to graduate studies at Harvard and then back to Kenya, where he had two other families, one with a Kenyan wife from before his marriage to Barack’s mother, and another with a second American wife. Obama saw his father one more time, several years later, and grew up idolizing him. Obama’s Midwestern mother nurtured her son’s appreciation of and identification with black culture.
Obama, who is married to an African-American woman from Chicago, describes himself as an African American, and says he is “rooted in the black community but not limited to it.”
People have been asking him recently, if he’s half white, why does he describe himself as an African American? He responds that the term African American denotes one has two sides to his heritage. “And I would broaden that and say, by definition if you’re an American, you’re a hybrid person,” Obama said recently on the television program Charlie Rose. “All you have to do is look at these white suburban kids who are wearing baggy pants and listening to Snoop Dogg to get a sense of how cross-pollination has taken place between cultures.”
Obama’s heritage goes beyond black and white. When he was 6, his mother remarried, to an Indonesian student she met at the University of Hawaii, and the family moved to Jakarta, where a half-sister, Maya, was born. After spending two years in a Muslim school and two years in a Catholic one, Obama was sent back to Hawaii to be raised by his Kansan grandparents, a furniture salesman and a bank employee who lived in a small apartment.
Obama went by the name Barry and got on the wrong track as an adolescent. He shunned school, spent much time playing basketball and turned to drinking and smoking marijuana, even experimenting with cocaine. Obama described this period of his life in his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. “I guess you’d have to say I wasn’t a politician when I wrote the book,” Obama told The New Yorker. Now that the transgressions are public information, he makes the best of the disclosure. “I wanted to show how and why some kids, maybe especially young black men, flirt with danger and self-destruction,” he said.
On the eve of delivering his keynote address at the Democratic convention, Obama explained on the television program Meet the Press, “Fortunately, I think that my family had such strong values, very much Midwestern values, that I pulled out of that funk, and was able to succeed.”
Obama & Elvis
Obama meets a supporter during a campaign visit to Chicago’s suburbs the week before the election.
Obama says he was still goofing off for the first two years of college, which he spent at Occidental in Los Angeles. He continued to play basketball, which friends say he is still quite good at, and was involved in other organized activities. He also spent “a lot of time having fun.”
He changed course junior year when he transferred to Columbia. “I realized I wanted to be in a more vibrant, urban environment,” he says. As a transfer student, he didn’t receive housing, so lived off campus in various makeshift arrangements, such as living in one bedroom of a three-bedroom apartment, and renting a sixth-floor walk-up with slanting floors on the East Side, “just north of gentrification,” as he describes it.
As he pursued a political science degree, specializing in international relations, Obama says he was somewhat involved with the Black Students Organization and participated in anti-apartheid activities. “Mostly, my years at Columbia were an intense period of study,” he says. “When I transferred, I decided to buckle down and get serious. I spent a lot of time in the library. I didn’t socialize that much. I was like a monk.”
Obama says it is difficult to separate his college experience at Columbia from the urban experience of living in New York City, and his memoir offers little about his time on campus. One noteworthy event during Obama’s college years, however, was his learning in 1982 of his father’s death from a car accident. It was not until years later, however, when Obama’s older half-sister visited him in Chicago, that he learned how inaccurate his image of his father had been. After working for an American oil company in Kenya and then for Kenya’s Ministry of Tourism, the economist fell out of favor with the government, was blacklisted from finding work and was socially outcast. He became a heavy drinker, turned abusive to his American wife and eventually was destitute, borrowing money from relatives for food, as Obama describes his sister’s account in his memoir.
“All my life, I had carried a single image of my father … The brilliant scholar, the generous friend, the upstanding leader. That image had suddenly vanished,” Obama wrote. “Replaced by … what? A bitter drunk? An abusive husband? A defeated, lonely bureaucrat? To think that all my life I had been wrestling with nothing more than a ghost! The king is overthrown, I thought. … Whatever I do, it seems, I won’t do much worse than that, I thought.”
Upon graduating from Columbia, Obama attempted a career as a community organizer. He wrote that when classmates weren’t sure what that was, he didn’t have a sufficient answer for them. “Instead, I’d pronounce the need for change,” he wrote. “Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.
“That’s what I’ll do, I’ll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change.”
Obama wrote letters to community organizations all around the country asking for a job, but received no positive responses. He ended up working as a research analyst at a consulting company before being promoted to financial writer. “I had my own office, my own secretary and money in the bank,” he says in his book. But he left to pursue his original goal of activism. For six months, Obama carried on another letter-writing campaign seeking a job and worked with an environmental group to encourage City College students to recycle. At last, he landed a job with a nonprofit in Chicago.
Obama drove to his new home, not knowing anyone there, and worked for three years in low-income neighborhoods helping churches create job training programs and advocating school reform.
In his late 20s, Obama attended Harvard Law School, where he received national publicity when he became the first African-American president of Harvard Law Review. Publishers contacted him about telling his life story, and he began to work on his memoir, which was published in 1995. It had a 15,000-copy print run but didn’t win a large readership and soon slipped out of print. Last summer, in the midst of Obama-mania, stray copies started selling on eBay for 10 times the original cover price. In August, a division of Random House reissued it in paperback, and the book promptly climbed to The New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list.
Cobra,
I am not sure what you are trying to argue in your most recent points (as usual). You seem to be babbling about me “disparaging” somone or something. I simply state facts. I have no intention of being insulting, impolite, or unkind. If these facts are disparaging to you, or others, I encourage you to join with me in ridding the land of affirmative discrimination.
Unfortunately, whites have to work at least twice as hard as blacks in order to get jobs and promotions.
Historically, whites obtained their positions by merit. Now, blacks are getting their positions by failing to have merit (affirmative discrimination).
As I’ve said dozens of times, I see this every day and I am directly involved in hiring, promotions, awards panels, recruitment, mentoring, etc.
Hey Cobra,
You said, “Well, if he’s only “half-black”, shouldn’t you only be criticizing him “half” as much for racial preferences? By your theory, Obama deserves only “half” of your contempt, because technically, he’s “half” white, and therefore, at least half of him “deserved” a spot, and was “entitled” to be at Harvard with the other white kids?”
NO ONE IS “ENTITILED TO” OR “DESERVED” A SPOT BASED ON A RACIAL PREFERENCE. NOT ASIAN AMERICANS, NOT BLACK AMERICANS, NOT WHITE AMERICANS, NOT LATINO AMERICANS, NOT A BLACK OBAMA, NOT A WHITE OBAMA, NOT A HALF WHITE OBAMA, and NOT A HALF BLACK OBAMA. YOUR SENSE OF ENTILEMENT BASED ON RACE IS SIMPLY ASTOUNDING!
ADMISSIONS SHOULD BE RACE BLIND AND COLOR BLIND. I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE RACE OF OBAMA IN ADMISSIONS TO ELITE SCHOOLS AND THE ADMISSIONS COMMITTEES SHOULD NOT HAVE KNOWN THE RACE OF OBAMA. BUT THEY DID KNOW, AND WITH THEIR RACE BASED AA ADMISSIONS PROCESS, THESE ADMISSIONS COMMITTEES GAVE OBAMA RACIAL PREFERENCES, IN ADMISSIONS, OR A LEG UP AND A TREMENDOUS BOOST
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS??
That’s what the readers of “Discriminations” have been trying to tell you in a most polite and civil manner, but you lack the ability to understand this or if you do understand, you have a complete denial of the facts. I will give the benefit of the doubt and attribute your refusal to accept the facts as a result of your ignorance, and not your lack of intelligence. Otherwise, I will call your postings RACIST!! Frankly speaking, I think you are intelligent enough to understand the readers/posters, and your refusal to accept their postings is simply RACIST!
BTW, even Al Sharpton said Obama was “not black enough”. You should ask the Reverend Al what he had in mind when he made this statement.
NO ONE IS ATTACKING ANY ANYONE HERE EXCEPT YOU, COBRA.
I am pointing out the flaws in your posts favoring race preferences which are inherently RACIST. Obama was an example of a major beneficiary of these race preferences, including his admission into Harvard Law Review. This is happening today because of political correctness in the academic community and American politics, not because race preferences are morally just and correct. The tide is turning in American politics to get rid of race preferences in admissions to elite schools.
Hey Cobra, I also know some Asian American Harvard Law graduates who graduated magna cum laude, as well as summa cum laude, who were either denied admissions to Harvard Law Review or saw Law Review as racially biased in its admissions. Some of these students did not even to apply to Law Review, simply because the admissions process to Harvard Review is TAINTED with RACIAL PREFERENCES. The institution of Law Review at Harvard is tainted because of RACE and de facto racial quotas are used in its admissions process.
Cobra,
Please make note of the following:
Obama’s daughters also would definitely be given racial preferences in admissions to the elite colleges, whether they needed them or not. That’s the kicker, when the present system of preferences includes race as a MAJOR DETERMINANT in the zero sum game of admissions using “diversity” as the rationalization for the race preference. This system of preferences may also include the ones for legacies, children of rich and famous VIPs, and the athletic preferences which benefit whites in admissions to the Ivies/Elites, but not exclusively. Collectively these preferences are known as “affirmation action for affluent whites” according to WSJ writer, Daniel Golden. However, blacks can also be beneficiaries of the said preferences.
Obama’s daughters may be beneficiaries of all these preferences, including the race preference, WHETHER OR NOT THEY WILL EVER NEED THEM FOR ADMISSIONS in our current admissions process to the Ivies/Elites.
In any case, they will be a shoo-in for admissions, since they will have the best chances any of the applicants, if and when they apply with the current admissions process in place.
The other KICKER in all this is that we may NEVER KNOW whether or not they will need race based AA for admissions by meeting a lower bar and being given a leg up, if the present system of admissions is used. They may have a “star” next to their accomplishments for many observers, as Barry Bonds will have a “star” on his 755 record breaking home run baseball, thereby tainting his accomplishment.
Cobra,
You said, “Well, if he’s only “half-black”, shouldn’t you only be criticizing him “half” as much for racial preferences? By your theory, Obama deserves only “half” of your contempt, because technically, he’s “half” white, and therefore, at least half of him “deserved” a spot, and was “entitled” to be at Harvard with the other white kids?”
NO ONE IS “ENTITILED TO” OR “DESERVED” A SPOT BASED ON A RACIAL PREFERENCE. NOT ASIAN AMERICANS, NOT BLACK AMERICANS, NOT WHITE AMERICANS, NOT LATINO AMERICANS, NOT A BLACK OBAMA, NOT A WHITE OBAMA, NOT A HALF WHITE OBAMA, and NOT A HALF BLACK OBAMA. YOUR SENSE OF ENTILEMENT BASED ON RACE IS SIMPLY ASTOUNDING!
ADMISSIONS SHOULD BE RACE BLIND AND COLOR BLIND. I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE RACE OF OBAMA IN ADMISSIONS TO ELITE SCHOOLS AND THE ADMISSIONS COMMITTEES SHOULD NOT HAVE KNOWN THE RACE OF OBAMA. BUT THEY DID KNOW, AND WITH THEIR RACE BASED AA ADMISSIONS PROCESS, THESE ADMISSIONS COMMITTEES GAVE OBAMA RACIAL PREFERENCES, IN ADMISSIONS, OR A LEG UP AND A TREMENDOUS BOOST
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS??
That’s what the readers of “Discriminations” have been trying to tell you in a most polite and civil manner, but you lack the ability to understand this or if you do understand, you have a complete denial of the facts. I will give the benefit of the doubt and attribute your refusal to accept the facts as a result of your ignorance, and not your lack of intelligence. Otherwise, I will call your postings RACIST!! Frankly speaking, I think you are intelligent enough to understand the readers/posters, and your refusal to accept their postings is simply RACIST!
BTW, even Al Sharpton said Obama was “not black enough”. You should ask the Reverend Al what he had in mind when he made this statement.
NO ONE IS ATTACKING ANY ANYONE HERE EXCEPT YOU, COBRA.
I am pointing out the flaws in your posts favoring race preferences which are inherently RACIST. Obama was an example of a major beneficiary of these race preferences, including his admission into Harvard Law Review. This is happening today because of political correctness in the academic community and American politics, not because race preferences are morally just and correct. The tide is turning in American politics to get rid of race preferences in admissions to elite schools.
Hey Cobra, I also know some Asian American Harvard Law graduates who graduated magna cum laude, as well as summa cum laude, who were either denied admissions to Harvard Law Review or saw Law Review as racially biased in its admissions. Some of these students did not even to apply to Law Review, simply because the admissions process to Harvard Law Review is TAINTED with RACIAL PREFERENCES. The institution of Law Review at Harvard is tainted because of RACE and de facto racial quotas are used in its admissions process.
Discriminations readers, I’d like to address you all at this time.
I sincerely hope you appreciate what a great learning opportunity my fellow posters have been providing here over the past few days. I type this with no snark or sarcasm.
I want you to work with me here. Free your mind–and listen to what ACF and E is REALLY saying, and why it proves my point about the MINDSET of far too many of America.
ACF writes:
>>>”I simply state facts…Historically, whites obtained their positions by merit.”
Now people, hey…I give the benefit of the doubt to a whole lot of fables and old wives tales in my time. But…
What???!!!?
ACF wants people to believe that HISTORICALLY, with Whites, it’s WHAT you know and not WHO you know. That there really wasn’t and still ISN’T anything to nepotism, cronyism, fraternalism, legacies, backscratching, old boys networking, interlocking directorates, and quid pro quo.
Rich White kids from powerful families get into Ivy League schools because they are ALWAYS the most academically qualified.
White-owned Firms with political connections get the contracts because they’re ALWAYS the lowest bidder and the most capable of doing the work.
…
Not even the most ardent anti-affirmative action type can possibly believe America was/is this unfathomable meritocracy that ACF paints.
ACF writes:
>>>”Unfortunately, whites have to work at least twice as hard as blacks in order to get jobs and promotions.”
Perhaps ACF hasn’t boned up on his American History, in regards to whether there’s ALWAYS been “equality” in regards to hiring Whites, particularly White Men.
I’m here for you, buddy. We can make this a “teaching moment.”
E’s is a slightly different case.
E writes:
>>>”If one is black, and a magna cum laude, one IS GIVEN A RACIAL PREFERENCE OVER OTHER non-black and non-preferred higher ranked students (whites/Asians) who are even summa cum laude students or other higher ranked magna cum laude students.”
OK, perhaps in your zeal to discredit and attack Senator Obama (you would have the reader believe that graduating from Harvard Law School Magna Cum Laude was a mark of SHAME), perhaps you might read a little more about the process for selecting a President of the Review:
From the NY Times:
>>>”Along with 40-odd classmates, he won a precious spot on the law review at the end of his first year through grades and a writing competition. But the next year, when other students implored him to run for the presidency, he demurred; he wanted to return to community work in Chicago, he said, and the credential would be no help. Late in the process, he finally agreed, saying he might be uniquely able to heal the review’s partisan divisions.
The election was an all-day affair with the ego-crushing drama of a reality TV show. Inside Pound Hall, the editors picked apart the intellectual and social skills of the 19 contenders, eliminating them in batches. At the last moment, the conservative faction, its initial candidates defeated, threw its support to Mr. Obama. “Whatever his politics, we felt he would give us a fair shake,” said Bradford Berenson, a former associate White House counsel in the Bush administration.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/us/politics/28obama.html?pagewanted=print
Again, I’m trying not to turn this thread into an Obama ’08 commercial, but with every post you make E, you’re proving my point about the mindset of far too many in America–
“No Black Achievement need go unpunished, and no Black Success is beyond disdain.”
–Cobra
Cobra,
You must have seen the movies “Barbarians at the Gate” or “Wall Street” one too many times.
I have no doubt that there have been whites who have produced enormous wealth by being productive in this society and have passed their wealth on to their children. I say congratulations to these people – they are shining examples to what you might aspire.
Meanwhile, this is not the realm of most hard-working white people. Instead, many of them have worked tirelessly to come from nothing (where food was scarce) to rising up the ranks of society, despite suffering continuous discrimination. Now, this took lifetimes of many days and nights of hard work, and several generations too. But that’s ok, these people are hard-working and didn’t demand that things be given to them through affirmative discrimination.
If you think that whites mostly became productive by taking from blacks, then much of what I have written above will sound bizarre. Note that it is very difficult for a white people to become wealthy by stealing the product of black people because the latter is paltry. Do you think that Rockefellar became wealthy by stealing the position of a more qualified black person? Which black person was that? Do you think Bill Gates is rich because he stole something from a black person? You think that all the white people over the past hundred years who became wealthy did so by taking the wealth of black people? What wealth?
ACF writes:
>>>”Note that it is very difficult for a white people to become wealthy by stealing the product of black people because the latter is paltry. Do you think that Rockefellar became wealthy by stealing the position of a more qualified black person? Which black person was that? Do you think Bill Gates is rich because he stole something from a black person? You think that all the white people over the past hundred years who became wealthy did so by taking the wealth of black people? What wealth?”
John, I–I swear to you and I will testify under OATH that I have not or am not currently paying any monetary reward to ACF and E to make posts here.
I’ve never met them in 3D…and I certainly haven’t colluded with them prior to posting any commentary.
That’s why I have chosen to simply address the reader’s of Discriminations, especially the young ones, in high school and college, whose mindsets haven’t been fossilized into this “whites are exemplary and blacks are substandard” dynamic.
On this thread, I am speaking to them.
Read, my brothers and sisters. The Internet is right here at your fingertips. Here’s some “homework”…
Look up:
“The 1830 Indian Removal Act”
“The 1862 Homestead Act”
“The 1790 Naturalization Act”
California’s “Alien Land Laws”
And this little tidbit…
>>>”When slavery ended, its legacy lived on not only in the impoverished condition of Black people but in the wealth and prosperity that accrued to white slaveowners and their descendents. Economists who try to place a dollar value on how much white Americans have profited from 200 years of unpaid slave labor, including interest, begin their estimates at $1 TRILLION.”
http://www.newsreel.org/guides/race/whiteadv.htm
And that was work done by those who actually MADE it here, and survived–as Matthew White explains:
>>>”Looking at all the scholarship on the subject, it looks like, at the very least, 35% of those enslaved in Africa died before they were ever put to work in America. On the other hand, at least 20% of them survived. Between these extreme possibilites (35-80%), the most likely mortality rate is 62%.
In terms of absolute numbers, the lowest possible (and only barely possible at that) death toll we can put on the trans-Atlantic slave trade is 6 million. If we assume the absolute worst, a death toll as high as 60 million is at the very edge of possibility; however, the likeliest number of deaths would fall somewhere from 15 to 20 million…
…If 5 million slaves were shipped in the 18th Century (the busiest century, see Hugh Thomas, above), then the 18th Century death toll could be around 8.1 million. (=5/11*17.8)
Keep in mind that these numbers only count the dead among the first generation of slaves brought from Africa. Subsequent generations would contribute additional premature or unnatural deaths.”
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatv.htm
Discriminations readers, you can disagree with me on Affirmative Action. There are good arguments to made, and several posters here make them well.
Beware, however, the rhetoric from some here, who do not seem to want to deal with historical American truths regarding race, wealth accumulation and equality.
Beware of the cold, haunting undertow of racial superiority that seems to lurk just beneath the surface of far too many poster commentaries.
And Beware, especially, of whom you choose as “allies” on your initiatives and movements, particularly those who belong to groups that aren’t the focus of your ire…
…this week.
–Cobra
Cobra said,
” And Beware, especially, of whom you choose as “allies” on your initiatives and movements, particularly those who belong to groups that aren’t the focus of your ire……this week.”
You are obviously playing the RACE CARD to the hilt. Do you have anything else under your sleeve to justify your outrageous sense of entitlement based on race and skin color which is inherently racist to the core?
For some reason, which remains unknown, E had trouble posting the following comment, which I post for him:
THE SELECTION PROCESS FOR HARVARD LAW REVIEW, ESSENTIALLY AN HONOR SOCIETY, IS TAINTED WITH RACIAL PREFERENCES FAVORING APPLICANTS BASED ON SKIN COLOR
Cobra said,
“OK, perhaps in your zeal to discredit and attack Senator Obama (you would have the reader believe that graduating from Harvard Law School Magna Cum Laude was a mark of SHAME), perhaps you might read a little more about the process for selecting a President of the Review:”
======================
BLACKS ARE GIVEN A BOOST AND PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT IN ADMISSIONS TO HARVARD LAW REVIEW BASED ON THEIR SKIN COLOR.
In my opinion, this process demeans every black, if there are any, who are able to meet the standards for admission to Law Review that the rest of the group has met in gaining admission. If anything, this policy presents serious doubts regarding every black who is admitted, even though he/she may have met the minimal requirements, including getting magna cum laude as a requirement. The Latin honor of magna cum laude is a meritorious one, but admissions into Harvard Law Review is not necessarily meritorious, because, race based AA is used for blacks, even for magna cum laude blacks.
http://www.harvardlawreview.org/membership.shtml
2007 Harvard Law Review Membership Selection Policies
Excerpts:
“In recent years, the number of students completing the competition has ranged from 200 to 255. Between 41 and 43 students are invited to join the Review each year.”
“Fourteen editors (two from each 1L section) are selected based on a combination of their first-year grades and their competition scores. Twenty editors are selected based solely on their competition scores. The remaining editors are selected on a discretionary basis. Some of these discretionary slots may be used to implement the Review’s affirmative action policy.”
AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION POLICY AND A DISCRETIONARY BASIS ARE USED FOR BLACKS GIVING THEM PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT BASED SOLELY ON SKIN COLOR IN THEIR ADMISSIONS TO HARVARD LAW REVIEW.
This means the whole selection process is TAINTED, because selection is based on race with de facto racial quotas.
Again, Obama was magna cum laude, but SO WHAT?
There are many magna cum laude and summa cum laude whites and Asians, who were more qualified and were denied admissions to Law Review in this ZERO SUM GAME based on race preferences.
The ONLY WAY to erase these doubts that the readers/posters have is to ELIMINATE the policy of race preferences in admissions to Harvard Law Review. The selection process is absolutely LUDICROUS!
You cannot have your cake and eat it at the same time, Cobra.
Thank God, the Nobel Prizes in Science and Medicine or the Lasker Awards in Medical Research are not given with a race based Affirmative Action policy favoring a winner with the preferred skin color. God help us all if this happens.
BTW, Obama is an Affirmative Action baby, because he was not a stellar student and received race preferences in his admissions to Columbia College, as well as Harvard Law School. Please reread my previous postings.
Obama’s election as the President of the Harvard Law Review is likely due more to his political skills than his academic skills over the other candidates.
John writes:
>>>”In my opinion, this process demeans every black, if there are any, who are able to meet the standards for admission to Law Review that the rest of the group has met in gaining admission. If anything, this policy presents serious doubts regarding every black who is admitted, even though he/she may have met the minimal requirements, including getting magna cum laude as a requirement. The Latin honor of magna cum laude is a meritorious one, but admissions into Harvard Law Review is not necessarily meritorious, because, race based AA is used for blacks, even for magna cum laude blacks.”
Discriminations readers, as you can see, yet another has joined the chorous.
Can you read between the lines here, people? What John has joined E and ACF in saying is that, very simply–
–It just doesn’t matter.
Senator Barack Obama is still “less”, no matter how good his grades were at Harvard Law School, just like Eugene Robinson’s awards and accomplishments mean NOTHING.
You know, back in the late 1920′s, half a century before Affirmative-Action, (the “golden age” for American race relations, I suppose for some here), there was this other guy you should know about…
>>>”William Henry Hastie was one of the twentieth century’s leading African–American lawyers and jurists. He served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1949 to 1971, becoming the first African American to sit on a federal appellate court. Hastie also distinguished himself as an educator, a CIVIL RIGHTS attorney, and a public servant. He successfully argued major civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and was a leader in the effort to desegregate the U.S. military during WORLD WAR II. With CHARLES HAMILTON HOUSTON, his second cousin, Hastie dramatically improved the standing and reputation of Howard University Law School during the 1930s and 1940s.”
http://law.jrank.org/pages/7286/Hastie-William-Henry.html
Why do I bring him up? What’s the connection?
>>>”Hastie was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on November 17, 1904. In 1916 his family moved to Washington, D.C., so that he could attend Dunbar High School. Thus began an education at the same schools Houston had attended before him. Hastie graduated from Dunbar as class valedictorian in 1921 and went on to distinguish himself at Amherst College, where he graduated in 1925, again as valedictorian.”
http://law.jrank.org/pages/7286/Hastie-William-Henry.html
OK…Valedictorian in High School, and Amherst College, which even TODAY, is no “party school.”
But still–what’s the connection to this…
>>>”After college Hastie spent two years teaching mathematics and science at a New Jersey school, then enrolled at Harvard Law School. There he served on the editorial board of the Harvard Law Review, becoming only the second African-American to do so. He received a bachelor of laws degree from Harvard in 1930 and a doctor of JURISPRUDENCE degree in 1933.”
http://law.jrank.org/pages/7286/Hastie-William-Henry.html
Hastie went on to make history, as the first African-American to sit on the Federal Bench, and was also the mentor of Thurgood Marshall. He was a pioneer in American Civil Rights successfully arguing case after case in front of the Supreme Court.
Readers, my point is this.
William Henry Hastie accomplished all of that, inspite of being born in the Jim Crow South (Negative Action, WHITE racial preferences).
Do you think whites of his era gave him any LESS criticism, disdain and derision about his acheivements than Senator Obama has received in here–especially when Hastie fought for the desegregation of the US Military during his stint as civilian aide to the Secretary of War under FDR?
LOL, of course not.
They discredited him and maligned him even worse. That’s the indellible pattern of American History in regards to African-Americans. They’re forces that are going to attack and devalue us whatever the status of Affirmative-Action is.
It just doesn’t matter.
The late William Henry Hastie did leave us who flail against the wailing winds a warning that minority readers of Discriminations should take seriously:
“ALWAYS BE PREPARED. YOUR OPPONENT WILL HAVE THE ADVANTAGE OF COLORLESSNESS.”
—WILLIAM HENRY HASTIE
Amen, Your Honor.
–Cobra
Cobra,
DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS??
That’s what the readers of “Discriminations” have been trying to tell you in a most polite and civil manner, but you lack the ability to understand this or if you do understand, you have a complete denial of the facts. I will give the benefit of the doubt and attribute your refusal to accept the facts as a result of your ignorance, and not your lack of intelligence. Otherwise, I will call your postings RACIST!! Frankly speaking, I think you are intelligent enough to understand the readers/posters, and your refusal to accept their postings is simply RACIST!
BTW, even Al Sharpton said Obama was “not black enough”. You should ask the Reverend Al what he had in mind when he made this statement.
NO ONE IS ATTACKING ANY ANYONE HERE EXCEPT YOU, COBRA.
I am pointing out the flaws in your posts favoring race preferences which are inherently RACIST. Obama was an example of a major beneficiary of these race preferences, including his admission into Harvard Law Review. This is happening today because of political correctness in the academic community and American politics, not because race preferences are morally just and correct. The tide is turning in American politics to get rid of race preferences in admissions to elite schools.
Hey Cobra, I also know some Asian American Harvard Law graduates who graduated magna cum laude, as well as summa cum laude, who were either denied admissions to Harvard Law Review or saw Law Review as racially biased in its admissions. Some of these students did not even to apply to Law Review, simply because the admissions process to Harvard Law Review is TAINTED with RACIAL PREFERENCES. The institution of Law Review at Harvard is tainted because of RACE and de facto racial quotas are used in its admissions process.
Supreme Court Clarence Thomas talks about THE TAINT OF RACIAL PREFERENCE AT YALE LAW SCHOOL.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/21767
In new book, Clarence Thomas directs ire toward Yale Law
Isaac Arnsdorf
Contributing Reporter
October 10, 2007
Clarence Thomas LAW ’74 appraises his Yale Law degree at 15 cents. He leaves it buried in his basement.
In the U.S. Supreme Court justice’s new autobiography, “My Grandfather’s Son,” Thomas divulges details about the origin of his rift with the law school he once hoped would nurture his aspirations in the legal world. His memoir presents a portrait of an embittered jurist who has long ranked his alma mater high on his list of enemies and has remained pointedly aloof toward the close-knit community of Law School alumni.
The book has sparked debate nationwide and among current and former law school affiliates, many of whom question Thomas’ harsh condemnation of the institution that some say helped pave his road to Washington.
When Law School Dean Harold Koh met with Thomas in his Supreme Court chambers last year, Thomas “made it clear that he had greatly enjoyed his time at Yale Law School, and that he had great affection for his fellow students and for several professors who are still here,” Koh said in an e-mail.
But the memoir gives a gloomier impression.
Thomas writes that he was “tricked” into attending Yale Law School and that it was a “mistake.” He reveals that he considered transferring and says his degree “bore the taint of racial preference.”
E writes:
>>>”NO ONE IS ATTACKING ANY ANYONE HERE EXCEPT YOU, COBRA.”
That’s just incorrect, sir.
Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.
>>>”Eugene Robinson, who in all liklihood owes his regular appearances on the editorial pages of the Washington Post to affirmative action, regards Clarence Thomas’s presence on the Supreme Court as a good argument against affirmative action.”
Posted by John Rosenberg on October 2, 2007 3:18 PM
Translation: There shouldn’t be an African-American collumnist at the Washington Post, because he can’t be as qualified as any available White man.
>>>”Eugene Robinson and Clarence Thomas are both quota hires.”
Posted by: ACF | October 3, 2007 9:34 AM
Translation: Eugene Robinson can’t possibly be educated and accomplished enough to get that job. He’s a Black man for, pete’s sake.
>>>”Even getting elected as the President of the Harvard Law Review is full of “doubt”, since membership in the Harvard Law Review is determined by spots open to blacks based on the race of the Harvard Law students as a determing factor for “diversity”. The position of the President of Law Review is an elected and political one, tinged with “political correctness”. Remember that Obama was elected as President of the Harvard Law Review.”
Posted by: E | October 8, 2007 1:03 PM
Translation: African-Americans are not capable of acheiving the high grades and writing skills required to make the Harvard Law Review, moreover, be elected President of said organization.
E, those are examples of “attacks.” What the people above are saying is nothing especially different from the same racial inferiority claims many conservative Whites have said about African-Americans for centuries.
To many white conservatives THEN, and most apparently NOW, is that any achievement by Blacks must be questioned and scrutinized. African-American accomplishments, in their view, must be “tainted” in some way.
The reason I brought up the Honorable William Henry Hastie is because his life is unimpeachable by this threads anti-affirmative action type standards. I’m also not that naive to believe that anti-affirmative action types won’t besmirch and discredit him here as well.
Perhaps MJ trips onto something in this post:
>>>”Racial preference on the other hand is against the US Constitution, violates individual civil rights, and is against the will of at least 60% of the population. Speaking as if the two are interchangeable allows dishonest leftists to propogate the idea that anyone anti-RP is really objecting to including blacks (based on the above example of AA) and is therefore advocating a return to Jim Crow.”
As an HONEST guy from the left, I can’t help but notice that the inference made by most anti-affirmative action types here is that the Jim Crow system was better.
It certainly was for White Males.
And that’s the REAL bottom line for some of you, isn’t it?
–Cobra
Hey Cobra,
TRANSLATION:
Race based AA PRESENTS the taint of racial preference. Abolish race preferences and race based AA, and you eliminate the DOUBT from everyone, INCLUDING AFRICAN AMERICANS THEMSELVES, by whatever definition one defines “black” or African American, including the “one drop blood of theory” definition for blacks.
Al Sharpton stated that “Obama was not black enough”. He is half white, and if you prefere, half black.
The use of race preferences in admissions to an honor society, such as the Harvard Law Review, demeans every single black who is admitted, whether the bar was lowered or not for each black admission.
Abolish all race preferences and race based Period. Then and only then, will the doubt be abolished, rightfully or not.
You cannot have your piece of cake and eat it too! Who do you think you are kidding?? Certainly not the black admittees into this honor society. C’mon, Cobra, using race preferences favoring blacks for admissions into the Harvard Law Review is simply absurb and insane and LUDICROUS.
Comprende, Cobra?
“As an HONEST guy from the left…”
Sorry, but you left any pretense of having that quality in the dust long ago, as readers here have noticed.
Cobra said, ["As an HONEST guy from the left..."
Sorry, but you left any pretense of having that quality in the dust long ago, as readers here have noticed.]
You are obviously talking to yourself and in denial of the facts.
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/21767
US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says his degree from the Yale Law School, “bore the taint of racial preference.”
You cannot have your piece of cake and eat it too! Who do you think you are kidding?? You are certainly not kidding the black members, who benefited from race preferences to this honor society. C’mon, Cobra, the use of race preferences favoring blacks for admissions into the Harvard Law Review is ridiculous, insane and LUDICROUS.
In order to eliminate the doubt, eliminate the race preferences.
The Nobel Prizes in Science and Medicine or the Lasker Awards in Medical Research are not given with a race based Affirmative Action policy favoring a winner with the preferred skin color. God help us all if this happens. The Nobel Prizes in the Sciences, Medicine, and Economics in world competition are open to everyone, regardless of one’s color, race, creed and ethnicity.
There are no race preferences given to the winners of the Gold Medal in the International Math and Physics Olympiads, open to everyone, regardless of one’s color, race, creed and ethnicity.
There are no race preferences for the winners of the Fields Medal given in world competition, open to everyone, regardless of one’s color, race, creed and ethnicity.
Race based AA PRESENTS the TAINT of racial preference.
E writes:
>>>”Race based AA PRESENTS the taint of racial preference. Abolish race preferences and race based AA, and you eliminate the DOUBT from everyone, INCLUDING AFRICAN AMERICANS THEMSELVES, by whatever definition one defines “black” or African American, including the “one drop blood of theory” definition for blacks.”
Nonsense. Many Whites in America believe Blacks to be inferior. They even express this in posts on this blog. Many Whites feel that Blacks are less intelligent, less capable, less moral…less everything. This snake oil you’re trying to sell about eliminating AA to eliminate doubt in White people is deserves a spot in a Leno monologue.
>>>”Race based AA PRESENTS the TAINT of racial preference.”
America is TAINTED by racism, sexism and classism. That you only seek to address preferences that don’t benefit Whites, justify American History in regards to race.
>>>”US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says his degree from the Yale Law School, “bore the taint of racial preference.”
You cannot have your piece of cake and eat it too! Who do you think you are kidding?? You are certainly not kidding the black members, who benefited from race preferences to this honor society. C’mon, Cobra, the use of race preferences favoring blacks for admissions into the Harvard Law Review is ridiculous, insane and LUDICROUS.”
Since when did Clarence Thomas speak for all African-Americans? He doesn’t even speak for HIMSELF on the COURT unless it’s to promote his book, of course.
I know it’s tradition among many white conservatives and anti-affirmative action types to glorify any mascochistic minority who self-flaggelates. I suppose this helps ease their psycological discomfort with minorities who DARE raise issues about the WHITE RACIAL PREFRENCES which shaped this nation.
I simply ask you this, E:
Do you believe that EVERY employed White man in America was the MOST qualified person for the position he occupies, and if NOT, what is your initiative to solve that problem?
Mikem writes:
>>>”Sorry, but you left any pretense of having that quality in the dust long ago, as readers here have noticed.”
Is that all you’ve got, Mikey? Ad-hominems?
That’s a shame. If readers looked back at some of Mikem’s posts with me three years ago, he actually tried to make a Point.
Times they are achanging, huh?
–Cobra
Stop the eternal, every hour of your day, whining. You stated that you are “HONEST”. I pointed out that you have shown otherwise here, repeatedly.
That’s not an ad hominem. It’s a refutation of your stated falsehood.
Cobra said,
“America is TAINTED by racism, sexism and classism. That you only seek to address preferences that don’t benefit Whites, justify American History in regards to race.”
THE FOLLOWING ARE OPEN COMPETITIONS FOR THE WORLD COMMUNITY WHICH INCLUDES EVERY INDIVIDUAL IN EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, REGARDLESS OF THEIR RACE AND ETHNICITY, UNFETTERED AND NOT TAINTED BY RACIAL PREFERENCES IN ITS RESPECTIVE AWARDS.
In order to eliminate the doubt, and the TAINT, eliminate the race preferences IN ALL COMPETITIONS, INLUDING MEMBERSHIP INTO THE HARVARD LAW REVIEW, A SUPPOSED HONOR SOCIETY AT THE HARVARD LAW SCHOOL. THERE IS NO HONOR IN PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT GIVEN TO THE BLACKS BENEFICIARIES, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY THESE RACE PREFERENCES DEMEAN THE BLACKS WHO WERE NOT ADMITTED WITH RACE PREFERENCES.
The Nobel Prizes in Science and Medicine or the Lasker Awards in Medical Research are not given with a race based Affirmative Action policy favoring a winner with the preferred skin color. God help us all if this happens. The Nobel Prizes in the Sciences, Medicine, and Economics in world competition are open to everyone, regardless of one’s color, race, creed and ethnicity.
There are no race preferences given to the winners of the Gold Medal in the International Math and Physics Olympiads, open to everyone, regardless of one’s color, race, creed and ethnicity.
There are no race preferences for the winners of the Fields Medal given in world competition, open to everyone, regardless of one’s color, race, creed and ethnicity.
Race based AA is the EMBODIMENT of the TAINT of racial preference. Race based AA, in itself, is racist and the ones who are proponents of this policy are also RACISTS!
You and your ilk and your line of thinking would be left in the dust in true competition, unfettered and NOT TAINTED by race preferences and preferential treatment given to its competitors, and its winners based on skin color.
Cobra said,
” I simply ask you this, E:
Do you believe that EVERY employed White man in America was the MOST qualified person for the position he occupies, and if NOT, what is your initiative to solve that problem?”
If your declaration and question above is the justification for race preferences favoring blacks in elite school admissions, you have no basis for your position, morally or legally. Race preferences for blacks DO NOT WORK TO CLOSE THE RACIAL GAPS IN ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT. RACE PREFERENCES AND RACE BASED AA DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD FOR BLACKS. In fact, since the era of race based AA, these gaps have widen.
FACTS:
Black children from the wealthiest families have mean SAT scores lower than white/Asian children from families below the poverty line.
Black children of parents with graduate degrees have lower SAT scores than white/Asian children of parents with a high-school diploma or less.
Eliminate ALL preferential treatment in elite school admissions based on race and ethnicity, as well as the preferences favoring whites such as the legacy, children of rich and famous VIPs, and athletic preferences giving whites preferential treatment in general for the Ivies and elite schools, but not exclusively. Blacks are also beneficiaries of the aforementioned, including the race preference.
I personally favor socio-economic AA and a race and ethnic group BLIND admissions process. However, even socio-economic AA will not solve the problem for increasing the small numbers of blacks in elite schools, because the poorest Asians/whites from families with annual incomes under the poverty line and parents with only a high school education or less, OUTPERFORM on objective measures (SATs, testing, academic achievement, etc..) the richest blacks from families with annual incomes of over $70K (in 1995 dollars) or more and parents with college degrees. Therefore, if one is to use socio-economic factors, without the use of race, black numbers will still be low.
So, what is one to do? Obviously, the applicant, regardless of race, should be better prepared at the k-12 level before entering the Ivies/Elites. This is the only way to solve the problem. The causes for the underperformance of rich and affluent blacks, despite their abundance of financial and academic resources, are unknown and more research needs to be done to find the causes. These causes may include the “culture” of blacks in general, but for one to suggest cultural differences between different racial and ethnic groups as a cause will most certainly elicit charges of racism from the race preferentialists and pro race based AA advocates. Even for one to ask blacks and others to change their cultures is politically incorrect and don’t even think of suggesting “innate differences” between the groups.
SIMPLY, BLACKS MUST CHANGE THEIR CULTURE FROM WITHIN. NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO EFFECT CHANGE UNLESS BLACKS CHANGE THEMSELVES CULTURALLY FROM WITHIN.
E,
Caps aside, you still refuse to answer my question to you.
Do you believe that EVERY employed White man in America was the MOST qualified person for the position he occupies, and if NOT, what is your initiative to solve that problem?
Perhaps you answered it by IGNORING the question, giving some tacit approval the notion oft held by many blog posters here that “white skin” is a congenital indicator of qualification.
E writes:
>>>”However, even socio-economic AA will not solve the problem for increasing the small numbers of blacks in elite schools, because the poorest Asians/whites from families with annual incomes under the poverty line and parents with only a high school education or less, OUTPERFORM on objective measures (SATs, testing, academic achievement, etc..) the richest blacks from families with annual incomes of over $70K (in 1995 dollars) or more and parents with college degrees. Therefore, if one is to use socio-economic factors, without the use of race, black numbers will still be low.”
Excellent! We now at least have something to actually debate about. Notwithstanding the fact, of course, that Senator Barack Obama’s academic performance at Harvard Law School pokes holes in your argument, let me bring to this discussion some facts about American Academic Integrity:
>>>”>>>”According to a new report by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, cheating, stealing and lying by high school students have continued their alarming, decade-long upward spiral. A survey of 12,000 high school students showed that students admitting they cheated on an exam at least once in the past year jumped from 61% in 1992 to 74% in 2002; the number who stole something from a store within the past 12 months rose from 31% to 38%, while the percentage who say they lied to their teachers and parents also increased substantially.
The report, released as part of National CHARACTER COUNTS! Week (October 20-26), also reveals significant deterioration over the past two years: Cheating rose from 71% in 2000 to 74% in 2002, theft increased from 35% to 38%, and those who said they would be willing to lie to get a good job jumped from 28% to 39%.
The 2002 report also found that students who attend private religious schools were less likely to shoplift (35% vs. 39%) but more likely to cheat on exams (78% vs. 72%) and lie to teachers (86% vs. 81%). In addition, students participating in varsity sports cheated on exams at a higher rate than students who did not (78% vs. 73%).”
http://www.josephsoninstitute.org/Survey2002/survey2002-pressrelease.htm
But what about the SATs?
>>>”According to recent surveys done by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Joseph and Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina Del Rey, Calif., three out of five high school students and one in three college students admitted to cheating at least once on an exam — though the survey does not single out the College Boards. As reported by The Washington Post’s Richard Morin, “American kids are lying, cheating and stealing in what some researchers fear are unprecedented numbers.”
“I can tell you from experience at Churchill,” said Churchill senior Ivan Snyder, “it’s all over the place. Not hard-core cheating, substituting, Larry Adler-type cheating, but going back in sections and talking about it during the break. Even when I took the exam, I heard people talking about the test, telling people what was coming up . . . . Both times I took the SAT, I saw it. I was sort of shocked because I thought, ‘You know, this is the SAT. This doesn’t happen.’”
http://www.ugelow.com/1993/01/03/standardized-mess/
I know what you’re thinking…”Hey, Cobra—that’s an old article! You can’t cheat on the SATs NOW with all the safeguards!”
Wrong. In fact, cheating on the SATs is a cottage industry.
>>>”A professional test-taker will take an SAT exam for you, with a fake ID, for around $800. Yes, this is cheating. It’s unethical but not illegal…
Do you want a particular score? No problem. “Bob” is such a pro at taking tests that you can even set a target score. The most requested scores run between 1100-1200…
The Clients
“Bob” states that his clients are lazy, upper-middle class kids with professional parents that have not applied themselves in high school.
http://educationalissues.suite101.com/blog.cfm/hell_cheat_for_you
E, you go right on and keep thinking that every White face you see walking to school is Baby Einstein. The REAL truth is that there is a frightening amount of academic fraud out there…far too much to make blanket statements about White excellence. This is not of course to minimize the fact that many African-American students must place a greater emphasis on scholastic achievement, but you can’t sit here and truthfully claim every Cuthbert and Chauncey with straight A’s and high SAT’s “earned” them. Now, if you you’re going to deal with the reality of raising K-12 academic performances of African-American students, particularly on the SATs, maybe you should stop attacking African-Americans, and buy wholesale into the “we’re all one nation” argument and work to improve the health and well-being of all citizens.
Or you can give some handouts so that poor parents can afford “Bob’s” services like wealthy parents.
Same thing goes for EMPLOYMENT, E:
>>>”Research has shown about one-quarter of resumes contain lies or errors, and a full one-third of resumes submitted for jobs paying $50,000 or more include false information, Allan Schweyer, executive director of the Human Capital Institute, told New England HR executives recently.
More important, Schweyer argued, the resume is “a very poor instrument” in identifying good job candidates. That’s why, overwhelmingly, companies tend to hire people referred by trusted sources, he said – the old “It’s not what you know. It’s who you know.”
http://www.employmentdigest.net/2005/11/internet%E2%80%99s-changing-recruiting-practices/
>>>”Estimates of how many people have committed resume fraud in America range from 30 to 50 percent of all workers. Some are simple exaggerations of job achievements, others disguise the true reasons people left a former employer, while some claim phony educational credentials.”
http://www.bendweekly.com/Business/Career/9486.html
Huh? How can this be, E? Where is your illusion of “qualification” and “meritocracy”, now? Compound this with your notion that EVERY Black person is “tainted” by Affirmative Action, you argument begins to look more flimsy by the moment.
I’ll ask you again, (just for fun, because I know you won’t/can’t answer it)…
Do you believe that EVERY employed White man in America was the MOST qualified person for the position he occupies, and if NOT, what is your initiative to solve that problem?
–Cobra
Cobra said,
“Do you believe that EVERY employed White man in America was the MOST qualified person for the position he occupies, and if NOT, what is your initiative to solve that problem?”
SIMPLY, BLACKS MUST CHANGE THEIR CULTURE FROM WITHIN. NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO EFFECT CHANGE UNLESS BLACKS CHANGE THEMSELVES CULTURALLY FROM WITHIN.
RACE PREFERENCES of any kind are immoral and illegal. This holds true if the beneficiaries are persons with white, black, brown, yellow, red, purple OR ONE DROP OF BLACK BLOOD. You are so full of fluff and go off in tangents. You keep playing the race card and the victim which will be the cause of your complete demise.
Racial preferences never worked in world history, not in Nazi Germany or in Bosnia.
You have not addressed any of my arguments directly. Anyway, the tide of public opinion is turning against you.
Again, FACTS:
Black children from the wealthiest families have mean SAT scores lower than white/Asian children from families below the poverty line.
Black children of parents with graduate degrees have lower SAT scores than white/Asian children of parents with a high-school diploma or less.
Eliminate ALL preferential treatment in elite school admissions based on race and ethnicity, as well as the preferences favoring whites such as the legacy, children of rich and famous VIPs, and athletic preferences giving whites preferential treatment in general for the Ivies and elite schools, but not exclusively. Blacks are also beneficiaries of the aforementioned, including the race preference.
Keep ranting and raving and playing the victim and you will get nowhere.
Again, is the following too difficult for you to understand?
So, what is one to do? Obviously, the applicant, regardless of race, should be better prepared at the k-12 level before entering the Ivies/Elites. This is the only way to solve the problem. The causes for the underperformance of rich and affluent blacks, despite their abundance of financial and academic resources, are unknown and more research needs to be done to find the causes. These causes may include the “culture” of blacks in general, but for one to suggest cultural differences between different racial and ethnic groups as a cause will most certainly elicit charges of racism from the race preferentialists and pro race based AA advocates. Even for one to ask blacks and others to change their cultures is politically incorrect and don’t even think of suggesting “innate differences” between the groups.
Read the story of Princeton Professor of Physics, Daniel Tsui, who CO-INCIDENTALLY IS NOT WHITE!!
He attributes his success to HIS CULTURE AND HIS LOVE OF LEARNING.
Prof Tsui, Nobelist in Physics, stated, “Even today, I do not know the answer. Was it to do with the schooling I missed in my childhood? Maybe. Perhaps it was the Confucius in me, the faint voice I often heard when I was alone, that the only meaningful life is a life of learning.”
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1998/tsui-autobio.html
Daniel C. Tsui
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1998
Autobiography
Daniel C. Tsui I tend to partition my life into three compartments: childhood years in a remote village in the province of Henan in central China, schooling years in Hong Kong, and the years since I came to attend college in the United States. The only thread connecting them is the kindness, generosity and friendship from the people around me that I have experienced all my life.
My childhood memories are filled with the years of drought, flood and war which were constantly on the consciousness of the inhabitants of my over-populated village, but also with my parents’ self-sacrificing love and the happy moments they created for me. Like most other villagers, my parents never had the opportunity to learn how to read and write. They suffered from their illiteracy and their suffering made them determined not to have their children follow the same path at any and whatever cost to them. In early 1951, my parents seized the first and perhaps the only opportunity to have me leave them and their village to pursue education in so far away a place that neither they nor I knew how far it truly was.
In Hong Kong, I began my formal schooling at the sixth grade level with fear and trembling, mixed with some pride and elation. I remember the difficulties that I encountered in not knowing the Cantonese dialect in the beginning, but, even more vividly, the overwhelming kindness of schoolmates who went out of their way to help by offering me their friendship, bringing me into their circle, and taking me to their out-of-class activities. In the middle of my second year in Hong Kong, I entered Pui Ching Middle School, which was known for being outstanding, especially in natural science subjects. Many of the teachers there were overqualified. They were the brightest graduates of the best universities in China and under normal circumstances would have been highly accomplished scholars and scientists. The upheaval of war in China, however, forced them to hibernate in Hong Kong teaching high school kids. They might not have been the best teachers pedagogically, but their intellects and their visions inspired us. Even their casual remarks and the stories from their romantic reminiscences of the glorious days at Peking University could leave indelible marks on us. It was they, I think, who in their unconscious ways dared us students, living in a most commercialized city, to look beyond the dollar sign and see the exploration of new frontiers in human knowledge as an intellectually rewarding and challenging pursuit.
I graduated from Pui Ching in 1957 and was admitted to the medical school of National Taiwan University in Taiwan. However, since it was unclear at the time how my parents were and whether I could return to them in China, I stayed in Hong Kong and entered a two-year special program run by the government to prepare Chinese high school graduates for the University of Hong Kong. In late spring the next year, I received the surprising good news from the United States that I was admitted with a full scholarship to my church pastor’s Lutheran alma mater, Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. I arrived on campus right after Labor Day 1958, and there spent the best three years of my life. It was there that I had for the first time the leisure to wrestle with my Lutheran faith and to think through and make some sense out of my life experience. In Hong Kong, I was always extremely busy as a scholarship student, heavily involved with church activities and responsibilities, and worn-out from long distance daily commuting. Here, I was free to read, to learn and to think through things at my own pace. I knew from the start that I would go to graduate school, and the choice of subject and school was never a problem. C.N. Yang and T.D. Lee were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957 and they both went to the University of Chicago. Yang and Lee were the role models for Chinese students of my generation and going to the University of Chicago for a graduate education was the ideal pilgrimage.
The University of Chicago was intense and intellectual. I liked its being in a major city, its cosmopolitan atmosphere, and even its grimy buildings and the austerity they appeared to convey. There, I luckily met and fell in love with Linda Varland, an undergraduate in the college, and we were married after her graduation. I was also fortunate that Royal Stark, who had just joined the physics faculty as a solid state experimentalist, took me on as a research assistant in the building-up of his laboratory. I realized quite early that I wanted to do experimental physics and that I lacked the aptitude for colossal experimental setups and also the taste for grandeur. I wanted to do tabletop experiments and be allowed to tinker. Royal Stark trusted me and let me try my hands on everything in his laboratory. I was given the best opportunity to learn from the bottom up: from engineer drawing, soldering, machining, and design, to construction and building of our laboratory apparatus. By the time I received my Ph.D., I was confident that I could make a living using the technical skills I had learned there. Since I could always fall back on a job using my technical skills, I reasoned, why not then take a risk and try a research position doing something entirely novel and at the same time intellectually challenging.
I left Chicago in early spring 1968 and took a position in Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey to do research in solid state physics. I found myself a niche in semiconductor research, though I never got into the main stream either in semiconductor physics, which was mostly optics and high energy band-structures, or its use in device applications. I wandered into a new frontier, which was dubbed the physics of two-dimensional electrons. In February 1982, shortly after the discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect, I moved to Princeton and started teaching.
Many of my friends and esteemed colleagues had asked me: “Why did you choose to leave Bell Laboratories and go to Princeton University?”. Even today, I do not know the answer. Was it to do with the schooling I missed in my childhood? Maybe. Perhaps it was the Confucius in me, the faint voice I often heard when I was alone, that the only meaningful life is a life of learning. What better way is there to learn than through teaching!
From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1998, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1999
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1998
Cobra,
Please read the following.
Arthur Hu has got it right. His article 10 years ago hit the nail on the head and is still true today.
http://www.nationalreview.com/15sept97/hu091597.html
AMERICA’S SCHOOLS
E D U C A T I O NA N DR A C E
The performance of minority students in affluent areas refutes the prevailing educational shibboleths.
ARTHUR HU Mr. Hu is a writer living in Kirkland, Washington..
DESEGREGATION is at a crossroads. As many analysts are declaring the integration experiment a failure, Harvard’s desegregation guru, Gary Orfield, keeps telling us that minority education could be fixed if only we desegregated more. Educators and the media routinely slam city schools for poor minority performance while holding up affluent suburban districts as models because of their better test scores. Yet, if Orfield is right that segregated districts don’t produce equal outcomes, no one has answered the more important question, which is whether “integrated” districts produce equal outcomes.
Oddly, while the courts have used inequality as the justification for busing, Orfield himself notes in his 1991 book The Closing Door that there isn’t much direct evidence that busing creates more equality. Almost as a footnote, he concedes that you would have to examine data broken down by race within mixed districts to prove that busing actually resulted in better performance for minorities.
After some cursory research — a few phone calls to local school districts, a ride on the Internet — I tracked down reports that do chart test scores and grades against race, not only in the worst but also in the best districts. The reason that people like Gary Orfield don’t have the numbers is that it’s safer to uphold the myth that minorities will perform as well as their white peers in good suburban schools than to expose the reality that the racial gap exists even in the best suburbs.
Test scores and grades for blacks in integrated urban neighborhoods aren’t any better than those in predominantly minority ghetto areas. Some affluent suburbs did no better than nearby urban areas, and even at the best suburban schools blacks on average lagged behind their white classmates. But a bigger secret is that even the poorest Asians tended to get better grades — if not test scores — than more affluent whites. Asians from poorer suburbs consistently outscored Euro-Americans in nearby more affluent suburbs. For all the talk about the superiority of schools in Japan or Korea, Asian-Americans are also nearly two years ahead in math, just as far ahead of their classmates as students in their ancestral lands are, even when they go to the same schools that fail other American minorities.
In short, predominantly minority schools have low test scores because minorities have lower test scores regardless of the segregation factor, not the other way around. And American schools would match Asian schools if they were dominated by Asian students. Perhaps that chilling reality is the reason that every newspaper I have contacted has chosen to ignore these data.
California’s 1994 CLAS (California Learning Assessment System) test introduced massive multiculturalism and had several questions for which more than one answer was counted as correct. Yet nobody noticed that elementary-school blacks and Hispanics did just as poorly in predominantly minority areas of Oakland, East Palo Alto, and Alum Rock as in legally integrated San Francisco. At Grade 10, only 10 to 15 per cent of black students got 3 or better in math whether they went to integrated San Francisco, the segregated communities of Contra Costa County, Oakland, or Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara County. Asians continue to stampede into Cupertino, home of the founders of Apple Computers, because of its excellent schools. But US News (April 21, 1997) highlighted the poor performance of blacks there, and they lagged the state average on the CLAS.
Meanwhile, the Asians of the Chinatown ghettos in San Francisco scored as well as children of affluent engineers in Santa Clara County. Asians in Santa Clara County scored as well as whites in posh San Ramon Valley or Cupertino. Asians in Cupertino scored as well as whites in Palo Alto, the best district in the Bay Area. Blacks in San Ramon Valley scored no better than state average for all races, while Asians there outscored every other race and community.
The Seattle Times annually slams Seattle’s math scores (just the 50th-percentile for Washington as a whole) compared to suburban Bellevue’s 67th-percentile performance, and highlights the race gap as an urban problem. But broken down by race, whites score at about 67 in either city, but blacks score worse in Bellevue, at 34 compared to 40 for Seattle. Seattle has an “African-American Academy,” but its test scores are virtually indistinguishable from the city average. Suburban inequality is much the same at nearby Issaquah (41) and Redmond (35), even though there are no minority ghettos in the suburbs, and there has never been any news coverage of racial differences in performance there.
Seattle is one of the few cities where Asians are so poor and white parents so highly educated that white students score better even in math. But Asians still have the highest grade-point average in the city. In the suburbs, Asian 8th-graders score 74 in 59th-percentile blue-collar Renton, hopping rungs over whites in 67th-percentile Bellevue. Asians in Bellevue score 82, equal to top-ranked Mercer Island’s 83. Asians in Mercer Island score an astounding 90, not far below the average at the best Lakeside private school.
Meanwhile, nobody ever asks in print why fourth-graders in nearly all-white (but poor) Edmonds or Mukilteo scored only 34 to 44, as badly as Seattle’s blacks. Nobody ever demanded that they be bused into richer school districts to remedy this inequity.
The Boston Globe also offered no explanation why black students who entered the Metco voluntary busing program from Boston with 50th-percentile scores didn’t score as well as their new suburban classmates in 88th-percentile Newton. Yet the whites from working-class Revere or Brockton have an SAT average of 411 — near the national black average. No Italian-American Revere youth dripping with gold chains and roaring upon his ‘82 firebird could expect that sending him to Newton for four years would turn him into Ivy League material. Yet the Harvard gurus remain mystified.
Fairfax County near Washington, D.C., has a 569 (1996) SAT math average, good enough for the University of California at Riverside. But Fairfax’s black average of 465 isn’t any better than “Can’t we just get along” Los Angeles. The black suburb of Prince George’s County is among the top 30 per cent of U.S. counties in average household income. The school district proudly claims that its black students perform as well as their “counterparts” throughout the state — but that’s only their black counterparts. Measured by Maryland’s MSPAP (Maryland School Performance Assessment Program) test, it ranks as 22 of 24 districts in the state.
It is widely accepted that test scores increase with family income. However, SAT breakdowns for 1995 show that even the most affluent blacks, from families with incomes over $70,000, have average scores of 426, lagging behind whites or Asians from families with incomes under $10,000. But Asians from families with incomes under $10,000 have average scores of 482, ranking them with whites from families making $40,000. And it is not just test scores. Oakland’s poor school system highlighted its low 1.8 black GPA to justify Ebonics. But GPAs aren’t any better in integrated Seattle or San Francisco.
Data books and health surveys all show that even in cities like Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco where the per-capita incomes of Asians are no higher than that of blacks, it is Asians, not whites, who have the best outcomes. The omission of Asians from the local news stories is probably deliberate because their statistics don’t support the thesis that racism and poverty are the reasons for poor outcomes. As much as the activists continue to deplore the model-minority “myth,” except in the most distressed Asian refugee communities, Asians generally have the best grades and test scores; the lowest rates of special and remedial education, dropouts, and expulsion; the highest rates of attendance; and the lowest rates of arrest, teen pregnancy, AIDS, and substance abuse.
If civil rights can be measured by affirmative action, multiculturalism, and desegregation, then they have massively succeeded in almost every urban school district in the country. Compared with Asians, blacks in California are at or near parity among teacher hires, college faculty, staff, and principals, and they are twice as well represented among superintendents. American history books now look like African-American history books, even casting revolutionary sailors as blacks, while Asians are all but completely absent from indexes. Yet these nifty educational strategies have utterly failed to raise black grades and test scores.
Last year, with little fanfare, Lawrence Steinberg, B. Bradford Brown, and Sanford Dornbusch released a new book, Beyond the Classroom that offered a very different explanation from the standard “racism and poverty” for why different groups perform differently in school. “Of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity is the most important . . . In terms of school achievement, it is more advantageous to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full time.” They found that no matter which school they looked at, Asians got the best grades and test scores, and blacks and Hispanics the worst. The problem was not the schools, but the attitudes and habits of the students themselves. The underachievers didn’t fear failure, didn’t study as hard, skipped class more often, and blamed their failures on racism. The overachievers didn’t tolerate failure, hung out with overachievers, spent the most time studying, and attributed their success to individual effort.
IRONICALLY, it is an even darker secret that blacks and Hispanics can succeed solely on the basis of merit. Brian D. Ray, President of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) did a study that shows that minority home-schoolers are in the 80th- to 85th-percentile of home-schooling students.
There are formal schools where blacks and Hispanics do well, too. The December 2, 1995, Economist highlights the Barclay Elementary School in Baltimore. It adopted a severe prep-school curriculum and zero-tolerance approach toward spelling mistakes to get suburban-level 60th-percentile scores in a city where failure is the norm. Seattle’s Zion private school boasts test scores above average with a largely black student body. The story of how Jaime Escalante fashioned a class of Advanced Placement calculus whiz kids out of a barrio school was made into a movie.
Whitney Young Magnet High in Chicago rivals many suburban schools. With a student body that is mostly black or Hispanic, it ranks above the 99th percentile among state high schools in 8th- and 10th-grade math and writing, and has ACT (American College Testing) averages that make it the equal of Asian-dominated Lowell in San Francisco. The best SAT scores in Georgia aren’t in a rich white suburb, but at Davidson Fine Arts Magnet in Richmond with a 42 per cent black student body, near an Army Signal Corps base.
At the college level, Martin Vaern Bosangue of Mt. San Antonio Community College near Los Angeles found that black and Hispanic students who took a calculus workshop and studied more hours than whites and Asians who started with higher SAT math scores wound up getting better grades than even the Asians.
Economic and race-based interventions have never been shown to achieve the equality that was set as their justification in the first place. After all, the numbers that matter are not the percentage of blacks on the staff or in the classroom, but grade point average, reading and math test scores, and hours spent on homework and attendance. As Thomas Sowell and Lawrence Steinberg observe, if students of all races worked equally hard, their disparate rates of success and failure would plausibly lead to explanations based on, on the one hand, racism and poverty, or, on the other hand, innate superiority or inferiority. When they differ on every measure of effort, what else would you expect?
Cobra,
Please also click on:
http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.html
Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
“The Widening Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT College Admissions Test”
Explaining the Black-White SAT Gap
There are a number of reasons that are being advanced to explain the continuing and growing black-white SAT scoring gap. Sharp differences in family incomes are a major factor. Always there has been a direct correlation between family income and SAT scores. For both blacks and whites, as income goes up, so do test scores. In 2005, 28 percent of all black SAT test takers were from families with annual incomes below $20,000. Only 5 percent of white test takers were from families with incomes below $20,000. At the other extreme, 7 percent of all black test takers were from families with incomes of more than $100,000. The comparable figure for white test takers is 27 percent.
But there is a major flaw in the thesis that income differences explain the racial gap. Consider these three observable facts from The College Board’s 2005 data on the SAT:
• Whites from families with incomes of less than $10,000 had a mean SAT score of 993. This is 129 points higher than the national mean for all blacks.
• Whites from families with incomes below $10,000 had a mean SAT test score that was 61 points higher than blacks whose families had incomes of between $80,000 and $100,000.
• Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 had a mean SAT score that was 85 points below the mean score for whites from all income levels, 139 points below the mean score of whites from families at the same income level, and 10 points below the average score of white students from families whose income was less than $10,000.
Please read the entire article.
Hey Cobra,
Please click on:
http://www.aapt.org/aboutaapt/2007-Physics-Team-Results.cfm
U.S. Physics Team Wins Gold and Silver Medals at International Competition
College Park, Maryland, United States, July 23, 2007
The U.S. Physics Team has returned home triumphant today, having garnered a total of five medals; one by each of the team members.
The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the American Institute of Physics (AIP) today announced that the students chosen to represent the United States at the 2007 International Physics Olympiad in Isfahan, Iran, earned two gold and three silver medals.
The 2007 U.S. Physics Team members are:
* Gold Medalist Jason LaRue, Miami, FL (teacher: David Jones)
* Gold Medalist Haofei Wei, Oklahoma City, OK (teacher: Shayne Johnston)
* Silver Medalist Kenan Diab, Gates Mills, OH (teacher: Bob Shurtz)
* Silver Medalist Rui Hu, Wilmington, DE (teacher: David Stover)
* Silver Medalist Jenny Kwan, San Marcos, CA (teacher: Jose Fernandez)
The students had been selected in June after a two-phase national contest and a ten-day training camp, conducted by seven AAPT-appointed coaches. The members of the team were ably mentored and prepared by Director Bob Shurtz and Senior Coach Paul Stanley who, along with AAPT Executive Officer Toufic Hakim, accompanied the team to Iran.
“We’re proud of our team members and so glad they had the chance to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Hakim. “We are certainly cognizant of our challenges to attract and prepare physics students to sustain our leadership in the science, but these students do give us hope.” He added, “This global event goes beyond just physics. By being in the beautiful, green, and history-rich city of Isfahan and by interacting with its friendly and hospitable people, we have all affirmed our belief that the commonality of people and universality of physics trump differences in language, dress code, practices, and political rhetoric.”
Each winter, more than 200 of the nation’s top-scoring high school students advance to the semifinals for the national team. Based on the results of 10 theoretical exams and 5 lab exams, as well as students’ school transcripts and letters of recommendation, the 24 members of the U.S. Physics Team are chosen in early May. Later in the month, team members travel to the University of Maryland-College Park for nine days of intense studying, testing, and problem solving at the annual U.S. Physics Team Training Camp. The five students who make up the national Traveling Team are chosen at the close of camp. Three additional days of intense laboratory work follow before the students leave for the International Olympiad.
“Not only is it challenging to keep satisfying their intellectual curiosity and answering their tough questions,” said Shurtz, “but it is the fact that we keep learning from these students that keeps us going. There is nothing better today than sharing in their success.”
This may be the end of the international competition, but all signs speak of a bright future for these students.
About the Olympiad
The U.S. Physics Olympiad Program is a joint initiative of AAPT and AIP. AAPT began the program in 1986 to promote and demonstrate academic excellence. The International Olympiad is a nine-day competition among pre-university students from more than 80 nations. This year’s Olympiad, the 38th, was held at the Isfahan University of Technology in Iran July 13-22. In 2006, the U.S. team brought home four gold and one silver medal. For a day-by-day recap of the team’s experiences in Iran, view the Competition Blog available on the Physics Team site.
2007 International Physics Olympiad Traveling Team
Jason LaRue, Miami, FL. He is a senior at Miami Palmetto High School and his bio can be found here.
Haofei Wei, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. He is a senior at Oklahoma School of Science and Math in Oklahoma City and his bio can be found here.
Kenan Diab, Westlake, Ohio. He is a senior at the Hawken School in Gates Mills and his bio can be found here.
Rui Hu, Newark, Delaware. He is a junior at Charter School of Wilmington and his bio can be found here.
Jenny Kwan, San Marcos, CA. She is a senior at San Marcos High School and her bio can be found here.
About AAPT
AAPT is the leading organization for physics educators—with 11,000 members worldwide. Our mission is to advance the greater good through physics teaching. We provide our members with many opportunities for professional development, communication, and student enrichment. We serve the larger community through a variety of programs and publications. AAPT was founded in 1930 and is headquartered in the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland.
PLEASE NOTE:
There are no race preferences given to the winners of the Medals in the International Math and Physics Olympiads, open to everyone in the world, regardless of one’s color, race, creed and ethnicity.
Please note Cobra, NOT ALL THE WINNERS ARE WHITE!! ONLY ONE OF THE FIVE WINNERS WAS WHITE. FOUR WERE ASIAN AMERICANS.
THERE ARE NO RACIAL PREFERENCES OR RACIAL QUOTAS FOR THE WINNERS IN THIS OPEN INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION, OPENED TO ALL RACES AND NATIONS IN THE WORLD.
Please stop your incessant whining and your holier than thou role as the victim, which will result in your eventual demise. Your rants simply don’t fly for any intelligent reader of this site.
Cobra, with your line of thinking, you could never compete in the world in an open competition, especially if you were chosen as a member of the team due to a racial preference or through race based AA. YOU WILL SIMPLY BE CRUSHED AND LEFT IN THE DUST!
Cobra,
You are making false assumptions.
Assuming Biracial People Identify More with One Side Than the Other
The majority race in America today isn’t white, black, or even Latino. It’s biracial. And this will only increase with each successive generation. We’re a society that loves to check off boxes, but the greater challenge is to stop seeing people as shades and start knowing them for who they are.
Quote:
“As the child of a black man and white woman, born in the melting pot of Hawaii, with a sister who is half-Indonesian, but who is usually mistaken for Mexican, and a brother-in-law and niece of Chinese descent, with some relatives who resemble Margaret Thatcher and others who could pass for Bernie Mac, I never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.”
- Barack Obama, Kenyan/White American, Illinois Senator, presidential candidate
E writes:
>>>”The majority race in America today isn’t white, black, or even Latino. It’s biracial.”
Not only do you continue to IGNORE my repeated question to you–
“Do you believe that EVERY employed White man in America was the MOST qualified person for the position he occupies, and if NOT, what is your initiative to solve that problem?”
–but you’ve moved on to science fiction.
I guess you just can’t bring yourself to admit that there are PLENTY of White men in positions they weren’t the most qualified to hold, which is the anti-thesis of John’s thread, calling into question the credentials of an award winning veteran African-American journalist.
I find this interesting, because you keep digging holes for yourself, like here:
>>>”Cobra, with your line of thinking, you could never compete in the world in an open competition, especially if you were chosen as a member of the team due to a racial preference or through race based AA. YOU WILL SIMPLY BE CRUSHED AND LEFT IN THE DUST!”
Perhaps this is your deal, E. Maybe I’ve finally figured you out.
You’re a true believer.
You have BLIND-FAITH in an unseen, and unpracticed meritocracy.
You must actually BELIEVE that the Bush Administration’s “No-Bid” contracts to political pals are a sign of “open competition”, especially in war profiteering, or disaster capitialization.
You must actually believe that Michael “Brownie” Brown, failed former head of the Arabian Horse Association, was without question, the PERFECT candidate to head FEMA.
You surely must believe that all those mostly white people hired by the Coalition Provisional Authority to “rebuild” Iraq were imminently qualified–right?
>>>”After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans — restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O’Beirne’s office in the Pentagon…
…Many of those chosen by O’Beirne’s office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance — but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting.
The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration’s gravest errors…
…”We didn’t tap — and it should have started from the White House on down — just didn’t tap the right people to do this job,” said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA’s Washington office. “It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193.html
I could give you example, after example, E.
It wouldn’t shake you, E.
You’re a TRUE-BELIEVER.
“All Blacks are questionable–All Whites get the benefit of the doubt, and if you get static, talk about how you love Asians.”
If I had a dime for everytime this little dynamic is played on this blog….
–Cobra
Cobra,
You are simply full of fluff, by making false assumptions.
Assuming Biracial People Identify More with One Side Than the Other
We’re a society that loves to check off boxes, but the greater challenge is to stop seeing people as shades and start knowing them for who they are.
Quote:
“As the child of a black man and white woman, born in the melting pot of Hawaii, with a sister who is half-Indonesian, but who is usually mistaken for Mexican, and a brother-in-law and niece of Chinese descent, with some relatives who resemble Margaret Thatcher and others who could pass for Bernie Mac, I never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.”
- Barack Obama, Kenyan/White American, Illinois Senator, presidential candidate
Hey Cobra.
You said, ["All Blacks are questionable--All Whites get the benefit of the doubt, and if you get static, talk about how you love Asians."] Cobra, you are turning and twisting with your spin. You are hallucinating and delusional, in complete denial of the facts in your posts, by making outrageous assertions, that should not even warrant a response.
Please read these excerpts carefully.
1. Economic and race-based interventions have never been shown to achieve the equality that was set as their justification in the first place.
2. As Thomas Sowell and Lawrence Steinberg observe, if students of all races worked equally hard, their disparate rates of success and failure would plausibly lead to explanations based on, on the one hand, racism and poverty, or, on the other hand, innate superiority or inferiority. When they differ on every measure of effort, what else would you expect?
WHAT ELSE WOULD YOU EXPECT?
http://www.nationalreview.com/15sept97/hu091597.html
AMERICA’S SCHOOLS
EDUCATION AND RACE
The performance of minority students in affluent areas refutes the prevailing educational shibboleths.
[Last year, with little fanfare, Lawrence Steinberg, B. Bradford Brown, and Sanford Dornbusch released a new book, Beyond the Classroom that offered a very different explanation from the standard “racism and poverty” for why different groups perform differently in school. “Of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity is the most important . . . In terms of school achievement, it is more advantageous to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full time.” They found that no matter which school they looked at, Asians got the best grades and test scores, and blacks and Hispanics the worst. The problem was not the schools, but the attitudes and habits of the students themselves. The underachievers didn’t fear failure, didn’t study as hard, skipped class more often, and blamed their failures on racism. The overachievers didn’t tolerate failure, hung out with overachievers, spent the most time studying, and attributed their success to individual effort.]
[IRONICALLY, it is an even darker secret that blacks and Hispanics can succeed solely on the basis of merit. Brian D. Ray, President of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) did a study that shows that minority home-schoolers are in the 80th- to 85th-percentile of home-schooling students.]
[There are formal schools where blacks and Hispanics do well, too. The December 2, 1995, Economist highlights the Barclay Elementary School in Baltimore. It adopted a severe prep-school curriculum and zero-tolerance approach toward spelling mistakes to get suburban-level 60th-percentile scores in a city where failure is the norm. Seattle’s Zion private school boasts test scores above average with a largely black student body. The story of how Jaime Escalante fashioned a class of Advanced Placement calculus whiz kids out of a barrio school was made into a movie.]
[Whitney Young Magnet High in Chicago rivals many suburban schools. With a student body that is mostly black or Hispanic, it ranks above the 99th percentile among state high schools in 8th- and 10th-grade math and writing, and has ACT (American College Testing) averages that make it the equal of Asian-dominated Lowell in San Francisco. The best SAT scores in Georgia aren’t in a rich white suburb, but at Davidson Fine Arts Magnet in Richmond with a 42 per cent black student body, near an Army Signal Corps base.]
[At the college level, Martin Vaern Bosangue of Mt. San Antonio Community College near Los Angeles found that black and Hispanic students who took a calculus workshop and studied more hours than whites and Asians who started with higher SAT math scores wound up getting better grades than even the Asians.]
[Economic and race-based interventions have never been shown to achieve the equality that was set as their justification in the first place. After all, the numbers that matter are not the percentage of blacks on the staff or in the classroom, but grade point average, reading and math test scores, and hours spent on homework and attendance. As Thomas Sowell and Lawrence Steinberg observe, if students of all races worked equally hard, their disparate rates of success and failure would plausibly lead to explanations based on, on the one hand, racism and poverty, or, on the other hand, innate superiority or inferiority. When they differ on every measure of effort, what else would you expect?]
E,
Do you believe Thomas Sowell, an African-American like Eugene Robinson, owes his career as a collumnist to Affirmative Action?
Do you believe Thomas Sowell is not qualified to speak on these issues, since he is an African-American?
Do you believe Thomas Sowell had lower grades and SATs than his fellow students growing up?
Why should I believe ANYTHING you quote from Thomas Sowell, since you OBVIOUSLY believe that ANY African-American in a positon of prominance doesn’t really deserve to be there?
I know. You won’t answer these questions either. You’ll just post another full article about how inferior blacks are. I get the game you’re playing.
–Cobra
Cobra,
You are simply full of fluff, by making false assumptions.
You are hallucinating and delusional with your outrageous assertions, which do not deserve a response.
Cobra, with your line of thinking, you could never compete in the world in an OPEN COMPETITION in the new global order, especially if you were chosen as a member of the team due to a racial preference or through race based AA. YOU WILL SIMPLY BE CRUSHED AND LEFT IN THE DUST!
I AM TALKING ABOUT PURE AND UNFETTERED OPEN COMPETITION!
I personally think you need help from a mental health provider.
Cobra said,
“I know. You won’t answer these questions either. You’ll just post another full article about how inferior blacks are. I get the game you’re playing.”
You are simply hallucinating and not in touch with reality by spewing out falsehoods or you are simply lying. ARE YOU FOR REAL??
You have not countered any of my points.
This is not a “game”, and the sooner you realize this, the better off you will be.
Race preferences do not work. Race preferences did not work in Nazi Germany in the past and they also do not work in present day Bosnia.
BLACKS CAN SUCCEED SOLELY ON THE BASIS OF MERIT.
Hey Cobra, COMPRENDE??
Please read the following carefully.
1. [IRONICALLY, it is an even darker secret that blacks and Hispanics can succeed solely on the basis of merit. Brian D. Ray, President of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) did a study that shows that minority home-schoolers are in the 80th- to 85th-percentile of home-schooling students.]
2. [There are formal schools where blacks and Hispanics do well, too. The December 2, 1995, Economist highlights the Barclay Elementary School in Baltimore. It adopted a severe prep-school curriculum and zero-tolerance approach toward spelling mistakes to get suburban-level 60th-percentile scores in a city where failure is the norm. Seattle’s Zion private school boasts test scores above average with a largely black student body. The story of how Jaime Escalante fashioned a class of Advanced Placement calculus whiz kids out of a barrio school was made into a movie.]
3. [Whitney Young Magnet High in Chicago rivals many suburban schools. With a student body that is mostly black or Hispanic, it ranks above the 99th percentile among state high schools in 8th- and 10th-grade math and writing, and has ACT (American College Testing) averages that make it the equal of Asian-dominated Lowell in San Francisco. The best SAT scores in Georgia aren’t in a rich white suburb, but at Davidson Fine Arts Magnet in Richmond with a 42 per cent black student body, near an Army Signal Corps base.]
4. [At the college level, Martin Vaern Bosangue of Mt. San Antonio Community College near Los Angeles found that black and Hispanic students who took a calculus workshop and studied more hours than whites and Asians who started with higher SAT math scores wound up getting better grades than even the Asians.]
Excerpts from
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/mcwhorter/mcwhorter_p2.html
THE DEMISE OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AT UC BERKELEY: DISSECTING THE STALEMATE
An Essay by John McWhorter
It is not difficult to see the source of this sense of disinclusion. It would be unusual if a race just a few decades past institutionalized racism did not bear the legacy of centuries of a justified distrust of the oppressor’s frames of reference. The question which arises now, however, is this: Does this culturally ingrained sense of disinclusion from education ÷ as opposed to growing up under concrete, externally imposed disadvantage ÷ justify lowering the bar for middle class black students indefinitely?
In my opinion, the answer to this question is no. This is because despite its initial necessity, Affirmative Action in university admissions has always come at an extremely high price, begging curtailment at the earliest possible opportunity. This price has consisted of four factors.
One: As Stephen Carter has told us, the beneficiaries of Affirmative Action can never be sure of the extent to which their accomplishments were based upon their own merit. Nepotism and favors (as well as dumb luck) play a large part in the trajectory of most lives, but these things are a matter of chance. As an institutionalized leg up, Affirmative Action leaves black Americans with the most systematically diluted responsibility for their fate of any group in America. This perpetuates the fundamental insecurity already bedeviling a recently oppressed race, and reinforces blacks’ general suspicion of whites’ opinion of them. The white student who gets a letter announcing their admission to UC Berkeley can go out and celebrate a signal achievement, although the luck of the draw almost always plays some role in a white or Asian person’s admission to a school. Can the black middle manager’s daughter getting the same letter have the same sense of achievement if her SAT scores would have barred any white or Asian from admission? The truth is no ÷ she can only celebrate having been good enough among African-American students to be admitted.
Two: With it widely known among the student body that most minority students were admitted with test scores and GPAs which would have barred white and Asian applicants from consideration, it is difficult for many white students to avoid beginning to question the basic mental competence of black people as a race, especially when most black students are obviously of middle class background. A white person need not be a racist to start wondering about this ÷ black students could not help wondering the same thing about whites in a situation in which middle-class whites were almost all let in under the bar. This undermines the mutual respect which successful integration requires.
Three: When Affirmative Action was aimed at improving the lot of the disenfranchised, then its displacement of some qualified white applicants was in my view thoroughly justifiable in the name of a greater good. However, when aimed at admitting middle class black children, whites’ complaints of reverse discrimination acquire more resonance. The defense that white athletes and children of the wealthy have always been admitted to elite universities under the bar is surely the weakest from the Affirmative Action camp. The common consensus has always held legacy students and semiliterate athletes with BAs in bad odor, and thus to argue that minority students ought be allowed the same privilege does not put us in the best company ÷ two wrongs do not make a right.
Not one but two black friends of mine reported the searing experience of revealing, during one of those late-night freshman-year hallway group discussions, that their test scores and/or GPAs had been lower than the norm for white students, only to be have an impolitic white student charge that they had taken someone’s place. I could not help noticing that behind the indignation with which they recounted these events was the sad fact that in the end, neither had been able to effectively defend themselves, both coming from stable, two-parent homes and fine schools. Few undergraduates ÷ or even adults ÷ command the spontaneous rhetorical resources to explain the subtle cultural barriers to scholarly achievement among middle class black children; those with middle class upbringings are generally barely even aware of these things on a conscious level; and few of those that were would be comfortable directly applying such an analysis to themselves in any case. Clearly, encounters like these subvert the goal of peaceful integration.
Four: As applied primarily to middle-class black students, Affirmative Action becomes simply insulting ÷ especially given the lack of interest its advocates have in coherently defending its maintenance under such conditions. The implication has become that no matter how comfortable their lives, no matter what their opportunities have been, black children cannot be expected to manage test scores or GPAs as high as white and Asian students. Racism is surely not dead, but it vastly underestimates a person to declare that the extremely occasional and abstract nature of the racism the typical black child encounters in today’s California makes it inappropriate to expect them to turn in an SAT score above 1000. Let us recall that the conscious life of a freshman entering Berkeley in fall 1998 began in the mid-1980s, not 1964 or even 1974 ÷ these students have only vague memories of Ronald Reagan being president!
These things said, I reiterate that Affirmative Action in university admissions and beyond was crucial thirty years ago. The benefits were well worth the cost of the four problems above. However, these problems have always conflicted in so many ways with effective integration that in university admissions, Affirmative Action is best seen as a desperate emergency measure, to be eliminated at earliest possible opportunity.
Indeed, one suspects that part of the reason even better-informed Affirmative Action advocates insist on depicting the policy as an opportunity for disadvantaged minorities is because it is virtually impossible to compellingly defend a policy aimed primarily at middle class minorities in the rabble-rousing sound-bite terms of rallies, flyers, and T-shirts. It would be a delicate matter indeed to rally the American public behind the idea of admitting middle class African-American students under the bar indefinitely on the grounds that African-American children tend to discourage each other from reaching that bar. Although the ultimate cause of this was bygone institutionalized discrimination, we can’t do anything about that now ÷ today the problem is generated from within the community, and in such a way that external intervention cannot solve it. Affirmative Action can certainly give a student a Bachelor’s Degree, but it cannot calibrate sociocultural attitudes ÷ if we hoped that it would indeed dilute the sense of separation black students feel from school and books, it is painfully clear that it has not and will not. Today the problem can only be solved from within, whether we be optimistic or pessimistic on the likelihood of this in the near future. Of course, as we have seen, some of middle-class black students’ poor test scores and GPAs could be ascribed to lower-class cultural patterns persisting in some families despite rising incomes. The problem here, however, is a simple one: how could evaluators decide whether or not this was the case on the basis of a particular evaluation, an interview, or really anything less than living with each black applicant for a month?
The blanket abolition of Affirmative Action at UC schools was crude, although advocates of the policy are so resistant to constructive discussion that I suspect that this H-bomb approach was the only way to make any change at all. If it were up to me, I would follow many commentators on the subject and maintain Affirmative Action based on class. To the extent that Affirmative Action had actually been achieving its official goal of bringing disadvantaged minority students to Berkeley (which was slight, but nevertheless), this would maintain this obvious good, while extending the same privilege to the increasing ranks of white disadvantaged people. At this point, many will have already objected that the problem is with the very nature of the bar to be reached; specifically, that the emphasis in admissions on standardized tests is misguided, because their predictiveness of scholarly success is not absolute. This objection lends itself to two alternative solutions.
One would be to abolish standardized tests as a criterion for admission. Simply de-emphasizing them would not work: this year Berkeley did just this in evaluating undergraduate applications, but the discrepancy in scores was still so great that the number of minority admits plummeted nevertheless. However, the sheer volume of applications received would make this extremely difficult.
Thus as long as elite universities continue to use SAT scores and GPAs as a significant factor in admissions, then the other avenue would be to coordinate a concentrated effort to bring minority students’ test scores up to the level of those of white and Asian students. We ought devote as much time to arguing for regular standardized testing starting in junior high school as we currently devote to issues such as classroom size, vouchers, computers, and phonics, especially in communities with large minority contingents (middle class ones most importantly). Minority students ought be encouraged to adopt the feverish use of SAT practice workbooks that Jewish high schoolers in Scarsdale do. It is often said that minority students cannot afford Kaplan courses and the like, but this again runs up against the fallacy that most Affirmative Action beneficiaries have been of humble origins. Many middle class families today could indeed afford such courses, especially since their proliferation has led to some competitive prices ÷ and in some areas there are even such courses aimed at minority students.
===========================
Hey Cobra,
Why don’t you address my points?
1. SIMPLY, BLACKS MUST CHANGE THEIR CULTURE FROM WITHIN. NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO EFFECT CHANGE UNLESS BLACKS CHANGE THEMSELVES CULTURALLY FROM WITHIN. THE CULTURE IS A SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ONE WITH BLACK ON BLACK CRIME, 90% OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTHS, ABSENT FATHERS, ETC..
2. NO ONE IS “ENTITLED TO” OR “DESERVED” A SPOT BASED ON A RACIAL PREFERENCE. NOT ASIAN AMERICANS, NOT BLACK AMERICANS, NOT WHITE AMERICANS, NOT LATINO AMERICANS, NOT A BLACK OBAMA, NOT A WHITE OBAMA, NOT A HALF WHITE OBAMA, and NOT A HALF BLACK OBAMA. YOUR SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT BASED ON RACE IS SIMPLY ASTOUNDING!
3. ADMISSIONS SHOULD BE RACE BLIND, ETHNIC GROUP BLIND AND COLOR BLIND. I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE RACE OF OBAMA IN ADMISSIONS TO ELITE SCHOOLS AND THE ADMISSIONS COMMITTEES SHOULD NOT HAVE KNOWN THE RACE OF OBAMA. BUT THEY DID KNOW, AND WITH THEIR RACE BASED AA ADMISSIONS PROCESS, THESE ADMISSIONS COMMITTEES GAVE OBAMA RACIAL PREFERENCES, IN ADMISSIONS, OR A LEG UP AND A TREMENDOUS BOOST
4. RACE PREFERENCES of any kind are immoral and illegal. This holds true if the beneficiaries are persons with white, black, brown, yellow, red, purple OR ONE DROP OF BLACK BLOOD. You are so full of fluff and go off in tangents. You keep playing the race card and the victim which will be the cause of your complete demise.
5. Race preferences for blacks DO NOT WORK TO CLOSE THE RACIAL GAPS IN ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT. RACE PREFERENCES AND RACE BASED AA DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD FOR BLACKS. In fact, since the era of race based AA, these gaps have widen.
FACTS:
Black children from the wealthiest families have mean SAT scores lower than white/Asian children from families below the poverty line.
Black children of parents with graduate degrees have lower SAT scores than white/Asian children of parents with a high-school diploma or less.
6. Race preferences do not work. Race preferences did not work in Nazi Germany in the past and they also do not work in present day Bosnia.
7. Race based AA is the embodiment of the taint of racial preference. Abolish race preferences and race based AA, and you eliminate the DOUBT from everyone, INCLUDING AFRICAN AMERICANS THEMSELVES, by whatever definition one defines “black” or African American, including the blacks with the “one drop of blood theory” definition.
8. The greater challenge is to stop seeing people as shades and start knowing them for who they are.
9. BLACKS CAN SUCCEED SOLELY ON THE BASIS OF MERIT.
Hey Cobra, COMPRENDE??
E,
Posting as much material as you can find on a topic won’t help you win this debate. I’ve been there/done that—John could tell you some stories!
You ESPECIALLY won’t convert anybody by posting professional Black conservatives like John McWhorter, because he can’t possibly be qualified to speak on the subject by your own definition.
>>>”McWhorter was an associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He received a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stanford University, and a B.A. in French and Romance Languages from Rutgers University.”
Since he is only 43 years old, by your own argument, John McWhorter is TAINTED. He MUST’VE received Affirmative Action to not only get into Rutgers, but that Phd from exclusive Stanford University. He couldn’t possibly have had high enough SAT scores or grades to accomplish this.
McWhorter, is a BLACK man, therefore his CULTURE is holding him back. That’s what you’ve been exhaustively posting for the past few days, isn’t it?
Why should any readers of Discriminations pay any attention to anything McWhorter or Thomas Sowell says?
They’re “Black” aren’t they?
Just like Eugene Robinson…
Just like Barack Obama…
–Cobra
Hey Cobra,
You said, [Why should any readers of Discriminations pay any attention to anything McWhorter or Thomas Sowell says?...They're "Black" aren't they?]
Why should anyone pay any attention to what you say or whom you believe and quote, regardless of your race or the race of anyone you happen to believe in. You are full of fluff, yet you are UNABLE to counter any of MY points of argument. You are simply full of fluff. I really don’t know your race and frankly, I don’t care.
You are completely lost for a response. You are simply flinging horse manure now, Cobra.
Hey Cobra,
You have not “won” anything.
Why don’t you address my points one by one? I am still waiting. I listed them for you. Your silence on each point IS DEAFENING!!
1. SIMPLY, BLACKS MUST CHANGE THEIR CULTURE FROM WITHIN. NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO EFFECT CHANGE UNLESS BLACKS CHANGE THEMSELVES CULTURALLY FROM WITHIN. THE CULTURE IS A SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ONE WITH BLACK ON BLACK CRIME, 90% OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTHS, ABSENT FATHERS, ETC..
2. NO ONE IS “ENTITLED TO” OR “DESERVED” A SPOT BASED ON A RACIAL PREFERENCE. NOT ASIAN AMERICANS, NOT BLACK AMERICANS, NOT WHITE AMERICANS, NOT LATINO AMERICANS, NOT A BLACK OBAMA, NOT A WHITE OBAMA, NOT A HALF WHITE OBAMA, and NOT A HALF BLACK OBAMA. YOUR SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT BASED ON RACE IS SIMPLY ASTOUNDING!
3. ADMISSIONS SHOULD BE RACE BLIND, ETHNIC GROUP BLIND AND COLOR BLIND. I DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE RACE OF OBAMA IN ADMISSIONS TO ELITE SCHOOLS AND THE ADMISSIONS COMMITTEES SHOULD NOT HAVE KNOWN THE RACE OF OBAMA. BUT THEY DID KNOW, AND WITH THEIR RACE BASED AA ADMISSIONS PROCESS, THESE ADMISSIONS COMMITTEES GAVE OBAMA RACIAL PREFERENCES, IN ADMISSIONS, OR A LEG UP AND A TREMENDOUS BOOST
4. RACE PREFERENCES of any kind are immoral and illegal. This holds true if the beneficiaries are persons with white, black, brown, yellow, red, purple OR ONE DROP OF BLACK BLOOD. You are so full of fluff and go off in tangents. You keep playing the race card and the victim which will be the cause of your complete demise.
5. Race preferences for blacks DO NOT WORK TO CLOSE THE RACIAL GAPS IN ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT. RACE PREFERENCES AND RACE BASED AA DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD FOR BLACKS. In fact, since the era of race based AA, these gaps have widen.
FACTS:
Black children from the wealthiest families have mean SAT scores lower than white/Asian children from families below the poverty line.
Black children of parents with graduate degrees have lower SAT scores than white/Asian children of parents with a high-school diploma or less.
6. Race preferences do not work. Race preferences did not work in Nazi Germany in the past and they also do not work in present day Bosnia.
7. Race based AA is the embodiment of the taint of racial preference. Abolish race preferences and race based AA, and you eliminate the DOUBT from everyone, INCLUDING AFRICAN AMERICANS THEMSELVES, by whatever definition one defines “black” or African American, including the blacks with the “one drop of blood theory” definition.
8. The greater challenge is to stop seeing people as shades and start knowing them for who they are.
9. BLACKS CAN SUCCEED SOLELY ON THE BASIS OF MERIT.
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You also said, “Since he is only 43 years old, by your own argument, John McWhorter is TAINTED. He MUST’VE received Affirmative Action to not only get into Rutgers, but that Phd from exclusive Stanford University. He couldn’t possibly have had high enough SAT scores or grades to accomplish this.
Hey, Cobra.
Please read point #9 above as a counterpoint, “BLACKS CAN SUCCEED SOLELY ON THE BASIS OF MERIT.”
Please do not TWIST and TURN my points by spewing lies.
E,
You’re making absolutely no sense at all.
How can you say this:
>>>”1. SIMPLY, BLACKS MUST CHANGE THEIR CULTURE FROM WITHIN. NO ONE ELSE IS GOING TO EFFECT CHANGE UNLESS BLACKS CHANGE THEMSELVES CULTURALLY FROM WITHIN. THE CULTURE IS A SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ONE WITH BLACK ON BLACK CRIME, 90% OUT-OF-WEDLOCK BIRTHS, ABSENT FATHERS, ETC..”
And then argue THIS…
>>>”8. The greater challenge is to stop seeing people as shades and start knowing them for who they are.”
Hello? E–if you’re bean counting Blacks in every facet of their lives, you can’t go around telling OTHERS to “stop seeing people as shades.”
You can’t say here:
>>>”Black children from the wealthiest families have mean SAT scores lower than white/Asian children from families below the poverty line.
Black children of parents with graduate degrees have lower SAT scores than white/Asian children of parents with a high-school diploma or less.”
And run around touting black collumnists who self-immolate like Thomas Sowell and John McWhorter without posting THEIR SAT scores.
What…if they criticized something other than BLACK people you wouldn’t endorse their viewpoints?
Come on, E. You’re reaching now.
–Cobra
You have not answered or countered any of my points.
You said, “And run around touting black collumnists (SIC) who self-immolate like Thomas Sowell and John McWhorter without posting THEIR SAT scores.”
Here you make another ridiculous assertion. Why don’t you post their SAT scores, as well as their grades?
BTW, anecdotes and exceptions to the rule DO NOT MAKE THE RULE. I am referring to group studies, not anecdotes and exceptions to the rule. I again say to your incessant ranting and raving based solely on anecdotes and outrageous assertions, SO WHAT??? You have not presented any evidence based on research, not one iota, to refute my points. ARE YOU FOR REAL?
Please read #9 again.
9. BLACKS CAN SUCCEED SOLELY ON THE BASIS OF MERIT.
Here’s food for thought.
http://www.arthurhu.com/index/afact.htm
Hu’s Laws of Affirmative Action
(1) No two groups are equal unless they are stastically identical
(2) The level of inequality goes up with the level of selectivity
(3) The only way to impose equality is to use different selection levels, and amount of difference goes up with the level of selection
These laws are upheld for almost every observable case of affirmative action.
The Politically Correct Laws of Affirmative Action
1) All groups are naturally equal in the absence of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.
2) Any differences are due to racism by the White Race (TM) and only the White Race (TM), in particular, religious, rich, conservative straight white males, can cause these differences. For differences between classes, see Karl Marx.
3) Affirmative Action does not require any preferences for any group at any level for any group.
These laws are consistent with any orthodox piece ever written about or defending affirmative action.
Top 10 most stupid defenses of affirmative action
1 – Affirmative Action is not racial preference. But they won’t
tolerate a ban on preferences. And if it’s unfair to not attack
veterans and alumni preferences, then doesn’t that prove that it is
also preferential?
2 – Affirmative Action is not quotas. But the only acceptable
evidence of discrimination is numerical quotas – “minorities are
under-represented”. No other criterion – test scores, grades,
experience are acceptable if they don’t result in diversity.
3 – Affirmative Action does not lower standards of excellence. But
the only standard of excellence that has any value is skin color and
ethnicity. The same people who say that there are no differences in
standards often refer to MINIMAL, not average standards.
4 – Affirmative Action does not admit unqualified people. But it is
admitting lesser qualified people. This is a circular defintion if
you define minimally qualified by the worst person hired. Minimally
is not equally or best qualified.
5 – Affirmative Action is not reverse discrimination. Some cite that
only whites can be racist since only they have power. They say
that it is impossible to discriminate against whites, even if a
program completely excludes whites, or causes whites to be
under-represented. Many admit that affirmative action is preference
for some races, which is by the dictionary defintion, discrimination.
6 – Discrimination still exists. It will always exist. But
discrimination against innocent parties does nothing to eliminate
discrimination against minorities, it only creates more
discrimination, and affirmative action is discrimination sanctioned
by law.
7 – Selection without regard to race amounts to unfair discrimination.
This is the most outrageously and blatant twisting of the word
discrimination, which used to mean selection with race AS a factor.
The definition of discrimination is now unequal outcomes, as opposed
to unequal treatment.
8 – No white man has ever been discriminated against. There are books
and newspapers full of the stuff, but it is rarely reported, and when
it is challenged, they often lose because the courts often rule
discrimination against Whites to be legal.