Steve Landes (R, Augusta County), my state delegate to the Virginia General Assembly and a very good guy, has introduced a bill to promote “intellectual diversity” and “a free exchange of ideas” on Virginia college campuses (and also, presumably, at the University of Virginia, which doesn’t have a campus; it has Grounds).
Marta Cook, Associate Editor of the Cavalier Daily, doesn’t like Landes or his proposal. In fact, she finds it “disrespectful” to compare intellectual diversity to affirmative action, and even “vaguely fascist.” She opposes what she regards as efforts to impose “ideological litmus tests on academics” (of course Landes proposes no such thing), but she apparently has no problem with efforts to impose racial litmus tests in university admissions and hiring (one can’t have racial preferences without racial litmus tests for who should receive them). She also misrepresents the current legal and moral justification for those preferences that is now all but official orthodoxy in academia.
The comparison to affirmative action is illogical. Conservatives argue that just as the state ensures minority and women students have adequate and fair representation on college campuses, so should professors with underrepresented political views have a presence at universities. First, the supposed liberal hegemony at universities seems more of a cliché than empirical observation….
More importantly, affirmative action was instituted to ameliorate centuries of oppression and the inability of minorities such as African-Americans to have access to education and employment opportunities. As opposed to the deaf ear turned to freed men and women wishing to go to college, universities do their best not to discriminate based on political ideology. The American Association of University Professors notes that most universities have guidelines to safeguard against any sort of discrimination, including political. This organization looks into a number of accusations of bias every year. Thus, conservative under-representation at universities is not comparable to institutional oppression and racism. Perhaps fewer conservatives desire to teach at universities. Or maybe fewer aspiring professors with conservative leanings possess the intellectual rigor to teach at top universities. Regardless, the comparison is weak and, in fact, disrespectful….
Landes’s bill is needless at best and vaguely fascist at worst.
“Freed men and women” is a 19th Century term referring to former slaves that has limited relevance to today’s debate, but use of that term is not Ms. Cook’s only anachronism. She conveniently forgets that racial preference as compensation for general, society-wide discrimination has been barred by the Supreme Court. That’s why the justification shifted to the promotion of “diversity.”
I don’t favor ideological preferences in hiring any more than I favor racial preferences, but it is odd to hear advocates of racial preference who react in horror when anyone suggests that efforts to admit a “critical mass” of minorities look pretty much like a quota all of a sudden denounce quotas when someone points to ideological imbalances in academia.
Geez, isn’t intellectual diversity what universities want (or, at least should want)?? But universities today are mired in “groupthink”; that’s why they don’t really care about intellectual diversity, and why they have no quibble with racial preferences (since, after all, racial groups “think alike,” or at a minimum have “shared perspectives”). It’s what the mythical concept of “diversity” is all about!
John writes:
>>>”I don’t favor ideological preferences in hiring any more than I favor racial preferences, but it is odd to hear advocates of racial preference who react in horror when anyone suggests that efforts to admit a “critical mass” of minorities look pretty much like a quota all of a sudden denounce quotas when someone points to ideological imbalances in academia.”
So a return to the all-white environment and scenarios that existed pre-affirmative action would be acceptable in your argument since any gauge of non-white “diversity” could be looked upon as “quotas?”
If this isn’t your argument, then what metrics can be used in these cases to determine if discrimination is taking place, outside of the solemn word of those in positions of power?
-Cobra
The “environment” was not “all-white” before affirmative action, and not every effort to promote “diversity” requires racial quotas. But some (like ensuring a “critical mass”) do.
The “environment” was not “all-white” before affirmative action
Nor would it be in the absence of “affirmative action,” as we know; does Cobra really find it that hard to tell the difference between Asians and whites?
David writes:
>>>”Nor would it be in the absence of “affirmative action,” as we know; does Cobra really find it that hard to tell the difference between Asians and whites?”
Are you trying to say that Asian-Americans are NOT discriminated against in the white corporate power structure?
Sigh.
For the umpteenth time…
>>>”The greatest danger facing underprivileged Asian Americans especially the young, is their second class status. Spawned by their perceived “foreignness,” diminished status is a result of continued anti-Asian discrimination. Chancellor (Chang-lin) Tien believes that it is the responsibility of Asian American university graduates to fight this discrimination because they are best equipped to do so.
He further proposed that Americans of all backgrounds support programs such as affirmative action in order to eliminate discrimination against the Asian American middle and underclass. Affirmative action, he argued, has helped Asian American university graduates to get their foot in the door. Tien, however, also made note of the glass ceiling with which Asian American professionals must contend. Affirmative action has also promoted interracial understanding. Ethnic diversity on university campuses prepares American youth for living in a racially and culturally diverse society and deepens their awareness of global interdependence. But diversifying college campuses is only one goal. Affirmative action seeks to eliminate some of the institutional barriers that beset certain racial groups moreso than others. In other words, certain racial groups have better educational opportunities because of a multitude of factors, such as different economic status divided along racial lines. Affirmative action helps underprivileged youth get into college-giving them access to a better life.”
http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/ass01/tic01.html
>>>”Asian Americans have only one-third the opportunity of Americans of any other ethnic group to rise to management positions in the academic world, the corporate world and even in government. Even in the federal government, where one least suspects discrimination, there is a low glass ceiling for Asian Americans. Of the 250-plus Cabinet positions at or above the rank of assistant secretary, Asian Americans hold only two of the lowest positions (Bill Lann Lee, as acting assistant attorney general for civil rights, along with Robert Gee, the assistant secretary of the Department of Energy.) Of the 845 serving federal judges, only seven are Asian Americans. To illustrate the disparity: we represent 3.5 percent of our nation’s population (and 10 percent of California’s), but we hold less than 1 percent of policy-making positions in the federal government.
Had such statistics applied to blacks or Jews, the media would have screamed “discrimination.” Our federal government would have threatened to withhold funding from offending institutions unless they took immediate corrective action. But since the malfeasance applies to Asian Americans only, and even the federal government condones it, no one seems to care. But we should care.”
http://www.asianweek.com/070298/news.html
Keep going “all in” on the Asian card, David. You’ll muck every time when I show you the full house of Asian-American claims of discrimination.
-Cobra
Are you trying to say that Asian-Americans are NOT discriminated against in the white corporate power structure?
Yes. And none of the anecdotes you cite show otherwise. Particularly funny is the second link you cite, which claims that Asians “fare worse” than blacks. I wonder if you polled blacks, or Asians, what percentage would agree with that claim.
All that this proves is that you simply pick random anecdotes to “prove” whatever silly thing you want to prove. Asians have higher incomes than whites. Lower incarceration rates. Higher test scores. Higher college graduation ratges. Lower unemployment. Pick virtually any metric, and Asians do better than whites.
So what do you do? You find some guy who claims that Asians are discriminated against because (a decade ago) there weren’t enough high-ranking cabinet officials who were Asian. (More recently, by the way, Bush had two Asian cabinet secretaries.) All this proves is that if you’re desperate enough to find evidence of discrimination, and you’ll accept any piece of evidence no matter how flimsy — hey, whites are underrepresented in the NBA! That’s proof that there’s discrimination against whites in the U.S.! — you can “find” it.
David writes:
>>>”So what do you do? You find some guy who claims that Asians are discriminated against because (a decade ago) there weren’t enough high-ranking cabinet officials who were Asian. ”
Well, I found some ASIAN-AMERICANS who claim to be victims of discrimination, because unlike YOU, I don’t presume to speak for Asian-Americans.
David writes in response to Asian-Americans claim that there is racial discrimination against them:
>>>”Yes. And none of the anecdotes you cite show otherwise. Particularly funny is the second link you cite, which claims that Asians “fare worse” than blacks. I wonder if you polled blacks, or Asians, what percentage would agree with that claim.
All that this proves is that you simply pick random anecdotes to “prove” whatever silly thing you want to prove. Asians have higher incomes than whites. Lower incarceration rates. Higher test scores. Higher college graduation ratges. Lower unemployment. Pick virtually any metric, and Asians do better than whites.”
David, none of the above proves that discrimination against Asian-Americans doesn’t exist. In fact, let’s look at an Asian-American perspective on your beliefs:
>>>”Again, we need to remember that not all Asian Americans are the same. For every Chinese American or South Asian who has a college degree, the same number of Southeast Asians are still struggling to adapt to their lives in the U.S. For example, as shown in the tables in the Socioeconomic Statistics & Demographics article, Vietnamese Americans only have a college degree attainment rate of 20%, less than half the rate for other Asian American ethnic groups. The rates for Laotians, Cambodians, and Khmer are even lower at less than 10%.
The results show that as a whole Asian American families have higher median incomes than White families. However, this is because in most cases, the typical Asian American family tends to have more members who are working than the typical White family. It’s not unusual for an Asian American family to have four, five, or more members working. A more telling statistic is median personal income (also known as per capita income). The results above show that Asian Americans still trail Whites on this very important measure.
Case in point, another reason why Asian American families tend to make more than White families is because, as described in the Population Statistics page, Asian Americans are much more likely to concentrate in metropolitan areas where the cost of living is much higher. Anyone who has lived in New York City (yours truly included) can attest to just how expensive it is to live in these cities. Therefore, Asian Americans may earn more but they also have to spend more to survive. In fact, research shows that within these metropolitan areas, Asian American incomes still trail that of Whites…”
http://www.asian-nation.org/model-minority.shtml
There’s more:
>>>”Another telling statistic is how much more money a person earns with each additional year of schooling completed, or what sociologists call “returns on education.” One of the first in-depth studies that looked at per capita income between Asian Americans and other racial/ethnic groups came from Robert Jiobu and is cited in Asian Americans: An Interpretive History by Sucheng Chan. Using this measure, research consistently shows that for each additional year of education attained, Whites earn another $522.
That is, beyond a high school degree, a White with 4 more years of education (equivalent to a college degree) can expect to earn $2088 per year in salary. In contrast, returns on each additional year of education for a Japanese American is only $438. For a Chinese American, it’s $320. For Blacks, it’s even worse at only $284. What this means is that basically, a typical Asian American has to get more years of education just to make the same amount of money that a typical White makes with less education.”
http://www.asian-nation.org/model-minority.shtml
Fascinating. The discrimination perspective of some of our Asian-American brothers and sisters is quite interesting indeed, huh David?
-Cobra