the salt makers

While perusing a very informative blog concerning law firm diversity I came across the following:

"This article from the Harvard Law Bulletin says that female lawyers are second-class citizens in the profession. Why? Because the senior partners at most law firms are white men, and they have a bias against women. That's why so few women become partners, says the article."
http://www.misterthorne.org/blog_lfd/

This article does mention the fact that women are 4 times more likely to take a leave of absence and desire more time with their family.  Certainly, it would hard to argue that doesn't impact their promotional results significantly.  I do question, however, whether women are as ambitious as men.

I came across an article that posited the following:
"For women to become truly equal in the workplace, changes to organizational structures, which place emphasis on long and rigid working hours and overtime, need to take place and options such as career breaks, part time work and flexible working hours must be given more professional credibility by senior management."

This seems to be saying that "women will be equal in the workplace when workplaces start caring less about hard work."  Or even that "women will be equal in the workplace when workplaces become less like workplaces"  That is certainly not a solution to the problem.

The article should also discuss the "taboo" topic of autochthonous intelligence.  Two recent studies have and came up with some not-so-easy to digest conclusions:  men are smarter than women.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=405056&in_page_id=1770

Now, I can't speak for the methodology of these two tests, but they seem, prima facia, legitimiate.  But even someone as anti-feminist as myself finds it hard to reconcile with.  I personally will need more than two studies to convince me of this turn of events.

What I will visit is the well established fact that while men and women have, on average, similar intelligence scores (roughly around 100), the distribution is totally different for the sexes.  Men score more in the higher brackets and also more in the lower brackets.  Women tend to score more in the average range.  What this means is that when you go to a party, a law firm, or a doctor's office you can be pretty sure that the smartest person you meet will be a man, but you can also be sure that the dumbest person you meet will be a man.

The difference, I suppose, is that only the brightest of the bright tend to gravitate towards professions like law and medicine, which puts women at a disadvantage from the get-go.  I mean, certainly the best surgeons are men, right?  I've certainly never heard of a famous female surgeon, though I know this anecdotal evidence is far from conclusive.  Unfortunately though, even if this is true I could never support any preferential policies to ameliorate the problem.  The best man (or woman) should always get the job, regardless of race, color or sex. 

--
Zachary Sonnier

Ethan and Hampton have brought up some excellent points that must be addressed.  But ultimately all of their arguments stem from a knowledge deficit of what affirmative action is supposed to be, what affirmative action is, and its real world implications.  I see I must compose a proper essay to address all of these issues.  But first some short answers:

To Hampton:
You're right, prima facia it appears as if you can end discrimination with discrimination just as you can end war with war.  But this demonstrates a misunderstanding for two completely different issues.  You cannot end racism with racism, welfare with welfare, or promiscuous gay culture with more promiscuous gay culture.  In short, conducting a war is not the same as conducting social policies!  In war you have a clearly defined enemy which you can incapacitate with artillery, weapons, etc.  Racism is intangible.  You can't point a gun at it and obliterate it.  It's as simple as that.

You have said that "affirmative action is most certainly not about ending discriminatory enrollment practices," but this is completely false.  This is true, but only in modern times.  It was by no means the intention of affirmative action.  But this will be addressed in the essay that follows. 

To Ethan:
You have said that "it seems to me that, quotas being illegal, all affirmative action does is prevent employers from not hiring qualified candidates on the basis of race, gender, class, or sexual orientation."  Once again, you are not familiar with the real world manifestations of affirmative action.  Hampton understands this by claiming that the purpose of affirmative action is create racial preferences for blacks.  But more on this in the essay.  Just because it's a university policy doesn't mean it must be argued "separately."  It's still affirmative action and it is still nocuous.  Furthermore, welfare and affirmative action can be conflated insofar that they are liberal race policies that do more harm than good.



Affirmative Action and Liberal Race Policies

"By cheering on counterproductive attitudes, making excuses for self-defeating behavior, and promoting the belief that 'racism' accounts for most of blacks' problems, white intellectuals serve their own psychic, ideological, and political interests. They are the kinds of friends who can do more harm than enemies."
- Thomas Sowell

A Short History

On June 4, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered a speech at Howard University, giving one of the earliest defenses of what is known today as affirmative action:

"But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result."

This seemed to be the first mainstream argument for racial preferences to ameliorate past injustices, and while many in the civil rights community were thinking this, they refrained from articulating it as they knew they had just finished an arduous battle to impose race neutral policies.  IE. The Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Consequently, the leader, Martin Luther King Jr., would never have supported a policy such as affirmative action as illustrated by his famous speech:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Indeed those who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 saw all too well what the actual manifestation of the policy would yield: racial preferences.  If you read the act it is blatantly obvious that there was no intention to impose racial preferences as the language is clear as day.

Clifford Alexander, former EEOC chairman said, "An affirmative action program has nothing to do with finding an unqualified black men or women.  It is about finding qualified black people who are there in abundance but who, either inadvertently or by choice, have been over-looked. 

Benjamin Hooks, former NAACP head said, "Affirmative action is simply an action taken to ensure or affirm equal opportunities for oppressed or previously disadvantaged groups.  What's wrong with that?"

Clearly, upon the advent of affirmative action came with it race neutral language.  The purpose was not to impose racial preferences for blacks because it was widely accepted in the civil rights community that the only reason blacks lagged behind whites in hiring practices and college admissions was because of discrimination.  If people could adopt affirmative action policies, which would successfully outlaw racial discrimination against blacks, then the playing field would become even.  "What's wrong" with this are the real world results of affirmative action.

After years of universities and companies adopting affirmative action policies, policies which only ensured equal opportunities between races, they found that their minority recruitment had increased only negligibly and sometimes none at all.  Thus began the era of modern affirmative action.

McGeorge Bundy wrote:  "The gaps in economic, educational and cultural advantage between racial minorities and the white majority are so wide that there is no racially neutral process of choice that will produce more than a handful of minority students in our competitive colleges and professional schools."

Peter Winograd, a law dean at New York University, went so far as to assert in 1969 that "the fact of the matter is that if you're color-blind, you don't admit minority groups."

Consequently, private and public institutions began a tradition of adjusting scores and lowering standards to increase their minority enrollment and representation.  Behind closed doors of course.  The reason is clear and I mentioned it earlier: Martin Luther King Jr. was rolling in his grave as his hard fought race neutral policies lived only a short time in American history.  Dinesh D'Souza poignantly posits that "Gradually, but indisputably , affirmative action metamorphosed from a project to recruit the best person for the job into a program to prefer minority applicants with weaker credentials over better qualified white applicants who are turned away.  The color-blind path became the road not taken."  Hampton even recognizes this, and obviously so do his peers, as those who advocate affirmative action today advocate racial preferences, not the historical affirmative action.

Proportional Representation
Ethan asks why anyone would be obligated to adopt affirmative action policies or hire less qualified candidates if quotas were illegal.  The answer: proportional representation.

In 1977 the governments and courts decided just how much racial preferences were warranted.  Here is how the supreme court defined the concept:

"It is ordinarily to be expect that nondiscriminatory hiring practices will in time result in a work force more or less representative of the racial and ethnic composition of the population in the community from which the employees are hired."

The argument has been made that this decision by no means mandates quotas, so it means nothing.  Unfortunately, this is not so.  Proportional representation became the dogma of multi-culturalists:  if all cultures are equal, then all groups are equal.  Given this, any discrepancy in minority representation must be a result of racial discrimination. 

As D'Souza points out, "In 1971 the Supreme Court devised an ingenious legalistic mechanism to enforce proportional representation.  The court ruled that companies are liable for illegal discrimination, regardless of their intentions, if the effect of their hiring and promotion standards is to advance a disproportionately small number of racial minorities.  Griggs V. Duke Power held that merit standards that produced such a "disparate impact" could only be justified if the company could prove that those standards bore a "demonstrable relationship" to performance and were required by "business necessity."

Prima facia, this seems like a reasonable request.  Companies can only have requirements which ensure good job performance.  Yet, the precise relationship between standards and actual performance is often quite difficult to demonstrate.  By making this connection very difficult to document, courts have succeeded in making virtually all companies vulnerable to a finding of illegal discrimination.  For example, a supermarket may require their employees possess a high school degree, a bank may require no criminal background and a police department may require the passing of a standardized test.  How can these companies prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these requirements are necessary to perform said jobs?  It's impossible!  It could easily be argued that criminals can be rehabilitated, you don't need a degree to run a register and you don't need to speak correctly to shoot people!

Barbara Lerner, a psychologist and expert on job testing, notes that the government and courts took advantage of these problems.  The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) insisted that tests used for hiring purposes be "validated" by professionals.  Furthermore, these government agencies not only required companies to prove their hiring requirements were necessary, but also that no alternative measures existed that would get the job done while getting more blacks and other minorities hired.

As D'souza notes, "In some cases, the government sued companies that used such hiring standards as requiring employees to have a high school diploma or not have a criminal record.  These standards were impermissible, the government declared, because blacks are less likely to graduate from school and more likely to be convicted of a crime than whites."

To no surprise, by the late 1970's racial preferences were a way of doing business in both the government and private sector.

In summary, if your town is 50% black, you should have 50% black employees, otherwise you're discriminating.  There is no other explanation.  The institution has two options:  they can settle or face the courts.  Either way they end up paying expensive damage awards or establishing preferential hiring programs to remedy their "indiscretions."

Furthermore, the EEOC uses an 80% rule to enforce proportional representation:  companies whose minority recruits are less than four-fifths of the ratio of each group in the population are automatically presumed to be discriminating.  Just look up the 1989 Uniform Guidelines put out by the EEOC.

Facts to support my position:
"Starting in the late 1960's civil rights activists in the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) used their leverage over government contractors to force them to adopt "goals and timetables" for minority hiring.  These early forms of racial preferences had nothing to do with proven cases of discrimination.  Rather, they were simply a condition for doing business with the federal government.

In 1972, when it gained the legal power to sue private employers, the EEOC began its aggressive campaign of threats and lawsuits aimed at coercing companies to hire minorities on a merit bases if possible, preferentially if necessary.  The EEOC targeted virtually every major company - including AT&T, General Motors, and General Electric - and, using the threat of lawsuits alleging racial discrimination, negotiated consent decrees typically mandating millions of dollars in back pay, settlement costs, as well as the implementation of minority hiring programs.  "Once we get the big boys," declared EEOC Chairman John Powell, "the others will soon fall in line."

The EEOC's technique for enforcing racial preferences against whites and in favor of minorities typically begins with a filed grievance by an individual alleging discrimination.  But instead of simply seeking to resolve the particular dispute with the employer, the EEOC uses the complaint to investigate the employer's overall minority hiring data.  If it finds evidence of minority under representation, the EEOC applies legal pressure, threatening a class action law suit, and seeking to force the employer to agree to a package of compensatory payments as well as enforceable minority hiring for the future.

Many companies find it less onerous to pay damages and change their hiring practices rather than risk a damaging verdict.

There is now in place a massive bureaucracy to enforce these policies which are mandated by the ideology of proportional representation.  All companies with more than fifty employees and $50,000 in federal contracts are subject to OFCCP's racial preference rules.  The OFCCP monitors about 400,000 companies that do business with the federal government.  Each year it conducts thousands of "compliance reviews" and extracts monetary concessions and hiring agreements. 

Similarly, the EEOC has gone from a staff of a few dozen to its current size of nearly three thousand full-time employees, including several hundred attorneys.  All firms with more than fifteen employees or more must file annual reports delineating progress in minority recruitment.  More than 85% of the private sector work force falls under EEOC regulations.  Each year thousands of cases are filed in federal court with EEOC clearance, and an equal number are resolved through strong-arm negotiation.  Then there are the civil rights divisions in the departments of justice and education, as well as numerous affirmative action sections in virtually every government department and agency.

While the recent Adarand Constructors v. Pena decision imposes tougher conditions for their use, the Supreme Court has proven itself to be malleable to the logic of racial preferences.  The Court has ruled that such preferences do not violate the seemingly explicit anti-discrimination language of the 14th amendment to the constitution or the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  (Wow)

Yet private companies too have proved generally invertebrate in resisting government pressures.  One reason is that they do not with to enter into expensive and long-lasting litigation, often with its attendant bad publicity."

Real World Examples
In support of affirmative action, the Clinton administration planned to fill its position for a senior State Department post by rejecting all white male candidates and insist it go to a minority.  "It's one thing to seek diversity," Richard Cohen from the Washington Post reported, "and quite another to reject a qualified individual on account of race or sex."

So, hopefully the origins of affirmative action, what it has turned into, and its real world implications have been established.  We can all agree that any solution the the dysfunctional black culture must be multi-faceted.  Certainly both Hampton and Ethan have argued this.  The problem you both have is encompassed perfectly by Hampton saying that those who support affirmative action are "starting to turn him around" while in the next paragraph stating that "we can't win the battle against poisonous cultures as long as affirmative action and social welfare programs exist."  Does it make any sense that you want to use a program that impedes cultural evolution to spark cultural evolution?  The solution must be multi-faceted and come from within the black community, not externally or by government mandates.  There is but one more issue to address.

How Affirmative Action Hurts Blacks and Everyone Else: A Laundry List
1.  There is a widespread suspicion that blacks are an inferior race biologically.  This is evidenced by polemical books such as "The Bell Curve."  A book, mind you, that has found a difficult time being refuted.  Affirmative action, rather than dispelling this myth, enforces it.  Such a policy sends a message to both blacks and others that this group is incapable of succeeding on their own, so we must help them.  You could see racial preferences as a sort of Special Olympics for blacks.  They only serve to devalue black achievements.

For some anecdotal evidence, when Kathryn's father was attending LSU Medical School his instructors held special "study" sessions for the black students only.  It consisted of the professors teaching them off of the tests they would be taking the next week.  That sends no other message than you are not smart enough to perform well on this test, so let me give you the grade.  Does that seem like it's going to solve their problems or reinforce them?  Furthermore, do you think these doctor's were very successful or very knowledgeable?  Not having to work for their degree?  Basically just being handed to them?  All this does is produce sub-par black doctors that the rest of the nation can stereotype by.  It hurts way more than it helps.

2.  Such a policy puts every black achievement in a light of suspicion:  did they actually achieve their status at this Ivy league school or were they simply put here to fulfill a diversity goal?  This is nocuous to both the students who benefit from the policy by shedding their own accomplishments in a light of suspicion and those individuals who were unjustly denied the seat.  Not to mention the contempt with which students may approach the possibly undeserving student. 

Sure, you could argue that those who got in due to their daddy's connections would also be suspect, but they aren't wearing a huge sign that says "I may have gotten in for reasons other than merit."  With policies like affirmative action in place, every man with black skin is wearing that exact sign.

3.  Dennis Prager argues that one "way in which race-based affirmative action injures blacks is that it perpetuates the racist myth that race is significant. The notion that racial diversity is important is itself based on this racist idea. It confuses cultural diversity – a great asset to a university – with racial diversity. It tells the black student that the rest of us regard him first and foremost as black. Yet, no white or Asian student thinks of himself this way, or is seen this way by others. Yet universities chisel this racist absurdity into students' hearts, minds and souls. Thanks to liberals, it will take yet another generation to identify people by their achievements and personalities rather than by their color.

Furthermore, it discourages self-reliance and hard work. If you knew that wherever you went in life, you would be given special consideration because of your ethnicity or color, would you work as hard? Of course not. Affirmative action is race-based welfare."

4.  It would be hard to argue that black culture is not, by-in-large, dysfunctional.  High crime rates, broken families, and illegitimacy are all rampant.  I find this evidence much more convincing for their poor performance than the contention that they are autochthonously inferior to whites.  But to fix this we must address the cultural breakdown, not create liberal race policies which do nothing more than create a blame-shift.  By enacting this policy it is as if we are saying, "it is not a cultural problem that must be addressed.  It is a racism and discrimination problem."  This is also why I don't subscribe to the belief that slavery has caused the immiserated state of black culture.  Not only do I think it's just not true, but it also plays into the blame-shift.  Their problems aren't their own, they are white people.  But that's for another debate, one which I will get to shortly, just for Christiaan.

5.  By admitting mediocre black students into top tier schools you are simply setting them up for failure.  A recent study has shown that racial preferences in top law schools were causing high black drop out rates and those that did graduate were more than likely to be at the bottom of their class.  It also noted that had the top tier schools not accepted them for racial reasons they would have likely been accepted by a less prestigous school and performed better because the school was more appropriate for their preparation level.
http://www.adversity.net/Sander/RHS_main_frame.htm

It would not be a stretch to apply the lawschool statistics and conclusions across the academic boards.

6.  Because this nocuous policy ends up forcing companies to hire less qualified candidates, the detrimental effect on both a company's performance and the economy leads to many new companies choosing to move to states with few black residents.  This is harmful to any state that would otherwise be a good candidate for a company's base and it also helps perpetuate black unemployment.  It simply creates a vicious cycle.

7.  Those qualified individuals who are passed over for less qualified candidates are more likely to act towards these minorities with contempt.  A survey by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith supports these findings:  "Reverse discrimination victims are more apt to hold anti-black beliefs."  It helps perpetuate racism.

8.  As D'Souza points out, "Companies that are legally or politically compelled to hire minorities are unlikely to place them in positions of serious responsibility: consequently racial preferences have inspired countless shop-window positions such as assistant director for human relations, liaison for minority development, coordinator for community affairs, consultant for interpersonal services, diversity officer, and so on.  Furthermore, then companies reorganize or downsize, executives are under economic pressure to cut back on generally unproductive divisions which have been created to preserve and display affirmative action employees."

9.  To quote Hampton:
"Meanwhile, the thing that worries me most about affirmative action is that it is "rewarding bad behavior." Preferred minorities (black people, Mexicans) perform worse, so they receive benefits. If their communities do not improve, they receive more handouts. That sort of cycle keeps them impoverished.

The second thing is that affirmative action can be used pretty irresponsibly. At Columbia, I think that the auto-accept GPA for black people was a 2.5, and the auto-reject GPA for white people and asians was a 3.5. It was something ridiculous like that. In the last enrollment group at UM (fall 2006), a black student with the median GPA was 43 times more likely to be admitted than a white student with the median GPA.

Also, "The programs enforce a sense of entitlement, and they make minorities believe that they  need AA to get into college, get a job, etc.  It lowers standards and expectations."

Meanwhile, affirmative action is amazingly unfair to the unprivelaged minorities (asians, indians). If you are a chinese girl from an impoverished area, you need to score way higher than your peers."

Conclusion and More
But Zach, you haven't mentioned why school admissions enact affirmative action policies if they aren't intimidated by the government like private companies.  Good point.  I don't know exactly why they do this, but I can make some suggestions.  The first reason is that most colleges seem to think that possessing a diverse student body makes them more appealing to prospective students.   I don't know how true this is, but it is certainly reasonable.  Secondly, a prestigous school that does not have racial preferences is likely to suffer the same consequences as a recent New York law firm.  Either way, the reasons for why AA is harmful still apply.

Thomas Sowell posits, "If black attorneys are not elevated to partnerships in law firms in proportion to their numbers, then to the New York Times this shows, in the words of their front page headline:  "Law Firms are Slow in Promoting Minority Lawyers to Partner Role."  Apparantly there can only be external reasons for anything negative that happens to blacks."

It all comes back in a circle as this is also a huge reason why many companies comply with the proportional representation fallacy: to prevent bad publicity.  And remember that it is not only the government who can persuade companies to comply with racial preferences to avoid bad publicity.  Do you remember the Denny's incident?  After a few complaints of racial discrimination by patrons the NAACP  put a political gun to Denny's head.  They agreed to increase their number of minority franchises by more than 50 by 1997, a minimum of 12 percent of food and supply purchases (does that percentage sound familiar anyone?) to black-owned businesses by the year 2000, and preferential hiring for black managers and workers.  They also made a $68,000 dollar contribution to the NAACP.  But it gets better!  The Justice Department decided to file a class action suit against Denny's, inviting blacks from all across the country to "admit" past discrimination.  Some four thousand complaints surfaced and Denny's ended up dishing out $54 million dollars to settle the cases.

As D'Souza notes, "If politicians refuse to work with the NAACP, the "black community" is said to be outraged.  The risk of incurring charges of bigotry makes it difficult for specious claims to political representation to be challenged by outsiders."

I hope that all of your issues have been addressed.  I don't really understand why these multi-faceted arguments are "turning you around" Hampton.  I don't think you would ever have argued otherwise.  I agree, but affirmative action should not be a part of that plan.  It's actually a little amusing how you guys keep saying that you agree with each other, like I don't agree with you on the multi-faceted argument. 

I agree that we should help minorities, but affirmative action is not the way to go. 

Hampton:
"That's true, but is it really fair to expect black people to compete both against us and their own environment?"

Actually Hampton, yes it is fair.  Because I subscribe to the belief that black culture is not largely the result of slavery or white racism the blame falls primarily, though not completely, upon the black community.  Since they are responsible for perpetuating their oppositional and destructive culture, YES, I DO expect them to change it and compete on an equal level.  Don't pretend like African Americans are the only minority who have had to fight against prejudices, poverty, and slavery.  They do, however, seem to be the only one's still blaming most of their problems on them.  For that I hold no one but them responsible.

Hampton:
"Affirmative action does not select for the people who disrespect education; it selects those who seize the opportunity.  I need to look up AA hiring and enrollment statistics, but my sense is that schools and businesses select only the best students from poor black areas."

I'm actually not even sure what this means.  How exactly do they "seize the opportunity?"  By filling out a college application?  That's hardcore.  And I'm quite sure that they only select the best students from poor black areas, but I fail to see the implications of this argument.  Or it's relavency.  I also don't see how it justifies a broken system.

Hampton:
"AA is about helping the racial blocks that need help."

Maybe, but the results are far from the intended.

Personally, I like the argument that if the KKK were to try and oppress blacks, they couldn't do a better job than creating a policy such as affirmative action because all the policy really does is hinder progress.  These arguments are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to liberal race policies and I firmly suggest you guys do your own research on these matters.  It is important to note, however, that liberals do intend well. 

And just for fun I'm going to include my previous email as you guys didn't really address its arguments.  It's a little redundant, but deal with it:

"I was talking with Ethan the other day about affirmative action and he tells me that he has no problem with it.  He brought up some excellent anecdotal evidence:  his father works at LSUE and is a professor there.  The only role affirmative action plays in his hiring processes is he is not allowed to discriminate against blacks or minorities.  He always hires the most qualified.

This, I'm sure, happens quite often, but it would be obvious to also say that clearly affirmative action is not necessary in your father's case.  He would still hire the best candidate.  Who wouldn't if they truly cared about their company or school?  

But that is besides the point.  That enactment of affirmative action is the general idea behind it, which I think is good.  While I think that every day it is losing it's relevancy in our society, it can be said that ensuring that only the highest qualified candidate is hired is a good thing.  But unfortunately, that's not how it come out in practice.

Immediately after the introduction of affirmative action there was virtually not increase in minority college or job  recruits.  This was not because, as many liberals would posit, that they were still discriminating.  It was because there simply weren't as many qualified black people as there were whites and Asians.  This led to the modern affirmative action: racial preferences.  They began lowering the standards and hiring less qualified minorities to fulfill their "goals," not "quotas" so that it looked like they weren't discriminating. (Like there's a fucking difference anyway, right?)  For what other reason could there be no increase in minority recruits once it becomes illegal to discriminate?  To admit it is the applicants fault would be to admit cultural inferiority.  You can't do that if you're a multiculturalist.

Needless to say, I'm sure the courts and the ACLU don't have their eye on Ethan's dad at LSUE.  They've got bigger fish to fry.

So, where does this leave us?  I mean, quotas are illegal, right?  So what does this even matter?

The answer: proportional representation.

In 1977 the governments and courts decided just how much racial preferences were warranted.  Here is how the supreme court defined the concept in a 1977 decision:

"It is ordinarily to be expect that nondiscriminatory hiring practices will in time result in a work force more or less representative of the racial and ethnic composition of the population in the community from which the employees are hired."

Here you have the legal and courtly justification for affirmative action and "goals."  If your town is 50% black, you should have 50% black employees, otherwise you're discriminating.  Does that sound legit to you, knowing black high school drop out rates and illegitimacy?  And here is where ACLU steps in.  If you are not proportional, you become a racist organization threatened with a lawsuit.  Why not just hire some underqualified applicants to keep it under wraps, eh?"

I look forward to real discussion on this issue.

Zach

It is a good old cliche that the modern western mindset is one with mysticism.

No one embodies this more sharply than the modern protester--one so thoroughly indoctrinated into a mystic framework that shouting and stamping become his means of communication. A person whose idea of dialogue is to travel in numbers to a place where his cult can be a social nuisance. At this location, there will presumably be a speech by the group leader, so the masses can receive the dogma. And in the grand tradition of mysticism, the ceremonies entail lots and lots of drug use.

This is not to say that protesters have no place. In certain points in history, the majority will marginalize a group unjustly. In the famous cases of women's suffrage and the civil rights movement, the protesters proved instrumental in effecting change. But it is important to consider the manner of their protest. Here is a well-known quotation by Frances Wright, taught in most high-school history classes:

However novel it may appear, I shall venture the assertion, that, until women assume the place in society which good sense and good feeling alike, assign to them, human improvement must advance but feebly. It is in vain that we would circumscribe the power of one half of our race, and that half by far the most important and influential. If they exert it not for good, they will for evil; if they advance not knowledge, they will perpetuate ignorance.

A speech of this nature would be a novelty in today's America. The speaker is protesting against the present authority, but without decrying them as being essentially evil or oppressive. She claims that women are entitled to vote, but she can defend this assertion on grounds that it benefits society's welfare. The entitlement is not assumed; it is proven.

The point deserves to be made, and without any subtlety: effective protest must appeal to the conscience of the host society. Other forms of protest are essentially militant, for they make demands without referencing the host society's laws or the host society's form of justice. Any entity that makes such demands is certainly foreign, and probably our enemy. It is possible to sympathize with a military that opposes the United States (indeed, compassion and good sense demand that we do so temporarily), but we must not confuse their soldiers for our own citizens. When protests begin to use the rhetoric of entitlement or even revolution, then the protesters are not citizens. They have strayed from the fabric of law. They are outsiders.

Fast-forward to the civil rights movement. In 1960, there were two separate modes of protesting. There was the mode of Martin Luther King Jr., which was centered on appealing to conscience and reason through the use of non-violence. There was the mode of Malcolm X, which was centered on power, self-interest, and revolution. Which mode was right and just? Needless to say, both men would lay claim to the title. It is not in the scope of this investigation to answer that question, though I am sure the reader can guess my position. Suffice to say, historians will debate the point.

What this investigation can assert is that the Black Panther members were not citizens. This idea rests on the following premises:

A. Citizens are defined not only nominally, but essentially. That is to say, a man may be nominally a citizen, but if he sells military secrets to Iran, he is not a citizen but a traitor--even if no one knows. The difference between a citizen and a mere resident is two-fold: it is a difference in title, and a difference in loyalty.

B. Violent revolt is inconsistent with loyalty. The truest citizen will accept an unjust punishment from his society, like Martin Luther King, who was jailed, or like Socrates, who faced his execution bravely though he had many chances to escape. If a man decides to fight the powers that accuse him, he may be just, but he is no citizen. From the moment he decides to fight, he is an enemy of the state. There are exceptions to this, but I will leave their consideration to the reader.

C. Making demands upon one's state without appealing to law or justice is inconsistent with loyalty. We know this intuitively. If a man asks us to do something and appeals to our sense of justice, he may or may not be a friend, but if a man merely demands that we do something, we can be fairly sure that he is not our friend.

Fast forward to 2006. The tradition of Martin Luther King has largely died. Though one must concede that his adherence to non-violence survived relatively intact, his concerns for justice and reason have long since decomposed. The tradition of Malcolm X, on the other hand, lives vigorously. Though his tendency toward violent revolt is mostly diminished, the modern protest movement has universally adopted his language of seizing that to which they are entitled, and vilifying authority. Susana Adame:

Bill Cosby took a lot of flack from social justice groups for his comments about black folks needing to take responsibility for their actions. But behind closed doors, far too many radicals copped up with the "You know, he could have said it in a different way, but there's some truth there, man!" rhetoric.

[No one] dared to speak the most obvious truth—that our own insistence on prioritizing "voting" over direct challenges to the legitimacy of the nation/state, prioritizing desegregation with whites over forming alliances with each other ... played a huge part in positioning poor blacks and Mexicans where they are today.

It is perhaps redundant to point out that when poor blacks and Mexicans alter their behavior—become educated and employable—they stand a much better chance of improving their lot in life. Since Adame approved of Bill Cosby's public flogging following his comments, we can infer that she thinks black and Mexican communities should forbid talk of self-improvement.

But it is not the intent of this investigation to debunk the absurd lack of racial dialogue that marks our society. It is merely to point out that protesters are animals. Do not look them in the eye.

Today, most every protest group is angry at some stereotype or another. In fact, this is the very reason that many protest groups exist: to fight stereotypes. Here I quote the wise and witty Seanbaby:

People who cry about stereotypes are usually upset because they fall into them. We don't have time to get to know every single person we see. We have to stereotype people in certain ways to know which one of them wants to kill us for our wallet, which ones can't drive, and which ones enjoy the taste of falafel. If we didn't have stereotypes, we'd be doing stupid shit like walking up to bikers and asking who won today's tennis match.

So if you're Hindu and everyone stereotypes you as someone who doesn't ever go fly fishing, I apologize on the sake of my cruel people. But if it really bothers you, start fly fishing. Otherwise they're right. A less drastic solution would be to distract them with one of your positive stereotypes like how all Hindus have mind powers.

You can use stereotypes to your advantage. For example, if you're tall everyone assumes you play basketball. You could foolishly spend 2 seconds every time you meet a stupid stranger to say, "No, I don't play basketball," or you could initiate SuperPlan X: let them think their stereotypes are true. Then, when the time is just right, you strike... and don't play basketball!

Indeed.



Gay People.
STEREOTYPE: Wanton, narcissistic, unconcerned with the greater good, promiscuous.
HOW PROTESTERS COUNTER THIS: Riding a 12-ft grinning dick, near-nudity, prancing.

Below: Normal, freedom loving Americans. This man wants gay peole to organize and promote justice. While fucking.I really hope these two or women. Otherwise my erection raises some uncomfortable questions.

Illegal Immigrants.
STEREOTYPE: Alienated, not loyal to the United States, unwilling to assimilate, constantly export capital to Mexico.
HOW PROTESTERS COUNTER THIS: Waving / wearing Mexican flags, writing signs in Mexican, using the slogan "No One Is Illegal!" (denying the legitimacy of law)

To their credit, I saw no Mexican immigrants bearing the “NO ONE IS ILLEGAL” sign. I saw many of them with the “I am not a criminal” sign. And many waved American flags as shown below. I get the sense that many far-left groups piggyback the immigrant marches to forward their cause. I am now satisfied that most of the immigrant protesters are respectable.

Pro-Choice.
STEREOTYPE: Concerned with their bodies and their choice but not justice. Also flippant baby-killers.
HOW PROTESTERS COUNTER THIS: Hold on. What the hell is going on here. These signs are … good. They make good points.

Hm. Yeah that’s kind of true. We have to have some amount of trust in our own citizens. It seems probably that most people will only abort when it is moral to do so. The protestors are invoking the greater good.

They are making a political stand while proclaiming a love of their city. And the brunette is letting her beautiful breasts shine light upon the populace. It's brilliant!

This is all very strange to me. I remember pro-choice activists waving idiotic slogans about their rights, and demanding that the government not cramp their style with things like laws.

I seem to remember Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation saying, “The threat to abortion rights will be defeated when young women take to the streets and stop letting old men tell them what to do…. Religious extremism in Afghanistan and religious extremism over here isn't really that different. They want to use ‘the law’ to outlaw what other people can and can't do.”

I seem to remember a protester named Carmen describing the following scenario at a pro-choice rally. There were Christian counter-protesters present, and they began to pray for Carmen and her associates. Someone yelled out, “What the fuck are you doing! Don’t pray for us!” Responding to this, the Christians asked if they were not ashamed of murdering unborn children. Carmen replied, “Mother fucker, I eat fucking baby McNuggets for breakfast.”

Let us look at the next batch of pictures.

Ah yes. These are the protesters I’ve come to know and love.

“What does my uterus have to do with you?” A very incisive, relevant question. And here is my response. What does a child molester’s penis have to do with you? Meanwhile, I think I've seen the bald dude in internet porn.I have no idea what this is supposed to represent.Did I miss that war? Oh. By "war" you meant "being subject to law." I see.

Arabs.
· STEREOTYPE: Violent, prone to gobble-dee-gook and burning shit and shooting AK's into the air, religious intolerance, gender intolerance, political intolerance, intolerance of other Arabs.
· HOW PROTESTERS COUNTER THIS: Burning and shooting shit (effigies, flags), killing a nun, stamping, shouting, rioting.

"Islam has not brought violence upon the world!"

Popular Iranian game show.

Palestinian fourth graders take a spelling test.
Give props to the Israeli soldier for not shooting the man in the red shirt. I mean, he didn't even shoot him in the foot. You are a more gracious man than I, sir. Also, give props to the Palestinian for bum rushing a fucking armed soldier. Join the rugby team, homie.

Green Party.

STEREOTYPE: Either college liberals who are upset at daddy, or ex-hippies. Thoughts clouded by weed at all hours. Also, very emo.

HOW PROTESTERS COUNTER THIS: cheering on the humanitarian crusade of the Iraqi insurgents, wearing marijuana symbols, making George Bush devils.

Below: A very smart man. When asked to comment about the sign, Green party presidential candidate David Cobb said, “I cannot renounce [that sign] because I don’t know exactly what it means.”

Green party candidate for new york senate. I'm not lying.
Below: Green party protesters betray their limited vocabulary.This is what happens when the hoi polloi are permitted to govern.

I think at some level we have to accept that institutional "racism" does exist. Sorry to use a PC buzz word, but I think cyclical poverty is pretty evident. Now, I'm as existential as the next guy, and I believe that we're all responsible for our actions and their consequences, but I think any reasonable person can recognize the limitations of possibility caused by years and years of slavery, followed by years and years of disenfranchisement, followed by years and years of poverty, followed by years and years of violent cultural messages. That is, black folks have reached an unfortunate situation, for which the American majority is partially responsible.

I must emphasize that the black community bears much responsibility for its position as well. As Bill Cosby has pointed out (and for which he received much unwarranted criticism and hate), much of black youth culture punishes success in academia and so-called white collar occupations. While black folks blame white people for their problems, they crush most oppurtunities for capital success at a tender age. Black kids are taught that speaking correctly is to act "white", to do well in school is to act "white", to get a good job and support a monogamous, unified family is to act "white". These different qualities, as most will attest, are the cornerstones of civility: education, stability, and some manner of familial support. This leaves the black community in a deep hole where viably ameliorating job oppurtunities are concerned. To leave the hood, is to betray your heritage. This, I assure all of you, is where much of the black man's plight comes from. His own misguided sense of racial pride.

Now, as I mentioned, White America is partially to blame as well. We were the slave-masters, the Jim Crow enforcers, and the prejudiced employers of the past 140 years. While many modern day conservatives try to excuse themselves by saying "I didn't own any slaves, this isn't my fault", they fail to include cultural history and the amount of time necessary to alter a culture's view on fundamental issues. This historically based argument works only on reparations. Sure I didn't own any slaves, and today's black folks aren't themselves slaves, so fuck that I don't owe you any money. But 140 years isn't so long in terms of history, and in that period we did do a pretty good job of keeping blackie down. The Seperate But Equal doctrine struck down in the 1960's had kept racial bindings on the black community similar to those enforced over 400 years of slavery. Yes, black people are poor because of slavery, there I said it. Impoverishing a community for that long does have a tendency to undermine its productive capabilities, and has a deleterious affect on their cultural understanding of themselves.

Now current Affirmitive Action laws may be unfortunate. They are riddled with contradictions, and do not have as much success as we would like. But as Zach decided to look at the practical implications of AA in terms of how many black folks actually benefited from it, let's have a little thought experiement and consider how many white folks were actually affected by it? There are over 4000 institutions of higher education in the United States, only 10% of our population is made up of blacks, while a solid 70% is white. Do you mean to tell me that a black man's "unfair" admission into one of these colleges has kept whitey out of school? Forget the principles involved and look at the numbers. Obviously, I'm no economist or sociologist so I don't have all the specific numbers, but I can make a reasonable guess about the actual affect of Affirmitive Affirimitive action on the White community. We get rubbed the wrong way because blacks may be getting the easy route into school. They score lower on tests, perform worse when there in the university, it violates all notions of rewards of excellence. But has this really tended toward the impoverishment of the white majority? I don't think so.

Furthermore, I would argue that if the system works for 1% of black folks it's set out to aid, it's doing its job, because that 1% can increase exponentially over the years until affirmitive action is an obsolete system. In this regard, AA operates as an incentive program, hopefully rasing the lowest standard for blacks. Sure they have lower scores, but they also have lower aspirations. Perhaps by raising the height of their goals we can elevate their performances.

Of course, I must issue this one caveat: who will turn off the faucet before we the well runs dry? If AA works at remedying the black cultural plight, then who in this worthless, PC, lazy bureacracy we call a government will stop it before its too late? This is where I think we must take any issue with AA as an institution, it has the potential to wreak more havoc if it is successful. In this regard AA is like democracy, it's a terrible way to fix the problem but its the best we've got.

I was talking with Ethan the other day about affirmative action and he tells me that he has no problem with it.  He brought up some excellent anecdotal evidence:  his father works at LSUE and is a professor there.  The only role affirmative action plays in his hiring processes is he is not allowed to discriminate against blacks or minorities.  He always hires the most qualified.

This, I'm sure, happens quite often, but it would be obvious to also say that clearly affirmative action is not necessary in your father's case.  He would still hire the best candidate.  Who wouldn't if they truly cared about their company or school?  

But that is besides the point.  That enactment of affirmative action is the general idea behind it, which I think is good.  While I think that every day it is losing it's relevancy in our society, it can be said that ensuring that only the highest qualified candidate is hired is a good thing.  But unfortunately, that's not how it come out in practice.

Immediately after the introduction of affirmative action there was virtually not increase in minority college or job  recruits.  This was not because, as many liberals would posit, that they were still discriminating.  It was because there simply weren't as many qualified black people as there were whites and Asians.  This led to the modern affirmative action: racial preferences.  They began lowering the standards and hiring less qualified minorities to fulfill their "goals," not "quotas" so that it looked like they weren't discriminating. (Like there's a fucking difference anyway, right?)  For what other reason could there be no increase in minority recruits once it becomes illegal to discriminate?  To admit it is the applicants fault would be to admit cultural inferiority.  You can't do that if you're a multiculturalist.

Needless to say, I'm sure the courts and the ACLU don't have their eye on Ethan's dad at LSUE.  They've got bigger fish to fry.

So, where does this leave us?  I mean, quotas are illegal, right?  So what does this even matter?

The answer: proportional representation.

In 1977 the governments and courts decided just how much racial preferences were warranted.  Here is how the supreme court defined the concept in a 1977 decision:

"It is ordinarily to be expect that nondiscriminatory hiring practices will in time result in a work force more or less representative of the racial and ethnic composition of the population in the community from which the employees are hired."

Here you have the legal and courtly justification for affirmative action and "goals."  If your town is 50% black, you should have 50% black employees, otherwise you're discriminating.  Does that sound legit to you, knowing black high school drop out rates and illegitimacy?  And here is where ACLU steps in.  If you are not proportional, you become a racist organization threatened with a lawsuit.  Why not just hire some underqualified applicants to keep it under wraps, eh?

--
Zachary Sonnier

Against my better judgment, I was watching Mad TV yesterday. Thankfully, by the time I had switched it on, there were only a few minutes left in the show. These few minutes featured a performance from the musical guest Ice T. At the end of the show, in classic Saturday Night Live style, the cast gathered on the stage while the band played a soft farewell tune and the host, Mr. Ice T, (Mr. T?) waved goodbye to the audience and thanked them for watching. Needless to say, I felt very appreciated for my brief investment of time.

“There is one person I would like to thank personally,” Ice T said. “I would like to thank Mr. Quincy Jones, the producer of this show, a proud black man!”

In response to Ice T’s raised tone, and raised hands, the crowd cheered wildly, presumably simply because Mr. Jones is black. The cast members also began to clap and cheer. One can only presume they had to because Mr. Jones is the one that signs their paychecks.

After the din ebbed, and the camera began to pull back from the stage, Ice T blew a kiss to the audience with his index finger and said, “Remember y’all, a world with no color barriers, none at all. If we can imagine it, we can make it happen.”

The crowd responded in standard Beatle-mania fashion and practically threw themselves off the balconies in support of such a bold and enlightened statement. I imagine that’s what it was like when Barry Manilow first performed “Mandy” in front of a live audience.

I, among the presumably millions of viewers of that program, was likely the only person confused by the host’s statement. First, Ice T pointed out that the producer of the show, Quincy Jones, is a black man, and deserves accolades for that fact alone. Only a few breaths later, Ice T calls for the eradication of racial lines. This is a stark contradiction.

Modern multiculturalism is the primary contributor to the modern racial apocalypse in western society. This multicultural dogma is not sustainable and will only work to increase tension between races because it is patently contradictory. It is impossible to both celebrate the cultural and racial differences between humans and simultaneously maintain a colorblind society. These two ideas completely contradict each other and only work to cause anger and extremism among those that are viewed as the oppressed because their demands can never be met, and frustration among those that are viewed as oppressors because the best intentions of inclusion and penance, however misguided, can never be adequate.

In his seminal work “The End of Racism,” Dinesh D’Souza states that certain “cultural defects” in the American black community are contributing to a virtual moral apocalypse within their ranks, resulting in low expectations and by extension, low achievements. He points to defects such as high illegitimacy and school dropout rates. This was not a new contention. In fact, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan had made the first public outcry in 1965 when he wrote “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” In this report, now commonly known as “The Moynihan Report,” the Senator stated that the destruction of the black family unit, specifically the absence of the father, was statistically on the rise and was contributing to the very defects D’Souza states are causing the modern downward spiral in black culture.

Ironically, even the title of Senator Moynihan’s report would be too risqué to speak in public in these enlightened modern times. Needless to say, Senator Moynihan’s report and Mr. D’Souza’s treatise on the matter have both been decried as works of racism.

Much like in psychiatric therapy, drug or alcohol addition, compulsive or otherwise destructive behavior, the first step to solving the problem is to admit that one exists. Until the black community ceases celebrating the very moral defects that are contributing to their grand dysfunction, such as illegitimacy, poor education, violence, drug use and domestic violence and the like, they will never be able to see the forest through the trees. Unfortunately, we find in our midst an entire corps of individuals that have make their substantial livings from maintaining this status quo of anger and resentment, which is only fueling this destructive behavior and pounding more nails into their cultural coffin.

Last night, my wife and I were having dinner with my wife’s father and stepmother. While discussing plans for the Halloween festivities this evening, her step-mother stated that my wife’s father, until recently, was always very involved giving out candy and trying to scare the children with his now-famous gorilla mask, but that he had become a “scrooge” in recent years. My wife asked why he had absconded from participation recently. He paused and said, “Because of ungrateful children.”

“Because of ungrateful black children” he meant to say. Since the storms of the last few years, which have caused a surge in the population of Lafayette and the surrounding areas, Halloween has become a markedly unfortunate event. Children, unaccompanied by parents, presumably from neighborhoods far away, would arrive at my father-in-law’s home wearing t-shirts and jeans, clutching Wal-Mart shopping sacks and demanding candy by the handful. He even told me about a few girls, no more than sixteen years old, similarly non-costumed, requesting extra candy for their unborn children as they patted their bellies, just beginning to swell. He also told me about some of these same girls, requesting candy for their newborns, as if a three-month-old has any business with a peanut butter cup.

These are not new ideas, but until these glaringly obvious contentions are, at the very least, no longer dismissed out of hand as racism or “hate-speech,” the problems will only get worse. As my father once said, “I’d rather be looking at a problem than looking for it.”

Well, we found it.

It is always a pleasure to pick up the Michigan Daily. It is somewhat akin to visiting http://www.timecube.com/ or http://www.realultimatepower.net/ . You read the front cover, and you know, basically immediately, what level these people’s minds are operating at. They are children. Today was a special treat.

In the upcoming Michigan elections, voters will decide on Proposal 2, or the so-called Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which would make it illegal for schools, employers, or contractors to discriminate against students on the basis of race, gender, or ethnicity. In effect, it outlaws certain affirmative action practices. A similar proposition (prop 209) passed in California ten years ago, effectively minimizing, though not eliminating, affirmative action policies (http://hrweb.berkeley.edu/seads/faq1.htm).

Needless to say, the left-wing politicos on campus are not amused.

Accordingly, the school newspaper today contained a six page pamphlet on why Proposition 2 “will immediately eliminate opportunities for women and minorities to have equal access to jobs, education, and contracts.” The pamphlet was written by the ACLU.

The pamphlet’s case against proposition 2 is very simple. They simply repeat increasingly ridiculous hyperbole (sometimes spicing it up with creative grammar). The core message is simple: cutting affirmative action means discriminating against minorities.

This shit is priceless.

Will Youmans: “I only had two black student in my class at UC Berkeley (after California passed proposition 209). I think these initiatives tell minorities basically get the message that they are not wanted.”

Brandon Jessup: “Eliminating the path for the next Barak Obama, Antonio Villaraigosa, Jennifer Granholm, William Jefferson Clinton and others is the purpose of ending Affirmative Action.”

Taina Gomez: “As the first in my family to go to college, I needed a supportive community of other students of color… Walking down Sproul Plaza during my first semester, I tried to find faces I could relate to, those who looked like me. I had a hard time finding one. It was then that I began to feel deceived, conned.”

Stephanie Chang: “Why, as a twenty-something Asian Pacific American woman, do I care about affirmative action? … Because opportunities need to continue here in Michigan for all of us, not destroyed by California millionaires who don’t know what’s best for Michigan. This is my fight because race matters.

My two personal favorite come from Taina Gomez again: “Our low numbers meant less of us in classrooms, departments and organizations…. More work fell on fewer students of color.”

What?! I’m not a teacher, but I’m pretty sure that the number of colored students has no effect on your workload. I really don’t think that Berkeley assigns a set amount of work to racial blocks.

Gomez continues, “Constantly, we were forced to tackle issues of race, discrimination, and hate, which the university, out of fear of being sued or labeled too liberal, or a violator of free speech, often did not.”

Simply breathtaking. Berkeley is afraid of being labeled too liberal? Berkeley? Due to this fear, they allow students to give hate-speech? Right. I’m pretty sure hate-speech is rampant at the Berkeley campus. Oh no wait. What I mean is, very rarely at Berkeley, a person might wrestle away from the thought police long enough to speak about race without using socially acceptable clichés (“minorities face structural racism all the time,” “republicans disenfranchise black votors,” “it is harder to advance if you are a woman”). Then the thought police promptly flog that person.

The ACLU pamphlet contains 8 articles. 5 are extended personal statements by students, graduates, rappers, and various others.


Of the remaining three:

• One attacks Proposition 2 for calling itself “The Michigan Civil Rights Initiative,” charging that this title is criminally deceptive. Since the proposition calls for equal treatment for all races, I do not find the argument especially compelling. Interestingly, in 2004, neither did the ACLU. They defended a lottery petition against litigation. The petitioners were charged with using deceptive language to get signatures. Back in 2004, the ACLU argued that ruling against the lottery petition would be tantamount to the courts deciding which opinion is correct. Way to stand by your convictions, ALCU. Fucking douchebags. (http://www.chetlyzarko.com/original-content/ACLU-two-faces.html)
• The second is titled, “Michigan’s Economy Can’t Afford to Turn Back the Clock on Civil Rights, Experts Say.” Wow. Can’t wait to read this one. I wonder how they can possibly show that affirmative action is good for the state economy. Reading…………………………… Alright. Don’t take the title literally. By “experts” they mean one researcher—Susan Kaufmann, Director of the Center for the Education of Women at the University of Michigan—and two baseless opinion quotations from an Ann Arbor business owner and a Detroit Councilwoman. Susan Kaufmann’s research (published here http://www.cew.umich.edu/PDFs/MCRIecon6-25.pdf and pseudo-contested here http://plaintruth.blogspot.com/2006/09/kaufmann-scare-monger-susan-kaufmann.html) seeks to prove that minorities in California lost opportunities after prop 209. Of course they lost opportunities. Prior to 209, minorities were given opportunities that were not commensurate with their abilities. Revoking a racially biased screening process will reduce opportunities for minorities. The study goes on to claim that “Michigan will fail to attract companies” if Proposition 2 passes, using the anecdotal evidence that “Recently, GM and Alcoa have stopped recruiting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison… because the student body is not diverse enough.” Um, Susan. Wisconsin-Madison is not located in California. How’s recruiting going for Berkeley students? Pretty fucking good, right? She must also be unaware that California’s GDP has grown 55% since proposition 209 was passed, fourth best in the nation. In the same time frame, Michigan’s has grown 10%, third worst in the nation.
• Finally, an attack piece on Ward Connerly (a black man), the force behind the MCR Initiative. The article states the following: “Orphaned at an early age and shuffled between relatives living in Washington and California, Connerly’s future seamed (their misspelling, not mine) uncertain. Yet his determination led him to … Sacramento State University where he was the first to pledge the all-white Delta Phi Omega fraternity and was elected student body president. With a promising future in politics, Connerly’s zeal for race relations grew exponentially, yet as many other black youth fought for civil rights and black solidarity, Connerly veered sharply to the right. In fact, during a New York Times interview he said “Reveling in blackness—black is beautiful, black power, black consciousness—just creates an invisible wall of difference that sets us apart.” That Bastard.

To learn more about the MCRI, visit

http://www.aclumich.org/

http://www.michigancivilrights.org/

But it does, and it does.

I would first like to make the observation that Christiaan's and my blog, while not fully compatible, are by no means mutually exclusive.  In fact, I see his "as if" principle as very similar to my "erring" principle.  I feel the posts supplement each other quite well.

But now onto Hampton's response:

Hampton, you are drawing the dots beautifully, but you refuse to connect them.  Certainly we define life, not something objective that we discover.  But you fail to realize that we define life with objective standards which we have discovered.

You seem to be advocating moral relativism in a very nocuous manner, and frankly I'm surprised that you would even entertain the idea of moral relativism given your Platonic and Socratic knowledge.  Surely, many views are molded by social convention, but to say that because a society has different moral views than another, and that neither can be wrong, is multicultural drivel. 

Hampton:
"Further, even if we agree that something is alive, we still must answer the question of whether it is immoral to kill it. This too, is moulded by social convention. It is not a concept that is forever unchanging. It must be applied selectively depending on our culture, our situation, and so on."

Do I really need to address the contention that because a society has deemed it morally acceptable to rape their women then is must be respected?  Or to sew their vagina's to ensure virginity for their wedding night?  Does anyone actually believe that because one society has deemed this acceptable that it is, in fact, moral?  I think it would be hard to seriously entertain this idea, but it is essentially what you are saying.  If a society decides if it is immoral to kill something, then they must decide every moral decision.  And I know you don't believe this.  I know you believe that rape is objectively immoral, but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Suffice it to say that a quote from facebook was not the best way to introduce your argument, but the fact that people have different definitions of life does not mean that what life is changes. 

Hampton:
"This has nothing to do with one group of people "erring on the side of life." It has everything to do with differing definitions."

Once again, you are drawing the dots, but you don't connect them.  This discrepancy in beliefs may exist due to "differing definitions," but you fail to understand why the parties have differing definitions.  While I refer you to both Christiaan's and my blog for a fuller picture, I will reiterate that the pro-lifer's definition exists because life cannot be proven.  In order to be 100% sure one is preserving innocent human life, the definition must begin at conception.  In order to be 100% sure they can preserve their life style, pro-choicer's choose their definition as when they don't feel like taking responsibility for their actions. 

Hampton:
"So if you truly wanted to "err on the side of life" then you should logically be a vegan, because can you really be sure that animals aren't alive? You can claim that you are sure, but then, a pro-choice feminist can claim that she is sure that fetuses aren't alive, and with equal validity."

Allow me to digress even further and make an easily deduced point from your logic: since plants are actually alive themselves, and since we cannot be sure that plants are not "morally" alive, the to "err on the side of life" I wouldn't be able to eat cabbage.  So if I eat a salad tonight, I'm supporting abortion!

Let's demonstrate this logic with syllogisms:

Premise 1:  Sharks live in water.
Premise 2:  There is water in my toilet.
Conclusion:  Sharks live in my toilet.

Premise 1:  It is always better to "err on the side of life."
Premise 2:  Plants and animals may or may not be alive.
Conclusion:  It is always better to not kill plants or animals.

What's wrong with these two syllogisms, the second which you seem to be advocating?  Well, in the first one, premise one is obviously considering "water" as oceans, so the conclusion is wrong.  In the second one I am obviously speaking about human life, not animal life.  So, unless you're prepared to argue that killing a human is morally tantamount to killing an animal, this argument is not relevant.  I am not prepared, nor do I care, to debate whether eating an animal is immoral.  Perhaps it is.  But what we can agree on is that it is always more immoral to eat a human than an animal, if for no other reason than pure intuition.

I will amend my principle if it makes it easier for you:  It is better to err on the side of human life.

Your strongest argument is one you haven't elaborated on yet: that abortion ultimately saves life, and serves the greater good.  Yet, you've also told me that abortion supports destructive cultures.  How are these not contradictory?  I would like you to explain the reasons why abortion serves the greater good (briefly, if possible...and no entropy please).  I know you will say that it reduces crime,  but what else is on your plate?

Also, you really haven't addressed the "erring" principle beyond noting some of its innocuous implications.  You haven't spoken to the content of the "as if" principle, either.  It seems to me that your best move at this point is to say that maybe we're killing humans, but it's better for society to take that risk than to prevent abortion. 

The questions you also have to answer is whether the destructive culture you are supporting is better than the culture that disallows abortions.

Maybe Chris Rock isn't the best source, but here is a quote that I think perfectly illustrates the culture you are supporting:

"Far from an encomium to fetus killing, Rock's abortion bit is an attack on women for the frivolous manner in which they decide whether or not to keep a child. "When a woman gets pregnant, it's a choice between the woman" — here Rock pauses, a mischievous grin barely restrained — "and her girlfriends." From there: "One girlfriend goes, 'Child, you should have that baby — that man got some good hair…' And the other girlfriend says, 'Child, why we even talking about this — ain't we supposed to go to Cancun next week? Get rid of that baby!' " And that, Rock says, "is how life is decided in America."

I'm also starting to give a lot of weight to the argument that the existence of abortion is actually harmful for women because it allows men to treat them much more like an object because they know they won't have to deal with the consequences!  Although I'm quite sure that many of your "sexually liberated" friends in Ann Arbor wouldn't give a shit about being treated as a sex object.  Also, really interesting fact:  for years more men have been pro-choice than women.  Why the hell do you think?  So they know they can have an easy escape hatch...it's got shit to do with their feelings for women's rights.

Here's the article where this is all from.  Very poignant:

http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001054.cfm

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Zachary Sonnier
337-250-5778

If anything has been made clear in this debate, it is that the abortion issue is one seldom compromised via rational means.

As Hampton pointed out, the issue of abortion rests solely on definitions, themselves mereley subjections and assumptions. Although I can't help but agree that such lack of observation or objectively derived data regarding the "beginning of life" exist, I will contend that such ambiguity does not support a rationally sound acceptance of abortion as an unfortunate necessity that serves the greater good.

For now I will ignore my general distaste for this type of utilitarianism in disguise (Hampton, a classicist like yourself should be ashamed), and Hampton's moot appeal to ancient practices. These components of the argument, I will leave later posts. Rather, I will choose to argue my point in light of what we can learn from the practice of faith, and in doing so I do not intend to settle this argument once and for all, that is in a way which will satisfy really any party. I will state this very clearly: THE ISSUE OF ABORTION IS NOT ONE WHICH CAN BE SETTLE VIA PURELY RATIONAL MEANS. In the end, I believe we are best left with some manner of faith to which we must appeal in order to formulate our opinion.

I have chosen (in the interest of time) not to attack Zach's examples or Hampton's subsequent responses. Because it poses bigger questions than the issue of abortion, I will have to leave my objections to Hampton's submission to the greater good for later.

Instead I will submit the following quote from a prominent atheist, Bertrand Russell: "It is wrong always and under any circumstances to believe anything without sufficient evidence."

Now, one might find it strange to use Russell's imperative in support of a faith-based argument, but this is not a faith-based argument in the sense that it involves merely religious assumptions of morality (i.e. a Christian's unwavering acceptance of the will of God etc.).
Rather, I believe that in answering Russell's imperative when it is applied to the realm of morality and ethics, we can find an answer.

Applying Russell's thought to the situation at hand, we find that a tantamount circumstance to Russell's lack of sufficient evidence. This seems to be something we can agree on, namely that there isn't and most likely will never be sufficient evidence to prove when life begins. So what is a Russellian to do? If we follow Russell's imperative, we can, at best, become morally agnostic and abstain from making any judgement regarding abortion's morality. But this would be a dire mistake. Abortions are a current and growing practice, and I believe that apathy toward it is a far worse evil than whole-hearted acceptance or intolerance.

The only way to rectify Russell's imperative with a morally ambiguous situation is to behave "as if". In other words, because we're left with a very specific dichotomy of argument, we can easily choose one or the other equally unproven sides with which to work. Assuming that we can accept that it is generally better to preserve innocent human life than destroy it, regardless of our own morally suspect behavior (eg. Hampton's point re: Vegan's and Capital Punishment), one could respond to the Russellian scenario of ambiguity by saying it is better to act "as if" the child is alive.

In other words, what we're left with is Kierkegaardian dilemma of faith. We must choose, almost blindly, which situation is the better: Assuming the "greater good" in this situation is morally viable and in fact equal in moral value to the imperative that protects innocent human life, we must make a choice. This is where faith comes in: we must have Faith (not necessarily a religious one) that the best thing we can do is preserve that human life. We must have faith that a foetus is indeed more than just genetic puddy, that it is potential humanity awaiting it's arrival into kinetic actuality, and that despite the possibilities that such a child will be unwanted, deformed, or wholly evil, it is better in all situations to let it live.

At most, I think we can say that choosing the greater good is only to mire ourselves in further moral argument. Many will, and have, contended that such appeals to the greater good as a moral necessity is incorrect, and consequently the abortion issue will only further spiral into moral ambiguity. However, the choice to preserve innocent human life is one that is unequivocally correct, assuming we don't become monstrous as we had in the past a begin murdering retards and folks with broken legs like a pack of wild dogs (as hampton would seem to have us do). Admittedly, this is not the most philosophic of answers. It is a choice to believe in the sanctity of human life, and the possibility that it begins at conception. Although we can never know that this is the case, we must behave "as if" life begins there, and accordingly act to preserve. This is a movement of faith.

But this faith does not have to come from a deity's rule. It can from our own worst case, "as if" scenario: The one in which we must decide between 1) a supposed greater good, and embark into further moral debate, and 2) an assumption that renders a clear moral imperative, namely to protect human life.

Here's the dirty little secret that societies tend not to talk about: the question of what is alive (in a moral sense) is something that we define, not something objective that we discover.

Further, even if we agree that something is alive, we still must answer the question of whether it is immoral to kill it. This too, is moulded by social convention. It is not a concept that is forever unchanging. It must be applied selectively depending on our culture, our situation, and so on. I will expand on this claim at the end. For now, consider these test cases.

1 In nomadic tribes, a man becomes too injured to keep up with his tribe. Such a man will sometimes be left to die. Various cultures (our own) find this reprehensible.

2 A man in our society is mentally handicapped. Regardless of his level of mental retardation, we say that he is alive and we are obligated to support him. Is this attitude universal? Assuredly not.

3 A baby is born with a serious defect. In our society, we will raise and care for the baby. In all parts of the ancient world, the baby would often be left to die of exposure.

4 A man in an ancient army flees from battle. His generals consider him dead. Upon finding the man, they kill him without a second thought, or perhaps torture him so he may serve some use.

5 A boy in ancient Persia is homeless and destitute. He steals food from a farmer. Will the farmer consider the boy to be morally alive? Will he think that the boy deserves life?

6 Some years ago a man in our own country beat his dog with a bat then buried it alive in wet cement. (meanwhile, my friend Kathy will not eat meat, dairy, or honey)

In which of these scenarios is the subject morally alive? In which scenario does the subject deserve life? I read on facebook the other day that, "life probably doesn't begin until age 4 or 5, because who can remember being a baby?" Suffice to say, people have different definitions of life. This has nothing to do with one group of people "erring on the side of life." It has everything to do with differing definitions.

You, my friend, do this yourself. You eat meat. You support capital punishment. Why do you fall on that side of the spectrum? Perhaps it is convenient. You can eat a hamburger for lunch. You can see bad people being killed and feel good, like the world is neat and orderly.

Of course, I'm fucking with you. I know that you don't believe these things out of convenience.

You eat meat because you have made the (correct) judgment that animals are not morally alive. Keep in mind that living a vegan life is not really that hard. The convenience of being an omnivore is somewhat trivial. So if you truly wanted to "err on the side of life" then you should logically be a vegan, because can you really be sure that animals aren't alive? You can claim that you are sure, but then, a pro-choice feminist can claim that she is sure that fetuses aren't alive, and with equal validity.

You support capital punishment because it does good. It removes the cancer from our society and inhibits other citizens from turning cancerous. Ultimately, we believe that it saves life, and serves the greater good. As you know quite well, I am tolerant of abortion for the exact same reason.

So that's all the preliminary stuff. Now I can attack the three scenarios without wasting much space.

Example 1: Free yourself and possibly kill an innocent.
I would most certainly not free myself, because I would be afraid of killing someone. But who am I afraid of killing? Let me alter your scenario a little bit.

New Example 1: Ethan captures me and presents me with a red button. If I press it, someone might die. If not, I'm trapped for six months. I ask him "Who will be killed?" Ethan answers "Someone chosen from a random sampling of rappers, terrorists, criminals, wifebeaters, meatheads who hang out at the Bulldog, drug addicts, socialist authors, unwanted fetuses in the first trimester, cancer patients with less than a day to live, and hard-line Iranian nationalists."

I think to myself, "Hmm... I don't really want to kill the cancer patient, and I'm somewhat taken aback by the fetuses. But the reward is surely worth the risk." And I slam that mother fucker all day long.

Example 2: Demolish a building and possibly kill a person.
I would most certainly not demolish the building, because we can oust the schmuck who's in there and then take care of business. But terminating a pregnancy is not like that. We can't decide not to abort temporarily. It's a final decision. So what if your example was scructured this way...

New Example 2: If I do not demolish the building, then the new construction project will never be built. The new construction project is a much-needed hospital, funded by the selfish prick Google owners.

I think to myself, "Who is that dumb shit in that building. Well, whoever he is, he's fucked." Kaboom.

Example 3: Kill myself to avoid music-induced insanity.
I would kill myself.


Now for my claim that "morally alive" is not an unchanging concept.

As we have seen, deciding if something "morally alive" is not the same as deciding whether or not the thing is alive, or whether or not the thing is human. If we took that stance, then we could not dish out corporal punishment or fight in a war. So we can throw out that criteria.

The next criteria is whether or not it is good for the subject to be alive. This is synonymous with saying, "will extinguishing the life of the subject serve the greater good." And this question, of course, depends on our culture, our situation, and so on.