Stuart Taylor Jr. : Let The Honest Talk About Race Begin

National Journal Magazine ^ | Feb. 28, 2009 | Stuart Taylor Jr.

[kellynla]

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

Your speech commemorating Black History Month by calling America "a nation of cowards" because we "do not talk enough with each other about race" -- a topic about which we talk incessantly -- was unworthy of the admirable public servant I believe you to be.

The speech was, as others have pointed out, embarrassingly misinformed, hackneyed, and devoid of thoughtful contributions to racial dialogue.

You can do much better. Please use your bully pulpit in the future to cut through the usual cant and state some politically incorrect truths about race in America that would carry special weight if they came from you. That would require mustering the courage to take on the Democratic Party's powerful racial-grievance lobby. But it would do the country a lot of good.

The one point that you developed in a bit of detail in the February 18 speech was especially silly: "Black history is given a separate, and clearly not equal, treatment.... Until black history is included in the standard curriculum in our schools and becomes a regular part of all our lives, it will be viewed as a novelty, relatively unimportant and not as weighty as so-called 'real' American history."

Bosh. The reality is that our high schools and universities are quite clearly focusing disproportionate attention on black history.

The proof includes a poll published last year in which 2,000 high school juniors and seniors in all 50 states were asked to name the 10 most famous Americans, other than presidents and first ladies. The top three finishers were black: Martin Luther King Jr. (67 percent), Rosa Parks (60 percent), and Harriet Tubman (44 percent). So is the only living finisher, Oprah Winfrey (22 percent).

As for the universities, "the almost obsessive emphasis on race, class, and gender in the humanities and social sciences means that, if anything, black history is overrepresented in college history curricula," in the words of professor KC Johnson, a distinguished scholar of American history based at Brooklyn College. (We co-authored a 2007 book on the Duke lacrosse rape fraud.)

It's true that college black-studies courses are often "separate." But the reason is hardly to slight black history. It is to satisfy demands for hiring more black professors, who tend to specialize in black studies. Some of them also use their platforms to spread the lie that America is still pervaded by white racism.

Your unelaborated assertion that "this nation has still not come to grips with its racial past" is also way off base, Mr. Attorney General.

To the contrary, this nation has adopted numerous civil-rights laws. It has replaced the once-pervasive regime of discrimination against blacks with a benignly motivated but nonetheless wide-reaching regime of discrimination against whites, euphemistically known as "affirmative action." It sometimes seems more interested in teaching children about slavery and segregation than about math and science. It has elected a black president.

The country has replaced the once-pervasive regime of discrimination against blacks with a benignly motivated but nonetheless wide-reaching regime of discrimination against whites known as "affirmative action."

For all of its flaws, this nation is "the least racist white-majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protection of minorities than any other society, white or black; [and] offers more opportunities to a greater number of black persons than any other society, including all those of Africa," black sociologist Orlando Patterson wrote in 1991.

You also said this, Mr. Attorney General: "On Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some 50 years ago [and] is voluntarily socially segregated."

Rubbish. It's true that social self-segregation persists -- especially, as Patterson has written, among "Afro-American students and young professionals." But as Abigail Thernstrom points out in National Review Online: "In 1964 only 18 percent of whites said they had black friends; the figure today is 87 percent." And the share of blacks with close white friends soared from 21 percent in 1975 to 82 percent in 2005. Sixty percent of whites report having black neighbors, up from 20 percent 50 years ago. A 2006 poll showed that half of the black respondents had dated whites and almost 40 percent of the whites had dated blacks.

Not to mention the black president, attorney general, former secretaries of state -- one of whom served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- power brokers, authors, entertainers, athletes, multimillionaires, and current and former CEOs at some of America's biggest companies.

You said, "It is not safe for this nation to assume that the unaddressed social problems in the poorest parts of our country can be isolated and will not ultimately affect the larger society." True. But you offered not a clue about how to address those problems.

As I think you know, and should acknowledge, Mr. Attorney General:

• The major causes of these problems do not include contemporary white racism, which has been driven to the margins of society and has not been a serious obstacle to black advancement for at least two or three decades.

• The dominant cause is, rather, our tortured history: slavery and past discrimination, of course, but also the misguided welfare policies and cultural trends that did so much to destroy work incentives, foster irresponsible child-bearing and dependence on the dole, and break up poor families in the latter half of the 20th century.

Indeed, even as legal barriers to blacks fell and discrimination receded, the percentage of black children born out of wedlock soared from an estimated 15 percent in 1950 to 69 percent in 2000. (There was a similar but far less dramatic trend among whites.) "You name the social problem -- poverty, crime, substance abuse, doing poorly in school, dropping out -- and it correlates with growing up in a home without a father," in the words of conservative lawyer-scholar Roger Clegg.

• The most-important remedies for the problems plaguing many African-Americans are not more racial-grievance talk or civil-rights lawsuits. They are education, hard work, and the cultural renewal necessary to overcome the views of many black students that studying is "acting white." The average black high school graduate has learned no more in school than the average white eighth-grader. Spending more money on schools won't change that unless we also adopt major reforms opposed by powerful Democratic interest groups: firing bad teachers, rewarding good ones, encouraging school choice, and tearing down the legal rules that make it so difficult to get disruptive students out of classrooms.

• On the subject of preferential treatment in college admissions and employment, as well as other racial affirmative-action programs promoted by your party, your speech offered nothing of substance -- only a cryptic comment that although there can be "very legitimate debate," the subject is "too often simplistic and left to those on the extremes."

If you really want an honest conversation and if you don't share the opposition of the vast majority of Americans (including me) to large racial preferences, please clarify specifically why you disagree. Also, please come to grips with the fact that these preferences do very little for truly poor people; that a substantial percentage of them go to middle- and upper-class blacks at the expense of less affluent Asians and whites; and that preferences harm some of their intended beneficiaries.

On this last point, please address the social-science research showing that virtually every selective college and university in the country discriminates so heavily in admissions that most black students cluster toward the bottom of the class and the best black students see their accomplishments stigmatized -- and that alarming percentages drop out. And that more than half of entering black law students never pass the bar and never become lawyers. And that many blacks might do much better and get better educations at the less selective schools they would attend if the racial preferences were not so large. And please state whether you support the racial-preference lobby's efforts to deny researchers access to the empirical databases that would cast more light on the magnitude of these problems.

One especially egregious reverse-discrimination case of which you are surely aware -- because it is pending before the Supreme Court and politically explosive -- is a lawsuit by white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who were denied promotions they had earned. The reason was that powerful political figures wanted to promote some blacks who had done much less well on tests of firefighting skills and expertise.

The most important contribution that your Justice Department could make to a serious conversation about race in the near future would be to file a friend-of-the-court brief supporting those white firefighters. The deadline for doing that is February 26, the day this column goes to press. Here's hoping that you do the right thing, and that your brief writers do a better job than your speechwriters.

[TexasCajun]

Is Dick Durbin a Racist?

[Nonstatist]

As brilliant as Stuart Taylor is, he can’t see calling himself a Republican. That has GOT to change, the party has to bring guys like that aboard. If its just an aesthetic remodelling, than so be it.

[ETL]

"Dear Mr. Attorney General..."

Eric Holder's role in the pardons of BLA (Black Liberation Army) comrades/Weather Underground members, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans (Brinks Truck robbery and triple murder):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2165052/posts

Eric Holder, Bill Clinton, Wright's 'Black Liberation' "church", and the pardons of 16 members of the Puerto Rican Marxist terrorist group FALN:(Wright's Marxist BLT 'church' advocated for FALN terrorists!)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2165024/posts
_________________________________________________________

"Fraunces Tavern is a restaurant and museum in lower Manhattan, New York City. It was built on the site of a former building which played a significant role in pre-Revolutionary activities, and in which, on 4 December 1783, General George Washington bade farewell to his officers at the end of the Revolution, before returning to his home, Mount Vernon."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunces_Tavern
_________________________________________________________

"During the 1970s and 1980s, FALN members set off at least 138 bombs in five major U.S. Cities. Six Americans were killed in those attacks. One of those bombings, in January 1975, was at the historic Fraunces Tavern in lower Manhattan while patrons were at lunch. The explosion killed four and injured more than 50."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/05/bill_hillary_and_the_faln.html
_________________________________________________________

"Between 1974 and 1985 the FALN (Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation) organized 120 terrorist bombings in the United States. Many Americans were killed in those bombings, and many more were crippled. In 1983, another Puerto Rican terrorist group known as the Macheteros, attacked and robbed a Wells Fargo armored car in Connecticut. The Macheteros intended to use the money to finance a terrorist campaign against the United States. Working under the cover of Puerto Rican nationalism and claiming to act on behalf of the 'oppressed people of Puerto Rico,' the FALN and the Macheteros are nothing but Communist revolutionaries. Both groups were organized by Fidel Castro's secret police. The ultimate goal of the FALN and the Macheteros is the creation of an independent Marxist-Leninist dictatorship on the island of Puerto Rico."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19760

[edcoil]

“was unworthy of the admirable public servant I believe you to be.”

Why do you believe him to be an admirable public servant? What has he ever done to get this reputation? I could argue he has a long history of corruption and never been admirable in either in public or private life.

Definition of Government: people who seek power over others and achieve it.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

The AG says we "do not talk enough with each other about race"

A lot of people are fed up with what they see as already endless talk and obsession with the subject. There is a middle ground, but there's not much $$$ to be found in the moderate mass. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

[Lee'sGhost]

OK. Let’s get the discussion started.

Why have blacks never said “thank you” for being full partnership in the greatest country in the history of the world and erected any monuments to the those who allowed it to happen?

[Christian4Bush]

mark for later reading

[Sherman Logan]

Why have blacks never ... erected any monuments to the those who allowed it to happen?

Frederick Douglass gave one of his most famous speeches at the dedication of a statue of Lincoln paid of by the contributions of freedmen.

[maica]

I would like to see the results of a poll of x-number of Americans with African roots that asks them if they would prefer to have been born in Africa or the United States.

That is one poll I would support!

[MamaTexan]

The most important contribution that your Justice Department could make to a serious conversation about race in the near future would be to file a friend-of-the-court brief supporting those white firefighters. The deadline for doing that is February 26, the day this column goes to press.

OUCH!

That's gonna leave a mark!

(grin)

[Lee'sGhost]

I know what you mean, but that doesn’t apply to my statement. I specifically chose the words “full partnership” so as to recognize not just that they were freed, but that they were later also given full equal rights and equal access and power to our system of government. If at any time...even right this minute...if whites suddenly said, “you’re out,” there would be little they could do, from a pure numbers perspective. Civil rights and voting gave black fulls partnership and happened long AFTER Douglas...and THAT’s what has never been acknowledged. And, for the record, blacks did not build the Lincoln memorial, not in the way and for the purpose I stated.

I will say that Frederick Douglass is probably the greatest “African American” in our history, much greater than Barry could ever hope to be.

[MamaTexan]

As brilliant as Stuart Taylor is, he can’t see calling himself a Republican. That has GOT to change, the party has to bring guys like that aboard.

I respectfully disagree.

Don't waste energy pestering someone over what label they wish to give themselves.

Let them do as they like so you may later shake their hand gladly over agreeing on what's best for the country, and all the while basking in the glow of 'bipartisanship'.

[Sherman Logan]

I never said Douglass was speaking at the Lincoln Memorial. He spoke at another monument that was erected by the freed slaves, quite a while before the LM was built.

I would object somewhat to your saying whites “gave” full equal rights to blacks. They always had those rights, they were “inalienable” and all that. They were denied their rights for centuries, shamefully, but the true American spirit eventually resulted in their being allowed what they should have been allowed from the beginning.

But I do understand what you mean. If all or even most whites were determined to keep blacks down, there would be little they could do to prevent it.

Same thing’s true of women, BTW. MEN voted to allow women to vote, but somehow we never get credit for it, only blame for the fact that women were denied the vote for a long time.

[Sherman Logan]

I would like to see the results of a poll of x-number of Americans with African roots that asks them if they would prefer to have been born in Africa or the United States.

I would agree if the poll wree limited to those who had spent at least a month in Africa. Many American blacks have no clue what it's like over there and romanticize the place unmercifully.

[Lee'sGhost]

I stand corrected about the Lincoln memorial comment. Damn! First mistake in 20 years.

Of course I was perfect in all other regards.

[Carry me back]

Race talk is a way to keep people from talking about the real issues. Simple a diversion. The feds have been given way to much power and it must be taken from them that is the solution to our problems.

[Go Gordon]

I wonder when blacks in this country will finally figure out that the only reason the Democrats cater to them is to have a block vote of approximately 13%. Personally, I couldn't care what color a person is, what religion they may or may not practice or what sexual preference one may have. My problem is that well over half of new legislation, new programs and emphasis are geared toward categorizing people into these groups solely to get more voting blocks.

Its a sad day in America and its been building for the past 40 years. To cop a sentiment from Michele Obama - Today is the first time I am truly embarrassed to be an American. Until the liberals are called to task and thrown out of power, and their agenda reversed, I will continue to be embarrased and ashamed that we, collectively, allowed the USA to become what it has become. What was once a great nation for many years, is seamingly headed toward third world status.

[Sherman Logan]

I would like to see the results of a poll of x-number of Americans with African roots that asks them if they would prefer to have been born in Africa or the United States.

I would agree if the poll wree limited to those who had spent at least a month in Africa. Many American blacks have no clue what it's like over there and romanticize the place unmercifully.

[Nonstatist]

Let them do as they like so you may later shake their hand gladly over agreeing on what's best for the country, and all the while basking in the glow of 'bipartisanship'.

You can't be "bipartisan" , if you don't have a seat at the table. And right now we have NO seat at the table. And 2010 right now looks like a bust.