Posted on 08/03/2017 7:06:07 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest
Yesterday, we noted the left’s freak-out over the news that the Justice Department will be investigating race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.
The freak-out was on full display on Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC show yesterday. You knew the fix was in from Mitchell’s choice as guests of two critics of the initiative: the Washington Post‘s Jonathan Capehart, and Janai Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
The most outrageous moments came when Mitchell said: “I don’t know if there are cases, even” of white students being disadvantaged by minority students taking available slots.
View the video here.
(Excerpt) Read more at legalinsurrection.com ...
The privilege is mine. :) It really is deserving and I can’t wait to see what else you have up your sleeve.
Thank you.
If you have a place to host it, you should be able to post a link to it.
I guess it goes back to the value of “diversity”.
I see zero value in diversity as measured by skin color, ethnicity, or gender.
However, I do see great value in diversity of thought, and that is completely unrelated to “diversity” in the sense it is intended by liberals. It is also far more difficult to quantify.
It is simple to quantify by race, skin color, sex or ethnicity. But to quantify how well someone can look at a problem or issue and think about it in a different way or suggest a solution (even a solution that isn’t truly viable) is harder to see in a person.
We all know people that, when a sticky issue arises, they can think of different or unorthodox approaches, and they are a valuable addition to any team. If you are worth your salt, you seek those people out.
I just bristle at the thought of using race or sex as a proxy for that. It is one of the things I despise most about liberals, is their hijacking of a perfectly good word “diversity” and turning into something that now has (for me) an intrinsic negative meaning. That really bugs me.
Sent you a Freepmail...
Alan Greenspan chose poorly.
Very good post. But you forgot one aspect of “Affirmative Action” (i.e. reverse-racism quotas): the intangible negative effect upon those members of the favored classification(s).
As a specific example, I was in Washington, DC for a seminar on the day that the Bakke decision was handed down. When I got home a couple of days later my father, a doctor, told me that he had a lesson for me to learn from that case. He went out of his way to tell me that he really regretted having to say what he was about to tell me, but that it was a message of truth that came from his experience. The message:
“In the future, when you have to go to a doctor, do NOT go to a female or a minority doctor who is any less than about 10 years older than you [I was 17 at the time]. Why? Because you can never be sure if that person got into medical school on their own merits, or because of some utterly irrelevant factor, like their gender, race, ethnicity, or whatever. It is sad for me to say this, because I know and work with many minority and female doctors who are excellent - but they (and others like them who are now doctors) got into medical school on their own merits, because they were smart and had worked hard to learn in college, and they graduated from medical school and passed medical boards by being smart and working hard to be their best - not because they were being given an artificial gift by a bunch of know-nothing do-gooders. Those do-gooders are going to get people killed - and I just don’t want you or your family to ever be one of those people. There will undoubtedly be highly qualified females and minorities who are your age or younger, but there is simply no way that you can know which female or minority doctors they are. That’s what the do-gooders have done to a bunch of smart and hard-working women and minorities - thrown into doubt their qualifications.”
I would add that my family is Jewish. My father suffered some (but not much) discrimination in school admissions because of that. His father-in-law, my maternal grandfather, was also a doctor - and he most DEFINITELY was discriminated against, to the point where he had to go to medical school 200 miles from home (which was in New York City, which then had no lack of such schools). They worked hard, they knew and understood discrimination and its effects, and they understood that in many fields (medicine being only one), sheer quality was the ONLY factor to consider, not stupidly irrelevant characteristics like gender, race, etc.
So there is another pernicious effect of this stupid policy - people who EARNED an admission or a title can’t ever get the full respect that they deserve - their dignity has been sacrificed on the alter of political expedience. So, despite the allegedly good intentions of the idiots who came up with, and have implemented, the policy of “Affirmative Action,” the effect is to effectively codify stereotypes. Way to go...assholes.
FYI, my wife is Jewish, as I am. Her family originated in Eastern Europe, and she’s so white that she damned near glows in the dark. But she is also from Mexico (quite legally, I promise - she’s been a citizen for about 13 years). Guess what? Our (very white) kids ALWAYS indicate that they are Latin American on all school and other applications, and will continue to do so. The do-gooders want to mess with us and our society? Well, I can (and will) mess back to ensure that my kids don’t get discriminated against for the “crime” of being white. If I lived on an island off the West Coast and couldn’t use the Latin American thing, I’d have my kids claim to be Pacific Islanders. I urge everyone who can do the same without lying to do so - the more we mess with the system, the sooner it’ll collapse and be replace by a merit-based system.
I thought this paragraph of yours summed it up pretty well:
"...So there is another pernicious effect of this stupid policy - people who EARNED an admission or a title can’t ever get the full respect that they deserve - their dignity has been sacrificed on the altar of political expedience. So, despite the allegedly good intentions of the idiots who came up with, and have implemented, the policy of “Affirmative Action,” the effect is to effectively codify stereotypes..."
Good post!
Send me a freepmail with your email and I will send it too you
I’m going to guess you tried my suggestion and it didn’t work... lol
That would be fantastic! Will do!
Exactly, I know so many people who were not angry at black people until they went to college. In fact they had met very few and had a good experience when they did. Then they went off to a state school where there were several students with nice cars, who never seemed to go to class, or study. Then they were let in on the dirty secret, those parties full of black students are paid by your tuition and taxes. They will party until they get kicked out or slide through. Because many of them did nothing to get into college and paid nothing either. Its just four years of free rent, food, and a very easy campus job. For any white students that worked, paid, and struggled. Its hard not to be affected.
"SEE? WHEN I TALK ABOUT BLOATED AND RUNAWAY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT!"
It was at this point my wife just walked by and said "What are you frowning at?"
Good God, I am as easy to read as a book!
Anyway, thanks for sharing it. I learned things I didn't know by reading it (two part test) but...I hated that quote by Jesse Jackson at the end. I think that is demonstrably false.
But I disagree with the entire notion, so I guess that isn't surprising. You did explain it well.
“...we forget the cost to other people and society as a whole, when we stop being a meritocracy (which has inherent damages associated with it) and put people into jobs they are less qualified (or unqualified) to be hold.”
The situation also perpetuates itself and expands as the incompetent workers are promoted through affirmative action. They know they are bad at their jobs and only hire other incompetent minorities. The competent people either retire or leave as they know they have no opportunity to move up. Moral declines and no one cares about doing the job properly. Pretty soon the whole organization is a dysfunctional mess.
That was exactly what I meant by “inherent damages”.
There was a time when many foreigners came to this country and were amazed that...things just worked. It was because, unlike many European or Asian countries where there was much greasing of palms, we were more capitalistic, which also made us more merit based because if something didn’t work, people didn’t buy it from one entity, but went to one that it did make it work.
Hence a meritocracy inherent in capitalism. But Affirmative Action is NOTHING like that.
I have never looked at it that way. I came from a military family, and we grew up with friends of all stripes.
Funny, the first girl I asked to “go steady” with me when I was 11 or 12 was named Lolita, and her father was a black enlisted man. (My father was the XO on the base!) Lolita declined, and it never occurred to me why, but I always wondered if her parents had a degree of anxiety when the XO’s kid wanted to be her boyfriend, and she understood the situation where I was completely oblivious!
I didn’t have that kind of experience you related when I went to college, but perhaps things were different then...or I just didn’t see it.
I used that quote at the end of the presentation as the class was fifty percent black and took a couple of big round knew to present that topic to that audience.
What I like about the quote is affirmative action is about recruitment of under represented groups. I had a log sheet for interviews. Recruitment being the door open metphor. But it all comes down to the job requirements i.e. Ability gets you inside
I had a white Oracle DBA and I told him the job req said 5 years experience, college degree, certification preferred. He had 7 years experience and Asian girl had 5. So she met the requirement as did he, but she met my affirmative action goal, he did not. So he went and got certified two days later by taking the test that Oracle had. Also I was at.no risk of cultural a bias in the test, as the test was Oracle’s and he got the gig.
Still have a Jewish quota, as do many Ivy league schools. Not explicit, nor is it with Asians, just higher standards to be met due to the requirements of a diverse student population. I have some sympathy for that, but it's too bad so many of the "diverse" admissions don't make it to graduation. In 6 years, the usual statistical period. Who can pay for their kids to go to school for 6 years. I suspect many are in over their heads, particularly at competitive schools.
The whore that wore knee pads for Hitlery.
“They will party until they get kicked out or slide through. Because many of them did nothing to get into college and paid nothing either. Its just four years of free rent, food, and a very easy campus job. For any white students that worked, paid, and struggled. Its hard not to be affected.”
My daughter attended a private university which at the time cost me about 30K per year as she received no financial aid because of my income. Minority students in her dorm were constantly partying and playing loud music at all hours making it difficult for my daughter (and others) to study. When she and other students confronted them they said that their parents were paying $1,000 a year tuition and they would do what they wanted. When told that other students parents were paying 30X more than they were paying they couldn’t believe it.
I am fascinated by “the road not taken” that results from discrimination against white people.
In my case it caused me to stay in my current location far longer than I had wished—but in the end everything turned out fine—for me.
As to the offices that did not hire me so they could “check the boxes” on Hispanic and Female—their crashing and burning was monumental. Entire offices were closed due to their stupidity and incompetence.
What goes around comes around...
It is an interesting thing.
I was giving some advice to my best friend’s son a few months ago when he graduated from college...
I told him to go into every job situation and treat it with seriousness, respect and dedication, even if it isn’t his favorite job, co-workers, environment, etc. Treat it all as if this is what you were destined to do, no matter what. (Basically, give each task/job your full effort and be a team player)
When you look back at your career as I have, you look at the path you have taken (in my case through at least four different major professions) it looks byzantine, and somehow, pre-ordained, as if there were no other path that could have been taken. Kind of the same way many of us look at our journey through WWII.
In reality, as you go through your career you are confronted with choices, branches in your career, crises to overcome, trials and tribulations, it will seem (and is) completely unscripted. But if you are steadfast in your approach...when you look back at the trail you took...it looks like it was all mapped out for you.
Makes it easier to live with your choices, too...:)
So, even when desired doors appear to close (as it did in your case) it is often a door opening to the “right way” in your path and if you approach it the right way...it WILL be the right way!
“an engineer or contractor who got their job on the basis of sex or color”
Any job seeker should be responsible enough to not go into a new employment situation if they know it would be a mismatch, especially towards the unqualified side. Today’s job seekers can’t depend on the average staffing company’s recruiters to guide them towards and/or along a chosen career path(s). If we’re going to MAGA, job seekers must learn to manage for themselves and find their own way(s) in. If you must do business with staffing services companies, let yourself be the “customer” at all times. Above all, do whatever you can to avoid having to always take the first thing that comes along. The only other option is to hang on to what you’ve got if it’s anything somewhat related to your actual career goals.
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