Posted on 08/12/2008 12:27:55 PM PDT by Tolik
Maureen Dowd recently preened that Obama "didn’t even tell Harvard Law School that he was black on his application." To the extent that her own research led her to believe this, or she would know accurately, one should still wonder why in the world Barack Obama, the child of a white woman and African father, would check the affirmative action box? When he applied to law school, there was nothing in the circumstances of his birth or even his upbringing up to then that located him in the African-American experience.
Obama's recent evocation of some sort of reparations, the resurgence in talk about affirmative action, current ballot measures, etc. should remind us of how unworkable a system it has become. As a veteran of two decades on hiring committees in the CSU system, I can attest that the rules and regulations of affirmative action were Byzantine, and not always based on the presumption of a past American history of racist oppression.
Hispanic elites from Chile and Argentina often qualified, whether officially or not. Meanwhile, Mexican-Americans felt that foreigners with work visas were accenting their names and simply piling on, despite their prior privileged lives back home in Santiago or Buenos Aires. Despite Hispanic-sounding last names, no one knew what to with the Portuguese and the Basques; both groups were usually seen as more affluent than the so-called 'white' minority. A student called Joe Smith could be the son a Mexican illegal alien and still seem far less a minority than Jose Castillo, a fifth-generation Chilean alien who was schooled in the US and decided to stay on.
We had a variety of recent immigrants from the Caribbean as professors and students, almost all from affluent families. One can imagine the problems of others supposedly with 3/4, 1/2, 1/8 black or Hispanic ancestry. What qualifies as a minority, and who ascertains it in the post-Ward Churchill era? Many of our white students with parents from the Oklahoma diaspora rightly claimed American-Indian heritage, albeit in the 1/16th to 1/8th range. The Asian problem was even weirder — 3rd-generation affluent Japanese, no? But the Hmong immigrant of 10 years, yes? The recent Taiwanese arrival, no? More likely, there were de facto Asian quotas — given the ability of such minorities in many fields to outperform almost everyone else and thereby become "overrepresented" in the UC system.
Bumper-sticker identification was unfortunate. The half-Hispanic student with Wilson as his surname never could obtain the authenticity that his counterpart with a Hispanic father received. Accented and hyphenated names, and renaming, were common, in addition to occasional ethnic dress. By the 2004, I think any original justification that groups whose ancestors had suffered historical discrimination qualified for redress was dropped, and informally it became a spoils system based on faulty perceptions of race — sort of a counterpart to the legacy system of the Ivy League that helps the offspring of wealthy alumni (which oddly, or rather logically, became a 'they do it too' argument by affirmative action's desperate adherents).
The corollary argument that someone of African or Caribbean ancestry, without ancestral claim to America's purported racist past, deserves some sort of compensation in the here and now on the basis of present public racism and discrimination fails utterly. There is a variety of other "people of color" — Arabs or Punjabis for example — who may, in fact, be more readily identifiable in the public domain as non-white and yet qualify for no such exemptions. One could go on, but here we are again in another racial absurdity of suggesting that Obama at some point in his career nobly chose not to suggest he was deserving of affirmative action, when in fact there would be no logical or ethical reason why he should.
In short, the entire Affirmative Action industry, however well-intended its origins, has gone the way of the Soviet bureaucracy as a sort of arbitrary racial nomenklatura that benefits mostly elites — self-contradictory, hypocritical, illogical, and finally unworkable.
I know that Ayers were the people who threw the first fundraiser for Barrys political career on the advice of Alice Walker (his then mentor, who he subsequently legalese’d off the ballot when she decided that she wanted to keep her elected office that she asked him to run for).
But although he was a ‘community organizer’ (otherwise known as an ACORN employee and a member of a continuing criminal conspiracy), WHY did he go to Chicago? How did that come about? You don’t need to go to Chicago to be an organizer since you were already at Harvard and Boston is chock full of corrupt political circles who needed a freshfaced black guy to be a front man.
I dont’ see any other connection to Chicago in his past so why not go back to Kansas and just take over the Democrat party with his glorious personality? Or go to Hawaii and take over with his sparkling aura?
I've no source, either. I'm theorizing from the circumstantial evidence.
Frank Marshall Davis was obviously in a position to give Obama names and phone numbers.
Whether Obama was actually motivated by Davis to use these contacts -- or he simply stumbled into the environment coincidentally -- won't ever to be known.
Frank Marshall Davis ......He also was from Kansas
So had something in common with Barack’s mother
Did you mean to put a /sarc after that?
Actually, they were born in adjacent counties -- but 18 years apart.
I doubt they ever knew of each other...until Hawaii.
No sarcasm..... Both being from Kansas was a jumping off point for conversation. They both had Kansas roots
BINGO
Wrong rule, but I can’t object to Zeta Jones, regardless of the rule - did I contort myself into a pretzel? Catherine can do that to me...
Okie (i’m a one-time okie myself),
This just adds to the questions about the guy. He is only 46 and he has been public only for the last 12 years and even THAT part can’t really be nailed down.
But Jesus had a big blank spot in his resume prior to age 30 so I guess that is why the media is giving The Obama a pass on his resume holes.
Me, I’m not looking for another Jesus. If the real one shows up, the answer to all the questions ought to be pretty self-evident.
Dumb of me not to figure it out ....but I didn't know THAT! Thanks.
Michelle makes super big coin ($250 large++) working as the Affirmative Action Consultant for some Foundation. You know what I mean ... maybe she keeps the Federal Brown Paper Bag sample in her desk to check out everyone's skin color for AFfrimative Action Benefits. Her anti-America rap is the same as bomber-Bernadette's.
Kenny,
TexasBlueBell found this link for me which gives an account of the only link which appears to create a causus belli for the Chicago move from Havard Law Review (not exactly a step up, ya know? No ‘bright’ person with hundreds of thou in debt decides to avoid all the recruiters to hang around Harvard and head to the slums of Chicago as a total stranger).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3582291.ece
The plot thickens. The "law firm" is the Ayers family firm, where Ms. Dohrn worked and was the mentor of Michelle. This is the source of the funding Weatherman Terrorists Ayers and Dohrn received from Ayers' father during their years on the run.
Bill Ayers is very close to ACORN (a Director then, as BHO became).) The UK article does not mention the ACORN connection and does not even hint at the Chicago Public Schools Project, which Obama and Ayers turned into an unmitigated disaster.
This article is more like an adulatory press release than news. It is understandable, if not obvious that Obama's terrorist connection wired him as the community organizer, got him into Harvard, and put him up for office.
The Daley Machine was either too dumb to fathom the commie connection, or too cynical to care.
Why would the Daley machine care? They’ve assimilated all kinds of corrupt people. They control as much of the machine as they need to in order to do what they want to do. Otherwise, I’m sure they’re always on the lookout for new blood who appear to be bright and ethically manueverable.
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