Posted on 06/01/2009 8:54:52 AM PDT by Tolik
The Sotomayor nomination — since the media focused on her ethnic profile rather than her solid credentials — has had the unintended effect of reminding the nation how strange the politics of racial identity have become, especially in a society where social status and material well-being are not necessarily predicated on being "white" (cf. per capita incomes of many Asian minorities), and the notion itself of "race" is now problematic with so many Americans of 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 racial heritage. Are we really to believe that Geraldo Rivera's high profile on Fox News lends "pride" to those who are of 1/2 Puerto Rican background, or does he resonate as Gerald Friedman with the Jewish community for his half-Jewish ancestry? Or is he just Geraldo, whose background is inmaterial?
One wonders whether affirmative action and diversity preferences are any more predicated on past collective suffering? If so, why has the UC university system in the past tried to find insidious ways of limiting Asian "overrepresentation" (given ample bias against Chinese and Japanese), or why is a Barack Obama, of half-African ancestry, a beneficiary of efforts to offer recompense to those of the African-American experience?
Or perhaps the problem instead is supposedly present individual discrimination? Yet does a Justice Sotomayor encounter today more bias than does a dark-skinned Punjabi, Egyptian Copt, or Syrian-American — members of groups that do not warrant special consideration and preference? If the past prejudice of the Mexican-American experience justifies race-based preference, to what degree do other Hispanics — Cubans, Brazilians, Spaniards, Costa Ricans — piggy-back and find themselves counted as "minorities" to meet "diversity goals", as if a university is relieved that no federal agency checks to see whether a well-off, blue-eyed Spaniard immigrant like José de la Cruz is actually not Mexican-American.
No need to cite the obvious — a Travis Thornberry living in Bakersfield, part of the Oklahoma Diaspora, poor and without educated parents, is entitled to no affirmative-action execmptions, but perhaps an illegal alien who crossed the border yesterday does become a "minority" by the very loose association with the Mexican-American experience? So we use increasingly baffling circumstances to dictate who and who is not deserving of special consideration.
In theory, the children of a Eric Holder and Colin Powell could prove racially-based handicaps that call for government intervention while, say, far poorer children of Punjabi and Arab-Americans parentage — in some cases more readily identifiable as non-white — could not. From past experience in the university, I can attest that the darker-skinned Mexican-American student of mixed parentage who spoke Spanish, was poor, but had an Anglo father and no desire for tribal identification — resulting in a name like a Joe Baker — had a harder claim than a lighter-skinned Latina, whose Mexican fides were on the paternal side and who sought such bumper-sticker identification, such as a Yolanda Trevino. The scoundrel Ward Churchill reminded us how such faux-identities can be constructed for careerist purposes.
In short, with so many races, so much intermarriage, so much mixing-up through popular culture, so much disconnection between class, status, and race — and so much evidence from Iraq, the Balkans, and Rwanda about the perniciousness of tribalism — the industry of racial identity should have long ago been shut down, especially since it is often championed by white elites, who, not putting their own children in the public schools and not living in racially mixed neighborhoods (both very concrete ways of helping the "other"), seem to find psychological atonement in advocating diversity preferences, while assuming their own wealth, connections, and education ensure their own privileged offspring the same exemptions. The children of someone like a Ted Kennedy, after all, enjoyed affirmative action long before it was predicated on race.
Seeking a racial identity in "diversity" has become like Marxism in the old Soviet Union — a doctrine that everyone praises, while privately realizing that it has devolved into a useful tool for careerist advancement.
When Words Don't Mean Anything [Victor Davis Hanson]
Rather than an attempt to defend empirically Sotomayor's suggestion that Latinas are superior, in the judicial sense, to white men, we have been given a variety of postmodern contexts, constructing what she "really" meant: She was merely talking about the advantages of poverty that she thinks she has experienced that are not true of white men; she was only "joking"; she was making an intricate case for diversity, etc. — any explanation other than the natural one that was elaborated on later in her diatribe, namely that she believes the color and gender of a person impart wisdom or less than wisdom.
With the advent of Obamaworld, the centrist veneer sometimes rubs off the race/class/gender/religion talk and we see the fundamentalism in its essence — in the impromptu moments of the campaign it was Michelle's "mean country" and first-time pride in the U.S., Obama's "typical white person," Pennsylvania clingers, and original contorted defense of Reverend Wright, then there was Eric Holder's "cowards" outburst, and now Sotomayor's Latina tribalism.
In each case, once the race/class/gender animosity is revealed, there is a brief hesitation to see how well the media will come to the rescue and "contextualize" the remark, and when that fails there is the obligatory qualifier "maybe not the best way of putting it," "wrong word," "if I had to say it over, I'd . . ." The point being that, in the D.C. gotcha culture, these are never gotchas due to the race, gender, or class of the perpetrator (sort of like the schizophrenic attitude toward plagiarism that exempts a Maureen Dowd, or Joe Biden, or intolerance of supernatural religion that ignores an Arianna Huffington's John-Roger or Hillary séances with Eleanor Roosevelt).
I think the unifying explanation is that such wonderful people either simply are incapable of racialist remarks, or that the good that they otherwise stand for so overshadows the embarrassments as to make them not embarrassments at all.
Just a partial list. More at the link: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index
Let me know if you want in or out.
Links: FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
His website: http://victorhanson.com/
NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
Pajamasmedia: http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/
Will some one please inform Churchill that he has been outed and needs to give it up?
This comment may not apply to Judge Sotomayor, but I find it ironic that racial minorities self-seggregate on college campuses. It’s reasonable to assume that many of those now working in this administration were among them, but we’re not supposed to look too closely to what they may have said or done in college.
This is how minorities learn about collective action against “the System”. They never really integrate. Of course the Press would have you believe the fairy-tale they they have.
...This has already been posted, can’t do the link thing, thanks anyway fer the ping...
I think you mean this post: Lost in the Labyrinth of Race http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2261778/posts brought via RealCelarPolitics but originally posted on VDH blog at Pajamasmedia http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/lost-in-the-labyrinth-of-race/
The NRO Corner post is somewhat repackaged and clarified (I think) comparing to the yesterday’s.
Whatever it was originally intended to be, Affirmative Action is now nothing but a racket.
Democrat voters are sort of simple-minded. THey have elected the action figure of their socialist dreams, the affiramtive action figure. So it is not surprising that this affirmative action figure is appointing affirmative action fellows to run this stupid, dumbed down, once Constitutional Republic, nation. Obowma’s worshippers should have the opportunity to purchase affiramtive action figures at Toy ‘R’ Us. Sonia ‘La Raza’ Sotomayor would make a nice one now ...
The popular notion that the Kennedys were from a family of poor Irish immigrants is, even of itself, only half true. Mother Kennedy, Rose Fitzgerald, actually came from the same English blueblood line from which my own mother descended and we share a common cousin named Owen Fitzpen, who has a more compelling biography than the Irish side of the family.
...Yea, that’s it. Saw it and responded this morning. Added to the past outrages still fresh on my plate. Thanks fer the link...
and yet to me she appears to be whiter than most of the white males to whom she feels infinitely superior...
37 years ago, when I was in the process of applying to law schools, I briefly toyed with the idea of legally changing my name to Rosalita Gonzales and failing to indicate race or gender on the application forms. As amusing as the results might have been, sanity prevailed.
The only people deceived regarding the racial politics issue are the whites. Every other racial group knows damn well the placing of their members in political office means wealth and power transfer from whites to “Third World” constituencies.
“I find it ironic that racial minorities self-seggregate on college campuses”
Very True.
In the late 80’s on my unnamed UP-state NY college, about 80% of the ‘people of color’ would not mingle with the rest of the campus.
They held their OWN gatherings ALWAYS on school properties and usually had their own segregated dorm floors.
The remark that ended the career of Trent Lott used the words “better off”. That was enough to brand him an irredeemable racist.
VDH’s conclusion that libs get do-overs and passes because their hearts and minds are in the right place (according to themselves) is the bottom line fact that each conservative must explain to their lib associates.
The burdened elitist conscience does more to promote the elitist conscience than it does anything else. It won't be elitist if it did otherwise. Keep the white man down, have your kids have the greatest educational advantage regarding the whites. Throw the blacks a bone or two and ensure even less whites attend college. It reminds me of how competitive women compete amongst themselves. These white elitist men have become white women.
The Dems can’t give up racial politics now. They’ve built practically their entire raison d’etre around racial victimology. Only the grossest race hustlers could have convinced a sizable percentage of Americans that they are victims in the best country on earth for getting ahead...if you have the right attitude.
Sotomayor and both Obamas are pampered beneficiaries of affirmative action applied to the Ivy universities, with special privileges, advantages, and rigged advancements available to no merely middle-class or even working-class American white males. The New Haven Fire Department case takes on special meaning here. As with Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). The ideology behind this must be exposed for what it really is. Liberals are using group identity politics to hype imaginary discrimination and grievances. In the New Haven case, the rights of actual American citizens were violated. Reverse discrimination must end. There should be a statute of limitations on these instances of payback.
“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans... The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of it continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.”-- Theodore Roosevelt October 12, 1915
"A hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts 'Native' before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance." -- Theodore Roosevelt
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