Via Roger Clegg and Discriminations, I see this interesting interview by the president of Columbia U., Lee Bollinger, who was the named defendant in the Grutter and Gratz affirmative action cases of 2003, of Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. As you'll recall, Sandra Day O'Connor's majority opinion seemed to put some sort of 25-year timeline on affirmative action, but the Attorney General is having none of that:
One of Bollinger’s questions concerned the United States Supreme Court’s decision earlier this week to reconsider affirmative action. Bollinger was involved in defending affirmative action when the court declared it constitutional in a landmark 2003 case, and he said on Thursday that the court’s decision to revisit the issue is “ominous.”
Holder expressed support for affirmative action, saying that he “can’t actually imagine a time in which the need for more diversity would ever cease.”
“Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation practices,” Holder said. “The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin ... When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”
As you'll also recall, the justification given for affirmative action in the majority opinion was not compensation for the historic effects of slavery and Jim Crow, but the benefits that white students gain from "diversity," from the free-wheeling, wide-open, politically incorrect intellectual atmosphere fostered on campus by letting in some students because of their racial/ethnic backgrounds. But, in the Attorney General's view, diversity is about people of color getting benefits. And we have not yet begun to fight!
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I think all adult "people of color", as Holder calls them, should be paid $25,000 each, or whatever sum is above the federal poverty limit for an individual. Sure, to pay for this would require we close the US gov't other than whatever is required to do the transfer from all other races to the blacks. But hey, that might be worth it if it would shut up shakedown artists like Holder!
Of course, like President Obama, Eric Holder has no American slave ancestors. His father was born in Barbados as were his maternal grandparents.
Its one thing to say the descendants of slaves (or, for that matter, American Indians) are given special favor because this country gave their ancestors a raw deal. Its an entirely different thing to give special favor to the descendants of immigrants from Kenya or Barbados because, well, just because.
OT: Matthew Yglesias says there aren't enough urban slums and Stalinist housing blocs in America:
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/03/high_rents_america_s_ridiculous_shortage_of_apartment_buildings_is_pushing_rents_way_up_.html
I think that the soft quotas we have now called affirmative action by most and diversity by the far left and university admissions directors following O'Conner in Grutter are going to be declared in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.
Kennedy, the swing vote, voted against O'Conner's Grutter decision.
Also, why does Holder get any benefits. His family is arrived long after the end of slavery.
@1st anon:
Holder wouldn't go for that because the leftist project is as much about making whites uncomfortable in their daily lives as it is about positive compensation for blacks. Whites should have to experience the same daily fear that blacks (supposedly) felt in Alambama in 1958.
Holder is a nincompoop. An elementary school principal from Omaha could do his job better.
Like pretty much all high ranking black officials (including Obama), he play acts the part of leader while white deputies run the show.
Marie Thereze Coincoin was one of the largest slave owners and she was a black woman.
How do we ensure her descendants do nor benefit from the "black privilege" of being former slave owners?
Holder is running head on to the fight by Tiger Moms and Eagle Dads including White ones to get into prestigious schools. Which determine success or failure, nowadays, for most of the high Middle Class.
As such, he's in a spoils battle with powerful, connected, and angry folks seeing the ladder to upward mobility crushed. That was probably OK when there were few relatively speaking non-Whites and a lot of Whites, not today. Americans are "acting Chinese" not the least of which are cram schools and agitation about discrimination. Turn Whites into a minority and they will ardently copy particularly Chinese attitudes. This is known as a pre-revolutionary state -- cutting off the minor gentry at the knees for some favored outside group.
the justification given for affirmative action in the majority opinion was not compensation for the historic effects of slavery and Jim Crow, but the benefits that white students gain from "diversity," ....
Enh? Then how does it have force of law? It sounds like that opens it up to 'whatever school management thinks is good for students'; so then, let the market decide.
@Whiskey:
Turn Whites into a minority and they will ardently copy particularly Chinese attitudes.
I don't know about that. Whites need the Chinese attitude to compete already, and from what I read here we don't. Why would officially becoming a minority make any difference? Though, I might expect to see 'white pride' become a thing, something we haven't needed 'til now (not saying that we'd need it then, either).
(comment - the formatting change is annoying, I can't figure out how to make a blockquote now.)
Well, at least the direction in regards to "diversity" are clear here. Give more to black people. Got it.
When I was student teaching with Teach for America, one of the major indicators I was graded on, and that I was supposed to implement into every lesson was "Use the students' diversity to promote understanding of the subject matter and to strengthen classroom culture" or something very similar. I looked at my students who were all black, all descendants of slaves, all living in the same neighborhood, all rooting for the same team and all from single mother households and wondered what to do. Eventually, I started to awkwardly include references to the fact that they liked different pizza topics and liked different TV shows best (yes, I gave them a survey- that's one of the "best practices" for effective teachers, you know) into lessons that had nothing to do with any of that. Oh, and i started to single out the only girl in class for being a girl in an attempt to use metaphors for examples or something. Anyway, I received zeroes for that category every time. My supervisor suggested I get some new kid transferred into my class to improve things. But there was only one class of that type! At least, if Mr. Holder was my supervisor, he wouldn't have marked me down for "diversity" issues.
The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin ...
Take heart. As soon as they start talking about permanent revolution you know they've already lost the momentum, and are just buying time.
Holder hints at what we're dealing with.
Its not Marxism as many claim, but Trotskyism - the Permanent Revolution.
There will never be a point in which they declare victory, put a fork in and say its done. There can be no appeasement, no reparation. They will always demand more, more, more.
"Holder is running head on to the fight by Tiger Moms and Eagle Dads including White ones to get into prestigious schools. Which determine success or failure, nowadays, for most of the high Middle Class."
Wait a minute, Whisk, you didn't go to a prestigious school and look at the way you turned out.
Oh...Wait, Darn, I guess you have a pretty good point.
As you'll also recall, the justification given for affirmative action in the majority opinion was not compensation for the historic effects of slavery and Jim Crow, but the benefits that white students gain from "diversity," from the free-wheeling, wide-open, politically incorrect intellectual atmosphere fostered on campus by letting in some students because of their racial/ethnic backgrounds.
Amazing, isn't it? The truthiness of diversity is so self-evident that no one really needs to test out the hypothesis that the educational milieu is enhanced by having students of different hues expanding each other's minds by simply being in the vicinity of people of different races.
Well, that is until Rothman, Lipset, & Nevitte decided that, you know, crazy guys that they are, that they'd actually try to test out the hypothesis that diversity is the most wonderful thing in the world and a mere dash of it in the recipe of higher education is all that is needed to make every person into a super and enlightened person.
What did they find?
As the proportion of black students enrolled at the institution rose, student satisfaction with their university experience dropped, as did assessments of the quality of their education, and the work efforts of their peers. . . .
The same pattern held for the faculty sample's evaluation of the educational milieu. Among faculty members enrollment diversity was negatively related to perceptions of the quality of education, the academic abilities of students, and the work efforts of students, . . .
Oops.
But fear not diversity loving enlightened people for the truthiness glasses that you see the world through actually does have a basis in fact. Noted in footnote #1:
Preliminary data analysis finds that the proportion of Asian students is positively related to favorable evaluations of the educational and racial milieu among students, faculty and administrators, while comparable findings for Hispanic enrollment are mixed. So the influence of enrollment diversity may be specific to the ethnic or racial group.
Now what do you imagine could be going on here? Here we have students congregating at universities to challenge themselves and learn new things and for some odd reason they find that their experience is enhanced by the presence of Asians and depressed by the presence of blacks. Such a mystery for it's clear that both groups count as visible minorities so when students SEE these visible minorities walking about campus and sitting in class, the neurons in their brains should be firing and they should be experiencing beneficial intellectual gains from seeing visible minorities, but instead we find that there isn't a uniform process at work. Why, if I didn't know any better, it would seem like students were making judgments on how visible minority students challenged them or what new insights they added in class and not so much on their skin color, but that can't be, can it? Could Eric Holder be wrong? Could the enlightened chattering classes be wrong about their truthy belief that diversity qua diversity is a benefit to students?
TangoMan: Thanks, I found the same thing in 2000 looking at white voting in the Gore-Bush election: the more Asians in a state, the more whites voted Democratic, the more blacks the more they voted Republican, with Hispanics in-between.
> But, in the Attorney General's view, diversity is about people of color getting benefits.
More Kinsley gaffes please, Mr. Attorney General.
Don't worry, this is 21st Century America. Nobody is paying attention.
In Bakke vs. Regents of Univ of Calif, the medical school was discriminating in favor of black applicants. Backke, a white student, sued and gained a place in the entering class. The court held that since Cal as a northern/western school never was shown to have discriminated against black students it was impermissible for it to discriminate in their favor now as it did not right any prior wrong. A throwaway line by one concurring justice said, now if the school was furthering some other academic goal, like diversity of viewpoints, the discrimination would be lawful.
Lo and behold, diversity suddenly became a great virtue. If you read college catalogues before Backke I'll bet you never find the word diverse describing the campus, faculty or student body. It just wasn;t considered important. So to justify a preconcieved policy some after the fact transparent rationalization was cooked up and now you can see white people on TV being interviewed about their neighborhoods claiming that they love where they live because it is "so diverse". They are just sure that diverse is good. While the justice who visited all that on then probably lives and travels in a very non-diverse set.
anonymous said " While the justice who visited all that on then probably lives and travels in a very non-diverse set"
the justice in question, Lewis Powell died 20+ yrs ago so he doesnt live or travel at all-but I'm sure his heaven is very "diverse" as a fitting reward
Diversity is America's weakness, as Harvard's Robert Putnam voluminously showed.
>When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?<
When does anyone truly get the benefits to which he is entitled in his own mind?
The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin ... When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”
They already have them. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, right to bear arms, right to a fair trial... Those are the only benefits to which Americans of any race are entitled. Everything else is up to you to get off your lazy ass and work for.
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