From my Taki's Magazine column:
On Monday, in America’s fifth year of a black presidency, the five Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices had an opportunity to abolish racial and ethnic preferences for violating the 14th Amendment’s requirement of “the equal protection of the laws.” They had affirmative action in their sights but were unable to pull the trigger, and so they merely sent the case back down to a lower court while recommending stricter scrutiny. ...
Few have mentioned that the affirmative-action non-decision interacts deleteriously with the Schumer-Rubio bill that would boost immigration. The great majority of amnestied illegal aliens and new immigrants brought in under the bill, plus their descendants unto the seventh generation, would be eligible for racial or ethnic privileges.
Read the whole thing there.
If we weren't letting in so many immigrants, presumably there'd be less of a clamor for the NSA et al to keep track of our activities.
ReplyDeleteIn the past I've posted Steve's solution (removing AA for Hispanics only) on other conservative blogs and message boards and the response is always the same - a screed against all affirmative action. They go on about blacks, Obama, Holder, etc... In fact if you read the replies it's like I never even mentioned Hispanics. Sadly, the concept of "picking your battles" seems to be alien to public discourse these days. Or at least it is on the Right.
ReplyDeleteSteve, you are assuming the justification for AA is to correct past discrimination. That was the initial reason, but now it is all about ensuring "diversity." So of course other nonwhite groups have to benefit because that makes for more diversity, which is by definition a "good thing."
ReplyDeleteIn a way, this sounds fairer, but it is actually more pernicious and it doesn't help blacks and native Americans. Since diversity now just means more non-whites, if your organization is 25 percent diverse, but most of the 25 percent are east Asians, you're good to go. This is how federal government institutions get around the problem of not getting enough qualified blacks and Latinos applicants, but still claiming to care about "diverse" hiring.
Why not bring in a full blown feudal or caste system and be done with it?
ReplyDeleteCan a group enjoying privileges for over two generations still be designated a "victim" with a straight face? Affirmative action in college admissions,in hiring, in business contracts qualify as marks of privilege in my book.
ReplyDeleteAA is a scam that should be put to an end. Descendants of slaves should be awarded 40 acres and a mule or a one-way ticket to Liberia plus 10,000 USD, whichever they prefer. In the latter case, they´d also have to forfeit US citizenship.
Of course foreigners should never have received especial privileges. What´s the point of being a citizen if anybody fresh off the boat is legally superior to you?
Elites might just as well revoke citizenship for 90 % of the population and establish a de jure tiranny.
I'm sure that the Supreme Court and the ruling class will see the light on affirmative action and minority preferences right about the time that whites become a minority, in a similar way that outdated voting rights laws were ignored until voter fraud achieved the desired results.
ReplyDelete"Supposedly clever alternatives to quotas have often proved even worse. For example, to get more black and Hispanic firemen, the city of Chicago lowered the passing score on the fire department’s hiring exam to the fifth percentile among white test-takers. Then, it just picks randomly among test-passers. I don’t live in Chicago anymore, but that’s a frightening way to hire the guys who are supposed to save your life.
ReplyDeletePlease share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki's Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don't get paid for their work."
I'm against AA but I always thought firefighting was more of a brawn and character type of job instead of a 'smarts' type of job.
Still, I have found Whites to be more conscience and generally have more character than NAMs, so the point is moot I suppose.
Improving "diversity" is the justification for AA policies now, not correcting past injustices. Diversity is just a "god word" that I don't see any possibility of AA going back to its original intent. (Which doesn't look so bad now, does it?)
ReplyDelete"Diversity" justifies all AA policies now. I'm just glad the universities have to jump through some hoops. Don't see AA going back to its original intent of correcting historical wrongs.
ReplyDeleteWhites soon may get to the point in which they may want some of these policies in place. Just saying.
Events are running faster than even you can write.
ReplyDeleteAs I awaken this morning Fox News is ablaze with the news that gay marriage has been endorsed by SCOTUS. Or maybe not quite endorsed - I'm not all that interested, maybe I wasn't listening hard enough.
There is stark contrast between the immigration debate and the gay marriage debate. It is literally one of life versus death.
The reason gay issues don't matter much is that they all die whereas illegal immigrants live.
After the initial commotion dies down the whole gay marriage controversy will quickly fade. Gay men may get married but they soon split up and of course they die after a while. But immigrants reproduce and live.
I never hear anyone mention that the issue is the importation of inferior Mexicans. That sounds racist but it isn't. There are many fine Mexicans in Mexico I'm sure. I have no objection to America receiving Mexican nuclear physicists, architects, doctors, engineers, or even lawyers. But that's not what we are being offered. We are being used as a dumping ground for largely illiterate peasants - fertile illiterate peasants.
These denizens of the left tail will breed and proliferate adding to our dependency population. The gays on the other hand just die out without issue.
Albertosaurus
The strikedown of the voting rights act should be seen as the court's (and specifically John Robert's) way of justifying their existence.
ReplyDeleteBut of course, as you wrote earlier, 1965 just isn't with us and hasn't been for a long time.
The actual effects of that strike-down, beneath all the hype, is actually minimal.
Affirmative action is far more sweeping, and far more seditious, covering our entire lives in their scope, from school to work into the sunset of our lives.
Yet the court essentially punted(tinkered insignificantly at the edges) on it.
The strike-down on DOMA is just a gift to liberals, it's been the obsession of white liberals for a long time and will calm and appease the waves in light of the voting rights act strike-down.
The fact that affirmative action affects 60% of the population, voting rights act around 12% and DOMA merely 2% seems to be lost on everyone.
It appears that the larger body you discriminate against, the less it matters. Or actually, silly me, that's inaccurate. It's all about which color is okay to discriminate against. After all, in the Orwellian phrase "people of color", the opposite must be people of no color, hence they do no exist and we needn't worry about them, after all they're colorless and cannot be seen.
Think about this: among non-Hispanic whites you have Jews, Arabs, Maghrebis, Central Asians and so on.
ReplyDeleteYou have Arab/Jewish organizations already for those of that origin. So lumping in those people is misleading.
The people who don't have any organizational structure to support them, at all, are the European-Americans.
And they are a smaller share of the population than the non-hispanic white share(by about 4%).
And who are the first people to be hit by affirmative action? People in their teens.
Whites constitute about 53-54% of the under-18 population according to already dated stats. Substract 4% and you get a minority.
So this is already an active law against a minority. But of course SCOTUS punted.
Secondly, remember Yglesias disgusting comments how a white court should be "humble"? Dare to guess that he won't ask a majority non-white court(or public) to ask to be humble in front of a white minority? As previously stated, Jews are recipients of affirmative action on a rather massive basis at the college level. Their NMS share is about 6% compared to WASPs who are about ten times that amount, at 66%. Yet both are are at about 25% at Harvard, Yale etc. The result, of course, is that Jews don't perform at the very top anymore once they get to Harvard/Yale, but who cares? Most of those kids shouldn't be there. But my point is that Yglesias, as a recipient/benefactor, has an axe to grind against any law that helps him(and then there's the hispanic side he can exploit).
In arguing for AA, the notion of mob rule was always brought up. In a democracy, minority rights should be respected, not just the blind will of the majority.
But that always depended upon a civilized and empathetic majority. And whites have been demonized as evil people, but we'll see that whites are in fact the nicest people in America and whites will discover that the favours they gave to others won't be given in return.
Affirmative action will stay, forever, and any appeals to "justice" or "racism" will not help. Only brutal power politics - read: ethnic politics - will move the needle.
But will white people actually lift their fingers for once and actually help themselves on anything at all and not just be masochists?
That would be a bizarre day to witness.
I have to disagree with this statement:
ReplyDeleteIndeed, it’s so inexplicable that virtually nobody attempts to explicate it.
I think this is taken care of via the 'compelling interest' blah blah. Since 'diversity' is, in and of itself, an unalloyed good, conferring intangible benefits that need not be 'explicated', the state has a 'compelling interest' in making sure universities and what not are 'diverse'. It doesn't matter that the beneficiaries do not literally belong to an historically aggrieved group.
But in any case, aren't all non-whites de facto members of aggrieved groups? It seems that way.
I don't know what you call people who enjoy privileges owing to the circumstances of their birth, privileges defended by both law and tradition, but what I call them is an aristocracy. How much money they have or lack, what language they speak or decline to learn to speak, and their output of disposable diapers I have to bicycle around, are immaterial to this definition. Whatever the nature of an overclass, it is irksome to have to salute it and coo over it and pray you haven't offended it, and with no end in sight.
ReplyDeleteYou can have freedom from 24/7 surveillance or you can have open borders, but not both.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the SCOTUS decision on California Prop 8, doesn't that mean that all the constitutional bans on homosexual marriage in some 30 states will be declared unconstitutional since that was the basis for overturning Prop 8?
ReplyDeleteNorthern European genius.
ReplyDelete"I just hope I'm not living in place like that."
ReplyDeleteIf it's important to have diverse universities and workplaces that "look like America", then we ought to cap the representation of Jews at elite institutions--say, 2-3% at Harvard.
ReplyDeleteI actually think that this would be a horrible idea--institutionalized mediocrity. But the point would not be to implement it, but to get liberals to explain why they (rightly) oppose it.
Since diversity now just means more non-whites, if your organization is 25 percent diverse, but most of the 25 percent are east Asians, you're good to go.
ReplyDeleteUmmmm, no not in every case.
EEOC and federal hiring rules can ding you bigtime if your employee profile doesn't match the racial profile of the surrounding area - i.e. if you're running a company down South you're expected to have a high percentage of blacks (15-35%) in your company. In Portland or Silicon Valley, not so much.
This is monitored especially closely for deep pockets companies that have over 10,000 employees, and for companies that have government contracts (OFCCP). D
I'll be referencing this one a lot, Steve. For now, it's linked and riffed on here:
ReplyDeletehttp://ex-army.blogspot.com/2013/06/reaffirming-affirmative-action.html
The strike-down on DOMA is just a gift to liberals,
ReplyDeleteAlso a gift to the GOP, which doesn't want to deal with it, except as a wedge issue in local referenda. That tactic has probably run its course.
Now if only they could get of abortion eh?
It should be clear by now, to anyone who's been paying attention, that democracy and civilization are not a sustainable combination.
ReplyDeleteSteve,
ReplyDeleteYou know what YOUR problem is?
You continue to assume that there's going to be this Citizenist Backlash at "Latinos" by Black and White Americans.
I don't doubt that you know Blacks are troublesome, but I really do believe you're over estimating the power of "Citizenism" over plain old Racial Politicking.
Most White People simply do NOT like Blacks, sure we may give lip service to it because we're "supposed to," but deep down we do just about everything to avoid being around them.
I mean come on Steve, you live in LA, I'm sure Angelenos understand where you're coming from, but a White dude from Detroit or Philly doesn't resonate with your sympathy for Blacks.
Why live amongst squat taciturn White-Amerindian hybrids in LA, than in a city with your vibrant entertaining fellow citizens in Philly or Detroit?
It's obvious!
Most Whites are tired of it and would NOT settle for expanding AA/Quotas and limiting it to just Blacks in exchange stopping Latino immigration.
What do we "Whites" get out of this exchange? Remaining in the majority for a little while longer, and furthermore, not being able to enjoy the benefits of being the majority ethno-racial group in America to the fullest extent. We'll be the nominal majority constantly walking on egg shells.
It's not that Mexicans well liked, but most Whites understand that something isn't fundamentally "right" about this system.
We're not as self-sacrificing as you think, even if it is in the name of "America".
Moreover, Methinks that if we're willing to cave for such a weak deal that doesn't even grant us anything, what makes you think we won't cave again in the future?
It's worth repeating that the word privilege literally means "private law". This describes exactly affirmative action - a special law designed to benefit selected groups and not only not to benefit but to actively penalise others.
ReplyDeleteIt absolutely does not describe "white privilege", which even if it does exist at all, is in no way a law, private or universal. It is simply generalised in-group altruism such as can be found in virtually every human society in every place in the world at every point in history.
Black "privilege" exists - black people help each other out in ways they don't help non-blacks out. Jewish "privilege" exist - Jews help each other out in ways they don't help gentiles out. Mestizo "privilege" exists - Mestizos help each other out in ways they don't help non-Mestizos out. What white people do is essentially no different - the only difference is that whites, uniquely among these groups, have created, through hard work, self-sacrifice and spirit of enterprise, a society capable of bestowing tangible, valuable benefits upon its members.
So always refute any description of routine European in-group altruism as "privilege", and assert aggressively that affirmative action, quotas and the selective application of free speech and hate crimes laws is actual "privilege" in every sense.
"The more cunning colleges have figured out that the solution to their “black lack” is to give affirmative action to “African Americans” who aren’t very black and/or aren’t very American."
ReplyDeleteAnd ever notice that most 'brown people of color' Hispanics in elite colleges look more like this than this?
Thanks, Steve, for pointing this out. With AA in the mix, S 744 is beyond amnesty - it's an escort to the front of many key lines for their progeny.
ReplyDeleteOne other elephant in the debate: birthright citizenship. With the likely baby boom you've chronicled plus millions of new legal immigrant visas, we're talking about a lot more future citizens a lot sooner than they are claiming.
You people act like there is an arbiter of these issues that is anything like fair/reasonable/logical at all.
ReplyDeleteToday's DOMA ruling, and yesterday's AA one, by SCOTUS once again underscores that this nation is ruled by fiat at the whims of the elite. Arguments about a policy are not going to change anything one whit.
No immigrant should EVER be entitled to A.A. In fact A.A. should be abolished altogether.
ReplyDelete"Today's DOMA ruling, and yesterday's AA one, by SCOTUS once again underscores that this nation is ruled by fiat at the whims of the elite. Arguments about a policy are not going to change anything one whit."
ReplyDeleteConservatives need to move toward informal organizations and cultural values outside legal/governmental control.
The hell with Boys Scouts. Let white parents form their own informal networks of groups to bring their kids together. Since it's an informal and not an official organization, white cons can do as they want.
As for marriage, we must create a new cultural rituals, norms, and values around true marriage.
As laws have been subverted by social viruses who've infiltrated into the system, we need to create and operate in cultural orders and associations freed from legal pressures.
"Conservatives need to move toward informal organizations and cultural values outside legal/governmental control."
ReplyDeleteIndeed.
New sovereignties based on affiliation rather than geography. Don't forget the heavy encryption. ;-)
It is all coming, it can't not happen any more than a ball can't roll downhill.
OT:
ReplyDeleteThe Spectator UK is having a open panel on immigration in London in July 2013. They will be hosting the author David Goodhart.
I cannot imagine an American magazine getting away with this w/o being put over the coals in the media.
http://events.spectator.co.uk/immigration.html
"Conservatives need to move toward informal organizations and cultural values outside legal/governmental control."
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll vote for Steve as first president if he ever gets rid of that citizenism schtick (which I suppose is more of a feint at maintaining some facade of respectability rather than his true belief - certainly citizenism is not a natural conclusion of HBD).
Andyhow, if Vaclev Havel, a poet or playwright or graffiti artist, whatever, can be the post-liberation prez of Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, Confederation of Slavonia, or whatever it was, certainly Steve can be the first post-liberation prez of Citizenia (hey, we'll carry on the fiction if it gives us good press).
"Conservatives need to move toward informal organizations and cultural values outside legal/governmental control."
ReplyDeleteI agree on the value of these, but they are much less efficient and effective than having public institutions which we dominate.
If I move to Denver, how do I find the conservative, competent people's club? It's not in the yellow pages.
Formal groups provide easy starting points for new people to join. In 1920, you could assume that the Boy Scouts or Episcopalian church would be a good starting place (That may still be the case in some parts of the South) If the Boy Scouts get replaced with local, private networks, it will be much harder to pull in recent arrivals into the network, or people who sympathize with your cause but are in work or social environments dominated by liberals and so haven't heard about it - especially as many of the competent people you would want in these networks move for work to places where they have fewer connections.
Maybe loose networks can connect them, like you see among the global diaspora of Lebanese Christians.
This is an ideal moment for Republicans to demand equality and call for an end to racial preferences, and not a single one can be bothered to do so.
ReplyDeleteConservatives need to move toward informal organizations and cultural values outside legal/governmental control.
ReplyDeleteThe hell with Boys Scouts. Let white parents form their own informal networks of groups to bring their kids together. Since it's an informal and not an official organization, white cons can do as they want.
This, at base, is what Gubmit fears about home schooling. Home school has already morphed from beleaguered mom trying to do it all herself to organized local groups with certified teachers in individual subjects, teaching ever-larger numbers of children. From there, private scouting and other programs are easy to create, and are probably already being created.
Once great enough "mass" is reached, it is not too hard to imagine a combined effort of home school and private school-user grass roots initiatives to stop paying taxes to support the public schools that none of them use.
"I'm against AA but I always thought firefighting was more of a brawn and character type of job instead of a 'smarts' type of job." - The test questions for firemen were simplistic to begin with, but remember, you have to be able to answer them while things are On Fire, and people are screaming.
ReplyDeleteIn any event, this part wasn't Affirmative action, but disparate impact that drove them to adopt that strategy.
and it doesn't help blacks and native Americans
ReplyDeleteOnly those native Americans like Elizabeth Warren.