I'm really looking forward to seeing if the Supreme Court will overturn past precedent with their upcoming decisions in the Students for Fair Admissions cases against Harvard and UNC. At the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn I can't help but notice that Asian Americans are at the vanguard of the defense of meritocracy in this country. Asian Americans played an outsized role in getting three former school board members recalled in San Francisco earlier this year after the board decided to focus on renaming schools and scrapping the merit-based entrance exam to Lowell High School instead of focusing on getting kids back to school during the pandemic. The new school board recently voted to reinstate the merit-based admissions system.
In Virginia, Asian Americans also played an outsized role in fighting back against the erosion of meritocracy both in Loudoun County and at Thomas Jefferson High School. In February of this year a federal judge ruled against the admissions changes at Thomas Jefferson finding that they were discriminatory in nature. The case is currently being appealed to the Fourth Circuit.
One of the more interesting but underdiscussed points was that the case against Harvard University by SFFA alleged that Harvard engaged in crude stereotyping of Asian Americans through the use of holistic admissions criteria. The very institutions that widely condemned Amy Wax for supposedly perpetuating negative stereotypes about Asian Americans engaged in the same behavior through their admissions processes. Hypocrisy indeed.
Despite the pushback against the anti-meritocratic ethos, I'm less confident than Glenn and John that long term victory is assured. I find that there's an increasing schism in the cultural mindset between immigrant groups and native-born Americans. The fact that Asian American immigrants are at the forefront of defending meritocracy in this country doesn't surprise me. Although polls do seem to suggest that the majority of Americans in both political parties are against outright race based affirmative action, when push comes to shove it's not clear to me the extent to which native born Americans are willing to fight in defense of an abstract principle at the expense of narrower group interests.
I should also add as an aside that the erosion of meritocracy and the increasing prevalence of cancel culture is manifesting itself in another manner not widely discussed on this blog. I've spoken out against the excesses of the recently ended China Initiative that targeted academics of Chinese descent purportedly out of a desire to root out espionage but ultimately prosecuting individuals mostly for administrative lapses such as failing to disclose ties to Chinese institutions. The LA Times recently published an op-ed pointing out that a growing number of Chinese academics were giving up their spots at American universities and returning to China in part based on no longer feeling safe working in this country. Academics of Chinese descent are at risk of being cancelled simply based on perceived ties to China regardless of whether or not anything legitimately untoward resulted from such connections. Given Glenn's strong opinions in defense of Asian Americans and school admissions, I'm curious what his thoughts are regarding the larger geopolitical forces at play.
One of the most monumental events in recent weeks was the Biden administration imposing sweeping controls on technological exports to the Chinese semiconductor industry. Not only did America sanction the selling of technology and tools to China, it even imposed restrictions on American citizens and green card holders being able to work for Chinese companies in the semiconductor sector. This suggests to me that the decoupling will not merely be technological in nature but will also apply to the realm of human capital. There were already calls by some politicians to ban Chinese nationals from studying STEM in the US and I imagine that if the Republicans take back the House and the Senate in the midterms as predicted that scrutiny of China and ethnic Chinese will only intensify. Personally, I’d put the odds at 50-50 as far as Chinese nationals being banned from studying STEM in the US in the next 5-10 years. This may very well have residual effects as far as DEI goes and I'm thinking back to Glenn's earlier conversation with Amy Wax about whether or not native born Americans might benefit from affirmative action at the graduate school level given the disproportionate presence of foreigners in many graduate programs in this country.
Yan Shen - it's a complex surface here in America. And the beauty is we can explore, grow and adapt along all dimensions in America.
You accurately point out that Asian Americans can push back on racist policies in ways that Caucasian Americans cannot. We THANK YOU for pushing back on these policies is it helps lead eradication of racism, just as having brilliant Americans like Loury and McWhorter that happen to be black lead here.
Yes, I agree that the US is gaining momentum in it's anti-China policy. This I view as more a symptom of basic nationalism by Americans for American's. Some might call it the America First movement. I've sat through many China 2050 strategic presentations. The intent is clear.
My recommendation would be for Chinese immigrating to the US to adopt the mainstream American culture and values. You must prove that you are not part of China's strategic intent. I know this is perhaps incomprehensible for those raised in Eastern cultures, but current trends are decidedly Western in nature - not Eastern - as we have had to live the differences in the Western world, and frankly are rejecting Eastern values and ethos as they prove time and again to be significantly inferior for humanity. We know that for the vast majority of Chinese, China is grossly inferior compared to America, and we now want America to have as little influence as possible from a nation and culture that has the intent to dominate us.
And yes, in our education system an America First policy would be to stop subsidizing foreign students in our public institutions as we do for America Citizens. Not sure that "affirmative action" is necessary if we adopt America First policies in America.
A very interesting set of concerns, which widens the scope.
As an external observer to the US (I am a Brit who lives in Canada, married to an American) I see global balances of power as a problem of a different order of magnitude than race discrimination due to prejudice and the more or less rational attempts to implement remedies.
We live in a globalized world where everything is connected. But China, like Russia and many others, is a totalitarian state that does not play within the rules of democracy, and can implement quite immoral and damaging strategies to gain advantages (not that the US and other countries do nothing of it, but at least they do it underhand and the governments are answerable to their citizens to a large extent).
In the case of Chinese nationals abroad and people with connections to Chinese institutions, much of what happens now in the US falls in the tradition of cold wars between states -- the morality of which is debatable, especially from the perspective of individuals that get crushed in its cogs... but surely it is impossible to avoid it completely in the name of freedom and fair play, because one-sided attitudes of this type, in international politics, would be a disastrous strategy. Much like nuclear proliferation, it can only be controlled by bilateral agreements that are respected on both sides. China is pushing a lot to quash every critique of its system and behaviours in Western academic institutions, through threats and ploys that often use Chinese students studying abroad and the university departments focused on Asian studies, who have much to lose from the displeasure of Beijing. China (like almost every other country for that matter) attempts to steal industrial and technology secrets from other countries in order to get an advantage, and does that often through people with a reason to be favourable to China, for personal gain or for reasons of loyalty. Many Chinese nationals are loyal to China, as is logical to expect. The suspicions are warranted, even though we may want to examine carefully the process through which such suspicions are acted upon.
For the rest, I do agree in full with your assessment on the "schism in the cultural mindset and between immigrant groups and native-born Americans", by what I can see from across the border. Nativism is a resurgent ideology throughout the West, partially in response to the excesses of identity politics and cultural shaming over an ever broadening notion of 'colonialism' -- which has, at least in Europe, prevented a sensible discussion over the social malaise caused by the indiscriminate very fast influx of large numbers of immigrants from radically different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, driven by necessity and not by a desire to share the values of the specific countries which they joined. Thence the anti-immigrant stance of so many rising far-right parties in Europe.
In the USA I see this same problem cristallised in the combative positions of native-born Americans who embrace the identity and immigrant groups who are told with increasing force, by a certain side, that is nobler NOT to integrate. 'Othering' people who do not look or think like us is a very old and ingrained human reflex, probably a survival evolutionary trait now obsolete; but we have it, and choosing to ignore it instead of finding ways to mitigate it is a certain path to disaster.
I will help you on the colonial issue. Whatever happened during colonialism, you cannot change history or the past. You can deal with present issues, and move forward to the future. It's not like pre colonial Africa or pre colonial America were parasides. You had slavery and human sacrifice, just like in pre Christian Europe. Instead of letting people pull out emotional responses, respond with facts.
If the administration wants to control exports to China, we already have the legal and administrative framework to do so. We actually have two such frameworks: the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which applies to weapons and weapon-related technology and is administered by the Department of State, and the Export Administration Regulations, which are administered by the Department of Commerce. Electronics could fall under either or both.
Restrictions can be quite broad, and restrict export of physical items, including tools to make things like chips, as well as designs, technology, and know-how. It could easily extend to essentially prohibiting US citizens or residents from working for Chinese companies. Exports to China can be (and are) restricted differently and more seriously than exports to Japan, Germany, or Canada.
In executing these regulations, economic impact to companies or individuals is irrelevant. If, for example, a US chip maker were buying its own US-designed chips from a Taiwanese company that had a fabrication facility in China, and the chips or associated technology were suddenly restricted, the US company would probably have to stop all cooperation with the Taiwanese company and the Chinese facility.
When Thai immigration examines Nigerian bags at the airport more often than japanese bags, simply because they are Nigerian and not japanese, then is that racist? Or is it perhaps because Nigerians account for 80% of the drug crimes in Thailand, and Thai immigration is trying to keep the community safe? When an american white male fbi agent investigates a Chinese graduate student, is it because he's a racist employing "obsolete" evolutionary traits, or is it because the CCP is a vicious, totalitarian hell-hole, and because they have a history of recruiting Chinese graduate students to become spies? When a police officer pulls over a young black man, is it because the police officer is a racist thug, or is it because young black men commit almost 50% of all violent crimes, and the rap music blaring from the vehicle, along with the tinted windows, might raise suspicion? I don't think these stereotyping strategies are racist at all. And I would want to argue that stereotyping is not some obsolete trait. If I walk the street at night, and see a white man with tatooes all over his body and a bottle in his hand, I might try to avoid him. These are just common sense strategies employed by officers and individuals to keep themselves and their communities safe.
I am glad that you live in a community where you have never found yourself on the wrong side of racial profiling. Because you see, the obsolete evolutionary trait I spoke of is not so much every form of stereotyping, but the suspicion, distrust, fear and hostility toward those who do not look like ourselves.
There is some truth in every stereotype, but stereotypes are categories that rise from an actual truth and transform rapidly into irrational tools of separation. By the same token, stereotyping tells a coloured person that all white people are inherently racist, a female of the species that all males are inherently abusers (and there are enough examples to support the claims). Stereotyping within government agencies is particularly pernicious, because it does not produce a healthy awareness of criminal statistics, but a rote assumption of culpability based on traits that trump many other collateral evidence.
I will not speak for your country. But for example in Canada, I have a wealthy, very well educated very black friend who has been stopped by police numberless times when driving his Mercedes at night, and compelled to show proof of ownership, despite he is dressed in his business clothes, is not in the right age range, does not play loud music and does drive very respectfully. But, you know, he's black -- and so many blacks steal cars. Lots of other colours steal cars, but blackness stands out. He should strive to look less black, surely there is nothing wrong in the judgement call of those police officers.
Likewise, the leader of the third national party in Canada, who happens to be a Sikh, has been carded numberless times in the capital and in Toronto while being an MP. It happens that even with their suits the Sikh wear turbans, which makes them look, to stereotyping officers, like Arabs. And you know, terrorism.
The problem with stereotyping is that it is a form of profiling that works outside reason, it works by knee jerk reflex or feeds on bias. Some people reject every form of profiling because of this, and it is a foolish and wrong denial of reality. But our stereotyping tendencies more often than not create division and increasing amounts of hatred, besides patent injustice.
Look at the history of the Jews. They have been stereotyped for centuries, they still are by many, despite their immense contribution to Western culture, knowledge and wealth. The stereotypes are false, though founded on nuggets of truth (many Jews have been very capable with money, because they were the only ones allowed to make a business of lending it, in the Christian world; and most Jews refuse to renounce their ethnic identity, are very closely knit together). From this, the 'othering' stereotype grew and bloated around the Jews, filled with untruths. And that stereotyping led to unspeakable things.
It is far from a logical strategy employed to keep people and communities safe.
All you are referring to is the novel over the familiar. There is no bias.
Your comment seems to lack logical coherency.
If everyone in your office wears suits, and one person shows up wearing a t-shirt and shorts, that person is going to stand out in the crowd.
And?
You don't think that person will be looked at differently? Possibly treated differently?
You claim such a reponse to the novel as existing "outside of reason". How is that possibly "outside reason". It's perfectly reasonable. In fact, it's innate to our very existence. It's the core substructure that has permitted humanity to survive this long. Your comment only states two things: that which looks different is noticed, and that which looks different might be a threat. (might is the key word here). And might means we might try to ascertain more information.
You say blackness stands out? Where? In Canada, where the population is predominantly white?
And?
Well, of course.
What would you expect?
Do you think a white person doesn't "stand out" in China or Ghana or the Philippines? I can assure you we stick out like a sore thumb. I've been there.
The politician wearing a sikh will certainly stand out at a Canadain airport, as will a catholic nun in Saudi Arabia.
It seems to me like Immigration is simply doing their job. They are looking for threats, they look for patterns, they see certain patterns, and they attempt to root out the problem. It's absolutely logical.
The other gentlemen used the example of Thailand and Nigerian bags. Let's look at the logic here: 1. Nigerians bring more drugs than other nationalities. 2. deploying resources to check nigerian bags is a better use of resources than checking Japanese bags. 3. Drug trafficking and crime is reduced. What part of that is not logical?
And the logic in that example is identical to your example of the Sikh politician.
Some muslims have attempted to carry out terrorist attacks in Western countries. Gentlemen wearing a sikh shows up to a Canadian airport. He looks different. He looks like a muslim to those who cannot understand the difference. Maybe we should check his card. Oh, he's a politician. He's not a threat. No problem. Have a good day sir. What part of that is illogical? What part of that is biased?
And what alterantive do you propose? That the officer hesistate, not pull anyone over, second guess himself or herself, wonder if he or she will be called a racist, etc, etc. I don't think that is a viable solution.
And where does individual responsbility come into play. Who chose to move to Canada, to subscribe to a different religion, to dress different than the general population?
If you are muslim living in Canada, perhaps you might accept that you look different, and that people might look at you different, just like a christian teaching english in Saudia Arabia might want to accept the fact that prayer is five times a day, that he is white, that he might be carded, that he might be looked at differently because he dressed different, that eyes might be on him at the mall, etc, etc.
A Saudi Arabian wearing a traditional dress in the catholic andes might want to accept that people may look at him a bit funny. The police might even pull him over.
And?
So what.
Tell me when you have evidence of real racism. Tell me when you have evidence that police are brutalizing blacks as they did in the 1950's in rural Alabama, or establishing Jim crow lows that prohibit blacks from voting. Then, we have a problem. Until then, let's get a grip with reality.
Sorry to inform you, my friend, you have been to many places, but apparently not much in Canada. Canada is a country of immigrants and becomes every year more diverse, and most of the immigrants are not white. Theoretical whites are just a little over 60% of the population (I say theoretical because, as reported by the last census, only 21% define themselves as white -- race-consciousness is not a defining factor in Canada). There are over one million black people, and over 800,000 Sikhs, on a population of 28 millions. In the cities especially, and especially in Ontario, race and ethnic clothing is not something that stands out.
As for the examples: Jagmeet Singh, a Canadian born in Canada and the leader of the NDP party, was never stopped or carded at airports, where the Canada Border Agency know how to do their job. He was stopped and carded by policemen on the streets of Toronto and Ottawa, cities where Sikh policemen and Sikh construction workers wear turbans instead of helmets and caps. The policemen used an irrational stereotype existing in their heads, ignoring every other piece of evidence like clothing, behaviour, etc. (and showing their ignorance of ethnic wear, in a place where that wear is quite common), wasting their time that could have been better employed to deal with petty crime and misdemeanours (not a lot of violent crime in Canada). And contributing to a situation of harassment.
They should be better trained, informed and instructed, for the sake of the public that they serve, of whom the Sikh are a significant part.
My black friend lives in an area where Blacks make up 24.2% of the total visible minority population. People are used to see blacks, nobody stares, there are very few differences between Blacks and Caucasians except skin colour. The differences among the population are of class: black and white poorer people commit more crimes and create more public order problems. The policemen that regularly stop my friend when he drives home at night in his Mercedes, in his suit and driving responsibly, are driven by a stereotyped assumption that in the situation makes no sense: they only see his skin colour and presume higher criminal propensity.
This is a racist attitude, because it attributes a character to a person based on one single, unreliable trait. This also constitutes harassment. They should be better trained to avoid doing that, because it comes in the way of serving the public, of which black people are a significant portion.
Your examples all only refer to situations in which a stranger (might say an alien, which is meaningfully synonym with foreigner) stands out alone for different looks and behaviour in a community uniformly different than he or she is. But what we are talking about here, from Asian Americans to Black Americans/Canadians to Sikh Canadians (who are, incidentally, completely not Muslim -- Sikhism is a religion related to Hinduism, but monotheistic) is people who are part of the community. They are part of the community in large numbers, and have been for many decades, but are treated by some as if they were not. And there is a presumption of wrongdoing because they are singled out for a trait, which in the eyes of the beholder is a stigma of something wrong.
This is racism. Is racism when white people do it and when black people do it, or muslims or christians and what have you. It has nothing to do with logic, it is prejudice. And it is the way that our world goes to hell, because it only encourages its like, resentment and anger that become hatred.
If for you racism only exists when people are brutalised like it was done to the Black population in the Southern States of the US until the Civil Rights movement, you have no idea how prejudice accumulates and creates worse and worse wrongs.
There is no need to see racism in every dismissive or oppositional behaviour like the woke crowd preaches, but the position that maintains that racism does not exist anymore (like the position that maintains that black people or ethnic minorities cannot be racist, for that matter) is a position that simply on one side justifies 'soft' racism, the racism that does not kill or maim, and on the other gives fuel to the promoters of the 'institutional racism everywhere' theories.
The gentleman who writes this Substack can certainly tell you, much better than I, that there is around evidence of real racism, even if it might kill or maim only occasionally. And that addressing it, in our attitudes towards our ingrained prejudices and especially in the attitudes of the institutions that protect and serve our communities, is very important to live better together.
Which does NOT mean adopting a DiAngelo/Kendi perspective.
(As for alternatives, my viable solution, which is the solution adopted in Britain, is that the officers are trained to recognise stereotyping biases in themselves and others, and to act consequently to take decisions based on more information than one single trait)
I would want to argue that this is more perception than reality. When I was 21, I was driving my grandfathers porsche to college class, and I was pulled over by an officer who presumably thought the car was stolen, afterall, not many 21 year olds drive porsches. At the time, I also had a bit of a beard so I looked more like a biker than a college student. Of course, racism exists. If you look hard enough for anything, you can find it. but I think its much more rare than people think. If the media told us all the cases where white men were being pulled over for doing nothing wrong, or white men being shot by police, then we might simply realize that this is simply innate to policing.
This is getting off the topic of the original post, but you should read my prior comment about the China Initiative. It was deeply flawed. Most of the cases involved criminalizing administrative lapses like failing to disclose ties to Chinese institutions rather than actual espionage. Furthermore, the conviction rate for China Initiative cases was significantly lower compared to the overall conviction rate for white-collar DOJ cases. More relevantly, it failed to appreciate the fundamental difference between academia and industry. As some of the targeted individuals pointed out, in academia everything is openly published. One of the most common criticisms of FBI overreach was that most agents failed to understand how the scientific enterprise ultimately operated.
There might be a different conversation to be had regarding corporate espionage but at least for academia, which was the focus of the China Initiative, there was relatively little theft uncovered from what I read. Either we were very bad at catching Chinese academics engaged in substantive theft or they were extremely good at hiding it or the entire premise was vastly overstated. By contrast I would argue that statistical evidence of vastly disproportionate Black crime is on much firmer footing given that homicide rates for Blacks are an order of magnitude higher compared to homicide rates for non-Blacks in America.
As far as your characterization of the CCP, you're entitled to your opinion. For what it's worth I've yet to see any hard evidence suggesting that there's a strong correlation between degree of authoritarianism versus tendency to engage in espionage. It seems like moralized panic to suggest that because the Chinese government is authoritarian and therefore "bad" that we should subject Chinese students to greater scrutiny in this country. I'd also point out that Kishore Mahbubani argues in his recent book that despite frequent foreign condemnation of China and the Chinese government, most mainland Chinese rate the CCP as reasonably competent.
The reason I went down this path is that as someone who's Chinese American I couldn't help but notice the contradiction between the excesses of wokeism on the one hand and the excesses of anti-Chinese sentiment on the other given the deteriorating geopolitical relations between China and the United States. Amy Wax was widely denounced for perpetuating stereotypes about Asian Americans, but as I argued above our elite universities do the same sort thing through their admissions processes. Bashing China or Chinese people using crude stereotypes seems par for the course for our political establishment these days and one of the few areas where Democrats and Republicans see eye to eye. It seemed very hypocritical for Amy to have been singled out specifically for this, although admittedly South Asian women seemed to be the primary focus of her criticism. In any case, it’s hard not to be cynical about the rhetorical posturing that’s part and parcel of our public discourse.
I’m glad that the conservative Supreme Court will most likely undo the prior precedents set by cases like Bakke and reestablish a more meritocratic admissions process. I’m not nearly as optimistic as Glenn and John that this heralds certain victory for all that’s right and good. I foresee significant geopolitical currents on the horizon that will almost certainly impact individuals of Asian descent in the years to come. Whether or not America is in fact a country that truly believes in meritocracy and equality of treatment for all is a proposition that I’m not willing to accept as given.
I respect your view. In reply, i would only want to say that the 1970's Russian academics (all white) were also targeted by intelligence agencies. I would also want to argue that this is not new, and it's not innate to the U.S., or predicated upon racial background. It's simply a consequence of the differences in political philosophy.
Most Americans see themselves in a cold war with stark differences between a decentralized republic and a centralized politburo: and competent or not, the CCP fits the definition of a totalitarian regime. Most Americans don't want social credit scores and a one party state, or a legal system with a 99% conviction rate, or have no right to vote for their reps, or have no bill of rights. As such, we can reasonably conclude that the profiling will exist until the threat disappears. But such profiling doesnt appear to have anything to do with color or ethnic background as far as I can see, only that Chinese students have a certain national citizenship, from a regime that has publicly expressed their disapproval of the american republic, a regime that has been openly hostile to its neighbors. I don't know whether the intelligence communities are effective or not; I don't work at those agencies, but I would argue that failing to disclose relationships with a foreign government or agency, although it doesn't infer guilt, is not a minor error, and that investigating some chinese students with ties to the CCP is not without good cause.
It is a certain thing that a vast part of the actions our countries put into effect to protect themselves and their assets are flawed, misguided and often patently unjust besides ineffective. It was not my intention to give a moral justification of whatever action the US government agencies may take toward Chinese nationals, on account of the "badness" of the Chinese state, and if it came through in this way, my apologies. My considerations were simply practical: that the so called liberal democracies and so called totalitarian states are opposing social systems (never mind the convenience of alliances), and it seems inevitable that suspicion and rivalry exist more than just on an economic level, when national interest is also seen in supporting a country's vision of the world.
I did not imply that, by the little I know of it in deep detail, the China Initiative affair has been right, fair, well conducted and harmless to people with relations to the Chinese state, or even effective in its purpose. It is just my opinion that, in the situation that we have, actions of this kind are sort of inevitable.
As for my take on the CCP, it has built for over 50 years of observing it, also through the eyes of several Communist friends very enthused with it, many books read (including the one by Mr Weiwei), and a niece who is a Chinese interpreter and was engaged for a while to a Chinese national who talked too much for his own good. It is not an opinion set in stone and I would be happy to change it if evidence of its incorrectness is given. But the fact that millions of Chinese approve of China's form of government is not such evidence, because there is no free circulation of information and ideas in the country and the millions who do not approve are forced to silence by fear; while Mr Mahbubani always speaks from a very Asia-centric point of view, which is fine and gives valuable insights, but kind of inevitably clashes on many issues (see his most recent declarations on the war in Ukraine) with my Euro-centric point of view.
I think a lot of anti Semitism is simply anti white racism. Basically, yes, the Europeans set up big colonial empires. But we cannot change history, and punishing people alive today for what other did decades or centuries ago is just absolutely INSANE.
Blaming Jewish people for Cruxification is actually anti-Christian. Christ, Jewish himself, said all may be saved and all may believe in him. Also, it's just insane to blame people alive for events centuries or in the case of cruxification 2000 years ago. No one can go back in a time machine and change history. As for Kanye West, he has joined the Black Hebrew cult I think. You can say I don't have anything good to say about that cult. I have been living in Europe for the past few years where I got both Portuguese and Spanish ancestry via Sephardic ancestry, and that was because in the South we had a number of Sephardic slaveowners, so both my mother and father have Jewish last names. So for me Jewish people are my cousins. Sometimes when I applied for certain educational programs like graduate school in NYC or for certain jobs I think I got accepted because the review assumed I'm Jewish (I'm Christian, but I do have Jewish ancestry).
Back to CRT. It is very racist. Some people into CRT refused to speak to me after learning I got two European citizenships via Jewish ancestry. But I think one way to end CRT is just admit the full truth of the history and then people can move on. The Igbo of Nigeria, when a woman had twins or other multiple births did human sacrifice on the INFANTS. British and other European colonialism stopped human sacrifice across Africa, the Americas, and Asia. It also spread literacy and technology. Did the Christians do bad things? Yes. But they did good things. Pre Christian Europe also had human sacrifice.
Judeo-Christian societies are orderly. The Old Testament lays down the laws which we must live in Abrahamic societies. The New Testament emphasized faith in Christ, because from a Christian viewpoint trying to follow laws without genuine faith is meaningless and cannot be done. But either way the order you have in Judeo-Christian societies is hated by CRT, who want to return to pre Christian Europe and pre colonial Africa, America, and Asia. They want to empty all prisons, end mental healthcare, get rid of the courts, and turn us into the stone age. Everything that is primitive and barbaric they love and celebrate and they hide behind racism. You can check out my podcasts and posts for more information.
I need to say something else. One reason why white people get upset about Jim Crow or colonialism. Nobody can get back in a time machine and changed the past. BLM is different. A group of Black Lesbians and Transgenders claimed endless persecution so they could defraud donors out of 90 million or more. The families of people killed by police have come forward and said they got no money. This is a criminal fundraising issue, and for state attorney generals to deal with, as various laws were broken. It's also up to people to understand the law in the United States. 45 states have laws concerning public accommodation. Meaning since BLM raised money from the public, that money legally had to be used to help people of all races. Anyone whose business was burned down by BLM could SUE the organization for formenting riots. However, I don't recall voting for BLM to represent me. The media decided BLM represented the voices of all Black Americans. Of course, BLM has been exposed and collapsed, and now the media wants to hide on this issue.
So to me, this is not an either or thing and anyone with any intelligence, since we FACTUALLY know what people were responsible, this is a matter for the law.
Both sides of my family lived under Jim Crow. No mass crime in those days. Serious crime would have gotten someone EXECUTED. There was no such thing as single mothers either. There was no welfare state in the South then, and to have a child out of wedlock meant the woman was a total prostitute. The liberalism created by Northern liberals, indulging the worst aspects of the civil rights movement and creating a welfare state certainly did create high levels of crime and disfunction where they simply did not exist before, because you could not do those things in the South without getting shot, the electric share, or hung.
Of course, a criminal who makes his living by race hustling will always make his living by racial hustling.
In order to nullify CRT, its pretty easy for all sides. You just tell the truth about what historically happened. You examine the values you have. You examine who you vote for. Quite clearly whatever the Democrats have done has made Democratic cities a crime ridden mess. On top of that, in NYC illegal immigrants got 400 to 700 a night hotels in NYC. I never got that.
By the way in Islamic parts of Africa theft gets your hands cut off. I am not saying do that, but the crime committed in America is POLITICAL and has to do with the removal of Christianity from the public sphere and education. My grandparents generation, if they want to school at all went to schools controlled by local churches. I personally would say that should be done again, particularly in the light that public schools want to turn all children into LGBTQs.
Now here's what I think the issue is. I see people in America descended from comparatively recent immigrants. Everyone says I'm Jewish, I'm Polish, I'm Italian, I'm Irish, my ancestors were not involved in slavery. That is problematic. Go back two or three thousand years, everyone has ancestors involved in some sort of slavery or genocide. The entire world. I have more recent ancestors involved in slavery, the ancestors I just spoke of. So what? I should not be condemned for it, nor should an entirely white person from America who did have ancestors who were involved in slavery. That person cannot go back in a time machine and changed the history of America, nor can I. That person is probably my cousin. I think what might be inflaming people as that people try to through Anglo Saxon Americans under the bus, and somehow making them uniquely responsible for racism when there has never been a period in human history where people even if they were of the same race on the same continent got along Russia is bombing the Ukraine. Europeans had a terrible history with each other. Africans have a terrible history with each other. Native Americans have a terrible history with each other. People of the same race hate their own families. My mother killed herself after fighting with her own sisters. So since that kind of drama can happen in any family, why are people obssessed with race?
Next time your at the dmv and the only line moving is the one white guys who worked there and the 3 affirmative action black woman talking about getting they nails did while the lines they work only grow longer . Let me know then how great affirmative action is . I already know because I was in the line I just described
I wouldn't fret too much about what you're "known for" vs. your actual expertise and life experience. Ordinary people don't read academic scholarship simply because it's above their heads, so if you weren't famous for race commentary, you probably wouldn't be famous for anything. You'd be well-known in your fields, but not known to the public.
Finding *any* sort of tipping point that gets you famous is very rare. Most authors never find a wide audience, and having a book in Barnes and Noble would be an impossible dream. John's memoir might be shelved in the wrong section, but it would sell to all sorts of people. And if any of them thought "Here is a Black book by an interesting Black person about being Black," the text of the book would contain all of the different dimensions you'd like to emphasize.
Legally, there is no doubt that the plaintiffs deserve to win on the merits. Racial preferences in university admissions are a clear violation of the plain language of the Civil Rights Act. There is no other statutory or constitutional provision that would allow discrimination for "diversity" by any fair reading.
Indications are that there are enough justices ready to rule against preferences, so we can safely expect a ruling banning preferences as practiced by Harvard and UNC. It will be interesting to read the specifics - how broadly they rule, and what loopholes they leave.
Politically, preferences are opposed by large majorities of the population, across racial and party lines, so the population will generally approve the ruling.
University officials, and admissions officers in particular, will try to find ways to avoid applying the judgment. I expect they will simply change their evaluation procedures to make criteria more opaque, allowing them to reduce or eliminate quantifiable criteria like test scores, GPA, or class rank, while adding arbitrary "plus" factors for things like "overcoming adversity". They think they're doing God's work, and have a clearer moral vision than anyone who opposes them. They won't change their minds based on a Supreme Court decision.
Once the Supreme Court has set precedent, it makes is very easy for people to sue universities directly in violation of the law. So I would say to any person of any race, if you find out your university application is affected by some sort of racial preference you need to sue the university.
With that said, if universities decide they want to give people from poor backgrounds opportunity that is perfectly legal to do so, so long as it is not based on the applicants race. Harvard has 51 billion dollars in their endowment, so if they decide they want to eliminate the SAT, that is perfect legal. How that works out for them is on them. There is no law that says that they have to have a GPA requirement or a SAT requirement, but there is a law saying that they cannot use race to determine who enters a college.
I consider it a net positive that Affirmative Action as a policy might be finally declared Unconstitutional after a half century in university admissions especially given how absurdly lopsided the entrance results have become between Asian and White applicants vs Black and Hispanic ones. That being said I think the university apparatus, in fact the entire Prussian Model Schooling apparatus, is entirely a goose that has been cooked to the point of being burnt.
The Marxist infiltration, out of control costs, massive administrative overbloat, the creation of what effectively amount to a class of secular temples that act as gatekeepers to Washington and New York elites that’ve parasitically hollowed out this entire country, and are now finally collapsing it in total, this whole thing has to go.
Jesse Kelly the Marine veteran and podcaster on YouTube, Twitter, on Tucker Carlson, and elsewhere have a very solid strong prescription. Take the top 10-20 universities that’ve been spewing every form of Communist garbage for generations, revoke the charters, seize the endowments, fire all the staff, demolish the buildings, and piss on the ashes. It sounds severe but that’s frankly far more preferable to continuing this dangerously unstable Communist Color Revolution.
The Tucker interview is on the same show Tucker Carlson Today that you were on which thank you for recommending btw phenomenal interview series well worth the subscription to Fox Nation just for that.
Directly related to this topic is John Taylor Gatto who also wrote a masterpiece work entitled The Underground History of American Education. I have the physical copy with the foreword by Dr. Ron Paul and it completely blew my lid.
It details how educated average Americans were as recently as 100 years ago with 5th graders reading the Bible, Shakespeare, Washington, Twain, Dickens, and more and how systematically after a century they can barely spell words like dog and cat.
Prussian Model Schooling is designed by default to completely brainwash young children and make them STUPIDER in order to make them COMPLAINT DRONES. This is the system of education/indoctrination that’s permeated the entirety of the West and by extension much of the rest of the world.
The homeschooling Revolution, independent learning pods, and more are all in part a direct reaction to this. PDF is well worth downloading, sharing, skimming, it’s definitely worth a read. Gatto himself was an award winning teacher who quit because in his words “he didn’t want to hurt kids for a living anymore.” Enjoy and prepare to have your mind blown 🤯 like I was.
After 50 years of receiving preferential treatment, blacks need to be judged on their own merits and their actual performance. Those that can excel will do so without government interference.
I would like proponents of a race-based preference system explain how such discrimination is okay is govt sanctions it, but a gross violation of the law otherwise. On what principle does that thought process rest?
At the Supreme Court this week, the Solicitor General made an astounding statement that was pretty much ignored. Using the military officer corps as an example, she called diversity a national security issue then added this part: this diversity cannot be attained in a purely merit-based admissions system. In other words, a senior official says that the position of the feds and one of the major parties is that certain minority groups cannot compete without govt putting its thumb on the scale. I wonder if there is a word for that type of attitude.
Affirmative Action is racist and sexist because it discriminates on the basis of race and sex. Pure and simple. Let’s eliminate racist and sexist laws and policies; or else admit that you endorse racism and sexist laws.
There are no racist and sexist laws. It is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, or nationality under Title V, Title VI, and Title VII. It is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex under Title IX. The issue is a lot of people ranted about reverse discrimination instead of actually gathering factual evidence and going to lawyers or complaining to the government. Fortunately, Edward Blum found actual evidence of discrimination against Asian American students, which is why the court will end affirmative action because we have factual evidence of people being harmed, not simply people's feelings.
I personally know white males who have sued for discrimination and won. I personally know Mark J Perry, who has filed 700 complaints against programs that discriminate against white men and he has won the majority of them. He's a professor of economics. Knowing to read helps. And not being a coward helps. You're hiding behind a fake name because you fear retaliation for saying things the woke crowd might not like. I too am posting under my real name, and yes, those laws do protect white men and most of the judges in America are still white men. Come to them with facts and not cowardice and you can be a part of stopping.
Sweetie, I served in the US military with honor; something you obviously never did. You’re wrong about the law and you resort to name calling because you are a coward, and also never served in the military. You are welcome for the freedom I provided you.
How do you know what I have done in my life? But I will say you can't do much hiding behind a fake name. That is the definition of cowardice. Yes, white men can sue for discrimination, and I have known effective white men who stopped a lot of discrimination against men and White people because they fought under their own names and because these men read very well. Plus, they knew how to collect evidence.
Affirmative action is preferential treatment for certain protected identity groups. Our country was founded promising equal opportunity, not equal outcome. Is it truly reparations if the manufactured outcome comes at the expense of another, who had no personal involvement in the historical oppression of one’s identity group?
Making generalizations is the Democratic Party’s favorite political tactic. Ironically, this is the party that claims to reject stereotypes in favor of a humanitarian approach.
Will do. You have summed up the crux of the matter very simply and is my opinion of the situation as well. The Constitution calls for equal treatment, not preferential treatment.
Love you guys. You guys have the energy of a couple buddies grabbing beers hashing out life and the world's problems. That you happen to be highly accomplished and recognized leaders in your respective fields, as well as polymath breadth of knowledge, has so many of us tune in.
Remember the days when the library mailed us video lectures on DVD? Yup, that's when I stumbled across this McWhorter guy when I trying to add a bit of background for some natural language processing work. John made linguistics so very accessible. Also spun off a couple of investigatory threads for me into histories of European regional languages and formation of modern nation states. I now count phrases when in conversation with people to better understand where they are and what they are trying to say. Thanks McWhorter for starting a very enriching journey into linguistics.
Back to the DIE (Peterson's rearrangement which is more accurate and has a nice punch to it) and Affirmative action topic at hand. Your discussion is almost exactly the discussions we have had many times at the neighborhood craft cocktail lounge. We've watched systematic theft of contribution, promotion of weak people into management and decision making rolls solely based on race, and yes friends pushed out of their long time contributions to the company based solely due to racists policy. Just as with X Boi, these people usually "couldn't carry my jock strap".
When hiring interns, we are given a pool of social activists students lauded as "future business leaders" with no identifiable passion for the business at hand. Then if you bring in the interns, they spend their time ranking and rating the business groups to HR based on, drum roll please, propensity for promoting social activists into leadership positions. They know they're "special" and literally dare their managers to push them for output or even attendance.
Meanwhile our own children with stellar academics, clear passion for the chosen areas of study are offered minimal or no scholarships when they do gain admittance to the schools they would like to attend, and then are actively discriminated against by corporate America for low intersectionality scores.
To interject some McWhorter linguistics back into the discussion here, I now try to discern in conversations if we are using descriptive language "talking about", understanding language, execution language, or synthesizing language.
We have been systematically moving people into roles where they simply cannot operate successfully.
I think the issue is you have academics speaking for everyone. Meaning we just hear the white leaders of these universities speak out. Not the students, and certainly not the alleged beneficiaries of affirmative action. I have two Ivy League degrees. BA from Cornell, and MA from Columbia. My lowest grade at Columbia was a B+. I mostly had As. Yet I had to pay in student loans and cash. Very few Black people at Columbia got affirmative action, and very few Hispanics did either. Those that did, boy, where there reasons for it. If you were Black or Hispanic and also either a former convicted criminal, an ILLEGAL immigrant, or a TRANSGENDER you got to go to Columbia for free.
There are reasons for there. An illegal immigrant transgender from Bogota, Colombia, who got to go Columbia University for free for his bachelor degrees, 4 years so he received 260,000 or more in FREE MONEY claimed endless persecution and discrimination. Why would this person do that? Because white liberal donors love that kind of talk and will donate BILLIONS of dollars to these top institutions. The beggar from Colombia got just a fraction of that.
Another person at Columbia who also got the royal red carpet was fat, so fat lady discrimination. She's Black, she's Hispanic, she's non binary, she's bisexual, she's disabled. Went to Columbia for free, got free meals at Columbia and still got food stamps. Is now getting her masters for her and her professors even got an agent. I, a Black man, never got that kind of treatment because I am an American, I am not a convict, and I am not a transgender. No normal Hispanic would get affirmative action like that either, because in woke circles its all about transgenders, criminals, and undocumented. My cousin who is going to a private university undergraduate is having to take out 30,000 dollars a year in student loans. She grew up in the house with her married parents, so though Black she may as say she is a white woman to the woke crowd.
So to make it abundantly clear, affirmative action MUST be ended as soon as possible. It is illegal and unconstitutional. It's also a fundraising SCAM. These frauds in academia have finally been exposed. Check out my substack channel for more information. I will be posting more.
Thank you Glenn and John, as always, for allowing myself and others to listen in on your conversations. As much as we often decry the impact of social media on our maturing(?) civilization, the fact we have this opportunity goes a long way toward justifying its existence.
Perhaps America can be saved after all. If it can, it will only be thanks to those individuals, like yourselves, who stood up when doing so was difficult and challenging, but also dangerous.
Feels good! I have hope. Thanks for your contribution to the noble cause. Maybe one day we can actual work on the real causes for our social issues. Many of them you guys have discussed in the past.
Affirmative Action, or better what A.A. wants to achieve, should start at home, at kindergarten, in the primary schools. Looking at US history, who contributed what and what was received in return, neighborhoods of color should for the next 10-20 years get more money, to have the best schools ( also for blue collar jobs), the best after-school programs, the best teachers, etc. And soft loans to start a business. A lot of (much needed) talent gets lost, is probably lost already.
If you are talking about large inner city populations, consider the fact that the majority of those municipalities have been run by Democrats and also many "people of color" in the administrative positions. These are the very people that hold the purse strings and determine where and how money is spent. Are these administrators really doing the best they can to help their constituents?
Let's also look at the current level of education in the nation as a whole. After Covid and its attendant school shutdowns and long-distance learning, education has taken a huge dive in this country. Also consider the current emphasis on training not future contributors to society, but Social Justice Warriors in our schools and universities. We are not encouraging a true learning environment for anyone, much less "people of color" whatever you determine that to be.
I do agree that emphasis should be on improving those inner city areas with good education, jobs and safe neighborhoods, but the local politicians need to step up to help their own people.
So, we agree. But if local politicians do not step up, better schools should be enforced from the state level or maybe even Fed. level. Issues:
- low property taxes result in low subsidies for local schools.
- putting children in buses to drive them to a school outside of their neighborhood can maybe work for some, but what about kids who cannot function if they have to get up at a very early hour ?
My point: AA at college/university level should not be needed, would not be needed if the US put considerable effort and money in early education for inner-city kids and other disenfranchised children/young adults of color (I do not have a better definition).
The problem is circular. Inner cities suffer from crime and poverty, which limits growth and therefore limits the tax base. Stores and businesses start to close and leave because of crime and those residents that make a decent income leave if they can. Maybe some help should come from the State or the Feds.
I would also include the poor White residents of Appalachia, who suffer from some of the same problems, poverty, illiteracy, poor health care and drugs. After all we should help the disadvantaged of any race, right?
Or maybe these problems are not necessarily due to poverty. The removal of Christianity from the public sphere by feminism, by gay marriage, and by related forces normalized the destruction of the nuclear family. It's much easier to do well in school with kids have stable, two parent homes. The left hates that because if there are no mothers due to the single mother always working or the married career woman always working, kids have no mothers and are completely dependent upon the state. Why, if you have Christian married couples, they will do things like homeschooling because they value their kids! My cousin was technically inner city, but his grandmother paid for him to go to a religious private school. GASP, their are solutions that don't always involve the government even if the parents are Black or Hispanic. I completely support the Supreme Court in ending affirmative action, btw.
I think the problem is actually mutlifactorial, poverty being one issue, the loss of the traditional family unit, cultural differences, etc. It burns me up that the leaders of these communities do so little to help these people when they purport to be their champions.
Go GLENN! Letting loose about Kendi hopefully felt liberating. Could NOT agree more with all of this and more. Thank you, thank you, thank you to both you and John, + Kmele, Coleman, Bari and SO many others who've given me sanity and direction these last couple bats-ass crazy years.
I'm really looking forward to seeing if the Supreme Court will overturn past precedent with their upcoming decisions in the Students for Fair Admissions cases against Harvard and UNC. At the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn I can't help but notice that Asian Americans are at the vanguard of the defense of meritocracy in this country. Asian Americans played an outsized role in getting three former school board members recalled in San Francisco earlier this year after the board decided to focus on renaming schools and scrapping the merit-based entrance exam to Lowell High School instead of focusing on getting kids back to school during the pandemic. The new school board recently voted to reinstate the merit-based admissions system.
In Virginia, Asian Americans also played an outsized role in fighting back against the erosion of meritocracy both in Loudoun County and at Thomas Jefferson High School. In February of this year a federal judge ruled against the admissions changes at Thomas Jefferson finding that they were discriminatory in nature. The case is currently being appealed to the Fourth Circuit.
One of the more interesting but underdiscussed points was that the case against Harvard University by SFFA alleged that Harvard engaged in crude stereotyping of Asian Americans through the use of holistic admissions criteria. The very institutions that widely condemned Amy Wax for supposedly perpetuating negative stereotypes about Asian Americans engaged in the same behavior through their admissions processes. Hypocrisy indeed.
Despite the pushback against the anti-meritocratic ethos, I'm less confident than Glenn and John that long term victory is assured. I find that there's an increasing schism in the cultural mindset between immigrant groups and native-born Americans. The fact that Asian American immigrants are at the forefront of defending meritocracy in this country doesn't surprise me. Although polls do seem to suggest that the majority of Americans in both political parties are against outright race based affirmative action, when push comes to shove it's not clear to me the extent to which native born Americans are willing to fight in defense of an abstract principle at the expense of narrower group interests.
I should also add as an aside that the erosion of meritocracy and the increasing prevalence of cancel culture is manifesting itself in another manner not widely discussed on this blog. I've spoken out against the excesses of the recently ended China Initiative that targeted academics of Chinese descent purportedly out of a desire to root out espionage but ultimately prosecuting individuals mostly for administrative lapses such as failing to disclose ties to Chinese institutions. The LA Times recently published an op-ed pointing out that a growing number of Chinese academics were giving up their spots at American universities and returning to China in part based on no longer feeling safe working in this country. Academics of Chinese descent are at risk of being cancelled simply based on perceived ties to China regardless of whether or not anything legitimately untoward resulted from such connections. Given Glenn's strong opinions in defense of Asian Americans and school admissions, I'm curious what his thoughts are regarding the larger geopolitical forces at play.
One of the most monumental events in recent weeks was the Biden administration imposing sweeping controls on technological exports to the Chinese semiconductor industry. Not only did America sanction the selling of technology and tools to China, it even imposed restrictions on American citizens and green card holders being able to work for Chinese companies in the semiconductor sector. This suggests to me that the decoupling will not merely be technological in nature but will also apply to the realm of human capital. There were already calls by some politicians to ban Chinese nationals from studying STEM in the US and I imagine that if the Republicans take back the House and the Senate in the midterms as predicted that scrutiny of China and ethnic Chinese will only intensify. Personally, I’d put the odds at 50-50 as far as Chinese nationals being banned from studying STEM in the US in the next 5-10 years. This may very well have residual effects as far as DEI goes and I'm thinking back to Glenn's earlier conversation with Amy Wax about whether or not native born Americans might benefit from affirmative action at the graduate school level given the disproportionate presence of foreigners in many graduate programs in this country.
We live in truly interesting times.
The same court which overturned Roe vs Wade will use a literal interpretation of the 14th amendment and Title VI to end affirmative action
Yan Shen - it's a complex surface here in America. And the beauty is we can explore, grow and adapt along all dimensions in America.
You accurately point out that Asian Americans can push back on racist policies in ways that Caucasian Americans cannot. We THANK YOU for pushing back on these policies is it helps lead eradication of racism, just as having brilliant Americans like Loury and McWhorter that happen to be black lead here.
Yes, I agree that the US is gaining momentum in it's anti-China policy. This I view as more a symptom of basic nationalism by Americans for American's. Some might call it the America First movement. I've sat through many China 2050 strategic presentations. The intent is clear.
My recommendation would be for Chinese immigrating to the US to adopt the mainstream American culture and values. You must prove that you are not part of China's strategic intent. I know this is perhaps incomprehensible for those raised in Eastern cultures, but current trends are decidedly Western in nature - not Eastern - as we have had to live the differences in the Western world, and frankly are rejecting Eastern values and ethos as they prove time and again to be significantly inferior for humanity. We know that for the vast majority of Chinese, China is grossly inferior compared to America, and we now want America to have as little influence as possible from a nation and culture that has the intent to dominate us.
And yes, in our education system an America First policy would be to stop subsidizing foreign students in our public institutions as we do for America Citizens. Not sure that "affirmative action" is necessary if we adopt America First policies in America.
A very interesting set of concerns, which widens the scope.
As an external observer to the US (I am a Brit who lives in Canada, married to an American) I see global balances of power as a problem of a different order of magnitude than race discrimination due to prejudice and the more or less rational attempts to implement remedies.
We live in a globalized world where everything is connected. But China, like Russia and many others, is a totalitarian state that does not play within the rules of democracy, and can implement quite immoral and damaging strategies to gain advantages (not that the US and other countries do nothing of it, but at least they do it underhand and the governments are answerable to their citizens to a large extent).
In the case of Chinese nationals abroad and people with connections to Chinese institutions, much of what happens now in the US falls in the tradition of cold wars between states -- the morality of which is debatable, especially from the perspective of individuals that get crushed in its cogs... but surely it is impossible to avoid it completely in the name of freedom and fair play, because one-sided attitudes of this type, in international politics, would be a disastrous strategy. Much like nuclear proliferation, it can only be controlled by bilateral agreements that are respected on both sides. China is pushing a lot to quash every critique of its system and behaviours in Western academic institutions, through threats and ploys that often use Chinese students studying abroad and the university departments focused on Asian studies, who have much to lose from the displeasure of Beijing. China (like almost every other country for that matter) attempts to steal industrial and technology secrets from other countries in order to get an advantage, and does that often through people with a reason to be favourable to China, for personal gain or for reasons of loyalty. Many Chinese nationals are loyal to China, as is logical to expect. The suspicions are warranted, even though we may want to examine carefully the process through which such suspicions are acted upon.
For the rest, I do agree in full with your assessment on the "schism in the cultural mindset and between immigrant groups and native-born Americans", by what I can see from across the border. Nativism is a resurgent ideology throughout the West, partially in response to the excesses of identity politics and cultural shaming over an ever broadening notion of 'colonialism' -- which has, at least in Europe, prevented a sensible discussion over the social malaise caused by the indiscriminate very fast influx of large numbers of immigrants from radically different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, driven by necessity and not by a desire to share the values of the specific countries which they joined. Thence the anti-immigrant stance of so many rising far-right parties in Europe.
In the USA I see this same problem cristallised in the combative positions of native-born Americans who embrace the identity and immigrant groups who are told with increasing force, by a certain side, that is nobler NOT to integrate. 'Othering' people who do not look or think like us is a very old and ingrained human reflex, probably a survival evolutionary trait now obsolete; but we have it, and choosing to ignore it instead of finding ways to mitigate it is a certain path to disaster.
Something we seem very well advanced towards.
I will help you on the colonial issue. Whatever happened during colonialism, you cannot change history or the past. You can deal with present issues, and move forward to the future. It's not like pre colonial Africa or pre colonial America were parasides. You had slavery and human sacrifice, just like in pre Christian Europe. Instead of letting people pull out emotional responses, respond with facts.
If the administration wants to control exports to China, we already have the legal and administrative framework to do so. We actually have two such frameworks: the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which applies to weapons and weapon-related technology and is administered by the Department of State, and the Export Administration Regulations, which are administered by the Department of Commerce. Electronics could fall under either or both.
Restrictions can be quite broad, and restrict export of physical items, including tools to make things like chips, as well as designs, technology, and know-how. It could easily extend to essentially prohibiting US citizens or residents from working for Chinese companies. Exports to China can be (and are) restricted differently and more seriously than exports to Japan, Germany, or Canada.
In executing these regulations, economic impact to companies or individuals is irrelevant. If, for example, a US chip maker were buying its own US-designed chips from a Taiwanese company that had a fabrication facility in China, and the chips or associated technology were suddenly restricted, the US company would probably have to stop all cooperation with the Taiwanese company and the Chinese facility.
When Thai immigration examines Nigerian bags at the airport more often than japanese bags, simply because they are Nigerian and not japanese, then is that racist? Or is it perhaps because Nigerians account for 80% of the drug crimes in Thailand, and Thai immigration is trying to keep the community safe? When an american white male fbi agent investigates a Chinese graduate student, is it because he's a racist employing "obsolete" evolutionary traits, or is it because the CCP is a vicious, totalitarian hell-hole, and because they have a history of recruiting Chinese graduate students to become spies? When a police officer pulls over a young black man, is it because the police officer is a racist thug, or is it because young black men commit almost 50% of all violent crimes, and the rap music blaring from the vehicle, along with the tinted windows, might raise suspicion? I don't think these stereotyping strategies are racist at all. And I would want to argue that stereotyping is not some obsolete trait. If I walk the street at night, and see a white man with tatooes all over his body and a bottle in his hand, I might try to avoid him. These are just common sense strategies employed by officers and individuals to keep themselves and their communities safe.
I am glad that you live in a community where you have never found yourself on the wrong side of racial profiling. Because you see, the obsolete evolutionary trait I spoke of is not so much every form of stereotyping, but the suspicion, distrust, fear and hostility toward those who do not look like ourselves.
There is some truth in every stereotype, but stereotypes are categories that rise from an actual truth and transform rapidly into irrational tools of separation. By the same token, stereotyping tells a coloured person that all white people are inherently racist, a female of the species that all males are inherently abusers (and there are enough examples to support the claims). Stereotyping within government agencies is particularly pernicious, because it does not produce a healthy awareness of criminal statistics, but a rote assumption of culpability based on traits that trump many other collateral evidence.
I will not speak for your country. But for example in Canada, I have a wealthy, very well educated very black friend who has been stopped by police numberless times when driving his Mercedes at night, and compelled to show proof of ownership, despite he is dressed in his business clothes, is not in the right age range, does not play loud music and does drive very respectfully. But, you know, he's black -- and so many blacks steal cars. Lots of other colours steal cars, but blackness stands out. He should strive to look less black, surely there is nothing wrong in the judgement call of those police officers.
Likewise, the leader of the third national party in Canada, who happens to be a Sikh, has been carded numberless times in the capital and in Toronto while being an MP. It happens that even with their suits the Sikh wear turbans, which makes them look, to stereotyping officers, like Arabs. And you know, terrorism.
The problem with stereotyping is that it is a form of profiling that works outside reason, it works by knee jerk reflex or feeds on bias. Some people reject every form of profiling because of this, and it is a foolish and wrong denial of reality. But our stereotyping tendencies more often than not create division and increasing amounts of hatred, besides patent injustice.
Look at the history of the Jews. They have been stereotyped for centuries, they still are by many, despite their immense contribution to Western culture, knowledge and wealth. The stereotypes are false, though founded on nuggets of truth (many Jews have been very capable with money, because they were the only ones allowed to make a business of lending it, in the Christian world; and most Jews refuse to renounce their ethnic identity, are very closely knit together). From this, the 'othering' stereotype grew and bloated around the Jews, filled with untruths. And that stereotyping led to unspeakable things.
It is far from a logical strategy employed to keep people and communities safe.
Well of course it's a knee jerk reflex.
And?
All you are referring to is the novel over the familiar. There is no bias.
Your comment seems to lack logical coherency.
If everyone in your office wears suits, and one person shows up wearing a t-shirt and shorts, that person is going to stand out in the crowd.
And?
You don't think that person will be looked at differently? Possibly treated differently?
You claim such a reponse to the novel as existing "outside of reason". How is that possibly "outside reason". It's perfectly reasonable. In fact, it's innate to our very existence. It's the core substructure that has permitted humanity to survive this long. Your comment only states two things: that which looks different is noticed, and that which looks different might be a threat. (might is the key word here). And might means we might try to ascertain more information.
You say blackness stands out? Where? In Canada, where the population is predominantly white?
And?
Well, of course.
What would you expect?
Do you think a white person doesn't "stand out" in China or Ghana or the Philippines? I can assure you we stick out like a sore thumb. I've been there.
The politician wearing a sikh will certainly stand out at a Canadain airport, as will a catholic nun in Saudi Arabia.
It seems to me like Immigration is simply doing their job. They are looking for threats, they look for patterns, they see certain patterns, and they attempt to root out the problem. It's absolutely logical.
The other gentlemen used the example of Thailand and Nigerian bags. Let's look at the logic here: 1. Nigerians bring more drugs than other nationalities. 2. deploying resources to check nigerian bags is a better use of resources than checking Japanese bags. 3. Drug trafficking and crime is reduced. What part of that is not logical?
And the logic in that example is identical to your example of the Sikh politician.
Some muslims have attempted to carry out terrorist attacks in Western countries. Gentlemen wearing a sikh shows up to a Canadian airport. He looks different. He looks like a muslim to those who cannot understand the difference. Maybe we should check his card. Oh, he's a politician. He's not a threat. No problem. Have a good day sir. What part of that is illogical? What part of that is biased?
And what alterantive do you propose? That the officer hesistate, not pull anyone over, second guess himself or herself, wonder if he or she will be called a racist, etc, etc. I don't think that is a viable solution.
And where does individual responsbility come into play. Who chose to move to Canada, to subscribe to a different religion, to dress different than the general population?
If you are muslim living in Canada, perhaps you might accept that you look different, and that people might look at you different, just like a christian teaching english in Saudia Arabia might want to accept the fact that prayer is five times a day, that he is white, that he might be carded, that he might be looked at differently because he dressed different, that eyes might be on him at the mall, etc, etc.
A Saudi Arabian wearing a traditional dress in the catholic andes might want to accept that people may look at him a bit funny. The police might even pull him over.
And?
So what.
Tell me when you have evidence of real racism. Tell me when you have evidence that police are brutalizing blacks as they did in the 1950's in rural Alabama, or establishing Jim crow lows that prohibit blacks from voting. Then, we have a problem. Until then, let's get a grip with reality.
Sorry to inform you, my friend, you have been to many places, but apparently not much in Canada. Canada is a country of immigrants and becomes every year more diverse, and most of the immigrants are not white. Theoretical whites are just a little over 60% of the population (I say theoretical because, as reported by the last census, only 21% define themselves as white -- race-consciousness is not a defining factor in Canada). There are over one million black people, and over 800,000 Sikhs, on a population of 28 millions. In the cities especially, and especially in Ontario, race and ethnic clothing is not something that stands out.
As for the examples: Jagmeet Singh, a Canadian born in Canada and the leader of the NDP party, was never stopped or carded at airports, where the Canada Border Agency know how to do their job. He was stopped and carded by policemen on the streets of Toronto and Ottawa, cities where Sikh policemen and Sikh construction workers wear turbans instead of helmets and caps. The policemen used an irrational stereotype existing in their heads, ignoring every other piece of evidence like clothing, behaviour, etc. (and showing their ignorance of ethnic wear, in a place where that wear is quite common), wasting their time that could have been better employed to deal with petty crime and misdemeanours (not a lot of violent crime in Canada). And contributing to a situation of harassment.
They should be better trained, informed and instructed, for the sake of the public that they serve, of whom the Sikh are a significant part.
My black friend lives in an area where Blacks make up 24.2% of the total visible minority population. People are used to see blacks, nobody stares, there are very few differences between Blacks and Caucasians except skin colour. The differences among the population are of class: black and white poorer people commit more crimes and create more public order problems. The policemen that regularly stop my friend when he drives home at night in his Mercedes, in his suit and driving responsibly, are driven by a stereotyped assumption that in the situation makes no sense: they only see his skin colour and presume higher criminal propensity.
This is a racist attitude, because it attributes a character to a person based on one single, unreliable trait. This also constitutes harassment. They should be better trained to avoid doing that, because it comes in the way of serving the public, of which black people are a significant portion.
Your examples all only refer to situations in which a stranger (might say an alien, which is meaningfully synonym with foreigner) stands out alone for different looks and behaviour in a community uniformly different than he or she is. But what we are talking about here, from Asian Americans to Black Americans/Canadians to Sikh Canadians (who are, incidentally, completely not Muslim -- Sikhism is a religion related to Hinduism, but monotheistic) is people who are part of the community. They are part of the community in large numbers, and have been for many decades, but are treated by some as if they were not. And there is a presumption of wrongdoing because they are singled out for a trait, which in the eyes of the beholder is a stigma of something wrong.
This is racism. Is racism when white people do it and when black people do it, or muslims or christians and what have you. It has nothing to do with logic, it is prejudice. And it is the way that our world goes to hell, because it only encourages its like, resentment and anger that become hatred.
If for you racism only exists when people are brutalised like it was done to the Black population in the Southern States of the US until the Civil Rights movement, you have no idea how prejudice accumulates and creates worse and worse wrongs.
There is no need to see racism in every dismissive or oppositional behaviour like the woke crowd preaches, but the position that maintains that racism does not exist anymore (like the position that maintains that black people or ethnic minorities cannot be racist, for that matter) is a position that simply on one side justifies 'soft' racism, the racism that does not kill or maim, and on the other gives fuel to the promoters of the 'institutional racism everywhere' theories.
The gentleman who writes this Substack can certainly tell you, much better than I, that there is around evidence of real racism, even if it might kill or maim only occasionally. And that addressing it, in our attitudes towards our ingrained prejudices and especially in the attitudes of the institutions that protect and serve our communities, is very important to live better together.
Which does NOT mean adopting a DiAngelo/Kendi perspective.
(As for alternatives, my viable solution, which is the solution adopted in Britain, is that the officers are trained to recognise stereotyping biases in themselves and others, and to act consequently to take decisions based on more information than one single trait)
I would want to argue that this is more perception than reality. When I was 21, I was driving my grandfathers porsche to college class, and I was pulled over by an officer who presumably thought the car was stolen, afterall, not many 21 year olds drive porsches. At the time, I also had a bit of a beard so I looked more like a biker than a college student. Of course, racism exists. If you look hard enough for anything, you can find it. but I think its much more rare than people think. If the media told us all the cases where white men were being pulled over for doing nothing wrong, or white men being shot by police, then we might simply realize that this is simply innate to policing.
This is getting off the topic of the original post, but you should read my prior comment about the China Initiative. It was deeply flawed. Most of the cases involved criminalizing administrative lapses like failing to disclose ties to Chinese institutions rather than actual espionage. Furthermore, the conviction rate for China Initiative cases was significantly lower compared to the overall conviction rate for white-collar DOJ cases. More relevantly, it failed to appreciate the fundamental difference between academia and industry. As some of the targeted individuals pointed out, in academia everything is openly published. One of the most common criticisms of FBI overreach was that most agents failed to understand how the scientific enterprise ultimately operated.
There might be a different conversation to be had regarding corporate espionage but at least for academia, which was the focus of the China Initiative, there was relatively little theft uncovered from what I read. Either we were very bad at catching Chinese academics engaged in substantive theft or they were extremely good at hiding it or the entire premise was vastly overstated. By contrast I would argue that statistical evidence of vastly disproportionate Black crime is on much firmer footing given that homicide rates for Blacks are an order of magnitude higher compared to homicide rates for non-Blacks in America.
As far as your characterization of the CCP, you're entitled to your opinion. For what it's worth I've yet to see any hard evidence suggesting that there's a strong correlation between degree of authoritarianism versus tendency to engage in espionage. It seems like moralized panic to suggest that because the Chinese government is authoritarian and therefore "bad" that we should subject Chinese students to greater scrutiny in this country. I'd also point out that Kishore Mahbubani argues in his recent book that despite frequent foreign condemnation of China and the Chinese government, most mainland Chinese rate the CCP as reasonably competent.
The reason I went down this path is that as someone who's Chinese American I couldn't help but notice the contradiction between the excesses of wokeism on the one hand and the excesses of anti-Chinese sentiment on the other given the deteriorating geopolitical relations between China and the United States. Amy Wax was widely denounced for perpetuating stereotypes about Asian Americans, but as I argued above our elite universities do the same sort thing through their admissions processes. Bashing China or Chinese people using crude stereotypes seems par for the course for our political establishment these days and one of the few areas where Democrats and Republicans see eye to eye. It seemed very hypocritical for Amy to have been singled out specifically for this, although admittedly South Asian women seemed to be the primary focus of her criticism. In any case, it’s hard not to be cynical about the rhetorical posturing that’s part and parcel of our public discourse.
I’m glad that the conservative Supreme Court will most likely undo the prior precedents set by cases like Bakke and reestablish a more meritocratic admissions process. I’m not nearly as optimistic as Glenn and John that this heralds certain victory for all that’s right and good. I foresee significant geopolitical currents on the horizon that will almost certainly impact individuals of Asian descent in the years to come. Whether or not America is in fact a country that truly believes in meritocracy and equality of treatment for all is a proposition that I’m not willing to accept as given.
I respect your view. In reply, i would only want to say that the 1970's Russian academics (all white) were also targeted by intelligence agencies. I would also want to argue that this is not new, and it's not innate to the U.S., or predicated upon racial background. It's simply a consequence of the differences in political philosophy.
Most Americans see themselves in a cold war with stark differences between a decentralized republic and a centralized politburo: and competent or not, the CCP fits the definition of a totalitarian regime. Most Americans don't want social credit scores and a one party state, or a legal system with a 99% conviction rate, or have no right to vote for their reps, or have no bill of rights. As such, we can reasonably conclude that the profiling will exist until the threat disappears. But such profiling doesnt appear to have anything to do with color or ethnic background as far as I can see, only that Chinese students have a certain national citizenship, from a regime that has publicly expressed their disapproval of the american republic, a regime that has been openly hostile to its neighbors. I don't know whether the intelligence communities are effective or not; I don't work at those agencies, but I would argue that failing to disclose relationships with a foreign government or agency, although it doesn't infer guilt, is not a minor error, and that investigating some chinese students with ties to the CCP is not without good cause.
It is a certain thing that a vast part of the actions our countries put into effect to protect themselves and their assets are flawed, misguided and often patently unjust besides ineffective. It was not my intention to give a moral justification of whatever action the US government agencies may take toward Chinese nationals, on account of the "badness" of the Chinese state, and if it came through in this way, my apologies. My considerations were simply practical: that the so called liberal democracies and so called totalitarian states are opposing social systems (never mind the convenience of alliances), and it seems inevitable that suspicion and rivalry exist more than just on an economic level, when national interest is also seen in supporting a country's vision of the world.
I did not imply that, by the little I know of it in deep detail, the China Initiative affair has been right, fair, well conducted and harmless to people with relations to the Chinese state, or even effective in its purpose. It is just my opinion that, in the situation that we have, actions of this kind are sort of inevitable.
As for my take on the CCP, it has built for over 50 years of observing it, also through the eyes of several Communist friends very enthused with it, many books read (including the one by Mr Weiwei), and a niece who is a Chinese interpreter and was engaged for a while to a Chinese national who talked too much for his own good. It is not an opinion set in stone and I would be happy to change it if evidence of its incorrectness is given. But the fact that millions of Chinese approve of China's form of government is not such evidence, because there is no free circulation of information and ideas in the country and the millions who do not approve are forced to silence by fear; while Mr Mahbubani always speaks from a very Asia-centric point of view, which is fine and gives valuable insights, but kind of inevitably clashes on many issues (see his most recent declarations on the war in Ukraine) with my Euro-centric point of view.
I think a lot of anti Semitism is simply anti white racism. Basically, yes, the Europeans set up big colonial empires. But we cannot change history, and punishing people alive today for what other did decades or centuries ago is just absolutely INSANE.
Blaming Jewish people for Cruxification is actually anti-Christian. Christ, Jewish himself, said all may be saved and all may believe in him. Also, it's just insane to blame people alive for events centuries or in the case of cruxification 2000 years ago. No one can go back in a time machine and change history. As for Kanye West, he has joined the Black Hebrew cult I think. You can say I don't have anything good to say about that cult. I have been living in Europe for the past few years where I got both Portuguese and Spanish ancestry via Sephardic ancestry, and that was because in the South we had a number of Sephardic slaveowners, so both my mother and father have Jewish last names. So for me Jewish people are my cousins. Sometimes when I applied for certain educational programs like graduate school in NYC or for certain jobs I think I got accepted because the review assumed I'm Jewish (I'm Christian, but I do have Jewish ancestry).
Back to CRT. It is very racist. Some people into CRT refused to speak to me after learning I got two European citizenships via Jewish ancestry. But I think one way to end CRT is just admit the full truth of the history and then people can move on. The Igbo of Nigeria, when a woman had twins or other multiple births did human sacrifice on the INFANTS. British and other European colonialism stopped human sacrifice across Africa, the Americas, and Asia. It also spread literacy and technology. Did the Christians do bad things? Yes. But they did good things. Pre Christian Europe also had human sacrifice.
Judeo-Christian societies are orderly. The Old Testament lays down the laws which we must live in Abrahamic societies. The New Testament emphasized faith in Christ, because from a Christian viewpoint trying to follow laws without genuine faith is meaningless and cannot be done. But either way the order you have in Judeo-Christian societies is hated by CRT, who want to return to pre Christian Europe and pre colonial Africa, America, and Asia. They want to empty all prisons, end mental healthcare, get rid of the courts, and turn us into the stone age. Everything that is primitive and barbaric they love and celebrate and they hide behind racism. You can check out my podcasts and posts for more information.
I need to say something else. One reason why white people get upset about Jim Crow or colonialism. Nobody can get back in a time machine and changed the past. BLM is different. A group of Black Lesbians and Transgenders claimed endless persecution so they could defraud donors out of 90 million or more. The families of people killed by police have come forward and said they got no money. This is a criminal fundraising issue, and for state attorney generals to deal with, as various laws were broken. It's also up to people to understand the law in the United States. 45 states have laws concerning public accommodation. Meaning since BLM raised money from the public, that money legally had to be used to help people of all races. Anyone whose business was burned down by BLM could SUE the organization for formenting riots. However, I don't recall voting for BLM to represent me. The media decided BLM represented the voices of all Black Americans. Of course, BLM has been exposed and collapsed, and now the media wants to hide on this issue.
So to me, this is not an either or thing and anyone with any intelligence, since we FACTUALLY know what people were responsible, this is a matter for the law.
Both sides of my family lived under Jim Crow. No mass crime in those days. Serious crime would have gotten someone EXECUTED. There was no such thing as single mothers either. There was no welfare state in the South then, and to have a child out of wedlock meant the woman was a total prostitute. The liberalism created by Northern liberals, indulging the worst aspects of the civil rights movement and creating a welfare state certainly did create high levels of crime and disfunction where they simply did not exist before, because you could not do those things in the South without getting shot, the electric share, or hung.
Of course, a criminal who makes his living by race hustling will always make his living by racial hustling.
In order to nullify CRT, its pretty easy for all sides. You just tell the truth about what historically happened. You examine the values you have. You examine who you vote for. Quite clearly whatever the Democrats have done has made Democratic cities a crime ridden mess. On top of that, in NYC illegal immigrants got 400 to 700 a night hotels in NYC. I never got that.
By the way in Islamic parts of Africa theft gets your hands cut off. I am not saying do that, but the crime committed in America is POLITICAL and has to do with the removal of Christianity from the public sphere and education. My grandparents generation, if they want to school at all went to schools controlled by local churches. I personally would say that should be done again, particularly in the light that public schools want to turn all children into LGBTQs.
Now here's what I think the issue is. I see people in America descended from comparatively recent immigrants. Everyone says I'm Jewish, I'm Polish, I'm Italian, I'm Irish, my ancestors were not involved in slavery. That is problematic. Go back two or three thousand years, everyone has ancestors involved in some sort of slavery or genocide. The entire world. I have more recent ancestors involved in slavery, the ancestors I just spoke of. So what? I should not be condemned for it, nor should an entirely white person from America who did have ancestors who were involved in slavery. That person cannot go back in a time machine and changed the history of America, nor can I. That person is probably my cousin. I think what might be inflaming people as that people try to through Anglo Saxon Americans under the bus, and somehow making them uniquely responsible for racism when there has never been a period in human history where people even if they were of the same race on the same continent got along Russia is bombing the Ukraine. Europeans had a terrible history with each other. Africans have a terrible history with each other. Native Americans have a terrible history with each other. People of the same race hate their own families. My mother killed herself after fighting with her own sisters. So since that kind of drama can happen in any family, why are people obssessed with race?
Next time your at the dmv and the only line moving is the one white guys who worked there and the 3 affirmative action black woman talking about getting they nails did while the lines they work only grow longer . Let me know then how great affirmative action is . I already know because I was in the line I just described
I wouldn't fret too much about what you're "known for" vs. your actual expertise and life experience. Ordinary people don't read academic scholarship simply because it's above their heads, so if you weren't famous for race commentary, you probably wouldn't be famous for anything. You'd be well-known in your fields, but not known to the public.
Finding *any* sort of tipping point that gets you famous is very rare. Most authors never find a wide audience, and having a book in Barnes and Noble would be an impossible dream. John's memoir might be shelved in the wrong section, but it would sell to all sorts of people. And if any of them thought "Here is a Black book by an interesting Black person about being Black," the text of the book would contain all of the different dimensions you'd like to emphasize.
Legally, there is no doubt that the plaintiffs deserve to win on the merits. Racial preferences in university admissions are a clear violation of the plain language of the Civil Rights Act. There is no other statutory or constitutional provision that would allow discrimination for "diversity" by any fair reading.
Indications are that there are enough justices ready to rule against preferences, so we can safely expect a ruling banning preferences as practiced by Harvard and UNC. It will be interesting to read the specifics - how broadly they rule, and what loopholes they leave.
Politically, preferences are opposed by large majorities of the population, across racial and party lines, so the population will generally approve the ruling.
University officials, and admissions officers in particular, will try to find ways to avoid applying the judgment. I expect they will simply change their evaluation procedures to make criteria more opaque, allowing them to reduce or eliminate quantifiable criteria like test scores, GPA, or class rank, while adding arbitrary "plus" factors for things like "overcoming adversity". They think they're doing God's work, and have a clearer moral vision than anyone who opposes them. They won't change their minds based on a Supreme Court decision.
Once the Supreme Court has set precedent, it makes is very easy for people to sue universities directly in violation of the law. So I would say to any person of any race, if you find out your university application is affected by some sort of racial preference you need to sue the university.
With that said, if universities decide they want to give people from poor backgrounds opportunity that is perfectly legal to do so, so long as it is not based on the applicants race. Harvard has 51 billion dollars in their endowment, so if they decide they want to eliminate the SAT, that is perfect legal. How that works out for them is on them. There is no law that says that they have to have a GPA requirement or a SAT requirement, but there is a law saying that they cannot use race to determine who enters a college.
I consider it a net positive that Affirmative Action as a policy might be finally declared Unconstitutional after a half century in university admissions especially given how absurdly lopsided the entrance results have become between Asian and White applicants vs Black and Hispanic ones. That being said I think the university apparatus, in fact the entire Prussian Model Schooling apparatus, is entirely a goose that has been cooked to the point of being burnt.
The Marxist infiltration, out of control costs, massive administrative overbloat, the creation of what effectively amount to a class of secular temples that act as gatekeepers to Washington and New York elites that’ve parasitically hollowed out this entire country, and are now finally collapsing it in total, this whole thing has to go.
Jesse Kelly the Marine veteran and podcaster on YouTube, Twitter, on Tucker Carlson, and elsewhere have a very solid strong prescription. Take the top 10-20 universities that’ve been spewing every form of Communist garbage for generations, revoke the charters, seize the endowments, fire all the staff, demolish the buildings, and piss on the ashes. It sounds severe but that’s frankly far more preferable to continuing this dangerously unstable Communist Color Revolution.
The Tucker interview is on the same show Tucker Carlson Today that you were on which thank you for recommending btw phenomenal interview series well worth the subscription to Fox Nation just for that.
Directly related to this topic is John Taylor Gatto who also wrote a masterpiece work entitled The Underground History of American Education. I have the physical copy with the foreword by Dr. Ron Paul and it completely blew my lid.
It details how educated average Americans were as recently as 100 years ago with 5th graders reading the Bible, Shakespeare, Washington, Twain, Dickens, and more and how systematically after a century they can barely spell words like dog and cat.
Prussian Model Schooling is designed by default to completely brainwash young children and make them STUPIDER in order to make them COMPLAINT DRONES. This is the system of education/indoctrination that’s permeated the entirety of the West and by extension much of the rest of the world.
The homeschooling Revolution, independent learning pods, and more are all in part a direct reaction to this. PDF is well worth downloading, sharing, skimming, it’s definitely worth a read. Gatto himself was an award winning teacher who quit because in his words “he didn’t want to hurt kids for a living anymore.” Enjoy and prepare to have your mind blown 🤯 like I was.
https://archive.org/details/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanEducation_758
After 50 years of receiving preferential treatment, blacks need to be judged on their own merits and their actual performance. Those that can excel will do so without government interference.
I would like proponents of a race-based preference system explain how such discrimination is okay is govt sanctions it, but a gross violation of the law otherwise. On what principle does that thought process rest?
At the Supreme Court this week, the Solicitor General made an astounding statement that was pretty much ignored. Using the military officer corps as an example, she called diversity a national security issue then added this part: this diversity cannot be attained in a purely merit-based admissions system. In other words, a senior official says that the position of the feds and one of the major parties is that certain minority groups cannot compete without govt putting its thumb on the scale. I wonder if there is a word for that type of attitude.
Could it be..... Racism?
Now if they will also declare all "affirmative action" unconstitutional, we can final begin to remove institutionalized racism from our laws.
Affirmative Action is racist and sexist because it discriminates on the basis of race and sex. Pure and simple. Let’s eliminate racist and sexist laws and policies; or else admit that you endorse racism and sexist laws.
There are no racist and sexist laws. It is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, or nationality under Title V, Title VI, and Title VII. It is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex under Title IX. The issue is a lot of people ranted about reverse discrimination instead of actually gathering factual evidence and going to lawyers or complaining to the government. Fortunately, Edward Blum found actual evidence of discrimination against Asian American students, which is why the court will end affirmative action because we have factual evidence of people being harmed, not simply people's feelings.
Not true; those laws protected all but white males and so in effect are racist and sexist.
I personally know white males who have sued for discrimination and won. I personally know Mark J Perry, who has filed 700 complaints against programs that discriminate against white men and he has won the majority of them. He's a professor of economics. Knowing to read helps. And not being a coward helps. You're hiding behind a fake name because you fear retaliation for saying things the woke crowd might not like. I too am posting under my real name, and yes, those laws do protect white men and most of the judges in America are still white men. Come to them with facts and not cowardice and you can be a part of stopping.
Sweetie, I served in the US military with honor; something you obviously never did. You’re wrong about the law and you resort to name calling because you are a coward, and also never served in the military. You are welcome for the freedom I provided you.
How do you know what I have done in my life? But I will say you can't do much hiding behind a fake name. That is the definition of cowardice. Yes, white men can sue for discrimination, and I have known effective white men who stopped a lot of discrimination against men and White people because they fought under their own names and because these men read very well. Plus, they knew how to collect evidence.
Affirmative action is preferential treatment for certain protected identity groups. Our country was founded promising equal opportunity, not equal outcome. Is it truly reparations if the manufactured outcome comes at the expense of another, who had no personal involvement in the historical oppression of one’s identity group?
Making generalizations is the Democratic Party’s favorite political tactic. Ironically, this is the party that claims to reject stereotypes in favor of a humanitarian approach.
Isn't generalization & stereotyping what "the woke" do to "Whites" and Western Culture!!
Great comment.
Thanks! I write articles if you want to check them out on my profile.
Will do. You have summed up the crux of the matter very simply and is my opinion of the situation as well. The Constitution calls for equal treatment, not preferential treatment.
Love you guys. You guys have the energy of a couple buddies grabbing beers hashing out life and the world's problems. That you happen to be highly accomplished and recognized leaders in your respective fields, as well as polymath breadth of knowledge, has so many of us tune in.
Remember the days when the library mailed us video lectures on DVD? Yup, that's when I stumbled across this McWhorter guy when I trying to add a bit of background for some natural language processing work. John made linguistics so very accessible. Also spun off a couple of investigatory threads for me into histories of European regional languages and formation of modern nation states. I now count phrases when in conversation with people to better understand where they are and what they are trying to say. Thanks McWhorter for starting a very enriching journey into linguistics.
Back to the DIE (Peterson's rearrangement which is more accurate and has a nice punch to it) and Affirmative action topic at hand. Your discussion is almost exactly the discussions we have had many times at the neighborhood craft cocktail lounge. We've watched systematic theft of contribution, promotion of weak people into management and decision making rolls solely based on race, and yes friends pushed out of their long time contributions to the company based solely due to racists policy. Just as with X Boi, these people usually "couldn't carry my jock strap".
When hiring interns, we are given a pool of social activists students lauded as "future business leaders" with no identifiable passion for the business at hand. Then if you bring in the interns, they spend their time ranking and rating the business groups to HR based on, drum roll please, propensity for promoting social activists into leadership positions. They know they're "special" and literally dare their managers to push them for output or even attendance.
Meanwhile our own children with stellar academics, clear passion for the chosen areas of study are offered minimal or no scholarships when they do gain admittance to the schools they would like to attend, and then are actively discriminated against by corporate America for low intersectionality scores.
To interject some McWhorter linguistics back into the discussion here, I now try to discern in conversations if we are using descriptive language "talking about", understanding language, execution language, or synthesizing language.
We have been systematically moving people into roles where they simply cannot operate successfully.
I think the issue is you have academics speaking for everyone. Meaning we just hear the white leaders of these universities speak out. Not the students, and certainly not the alleged beneficiaries of affirmative action. I have two Ivy League degrees. BA from Cornell, and MA from Columbia. My lowest grade at Columbia was a B+. I mostly had As. Yet I had to pay in student loans and cash. Very few Black people at Columbia got affirmative action, and very few Hispanics did either. Those that did, boy, where there reasons for it. If you were Black or Hispanic and also either a former convicted criminal, an ILLEGAL immigrant, or a TRANSGENDER you got to go to Columbia for free.
There are reasons for there. An illegal immigrant transgender from Bogota, Colombia, who got to go Columbia University for free for his bachelor degrees, 4 years so he received 260,000 or more in FREE MONEY claimed endless persecution and discrimination. Why would this person do that? Because white liberal donors love that kind of talk and will donate BILLIONS of dollars to these top institutions. The beggar from Colombia got just a fraction of that.
Another person at Columbia who also got the royal red carpet was fat, so fat lady discrimination. She's Black, she's Hispanic, she's non binary, she's bisexual, she's disabled. Went to Columbia for free, got free meals at Columbia and still got food stamps. Is now getting her masters for her and her professors even got an agent. I, a Black man, never got that kind of treatment because I am an American, I am not a convict, and I am not a transgender. No normal Hispanic would get affirmative action like that either, because in woke circles its all about transgenders, criminals, and undocumented. My cousin who is going to a private university undergraduate is having to take out 30,000 dollars a year in student loans. She grew up in the house with her married parents, so though Black she may as say she is a white woman to the woke crowd.
So to make it abundantly clear, affirmative action MUST be ended as soon as possible. It is illegal and unconstitutional. It's also a fundraising SCAM. These frauds in academia have finally been exposed. Check out my substack channel for more information. I will be posting more.
Thank you Glenn and John, as always, for allowing myself and others to listen in on your conversations. As much as we often decry the impact of social media on our maturing(?) civilization, the fact we have this opportunity goes a long way toward justifying its existence.
Perhaps America can be saved after all. If it can, it will only be thanks to those individuals, like yourselves, who stood up when doing so was difficult and challenging, but also dangerous.
Feels good! I have hope. Thanks for your contribution to the noble cause. Maybe one day we can actual work on the real causes for our social issues. Many of them you guys have discussed in the past.
Glenn went hard in the paint there on Henry Rogers, and I could not agree more! :)
Affirmative Action, or better what A.A. wants to achieve, should start at home, at kindergarten, in the primary schools. Looking at US history, who contributed what and what was received in return, neighborhoods of color should for the next 10-20 years get more money, to have the best schools ( also for blue collar jobs), the best after-school programs, the best teachers, etc. And soft loans to start a business. A lot of (much needed) talent gets lost, is probably lost already.
What constitutes a neighborhood of color?
If you are talking about large inner city populations, consider the fact that the majority of those municipalities have been run by Democrats and also many "people of color" in the administrative positions. These are the very people that hold the purse strings and determine where and how money is spent. Are these administrators really doing the best they can to help their constituents?
Let's also look at the current level of education in the nation as a whole. After Covid and its attendant school shutdowns and long-distance learning, education has taken a huge dive in this country. Also consider the current emphasis on training not future contributors to society, but Social Justice Warriors in our schools and universities. We are not encouraging a true learning environment for anyone, much less "people of color" whatever you determine that to be.
I do agree that emphasis should be on improving those inner city areas with good education, jobs and safe neighborhoods, but the local politicians need to step up to help their own people.
So, we agree. But if local politicians do not step up, better schools should be enforced from the state level or maybe even Fed. level. Issues:
- low property taxes result in low subsidies for local schools.
- putting children in buses to drive them to a school outside of their neighborhood can maybe work for some, but what about kids who cannot function if they have to get up at a very early hour ?
My point: AA at college/university level should not be needed, would not be needed if the US put considerable effort and money in early education for inner-city kids and other disenfranchised children/young adults of color (I do not have a better definition).
The problem is circular. Inner cities suffer from crime and poverty, which limits growth and therefore limits the tax base. Stores and businesses start to close and leave because of crime and those residents that make a decent income leave if they can. Maybe some help should come from the State or the Feds.
I would also include the poor White residents of Appalachia, who suffer from some of the same problems, poverty, illiteracy, poor health care and drugs. After all we should help the disadvantaged of any race, right?
Of course. Widen the problem until it becomes unmanageable, then leave everything as it was.
No. Start somewhere. See if it works. Take it from there.
I also agree that starting at the beginning is better than playing catch up at the end.
Or maybe these problems are not necessarily due to poverty. The removal of Christianity from the public sphere by feminism, by gay marriage, and by related forces normalized the destruction of the nuclear family. It's much easier to do well in school with kids have stable, two parent homes. The left hates that because if there are no mothers due to the single mother always working or the married career woman always working, kids have no mothers and are completely dependent upon the state. Why, if you have Christian married couples, they will do things like homeschooling because they value their kids! My cousin was technically inner city, but his grandmother paid for him to go to a religious private school. GASP, their are solutions that don't always involve the government even if the parents are Black or Hispanic. I completely support the Supreme Court in ending affirmative action, btw.
I think the problem is actually mutlifactorial, poverty being one issue, the loss of the traditional family unit, cultural differences, etc. It burns me up that the leaders of these communities do so little to help these people when they purport to be their champions.
Go GLENN! Letting loose about Kendi hopefully felt liberating. Could NOT agree more with all of this and more. Thank you, thank you, thank you to both you and John, + Kmele, Coleman, Bari and SO many others who've given me sanity and direction these last couple bats-ass crazy years.
Couldn't agree more!