Feb
5
From The Weekly Standard:
Senior House Democrat John Conyers is demanding that Hillary Clinton demote Rajiv Shah, head of USAID, in which capacity he’s leading U.S. relief efforts in Haiti.
Does Conyers think that Shah lacks competence to carry out the incredibly important task of saving lives? No. The Hill reports that Conyers is angry that Shah “showed up at a meeting with the 42-member Congressional Black Caucus without any African American staffers in tow.”
Conyers writes in a letter to Clinton:
Dear Secretary Clinton:
As you know, the 42 member Congressional Black Caucus met with Rajiv Shah, the Administrator of the U.S. AID yesterday to discuss the crisis in Haiti. I was alarmed and chagrined to learn that none of the approximately dozen staff he brought with him were African American. This is so serious an error in judgement that it warrants his immediate demotion to a subordinate position at AID. It is well known that there has long been an under-representation of minorities in key positions within the State Department. I am confident this Administration will immediately begin addressing this problem.
I look forward to meeting with you on this matter.
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve heard from a politician.
Oct
20
See Here.
Among the media, academia and within planning circles, there’s a generally standing answer to the question of what cities are the best, the most progressive and best role models for small and mid-sized cities. The standard list includes Portland, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis, and Denver. In particular, Portland is held up as a paradigm, with its urban growth boundary, extensive transit system, excellent cycling culture, and a pro-density policy. These cities are frequently contrasted with those of the Rust Belt and South, which are found wanting, often even by locals, as “cool” urban places.
But look closely at these exemplars and a curious fact emerges. If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles you will find that the “progressive” cities aren’t red or blue, but another color entirely: white.
In fact, not one of these “progressive” cities even reaches the national average for African American percentage population in its core county. Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group.
This is “white-flight” progressive style. For the progressive, black and hispanic America is something to be patronised, not lived with. Progressive measures like welfare and multi-culturalism captures ethnic America in colour-coded pockets.
Progressive America likes to preach from their tower about racial and ethnic diversity. But they make damn sure that that tower is an ivory one.
Jul
22
White Is Right!
Filed Under American Politics, Identity | 11 Comments
No I haven’t gone all David Duke (or Robert Byrd) on you, I’m referring to the moralistic dishonesty of the liberal elite. Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator has picked up on a certain hypocrisy at the liberal luvvies paper of record, the New York Times.
On the New Haven Firefighting story, the NYT referred to a disconnect between the number of minorities in New Haven and the number of minorities in command positions in the Fire Department:
There is a long history of discrimination in the firefighting ranks. Although New Haven is nearly 60 percent black and Hispanic, few minorities are in command positions. She noted that New Haven’s test was flawed, and that other cities used better tests, with less racially skewed results.
Lord then notes a Maureen Dowd piece about Republican opposition to Sotomayor:
The “wise Latina’s” senatorial inquisitors, fumed Ms. Dowd in “White Man’s Last Stand,” were nothing more than “white Republican men afraid of extinction” who traffic in “codes, handshakes and clubs.” Said Dowd: “President Obama wants Sotomayor, naturally, to bring a fresh perspective to the court. It was a disgrace that W. appointed two white men to a court stocked with white men.
So with all that disgust at the lack of representation, surely the NYT, the paper from one of the most multi-ethnic cities in America would be fully representative?
Hmmm!
According to the New York Times, its editorial board has 17 members. Of those 17, fifteen — say again, 15 of the 17 — are whiter than white on rice.
Or:
Of the eleven columnists the Times advertises as its team of Op-Ed page writers, nine are whites. Of those nine, seven are — ouch! — the disgracefully whitest of white men! Which is another way of saying 81% of the Times Op-Ed columnists are white (White Mo included) and 77% of the columnist team is, to use White Mo’s phrase about the Supreme Court, “stocked with white men”
That’s the trouble with liberals. They’re all for minorities; so long as they’re neither seen nor heard. Now tell me again who the racists are?
Jul
13
Racism In America: An Alternate View
Filed Under American Politics, Identity | 19 Comments
Israel’s post on The End Of Racism in America is an interesting polemic on the perceived racism within the Republican Party. But it is only that, a cobbling together of isolated, and sometimes despicable, incidents that are meant to be representative of an institutionalised racism within the GOP. But for all the reprehensible racist name-calling, there is a more fundamental issue of racism within American society that needs to be addressed.
Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic discusses the reality of being black in America in this debate about the meritocratic vs the democratic. Coates is black and what troubles me about what he writes (which he does very well) is that there is a very obvious theme of victimhood running throughout the article.
“More to the point this “democratic ideal” is really a euphemism for white populism, and from a black perspective, even white tyranny.”
Having just been through an election in which a black candidate makes a populist appeal to the demos, and wins more than 95% of the black vote, I find it ironic that Coates finds any “democratic ideal” to be an instance of “white tyranny”.
Black America is still largely a dysfunctional society.The illegitimacy rate for black Americans is 70%, 56% of black women are unmarried. And these cause the other symptoms of dysfunctional Black America: crime, poverty, lack of educational attainment, poor health.It is easy to attribute these issues to the blindingly obvious, a white racism writ large in the historical narrative of slavery and Jim Crow. But sometimes Occam’s Razor does not apply. Walter Williams notes the discrepancy of a racial history that blames slavery and racial oppression for the breakdown in the Black American family:
“A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of black families were nuclear families, comprised of two parents and children. In New York City in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households had two parents. In fact, according to Herbert Gutman in “The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750-1925,” “Five in six children under the age of 6 lived with both parents.” Therefore, if one argues that what we see today is a result of a legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty, what’s the explanation for stronger black families at a time much closer to slavery — a time of much greater discrimination and of much greater poverty?”
In fact, the truth of black dysfunctionalism starts to accelerate from the 1930’s with a particular spurt in the 1960’s that drives us to where we are today. What do the 1930’s and 1960’s have in common? The New Deal and The Great Society; the centrepieces of a progressive liberal historicism.
Roosevelt’s Aid to Dependent Children Program, part of the Social Security Act of 1935, prohibited welfare for two parent families, thus incentivising single parenthood.However Roosevelt’s program enabled state administration, which meant that in many cases, African-Americans were ‘gerry-mandered’ out of being eligible and thus black illegitimacy only increased slightly from 19% to 22%. However, President Johnson’s “War on Poverty” greatly increased welfare entitlement generally and to African-Americans specifically.Black illegitimacy skyrocketed, 22% in 1965, 68% in the late 1990’s. Certainly there were other factors involved, mainly the greater sexual freedom as a result of the liberalisation of the 1960’s, but the conflation of events is too precise to be mere coincidence.
This welfarism has perversely joined the fortunes of African-Americans to the Democratic Party. However, this is a parasitical, rather than symbiotic relationship. Having lost the south as a result of the Civil Rights Act and Nixon’s “southern strategy”, the Democrats are dependent on the black vote. As Thomas Sowell notes:
“If the share of the black vote that goes to the Democrats ever falls to 70 percent, it may be virtually impossible for the Democrats to win the White House or Congress”
From the New Deal onwards, with a Clintonite/DLC interlude, the Democrats have positioned themselves as the party of the ill-treated minorities. However, to maintain that positioning, the minorities represented need to carry on believing that they are the victims of ill-treatment at the hands of forces outside the Democratic Party. The weapon of choice that the Democrats use to keep black America on side is of course racism.Racism exists, to deny that would be unreasonable, and in many circumstances that racism is institutional, but the stoking of black paranoia and the reinforcing of a sense of victimhood does nothing to ameliorate a societies ability to improve itself. So the Democrats not only enslaved Black America to a culture of dependency, they actively discourage self-reliance and cultural independence (witness the attacks on Black Americans who don’t conform to the victim stereotype like Juan Williams and Clarence Thomas).
But there is hope. A number of prominent African-Americans have risen to the highest corridors of power in the past eight years, obviously culminating in the first Black President. But Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas should not be forgotten (although they seem to have been as the MSM spin the mythology of Obama’s race-defying climb to the top of the American Cursus Honorum).
Obama, Rice, Powell and Thomas along with the numerous black entrepreneurs, judges and writers are still the exception that proves the rule. They will continue to be so, so long as the culture that they emerged from is told that it is different, dependent and a victim. It is not the Republican Party that tells them that, it is the Democrats. So whilst the overt disgusting words that emerged from the Free Republic is reprehensible, it is the covert politically expedient cultural sticks and stones by the Democrats that actually damages prospects for black America.
May
29
According to Nate Silver, yes they can
It is a long piece with a number of different electoral combinations and I’m not going to go into it in too much detail here so I strongly advise you to read the piece. However, Nate Silver is saying that the Hispanic vote did not put Obama over the top in the election, it was his stronger showing amongst white voters that made the difference. He goes on to say that the GOP could effectively give up on Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico with their strong Hispanic presence and target whiter states like Indiana, North Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia and Florida. Now I know that Florida has a strong Hispanic makeup, but Cuban Hispanics are more Republican than Peurto Rican and Mexican Hispanics (John McCain won 43% of them in 2008).
Andrew Gelman at the same site expands on the role of Hispanics in the election:
The removal of the Hispanic vote wouldn’t have changed the election outcome in any state (although New Mexico, Florida, Indiana, and North Carolina are within 1% of flipping, and small changes to the model (for example, using exit polls instead of the Pew surveys) might cause some of these to flip)
The bottom line: Hispanics were not a key component in Obama’s win. However, this is not to say that the Republicans should not try to contest the Hispanic vote. As the last scatterplot above shows, further losses of Hispanics would make the Democrats competitive in Georgia, Texas, and Arizona. In some sense this is no big deal, at least at the presidential level: If the Democrats remain at 53% or 54% of the vote, they’ll win nationally in any case. If we imagine a national swing of 3% or so toward the Republicans, so they’re competitive nationally, then their big risk if they lose Hispanic votes is to no longer be viable in Florida (where we estimate McCain to have won 43% of the two-party vote among Hispanics in 2008). That’s the state where Republicans really can’t afford to abandon the Hispanic vote.
So the Sotomayor matter may not affect the GOP too dramatically, if the Republicans keep their Hispanic support at the level it is now and can effect a 3-4% swing amongst white voters, they could win in 2012. Of course that’s all easier said than done.
May
18
The GOP and Minorities – A More Prosaic Reason For Falling Support Perhaps.
Filed Under American Politics, Identity | 11 Comments
Interesting survey from one of my favourite research sites, Pew Research about minority groups and home ownership.
But since the start of the housing bust in 2005, rates have fallen more steeply for two of the nation’s largest minority groups — blacks and native-born Latinos — than for the rest of the population.
blacks and Latinos remain far more likely than whites to borrow in the subprime market where loans are usually higher-priced. In 2007, 27.6% of home-purchase loans to Hispanics and 33.5% to blacks were higher-priced loans, compared with just 10.5% of home-purchase loans to whites that year.
The analysis finds that counties with higher shares of immigrant residents had elevated rates of foreclosure.
Loan applications for home purchases by Hispanics fell 38.2% from 2006 to 2007. Applications from blacks decreased 34.4% during the same period, and the number of white applicants decreased 18.9%
It is a much quoted axiom that voters vote with their wallets. It might just be the case that latino voters adversely affected by the housing crash did the same. If themselves, their families or their communities suffer from plummeting house prices or even foreclosures, that is a pretty strong incentive to vote out the party that you perceive to have got you into that mess in the first place.
One last interesting note from this survey. Of the 33 American counties with a foreclosure rate of 5% or higher, more than half were in Florida, Virginia and Nevada; all swing states.
May
11
An All-American! (Or All-British).
Filed Under Identity | Leave a Comment
Ward Connerly
In his book “Who Are We?”, Samuel P. Huntington relates a conversation between a reporter and Ward Connerly, African-American opponent of affirmative action.
Reporter: “What Are You?”
Connerly: “I am an American”
Reporter: “No, no, no! What are you?”
Connerly: “Yes, yes, yes! I am an American.”
Reporter: “That is not what I mean. I was told that you were an African-American. Are you ashamed to be African-American?”
Connerly: “No. I’m just proud to be an American.”
Connerly then explained that his ancestry included Africans, French, Irish, and American Indians, and the dialogue concluded:
Reporter: “What does that make you?”
Connerly: That makes me all-American!”
Aside from the fact that the exchange appeals to my sense of humour, it also speaks to the way that I believe we should approach those racial, ethnic and cultural schisms in society that can be so harmful. Neither the far right who expect conformity, or the left who accentuate the differences so that they can serve as saviours to minorities have the right answer. Inclusion is the right way to respond to these divisions. It might be a rather twee axiom but there is more that unites us than divides us. No matter what race or culture we come from, family, security and our economic standing are universals that unite. Public policy should reflect this, it should serve as an enabler so that we can all partake of the dream of improving our lives without the drag of imposed conformity or implied victimhood.