Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economics, Economy, Education, Free Markets, Free Speech, Freedom, History, National Security, Politics, Progressivism, Regulation, The United States | Tags: Best Scientific Minds, Diversity, Knowledge Misunderstood
If you wonder why some new college graduates seem a little under-educated, you can blame it on the “social justice” people, and their loony ideas. There is no such thing as “social justice” and “Diversity” is bunk. The diversity that matters is diversity of ideas, freedom of thought, but that is not what they are after. They want conformity, they want you to fall in line, do as they say, and vote for them and all their rotten ideas.
Heather MacDonald is a national gem. She researches the stupid ideas, and applies logic. Something the Left fears.
p.s. Why do you think the publicity hog, gun banner David Hogg got accepted to Harvard with lower SAT scores than are the norm for those who are admitted? Harvard is already being sued because they block Asian students for having too high SAT scores.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economics, Economy, Education, Freedom, Immigration, Intelligence, Media Bias, Politics, Regulation, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: Diversity, Does it Matter?, Race
Heather MacDonald spoke a couple of weeks ago at Hillsdale’s Washington DC outpost, about diversity, based on the research done for her new book The Diversity Delusion. If you wonder why every college now seems to have a Diversity Office, as well as large groups of “snowflakes” and frequently gets into the news for some protest or riot, and is so sensitive that hearing something with which they disagree gives them major cases of the vapors, Heather explains. Her speeches have been protested, yet she speaks in favor of the police, the dismantling of what she properly calls “the diversity delusion.”
At a time when race seems to matter less and less, we talk about it more and more. We have a long and unfortunate history of assuming that race matters, and officialdom still wants to know just what our race is, even in situations where it does not and should not matter. It’s because we are run by a bureaucracy that wants to protect itself by keeping track. It’s a very interesting speech, and eye-opening about the dysfunction on our college campuses. And yes, if you have kids now in college or soon to be, you need to be informed. Heather MacDonald always does her homework. She searches out the data and verifies it, and what she says can be taken to the bank.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economics, Free Speech, Freedom, History, Immigration, Law, Media Bias, Progressivism, The United States | Tags: Diversity, Identity Politics, What About Merit?
Heather MacDonald visits the “Diversity Debate” in her column today. The problem is apparently Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who “is being hammered for reportedly having rejected identity politics in favor of meritocracy. (Do read the whole thing, it’s short)
In the workplace we are supposed to ignore the knowledge and ability one brings to the job in favor of the color of one’s skin? Zinke is currently facing media criticism because he allegedly said that diversity is “not important,” and of course he absolutely correct. It is not.
(T)he Interior Secretary is being condemned for allegedly saying that he discounts racial categories in hiring, and prefers “having the right person for the right job.” This position, uncontroversial for decades, was the essence of Martin Luther King’s vision of a colorblind, merit-based society. Treating people the same way regardless of their race or sex used to be considered the definition of fairness; now it is understood to be vicious and intolerable.
We seem to be living in an era when the Left is seriously messing with our understanding of ordinary language and thought, and our minds. Time to re-read 1984? The Constitution, written way back in the 1700’s, is outdated and needs the refreshing criticism of a bunch of 17 year-olds who know better what it should say. Populism is supposed to be something bad, since it is the will of the people. Merit is undeserved. Only skin color matters, but is it trumped by ethnicity? Gender is a matter of your feelings at the moment. Citizenship is not only not important, but a question that should not be asked on the Census. The 12,000 gun-related homicides a year are heavily concentrated in inner- city neighborhoods that are afflicted with drugs, gangs and crime. There are serious problems in the current understanding of the meaning of free speech. Universities have small designated spaces where one can go to practice free speech, which is not acceptable elsewhere.
If the tech companies want to know what ads I’d be most likely to be interested in, I’d be happy to answer a questionnaire, if they would stop monitoring my presence online. And I have this odd idea that businesses have no business playing politics. If they want to financially support a candidate privately, that’s their business. If they want to do politics then they should resign from business and do politics. But if they want to be political while asking customers to support them, they’ll be out of luck.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Freedom, Immigration, Law, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: Diversity, Prejudice, Who Do You Want for a Neighbor
In this worldwide poll, people were asked to choose which, if any, groups of people they would not want as neighbors. (Click to enlarge) Kind of a test of prejudice or diversity. The nations of the Anglosphere, with some additions from South America, are the least likely to object to having people of another race or religion as neighbors. (I guess they didn’t ask in the grey areas)
So much for Democrats propaganda about diversity and inclusion, which they use constantly to tell people of other races in this country that 1. The Democrats are very inclusive, and care about diversity, and thus thus they care about people of other races. 2. They have found that by dividing the electorate up into voting groups they can direct specific messages of how prejudiced the Republicans are to those specific groups, and gain votes.
This is why Obama is attempting to get so many illegals into the country and offer them amnesty, and why he wants to import so many refugees. Republicans will reliably object, because we are a nation of laws and Republicans want the laws obeyed.
As far as I can tell, Republicans don’t spend a lot of time worrying about race simply because they don’t think a different race is a big deal. They, for the most part, actually do judge a person on their character, not the color of their skin. When they object to illegal aliens, it is not because of their race or ethnicity, but because of the illegal part.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Law, Progressivism, Regulation, The United States | Tags: Compassion, Diversity, Empathy, Social Justice
I wrote earlier about the problem of “Diversity”— that progressive catch-word — around which they attempt to arrange all their bright ideas. “Diversity,” they believe, is a positive good. Wealthy neighborhoods, or for that matter any neighborhoods that do not house the correct numbers of varying races and ethnicities need to be “fixed.”
And, on the other side, we have the victims of progressive diversity demands (affirmative action) such as National Merit scholars who can’t get into elite universities like Harvard because the category of Asian students already matches the percentage of Asians in the economy, so students of different race and ethnicity must be admitted instead despite lower SAT scores. So we are trading brighter doctors and scientists and businessmen for the precious idea of diversity. And that makes sense just how?
The real problem is that “diversity” doesn’t produce the desired effect. The more diverse or integrated a neighborhood becomes, the less socially cohesive it becomes, and the more homogenous or segregated, the more socially cohesive. Simple. A mom and dad prefer their children to other children. Having a child does not produce liking for all children. People prefer their compatriots to strangers from another country. This is not prejudice, but a natural affinity for those with whom you have something in common. It’s what humans do.
Progressives believe “diversity” is a necessity in the quest for social justice which is the shining goal of the left. The pursuit of social justice is the reason for empathy, for welfare, for caring for others. The pursuit of that goal renders philanthropy harmful. William Voegeli notes:
The alliance of experts and victims will progress toward its goals more slowly and with greater difficulty if amateurs, hobbyists, and dilettantes are mucking about, trying to alleviate a victim’s suffering. They don’t know what they’re doing, and should keep out of the way of people who do. Furthermore, caring for others by any other means than supporting with votes and taxes, welfare state programs to enact and adequately fund those programs postpones rather than hastens the realization of social justice.
“I gave at the office” should mean just one thing: the taxes withheld from my paycheck are funding government programs, the only path to social justice. If it means, instead, charitable contributions are activities that endorse the efficacy and virtue of extragovernmental efforts to ameliorate suffering situations, the pursuit of social justice is thwarted. The more government takes over welfare — the weaker the fellow feeling of the other ties.
The famous American skeptic H.L Mencken once wrote, “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve.” Or to put it a little differently — Social Justice doesn’t mean that at last everybody is finally equal. It means that you are all equal, and we are in charge.
Filed under: Education, Immigration, Intelligence, Progressives | Tags: Diversity, Harvard University, SAT Scores
On the other side of diversity, Harvard University is, according to the Wall Street Journal, looking for legal cover to justify discriminating against Asian-Americans, Sixty-four organizations have alleged that Harvard uses de facto quotas to limit Asian-Americans on campus.
The percentage of Asian-American students at elite universities like Harvard have held steady at around 18% for two decades. But the number of college-age Asian-Americans has increased rapidly. In May the coalition of sixty-four organizations asked the civil-rights arms of the Education and Justice Departments why Asian-Americans, who make up about 5% of the population — but earn an estimated 30% of National Merit semifinalist honors, aren’t accepted to Harvard in numbers that reflect those qualifications.
The Department cited pending litigation as grounds for dismissal, and the only such suit is one against Harvard and the University of North Carolina filed in November by Students for Fair Admissions. This sounds reasonable, but wait. Harvard and UNC’s lawyers this week filed motions to halt the lawsuit until the Supreme Court reconsiders race-based admissions next term in Fisher v. University of Texas. That ruling won’t surface until 2016, and Harvard’s strategy is to drag out inquiries in hopes the Court blesses race-based admissions.
Asian Americans need to score 140 points higher on the SAT than white students to be considered “equal applicants” on paper, and 450 points higher than African-Americans, according to independent research.
The coalition says they will continue to push back against the quota-like conditions at the elite schools. Liberal ideas of diversity have nothing to do with intelligence or accomplishment — only with… but you know the rest.
Interestingly enough, Canada and Australia admit immigrants based on the same kind of qualifications that Harvard and other elite universities use. They want immigrants who can bring some talent or qualifications to the country. Seems like a good idea, We might want to try it.
Diversity points are not about diversity, The issue is never the issue. It’s about voting groups and power for the Left.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Education, Politics, Progressivism, Regulation | Tags: Diversity, Liberalism Never Works, Totalitarianism
Today, HUD Secretary Julian Castro announced the finalization of the Obama Administration’s “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” rule.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has released a final rule to equip communities that receive HUD funding with the data and tools that will help them to meet long-standing fair housing obligations in their use of HUD funds. HUD will provide publicly open data for grantees to use to assess the state of fair housing within their communities and to set locally-determined priorities and goals.
Translation: Just preventing anyone from refusing to rent or sell homes to those of different color, sex, ethnicity etc. etc. has not succeeded in ending ghettos or neighborhoods with bad schools and high incidence of crime and drugs, and that’s just not fair. We need to integrate wealthy neighborhoods.
HUD will determine what the proper ethnic makeup of a given neighborhood should be, and communities must build fair housing goals into their existing community development and housing planning. It is called “a balanced approach to fair housing.”
Observing neighborhoods in lots of different cities, you notice that people of a particular ethnic heritage are often likely to group together. Seattle has a Norwegian founded neighborhood, and an International District that is mostly Asian, for example.
HUD says “no child’s ZIP code should determine her opportunity to achieve.” Typical Leftist bullshit. A child’s opportunity to achieve is determined by whether their mother is married, graduated from high school, and cares about how her child turns out, not whether their neighborhood has the correct distribution of blacks and Hispanics.
“Diversity”remains the shining goal of most Leftist programs, and like all such programs, nobody ever checks up to see if the goal has achieved anything beyond a correct mixture of ethnicities, sexual preferences, or races. Are the people involved happier, more successful, better educated?
No leftist program ever is judged by whether its results are successful. Head Start, for example, has been shown by study after study to have no benefits as its participants proceed through their school years. According to HHS, Head Start “positively influenced children’s school readiness” — but only if you tested them after they finished Head Start but before they started Kindergarten. Leftist programs make their proponents feel good because they have done something. They never die because they don’t work. “Diversity” is one of those sacred words.
You will no longer get to buy a home in a highly desired school district, or near a desirable park, or even where there are lots of people who speak your language and celebrate the same holidays. Because diversity.
Filed under: Capitalism, History, Humor, Liberalism, Literature | Tags: Diversity, Radical Chic, Straight Line Thinking
There is a disturbing tendency among many towards straight-line thinking. If the stock market is down today, it will only be down more tomorrow and we’re all doomed. I just saw an article claiming that a house is no longer a good investment now or in the foreseeable future.
A bad food crop means world starvation and a slight warming trend means catastrophic global warming. Peak oil falls into the same category. This only seems to work with negative events. Nobody seizes upon a wonderful day and writes about it’s being the harbinger of constant wonderful days. Is it just a gloomy disposition?
President Obama has been insistent upon comparing his recession to the Great Depression. Whether that’s because he wants to be compared to FDR, or wants people to understand the terrors he faces, I don’t know. The actual recession is far less serious than the Great Depression, and has only been made worse by administration ineptness, and adherence to discredited economic policies.
Then there is the problem of confusing cause and effect. The New York Times’ David Leonhardt goes off on the real culprit — consumer spending. Discretionary spending on restaurant meals, entertainment, education and insurance is down in this slump almost 7 percent, when it’s never fallen before more than 3 percent per capita. It’s all the consumers’ fault.
I have been rereading a wonderful essay by Tom Wolfe from the 1970s — Radical Chic —which describes the courting of romantic radicals like the Black Panthers, striking grapeworkers and the Young Lords by New York’s socially elite. He focuses particularly on one symbolic event: the gathering of the radically chic at Leonard Bernstein’s Park Avenue apartment to meet spokesmen of the Black Panther Party, to hear them out and talk over ways of aiding their cause. The players and the event have changed, but the strange phenomenon continues.
You had Jane Fonda celebrating the brave Viet Cong peasants, and heroin chic in which fashion decreed that the in look was that of an addict on the street. Everybody is wearing Sadat’s keffiyeh, We have torn jeans, worn-out jeans, clothes that look that they came from your grandmother’s ragbag.
Destroyed cotton t-shirt , Balmain, $1,624, collection at Jeffrey, NYC. Canvas shorts, Bottega Veneta $590. Shell earrings, Celestina, $780. Webbing Belt, Burberry $325. Ribbon ID bracelets, Mianstal $120 each. The Look : total cost $3,559 (plus tax). (Photo and prices from American Digest)
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Diversity reigns on the nation’s campuses, which oddly seems to mean only color of skin and ethnicity — which are only the most diverse things about a person according to those who are deeply fixated on race. The rest of us think that two people of whatever color and ethnicity who are both Army brats probably have a lot more in common than two people who happen to come from different parts of Africa. A couple of young moms who had their babies on the same day in the same hospital probably care more about that fact that about the difference in the color of their babies.
I don’t venture to connect all the dots, nor to pose some philosophic truth. I’m just noticing that there’s a lot of fuzzy thinking going on.
Filed under: Liberalism, Statism, Terrorism | Tags: Diversity, Multiculturalism, Religion of the Universities
It was only eight days ago that I was writing about U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s public denunciation of multiculturalism, along with the leaders of France and Germany, and his declaration that it was a proven disaster and a threat to society. Multicultural values had led to segregated communities and Mr. Cameron said, imposed policies of blind toleration that had helped to nurture radical Islam’s terrorist cells.
This was a major, major event. Multiculturalism and it’s accompanying religious tenet diversity have been “the unofficial established religion of the universities, the faith whose requirements have shaped every aspect of cultural, economic and political life in Western democracies for the last 50 years.”
This happened just when a report was released, reported Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal, titled “A Ticking Time Bomb” that provided the most complete disclosures about the multiculturalist zeal that had caused the Army and medical school superiors to smooth Nidal Malik Hassan’s way through training, promote him, and in spite of plain clear evidence of his unfitness, raise not one single concern. Major Hassan, now a U.S. Army psychiatrist, was assigned to Fort Hood where he opened fire on his fellow soldiers in November of 2009, killing 12 plus a civilian employee and wounding 32 others.
The report from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs led by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) concerns the Department of Defense’s official report on the Fort Hood bloodbath. It made no mention , none, of Hasan’s well documented jihadist sympathies.
During his medical training at Walter Reed, and his two years at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, multicultural taboos reigned. Walter Reed required a presentation on a psychiatric theme, Hasan produced a draft largely from the Quran “arguing for the painful punishment and liquidation of non-Muslims.” When he was told that the presentation was “not scholarly”, he revised slightly and was allowed to graduate. In his medical fellowship, he delivered a class lecture on the theme that the West in general and the U.S. Military specifically had mounted a war on Islam and continued with themes sympathetic to Osama bin Laden. His classmates were outraged.
Hasan’s contacts with terrorist suspect came to the notice of the FBI, but the agents were lulled by the impressive evaluation reports that described Hasan as an authority on Islam, whose work had “extraordinary potential to inform national policy and military strategy.” He was commended as “a star officer” who was focused on “illuminating the role of culture and Islamic faith within the Global War on Terrorism.” Rabinowitz adds “No single word of criticism or doubt about Hasan ever made its way into any of his evaluations.”
His superiors noticed all right, but as Ms. Rabinowitz says:
Some of those enthusiastic testaments strongly suggested that the writers were themselves at least partly persuaded of their reasoning. In magical thinking, safety and good come to those who obey taboos, and in the multiculturalist world, there is no taboo more powerful than the one that forbids acknowledgment of realities not in keeping with the progressive vision. In the world of the politically correct—which can apparently include places where psychiatrists are taught—magical thinking reigns.
He was a star not simply because he was a Muslim, but because he was a special kind—the sort who posed, in his flaunting of jihadist sympathies, the most extreme test of liberal toleration. Exactly the kind the progressive heart finds irresistible.
A decision should be made soon about whether Major Hasan will go to trial before a military court-martial. He is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder. The trial will probably go forward. But the Department of Defense still has not specifically named the threat which is represented by the Fort Hood bloodbath.
Multiculturalism and Diversity live on in the nation’s colleges and universities and in the human resources departments of most major corporations, always concentrating on exactly the wrong thing.
In his book Plagues of the Mind, Bruce Thornton described the problem:
Despite what we are led to believe by its apologists, Multiculturalism is not about respecting cultural difference or the diversity of ethnic groups in America. Multiculturalism is instead a melodramatic tale of the wickedness of the West and its role in destroying the peaceful paradises in which other peoples (usually “of color”) lived before Europeans and then Americans came along to inflict on them racism, sexism, slavery, colonialism, imperialism, homophobia, technology and environmental degradation.
If it was intended to make sure we were all nice to people of different colors and ethnicities, multiculturalism and diversity have evolved into a sort of required tolerance that does not distinguish. Required equality. Differences in behavior will not be noticed, because it might mean that you are noticing ethnicity or skin color.
Oddly, differences in skin color or country of origin are seldom problems, but bad behavior, which is to go unnoticed can cause all sorts of problems. Honor killings, female circumcision, forced marriages are to be tolerated, and major attempts to blow up Americans are simply “man-caused disasters.” Terrorism and Islamic jihad are preferably not mentioned. Tolerance in all things.
Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Freedom, History, The Constitution | Tags: Diversity, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness
Perhaps it began in the European Union. The continent of Europe has been the site of one bloody war after another for centuries. The nations of Europe, exhausted after the Second World War, wanted to stop. Anti war rallies were very much in vogue while the Cold War left an aggressive Soviet Union threatening from the East.
The European Union’s birthrate has dropped below replacement rate. Which means, if nothing else, that the young workers to support Europe’s aging welfare state simply would not be there. The EU encouraged immigration, particularly from their former colonies. Immigration did not necessarily mean assimilation, immigrants were not always welcomed, and belonging wasn’t necessarily a part of the multicultural vision.
All the differences people brought with them were theoretically to be melded into the colorful tapestry of the modern multicultural state. Differences in language, custom, religion and race were to make the tapestry richer and more interesting, and anyone who publicly disagreed could be investigated by the thought police and charged with the sin of racism. Careers could be destroyed by incorrect thought by anyone indigenous, white and male. Freedom of thought was officially out of fashion and official language was closely controlled. Keeping your head down became a way of life.
Overnight, all has changed. Angela Merkel, chancellor of a country where political correctness is carefully nurtured, has just told us that multiculturalism “has failed utterly.” France’s President Sarkozy has been saying the same thing for some time. Prospect, Britain’s leading left-wing intellectual monthly carried a headline “re-thinking race; has multiculturalism had its day? And now Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron has delivered a reasoned demolition of “state multiculturalism” and made a start at rooting it out of official British policy. In Switzerland a referendum about minarets revealed the population’s concerns about Islamism. In Canada a leader of the country’s Muslim community, Tarek Fatah, has spoken out to say that just like Britain, Canada’s multiculturalism will fail.
Cameron delivered the analysis at the annual conference on international security in Munich. It removed multiculturalism from the categories of welfare and anti-discrimination policy to that of national security and anti-terrorism, where conservatives have an advantage over the left.
His argument is that terrorism is threatening the West, not only in Afghanistan, but also at home. It has its roots in the underlying “extremist ideology” of Islamism. Young Muslim men in Britain begin their road to jihad by picking up this ideology from institutions, leaders and organizations subsidized by government money and official favors. It is further promoted by multiculturalism which encourages different cultures to live separate lives, and delivers impressionable young men into the hands of state-funded extremists. It would have to be confronted by denying funds to bodies that preach hatred and separatism, and ideologically as well.
Both Mark Steyn and John O’Sullivan have insisted that one reason for the success of extremist Islamism is the absence of British patriotism. Multiculturalism has refused to offer its new citizens the real opportunity to become British. To offer real assimilation and pride in their country’s national identity. Multiculturalism and political correctness have created a vacuum where British patriotism ought to be.
America has been a melting pot from the beginning. And when we wrote a Constitution, we wrote that into it. American was already a blend of immigrants from many countries with many languages and many religions. Our national identity became a country of immigrants united by ideas of freedom and opportunity, protected by a Constitution in which the people gave the government some few limited powers, with lots of checks and balances.
That has not made us immune to the liberal elite’s embrace of multiculturalism and diversity to enhance their push for radical equality and insistence that racism is the greatest problem in American life. Our history and deep national patriotism have made multiculturalism and diversity more often the subject of jokes, but it is there and needs to be rooted out.
Americans who made multicultural jokes, and laughed at diversity and got kicked out of college by the faculty language police were in the right. Our elites should take notice of what is happening across the water.
American Elephants 