I worked as a civil servant, in the MN court system, and I can tell you tales of waste that you wd not believe. BUT, civic groups, church groups, rights groups, etc. can only do so much. They are a fraction of the power that Corporate America is.

I argue similarly w morons who have a pathological hatred for unions. Even in the 60s the unions had a fraction of the power corporations did, and now that’s a fraction of a fraction.

Only the Federal gov’t, w the hammer of the Constitutuion, can do certain things, lie making sure talented non-white non-males get equity- or close to it, in job pursuits. Only gov’t can hammer away toxic polluters, Only gov’yt can provide infrastructure. It may do it weakly, or poorly, but that’s better than the NADA that wd exist sans gov;t intervention.

Again, David is absolutely right when he points to France as an example where backsliding has occurred in terms of racial relations.

In short, in the real world, bigots in white hoods are mocked by most, but the majority of white Americans are still worried about property values if a black family moves into a lily nabe, the majority of white parents get a chill in their spine if daughter brings home Jamal, and the majority of white Americans still feel a sense of entitlement- in terms of jobs, vis-a-vis minorities. You can hear it muttered under their breaths. You can see it in the glowers they shoot at blacks or Latinos. You can see it in many blog posts (non-TMV) on subjects similar to this, if you are capable of reading between the lines.

The thing I find the most amazing about many commenters at this and other blogs is how often they seem to carry their own fishbowl worlds with them, and how they sustain their POVs.

On another thread I’m arguing with someone re: a military rape case that was scotched, and the guy is actually claiming things about immunity in legal cases, when he has likely never even known someone granted immunity!

Or, I argue with people who are against abortion, who’ve never even seen nor held a fetus.

It’s damned amazing. Now, I am not trying to marginalize you, CS, but I have to say, some of your ideas, and solutions, as outlined above, make me think you are still in a Beaver Cleaver world which never really existed.

C’mon. Black people get- and I’ll be PC- screwed up the ass every day in ways you cannot imagine. No rights march will change that. Only legal sanctions that hold doors open until the racist dinosaurs die off, and people actually relate to one another on a basis of personalities and ideas.

To deny that seems to be a willful act of stolidity, or wishful thinking. Furthermore, it only slows down the process of real change by braking the processes that could bring about the changes that you seem to want. And that you don’t get that I find amazing.

And, as said, I’ve been screwed over jobs and other things because of affirmative action. BUT, I realize there is a greater good to be had than just my immediate fiscal or personal satisfaction.

I claim no sainthood, but more people have to stop being so selfish (be it based on racism or plain old self-centeredness) or else it’ll only slow things down more.

But, what is certain is that by backsliding, as the French have done, only more problems will erupt.

The thing is, if we want to have discussions that lead to solutions to these problems, we have to be willing to entertain different ideas. I don’t agree with everything my liberal friends say, any more than I agree with everything my conservative friends say. But, even though I’m a conservative, I don’t write off liberals as dangerous nuts just because I don’t agree with their suggested solutions for problems. When we define the terms of discussion so that the only people who share ideas are the ones who agree with us, we have an echo chamber, and it is harder to get any change to occur. I susp[ect this is much of what is wrong in our politicized country (and world) – as C. Stanley notes, I would guess that staunch liberals like David, Gray, Cosmo and other liberals probably don’t spend much time talking to people who don’t share their views, and don’t socialize much with people who don’t share their views. This same charge can be leveled with accuracy at many on the other side of the aisle. But, as C. Stanley notes, the simple two-sided division is probably a mistake, because there are a lot of gradations on political spectrum. Some conservatives support affirmative action, many do not; some liberals oppose affirmative action, many do not – but there is no universal duality.

For anyoen interested in taking my comments re: Cosby’s view vs. Jackson and Sharpton’s try looking at this article by Myron magnet in the Spetember, 2007 issue of City Journal, called “In the Heart of Freedom, in Chains.” The e-address is:

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_black_america.html

I think it is vitally important to understand C. Stanley’s point that getting people to change their culture is a long, slow process, and it is resistant to attempts to force sudden change.

Interesting comments all. Thank you.

1) Justice Thomas (and Harlan) admitting that color-blind government means permitting certain racialized disparities in society (admission against interest warrant).

2) French example: the best empirical case we have of a truly color-blind government is wildly color-conscious in social practice and has worse race relations than we do. (empirical evidence which is still standing pretty tall at the end of this thread)

3) Klarman’s argument that even at the height of Jim Crow, social color-consciousness was the driving force behind governmental policy, not the other way around (bad causality–societal color-consciousness doesn’t need governmental color-blindness to survive).

You might have objections to any or all of these, but its unfair to say I didn’t provide them and asserted a “dogma”.

Similarly, I think you’re making far more presuppositions and false inferences about the positions being taken here than I am. I’ve at no point said a word about your motives. Nor have I said anything about the “guilt” or “innocence” of anybody, a framework which I don’t think is applicable (this isn’t a criminal hearing) and which has been consistently rejected by nearly every AA advocate. And believe me–living in America, I’ve come across more than a few people who oppose AA but don’t claim a racist motivation (indeed, I used to be one of them). You assume without warrant that AA represents an unfairness, which I also don’t accept and certainly can’t just be asserted on face. I’d argue AA is fair because it’s intrinsically meritorious (diversity is a component of merit), fair on distributional justice grounds (equalizing the position of illegitimately stratified groups is a legitimate social goal), and fair on remedial grounds (reparations for past and ongoing mistreatment is a fair ground for action). I’ve made all those arguments before–you can’t just elide them all then assume what’s yet to be proven.

At best, your call to enforce anti-discrimination laws more strictly provides an alternative mechanism for achieving 2 and 3, which a) it probably can’t achieve completely (recall my recent post on why discrimination complaints won’t necessarily even be filed, and beyond that significant unaddressed problems dealing with “mixed motive” discrimination, subconscious biases, and structural impediments) and b) doesn’t show why the existence of an alternative renders the original stance unjust. And even beyond that, I still have my ace card, which is that diversity is a component of merit, which provides an intrinsic connection. These arguments have to be addressed–you can’t just wish them away and then lecture me about dogma.

Well, maybe you have a different view of your side, maybe there are more than two main camps, ok.

Hurrah, you got to it in the end, Gray!

That’s exactly the point; when we put people into two camps and draw false dichotomies, we miss the discussions that could actually craft new, more effective solutions. If everyone who believes the AA is the solution determines that everyone opposed to it is a racist, then we’re not exactly looking for any other way to handle racism, are we? I am guessing that you, David and cosmo don’t talk to a whole lot of people like me- conservatives who oppose AA but not out of racist motivation. I happen to know a whole lot of people like that, but since people who advocate AA reject us and impune our motivations, there’s not a whole lot of opportunity to say what we think ought to be done. Look at the way David phrased his false argument: we either have to accept non-color blind govt or we’ll be stuck with color blind society. Says who? He gives no evidence that this is true, he just states it as dogma.

As to “what I would do”, I did in fact mention one suggestion which would be to promote nonprofit groups to fight true battles against racial discrimination (a panel to review complaints against insurance companies, realtors, mortgage lenders, etc and litigate when appropriate- just shining the light of day on this stuff would go a long way toward stopping it.) Citizen groups can also demand more scrutiny over police actions if warranted. If we prosecute the cases where discrimination truly exists, then we are enforcing the idea of equal treatment under the law. If we go beyond that though, to say that minorities and women get special treatment, then we’re doing something altogether different. Why not demonstrate fairness by punishing unfair treatment instead of promoting a different kind of unfair treatment? As I said earlier, with AA there is a presumption of guilt, a collective punishment on a group of people for the sins of others in their group. That resembles no understanding that I have of the Constitution. While I can accept that such drastic measures may have been temporarily necessary because of the gravity of the wrongs committed against blacks, I feel the time has come to end that suspension of the concept of supra-equal treatment under the law.

And besides the legal issues, what about the million little things we can all do in our everyday lives? The ways we interact socially with people of other races, the way we raise our children, the way we decide whether to tolerate bigoted statements and jokes or to call people out on them, etc, etc. There’s a whole wide world out there which has nothing to do with government and as you said yourself, Gray, even most liberals have to admit that changing the law doesn’t change people’s attitudes. But we can all influence attitudes around us in small incremental ways. That’s a lot slower than the legal process but ultimately a LOT more effective. A story I like is a high school here in GA: for years they had segregated, non school sponsored proms because legally the school had to promote only an integrated prom but the kids (and parents, I’m sure) chose to hold their own black and white proms seperately. This past year the kids organized and decided to integrate; you can look at the glass half empty in that story and say ‘what took them so long’ or you can look at it half full and see that now the people truly WANT to associate freely with other races instead of having it imposed on them. That attitudinal change takes time but it is lasting instead of transient and superficial.

And finally, yes, I do think the black community has to take more responsibility. First of all, the cold hard truth is that when you review history, it is rare for a subjugated group to gain status in a society and in the few cases where it has happened it’s because they’ve gone above and beyond what would be expected and earned respect (think Gandhi). That’s a lot to ask of blacks, to be sure, but I don’t suggest it because I feel they deserve it but only because I see that human nature demands it. You can’t earn respect by getting special treatment, you can only earn it through your own exemplary actions. That may not be fair but we have to deal with the world as it exists, not as we wish it to be.

C, I don’t know how to interprete your statement in another way: “I don’t think people on my side of the debate are the ones who have to justify our position. “
Your site of the debate is against AA, but didn’t ever come up with another plan to actively fight inequality. This stance shows in Oson’s comment above, who is firmly against all actions addressing the problem because of ideological reasons (“there is much more to fear from a government mandating color consciousness than a scrupulously color-blind one.”). However, I congratulate you on being able to discuss this without sneakingly inserting prejudices into the discussion (“A nihilistic culture glorifying crime has replaced Black self-sufficiency” – now, Orson, really…). Sry, this is your side, and it refuses to do anything against discrimination.

Well, maybe you have a different view of your side, maybe there are more than two main camps, ok. But then, it’s not my fault that your statement doesn’t mention any of this and so is bound to be misunderstood. Well, no problem, just go ahead and tell us what you would do against inequality. So far, all you have told us is what you wouldn’t do.

Thanks for the follow up Mr. Schraub (41), but I will side with C Stanley here re: your point 1. Equality before the law seems to be well established in the constitution, and while you may be correct in saying I would say your reading says nothing that specifically forbids racial consciousness, a counter argument might be the last sentence of Sec. 1 of the 14th Amendment: “…nor to deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” So your interpretation of the constitution is debatable – it may be correct, but it might not be. That, ultimately will be for the courts to decide. I’d say that form this layman’s perspective, that phrase is as strongly supportive of a color-blind government as the argument in Roe vs. Wade that the constitutional right to privacy covers the right to an abortion.

This seems to be the long standing debate over equality of opportunity vs equality of results. And while there is no doubt that either alternative has legitimate arguments in its favor, I think there is much more to fear from a government mandating color consciousness than a scrupulously color-blind one. Michael Nifong as minister of justice, anyone? Would you like your child to deal with the kind of racially and gender conscious society that existed (and, apparently still exists on the Duke campus)? Race and gender consciousness may have been helpful at one time, I doubt that they are serving much if any useful purpose now, as they are exacerbating racial tension, rather than diminishing it.

Maybe we should be listening to Bill Cosby instead of the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton about what’s wrong in Black America. A nihilistic culture glorifying crime has replaced Black self-sufficiency, and anyone who mentions this is immediately accused of being racist or ‘blaming the victim.” But I think Cosby has a point – there is a huge cultural element behind why Blacks are not making the kind of economic and political progress most reformers think they should. I think this ties in with Mr. Schraub’s argument about the failings to the French attempt to create an integrated legally color-blind society.

The problems in France appear to be cultural, and, like most problems, a two-way street, with both sides being partially to blame for the problem. France guaranteed citizenship to people from former colonies, but there seems to be a cultural problem with absorbing the Africans from former French colonies into France. They are overwhelmingly Moslem, and show little or no interest in assimilating into a forcedly secular French society. The French, although officially non-religious in governance, are a population shaped largely by, and largely adhering (in word if not practice) to Catholicism, and to a lesser extent Protestant Christian and Jewish religious beliefs and the cultural aspects of European life shaped by those religions. While Frenchmen might be willing to accept Africans who are willing to generally assimilate into French society, there is clearly a resistance to having Moslems arrive in large numbers.

So we’re back to my question about where is the utopia? Is there some nation which has a more multiculturally diverse society than the USA which is politically and economically stable, and which has a democratic government? The evidence I draw from history is that a government which is officially color blind is not perfect, but is less damaging to the civil liberties of its citizens than one which tries to mandate equality of outcome using racial and gender mandates for outcome. While many proponents of this view see this as a way to force change, cultural change is seldom fast, and efforts to force it often fail, or backfire. Tito forced all the ethnic groups to function as a single country, but after his death, the ethnic struggles resumed, and Yugoslavia unraveled. I think the only way to get a more tolerant society is to let it come about as a result of gradual cultural value shift, nudged by a color-blind government.

Cosmo: To some degree, same complaint as above to Gray. Why do we always get back to saying that people who don’t agree with the particular remedies of quotas must be assumed to not care or to think that racial inequity is negligible? (To be fair, I can see where my riff to David may have led down that path because I went off on tangent about allowing minorities to define when racism exists or doesn’t exist).

To answer your questions though, I live in deep south, in a home that’s above median price but certainly not a McMansion and NOT gated. There are still way too many rednecks around here and whites are by far the majority (a concern for me since my son’s public school is like 96% white and he’s hispanic, but so far no issues there). I’m well aware that bigoted attitudes are still alive and well, including all of the examples you mentioned (I’ve deffinitely seen improvement in the 12 years I’ve lived here though), but I don’t see how the legal preferences help most of that (your job one was the only example). So if the attitudes are the problem and quotas have a tendency to inflame the attitudes, then I think that’s a problem. Keep in mind that I DO think that the law should vigorously address real discrimination, like mortgage lending. That’s a separate issue from quotas.

I’m sure part of the differences here are due to my general disdain for looking toward govt solutions for most societal problems. Even aside from all of the objections I have with the way that usually works out, those kinds of solutions tend to distract from better nongovernmental changes that could be made (just one thought off the top of my head-why not NGOs to provide a voice for people who really are victimized- groups that would investigate claims of mortgage inequity or job discrimination? Something like ACLU but on a local level where people’d have direct access to representation.)

David: Thanks for the response. I’ll need to look it over more carefully when I have time, but I can see I did in fact read more into your post than you intended in terms of ‘admitting’ a problem with Constitutionality. I guess I don’t get how “all pigs are equal but some are more equal than others” could be Constitutional even if the intent of it is good.

CS, come on “I don’t think people on my side of the debate are the ones who have to justify our position. “?
You wanna say that working against the inequalities, that are not just perceived but empirically proven, shouldn’t be an important topic for all Americans? Excuse me pls, but why do I always have the feeling that it’s the ‘foreigners’ who are much more impressed about ‘all men are created equal’ and the ‘pursuit of happiness’ than US citizen? Imho this explicit statement in the declaration of independence shows that its one of the main values of the US that everybody should have a chance to make the most of his abilities. And I think this also implies that it’s a patriotic duty to assure that everybody actually has such a chance and isn’t handicapped in it because of his race, religion, or gender.

Well, I’m just a romantic fool, but I guess I’m not alone. Imho there are many people all around the world who like the ideal of the US much more than its reality. Too sad.

Ok, CS, let me ask this then- what part of this country- geographically, socially, economically, racially, do you live in? I don’t mean this snidely, but if I assume that you are in the middle or working class, how can you NOT see that quotas are still MANIFESTLY not needed?

I work in retail, and black customers, even in designer suits, are still followed around (often by black security folk) far more than whites. I have seen smarter blacks denied jobs over dumber whites for no other reason than their color. I have seen cabs whizz by blacks. I have seen the looks and clutches at purses that black people engender by merely existing. I have been told flat out by real estate agents that certain people are preferred in certain areas, etc.

Again, not to be snide, but are you independently wealthy and living in a gated community? Otherwise, I can only guess it’s a refusal to see reality as it is.

There’s still decades to go before we can even think of not helping those discriminated against.

David’s Pts 3 & 4 nail a good portion of the argument. W/o quotas- and let’s call them what they are- if we support quotas, they are quotas, if we are pro-abortion we are pro-abortion, if we are this or that, let’s at least be honest in word choices.
But, w/o quotas we will backslide, not totally to Jim Crow, but we will not be where we are. David points to some examples, and I’m sure there are many more.

It’s hard to jump into a comments thread this deep, but I’ll to address at least the stuff directed at me.

1) I don’t think color-conscious policy is unconstitutional–the text doesn’t say it, I don’t think the values imply it, and the history of the 14th amendment (ratification debates, subsequent legislation) points in the precise opposite direction (nothing is more hypocritical than an “originalist” who says the constitution demands color-blindness. I’m not an originalist, so I can’t hang my hat on that, but any originalist who tries to make the “our constitution is color-blind” argument is either lying or ignorant).

2) My “end-point” would probably be the end of wide-ranging statistically significant disparities between the dominant and marginalized groups, although if a group did not continue to perceive discrimination, I wouldn’t insist that they do. Statistics being what statistics are, there can still be outliers, but right now disparity is the norm, not the exception. Once it’s the exception and not the norm, we’ll talk. You stop remedying discrimination when discrimination stops.

3) I still think my “French model” point holds up: Unlike the US, France has constitutionalized a color-blindness principle, and it’s had catastrophic results. The color-blind advocates need to come up with a compelling reason for why their paradigmatic case has crashed and burned if they want me to agree to support an Act Two in the ‘States.

4) “Any excuse serves the tyrant,” sayeth Aesop, and so it is with prejudice. If we have affirmative action, Whites will say Black presence in high positions is due to it, and that they can’t make it on their own. If we don’t have AA, then Whites will say that Black absence from high positions proves they can’t make it on their own. They may feel more resentful in the former case, but as Delgado notes, the empirical trend has been that implementing AA correlates to more positive racial views, so any resentment appears to be outweighed by waving in the face of White people that, yes, Black people are equally competent to their White peers. I’d also note that there is a distressing trend in that we’re saying that Black “resentment” is unjustified, the product of racial hucksters and victim peddlers, but White resentment is perfectly justified, something we need to tenderly and sensitively address and deal with. My intuition is the reverse is true, and that insofar as White folks both have the jobs and have the problem, they’re the ones who need the tough love.

5) Neither I nor anybody I know supports, as a general matter, distributing a benefit (job, admission slot, etc) based solely on race. We merely advocate it being part of a nexus of factors considered. Quotas haven’t been part of the AA game in 30 years–its time to let sleeping slogans lie. When Carleton does AA, we don’t just take a bus up to central St. Paul, load up the first 200 Black people we see, and say “congratulations, you’re going to Northfield!” The Black students we admit, like all the students we admit, are granted admission to a wide-ranging assessment of a broad range of factors–race being one (but only one). It’s wildly reductive and deterministic to say that this is “race-based”. It is “race-conscious“, nothing more.

First off I made a mistake in my comment. I actually think being refused a job because of being a woman would be more humiliating than getting one for the same reason BUT it’s still humiliating. As to being poor and such, I never meant to imply that I expect anyone in that position to refuse such an offer, I understand that work is work, especially if you’re poor. That said, it’s still not the best in terms of principles. Being hired or fired based on anything except your personal capacity is far from ideal.

The comment was longer, but I’m sick of WordPress at the moment.

It seems to me that implicit in David’s post is a sort of admission that racial/gender quotas are unconstitutional. Maybe I’m reading too much into that, but it seemed to me that he’s saying something like, “Yeah, I know that ideally the law should treat everyone equally but we have to make an exception in this case”.

If that is indeed what he’s saying, then I think it’s his obligation to define what the endpoint should be. He said he thinks it has to be this way for the “foreseeable future”. What does that mean? 5 more years? 10? 30? Or until, as cosmo suggests, whites are no longer in the majority?

Or do we define the endpoint as when every industry has the same composition as society overall? I think most would agree that this is an impossibly utopic goal (and dystopic as well, since it would be a nightmare to say that somehow all races would be equally represented even if people were forced into jobs they weren’t suited for).

A lot of David’s posts seem to suggest that he thinks the endpoint should be when minorities don’t “feel” that they are being discriminated against. It seems that any other measure is suspect of being skewed toward a presumption of nonbias.

Personally I’m not comfortable with this sort of self defined victim status, particularly since I believe that people are stirring the pot to encourage people to feel victimized.

David, if there is some other sort of defined endpoint, please elaborate. I do think the attitudinal changes are difficult to measure, but I think that some criteria need to be defined.

Gray: Never said I didn’t think that hard work could eventually overcome prejudices. I just think that the existence of the prejudice means that the work has to be a factor higher than it normally would be, and then the existence of the quotas makes it an even higher burden of proof. And anyway, I think that since the use of the law in this way is outside the constitution, I don’t think people on my side of the debate are the ones who have to justify our position. The burden of proof there is on proponents of the quotas to show that they are still working and helping alleviate the problem. Cosmo cites that people are now less race conscious than they were; fine, but is that changing for the better year by year, or have we hit a wall where the quotas might now be causing stagnation or even reversal of the gains that have been made? Intuitively it seems to me that the latter might be the case, but I don’t have any empirical evidence. Maybe David would like to dig into that to support his thesis.

I don’t disagree with this theoretically. But, in politics, theory and reality don’t mix. By not having quotas and a government power to back them up, one is de facto letting the corporate or housing (redlining) bullies have their way. Resent it or not, I don’t care what the buullies and bigots think. Their kids, by and large, will be more tolerant, just as 2007′s young folk, are less race obsessed than those in 1977 or 1957, or 1857.

I see. Sry I’m a bit slow today. Must be the rainy weather.

However, if that’s the case, then I think further discussion of this is useless. I believe in women being able to overcome those prejuduces with hard, successful work, you don’t think so. Who’s gonna judge who’s right? Maybe time will tell.

Well, where did I say I think it is? Nowhere, cause I don’t think so. I was always talking about ‘hard work’, see?

But would you now pls address my point that women’s positive achievements on the job will change the way they are perceived (slowly but surely), and that consequently it would be helpful to get more women into such positions to accelerate this process?