In 21st century America, institutional racism and sexism remain great twin evils to be eradicated on our long journey to the wonderful world where, at last, all are equal.
What are we to make, then, of a profession that rewards workers with fame and fortune, yet discriminates ruthlessly against women; an institution where Hispanics and Asians, 20 percent of the U.S. population, are neither sought after nor widely seen.
In this profession, white males, a third of the population, retain a third of the jobs. But black males, 6.5 percent of the U.S. population, have 67 percent of the coveted positions—10 times their fair share.
We are talking of the NFL.
In figures reported by columnist Walter Williams, not only are black males 77 percent of the National Basketball Association, they are 67 percent of the players in the NFL.
Yet no one objects that women are not permitted to compete in the NFL. Nor do many object to the paucity of Asian and Mexicans, or the over-representation of blacks, even as white males dominate the National Hockey League and the PGA.
When it comes to sports—high school, collegiate or professional—Americans are intolerant of lectures about diversity and inclusiveness. They want the best—the best in the NFL, the best in the NBA, the best at Augusta, the best at Wimbledon, the best in the Olympics, the best in the All-Star Game, the World Series, the Super Bowl.
When it comes to artistic ability, musical ability, acting ability, athletic ability, Americans accept the reality of inequality. We are not all born equal, other than in our God-given and constitutional rights.
We are not all equally gifted. There are prodigies like pianist Van Cliburn, chess wizard Bobby Fischer, actress Shirley Temple. Every kid halfway through first grade knows who can spell and sing and who cannot, and who is bright and talented and athletic, and who is not.
What most Americans seek is a level playing field on which all compete equally, for what we ultimately seek is excellence, not equality.
Why, then, cannot our elites accept that, be it by nature, nurture, attitude or aptitude, we are not all equal in academic ability?
What raises this issue is the anguish evident in New York over the latest state test scores of public school students, which reveal that the ballyhooed progress in closing the racial achievement gap never happened.
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Friday, August 27, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Prof. Frances Berry: "Having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness..."
"Tainting the tea party with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective tactic for Democrats," Mary Frances Berry, a former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, told the Webzine Politico Tuesday.
"There is no evidence tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans," said Ms. Berry, who is now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness."
In 2008, a group of liberal journalists discussed how to handle news coverage of Barack Obama's long association with his hate-spewing pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
"If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose," Spencer Ackerman, now of Wired magazine, said in an e-mail to colleagues on Journolist. "Instead, take one of them -- [Weekly Standard editor] Fred Barnes, [former Bush aide] Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists."
Journolist was a list-serve created by The Washington Post's Ezra Klein. He shut it down after conservative commentators Tucker Carlson and Andrew Breitbart obtained e-mails members had sent to each other.
But when the race card is played clumsily, it can backfire, as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Obama administration learned last week.
Just hours after Mr. Breitbart posted Monday a two-and-a-half-minute excerpt of a 43-minute speech Shirley Sherrod made to an NAACP audience in March, one of her superiors was on the telephone demanding she resign as director of rural development in Georgia for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The White House wanted her gone, Ms. Sherrod said she was told by Deputy Undersecretary Cheryl Cook.
The White House denies involvement. But Politico reported that at a staff meeting Tuesday morning, Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina praised aides for moving quickly.
"We took decisive action, and it's a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere," Politico's source quoted Mr. Messina as saying.
"There is no evidence tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans," said Ms. Berry, who is now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one's opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness."
In 2008, a group of liberal journalists discussed how to handle news coverage of Barack Obama's long association with his hate-spewing pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
"If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose," Spencer Ackerman, now of Wired magazine, said in an e-mail to colleagues on Journolist. "Instead, take one of them -- [Weekly Standard editor] Fred Barnes, [former Bush aide] Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists."
Journolist was a list-serve created by The Washington Post's Ezra Klein. He shut it down after conservative commentators Tucker Carlson and Andrew Breitbart obtained e-mails members had sent to each other.
But when the race card is played clumsily, it can backfire, as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Obama administration learned last week.
Just hours after Mr. Breitbart posted Monday a two-and-a-half-minute excerpt of a 43-minute speech Shirley Sherrod made to an NAACP audience in March, one of her superiors was on the telephone demanding she resign as director of rural development in Georgia for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The White House wanted her gone, Ms. Sherrod said she was told by Deputy Undersecretary Cheryl Cook.
The White House denies involvement. But Politico reported that at a staff meeting Tuesday morning, Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina praised aides for moving quickly.
"We took decisive action, and it's a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere," Politico's source quoted Mr. Messina as saying.
Clinton and Carter pollsters accuse Obama of cynical and racially divisive policies designed to pay off in 2012 election
Rather than being a unifier, Mr. Obama has divided America on the basis of race, class and partisanship. Moreover, his cynical approach to governance has encouraged his allies to pursue a similar strategy of racially divisive politics on his behalf.
We have seen the divisive approach under Republican presidents as well—particularly the administrations of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. By dividing America, Mr. Obama has brought our government to the brink of a crisis of legitimacy, compromising our ability to address our most important policy issues.
We say this with a heavy heart. Both of us share the president's stated vision of what America can and should be. The struggle for equal rights has animated both of our lives. Both of us were forged politically during the crucible of the civil rights movement. Having worked in the South during the civil rights movement, and on behalf of the ground-breaking elections of African-American mayors such as David Dinkins, Harold Washington and Emanuel Cleaver, we were deeply moved by Mr. Obama's election.
The first hint that as president Mr. Obama would be willing to interject race into the political dialogue came last July, when he jumped to conclusions about the confrontation between Harvard Prof. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates and the Cambridge police.
During a press conference, the president said that the "Cambridge police acted stupidly," and he went on to link the arrest with the "long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."
In truth, the Gates incident appears to have had nothing to do with race—a Cambridge review committee that investigated the incident ruled on June 30 that there was fault on both sides.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) has said the president told him in a closed-door meeting that he would not move to secure the border with Mexico unless and until Congress reached a breakthrough on comprehensive immigration reform. That's another indication Mr. Obama is willing to continue to play politics with hot-button issues.
Add in the lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law and it's clear the Obama administration is willing to run the risk of dividing the American people along racial and ethnic lines to mobilize its supporters—particularly Hispanic voters, whose backing it needs in the fall midterm elections and beyond.
As the Washington Post reported last week, two top White House strategists, speaking on condition of anonymity, have indicated that "the White House plans to use the immigration debate to punish the GOP and aggressively seek the Latino vote in 2012."
We have seen the divisive approach under Republican presidents as well—particularly the administrations of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. By dividing America, Mr. Obama has brought our government to the brink of a crisis of legitimacy, compromising our ability to address our most important policy issues.
We say this with a heavy heart. Both of us share the president's stated vision of what America can and should be. The struggle for equal rights has animated both of our lives. Both of us were forged politically during the crucible of the civil rights movement. Having worked in the South during the civil rights movement, and on behalf of the ground-breaking elections of African-American mayors such as David Dinkins, Harold Washington and Emanuel Cleaver, we were deeply moved by Mr. Obama's election.
The first hint that as president Mr. Obama would be willing to interject race into the political dialogue came last July, when he jumped to conclusions about the confrontation between Harvard Prof. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates and the Cambridge police.
During a press conference, the president said that the "Cambridge police acted stupidly," and he went on to link the arrest with the "long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."
In truth, the Gates incident appears to have had nothing to do with race—a Cambridge review committee that investigated the incident ruled on June 30 that there was fault on both sides.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) has said the president told him in a closed-door meeting that he would not move to secure the border with Mexico unless and until Congress reached a breakthrough on comprehensive immigration reform. That's another indication Mr. Obama is willing to continue to play politics with hot-button issues.
Add in the lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law and it's clear the Obama administration is willing to run the risk of dividing the American people along racial and ethnic lines to mobilize its supporters—particularly Hispanic voters, whose backing it needs in the fall midterm elections and beyond.
As the Washington Post reported last week, two top White House strategists, speaking on condition of anonymity, have indicated that "the White House plans to use the immigration debate to punish the GOP and aggressively seek the Latino vote in 2012."
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Coulter: When Democrats are down, racism is everywhere
The Democrats are depressed about their collapsing poll numbers, so it's time to start calling conservatives "racist."
As we now know from the Journolist list-serv, where hundreds of liberal journalists chat with one another, and which was leaked to Daily Caller this week, journalists cry "racism" whenever they need to distract from bad news for Obama. (Ironically, this story did not make headlines.)
When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal broke during the 2008 campaign, the first response of Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent was to demand that they start randomly picking conservatives -- "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists."
Ackerman, frequent guest on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show," continued on Journolist:
"What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger's [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically."
This is what "racism" has come to in America. Democrats are in trouble, so they say "let's call conservatives racists." We always knew it, but the Journolist postings gave us the smoking gun.
This explains why we've heard so much about Tea Partiers being "racists" lately.
As we now know from the Journolist list-serv, where hundreds of liberal journalists chat with one another, and which was leaked to Daily Caller this week, journalists cry "racism" whenever they need to distract from bad news for Obama. (Ironically, this story did not make headlines.)
When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright scandal broke during the 2008 campaign, the first response of Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent was to demand that they start randomly picking conservatives -- "Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists."
Ackerman, frequent guest on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show," continued on Journolist:
"What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger's [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically."
This is what "racism" has come to in America. Democrats are in trouble, so they say "let's call conservatives racists." We always knew it, but the Journolist postings gave us the smoking gun.
This explains why we've heard so much about Tea Partiers being "racists" lately.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Just in time: A 12-step program for racists
1. We are powerless over racism. We are white. It's in our DNA, and it's on display from infancy. Unpublished scientific studies show that when presented with a white ball and a black ball, the white infant will choose the white ball 99% of the time. In contrast, the black infant will choose the black ball exactly 50% of the time. To the black infant no race is preferable over another. It's in his DNA. The only known exception is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. When presented with a black ball and a white ball the infant Jeremiah chose the black ball 100% of the time. Indeed, when he was strong enough, he picked up the black ball with both hands and used it to smash the white ball into pieces.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Frank Luntz: Barack Obama, the new face of Washington, is disliked because of that fact
"As the former leader of the free world, Jimmy Carter deserves our respect. As a political analyst - attributing racism to the anger at President Obama - he is irresponsibly inaccurate.
Obama's popularity hasn't tumbled because he's black. It's tumbled because he has come to represent Washington instead of those who sent him there.
I know this because of a 6,400-person interview survey I conducted for my new book "What Americans Really Want ... Really." I sat down to write this book, conduct the poll and insisted that the second "really" be included in the title because I was fed up with opinion elites who ascribe opinions to Americans that simply do not exist.
The latest flareup over supposed racism is only the most recent example. America certainly isn't perfect, but as a society, we are intolerant of intolerance, and we'll immediately demonize anyone, anywhere who tries to play the race card. Just ask Bill Clinton.
The real reason why 72% of the people I interviewed say that they're "mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore" has nothing to do with racism. No, their rage is about a lack of accountability, a lack of respect, and a lack of progress in the nation's capital."
Obama's popularity hasn't tumbled because he's black. It's tumbled because he has come to represent Washington instead of those who sent him there.
I know this because of a 6,400-person interview survey I conducted for my new book "What Americans Really Want ... Really." I sat down to write this book, conduct the poll and insisted that the second "really" be included in the title because I was fed up with opinion elites who ascribe opinions to Americans that simply do not exist.
The latest flareup over supposed racism is only the most recent example. America certainly isn't perfect, but as a society, we are intolerant of intolerance, and we'll immediately demonize anyone, anywhere who tries to play the race card. Just ask Bill Clinton.
The real reason why 72% of the people I interviewed say that they're "mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore" has nothing to do with racism. No, their rage is about a lack of accountability, a lack of respect, and a lack of progress in the nation's capital."
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