According to an article in the Macomb (Michigan) Daily, opponents of MCRI openly acknowledge they favor quotas.
“Quotas are necessary and will remain necessary until society is color blind,” the Rev. D.L. Bradley, leader of the Macomb County Ministerial Alliance, told about 100 people who attended a Clinton Township rally to oppose the measure.
“End racism and we will gladly shout ‘end quotas and end affirmative action.'”
In other words, we’ll continue to need quotas until the lions lay down with the lambs.
But until that day arrives, dismantling efforts to end years of discriminatory hiring practices against minorities, as this legislation would do, would “immediately kill all of the progress designed to help women, African-Americans and other minorities,” said U.S. Army retired Brig. Gen. Michael Rice, executive director of Citizens for a United Michigan.
His organization is spearheading opposition to the petition drive and is urging residents to not sign it.
“Discrimination still exists,” he said. “The other side believes either racism doesn’t exist or that it’s not important.”
The general’s argument is that we need to keep discriminating until discrimination ceases. To me, this sounds like a reprise of the argument with which the general may be familiar — that it was necessary to destroy villages in order to save them.
John, I have to thank you for pointing that out. Priceless.
I read Gen. Rice’s argument as we need to maintain institutionalized discrimination until noninstitutionalized discrimination ceases.
What is the Conservative solution, governmental or not, for ending noninstitutionalized discrimination? If the source of prejudice is an insular life experience, what options other than affirmative action are there to force integration and combat ignorance?
Nels, why is it the government’s job to end noninstitutionalized racism?
I think you’re getting into thought police territory here.
First, it is the belief of many that institutionalized discrimination contributes to non-institutionalized ddiscrimination.
Second, the idea that one must solve all of the world’s problems in one fell swoop in order to be entitled to solve a part of the problem is an absurd requirement that would end all human progress.
Even accepting the latter however, the argument to preserve race preferences fails if it can’t be shown they have a positive effect. The University of Michigan tried vainly, to the point of creating fictitious science and hiding the data for that science from the public, to prove this theoretical positive effect. The pscyhology professor that testified about this positive effect concealed from the Court the secret report her own husband co-authored saying that the positive and negative impacts of these policies presented such a mixture of positive and negative that he couldn’t say that “numerical diversity” had the impact they wanted it to have. When all else fails, just say it often enough and people will believe.
Of course, even a hypothetical positive impact could be outweighed by other overriding principles, but why get to that point. There is no evidence that preferences solve the non-institutional
racism you refer to.
As to what “conservatives” would do,
I’d point out that many conservatives have advocated for things like school vouchers, standards, etc. I wouldn’t call myself a “conservative,” but I’m for greater educational standards, accountability, and some kind of competition within the teaching ranks. On the other hand, even as I’d increase competition and accountability; I’d increase school funding as well, a liberal principle. But I wouldn’t do the latter without the former; otherwise we’re throwing the money down a hole. But it would be inappropriate to have that part of the debate mixed in with part about ending race preferences; because they are different political and philosophical issues.
Chetly, I’m sorry if I came across as implying that all those opposed to affirmative action are conservatives. An end to institutionalized discrimination coupled with increased funding for education is a course of action I can agree would work toward the goal of proportionate representation in higher education by racial minorities, though I prefer the approach of greater spending for education and other programs resulting in a natural, gradual decline in the necessity for race-based preferences.
My interest was in how an end to affirmative action paired with decreased government revenue could lead toward the goal of proportional representation.
“Institutional racism” is a constantly shifting, impossible to define target. I get the feeling that those who cite it do so just so that they can keep moving the goalposts.
I’ve never been able to figure out what it means, and I think that that is the point of its proponents.
Should we do away with love and marriage until human jealous is eradicated?
“a natural, gradual decline in the necessity for race-based preferences.”
That’s always been the theory, I think, starting with school desegregation in the 1970’s. Here we are almost 40 years later, and Justice O’Connor suggested we’ll need another 25. How do we measure the necessity for raced-based preferences, and who gets to say they aren’t needed? And even if the necessity declines, which it surely should have begun to do by now, that doesn’t mean that the preferences themselves will naturally decline. They’ll have to be deliberately taken down. Who gets to say when it’s time to do that?
As to noninstitutionalized racism: I heard a speaker on a self-described black radio station (that I have to listen to at work) complaining that the public school system is set up to give black school children the short end of the stick. Okay, in my city we have a black school superintendent, a majority black school board, a 90% black student body in the public schools, and mostly black principals and teachers. I would have loved to ask this guy who it is exactly that is systematically keeping down the black kids. I think this noninstitutionalized racism thing is so nebulous that it can and will always be invoked when needed to score a political point.
An end to institutionalized discrimination coupled with increased funding for education is a course of action I can agree would work toward the goal of proportionate representation in higher education by racial minorities, though I prefer the approach of greater spending for education and other programs
So, the solution to anything is spending more money. Well, Nels, there is no doubt about your liberal credentials. Do I become a better teacher if you pay me more? If so, they I guess you would also believe that we get better artists and musicians by paying them more.
Do you think students learn more if each one has a computer? I’ve been teaching for 25 years and I may just have a little insight into what good teaching is. Beyond the obvious basic need for facilities, the increased spending for education is counter-productive. The more money we spend on “educational equipment” the less real learning goes on.
By the way, since you obviously believe in the equality of the races, I assume that you would also support the goal of proportionate representation in sports. And since we obviously have not reached the goal of equality in sports, in the meantime we will need to hire a few (actually a great many!) affirmative action Caucasian basketball players.
Laura, I would say that with quotas set proportionate to the general population there would not need to be a subjective judgment of when to end affirmative action. As more students within racial minorities became capable of qualifying on the standard merits alone, fewer students would be admitted using race as a factor. When the quotas could be met without racial considerations, affirmative action would no longer be necessary.
Richard, I agree that spending money is not always the solution, but collectively paying artists and musicians more would raise production as it would allow more of them to continue in fields which interest them and for which they are trained, would encourage others to consider the study of art and music, thereby widening the pool of potential talent, and would increase self-worth through a validation of their choice of profession. These are my same arguments for increased funding for teachers.
I’m not an educator so I don’t know all the solutions for poor student performance, but reduced class size coupled with high quality teaching seems to me a logical start. This requires more teachers, which means more money, as well as better teachers, which means either additional training of existing employees or higher salaries/incentives to attract and retain the best people. And while I don’t believe a computer for each student is necessary, here in California we have schools which lack such basic “educational equipment” and services as textbooks, libraries, paper, and pens. One of the wealthiest states on a per capita basis, we have one of the worst public education systems in the country, largely attributable to 1978’s Proposition 13 which effectively capped local property taxes, the prime source of educational dollars, preventing government from increasing spending to respond to an explosion in enrollment (4.16 mil K-12 students in 1977 to a projected 6.07 mil this next year, a 46% jump). I don’t see how more money is not part of the solution.
but collectively paying artists and musicians more would raise production as it would allow more of them to continue in fields which interest them and for which they are trained, would encourage others to consider the study of art and music, thereby widening the pool of potential talent, and would increase self-worth through a validation of their choice of profession. These are my same arguments for increased funding for teachers.
Nels, this is priceless. If I had written these exact words, it would have been to satirize the Liberal point of view. However, you really do believe this nonsense, don’t you? How sad.
So as far as you are concerned art and music has nothing to do with talent? If we just pay artists and musicians high salaries, we will produce great art and music. All of those budding artists are just turned off by the lack of financial rewards so they all become bookkeepers.
Is there some reason that individual effort is not in your vocabulary? Do you not understand that self worth is an internal process? Do you think that if an artist is able to paint masterpieces, he will not think well of his talents unless he is paid well? I guess that is why we have a whole generation of so-called musicians who think they have talent because they make millions of dollars.
I clearly stated that it was necessary to provide basic levels or resources for education, so we do agree that schools should not be under funded. However, you have missed the point of my comment that simply raising their salaries does not produce good teachers.
Hear, hear
Richard, I probably explained my position poorly as nothing I meant to say is controversial. What I was trying to convey is that higher salaries for a particular job lead to more study in relevant fields, better quality applicants, greater retention of employees, increased pride in work, and more incentives to excel due to the raised competition for the job.
My company has about a dozen positions for artists. We pay them fairly well as we want to attract people with a high level of talent and experience, we want them to stay with the company, we want them to know that we value their work, and we want them to do their best for fear of losing their jobs. None of the artists would fill these positions voluntarily, and if we offered minimum wage we would attract only low-caliber employees with little incentive to work hard.
Nels, setting quotas makes an assumption that I don’t think is valid. Black Americans make up between 12 and 13 percent of the total population of this country. So you could say that, for example, when between 12 and 13 percent of pharmacists are black, then there’s no more need of AA in pharmacy school. That assumes that black people are exactly as likely to go after a pharmacy degree as white people are. I had a black co-worker who majored in biology over her mother’s dead body: she told her daughter to major in education, nursing, or social work, like all her sisters did, because “they” would not let her get anywhere in any other field; and she was shocked when my friend actually landed a job making good money. This is anecdotal but I’ve heard similar things elsewhere. It’s like, when schools drop their racial preferences, the number of minority students who APPLY for the programs decreases. They don’t give the schools a chance to accept them on their merits. I think that’s very sad. I guess you could reasonably call that sort of thing noninstitutionalized racism, but it’s an internalized racism. Quotas are not going to solve that problem. I also think that all the emphasis on the absolute necessity of maintaining racial preferences encourages black people to think they’ve got to have them because they just can’t compete with white people. It’s counterproductive to the society we want, in which people dare to dream big and to go after their dreams, and are limited only by their own ability and ambition.
And let me add, the students themselves, minority and otherwise, don’t know which minorities are admitted due to racial preferences and which would have been admitted anyway. This casts a shadow on the qualifications of every minority student in the program. It’s not fair, but there it is.
Institutional racism exists when it can’t be seen, felt, or smelled but you know it exists anyway and justifies discriminatory policies.
The problem with quotas and proportional representation in all fields is: what do you do once you’ve reached equilibrium? Once, say, African Americans reach the optimum percentage of pharmacists, say 13%, what do you tell the aspiring African American pharmacist? That, unfortunately, she will not be allowed to become a pharmacist, because so doing will cause Philipino Americans to be, *gasp*, underrepresented in the pharmacies of America?