Friday, August 17, 2012

Against a New Apartheid....















The 1978 Bakke Decision had ostensibly ended the segregation of standards that some folks had tried to instill with Affirmative Action’s preferential policies throughout the 1970s.

After that decision outright quotas were legally banned, although through the 1980s and into the 1990s various apartheid-like schemes that sought to utilize racial preferences in lieu of quotas were challenged and scaled back.

Still, with each new challenge scaling back their uses, new schemes to utilize race to favor “protected races” at the expense of other races (most notably Asians and whites) came into play.

Much, if not ALL of this was/IS rooted in a “liberal” paternalism,” that sees blacks are innately incompetent and intellectually inferior and thus unable to compete with other races.

Moreover, this paternalism has no Party boundaries. The current lawsuit against the FDNY, for instance, was initiated by the G W Bush Department of Justice under then Attorney General Alberto Salazar.

In recent years all manner of Civil Service Entry level and promotion exams have been sued over “disparate impact” (differing outcomes between various ethnicities). In the case of the FDNY’s Entrance Exams, its written has been dumbed down to such a point (a 7th grade reading level) that it’s hardly a “test” any more.

Regardless, due to the significant “disparate impact” (more blacks do poorly than whites) the test has been sued.

BUT this is hardly an isolated example of this new apartheid. In Chicago, eleven Chicago police officers are suing the city over claims they were demoted from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s security detail simply because they aren't black.

According to published reports one Police commander told one of the plaintiffs that, "The color of your skin is your sin," when that plaintiff asked why he was being demoted and the black officers were not, according to the suit.

The suit, filed Monday (August 13th, 2012) in U.S. District Court in Illinois, contains some explosive accusations that the officers had their civil rights violated after Emanuel took office last year.

In another recent case, a federal jury ruled in favor of a former Las Vegas deputy fire chief Friday in his racial discrimination lawsuit against the city and his former supervisor.

According to that complaint filed in U.S. District Court, former fire deputy chief Ken Riddle had worked for the city of Las Vegas since 1978 and was fired in August 2006.

The jury found that his race was a "determinative factor" in his termination. Riddle, a white man, sued for damages, including lost income, employee benefits, emotional distress and mental anguish.

David Washington, a black man, was fire chief and Riddle's supervisor. The response filed by Washington and the city denied the charges.

Riddle's attorney Mary Chapman said the jury ruled in favor of Riddle and awarded him $365,000 in compensatory damages.

The jury also charged $25,000 in punitive damages against Washington, which according to Chapman, federal law only allows punitive damages to be awarded if malice is shown.

How much more proof do those who remain “undecided” about this issue need, before deciding that this IS about defending the principles of “Equality of Opportunity” (EVERYONE being judge by the SAME standards) and “Equality before the Law” (the very concept of “protected/favored groups violates this precept)?

This is not an area in which “reasonable people can agree to disagree,” this is about proponents of racial preferences INSISTING on an apartheid-like policy that discriminates against whites, Asians and puts high-quality applicants from ALL backgrounds at a distinct disadvantage.

It is imperative that all Americans of good faith and traditional values stand up to oppose this new apartheid, this modern-day segregation of standards, this misguided celebration of mediocrity.


JMK

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Paternalism Fuels “Racism”












Liberalism tends to see blacks as incompetents who can't possibly compete on an equal level and need paternalistic "help" from "enlightened white liberals" to get by.

That kind of paternalism is rooted in a confirmed sense of black inferiority. Those blacks who agree with white liberals on that are so beaten down and so convinced of their own innate inferiority that they gladly accept that liberal paternalism. It's really pretty sad.

A recent incident at UCLA’s Medical Program and a lawsuit by a physician there, Dr Christian Head has again brought that issue to the forefront. (SEE: http://wavenewspapers.com/opinion/article_b8035aa8-94ce-11e1-ac61-0019bb30f31a.html)

Without question, Dr. Head appears a very sympathetic figure, BUT....he has been unable to find the alleged slides he describes. (SEE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eMwYtycb_I&feature=share)

Even more problematic is that, according to University spokesman Phil Hampton, "The university "has investigated this matter and found that the evidence does not substantiate the claims of unlawful activity"...."Dr. Head was directed to take up the issues with the Academic Senate committee charged with resolving faculty allegations of mistreatment, and thus far he has declined to do so," Hampton continued.

So Dr. Head himself has refused to avail himself of the option of taking the matter up with the Academic Senate Committee, which doesn't bode well for Dr. Head's claims.

Worse still, is the fact that according to all involved, these "slide shows at the graduation events are typically a roast of faculty members."

Absent the plaintiff (that's Dr. Head) finding those slides, there seems to be little to no evidence supporting his claims.

I'm a DEMOCRAT. I've remained a lifelong Democrat, albeit a Conservative ("Zell Miller Democrat," for the most part) all my life.

However, I'm NOT a liberal. I far too much respect for the dignity and abilities of other people to ever endorse that kind of paternalism.

Race-based preferences are rooted in the view (promulgated primarily by liberal whites) that blacks cannot possibly compete on an equal level and will never improve based on their own efforts.

In the piece on Dr. Head, it's noted that just 3 African-Americans made it into UCLA's Medical program (a program of 200). I have very little doubt that IF all applicants were admitted purely based on grades and test scores there'd be even fewer blacks, somewhat less whites and more Asians in that program...that's just the way things tend to break down at this point.

What's the "liberal" solution?

Admitting blacks on a LOWER criteria...any black with a 3.0 GPA would be eligible for consideration.

Whites and Asians are (and would continue to be) only considered with a 3.75 GPAs or better.

THAT'S paternalism...rooted in the view that blacks will never be able to compete on an equal level. That's a very damning critique of blacks and those blacks who support such preferences ARE buying into that, whether they attempt to rationalize it in other ways or not.

One article on the Dr. Head lawsuit DID shed some additional light on Dr. Head's conflicts. "...Dr. Marilene Wang, a full professor who supervises Dr. Head, was dismissive of his qualifications and repeatedly referred to him as “an affirmative action hire” and “part of the university’s affirmative action program” in conversations with medical colleagues despite his training, awards and certification in his speciality...[Dr Head's] "lawsuit states that Dr. Wang said Dr. Head “and doctors like him — who are African-American, were the reason for failed hospitals like King Drew"....Wang reportedly issued Head nothing but negative supervisor and peer evaluations until the medical school’s dean, the late William F. Friedman, ordered her to stop in accordance with the 2004 Equal Employment Opportunity Resolution enacted after she called Head an “affirmative action hire.”
http://wavenewspapers.com/opinion/article_b8035aa8-94ce-11e1-ac61-0019bb30f31a.html

The most vital questions are, (1) DID Dr. Head get into that program under preferential (less competitive policies) and (2) Was his work under Dr Wang sub-par?

If so, then Dr. Wang is entirely justified in BOTH her opposition to such preferential policies that allow sub-standard students to become physicians and her antagonism toward Dr. Head.

Abigail Thernstrom correctly notes, "I think there's a running assumption through all of the writing on the left about racial issues that, were it not for racism, you would have random distribution of racial and ethnic groups in education, employment, contracting, elections — whatever you're looking at. But the notion of random distribution of blacks, Latinos, Jews, Armenians or whomever is absurd. It's indifferent to the reality of society. That's just not how people distribute themselves."

It's highly doubtful that Dr. Marilene Wang is motivated by any racial bigotry. In fact, generally the bigotry/racism between blacks and Asians seems largely one-sided, blacks exhibiting a pronounced bigotry toward Asians NOT the reverse.

Considering how the Trayvon Martin case seems to be unraveling, with new evidence and witness accounts that put the attack at Zimmerman's car, with Trayvon Martin as the initial aggressor, it's best not to take mere "charges" as gospel. We saw how tragically that worked out with "the Duke University Rape Hoax" back in '08.

How many people, including at least 30 instructors at Duke University initially supported those scurrilous and unfounded charges by the two “exotic dancers,” until those Duke students were ultimately were forced to prove their own innocence (which they DID) in violation of due process....and, in the end, taking both a rather generous settlement from Duke University, as well as D.A. Nifong's law license!

All of those tragedies were exacerbated by liberal paternalism that sees grievances were none actually exist.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

The Week That Disco Died










With the passing of Donna Summer (lung cancer) at 63 y/o and Robin Gibb (colon and live cancer) at 62 y/o (the 3rd of the 4 Gibb brothers to pass on) last week, the two most prominent sounds of the “Disco Era” (Donna Summer & The Bee Gees) were silenced forever.

I was not much of a Disco fan, but then again, I’ve always had two left feet, but the Disco Era was the first musical genre, followed by Punk and Grunge to move music from its hard rock center.

Until the mid to late 1970s, Rock & Roll seemed the be all, end all of contemporary music. Disco was the first genre to move away from that, with its pulsating dance beats.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s WKTU in New York was one of the popular FM radio stations in the Tri-State.

Disco’s reach was so great that it inspired its own backlash by the mid-1980s, the “Disco Sucks” movement.

But both Summer and the Gibb’s were able to move beyond Disco and flourish among dance music fans for decades after. In the Bee Gees case, their soft rock roots had showed their resilience prior to the Disco craze.

After the death of Maurice Gibb in 2003, Barry and Robin went on with the Bee Gee sound.

The passing of Donna Summer and Robin Gibb, doesn’t only represent the passing of a familiar sound, but it marks the passing of an age, especially for the Baby Boomers who came of age during the 1970s.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Slavery and the Spawning of the Age of Piracy


















History has a lot of lessons, but a primary one is that every incident or eventuality creates unintended and often unexpected opportunities.

The advent of the European slave trade was one example.

The Europeans were late comers to the slave trade, trailing the Arabs’ Zanzibar trade by a few Centuries.

Short shrift is given to the fact that the initial European slave trade involved the Irish and was part of Cromwell’s attempted and nearly successful extermination of that race.

Throughout the 17th Century, Ireland saw its population drop from 1.6 million to under 500,000 as England’s war against the Irish proceeded. Not disposed to pass up an opportunity, Cromwell’s forces saw the legions of homeless Irish, many of them women and children dispossessed in the wake of their husband’s and father’s death, were scooped up and shipped to the America’s as slaves NOT “indentured servants.”

Until the early 1700s there were far more Irish slaves in the America’s than there were Africans.

Debtors and others found in the workhouses were often plied with drink to get them to sign on to work onboard slave ships.

Large crews were necessary on the voyage to the Americas to reduce the possibility of any slave revolt, but few were needed on the return trip when the ships were laden with tobacco, sugar and other crops.

The slave-ship seamen’s lives were brutal and often short, as well.

While about 12% of the slaves died in passage from Africa to “The New World,” fully 21% of the crews did, as well. Many more of them were often left stranded penniless in the Americas when the ships returned to Europe. Many of those starved to death, since there was no work available in such slave-based economies.

The Captains of these ships were supreme rulers, in effect, “gods” to their men...their word was law.

Many delighted in inflicting brutal punishments on their crews, often keel-hauling (pulling a man’s body from stem to stern along the bottom of the ship by means of a rope and pulleys) or fastening iron bolts into the mouths of those who complained “too much.”

As luck would have it, this created a fertile opportunity for the new breed of pirates, who’d moved from the ranks of “official Privateers,” under the aegis of various governments, to independent “enemies of all mankind.”

These independent pirates constantly needed an infusion of manpower, given the violent and often short-lived nature of their work. Slave ships became a favorite target of pirates for exactly that reason – to “recruit” their crews.

Often the crews of such ships were more than happy to see their officers punished and often pirates would put such officers “on trial” before their crews.

Most crew members saw a much better chance of survival aboard a pirate ship than with the slave-ships they worked on, making them more than willing recruits.

That’s how Bart Roberts (the most successful pirate in history) was recruited into piracy. He was a reluctant 3rd Officer on a slave-ship attacked by the pirate Howell Davis’ crew.

They found themselves in need of a navigator and Roberts could read maps and navigate so his skill-set was valuable to the pirates.

When Captain Davis was killed in a battle a short while later, the crew appealed to the reluctant Roberts, a non-drinker and one who did not delight in the violence he’d been immersed in and he accepted.

Throughout the 18th Century the slave trade fueled the growing pirate menace until the Caribbean became an untenable pirates cove, from which neither American nor European ships were safe.

In that regard, the rise of independent piracy is a testament to unintended consequences and expanding variability.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Atheism and Agnosticism
















According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) atheism is the disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a god, while agnosticism is the view that the existence of anything beyond and behind the natural and material phenomena is unknown and (so far as can be judged) unknowable, and especially that a First Cause and an unseen world are subjects of which we know nothing.

People who don't take enough variables into account, often find themselves confusing the two. Occasionally, some "gnostic atheists" (those who believe "god does NOT exist") seek to include empirical agnostics into their midst by erroneously claiming "Agnosticism is a form of atheism and vice versa." THAT is patently UNTRUE.

Agnostics are empiricists who merely acknowledge that there are some things that appear humanly unknowable. They tend to hold this position because reason compels them to doubt the existence of any specific god/gods, yet they resist calling themselves atheists because they hold to that view tentatively.

Agnosticism is the position counter to Gnosticism - the belief that a human being can possess knowledge about a god. It's an epistemological term - about the possibility of knowledge in regard to 'god' claims - and not a statement about matters of belief. 'Agnostics' hold to the epistemological position that human beings can't actually know anything about something beyond nature, something theists call 'supernatural'. So they believe that there's no way for a human to know anything about a 'god' and there are many theists who agree with agnostics on that.

Theists can be agnostics, in fact, many theists say that they hold to their god belief on faith because they agree that we humans can't know things about the supernatural, or 'god'. Some very famous theologians have agreed that man is limited and that this means that man cannot have 'god knowledge". The list of theologians would include people like Martin Luther or Soren Kierkegaard.

It is this empirical doubt that separates agnostics from both Gnostics AND atheists, who, all too often imply that there is some (“scientific”) reason or some evidence to support the view “God does not exist,” whereas ALL empirical thought leads ONLY to the conclusion that “we DO NOT know.”

Friday, February 17, 2012

What is Expanding Variability?.....
















“Expanding Variability,” merely acknowledges the very real conundrum, that the MORE information/data we have, the MORE new (or previously unseen) variables/unknowns we find ourselves faced with. In other words, problems become more complex the closer we look at them.

More data uncovers more variables/unknowns. It DOESN'T create or generate new variables/unknowns, it merely brings into light variables/unknowns that were previously unseen or unconsidered.

This is why so many "experts" are wrong so often.

Most experts were good students and as students (especially in math and physics) we are often given problems that "assume a perfect vacuum," precisely to sidestep the thorny problems that an increasing number of unknowns poses.

UNFORTUNATELY, many such good students take such practices with them into the real world, where unknowns cannot simply be ignored.

But even when we look to take into account as many variables as we're aware of, the more data we input, the more new information we glean, the more variables/unknowns we come across.

it is this "Expanding Variability" that often presents us with the greatest obstacle to solving our problems. It inevitably leads to over-simplification and "sloppy thinking."

I will devote this blog to highlighting instances where expanding variability has stymied some of our "best and brightest" who've operated earnestly and out of "the best of intentions.