Category Archives: rights

Another Thought on Racism in Education

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Florida’s Department of Education has set race-based goals for its K-12 students (the Florida’s DoE Strategic Plan can be found here and here.  For reading, these goals are

  • Asian students: 90% reading at or above grade level
  • White students: 88% reading at or above grade level of white students,
  • Hispanic students: 81% reading at or above grade level
  • Black students: 74% reading at or above grade level
  • American Indian students: 82% at or above grade level

The math goals are

  • Asian students: 92% at or above grade level
  • White students: 86% at or above grade level
  • Hispanic students: 80% at or above grade level
  • Black students: 74% at or above grade level
  • American Indian students: 81% at or above grade level

These are not trivial differences.  Education Sector’s Director of Strategic Communications, Kristen Amundson, notes

I understand that this is recognition that students are beginning at different places—and that’s honest—but I think it is, at best, ill-advised to set different learning standards for students based on the color of their skin.

She’s being generous.  This is a blatantly racist program, and it harkens back to Woodrow Wilson’s paternalistic racism.  Some races, the Florida DoE seems to be suggesting, are just inherently inferior to others, and so they should not be held to the same standards.

Adding failure to injury, while this…policy…correctly recognizes that some groups of children start from different—lower—bases than others, it does absolutely nothing to correct those differences—which are educational, not innate capability.  Recognizing that these kids start out at different levels of preparation for school, and that much of these differences correlate with race (they also correlate with a host of socioeconomic factors—family income, family stability, and so on; these factors subsume race into them, so there’s a bit of double-counting here), makes for a useful start point.  But the Florida DoE is telling these kids that nothing will be done to help them finish school on a more-or-less equal footing with their peers.  “There’s no point in teaching you to do better.  You just can’t catch up.”

Yet the Florida School Board Association Executive Director, Dr Wayne Blanton, said this—and he was serious:

The message could have been portrayed a little clearer, but as far as racism, I see nothing in wanting to raise test scores that would be racist.  You’re trying to raise all test scores, not just in one particular group.

No, doctor, the message was portrayed quite clearly.  As clearly as your own disingenuousness.  No one is suggesting Florida is trying to raise test scores only in “one particular group.”  That’s just a cynical red herring.  What Florida is doing is providing drinking fountains, or bathrooms, to all groups—but some will be better maintained than others.

Racism in Student Selection

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Bill Powers, President of the University of Texas at Austin, put an op-ed into The Wall Street Journal in which he attempts to defend a particular version of “affirmative” action for admission to that university.  The case on which he commented is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which is before the Supreme Court this term.  In this case, a young woman was denied admission in favor of a less qualified black student because, she argues, she’s white.

The subtitle for Powers’ piece is this:

My university once kept blacks out.  Now at Texas we ensure that their grandchildren can enter.

But what he omitted to say there is that UTA once kept blacks out for purely racial reasons.  Now UTA “ensures that their grandchildren can enter” also on racial grounds.

Before I expand on that, though, a couple of smaller points.  Powers wrote,

UT finds itself back in court superficially for the same reason—considering race in admissions—but with just the opposite motivation.

No motive can justify racism.  Woodrow Wilson’s racism was for lofty motives—poor, inferior blacks needed the protections of segregation.  Nor do the basest of motives justify it, as the Jim Crow laws demonstrated.  Racism is…racist.

Powers also wrote

[T]he fiction that will be dispelled by Fisher is that minority students are being admitted at the expense of more-qualified white students.  There are no unqualified students admitted to UT[.]

This is nothing but a non sequitur.  Admitting less qualified students at the expense of more qualified students in no way implies that unqualified students are being admitted.  Nor is this the argument Ms Fisher is making: she’s averring that race played the role, not qualifications.

But from his flawed logic, as illustrated by these minor nits, flows the larger problem.  Powers made his case thusly:

[D]iversity isn’t only acceptable but desirable in all aspects of life, especially education.  In my 38 years in the classroom, I often have seen how a diverse classroom enriches discussion, provides valuable insights and offers a deeper learning experience.

And

[W]e employ an entirely holistic review in which race is one of many factors along with leadership, extracurricular activities, awards, work experience, family-income level and community service.

With this argument, he’s demonstrated the bankruptcy of his race-based (however diffuse) admission policy.  That breadth of diversity for which he seeks—leadership, extracurricular activities, awards, work experience, family-income level, and community service—already is wide.  Moreover, those last two, family income and community service (which carry within them the diversity of communities in which his applicants live, that income is earned, and that service is performed), are alone richly diverse, and they contain ethnicity and race within them.  With that broad diversity built into his selection paradigm, there’s no need to consider race separately.  Doing so is just separate but equal papered over.

What diversity actually would accomplish, were it not for Powers’ double counting of race in  it, would be to give all disadvantaged applicants equal opportunities for access, rather than giving superior access to those belonging to Powers’ favored race.  Giving preference to race—regardless of the strength of that preference—is to give preference to race.  There’s no amount of lipstick that can be smeared on this bigotry by those who should know better that can disguise that.

What’s Going On Here?

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US military members tend strongly to vote Republican.  Yet in election swing states, absentee ballot requests are shockingly low.  There are a couple of possibilities for why this is so: on the one hand, our soldiers and spouses, and those who support them, don’t care enough about voting in this year’s elections to request their ballots.  This is hard to credit.

On the other hand, they’re not getting the information they need to get their ballots so they can vote.  We know some things about this.  For instance, we know that the Joint Chiefs of Staff is not in the chain of command for our soldiers, but it is charged with providing the command chain with training, equipage, and support for the commanders’ soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines.

We also know that the Chairman of the JCS, General Martin Dempsey, is too busy hectoring ex-military and civilians for exercising their free speech rights to have any time left providing that support—which, among other matters, includes making it possible for our soldiers and spouses, and those who support them, to vote absentee.

Here’s how well he’s doing on soldiers’ absentee voting, and how will others specifically charged with the task are doing.  This table, taken from the Military Voter Protection Project‘s report, shows how far the numbers of requested absentee ballots have fallen from the numbers in 2008 (the complete report is available at the MVP Project link).

State

Total Requested
in 2008

Current
Requested
in 2012

Percent
Difference

Florida

121,395

65,173

-46%

Virginia

41,762

12,292

-70%

North Carolina

19,109

7,848

-59%

Illinois

9,858

3,532

-64%

Ohio

32,334

9,707

-70%

Alaska

13,766

6,535

-52%

Colorado

5,104

2,986

-41%

Nevada

4,919

1,750

-64%

We also know some other things about this shameful failure.  DoD spokeswoman Cmdr Leslie Hull-Ryde is insisting that 2012 is much different than 2008: the 2008 elections had contested primaries for both major parties, but this time only Republicans had a contested primary.  That’s their excuse, apparently: there must be primaries by both parties, else the Pentagon is relieved of its duty.  Hull-Ryde added, proudly,

We are in complete compliance with the law.  (The Federal Voting Assistance Program) strives to ensure that every absent military and overseas citizen voter has the tools and resources to receive, cast and return an absentee ballot and have it counted—regardless of who they vote for.

When I was on active duty in the USAF, such “meets standards” performance, noted on an Officer Efficiency Report or an Airman Proficiency Report, was the kiss of death to a career.  We were expected to do better than that.  Moreover, DoD was authorized $75 million for last year and this to set up the mechanisms—including those voting assistance offices—for getting this voting information to its service members.  Yet it has chosen not to, to any great extent, despite the fact that the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act requires them to.

Pam Mitchell, acting director of the FVAP, compounds the matter, bragging that there are over 220 voting assistance offices seat up worldwide, and claiming with a straight face,

I strongly believe that voting assistance is the best that it has ever been.

Never mind that she has a vested interest in downplaying this failure.  Never mind that the 220 offices of which she’s so proud is a trifling number compared to the thousands of locations around the world at which we have soldiers and spouses, and those who support them—or just soldiers and their support—stationed.  It seems the FVAP isn’t striving very hard.

Despite the Pentagon’s decision to fail [sic] on this, soldiers and spouses, and those who support them, can request absentee ballots at the MVP Project link above and at  the Heroes Vote Initiative Web site, http://heroesvote.org.

One more thing: think the military vote is too trivial to matter?  Aside from the utter immorality of depriving these men and women who are willing to sacrifice everything in order to protect us and our freedoms—including our right to vote—of their right to vote, think about the numbers involved.  Compare the present reduction in military votes cast (again, a segment of our population that tends strongly to vote Republican) with the closeness of past Presidential elections in Florida and other swing states, the 2008 Senatorial election in Minnesota, the gubernatorial elections in Washington, and so on.

Switzerland Giving up Its Tax Haven Status?

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Spiegel International Online has an article that discusses the possibility of Switzerland giving up a major portion of its banking secrecy laws under political pressure from the US and Germany.  Although the purpose of the article is to discuss the degree of importance (or lack) of the Swiss’ status as a tax haven to the Swiss economy, the discussion raises another question, immediately germane to our own economic condition, about tax havens generally.

Should we care if Switzerland remains a tax haven or gives that up?  If our own tax code weren’t so Byzantine, with such high rates, and with so many excused from taxes altogether (whether from the aggregate of subsidies, credits, exemptions, pick-a-loophole, or just from belonging to a protected class), Americans would have no need of tax havens.

If privacy is our concern, still we should be looking here at home, and reining in an overreaching government.  Sort of the kind of thing elections are for.

A Thought about Unions

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Perry Chiaramonte, of Fox News, noticed this bit a few days ago.

The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) was carrying signs and chanting slogans in front of the future site of the United Food and Commercial Workers federal credit union in downtown Pittston.

Because UFCW is using non-union labor for the construction of this future site.  The reasons for both the picketing and the use of non-union labor is made clear by the IUPAT’s spokesperson:

Bob Griffiths said he never expected a fellow union to bypass organized labor to save a buck.

Doesn’t a business improve its chances of succeeding—and of keeping its employees employed—by holding down its costs?

Griffiths also said, without any irony,

It’s about the principal, not losing the work[.]

Never mind that those who got the work would be out of work if the union took the job.  Never mind that, as Griffiths has already bragged, that job would be done at higher cost, which can only be passed on to the credit unions’ customers.  Never mind that those customers include union members.

I have to ask: are unions for the working stiff, generally, or just the chosen few?  Are businesses just jobs welfare programs for unions?