What does amaze me, however, is that they are accusing her of being racially divisive:
But, what's especially interesting about reading Oprah's Web site is why some of those fans seem to be upset: the way she stumped for Obama, they say, seemed to pit white against black.
"I've been inspired to believe that a new vision is possible for America,"
Oprah said while on the stump with Obama in South Carolina. "Dr. King dreamed the dream, we get to vote that dream into reality."
Back on Oprah's Web site, one commenter wrote, "Winfrey has artfully begun her stump speeches alongside Obama with a negative racial tone."
And another commenter wrote, "Don't pit blacks against whites."
How Ms. Winfrey's comments could conceivably be called "a negative racial tone" or "pit[ting] blacks against whites" is literally beyond me, except so far as any mention of racial justice makes whites defensive and angry.
Oprah says she is "offended" by implications that she is supporting Obama due to his race. As she should be. It is offensive to assume that Black voters are so immature that they see nothing but skin color when casting their ballots. Obama is getting her vote because she thinks he is the best candidate for America -- the same reason most other voters choose their candidates.
20 comments:
If it were just about getting someone black, shouldn't she have been stumping for Alan Keyes all these years? Help a brotha out!
It is offensive to assume that Black voters are so immature that they see nothing but skin color when casting their ballots.
This article by a black author clearly indicates that many liberals and civil rights leaders do only see skin color as indicated by the tribulations that Clarence Thomas has gone through in which, in effect, he has been called a traitor to his race.
We are far from a race blind society and unfortunately policies of equal outcomes as opposed to equal processes will delay a race blind society.
Well, golly, nothing like a specific, sourced attribution like "Civil rights leaders will continue to brand him as a fake, inauthentic black man" to prove your point beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Incidentally, wouldn't it be more indicative of "only see[ing] skin color" if Black leaders supported Clarence Thomas despite the fact that he differs with them on virtually every substantive policy issue?
No.
Blacks leaders decide what you are supposed to think based on skin color. This is radically different from supporting his right to think differently no matter his skin color.
Blacks leaders decide what you are supposed to think based on skin color. This is radically different from supporting his right to think differently no matter his skin color.
That's a different claim. Your original was one of hyper-racial solidarity -- skin color is the only thing that matters (as PG noted in her original comment, that would imply that Oprah should have been stumping for Alan Keyes). The new claim is that you think the Black leadership is too restrictive in defining the contours of identity politics (I'd note, incidentally, that you have no proof that either Oprah specifically or the Black population at large engages in this). It's still a policy based disagreement, though -- it's not like these Black leaders like Scalia or Alito any more than they do Thomas -- they just have a "special" regard for the latter because he's one of their own.
But every group does this. I don't like Christian fundamentalists. But I particularly dislike the Jews who sell themselves out to be their allies (e.g., Dennis Prager). I will single out Prager for special opprobrium because I think he's turned against the group. Ditto for Jewish anti-Zionists. Group identity is intersubjectively defined -- members have a right to debate over what commitments are implied by group membership. No Jews for Jesus, for example. And it's also an open question as to whether the contours are too restrictive -- Orthodox Jews would argue I'm not a "real" Jew because I'm conservative. I'd argue back that I'm still very much a Jew.
The Black community is doing the same thing. It's defining Clarence Thomas:Black::Noam Chomsky:Jews. That's not facially illegitimate, and it has nothing to do with "only seeing skin color", any more than my annoyance with Chomsky is "only seeing Judaism."
There's also the de facto "black seat" on the Court on which Thomas's behind currently rests. I think Thomas is a serious intellectual and has done interesting work on the Court, but I continue to find it implausible that he was the most qualified candidate Bush I could find (any more than Harriet Miers, back when Bush II was trying to maintain a "female seat," was the best he could do). Back in the days of hardcore anti-Semitism, there also was a "Jewish seat" on the Court (Cardozo-Fortas); at one time there also was a "Catholic seat." Now the Court is made up of 5 Catholics, 2 Jews and 2 WASPs.
For the man who argued Brown v. Board to be replaced by a man who is pissed off that he benefited from affirmative action is a distinct annoyance for several black people.
It is clear that many civil rights leaders expect that blacks should follow the "party line" and that those who follow a different line is criticized as being anti-black. In the case of Thomas he is clearly pro-black but believes that the means of improvement is in effect the same as how the Jews did it - namely prove that they are capable without any assistance.
All too many black leaders and liberals want to dictate what people should think and if someone should think differently particularly in how a goal should be achieved then they are considered untermenchen. This has been seen in how Reagan and now Bush has been portrayed in various media as dumb, demented or as cowboys.
You may criticize these means as much as you want but the point of the matter is that both right and left often want similar goals but by different means. Civil rights leaders want to legislate equality of results, Thomas wants to ensure equality of process which in the long run is the only equality you can guarantee to any degree and in my opinion is the best means to achieve true equality.
(I haven't been able to read minds since I was placed on Thorazine so I can't comment on whether O is playing identity politics. But many other black and civil rights leaders have made such comments as I have noted above.)
The problem with your example of Jewish anti-Zionists and Chomsky is that they do not want the same goals as most Jews. They, in effect by their words and actions, want the destruction of Israel. You may not agree with Prager's policies or his approach or his approval of evangelical Christians who are especially supportive of Israel and Jews but his goals are not that much different from most Jews.
PG - To believe or to imply that there should be black or female or Jewish seats on SCOTUS is truly an indication of latent prejudice. Character is more important than color.
The problem with your example of Jewish anti-Zionists and Chomsky is that they do not want the same goals as most Jews. They, in effect by their words and actions, want the destruction of Israel. You may not agree with Prager's policies or his approach or his approval of evangelical Christians who are especially supportive of Israel and Jews but his goals are not that much different from most Jews.
That's an inane comment. Thomas does not want the same goals as most Blacks -- most Blacks want affirmative action preserved, diversity to be valued, and reparations (in some form) for slavery. Thomas opposes all of these things. Most Jews want a strong, secure Israel as a Jewish state. Noam Chomsky opposes these things. Most Jews also want a secular government and freedom from Christian socio-political and religious domination. Dennis Prager opposes all of those things. If it's just a higher level of abstraction, then you got to do it for everyone -- Thomas, like Chomsky and Prager, want a world in which their respective groups are treated fairly and equally in society. They just disagree with their cohorts on how to get there. You're cheating when you let one side abstract itself but hold the other to specifics.
In any event, Black leaders, like most other human beings, want people to agree with them, and when they don't, they use what influence they have to try and either a) get the dissident to change their mind or b) discredit the arguments they're making (and/or the person making them). That's totally legitimate -- indeed, it's the essence of a deliberative democracy, where we try and sway other people to our conception of the good. That the Black community (and the Jewish community, for that matter) have strong commitments which they argue for passionately is a point in its favor, not a strike against. Ultimately, both Blacks and Jews have a right to argue over what their collective political agenda should be, and the "leaders" have a further right to not agree with the people who disagree with them (natch!).
The goals that you mentioned are not goals. They are a means to an end. Affirmative action, valuing diversity, reparations are not the goals that black leaders or civil right leaders affirm which namely is a color blind society. The items you mentioned, to repeat myself are simply a means to an end.
The legitimate question is are these means the best way to achieve the goal of a color blind society?
If you read Prager and American history from the Puritans to the Revolution you would realize that it was the Christian socio-political beliefs and history and diversity that created American secular government and the First Amendment of the Constitution. I also recognize that a secular American can only survive with a strong moral base whose basis, in my opinion, must be Judeo-Christian.
And you are right in that most people want others to agree with them (though I've accused of enjoying the role of a devil's advocate - but then again I am not a political leader) and to disagree, sometimes politely sometimes violently, with those who oppose them. But my problems with many on the left includes blindness to the difference between ends and means and the ad hominem attacks so commonly used.
First of all, not every civil rights leader wants a "color-blind" world. I'm no leader, but I don't want a color-blind world. I want a multicultural world, where our difference is recognized, noted, and cherished -- and many civil rights leaders and other moral philosophers agree (see, e.g., Charles Taylor's "Politics of Recognition"). So right at the start you're collapsing the very distinction in worldviews at issue.
But the means/goals distinction is a false dichotomy anyway -- every "goal" is a "means" to a greater "goal," which is why I said the critical flaw in your argument was differing levels of abstraction. Black leaders pursue the "goal" of affirmative action as a "means" to the greater "goal" of a racially egalitarian society (not necessarily a color-blind one). Jews pursue the "goal" of a strong, healthy Israel as a "means" to a greater "goal" of safe, egalitarian world for Jews. Any goal can be stated at a high enough level of abstraction so that everyone agrees with it. Hence, if this discussion is to have any critical bite whatsoever, what matters is whether or not a given person is on-board with the immediate pragmatic agenda of the larger community (support for Israel's security and a secular public society for Jews, support for affirmative action and strong anti-discrimination laws for Blacks).
Finally, I'll try not to stray off topic on this, but there is no such thing as "Judeo-Christian" morality. Jews and Christians have radically different value systems (and moral/theological epistemologies). Hence, "Judeo-Christian" tends to be 100% Christian, with any Jewish component being purely accidental and easily jettisoned (I've seen everything from Christian prayer in school to nativity scenes described as part of the "Judeo-Christian" heritage. I never realized that the birth of Christ was so important to Jews until I read the Family Research Council). I have yet to see a description of "Judeo-Christian" anything that even gestures at Jewish moral or theological arguments on the topic at issue -- problematic when Jews break rather strongly with their Christian counterparts (abortion is the huge one, death penalty, recently gay rights, biblical interpretation). Anyone who's done even cursory study into Jewish theology or history knows that our value system can't fit neatly inside that developed by Christianity.
Indeed, the ideology of a unified "Judeo-Christian" ethos is, in my opinion, anti-Semitic for two reasons: 1) It implicitly adopts Christianity's supercessionist ideology, which holds that Christianity is the "completion" of Judaism and that Judaism, for its part, is an effectively dead religion with no ongoing, independent contributions. 2) By erasing Jewish experience from the polity (under the guise of including it), it silences actual Jewish contributions to our political discourse, because it is assumed we're already "spoken for" (rather than letting us speak for ourselves).
Hence why I dislike Prager -- he's engaging in a project that I think is fundamentally hostile to Judaism by contributing to the dissolution of an independent Jewish voice in favor of a fictive "Judeo-Christian" narrative. It's utterly bogus, way outside the Jewish tradition, and rejected by most Jews. We should be training fire on Prager and his allies for serving as tools for a political program that is corrosive for our people.
Cf. David Schraub, "Jews in Space," The Lens Magazine (Winter 2006).
With regards to civil rights leaders they cannot have it both ways. Ensuring a racially egalitarian society means enforcing discrimination. This is anything but promoting civil rights. Further it merely perpetuates the false story that blacks cannot success without the assistance of whites, particularly liberals, who are the enforcers. It infantilizes blacks.
The differences are anything but abstract, a term you are using to obscure the concrete differences between means and ends.
The problem with a multicultural world as presently pursued by the media and the left is that it makes equivalent all cultures and ignores barbarous beliefs and actions of lesser cultures while denigrating (am I allowed to use a word these days that is derived from the French word niger meaning black?) only the West. The problem is that multiculturalists don't know the difference between right and wrong.
But there is a Judeo-Christian morality and you can see this in the differences in how European (and unfortunately mainline Christian religions in America)Chritstianity respond to the Arab-Israeli conflict and even the conflict between Islam and the West as opposed to Evangelical Christians in America.
At present I live in a community that is a mix of Jews from Reconstructionists to Reform to Conservative to Orthodox. What I have found is that the most learned are the ones most likely to believe that America (unlike Europe) is based on Judeo-Christian principles. Unlike Islam which took and CHANGED THE NARRATIVE of both the Old and New Testaments, Christianity never denied the validity of the Old Testament while stating that a good number of the 613 commandments need to be changed. (Which ones depend on the sect which is why you have some Christian sects following some of the 613 commandments that others do not, perhaps the most noticeable are the Seventh Day Adventists having their Sabbath from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday ala Judaism.)
With regards to Prager he was raised Orthodox but I believe is no longer so (Conservative? Reform?) and thus falls into my observation that those who know more of the religious tenets of Judaism are more likely to align themselves with those Christians who acclaim the Judeo-Christian basis of America. This is in contrast with the cultural Jews with minimal knowledge of their religion beyond persecution.
With regards to civil rights leaders they cannot have it both ways. Ensuring a racially egalitarian society means enforcing discrimination. This is anything but promoting civil rights. Further it merely perpetuates the false story that blacks cannot success without the assistance of whites, particularly liberals, who are the enforcers. It infantilizes blacks.
That's your definition. I and many civil rights leaders have a different one -- one where a racially egalitarian society includes (in addition to anti-discrimination) distributional justice and a respect for pluralism. You can disagree with that, but what you're doing instead is trying to define away the very conception of the good life that's under contention. That's bogus. There's a debate here, but rather than having it you want to deny that it exists in favor of just asserting that Black leaders have gone insane.
The problem with a multicultural world as presently pursued by the media and the left is that it makes equivalent all cultures and ignores barbarous beliefs and actions of lesser cultures while denigrating (am I allowed to use a word these days that is derived from the French word niger meaning black?) only the West. The problem is that multiculturalists don't know the difference between right and wrong.
I will translate: Viciously caricatured multiculturalism is a terrible thing!
I will eat the inanimate object of your choice if you've read a single major scholarly work in the multiculturalist canon (someone at the level of Kimberle Williams Crenshaw), but I'm skeptical. No multiculturalist says that non-Western cultures are immune from criticism -- generally they are just as critical of non-Western cultures as they are of the West. Critics in the Multicultural tradition simply assert that we should approach societal problems (regardless of the society) from an internal, rather than external, vantage point (e.g., this post on reformulating Confucian doctrine to purge it of sexism). Multiculturalists are more likely than other people to situate analysis of evil actions (e.g., domestic abuse) within cultural contexts that nourish and sustain them.
PS: Don't bother answering that comment until you can provide a citation to an academic multiculturalist you've read. You have to know it's bogus to offer half-assed "critiques" of a whole intellectual movement if you haven't read any of its actual texts. If you want, I can offer some suggestions, but I am so sick of people lecturing me about what "multiculturalism" means when they have absolutely no exposure to it beyond mainstream parody.
What I have found is that the most learned are the ones most likely to believe that America (unlike Europe) is based on Judeo-Christian principles. Unlike Islam which took and CHANGED THE NARRATIVE of both the Old and New Testaments, Christianity never denied the validity of the Old Testament while stating that a good number of the 613 commandments need to be changed. (Which ones depend on the sect which is why you have some Christian sects following some of the 613 commandments that others do not, perhaps the most noticeable are the Seventh Day Adventists having their Sabbath from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday ala Judaism.)
1) Saying Christianity affirmed "the validity of the Old Testament" while changing a good portion of the 613 commandments is like saying X new religion "affirmed the validity of the New Testament" while rejecting Christ. It's kind of a big deal -- particularly when we're talking about a shared or differentiated moral/ethical paradigm. This is important: Jews don't believe Christians truly accept the validity of the Tanakh. If they did, they'd be Jews, not Christians.
2) If anything Christianity's treatment of the Tanakh (not the least, changing it's popular name to the "Old Testament") is worse than Islam just changing the story, because y'all appropriated the sucker. Jews don't even have control of our own sacred text anymore, because y'all decided to take it for yourself (plus and minus a few inconvenient passages you didn't want to deal with).
3) Even if I bought that Christianity was a natural off-shoot of Judaism in the year 50 C.E. or whatever, that doesn't tell us anything about their relative socio-political stances 2000 years later unless you assume that Judaism hasn't done anything theologically noteworthy over that time. Christians love making that assumption, because it plays into the aforementioned supercessionist ideology where Judaism is a dead religion post-Christ. But as it turns out, Judaism has been extremely active and vibrant in developing social and religious norms over the past 2000 years, and those norms (from the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, Mishnah, Responsa, etc.) are in no way shared with Christianity at all.
Distributional justice has already been tried and it failed. It is also known as communism. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
One major problem with this, among others, is who gets to decide what is justice and what should be distributed. Ultimately it creates a dictatorial system in which property is taken from one and given to another, but usually to those in power.
If this is what you believe in then you should not be upset if you do not get into a law school with a 177 on the LSAT if it means that minority students with 155 or less has taken all the seats in the schools you have applied to. After all you need to distribute justice and give reparations.
The debate as I see it is how to ensure a system, to the best of our abilities, that will be fair to all. In my opinion it is not one that guarantees any certain result but one that guarantees a fair process with clear rules that do not change in midstream.
With regards to your wager you clearly have an out with how you want to define "major" but I offer you this which discusses how female genital mutilation, excuse me, circumcision is becoming acceptable, and not just a debatable issue. The euphemisms of this author must be admired in which he calls mutilation "modification".
If this reaches your level of a major scholarly work (the last reference is from University of Chicago to which my son is applying and now I may have second thoughts on this otherwise fine institution) my choice of an inanimate object is a Twinkie. Besides being a good defense in a trial I was recently watching a cable program that showed how they are made. It was minimally interesting.
If you agree that FGM is modification and not mutilation (and you must keep in mind that FGM is a clitorectomy for which the equivalent for a male is a penectomy and not circumcision) then I'm afraid you have joined the group of multicultural relativists and have foregone right and wrong.
Finally with regards to Judeo-Christian morality you are most likely right in saying that if Christians truly accepted the Tanakh they would be Jews. But the point of the matter is that they accepted it with modifications or "revelations" that are present in the New Testament and the "voiding" of various laws (much like the non-Orthodox Jewish groups have done). This does not mean they have repudiated it as the foundation of Christianity. Islam on the other hand changed whole story lines such as Abraham sacrificing Ishmael and not Issac or Jesus living and not crucified. Islam does this primarily to undermine the religions of Jews and Christians.
Yes, chaver, Judaism has changed in over the past couple of millennia but so has Christianity. Of note were the Calvinists who disavowed the secessionist theology during the Reformation which carried over to the New World with the Puritans who saw themselves as Israelites entering Canaan. Has there been a lockstep between the two theologies with respect to all of its tenets? Not even Judaism has been in lockstep with itself. This argument is a straw man because no one is arguing the theologies are in lockstep or frozen but that they share the same base.
Communism and distributional justice are not the same thing. John Rawls, for example, was a proponent of distributional justice but a staunch critic of communism. They're vastly distinct concepts. Distributional justice has problems (who gets and how much) for sure, but so does not incorporating distributional justice (children starving on the street).
I support affirmative action because I think it a component of a merit-based system (see esp. Part II). I can imagine someone with a 155 LSAT score still being more qualified than I am for a law school, just as I can imagine myself being more qualified than someone with a 180 LSAT. And what's more, I can imagine me being respectively more and less qualified than those same people, depending on the school! It's so variable what each person has and what each school needs (and what each school can get from the applicant pool) that it's impossible to abstract merit the way you want me to. Operationally, schools that practice affirmative action don't end up with minorities "taking" all of the White guys spots (I just wrote an essay to Michigan on that precise topic) -- White guys still do just fine in an admissions context. I'm not worried.
Here's a hint on what counts as a "major scholarly work": a) it's published in a peer-reviewed journal or a university press (not the New York Times) and b) it's not a rough draft! And as to whether the author is a multiculturalist, here's another hint: if the author says in his title that he's operating from a "moral realist" school (Moral realism = the view in philosophy that there are objective moral values), that's a clue that the author might not even be a multiculturalist -- and certainly isn't a moral relativist (indeed, Shweder's article is cast as a moral realist response to the conservative moral relativist Judge Richard Posner). Oops. Twinkie's gonna have to wait.
As it happens, I've read literature in the MC community on FGM. By and large, their argument is that attacking FGM without situating it inside the cultural context it operates in is both patronizing and likely futile. Dr. Ahmadu's experience is actually illuminating here -- any strategy that wants to eliminate FGM will have to replace the initiation rite that it currently occupies. MCs have advocated "nicking" the clitoris (to draw blood but not excise it) as a replacement for the clitorectomy, which would be effectively akin to a male circumcision. And they suggest working inside the female dominated groups that perform FGMs to get the change operationalized.
Finally, if all "Judeo-Christian" means is that we have some shared base which we've admittedly deviated significantly from over the past 2000 years, its substantively meaningless. What's the "Judeo-Christian" belief on abortion? They seem to split rather drastically. Death Penalty? Gay Rights? Religious freedom? Economic justice? It's nonsense to even talk about it.
Theologically, I'm significantly more comfortable with Islam "changing the story" (which establishes it as a completely different religion) than Christianity's appropriation (which makes it try to supercede Judaism). Christianity ought to stand on it's own legs for once. If y'all want to say Christianity means no abortion, no gay rights, and whatever else is on your agenda, be my guest. But let my people make our own decisions on the topic.
PG - To believe or to imply that there should be black or female or Jewish seats on SCOTUS is truly an indication of latent prejudice. Character is more important than color.
How much does "character" have to do with being a good Supreme Court justice? Obviously one ought not be bribe-able nor nakedly putting policy preferences into place, but I don't really care if a justice cheats on her spouse, drinks heavily and is rude to her clerks, if she turns out good opinions. Justices aren't politicians.
I don't think there should be Jewish, Catholic, black or female seats on the Court. I also don't think there should be geographic seats on the Court -- yet back when only white males were allowed, that was part of the distribution scheme, to ensure representation from different sections of the country. That presidents think in these terms to ensure they don't offend particular groups, whether those groups are based in geography or in the kinds of identity you're capable of recognizing and decrying, is not only a historical but also a present-day fact.
I think you're missing the point. The point is that when a president presents a front of being attentive to the concerns of a particular group -- let's say Southerners who are suspicious of a Yankee president -- by appointing a judge who is from below the Mason-Dixon line, but whose thinking clearly is in lockstep with the Yankees and not at all with Southerners, those Southerners are understandably going to be annoyed that the president thought to put one over on them in this way.
Oh, and as for black leaders deciding what you're supposed to think based on color, why don't they decry all those white liberals like David who are supportive of policies that don't advantage him in the most obvious possible way? In Cycle Cyril's view of "black leaders," wouldn't David's color preclude him from the thoughts he expressed on this blog?
Distributive justice is communism as illustrated in this reference’s first line: “…the first relatively simple principle of distributive justice examined is strict egalitarianism, which advocates the allocation of equal material goods to all members of society.” Rawls modified this a bit but his modification would only justify the power elite to literally take all the wealth, and power of course, for itself as has happen in virtually all socialistic/communistic nations.
Affirmative Action is advancement regardless of merit. Arguments to the contrary, such as increasing diversity, are simply a ploy to skirt around the issue of meritless advancement. This is why blacks admitted to law schools via AA have a higher drop out rate and a lower rate of passing the bar examination. See here and here and here.
Yes, schools look at more than LSAT scores but I’m using that as a surrogate, and a fairly reliable one, regardless of its faults, for merit. And yes white guys do fine, as I’m sure you will do fine, but I was giving an example in the extreme wherein meritless groups are given a vastly enlarged number of seats displacing the meritorious.
As for Shweder I guess that a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association doesn’t count as scholarly. As for his “moral realist” belief in an “objective moral value” that is hard to swallow considering his defense of female genital mutilation, excuse me, modification.
With regards to attacking FGM within the cultural context this approach merely legitimizes FGM. If the British took this approach with regards to the slave trade out of West Africa it would still exist and the practice of suttee in India wherein widows immolate themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres would be burning bright. Cultures can change from internal causes but these tend to be slow and generational. Rapid change usually occurs only with external pressures and then it can only be partial. Saudi Arabia only outlawed slavery legally in about 1962 due to external pressures, but it remains active in that nation and even arrives here in the USA by adherents of Islam (though not exclusively by them).
Judaism and Christianity have changed in 2000+ years but the basis of the religions which includes objective right and wrong, of the Decalogue, of G-d as a rational actor who makes rules and doesn’t change them depending on his whim (however much we might). That doesn’t mean there’s agreement in everything nor needs there to be (another straw man argument). What is necessary is a mutual respect and acknowledgement of the basic agreements.
I cannot truly be a speaker for Christianity in any aspect and I have no agenda for it. But you misunderstand Calvinism, Puritanism and their offspring evangelical Christians, if you believe they are trying to supplant or supersede Judaism. They are believers in Genesis 12:3: “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee”. It is Islam, by changing the narrative of both the Old and New Testament, which is actively attempting to destroy and supersede both Judaism and Christianity in every land it rules. As a consequence, the Christian population of virtually every single Islamic nation is under attack and leaving or otherwise diminishing.
PG
I’m getting tired so I’ll make it brief.
Since you really don’t care if a justice cheats on her spouse or rude to her underlings, then I would imagine that when Clarence Thomas was accused of sexual harassment you were of the opinion to forego that accusation and focus on his judicial views.
You’re right in that politicians always like a “balance”, especially in a superficial fashion, in much of what they do in order to please as many people as possible. But this is harder to do these days because information is much more readily available.
And who doesn’t like followers of any stripe? The issue is not welcoming adherents but denouncing apostates who are deemed apostates based solely on skin color.
Cyril,
You really can't distinguish between behavior that generally is not governed by law, and workplace behavior that is outlawed by statute? (Sexual harassment violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964; just being an ass to everyone does not.) If we were a country that had a federal agency tasked with ensuring that everyone was sweet to their underlings, or that all spouses were faithful, I might think your argument made sense. However, in the absence of those agencies and in the existence of the EEOC -- which Thomas was running at the time he was alleged to have sexually harassed Hill -- I don't think you can plausibly claim that someone who will be charged with ensuring "equal justice under the law" has the same obligation to avoid merely being an unpleasant person (an adulterer, a jerk boss) that he does to obey the law on employment.
That conservatives were unable to grasp that Thomas was alleged to have violated the law, not merely to have been an annoying boss, indicates just how little respect they have for laws against employment discrimination.
As for Thomas's being singled out as an "apostate," he was the founder of the Black Student Union at his college and responded to minority recruitment programs for college and law school. I believe that he did have a sincere change in his views, but I also think that to a more skeptical observer, Thomas appears to have shifted his politics in order to appeal to white conservatives. He spent nearly his entire career working for Republican politicians, first Danforth and then Reagan. I suspect that for many black leaders, the charge is not one of apostasy -- i.e., a sincere change of belief. Rather, it's of selling out -- of turning his back on his former beliefs in order to obtain worldly advantage.
I'm not sure what's more annoying here: the constant argumentative strategy of "if I stretch every argument to the extreme, it'll be bad" (no kidding!), or the fundamental dishonesty in asserting that the "extreme" version of an argument is the only one available. I mean, did you seriously think I wouldn't click the link on Distributive Justice? The part where it follows your own quote with "John Rawls' alternative distributive principle, which he calls the Difference Principle, is then examined." And then the rest of the article, which gives seven more conceptions of distributive justice beyond strict egalitarianism and the difference principle? For serious?
I said I support Affirmative Action because I believe it is meritorious -- diverse institutions outperform homogeneous peers. Section II of my article provides the empirical and analytical evidence to back this up (empirically, e.g., Sommers 2006, Murphy et al 2007; analytically, e.g., Sunstein 1993, Young 1997, Posner 2003). Hence, contributing to diversity is a component of merit. I believe opposition to affirmative action represents a deviation from the merit principle, and stand on the opposite side accordingly. Yes, this doesn't hold if we replace 177 LSAT White kids with some random Latinos we round up on a bus, but that's never what actually happens -- once again, "extreme," not reality (FYI, it's hard to control for racism in bar passage and drop out rates, so those studies don't tell anything by themselves).
I feel like "published" a solid requirement for a "major scholarly work", but whatever. More perplexing is that you seem to think that anyone who disagrees with you on moral issues (i.e., Shweder) is necessarily a moral relativist. But Shweder's argument was that because moral facts are objective, we need strong evidence as when we are to go as far as saying something is "morally wrong", and there isn't evidence that we've universalized an anti-genital "modification" view, or that the "horrifying" editions of FGM are at all widespread, to justify the type of "overheated" rhetoric on the subject. I disagree with the conclusion, but that's not the point -- he's definitely operating from a realist school, not a relativist one.
You don't provide any proof that working inside cultural boundaries won't work (in fact, you tend to show the opposite by noting slavery was merely driven underground in Saudi Arabia), while I provided a pretty plausible methodology of solvency for eliminating FGM via creating alternative rite-of-passage rituals, so we'll move on there.
Finally, if evangelicals say that they don't view themselves as supercessionist (which I highly doubt, say, the Southern Baptist Convention would agree with), then my response is they have to practice what they preach (heh). No conversions of Jews (the SBC definitely doesn't agree with that). And since I think the rhetoric-as-applied of "Judeo-Christian" is itself supercessionist, they need to drop that too.
PG
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is an example of judicial activism which in my opinion needs to be avoided. The CRA of 1964 is silent on sexual harassment. It was not until Barnes v. Train 1974 that the issue was even brought to the Federal courts and then dealt with by the SCOTUS in Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson in 1986. Legislative action only took place in the 1990’s, after and partially due to Anita Hill’s accusations of harassment by Thomas during his confirmation hearings.
While I fully believe that sexual harassment is wrong the problem with such judicial activism is that you do not know in advance what the rules are that you need to follow. This is in effect an ex post facto law enacted by the judiciary.
This is not an excuse for harassment but an argument that people need to know the limits of laws before they act in order to be within the law. Judicial activism is a retrospective determination of such limits and unpredictable because it depends on the whims, ultimately, of nine justices who are unaccountable for their decisions.
As for Thomas violating the “law”, Hill’s accusation of harassment was for the years 1981 to 1983. One perhaps could make the argument that since the SCOTUS did not decide Meritor until 1986 there was no law to violate, only morality and whatever an articulate advocate can persuade an en banc of nine justices.
As for Thomas selling out “in order to obtain worldly advantage” this article clearly indicates that he sold out to the lowest bidder. If you eliminate his wife’s holdings he could be almost considered indigent. I imagine however his salary and his book earnings now put him in a comfortable range but he made his conservative turn years before and without any guarantee, let alone indication that it would be remunerated. . (This reminds me of the joke of the old Jewish man hit by a car while crossing the street. When asked by a good samaritan “are you comfortable?” he replies “Eh, I make a living.”) Anyway, it is clear that there was no selling out but a conscious decision of conscience.
David
The article I linked had more than distributive justice; it included libertarian beliefs for example. While some may say that the study of distributive justice includes examining multiple economic/political systems and how “justice” is distributed, for the most part discussions of distributive justice is really talking about, what one might call, redistributive justice. Essentially it is person A looking at person B and saying you are in need and we will have person C (the classic “Forgotten Man”) pay for your needs.
With regards to AA your article only has references to Sommers, Young and Posner. Of interest regarding Sommers article, while there was more discussion in mixed juries there was no significant differences in decisions. What does it mean? I don’t know. Also why didn’t he have all black juries? I think this is a significant deficiency in his methodology. But I would rather have a diversity of opinions rather than skin color in most endeavors. With regards to bar passage and drop out rates you seem to attribute these problematic issues to racism. Is this your answer to every deficiency of any group?
You’re hedging on FGM. You don’t like it but you’re not going to say it is wrong. Face it, you are here a multicultural relativist. As for Shweder, in this instance, I’m looking at his end result and not his process. And his end result is a relativistic result. (I would actually say it is a rationalization process rather than a reasoning process.)
Saudi Arabia and slavery driven underground (only from a Western perspective) is an example of Saudi PR and nothing more. The West is afraid to use any of its influence, let alone power, on the Saudis for obvious reasons. The recent commutation of 200 lashes of a woman raped was simply to quiet the Western media. Next time such a judgment is handed down I would not be surprised if it is not publicized. The inquiry on the raped woman’s lawyer continues.
Just because evangelicals believe in the “two covenant” does not mean they will not try to convert Jews. One does not preclude the other. If Jews were into it they might try proselytizing themselves. And in my opinion the term Judeo-Christian is an indication of the basic similarities of the two religions.
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