Sins of Omission

Steve Benen and Ed Brayton are crowing over a "modified" quote from Thomas Jefferson that appeared in President George W. Bush's 4th of July speech in Charlottesville. Here's Bush:

“The principles that Thomas Jefferson enshrined in the Declaration became the guiding principles of the new nation. And at every generation, Americans have rededicated themselves to the belief that all men are created equal, with the God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“Thomas Jefferson understood that these rights do not belong to Americans alone. They belong to all mankind. And he looked to the day when all people could secure them. On the 50th anniversary of America’s independence, Thomas Jefferson passed away. But before leaving this world, he explained that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were universal. In one of the final letters of his life, he wrote, ‘May it be to the world, what I believe it will be — to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all — the Signal of arousing men to burst the chains, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.’”

And here's the original of the quote he draws from:

“May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.” [emphasis added]

The bolded part was omitted.

Color me unimpressed. I understand the point Benen and Brayton are trying to make -- Jefferson was skeptical of organized religion and that's a fact that has been purged from "civilized" discourse -- but I don't think the omission was all that significant. Famous quotes are truncated all the time. So long as Bush didn't change the meaning of Jefferson's words (and I don't think he did), I have no problem.

Indeed, reading the quote in original form might have been a bigger blunder. The context Bush read it in was his standard refrain about hoping the whole world will become democratic. It's a vision that has never really stepped beyond the rhetorical for Bush, but the rhetoric does matter at least somewhat. And I have to say, given the primary arena in which we are seeking to promote democracy at the moment, I think it would be rather unwise to tie its rejection to "monkish ignorance and superstition."

Asian Plurality at TJ

The Thomas Jefferson High School of Science & Technology is one of the top public schools in the country. I'm familiar with them because they were in my high school debate league, and they were one of the few local programs that could run with my own school (a local, if not national, powerhouse). The students are sharp -- including the now-Rhodes Scholar I once beat in debate.

Anyway, the Washington Post reports that, for the first time, TJ will have a plurality of Asian students in its entering class. The article focuses on the continued lagging enrollment of Black and Latino students, but underneath that there is an intriguing subtext about how Whites are getting nervous now that "meritocracy" is leaving them in the minority:

Jenny Tsai, a recent Harvard University graduate, wrote her thesis about what she perceived as a growing sentiment that "too many Asians" were at top magnet schools. She attended the selective Hunter College High School in New York, where she sensed "a certain level of anxiety" as the portion of Asian American students in the entering class grew from less than a third to more than half between 1997 and 2003. Tsai said some students felt a need to justify their admission or their contributions.

"I don't think there was ever a question of who really belonged there until the numbers shifted," she said.

Scholars studying Asian-Americans in the United States have noted this dynamic before -- how White society has, to varying degrees, reworked what counts as merit to discount Asian accomplishments (one of the more popular being to dismiss test scores and math/science acumen as "mechanical", whereas White students supposedly demonstrate greater creativity and innovation).

In any event, I'm curious to see if and how the White pushback on this issue develops. It would be interesting if Whites suddenly develop an interest in racial equity as they are no longer the top performers along "traditional" scales of merit (or if they will show continued dexterity in changing the metrics to keep themselves safely ensconced on top).

Civil Rights Roundup: 07/07/08

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news

An inspiring story in the Boston Globe of a graduate of one of Boston's struggling public schools. The Globe also has the story of a teen mother from the same school who is heading off to college.

Chicago is bracing for challenges to its gun ban in the wake of the Supreme Court's Heller decision.

The Washington Post reports a new surge in law students studying immigration. Anecdotally, when I've asked folks attending law school what they want to study, immigration law has in fact been a surprisingly common response. Most of these folks are liberals -- I wonder if its a counter-mobilization to recent conservative demagoguery on the issue?

A new trend sweeping American states is to try and keep illegal immigrants out of college. Apparently, we're so blinded by rage in this issue that we actively want to make gang life the only salient option for these kids. I, for one, support meritocracy -- it's not like we have a surplus of smart people out there.

Immigration reform isn't being sunk because it offers amnesty. It's being sunk because it's being wrongly characterized as offering amnesty.

Wal-Mart lost another multi-million dollar lawsuit regarding its wages-and-hours practices. As Lindsay Beyerstein points out, though, the settlement amounts to less than $3.25 per violation.

Like Hilzoy, I have refrained from blogging on Sen. Jesse Helms death because it seems unseemly to speak ill of the dead. But also like Hilzoy, I am stunned at the degree to which the right is claiming Helms as an exemplar of their movement, given that he was -- how to put this gently? -- an unabashed force for evil in the world. Yet there they are. Jim Lindgren clearly protests too much. Also, it is amusing that in the wake of this out-pouring of admiration for a open-and-shut racist, Republicans will indeed probably attempt to reach out to Black voters once again -- and then wonder why they fail.

A discrimination lawsuit against the Minneapolis police force is moving forward after a Latino veteran of the force was turned down from a position with an elite anti-gang unit.

Pam's House Blend calls gay bars one of the "worst offenders" with regard to anti-trans discrimination. Yay, solidarity!

Wal-Mart blocks an HIV-prevention and testing awareness event to be held on its site under pressure from "pro-life" groups (Planned Parenthood was running the show). How life-affirming.

Geography Bee

From a CNN.com article on the potential boycott of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies:

Japan's Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda also said he would attend the opening ceremony despite concerns about human rights in China that prompted some other European leaders to boycott the event.

Some other European leaders? I know Japan is industrialized and rich and prosperous, but it remains quite comfortably in Asia as far as I'm aware of.

(The previous paragraphs were talking about the United States -- also not in Europe).

Sign of the Apocalypse

Spotted at the movies today: an advertisement for a Glenn Beck stand-up routine.

Lord, whatever we've done to deserve this, I repent with the depths of my soul.

Sign of the Apocalypse

Spotted at the movies today: an advertisement for a Glenn Beck stand-up routine.

Lord, whatever we've done to deserve this, I repent with the depths of my soul.

How To Teach Arabic

Responding to this WaPo op-ed by Joel Pollack (related to Noah?) on how Arab language courses are taught with an Arabist (and thus anti-Israel) slant, Matthew Yglesias mocking commends the Post for being "brave" and "speaking truth to weakness."

Given that in the United States there are virtually no outlets aside from major newspaper and magazines, broadcast and cable television networks, and hugely popular books in which pro-western or pro-Israel interpretations of Middle Eastern politics are available, it's absolutely vital that we eliminate this scourge of Arabism from our campuses.

I bit too nonchalant, I think. Certainly, some of Pollack's complaints seem rather trivial (the film about the Islamic scholar battling fundamentalist didn't mention that he had Jewish transcribers? Anti-semitism!), but I think Matt is misinterpreting how the Israeli/Arab conflict is presented on college campuses on at least a couple of levels (in part because I think Matt overestimates the pro-Israel bias in American society generally).

For starters, even if American society writ large is permeated with Zionist propaganda, that doesn't mean colleges are. We can debate whether being pro-Israel makes one an oppressed minority in American universities, but it is at least clear that the anti-Israel point of view gets plenty of airtime and representation in the collegiate context. And in my observation at Carleton, the folks who were most likely to take Arabic were the most likely to hold these (anti-Israel) views already. That's a generalization -- one of my friends who is essentially a fascist was also one of the first students in our Arabic program -- but it shouldn't surprise that folks interested in Arabic would be ones who already were sympathetic to the broad Arab outlook. You'd forgive me then, if I'm not thrilled about the next generation of critical middle eastern foreign service operatives are one's whose ideology in the region is anti-Israel from front-to-back.

The mistake boils down to the common and inaccurate (in general, but particularly in a college context) sense that Americans only hear the Israeli side of the story, that nobody ever thinks of the Palestinians, and that thus anything that portrays the "voice" of the Palestinian or Arab side -- no matter what the substantive content -- is a valuable addition to our moral and political development (and by extension, anything that gives the Israeli or Jewish side of the story is superfluous or extraneous).

Happy 5th!

I tried to write a post wishing everyone a happy 4th of July, but blogger was uncooperative. So happy 5th of July instead!

CNN has a a round-up of what various citizens define "patriotism" as, but for my money they could have just bought the rights to Eugene Robinson's column (H/T: PG). It's beautiful.

Interview With a Dean

Newly installed dean of newly created UC-Irvine law school Erwin Chemerinsky has an interesting interview about his thoughts on his new posting. I found it particularly interesting that the interviewer felt it necessary to comment on the reputation of UC-Irvine as a bastion of anti-Semitism with regards to American university campuses (Chemerinsky did not seem bothered).

Former Congo Leader Indicted for War Crimes

CNN has the story. Jean-Pierre Bemba, a warlord who ruled over a large swath of northeastern Congo, then became a vice-president in Congo's transitional government, was accused of leading a militia which used rape as a primary tactic of war while intervening in the Central African Republic.

I certainly hope the victims in the CAR see justice done in this case. But I also hope that Bemba's arrest causes no disturbance or instability in Congo's shaky but burgeoning democracy.

Love It or Love It

Conservative style patriotism, as put by Jonah Goldberg: it's a failure of patriotism if you didn't show respect to the American South in the 1920s. As Jonathan Chait remarks, if there was any time and place in America that deserved nothing but condecension and scorn, it was the quasi-oligarchical racist fiefdom that was the Jim Crow south.

It's true, as Matt Yglesias points out, that much Northern scorn towards the South at this time was not matched by a similar commitment to combat epidemic racism in their own communities. But that objectively just serves to further undermine the notion that this is a failure of patriotism: if all of America was at fault, then all of America needed to have its ass kicked into gear.

Quote of the Day

From the indomitable Poz:

The question of the proper scope of a constitutional theory connects with another much discussed issue, what level of generality of the framers' intentions should guide judges in interpreting the Constitution. If you ask what the intention behind the equal protection clause was, you will find that it was both to benefit blacks in some ways but not others and to promote an ideal of equality that may be inconsistent with aspects of the framers' more specific intention, which was to entitle blacks to civil but not social equality with whites. The choice of which intention to honor determines for example whether the Supreme Court was correct to outlaw racial segregation in public schools. But it is a question about the level of generality of intention behind a single clause. To pass beyond that to intentions concerning the Constitution as a whole, a sheaf of documents written at different times and covering a variety of discrete topics--to suppose it possible to extract a single unifying intention or theme from that sheaf--is to enter cloud-cuckoo-land. This is not disparage the holistic approach but to distinguish it from one that depends on the framers' intentions, whether broadly or narrowly construed. Yet it is a considerable demerit of the holistic approach, in the eyes of many legal professionals, that it cuts free from those intentions.

Richard A. Posner, Overcoming Law (Cambridge: Harvard UP 1995), 179.

Heaven Forbid We Listen To Reason

Jamie Kirchick...massive asshole. I love how he doesn't bother to note whether he thinks the "nutroots"* are even wrong on issues like the FISA bill. Calling them names is so much more fun than substantive engagement.

* I can concede that the netroots has been right on more issues than I have, before I came around -- namely, the Iraq War, and mistrust of Joe Lieberman. That's because I'm a mature human being who can admit a mistake. Kirchick is a child who thinks pugnaciousness can substitute for erudition. He is sadly mistaken. On the other hand, watching him get ripped to shreds whenever he accidentally crosses path with anyone intelligent is one of the blogosphere's great spectator sports.

Civil Rights Review: 07/03/08

Your morning roundup of civil rights and related news. The review will be off for July 4th, and will return to action Monday morning.

The NAACP has made its way to Utah to fight mortgage discrimination.

A Texas death row inmate's execution has been delayed again as he tries to get courts to consider DNA evidence that might prove his innocence.

Gender gaps persist in Houston's fire department -- particularly at the upper levels.

The Justice Department is looking at endorsing profiling by the FBI -- even when there is no individual suspicion of wrongdoing.

A Texas grand jury declined to indict a man who shot and killed two burglars who were robbing a neighbors home. The Houston Chronicle has a good editorial on the matter.

AlterNet reports on folks who are changing their middle name to "Hussein" to combat intolerance.

A lawsuit has forced the release of a detained legal immigrant who alleged that her health problems were received negligible attention from federal authorities. The government denies wrongdoing, but the NYT reports that they have instituted new reporting requirements regarding the deaths of immigrant detainees (this woman, thankfully, did not die -- though from the reports of her condition she came pretty close).

Shorter David Broder: There's no actual evidence that increased diversity is undermining American "identity". But since some conservatives said that was happening, I'll repeat all their talking points anyway.

This is a great example of a technically accurate headline that still probably was a poor choice: "Bushmen denied visas to build mud-huts in Va."

San Francisco has reversed its "sanctuary policy" for illegal immigrant children. The city remains adamant, however, that the young men and women are "victims" and alleges that many of them were effectively pressed into slavery by local gangs. "We have a duty to defend these kids, zealously," said Patricia Lee, manager of the public defender office for juvenile court.

A transgender woman was just found murdered in Memphis, the apex of "a string of hate crimes against the Memphis transgender community."

Quote of the Day

"I make no apologies for the view that the business of judging in constitutional fields is one of searching for the spirit of the constitution in terms of the present as well as the past, not the past alone." -- Judge John R. Brown, dissenting, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 270 F.2d 594. Judge Brown was one of the "5th Circuit Four" whose tireless efforts in the face of southern resistance to desegregation orders were instrumental in making the promise of Brown, and racial equality more generally, a reality in the American South.

Lead the Way

In the course of reporting on the single-dumbest non-scandal in this election cycle, the WaPo cites this argument coming out of the McCain camp for why his POW experience matters:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., rebutted Clark's claim by arguing that McCain's years as a prisoner of war and the mistreatment he endured made him uniquely qualified to lead the campaign in the Senate to ban the use of torture in the interrogation of detainees in the war on terror.

"Nobody could have taken the floor and spoken about detainee policy" the same way, Graham added.

That would be true, if McCain had actually taken the lead on this issue. In actuality, he's been nothing more than an enabler of America's torture regime.

Still on this issue, this Post editorial misses the point entirely. Is the media's focus on what really is a total side issue obnoxious? Yes. But what's more so is the media's utter inability to recognize that Clark didn't say anything wrong. By acting like this was an actual "attack" that the media should ignore because Clark's views are inconsequential, it implicitly defends its own bogus labeling of Clark's claim as unjustifiable in the first place.

Civil Rights Roundup: 07/02/08

Your morning roundup of civil rights and related news:

This is a frankly bizarre story of an unidentified White murder victim whose burial has been indefinitely delayed because the county is reluctant to bury her in a "Black" cemetery.

Redundant headline of the day: Judges rip Texas courts in death penalty case. At issue is the failure of Texas courts to even grant an oral hearing as to whether a convicted death row inmate is mentally retarded (and thus ineligible for execution). Three tests have placed his IQ below 70.

Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, claims he lacks the authority to turn over illegal immigrants to the feds.

A new push to encourage immigrants to become citizens and then vote. Civic engagement: it's a good thing.

America's torture regime: hand-copied from Chinese communists.

Civil rights saves: The rapper T.I. -- imprisoned on gun charges -- is now working with Atlanta mayor and civil rights hero Andrew Young (yes, I'm aware of the controversy around him) to help reduce gun violence. T.I. cites his exposure to the works of leading civil rights leaders as critical to his new focus.

Yay revisionist history! The Claremont Institute has a charming apologia attempting to rehabilitate the institutional right's stance on civil rights in the 60s. Incidentally, anyone who thinks the right was happy to support "Integration and black progress ... when they were the result of private actions like the boycotts of segregated buses or lunch counters" needs to have Will Herberg's "Who are the guilty ones?" article shoved in their face.

WaPo columnist Courtland Milloy urges Black civil rights leaders to get tougher in situations where the perpetrators as well as the victims lie in their own community (the example here being Prince George's County).

The NAACP's youngest ever leader is set to take office. It's a good move for the venerable but aging organization, which is losing ground to hipper new movements like Color of Change. I think the CoC does fantastic work, but we need every bit of cachet, reputation, history, and manpower we can get to win this fight.

Springfield News-Leader: "Even if there were no minority students in Springfield schools, the kids would need minority teachers."

We Are Fabulous

My boss wins "best dressed" at the American Constitution Society's 2008 National Convention.

Unger-neath the Cork Tree

Also interesting: this article on Roberto Unger -- one of the key figures in Critical Legal Studies -- in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Fun/demoralizing fact: at the age of 22 (i.e., my age), he was already an assistant professor at Harvard Law School.

At 22, I was already rejected by Harvard Law School. The parallels are astounding!

But it is a really neat article, and reinforces my somewhat dormant desire to actually read some of his work.

Empowerment?

A really good post at Feminist Law Profs exploring whether the rhetoric of "empowerment" really is the best feminist frame for dealing with questions of sexuality.

Civil Rights Roundup: 07/01/08

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news from around the country.

Here's a convoluted story: Eli Lilly and Co. will pay $64,400 to settle a lawsuit accusing the company of withholding severance pay to force a longtime employee to withdraw a discrimination charge.

Disgusting: Blacks given "ghetto" names in SoCal yearbook

It's heading to the courts: group sues to keep anti-affirmative action measure off the Arizona ballot. The group claims the signature-gatherer's pitch "led potential signers to believe it would further the cause of civil rights, in some cases saying it would actually preserve affirmative action."

Mississippians are celebrating Voter Registration Day at the Medgar Evans library. This being Mississippi, the focus of the event is on the state's recently expanded felon disenfranchisement law.

The charge of "judicial activism" is so frequently hurled from the right that it's easy to forget that it was once conservatives whose stranglehold on the judiciary was what blocked the democratic will from being achieved. With what appears to be an Democratic wave cresting, E.J. Dionne wonders if the judges appointed by Reagan/Bush/Bush will have the same effect in the years to come.

It's official: the evidence for holding some Gitmo detainees is comparable to something out of Lewis Carroll (writer of "Alice and Wonderland"). Of note: David B. Sentelle, one of the more high-profile conservative judges in the country, was on the panel (and in the majority).

Prone Position

Following up on yesterday's story about the Clark "questioning" McCain's military service:

Yes, I'm pissed the Obama capitulated. Yes, I think it's dumb politics as well as substantively wrong. Yes, I think this effectively sinks Clark's VP chances, which is a shame. And yes, I'm worried that this is the first salvo in the media's four month long cum shot over John McCain.

Incidentally, Clark is not backing down. Way to show more balls than a certain Illinois Senator.

Civil Rights Roundup: 06/30/08

One of the things I do for my job at the LCCR is help "clip" articles from around the country relating to civil rights and related areas each morning. The articles are saved into del.icio.us and come up in a feed on our website. So I figure: so long as I've got all this stuff in front of me, why not share it with you?

All this is to announce what I hope to be a daily feature (at least through this summer): Civil Rights Roundup -- a collection of news stories related to civil and minority rights, all in one easy location. I hope to have it up each morning by 11:00 AM, but it might be earlier or later depending on my schedule.

So, without further ado....

The Boston Globe has an op-ed urging the creation of more English language classes to assist immigrants attempting to assimilate. They report 14,000 names on the waiting list for state-sponsored English programs.

L.A. Judge OKs Cops' not Asking Crime Victims, Witnesses About Immigration Status

Researchers are looking into reports that subprime mortgages were targeted at minority communities.

In "Flag City, USA", it's tough for Obama to break through the swamp of rumors surrounding him.

Thomas Atkins, a key civil rights leader in Boston who became the cities first black at-large city councilor, has died at age 69.

From the AP: "A police officer who body-slammed an unarmed woman and broke her jaw during a medical call to a suburban restaurant last year was arrested by the FBI on Friday and charged with violating her civil rights."

Affirmative Action: Not a quota system, not judicial activism, not anti-meritocratic.

This is an interesting case: Authorities are investigating whether San Francisco is giving illegal immigrants taxpayer financed trips home -- without formally deporting them.

Reason #414 Why I Couldn't Do Electoral Politics

So General Wesley Clark, a decorated veteran, was on TV the other day talking about John McCain's qualifications for the Presidency. Namely, that in Clark's opinion, he doesn't have any.

"I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn't held executive responsibility," said Clark, a former NATO commander who campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.

"He hasn't been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn't seen what it's like when diplomats come in and say, I don't know whether we're going to be able to get this point through or not," Clark said.

So far, so good -- although I'm not sure that "qualifications" is the right frame for this. Generally, we hold being a US Senator to be a solid qualification for the Presidency. Clark's prior explanation for what he means -- that McCain is hinging his campaign on his unique background as a leader who's "been there" is better, and I guess qualifcations is a pithy way of talking about that. This is also is how he avoids that "Obama doesn't have it either" charge: Obama, Clark notes, isn't basing his campaign on his long background as a Washington leader. Obama's running a campaign based on his judgment and ideas.

But I digress.

[CBS' Bob] Schieffer noted that Obama did not have any of those experiences, nor had he "ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down."

"Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," Clark said.

In a statement released by the McCain campaign Sunday afternoon, retired Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith criticized Clark's comment.

"If Barack Obama wants to question John McCain's service to his country, he should have the guts to do it himself and not hide behind his campaign surrogates," Smith said.

"If he expects the American people to believe his pledges about a new kind of politics, Barack Obama has a responsibility to condemn these attacks."

Argh!

Look. 1) Clark is totally right here. McCain's service was absolutely, 100% honorable. He showed bravery and courage in an unimaginably difficult and harrowing situation. That is not the same thing as a presidential qualification -- particularly, again, under the lens Clark is talking about: the question of having executive responsibility. 2) This was self-evidently not a "questioning", much less an "attack", on "John McCain's service to his country." That's just a bullshit rendition of Clark's claim. Getting shotdown in Vietnam shows many things about a man, but it does not automatically qualify one for the Presidency. If that's now anti-veteran, there's no way to avoid it.

And I can't do electoral politics, because I can't handle the sort of mealy-mouthedness that might turn this into an actual story framed around "Obama surrogate attacks McCain."

The Exchange

CNN reports that Israel has agreed to a prisoner swap with Hezbollah, which hopefully will bring home two Israeli solidiers abducted by the terrorist group when it sparked the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon. Reports are sketchy, however, on whether the two solidiers are alive, and on the contours of the deal itself. CNN notes (accurately) that Hezbollah's top priority in these negotiations has always been to secure the release of Samir Kuntar, currently serving a life-sentence for the cold-blooded murder of an Israeli man and his 4-year old daughter. That this is Hezbollah's number one objective (they view him as a hero) is highly indicative of their continued rejectionist stance: bloody, illiberal, and properly banished from the realm of respectable politics.

As much as I want to see the kidnapped solidiers come home safely (assuming that even is on the table), I previously wrote that the release of Mr. Kuntar has be seen as a red-line. The sheer depravity of his act -- he shot the father to death before his daughter's eyes, then dashed her brains out with rocks -- is shocking even when cast against the entire history of the Israeli/Arab conflict. It is sickening, and the idea that this man will walk free again -- much less to a hero's reception -- is nauseating, not to mention, a banner around which those who thirst for continued terroristic violence will rally around.

As I have relayed in many other analogous contexts, it is ultimately Israel's choice as to how it wishes to mediate these tough choices. But if Mr. Kuntar is released, the global community must make it absolutely clear that the man now walking the street is not just a terrorist, but a uniquely sick and twisted individual who represents the worst in anti-Semitic and anti-Israel pathologies.

UPDATE: The WaPo version of the story reports that Mr. Kuntar will be released.

Joy

Happy hour menus that include delicious $2.00 hamburgers: greatest discovery of the summer.

Article of the Day

Caitlin Knowles Myers, A Cure for Discrimination? Affirmative Action and the Case of California's Proposition 209, 60 Ind. & Lab. Rel. Rev. 379 (April 2007)

[B]etween 1995 and 1999 the relative employment of minorities fell by 2.8 percentage points while non-participation rose by 2.9 percentage points. Similarly, between 1995 and 2000 relative employment fell by 1.8 percentage points and non-participation rose by 2.2 percentage points, and between 1995 and 2001 relative employment fell by 2.2 percentage points while non-participation rose by 2.0 percentage points. Breaking this down by group, between 1995 and 1999, the percentage point rise in relative non-participation was 2.9 for [*389] white women, 4.6 for black women, 5.2 for Hispanic women, and 6.8 for other men. This increase in non-participation accounts for nearly all of the decline in employment for all groups except black women, who also saw a drop in unemployment. Black and Hispanic men and "other" women do not exhibit statistically significant changes in labor force status between 1995 and 1999. The general trend continues through 2001, at which point there appears to have been a rise in non-participation for all minority groups save for "other" women, for whom the point estimates are similar to other groups but not significant, and black men, for whom non-participation fell. That there is little evidence of a negative impact on black men is in keeping with previous findings (for example, Holzer and Neumark 2000b) that in later years affirmative action had a greater impact on women, but it should also be noted that black men comprise the smallest of the six minority groups in the sample.
[…]

[*390]

As a whole, the results suggest that the impact of Proposition 209 was to move women and minorities from employment to out of the labor force. If, as the results indicate, the removal of affirmative action made it more difficult for women and minorities to find work, then this exit from the labor force is not surprising.” (388-90)

Interesting data. I do think, though, that the author is a bit too bold with her conclusions. She claims that her findings show one of the following: that a) affirmative action programs are inefficient, b) affirmative action is efficient but ineffective in fostering long-term changes in prejudicial attitudes, c) the sources of inequality are not based on prejudice, or d) that California had not had AA long enough for the long-term change in attitudes to take place.(395) And her rhetoric definitely seems to point towards her preference for hypothesis "c" or especially "a" (she is an economist after all).

For my part, I think a few other possibilities exist: that e) affirmative action is necessary but not sufficient to remedy prejudicial attitudes, or f) that bans on affirmative action prevent employers from considering some positive qualities possessed by potential employees of colors, making the system less efficient and structurally prejudicial. The last one is my preferred argument -- and intriguingly, it actually matches up with classical economics rather well, as those theorists would generally hold that regulating what type of information the market "can't notice" creates inefficiencies.

Look at Me!

Congress Introduces Bill Improving Access to the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Byline: David Schraub.

Working for the LCCR is fun!

Keeping Murder Maximum

My views on the death penalty might be described as the opposite of Feddie's: I don't have an inherent objection to it, but my observation on how it's applied in America makes me skeptical that it can ever be carried in a manner consistent with our standards of justice and due process. Certainly, it isn't being done so now, and so for the time being I don't support the death penalty as a general rule.

Thinking about child rape specifically (since the Supreme Court just outlawed the use of the death penalty in such cases), I think my intuition is the same: troubles with the death penalty as applied notwithstanding, I don't have any intrinsic reason why child rape is not worthy of capital punishment. But on that score, Matt Yglesias makes a good point:

You want to make it the case that no matter what terrible things a criminal has done, he would get an even worse penalty if he killed the victim/witness. Getting bogged down into a debate over the relative heinousness of various crimes is a bit of a red herring -- there's an internal logic to the deterrent system that requires murder to carry a unique and maximally severe penalty.

A good (if not necessarily constitutionally-manifest) point.

A Congressional First

At Pam's blog, Autumn Sandeen gives her reaction to the historic hearing by the House Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee on the topic of workplace discrimination against the transgendered -- the first hearing of its kind in Congressional history. The hearing was chaired by Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ), who recently attempted to unseat Senator Robert Torricelli in the state's Democratic primary -- running to Torricelli's right. Andrews still reportedly has his eyes on higher office in the Garden State, and this might be a way of repairing his reputation amongst mainline liberals. If so, this is a good start: I attended the hearing as well, and I can say that Rep. Andrews absolutely shined.

For the most part, though, my reactions were the same as Sandeen's. The main conservative witness, Glen Lavy of the Alliance Defense Fund, was surprisingly weak. I don't mean substantively -- obviously, there is nothing he could have said that would have persuaded me. But he was just not an impressive witness. He was inarticulate, he paused for long periods, and he looked utterly baffled (if not on the verge of tears) under cross-examination by Rep. Andrews -- questioning that, while tough, was hardly making unexpected points (how is this sort of discrimination different than that of race? Discriminating against veterans? Religious people? Lavy looked like the concept that one might believe bad things on religious grounds was a horrifying and earth-shattering revelation to him).

I also concur with Sandeen that the hearing's star witness was retired Army Colonel Diane Schroer. A former Special Forces operative and expert in counter-insurgency, Schroer went from getting a new job with the Congressional Research Service in her primary field of speciality, to being a "bad fit" for it, in the 24 hours in which she told her new boss she was transitioning from male to female. As a country, we simply cannot afford to lose unbelievably talented patriots like Col. Schroer, and she hit home with devastating effectiveness both the moral and social costs of maintaining our current discrimination-friendly environment.

It is worth noting, finally, that all the questioning in the hearing was done by Democrats save one -- Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the ranking minority member and my Congressman when I was registered at Carleton. Kudos to him for showing up, and also kudos for asking reasonable questions -- albeit to one of the two conservative witnesses. But none of the Republicans on the committee had the guts to tell any of the majority witnesses -- many who were transgendered themselves -- that their social exclusion was justified. That's telling -- though I suspect only of an eventual hypocrisy.

Oh, and the Traditional Values Coalition, ever the classy organization, distributed this press release (at the commitee, no less!): "Americans Face Energy Crisis While House Of Representatives Holds A She-Male Hearing!"

Yes, these are the folks that are vested with defending "family values."

Stigma as an Instrument of Protection

In the comments to this LGM post, folks are having fun noting the apparent inconsistency between how conservatives normally deal with the topic of rape ("It's largely a myth! Women want sex then cry 'rape' to avoid the consequences!"), and the discourse surrounding the Supreme Court's recently announced decision barring execution of child rapists (specifically, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's signing into law a bill which would castrate all sex offenders). One of the points raised by "Ugly in Pink" struck me in particular:

[J]uries will never want to convict anyone with this punishment in place out of either compassion or worry they've got the wrong guy. Rape convictions will plummet, and it won't effectively be a crime anymore unless you're forcibly raping a baby who wasn't too much of a slut. Which is exactly what they want.

Now, in all honesty, I don't think there's a huge contradiction in the child rape case particularly, because I don't think conservatives as a rule apply their standard rape apologia -- namely, the bitch really wanted it after all -- to children. But in general, I think this is a very insightful point, and gets at an interesting paradox in our discourse around certain horrible injustices -- namely, sometimes, the act of extreme stigmatization can actual help protect the unjust behavior from further reform.

One of the things I've noticed with regards to rape discourse is how so many people want to treat it differently from other violent crimes. Most of the reasons for this are rather bogus: it's no more he-said/she-said than many other legal problems courts deal with daily; there isn't a particularly strong incentive for women to lie about the crime being committed, and we don't display the same default cynicism towards accusers in other cases where the incentive to lie is far greater (insurance fraud for robbery and arson, for example). But one argument stands out: that the accusation of rape is so uniquely stigmatizing to the reputation of the accused that we must be extra-vigilent to guard against false reports.

And the premise -- that the accusation of rape is uniquely stigmatizing -- strikes me as surprisingly accurate. Despite the dearth of effort focused on providing justice to actual rape victims (not to mention prevention efforts), the abstract language we use is one of virulent condemnation -- as in Gov. Jindal's overwrought castration plan. But, far from being in tension with the anemic concrete protections for victims of rape, the stigmatizing rhetoric actually helps sustain a climate in which citizens are hesitant to take action. As Ugly in Pink says, raising the rhetorical heat to such high degrees makes jurors reluctant to convict, particularly when that means no choice but assigning draconian penalities.

Now one might say that these crimes are truly repugnant, and thus deserve the highest depths of our condemnation. And I'd agree. But consider another case: the controversy over so-called "gray rape." Many people, including many women, have been resistent to use the rape label (hence the "gray" appellation), specifically because they don't see what happened to them as being commesurate with the ultimate evil that is rape. The intense stigma attached to rape means that we are naturally hesitant to apply the label to all but the most extreme cases, and that has the effect of shielding a great number of violent sexual assaults from being brought to justice.

This plays into the previously blogged upon "just world" theorem, which basically describes the psychological preference (or need) most people have to believe the world is just. Given that constraint, it is impossible to believe that a given act X is a) horrifyingly, unforgivably evil and b) common and widespread. Despite Arendt's protest, we cannot truly believe that evil is that banal. The reconciliation comes by redefining X, usually by restricting it to a narrow enough band of cases so that it no longer can be seen as omnipresent.

In this way, extreme stigmatization of injustice acts as a ward for it. By virtue of our strident condemnations, we are simultaneously signaling that the events in question are abhorrent as well as aberrant. They are exceptions. They are so far beyond the ethical standards of society that they merit this extreme reaction. The implication is that the object in question cannot, by its very nature, incorporate any mainstream elements, for that would undermine the very lifeblood of the stigma.

Racism is another example of stigma operating to reify, rather than undermine, an oppressive force. Prior to the Civil Rights revolution, racist activities were common and widespread, but they were not considered to be evil. After the civil rights revolution, we began to come to terms with the magnitude of the injustice that racism represented. But to recognize that while still accounting for its pervasive presence in American society would force us to consider the possibility that our system might be fundamentally unjust ("to the bone", as Jerome McCristal Culp might have put it). Society can't function when the vast majority of persons are considered implicated in supreme evil. If I can't associate with a racist, and everyone is a racist, I can't associate with anyone. This state of affairs is untenable. So racism got redefined to only mean the most overt, shocking, horrifying aspects of White supremacy, and the rest gets a free pass.

How do we resolve this dilemma? I'm on the record as favoring lowering rhetorical heat in order to create space for more public action (in other words, I want to diminish the sentiment that all race-based wrongs, or (yes) all sex crimes, are "horrifyingly, unforgivably evil."). This doesn't mean that I believe nothing qualifies for fiery, virulent condemnation -- a lynch mob or a child rape certainly does. But if (and because) we do need to preserve our rhetorical cannons for those truly horrible events, that then impresses the need to develop a more vibrant, flexible vocabulary for discussing these sorts of wrongs. If "racism" is to mean "unforgivably evil", then we need words that describe racial injustice that do not have that connotation -- for there are acts of racial significance that are neither unforgivable nor justly ignored.

Reggie Love

Say it low and slow.

I saw that Senator Obama's bodyman (his Charlie, West Wing fans) is a man by the name of Reggie Love. And I thought, "could it be"? And yes, it is: the same Reggie Love who played both Basketball and Football at Duke only a few years ago.

Zizek on Contemporary Capitalism

It even flirts with readability! My favorite excerpt deals with what he calls the "four antagonisms" that are the primary threats to the viability of the dominant capitalist model in the coming future:

[T]he looming threat of ecological catastrophe; the inappropriateness of private property rights for so-called “intellectual property”; the socio-ethical implications of new techno-scientific developments (especially in biogenetics); and, last but not least, new forms of apartheid, in the form of new walls and slums.

The first three antagonisms concern the domains of what political theorists Michael Hardt and Toni Negri call “commons” — the shared substance of our social being whose privatization is a violent act that should be resisted with violent means, if necessary (violence against private property, that is).

The commons of external nature are threatened by pollution and exploitation (from oil to forests and natural habitat itself); the commons of internal nature (the biogenetic inheritance of humanity) are threatened by technological interference; and the commons of culture — the socialized forms of “cognitive” capital, primarily language, our means of communication and education, but also the shared infrastructure of public transport, electricity, post, etc. — are privatized for profit. (If Bill Gates were to be allowed a monopoly, we would have reached the absurd situation in which a private individual would have owned the software texture of our basic network of communication.)

The slum-dwellers, by contrast, he casts as the outsiders to the political community that prevent us from softening the edges of the other three antagonisms by personal action. The slum-dwellers live in an effectively extra-legal position: shorn of effective police and fire protection, beset by crime, outside the "official" economy, and deprived of health and social security protection. Their position is a constant threat to the capitalist order, and can thus act as a catalyst to prevent orderly resolution of the other three.

* I should clarify that I don't necessarily agree with Zizek, but he is an important and interesting writer whose ideas are worth chewing over, no matter how radical they might seem.

Bust It Up

Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) have announced they will filibuster the retroactive-immunity FISA "compromise" bill. Good for them. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has announced his support for the move, so good for him as well.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also is apparently supporting the filibuster "from afar", but she already had her chance to derail the bill, so no good for her.

Brother Outsider

Remarking on Karl Rove's ludicrous description of Barack Obama in terms of what type of country-club member he is, Christopher Orr remarks that "On the plus side, this presumably means Rove is giving up on the whole radical-Muslim-foreigner-outsider frame."

I understand that Orr is being a little tongue-in-cheek, but this is most certainly not what is going on here. Orr is making a mistake in assuming that either frame -- Obama as haughty country-clubber or Obama as scary dark outsider -- is intended to operate as a logical argument. Far from it. They are designed to plant seeds (or exploit latent seeds) about whether Obama is truly one of "us", as opposed to "them" -- and for that purpose it really doesn't matter who "they" are.

While the country-club set may be the ultimate insiders in one sense, they are certainly far removed from the experience of average Americans. To most voters, they are part of a "they" that are distant and mistrusted -- folks we don't want to have in charge of our government. And of course, scary dark hordes of foreigners occupy the same position: distant, inscrutable, and (in the eyes of conservative demagogues like Rove) always on the cusp of wresting control of the nation from good ol' patriotic Americans. It's obviously illogical for Obama to be both barely American and a member of the blue-bloods, but putting both those frames out there is quite effective at reinforcing a vague sense of "otherness", and Rove is savvy enough to know that.

The Other Catastrophe

The Jerusalem Post compares the decimation of the Jewish population in the Arab World to the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians by Israel. As the author writes, if Israel is to be considered part of the category, it "is perhaps the least efficient "ethnic cleanser" in the history of mankind." The Arab/Palestinian population in what comprised the territorial mandate of Palestine is currently 5 million, from a 1947 level of less than 800,000. The Jewish population in the Arab World, by contrast, crashed from close to 900,000 in 1947 to less than 7,000 as of 2001.

Leaving a Mess

Bill Kristol thinks that, if Obama is elected, President Bush will might leave a "mess" for him in Iran. If McCain is the President-elect, Bush may be willing to leave the situation to the incoming President to address, but he might want to force Obama's hand in a more belligerent direction.

The most generous way to interpret this is that Bush is so certain that Obama's strategy on Iran will be inadvisable that he won't even give him a chance to play it out. Whether or not that sentiment is justified (I, obviously, think it is misguided), I think it is at least intermingled with the political gamesmanship and (let's call a spade a spade) spite that has characterized how President Bush has combined partisan politics and national security throughout his administration.

LCCR

I start work tomorrow here -- the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Blogging will probably be sporadic until I can figure out how it works with my schedule.

Also, needless to say, any blogging I do engage in is solely my own opinion, and not that of the LCCR.

Ridge for VP?

CNN reports that former Pennsylvania Governor and head of the Department of Homeland Security Tom Ridge would consider being a VP if asked by the McCain campaign. The article focuses on Ridge's pro-choice stance as the primary stumbling block with GOP voters. But my thoughts more run along the lines of: "wasn't he a catastrophe as head of the DHS?" Now, this could be mistaken. I could be confusing him with other Bush administration appointees (incompetence is a pretty widely shared character trait, so it's a solid bet). I could be over-estimating the degree to which incompetence is a bar to GOP voters (likely). But still, it strikes me as not the wisest choice available to McCain (personally, I think Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is the best choice -- I'm not even sure what his downside is supposed to be).

What Are Dreams Worth?

This story through Feministe, about a teacher in inner-city LA fired for being too encouraging of political activism amongst her students, is interesting to me. Dyed-in-the-wool leftist I may be, but that does not make me comfortable with every manifestation of leftism. There are some things this teacher did which I think are fine and/or beneficial. I have no problem with afro-centric curricula. I certainly have no problem with the poetry of Langston Hughes (my hyper-White suburban high school taught Hughes, for crying out loud), or the autobiography of Malcolm X (one of the most important figures in 20th century American history).

And there are things that make me uncomfortable as well. The video the students created in support of the teacher, for example (it's on the Feministe post) -- where they refer to each other as comrades? That rang the wrong way with me. The Intifada poster? Obviously I'm not thrilled. In general, the type of leftism she seems to be encouraging is not the type that is to my liking, and I'd be lying if I said otherwise. So it does not surprise me that the LA school district is even less happy about it than I am.

But there was something else in that video that was worth mentioning. The part where the kids said that this teacher had made them believe they could do anything. That they could attend top four-year colleges. That they could become doctors and lawyers. It was a message, they said, that was being given by far too few educators at their school. And if that's the case, and this teacher is inspiring these kids to look beyond themselves and beyond their surroundings, I can deal with being made a little uncomfortable. It is well, well worth it.

Lots of people go through a radical left stage. A great many of the big conservative intellectuals of the 20th century spent time as communist or socialist sympathizers. Spending time as a leftist is not the worst thing in the world, no matter what your opinion of the politics. These kids are, if nothing else, engaged in the type of civic activism that is precisely what we want to see in our American democratic project. Particularly in the inner-cities, a more engaged, civic-minded citizenry is the first step to reform. People who care about their education, who care about their surroundings, and are willing to take on the bureaucracy to get what they think they need.

Any teacher who can inculcate those values, in my book, is a teacher who deserves to stay.

Paradise Lost

So when I said yesterday that I got the internet working, what I meant was it working solely last night before ceasing for no apparent reason. My girlfriend's computer works fine, of course.

Vista deserves to burn in hells of a thousand suns, I assure you.

Internet Back

After a grueling battle over the past week, the internet at my new apartment appears to be online (ha!) and ready to go. Tragically, I'm starting a new job Monday and going to bed now, so new obstacles to blogging rise apace. But Sunday looks pretty good. Except that it's Sunday.

Keeping the Ex

Megan McArdle has a really great post up on the economics of hiring ex-convicts, and how we can restructure our system to make it easier. If we want ex-convicts to stay "ex-", we need to offer them some prospect of legitimate employment after their conviction. At the moment, that's basically impossible, making criminality the rational response. That's fine if you're okay with the status quo affecting many urban men: "catch-imprison-release-catch again", where the externalities fall nearly exclusively upon "certain" communities not-us. But if we want to actually do more than than watch from the sidelines as urban communities wither, rot, and die, then we need to start looking for ways to open up the current deadland of opportunity -- even for those who, like most of us, have made some mistakes in life.

The post was done at the request of Ta-Nehisi Coates, a liberal Black male blogger who is rapidly becoming one of my favorites. He wanted a differing perspective on the topic, so he enlisted McArdle, a libertarian-leaning conservative. McArdle's ideas are certainly tinged with that philosophy, but each one of her suggestions would be something I could endorse without hesitation. Most importantly, she is cognizant of the "the moral dimension" of the issue:

I don't know about you, but I've made a fair number of spectacular moral and economic mistakes in my life. Middle class kids, though, have margin for error. It's all very well to talk about how poor kids could pull themselves out of it if they did X, Y and Z, and I happen to believe that this is correct. The problem is that the first slip a poor kid makes is usually his last--as John Scalzi said, "Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old."

McArdle's suggestions are what happens when you pursue integrated social discourse with an eye towards solving problems, not burying people who feel too problematic for us to handle. McArdle's views on the world are different from mine. But she pursues the issues in good faith, with an eye towards actually fixing the problem. That type of contribution is always welcome, regardless of political persuasion.

Look Who's Talking

Ta-Nehisi Coates is frustrated with how Barack Obama's Father's Day speech is being covered. Not because the speech was bad, or the message was wrong. Rather, because its as if Obama is the only person talking about the need for fathers to take responsibility in Black America, and that's just false:

Barack Obama is basically touting a message that you will hear coming from any serious black person in any black community. Louis Farrakhan was saying this shit thirteen years ago, but I didn't hear anything about Louis Farrakhan offering "a strong rebuke" to absent black fathers. That's because this isn't really about black fathers, or black families. It's about Barack giving voice to white frustration. That's not a reason for Barack not to say what he's saying. He did it in front of a black crowd, and it was the right thing to say. But reporters need to stop acting like this dude is the only civilized black man in the world.

In my book review of the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, I noted how many Whites seemed perfectly willing to make assumptions about "what Black people think" without even the slightest engagement with Black people. At the very least, one needs to be reading Black political writers, but, as Coates writes in a different post, even that is incomplete exposure because it only gathers the political outlook of a particular class of Blacks (those who "think for a living" versus "work for a living"). In a segregated society such as ours, Whites and Blacks by and large to not engage in mutual deliberation together, and there are few opportunities for Whites to garner reliable knowledge about the (various!) thought-processes and value metrics held by the Black community. This effects Black perceptions of Whites as well, but not to as intense a degree, just because the presence of Whites and White culture on the mainstream media makes up for far more of the gap (particularly in showcasing the pluralism of perspectives Whites hold. Nobody will mistake Spike TV as the be-all-end-all of White culture, but I know many Whites who would make that mistake about BET).

George Yancy argues, "whiteness admits of no ignorance vis-à-vis the black. Hence, there is no need for white silence, a moment of quietude that encourages listening to the black." This, perhaps more than anything, is what grates me about the manner in which racial conversation plays out in America. "Whites admit no ignorance of the Black." We assume knowledge we do not have. We fill in these gaps with stereotypes and prejudice, not empirically crafted evidence, not even (usually) personal experience. Mark Olson's rant about how much poor urban parents suck -- backed up by literally no evidence, no consideration of their situation, no proof that they neglect any of the things he says they neglect (even breakfast, his "slam-dunk"), nor that they are even capable of providing the things he wants them to provide (what if they are working at breakfast time?) is proof of this. Mark does not feel the need to engage with the Black or urban community at all along any of these fronts. Indeed, he's actively resistant to the prospect of this sort of integrated deliberation. He would rather assume than know, and in fact substitutes assumption for knowledge. In his worldview, the perspective of Black people on Black values is irrelevant information -- extraneous (after all -- we have perfectly credible White people talking. Who needs Blacks?). It's viciously dehumanizing.

In order to be a productive contributor to a topic, you have to know of what you speak. I know nothing of physics. I do not blog on it -- or if I do, I'm deferential to actual physicists. If White people want to talk about Blacks, they have to look at what Black themselves say. Read Black writers, study Black philosophers, and engage in the part of the Black community that is neither writer nor philosopher, but (like most Whites) just "works for a living."

If you're not willing to do that, you haven't earned your right to speak.

Hating America

Last year, I wrote a post asking whether or not people would have thought it morally justified for Blacks in 1856 to engage in a full-on revolution in America, violently marching on Washington and overthrowing the government. Most people, somewhat to my surprise, agreed that it would have been.

In my post yesterday on the detainee rights ruling, I noted that -- in response to reports that some released Guanatamo detainees had committed acts of violence against American troops -- it's entirely possible that they were radicalized by their time in American detention. Limitless, lawless detention mixed with torture does tend to have that effect, as countless authoritarian dictatorships can testify.

So off of that, my question for today is: what would have to happen for us to say that an individual person is justified in "hating America", to take up arms against her and seek to ruination (the same way an Iraqi might have rebelled against the Hussein regime)? It seems to me that detaining and torturing someone in an isolated, extra-legal prison with no legal proceedings or due process rights would easily cross that threshold, such that, even if I had no particularly negative feelings towards America prior to the ordeal, I'd sure have some rage at the country afterwards.

The type of activities we engaged in when we authorize these detentions and allow for this torture, these are terrorist methods. They are the sort of things that are worthy of hate. Which means that when we sanction them, we are rendering ourselves worthy of hate. It is terrifying to me to watch as so many in my country -- people who claim to be patriots -- want to make America into an object deserving of contempt and rage.

Counter-Insurgency

Barack Obama should fight rumors with rumors.

Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD)

Congratulations to now-Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), who just became the first Black woman elected to Maryland's congressional delegation out of the 4th District. Edwards narrowly lost a 2006 primary challenge to then-incumbent Albert Wynn (D), who was widely criticized for being too conservative and too tied to lobbyists for this deep-blue district. But she came back this year to blow Wynn out by 22 points. After Wynn resigned his seat, Edwards won a special election by 63 points (said her Republican opponent: "A lot of people thought she was the congresswoman already -- there's been a lot of that" -- ah, the fruits of Democratic Primary victory in Maryland).

Edwards is a good woman, and will make a great addition to Maryland's Congressional delegation. Welcome aboard!

Today in Old

Fresh off the heels of graduation, I received notice that another friend of mine was getting married. Specifically, my first girlfriend (back in Middle School -- so a lot of hand-holding, and very little else. But we did go on a date). So while congratulations to her, weird and a bit terrifying to me.

Vote Yes

Over at the Washington Monthly, there is an ad on the sidebar asking "Is it OK to unconditionally meet with anti-American foreign leaders? (Yes/No)" I thought it sounded a little pushy, and sure enough, at the bottom it says its paid for by the McCain campaign. Fantastic targeted advertising, that is -- Kevin Drum's audience is quite swingable, I'd wager.

I tried clicking "yes" in the hopes that it'd send me to a site criticizing me for hating America or whatever, but it appears to link to the same "Donate to McCain" page that clicking "no" does. I guess McCain is as willing to take money from appeasors as he is taking money from those who compare rape to bad weather.

More On the Texas GOP

I wouldn't quite say this tops the contribution noted in my last post, but Cogitamus has some more lovely outcroppings of the Texas GOP Convention:



UPDATE: The Texas GOP has distanced itself from the vendor selling the button and, more importantly (taking a page out of the not-John McCain book) has donated the rent it collected from the company to midwest flood victims.

Big John!

Scariest movie ever. It doesn't help that John Cornyn is one of the more despicable men in the US Senate (pro-torture, "explainer" of violence against judges (it's because of "activism"), and fan of arresting Black people en masse).

I particularly love am terrified by the chanting in the background, which definitely increases the (already staggeringly high) creepiness level by another order of magnitude.

Stuff That Gets People Killed

Tom Lasseter's report on innocent people detained by the United States in our war on terror (remember this case?) reminds me of my reaction how Scalia characterized the majority's ruling in Boumediene. He said that the court's ruling, giving detainees Habeas rights against their indefinite detentions, "will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

He might be right. He might not be -- I'm skeptical there is no trade-off by which our continued flouting of human rights doesn't redound back against us in the form of more violence (when Scalia pointed to several released detainees who engaged in acts of violence against American troops, my response was "well sure -- if they didn't hate America before, they sure as hell do now!"). But he might be right. It is entirely possible that, in the wake of this decision, our jobs will become harder, and more Americans will be killed.

You know what else has that effect? Rights. The fact that the police can't just bomb apartment buildings with suspected criminals inside puts officers at risk. Some, inevitably, will be wounded or killed as a result. Yet, we restrict ourselves anyway. Every right afforded to criminal suspects (a significant concern of our bill of rights) could be cast as putting Americans at risk. The "safe" thing to do would be to shell "bad" neighborhoods into submission and then round up the survivors and place them in internment camps. That would keep Americans alive. It would just be hideously immoral, so we don't do it.

The point is that being a moral human being means that there are some things we can't do, even if they're in our immediate security interests, because they're wrong. In the context of war, certain tactics definitionally cause us to lose the war even if they help an individual battle. When Scalia makes this sort of argument, he betrays a basic misunderstanding of what it means to live in a free society -- in a society that cares about morality, in a society that is constrained by the constitution. "Security" simply does not give us free license to do whatever we want. What Scalia wants is for America to have the liberty to become terrorists. Our founders were wise enough to chart a different course.

Parental Commitment

I find it interesting that in this post much of the comment debate is focusing on the issue of parental involvement or commitment to their children's education. I find this so for two reasons. First, nobody cites sources saying that urban parents are "less committed" to the education of their children. This is because "commitment" is a nebulous term. What are we talking about? If we mean "helping one's children out with their schoolwork", then obviously there is an advantage for wealthier, well-educated parents over poorer and more poorly-educated ones. If you have only an 8th-grade education, it's tough to help your kid with her algebra homework no matter how "committed" you are. If we mean "dedicating time and resources to improving your child's educational experience" (volunteering to read at elementary school, chaparoning field trips, raising money for new programs), the same thing applies: poorer families are less able to take time off work to engage in these activities, and have fewer private resources to invest. The parents at one suburban New Jersey raised $187,000 to send their choir to Vienna, Austria for a concert. It is not a failure of commitment that prevents parents in Anacostia from doing the same. These metrics of "commitment" boil down to the argument that in order for poor students in urban schools to succeed, they need to become rich, which is not a meaningful statement.

If "parental commitment" is to mean anything with a critical bite in the context of reforming urban schools, then, it has to be more abstract: parents who "value" education and learning, who are "committed" to extolling the importance of it. And I do believe that's what we're talking about when we say we want parents "committed" to education. After all, O'Reilly's quote in the aforementioned post was one that contrasted the "values" in urban versus suburban school districts. Unfortunately, it's devilishly difficult to measure "parental commitment" under this definition. This makes it all the more troublesome that people just assume that urban parents do not value education the same way that suburban parents do. Without any empirical evidence backing it up, the statement reeks of stereotyping and prejudice.

Several years ago, the Wall Street Journal tried to bank-shot an argument for parental commitment by claiming that the amount of money spent on schools was a proxy for how much a given community's parents cared about education. They did so in the context of arguing that more money, itself, was not an important factor in the educational achievement of students. To explain the strong correlation between high spending and high performance in many affluent districts, the Journal argued that it was not the money, but the value commitment that impelled parents to spend the money via taxation, that was responsible for the performance. But this, as Jonathan Kozol points out in his magnificant (and chilling) book Savage Inequalities, is belied by the fact that many parents in urban school districts do, in fact, vote to tax themselves at high rates -- far higher ones than most suburban districts, in fact -- in order to invest in the public school system. The problem, of course, is that even a higher percentage of income going to schools still yields massive inequalities when starting from a lower base. Most educational spending comes from property taxes, and the inner cities suffer from a deficit of high-value property. At the time of Kozol's writing, the property value of the entire city of Camden, New Jersey, combined, was less than that of a single Atlantic City Casino. But if the Journal is correct and willingness to spend what money one has on the public schools is a solid proxy for parental commitment to education, than commitment does not appear to be the inner city's problem.

The second reason I find this discussion interesting is the way in which it displaces discussion of alternative or systematic reform avenues -- particularly ones which might threaten the interests of suburban school districts (or even simply problematize the comfort suburban parents and graduates feel that the status quo which advantages them is "fair") -- in favor of aggressively foisting responsibility back on inner city families. Kozol notes that, while in reality the way we organize public schooling in America needs many changes and many reforms if it is to solve the problem of educational inequality

The search is for the one change that will cost the least and bring the best return. "Changing parent values" is the ideal answer to this search because, if it were possible, it would cost nothing and, since it isn't really possible, it doesn't even need to be attempted. [Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities (New York: Harper, 1992), 136]

Coupled with the lack of empirical evidence that urban communities actually suffer from a significant deficit of parent's who understand the value of an education, the discussion takes on the gloss of a very perverse type of wishful thinking: Though we have no proof that it's the parents fault that inner city students suffer, we hope it is, because the alternative is that the explanation lies in something we did, in how we organized the system, in the resources we give to ourselves and deny to them. These thoughts are scary, so we push them away and advocate "solutions" whose only benefits are not that they actually are geared towards the obstacles faced by urban schoolchildren, but that they don't require anything out of ourselves.

I don't disagree that parental commitment to the value of education is a very important thing for the development of children. But I do think it is in many ways a distraction. There is little proof that it is the major barrier facing urban school districts; it is way too convenient an explanation in that even to the extent it is "the problem" (as if there is only one!) it's one that requires absolutely nothing out of larger society (indeed, is uniquely resilient to social reforms); and as for students who do have parents who don't value an education, it's not like we can just give up and throw them to the wolves. As PG says, children are not "property of parents" in this respect -- if parents don't care about education, well, guess what, we still do. Since we can't reform the values of the parents directly, we're still left in precisely the same position as when we started -- looking at alternative mechanisms to reform our educational system so it fairly serves children in inner cities.

More Time

One of the interesting things that's developing as my generation enters the market is how we are dealing with the concept of time. On the one hand, having grown up perpetually wired, we are quite accustomed to being able to work at any time, in any place, whenever we feel like. The traditional model of being chained to the cubicle door does not work for us. On the other hand, we are not thrilled with the grueling, super-man schedules that are rapidly becoming the norm in the most high-flying, professional jobs. Our generation is not only more demanding of actually having time to start a family (and then be able to spend time with them), but it's willing to take paycuts to do it. These twin factors are pushing against the traditional 9-5 work environment in favor of flex-time arrangements. The irony is, this movement is occuring during a period of intense globalization which increases the value of those high-flyers who are willing to take on insane hours and workloads (and the hyper-competitive nature of the elite educational track has paradoxically increased the supply of those sorts of people at the same time as the overall trend of my generation has been in favor of more flex-time).

CNN had an interesting article up reporting that this trend appears to be expanding from its tradtional base though: claiming that many fathers in the workforce now want to spend more time with their families and are willing to slash their pay to get it. I say "beyond the traditional base" because the workers most associated with this pressure are a) young and b) women. In fact, I'd say that one of the most important contributions flowing from the normalization of women in the workforce is the pressure its created for more flexible and family-friendly work paradigms. The first generation of working women, mindful of their crusading status, had to play by the boy's rules and could not agitate for "special privileges" like maternity leave (at least not without sabotaging their career prospects). Today's women do not feel like they should have to make that choice, and though they've been deluged with "experts" telling them "you're going to have to", they've pushed back with admirable tenacity. They know that they've got skills needed by the best corporations, and they're flexing that economic muscle to demand better hours, better leave policies, and more flexibility. It's a victory for feminism that is also a victory for all workers, and we owe them tremendously for it (though of course, the battle isn't over yet).

One of the reasons I want to go into teaching is that it is the rare high-status job that really does seem to have the sort of flexible, creative work environment I crave. But even amongst the newly minted lawyer class, I've heard rumblings of a revolution. I know what the starting salary is for a BigLaw associate coming out of Chicago, and I know what the work expectations are like. I'd greatly trade less of one for less of the other. Easy for me to say because I don't plan on staying an attorney for long (if at all), but ultimately, it's a trend I see increasing in saliance, and one that may well explode in a veritable workplace revolution in the next decade.

Momentous Occasions

Tomorrow is the 4th birthday of this blog. But I likely will be distracted from celebrating. I began blogging the summer before I entered Carleton College. Which means today is a new chapter in the blog, but more importantly, in my life. For I have, as of 11:30 this morning, officially graduated from Carleton College, magna cum laude and with distinction in Political Science.

But for once, I don't want to talk about myself, but about my friends. The number of wonderful people I've met at Carleton is to great to count, much less to recount. But in a special category are those folks who resided with me on my Freshman floor -- 4th Burton.

Though friendships at Carleton are easy to make and even easier to keep, the kids on 4th Burton my year were legends around campus as an unbelievably close group (also as the "sub-free floor that wasn't", but that's a separate story). We all had different interests and different strengths, but we never drifted away or stopped seeing each other. Each term after Freshman year, when we had scattered to various other locations around campus, we hosted a "reunion" -- a moving party stopping at our various new rooms to make sure we stayed in touch.

The 4th Burton crew were extraordinary friends, and they also were extraordinary people. I hope they'll forgive me if I recount to you all what their respective post-graduate plans are, as a testament to their incredible talent as well as our incredible friendship.

Like any group of seniors, a few don't have firm plans yet. Richard is thinking of moving back home to Mississippi to work as a computer programmer, or possibly Silicon Valley for the same. Mo hasn't even gotten that far, but given that she was the only one of us to get distinction in not one but two majors, I'm sure she'll be doing just fine whatever she decides.

Brandy is working for Goldman Sachs in New York -- a long way from her home in South Dakota. Our floor's other South Dakotan, Adam, is staying right in Northfield to teach high school English. Peter, too, is becoming a teacher in his native Chicago. He'll be living with my Freshman year roommate, Brian, who is preparing to apply to Vet school -- just like he said he would four years ago.

A few folks are going abroad to teach. George will be spending a year teaching English in Japan, followed by another year teaching in Taiwan. Mandi is skipping step one of that path, going straight back to Taiwan to teach English on a Fulbright Scholarship.

Gabe is the only one besides myself to immediately head off to grad school -- he's going to UNC to study Computer Science. But Lauren is preparing to apply to Medical School next year, and her roommate Wendy is deferring one year after being accepted to Med School at the University of Minnesota. She's come a long way since she microwaved her pet fish to death because she "thought it looked cold."

Seth is moving to Boston, but won't be spending much time there as he travels the globe as a healthcare consultant. Carrie is moving to St. Louis with her fiance -- her middle-school sweetheart (they got engaged this year), and is thinking about applying to graduate school in Chemistry. And finally, Kace tranferred out of Carleton before her Senior year to UVA, realized she made a huge mistake in doing so, and transferred right back the next term. Unfortunately, that meant she needed one more term to graduate, so she's headed back in the Fall. But that's just another reason for us to visit!

To them, and to all my other many graduating friends, thank you. You've already done amazing things, and we will I'm sure continue to do them throughout the rest of our lives.

Malik Obama's Message for the Jews

I'm not sure why, but I found this message from Malik Obama -- Barack's Kenyan half-brother -- really touching:

The half-brother of U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, Malik Obama, told Army Radio on Thursday that Obama would make a good president for Jews.

Malik Obama, a Muslim who resides in a small village in western Kenya, also requested to send a special blessing to the Jewish people around the world from the Obama family in Kenya.

It's not really politically relevant -- there's a reason why it's being printed in Ha'aretz rather than an American paper -- but again, it was nice.

Expect Nothing More

Conservatives are always talking about the need to keep high expectations for inner-city youth. "High expectations" is a talisman that gets waved so that poor school districts don't get funds for desperately needed infrastructural improvements, to ignore the gaping funding disparities (made all the worse that -- by any measure -- poor students require more public funding to have an equal educational opportunity compared to wealthy students), to excuse the huge gaps in academic and extra-curricular offerings compared to what's available in suburban districts, and to side-step the horrifying obstacles that stand between these students and the American dream.

There is something to be said for high expectations, in tandem with creating an "enabling environment" so that the reasonable student has a reasonable chance at success. It's when "high expectations" gets deployed as a replacement for reform -- so that failure becomes the fault of the student no matter what odds they were up against -- that it begins to get twisted.

But the worst part about the "high expectations" mantra is that it's hard to believe there is any there behind it. When Bill O'Reilly is astounded by an episode of suburban schoolkids misbehaving, and remarks "this isn't ... the inner city; you would think that these kids would have some kind of a values system," he is betraying what he really thinks: Bad behavior is expected in the inner-city, because those kids lack "values" (value?).

If conservatives are going to offer naught but high expectations for the inner-city, the least they could do is actually hold those expectations. But they don't. Because it's just rhetoric designed to stymie the urgent reforms every educational expert agrees are necessary for inner city kids to succeed.

Private Action

Following up on the story of the kid who immigrated with his family from Armenia at age two, became valedictorian of his high school, and is now facing deportation -- Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has introduced a private bill to allow him and his family to stay in the United States. It's apparently a long-shot, but we can only hope that 50 60 Senators, a majority of the House, and President Bush decide that sending away really smart kids from the country they've lived in nearly their entire lives is not particularly bright on our part.

Boren Won't Endorse Obama

Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK), one of the more conservative members of the House Democratic caucus, has announced he will not be endorsing Barack Obama for President, claiming that he needs to represent the views of his conservative Oklahoma district. In doing so, he repeated the silliness that Obama is "the most liberal senator" -- then immediately waffled on his own position by saying he'd vote for Obama at the convention because "this is an important time for our country."

Look, I can understand certain Congressfolk withholding their endorsement due to political pressures (though for advice on how to do without feeding GOP talking points, see how Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-FL) did it in the same article). But I frankly think Rep. Boren is miscalculating his own district. Obama has over-performed in plains states. It'd be one thing if this was in Appalachia, which has shown itself to be uniquely hostile to the Illinois Senator. But there is little indication that middle America will be particularly ill-disposed to Obama this year. If anything, Obama is supposed to help us down-ticket in that region.

Pound It, Part II

Obama's fist poundng ways are taking the political world by storm. Now North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley (D) is getting in on the action.

I suppose there is no way for an older White guy not to look awkward doing that, so once again, my vote is for cute.

Bad Behavior

The Jerusalem Post: How Reform Jews almost got Kicked Out of the UN.

It all started predictably enough. At a UN Human Rights Council session on January 24 called solely to excoriate Israel for "human rights abuses" while ignoring the seven-year-long shelling of Israeli civilians, the Reform movement's representative at the meeting, David Littman, chose to focus on Hamas's outright philosophical commitment to human rights violations - in this case their promotion of genocide.

Hamas's intentions were the "context of Israel's conduct," according to the WUPJ [World Union of Progressive Judaism, an umbrella group for Reform and Liberal Jewish movements], and so fell "within the scope of the discussion."

Stopped three times during his speech by the Romanian president of the HRC (the second time for quoting article 2 of the Hamas charter: "Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it"), the Reform representative signed off with the Shakespearean lament that "there is a general malaise in the air, a feeling that something is rotten in the state of this council."

Five months later, at the next meeting of the UN's NGO Committee, a coalition of Cuba, Qatar, Sudan, Egypt and others sought to have the Reform movement booted out of the UN (where it has been an observer NGO for 36 years) for seeking "to undermine the United Nations system and [making] unfounded allegations against its Member States," in the words of the complaint letter sent by Cuba in May in the name of the entire 118-country Non-Aligned Movement.

After an apology(!) by the WUPJ, the eventual outcome was "merely" a reprimand for "bad behavior."

Ugh. I hate this body.