"Revolutions, it is commonly observed, often break out not when circumstances are next to intolerable but when conditions begin rapidly to improve."
His explanation for both feminist and minority animosity is "the sudden and dramatic widening of choices about life, a new freedom and responsibility that frightens." He quotes black author Shelby Steele:
"With the decline in racism the margin of black choice has greatly expanded, which is probably why race-holding is so much more visible today than ever before. But anything that prevents us from exploiting our new freedom to the fullest is now as serious a barrier as racism once was."
Whatever white racists are left in this country, they are a few uneducated 'hicks' who pose no real threat and are mocked by all of the rest of us. The racism I see today, is in fact against whites, even though the word "racist" today, ONLY connotes prejudice against blacks, hispanics, middle-easterners etc. And 'hating whitey' (as David Horowitz calls it) is encouraged by everyone--especially white celebrities, politicians, and media---what Steele diagnoses as "White Guilt."
A 1990 New York Times/CBS poll of black New Yorkers revealed:
---10% agreed that AIDS "was deliberately created in a laboratory in order to infect black people." -19% thought it "might possibly be true."
---25% thought the government "deliberately makes sure that drugs are easily available in poor black neighborhoods. -35% thought it was "possibly true."
John Singleton, who made Boyz 'N the Hood said, "If AIDS was a natural disease, it would have been around 1000 years ago. I think it was made in order to kill undesirables. That would include homosexuals, intravenous drug users and blacks."
Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are prime examples of "race hustlers"; they show up when any story involves black people, and attack even before the facts are out. Sharpton jumped to Tawana Brawley's defense when it turns out she fabricated her 'six white men raped me' story. Black scholar Glenn Loury blames the 60's for training blacks how to get ahead: "We learned too well during the upheavals of that decade how to be America's pre-eminent victims." He cited a story about Jesse Jackson: "[There was a] series of killings of black children in Atlanta, which the activist Dick Gregory said was the work of a disease control center pursuing a cancer-fighting drug allegedly found in the tips of their sex organs." Right away, Jesse Jackson was there: "It is open season on black people...These murders can only be understood in the context of affirmative action and Ronald Reagan's conservative politics." There was great disappointment when the killer turned out to be black, and was convicted before a black judge, and a largely black jury.
Thomas Sowell, an American economist, headed an international study of government-mandated racial preference programs and found these common factors:
1. Preferential programs, even when explicitly and repeatedly defined as 'temporary', have tended not only to persist but also to expand in scope, either embracing more groups or spreading to wider realms for the same groups, or both. Even preferential programs established with legally mandated cut-off dates, as in India and Pakistan, have continued far past those dates by subsequent extensions.
2. Within the groups designated by government as recipients of preferential treatment, the benefits have usually gone disproportionately to those member already more fortunate.
3. Group polarization has tended to increase in the wake of preferential programs, with non-preferred groups reacting adversely, in ways ranging from political backlash to mob violence and civil war.
4. Fraudulent claims of belonging to the designated beneficiary groups have been widespread and have taken many forms in various countries.
Bork explains, "Proportional representation in various fields has been reached by diktat, by depriving people of freedom, which is what a policy of racial preference does." Bork points out that many liberals admit the time has come to end affirmative action as it stands;
Joseph Califano who under the Johnson and Carter administration pushed for affirmative action policies wrote in 1989, that the policy was intended "only as a temporary expedient to speed blacks' entry into the social and economic mainstream," and it's "time is running out."
Even Susan Estrich, a law professor who worked for the Dukakis campaign in 88 said, "For all it's good intentions, affirmative action was never meant to be permanent and now is truly the time to move on to some other approach."
Ward Connerly, a University of California Regents board member said, "I tell you with every fiber of my being that what we are doing is inequitable to certain people...To those who say 'Affirmative action now, affirmative action as it is now'--that's what George Wallace said about segregation."
And today, we start the confirmation hearings of another official nominated on the basis of her race, and the 'historic aspect' of having a latina women on the U.S. Supreme Court. When will we nominate, reward, and acknowledge achievements based on true merit and not by extra credit points for race, gender, or other backgrounds yet to be exploited? I have already posited my opinion on Sotomayor and her statements regarding the duty of the court, and her 'richness of experience as a latina woman.' But it's so frustrating to watch the (liberal and moderate) senators commend her for her race and sex, rather than judge her past rulings and assess her capabilities for ruling with what the framers of the U.S. Constitution had in mind, over her own bias and ideology.
Just last year she was part of a second-circuit panel in Ricci v. DeStafano that upheld the right of the City of New Haven to throw out a test for firefighters, simply because no african-americans were able to pass it. The U.S. Supreme Court recently overturned this decision, agreeing that the 17 european-americans and 1 hispanic that did pass the test to be promoted to management, were in fact the ones being discriminated against--violating the Title VII of Civil Rights Act of 1964. And now she is going to be joining them in the highest court of the land. There are just too many instances of her admissions that she can't separate her prejudices and partiality from what is right according to the Constitution. And while there are a few senators willing to confront these statements:
I can already hear them being called 'racist and/or sexist'.
by the way, someone was just removed from the hearings for yelling "Abortion is Murder!" --just to let you know, it wasn't me! Let's hope Sotomayor is a true Roman Catholic (unlike Biden, Kerry, the 54% of catholics who elected Obama etc) and rules to overturn Roe v. Wade
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