Good Intentions and Racism

In 2003, Rush Limbaugh had a guest analyst post on an ESPN show.  Limbaugh was a huge football fan, and was thrilled to have the role.  During one appearance, he noted that a certain quarterback was getting more credit than the numbers indicated he should be getting.  He said the league and sports press was so desirous of having a successful black quarterback that it was promoting him beyond his talents.  This immediately led to accusations of racism on Limbaugh's part and he was removed from the show.

In 2008, a first term senator with only 2 years on the job ran for president.  Obama was championed despite a thin resume.  As with the quarterback, the media and the country in general had high hopes for a black politician.  Opposition to him or his policies was declared racist throughout his two terms in office.

Jason Arday, who plagiarized his PhD thesis and told the most outlandish stories was nevertheless awarded a doctorate and rose to be the youngest black professor ever at Cambridge.  Academics had high hopes for him and allowed him to bypass obstacles that no other candidate would be allowed to ignore.  His rocket rise was followed by an inevitable meteoric fall.  His tragic fall was enabled by those who wished him the best, misguided cheerleaders who allowed an unqualified man to assume a post to which he was almost certain to fail.

This has been an ongoing problem.  Colleges have given black students an advantage in enrollment - as demonstrated by the recent Harvard lawsuit settlement - where they find themselves in settings beyond their abilities.  A student who would excel and graduate from a state university is instead thrust into an elite institution where he falls behind and often drops out.  This 'benefit' to make up for past wrongs only sets the student for failure.  Such partly explains the fall of Jason Arday.

One must stick to merit alone.  By taking race into account to either benefit or penalize a candidate is harmful.  It is a misallocation of talent.  It is better to be a successful plumber than a drop out burdened by student loan debt.  One must be allowed to honestly assess an individual's abilities and accomplishments without being called a racist.  On the other side, one must hold all candidates to the requirements, regardless of how eagerly it is hoped for the candidate's success.

Uncle Tom

Here is a movie that explores right-leaning blacks in America.  Many of them have been called an Uncle Tom or worse for not siding with the Democratic Party.  These are their stories.  What struck me most was when it was noted that they all knew who Jay-Z was (a self-admitted drug dealer) but not Thomas Sowell, a Harvard graduate and noted cultural commentator.  The media highlights left-leaning blacks but attacks right-leaning ones.  When Kanye met with Trump, he was said to be off his meds.  Candace Owens has been linked to white supremacy despite being black.  The theme is that blacks who don't toe the liberal line will be ostracized and attacked by those who do.  Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Larry Elder have spent decades countering the idea that blacks can't advance because of racism in America.  The most successful blacks in America today are Nigerians.  Why?  Because they haven't been told since birth that racism in America will never let them succeed.  It is not by chance that black Americans are marinated in the racist America myth.  Those who embrace the myth will vote Democrat and those who don't will be called Uncle Toms and race traitors.  Not an accident.  Herman Cain, an extremely successful business man and one-time presidential nominee, talks about his life and rise to success.  He says that hard work pays.  Ben Carson, a famous brain surgeon and also a presidential nominee, has been regularly mocked by late night comics.  If you are black and on the left, it is racist to mock you.  If you are black and on the right, you are fair game.

This is an excellent film that shines a light on the other side of this conversation, a side that is mostly hidden.  See this movie!

BLM Narrative Meets Data

Heather Mac Donald counters the current narrative with data.  Long but rewarding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=437&v=qbMkYZGFVw0&feature=emb_logo

Actors barred from Acting

The complaints have been growing for years.  There were those upset that Apu the Indian-American in The Simpsons was voiced by a white actor, Hank Azaria.  Well, that can't stand.  Earlier this year, Azarian left the role.  Now Jenny Slate will no longer voice the role of a half-white, half-black character because she is white.  Kristen Bell will no voice a character that doesn't match her race.  Is this a one way thing?  Do we need to redub Star Wars so James Earl Jones isn't the voice of Darth Vader?  How about the entire cast of Hamilton?  Will future actors to take the role of FDR be required to suffer paralysis from polio?  Can only a blind and deaf actress play Helen Keller?  How dare Daniel Day-Lewis, who is only 6'1" tall play 6'4" Abraham Lincoln?  How does heterosexual Armie Hammer get the role of homosexual Oliver in Call Me by Your Name?  How does a 60 year-old Meryl Streep get cast as a 40 something Julia Child in Julie & Julia?  Let's not even get started with all the 20 somethings who play high school students.  When will this madness end?  When will we start casting people who match the demographics of the characters they play?  Who do these people think they are that they act like someone else with different experiences than themselves?  Clearly, they are insensitive racists, sexists, ablists, ageists, and so on.  Shame!

Desperately Looking for Racism

Here is a story of a man who walked the streets of New York with a shirt the resembled the Redskins logo but was instead the profile of a white man.  The faux team was the Caucasians.  That's funny.  I would laugh at that.  Certainly not offended by it.  Of note, the story is entirely self-reported.  The journalist takes his word for everything.  Sure, an old lady said it was disrespectful and a white guy called him an a--hole when he realized it wasn't a Redskins logo.  That is obviously the reaction Mr. Joseph wanted and that is the reaction he reports to Yahoo News.  And they parrot it without any skepticism.  Hmm.

By contrast, when a woman wanted to demonstrate that she was 'harassed' while walking down the street, she had it all on film.  Mr. Joseph should try his 'experiment' again and have a similar camera setup.  I am doubtful that his reported interactions would repeat.  Also, there would probably be a lot of laughs.  Checking the comments, it seems the majority had exactly my take on the story.

Speaking of the Redskins controversy, the team is not named that to be insulting or privileged.  Barring the rare exceptions (e.g. UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs, UC Irvine Anteaters), team names are chosen for being fierce (e.g. Lions, Bengals, Bears), or cool (e.g. Cowboys, Patriots, Buccaneers), or representative of local industry (e.g. Oilers, Packers, Steelers), and so forth.  Serious teams aren't named the Village Idiots, the Dolts, the Weaklings, etc.  No one wants a name that will provoke scorn or disrespect.  Should I be offended by the Boston Celtics or the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame?

 

Thought experiment: What if there was exactly one incident of overt racism every day and that one incident led the news that night.  Would that give an accurate picture of the level of racism in our society?  On the one hand, racist incidents are in the news every night but on the other hand there is only 1 incident a day in a country of 320 million people.  How we see the world is shaped and molded by the editorial decisions of a relatively small number of people.

Right to Refuse Business

The Supreme Court has ruled (7 to 2) in favor of the baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding.  Those who are pleased by the ruling proclaim a victory for religious liberty.  Those against the ruling liken it to blacks not being seated in restaurants.  Though I like the result, I don't much care for the religious liberty reasoning.  I'm more of an extremist.

 

All transactions between private people must be consensual.  If Nazi Nick doesn't want to service Jews in his business, the government should not force him to do so.  If Klansman Keith doesn't want African American patrons in his business, then he should have the right to refuse service.  Of course, this works both ways.  Jews and African American business owners can refuse service to Nazis and Klansmen.  Government is a different matter.  The State of Alabama or the City of New York must treat all people equally.  As such, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, Votes for Women, and so forth were absolutely required.  Government is disallowed from being a racist or a bigot but it cannot criminalize that in its citizens.  The correct way to purge racism, bigotry, sexism, and other prejudices is through private ostracism.  That is a long and slow process.  It is so much quicker to pummel the racist and sexist bigots with the coercive government.  Barry Goldwater voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act because it criminalized the right of private individuals to choose to do business or not do business with whomever they chose.  People should be free to be miserable human beings.  Forced virtue is no virtue at all.  That's a hard argument to sell and is partly why Goldwater was obliterated in the 1964 election.

 

As Ron Paul said in his farewell address to the House of Representatives, freedom is a hard sell:

 

I have thought a lot about why those of us who believe in liberty, as a solution, have done so poorly in convincing others of its benefits. If liberty is what we claim it is- the principle that protects all personal, social and economic decisions necessary for maximum prosperity and the best chance for peace- it should be an easy sell. Yet, history has shown that the masses have been quite receptive to the promises of authoritarians which are rarely if ever fulfilled.

 

As Jefferson may have said (it has often been attributed to him), "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."  Vigilance is hard work.  The promises of politicians to do all the hard work for the citizens is enticing.  It is laborious and time consuming to debate the racists and the sexists and the bigots while it is comparatively easy to pass a law and sic the cops on them.  Sure, that punishes the bad think, but it doesn't reform them but rather hardens their prejudices.

 

With our current technology, such laws are mostly unneeded.  No law was required to cudgel Starbucks in the wake of apparent racism.  The company folded almost immediately.  Ditto for a bakery in Portland that refused to service a black women who arrived after the store was closed; employees were fired here.  Though I think the businesses were justified in both cases, private citizen outrage resulted in immediate action by those businesses.  In this atmosphere, just try to be a racist business owner.

 

The baker may have won the ruling but I highly doubt he will have great success in his future baking endeavors.  Everyone knows who he is and he will most likely lose more business from those who think he's a bigot than he will get from those who think he's a hero.  And that is how you change society.

Crying Wolf

Followed a link from Scott Adams blog to Slate Star Codex.  Here is a very long article that debunks the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic stories about Donald Trump that have been ubiquitous.  What is really interesting is that the writer is clearly anti-Trump.  He holds that the media has spent so long accusing Republicans of being racists that the accusation has lost its bite, especially since it isn't true.  He repeatedly asks what will happen if a real racist shows up?  No one will believe the accusation.  It is a long read but worth your time.

Racism?

Speaker Ryan has described a statement by Donald Trump as textbook racism.  No equivocating, no offering of mitigating circumstances, just racism.  This is the presidential nominee of his party.  I have no knowledge of the Trump University lawsuit and that is irrelevant to my point.  Some years ago, a judicial nominee said this:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion."

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Is that racist?  Maybe sexist?  She is Latina and that make her better.  How about this one:

But she is a typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, you know, there's a reaction that's been bred in our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society.

Barack Obama regarding his grandmother

I can just imagine how well that would have gone if a white politician had said 'typical black person.'  All these years later, we would still be watching the clip whenever that politician was in the news.  Here is what Trump said:

“He is a Mexican. We're building a wall between here and Mexico. The answer is he is giving us very unfair rulings -- rulings that people can't even believe.”

Donald Trump on Judge Gonzalo Curiel

Based on how President Obama and Justice Sotomayor view race, Trump is making a valid point.  Obama and Sotomayor think that race leads to biases, either for good or ill.  Trump is agreeing with them.  But is there really a reason to suspect Judge Curiel?  Yes.  He is a member of The Race Lawyers of California, that race being Latino and Chicano.  Oh, that should be La Raza, not The Race.  Sorry, shouldn't have translated that bit.  You show me the Caucasian Lawyers Association and tell me that wouldn't be considered a branch of the KKK.  Race is in the name!  No, it is not affiliated with the National Council of the Race, er... La Raza but it is an exclusionary club.  Isn't that bad?

That is not how it is supposed to be.  Justice is blindfolded for a reason.  The law, as applied by judges, should be indifferent to the races of the litigants.  Though it is difficult to achieve, a judge should seek to be impartial.  People are rarely impartial, especially in matters that interest them.  I could be amazingly impartial in judging baseball because I have no interest in it.  Economic theory?  Sorry, I'd have to recuse myself because I have very strong opinions and have already made up my mind.  Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, himself a man of Mexican descent, said that Trump has a point.

Louie De Palma is still a Jerk

At the Sundance Film Festival, Danny DeVito declared the country to be racist.  Here's the video.  Because there are no black nominees for the Academy Awards, the country is racist.  To make such a damning accusation against one's own country on such a flimsy foundation says more about DeVito than about the country.  Did the country have a vote as to who the nominees were?  No, actually, only members of the academy had a vote.  How many members of the academy are there?  There are approximately 6,000 voting members of the Academy.  On account of the votes of this tiny cadre of entertainment professionals, Danny DeVito is accusing the entire country of being racist.  Really? 

 

Let's delve further into this.  Which party benefits from Hollywood donations?  During the 2012 Presidential Campaign, Obama raked in 80% of the donations vs. Romney's 20%.  In the current primaries, Hillary Clinton has received 90% of the money, stomping her nearest competitor, JEB.  So it is safe to say that Hollywood is a Democrat town.  That makes sense.  Democrats were the party of slavery and the party of Jim Crow.  When DeVito accuses the 'country' of being racist, he is trying to shift blame from the overwhelmingly Democratic Academy members who voted only for whites.  Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has a running line where he asks why are liberal enclaves such hotbeds of racism?  It wasn't a bunch of Republicans who selected the Oscar nominees.

 

I always thought his abrasive and often mean-spirited characters (Louie De Palma of Taxi being the most memorable) showed that he could act.  No, it turns out he wasn't acting at all.

Who's Running the Show?

It is regularly said that Republican are racists and that's why blacks aren't doing as well as white in America.  The Democrats offer dog whistles, code language, and opposition to race-based admissions at colleges as clear evidence of Republican racism.  Sounds like the bar has been set fairly low to level the racism charge.  But here is a question: where are these hotbeds of Republican racism?  Where are blacks being treated unfairly, where cops are shooting them, where the murder rates among blacks are particularly high?

In an October story, St. Louis was listed as having the highest per capita murder rate in the US, having 50 murders for every 100 thousand residents.  The last Republican mayor of St. Louis was elected in 1943.  Okay, that's probably just a fluke, an outlier.  What city is number 2?

In that same story, Detroit was listed with 44 per 100K.  The last Republican mayor was elected in 1957.  All right, another oddball.  Let's continue.

New Orleans ranks 3rd, with 38 murders per 100K.  The last Republican mayor was Benjamin Flanders, who served from April 1872 to November of that same year.  Wow, that a long time of one party rule.

According to the FBI, the 4th city on the list is Jackson, Mississippi, with 35 murders per 100K.  Searching the records, I could not find the last Republican though everyone since the late 40s has been a Democrat.  Fine, next city.

The 5th city is Baltimore and it last elected an evil racist Republican in 1963.  Hmm.  This is starting to look less like a fluke and more like a pattern.  Too soon to tell.  Let's move on.

Newark, New Jersey had 33 murders per 100K.  The last Republican mayor was elected in 1949.  Just because the top 6 have been run by Democrats for decades doesn't absolve Republicans!

Birmingham is 7th and George Siebels was the last, and also first, Republican elected in 1967.  Buffalo, NY had the last Republican mayor elected in 1950.

Baton Rouge had a Republican mayor elected in 2000!  There it is!  The city with the 9th highest murder rate in the nation had a Republican mayor as recently as 2004!    Clearly, his racist four years led to the high murder rate of today.

Pittsburgh (22 murders per 100k) elected a Republican mayor in 1933 and thus rounds out the top 10 highest murder rate cities in the country.  Of course, the current mayor in all 10 is a Democrat.

The national average per capita murder rate is 4.5.  Only one of the nation's largest cities comes in under that number: New York City.  Yes, NYC had only 3.9 murders per 100k.  Interestingly, NYC had 8 years of Republican Rudy Giuliani followed by 7 years of Republican Michael Bloomberg and 5 more years of Independent Michael Bloomberg.  Bloomberg generally left Giuliani's crime prevention policies in place but added nanny-statism to the mix.  In 1990, under Mayor David Dinkins, there were 2,262 murders in NYC.  By 2001, Giuliani's last year in office, there were 639.  In 2015, there were 333 murders.  This is a massive success but, for some reason, these other cities - run by Democrats - are not implementing the policies that made it happen.

 

Who is running the cities where police shoot young black men?  Who is running the cities where gangbangers are slaughtering each other and random - usually black - bystanders?  Democrats are running these cities and have done so for decades.  If it has stayed this way for so long, whoever is in charge must like the status quo.

Racism according to Kareem

It turns out that since his basketball career, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has become a contributor to Time Magazine.  Who knew?  He comments on how to tell if you are a racist.  If you've ever said that you don't care if someone is white, black, yellow, or purple, he suggests that's a hint you may be racist.  He says that the issue may be how we define racism.  Then, in the rest of the article, he fails to define racism.  Awesome.  However, he does list things that he thinks are racist.  Topping his list is that you deny there is racism.  Well, there's a straw man.  No one denies there is racism.  Racism was codified into the legal system prior to the Civil Rights Movement.  That was structural, wide-spread racism that needed to be stamped out.  Today, we have buffoons like Donald Sterling.  The magnitude of that change is profound but Kareem isn't having it.  See, the Supreme Court overturned part of the Voting Rights Act.  Racism!  The Supreme Court has weakened Affirmative Action.  Racism!  Bill O'Rielly says that discrimination is in the past.  Racism!  He offers a 2006 poll (couldn't come up with something more recent?) that showed 49% of minorities think racism is a big problem versus only 18% of whites.  Racism!

Racism today is a pale shadow to what it once was.  How else to explain that a black man is president, that a black woman was Secretary of State under a Republican president, that Oprah Winfrey spent decades as the most popular television personality?  Why is it that immigrant blacks do amazingly well within a generation while native ones struggle?  I would posit that the immigrants haven't spent a lifetime being marinated in talk of racism from people like Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, Spike Lee, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  Stop telling blacks that they are victims of racism and slavery and The Man.  Instead, tell them that they can be President, Attorney General, Secretary of State, UN Ambassador, Supreme Court Justice, or whatever else.  Will there be hurdles?  Of course!  It certainly doesn't help that anyone who opposes the president's policies is automatically a racist.  If that is how you define racism, then you will find a lot of racists.  Worse still, any black person who opposes the president is an Uncle Tom or a Race Traitor.

 

To a hammer, everything is a nail.  To someone like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, everything is racism. 

Random Thoughts

Michelle's Recollections

 

You see, even though back then Barack was a Senator and a presidential candidate…to me, he was still the guy who’d picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger side door…he was the guy whose proudest possession was a coffee table he’d found in a dumpster, and whose only pair of decent shoes was half a size too small.

First Lady Michelle Obama

That is what Ms. Obama said in her speech last night but I find myself disbelieving.  Michelle and Barack met in 1989, 6 years after he had graduated Columbia.  He was attending Harvard at the time (1988 to 1991) where he got his J.D.  Michelle had graduated Princeton and then got her JD at Harvard in 1988 but she was interested in dating a man who couldn't get shoes that fit?  On another point, they met while he was working at a law firm in Chicago; what did he wear there?  My grandfather detested lawyers but he'd probably agree they dressed well.  If I knew a guy who graduated from an Ivy League school and was proud of furniture acquired from a dumpster, I'd tell him to stop screwing up his life.  Maybe Michelle did exactly that.

 

Tax Now or Tax Later

 

I listen to EconTalk, a podcast by Russ Roberts of George Mason University.  He recently had a discussion that explained how government can pay for things by taxing now or by borrowing which amounts to taxing later.  Our skyrocketing debt (broke $16 trillion) indicates which path has been chosen.  The people who are enjoying the current benefits are deferring the costs to future taxpayers.  Sometimes, that is appropriate.  For instance, borrowing money to build a school that those future taxpayers will attend could be argued to be reasonable.  Borrowing money to pay for healthcare, retirement, food stamps, and other ephemeral social programs is not reasonable.  Politicians love funding through borrowing because it allows them to have the benefit of spending without the penalty of taxes.  Unfortunately, the bill eventually comes due for those future taxpayers as Greece is discovering.

 

The Race Card

 

Back when Obama was elected, I celebrated one thing: Racism in America had finally been purged.  Sadly, it turns out that I was completely wrong.  Now everything is racism.  It is racist to point out that the debt has soared under Obama.  It is racist to mention Chicago in relation to Obama's campaign.  It is racist to call Obama the Food Stamp President though Food Stamp use has gone from 30 million to 46 million people.  Chris Matthews is foaming at the mouth with constant allegations of racism.  I have had a family member imply I was racist for opposing Obama.  The point of the racism charge is to silence the opposition but with its frequent use, it is becoming a punch line.

 

Voter ID

 

Democrats are opposed to Voter ID laws, claiming that they will disenfranchise minorities and the elderly.  In other news, the Democratic Convention in Charlotte requires photo ID to enter.

 

Booing God

 

The Democratic Platform had purged any mention of God.  This did not play well so the platform was rewritten to include God.  There was a floor vote that required a two-thirds majority to put God back in the platform.  Watching the vote, it is obvious that that bar was not met.  Nonetheless, the motion was declared successful and there was much booing from half the delegates.

 

Can't have an Empty Chair

 

Obama's planned acceptance speech at a 70,000 seat stadium was nixed in favor of the 20,000 seat auditorium of the convention.  It is said that potential inclement weather is to blame.  Republicans are saying that Obama can no longer fill a 70,000 seat stadium and empty seats would recall Clint Eastwood's conversation with an empty chair.  I am skeptical of the weather claim.  Obama should pray for a hard rain tomorrow night to bolster the claim.  A sunny day will look bad.