By Professor Doom
It really is
amazing the level of scrutiny Trump gets. Every action, no matter how trivial,
gets blown up and represented as negatively as possible. Even when he got a
second scoop of ice cream, the media
did what they could represent his getting a bit extra as yet another sign that
he’s literally Hitler.
Like any
President, Trump has blood on his hands…it’s impossible to do that job without
doing harm. That said, the media never mentions that, yes, occasionally, Trump
does some good things.
Affirmative
action is a tough concept for a thinking man to agree with. The cognitive
disconnect necessary to accept “Things
aren’t fair, so we need to make things less fair” by unfairly giving people
with certain genitals/skin color advantages that have nothing to do with
genitals/skin color is just too large for a normal person to possess and
otherwise function normally in other aspects of life.
Nevertheless,
it’s how things work on most campuses. I’ve covered the racist and sexist
hiring policies many times (see here, here, and here, as
examples), and with the existence of such policies no longer in doubt, we need
to go to the next level: we must consider why
these policies are accepted.
The answer is
simple enough: administration is comfortable with racist and sexist hiring
policies because they’ve learned to accept racist and sexist admission and
scholarship policies. These highly questionable policies have done considerable
harm in many ways, not least of which is harm to
the kids the policies are supposed to help.
And Trump is
trying to put a stop to these evil policies:
Justice Dept. to Take On Affirmative
Action in College Admissions
--sorry to
link to a Left Wing Hate site, but we’ll get to that…
Now, the paper
naturally slants this as a bad thing:
“This is deeply disturbing,” she said. “It
would be a dog whistle that could invite a lot of chaos and unnecessarily create
hysteria among colleges and universities who may fear that the government may
come down on them for their efforts to maintain diversity on their campuses.”
Putting that “dog
whistle” slur aside, it’s interesting that the paper doesn’t even question the
assumption that “maintain diversity” is a good and necessary thing…it was never
necessary at any other time in the planet. I assure the gentle reader that I
was a minority as a white male mathematics graduate student, and it was common
enough for me to be the only such in my classes (even when I was on the math
department soccer team, I had to learn basic Mandarin so I could communicate
with my teammates)….and it never once occurred to me that we needed programs to
include more white males.
But now it’s taken as a given that we need
such policies. Well, not for white males, but I trust the reader knows what I
mean here.
In any event the
paper gives no indication of an opposing point of view, so I need to shift to
another site, one that allows comments. And, hey, look, there’s actual
legitimate discussion of an opposing
point of view:
Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal
Opportunity, which opposes affirmative action, told the Times he
welcomed the new campaign by the Justice Department. "The civil rights
laws were deliberately written to protect everyone from discrimination, and it
is frequently the case that not only are whites discriminated against now, but
frequently Asian-Americans are as well,” he said.
Much like Clegg,
I’m against discrimination in any form. And, again, I had many Asian friends in
graduate school. Even as they consistently demonstrated they were better
students, it never occurred to me to set up a system to make me look good by
locking them out.
In an attempt to
maintain balance, a pro-discrimination expert is cited, but, alas, all he can
do is spew hatred:
Dan Losen, a lawyer who is director of the
Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles,
said that he found the Justice Department's action deeply distressing.
"This is another example of how the administration is dismantling the Department
of Justice, turning core constitutional protections upside down and the concept
of remedying discrimination on its head," he said. "What do you
expect from a president that makes openly bigoted remarks about
Mexican-American judges, has boasted about assaulting women, has a history of
engaging in racially discriminatory housing practices and is fighting to ban
entrants to our country based on their religious background? Make no mistake,
the Trump administration's positions are consistent with his bigoted statements
and historical track record.
A point by point
refutation of the assertions above can be done, but is beside the point:
there’s nothing in it that says why the racism he favors is a good idea
(although I have to laugh at raising the “historical” record of a guy in office
not even close to a year).
One of the neat
things about the fake news revelations of late is how once one site runs the
fake news, other sites play off it. So, it doesn’t matter if the original news
is fake, you now have a dozen places all the saying the same thing, much like
the grand Trump/Russia conspiracy theory.
And thus I’m
grateful that this site allows comments, as readers quickly point out an issue:
I saw this reported on CNN/HLN this morning as well, citing the
times' article. At least CNN mentioned that it was the product of an
unconfirmed leak.... In other words, another rumor.
Another reader provides even further clarification (though
sadly, the rest of the comments degenerate into political irrelevancy):
….It came from the NY Times.
That makes it suspect from the beginning. When will we learn to fact check
Times stories before getting all upset about them? Turns out, of course, the
story was false. It is to deal with an Asian American-related discrimination
complaint filed during the Obama years.
So, even if this
new version is closer to the truth, it’s still a start for fixing this everyday
injustice, just as Rosa Parks at least started
the conversation we needed to have then.
Instead of being
moved to the back of the admissions line, an Asian-American is standing up and
saying what we’re doing to our kids regarding admissions at our few good
schools is wrong.
Now, I grant that
at best it only looks like admissions will be targeted here, but once this is
addressed then perhaps we can indeed address the sexist and racist hiring
policies that are now accepted at many of our institutions of higher education.
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