Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

And just wait until those same women hear this interview with Webb:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UebXkJhGpyA

Wait a minute - Asians benefit from affirmative action? Why didn’t anyone tell me?!

So, his point is that his and my fellow Scotch-Irish aren’t that upset about Sen. Obama being black, they’re really upset that he’s half-white and half-Nigerian and thus not a descendant of slaves, but still able to benefit from affirmative action?  If he were a descendant of slaves everything would be well and he’d vote for them, so long as he weren’t Latino?

Memo to Independent George:  I’m just following the widely used Small Business Administration affirmative action guidelines, which state that their program is open to:

* Black Americans
* Hispanic Americans
* Native Americans (American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians)
* Asian Pacific Americans (persons with origins from Japan, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Korea, Samoa, Guam, U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands [Republic of Palau], Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Laos, Cambodia [Kampuchea], Taiwan; Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Macao, Hong Kong, Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu, or Nauru; Subcontinent Asian Americans (persons with origins from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives Islands or Nepal), and
* Members of other groups designated by the SBA.

The Hawaiian people would just like to be able to keep what was theirs.  Their land has been stolen by an influx of main-land americans.  The Democratic legislature has aided and abetted this for the last forty years, and it is still going on.  Grade and high schools receive much less funding, with no intent of educating mainly Hawaiian children.  Housing is deplorable and the entrepreneurs constantly cheat the Hawaiian people of their birthright.  It reminds me of Washington D.C. in the fifties when the blacks were being robbed of their homes.
Yet Congress has not made one attemp to solve the nations problems during the last decade.

Asians most certainly do NOT benefit from Affirmative Action.  In fact, they have to clear a higher bar than whites, even.

So yes, it is APPLIED to Asians, but negatively.  An Asian has to get an SAT score of 1100 where a white needs 1000 and a black needs 800. 

When California got rid of AA in the US system in 1997, Black and Hispanic enrollment dropped 55-65%, while Asian enrollment INCREASED 11%.

Webb has a long history of antagonizing women - I’m not thinking they’re suddenly going to rally to the guy who wrote this:

http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/mediapolitics/2182.html

Professor, you are technically correct, but at least in the area of education in California, the diversity types have been trying to “fix” the “problem” of too many Asians in various schools: see here for example.

Also, Sen. Webb is close to saying what many people believe: Obama is an affirmative action candidate, because nobody with his thin credentials, leftist beliefs, and dodgy associates would be near the Democratic nomination if he weren’t half black.

I used to be a big Webb fan. I particularly admired his book “Born Fighting”. I was glad when he won a Senate seat.

And then he let his aide spend a night in jail for carrying his (Webb’s) gun in DC. Webb would not come forward for almost 24 hours to say the gun was his and the aide was carrying it unknowingly.

Webb, for all his previous courage and integrity has turned into a cowardly slimeball. I guess elections do that to you.

Yeah. Him and Obama. They deserve each other.

John Henry

"Birthright”?  Way to dive straight into the racist arguments, Pupule Harry.  As long as people self-segregate, they will suffer.

So, his point is that his and my fellow Scotch-Irish aren’t that upset about Sen. Obama being black, they’re really upset that he’s half-white and half-Nigerian and thus not a descendant of slaves....”

Oh, you haven’t heard? It’s even better (or worse_ than that: Obama, it seems, is a direct descendant of slave-OWNERS.

Details here:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/for-the-record-obama-descended-from-white-slave-owners/2007/03/02/1172338880761.html

Most universities do not practice affirmative action in favor of Asian-Americans (or, in some cases, Cuban-Americans).  Every governmental affirmative action in hiring or contracting that I know of (and I used to do procurement work for the State of New York) does include Asian-Americans (and Cuban-Americans) in its list of affirmative action categories.

Other private institutions vary.  My understanding is that most investment banks do not consider Asian-Americans an affirmative action category, but most law firms do.

Well, the fellow Scots-Irish that I grew up with and know, were always in favor of individual rights and the right of equal opportunity and very chary, at best, of equal outcomes.  They reluctantly, I think, backed affirmative action as it was originally designed to help those who had been systematically denied these rights by government decree.

However, once affirmative action became applicable to anyone who could somehow claim ‘victim’ status, most, if not all, of them got off the bandwagon.

Trust me, most of them could not care one whit about Obama’s race or background.  What they *do* care about is being given an advantage based on a claimed group ‘victimhood’.  They want to see honest effort honestly rewarded and *no one* given an advantage who hasn’t ‘earned’ it.  I’m guessing that many individuals who come from substantial backgrounds but get better treatment due to their membership in a ‘disadvantaged’ groups would not be considered ‘honest’ recipients of such treatment.

Most programs DO consider Asians a “protected class,” the problem for them in higher Ed, esp in California, is that they are “over-represented”.  Affirmative action really functions as quotas no matter what its defenders say, and to a considerable degree the “goals” are both floor AND ceiling.  The trick is to get the goal set so unrealistically high that your group never attains it, then you can scream about discrimination while bellying up to the trough forever.  But, in a lot of areas the blacks and hispanics and women got there first and have the unreasonable goals, so the latecomers (Asians, people with disabilities, etc.) are stuck (you can’t have all the goals add up to 300%, after all).

I wish Webb wouldn’t use the neologism “Scots-Irish.” Our term for ourselves, “Scotch-Irish” was and is perfectly fine.  If the Scots use “scotch” only to describe inanimate objects and “scots” to describe people, they can continue to do do. But we, the Scotch-Irish in the US, should call ourselves whatever we want and shouldn’t engage in hyper-correction.

Oh, and on affirmative action, Webb is of course correct.  He’s hardly the only person to point out that the arc of affirmative action has led us to a place where it has a lot of political opposition.

Webb would be a heck of a VP choice for Obama and would help heal the fissures in the Democratic Party since it abandoned its Scoop Jackson, Joe Lieberman, and Zell Miller contingencies.  This would have been a way to get that back.  A more centralist, populist, and patriotic party. 

Yes Virginia, many Democrats are not patriotic. Oh they freak out when you say that, and I am not talking about a majority, but in truth a significant minority seem to harbor resentment and anger towards the United States that is a bit pathological. 

But since I am for McCain, by all means pick some bat guano crazy VP to run with Barack.

I believe this is the ideal that Sen. Webb is inartfully looking for:

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society-the farmers, mechanics, and laborers-who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.

- President Andrew Jackson’s Bank Veto Message, 10 JUL 1832 (Source: The Avalon Project)

Women, in general, have been the main beneficiaries of affirmative action and will be the biggest losers if it is overturned

There is no evidence that affirmative action or any government policies accelerated the entry of women into any field. Except for a hiccup caused by WWII, female entry into the workforce was a smoothly rising curve although the 20th century. There simply isn’t any indication that these policies helped at all. Ditto for African-Americans, the curve after 1964 looks exactly like the curve before.

In judging the effectiveness of programs you have to look at their effect on trends. Affirmative action doesn’t seem to have effected trends one way or the other.

The real big Inconvenient Truths are these:
1) if there are two groups with a 5% average difference in IQ, the group with the lower IQ average will less good results in any peaceful, honest, voluntary economy.
2) as a group, Black Americans score about 5% less than Whites on IQ tests.
Which correlate fairly well with SAT.
Which correlate well with school success.
Which correlate well with economic success.

But in all cases, individual differences and characteristics dominate.

Gov’t policy based on equal ability when ability is not equal, will not get the results planned for.

They bend the rules for “disadvantaged groups.” That includes women.  Fire departments, police departments, the military, etc.  Otherwise not many women would pass the tests.

Blacks score 1 standard deviation lower than Whites and 1.2 standard deviations lower than East Asians and at least 1.5 standard deviations lower than Ashkenazi Jews, on IQ tests.  I standard deviation is 15 IQ points.

Does this count as “speaking truth to power?” Like my Hungarian Grandfather used to say, “Tell the truth.  And then run!”

Asians benefit from set-asides for minority-owned businesses.  I’ve see truly awful engineers immigrate from Korea to California, start a “consulting” business and land government contracts.

Gee, as a person of Scotch-Irish and Japanese descent, I guess I have two dogs in this fight.

Look, here’s the deal about affirmative action and Asians (or at least, Japanese-Americans—I have no idea how Cambodians feel about it). Believe it or not, Asians are raised to value education. We disproportionately want to earn undergraduate and advanced degrees. My mother used to reassure me “I will love you even if you don’t get a PhD,” which any Japanese-American kid will explain really means “you had better plan on getting a PhD.”

So when some officious do-gooder tells me that it will be harder for me or my children to get into college or grad school because we are over-represented as a racial group, well, that *really* angers me. Education is important to us, at a very visceral level. Conversely, it does me no good at all to have some guy at a law firm give me extra points on my application because I’m a Nisei. I don’t want to be a lawyer. If Asians are under-represented in some sector of the economy, believe me, it’s because we disproportionately don’t want to participate in that sector of the economy. My mother would have been absolutely disgusted if my goal in life were to have been a football player. So the fact that there are no NFL players named Watanabe does not bother me in the least and it does me no good at all if some bright-light pie-splitting racist wants to boost our representation in their sector.

So tell me, are there any sectors of the economy where the affirmative action bar is raised, not lowered, if you are black or Hispanic? That is, where it is official government affirmative action policy to make it harder for you to do something simply because you are black?

And as far as having a Scotch-Irish dad—well, gee, that’s what makes me quick to anger! Don’t mess with me or my kids....

Kindest regards
BBB

"The Hawaiian people would just like to be able to keep what was theirs.  Their land has been stolen by an influx of main-land americans.  The Democratic legislature has aided and abetted this for the last forty years, and it is still going on.  Grade and high schools receive much less funding, with no intent of educating mainly Hawaiian children.  Housing is deplorable and the entrepreneurs constantly cheat the Hawaiian people of their birthright.  It reminds me of Washington D.C. in the fifties when the blacks were being robbed of their homes.
Yet Congress has not made one attemp to solve the nations problems during the last decade.

Posted by Harold Cutler on 05/22 at 04:32 PM”

Not quite true. Been there lately? The place has been bought; lock, stock and barrel by the Japenese.

Differential capacities as a group average phenomenon are among the most obvious realities in the world. No one in their right mind would want nearly any woman on a fire department or in a combat role in the military. Racial/cultural differences (the two concepts become almost inextricably intertwined in the US) are so great and tend to be so permanent that, for example, to get any significant change in lower class black emotional/cognitive/ and social skills closer to that of middle class whites is a herculean task.
While such a task is worthwhile there are two fundamental problems those who would initiate change face: a good part of the difficulty is in fact genetic but worse, any number of absolute fools (otherwise known as liberals) are not convinced that there is any such thing as “better”. Unless, of course, it is anti-Euroamerican or anti-white.

John Henry wrote:

Webb, for all his previous courage and integrity has turned into a cowardly slimeball. I guess elections do that to you.

Not to brag, but I had Webb pegged as a slimeball after “macacagate” and his “Don’t question my patriotism” campaign. Tossing his aide under the bus was par for the course.

Webb is dead wrong - affirmative action was never justifiable. It was fashionable racism as morally indefensible as Jim Crow. Webb’s comments remind me of William Jefferson Clinton’s mend-it-don’t-end-it attempts to save affirmative action when it looked like the nation was finally ready to close that sinister chapter once and for all.

I always thought it was funny for Asian-Americans to get affirmative action benefits for contracts, business, etc. Its not like a Chinese-American doesn’t have an advantage over white people when buying products in China, right?

BBB is right, and meanwhile too many blacks are inculcating their kids that it is “whitey” (meaning BAD) to want to achieve academically and aspire to a high-level (and I do NOT mean GOVERNMENT) job. Asians, especially Japanese, are expected to aspire and achieve. Kids want to fulfill expectations.

The cultures are to blame for affirmative action and its consequences. And I am no fan of Webb but he’s right in this instance.

And ain’t it just rich that the messiah is descended from slave-owners? Does this mean he, too, will have to pay reparations if those ever (God forbid) come to pass? Irony, thy name is Democrat.

Yikes!  I always thought Bainbridge’s web site would bring together a more intelligent group than what is represented by many (though certainly not all) of the above posts.

Two points:
1) the holier than thou, racist attitudes of native Hawaiians never ceases to amaze or disgust me...wasn’t it Hawaii that had racially advantageous property and tax laws on its books until relatively recently, and even then it took federal court involvement to get these laws stricken...pathetic; and

2)those of you who insist on calling yourselves “Scotch-Irish” please do me two favors: a) do not come to Scotland (ever) (I am an American and live in Scotland, so have come to identify with how rude the American term is to the Scots); and b) recognize that Scots-Irish are people who moved from the geographical area known as Scotland to the geographical area of Ulster/Northern Ireland; due to religious conflicts, most Scots-Irish in the US are really just Scottish...and they are definitely NOT Scotch...Scotch is a drink - a very delicious, wonderful drink...the water of life!

James Webb is far and away my favorite Democrat. If there were more James Webbs in the party the party would be doing a hell of a lot better. Luckily there’s little danger of that. Most Webb-like guys are Republicans (at least in the voting booth) even if they have union or volunteer firefighter stickers on their trucks.

It us NOT Scotch-Irish.

It is Scots-Irish.

Scots is a person.

Scotch is a drink.

Ask Sean Connery.

Webb is probably way too honest to be a VP candidate, given the spinning nonsense that passes for discourse these days.

RE wrote:

>>2)those of you who insist on calling yourselves “Scotch-Irish” please do me two favors: a) do not come to Scotland (ever) (I am an American and live in Scotland, so have come to identify with how rude the American term is to the Scots); and b) recognize that Scots-Irish are people who moved from the geographical area known as Scotland to the geographical area of Ulster/Northern Ireland; due to religious conflicts, most Scots-Irish in the US are really just Scottish...and they are definitely NOT Scotch...Scotch is a drink - a very delicious, wonderful drink...the water of life!<<

My great-great-great-great-grandfather did not kick your royalist a**es at Yorktown just to have you lecture us about the difference between Scots-Irish and Scotch-Irish. If you had wanted the right to lecture us about the difference between Scots-Irish and Scotch-Irish, you should have tried a weensy bit harder to win that war. I was raised “Scotch-Irish” by a tough man descended from pioneer stock and you can keep your elitism to yourself.

BTW I did visit Edinburgh in 1997 and loved it! I was careful to watch the Scots and drink my Scotch there, though....

Warm regards
BBB