Vision Circle

Ward Connerly

OK, I've been writing that Ward Connerly has taken advantage of affirmative action programs. I have no problem with people taking advantage of such programs.

I've come to understand affirmative action programs, in government contracts, as being pure set asides OR requirements that companies who win government contracts use some percentage of "disadvantaged companies" as subcontractors. Here "disadvantaged companies" tend to mean minority and/or women owned companies.

LaShawn Barber found it "repugnant" that I mention this because in previous "discussions", she has mentioned that she discussed this with him and he denied it.

So, I did some Googling...

Black Detroit Exodus Reveals Racial Friction

Reading today's Detroit Free Press, I run into an article dealing with the tension black metropolitan Detroiters encounter when they move into formerly all white suburbs. I grew up in Inkster, a small mostly black suburb outside of Detroit used by Ford in the mid 20th century to house black workers. Moving to Redford (a predominantly white suburb) in the eighties we experienced racism from adults and kids. The significant difference from our end was that we KNEW why we were being hassled. There are some class dynamics going on in this article that aren't being uncovered (Taylor, Trenton, and Warren are not just white suburbs, but rather are white working class suburbs). But when the black mother of a black child tells a reporter that her nine year old child didn't know what race was...there is a problem that goes beyond the actions of white racists. Black children brought up blind to the realities of racism are automatically crippled.

Moving On

This week's cover of the Amsterdam News , New York's longest standing Black weekly, features a picture of the Honorable Louis Farrakhan with headlines referencing the ADL and the Millions More March scheduled for October 2005.

Mexico's Fox draws ire for racial miss-step

Mexican President Vicente Fox was sound criticized for comments made about blacks during a speech criticizing US policy. Fox noted the following:

"There's no doubt that the Mexican men and women _ full of dignity, willpower and a capacity for work _ are doing the work that not even blacks want to do in the United States,"

Now to be fair, he's right. The jobs that Mexican immigrants take are jobs that most Americans would not want to take. Where Fox makes the mistake is in revealing the fundamental nature of the contemporary racial hierarchy. "...Doing the work not even blacks want to do." That is to say, the work that not even the lowest among you would do for money.

Edited to add: Bomani's got the same ideas on this, but fleshes them out a bit more.

One Reason Why I Hate Virginia

Southern heritage buffs vow to use the Virginia gubernatorial election as a platform for designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.

The four candidates for governor have differing views on whether to pay official state homage to the Confederacy, an issue that has been debated for years in the commonwealth.

"We're not just a few people making a lot of noise," said Brag Bowling, a spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the oldest hereditary organization for male descendents of Confederate soldiers. "This is not a racial thing; it is good for Virginia. We're going to keep pushing this until we get it."

[ Emphasis mine ]

To the spokesman I write,
BULL.SHIT.

Another Riot

Another riot?

What is it about their culture that causes them to do this?

Race or No Race?

Unpacking the science and the politics could be complicated absent a clear understanding of what *blackness* is. It is fundamentally a unique form of interpersonal communion arising in the uniquely hostile social environment which was chattel slavery and jim crow America - nothing more and nothing less. Now if a simple autodidactic layperson - such as myself - can easily grasp this fact, what's wrong with all these big-headed scientists? Fascinating discussion of the Leroi article posted on the 15th - especially big props to the editor-in-chief of the New Scientist who fundamentally gets it. The Provost at Georgetown shows his behind in a Lawrence Summers on steroids moment...,

Armand Leroi is bound to please the right wingers with his view that "genetic data show that races clearly do exist". I'm sure that is not his intention but I also doubt that everyone will read as far as his belief that "skin colour does not give the measure of a man, that it tells nothing about his abilities or temperament". That genetics has a bad history of being misunderstood and misapplied scarcely needs restating.

The Paradox of Normal Human Variety

Solve this paradox;

We're discussing people who honestly feel friendly, but withold somewhere in their minds a willingness to be equally human.

Then you may be psychologically qualified to undertake this science

there's one aspect of human inheritance that people are resolutely ignoring. And that is normal human variety. Or, to put it more crisply: race. If we look around the world we find that people look very different from each other. These differences are manifestly genetic. They must be. That's why people's kids look like them. Yet we know nothing about that variety. We don't know what the differences are between white skin and black skin, European skin versus African skin. What I mean is we don't know what the genetic basis of that is. This is actually amazing. I mean, here's a trait, trivial as it may be, about which wars have been fought, which is one of the great fault lines in society, around which people construct their identities as nothing else. And yet we haven't the foggiest idea what the genetic basis of this is. It's amazing. Why is that?

Race Hustling

[ Edited for some clean up ]

If "Black liberals" can be race hustlers, why can't "Black conservatives"?

[ edited ] Didn't Alan Keyes race hustle when he ran for the senate seat in Illinois? Come on, tell the truth.

From an exchange on Booker Rising:

Massie as race hustler, DS? Which race is he hustling?

LB, I number of times I've pointed out glaring inconsistencies in some of his pieces.

In this one, I point out that he's slamming Blacks for the idea of a Black community. If he believes that Blacks should look at Blacks as a part of America, then he should stop bashing the Black community because it's something that he doesn't believe in.

By bashing the Black community, which he doesn't believe in, he's using race when it's convienient. Thus, to me, he's hustling the race issue.

Next, the idea that most Blacks don't consider ourselves as being part of America fails under the light of inspection.

Start with the fact that Blacks are more likely to live in an integrated neighborhood than whites. Continue with the fact that most Blacks still strive for, and believe in, integration.

Consider the make up of the military, recent recruiting data not withstanding. The percentage of Blacks in the military exceeds the percentage of Blacks in the general population. If Blacks didn't consider ourselves as a part of America, the percentage in the service would be lower than in the general population.

Condi Rice and Colin Powell have called themselves African-American. Now tell me that by them calling themselves African-American, they don't consider themselves to be American. Yet, those who are intellectually lazy or who just want to throw flames, state that by calling themselves African-American, they are belittling themselves as American. Or better stated, they are down playing that they are American.

There is a sticker that says, "American by birth. Texan by the grace of God!". I've seen that sticker a lot. Does it mean that the person is not considering themselves to be American?

Of course not.

Interpersonal Communion with the Poor, White, and Pissed

For the past couple weeks I've been indulging a guilty pleasure - no holds barred textual street fighting. It's what invariably happens when I go to visit a sleeply little listserve with an established pecking order and protectionist orthodoxy. Think Vin Diesel's character in Knockaround Guys, and you have a pretty clear picture of what I'm talking about. I'll watch the list flow for a minute, identify the toughest poster(s) - whose self-appointed job it is to enforce aggregate status quo by challenging and discouraging potentially upsetting ecclexia.

Posting something certain to draw a response from the local toughs, I then proceed to share with these hapless rubes (it's always doods too) the hard-earned monstrousness I've amassed over the course of the preceding 2000 textual brawls.