If you recall the Dilbert series on television, you may remember the chicken man episode. The pointy haired boss has gathered together a dreaded committee to launch a new product, and one of the office dweebs is nominated to name the committee. This is considered the most difficult job of all as it causes the person assigned no end of confusion. He stood to give a name and nothing but clucks came out of his mouth.
I encountered the same kind of dyslexia a few moments ago in trying to describe what manner of black conservative I am. So I know better. Don't ask.
But having given it the old college try, I could say what kind of black conservative I am not. These things seem to fly right off my lips, despite the fact that there are certain qualifications. Exactly what those qualifications are become a bit more difficult to specify when one of the people mentioned is Clarence Pendleton. You remember Clarence:
As chairman of the Civil Rights Commission, Pendleton provoked criticism by taking stands against several established tenets of civil rights reformers. He opposed school desegregation through busing and believed that affirmative action programs detracted from the achievments of those who could have succeeded without them. During his time as chairman, congressional funding for the Commission was greatly reduced and many top staff members either lost their jobs or left in disillusionment over the direction of the agency. Pendleton was known to respond sharply to his critics and was unwavering in his approach. William Bradford Reynolds, Assistant Attorney for Civil Rights and a close friend of Pendleton's, characterized him in the New York Times as a man of candor who "felt very deeply that the individuals in America should deal with one another as brothers and sisters totally without regard to race and background."
Scouring the net (for 10 minutes) I found very little on Pendleton other than a half dozen copies of the above paragraph which was excerpted from his 1988 NYT obituary. The only thing of substance seems to be this paper on Affirmative Action, which is available for $5 from the William Monroe Trotter Institute in Boston.
It's certainly a remarkable thing that the intense feelings people (who remember) have or had about Pendleton have remained far longer than any concrete example of what he did or said. Once things get beyond the grasp of Google, and become the province of Lexis and Nexis, those of us in the general public are left simply with vague memories and emotions. We are left to the mercies of vituperous spin-dogs like Ann Coulter and other disingenuous ideological fanatics. We depend on the deadpan aloofness of librarians and the pedantic obfuscations of scholar-squirrels. Do you get the feeling I'm unsatisfied with this situation? I am.
It's easy enough to say that I find a number of reasons to support Affirmative Action, but I too am against bussing of children. The devil is in the details of course, and Pendleton's details cost a five spot. Is it worth five bucks to get the damned paper and make a judgement? I'd say so, but apparently the Institute doesn't take Visa. Please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope and allow six to eight weeks for delivery. I thought we got beyond all that.
The larger issue involves the parsing out of policy positions which is a crafty business. Is it useful to bother with what Clarence said way back when. Absolutely. But whether or not I research this particular issue, I am always interested in seeing this kind of work happen 'open source' on the internet. If I could be so bold as to suggest that I want the be the Linus Torvalds of open source political deliberation, you might get an idea of where I'm headed. I don't want to pay some hidebound institution to remember for me, I want people who think it's important for everyone to know to come to my site (or some site I could link to) and tell us materially what Pendleton was all about, not just that his father was a swim coach. Furthermore I want to host discussion so that Joe Doaks can determine whether or not Pendleton matters today for reasons other than my needs for an intellectual pedigree in shorthand.
There may be no easy way around disintermediating academia's stranglehold on research materials. Some people are trying to fix that problem. DSpace and PLoS are leading examples. It's really a trip because my original concept of the internet project which has become VisionCircle and mdcbowen.org was called 'bSpace'.
Everything I do here will continue to be free via Creative Commons. If I spend the five bucks, I'll let you know the deal.
Posted by mbowen at August 3, 2003 08:54 PM | TrackBack