If you go to Google today and search for 'Black Republicans', you will not find this website. That is because I have used some choice words that Google doesn't accept for its paid advertisers.
In order to meet the greater good of spreading the good word, I am going to redact the bad words here. I will continue to publish orignal stuff over at Cobb, and then print sanitized versions here. So if you swear that you've seen a more peppery version of the same idea somewhere else, you aren't going crazy. Google is the reason.
How do I feel about this kind of censorship? I have no idea what kind of algorithm Google is using, but I know that it is a computer algorithm. So I do not believe that there is some ideological filter on my speech, rather a spell-checker on steroids. It's a reality I can endure.
(reprinted from Cobb)
At this point my understanding of the SC decision on Affirmative Action is fairly straightforward. The Court likes 'individualized' decisions which take race into account, as exemplified by the U of M's Law School admissions process, but strikes down more numerically oriented processes which automatically fix some numerical value to racial identity in a preferential manner. This was the point system used by the undergraduate school.
My reaction is mixed. The most important aspect of the decisions was that they didn't break Bakke which essentially said, no quotas but race can be taken into account. Although I like the principle of not weighing race by numbers, I'm a numerical kind of guy.
One of the old standards for Affirmative Action was 'community representation' which was rather numerical but squishy. One of the reasons I mentioned Caspar, Wyoming was to express the common sense notion that if there are not 8% blacks at the local college there nobody really expects a loud complaint. But if there were not 8% blacks at Emory University in Atlanta, GA people would rightly smell a rat. I always liked the idea of the institution as a semi-permeable membrane. The inside should more or less resemble the outside, not be a fortress, even a fortress of meritocracy. While the rule for inclusion cannot be mathematical, people are still going to count noses and they are still going to compare the inside with the outside.
When it comes to university, I like the idea of 'critical mass' much more than I do 'diversity', but I do so strictly within the limits of the cultural value of a mixed race campus. I don't believe that any Supreme Court ruling should have been necessary in that regard and that universities should have been able to work within Bakke indefinitely. I acknowledge the political axe of 'colorblindness' as well as those who see any racial discrimination as racist regardless of intent to exclude. They forced the issue.
My prime objective in supporting Affirmative Action, aside from defending the political rights of African Americans to demand any concession they damn well please after bearing the burdens they have for this nation, is to reinforce the idea of racial integration as a practical matter. In that context, there is very little that I expect from integration at the college level. Integration is much more important in housing and in work, but I'll take it where I can get it. Nevertheless at college it is more important at the undergraduate level than at the level of professional schools. So the failure of the point system is a disappointment for me.
For the same reasons I think 'diversity' at university is squishy, clumsy and sometimes dead wrong, I think a point system is good and the idea of undergraduate meritocracy highly suspect. That is to say, I find the baked-in essentiality of racial identity in 18 year old freshmen to be fairly lacking in substance. People go to college to learn, to be molded and shaped. Certainly people bring a fair amount of 'baggage / authentical goodness' to the table as freshmen, but how seriously are we to take this? How many college freshmen have a good sense of the literature of their ethnicity and understand squarely their place within it? That seems to me to be something that becomes more defined at college, not something fixed before and unchanging during college. Thus the premise of diversity, that these essential qualities must be deliberately managed and finessed to deliver a finer outcome rings hollow for college. This is where the reasoning of diversity as a justification for Affirmative Action has gone awry. It has forced black students to actively represent something racial, rather than just acknowledge the general disadvantages attending black communities despite the strength of those students' ambitions.
It's important for me to say that I see race at the undergraduate level as a proxy for the economic and educational deprivations latent in the legacy of Jim Crow. It's not that college students are these racially charged ions which need the strong force of diversity to bind them into cohesive molecules of society. Rather that their achievements are all tainted by the structural advantages and disadvantages of separate and unequal neighborhoods. If one substituted zipcodes for race and awarded points that would be just fine with me.
It is precisely for that reason that I am not particularly irked at a point system such as U of M's now illegal method. I think one can be 20 points of 'athlete' and that counts as much as 20 points of 'asian' or 20 points of 'legacy' at the age of 18. That these are all positive discriminations gives these characteristics the benefit of a doubt. Fine. But now that the automatic granting of points is no good I am just as well suited to accept an essay on any such topic (pick two from "My Ethnicity", "My Athleticism", "My Religion", "My Dad's Old Boy Network"..etc) and assign points to the quality of the essay. There's nothing particularly mechanized about that.
But, that still won't stop people from counting noses. Which means in the end, people will still fret and sue if the college seems too black. Of course next time they will start investigating the essays and we Americans will really be showing our collective ass.
I still stand to say that America is standing at a stilted racial equilibrium. Integration is not complete. The semi-permeable membranes of America's institutions are still not balancing their supply of opportunity with the demand by those on the outside. This decision against point systems, while strictly sensible, has slowed down the process at the undergraduate level in one of the few places integration still takes place. I would have rather seen it go the other way, especially considering the numerical nature of the GRE, GMAT etc and the premise of professional certification. (And the certification arguments on meritocracy are fascinating in their own right). There are many reasons for that chief among them is that I would prefer the kind of society that depends far less on exceptional racial tokens, and more on neighbors. Be that as it may, I can abide the decisions as I see them. Of course, I will look closer again.
Much is being made of Sandra Day O'Connor's swing vote upholding the U of M's Law School admissions policy. What's irking me is probably irking you as well. That is, the suggestion that there is no logic in her decision. Then people (like Kinsley and Sullivan) rant on illogically to 'prove' their points.
I've said a few things on the subject here. But over here would be a good place to observe things that [white] conservatives are supposed to think about the way things have been adjudicated.
As I review the pace of change and growth here, I am finding that I bought a size 44 jacket for a 36 inch chest, and the miracle drug of the web is not making my muscles bulge.
So I will be shutting down the BBS section over the next few weeks and limiting discussion to the comments sections of the editorials. This will allow me to consolidate my websites to one location as I let my trial lapse with the current host.
Thanks go out to the brave souls (and personal friends) who have signed up for the BBS. OSR, downsized will continue. And, truth be told, it might even continue as OldSchoolThought. Just a thought.
Apple announced its new G5 today. Big whoop!
The big deal about the G5 is that it's a 64bit chip built by IBM that will run at some obscenely high clock speed. If you can't guess, I'm not particularly impressed. In fact, I think the greatest thing that could happen to increase Apple's influence on the market would be for them to get off Moore's Treadmill and put that fabulous OS of theirs on cheap hardware.
So let me start the meme. Moore's Treadmill is the narrow view by the computing industry that faster chips is always better. So long as the economics are working and people keep upgrading their old machines, the Treadmill works. You could say that in the 60s and 70s, Detroit was on an equivalent treadmill for engines. The car was essentially the engine. The more the horsepower, the more attractive the car. So they thought. Of all the companies to be stuck on Moore's Treadmill, Apple provides the most irony because their marketing has always focused on usability. So it is this contradiction that strikes me as Steve Jobs announces 64bit computing.
I believe that with Jaguar, Apple has proven itself to be a great competitor to the Linux desktop. It's even fair to say that the Linux desktop won't happen in any consumer markets, and certainly not in the corporate sphere because of Apple, at least not until blade workstations become mainstream. But as long as the Mac OS is limited to Mac hardware, Linux will continue to be strong.
I don't have anything against Linux. Quite the contrary. But a Linux desktop makes no sense in corporate IT right now. Its too costly to maintain, not because of the software itself, but because of the cost of tech support for network guys. Imagine retooling the helpdesks of the Fortune 500. This is the hidden cost of the Linux desktop in business. Enabling end-user support for Linux desktops would require a substantial investment in retooling a big workforce. When blade desktops come around and PC support can be handled as nicely as some internet cafes are, that will be a different story. But today when it means a box on a desk, Linux is out of the question.
The Mac could swing the corporate desktop, and probably would have by now if they hadn't killed Power Computing, the hardware clone out of Austin. Certainly the same Dell folks who commoditized the PC and slammed manufacturing costs would have bled some influence over there. Clearly Apple revoked the Power license because Power undersold the Macs in retail. But that same low price combined with the fabulous thing the Microsoft Office Suite has become for Mac could have made a big dent in corporate business. I'm not fantasizing however. As quiet as it's kept, Microsoft wasn't the only vendor hostile to Java. There are a lot of reasons Apple hasn't gone corporate.
At home and for geeks, that's a different story. There are plenty of reasons to run OS X at home for geeks and non-geeks alike. But speaking from the geek side of the equation, the single computer home is a thing of the past. Moore's law looks very good when it applies to the reselling market. Perfectly good Pentium 3 machines can be had for $150. I've got such a Dell at my house. A revolution could be afoot if I can think about buying a machine for each of my kids at that pricepoint. Wouldn't it be nice if I could manage all of that home networking under the Apple paradigm? Yes, without question. The problem is that I have to shell out megabucks for Macs. So Apple is out of the question.
I am accustomed to Apple doing the wrong thing. It doesn't affect me half as much as it used to. Maybe I'm growing up. Yet I still admire their style, nerve and quite frankly their hardware. But it's really the OS I want. Too bad it's stuck on the treadmill.
I saw the following quote in reference to the SCOTUS ruling today on Affirmative Action in college admissions:
"The Constitution protects the rights of individuals, not racial groups,"
This is the common conservative interpretation.
It's wrong.
Check out the 13th Amendment.
While the 14th Amendment definitely talks about protecting individuals from discrimination, the 13th AMendment talks not only about ending slavery but protecting GROUPS from the badges of enslavement. Now in practice this amendment has been used to apply to prostitutes and a whole host of subjugated classes. Seems to me that the group it was intended for still bears that badge. Does not make us victims in an ontological sense. I am by no means a "victim." (As a sidenote just got CONTEMPT AND PITY by Daryl Michael Scott. Scott makes an excellent argument about the way that "victim arguments" have been used by liberals, radicals, and conservatives to help/hurt African American progress. Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, and most recently Stanley Crouch have made similar arguments...)
I have given a lot of thought to the matter of reparations and I'd like to be blunt about my conclusions for the sake of brevity. The answer is that blackfolks will settle for anything they can get because they are so accustomed to not getting what they deserve. African Americans deserve reparations, they won't get them, and the issue will hang around indefinitely with no resolution - rather like the Catholic Church's edict against the use of birth control. It won't matter how well thought out the moral case, it just won't mean shinola here in America. People will go about their own lives knowing that there is a compelling argument against what they are doing, but they won't look closely at the argument itself.
The simple case for reparations is this:
1.There is no statute of limitations on debt. It is either forgiven or not.
2. A man and his progeny have a right to the rewards of his labor.
3. A government, most especially a government of and by the people, should not conspire in the theft of those rewards. The descendents of slaves, through the legal institution of slavery itself and the Jim Crow laws that followed, are the only Americans who have been denied, by government, the inheritance their own forebears energy and creativity would have bequeathed them.
How can conservatives, who are so outraged by taxes, not be outraged by this?
I think conservatives and Republicans are not outraged about anything, they are just calculatingly greedy. I know I am. They care most about the integrity of a system of producing and maintaining wealth. The idea of reparations, taken as a 'transfer of wealth' seems to violate a principle of propreity which in fact it defends.
I think far too many people object to reparations for African Americans because it suggests that they would get wealth in a different manner than everyone else. I believe this to be a racist argument because it doesn't invalidate the claim for reparations, it simply sets up an arbitrary standard of how blacks should behave with no regard to their actual condition or history. It simply says 'not the Irish way, therefore not legitimate'.
What I believe should be done is that serious consideration be given to the form and substance of the reward itself. I strongly believe that African Americans, given some coordination and discipline, could and would develop several strong and well-accepted uses for any reparation payments. In fact, these would be desirable in any case and applicable to the needs of African American anyway. Why then limit the justification of these needs to the political impossibility of a reparations settlement?
When I first thought about Republicanism for myself, one of the first things I asked seriously was, what's in it for me? Where is my patronage and what kind do I want? I have been disappointed to the extent to which, in the African American case, Republicanism is a psychic thing. People seem to get the most kick out of the existentials of calling themselves black Republicans, and calling others fools and vice versa. Blacks are so hung up about wearing the label (or not) that nobody cares about the policies and practices. I exaggerate but you know what I'm saying. My point is that we should be outlining what our political desires are in concrete policy terms first, then worrying about how we can get them second. Instead of reserving all of our energy into theoretical issues like reparations and affirmative action we should be more concerned with the practical benefits owing to party work.
So I'm saying that if one congresscritter can slip in last minute riders on a bill that is going to sail through congress give x billion to y corporation, we shouldn't be spending our resources trying to convince the entire American public about the validity of reparations. Reparations are valid. It's as simple as one, two three, but public opinion is the path of greatest resistance and least reward. Buying a congressman or two is a lot simpler, especially since there is this thing called the Black Caucus. Understand that 15% of America is racist and another 25% on top of that is stupid and apathetic. Instead of trying to convince them that the sky is blue and reparations are good, we should be directing those agents we already control to do what they are already capable of doing. In other words, reparations are an impractical justification for better schools. If you wan't better schools than say so and figure out a way to get them that doesn't require (white) America to strain itself with moral thinking.
The sooner we get on that track, the better off we are.
One of the platforms of the new Republican Party (post-Goldwater) is State's Rights. When Ronald Reagan first announced his presidential run in 1980 he did it from the poor town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. THIS Philly wasn't known for Moses Malone, cheesesteaks, or even MOVE.
THIS Philly was known for one thing--the brutal murder of four civil rights workers. ONE thing only.
Reagan's speech? Focused primarily on state's rights. Think the two are related? Of course they are.
I've pretty much thought state's rights was synonymous with a neo-confederate platform. Didn't think it was possible at all to use the idea for a cause beneficial to black people. Until now.
In a climate where regressive conservatives run all aspects of the federal government as well as the national media...the states might be the only option. If even Alabama's governor can decide to raise taxes...then perhaps our best hope lies there.
SHARPTON ISSUE WATCH
I think I've been looking at the wrong website. Here is where I should've looked. And Al DOES have a couple of issue platforms. One dealing with statehood for DC, the other dealing with positive rights and the Constitution. And that's it. I won't go too much into depth, but suffice it to say that he didn't need Cornel West at all if all he was going to do was steal ideas from Jesse Jackson jr. and Jesse Jackson sr.
The Ituri reminds me of pygmies. It was something I learned in highschool about human biodiversity. But, the pleasant memories of being called an African pygmy by my enlightened teenaged schoolmates are taking a back seat to a new genocide.
Now I know that since I am not a diplomat with international credentials I am not authorized to use such polarizing language. But hell, I heard that 14 year old boys are shooting faces off and hacking off genitalia and making necklaces with them. The death toll is something on the order of 3,000 a day if NPR commentators are to be believed. This is East Congo in the hands of several wretched militias.
The response of the 'International Community' is about on par with that of the International House of Pancakes. Everybody is invited to have a nice meal and discuss the matter. Well, it's a good thing because it's not making headlines. (I can't believe I just wrote "it's not making headlines", as if the concern of Americans who read headline has any moral force worth soliciting. Well it would if this were a proper empire, but as we know, it is not.
I think finally people with good sense are giving up on GWBush, not that he was so very brilliant in the first place. You have to admire his audacity - that is to say his willingness to step up and put a brave face on the peanut brittle diplomacy he dishes out. I can only hope that Colin Powell runs against him. Please do it. Out the bastard. He's just too slow.
Cheney-Powell '04. That'll work.
In the meantime we've got a world class disaster unfolding. Hema vs Lendu. Bastards we could stomp.
I am compelled to quote the Reverend Doctor at this moment. You know the old 'injustice anywhere' line. It is not sufficient. So I will steal a set of fundamental injunctions from a simple research paper covering King's Letter. The moment calls for the language. (Thank you Professor Draeger)
(1) Justice is not conformity to the law --- King argues that laws can be unjust and this implies that the state does not define justice. Segregation should not be considered just simply because it is the law of the land. (Notice that this is similar to the thought that justice is independent of public opinion found in the Crito. Note also that King shows respect for the law even while breaking it. This is seen in his willingness to submit to punishment.)(2) Justice is conformity to God’s Law --- God is the source of the moral law. So, any law of human creation that agrees with God’s law is considered just and any human law that violates God’s law is unjust. Segregation is considered unjust because it violates God’s law. (Notice that this definition depends on King’s particular theological views which others may or may not share).
(3) A law is just if it uplifts the human spirit and unjust if it degrades. There are at least two ways we can think of ‘uplifting’ and ‘degrading’:
(3A) A law is uplifting if it has the effect of improving people’s lives and is degrading if people are worse off under it. In order to evaluate the law, we look to its consequences. Does it effect people positively or negatively? Here, segregation is unjust, because it doesn’t lead to human flourishing (i.e. people’s lives are decidedly worse).
(3B) A law is uplifting if it respects human dignity and is degrading if it treats people as mere objects. This is not quite the same as evaluating consequences, rather it sets limits on the sorts of laws that can be considered just. Here, segregation is unjust, because it treats people as things and as such fails to show value human dignity.
(4) A law is just if it applies to all equally and is unjust if is imposed on some but not others. The thought seems to be that justice is tied up with fairness. A law cannot be just if it treats people unfairly. People are treated unfairly when they are treated differently. Here, segregation is unjust because it gives special treatment to whites and imposes unfair restrictions on blacks.
(5) A law is just if those bound by that law are involved in its creation and unjust otherwise. The thought here seems to be that democratically constructed laws are just in ways other laws are not. Here segregation is unjust because not some are excluded from political participation. (Notice how different this version is from the one found in (2)).
There is no violation of principle in applying equal measures of justice then here and now there. The question rather is are we capable? Are we the Bull Connors or are we Arkansas National Guard? Is our international policing capability ready? The capacity is clear, the rationale for evasion is murky. We cannot continue to pose as superheroes chasing mad scientists bent on world domination with secret weapons. We need to beat down the thugs with clubs. If we don't, then we cosign the kinds of dictatorships we just put down in Iraq and the Balkans.
We need to see, but we are looking in all the wrong places. Iran is not the place needing pacification. They are not at war with their neighbors. Nor is North Korea for that matter. I'm going to suggest this once and let your mind roam on it. What if we learn that some African warlord gets his hands on a bioweapon? Charles Taylor, for example? Don't look now...
Here's a brilliant, purely verbal glimpse of interconnectedness, of the way the sorts of lines of force that are separated out in a STELLA or VenSim model or a HipBone analysis actually swirl together in reality in a much foggier manner than our best graphical depictions can suggest – "foggier" in this case meaning richer and more complex, more truthful in fact, though not necessarily terribly informative (was Socrates informative?).
The paragraph comes from a longer piece about battlefield drones -- the pilotless aircraft that now carry both video cameras and missiles -- and the issues raised by recent CIA use of them in Afghanistan when viewed in the context of a potential for DOD CIA FBI bleed together… an interesting topic in its own right, but one that I suspect works more like a Rorschach blot than anything else at this moment, unless one is naturally incurious or as well informed as James Der Derian.
My point here, in any case, is to draw attention to the way the words in this paragraph picture a process. The para itself comes from Jordan Crandall, the piece is called Fingering the Trigger, the language is (appropriately, in my view) techno-military.
Here's the para:
The military does not simply produce a weapon to meet a need; a weapons-capacity arises in a cultural-machinic field and the military organizes itself, aligns itself, around it. A drone arises out of a field shaped by continuous tradeoffs between protection, visibility, mobility, and firepower. Its capacities morph -- suddenly it is a missile-equipped drone, suddenly it is a hybridly-piloted one -- and fighting doctrines, careers, organizational strategies realign themselves accordingly. At the same time, the conventions shape the device. All rework the capacities of the human. There are continuous flows between humans, armaments, and systems of combat. There are flows and assemblages, and the modulations they allow. New forms of vision, representation, and coordination mediate these changes. What sees, what "captures," and with what capacity does it touch the trigger?*
Let's go back to that penultinmate sentence:
New forms of vision, representation, and coordination mediate these changes.The flow, in other words, passes through not just the real and virtual worlds (physical drone, video feed to remote pilot), but also through both external and interior worlds – through the realms charted if at all by anthropology, psychology and the religious and imagination…
That's the bit that gets me, the sense that the imaginal is the uninvited guest at all intelligence gathering and analytic functions.
Anthropology, depth psychology and comparative religion are the three great knowledge zones offering the potential of the greatest evaluative impact on how we view world affairs, just as systemic thinking of the sort practiced by Donella Meadows is the modal shift most needful in our thinking…
A Reuters post today, China Jails 180 Falun Gong Members for SARS Rumors, touches on the fascinating and frustrating intersection of the SARS epidemic and apocalyptic religion:
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has detained 180 members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual group for spreading rumors and recruiting new followers amid the SARS epidemic, state radio said on Thursday. The practitioners were all arrested in the northern province of Hebei, it reported. Police officials were not immediately available for comment. "They spread doomsday theories in a bid to cause panic in society and claimed that the SARS outbreak in China was a warning to those who persecute and hate the Falun Dafa," it said, using another name for the group. "They also spread falsehoods that people who practice Falun Gong will not contract SARS in order to try to spread the cult and recruit more followers," it said.Chinese authorities are unlikely to be monitoring and reporting on the particulars of the "rumors" spread by Falun Gong members, since they consider Falun Gong superstitious as well as dangerous, but the form taken by the members' "doomsday theories" would be of intense interest to scholars of apocalyptic movements such as the members of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University -- of which I am one -- both for their own intrinsic interest, but also because such things are leading indicators for the ways in which apocalyptic belief can configure political dissent and on occasion trigger violence.
The funding of secondary-education remains problematic, as does the conservative attempt to gut public schools. According to some indicators hypersegregation is even more problematic than it was thirty years ago.
I firmly believe that the best solution to the problem is a variant of the Blair solution in the south. After slavery was ended, hundreds of thousands of formerly enslaved Africans needed to be educated, as well as large numbers of rural whites. In response Henry Blair, a northern Republican senator came up with a bill that would call for massive federal funds devoted to dealing with southern illiteracy. The bill ended up failing...another example of shooting off one's nose to spite one's face.
But this bill, if enacted, would have not only bolstered an important civic institution, but it would have developed human capital. With all of today's talk about focusing on k-12 rather than on johnny come lately programs like Affirmative Action, I think it is probably not a bad idea to revisit old school republican policy initiatives.
SHARPTON UPDATE:
No new changes on the policy front. Blacks are expected to give money, to vote...but for seemingly no other reason than melanin. New school republicans have got a support Al Sharpton campaign going. Wonder why?