Category Archives: Affirmative Action

Desmond Tutu NOT An Example Of Black Privilege

Affirmative Action, Israel, Neoconservatism, Race, Racism, South-Africa

I am not sure why the authors of Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream, reviewed by philosopher-pundit Jack Kerwick on FrontPage Magazine, picked on Desmond Tutu as an example of black privilege in South Africa.

It must be an authorial tic peculiar to neoconservatives, and applied to anyone with an anti-Israel position, for which Archbishop Tutu is famous. It is also typical of the neoconservative’s reflexive ahistoric approach, where a proposition or an idea (black privilege) is applied without nuance, to any and all annoying blacks (Tutu is that alright).

Horowitz and Perazzo even show that black skin privilege transcends continents. Alluding to South Africa’s Bishop Demond Tutu, they write: “What white spiritual leader could support the torture-murders of South African blacks, compare Israel to Nazi Germany, and still be regarded as a moral icon? A black cleric like Bishop Desmond Tutu can.” (Indeed, as occasional Front Page Magazine contributor and former South African resident Ilana Mercer amply demonstrates in her, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, the new South Africa is black skin privilege on steroids.)

(From “Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream” by Jack Kerwick.)

I don’t think Desmond Tutu is an example of black privilege. He supports it, but doesn’t exemplify it.

If anything, the elderly Archbishop, whose inauguration I attended and with whom my father and I took afternoon tea many decades back, embodies the old-style, old school African man. Tutu grew up in wretched poverty, received—and gladly accepted—a decent education courtesy of the Church, and worked his ministry so hard as to reap the rewards. (In “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” I discuss the wonders the white-run churches had done in South Africa, as do I mention what was for me a memorable meeting with the Archbishop. From that occasion I took away that he was fond of my father and respectful of dad’s Jewish faith and scholarship. How good an equalizer were some schools in the old South Africa? You be the judge. Tutu and I, and tens of thousands of other Africans, belong to the same alma mater: UNISA.)

Sure, Tutu is a left-liberal. But to me, as I said in “King Tut(u) Not So Terrific,” his impiety stems from never having piped up about the ethnic cleansing of rural whites, Afrikaners mostly, from the land in ways that beggar belief. Saint Mandela has also remained mum about these Shaka-Zulu worthy murders.

And so have our neoconservatives!

Witness the authors of Black Skin Privilege and the American Dream, who, it would appear, protest Tutu’s alleged support for the “torture-murders of South African blacks” (by which I am told they meant white South Africans), but say nothing, seemingly (just like Tutu), about the targeted slaughter of whites in South Africa, and then only when it’s politically safe to do so. (Watch Barely a Blog for commentary about Oscar Pistorius.)

Jack Kerwick, of course, is correct (and most kind) to subtly remind neoconservatives that it is “the new South Africa [that] is black skin privilege on steroids” (and that a rightist has already plumbed the depths of this topic).

David Mamet Packs Heat, Sheds Light

Affirmative Action, Conservatism, Constitution, Government, GUNS, Hollywood, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Race, Republicans, The State

In “Gun Laws and the Fools of Chelm,*” the talented Hollywood playwright, author, director, and producer David Mamet motivates for his individual right to defend life, liberty and property.

As a conventional conservative or Republican, Mamet’s positions are often pat, lacking philosophical depth. For example: He fingers The Bureaucracy as ineffectual because lacking in compassion and common sense. However, like most members of the right-leaning establishment, Mamet is incapable of explaining the underlying dynamic or structure that accounts for the inversion of economic incentives in the bureaucracy, irrespective of the good intentions and good character of the bureaucrats.

Mamet also mouths the conventional conservative talking points about affirmative action: that it is based in the mistaken premise that “black people have fewer abilities than white people,” a notion Mamert calls “monstrous.”

The “I love blacks, so I want to make them compete on an equal footing” mantra is as prevalent a platitude among conservatives as it is stupid. Affirmative action is based on the immutable fact of blacks’ lower aggregate scores in academia and in other fields. The “monstrous” part of it is that quotas treat all individual blacks as part of an underachieving, oppressed cohort. As does it lump all whites—the poor, the underprivileged and the victimized too—in a group that needs to suffer for the sake of black upliftment.

Also lackluster or absent is Mamet’s defense of a natural right that predates the constitutional right to bear arms. But Mamet should be appreciated for writing very well, and for being a lone voice for reason and rights in Hollywood, writing that,

…there are more than 2 million instances a year of the armed citizen deterring or stopping armed criminals; a number four times that of all crimes involving firearms.
The Left loves a phantom statistic that a firearm in the hands of a citizen is X times more likely to cause accidental damage than to be used in the prevention of crime, but what is there about criminals that ensures that their gun use is accident-free? If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.
Violence by firearms is most prevalent in big cities with the strictest gun laws. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., for example, it is only the criminals who have guns, the law-abiding populace having been disarmed, and so crime runs riot.
Cities of similar size in Texas, Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere, which leave the citizen the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed in the Constitution, typically are much safer. More legal guns equal less crime. What criminal would be foolish enough to rob a gun store? But the government alleges that the citizen does not need this or that gun, number of guns, or amount of ammunition.

[SNIP]

* Chelm: From Mamet’s reference to Chelm, I concluded that he is probably Jewish (and well-educated, of course, which he is).

Thoughts On Gun Debate, Republikeynesians & The Practice of Proctology

Affirmative Action, Democracy, Democrats, Feminism, GUNS, Healthcare, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Political Philosophy, Politics, Regulation, Republicans, Socialism

GUN LOBBY MADE ‘EM DO IT. Have you noticed how Democrats and their media lapdogs counter arguments for the natural right to self defense? They blame the “gun lobby.” Accordingly, it is not the gun owners who assert this right, but a monied gun lobby. This variation on the ad hominem argument allows these statists to bypass the debate about the right to defend life, liberty and property.

HOW LIKE DEMOCRATS. In arguing their case, tit-for-tat Republicans use the exact arguments their opponents use. Thus, instead of making a point against affirmative action and for individual merit, you find Fox Rinos like Dana Perino and Kimberly Guilfoile asking, “Where are the minorities” in Obama’s cabinet?

THE OBAMACARE SURVIVAL GUIDE. It’s a best-seller; # 47 on Amazon. I am sure that, like me, you know Obama-heads (doctors too) who shrugged off the idea that a further centralization of healthcare by “Obama’s Politburo Of Proctologists”— a modest healthcare expansion totaling $2 trillion—will cost them anything at all. I’m already feeling The Care. How about you? TAWE (The Ass With Ears) has sent the health care we had to hell in a handcart, for the ostensible benefit of less than ten percent of the population. In any case, if this “2,700 page law” made life easier, would the author of the ObamaCare Survival Guide be selling so many guides to so many perplexed people?

Ivy League Education: Only Idiots And Elites Need Apply

Affirmative Action, Education, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Judaism & Jews

A graduate of an Ivy League school himself, Barely A Blog contributor Myron Pauli (bio below) decries the idiots and the elites—categories which are by no means mutually exclusive—who rig top tertiary education these days.

Ivy League Education: Only Idiots and Elites Need Apply
By Myron Pauli

Imagine a “thought experiment” where a student has two choices:

CHOICE ONE: Attend Harvard University where famous obnoxious faculty big shots (Nobel Prizewinners and public celebrities) roam the campus and where you will be likely to dorm with children of CEO’s, cabinet officers, and third world dictators, dining out in the Cambridge milieu – and then you receive a diploma after 4 years that says “University of North Dakota,”

OR:

CHOICE TWO: Attend the University of North Dakota with friendly but completely ordinary professors and the 4-H club and ROTC students hanging out in the great cultural milieu of Grand Forks ND – and then you receive a diploma after 4 years that says “Harvard.”
In other words, which is better, the “Harvard education” or the “Harvard credential”? My mother who always said, “It’s not what you know, it’s whom you know” would definitely pick the latter. So would most people. In fact, the Harvard education is probably worth 1% of the value of the Harvard certificate. Such is the nature of the elite “meritocracy” of the United States where Ivy League graduates such as the Obamas are automatically heralded as “geniuses.” Conferring an Ivy League diploma on the local bowling alley attendant elevates that person into a sage of our modern era.

Naturally, affirmative action for blacks and Hispanics distorts the admissions process. While I was at MIT, a white from Brooklyn with one B and A in everything else, including advanced graduate work, was denied admissions to Stanford graduate school, while a black from East Orange NJ with C’s and D’s in lower level MIT courses was accepted. They both stayed at MIT with the former now a distinguished professor in his field, and the latter dropping out of graduate school – having had his time “wasted” by people bending over backwards on his behalf.

There are many other distortions and biases – some of the statistics and anecdotes can be found in the recent article “The Myth of American Meritocracy” in The American Conservative (TAC) which serve to point out the rather arbitrariness of the elite admissions (except for the completely test-related Caltech) of the elite colleges.

Not surprisingly, Asians, as a group, are discriminated against by the Ivy Leagues. They score 140 points above their white competitors and 450 points above their black competitors on the SAT’s (perhaps the Asians are not as good in football!). A more surprising find is that non-Jewish whites, formerly the backbone of the Ivy Leagues, appear to be at a disadvantage under the current admissions process. While they make up 88% of University of North Dakota, these “whities” are only good for 18% at Harvard. Even nerdy Caltech with 39% Asian has 33% non-Jewish whites. But they are currently not politically protected. The article referenced did not go into how many non-Jewish whites, who are neither alumni legacies nor ones with elite “connections,” get into Harvard, but it is likely a very low number.

Ironically, the TAC data indicates that Jews, who used to be discriminated against by the Ivies 90 years ago or so, currently seem to be overrepresented above and beyond their performance. Additionally, there are arguments that Jews have slipped educationally in the last few generations for a variety of reasons: disinterest in academics (why study physics when you can make money doing hedge funds?), and the demographic rise of the non-academic Orthodox Jewish component. Jews who dominated in science competitions 40 years ago seem to have been replaced by Asians. [Could it be that Jews are now fully acculturated to the American progressive educational ethos, where the goal is to ‘follow your dream and have fun’; a goal that almost always precludes hard work? Asian mothers are slower to respond to this fatuity, but it’s happening. I met one the other day.—IM]

Academic performance has been replaced with expert “gaming the system”. Why bother with nerdy grind-work when a well-connected guidance counselor and the correct extras can get you into the palace of Princeton?

If America of 1912 was dominated by a self-anointed “old-boy network” of White Protestant men – the America of 2012 is dominated by a self-anointed “PC network” which may look more diverse but is just as much of a self-chosen network.

The “best and brightest” is not merely a snobby social club, but also includes those who make decisions to get us into wars, deficits, and to take our freedoms away.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.