Madness, Exposed
The NBA should ditch the requirement that players attend a year of college before entering the draft.
On the Newsstand:Race
Healthcare
This policy memo addresses the current and projected shortage of primary care health professionals in light of population dynamics and health care reform.
Download the Full Report
Ron Paul’s Campaign Problem
The need for an official response from Paul to the recent racism allegations.
Obama’s Other Balancing Act
The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency by Randall Kennedy
Weighing In: Class-Based Affirmative Action Good, But Arguments Against Race-Based Affirmative Action Still Bad
Peter Bozzo has posted a very thorough reply to my reply to his column which argued that we should replace race-based affirmative action with class-based affirmative action. (Got that?) Peter cites three studies, but only one of them seems to have analyzed the socioeconomic backgrounds of African-American college students, as opposed to the socioeconomic backgrounds of college students of all ... Read More
Re: Class-Based Affirmative Action Again
Peter Bozzo writes in today’s Crimson in favor of switching from race-based to class-based affirmative action. He makes a very strong case, but I think he ultimately goes wrong. First, his interpretation of Brown v. Board as a decision rooted in the principle of color-blindness is implausible to me. The heart of the ruling was this passage: “To separate [black ... Read More
Ross Douthat on “White Grievance”
Ross Douthat has a wonderful way of casually saying things that you don’t hear many conservatives say. For instance, his statement on Monday that “the note of white grievance” that Pat Buchanan struck in a 2000 speech at Harvard is now “part of the conservative melody.” Wow, a prominent conservative who acknowledges that politics in the Obama era involves an ... Read More
A better case for affirmative action
Liberals often try to defend affirmative action as fair compensation for historical injustice. To put their argument crudely and briefly, they say that whites got ahead unfairly for centuries, and now it’s time to help blacks get ahead. Regardless of its philosophical merits or demerits, this argument is incredibly controversial. On its face, it allows an analogy to be drawn ... Read More
Racial discrimination in jury selection still widespread
Thinking about my post from last night, I realized how strange you might think me for assuming that there’s greater risk to liberty from police and prosecutors misbehaving than there is from letting a certain number of criminals get off on “technicalities.” Thankfully, with impeccable timing, we got this report today from the New York Times, summarizing a study by ... Read More
Couple More Thoughts on Rand Paul
First, I think Adam Serwer has really crystallized the basic problem with how conservatives (and a fair number of over-polite liberals) talk about race. It seems really weird to give Goldwater all this credit for not being personally racist while championing a cause supported by racists, and say this is the same thing as Kennedy and Johnson being racist but ... Read More
Rand Paul: Against the Civil Rights Act
As I said yesterday, the Kentucky Senate race between Rand Paul and Jack Conway should be a real battle. Paul is probably not helping himself by insisting, as many libertarian ideologues but few Senate hopefuls do, that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was wrong to ban racial discrimination in private establishments like restaurants and movie theaters. INTERVIEWER: Would you have ... Read More
Representation on the Court
[The Supreme Court's] purpose is not to uphold the interests of individuals (at least not directly), but to faithfully interpret the Constitution.
