Ron Paul’s Campaign Problem
The need for an official response from Paul to the recent racism allegations.
Post Tagged with: "Race"
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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.
Finally, A Post on Stephanie Grace
Until now I’ve resisted commenting on the controversy that was created last week when Harvard 3L Stephanie Grace’s private email saying she “does not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent” came to light. But now I see that Andrew Sullivan is having a related conversation about race and intelligence, and [...]
Lack of Diversity in Harvard Faculty
Yesterday, President Drew Faust sent out another one of her overly lengthy and strangely timed emails to the Harvard community, this one ironically entitled, “Diversity and Excellence at Harvard”. She sums up the sad history of faculty diversity at Harvard in 900 words, presenting the following dismal statistics: Approximately 17 percent of Harvard’s ladder faculty are minorities, an all-time high, [...]
