Posted by republicansareidiots on August 3, 2010 at 3:51 PM
I'm going to start with the most intelligent of the Republican idiots, then work my way down the list getting progressively more stupid.
The Educated Republicans:
These are the rarest of all Republicans. Occasionally you will run into one in public, or in a public-forum online. These Republicans are the smartest of the Republican idiots. They have learned everything there is to know about their position, from a Republican perspective. They've educated themselves on all the reasons why their position is correct.
The reason why this type of Republican is an idiot:
Anyone with the internet and 5 minutes can find something that thoroughly discredits their version of the "facts". Even when confronted with contradictory facts though they will continue to fall back on their original arguments, try to change the subject to something they are more comfortable talking about, or start expressing opinions with no factual merit.
What to Remember when debating them:
Keep them on-topic. Don't let them ignore your counter-points and then change the subject on you. They're masters of that, but if you can keep them on topic eventually they will just start expressing opinions to which you can say "do you have any facts to back that up?"
Fox News and Conservative Talk Radio Republicans:
These are one of the angriest groups of Republicans. They watch Fox News or listen to Conservative Talk Radio and they think it makes them an expert on politics. The only knowledge they have of politics is parroted talking points without any facts to back them up. When you defeat them in debate they will result to calling you names like "Liberal", or "commie" or "socialist" or "baby-killer" etc. They think all liberals are socialists that want to take their money and give it to people who don't deserve it.
The reason why this type of Republican is an idiot:
They have no idea what they are talking about. Usually they're just repeating things they have heard from Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. They think that liberals want to take away their freedoms and they clearly don't know what the word "liberal" means, or what liberal have done for our country and freedom. They think President Obama is comparable to Hitler for passing health-care reform. They accuse you of watching MSNBC if you don't agree with them. They call you a sheep but expect you to blindly believe everything they tell you, without question.
What to Remember when debating them:
Keep demanding facts from them to back up their assertions until they break down and call you any of the aforementioned names. Ask them to name specific freedoms that liberals have taken away from them. They have a tendency to become violent so watch their hands if you are debating them face to face.
Christian Republicans:
These Republicans are hypocrites. They do everything in the name of Christ, while simultaneously acting as un-Christlike as humanly possible. They support the right to carry assault weapons, are pro-War, and completely ignore the fact that the Bible depicts Christ as a Liberal who was opposed to capitalism and violence. They sincerely believe that this is God's country and that God loves us more than anyone else in the world. They think that anyone that is not 100% pro-Israel is anti-semitic. They hate everyone that doesn't agree with them and think the Bible tells them to, and they hate Gay people because they think they are sinners.
The reason why this type of Republican is an idiot:
They do terrible things in the name of their Lord. They think that anyone that doesn't agree with them is damned to hell or hates America. They believe that we are a Christian Nation even though the Founding Fathers made sure that they did not brand this country as a Christian Nation. The Founding Fathers wanted a country of religious freedom, free from religious persecution, but these Republicans will never admit that.
What to Remember when debating them:
There's a list of all the quotes that prove our Founding Fathers wanted a Country of religious freedom. The link is HERE. Another thing to remember is that the Christian Right is neither. Start asking them questions like "how would Jesus feel about war?", "how would Jesus feel about assault rifles?", or "do you REALLY think that America is God's favorite country, in the ENTIRE universe?". And of these questions should yield a response that thoroughly proves that they are hypocrites, and continuing to argue with them would be a waste of time.
Tea Party Republicans:
These Republicans are a dumbed-down combination of the previous 2 groups of Republicans. They think Sarah Palin is intelligent and it's the media filter's fault that she looks so stupid. They think Reagan was fiscally Conservative even though he tripled the deficit. They watch Fox News religiously, and think Glenn Beck is credible. They don't understand why people think they're racist while they're standing next to people holding racist signs. They protest higher taxes even though taxes have gone down for 95% of working families.
The reason why this type of Republican is an idiot:
They parrot Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin talking points. When you discredit one thing they say they immediately move on to the next subject. Anyone that doesn't agree with them is a socialist, even though they can't give you the actual definition of socialism. Many of them are on Medicare while protesting "socialism". They have never met a socialist, so they have no idea what socialists believe. They think liberals are socialists and socialists are Nazis.
What to Remember when debating them:
They have no idea what they're talking about. Ask them to prove what they are saying. If you ask them a question and they respond with a question refuse to answer their question until they answer yours. Don't back down. Remind them that taxes have actually been lowered for 95% of working families. If debating them in public be careful because they are known to carry guns in places they don't need them, like public parks and bars and churches.
Birther Republicans:
The birthers think that Obama was born in Kenya. No matter how much evidence you present them with that is contradictory to that they will continue to insist that he is not the legitimate President. They are sore-losers because McCain lost the election, and they will never support Obama, even if he paid off the entire National Debt.
The reason why this type of Republican is an idiot:
They think Obama was born in Kenya. They think that Orly Taitz, who grew up in a socialist country, is credible, and that Obama is a socialist. They think that Obama's birth announcements in Hawaiian newspapers were propagated over 40 years in advance of his election, just so that he could be elected someday.
What to Remember when debating them:
Don't waste your time. You could wave Obama's actual birth certificate in their face and they would still say it's a fake. They are sore-losers and they will never be happy as long as Obama is President. Make jokes asking to see their birth certificates, or Sarah Palin's birth certificate. This is the best way to get them to go away.
Racist Republicans:
[DISCLAIMER: I am putting this one almost last for a reason. I do NOT think that all Republicans are racists. I have Republican family members who are not racist. This section is only about the small percentage of Republicans that are ACTUALLY racist, because they do exist. I'm not "playing the race card" or "race-baiting", I'm just describing a small group of racists who also affiliate themselves with the Republican Party]
Racist Republicans hate Obama because he's black. They think that all Muslims are terrorists. They think Obama is a terrorist Muslim. Anyone with a name like Obama's is a terrorist.
The reason why this type of Republican is an idiot:
They're racist, but they think Obama is a racist. They can't understand why people call them racists when they post racist pictures or racist comments and then claim not to be racist. Whenever they possibly can they will call you a racist, to hide the fact that they are actually racists.
What to Remember when debating them:
They're racists. Racists are uneducated bigots. You would have a much easier time convincing an apple tree to start growing oranges.
Extremely Idiotic Republicans:
These Republicans are Republicans because they think it's cool. They have a Republican in one of the other groups listed, so they think they know what they're talking about. They have terrible spelling and grammar but they expect you to believe whatever they say because they are saying it to you.
The reason why this type of Republican is an idiot:
It's hard to tell if they ever made it past the 4th grade. Most of their posts are illegible. The don't know anything about their position other than what they have heard their friends say. They think that Republicans are fiscally conservative because they say that they are, and call anyone that doesn't agree with them sheep. They ignore all historical information that is contradictory to what they say. They are 100% blind to facts.
What to Remember when debating them:
No amount of facts or logic will ever convince them that their buddies are wrong. You could be a college professor and they will still think that your opinion isn't credible. Instead of trying to argue with them try explaining Algebra to your dog. I'm sure it will be much more productive.
I hope that this has been an informative resource for you. I hope you will remember some of the things I have said the next time you are engaged in a debate with a Republican idiot.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
HOW THE REPUBLICANS ARE DESTROYING AMERICA
Four Deformations of the Apocalypse
By DAVID STOCKMAN
Published: July 31, 2010
More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.
This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.
The first of these started when the Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world. Now, since we have lived beyond our means as a nation for nearly 40 years, our cumulative current-account deficit — the combined shortfall on our trade in goods, services and income — has reached nearly $8 trillion. That’s borrowed prosperity on an epic scale.
It is also an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves. Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.
It may be true that governments, because they intervene in foreign exchange markets, have never completely allowed their currencies to float freely. But that does not absolve Friedman’s $8 trillion error. Once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors.
In fact, since chronic current-account deficits result from a nation spending more than it earns, stringent domestic belt-tightening is the only cure. When the dollar was tied to fixed exchange rates, politicians were willing to administer the needed castor oil, because the alternative was to make up for the trade shortfall by paying out reserves, and this would cause immediate economic pain — from high interest rates, for example. But now there is no discipline, only global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.
The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40 percent of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970. This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.
In 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts, matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces — the welfare state and the warfare state — that drive the federal spending machine.
Soon, the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.
Friday, July 30, 2010
SENATOR WEBB - ANOTHER SPINELESS DEMOCRAT
Webb of Deceit: Racism, Affirmative Action and History as Misunderstood by a U.S. Senator
by tim wise
Fri Jul 30, 2010 at 10:41:11 AM PDT
On July 22, U.S. Senator Jim Webb had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal critiquing affirmative action programs and claiming that they are a significant cause of hardship among whites. He is wrong. Indeed, virtually everything he says in the column is incorrect. Below the jump is my full and documented explanation as to why...
- tim wise's diary :: ::
In this summer of white resentment, one would think it sufficient to have to suffer through the daily droning of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of the crew at Fox News, or perhaps the dishonest machinations of professional liar and fear-pimp Andrew Breitbart.
What with their endless claims that the Obama Administration is out to get white people, by way of purposely destroying the economy, taxing the mostly white folks who go to tanning salons, and deliberately refusing to prosecute blacks who intimidate white voters--or with Brietbart's hatchet-job on Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod--the right has been ramping up the reverse racism trope for the past few months.
But in what can only be considered either the worst timing in history, or the most obviously cynical attempt ever made by a politician to pander to the fears of his mostly white voter base, the banner of anti-white bias has been raised yet again, and this time by a Democrat, U.S. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia.
In a July 22 Wall Street Journal column, entitled "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege," Webb--who fashions himself something of an historian--shows his ignorance not only about the history of the country he serves as a lawmaker, but also about its present-day reality.
Denying White Privilege is Easy When You Don't Understand What it Means
The basic thrust of Webb's essay--a broadside against government efforts to promote racial diversity in jobs, contracting and schools--is that affirmative action programs have strayed from their original purpose: to help repair the damage done by the system of African enslavement and Jim Crow segregation. While affirmative action's intended beneficiaries were blacks who had been subjected to those systems and their descendants, Webb claims that in the last forty years these efforts have experienced a form of "mission creep," which now leads them to support virtually any person of color, including recent immigrants. As Webb puts it, diversity measures help anyone who "does not happen to be white." He is especially enraged about the way in which white working class folks have been "passed over" by these newcomers to the country, having never benefitted from government programs on their behalf, because they are presumably the wrong color. And this has happened, according to Webb because lawmakers have long viewed whites as a "monolith" of privilege and advantage, rather than a diverse bunch, within which significant class cleavages remain.
Although Webb does not advocate the complete abolition of affirmative action--indeed he suggests it is still needed and valid for African Americans--his call to exclude other people of color from such efforts, and his rhetorical narrative about the "myth" of white privilege and advantage, are both sufficiently problematic to require a response. Indeed, if he is right about the latter, the entire basis for affirmative action, even for black folks, is undermined.
Early on in his screed, Webb exudes a bizarre uncertainty as to whether white privilege ever really existed, when he claims that during the civil rights struggle, the "supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America." Are we to believe--and does the Senator--that this white dominance was just a figment of black folks' fevered imaginations, even prior to the passage of civil rights protections?
Given Webb's emphasis throughout the column on class divisions within white America, perhaps he believes that the existence of white poverty somehow disproves the notion that whites have privilege relative to blacks and other people of color. But if so, this would mean than even during the period of enslavement, there was no white privilege, since there have always been poor white folks: a strange conclusion, but one that Webb would virtually have to endorse if we follow his logic to its ultimate conclusion. Like most white Americans, Webb misunderstands what the term white privilege is meant to convey. It is not meant to suggest that all whites lead privileged lives of affluence and absolute well-being. Rather, it is meant to convey that relative to people of color, being white generally provides advantages, head starts and opportunities not as readily available to others. Just as male privilege does for men, relative to women, even though there are millions of men who are poor. Just as able-bodied privilege does for the able-bodied, relative to the disabled, even though there are plenty of able-bodied people who are out of work and struggling too.
Regardless, even if one accepts that such institutionalized white privilege was real back in the day, Webb insists that now "WASP elites have fallen by the wayside." As evidence he cites no less an authority than Pat Buchanan and Buchanan's recent lamentation that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court there would be no Protestants on the nation's highest judicial bench. Of course, religious affiliation says nothing about race, and indeed the Court would remain--as is true for every other institution in the country, like say, Webb's own Senate--overwhelmingly white. To make whiteness about WASPs and WASPs alone is disingenuous and surely Webb knows it. Although some Catholics (Irish and Italian especially) were once the targets of invidious discrimination, over time they matriculated into the club of whiteness and have come out the other end as part of a larger white society that continues to have advantages over people of color.
...and it's Even Easier When You Refuse to Read Data
To drive home his point that there is no monolithic whiteness and that many whites struggle economically and socially, as with people of color, Webb conjures the historic plight of Irish Protestants (also known as, and referenced in Webb's highly regarded book on this group as, the Scots-Irish). But to compare the economic condition of the Scots-Irish to that of people of color, requires Webb to utterly ignore the readily available data on Scots-Irish well being, compared to that of blacks or Latinos. According to 2006 Census Bureau figures, whites of Scots-Irish descent over the age of 25 are more than twice as likely as comparable blacks to have at least a Bachelor's Degree, and nearly five times as likely as comparable Mexican-Americans to have finished college. Compared to African Americans, the Scots-Irish are less than half as likely to be unemployed, less than one-third as likely to be poor, nearly 70 percent more likely to work in professional or managerial jobs, and their families have a median income nearly twice as high. Compared to Mexican-Americans (among those recent immigrants for whom Webb begrudges affirmative action because it ostensibly hurts struggling whites), the hardscrabble Scots-Irish are 35 percent less likely to be out of work, less than a third as likely to be poor, more than three times as likely to work in professional or managerial jobs, and their families have median incomes that are nearly twice as high.
Although it is true that most Asian sub-groups have higher family incomes and lower poverty rates than whites (and perhaps this is what most upsets Webb, if and when Asian Americans benefit from affirmative action, as happens in contracting or employment occasionally), they are not doing well compared to whites once we control for the geographic placement of whites and Asians throughout the country. So, because Asians are concentrated in a handful of states (Hawaii, California, and New York) that have higher incomes than the national average and higher costs of living, aggregate Asian income will be higher than the same for whites, who are spread throughout the United States. But when whites and Asians in the same state or community are compared, whites earn far higher incomes and have lower rates of poverty. Indeed, within the same cities, Asian poverty rates tend to be double the rate for whites. Likewise, when we compare whites and Asians with comparable educations, whites earn anywhere from 14-28 percent more than their Asian American counterparts.
Although Webb insists that "a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers," he fails to name even one of these policies, let alone demonstrate how it can be blamed for marginalizing whites in the labor market. Given persistent unemployment rates for people of color that are always higher than the rates for whites (even at the same levels of education and qualification), it becomes a bit hard to swallow the notion that whites are being displaced to any significant degree by something like affirmative action. And while there would be nothing wrong with adding economic considerations to affirmative action programs so as to help whites who are economically marginalized, it is surely unnecessary to attack race-based opportunity efforts in order to do so.
Webb then insists that diversity efforts have "allowed" recent immigrants to jump ahead of whites with roots in the nation going back hundreds of years. But in fact, those immigrants of color who have higher incomes and educational attainment rates than whites (largely recent Asian immigrants or African immigrants) typically come with pre-existing class and schooling advantages. It is not because of affirmative action that they are able to "jump ahead" of anyone.
For immigrants generally, and contrary to Webb's suggestions to the contrary, discrimination continues to limit opportunity, thereby making deliberate efforts at inclusion necessary. For instance, one recent study found that immigrants with the lightest skin shade (typically European) make about 15 percent more, on average, than immigrants with the darkest skin shades, even when only looking at persons who have the same level of education, experience and observed productivity. Similarly, research indicates that hundreds of thousands of Asian Americans and Latinos are discriminated against in the job market each year, and that such folks experience discrimination in about one out of three job searches. Although Webb notes high rates of Chinese American college completion, presumably to suggest that Asians are doing just fine without deliberate efforts at inclusion, he conveniently overlooks the evidence indicating that Chinese Americans with professional status positions still earn only about 56 percent as much as their white counterparts, despite having higher average educational attainment.
Don't Know Much About History: Jim Webb Misrepresents America's Past
But it's not only the current racial reality that Webb fails to appreciate. His understanding of history is equally as blinkered. While the Senator is correct that many advocated affirmative action specifically as a way to respond to the legacy of enslavement and Jim Crow, it is simply false that the only reason for such efforts was to repair the damage done by these historic injustices against African Americans. Both the legislative and legal history of affirmative action efforts make clear that just as important was the sense that in the absence of deliberate efforts at inclusion, people of color would continue to be excluded from opportunity in the present. Old boy's networks for jobs and contracts were so tightly dominated by whites (irrespective of qualifications), and private sector job selection criteria were so subjective and skewed to the benefit of whites, that both lawmakers and courts realized more would be needed than mere passive non-discrimination.
And although blacks certainly have faced different obstacles than other persons of color, it is simply historically illiterate to suggest, as Webb does, that those injustices have "no parallel in our history." Indigenous North Americans would likely beg to differ, though the Senator shows no indication of having given first nation's peoples even a fleeting thought in his condemnation of diversity efforts. Even Webb's insistence that "those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government," is so utterly inaccurate as to call into question his basic understanding of the nation's past, to say nothing of its present.
First, these immigrants did face discrimination in the sense that they were routinely blocked from even entering the country, because of blatantly racist immigration laws, in place from the 1880s to 1965. Secondly, Mexican Americans are descended from those who had half of their country stolen by the United States, in a racist war of aggression that we started on false pretense. During the Great Depression, as many as a million Mexicans and Mexican Americans (60 percent of them citizens of the United States) were forcibly expelled from the country so as to free up job opportunities for whites. In the 1950s, tens of thousands more were removed from the nation under "Operation Wetback," including thousands of children whose birth in the United States made them legal citizens. From the 1940s to the 1960s, millions more were exploited by agribusiness interests under the "bracero" program which allowed migrant labor to enter the U.S. from Mexico but then paid lower wages than had been originally agreed to, and refused to pay workers the money that was withheld from their paychecks for mandatory savings accounts.
Likewise, Chinese labor was used, exploited and often worked to death in the United States, brought in to help construct the railroads without which the transcontinental economy could never have emerged. Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps during World War Two, and Southeast Asians who fled to the U.S. in the post-Vietnam War era watched as this country dropped millions of tons of bombs on their nations, poisoning their countrysides with chemical agents and killing millions of people in the process. That we might owe a debt to those whose nations and communities we have helped to collectively wreck over the years seems to escape Webb, though it would likely register fairly clearly on the moral scales of most philosophers, or merely those with a more developed ethical code than that which is typical for far too many lawmakers.
Even worse is Webb's suggestion that whites, unlike these newcomers of color, have never been the "beneficiaries of special government programs." The level of historical ignorance necessary to render a judgment such as this is stunning, and should forever disqualify Senator Webb from being taken seriously by anyone with an interest in truth. Whites, of course, have benefitted more from "special government programs" than members of any other racial group. Indeed, for most of our nation's history it was whites benefitting from these efforts to the exclusion of persons of color.
Among the "special programs" about which Jim Webb appears to know or care nothing, one might include the Homestead Act (which gave out over 200 million acres of virtually free land to whites, beginning in the 1860s), several key programs of the New Deal, from which blacks were mostly excluded for years, but which saved millions of struggling whites--such as the Federal Housing Administration loan program, which by 1960 was being used to finance 40 percent of all white housing--and the GI Bill, which in theory was meant for all returning veterans, but which in practice favored whites, since segregation was allowed to trump the "right" of black and brown GIs to use their job or educational benefits under the program. These and other programs suggest the greatest irony in critiques of affirmative action: namely, that the nation has been engaged in affirmative action for whites virtually forever. But only now has the specter of "preferential treatment" become a problem.
Conclusion: The Best Evidence That Webb's Column is Political Hackery
Based on his faulty understanding of history and apparent inability to decipher the ongoing evidence of racism in the contemporary period, Webb concludes that although the nation has a "continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end." But what is most telling about this policy directive, and Webb's larger narrative about the way affirmative action has spread beyond its original intent is what he appears unwilling to say directly. Because if there were any case to be made for affirmative action having undergone mission creep in recent decades, it would not be with regard to the inclusion of people of color other than blacks. After all, it was the recognition that racism remained a real and persistent problem, requiring more than mere civil rights laws, which animated all early supporters of affirmative action. Rather, the only possible case for mission creep would be with regard to the way in which white women have reaped a disproportionate share of the benefits from such efforts. While one can certainly make the case--and I would, and have--that institutionalized sexism against women as women makes sex and gender considerations legitimate within affirmative action programs, this would seem a more logical target for the Senator's ire, if indeed the purpose of his column had been to highlight the excesses of a program gone wrong.
By remaining entirely silent on this subject--and thereby making sure not to anger up to half of his white voter base (a far larger segment of his constituency than Asians and Latinos)--Webb shows himself to be an opportunistic political hack, exploiting white fears and anxieties about "reverse racism," all the while glossing over the enormous dividends paid to white families via affirmative action, by opening opportunities to white mothers, daughters, sisters and wives.
He should be ashamed. But he won't be. Fear pays, and Jim Webb has plenty of inventory.
What with their endless claims that the Obama Administration is out to get white people, by way of purposely destroying the economy, taxing the mostly white folks who go to tanning salons, and deliberately refusing to prosecute blacks who intimidate white voters--or with Brietbart's hatchet-job on Department of Agriculture employee Shirley Sherrod--the right has been ramping up the reverse racism trope for the past few months.
But in what can only be considered either the worst timing in history, or the most obviously cynical attempt ever made by a politician to pander to the fears of his mostly white voter base, the banner of anti-white bias has been raised yet again, and this time by a Democrat, U.S. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia.
In a July 22 Wall Street Journal column, entitled "Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege," Webb--who fashions himself something of an historian--shows his ignorance not only about the history of the country he serves as a lawmaker, but also about its present-day reality.
Denying White Privilege is Easy When You Don't Understand What it Means
The basic thrust of Webb's essay--a broadside against government efforts to promote racial diversity in jobs, contracting and schools--is that affirmative action programs have strayed from their original purpose: to help repair the damage done by the system of African enslavement and Jim Crow segregation. While affirmative action's intended beneficiaries were blacks who had been subjected to those systems and their descendants, Webb claims that in the last forty years these efforts have experienced a form of "mission creep," which now leads them to support virtually any person of color, including recent immigrants. As Webb puts it, diversity measures help anyone who "does not happen to be white." He is especially enraged about the way in which white working class folks have been "passed over" by these newcomers to the country, having never benefitted from government programs on their behalf, because they are presumably the wrong color. And this has happened, according to Webb because lawmakers have long viewed whites as a "monolith" of privilege and advantage, rather than a diverse bunch, within which significant class cleavages remain.
Although Webb does not advocate the complete abolition of affirmative action--indeed he suggests it is still needed and valid for African Americans--his call to exclude other people of color from such efforts, and his rhetorical narrative about the "myth" of white privilege and advantage, are both sufficiently problematic to require a response. Indeed, if he is right about the latter, the entire basis for affirmative action, even for black folks, is undermined.
Early on in his screed, Webb exudes a bizarre uncertainty as to whether white privilege ever really existed, when he claims that during the civil rights struggle, the "supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America." Are we to believe--and does the Senator--that this white dominance was just a figment of black folks' fevered imaginations, even prior to the passage of civil rights protections?
Given Webb's emphasis throughout the column on class divisions within white America, perhaps he believes that the existence of white poverty somehow disproves the notion that whites have privilege relative to blacks and other people of color. But if so, this would mean than even during the period of enslavement, there was no white privilege, since there have always been poor white folks: a strange conclusion, but one that Webb would virtually have to endorse if we follow his logic to its ultimate conclusion. Like most white Americans, Webb misunderstands what the term white privilege is meant to convey. It is not meant to suggest that all whites lead privileged lives of affluence and absolute well-being. Rather, it is meant to convey that relative to people of color, being white generally provides advantages, head starts and opportunities not as readily available to others. Just as male privilege does for men, relative to women, even though there are millions of men who are poor. Just as able-bodied privilege does for the able-bodied, relative to the disabled, even though there are plenty of able-bodied people who are out of work and struggling too.
Regardless, even if one accepts that such institutionalized white privilege was real back in the day, Webb insists that now "WASP elites have fallen by the wayside." As evidence he cites no less an authority than Pat Buchanan and Buchanan's recent lamentation that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court there would be no Protestants on the nation's highest judicial bench. Of course, religious affiliation says nothing about race, and indeed the Court would remain--as is true for every other institution in the country, like say, Webb's own Senate--overwhelmingly white. To make whiteness about WASPs and WASPs alone is disingenuous and surely Webb knows it. Although some Catholics (Irish and Italian especially) were once the targets of invidious discrimination, over time they matriculated into the club of whiteness and have come out the other end as part of a larger white society that continues to have advantages over people of color.
...and it's Even Easier When You Refuse to Read Data
To drive home his point that there is no monolithic whiteness and that many whites struggle economically and socially, as with people of color, Webb conjures the historic plight of Irish Protestants (also known as, and referenced in Webb's highly regarded book on this group as, the Scots-Irish). But to compare the economic condition of the Scots-Irish to that of people of color, requires Webb to utterly ignore the readily available data on Scots-Irish well being, compared to that of blacks or Latinos. According to 2006 Census Bureau figures, whites of Scots-Irish descent over the age of 25 are more than twice as likely as comparable blacks to have at least a Bachelor's Degree, and nearly five times as likely as comparable Mexican-Americans to have finished college. Compared to African Americans, the Scots-Irish are less than half as likely to be unemployed, less than one-third as likely to be poor, nearly 70 percent more likely to work in professional or managerial jobs, and their families have a median income nearly twice as high. Compared to Mexican-Americans (among those recent immigrants for whom Webb begrudges affirmative action because it ostensibly hurts struggling whites), the hardscrabble Scots-Irish are 35 percent less likely to be out of work, less than a third as likely to be poor, more than three times as likely to work in professional or managerial jobs, and their families have median incomes that are nearly twice as high.
Although it is true that most Asian sub-groups have higher family incomes and lower poverty rates than whites (and perhaps this is what most upsets Webb, if and when Asian Americans benefit from affirmative action, as happens in contracting or employment occasionally), they are not doing well compared to whites once we control for the geographic placement of whites and Asians throughout the country. So, because Asians are concentrated in a handful of states (Hawaii, California, and New York) that have higher incomes than the national average and higher costs of living, aggregate Asian income will be higher than the same for whites, who are spread throughout the United States. But when whites and Asians in the same state or community are compared, whites earn far higher incomes and have lower rates of poverty. Indeed, within the same cities, Asian poverty rates tend to be double the rate for whites. Likewise, when we compare whites and Asians with comparable educations, whites earn anywhere from 14-28 percent more than their Asian American counterparts.
Although Webb insists that "a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies have marginalized many white workers," he fails to name even one of these policies, let alone demonstrate how it can be blamed for marginalizing whites in the labor market. Given persistent unemployment rates for people of color that are always higher than the rates for whites (even at the same levels of education and qualification), it becomes a bit hard to swallow the notion that whites are being displaced to any significant degree by something like affirmative action. And while there would be nothing wrong with adding economic considerations to affirmative action programs so as to help whites who are economically marginalized, it is surely unnecessary to attack race-based opportunity efforts in order to do so.
Webb then insists that diversity efforts have "allowed" recent immigrants to jump ahead of whites with roots in the nation going back hundreds of years. But in fact, those immigrants of color who have higher incomes and educational attainment rates than whites (largely recent Asian immigrants or African immigrants) typically come with pre-existing class and schooling advantages. It is not because of affirmative action that they are able to "jump ahead" of anyone.
For immigrants generally, and contrary to Webb's suggestions to the contrary, discrimination continues to limit opportunity, thereby making deliberate efforts at inclusion necessary. For instance, one recent study found that immigrants with the lightest skin shade (typically European) make about 15 percent more, on average, than immigrants with the darkest skin shades, even when only looking at persons who have the same level of education, experience and observed productivity. Similarly, research indicates that hundreds of thousands of Asian Americans and Latinos are discriminated against in the job market each year, and that such folks experience discrimination in about one out of three job searches. Although Webb notes high rates of Chinese American college completion, presumably to suggest that Asians are doing just fine without deliberate efforts at inclusion, he conveniently overlooks the evidence indicating that Chinese Americans with professional status positions still earn only about 56 percent as much as their white counterparts, despite having higher average educational attainment.
Don't Know Much About History: Jim Webb Misrepresents America's Past
But it's not only the current racial reality that Webb fails to appreciate. His understanding of history is equally as blinkered. While the Senator is correct that many advocated affirmative action specifically as a way to respond to the legacy of enslavement and Jim Crow, it is simply false that the only reason for such efforts was to repair the damage done by these historic injustices against African Americans. Both the legislative and legal history of affirmative action efforts make clear that just as important was the sense that in the absence of deliberate efforts at inclusion, people of color would continue to be excluded from opportunity in the present. Old boy's networks for jobs and contracts were so tightly dominated by whites (irrespective of qualifications), and private sector job selection criteria were so subjective and skewed to the benefit of whites, that both lawmakers and courts realized more would be needed than mere passive non-discrimination.
And although blacks certainly have faced different obstacles than other persons of color, it is simply historically illiterate to suggest, as Webb does, that those injustices have "no parallel in our history." Indigenous North Americans would likely beg to differ, though the Senator shows no indication of having given first nation's peoples even a fleeting thought in his condemnation of diversity efforts. Even Webb's insistence that "those who came to this country in recent decades from Asia, Latin America and Africa did not suffer discrimination from our government," is so utterly inaccurate as to call into question his basic understanding of the nation's past, to say nothing of its present.
First, these immigrants did face discrimination in the sense that they were routinely blocked from even entering the country, because of blatantly racist immigration laws, in place from the 1880s to 1965. Secondly, Mexican Americans are descended from those who had half of their country stolen by the United States, in a racist war of aggression that we started on false pretense. During the Great Depression, as many as a million Mexicans and Mexican Americans (60 percent of them citizens of the United States) were forcibly expelled from the country so as to free up job opportunities for whites. In the 1950s, tens of thousands more were removed from the nation under "Operation Wetback," including thousands of children whose birth in the United States made them legal citizens. From the 1940s to the 1960s, millions more were exploited by agribusiness interests under the "bracero" program which allowed migrant labor to enter the U.S. from Mexico but then paid lower wages than had been originally agreed to, and refused to pay workers the money that was withheld from their paychecks for mandatory savings accounts.
Likewise, Chinese labor was used, exploited and often worked to death in the United States, brought in to help construct the railroads without which the transcontinental economy could never have emerged. Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps during World War Two, and Southeast Asians who fled to the U.S. in the post-Vietnam War era watched as this country dropped millions of tons of bombs on their nations, poisoning their countrysides with chemical agents and killing millions of people in the process. That we might owe a debt to those whose nations and communities we have helped to collectively wreck over the years seems to escape Webb, though it would likely register fairly clearly on the moral scales of most philosophers, or merely those with a more developed ethical code than that which is typical for far too many lawmakers.
Even worse is Webb's suggestion that whites, unlike these newcomers of color, have never been the "beneficiaries of special government programs." The level of historical ignorance necessary to render a judgment such as this is stunning, and should forever disqualify Senator Webb from being taken seriously by anyone with an interest in truth. Whites, of course, have benefitted more from "special government programs" than members of any other racial group. Indeed, for most of our nation's history it was whites benefitting from these efforts to the exclusion of persons of color.
Among the "special programs" about which Jim Webb appears to know or care nothing, one might include the Homestead Act (which gave out over 200 million acres of virtually free land to whites, beginning in the 1860s), several key programs of the New Deal, from which blacks were mostly excluded for years, but which saved millions of struggling whites--such as the Federal Housing Administration loan program, which by 1960 was being used to finance 40 percent of all white housing--and the GI Bill, which in theory was meant for all returning veterans, but which in practice favored whites, since segregation was allowed to trump the "right" of black and brown GIs to use their job or educational benefits under the program. These and other programs suggest the greatest irony in critiques of affirmative action: namely, that the nation has been engaged in affirmative action for whites virtually forever. But only now has the specter of "preferential treatment" become a problem.
Conclusion: The Best Evidence That Webb's Column is Political Hackery
Based on his faulty understanding of history and apparent inability to decipher the ongoing evidence of racism in the contemporary period, Webb concludes that although the nation has a "continuing obligation to assist those African-Americans still in need, government-directed diversity programs should end." But what is most telling about this policy directive, and Webb's larger narrative about the way affirmative action has spread beyond its original intent is what he appears unwilling to say directly. Because if there were any case to be made for affirmative action having undergone mission creep in recent decades, it would not be with regard to the inclusion of people of color other than blacks. After all, it was the recognition that racism remained a real and persistent problem, requiring more than mere civil rights laws, which animated all early supporters of affirmative action. Rather, the only possible case for mission creep would be with regard to the way in which white women have reaped a disproportionate share of the benefits from such efforts. While one can certainly make the case--and I would, and have--that institutionalized sexism against women as women makes sex and gender considerations legitimate within affirmative action programs, this would seem a more logical target for the Senator's ire, if indeed the purpose of his column had been to highlight the excesses of a program gone wrong.
By remaining entirely silent on this subject--and thereby making sure not to anger up to half of his white voter base (a far larger segment of his constituency than Asians and Latinos)--Webb shows himself to be an opportunistic political hack, exploiting white fears and anxieties about "reverse racism," all the while glossing over the enormous dividends paid to white families via affirmative action, by opening opportunities to white mothers, daughters, sisters and wives.
He should be ashamed. But he won't be. Fear pays, and Jim Webb has plenty of inventory.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
"Imagine if the Tea Party was Black" by Tim Wise
Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S. Wise has spoken in 48 states, on over 400 college campuses, and to community groups around the nation. Wise has provided anti-racism training to teachers nationwide, and has trained physicians and medical industry professionals on how to combat racial inequities in health care.
"Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black" - Tim Wise
Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure - the ones who are driving the action - we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.So let’s begin.
Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.
Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.
Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama.
Imagine that a prominent mainstream black political commentator had long employed an overt bigot as Executive Director of his organization, and that this bigot regularly participated in black separatist conferences, and once assaulted a white person while calling them by a racial slur. When that prominent black commentator and his sister — who also works for the organization — defended the bigot as a good guy who was misunderstood and “going through a tough time in his life” would anyone accept their excuse-making? Would that commentator still have a place on a mainstream network? Because that’s what happened in the real world, when Pat Buchanan employed as Executive Director of his group, America’s Cause, a blatant racist who did all these things, or at least their white equivalents: attending white separatist conferences and attacking a black woman while calling her the n-word.
Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by “hating black people,” or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn’t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough—“living fossils” as he called them—“so we will never forget what these people stood for.” After all, these are things that Rush Limbaugh has said, about Barack Obama’s administration, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, a fight on a school bus in Belleville, Illinois in which two black kids beat up a white kid, and about liberals, generally.
Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president’s policies, that he was ready to “suit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.” This is, after all, what Pastor Stan Craig said recently at a Tea Party rally in Greenville, South Carolina.
Imagine a black radio talk show host gleefully predicting a revolution by people of color if the government continues to be dominated by the rich white men who have been “destroying” the country, or if said radio personality were to call Christians or Jews non-humans, or say that when it came to conservatives, the best solution would be to “hang ‘em high.” And what would happen to any congressional representative who praised that commentator for “speaking common sense” and likened his hate talk to “American values?” After all, those are among the things said by radio host and best-selling author Michael Savage, predicting white revolution in the face of multiculturalism, or said by Savage about Muslims and liberals, respectively. And it was Congressman Culbertson, from Texas, who praised Savage in that way, despite his hateful rhetoric.
Imagine a black political commentator suggesting that the only thing the guy who flew his plane into the Austin, Texas IRS building did wrong was not blowing up Fox News instead. This is, after all, what Anne Coulter said about Tim McVeigh, when she noted that his only mistake was not blowing up the New York Times.
Imagine that a popular black liberal website posted comments about the daughter of a white president, calling her “typical redneck trash,” or a “whore” whose mother entertains her by “making monkey sounds.” After all that’s comparable to what conservatives posted about Malia Obama on freerepublic.com last year, when they referred to her as “ghetto trash.”
Imagine that black protesters at a large political rally were walking around with signs calling for the lynching of their congressional enemies. Because that’s what white conservatives did last year, in reference to Democratic party leaders in Congress.
In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?
To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.
And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.
Game Over.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
School Property - Proselytizing Prohibited
A remarkable observation, analysis and conclusion by a high school student in political science.
"In my political science class today, we talked about the constitution and the first amendment. My teacher mentioned the case engel v. vitale, and when I researched it, I realized that mark wyland had violated the constitution, as well as US statutory law. so..... I wrote this letter to him. . . . "
Mr. Mark Wyland:
I am a high school student at the Classical Academy High School. Recently, you spoke at my school's graduation. In your speech, you addressed religion, and more specifically, the Christian faith. A large portion of your speech was about the loss of morals in our society because of the trend toward a more secular country. You also encouraged us to follow the Christian faith in order to be successful and promote a more sacred society.
The Supreme Court, in the case Engel v. Vitale, ruled that government-endorsed prayer or religion in federally-funded schools violated the establishment clause of the 1st amendment. My school is a publicly funded charter school. Since you explicitly endorsed Christianity at a school function, I believe you have violated constitutional and statutory law.
In addition, many people were also offended that you equated Christianity with morality and success. The success of our society does not depend on Christianity, it depends on our freedom to practice the religion of our choice.
In the future, I would like to request that, as a government official, at a public function, you do not use your position to endorse religion.
Thank you,
Anzy McWha
I wrote back, Anzi, . . . the case you cited stands for the prohibition against an "official" imposition of a prayer or any activity recognizing, implimenting or imposing a religious doctrine by the government. In short, the government is not allowed to bring religion into a public school. The questions here are 1. Who is Mr. Wyland? Is he a government official or is he just a private person who was speaking for himself? 2. Was the school being used by Mr. Wyland, in either an official or unofficial capacity, to promote religion in any
Her answer.
1. He's a senator
2. Yes- he spoke to the graduating class and the rest of the school during the actual graduation ceremony. He stated several times that we should follow the Christian faith, promote a more sacred country, glorify God in everything we did, etc. And he was using a school function to promote Christianity, so yes.
"In my political science class today, we talked about the constitution and the first amendment. My teacher mentioned the case engel v. vitale, and when I researched it, I realized that mark wyland had violated the constitution, as well as US statutory law. so..... I wrote this letter to him. . . . "
Mr. Mark Wyland:
I am a high school student at the Classical Academy High School. Recently, you spoke at my school's graduation. In your speech, you addressed religion, and more specifically, the Christian faith. A large portion of your speech was about the loss of morals in our society because of the trend toward a more secular country. You also encouraged us to follow the Christian faith in order to be successful and promote a more sacred society.
The Supreme Court, in the case Engel v. Vitale, ruled that government-endorsed prayer or religion in federally-funded schools violated the establishment clause of the 1st amendment. My school is a publicly funded charter school. Since you explicitly endorsed Christianity at a school function, I believe you have violated constitutional and statutory law.
In addition, many people were also offended that you equated Christianity with morality and success. The success of our society does not depend on Christianity, it depends on our freedom to practice the religion of our choice.
In the future, I would like to request that, as a government official, at a public function, you do not use your position to endorse religion.
Thank you,
Anzy McWha
I wrote back, Anzi, . . . the case you cited stands for the prohibition against an "official" imposition of a prayer or any activity recognizing, implimenting or imposing a religious doctrine by the government. In short, the government is not allowed to bring religion into a public school. The questions here are 1. Who is Mr. Wyland? Is he a government official or is he just a private person who was speaking for himself? 2. Was the school being used by Mr. Wyland, in either an official or unofficial capacity, to promote religion in any
Her answer.
1. He's a senator
2. Yes- he spoke to the graduating class and the rest of the school during the actual graduation ceremony. He stated several times that we should follow the Christian faith, promote a more sacred country, glorify God in everything we did, etc. And he was using a school function to promote Christianity, so yes.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
I'm goin to Arizona in my mind. An imaginary conversation between Governor Brewer and President Calderone.
Foreign nationals on American soil are, in many cases, subject to the terms of international treaties which are supreme law of the United States under the Constitution. Individual state governments cannot interfere with the relations between the U.S. and other countries and their citizens. Just imagine . . . . . . .
"Hello, Phillipe?. . . Yeah, its me Governor Brewer. Listen muchacho; my anti-racial discrimination law just went into effect. It seems that by coincidence we caught about 200 people violating our traffic laws and who didn't have proof of legal presence in the U.S.. Anyway, the reason I called is that a lot of these people look like your people and I thought you might want them back." . . . . No. no, no, not all of them . . . . some of them say they have green cards or that they were born here but we arrested them anyway . . . well yes, they all looked suspicious . . . . we wanted to be fair to everybody. . . . Anglos? . . . . No . . . . . not a one. What do you mean I have to go through the Embassy and notify the consulate? . . . . But . . . What do mean that you are the President of a whole country and I am just a dumb shit governor of a desert state full of snakes, scorpions, and headless bodies? Mr. Presiden. Mr. President?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . imagine
"Hello, Phillipe?. . . Yeah, its me Governor Brewer. Listen muchacho; my anti-racial discrimination law just went into effect. It seems that by coincidence we caught about 200 people violating our traffic laws and who didn't have proof of legal presence in the U.S.. Anyway, the reason I called is that a lot of these people look like your people and I thought you might want them back." . . . . No. no, no, not all of them . . . . some of them say they have green cards or that they were born here but we arrested them anyway . . . well yes, they all looked suspicious . . . . we wanted to be fair to everybody. . . . Anglos? . . . . No . . . . . not a one. What do you mean I have to go through the Embassy and notify the consulate? . . . . But . . . What do mean that you are the President of a whole country and I am just a dumb shit governor of a desert state full of snakes, scorpions, and headless bodies? Mr. Presiden. Mr. President?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . imagine
Monday, July 5, 2010
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