Yes, Brown is correct. The SCOTUS 6 have shown themselves to be 'christian' nationalists ... or 1 step this side. At least 4 were elected based on their membership in a Roman Catholic weirdo cult. Roman Catholics may regard thenselves as the One, True, Religion, but members of the 2 cults are much further from the True teachings of the young Jewish man-god they purport to worship.
Do you truly believe a broad, vicious, untethered attack advances thoughtful analysis and discussion? You want to think more before you put pen in hand.
I put plenty of thought in before putting pen in hand. You may forget that we have had more than 30 years to think about Thomas' personality and performance on the Court.
Thomas was a disaster at EEOC, and has been a rolling disaster since. Biden made a big mistake in his youth.
I believe Anita Hill and others.
As for the others, look up Leonard Leo and what he has accomplished to destroy America. Scalia was also Opus Dei and his son was leader of. People of Praise is the other virus on the Court.
Thank you, too. You are correct Biden was not alone, and did vote 'Nay'. 95% of the fault lays at the feet of the GOP (who were actually Republicons at the time having mopfhed twice already from being Republicans pre-Reagan [possibly the result of a KGB effort?]). Most of the remainder falls at the feet of the 11 Democrats who, doubting the credibility of a Law professor, voted Aye.
However, Joe "was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blamed for doing little to stop the attacks on Hill and opting not to call three other witnesses who would have echoed Hill’s charges of sexual harassment. Biden almost apologetically gave Thomas the benefit of the doubt, critics say, and that stance helped put Thomas on the Supreme Court."
Had he not felt so embarrassed about the allegations and had waited on the other allegations, I feel quite sure at least 3 of the 11 Democrats and several more Republicons would have had to concur with "Nay". It was 1991 afterall. And I wish we did not have to dredge this up one more time.
Yes! Today, 30 June 2023, marks one full year since Justice Jackson was sworn in. She's a true American treasure! As someone else mentioned, she could/should/will be a superb Chief Justice some day. If that happens, she can help reinstate trust, respect and credibility of SCOTUS in that role. Her presence as the most junior Justice brings serious integrity to the institution. Thankfully. Grateful for her! Thank you, President Biden.
I'm sick and tired of Christians being mollycoddled all day every day. The Catholic church is the biggest tax dodge ever invented, followed closely by the Mormons and Scientologists and Baptists. What you call broad and vicious and untethered (got your thesaurus out I see) is in reality true and just. Someday if there is a god we'll be rid of organized religion.
This opened my eyes, and it was shocking to see how much money various groups manage! And will you look at the #1 entry - Ensign Peak Advisors, which manages the assets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I find it jaw-dropping. You can see others on the list associated with religion.
Absolutely correct, Carolyn. In the short time she has been on the Court, she has distinguished herself as an outstanding Justice in every sense of the word.
Thomas, Gorsuch and Roberts had choices. Cases that were brought before them that helped their "friends". But they did not recuse. As Joyce Vance indicated, Brown showed them how it's done. She schooled her corrupt fellow justices.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is a role model. And isn't it refreshing to see her hit back at pompous political puppetry? I see her as Chief Justice someday.
She is magnificent indeed, Bill. In the short time she has been on the bench, she has shown what an all around class act she is, as well as being a Justice in every sense of the word.
On the other hand, Justice Thomas continues to comport himself with all the dignity of a Stepin Fetchit revival.
The full catalogue of his horrendous abuses of his position are too Tolstoyan in length to list here.
With respect to the Harvard/UNC decision alone, I would point out two for this post's purpose: HIs cringy statement that the Constitution is "colorblind" is preposterous. The drafters of the Constitution directly deliberated upon slavery and enacted the founding document fully aware that the "peculiar institution" of slavery was fully operative at the time, even while inserting a provision for the sunsetting of slave importation. The post Civil War or Reconstruction Amendments (13-15) directly addressed the status of the former slaves and amended that status to reflect full freedom and endowment with all applicable constitutional rights. In fact, these amendments were "fully sighted" with respect to color, in the exact converse of "colorblind".
Also, I have never heard of a Justice other than the Justice announcing the opinion of the Court (usually the Chief, or the Chief handing off the announcement to the Justice who authored the opinion) reading his/her concurring opinion aloud. Thomas did so in this case, seemingly to spite the first female African American Justice. He was well aware that she, as the newest Justice and thus not the senior Justice on the dissenting side, would not be reading hers.
Ha! I am familiar with that film, although have not seen it. I'm not the biggest Quentin Tarantino fan. He has cinematic chops for sure, but so many of his films, especially his more recent ones are juvenile blood spatterers with no real soul to them.
I do like the Kill Bill films, most of Pulp Fiction, and of course his best one, "Jackie Brown"
Well.... the point isn't the film itself. The point is the character Jackson plays. He's what the slavers used to call a "house Negro" who was completely loyal to ol' massa and kept the other slaves in line (https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/mxp/speeches/mxa29.html). In exchange, he got to live in relative comfort.
Some people will sell out their own families if the price is right. Thomas is obviously that sort of person.
KB did not have a "choice", thank you mzlizzi, SCOTUS had 2 cases to consider, one from a STATE university, UNC & one from a PRIVATE university, Harvard. KB's admistrative role at Harvard compels recusal which makes her legal decision on the UNC facts even more powerful now & in cases ahead.
It sounds like Thomas’s experience after HIS graduation from “elite” schools was fine for him but not for anyone else. Further, His experience of having not received offers from “elite” law firms after graduation, as others may have, really seared him. A documentary about him noted this, and he ended up having to go to work in government. Thomas strikes me as self-loathing and desperately wanting to be what his white, very rich benefactors want him to be. He has always seemed to be just this side of explosive anger.
He looks to me like a smug arse getting revenge for every slight, but mouthing I’ve got mine, now screw you. Of course, he and Ginni do nothing but bow and scrape to money to maintain their position on the mountain top.
Thomas chose to wear overalls while at Yale to make a statement about his past--at Yale, a socially conservative school. He graduated in the middle of his class. I personally believe that choice to portray himself as rebellious, plus his mediocre class standing, had more to do with his lack of making connections, both with students and with future employers, than his race. IOW, he himself played the race card, but not very well and without forethought of the consequences.
Yes, and now he wants us to believe he is where he is because of merit which he totally lacks. From day one that guy has appeared as the dud he is....nothing to do with his race either. Sometimes people who do not get what they think they deserve despite being mediocre spend a lifetime trying to get revenge or to somehow erase that. He is hey, look at me in my black robes and I can help make your life miserable while I hobnob with the wealthy and get lots of perks from that. Then i have a white wife, never mind that she is an insurrectionist. That pair gives me a vomit reflex.
It has occurred to me that he was appointed in order to provide a black person on the court. He seems to me to represent the Stockholm syndrome—identifying with his oppressors to prove his worth…
No but, I think MLMinET is on the right track with the "seared" observation. Apparently, Thomas' many post Yale law firm rejections led him to over dramatically deface his Yale diploma. From there, Thomas worked at the EEOC, oh ... sorry, I meant wrecked the EEOC. Fast forward to yesterday where Justice Kentanji Bown stated in her dissent that Thomas was railing against a dissent that she did not write. I would say scalded not seared.. Scalded for life.
Former labor secretary Robert Reich , a classmate, says he always said hello to Thomas as he entered class and was always ignored. Thomas had a Dickensian childhood, and he does not seem to have recovered.
He really wanted to be seen as a "mudsill". I knew what mudsills were in construction but had no idea of the use of the term for slaves and poor white farmers before the civil war. Thank you Dr. Richardson for that piece of history. I even had to go to wickapedia to see the historical connection to construction.
I am appalled at this decision, and many other actions taken by Justice Thomas. At the same time, the Front Line documentary on Clarence and Ginny Thomas gave a very thorough portrait of Justice Thomas's life from childhood on. He did not have one consistent adult who treated him with love and acceptance. In fact he was beaten regularly by his grandfather who raised him after his father abandoned him, and then threw him out at age 16 to fend for himself. There were many other disturbing experiences noted in the film.
As to affirmative action, not only did it not guarantee his being hired by a prestigious law firm but also, it all but assured that he was routinely tormented by fellow classmates (e.g. keeping him awake all night in the dorm by calling "Ni**er" over and over.)
I am not offering these facts as excuses. But they are only a very few of the painful tormenting incidents that were recounted in the documentary. As I take in this information, I'm wondering how these factors contributed to his growing up to be as flawed and seeking of power as he did.... not to excuse his behaviors but to better understand the causes, which are much more complex than that "he's a terrible human being."
Thank you, Thread. I bet you meet many children who raise those questions for you. I was a teacher many decades ago, and I have such respect for anyone fulfilling that mission today. I know there's not one right way to raise our children. But I think there are some foundational principles that some folks simply don't know - or aren't able to recognize as essential, as you stated "receiving the love and support they need to thrive and to become reasonable and caring adults." Did you ever read that the former president was two years old when his mother went into hospital for nearly a year? Again, not to excuse, but to wonder about the impact from that absence and all that we know about his father. Blessings,
The pretense that there was an equivalence between Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall was a fiction based entirely on skin color, as seen through the lens of racists like Lee Atwater and his cronies. It was disgusting when he was nominated, and it has only become more so in the years and scandals since.
I could make the same comment about Amy Coney Barrett replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Republicans love symbols without substance, and unfortunately there's plenty of ambitious Justice fodder ready to toe the Federalist Society line in return for a chance for a lifetime position of power and influence.
C.Thomas Lied during his Senate hearing and should be impeached and removed from the bench he is an embarrassment as a jurist. He is a guarantee right wing vote with total disregard for the law and precedence .
I'm thinking there was some affirmative "action" in that appointment - the fact he was appointed after the hearing on his sexual abuse of women? Boy does that remind me of Kavanaugh AND dumpty! All 3 of them! I wonder - is that what is necessary to appeal to the Repubs now? Is that the drawing card?
What a stupid analysis. That's a highly RACIST cheap shot and condescending.
Thomas has to on the racial plantation to be black? Maybe you are self loathing and angry?
Lets cut through the bullshit and be honest. This is the MIDDLE FINGER to
Asians. They are the group harmed by elite college quota systems.
They came to this country and benefited from the laziness of Americans. They worked harder and sacrificed to get into elite colleges and careers. God Bless them they raised the bar.
Instead o[f praising and emulating their effort, we get the usually claptrap about racism. Its like the drunk uncle who can't stop about Vietnam. Wilfreed Sheed called it "a one note living room"
If you read the majority opinion their analysis is simple. You can't discriminate based on race. Previous courts made some special exemptions based on "public good". Those exemptions HAD VERY CLEAR restrictions.
1) There had to be time limits - As Ailto wrote "there seems to be no end in sight"
2) There is "strict scrutiny" College can't make up their own rules.
You're the first one to make this thread about perceived anti-Asian bias. Telling, that.
P.S. Had you bothered to read the article, you would know that Harvard's admissions policies were not "clearly based on race." Or maybe you knew that and are just being dishonest.
We heard a Heritage Foundation (Black) person make the anti-Asian bias argument yesterday in a panel discussion. First time we ever heard it. While he was smart and articulate and made some interesting points, he mentioned that Thomas was his 'favorite' SC Justice... so there was that.
A dissent can be "powerful" not in the sense it carries any binding legal power at the present, but in that it can be powerfully written, powerfully argued, powerfully persuasive, etc. The legal scholarship in dissents can also be used, and has been used, at a later date to guide other legal opinions that may become consequential. Justice Brown Jackson's is one such opinion, as evidenced by the many outlets which quoted portions at length today in their coverage, unusual for a dissent.
No offense, mzlizzi, but a quick check at your lengthy subscription list to what seems like every loony conspiracy theorist on this platform, Covid-related and otherwise, leads me to wonder if you will enjoy your time here. Obviously all are welcome, but Professor Richardson proffers scholarship, not paranoia, and the former is preferred to the latter amongst the commentariat as well. Heads up!
Well, she could have overlooked the ethical considerations, as Thomas, Alito and Roberts have, and cast her vote. But, she is ethical and therefore recused herself.
To answer your questions about dissents, Justice Jackson is establishing her position via how she writes and how she acts. When (as I devoutly hope) the majority on the Court shifts, she will write with the majority, and her writings will carry more weight because of the action she is taking now.
Google "I Dissent" for some background information on the power of dissent.
Ally, we should understand that Justice Brown Jackson realized that she may not be on the 'winning team' in her decisions on this Court but that a pertinent and well-presented opposing opinion can be very useful in future similar cases brought before the Court. She is evaluating her writings with an eye toward both history and future cases.
And, gosh darn it, it just needed saying!!! Eagerly hope to see, in the very near future, multiple lawsuits challenging legacy and sports preferential considerations in college admissions .
Did I hear correctly in President Biden's sit-down interview on Wednesday that, when questioned about reform of the Supreme Court, he does not propose supporting any changes during his administration? If so, isn't he missing a chance to offer reforms?
Yeah, I have to say I disagree with him on this one. You KNOW the Rs are going to do it first chance they get to have power again. They are trying VERY hard to establish permanent power, and I believe they will use any means necessary.
I think President Biden is missing the point that this court is ALREADY politicized. He is trying very hard to bring this country back to the honorable, civilized side, but I don't know that that is possible any longer.
Biden is living in a past world when 2 parties could work together. We no longer live in that world. There isn’t a republican party any longer. It is the MAGA party. I admire Biden’s optimism, but he is out of touch with what needs to be done in this current political environment. This is what has been wrong with Dems for far too long. You gotta fight fire with fire. Wake up Biden, someone, anyone bring him up to speed with the peril that our Democracy is in. Increase the courts, control the narrative. Biden’s a good guy, he just needs to ditch his thoughts of yesteryears.
"While the Court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for."
Viewed from afar and over many decades, nothing has yet been able to change America's institutionalized hypocrisy, well represented by the current Supreme Court.
Sometimes true friendship demands that we tell truth unvarnished and undistorted.
I agree Peter, and over the past few decades what we know as "affirmative action" has helped level the academic playing field for entire classes of Americans who were once totally excluded from the best of higher education and the advantages and privileges that come with it.
But the real problem that we are afraid to deal with is wealth and income disparity. Until the best and highest education is made available to all citizens at all levels free of charge, we will continue to be a society characterized by extreme wealth and poverty without any way out of what is a very vicious cycle.
In Italy where I live, the things people find weird about the USA are our addiction to guns and the enormous expense of going to college or University. And when I tell people that public schools in the USA are mainly financed by local taxes on real estate (as in rich towns and neighborhoods have better schools) they shake their heads in disbelief.
Affirmative action was like a bandaid on a large and potentially mortal wound; perhaps the SCOTUS is giving us a reason and a chance to start changing our society in more profound ways than our conservative judges can imagine.
"what we know as "affirmative action". This is an excellent phrase. It prompts me to think about what affirmative action really is in the United States of America and who really receives affirmative action.
For example, at Harvard, in 2020, 36% of admissions were "Legacy" admissions. Now, since Harvard mostly admitted white people 20 years ago, "Legacy" admission is really affirmative action for white people. In the last couple of years, with people starting to talk about "Legacy" admission more, it has dropped to around 16% (or so Harvard says, who knows what is true).
In fact, I can say, without a hint of irony, that REAL affirmative action in America IS mostly for white people. It really, really is very sad that "affirmative action" became associated with black people who are not given a single break from birth in the USA.
For example, George W. Bush's extremely poor academic performance at Yale and Harvard, something he bragged about as President, was presaged by equally poor performance in his private prep school. BUT, he as admitted on "Legacy". Bush is white.
Hence, George W. Bush was a pure product of affirmative action.
It is OK to admit low performing white folks into Harvard, if they are white and rich. Preferable, apparently, since we also have Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.
A tragedy of terms to associate the tiny number of black folks admitted to Harvard with "affirmative action" when in fact, REAL affirmative action at Harvard and in America?
Females did benefit tremendously from Affirmative Action. When I graduated from Harvard Law in 1973, 10% of the class was female. It's now slightly more than 50%. Same at Stanford Medical School where my wife got her M.D. in 1978 - 10% were female. When our daughter graduated from Santa Clara Law School in 2012, more than 50% of the graduates were female. So, we did overcome some systemic misogyny. But, we have work to do in the area of race. In my view, MAGA really is KKK. Get Timothy Egan's amazing book, "A Fever in the Heartland." MAGA really is the KKK revived. Remember the marchers at Charlottesville in 2017 shouting "Jews will not replace us?" That's Klan talk.
Making higher education and professional schools affordable once again is part of Biden's larger political agenda. All the more reason why his second term will be as consequential as his first. Those of us of a certain age have been witnesses to the drastic shrinkage of opportunities for upward mobility that occurred in our lifetime. May Biden complete the dismantling of Reagan's heartless trickle down economics and resurrect the New Deal but this time for all Americans regardless of race or ethnicity. Agree completely with your equating of MAGA with KKK.
Yes, Richard, as a CA state employee working in higher ed starting in 1968, once Reagan became Gov I watched the slow strangulation of education, especially the CC, SC & UC higher education system…once considered CA’s “jewel in the crown” of state institutions. Was gobsmacked when he was elected president.
Mike S, perhaps affirmative action is not the correct term for the significant increase in women in grad schools and professions since Title 9. Before 1972 universities could require higher test scores and GPAs for women applicants vs men. They can no longer do that. Girls tend to perform better in high school than boys so it became difficult for universities to justify accepting a much higher percentage of male applicants to women. Add in the enormous cultural changes (birth control, baby boomer women choosing to go to college and delay marriage and child birth, economics pressuring dual income parents) and here we are today. Sex discrimination still exists but it is much less than it used to be. And we have all benefitted by increasing the pool of smart, hard working., educated citizens in our country.
"Before 1972 universities could require higher test scores and GPAs for women applicants vs men. They can no longer do that. "
I was not aware that this was going on prior to 1970..
So, it was MEN who were getting affirmative action due to lower performance requirements.
No surprise to me having had essentially an all male management group for my 40 year career in engineering.
I spent more than my fair bit of time attempting to explain something a five year old kid would have grasped in a second to a senior manager who, often, never got it.
I would like to distinguish my own personal distaste for using the words Affirmative Action to describe the process of allowing highly capable and competitive students into formerly all male schools which, for hundreds of years did not consider performance for admission.
I would rather use the word Affirmative Action for what went on BEFORE highly capable men and women entered the university then the workforce.
In other words: White men were admitted without regard for past performance and, for sure in Ivy, mostly associated with the wealth of the family.
I was wondering about this. Why is legacy just accepted as a normal course of procedure in considering applications? I find this astounding. Where is the backlash against this policy? You mention race and wealth (which is undoubtedly the motivation, particularly wealth and ability of family members to donate) but by definition, it's just bloodline, which is an absurd variable to weigh. If we're talking about fairness and merit, this policy needs to come into the light of legal scrutiny.
While we're at it, I think I'll trample on this sacred cow: Why does Harvard need to have a football or basketball team? Why do universities offer athletic scholarships? Why does some 19th century notion of the connection between sharp minds and strong, healthy bodies and moral vigor and God knows what else still play such a big role in what is supposedly higher education? Or even at the high school level?
There is no NCAA in Italy or elsewhere in Europe as far as far as I know, but this certainly doesn't keep people from becoming great athletes and national heroes (individually or on teams) and earning a ton of money, or diminish the public appetite for televised sports and the "BIG" game. Here, if you want to do sports seriously, there are special organizations and structures dedicated to that, but it is all quite separate from study and learning and intellectual achievement generally, and most higher education is paid for by tax revenues in any case.
Oh my God! No high school basketball in Italy? How barbaric!
While I find a lot troubling with the NCAA (or NC$$, as some call it) I came to terms with college athletics many years ago. If the purpose of college is to prepare one for life (not necessarily the career one's degree was aimed toward), athletics offers the chance for student athletes to turn pro and earn money, at least for a short while, before they hit the Real World in which a college education is required (and the fact that most student-athletes end their careers when they leave school, or have attenuated pro careers, isn't lost on me.) Athletics also increase the diversity of a student population -- not only with regard to race, but also country of origin, and that's for the better. I'm a casual fan of college (and pro) sports, and do wish that the amount of money raised for and directed to college sporting arenas is obscene in many cases -- money which could go towards educational purposes, but there is an appetite for competitive sports teams here and abroad, and there is competition to attract better athletes (there is also a lot spent on attracting students with high-end dorms, dining halls and other lifestyle amenities -- a far cry from when I attended state college in the mid-70s.)
All of this is off-topic, of course, so I'll not go further.
With very rare exceptions, athletes at the very top private schools (e.g., Harvard) players do not become professionals, and sporting teams at those schools do not make money. I think that giving priority to competitive athletes at those schools is not comparable to affirmative action and I don't have a problem with that. Athletic accomplishment is an accomplishment - not so different from musical accomplishment - although very different from scholarly accomplishment. That is very different from giving priority to athletes in sports - e.g. football, basketball - that are seen to make money (directly or indirectly).
I agree...I don't see much "equality before the law" on this issue. If SCOTUS pulled the plug on Affirmative Action, then should it not also pull the plug on "Legacy Action"? (And now I will get a swarm of comments to the effect that legacies are okay for PRIVATE colleges and universities.)
Legacy admissions seem to me a sort of nepotism. I can understand a parent or kid wanting to attend the school attended by others in the family before them….”a tradition of us attending ol’ Rumson U”, but should that give any student preference? Nah.
It is not coincidental that while female graduations from law schools have increased, the starting salaries of lawyers have declined. Income and wealth are indeed the fundamental disparities as Mike S writes.
Thank you for pointing that out. For the chief justice to complain about affirmative action is absurd. The late Professor Derrick Bell, a black man who left Harvard Law because they would not appoint a black woman to the faculty, was always quick to point out that it would only be fair to exclude legacies and the offspring of donors if schools chose to discontinue affirmative aaction.
The cost of a higher education. It is disgraceful. I finished my higher education in 1973 (Whittier College, USC - 2 years, Harvard Grad School - 3 years, Harvard Law School - 3 years) and my TOTAL tuition for all 12 years was less than $16,000. I know, that was a few years back, but the cost of tuition today is unconscionable. We should forgive all student debt, which is less than the $2 trillion that Trump and the MAGA Republicans doled out to the big corps and the wealthy in 2017.
Exactly. When the talk of student loan forgiveness was going on, to rebut what my MAGAt friends were saying, I researched it. In 1980, my state college tuition was under 3K a year. Minimum wage at the time was $3.50. In 2016 (when my nephew graduated) it was over $20.000. Minimum wage was $9.25. There is a huge difference in those ratios.
I don't think it was the "Greed is good" idea as much as the "Gov't is not the solution; gov't is the problem" mantra and the anti-tax movement that was supported by it. So gov't support of higher ed declined rapidly and long, so tuition skyrocketed (and quality declined as well -- students interacted with TAs and "adjuncts" instead of the profs who made the institutions' reputations (not that tenured researchers and publishers were necessarily good teachers . . .). But yeah, Uncle Ronnie and the oligarchs behind him (who also spearheaded the marginalization of workers' concerted action through unions), damn his itty-bitty soul. Like tfg, the oligarchs "love the poorly educated" for their ready manipulability through engagement of their narrow minds in "culture wars." (No, I don't equate lack of college with lack of education; there are still autodidacts around -- AND there are plenty of college degrees that require only vocational training, nothing that I'd call education.)
Mike S - it seems we may be close in age. That's about what I recall paying for tuition at A&M. Class of '80 here. Back then I took an Economics course taught by Phil Gramm. And, to my shame, occasionally voted for Republicans.
Ally, I used to have copies of a short essay (forget the author) about how it was almost impossible any longer to “work your way through college”. Students would tell me that their parents did & expected them to as well (one student did tell me his dad worked his way through w/ part time work…oh, and the GI Bill….well deserved, but still). Based on the then economic landscape, a student at the prevailing min wage would have to work well OVER 40 hrs a week to meet costs….yeah, and exactly when would they be able to attend class & study???!!!! I’d give a copy of this “handout” so the student could share it with their parents. There IS a way, however, to do so and it’s generally someone working FT and attending night school part time, or maybe funded (time and money) by their employer.
Agree…however it is plain to see many of those Americans holding very different views than I (me being center-left on the spectrum) say the very same thing, tho’ they seem to be (are) willing to do so by any means necessary.
Between the disastrous (to the Treasury) tax cuts and the issuance of PPP loans that have not yet been repaid, anyone who benefitted from any of them and yet has the temerity to dispute student loan forgiveness needs to be taken out to the woodshed for a short, sharp lesson.
Richard, IMHO, the whole student aid “system” needs an overhaul. The grant/loan imbalance is huge and funding, even loans (annual & aggregate limits), do not cover the cost of attendance (and gave rise to the “private” student loan market—ugh, don’t get me started!). Loan forgiveness for current loan holders is a start, but will not help many currently enrolled students & future students—we need a big shift in the whole program. I started working in the field of college student aid (a college Fin Aid Office) in 1968, just scant years after the Higher Education Act of 1965 was passed, and saw how funding became a pinball game of changes—some good, some definitively not, over the decades. Folks often forget that the cost of attendance (COA) is not just tuition/fees, but also book & supplies and living costs (rent/utilities/food/etc) while in school. I would advise prospective students to carefully review the COA and their aid package, as it was rare a student would be fully funded….had many a budgeting session with students over the years!
I'm old now - 83 years. My total tuition for 12 years of college/grad school/law school was less than $16,000. My rent in 1973 was $125/mo. What we are experiencing now is a counter-revolution, the reactionary forces are fighting back. They're the ones who ran the national debt up to $33 trillion, siphoning that money out of the system. The $2 trillion tax break in 2017 helped to increase the national debt another $7.8 trillion. That's supply side economics. The recipients bought back their own stock, doing nothing to stimulate the economy. But, if the student debt forgiveness program went through, this would stimulate the economy because those folks would spend that money. It's not rocket science. It is exploitation of the many by the few who use wedge issues and misdirection plays to get a large number to vote against their own best financial/economic interests. As G.W. Bush said at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on 3/31/2001, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on."
Yeah, back when I started college my then husband and I (we married very young) rented small places for $75-100 month; in addition to working at school on Federal Work Study, I also had odd jobs (stoop labor in the fields, shelling Dungeness crabs) for a grand hourly wage of $1.65. School fees (they didn’t call it tuition then) were about $60 per quarter…..I did have some student loans (this was pre-Pell Grant), but not a lot. We scraped by on a very slim budget, but it was doable….not so easy these days with increasingly skyrocketing costs over time (nothing to do w/ the present “inflation” hullabaloo). Yeah, that whole “trickle down” theory of the last 40-50 has never really worked, but it is still being pushed by those who want to hold on to the $$$ (as you say, stock buy-backs, etc.) instead of letting it trickle…ha, whose bright idea was THAT anyway???!!!!
BK - my partner and I met in the mid 80s at grad school, where we both had full rides plus teaching stipends that allowed us to survive. By the time we had kids it was clear to us that those opportunities weren't gong to be available to them. We started to put money into 529 programs for them before they were a year old. We were pretty broke (launching different startups) when our daughter started college, and the financial aid available to her meant she didn't have to reach very deep into her 529 at first. She's going to graduate UCLA with zero debt. She's been lucky, and smart with her money. That said, I agree that cost of attendance it too high, and I don't have any good prescriptions for bringing it down. I do support efforts by the Biden administration to use tax dollars to reduce student debt, regardless of what the corporatist thugs among the radical "conservatives" on SCOTUS have to say about it.
I've written elsewhere with respect to how socioeconomic status affects access to higher education. My partner and I both have advanced degrees from UC, and entrepreneurial experience. My dad went to UCLA and Cal (I went to Texas A&M and UC Davis). My partner's dad went to Stanford, retired from the military as a colonel, and taught at Cal Poly (she went to Cal Poly after her dad retired, and then to UC Davis). Generationally, our kids expect to graduate from college.
We sacrificed to send our kids to Montessori and to fund those 529s. We lived on very tight finances for well over a decade. We'd have been screwed without my partner's solid UC pension. We're solidly middle-class for the Bay Area. We recognize our privilege, don't take it for granted -- we raised our kids not to take it for granted -- and we do what we can to support others in our community to succeed. But we know that it's largely down to white privilege and luck that our kids are where they are today.
Racial, economic inequalities indeed! The reasonably and very well off systemically under appreciate or just deny the social/pysch barriers that racism / endemic poverty create. Despite an extended period of things like affirmative action, "food stamps" and other social supports to the disadvantaged, educational and economic differentials remain historic. Perhaps efforts to change the social legacy of the past have made a difference, but changing social mindsets, for both the advantaged and disadvantaged, is a far greater challenge than anyone back then remotely imagined, and to a great extend, today. America remains a divided world. Oh, did we mention gender?
"Bandaid on a large and potentially mortal wound."
Now, it's not even bandaid. Thanks to the present Governor of Florida and would-be floridator of the United States, total denial of that wound is now mandatory.
"Woke" has been a normal, healthy reaction of the body politic, the surfacing and bursting of a deep abscess. The most extremist forms of "anti-woke" (which, after all, means "Go back to sleep and stay asleep") go way beyond denial, it is as though doctors faced with a suppurating wound had no better reaction than to tell the unsightly blood and pus to get back deep inside, out of sight, out of mind.
Considering how deep, ancient, cruel and overwhelming the oppression of all minorities has been in the United States -- including that of poor white immigrants who could subsequently become invisible and melt into the melting pot -- it is surprising that the bursting of the abscess should have been so restrained, so unspectacular. All this tells us far more about mainstream American society and the tiny ultra-wealthy minority than it does about the country's black or brown citizens, still forcefully discouraged from attaining access to full citizenship.
(I live in France, where the current reactions of a large underclass to what might in America still be a commonplace police shooting seem far more nihilistic and violent.)
David, I think you have hit on the real disparity in college admissions, namely that of income disparity. While bothered by the politics surrounding the SCOTUS decision, I have personally felt most socially uncomfortable with those from lower socioeconomic groups than with those of different races but from the same socioeconomic stratum. This seems a surer sign of my own prejudice born of the culture I grew up in. Perhaps addressing income disparity will provide a more sure remedy for what ends up being the prejudice our society shows than that simply of race, (whatever THAT might prove to be).
Or, JohnM, we can trim it down to this: When we are being honest with ourselves, what do we really value in other people? And what would we most like to change in ourselves (if we could)?
I absolutely agree that socioeconomic status (y'know, access to the good stuff in life) is much more important than race, which is a kind of lazy, nearly meaningless intellectual construct invented to justify certain people lording is over other people. That racial prejudice is used/allowed to determine socioeconomic status is a national embarrassment that we continue to indulge at our great peril .
David, I want to endorse your closing phrase and to give it the prominence it deserves:
“Perhaps the SCOTUS is giving us a reason and a chance to start changing our society in more profound ways than our conservative judges can imagine.”
The President has been building a bridge:
FROM a saner, more generous and imaginative past, a time when politics was at the service of the human population, not—as it has been since the Reagan presidency—at the well-nigh exclusive service of money and oligarchy...
TO the present and a future in which government once again serves citizens and the economic and social interests of the country.
This will mean returning economics to its proper role as the management of the household—all the household, without any exceptions. Currently the have-nots, the ultimate underclass, have the status of vermin; and the human consequences are unspeakable.
At the other end of the scale, Republican administrations have been siphoning off the wealth of the country and delivering it, not just to the haves, but to a tiny minority, the ultra-haves, those who have so much that they don't know what to do with it.
Although it is hard to be sanguine about the possibility of our world returning from delirium to anything that might be described as “basic reality”, this is a time when we are going to have to adjust economics to address such issues as sustainability, debt and the demands of life on the earth’s surface.
Here it may be enlightening to refer readers still following the thread to a major Chinese thinker, Cheng Yi… writing in the 11th century. Cfr. The Tao of Organization, Cheng Yi, translated by Thomas Cleary, published by Shambhala, 1988, pp. 131-132 (Reduction) and 136 (Increase).
REDUCTION describes the kind of development exemplified by trickle-down economics, in which those on the top of a tall structure undermine the whole by taking from the base, while a more recent version of the message of INCREASE will be found in an aphorism of Conservative statesman Benjamin Disraeli: “The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.”
You may be put out when you discover this work, but the content more than merits study.
David, as I understand it,(and I speak as an older white man who attended public schools and a state U, and was a middling student throughout) affirmative action is as much about post-secondary education (e.g. Harvard or Yale Law) and subsequent connections via the pipeline of privilege to elite job opportunities, including the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas was a beneficiary of affirmative action, but as I've heard, a worthy one -- he had the intellectual qualifications to succeed, and whether one likes his opinions or not (I don't,) it's undeniable he has had a mighty role in conservative law. (Of course, he is also the model of hypocrisy, with his subsequent disgust of AA as well as his acceptance of gifts from those seeking favor.)
Improving our educational systems is of course something we as a nation should be continually striving for. But I suspect it won't do much to put a future Ketanji Brown Jackson or a Clarence Thomas, if that's your bent, on the Supreme Court or in other places of power.
In a "more perfect" world, affirmative action shouldn't be necessary.
Doug, affirmative action was once politically popular enough that a more liberal SCOTUS let it stand, and in the absence of any other serious attempt to end or even diminish white male dominance of most things in the US, it was better than nothing. Thus, lots of laments in today's LFAA.
Frankly, I think Clarence Thomas and his conservative buddies have serially and deliberately misunderstood/misinterpreted the US Constitution as part of a long term project to turn back the clock of US history, so I'm not sure his supposed "intellectual qualifications" (like what, a degree?) make Thomas a worthy Supreme Court justice.
But aside from that, I think the Reagan-through-Trump era is exposing certain dangerously weak spots in our Constitution and the sort-of, kind-of democracy most of us are still proud of. I guess.
So it's time we really got to work on having a more perfect world, and perhaps some reflection on what affirmative action has accomplished (and cannot accomplish) is a part of that.
My attempy to understand Thomas leads me to the hypothesis that his experience and success has brought about criticisms that he only succeeded because he was given undue priviledge because he was black. He resents the not-so-subtle put-downs and wants others from minority groups to be able to rejoice in their success in a manner he has only wanted to do.
But Jackson has it right. If you look at the myriad areas in which differences exist between blacks and whites (e.g., maternal deaths, infant deaths, life expectancy, access to fresh foods, income levels, etc.) there is no question that the effects of racial discrimination remain as important factors in determining the opportunities for success.
In a sense, Jackson's analysis justifies Thomas' resentment that his success has been viewed with an asterisk (much like Maris' home run record). His solution has been to attack the source of his perceived humiliaion.
David, I want to endorse your closing phrase and to give it the prominence it deserves:
“Perhaps the SCOTUS is giving us a reason and a chance to start changing our society in more profound ways than our conservative judges can imagine.”
The President has been building a bridge:
FROM a saner, more generous and imaginative past, a time when politics was at the service of the human population, not—as it has been since the Reagan presidency—at the well-nigh exclusive service of money and oligarchy...
TO the present and a future in which government once again serves citizens and the economic and social interests of the country.
This will mean returning economics to its proper role as the management of the household—all the household, without any exceptions. Currently the have-nots, the ultimate underclass, have the status of vermin; and the human consequences are unspeakable.
At the other end of the scale, Republican administrations have been siphoning off the wealth of the country and delivering it, not just to the haves, but to a tiny minority, the ultra-haves, those who have so much that they don't know what to do with it.
Although it is hard to be sanguine about the possibility of our world returning from delirium to anything that might be described as “basic reality”, this is a time when we are going to have to adjust economics to address such issues as sustainability, debt and the demands of life on the earth’s surface.
Here it may be enlightening to refer readers still following the thread to a major Chinese thinker, Cheng Yi… writing in the 11th century. Cfr. The Tao of Organization, Cheng Yi, translated by Thomas Cleary, published by Shambhala, 1988, pp. 131-132 (Reduction) and 136 (Increase).
REDUCTION describes the kind of development exemplified by trickle-down economics, in which those on the top of a tall structure undermine the whole by taking from the base, while a more recent version of the message of INCREASE will be found in an aphorism of Conservative statesman Benjamin Disraeli: “The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.”
You may well be put out when you discover this work, but the content more than merits thought and study.
"Viewed from afar and over many decades, nothing has yet been able to change [humanity's] institutionalized hypocrisy, well represented by the current [crop of homo sapiens]."
Will, no one could disagree with your identifying hypocrisy as a common human trait, one particularly prevalent in institutions.
Nevertheless, just as the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling degrades, even negates citizenship, providing the Corporate Cuckoo with loudspeakers while mere humans are shoved from the nest, so the still unrivaled material power of the USA multiplies the baleful influence of America's institutionalized hypocrisy.
The greater the power, the greater the responsibility.
And conversely, the impact of endemic -- not just ingrown but ever more institutionalized -- irresponsibility.
Deliberately cultivated irresponsibility.
The Herculean task: to uproot that. For America's own sake. On behalf of humanity.
I'll just add that I see no essential difference between your attitude and my own, except that we were and are discussing a specifically American problem.
Consequently, to refer to its universal nature is to run the risk of distracting from our focus on the issue in hand and, worse, providing justifications to those like Putin who accompany their every crime by statements that “If they can do it, so can I”. For the rest, it should be plain to all that great power entails great responsibility.
There are powerful forces at work in America that are doing their damnedest to manipulate the public by reinforcing voters' ignorance and irresponsibility, thus subverting both country and universal commitments in pursuit of their supposed private interests. Criminals thrive where there is war and chaos. And there are very powerful criminal forces at work in America, typically under a veneer of wealth and respectability.
Peter, everything in your response is absolutely fantastic and has my hearty agreement. I suppose this is yet another case of two people caring about the same things but peering at the prism from different angles.
I see what you mean about the pitfalls of generalization, in that it can help avoid responsibility. I personally share your belief that all American citizens should consider their citizenry with the weight of a global responsibility, as our larger size and power mean our actions are simply more imactful than, say, Vanuatu ever could be. Our small difference appears to be that while you were focusing on the tangled web of the American psyche, I think that to view many of our failings as uniquely American is an equally large trap. Stubborn bigotry, willful ignorance, corporate greed, etc. are continual human problems, and the only thing specific to America about their presence here is the specific forms they take. Your initial post could have the name of the country and a few other words changed and ring true for that place as well. We Americans can and should change the laws to tackle the practical effects of our current specific forms of hypocrisy, but others may well spring up. Eliminating hypocrisy will be a lofty goal for civilization for quite a while yet.
Thank you, Will, but perhaps you underestimate the influence of America's soft power, something I've been seeing since childhood. From my point of view, the rest of the world all lies downstream of America... whose cultural flotsam and jetsam all too often get taken up by cargo cultists everywhere, while at the same time giving rise to rabid anti-Americanism and imitation by would-be rivals of all that is worst in the States.
Except that only countries like Somalia, Sudan and Mali are even more than America the victims of paranoia and arms merchants, although it's not said that mass madness may never turn neighbor against neighbor. (Switzerland, with its citizens' army, perhaps exemplifies the better intentions of the drafters of the 2nd Amendment.)
I'm too sad about what has been done to my own country by the same forces that threaten the USA, too sad to want to comment on what I have seen.
Granted, the "human condition" is deplorable, but we're talking about America, Will. If you're trying to generalize this, you've totally missed the point. You need to get out more, but fortunately you're still very young.
"Granted, the "human condition" is deplorable..." I just spent yesterday evening with family at our county fair. I met some nice people and had a lovely time. If you find yourself deploring humanity so casually, you may be interested how many therapists are doing video conferencing now.
"...but we're talking about America..." I'm aware of the country of focus of this newsletter, yes.
"If you're trying to generalize this, you've totally missed the point." I'm not trying to generalize. I *am* generalizing, because I find this to be a general human characteristic, not a strictly American one, and *I* think people who think otherwise are missing the point. Ain't disagreement fun?
"You need to get out more..." See above regarding county fair. Whaddaya want me to do, visit the West Bank to really get a feel for epic futility of it all? Send me a check for the air fare and I'll start packing!
"...but fortunately you're still very young." Define very. I'm old enough to plausibly be a married homebuyer raising an elementary-school aged child. I have gotten a degree, a job, a raise, paid my taxes, paid my lease, and voted in multiple elections. At what point do I gain enough wisdom and experience to be a real boy? Do tell!
There's nothing like some truly breathtaking condescension early in the morn!
It's Will that is being disrespectful and I called him on it. I felt Peter Burnett's comment was very astute and well stated. At this time almost 100 other readers agree. I'm pasting it below to save you a lot of scrolling if you'd care to review it:
Peter Burnett
7 hr ago
" 'While the Court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.'
Viewed from afar and over many decades, nothing has yet been able to change America's institutionalized hypocrisy, well represented by the current Supreme Court.
Sometimes true friendship demands that we tell truth unvarnished and undistorted."
Will edited Mr. Burnett's "Viewed from afar...." paragraph to twist its intent, posted it here, then concluded with a very snarky "FIFY (Fixed It For You)" which I found to be not only disrespectful in the extreme but typical of some of his stilted rants, though employing far fewer words than is typical for him.
Mr. Burnett's final paragraph applies here as well. We're supposedly a more or less like minded community on this forum. In my opinion it's a responsibility for its members to police our own when we see their egos getting too swollen.
I think Peter and Will are adult enough and on this page frequently enough to handle any back and forth discourse without interference/refereeing from any of us. Disagreement does work.
Respectful disagreement is one thing. Sneering sarcasm is quite another. When I suggested to Will that he had missed the point of the original comment, he suggested that I see a shrink, for example, which clear evidence to me that he is immature. I'm not setting myself up as a "referee", just expressing an opinion. I hope that's still ok.
I suppose this is a lost-in-translation example of people speaking different dialects, internet-wise. For the record, in my frame of reference FIFY (or FTFY, Fixed That For You) is a really common texting/commenting bit of slang/trope. It always involves either replacing words or adding words to the above person's comment, usually to make it more specific, more generalized, or more colorful. It's *self-aware* passive-aggression as part of a rapport, and can be used in a playful way, although if you haven't come across it before, I suppose it could read as actual aggression, or "twisting," as you put it. However, it beggars the bigger question: what is wrong with sarcasm? I like sarcasm, and I like other sarcastic people. Everyone has a different style, and if you don't speak my lingo or vibrate on my wavelength, no harm no foul. But just move along, please.
If my comment is your idea of disrespect "in the extreme," you may wish to avoid almost all the rest of the internet. Your sensibilities will be shocked beyond belief.
Yes, Will, I understood the "trope" as you put it, and will be quite happy to "move along" herewith.
As to my sensibilities, I've been in and around the internet almost as long as you've been on the planet, so please don't concern yourself with them.
When I spoke to your age I was not intending to diminish you. I meant it literally when I suggested that you should "get out more" (before you make these pronouncements on other people's views), which was intended to convey that experience weighs heavily on the validity of a person's commentary. Peter was speaking directly to the issue of "American hypocrisy" which is a very special case and a long standing problem for us. His views "expressed from afar and over decades" reminded me of my own experience in many other countries and over decades as well. I've seen the impact on the impression we create in our neighbors with our tendency to view ourselves as "exceptional". So your playful edit of his comment seemed a bit flip to me. But then, no real harm has been done, so let's just agree to drop it. Peace.
The conservative Injustices of Supreme (Kangaroo) Court seem unable to recognize that hundreds of pages of high-faluting legalese cannot obscure the REAL message that their verdict delivers to so many Americans. What are they REALLY saying with those endless smoke-and-mirror clauses and citations? It's simple, really:
"You don't belong here. You never did. The idea you ever could is madness. Now get out and stay out.
The dumb bleeding-heart liberals put their thumb on the scale for you to get a shot at accomplishing something in order to make themselves feel like good people. But we know that if everything was just done based on who was smarter and more capable - you know, *better* - you would never have made it. If everything was done the way it naturally should go, your spots would have gone to the white people you stole them from. They (the white people, that is) are the ones that really earned it - DESERVE IT - because they (the white people, that is) are naturally smarter and more capable. You know, *better.*
White people are just naturally better than other people.
You say you're disadvantaged, but it's your own fault you cannot get over the obstacles you say are in your way. You've always been greedy, never knowing your place, and a whiny victim to boot. Go ahead, prove us wrong. I think you'll find we aren't keeping anything from you, not really. You just have to prove you are good enough to belong here! Here... just count all the jellybeans in this jar. Did you guess right? Oh dear... I didn't think so."
I can hear this loud and clear, and I am as white as an albino polar bear drinking a milkshake. Imagine how some people are feeling today. No legalese can make that slap sting less, or can make that willful entrenchment of power less blatantly obvious.
What are these people going to do when college starts up in the fall... and there are still Black and brown people there? And what are they going to do when those students start lining up at the polls? The message those students will be sending is even shorter, and even clearer:
"Guess what? We do belong. And your time is soon up."
Well said. Because it’s not like we didn’t get rid of separate but equal in the school system. The schools in poor neighborhoods of color are just as good as those in Malibu or Martha’s Vineyard because they’re all equal now. So “those people” had just as much access to education as everyone else. If they didn’t properly apply themselves, or were more concerned about staying alive while walking to school, well I guess they didn’t really care about what was important - their education. And if they couldn’t study well because their bellies were empty, again that’s the fault of the parents not society. They have an equal school, so there’s no excuse for why they can’t score as well on SAT’s or ACT’s. Clearly they didn’t try as hard as the white kids. Oh wait! Those schools are letting too many Asians in now! It’s not fair to the white kids. I know! Let’s limit the number of Asian students that can be in the student body because, well it’s not fair. Their parents push them too hard in math and science and they study all the time. We want a more well-rounded student body that participates in sports and such. (You know, anything that favors the white kids). Ugh! I’m so done.
The Extreme Kangaroo Court is certainly what it should be called. It also has me wondering what's next from the Fascist GQP domestic terrorists. They are a total disgrace to our nation.
My junior high brain has decided the abbreviation of the Supreme Court of the United States should henceforth include the designation (R) to denote party affiliation. Therefore, the abbreviation should henceforth be SCROTUS, with all the attendant juvenile snickering referring to a part of the male anatomy (which I have heard reference as both "ball sack" and "holder of the sacred testes".) If we could make Kangaroocourt one word, I could still have the sound of my personal favorite...
Hmmmm, i wonder how true that is?? I know these 6 lying bungholes have lifetime appointments, but i would hope someone in the Senate and the Dems in the House would seriously consider impeaching those 6 Rethug. terrorist judges. This insanity has to STOP. I am sick and fed up with these corrupt Justices thwarting the rule of law.
Unfortunately, The Law has made them “The Law” and now they are creating Law as unelected adjudicators of parsed legal mumbo jumbo KNOWING that Congress is deadlocked in a battle between the Forces of Dark Money vs “The will of the People” and cannot pass the legislation required to legally stop them
Even if a Congress did pass new laws, This Roberts Gang of Six could over rule them
I agree, it sure does look bad right now. Makes me angry. but this situation really looks hopeless. I am about ready to hightail it out of the United States.
My longest friend from childhood, also a Virginian, expressed basically the same thought to me on Wednesday, although related to healthcare, not education. Part of me was astounded, part of me wasn’t surprised. Racism runs deep.
Yes. My sister and her husband long ago moved to South Carolina, considered more racist than Virginia. (Current Republican senators?) Judge Roberts may himself be racist which is why he doesn’t “understand” or care to understand its hold on America. One need only look at MS and AL to see the results of continuing racism in America.
Husband and I had snacks and drinks in an inner city area of Richmond, VA the other afternoon. The groups were there thoroughly diverse, and waaaay younger. Exposure is key. Why has that not changed in more red areas? Lack of exposure certainly, but my gawd, how can you be combative not inclusive in an illusion?
And oh yeah - if you just "work hard & pull yourself up by your bootstraps" everything will be hunky dory - right?
And then there's the push to - heavens above - "not hurt any child's (white child) feelings" by educating them about the true history of treatment of poor/black/indian/immigrant people in this country. Sorry I guess thats jumping to another section of this subject.
The socially/economic advantaged also pick up in pyschological aid. Check out the academic scores from advantaged versus dis-advantaged institutions. Don't forget private schools etc
Has anyone here read "Poverty, by America" by Matthew Desmond? It came out in March. I'm considering buying/reading it and just wondered if anyone recommends it... I read his book "Evicted" and thought it was thought provoking.
I'd say that about covers it, yeah. The question is, when those students start lining up at the polls, will states controlled by angry, paranoid white racists allow them to vote at all? Or will they find ways to suppress their vote in the name of "election integrity"?
"It's annoying that we have to fight elections for our cause
The inconvenience—of having to get a majority
If normal methods of persuasion fail to win us applause
There are other ways of establishing authority
We have ways of making you vote for us, or at least of making you abstain." - Tim Rice, "Evita"
I find it ironic that Clarence Thomas, who benefited in every aspect of his education to his narrow Senate approval to the lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court because of his race, was so fulsomely opposed to affirmative action.
Based on his character and judicial track record, Thomas was not a top-ranked candidate for the Supreme Court. He had the good fortune of replacing the distinguished Thurgood Marshall, the first Black on the Supreme Court. I fear that Ginni/Clarence Thomas will not cease their vengefulness on the Stench Court.
Keith, my take on Thomas is that he is racist. When I taught at the first Black Catholic University in America, I had a racist student in class. The rest of the class applauded vigorously when I responded to her attack 1970’s). Thomas’s attitude reminds me of the ignominy of racism.
Members of minority groups, being just as human as those in the majority group, are unfortunately not exempt from the same fallible thought processes that lead to prejudice. If you hear the same harmful tropes ascribed to your group over and over and do not possess the character to reject them, you can grow to believe them and direct the resulting self-hate outwards. These people define themselves as being "not like the others," rather than an example that disproves the stereotypes. In LGBT circles there is the concept of "internalized homophobia." The same can apply for ethnicity, gender, disability, etc. It really explains well the behavior of so many people whose lived experience should have taught them more understanding but sadly did not, and the dynamic becomes more apparent the higher profile someone receives. Like, a Supreme Court appointment, say.
Will, it’s been my experience that racism exists in a spectrum that includes pretty much all races and creeds: I could call it “fear of the other” and is manifested in the physical separation that exists between various communities. Inclusion breaks down the separation by causing peoples to interact. Our path to “equality” lay in the direction of “rubbing elbows”, but institutionalized (taught) prejudices interfere with that (idealized) goal
This is why we need a national service program that brings together young Americans from all walks of life, kind of like the military in WWII. Without all the guns of course.
I totally agree with a national service corps, similar to the Peace Corps. It would bring together diverse young people from various backgrounds, regions, ethnicities, and help them appreciate their differences while working toward common goals.
Yes! I have long thought this—make it a requirement! It could be applied to so many areas that our nation could use help with. I would see students come to the Univ where I worked having done Peace Corp, AmeriCorp or CA Conservation Corp “tours of duty” and most said it was an enlightening and life changing experience.
Will, you are spot on. Definitely can speak to the "internalized homophobia" being present in me. Both my wife and I had the the thought "who would want to come to our wedding?" as we were planning to lawfully marry when we celebrated our 25th anniversary. The answer was "the whole damn family, thank you very much."
Awww, I bet everyone showed up! It is amazing how, even when we think we are okay with ourselves, those little voices saying something is wrong with us will persist, telling us to keep subtly apologizing for burdening others with our abnormality, to not to take up too much of the room we don't deserve. That we need to excel in other ways to make up for this flaw we have, to prove to others and ourselves that we are worthy despite it all. How freeing in those moments ts when you realize none of that needs to be engaged with at all, because that core belief that something is wrong or lesser about us just is not true and never has been. We are perfectly fine the way we are, and deserve the opportunities and experiences others have just as much as they do. Easier said than done, but worth it!
Keith, your “take no prisoners” language is a breath of fresh air in this never-tell-it-like-it-is atmosphere. But can we extend the “moron” to Judge Roberts’ “reasoning” about the unconstitutionality of affirmative action? It makes no sense.
Virginia My height has shrunk a bit, but I am no shrinking violet. I am still taking no prisoners when it comes to truthful analysis. [This way, it’s much easier to remember what I have said.]
In the current climate (cannot go out because of smoke), I repeat, you are a breath of much-needed fresh air. Truth is priceless in the trumpest atmosphere. Only language and forest conservation can truly give us hope.
Virginia Roberts is not a ‘moron.’ He is, as Lincoln phrased it, attempting to balance two melons on his shoulders.It doesn’t work. Now he is admired neither in the originalists’ nor in the constitutional common sense camp.
I think you may be giving him too much credit. I continue to look at his face. Think he may be more concerned with his (and “his court’s”) reputation than with the people he’s bound by law (why did he misinterpret the 14th amendment? and again reject stare decisis?) to serve. In short, I don’t see the melons on his shoulders, not even on one side.
Add one more item to the list of why Democrats need to take back the house and keep the sentate and the presidency.
I was one of the first women to be admitted to an ivy graduate school in science. When I interviewed for jobs after obtaining my PhD I was explicitly told I was only being interviewed because I was a woman and often a token woman hire was pointed out explicitly as that--we dont need more.
When I was hired at an elite institution I was told it was temporary because they had a hiring freeze in place. When I onboarded I found out a white male was hired within a week to a permanent position. I was explicitly told by multiple colleagues that I was only hired because I was a woman.
Working for change and being a squeaky wheel in that environment was exhausting and often humiliating. Equipment purchases delayed because of "budgetary constraints," equipment sabotaged. The same things were faced by my black colleagues. Affirmative action may open doors a crack but there is still so much else that is needed for all to reach their full potential. Mentoring and support and networking opportunities.
But this ruling feels like even that narrow gap that was opened 50 years ago is being shut because you just know that this will be used as a justification for "confusion" about what is permissiible and conservatives will be able to use the leverage of that "confusion" to pressure institutions into policies that return to the more discriminatory practices of the past.
Georgia, you describe the pain associated with affirmative action so clearly. I was a token, and had those strange hiring conditions, too. Being hired because... It sure does diminish respect for the work we do. I like the idea of economic affirmative action. Applied across the board, it would help people of all races.
It may make the crack in the door wider but it would not address all of those other things like mentoring and allocation of resources and networking that have a huge impact on career paths and beiing able to reach your full potential. What scares me here is all of those employment and job related affirmative action programs will now also be subject to question. A black person from a middle class home is still going to face all of that.
As for the last 6 years, Republicans are again delivering on their promise of racism, deregulation, and clerical fascism.
And they can do this because racist right wing religious extremists took the lesson of the civil rights movements - unite, vote.
While the Left won social progress but sacrificed political strategy to purity tests, pipe dreams, and Pied Pipers. They can do this because in 2016 the GOP concentrated on the Electoral College while Hillary Clinton instead of mending fences in Milwaukee, fantasized building bridges in Texas. They can do this because reliable Republican voters in swing states held their noses and voted for Trump, while potential Democratic voters turned up their noses and refused to vote for Hillary. Sitting on your hands doesn't keep them clean. Self indulgently voting your gut rather than your brain - seeing voting as an expression of personal identity rather than the act of taking the levers of power to fulfill shared goals - sacrifices our most vulnerable neighbors, fragile planet and endangered democracy to savvy right wing operatives hell bent on instituting their dog eat dog dystopia of unconscionable greed. Just saying. 2024. No time to lose.
Boy, I love that: "Sitting on you hands doesn't keep them clean" is spot on. Your assessment of "holding nose/voting for tfg" and "turning up nose and refusing to vote for Hilary" is what got us tfg in office.
Dobbs took women’s reproductive right away and today the Court with this affirmative action decision took away from brown and black students in certain elite universities the possibility of leadership…..
What’s next?
You only have to look at the educational degrees that the Court themselves have ‘attained’ to see how important those elite university degrees are…the Court itself generally graduated from either Harvard or Yale…
Elite ? Perhaps an over used word that has become trite. Consider the creatures like Cruz, DeSanctis, Hawley to name a few who hang a diploma on their office wall from those places!
Just out of curiosity, I looked up Donald John Trump on the Bachelor graduation list at Wharton College. Unlike his bragging about being at the top of his class, his name just languishes in alphabetical order among the regular students: no honors at all.
Donald switched from Fordham to the undergraduate Wharton program at U. Of Penn. Whoever did his work for him (he commuted back to NYC during week ends), he never was acknowledged for honors-level work. Several of his classmates mentioned that her seemed a dilettante student. His lawyers threatened to sue if his transcript was Wharton was ever released. Not the academics of a ‘stable genius.’
I dunno; going after the basis of Lawrence v. Texas might jump over contraception, but then again, it might not. Somehow, I wonder if interracial marriage will escape, because that, too, is a race based judicial precedent.
In an election cycle I’d guess that the contraception issue is (temporarily) off the table…but attacks on anything related to gays, is prime meat. And the opposite is true as well …think Dobbs will be very politically useful to the Dems!
Joan, I have confidence in women (re: reproductive rights) and the great and amazing people of color who have built this country. The Creator of heaven and earth (in my opinion) will not leave us. His work may not be in our time or in our way, but I believe the Creator is alive and well. My (our) God sees, and the Spirit is active within His people. I am naive, I know, but I choose to believe that freedom will win.
Emily, even though I am not religious myself, I would just like to say that I respect your beliefs and find inspiration in your brief description of your faith and spirituality, even if it takes a different form from my own.
Like others, I also encourage you to join many of your fellow citizens in taking whatever concrete actions you can here on the ground to remedy our nation's ills, even if that is just a few volunteer hours or tough conversations with a neighbor. If you have faith in what you perceive to be God's plan, please be part of bringing that plan to fruition, rather than waiting for an opening in the sky. *Hugs*
Will, thank you , I receive and respect your encouragement to put my words into action.
When Trump was nominated to serve as President of our gerat nation, I was in SHOCK! I had been a member of the Republican Party all of my voting life!!!
No more!!!
I voted joyfully for Joe Biden and for every Democrat I could and I will continue to do so as long as we support freedom and support one another as citizens of this planet.
I respect and appreciate Heather as a patriot.....a wonderful communicator.....a person who loves this country and the promise of freedom and opportunity for all. I am also reading her books and others recommended by other contributers to this column.
I also respect the diversity of people and opinions displayed amongst her readers.
Will, you are ever graceful. Thank you for that. As one often rendered speechless (as when my neighbor informed me “God will take care of climate change”) may I learn from you how to respectfully disagree and gently make a point.
Emily, I am sure that is all very comforting to you, but it doesn't help get this kid into Harvard this fall, or that kid a safe and timely abortion for her problem pregnancy today. If there is a creator, it obviously doesn't work on a human timescale, or else it is vastly indifferent to humans. Human people have to work now to fix the stupid, cruel problems that humans create - poverty, ignorance, problem pregnancies, healthcare, befouled and dangerous environment, hatred and gun abuse, drug abuse, etc., not hang around issuing "thoughts and prayers", which is, essentially, what the whole "creator" stuff is. We cannot rely on some putative creator for suggestions or for solutions, and certainly not to act to correct the problems, even if it feels good to wrap ourselves in the lovely warm blanket of its indifference.
Lynn, I appreciate your comment. I do believe in a woman's right to choose.
afterall, she is alone....right ?
There was a horrible situation with a woman who drove her four children into a pond. They drowned. She went to prison and was put to death.
My question was and is, Where was the father....where was a single friend or family member? She was as every woman carrying a child.....alone. She was hiding pain, anger, helplessness, hopelessness.
We never heard of her mental state only the horrible death of 4 young children.....and I do not lesson that horror.
There are a million variables in real situations with which women must act to save their own lives, mentally or physically. She must have that right. She alone will live with her choice. That in itself is difficult enough. There should not be judgement from onlookers.
Another opinion: I have come to believe that this "creator" has given up on people. Homo sapiens are destroying ourselves and the earth by our own actions. He promised not to do so again after his cleansing flood, and we are doing it ourselves as he watches. Once gone, the world can regenerate to its intended magnificence without human intervention.
Indeed, Joan! Once again, the Conservative INJustices of the Supreme Court strike against equality of rights and opportunities. It seems they’ve morphed the interpretation of “supreme” from authority to authoritarianism.
Well, we now have the answer to "what's next" - "Supreme Court Strikes Down Biden’s Debt Forgiveness Plan. In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority rejected President Biden’s plan to cancel more than $400 billion in student loan debt for millions of borrowers. It would have been one of the most expensive executive actions in U.S. history."
“While the Court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.”The best statement I have read today. Just saying something isn't so does not mean that is correct. Racial injustice does exist, it exists in all 50 States, and not always against the same subgroup. Unless and until we recognize this as a fact, we will never achieve a free society.
RE "While the Court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.”: Except that what the Supreme Court decides actually is what T's America stands for.
Correct, Joanne. Admirably "unifying" rhetoric aside, there are currently two Americas, standing for divergent cultural values and promoting two starkly differing views of self. We have reached a juncture in history where these two visions appear irreconcilable, and one stands to lose. Hint: the loser is most likely the one that wants to rewind the century, because that's not how time works.
That's not how anything works. We may may make concrete steps to restore some things we have lost, such a stable, livable climate, but time still flows one way and we are always bucking entropy. We may identify some wisdom and guidance in the way some things were done before, such as anti-trust enforcement, but we learn from history and never, when full context is considered, really repeat it. Heraclitus claimed you can never step into the same river twice. We are and are not the same person were a decade ago, or even yesterday. The moving finger writes.
It seems to me that the hubris of so-called "Conservatives" is that the think that they have all the answers, when our pattern of success as humans has historically been to question everything, and to test and build on our legacy of of inherited knowledge. "Conservative" thinking punished Galileo for applying new observations.
"Conservatives" seem to think that the older an idea is, the more authority it has, and yes, there is significance in the power of persistent conclusions, as there is wisdom to be gathered from ancient Greeks and other ancient sources, such as Heraclitus, who I cite above; but we are fools if we fail to triage and revitalize that legacy; racism, sexism, and aggressive, self-serving wars have a long-standing history as well.
I would like this statement better if it said, "...it cannot change what America strives for." It is fact that it is harder to get even to the admissions door if one is disadvantaged by race, poverty, and lower income. And even if one does get admitted, there are the further likely burdens of student debt (vis a vis students whose familial wealth pays their tuition).
Maybe it should be Awake -up day - maybe the Federal Gov't should put some teeth into ensuring that ALL children have a proper education - maybe (shock-horror) a uniform curriculum across the entire country! Kids are getting short-changed. Forget the Universities!
Hugh, I could not just "like" your comment. I enthusiastically agree. Without a good solid foundation, it is difficult to catch and continue-in a love and respect for learning.
This does not just happen.
In order for our children to be well educated, which is a huge task if everything in their lives is flowing fairly well, we must consider that there are many factors involved in a child's education.....and we must work hard to meet as many of those challenges as possible. And....we must be willing to invest in the children in our country.
Each child does not come to school with a clean body or wearing clean clothes or having had a breakfast . Each child does not go home to a parent or grandparent who makes sure they are completing school assignments. Each child does not live in a home in which reading has always been a part of the daily routine, or bathing, or dental care...etc.
We also must find ways to help our children without disrespecting a home inwhich their caregiver/s are also struggling in life.
Just ask teachers....fewer are staying because of the many social problems that disrupt their classrooms on a daily basis. We, as a nation must expect excellence from our teachers. We must hold them accountable to do the work they have been hired to do but they also need support.
In other words Hugh....completely agree....but we cannot ignore the huge task of educating each and all of our young people. And we must include those children and adults fleeing despots for a better life in this country. ( look up the words written on the Statue of Liberty if you question me))
I am in awe of our teachers who have not given up on their huge tasks of educating our children, young and older students.
I am also amazed at the good servants of hope and freedom who work daily at our borders. (more children and adults for our classrooms and jobs for our teachers)
One small thing to do is to immediately cease providing any public funds to all non-public and all religious schools, and eliminate all tax breaks (property and income) for all religious institutions. Claw that money back to hire more public school teachers and pay them better, improve school libraries, buildings and equipment, fund arts and music education programs and after school programs instead of athletics (honestly, if it's that popular in the community for kids to bash each others' heads in - looking at you, football - just have town teams and let them fundraise - let the jocks hold the bake sales for once). Refund the schools and keep out "moms for liberty" and their ilk.
Thinking of Will in Cal, going to try to be both succinct and graceful. I taught in various situations for more years than I can count (having never tried beyond 15 years in universities). I knew, from my sophomore year in undergraduate school that I would NEVER waste time on a teaching certificate. Why: as I waited to seer a prof, another member of his department (there were only three, it was a small college art department) gave me a newspaper article to read while I waited. The article stated that students with the lowest SAT scores were getting degrees in education. This was 1952. It is obvious that things have gone downhill ever since. I have had one affirmation (in this comment section?) of the article. It was from someone’s experience in a western university in the 1960’s, whose education courses had consisted of multiple choice tests.
If a person WANTS to teach, (all pronouns) will learn how, as I did from best teachers that person had in any class. Example: my first grade teacher made certain that no one bullied the motherless son of a bootlegger who came to our class for a time; my first teacher of French, with two years of college French behind her, taught phonetics to us with our spelling lists of French words. This was in a tiny, poor public school during WWII. I credit the spelling lists with my acing a university phonetics course, taught by a Frenchman who later, as chairman of the department of one of the four top universities to study all aspects of French language and literature, offered me a graduate assistantship (paid teaching assistantship) out of the blue, as it were (I made a C in his civilization course).
Telling this because my hope is to alert enough people to getting back to the FACT that a liberal arts education, taught by enthusiastic teachers, who then go on to teach at all levels without syllabi that MUST be followed to the letter (how many text books in how many courses did my various teachers fail to “finish”?), is where we need to aim, if we aren’t just teaching for jobs. We had home economics for girls and shop for boys. Now the two could be choice of one or the other.
Ending with oft-repeated: internationally reputed professor of medieval studies (so talented that his Finnish almost got him posted as ambassador to Finland during WWII), best description is “larger than life”: reminded us that he got out of Harvard “while it was still a university, the year before they added the Business School.” (He got his PhD at 20 and taught full steam until retirement.)
Thank you to anyone who reads all of this. May it move some of you to write to those who might influence public education for something other than serfdom or financial gain in America.
Hugh In theory I support your suggestion of uniform federal curriculum nationwide. In fact, much of public school curriculum is determined by states and textbook sales [CA & TX dominated this content battle back in the 90s—today,. Add Florida and others.
I was engaged in the social studies national curriculum endeavor back in the early 1990s. We ‘professionals’ provided an extensive list of what could/should be included in American history. [Actually, in 40-50 minute classes four times a week, the amount of content would be severely limited].
I recall that the Senate, in a resolution, rejected our initial findings 99-0.
I don’t recall what, if anything, resulted from our subsequent recommendations. Clearly no federal curriculum mandate would suit DeSantis in Florida and other states in thr South and elsewhere.
Indeed, what I taught as a community college history professor from 1992 to 2013 today would be excluded in a number of states.
Harry A. Blackmun wrote in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke,
“In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way.”
That for me is the last word on America’s centuries long conflict with race.
There were fascinating reveals about our society within the opinions written by the Justices and responses to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action. A couple of them particularly struck me as mirroring the country’s divide on the matter with relatively polite words.
Justice Samuel Alito:
I thought that the whole purpose of affirmative action was to help students who come from underprivileged backgrounds, but you make a very different argument that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. The top 10 percent plan admits lots of Hispanics and a fair number of African Americans. But you say, ‘well, it’s – it’s faulty, because it doesn’t admit enough African Americans and Hispanics who come from privileged backgrounds.’ And you specifically have the example of the child of successful [minority] professionals in Dallas. Now, that’s your argument?
If you have an applicant whose parents are – let’s say one of them is a partner in your law firm in Texas, another one is a corporate lawyer. They have income that puts them in the top 1 percent of earners in the country, and the parents both have graduate degrees. They deserve a leg-up against, let’s say, an Asian or a white applicant whose parents are absolutely average in terms of education and income?”
Mrs. Obama’s Statement:
Back in college, I was one of the few Black students on my campus, and I was proud of getting into such a respected school. I knew I’d worked hard for it. But still, I sometimes wondered if people thought I got there because of affirmative action. It was a shadow that students like me couldn’t shake, whether those doubts came from the outside or inside our own minds.
But the fact is this: I belonged. And semester after semester, decade after decade, for more than half a century, countless students like me showed they belonged, too. It wasn’t just the kids of color who benefitted, either. Every student who heard a perspective they might not have encountered, who had an assumption challenged, who had their minds and their hearts opened gained a lot as well. It wasn’t perfect, but there’s no doubt that it helped offer new ladders of opportunity for those who, throughout our history, have too often been denied a chance to show how fast they can climb.
Of course, students on my campus and countless others across the country were — and continue to be — granted special consideration for admissions. Some have parents who graduated from the same school. Others have families who can afford coaches to help them run faster or hit a ball harder. Others go to high schools with lavish resources for tutors and extensive standardized test prep that help them score higher on college entrance exams. We don’t usually question if those students belong. So often, we just accept that money, power, and privilege are perfectly justifiable forms of affirmative action, while kids growing up like I did are expected to compete when the ground is anything but level.
So today, my heart breaks for any young person out there who’s wondering what their future holds —
and what kinds of chances will be open to them. And while I know the strength and grit that lies inside kids who have always had to sweat a little more to climb the same ladders, I hope and I pray that the rest of us are willing to sweat a little, too. Today is a reminder that we’ve got to do the work not just to enact policies that reflect our values of equity and fairness, but to truly make those values real in all of our schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods.
In discussions with Racists I generally pose this:
In any interview a manager / selector has an immediate choice when the applicant enters the room. White skin or black skin begin a series of judgements based on skin color. The subject may not dominate any decision but surely accompanies it.
I once aided the promotion of a Black Man to a position the white manager insisted he could not qualify since making radio calls were part of the duties. The manager said the thick lips of black people were unintelligible using microphone’s.
It honestly flabbergasted me. The job required the use of a Marine Radio Network and coordinate arrivals and departures of vessels.
The applicant did have a southern drawl but was otherwise spoke clearly.
The bigot refused to select the man since, he claimed, the thick lips of African people prevented them from being easily understood on the radio.
My rejoinder that resolved the conflict but brought me enmity was I thought I understood the words of Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong through microphones very well.
He was selected to his sorrow. He was understood okay but never forgiven.
Art, the routes of racism are endless and open to mimicry. Imagine Nate King Cole, Louis Armstrong and Sammy Davis performing a number dedicated to the advantages thick lips over those thin, measly orifices.
I have such admiration for Michele Obama…her grit, wit, wisdom and kindness. We were so lucky to have had her as FLOTUS, and now as an engaged citizen.
Two directions for action regarding reactionary SCOTUS:
1. Expand the court. Support the Judiciary Act of 2023, "legislation that would expand the Supreme Court by adding four seats to create a 13-Justice bench."
"Affirmative action was never a complete answer in the drive towards a more just society. But for generations of students who had been systematically excluded from most of America’s key institutions–it gave us the chance to show we more than deserved a seat at the table. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision, it’s time to redouble our efforts. So, if you’re looking for ways to help right now, here are some organizations doing important work: UNCF Hispanic Scholarship Fund
APIA Scholars American Indian College Fund TheDream.US
As HCR notes, "At Harvard, those on the list to be cut were evaluated on four criteria: legacy status, recruited athlete status, financial aid eligibility, and race. Today, the Supreme Court ruled that considering race as a factor in that categorical fashion is unconstitutional." So one obvious remedy is to sue Harvard and other elite universities to eliminate some of those other arbitrary and discriminatory criteria for making the final cut among qualified applicants, especially legacy status.
It bothers me that a Right Wing organization developed to challenge equality of Races in America was allowed by SCOTUS to focus on race.
Any identifiable selection criteria separates citizens for arbitrary reasons from their fellow citizens. Legacy admissions automatically create an Aristocratic class of students; athletic ability eliminates physically limited and handicapped individuals; academic standards eliminates the products of crappy schools and by selecting to eliminate race as a factor the court ensures any black skinned individual can be dismissed from consideration.
It is plantation justice supported by the House Slavee.
Sadly Asians the right wing conservatives used as pawns, do not realize Asians are not considered equal by white supremacists. Our faces give us away every time. We are the first they’ll throw under the bus, just like in the past, just as it continues now against Chinese scientists and students, just like the recent discrimination laws about owning a home in Florida. Just like Trump can make fun of Elaine Chao because of her race and ethnicity, and no one gets enraged. Asians Americans are a diverse group rich, poor, educated, uneducated, different cultures different beliefs were disenfranchised by the few only thinking of themselves, by people only thinking about themselves. That’s where democracies go to die.
For too many years, my brothers and I have considered the republican party to be a terrorist group (through the bastardization of the 2nd Amendment) and like the Taliban/ISIS they have blatantly stripped our rights one by one. They will do anything (including supporting a batshit crazy madman who is a criminal for president) to hold onto power and money. It is shattering.
Regarding affirmative action, my 10 S. Sudanese grandkids stand a chance (albeit still an uphill battle) because we all live in Massachusetts. Make no mistake about it, the playing field is not level and racism is very much a part of the equation. As a group and individually, women understand closed doors, lost opportunities, and outright discrimination.
John Lewis constantly rings in my head “Speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”
I always preface my opinions about C. Thomas, Candace Owens, Hershel Walker, K. West, et al, by saying I appreciate their hard work , talent, and material success in face of all the odds. Though they aren't my cup of tea. Today we're talking C. Thomas who is a direct beneficiary of affirmative action who now wants to close the gate behind him after having gotten - his?
Folks need to understand the long game being played here starting with Dobbs. Democracy minded folks are left to have to find creative ways around the Supreme Court which is packed with maga. I feel confident that we will.
I think we should be talking about George W. Bush and Brett Kavanaugh as products of affirmative action instead of Thomas.
Both of them were poor performers academically, prior to college, and were well known "party boys". Both of them went to private "prep schools" where the average grade is an A, no matter what you score on your tests.
When we ignore the poor academic performance of white people in private prep schools and then admit them to Harvard without regard for their past performance BUT because they are rich, then?
THAT is REAL affirmative action.
At Harvard, a very large number of white people walking the campus fall into the category of real "affirmative action".
NOT the very tiny number of black people whose academic performance is typically excellent.
Like, for example, Michele Obama. She was a total rock star as a student, start to finish. She was admitted to Harvard not based on affirmative action, but, because she was an excellent student.
Kavanaugh? Just a lazy, rich white kid that they admitted on affirmative action.
Mike S. I think we should follow your lead and begin questioning the practice you are talking about, which in my opinion should be labeled what it is: “Confirmative Action”. As in “We are confirming our aristocratic-power-position”.
I may have heard an inkling of this but I didn't know it was as radical as you present here. You're talking from an interesting perspective and I know you're being ironic in calling White privilege, affirmative action. That being said, I'd like to give a shout out to all the Black and White students who may have gotten a break and didn't turn their back on others.
I fully agree, Mike S. But I would suggest that instead of “REAL Affirmative Action,” the practice could be more accurately labeled “Privileged Status Reaffirming Action.”
Note that Ketanji Brown graciously recuses herself in a case for which she could be too closely involved, unlike others on the Court.....
Yep, but she only explicitly notes the build-in biases across the court which might otherwise recuse them all. Social conscience indeed!
Yes, Brown is correct. The SCOTUS 6 have shown themselves to be 'christian' nationalists ... or 1 step this side. At least 4 were elected based on their membership in a Roman Catholic weirdo cult. Roman Catholics may regard thenselves as the One, True, Religion, but members of the 2 cults are much further from the True teachings of the young Jewish man-god they purport to worship.
Do you truly believe a broad, vicious, untethered attack advances thoughtful analysis and discussion? You want to think more before you put pen in hand.
I put plenty of thought in before putting pen in hand. You may forget that we have had more than 30 years to think about Thomas' personality and performance on the Court.
Thomas was a disaster at EEOC, and has been a rolling disaster since. Biden made a big mistake in his youth.
I believe Anita Hill and others.
As for the others, look up Leonard Leo and what he has accomplished to destroy America. Scalia was also Opus Dei and his son was leader of. People of Praise is the other virus on the Court.
A cabal is a cabal.
I have always thought it amazing that Thomas and others have forgotten that intermarriage used to be against the law.
I wholeheartedly agree, except you cannot lay Thomas as a gross, plain mistake even then on Biden's doorstep alone. Thank you.
Thank you, too. You are correct Biden was not alone, and did vote 'Nay'. 95% of the fault lays at the feet of the GOP (who were actually Republicons at the time having mopfhed twice already from being Republicans pre-Reagan [possibly the result of a KGB effort?]). Most of the remainder falls at the feet of the 11 Democrats who, doubting the credibility of a Law professor, voted Aye.
However, Joe "was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, blamed for doing little to stop the attacks on Hill and opting not to call three other witnesses who would have echoed Hill’s charges of sexual harassment. Biden almost apologetically gave Thomas the benefit of the doubt, critics say, and that stance helped put Thomas on the Supreme Court."
Had he not felt so embarrassed about the allegations and had waited on the other allegations, I feel quite sure at least 3 of the 11 Democrats and several more Republicons would have had to concur with "Nay". It was 1991 afterall. And I wish we did not have to dredge this up one more time.
Chris Hayes of All In on MSNBC did a thorough discussion on Thomas's hatred of Affirmative Action. Here's Chris's take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbiPRfbAEMw
Uh, I thought Westtrekker made a pretty good point.
Yes! Today, 30 June 2023, marks one full year since Justice Jackson was sworn in. She's a true American treasure! As someone else mentioned, she could/should/will be a superb Chief Justice some day. If that happens, she can help reinstate trust, respect and credibility of SCOTUS in that role. Her presence as the most junior Justice brings serious integrity to the institution. Thankfully. Grateful for her! Thank you, President Biden.
I'm sick and tired of Christians being mollycoddled all day every day. The Catholic church is the biggest tax dodge ever invented, followed closely by the Mormons and Scientologists and Baptists. What you call broad and vicious and untethered (got your thesaurus out I see) is in reality true and just. Someday if there is a god we'll be rid of organized religion.
This opened my eyes, and it was shocking to see how much money various groups manage! And will you look at the #1 entry - Ensign Peak Advisors, which manages the assets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I find it jaw-dropping. You can see others on the list associated with religion.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-top-endowment-funds/
Yeah the Mormons are the largest owner of real estate in like 7 western states...
I don't think there's any question about this court imposing its religion on our nation.
I so agree, William. No question at all.
Vicious?
Absolutely correct, Carolyn. In the short time she has been on the Court, she has distinguished herself as an outstanding Justice in every sense of the word.
Graciously, yes. But did she really have a choice?
Thomas, Gorsuch and Roberts had choices. Cases that were brought before them that helped their "friends". But they did not recuse. As Joyce Vance indicated, Brown showed them how it's done. She schooled her corrupt fellow justices.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is a role model. And isn't it refreshing to see her hit back at pompous political puppetry? I see her as Chief Justice someday.
She is magnificent indeed, Bill. In the short time she has been on the bench, she has shown what an all around class act she is, as well as being a Justice in every sense of the word.
On the other hand, Justice Thomas continues to comport himself with all the dignity of a Stepin Fetchit revival.
The full catalogue of his horrendous abuses of his position are too Tolstoyan in length to list here.
With respect to the Harvard/UNC decision alone, I would point out two for this post's purpose: HIs cringy statement that the Constitution is "colorblind" is preposterous. The drafters of the Constitution directly deliberated upon slavery and enacted the founding document fully aware that the "peculiar institution" of slavery was fully operative at the time, even while inserting a provision for the sunsetting of slave importation. The post Civil War or Reconstruction Amendments (13-15) directly addressed the status of the former slaves and amended that status to reflect full freedom and endowment with all applicable constitutional rights. In fact, these amendments were "fully sighted" with respect to color, in the exact converse of "colorblind".
Also, I have never heard of a Justice other than the Justice announcing the opinion of the Court (usually the Chief, or the Chief handing off the announcement to the Justice who authored the opinion) reading his/her concurring opinion aloud. Thomas did so in this case, seemingly to spite the first female African American Justice. He was well aware that she, as the newest Justice and thus not the senior Justice on the dissenting side, would not be reading hers.
He is reprehensible.
Thomas is the Samuel L. Jackson character in "Django Unchained."
Ha! I am familiar with that film, although have not seen it. I'm not the biggest Quentin Tarantino fan. He has cinematic chops for sure, but so many of his films, especially his more recent ones are juvenile blood spatterers with no real soul to them.
I do like the Kill Bill films, most of Pulp Fiction, and of course his best one, "Jackie Brown"
Well.... the point isn't the film itself. The point is the character Jackson plays. He's what the slavers used to call a "house Negro" who was completely loyal to ol' massa and kept the other slaves in line (https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/mxp/speeches/mxa29.html). In exchange, he got to live in relative comfort.
Some people will sell out their own families if the price is right. Thomas is obviously that sort of person.
Daniel, my man! When I was teaching in film school, I refused to teach QT. Total asshole, and so irresponsible to his actors.
Thank you! My only regret is that I can like this only once. You wrote much of my thoughts and I sincerely give this entire comment a hearty AMEN!
Very sweet of you. Much appreciated.
Chris Hayes of All In on MSNBC did a thorough discussion on Thomas's hatred of Affirmative Action. Here's Chris's take: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbiPRfbAEMw
KB did not have a "choice", thank you mzlizzi, SCOTUS had 2 cases to consider, one from a STATE university, UNC & one from a PRIVATE university, Harvard. KB's admistrative role at Harvard compels recusal which makes her legal decision on the UNC facts even more powerful now & in cases ahead.
It sounds like Thomas’s experience after HIS graduation from “elite” schools was fine for him but not for anyone else. Further, His experience of having not received offers from “elite” law firms after graduation, as others may have, really seared him. A documentary about him noted this, and he ended up having to go to work in government. Thomas strikes me as self-loathing and desperately wanting to be what his white, very rich benefactors want him to be. He has always seemed to be just this side of explosive anger.
He looks to me like a smug arse getting revenge for every slight, but mouthing I’ve got mine, now screw you. Of course, he and Ginni do nothing but bow and scrape to money to maintain their position on the mountain top.
Thomas chose to wear overalls while at Yale to make a statement about his past--at Yale, a socially conservative school. He graduated in the middle of his class. I personally believe that choice to portray himself as rebellious, plus his mediocre class standing, had more to do with his lack of making connections, both with students and with future employers, than his race. IOW, he himself played the race card, but not very well and without forethought of the consequences.
Yes, and now he wants us to believe he is where he is because of merit which he totally lacks. From day one that guy has appeared as the dud he is....nothing to do with his race either. Sometimes people who do not get what they think they deserve despite being mediocre spend a lifetime trying to get revenge or to somehow erase that. He is hey, look at me in my black robes and I can help make your life miserable while I hobnob with the wealthy and get lots of perks from that. Then i have a white wife, never mind that she is an insurrectionist. That pair gives me a vomit reflex.
It has occurred to me that he was appointed in order to provide a black person on the court. He seems to me to represent the Stockholm syndrome—identifying with his oppressors to prove his worth…
Ginni is more than a little nuts. If I remember right she grew up in some sort of cult…like Coney Barrett, similarly execrable.
Lots of black men pick white wiseman, I have no idea what that’s about but mostly I don’t care.
But he learned to bow to money, now everyone pays. Wonder what Ginni saw in him back then, maybe a ruthlessness they share…
Anybody got a Personality Disorder diagnosis for either,
No but, I think MLMinET is on the right track with the "seared" observation. Apparently, Thomas' many post Yale law firm rejections led him to over dramatically deface his Yale diploma. From there, Thomas worked at the EEOC, oh ... sorry, I meant wrecked the EEOC. Fast forward to yesterday where Justice Kentanji Bown stated in her dissent that Thomas was railing against a dissent that she did not write. I would say scalded not seared.. Scalded for life.
Narcissists loath themselves, and love no one.
Former labor secretary Robert Reich , a classmate, says he always said hello to Thomas as he entered class and was always ignored. Thomas had a Dickensian childhood, and he does not seem to have recovered.
Interesting. I believe this substory confirms that he HATES what he is - or has become.
If there is truth to re-incarnation, his prior life must have been in the KKK.
But he sure knew who to blame for it. Ginni helped
He really wanted to be seen as a "mudsill". I knew what mudsills were in construction but had no idea of the use of the term for slaves and poor white farmers before the civil war. Thank you Dr. Richardson for that piece of history. I even had to go to wickapedia to see the historical connection to construction.
That is an interesting term that I learned here also. We had some construction projects when I was in education and I learned the term "floor dog".
From his attack on KBJ's response, my analysis is that he hates what he is. Too much vinegar for any other explanation.
I am appalled at this decision, and many other actions taken by Justice Thomas. At the same time, the Front Line documentary on Clarence and Ginny Thomas gave a very thorough portrait of Justice Thomas's life from childhood on. He did not have one consistent adult who treated him with love and acceptance. In fact he was beaten regularly by his grandfather who raised him after his father abandoned him, and then threw him out at age 16 to fend for himself. There were many other disturbing experiences noted in the film.
As to affirmative action, not only did it not guarantee his being hired by a prestigious law firm but also, it all but assured that he was routinely tormented by fellow classmates (e.g. keeping him awake all night in the dorm by calling "Ni**er" over and over.)
I am not offering these facts as excuses. But they are only a very few of the painful tormenting incidents that were recounted in the documentary. As I take in this information, I'm wondering how these factors contributed to his growing up to be as flawed and seeking of power as he did.... not to excuse his behaviors but to better understand the causes, which are much more complex than that "he's a terrible human being."
https://youtu.be/wJuRx1wARUk Link to Documentary
Thank you, Thread. I bet you meet many children who raise those questions for you. I was a teacher many decades ago, and I have such respect for anyone fulfilling that mission today. I know there's not one right way to raise our children. But I think there are some foundational principles that some folks simply don't know - or aren't able to recognize as essential, as you stated "receiving the love and support they need to thrive and to become reasonable and caring adults." Did you ever read that the former president was two years old when his mother went into hospital for nearly a year? Again, not to excuse, but to wonder about the impact from that absence and all that we know about his father. Blessings,
He is spiteful, angry and resentful. As as Buch Sr. who appointed him, said he was the most qualified jurist in the country.
The pretense that there was an equivalence between Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall was a fiction based entirely on skin color, as seen through the lens of racists like Lee Atwater and his cronies. It was disgusting when he was nominated, and it has only become more so in the years and scandals since.
It was disgusting also after the Anita Hill challenge.
I could make the same comment about Amy Coney Barrett replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Republicans love symbols without substance, and unfortunately there's plenty of ambitious Justice fodder ready to toe the Federalist Society line in return for a chance for a lifetime position of power and influence.
C.Thomas Lied during his Senate hearing and should be impeached and removed from the bench he is an embarrassment as a jurist. He is a guarantee right wing vote with total disregard for the law and precedence .
Daddy Bush had already drunk the Kool Aid, Lee Atwater helped him overcome any scruples
I'm thinking there was some affirmative "action" in that appointment - the fact he was appointed after the hearing on his sexual abuse of women? Boy does that remind me of Kavanaugh AND dumpty! All 3 of them! I wonder - is that what is necessary to appeal to the Repubs now? Is that the drawing card?
He puts me in mind a bit of Samuel L. Jackson's character Stephen in "Django Unchained".
What a stupid analysis. That's a highly RACIST cheap shot and condescending.
Thomas has to on the racial plantation to be black? Maybe you are self loathing and angry?
Lets cut through the bullshit and be honest. This is the MIDDLE FINGER to
Asians. They are the group harmed by elite college quota systems.
They came to this country and benefited from the laziness of Americans. They worked harder and sacrificed to get into elite colleges and careers. God Bless them they raised the bar.
Instead o[f praising and emulating their effort, we get the usually claptrap about racism. Its like the drunk uncle who can't stop about Vietnam. Wilfreed Sheed called it "a one note living room"
If you read the majority opinion their analysis is simple. You can't discriminate based on race. Previous courts made some special exemptions based on "public good". Those exemptions HAD VERY CLEAR restrictions.
1) There had to be time limits - As Ailto wrote "there seems to be no end in sight"
2) There is "strict scrutiny" College can't make up their own rules.
3) Admissions can't be clearly based on race.
You're the first one to make this thread about perceived anti-Asian bias. Telling, that.
P.S. Had you bothered to read the article, you would know that Harvard's admissions policies were not "clearly based on race." Or maybe you knew that and are just being dishonest.
We heard a Heritage Foundation (Black) person make the anti-Asian bias argument yesterday in a panel discussion. First time we ever heard it. While he was smart and articulate and made some interesting points, he mentioned that Thomas was his 'favorite' SC Justice... so there was that.
She has as much of a choice as Gorsuch, Thomas, and others on the SCOTUS. She just made the principled decision. Unlike them.
Ethics, not law, compels her recusal. If she decided bot to recuse who would make her? The police?
You are correct. She did not.
How do dissents make a Justice’s decision “powerful?”
A dissent can be "powerful" not in the sense it carries any binding legal power at the present, but in that it can be powerfully written, powerfully argued, powerfully persuasive, etc. The legal scholarship in dissents can also be used, and has been used, at a later date to guide other legal opinions that may become consequential. Justice Brown Jackson's is one such opinion, as evidenced by the many outlets which quoted portions at length today in their coverage, unusual for a dissent.
No offense, mzlizzi, but a quick check at your lengthy subscription list to what seems like every loony conspiracy theorist on this platform, Covid-related and otherwise, leads me to wonder if you will enjoy your time here. Obviously all are welcome, but Professor Richardson proffers scholarship, not paranoia, and the former is preferred to the latter amongst the commentariat as well. Heads up!
Yes. Beautifully put.
Well, she could have overlooked the ethical considerations, as Thomas, Alito and Roberts have, and cast her vote. But, she is ethical and therefore recused herself.
To answer your questions about dissents, Justice Jackson is establishing her position via how she writes and how she acts. When (as I devoutly hope) the majority on the Court shifts, she will write with the majority, and her writings will carry more weight because of the action she is taking now.
Google "I Dissent" for some background information on the power of dissent.
Ally, we should understand that Justice Brown Jackson realized that she may not be on the 'winning team' in her decisions on this Court but that a pertinent and well-presented opposing opinion can be very useful in future similar cases brought before the Court. She is evaluating her writings with an eye toward both history and future cases.
And, gosh darn it, it just needed saying!!! Eagerly hope to see, in the very near future, multiple lawsuits challenging legacy and sports preferential considerations in college admissions .
You said it better than I did. Thank you!
There is a history of SCOTUS' dissents later becoming the Law of the Land by power of legal reasoning and/or Congressional statutory action.
Indeed, she documented the rationale that will ultimately be used to challenge the decision later, or lead to new legislation.
Yes, I agree that tRump's absent mother at that crucial age, with no loving substitute, had a horrid affectvon him, and now sadly, our entire country.
We and they all have choices. Always. She chose the honorable path. Plus her vote wouldn't change a thing this time.
I was being ironic - :-)
When the Conservatives on the court act like their counterparts in the legislature, this is what happens.
I know! What a concept! (Shakes head).
That was my big take away too.
Thank you Heather, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and the Biden Administration.
Did I hear correctly in President Biden's sit-down interview on Wednesday that, when questioned about reform of the Supreme Court, he does not propose supporting any changes during his administration? If so, isn't he missing a chance to offer reforms?
Yeah, I have to say I disagree with him on this one. You KNOW the Rs are going to do it first chance they get to have power again. They are trying VERY hard to establish permanent power, and I believe they will use any means necessary.
I think President Biden is missing the point that this court is ALREADY politicized. He is trying very hard to bring this country back to the honorable, civilized side, but I don't know that that is possible any longer.
Biden is living in a past world when 2 parties could work together. We no longer live in that world. There isn’t a republican party any longer. It is the MAGA party. I admire Biden’s optimism, but he is out of touch with what needs to be done in this current political environment. This is what has been wrong with Dems for far too long. You gotta fight fire with fire. Wake up Biden, someone, anyone bring him up to speed with the peril that our Democracy is in. Increase the courts, control the narrative. Biden’s a good guy, he just needs to ditch his thoughts of yesteryears.
Agree with you in some ways. Don't think it's that simple. Corporations own the government. Political environment is a function of that reality.
"While the Court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for."
Viewed from afar and over many decades, nothing has yet been able to change America's institutionalized hypocrisy, well represented by the current Supreme Court.
Sometimes true friendship demands that we tell truth unvarnished and undistorted.
I agree Peter, and over the past few decades what we know as "affirmative action" has helped level the academic playing field for entire classes of Americans who were once totally excluded from the best of higher education and the advantages and privileges that come with it.
But the real problem that we are afraid to deal with is wealth and income disparity. Until the best and highest education is made available to all citizens at all levels free of charge, we will continue to be a society characterized by extreme wealth and poverty without any way out of what is a very vicious cycle.
In Italy where I live, the things people find weird about the USA are our addiction to guns and the enormous expense of going to college or University. And when I tell people that public schools in the USA are mainly financed by local taxes on real estate (as in rich towns and neighborhoods have better schools) they shake their heads in disbelief.
Affirmative action was like a bandaid on a large and potentially mortal wound; perhaps the SCOTUS is giving us a reason and a chance to start changing our society in more profound ways than our conservative judges can imagine.
David,
"what we know as "affirmative action". This is an excellent phrase. It prompts me to think about what affirmative action really is in the United States of America and who really receives affirmative action.
For example, at Harvard, in 2020, 36% of admissions were "Legacy" admissions. Now, since Harvard mostly admitted white people 20 years ago, "Legacy" admission is really affirmative action for white people. In the last couple of years, with people starting to talk about "Legacy" admission more, it has dropped to around 16% (or so Harvard says, who knows what is true).
In fact, I can say, without a hint of irony, that REAL affirmative action in America IS mostly for white people. It really, really is very sad that "affirmative action" became associated with black people who are not given a single break from birth in the USA.
For example, George W. Bush's extremely poor academic performance at Yale and Harvard, something he bragged about as President, was presaged by equally poor performance in his private prep school. BUT, he as admitted on "Legacy". Bush is white.
Hence, George W. Bush was a pure product of affirmative action.
It is OK to admit low performing white folks into Harvard, if they are white and rich. Preferable, apparently, since we also have Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.
A tragedy of terms to associate the tiny number of black folks admitted to Harvard with "affirmative action" when in fact, REAL affirmative action at Harvard and in America?
Is for white people.
Females did benefit tremendously from Affirmative Action. When I graduated from Harvard Law in 1973, 10% of the class was female. It's now slightly more than 50%. Same at Stanford Medical School where my wife got her M.D. in 1978 - 10% were female. When our daughter graduated from Santa Clara Law School in 2012, more than 50% of the graduates were female. So, we did overcome some systemic misogyny. But, we have work to do in the area of race. In my view, MAGA really is KKK. Get Timothy Egan's amazing book, "A Fever in the Heartland." MAGA really is the KKK revived. Remember the marchers at Charlottesville in 2017 shouting "Jews will not replace us?" That's Klan talk.
Making higher education and professional schools affordable once again is part of Biden's larger political agenda. All the more reason why his second term will be as consequential as his first. Those of us of a certain age have been witnesses to the drastic shrinkage of opportunities for upward mobility that occurred in our lifetime. May Biden complete the dismantling of Reagan's heartless trickle down economics and resurrect the New Deal but this time for all Americans regardless of race or ethnicity. Agree completely with your equating of MAGA with KKK.
Yes, Richard, as a CA state employee working in higher ed starting in 1968, once Reagan became Gov I watched the slow strangulation of education, especially the CC, SC & UC higher education system…once considered CA’s “jewel in the crown” of state institutions. Was gobsmacked when he was elected president.
Richard,
I would not say that "females benefitted from affirmative action".
I would say that Universities benefitted from more competitive admissions policy that considered the capability of all applicants.
The women I went to engineering school with at A&M? They got in because they were qualified, competitive and worked hard.
Nothing to do with affirmative action in my mind.
Oh,
And the number 1 graduate in Chemical Engineering at A&M in 1982.
A woman. 4.000
And that was at a time when A&M flunked out 60% of the incoming folks who attempted Chemical Engineering.
Mike S, perhaps affirmative action is not the correct term for the significant increase in women in grad schools and professions since Title 9. Before 1972 universities could require higher test scores and GPAs for women applicants vs men. They can no longer do that. Girls tend to perform better in high school than boys so it became difficult for universities to justify accepting a much higher percentage of male applicants to women. Add in the enormous cultural changes (birth control, baby boomer women choosing to go to college and delay marriage and child birth, economics pressuring dual income parents) and here we are today. Sex discrimination still exists but it is much less than it used to be. And we have all benefitted by increasing the pool of smart, hard working., educated citizens in our country.
GMB,
"Before 1972 universities could require higher test scores and GPAs for women applicants vs men. They can no longer do that. "
I was not aware that this was going on prior to 1970..
So, it was MEN who were getting affirmative action due to lower performance requirements.
No surprise to me having had essentially an all male management group for my 40 year career in engineering.
I spent more than my fair bit of time attempting to explain something a five year old kid would have grasped in a second to a senior manager who, often, never got it.
Then how do you explain the graphic disparity prior to Affirmative Action?
Richard,
I would like to distinguish my own personal distaste for using the words Affirmative Action to describe the process of allowing highly capable and competitive students into formerly all male schools which, for hundreds of years did not consider performance for admission.
I would rather use the word Affirmative Action for what went on BEFORE highly capable men and women entered the university then the workforce.
In other words: White men were admitted without regard for past performance and, for sure in Ivy, mostly associated with the wealth of the family.
I was wondering about this. Why is legacy just accepted as a normal course of procedure in considering applications? I find this astounding. Where is the backlash against this policy? You mention race and wealth (which is undoubtedly the motivation, particularly wealth and ability of family members to donate) but by definition, it's just bloodline, which is an absurd variable to weigh. If we're talking about fairness and merit, this policy needs to come into the light of legal scrutiny.
Legacy schmegacy!
While we're at it, I think I'll trample on this sacred cow: Why does Harvard need to have a football or basketball team? Why do universities offer athletic scholarships? Why does some 19th century notion of the connection between sharp minds and strong, healthy bodies and moral vigor and God knows what else still play such a big role in what is supposedly higher education? Or even at the high school level?
There is no NCAA in Italy or elsewhere in Europe as far as far as I know, but this certainly doesn't keep people from becoming great athletes and national heroes (individually or on teams) and earning a ton of money, or diminish the public appetite for televised sports and the "BIG" game. Here, if you want to do sports seriously, there are special organizations and structures dedicated to that, but it is all quite separate from study and learning and intellectual achievement generally, and most higher education is paid for by tax revenues in any case.
Oh my God! No high school basketball in Italy? How barbaric!
While I find a lot troubling with the NCAA (or NC$$, as some call it) I came to terms with college athletics many years ago. If the purpose of college is to prepare one for life (not necessarily the career one's degree was aimed toward), athletics offers the chance for student athletes to turn pro and earn money, at least for a short while, before they hit the Real World in which a college education is required (and the fact that most student-athletes end their careers when they leave school, or have attenuated pro careers, isn't lost on me.) Athletics also increase the diversity of a student population -- not only with regard to race, but also country of origin, and that's for the better. I'm a casual fan of college (and pro) sports, and do wish that the amount of money raised for and directed to college sporting arenas is obscene in many cases -- money which could go towards educational purposes, but there is an appetite for competitive sports teams here and abroad, and there is competition to attract better athletes (there is also a lot spent on attracting students with high-end dorms, dining halls and other lifestyle amenities -- a far cry from when I attended state college in the mid-70s.)
All of this is off-topic, of course, so I'll not go further.
With very rare exceptions, athletes at the very top private schools (e.g., Harvard) players do not become professionals, and sporting teams at those schools do not make money. I think that giving priority to competitive athletes at those schools is not comparable to affirmative action and I don't have a problem with that. Athletic accomplishment is an accomplishment - not so different from musical accomplishment - although very different from scholarly accomplishment. That is very different from giving priority to athletes in sports - e.g. football, basketball - that are seen to make money (directly or indirectly).
I agree...I don't see much "equality before the law" on this issue. If SCOTUS pulled the plug on Affirmative Action, then should it not also pull the plug on "Legacy Action"? (And now I will get a swarm of comments to the effect that legacies are okay for PRIVATE colleges and universities.)
Legacy admission is not OK.
Legacy admission results in poor quality students who have a poor attitude.
Like George W. Bush.
yep....but I'm sure that there are folks aplenty (all obscenely wealthy, no doubt) who do think legacy admissions are perfectly fine.
Legacy admissions seem to me a sort of nepotism. I can understand a parent or kid wanting to attend the school attended by others in the family before them….”a tradition of us attending ol’ Rumson U”, but should that give any student preference? Nah.
"Why is legacy just accepted as a normal course of procedure in considering applications? "
Because it benefits white people. No white person complains about favoritism for their own kid.
Yup. Quotas didn't bother them when the quota for non-whites was 0%.
A brilliantly written sentence.
I have absconded with it for further use!
This is a huge understatement.
Why is the privileged class given free reign to extol more privilege?
Agreed. Time for a legal challenge to both legacy and athletic admissions.
We need a lawsuit against "Legacy" admissions
It is not coincidental that while female graduations from law schools have increased, the starting salaries of lawyers have declined. Income and wealth are indeed the fundamental disparities as Mike S writes.
And I hear the same has been occurring for years for graduates of medical schools.
Thank you for pointing that out. For the chief justice to complain about affirmative action is absurd. The late Professor Derrick Bell, a black man who left Harvard Law because they would not appoint a black woman to the faculty, was always quick to point out that it would only be fair to exclude legacies and the offspring of donors if schools chose to discontinue affirmative aaction.
"For the chief justice to complain about affirmative action is absurd."
IF the Chief Justice was actually talking about affirmative action and who really gets it in the USA, white people, then, I agree.
But, everything he said yesterday was bunk.
The cost of a higher education. It is disgraceful. I finished my higher education in 1973 (Whittier College, USC - 2 years, Harvard Grad School - 3 years, Harvard Law School - 3 years) and my TOTAL tuition for all 12 years was less than $16,000. I know, that was a few years back, but the cost of tuition today is unconscionable. We should forgive all student debt, which is less than the $2 trillion that Trump and the MAGA Republicans doled out to the big corps and the wealthy in 2017.
Exactly. When the talk of student loan forgiveness was going on, to rebut what my MAGAt friends were saying, I researched it. In 1980, my state college tuition was under 3K a year. Minimum wage at the time was $3.50. In 2016 (when my nephew graduated) it was over $20.000. Minimum wage was $9.25. There is a huge difference in those ratios.
Ally, My tuition at Texas A&M was $64 per semester.
Then came Ronald Reagan.
And greed became good.
I don't think it was the "Greed is good" idea as much as the "Gov't is not the solution; gov't is the problem" mantra and the anti-tax movement that was supported by it. So gov't support of higher ed declined rapidly and long, so tuition skyrocketed (and quality declined as well -- students interacted with TAs and "adjuncts" instead of the profs who made the institutions' reputations (not that tenured researchers and publishers were necessarily good teachers . . .). But yeah, Uncle Ronnie and the oligarchs behind him (who also spearheaded the marginalization of workers' concerted action through unions), damn his itty-bitty soul. Like tfg, the oligarchs "love the poorly educated" for their ready manipulability through engagement of their narrow minds in "culture wars." (No, I don't equate lack of college with lack of education; there are still autodidacts around -- AND there are plenty of college degrees that require only vocational training, nothing that I'd call education.)
Mike S - it seems we may be close in age. That's about what I recall paying for tuition at A&M. Class of '80 here. Back then I took an Economics course taught by Phil Gramm. And, to my shame, occasionally voted for Republicans.
Ally, I used to have copies of a short essay (forget the author) about how it was almost impossible any longer to “work your way through college”. Students would tell me that their parents did & expected them to as well (one student did tell me his dad worked his way through w/ part time work…oh, and the GI Bill….well deserved, but still). Based on the then economic landscape, a student at the prevailing min wage would have to work well OVER 40 hrs a week to meet costs….yeah, and exactly when would they be able to attend class & study???!!!! I’d give a copy of this “handout” so the student could share it with their parents. There IS a way, however, to do so and it’s generally someone working FT and attending night school part time, or maybe funded (time and money) by their employer.
There is another way. We need to take our country back.
Agree…however it is plain to see many of those Americans holding very different views than I (me being center-left on the spectrum) say the very same thing, tho’ they seem to be (are) willing to do so by any means necessary.
Between the disastrous (to the Treasury) tax cuts and the issuance of PPP loans that have not yet been repaid, anyone who benefitted from any of them and yet has the temerity to dispute student loan forgiveness needs to be taken out to the woodshed for a short, sharp lesson.
Richard, IMHO, the whole student aid “system” needs an overhaul. The grant/loan imbalance is huge and funding, even loans (annual & aggregate limits), do not cover the cost of attendance (and gave rise to the “private” student loan market—ugh, don’t get me started!). Loan forgiveness for current loan holders is a start, but will not help many currently enrolled students & future students—we need a big shift in the whole program. I started working in the field of college student aid (a college Fin Aid Office) in 1968, just scant years after the Higher Education Act of 1965 was passed, and saw how funding became a pinball game of changes—some good, some definitively not, over the decades. Folks often forget that the cost of attendance (COA) is not just tuition/fees, but also book & supplies and living costs (rent/utilities/food/etc) while in school. I would advise prospective students to carefully review the COA and their aid package, as it was rare a student would be fully funded….had many a budgeting session with students over the years!
I'm old now - 83 years. My total tuition for 12 years of college/grad school/law school was less than $16,000. My rent in 1973 was $125/mo. What we are experiencing now is a counter-revolution, the reactionary forces are fighting back. They're the ones who ran the national debt up to $33 trillion, siphoning that money out of the system. The $2 trillion tax break in 2017 helped to increase the national debt another $7.8 trillion. That's supply side economics. The recipients bought back their own stock, doing nothing to stimulate the economy. But, if the student debt forgiveness program went through, this would stimulate the economy because those folks would spend that money. It's not rocket science. It is exploitation of the many by the few who use wedge issues and misdirection plays to get a large number to vote against their own best financial/economic interests. As G.W. Bush said at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on 3/31/2001, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on."
Yeah, back when I started college my then husband and I (we married very young) rented small places for $75-100 month; in addition to working at school on Federal Work Study, I also had odd jobs (stoop labor in the fields, shelling Dungeness crabs) for a grand hourly wage of $1.65. School fees (they didn’t call it tuition then) were about $60 per quarter…..I did have some student loans (this was pre-Pell Grant), but not a lot. We scraped by on a very slim budget, but it was doable….not so easy these days with increasingly skyrocketing costs over time (nothing to do w/ the present “inflation” hullabaloo). Yeah, that whole “trickle down” theory of the last 40-50 has never really worked, but it is still being pushed by those who want to hold on to the $$$ (as you say, stock buy-backs, etc.) instead of letting it trickle…ha, whose bright idea was THAT anyway???!!!!
Bright idea? Allegedly Ronald Reagan's, an "idea" that his V-P, G.H.W. Bush earlier called Voodoo Economics.
BK - my partner and I met in the mid 80s at grad school, where we both had full rides plus teaching stipends that allowed us to survive. By the time we had kids it was clear to us that those opportunities weren't gong to be available to them. We started to put money into 529 programs for them before they were a year old. We were pretty broke (launching different startups) when our daughter started college, and the financial aid available to her meant she didn't have to reach very deep into her 529 at first. She's going to graduate UCLA with zero debt. She's been lucky, and smart with her money. That said, I agree that cost of attendance it too high, and I don't have any good prescriptions for bringing it down. I do support efforts by the Biden administration to use tax dollars to reduce student debt, regardless of what the corporatist thugs among the radical "conservatives" on SCOTUS have to say about it.
Kudos to your daughter graduating UCLA debt free….that is a HUGE accomplishment…AND you must be a proud dad too!!!!
I've written elsewhere with respect to how socioeconomic status affects access to higher education. My partner and I both have advanced degrees from UC, and entrepreneurial experience. My dad went to UCLA and Cal (I went to Texas A&M and UC Davis). My partner's dad went to Stanford, retired from the military as a colonel, and taught at Cal Poly (she went to Cal Poly after her dad retired, and then to UC Davis). Generationally, our kids expect to graduate from college.
We sacrificed to send our kids to Montessori and to fund those 529s. We lived on very tight finances for well over a decade. We'd have been screwed without my partner's solid UC pension. We're solidly middle-class for the Bay Area. We recognize our privilege, don't take it for granted -- we raised our kids not to take it for granted -- and we do what we can to support others in our community to succeed. But we know that it's largely down to white privilege and luck that our kids are where they are today.
Racial, economic inequalities indeed! The reasonably and very well off systemically under appreciate or just deny the social/pysch barriers that racism / endemic poverty create. Despite an extended period of things like affirmative action, "food stamps" and other social supports to the disadvantaged, educational and economic differentials remain historic. Perhaps efforts to change the social legacy of the past have made a difference, but changing social mindsets, for both the advantaged and disadvantaged, is a far greater challenge than anyone back then remotely imagined, and to a great extend, today. America remains a divided world. Oh, did we mention gender?
"Bandaid on a large and potentially mortal wound."
Now, it's not even bandaid. Thanks to the present Governor of Florida and would-be floridator of the United States, total denial of that wound is now mandatory.
"Woke" has been a normal, healthy reaction of the body politic, the surfacing and bursting of a deep abscess. The most extremist forms of "anti-woke" (which, after all, means "Go back to sleep and stay asleep") go way beyond denial, it is as though doctors faced with a suppurating wound had no better reaction than to tell the unsightly blood and pus to get back deep inside, out of sight, out of mind.
Considering how deep, ancient, cruel and overwhelming the oppression of all minorities has been in the United States -- including that of poor white immigrants who could subsequently become invisible and melt into the melting pot -- it is surprising that the bursting of the abscess should have been so restrained, so unspectacular. All this tells us far more about mainstream American society and the tiny ultra-wealthy minority than it does about the country's black or brown citizens, still forcefully discouraged from attaining access to full citizenship.
(I live in France, where the current reactions of a large underclass to what might in America still be a commonplace police shooting seem far more nihilistic and violent.)
Love "would-be floridator."
Well said.
My view from France is the same.
David, I think you have hit on the real disparity in college admissions, namely that of income disparity. While bothered by the politics surrounding the SCOTUS decision, I have personally felt most socially uncomfortable with those from lower socioeconomic groups than with those of different races but from the same socioeconomic stratum. This seems a surer sign of my own prejudice born of the culture I grew up in. Perhaps addressing income disparity will provide a more sure remedy for what ends up being the prejudice our society shows than that simply of race, (whatever THAT might prove to be).
Or, JohnM, we can trim it down to this: When we are being honest with ourselves, what do we really value in other people? And what would we most like to change in ourselves (if we could)?
I absolutely agree that socioeconomic status (y'know, access to the good stuff in life) is much more important than race, which is a kind of lazy, nearly meaningless intellectual construct invented to justify certain people lording is over other people. That racial prejudice is used/allowed to determine socioeconomic status is a national embarrassment that we continue to indulge at our great peril .
Precisely what I was trying to get at but more eloquently put. NICE!
John M.
Honesty is a good policy, and, this was an honest post.
Thank you
David, I want to endorse your closing phrase and to give it the prominence it deserves:
“Perhaps the SCOTUS is giving us a reason and a chance to start changing our society in more profound ways than our conservative judges can imagine.”
The President has been building a bridge:
FROM a saner, more generous and imaginative past, a time when politics was at the service of the human population, not—as it has been since the Reagan presidency—at the well-nigh exclusive service of money and oligarchy...
TO the present and a future in which government once again serves citizens and the economic and social interests of the country.
This will mean returning economics to its proper role as the management of the household—all the household, without any exceptions. Currently the have-nots, the ultimate underclass, have the status of vermin; and the human consequences are unspeakable.
At the other end of the scale, Republican administrations have been siphoning off the wealth of the country and delivering it, not just to the haves, but to a tiny minority, the ultra-haves, those who have so much that they don't know what to do with it.
Although it is hard to be sanguine about the possibility of our world returning from delirium to anything that might be described as “basic reality”, this is a time when we are going to have to adjust economics to address such issues as sustainability, debt and the demands of life on the earth’s surface.
Here it may be enlightening to refer readers still following the thread to a major Chinese thinker, Cheng Yi… writing in the 11th century. Cfr. The Tao of Organization, Cheng Yi, translated by Thomas Cleary, published by Shambhala, 1988, pp. 131-132 (Reduction) and 136 (Increase).
REDUCTION describes the kind of development exemplified by trickle-down economics, in which those on the top of a tall structure undermine the whole by taking from the base, while a more recent version of the message of INCREASE will be found in an aphorism of Conservative statesman Benjamin Disraeli: “The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.”
You may be put out when you discover this work, but the content more than merits study.
Thanks, Peter, great comment.
Universal Basic Income for all!
David, as I understand it,(and I speak as an older white man who attended public schools and a state U, and was a middling student throughout) affirmative action is as much about post-secondary education (e.g. Harvard or Yale Law) and subsequent connections via the pipeline of privilege to elite job opportunities, including the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas was a beneficiary of affirmative action, but as I've heard, a worthy one -- he had the intellectual qualifications to succeed, and whether one likes his opinions or not (I don't,) it's undeniable he has had a mighty role in conservative law. (Of course, he is also the model of hypocrisy, with his subsequent disgust of AA as well as his acceptance of gifts from those seeking favor.)
Improving our educational systems is of course something we as a nation should be continually striving for. But I suspect it won't do much to put a future Ketanji Brown Jackson or a Clarence Thomas, if that's your bent, on the Supreme Court or in other places of power.
In a "more perfect" world, affirmative action shouldn't be necessary.
Doug, affirmative action was once politically popular enough that a more liberal SCOTUS let it stand, and in the absence of any other serious attempt to end or even diminish white male dominance of most things in the US, it was better than nothing. Thus, lots of laments in today's LFAA.
Frankly, I think Clarence Thomas and his conservative buddies have serially and deliberately misunderstood/misinterpreted the US Constitution as part of a long term project to turn back the clock of US history, so I'm not sure his supposed "intellectual qualifications" (like what, a degree?) make Thomas a worthy Supreme Court justice.
But aside from that, I think the Reagan-through-Trump era is exposing certain dangerously weak spots in our Constitution and the sort-of, kind-of democracy most of us are still proud of. I guess.
So it's time we really got to work on having a more perfect world, and perhaps some reflection on what affirmative action has accomplished (and cannot accomplish) is a part of that.
My attempy to understand Thomas leads me to the hypothesis that his experience and success has brought about criticisms that he only succeeded because he was given undue priviledge because he was black. He resents the not-so-subtle put-downs and wants others from minority groups to be able to rejoice in their success in a manner he has only wanted to do.
But Jackson has it right. If you look at the myriad areas in which differences exist between blacks and whites (e.g., maternal deaths, infant deaths, life expectancy, access to fresh foods, income levels, etc.) there is no question that the effects of racial discrimination remain as important factors in determining the opportunities for success.
In a sense, Jackson's analysis justifies Thomas' resentment that his success has been viewed with an asterisk (much like Maris' home run record). His solution has been to attack the source of his perceived humiliaion.
Thomas is just a prostitute.
He does what he is told for money.
Very common profession.
David, I want to endorse your closing phrase and to give it the prominence it deserves:
“Perhaps the SCOTUS is giving us a reason and a chance to start changing our society in more profound ways than our conservative judges can imagine.”
The President has been building a bridge:
FROM a saner, more generous and imaginative past, a time when politics was at the service of the human population, not—as it has been since the Reagan presidency—at the well-nigh exclusive service of money and oligarchy...
TO the present and a future in which government once again serves citizens and the economic and social interests of the country.
This will mean returning economics to its proper role as the management of the household—all the household, without any exceptions. Currently the have-nots, the ultimate underclass, have the status of vermin; and the human consequences are unspeakable.
At the other end of the scale, Republican administrations have been siphoning off the wealth of the country and delivering it, not just to the haves, but to a tiny minority, the ultra-haves, those who have so much that they don't know what to do with it.
Although it is hard to be sanguine about the possibility of our world returning from delirium to anything that might be described as “basic reality”, this is a time when we are going to have to adjust economics to address such issues as sustainability, debt and the demands of life on the earth’s surface.
Here it may be enlightening to refer readers still following the thread to a major Chinese thinker, Cheng Yi… writing in the 11th century. Cfr. The Tao of Organization, Cheng Yi, translated by Thomas Cleary, published by Shambhala, 1988, pp. 131-132 (Reduction) and 136 (Increase).
REDUCTION describes the kind of development exemplified by trickle-down economics, in which those on the top of a tall structure undermine the whole by taking from the base, while a more recent version of the message of INCREASE will be found in an aphorism of Conservative statesman Benjamin Disraeli: “The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.”
You may well be put out when you discover this work, but the content more than merits thought and study.
"Viewed from afar and over many decades, nothing has yet been able to change [humanity's] institutionalized hypocrisy, well represented by the current [crop of homo sapiens]."
FIFY (Fixed It For You)
Will, no one could disagree with your identifying hypocrisy as a common human trait, one particularly prevalent in institutions.
Nevertheless, just as the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling degrades, even negates citizenship, providing the Corporate Cuckoo with loudspeakers while mere humans are shoved from the nest, so the still unrivaled material power of the USA multiplies the baleful influence of America's institutionalized hypocrisy.
The greater the power, the greater the responsibility.
And conversely, the impact of endemic -- not just ingrown but ever more institutionalized -- irresponsibility.
Deliberately cultivated irresponsibility.
The Herculean task: to uproot that. For America's own sake. On behalf of humanity.
I'll just add that I see no essential difference between your attitude and my own, except that we were and are discussing a specifically American problem.
Consequently, to refer to its universal nature is to run the risk of distracting from our focus on the issue in hand and, worse, providing justifications to those like Putin who accompany their every crime by statements that “If they can do it, so can I”. For the rest, it should be plain to all that great power entails great responsibility.
There are powerful forces at work in America that are doing their damnedest to manipulate the public by reinforcing voters' ignorance and irresponsibility, thus subverting both country and universal commitments in pursuit of their supposed private interests. Criminals thrive where there is war and chaos. And there are very powerful criminal forces at work in America, typically under a veneer of wealth and respectability.
Peter, everything in your response is absolutely fantastic and has my hearty agreement. I suppose this is yet another case of two people caring about the same things but peering at the prism from different angles.
I see what you mean about the pitfalls of generalization, in that it can help avoid responsibility. I personally share your belief that all American citizens should consider their citizenry with the weight of a global responsibility, as our larger size and power mean our actions are simply more imactful than, say, Vanuatu ever could be. Our small difference appears to be that while you were focusing on the tangled web of the American psyche, I think that to view many of our failings as uniquely American is an equally large trap. Stubborn bigotry, willful ignorance, corporate greed, etc. are continual human problems, and the only thing specific to America about their presence here is the specific forms they take. Your initial post could have the name of the country and a few other words changed and ring true for that place as well. We Americans can and should change the laws to tackle the practical effects of our current specific forms of hypocrisy, but others may well spring up. Eliminating hypocrisy will be a lofty goal for civilization for quite a while yet.
Thank you, Will, but perhaps you underestimate the influence of America's soft power, something I've been seeing since childhood. From my point of view, the rest of the world all lies downstream of America... whose cultural flotsam and jetsam all too often get taken up by cargo cultists everywhere, while at the same time giving rise to rabid anti-Americanism and imitation by would-be rivals of all that is worst in the States.
Except that only countries like Somalia, Sudan and Mali are even more than America the victims of paranoia and arms merchants, although it's not said that mass madness may never turn neighbor against neighbor. (Switzerland, with its citizens' army, perhaps exemplifies the better intentions of the drafters of the 2nd Amendment.)
I'm too sad about what has been done to my own country by the same forces that threaten the USA, too sad to want to comment on what I have seen.
To me that's 3 great, insightful, and important posts in a row. Thank you. I missed it: what is your "own country"?
We wouldn’t be human without it!
Granted, the "human condition" is deplorable, but we're talking about America, Will. If you're trying to generalize this, you've totally missed the point. You need to get out more, but fortunately you're still very young.
"Granted, the "human condition" is deplorable..." I just spent yesterday evening with family at our county fair. I met some nice people and had a lovely time. If you find yourself deploring humanity so casually, you may be interested how many therapists are doing video conferencing now.
"...but we're talking about America..." I'm aware of the country of focus of this newsletter, yes.
"If you're trying to generalize this, you've totally missed the point." I'm not trying to generalize. I *am* generalizing, because I find this to be a general human characteristic, not a strictly American one, and *I* think people who think otherwise are missing the point. Ain't disagreement fun?
"You need to get out more..." See above regarding county fair. Whaddaya want me to do, visit the West Bank to really get a feel for epic futility of it all? Send me a check for the air fare and I'll start packing!
"...but fortunately you're still very young." Define very. I'm old enough to plausibly be a married homebuyer raising an elementary-school aged child. I have gotten a degree, a job, a raise, paid my taxes, paid my lease, and voted in multiple elections. At what point do I gain enough wisdom and experience to be a real boy? Do tell!
There's nothing like some truly breathtaking condescension early in the morn!
As you said Will - aint disagreement fun?
LeMoine, that is a very impolite and condescending comment.
Ally,
It's Will that is being disrespectful and I called him on it. I felt Peter Burnett's comment was very astute and well stated. At this time almost 100 other readers agree. I'm pasting it below to save you a lot of scrolling if you'd care to review it:
Peter Burnett
7 hr ago
" 'While the Court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.'
Viewed from afar and over many decades, nothing has yet been able to change America's institutionalized hypocrisy, well represented by the current Supreme Court.
Sometimes true friendship demands that we tell truth unvarnished and undistorted."
Will edited Mr. Burnett's "Viewed from afar...." paragraph to twist its intent, posted it here, then concluded with a very snarky "FIFY (Fixed It For You)" which I found to be not only disrespectful in the extreme but typical of some of his stilted rants, though employing far fewer words than is typical for him.
Mr. Burnett's final paragraph applies here as well. We're supposedly a more or less like minded community on this forum. In my opinion it's a responsibility for its members to police our own when we see their egos getting too swollen.
I think Peter and Will are adult enough and on this page frequently enough to handle any back and forth discourse without interference/refereeing from any of us. Disagreement does work.
Kathy,
Respectful disagreement is one thing. Sneering sarcasm is quite another. When I suggested to Will that he had missed the point of the original comment, he suggested that I see a shrink, for example, which clear evidence to me that he is immature. I'm not setting myself up as a "referee", just expressing an opinion. I hope that's still ok.
I suppose this is a lost-in-translation example of people speaking different dialects, internet-wise. For the record, in my frame of reference FIFY (or FTFY, Fixed That For You) is a really common texting/commenting bit of slang/trope. It always involves either replacing words or adding words to the above person's comment, usually to make it more specific, more generalized, or more colorful. It's *self-aware* passive-aggression as part of a rapport, and can be used in a playful way, although if you haven't come across it before, I suppose it could read as actual aggression, or "twisting," as you put it. However, it beggars the bigger question: what is wrong with sarcasm? I like sarcasm, and I like other sarcastic people. Everyone has a different style, and if you don't speak my lingo or vibrate on my wavelength, no harm no foul. But just move along, please.
If my comment is your idea of disrespect "in the extreme," you may wish to avoid almost all the rest of the internet. Your sensibilities will be shocked beyond belief.
Yes, Will, I understood the "trope" as you put it, and will be quite happy to "move along" herewith.
As to my sensibilities, I've been in and around the internet almost as long as you've been on the planet, so please don't concern yourself with them.
When I spoke to your age I was not intending to diminish you. I meant it literally when I suggested that you should "get out more" (before you make these pronouncements on other people's views), which was intended to convey that experience weighs heavily on the validity of a person's commentary. Peter was speaking directly to the issue of "American hypocrisy" which is a very special case and a long standing problem for us. His views "expressed from afar and over decades" reminded me of my own experience in many other countries and over decades as well. I've seen the impact on the impression we create in our neighbors with our tendency to view ourselves as "exceptional". So your playful edit of his comment seemed a bit flip to me. But then, no real harm has been done, so let's just agree to drop it. Peace.
I agree.
The conservative Injustices of Supreme (Kangaroo) Court seem unable to recognize that hundreds of pages of high-faluting legalese cannot obscure the REAL message that their verdict delivers to so many Americans. What are they REALLY saying with those endless smoke-and-mirror clauses and citations? It's simple, really:
"You don't belong here. You never did. The idea you ever could is madness. Now get out and stay out.
The dumb bleeding-heart liberals put their thumb on the scale for you to get a shot at accomplishing something in order to make themselves feel like good people. But we know that if everything was just done based on who was smarter and more capable - you know, *better* - you would never have made it. If everything was done the way it naturally should go, your spots would have gone to the white people you stole them from. They (the white people, that is) are the ones that really earned it - DESERVE IT - because they (the white people, that is) are naturally smarter and more capable. You know, *better.*
White people are just naturally better than other people.
You say you're disadvantaged, but it's your own fault you cannot get over the obstacles you say are in your way. You've always been greedy, never knowing your place, and a whiny victim to boot. Go ahead, prove us wrong. I think you'll find we aren't keeping anything from you, not really. You just have to prove you are good enough to belong here! Here... just count all the jellybeans in this jar. Did you guess right? Oh dear... I didn't think so."
I can hear this loud and clear, and I am as white as an albino polar bear drinking a milkshake. Imagine how some people are feeling today. No legalese can make that slap sting less, or can make that willful entrenchment of power less blatantly obvious.
What are these people going to do when college starts up in the fall... and there are still Black and brown people there? And what are they going to do when those students start lining up at the polls? The message those students will be sending is even shorter, and even clearer:
"Guess what? We do belong. And your time is soon up."
Well said. Because it’s not like we didn’t get rid of separate but equal in the school system. The schools in poor neighborhoods of color are just as good as those in Malibu or Martha’s Vineyard because they’re all equal now. So “those people” had just as much access to education as everyone else. If they didn’t properly apply themselves, or were more concerned about staying alive while walking to school, well I guess they didn’t really care about what was important - their education. And if they couldn’t study well because their bellies were empty, again that’s the fault of the parents not society. They have an equal school, so there’s no excuse for why they can’t score as well on SAT’s or ACT’s. Clearly they didn’t try as hard as the white kids. Oh wait! Those schools are letting too many Asians in now! It’s not fair to the white kids. I know! Let’s limit the number of Asian students that can be in the student body because, well it’s not fair. Their parents push them too hard in math and science and they study all the time. We want a more well-rounded student body that participates in sports and such. (You know, anything that favors the white kids). Ugh! I’m so done.
VERY well said, Dianna.
The Extreme Kangaroo Court is certainly what it should be called. It also has me wondering what's next from the Fascist GQP domestic terrorists. They are a total disgrace to our nation.
My junior high brain has decided the abbreviation of the Supreme Court of the United States should henceforth include the designation (R) to denote party affiliation. Therefore, the abbreviation should henceforth be SCROTUS, with all the attendant juvenile snickering referring to a part of the male anatomy (which I have heard reference as both "ball sack" and "holder of the sacred testes".) If we could make Kangaroocourt one word, I could still have the sound of my personal favorite...
As individuals, they should be called SCROTUMs, just for good measure.
Perhaps we should dispense with the antiquated and silly robes, too, so the SCROTUMs can bare their unrestrained analyses for the (m)asses.
PS good to see you again!
Oh Ally you are right on the ball (so to speak) today - as always!!
John, Dave Fake News has heard that the Extreme Kangaroo Court is putting a stay on all Jan6 prosecutions and is commuting the previous sentences
Hmmmm, i wonder how true that is?? I know these 6 lying bungholes have lifetime appointments, but i would hope someone in the Senate and the Dems in the House would seriously consider impeaching those 6 Rethug. terrorist judges. This insanity has to STOP. I am sick and fed up with these corrupt Justices thwarting the rule of law.
Unfortunately, The Law has made them “The Law” and now they are creating Law as unelected adjudicators of parsed legal mumbo jumbo KNOWING that Congress is deadlocked in a battle between the Forces of Dark Money vs “The will of the People” and cannot pass the legislation required to legally stop them
Even if a Congress did pass new laws, This Roberts Gang of Six could over rule them
We’re on the road to doom
I agree, it sure does look bad right now. Makes me angry. but this situation really looks hopeless. I am about ready to hightail it out of the United States.
Will, I read the whole thing! I’m from Virginia, and my mother could have said that! Well done and thank you!
My longest friend from childhood, also a Virginian, expressed basically the same thought to me on Wednesday, although related to healthcare, not education. Part of me was astounded, part of me wasn’t surprised. Racism runs deep.
Yes. My sister and her husband long ago moved to South Carolina, considered more racist than Virginia. (Current Republican senators?) Judge Roberts may himself be racist which is why he doesn’t “understand” or care to understand its hold on America. One need only look at MS and AL to see the results of continuing racism in America.
Husband and I had snacks and drinks in an inner city area of Richmond, VA the other afternoon. The groups were there thoroughly diverse, and waaaay younger. Exposure is key. Why has that not changed in more red areas? Lack of exposure certainly, but my gawd, how can you be combative not inclusive in an illusion?
And oh yeah - if you just "work hard & pull yourself up by your bootstraps" everything will be hunky dory - right?
And then there's the push to - heavens above - "not hurt any child's (white child) feelings" by educating them about the true history of treatment of poor/black/indian/immigrant people in this country. Sorry I guess thats jumping to another section of this subject.
Really good post, Will.
As Joy Reid said, all the black students were smarter than the legacy students.
The socially/economic advantaged also pick up in pyschological aid. Check out the academic scores from advantaged versus dis-advantaged institutions. Don't forget private schools etc
Has anyone here read "Poverty, by America" by Matthew Desmond? It came out in March. I'm considering buying/reading it and just wondered if anyone recommends it... I read his book "Evicted" and thought it was thought provoking.
I'd say that about covers it, yeah. The question is, when those students start lining up at the polls, will states controlled by angry, paranoid white racists allow them to vote at all? Or will they find ways to suppress their vote in the name of "election integrity"?
"It's annoying that we have to fight elections for our cause
The inconvenience—of having to get a majority
If normal methods of persuasion fail to win us applause
There are other ways of establishing authority
We have ways of making you vote for us, or at least of making you abstain." - Tim Rice, "Evita"
I find it ironic that Clarence Thomas, who benefited in every aspect of his education to his narrow Senate approval to the lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court because of his race, was so fulsomely opposed to affirmative action.
Based on his character and judicial track record, Thomas was not a top-ranked candidate for the Supreme Court. He had the good fortune of replacing the distinguished Thurgood Marshall, the first Black on the Supreme Court. I fear that Ginni/Clarence Thomas will not cease their vengefulness on the Stench Court.
Keith, my take on Thomas is that he is racist. When I taught at the first Black Catholic University in America, I had a racist student in class. The rest of the class applauded vigorously when I responded to her attack 1970’s). Thomas’s attitude reminds me of the ignominy of racism.
Members of minority groups, being just as human as those in the majority group, are unfortunately not exempt from the same fallible thought processes that lead to prejudice. If you hear the same harmful tropes ascribed to your group over and over and do not possess the character to reject them, you can grow to believe them and direct the resulting self-hate outwards. These people define themselves as being "not like the others," rather than an example that disproves the stereotypes. In LGBT circles there is the concept of "internalized homophobia." The same can apply for ethnicity, gender, disability, etc. It really explains well the behavior of so many people whose lived experience should have taught them more understanding but sadly did not, and the dynamic becomes more apparent the higher profile someone receives. Like, a Supreme Court appointment, say.
Will, it’s been my experience that racism exists in a spectrum that includes pretty much all races and creeds: I could call it “fear of the other” and is manifested in the physical separation that exists between various communities. Inclusion breaks down the separation by causing peoples to interact. Our path to “equality” lay in the direction of “rubbing elbows”, but institutionalized (taught) prejudices interfere with that (idealized) goal
This is why we need a national service program that brings together young Americans from all walks of life, kind of like the military in WWII. Without all the guns of course.
I totally agree with a national service corps, similar to the Peace Corps. It would bring together diverse young people from various backgrounds, regions, ethnicities, and help them appreciate their differences while working toward common goals.
Yes! I have long thought this—make it a requirement! It could be applied to so many areas that our nation could use help with. I would see students come to the Univ where I worked having done Peace Corp, AmeriCorp or CA Conservation Corp “tours of duty” and most said it was an enlightening and life changing experience.
LWV has a Courageous Conversation in their DEI community. It has a Self-Disclosure Activity.
Will, you are spot on. Definitely can speak to the "internalized homophobia" being present in me. Both my wife and I had the the thought "who would want to come to our wedding?" as we were planning to lawfully marry when we celebrated our 25th anniversary. The answer was "the whole damn family, thank you very much."
Awww, I bet everyone showed up! It is amazing how, even when we think we are okay with ourselves, those little voices saying something is wrong with us will persist, telling us to keep subtly apologizing for burdening others with our abnormality, to not to take up too much of the room we don't deserve. That we need to excel in other ways to make up for this flaw we have, to prove to others and ourselves that we are worthy despite it all. How freeing in those moments ts when you realize none of that needs to be engaged with at all, because that core belief that something is wrong or lesser about us just is not true and never has been. We are perfectly fine the way we are, and deserve the opportunities and experiences others have just as much as they do. Easier said than done, but worth it!
Show up they did!!
Virginia Thomas’s early years certainly support your Thomas racist theory. Look at his personal activities in the late 1960s;
And we have seen Anita Hill’s testimony verified. Fortunately she has had a long teaching career following Thomas’ lies.
Should he not have recused being himself helped by affirmative action?
Jennifer Thomas should be recused and removed. Speaking of Thomas and ethics is an oxymoron, with emphasis on judicial moron
Keith, your “take no prisoners” language is a breath of fresh air in this never-tell-it-like-it-is atmosphere. But can we extend the “moron” to Judge Roberts’ “reasoning” about the unconstitutionality of affirmative action? It makes no sense.
Virginia My height has shrunk a bit, but I am no shrinking violet. I am still taking no prisoners when it comes to truthful analysis. [This way, it’s much easier to remember what I have said.]
In the current climate (cannot go out because of smoke), I repeat, you are a breath of much-needed fresh air. Truth is priceless in the trumpest atmosphere. Only language and forest conservation can truly give us hope.
Virginia Roberts is not a ‘moron.’ He is, as Lincoln phrased it, attempting to balance two melons on his shoulders.It doesn’t work. Now he is admired neither in the originalists’ nor in the constitutional common sense camp.
I think you may be giving him too much credit. I continue to look at his face. Think he may be more concerned with his (and “his court’s”) reputation than with the people he’s bound by law (why did he misinterpret the 14th amendment? and again reject stare decisis?) to serve. In short, I don’t see the melons on his shoulders, not even on one side.
Virginia Perhaps I was myopic and, in fact, he lacks two balls.
I understand this BUT is it correct tthat he should have recused himself?
Only if he believed he was assisted by it. All his life he has tried to overcome it.
Yes, he should have recused as Judge Jackson did in the case of Harvard.
More than "ironic," it's obscene.
Thomas shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence with Thurgood (not Thurmond, BTW) Marshall!
Ellen Thanks for the correction. Thurmond was the antithesis of Thurgood. In the middle of the night at least I got the Thur…d right.
Add one more item to the list of why Democrats need to take back the house and keep the sentate and the presidency.
I was one of the first women to be admitted to an ivy graduate school in science. When I interviewed for jobs after obtaining my PhD I was explicitly told I was only being interviewed because I was a woman and often a token woman hire was pointed out explicitly as that--we dont need more.
When I was hired at an elite institution I was told it was temporary because they had a hiring freeze in place. When I onboarded I found out a white male was hired within a week to a permanent position. I was explicitly told by multiple colleagues that I was only hired because I was a woman.
Working for change and being a squeaky wheel in that environment was exhausting and often humiliating. Equipment purchases delayed because of "budgetary constraints," equipment sabotaged. The same things were faced by my black colleagues. Affirmative action may open doors a crack but there is still so much else that is needed for all to reach their full potential. Mentoring and support and networking opportunities.
But this ruling feels like even that narrow gap that was opened 50 years ago is being shut because you just know that this will be used as a justification for "confusion" about what is permissiible and conservatives will be able to use the leverage of that "confusion" to pressure institutions into policies that return to the more discriminatory practices of the past.
Georgia, you describe the pain associated with affirmative action so clearly. I was a token, and had those strange hiring conditions, too. Being hired because... It sure does diminish respect for the work we do. I like the idea of economic affirmative action. Applied across the board, it would help people of all races.
It may make the crack in the door wider but it would not address all of those other things like mentoring and allocation of resources and networking that have a huge impact on career paths and beiing able to reach your full potential. What scares me here is all of those employment and job related affirmative action programs will now also be subject to question. A black person from a middle class home is still going to face all of that.
Oh, it will be even worse for minorities for sure. We are so NOT colorblind, and in my experience, nobody likes affirmative action.
Exactly!!!
As for the last 6 years, Republicans are again delivering on their promise of racism, deregulation, and clerical fascism.
And they can do this because racist right wing religious extremists took the lesson of the civil rights movements - unite, vote.
While the Left won social progress but sacrificed political strategy to purity tests, pipe dreams, and Pied Pipers. They can do this because in 2016 the GOP concentrated on the Electoral College while Hillary Clinton instead of mending fences in Milwaukee, fantasized building bridges in Texas. They can do this because reliable Republican voters in swing states held their noses and voted for Trump, while potential Democratic voters turned up their noses and refused to vote for Hillary. Sitting on your hands doesn't keep them clean. Self indulgently voting your gut rather than your brain - seeing voting as an expression of personal identity rather than the act of taking the levers of power to fulfill shared goals - sacrifices our most vulnerable neighbors, fragile planet and endangered democracy to savvy right wing operatives hell bent on instituting their dog eat dog dystopia of unconscionable greed. Just saying. 2024. No time to lose.
Lin. Whoa!!!! Speaketh
Boy, I love that: "Sitting on you hands doesn't keep them clean" is spot on. Your assessment of "holding nose/voting for tfg" and "turning up nose and refusing to vote for Hilary" is what got us tfg in office.
"Sitting on your hands doesn't keep them clean." Love it!
Ellen ‘Sh+ting on your hands certainly doesn’t keep them clean.’ A motto for the Stench Court?
LOL
Dobbs took women’s reproductive right away and today the Court with this affirmative action decision took away from brown and black students in certain elite universities the possibility of leadership…..
What’s next?
You only have to look at the educational degrees that the Court themselves have ‘attained’ to see how important those elite university degrees are…the Court itself generally graduated from either Harvard or Yale…
Elite ? Perhaps an over used word that has become trite. Consider the creatures like Cruz, DeSanctis, Hawley to name a few who hang a diploma on their office wall from those places!
Nothing elite about those creatures!
Just out of curiosity, I looked up Donald John Trump on the Bachelor graduation list at Wharton College. Unlike his bragging about being at the top of his class, his name just languishes in alphabetical order among the regular students: no honors at all.
I wonder who wrote his papers...
His Daddy’s secretary, I presume.
Donald switched from Fordham to the undergraduate Wharton program at U. Of Penn. Whoever did his work for him (he commuted back to NYC during week ends), he never was acknowledged for honors-level work. Several of his classmates mentioned that her seemed a dilettante student. His lawyers threatened to sue if his transcript was Wharton was ever released. Not the academics of a ‘stable genius.’
I believe his degree is from Fordham, not the Wharton School of Finance. Mostly, his brother got him in.
Access to contraception is next. Then marriage equality. Just my guess.
I dunno; going after the basis of Lawrence v. Texas might jump over contraception, but then again, it might not. Somehow, I wonder if interracial marriage will escape, because that, too, is a race based judicial precedent.
This Court is definitely about moving the country backwards. Two-thirds of it, anyway.
In an election cycle I’d guess that the contraception issue is (temporarily) off the table…but attacks on anything related to gays, is prime meat. And the opposite is true as well …think Dobbs will be very politically useful to the Dems!
Joan, I have confidence in women (re: reproductive rights) and the great and amazing people of color who have built this country. The Creator of heaven and earth (in my opinion) will not leave us. His work may not be in our time or in our way, but I believe the Creator is alive and well. My (our) God sees, and the Spirit is active within His people. I am naive, I know, but I choose to believe that freedom will win.
Emily, even though I am not religious myself, I would just like to say that I respect your beliefs and find inspiration in your brief description of your faith and spirituality, even if it takes a different form from my own.
Like others, I also encourage you to join many of your fellow citizens in taking whatever concrete actions you can here on the ground to remedy our nation's ills, even if that is just a few volunteer hours or tough conversations with a neighbor. If you have faith in what you perceive to be God's plan, please be part of bringing that plan to fruition, rather than waiting for an opening in the sky. *Hugs*
Will, thank you , I receive and respect your encouragement to put my words into action.
When Trump was nominated to serve as President of our gerat nation, I was in SHOCK! I had been a member of the Republican Party all of my voting life!!!
No more!!!
I voted joyfully for Joe Biden and for every Democrat I could and I will continue to do so as long as we support freedom and support one another as citizens of this planet.
I respect and appreciate Heather as a patriot.....a wonderful communicator.....a person who loves this country and the promise of freedom and opportunity for all. I am also reading her books and others recommended by other contributers to this column.
I also respect the diversity of people and opinions displayed amongst her readers.
I applaud your respectful response, Will.
I don't see you here everyday, perhaps I'm earlier than you on those days, but it is always good to read your comments.
Will, you are ever graceful. Thank you for that. As one often rendered speechless (as when my neighbor informed me “God will take care of climate change”) may I learn from you how to respectfully disagree and gently make a point.
Emily, I am sure that is all very comforting to you, but it doesn't help get this kid into Harvard this fall, or that kid a safe and timely abortion for her problem pregnancy today. If there is a creator, it obviously doesn't work on a human timescale, or else it is vastly indifferent to humans. Human people have to work now to fix the stupid, cruel problems that humans create - poverty, ignorance, problem pregnancies, healthcare, befouled and dangerous environment, hatred and gun abuse, drug abuse, etc., not hang around issuing "thoughts and prayers", which is, essentially, what the whole "creator" stuff is. We cannot rely on some putative creator for suggestions or for solutions, and certainly not to act to correct the problems, even if it feels good to wrap ourselves in the lovely warm blanket of its indifference.
Thank you, Lynn. “Let go and let God” has to be one of the most ridiculous and sanctimonious phrases developed by the white patriarchy yet.
Lynn, I appreciate your comment. I do believe in a woman's right to choose.
afterall, she is alone....right ?
There was a horrible situation with a woman who drove her four children into a pond. They drowned. She went to prison and was put to death.
My question was and is, Where was the father....where was a single friend or family member? She was as every woman carrying a child.....alone. She was hiding pain, anger, helplessness, hopelessness.
We never heard of her mental state only the horrible death of 4 young children.....and I do not lesson that horror.
There are a million variables in real situations with which women must act to save their own lives, mentally or physically. She must have that right. She alone will live with her choice. That in itself is difficult enough. There should not be judgement from onlookers.
Emily…I have confidence too….but think we all need to do absolutely everything possible to avoid a return of the ‘Orange menace’ as well!
Another opinion: I have come to believe that this "creator" has given up on people. Homo sapiens are destroying ourselves and the earth by our own actions. He promised not to do so again after his cleansing flood, and we are doing it ourselves as he watches. Once gone, the world can regenerate to its intended magnificence without human intervention.
Yep! The majority opinion is inherently circular, based on social/economic status.
Indeed, Joan! Once again, the Conservative INJustices of the Supreme Court strike against equality of rights and opportunities. It seems they’ve morphed the interpretation of “supreme” from authority to authoritarianism.
Well, we now have the answer to "what's next" - "Supreme Court Strikes Down Biden’s Debt Forgiveness Plan. In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority rejected President Biden’s plan to cancel more than $400 billion in student loan debt for millions of borrowers. It would have been one of the most expensive executive actions in U.S. history."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/30/us/student-loans-supreme-court-biden?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20230630&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=cta®i_id=20513434&segment_id=138073&user_id=f8aafa4373931a5f4547a80557e0fc19
“While the Court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.”The best statement I have read today. Just saying something isn't so does not mean that is correct. Racial injustice does exist, it exists in all 50 States, and not always against the same subgroup. Unless and until we recognize this as a fact, we will never achieve a free society.
RE "While the Court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.”: Except that what the Supreme Court decides actually is what T's America stands for.
Correct, Joanne. Admirably "unifying" rhetoric aside, there are currently two Americas, standing for divergent cultural values and promoting two starkly differing views of self. We have reached a juncture in history where these two visions appear irreconcilable, and one stands to lose. Hint: the loser is most likely the one that wants to rewind the century, because that's not how time works.
That's not how anything works. We may may make concrete steps to restore some things we have lost, such a stable, livable climate, but time still flows one way and we are always bucking entropy. We may identify some wisdom and guidance in the way some things were done before, such as anti-trust enforcement, but we learn from history and never, when full context is considered, really repeat it. Heraclitus claimed you can never step into the same river twice. We are and are not the same person were a decade ago, or even yesterday. The moving finger writes.
It seems to me that the hubris of so-called "Conservatives" is that the think that they have all the answers, when our pattern of success as humans has historically been to question everything, and to test and build on our legacy of of inherited knowledge. "Conservative" thinking punished Galileo for applying new observations.
"Conservatives" seem to think that the older an idea is, the more authority it has, and yes, there is significance in the power of persistent conclusions, as there is wisdom to be gathered from ancient Greeks and other ancient sources, such as Heraclitus, who I cite above; but we are fools if we fail to triage and revitalize that legacy; racism, sexism, and aggressive, self-serving wars have a long-standing history as well.
I hope that you're right, that the "genie cannot be put back in the bottle" as my Dad used to say. Time does not roll backwards.
I would like this statement better if it said, "...it cannot change what America strives for." It is fact that it is harder to get even to the admissions door if one is disadvantaged by race, poverty, and lower income. And even if one does get admitted, there are the further likely burdens of student debt (vis a vis students whose familial wealth pays their tuition).
A sad day for America.
Maybe it should be Awake -up day - maybe the Federal Gov't should put some teeth into ensuring that ALL children have a proper education - maybe (shock-horror) a uniform curriculum across the entire country! Kids are getting short-changed. Forget the Universities!
Hugh, I could not just "like" your comment. I enthusiastically agree. Without a good solid foundation, it is difficult to catch and continue-in a love and respect for learning.
This does not just happen.
In order for our children to be well educated, which is a huge task if everything in their lives is flowing fairly well, we must consider that there are many factors involved in a child's education.....and we must work hard to meet as many of those challenges as possible. And....we must be willing to invest in the children in our country.
Each child does not come to school with a clean body or wearing clean clothes or having had a breakfast . Each child does not go home to a parent or grandparent who makes sure they are completing school assignments. Each child does not live in a home in which reading has always been a part of the daily routine, or bathing, or dental care...etc.
We also must find ways to help our children without disrespecting a home inwhich their caregiver/s are also struggling in life.
Just ask teachers....fewer are staying because of the many social problems that disrupt their classrooms on a daily basis. We, as a nation must expect excellence from our teachers. We must hold them accountable to do the work they have been hired to do but they also need support.
In other words Hugh....completely agree....but we cannot ignore the huge task of educating each and all of our young people. And we must include those children and adults fleeing despots for a better life in this country. ( look up the words written on the Statue of Liberty if you question me))
I am in awe of our teachers who have not given up on their huge tasks of educating our children, young and older students.
I am also amazed at the good servants of hope and freedom who work daily at our borders. (more children and adults for our classrooms and jobs for our teachers)
One small thing to do is to immediately cease providing any public funds to all non-public and all religious schools, and eliminate all tax breaks (property and income) for all religious institutions. Claw that money back to hire more public school teachers and pay them better, improve school libraries, buildings and equipment, fund arts and music education programs and after school programs instead of athletics (honestly, if it's that popular in the community for kids to bash each others' heads in - looking at you, football - just have town teams and let them fundraise - let the jocks hold the bake sales for once). Refund the schools and keep out "moms for liberty" and their ilk.
Thinking of Will in Cal, going to try to be both succinct and graceful. I taught in various situations for more years than I can count (having never tried beyond 15 years in universities). I knew, from my sophomore year in undergraduate school that I would NEVER waste time on a teaching certificate. Why: as I waited to seer a prof, another member of his department (there were only three, it was a small college art department) gave me a newspaper article to read while I waited. The article stated that students with the lowest SAT scores were getting degrees in education. This was 1952. It is obvious that things have gone downhill ever since. I have had one affirmation (in this comment section?) of the article. It was from someone’s experience in a western university in the 1960’s, whose education courses had consisted of multiple choice tests.
If a person WANTS to teach, (all pronouns) will learn how, as I did from best teachers that person had in any class. Example: my first grade teacher made certain that no one bullied the motherless son of a bootlegger who came to our class for a time; my first teacher of French, with two years of college French behind her, taught phonetics to us with our spelling lists of French words. This was in a tiny, poor public school during WWII. I credit the spelling lists with my acing a university phonetics course, taught by a Frenchman who later, as chairman of the department of one of the four top universities to study all aspects of French language and literature, offered me a graduate assistantship (paid teaching assistantship) out of the blue, as it were (I made a C in his civilization course).
Telling this because my hope is to alert enough people to getting back to the FACT that a liberal arts education, taught by enthusiastic teachers, who then go on to teach at all levels without syllabi that MUST be followed to the letter (how many text books in how many courses did my various teachers fail to “finish”?), is where we need to aim, if we aren’t just teaching for jobs. We had home economics for girls and shop for boys. Now the two could be choice of one or the other.
Ending with oft-repeated: internationally reputed professor of medieval studies (so talented that his Finnish almost got him posted as ambassador to Finland during WWII), best description is “larger than life”: reminded us that he got out of Harvard “while it was still a university, the year before they added the Business School.” (He got his PhD at 20 and taught full steam until retirement.)
Thank you to anyone who reads all of this. May it move some of you to write to those who might influence public education for something other than serfdom or financial gain in America.
Thank you, Emily. And when we see and hear efforts such as book banning, your comments ring even truer.
Absolutely 100% agree.
Hugh In theory I support your suggestion of uniform federal curriculum nationwide. In fact, much of public school curriculum is determined by states and textbook sales [CA & TX dominated this content battle back in the 90s—today,. Add Florida and others.
I was engaged in the social studies national curriculum endeavor back in the early 1990s. We ‘professionals’ provided an extensive list of what could/should be included in American history. [Actually, in 40-50 minute classes four times a week, the amount of content would be severely limited].
I recall that the Senate, in a resolution, rejected our initial findings 99-0.
I don’t recall what, if anything, resulted from our subsequent recommendations. Clearly no federal curriculum mandate would suit DeSantis in Florida and other states in thr South and elsewhere.
Indeed, what I taught as a community college history professor from 1992 to 2013 today would be excluded in a number of states.
Harry A. Blackmun wrote in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke,
“In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way.”
That for me is the last word on America’s centuries long conflict with race.
There were fascinating reveals about our society within the opinions written by the Justices and responses to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action. A couple of them particularly struck me as mirroring the country’s divide on the matter with relatively polite words.
Justice Samuel Alito:
I thought that the whole purpose of affirmative action was to help students who come from underprivileged backgrounds, but you make a very different argument that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. The top 10 percent plan admits lots of Hispanics and a fair number of African Americans. But you say, ‘well, it’s – it’s faulty, because it doesn’t admit enough African Americans and Hispanics who come from privileged backgrounds.’ And you specifically have the example of the child of successful [minority] professionals in Dallas. Now, that’s your argument?
If you have an applicant whose parents are – let’s say one of them is a partner in your law firm in Texas, another one is a corporate lawyer. They have income that puts them in the top 1 percent of earners in the country, and the parents both have graduate degrees. They deserve a leg-up against, let’s say, an Asian or a white applicant whose parents are absolutely average in terms of education and income?”
Mrs. Obama’s Statement:
Back in college, I was one of the few Black students on my campus, and I was proud of getting into such a respected school. I knew I’d worked hard for it. But still, I sometimes wondered if people thought I got there because of affirmative action. It was a shadow that students like me couldn’t shake, whether those doubts came from the outside or inside our own minds.
But the fact is this: I belonged. And semester after semester, decade after decade, for more than half a century, countless students like me showed they belonged, too. It wasn’t just the kids of color who benefitted, either. Every student who heard a perspective they might not have encountered, who had an assumption challenged, who had their minds and their hearts opened gained a lot as well. It wasn’t perfect, but there’s no doubt that it helped offer new ladders of opportunity for those who, throughout our history, have too often been denied a chance to show how fast they can climb.
Of course, students on my campus and countless others across the country were — and continue to be — granted special consideration for admissions. Some have parents who graduated from the same school. Others have families who can afford coaches to help them run faster or hit a ball harder. Others go to high schools with lavish resources for tutors and extensive standardized test prep that help them score higher on college entrance exams. We don’t usually question if those students belong. So often, we just accept that money, power, and privilege are perfectly justifiable forms of affirmative action, while kids growing up like I did are expected to compete when the ground is anything but level.
So today, my heart breaks for any young person out there who’s wondering what their future holds —
and what kinds of chances will be open to them. And while I know the strength and grit that lies inside kids who have always had to sweat a little more to climb the same ladders, I hope and I pray that the rest of us are willing to sweat a little, too. Today is a reminder that we’ve got to do the work not just to enact policies that reflect our values of equity and fairness, but to truly make those values real in all of our schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods.
***
In discussions with Racists I generally pose this:
In any interview a manager / selector has an immediate choice when the applicant enters the room. White skin or black skin begin a series of judgements based on skin color. The subject may not dominate any decision but surely accompanies it.
I once aided the promotion of a Black Man to a position the white manager insisted he could not qualify since making radio calls were part of the duties. The manager said the thick lips of black people were unintelligible using microphone’s.
A true story I mocked to death.
Art, I got stuck with the thick lips...a projection to what on the part of the manager?!
It honestly flabbergasted me. The job required the use of a Marine Radio Network and coordinate arrivals and departures of vessels.
The applicant did have a southern drawl but was otherwise spoke clearly.
The bigot refused to select the man since, he claimed, the thick lips of African people prevented them from being easily understood on the radio.
My rejoinder that resolved the conflict but brought me enmity was I thought I understood the words of Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong through microphones very well.
He was selected to his sorrow. He was understood okay but never forgiven.
Art, the routes of racism are endless and open to mimicry. Imagine Nate King Cole, Louis Armstrong and Sammy Davis performing a number dedicated to the advantages thick lips over those thin, measly orifices.
She needs to be on SC
I have such admiration for Michele Obama…her grit, wit, wisdom and kindness. We were so lucky to have had her as FLOTUS, and now as an engaged citizen.
Two directions for action regarding reactionary SCOTUS:
1. Expand the court. Support the Judiciary Act of 2023, "legislation that would expand the Supreme Court by adding four seats to create a 13-Justice bench."
https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/05/16/2023/sen-markey-rep-johnson-announce-legislation-to-expand-supreme-court-restore-its-legitimacy-alongside-sen-smith-reps-bush-and-schiff
2. President Obama’s Statement:
"Affirmative action was never a complete answer in the drive towards a more just society. But for generations of students who had been systematically excluded from most of America’s key institutions–it gave us the chance to show we more than deserved a seat at the table. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision, it’s time to redouble our efforts. So, if you’re looking for ways to help right now, here are some organizations doing important work: UNCF Hispanic Scholarship Fund
APIA Scholars American Indian College Fund TheDream.US
Thurgood Marshall College Fund
DC CAP
Hope Chicago"
https://barackobama.medium.com/our-statements-on-the-u-s-supreme-courts-decision-to-overturn-affirmative-action-2e161f52b5d1
As HCR notes, "At Harvard, those on the list to be cut were evaluated on four criteria: legacy status, recruited athlete status, financial aid eligibility, and race. Today, the Supreme Court ruled that considering race as a factor in that categorical fashion is unconstitutional." So one obvious remedy is to sue Harvard and other elite universities to eliminate some of those other arbitrary and discriminatory criteria for making the final cut among qualified applicants, especially legacy status.
It bothers me that a Right Wing organization developed to challenge equality of Races in America was allowed by SCOTUS to focus on race.
Any identifiable selection criteria separates citizens for arbitrary reasons from their fellow citizens. Legacy admissions automatically create an Aristocratic class of students; athletic ability eliminates physically limited and handicapped individuals; academic standards eliminates the products of crappy schools and by selecting to eliminate race as a factor the court ensures any black skinned individual can be dismissed from consideration.
It is plantation justice supported by the House Slavee.
Sadly Asians the right wing conservatives used as pawns, do not realize Asians are not considered equal by white supremacists. Our faces give us away every time. We are the first they’ll throw under the bus, just like in the past, just as it continues now against Chinese scientists and students, just like the recent discrimination laws about owning a home in Florida. Just like Trump can make fun of Elaine Chao because of her race and ethnicity, and no one gets enraged. Asians Americans are a diverse group rich, poor, educated, uneducated, different cultures different beliefs were disenfranchised by the few only thinking of themselves, by people only thinking about themselves. That’s where democracies go to die.
For too many years, my brothers and I have considered the republican party to be a terrorist group (through the bastardization of the 2nd Amendment) and like the Taliban/ISIS they have blatantly stripped our rights one by one. They will do anything (including supporting a batshit crazy madman who is a criminal for president) to hold onto power and money. It is shattering.
Regarding affirmative action, my 10 S. Sudanese grandkids stand a chance (albeit still an uphill battle) because we all live in Massachusetts. Make no mistake about it, the playing field is not level and racism is very much a part of the equation. As a group and individually, women understand closed doors, lost opportunities, and outright discrimination.
John Lewis constantly rings in my head “Speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.”
I always preface my opinions about C. Thomas, Candace Owens, Hershel Walker, K. West, et al, by saying I appreciate their hard work , talent, and material success in face of all the odds. Though they aren't my cup of tea. Today we're talking C. Thomas who is a direct beneficiary of affirmative action who now wants to close the gate behind him after having gotten - his?
Folks need to understand the long game being played here starting with Dobbs. Democracy minded folks are left to have to find creative ways around the Supreme Court which is packed with maga. I feel confident that we will.
Bill,
I think we should be talking about George W. Bush and Brett Kavanaugh as products of affirmative action instead of Thomas.
Both of them were poor performers academically, prior to college, and were well known "party boys". Both of them went to private "prep schools" where the average grade is an A, no matter what you score on your tests.
When we ignore the poor academic performance of white people in private prep schools and then admit them to Harvard without regard for their past performance BUT because they are rich, then?
THAT is REAL affirmative action.
At Harvard, a very large number of white people walking the campus fall into the category of real "affirmative action".
NOT the very tiny number of black people whose academic performance is typically excellent.
Like, for example, Michele Obama. She was a total rock star as a student, start to finish. She was admitted to Harvard not based on affirmative action, but, because she was an excellent student.
Kavanaugh? Just a lazy, rich white kid that they admitted on affirmative action.
Mike S. I think we should follow your lead and begin questioning the practice you are talking about, which in my opinion should be labeled what it is: “Confirmative Action”. As in “We are confirming our aristocratic-power-position”.
I may have heard an inkling of this but I didn't know it was as radical as you present here. You're talking from an interesting perspective and I know you're being ironic in calling White privilege, affirmative action. That being said, I'd like to give a shout out to all the Black and White students who may have gotten a break and didn't turn their back on others.
It's not ironic, it's truth. Legacy admission means continuing past practices.
I fully agree, Mike S. But I would suggest that instead of “REAL Affirmative Action,” the practice could be more accurately labeled “Privileged Status Reaffirming Action.”
Well said, Mike.