Nov 17 2008

The Left At Christian Universities, Part 6: You can’t post that HERE!

Category: diversity,higher education,left,multi-cultural,politicsharmonicminer @ 1:32 pm

If you missed it or want to read it again, Part 5 of this series is here.

At Pepperdine, students aren’t allowed to post signs announcing meetings that might be critical of Obama. And they have a “Director of Intercultural Affairs” to enforce the rule on 18 yr old freshman Republicans, too. After describing the de facto censorship of the the College Republicans at Pepperdine, Mike Adams delivers this assessment of one of the players:
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Oct 25 2008

African American Male Interaction

Category: diversityharmonicminer @ 9:03 am

Mike Adams describes a new college course called Effective Interactions With African-American Males.  Here’s the catalog description, and you can read his comments at the link:

Using an African-centered philosophical worldview and a racial socialization framework, this class will use participatory education to equip undergraduate and/or graduate students, to “better” understand and effectively work alongside and with young adult African-American men. The core tenets underlying this class are racial oppression exists, matters, is ubiquitous and pernicious and that those most affected are often ignorant of this reality.

Adams asks several questions about the course and its content, some funny, some tragic, and worth reading.

Continue reading “African American Male Interaction”

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Sep 28 2008

Some inconvenient truths about racial preferences and affirmative action/diversity policies

Here are the first few paragraphs of a scholarly paper presented at “Race and Gender Preferences at the Crossroads,” a conference organized by the California Association of Scholars and cosponsored by the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) and the Center for Equal Opportunity, held January 19, 2008, at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California. The title of the paper is The Effects of Proposition 209 on California: Higher Education, Public Employment, and Contracting 09/25/2008 Charles L. Geshekter

In 1996, Californians overwhelmingly approved Proposition 209 that prohibited all state agencies from using anyone’s race, ethnicity, or gender to discriminate against them or give them preference in university admissions, public employment, or competition for a state contract.

Those who opposed Proposition 209 predicted that ending racial or gender favoritism would result in sharp declines in black and Hispanic college enrollments, setbacks for women in public employment, reduced funds for cancer detection centers and domestic violence shelters, or other alarmingly negative effects.

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Sep 23 2008

Home loans for illegals: a personal aside

Category: diversity,economy,illegal alienharmonicminer @ 10:40 pm

Michelle Malkin :: Townhall.com :: Illegal Immigration and the Mortgage Mess

It’s no coincidence that most of the areas hardest hit by the foreclosure wave — Loudoun County, Va., California’s Inland Empire, Stockton and San Joaquin Valley, and Las Vegas and Phoenix, for starters — also happen to be some of the nation’s largest illegal alien sanctuaries. Half of the mortgages to Hispanics are subprime (the accursed species of loan to borrowers with the shadiest credit histories). A quarter of all those subprime loans are in default and foreclosure.

Read the whole thing.  It is both stunning and a bit chilling.

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Sep 23 2008

California Supreme Court: restrained when it suits its political positions

Category: affirmative action,diversityharmonicminer @ 1:40 pm

An earlier post discussed the issue of Richard Sander’s attempt to get bar association records to evaluate the efficacy of affirmative action in law school admissions. It would seem that the California State Supreme Court, in an uncharacteristic display of judicial restraint, has decided not to consider Sander’s request for an order to release the records.

If UCLA law professor Richard Sander gains access to California Bar exam data for his own study on racial preferences, he’ll have to start somewhere other than the California Supreme Court.

Last week, that court denied Sander’s request for an order compelling the State Bar to cooperate with him. The justices didn’t rule on the merits of the request — which had been filed with the Supreme Court early last month — but rather indicated Sander should refile “in an appropriate court.”

This is, of course, a pure stalling action. They hope that Sander will just give up at some point, run out of money to pursue it, etc. They hope that somehow a resolution can be found for the matter that won’t require them to go on record as opposing public access to such records on the one hand, or appearing to support research that might undermine affirmative action on the other.

Our black robed masters are so courageous, whenever they can rule in favor of the extreme Left, but curiously gutless when it comes to upholding public access to what should be public records.  Of course, this is probably just a case of attorneys protecting attorneys, the jurisprudential version of professional ethics.

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Sep 20 2008

Bigotry towards whites masquerades as reporting on race

Category: diversity,election 2008,multi-cultural,Obama,politics,race,racismharmonicminer @ 9:08 am

It will get worse before election day, as the Main Stream Media does it’s best to guilt everyone into voting for Obama even though they disagree with his policies and/or think his leadership and experience is lacking, just for fear of being called racist.

Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks, many calling them “lazy,” “violent,” responsible for their own troubles.  The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004, about two and one-half percentage points.

Of course, “deep seated racisl misgivings” on the part of blacks will cause 90+% of blacks to vote FOR him, with a total margin greater than 2 1/2% of the vote.

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents, voters Obama can’t win the White House without, agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don’t have such views.

There is no foundation established here to conclude that a voter will not select a particular individual just because the voter makes generalized observations about a demographic group. And the huge piece of missing information here: how would blacks respond to the same survey? We all know the stories of black cab drivers who won’t pick up young, male blacks at night. Are they bigots, too?

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Sep 20 2008

If you doubt the validity of affirmative action, you must be a racist

As usual, anyone who tries to scientifically study the actual effect of affirmative action is accused of racist motives.

In his 19 years as a law professor at UCLA, Richard Sander has pondered a nagging question: Does affirmative action help or hinder black people who want to become lawyers?

Two years ago, he published research suggesting that racial preferences at law firms might be responsible for black lawyers’ high rate of attrition and difficulty making partner. He hypothesized that, in the interest of promoting diversity, law firms sometimes hire black lawyers that are under-qualified, and that when there is a “credentials gap” between black and white lawyers at a firm, black lawyers often fail.

The research stirred debate throughout the legal community, and Sander said he was surprised at the vehemence with which people attacked his motives. A former Vista volunteer, fair-housing activist and campaigner for Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington, Sander insisted he was simply trying to examine an important question.

Now the law professor has waded into another controversy. Sander says his goal this time is to examine whether law schools set up many affirmative action beneficiaries for failure by admitting them into rigorous academic environments in which they are ill-prepared to compete. He proposes to study almost 30 years of data on California Bar Association exam-takers. In the end, he hopes to explain why, as reported in a Law School Admission Council study in the 1990s, blacks are four times as likely as whites to fail the bar exam on the first try.

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Aug 29 2008

The Left at Christian Universities, part 5: Silencing Free Expression the Gentle, Positive Way

This is a post in the chain on “The Left at Christian Universities”. The last, on diversity, was The Left at Christian Univs, part 4: Diversity.

It now appears that at least portions of the American academy are waking up to the threat against free speech and academic freedom represented by speech codes and “hate speech” laws, even in other nations.

Beware of Canada, where academic freedom is in jeopardy. That’s the message of a growing number of eminent scholars within the American Political Science Association (APSA) who have signed a petition expressing concern about presenting their work in Toronto, the expected location of the 2009 APSA conference.

And excerpts from the petition:

Continue reading “The Left at Christian Universities, part 5: Silencing Free Expression the Gentle, Positive Way”

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Aug 14 2008

“Diversity Leadership” and the diversity training industry: a project of the Left

Category: diversity,higher education,multi-culturalharmonicminer @ 9:34 am

Diversity Training University International (DTUI) is a company specializing in training diversity officers and workers for organizations. They maintain a blog where they discuss “diversity issues” from the point of view of diversity trainers and managers, and in a recent article discuss the difficulties diversity managers and trainers can have when they meet resistance.

In-house diversity professionals often ask me about how to address resistance to their diversity and inclusion program. These professionals describe managers who give a nod to the diversity program in leadership meetings, while making excuses for not being more actively involved in addressing the issues in their units. Others enthusiastically offer their opinions and suggestions on other topics, but disengage when the diversity goals are covered. A couple of the managers seem to be openly hostile towards the diversity program based on the reasons they give for not supporting it and the aggressive tone of their statements about it. Many managers may not openly show support negative statements about the diversity program, but you can see their faces light up while that “brave” individual speaks her or his mind.

I guess you can count me as one of those speaking his mind.  And yes, I’ve seen eyes lighting up when I speak up for people who are a bit reserved but agree with me.

Here is one of the more revealing paragraphs:

Our view of cultural diversity has been ingrained in us since birth. It
is not easy to unlearn the biases and prejudices we are exposed in a
society that gives us the double message of being tolerant in our
attitude and exclusive in our behaviors. Liberals tend to bend over
backwards for people who are different
and too many people of color
struggle with their own sense of sense of being treated unfairly. The
diversity professional must be clear about any baggage he or she brings
to the work.

I provided the boldface, to illustrate the inadvertent admission of the article. Diversity is a project of liberals, of the Left. No news here…. but the admission is useful for confirming it in the mind of doubters.

Why does this matter?

Because when organizations embrace diversity, they are embracing the Left. It really is that simple. That might be OK for some organizations, but when Christian universities, churches, other para-church organizations, etc., embrace diversity, they will not be able to avoid the intrusion of aspects of the Left which they may (and certainly should) find objectionable, on a host of social issues and political implications.

It is possible, of course, that a strong diversity movement in an institution is not the cause of a Leftward motion, but is rather a symptom of it. The correlation is clear, however. Whether diversity is itself a contributor to Leftward motion, or whether it is merely the “canary in the coal mine”, or both, a strong diversity emphasis in your institution is something to be concerned about, if you hold to traditional perspectives on matters like abortion, gay marriage, national defense, government taxation and redistribution, etc.

If you’re a diversity professional now, I suggest you encourage your children to seek another career. According to the New York Times:

Ethnic and racial minorities will comprise a majority of the nation’s population in a little more than a generation, according to new Census Bureau projections, a transformation that is occurring faster than anticipated just a few years ago.

Got that? Your job is going to be as obsolete as the buggy whip, and quite soon. Better start planning for early retirment, and encourage your kids to major in something else…. say, engineering or business administration or marketing. Or white studies.

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Jul 23 2008

When there’s a financial crisis, look to the government as the cause, part 2

Category: Congress,corruption,diversity,economy,election 2008,housing,politicsharmonicminer @ 12:11 pm

Thomas Sowell continues his previous discussion of how the government is the primary cause of our current financial issues.

We don’t look to arsonists to help put out fires but we do look to politicians to help solve financial crises that they played a major role in creating.

How did the government help create the current financial mess? Let me count the ways.

Continue reading “When there’s a financial crisis, look to the government as the cause, part 2”

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