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‘All Animals Are Equal, but Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.’
I need help in trying to understand some of the deep thinking of this “Administration” with the most recent example being the grossly unfair and, if done by anyone but our Potemkin “President,” near illegal announcement that he would only consider a black female for the next seat on the Supreme Court. Here is my question: I would sincerely appreciate it if anyone can tell me the difference between what he (yes, I know and we all know “he” doesn’t do anything but…) is doing and what this sign from our earlier days represents:
Or this one from London:
Some of the messages I found contained such offensive words by today’s standards I could not post them, but you get the point. To return to my question, how are these any more offensive conceptually than the White House criteria, which eliminates 98% or more of the attorneys in the country, approximately a million, from even being considered— even as a long, long shot!- for the position. And, as a writer with the Federalist pointed out,
What a slap in the face, by the way, to Breyer. Nothing says, “Thanks for your service!” like a president effectively deciding you’re unfit to fill the very post you just vacated because he believes it’s politically convenient to discriminate against the skin hue and gonads you were born with. But that’s what the left does. In two years, Breyer will have his namesakes and statues ripped down, just like Lincoln. That’s what they call progress.
There is no doubt that the use of this criteria would be unlawful if used by a business and unconstitutional if used in admission policies in a university; this was set forth clearly in a discussion by Professor Jonathan Turley in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “A College Couldn’t Get Away With Biden’s High Court Criteria”:
Mr. Biden could have learned something from the universities now defending their admissions policies in Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. For decades, universities have avoided the type of outright quota the court held unconstitutional in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). “Preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake,” Justice Lewis Powell wrote. “This the Constitution forbids.”
As Prof. Turley points out, “Mr. Biden’s use of such threshold exclusions is neither unlawful nor judicially reviewable”’, but it does represent one more instance of this “Administration” taking every opportunity to arrogantly and disdainfully sow divisiveness and fan the flames of already dangerous levels of racial tension across the land. It also carries with it more than just a sniff (no pun intended) of cynicism based on the assumption that no member of the GOP would dare challenge the nomination of one of the most highly privileged classes in America today
While one may safely assume that will be the case with reliable squishes like Romney and Graham, one can only continue to hope that some of the few Senators on our side with at least remnants of backbones may actually examine the record of whichever black woman is nominated just as vigorously as the despicable cretins, such as the current Vice President, Maizie Hirono, and other “luminaries” of the Democrat persuasion, did in the Kavanaugh and Coney hearings. While I am a firm believer in the old saw “Hope springs eternal”, I am certainly not holding my breath on that one.
While not unlawful, this criteria, and the next Justice it will produce, will set up what should be a most uncomfortable scenario when the docket is called for Oral Arguments in the Harvard and UNC cases; Prof. Turley again:
Mr. Biden is now going to create one of the more jarring and incongruous moments in the history of the Supreme Court. This fall, in the Harvard and University of North Carolina cases, the justices will hear arguments that the use of race in admissions is unlawful discrimination. One of them will have gained her seat in part through exclusionary criteria of race and sex.
In the Federalist piece cited above, Joy Pullman sketched out the potential damage Biden is doing with this move (as if he has not done enough damage to our Nation in one short year already) in stark, but accurate, terms:
This makes me sick. When I was a girl, my momma taught me that in America, we don’t treat people any differently due to their skin color. She taught me that’s an evil thing, and she learned it coming of age in Detroit during the civil rights movement. Most Americans alive today learned the same thing from our parents and schools. We hate this and find it utterly repulsive. This is not the America we want, not at all.
***
Today’s left also calls “progress” picking a woman for her boobs instead of her brains, and a judge for her skin color instead of her adherence to the law. They also claim that a nominee should be immune to all criticism and gain unthinking support from elected representatives based solely on her skin color and biological sex.
I call this disgustingly racist and sexist. It is not progress, it is retrogression. Americans should not tolerate social Jim Crow dynamics like these any more than we tolerated Jim Crow laws in the second half of the 20th century. I don’t want to go through another round of mass civil unrest to re-establish that American ideal, either. Neither should anyone else, but that’s what this kind of sex- and race-baiting will lead to if left unchecked.
When I first started thinking about writing something about this wretched move on the part of what I consider to be a thoroughly lawless “Administration” which trashes the Rule of Law at every opportunity, I thought I might start with a tongue-in-cheek bit of mischief by wondering what would happen if someone, somewhere, would file a lawsuit claiming this selection was null and void as it is based on the rankest kind of racism and should not be permitted. Lo and behold, I find, in an article titled “You may have a solid racial discrimination lawsuit against Joe Biden and the U.S. Government”, a most interesting discussion by a retired lawyer exploring those very possibilities:
Biden is either more honest than these employers or perhaps just less skilled in duplicity. He boasts of both his diversity and the discrimination that produces it. He has overtly, explicitly and proudly stated that he will rule out 98% of the qualified people for this opening on the basis of their sex and skin color.
That 98% of American lawyers – amounting to a number over a million – have a clearcut lawsuit against Biden and the U.S. government. Expect some of those lawyers to file that suit, including savvy political lawyers at places like Judicial Watch and the Federalist Society.
You too have a claim. Although having dark skin and no penis is a necessary qualification for this opening at the Supreme Court, technically a law degree is not. In fact, for the first century of the Supreme Court’s existence, none of the justices had law degrees because there were no law schools until the early 20th century.
That means the pool of potential plaintiffs in the civil rights claim against Biden and the government is nearly the entire population of American adults.
I foresee some entertaining political theater. Claims will be filed in numerous courts and with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Maybe some aggressive lawyers will seek temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions which would be heard about the same time as the senate confirmation hearings. Decisions will wind their way up the appellate courts culminating in, you guessed it, the Supreme Court.
Where will all of this lead to in the future? The possibilities — bleak as is everything else about this “Administration” — are endless. One talented writer suggests the next logical step in an article titled “Biden Says Next Air Force One Pilot Will Be Black Woman”, in which the “deliberative” process (surely an oxymoron when it comes to this “Administration”) is described as follows:
With calls from within his own party to reimagine the elite retinue of Air Force One pilots into one that “looks like America,” President Biden announced that the next pilot to fly Air Force One will be a black woman.
In his statements from the White House Rose Garden, Biden said that the next Air Force One pilot will be the “most-qualified, active-duty military pilot who isn’t Hispanic, Native American or of Indian, Arab, Irish, Asian, Scandinavian, or Mediterranean descent.” Biden added that “Black men also need not apply,” stating that a president’s safety is too important to be left to anyone other than the most qualified pilot available, provided that the pilot is “a black gal.”
According to anonymous sources within the White House, Biden initially expressed concerns to his aides that a president’s safety when flying is too important to be left to considerations of race and gender, saying “This is my life we’re talking about.” Biden came around, however, after two female staffers fainted and a third male staffer vowed to literally self-immolate then and there if he didn’t choose a black woman. (All of the staffers were white.)
As a proud member of the Bar and one who, if I may say it without sounding too much like so many virtue-signalers of our “woke” generation, reveres and respects our American Rule of Law, it pains me to see these ruthlessly lawless “elites” writing Presidential policy with little or no regard for the values and customs and traditions which made our country what it is today—the greatest Nation ever devised by the mind of man. I hope we can all hang onto the idea that hope really does spring eternal and that we will soon have leaders who love America rather than those who defile America at every opportunity.
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One can deconstruct anyone’s personal history and emphasise the negative for partisan purposes, including many heroes of the conservative movement. Equating a duly elected President of the United States with a “gangsta rapper” is pretty low.
Aren’t role models generally considered to be people WORTHY of admiration, etc, because they WORKED to get to where they got? The evidence is that Obama didn’t. How does one “emphasize the negative” that Obama didn’t DESERVE to get into Harvard or onto the Law Review, based on his actual (lack of) performance? That’s not “emphasizing” that’s just pointing out the facts.
“people who were with him at law school” do not determine “the facts”. Anyway, I’m no fan of the guy, far from it. I still think it is objectively a good thing that a black man was elected President.
Including the members of the Stupid Party who should have been all over that within the hour.
Thus, the word “stupid” in the name of their formerly historically honored party!
I don’t think it’s good for (black/white) kids to think they can reach levels they don’t deserve.
Nobody in the black community is saying that. They’re saying america is systemically racist regardless of Obama winning the highest office in the land. No one says it about Clarence Thomas either. So we don’t need to cave on this racial pandering and pretend out the other side of it will be more positivity about America or whites. There won’t be. Clarance Thomas will be an uncle tom and the black liberal female justice will be set upon by racists for fighting for social justice.
But it’s certainly true that he was overwhelmingly elected by white people. The good is shown not in the man himself but in those who chose him and why.
Except there’s good evidence that they voted for him – many of them both times, and then voted for Trump – not because they thought he was qualified, or even because they thought the country should have a (half-)black president, but because they wanted to feel good about themselves for doing so. Kinda different.
Those who voted for him were saying, Yes! We’re not racist. We will have a black president. Let’s move on!
And they hoped for change. I didn’t vote for him, but I think of those who did, this was what they were overwhelmingly thinking. Good intentions. Very bad, even contradictory result.
I think it would have been far better to have a QUALIFIED black (or half-black) president.
Added: I’ve said for years that voting for Obama because “it’s time” to have a (half-)black president, makes as little sense as voting for Hillary because “it’s time” to have an (allegedly) female president, or voting for Jimmy Carter because “it’s time” to have a peanut-farmer president.
And not one who took Americans good will regarding race and turned it around against them.
“ Half-black” is a derogatory term.
Maybe. Is saying quarter-Chinese derogatory?
But accurate. The “if he’s part-black, he’s BLACK” comes from the “drop-of-blood” days which nobody should be in favor of.
And one thing that steams me is when half-black-or-less people choose to identify with only the black side of their heritage. Not only does it also follow the “drop-of-blood” thing, but it ignores that if Obama had been born to two Kenyans even if they lived in the US (and especially if they’d then gone back to Kenya as his father did) what are the chances that he’d have even been “wafted up” as he was?
With respect, do I detect just a slight wafting of “woke” thinking all of a sudden on Ricochet? Just sayin’.
There are fissures in the “Black community” over how immigrant Blacks have been soaking up positions. Another source of friction is how lighter skinned Blacks seem to have more success in the diversity dance.
Is “black” a derogatory term?
Is “white” a derogatory term?
If not, how could “half-black” be a derogatory term?
Just trying to get the game rules straight, which is getting harder and harder in these days of wokeness and a bewildering lack of even a semblance of a sense of humor in which everything is an existential threat to the entire known universe. (For a sickening example, see the current pure insanity going on at Georgetown Law Center, not long ago one of the most highly esteemed law schools in the country, about Professor Ilya Shapiro, a brilliant and universally respected scholar of the law who had the temerity to make the exact point I made in this post, which caused a number of fragile little snowflakes to get a bad case of the vapors and demands for his firing!) Sincerely, Jim
Ah, you grasp the fundamentals of wokeness.
I do Ops Research for the USAF. One of the old heads gave me a gem that has served me well for this career.
“All models are wrong. Some models are useful.”
So the goal is not about being right, it is about being useful.
Wokeness is a mental model that purports to help you navigate life. It is a lens through which one interprets the world.
Wokeness is wrong. All models are wrong.
Wokeness is also useless – it provides no mechanism for healing, bringing together it doesn’t even provide a pathway to living your life – there can be no redemption within wokeness. Christianity at least has a mechanism for the forgiveness of sins. In wokeness there is none.
I didn’t say this, but I took it as sarcasm.
With respect, I don’t speak for “the black community”. I’m expressing a personal opinion. One I didn’t expect to be controversial.
Thank you! Jim
I’m not going to address your concerns because I reject the premise of race anyway. But the question of whether something is a derogatory term has an answer. If those to whom the term applies keep changing the term because it has taken on negative connotations, then yes, it’s a derogatory term. Now it’s time for Whites to adopt a national ad campaign to be known as European-Americans or North Atlantic-Americans.
Czech-Americans might have difficulty with being called “checkered-Americans”, which in itself might be considered derogatory as well. “He admits to quite a checkered past, you know.”
Context and intent are relevant. Especially the latter
As it happens, my parents came from two very different backgrounds, so I am 50% of each. I am intensely proud of both parts although in my daily life I am very much one part over the other. I frequently tell people about the other part (usually when they ask me where my name comes from). But a guy called me “a half-caste” once and that enraged me.
Respecting other people’s identities is not woke: it’s good manners. Denigrating someone’s identity because you don’t like their politics, or their life story or the lawful means to their achievements, is bad manners, or worse.
Checkers is for the Cracker Barrel crowd. The Ivy elite prefer chess.
@flicker, I realized my mistake after I had already sent the comment which is one reason I immediately did the next one. I did not intend to attribute it to you. Jim
I couldn’t agree more and the last thing would knowingly commit is a breach of manners or respect and sincerely hope that’s not the way it came across to you. While I agree with your statement about denigrating someone’s identity, etc., I believe it is wrong to use identity as one’s only measure for a nomination to one of the nine most important Judgeships in the world; I not only believe, but know, it is illegal when it comes to businesses and unconstitutional when it comes to university admissions. Not only do I not consider that not disrespectful of any of the nominees I also know it is respectful of the Rule of Law, far more important, in my view, than any one nomination to the Supreme Court. Finally, what gave rise to my initial set of comments in this thread, in addition to the disgraceful savaging of the reputation of one of the finest legal scholars in the country today, is the fact that I am sick to my stomach of all this talk about “whites” being apparently the only group one can now say anything derogatory about with impunity as if we were some kind of lower caste. This all becoming blatantly racist-there’s no other way to describe it. I also feel it is potentially quite dangerous as “whites” should no more be expected to be treated as second-class citizens as blacks did in the time of Jim Crow. With respect, Jim
It depends on how much suspension of disbelief they are attempting to demand of me.
I draw the line at calling a singular (he/him) plural (they/them). I also draw the line and calling “he” “she” it is bad manners to demand that I do.
I don’t disagree with much of what you say and I appreciate your expression of respect, which is mutual.
In my first contribution to this debate I used the phrase “suitably qualified”. I don’t like identity politics and I don’t like how President Biden has gone about this (or anything else for that matter). I just think it would be good to see people from different backgrounds on the Supreme Court. In fact, I recently helped my law student daughter with an assignment on the need for some different perspectives in our own (Irish) Courts. I am well aware that they are populated by people who almost all come from the same pool of elite schools, live in the same leafy neighbourhoods and dine in the same restaurants. People like me in many ways. But it’s not healthy.