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Category: Race & Ethnicity

“Conservative Values” at Princeton

By now, most people have read about Samuel Alito’s membership in the racist, sexist Concerned Alumni of Princeton group. While his membership is notable — what kind of decent person remains in such a heinous organization, even if they weren’t particularly active? — what I think is more interesting is the conservative reaction to his membership.

In an interview, [Laura] Ingraham said liberal groups were making too much of Judge Alito’s membership. “Stop the presses!” she said. “Sam Alito, a conservative, was once a member of a conservative Princeton alumni group.”

Mr. D’Souza said supporters of Concerned Alumni were motivated by a fear that “traditional values” at Princeton had come under attack, but their specific concerns varied from academic standards to the athletic program. Judge Alito’s support for the group “might tell you something,” he said, “but it is hard to know what.”

So what are the “conservative” and “traditional” values that Concerned Alumni sought to uphold?

The group had been founded in 1972, the year that Judge Alito graduated, by alumni upset that Princeton had recently begun admitting women. It published a magazine, Prospect, which persistently accused the administration of taking a permissive approach to student life, of promoting birth control and paying for abortions, and of diluting the explicitly Christian character of the school.

As Princeton admitted a growing number of minority students, Concerned Alumni charged repeatedly that the administration was lowering admission standards, undermining the university’s distinctive traditions and admitting too few children of alumni. “Currently alumni children comprise 14 percent of each entering class, compared with an 11 percent quota for blacks and Hispanics,” the group wrote in a 1985 fund-raising letter sent to all Princeton graduates.

and

A pamphlet for parents suggested that “racial tensions” and loose oversight of campus social life were contributing to a spike in campus crime. A brochure for Princeton alumni warned, “The unannounced goal of the administration, now achieved, of a student population of approximately 40 percent women and minorities will largely vitiate the alumni body of the future.”

and

When the administration proposed a new system of residential colleges with their own dining halls, Prospect denounced the idea as a potential threat to the system of eating clubs. The magazine charged that, like affirmative action, the plan was “intended to create racial harmony.”

Prospect portrayed the proposal as an effort to end the de facto segregation of the campus in which black students were concentrated in one dormitory and mostly did not belong to the clubs. “Doubtless, there will be many who regard this as mere stalling, and prejudice by another name,” an unsigned 1982 editorial argued in defense of the magazine’s position. “If realistic approaches to problems must be called dirty names because we do not like them, well, there is no remedy for it.”

Glad to see that at least some conservatives will look at racism, sexism and bigotry and call them out for what they are: “traditional conservative values.”

Being White Is Hard

You know, those darkies are really ruining New York City when a nice white lady can’t go to the beach because she finds it disgusting, and when all those colored folks dirty up the public pools (before you know it, they’ll be letting them use our drinking fountains, too!).

To the Editor:

As a white woman who lived my first 18 years in the Inwood section of Manhattan and the past 13 years living in the Bronx, I’d like to say there are plenty of public places I cannot go based on my skin color.

There are no public pools I would feel comfortable in, and I have no desire to travel to a less desirable area to use one. I don’t go to Orchard Beach because it’s just disgusting. I can’t go to state parks, even those in Rockland and Northern Westchester Counties, because of the lack of security, noise and filth often created by those who reside in New York City.

So those who live in East Harlem may feel slighted because there are too many white people using the facilities at Randalls Island, but I have felt slighted my whole life in this city for the same reason. Only when you’re white, you’re not allowed to say anything, nor does anyone do anything about it. You just learn to deal with it.

Colleen Sussmann
Morris Park, the Bronx

Colleen, you’re welcome to move to Salt Lake City at any point.

via Gawker.

Send ‘Em Back to Africa

Nah, this guy isn’t racist, just realistic.

The assiduously courted invasion usually rests on a curious idealism that I find hard to credit in adults. The notion is that we are all just people, brothers under the skin, that all we need is love and understanding, black and white together, kum bah ya; only a few reactionary forces need to be stilled to bring about universal bliss. This happy thought doesn’t surprise me among students in high school. Politicians aren’t.

Has no one noticed that diversity doesn’t work? Putting together peoples with little in common begs for trouble, usually with success. It is the chief source of the world’s bloodshed and enmity.

Read More…Read More…

In Memory: Rosa Parks

rosa

At 92, Rosa Parks has passed away. There’s probably nothing I can say about her that will do justice to what a remarkable human being she was, and that will fully capture her contribution to the world we live in today. I know many people take issue with Jesse Jackson, but I thought his reaction was appropriate: “She sat down in order that we might stand up. Paradoxically, her imprisonment opened the doors for our long journey to freedom.”

Shy and soft-spoken, Mrs. Parks often appeared uncomfortable with the near-beatification bestowed upon her by blacks, who revered her as a symbol of their quest for dignity and equality. She would say that she hoped only to inspire others, especially young people, “to be dedicated enough to make useful lives for themselves and to help others.”

She also expressed fear that since the birthday of Dr. King became a national holiday, his image was being watered down and he was being depicted as merely a “dreamer.”

“As I remember him, he was more than a dreamer,” Mrs. Parks said. “He was an activist who believed in acting as well as speaking out against oppression.”

She would laugh in recalling some of her experiences with children whose curiosity often outstripped their grasp of history: “They want to know if I was alive during slavery times. They equate me along with Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth and ask if I knew them.”

I’m sure there will be many more things written about her in the coming days. Feel free to leave additional links in the comments. While I doubt it will be a problem, any rude, innappropriate or off-topic comments on this post will be deleted.

Thanks to Sumeet for the immediate IM and the enthusiastic “I love that woman!” when it was posted on the Times website.

Nazis, You Suck

…but Doug Giles kind of understands.

Sure, he’ll take a strong anti-Nazi position — look, Nazis, you guys failed to take over the world, so clearly the movement is a loser. Better luck next time. Pick up a Marvin Gaye record and move on. But, as much as Doug dislikes people who follow dead movements (Communists, for example), he dislikes people who more actively dislike those people even more. Black people, for instance, whose constant, unending looting makes them appear “sub-human” to folks like Doug (Nazism, what?). Mr. Giles lives in fear of these folks, who inexplicably become angry when a group of neo-Nazis show up in their neighborhood to protest their very existance.

I mean . . . what’s going to set them off next? Long lines at Taco Bell, sold out tickets to Snoop’s concert, no booths available at the Olive Garden, a two-week waiting period for 22” rims?

…Because being angry at Neo-Nazis who tell you you’re sub-human is sort of like being angry when you can’t get your Taco Bell fast enough. And, really, the Olive Garden? Wouldn’t something about fried chicken and watermelon be a better racist reference? Jeez, Doug, get it together…

The cherry on top of this multi-layered, dysfunctional cake is that we’re told we have to understand the plunderers . . . yea, feel their pain. Look, I understand getting ticked off and wanting to mess someone up. I feel that way at Starbucks every morning when I’m standing behind a JLo wannabe who uses nine words to order her coffee. It’s all I can do to keep from pile driving her skull with a big French coffee press from their display rack for eating into my schedule and for polluting the atmosphere with her preening self-love.

Dude, you’re in Starbucks. If you don’t want to hear someone use nine words to order their coffee, get a 50-cent cup of black from a cart on the street (50 cent! Black! What am I thinking??). And what was that snide comment earlier about black folks getting mad about long lines at Taco Bell? Pot, kettle, etc etc.

And is anyone else disturbed that the simple act of a woman ordering her drink at Starbucks is enough to send Doug into such a rage that he wants to pile drive a coffee press into her skull? That is genuinely frightening, and it sounds like Mr. Giles needs some help.

Since this great land is still the land of opportunity, my suggestion to the violent ones “without” is this: Why don’t you take all the energy you normally exert in choosing which bandana you’ll wear to hide behind, what moving vehicle you’ll pelt with a fist- sized rock, how much crack you’ll smoke before breakfast, determining what alley has the best bottles for Molotov cocktails and what hole you can slink into post-riot and focus that get-up-and-go into getting your GED, going to college and giving your life to Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Tony Robbins, Oprah or someone of higher power?

Right. Because Doug gave his life to Jesus, and now he only fantasizes about breaking the skulls of young women who have the audacity to waste his precious time by ordering their coffee. Particularly when those women are Puerto Rican, or otherwise resemble JLo (perhaps it’s the amazing ass that infuriates him?) That, my friends, is far more productive and laudable than reacting when Neo-Nazis show up on your doorstep.

But I Thought We Hated Europe

Sure, but we hate native brown people more. Before you dare praise any culture without European roots, heed the ladylike racism of IWF’s Charlotte Allen. Responding to an archeologist quoted in the New Yorker as saying of pre-Columbian Brazil, “All the settlements were laid out with a complicated plan, with a sense of engineering and mathematics that rivalled anything that was happening in much of Europe at the time,” Allen (no doubt an expert in archeology herself) responds with, “What?” She goes onto defend the virtues of European architecture, of which there are many, all while arguing that no other civilization compares. Heck, she says, they still don’t compare:

The Brazilians, by contrast, for all their admirable moats and roads, built no monuments of any kind, didn’t get past pottery in terms of art, and had neither reading nor writing. Their tribal descendants today, living off Brazillian government welfare, don’t do much besides run around naked, fish for piranha, wage murderous wars against their enemies, kill the occasional white intruder, practice polygamy (two wives apiece is standard), and try to keep their television-preferring children interested in the traditional customs, such as secluding teenage daughters inside the house for years until it’s time for the big fertility blowout.

Yes, those dirty naked savages still exist today! And they’re a conservative’s nightmare: they love welfare, aren’t ashamed of nudity, spit on traditional marriage, and hate white people (although they do, redeemingly, love war). She goes on to basically argue that Mayan culture has no good qualities either because they engaged in human sacrifice, their hands dripping blood “incessantly.” The Aztecs were barbarians, too. Her point: She *hearts* Europe. Or at least, pre-Columbian Europe. Because compared with them injun savages, she’d take Europe any day — assuming, of course, that we aren’t talking about France.

In Memory: Constance Baker Motley

Constance Baker Motley, the first black woman to be a federal judge, the first female Manhattan borough president, and the first black woman to serve in the New York State Senate died two days ago, at 84.

Judge Motley was at the center of the firestorm that raged through the South in the two decades after World War II, as blacks and their white allies pressed to end the segregation that had gripped the region since Reconstruction. She visited the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in jail, sang freedom songs in churches that had been bombed, and spent a night under armed guard with Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader who was later murdered.

Born ninth of 12 children in New Haven to immigrant parents from the small Caribbean island of Nevis, Motley’s father worked as a chef for Yale student organizations, including the Skull and Bones society. She decided she wanted to be a lawyer early on, and tried to finance her education by being a domestic worker. She got a break when a white businessman and philanthropist heard her give a speech at an African-American social center, and offered to finance her education. She went to Fisk University in Nashville for a year, before transferring to New York University, where she graduated in 1943. She went on to Columbia Law School, and after graduation worked as a civil rights attorney for $50 a week.

After becoming a federal judge in 1966, Judge Motley ruled in many cases, but her decisions often reflected her past. She decided on behalf of welfare recipients, low-income Medicaid patients and a prisoner who claimed to have been unconstitutionally punished by 372 days of solitary confinement, whom she awarded damages.

She continued to try cases after she took senior status. Her hope as a judge was that she would change the world for the better, she said.

“The work I’m doing now will affect people’s lives intimately,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in 1977, “it may even change them.”

Via my dad, who writes, “Jill, Look at Thursday’s obits, there is a very nice article about the first African-American woman federal judge who just recently died. It might be the basis for something to write about on your blog. Also when you start feeling down about the burdens of being a poor overworked law student, it can offer some inspiration.” Indeed, it did. As cliche as it sounds, the world is certainly a better place because of Judge Motley’s presence on it.

Purging the Poor

Naomi Klein is a must-read this week, as she rakes through the racial and socioeconomic politics of the new New Orleans.

Wearing a donated pink T-shirt with an age-inappropriate slogan (“It’s the hidden little Tiki spot where the island boys are hot, hot, hot”), Nyler tells me what she is nervous about. “I think New Orleans might not ever get fixed back.” “Why not?” I ask, a little surprised to be discussing reconstruction politics with a preteen in pigtails. “Because the people who know how to fix broken houses are all gone.”

I don’t have the heart to tell Nyler that I suspect she is on to something; that many of the African-American workers from her neighborhood may never be welcomed back to rebuild their city.

Why? Because Washington is offering huge incentives — tax breaks, subsidies and relaxed regulations — to big firms for their help rebuilding the city, which will be designed by people Klein calls the “white elite.” (And considering that whites make up only 27% of people in New Orleans, she’d be correct).

So what could they do? Well, integrate neighborhoods, for one:

As for the hundreds of thousands of residents whose low-lying homes and housing projects were destroyed by the flood, [New Orleans’ top corporate lobbyist, Mark] Drennen points out that many of those neighborhoods were dysfunctional to begin with. He says the city now has an opportunity for “twenty-first-century thinking”: Rather than rebuild ghettos, New Orleans should be resettled with “mixed income” housing, with rich and poor, black and white living side by side.

What Drennen doesn’t say is that this kind of urban integration could happen tomorrow, on a massive scale. Roughly 70,000 of New Orleans’ poorest homeless evacuees could move back to the city alongside returning white homeowners, without a single new structure being built. Take the Lower Garden District, where Drennen himself lives. It has a surprisingly high vacancy rate–17.4 percent, according to the 2000 Census. At that time 702 housing units stood vacant, and since the market hasn’t improved and the district was barely flooded, they are presumably still there and still vacant. It’s much the same in the other dry areas: With landlords preferring to board up apartments rather than lower rents, the French Quarter has been half-empty for years, with a vacancy rate of 37 percent.

The citywide numbers are staggering: In the areas that sustained only minor damage and are on the mayor’s repopulation list, there are at least 11,600 empty apartments and houses. If Jefferson Parish is included, that number soars to 23,270. With three people in each unit, that means homes could be found for roughly 70,000 evacuees. With the number of permanently homeless city residents estimated at 200,000, that’s a significant dent in the housing crisis. And it’s doable.

But why do I get the feeling that it won’t be done?

Bush *hearts* black folks

The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of “compassionate conservatism,” the lack of concern for the “underprivileged” his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action.

Frank Rich, I love you. Perhaps GWB would be better off if he called on Sally and Johnny for some help.

(Disclaimer: the site is a joke. It’s also obviously anti-racist, but I suspect that some people may be a little too slow to catch on, so please, no one flip out.)