Friends, if there's one assumption that dominates the worldview of the modern Left, it's this: bigotry, including racism, is everywhere, and you can assume, therefore, that anyone and anything is tainted by it, unless there's positive proof to the contrary. It's perverse logic like that, sadly, that explains much modern policy and jurisprudence, or what passes for policy and jurisprudence. Individuals, institutions, and companies are all assumed to be guilty of prejudice and discrimination, and they are thus placed in the unenviable position of either having to prove a negative -- that they aren't, for instance, racist monsters -- or of having to anticipate the sort of results that the Left is looking for, in terms of the distribution of life's rewards (from jobs and salaries, to college degrees and home mortgages), and to find ways, no matter how unjust, of delivering those results preemptively, to head off even greater headaches..
Case in point: the Department of Labor's vendetta against Oracle, the software giant. Read all about it in my latest article:
https://www.wnd.com/2020/01/swamp-regulators-harass-company-racism/
Dr. Waddy: I look forward to the writing someday of an objective history of the origin of the term "racism" and its relative -"racial discrimination".
ReplyDeleteAs a prison staffer in New York State I routinely faced casual but sometimes formal charges of the above for having refused to refrain from taking disciplinary action against minority inmates (with the exception of Asian inmates, gee, for some reason they had respect for immediate authority if not necessarily for the law and I never had to take them to task)simply because they were minority. I know the bitterness of having spineless management deem it "racism" despite the close attention to legitimate minority interests I paid in doing my job. So have so many in law enforcement. I was once accosted by a blusteringly indignant inmate who accused me of "racial discrimination" in my selection of Salsa cassettes for my library and no Hip Hop. I told him the following: "yes I did discriminate, just as I do when I buy a pair of shoes. This institution is within radio range of several Hip Hop stations but no Salsa stations and I know you guys have radios. I have a limited budget and it is my job to SELECT".
In the deep state there are so many esconsed by the Clintons and Obama for whom any thing they deem "racism" IS racism. Naturally they are terrified at the ever increasing encroachment of Trump appointees who bid fair to end their leftist reign of bureaucratic terror. Though New York State is now a far leftist fief under Cuomo and his slavish legislature, under Governor Pataki the affirmative action leftist commissars were for a time suppressed in our now benighted state. For a time, we laughed at them.
President Trump's obvious devotion to equal opportunity instead, in 2020 after all, of 40 years of yes, racially unjust affirmative action, is a positive and just position and should be supported by the real America in an all out effort for his reelection
Hear hear, Jack! Honestly, the Trump administration has only just begun the work of undoing the damage of the Left's program of "positive" discrimination, enacted over many years, and in many ways still advancing in education and the private sector. A Supreme Court decision finding "reverse discrimination" to be, well, DISCRIMINATION, would be welcome!
ReplyDeleteSalsa music=racism. That's a new one. You realize, of course, that if you had played or liked hip hop, you'd be guilty of "appropriation". You just can't win...
Dr. Waddy: I did get alot of thsnk yous from minority inmates (and some staff)who were pleased with the effort I made to learn from them and to have their sometimes particular interests well represented in my collection and services. However there were always some inmates and even administrators who assumed that because of my race and the fact that I am a man, I was certain to be thoroughly remiss and possessed of undoubted bad will.
ReplyDeleteHad Hillary been elected we would have had a similarly prejudiced President thoroughly determined to exact retribution from entire groups, racial, sexual and national. The power to accuse of "racism" and to punish for it has been as misused over the last 50 years as to have discredited the term "racism" much as was the term "heresy" in the secular world. It would be of benefit to see a SCOTUS opinion to this effect.
Agreed, Jack! The sad part is that few Americans realize the extent of reverse discrimination, or the pressure that is placed on many institutions and companies to achieve numerical goals, without reference to qualifications or fairness. It's a scandal, frankly, and it's getting a total media blackout. These matters aren't likely to be tackled aggressively at the political level, therefore. Our main hope has to be that the courts will mandate fairness, when and where politicians and private sector employers refuse to implement it.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: There is much irony in this for conservatives; we often lament the way the courts have effected change not possible in legislatures. Perhaps our justification can be derived from this: what leftist judicial presumption of legislative right has wrought in our laws can be undone by a judiciary respectful of the balanced and principled primary role of the judiciary in construction , not origination, of our laws.
ReplyDeleteThe totalitarian American left has long promoted and empowered a view of any questioning of the consummate virtue of all members of perceived oppressed groups as evil and deserving of unrestrained societal and legal repression. Fearing for their livings, their professional reputations, their financial security(no matter how laboriously earned) and , these days, even their freedom, people especially in middle management, with superiors insulated from the proven onerous effects of promotion simply for membership in "protected groups" (a term straight out of NY State government lingo) are understandably afraid to go on principle. They know they will be told "you may be right but you are wrong; bye bye, I'm not risking my career for one as lacking in 'juice' as you."
How is this countered? Courageous executives like Gov. Pataki can make a big difference. And yes, the courts can have a salubrious effect, like when SCOTUS ruled in 1996 that the states have no obligation to turn prison inmates into "litigating engines", thereby making it a little harder for thugs to sue for the absence of crunchy peanut butter in their taxpayer provided menus. It would take a profound political shift for Congress to return to common sense in this regard and as for states like NY and CA, they are lost for the foreseeable future unless a Federal government "fed" up with their arrogant totalitarian oppression of their "politically incorrect" subjects takes them in hand as was done to Southern states in the '60'.
Dr.Waddy: I should have said "Courageous executives like Gov. Pataki and President Trump can make a big difference".
ReplyDeleteTotally agree Jack, smiles.
ReplyDeleteJack, once upon a time the people themselves intervened in this battle over fairness in hiring, college admissions, etc. Affirmative action was banned in places like California and Michigan by plebiscite. No matter, said the elites -- we'll just find creative ways around the people's verdict. And so they did. The people, as they often do, lost interest -- and the diversity agenda and "positive" discrimination thrived as never before. If there's a lesson here, it's that all victories over the Left are only provisional, and they are resourceful enough to lose a battle but win the war. Thus, only by winning the war -- by defeating the Left itself in a much more decisive fashion -- can we make real progress.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy and Linda: Thanx and Ditto and it could happen this year. 2016 was the haymaker and this year could be the finisher.
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