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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day The interests of do-gooding organisations are always at odds with their goals. Succeed and you put yourself out of business. With racism in rapid retreat and mixed-race children on the rise, there is one great contribution the Commission for Racial Equality could make to its official cause. Stop existing.
– Jamies Whyte, who is what he sounds like and who has a black wife and a brown daughter, ending his comment piece today in Times on line today (also linked to by Mick Hartley)
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This funny piece in today’s NY Times:
“… public universities are scrambling to find race-blind ways to attract more blacks and Hispanics.”
They are looking for ways to stay racist in “race blind” ways….
He makes a dangerous generalisation. Places like the CfRE are packed with paid staff – they really do have an interest in keeping Britain racist, so they can draw a nice wage to think up ways of combating it. This problem now extends to many large charities and is deeply regrettable
But there are many, many ‘do-gooding’ organisations whose members are not paid, and would be happy to find a new hobby just as soon as they have set out to do what they hope to do. In fact, I was a member of one such organisation, dedicated to preserving historic buildings in the small US town of Hannibal, Missouri. Once it had raised funds to purchase the properties in question, and paid a lawyer to truss them in enough legal entanglements to keep future property developers at bay, they duly disbanded themselves. Job done.
Let’s not tar all those who seek to do good with the same brush.
Recent Hugo Rifkind comment in The Times’ People column stated,
I don’t think this was intended to be a funny thread.
But I am sitting here, literally laughing out loud at those first two comments. I don’t mean to be, but everytime I read them I start laughing again.
Perhaps that’s the best thing for these guys, to laugh at them.
Ah, I think that would be 1st and 3rd comments, Jacob’s and Julian Taylor’s. J’s showed up a little later.
All three are hilarious , J’s contains tarred with the same brush. However Trevor Phillips is the best because HE actually said it. In fact he should have commented that his wording was equivalent to potting the black ball.
I am reticent to interject any seriousness into an otherwise delightful thread but one can quite readily “attract more blacks and hispanics” (as well as more white trailer park kids) by using family income in place of race for AA.
The truth is, race has been used as a proxy for family income for some time and family income is merely a proxy for “parents who don’t give a shit about education”.
I’d prefer zero AA myself and instead, I’d cut checks to the parents of low income kids who did well on standardized tests (I know, I know, we’ll have to watch out for cheating). We’ll either have to convince these folks that education is a viable way out of poverty (it is) or spend more money to jail or subsidize them later. It isn’t fair that the competent should be penalized for the choices of the incompetent, of course, but there does come a “let them eat cake” moment if one isn’t careful. Sometimes one has to choose the “least bad” solution to avoid the truly terrible one.
Incompetent parents are a “tragedy of the commons” problem in my opinion. The effects of their substandard behavior are felt by innocents in the form of crime, large prison populations, etc. Poor kids seem to “get” that if you’re good at sports you might well get paid, why not (by direct bribes) convince them that the same is true (and more likely) via education?
I actually think the likes of the CfRE aren’t so much maintaining racism as continually expanding what racism is. Look at the pointless persecution of Hartley’s Jam over their Golly, the utterly bizarre discussion over the etymology of “nitty-gritty” (a matter that in more enlightened times would have been left to lexicographers) and the national self-evisceration over comments from a pig-ignorant slag on Celebrity BB.
Also note the glee with which these sorts of people are selling their latest product line: Islamophobia.
And it hasn’t quite garnered the column inches yet, but around the corner is “speciesism”.
Expect the CfRE to deviate ever further from reality and ultimately end up deeming everything (probably including themselves) racist.
YogSothoth,
So what you are saying is that the only part of education that is presently tested on a competetive basis (that being sports) is also the only one that is motivating and developing those students to achieve their potential?
The government kidnaps children, indoctrinates them, punishes employers for not hiring the products of that indoctrination process in the proportions and for the pay rates that the government dictates.
Does it surprise you that the only part of education that can’t be rigged (best football team, etc.) is the only part of education that is producing marketable graduates from the disadvantaged communities? That it is by far the most color blind and merit based department in education? In many cases these kids are able to move straight into national and international competition right from high school. And when they do attend college, their academic education is a by product of their athletic education.
And is it any surprise that it is mostly minorities that gravitate to the only education industry product that is intractibly merit judged at every single level of education from pee wee to NCAA?
It is time we brought free market competition back to education. Allow corporations to recruit students to train for jobs they actually need filled with skills that are objectively capable of doing the work. Let employers compete for students and students compete for employers. It used to be that was how it worked. Even to leaders of our country as great as Ben Franklin who was apprenticed to his brother for training. (A job he ran away from when he got in big trouble for sneaking articles into the paper that he wrote under the name of Mrs. Silence Dogood)
As a transition phase, define a core curiculum that the companies must teach to a testable standard in order to qualify for the program.
So – Speaking of discrimination in general. How come in the UK it is apparently perfectly legal to use so-called ‘positive’ discrimination in favour of groups who are under represented? What’s ‘positive’ for one group in a given set of circumstances is surely actually negative for all other groups. It also rightly or wrongly absolutely leaves the impression that anyone who so benefits was not the best person for the job, just another HR box ticked.
Discrimination is surely discrimination. If you reverse the circumstances and it looks wrong then it is wrong.