Thursday, 22 April 2004 - 5:28 PM EDT

I thought you'd be more outraged at this today. What with the tax increases and all...

Friday, 23 April 2004 - 8:58 AM EDT

I'm outraged over both of these articles. As far as the firefighters go, I mean, what else can you say. I liked how, in betwen ceremoniously whipping himself as penance before the press, the chief commented that the process was, in no uncertain terms, absolutely fair. As one firefighter said, "How do you get more fair than fair?" It's like some sorta PC riddle.

And the taxes -- oh, boy the taxes. I guess I'm not that upset about them. After all, with the increase in my energy bill and a levy on my cell phone, I feel confident that I'll be better protected from crime, that the roads will be better, the streets will be cleaner and the fire department will come to my house faster.

Unless, of course, they're all white.

Friday, 23 April 2004 - 3:27 PM EDT

In answer to your original question, the exact date is hard to pinpoint, but most experts agree it was somewhere around the time of Journey's first number one hit.

Saturday, 24 April 2004 - 2:44 AM EDT

A big-city Democratic mayor raising taxes is kind of a dog-bites-man story. I'm still pissed about it, but I can't say I'm surprised. This town will keep on raising taxes until everyone has left but Johns Hopkins, which will then be forced to pay a 100% college tax or something.

Saturday, 24 April 2004 - 7:46 PM EDT

I was surprised to learn that this blog is not named after my penis, but I digress...

"Some have said that the above sequence of events was tantamount to "stamping on racial progress and violating the tenets of the Civil Rights Act."

I don't know who said this and I'm not defending it. But I think that one freak example, or one bizarre quote, hardly justifies a wholesale rejection of affirmative action and civil right legislation.

If more people understood the policy of affirmative action, there would be far greater support.

Sadly, however, conservatives use freak occurrences like the above to sway popular opinion.

The truth behind affirmative action is this:

Our country is founded on the idea that we all have the right improve our lot in life through hard work and such. Equal opportunity under the law necessarily follows. However, we have a large segment of the population that was denied any opportunity for generations. Obviously the removal of legal impediments will not insistently cure generations of lost opportunity which have culminated in widespread poverty today.

This policy has nothing to do with morality or rewarding some and punishing others. Rather, it's an attempt to restore the property rights of African American that our government took from them.

Obviously, no wants quotas, which are rightfully illegal. But a policy that says "if you have two equally qualified candidates, the minority is preferred" is more than justified, it's, in fact, necessary.

Monday, 26 April 2004 - 10:47 PM EDT

All of those rights you are referring to are individual rights, not group rights. Affirmative action is tribalism for our times, and as such is antithetical to the regime of individual rights and responsibilities enshrined in the Constitution.

Any individual whose property rights have been violated has recourse to the law. But how have the property rights of any black person in 2004 been violated by the actions of people who have been dead for a hundred years? Furthermore, what property rights of say, modern-day Hispanics or women, were violated by slavery or Jim Crow laws? And why don't Asians benefit from affirmative action? Hell, the government rounded them up into camps less than 60 years ago.

Affirmative action laws only serve to preserve and encourage racial animosity. The "one drop rule", originally an instrument of white oppression, now has its fiercest defenders amongst black political leaders, who defend it in order to claim as many people as possible for the class of official victims. Any attempt to break down racial barriers (such as recently defeated Propostion 54 in California), is decried as an attack on civil rights -- this from the movement which once dreamed of a nation where people "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".

Tuesday, 27 April 2004 - 8:39 PM EDT

I agree that property is an individual right. It was a right that was taken away from all African Americans.

Of course, that was in the past. All slave-owners are long dead, and so are their slaves. But there are consequences and aftereffects of this past.

For example, if you compare the level of wealth today, GDP, infant mortality rates, etc. of whites and African Americans, the consequences and aftereffects of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and other discrimination are all too apparent.

I don't believe that African Americans are inferior to, or more lazy than, whites. So why are they so much worse off (on average)?

Obviously, it has a little something to do with the past, to put it mildly.

Personally, I think affirmative action is the right idea.

I'm now sure what "recourse of law" you're suggesting. Reparations?

As far as other races go, and this is a separate issue, why not encourage multiculturalism? No one wants quotas or anything like that. I don't. But I think we all gain from diversity.

Wednesday, 28 April 2004 - 10:17 AM EDT

The question is: at what point do blacks stop needing a head start (or conversely, when do we stop puninshing whites for the sins of their ancestors?)? Forever? Until blacks perform economically at the same levels as whites? What if that never happens?

Obviously, we don't all start off on a level playing field. But race isn't the only (or even the most important) factor. I'm not sure that I (born to two 14 year-old parents, and the first in my family to attend college) have a leg up on the child of a couple of PG County bureaucrats or lawyers who happens to be black.

If race is the only the thing holding blacks back, how do you explain the economic and academic success of West Indian or Nigerian immigrants compared to American blacks? They are exposed to same racism and discrimination that supposedly disadvantage every other black person.

The answer is that immigrant blacks are products of a culture that encourages achievement, while American black culture derides economic and academic achievement as "acting white" or "selling out". See John McWhorter's work Losing The Race: Self-Sabotage In Black America for the reasons why the problems of American blacks are, by and large, integral to their culture, not imposed on them from external forces.

As far as other races go, and this is a separate issue, why not encourage multiculturalism?

Wednesday, 28 April 2004 - 4:27 PM EDT

As much as I enjoy seeing Marc beat the living crap out of Dave, I though I'd chime in myself. Not to devalue this "big picture" discussion of Affirmative Action, but we'd be remiss if we neglected the fact that the Baltimore Fire Department has an Affirmative Action program that failed to produce the desired results. The tests used to screen fire fighters were designed with minorities in mind (whatever that might mean), and every black candidate who met the qualifications was hired. The question that has yet to be answered is one that firefighters in the city have been asking since this whole situation became public: How do you get more fair than fair?

If there simply is not a large number of qualified black candidates to fill these positions, is the answer to lower the standards at which new recruits are hire? Wouldn't this put public safety (the first and most important goal of any governing body) in jeopardy?

It's one thing if qualified black applicants were denied employment for no other reason than their race. But not only is this not the case, but the city made a distinct effort to hire as many qualified black candidates as possible.

Now, in order to increase the applicant pool the tests will be altered (read: standards lowered) and will be given more frequently, despite the fact that the city is in the middle of serious budget woes.

There's no racism in this case. And there's not even a lack of Affirmative Action. The problems that arise from this case do not raise the question of whether or not Affirmative Action is just, but what do you do when Affirmative Action still doesn't work?