‘Wise’ Quote Not So Wise
While I think Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" line falls well short of racism and is even inarguably true given the right context (i.e., that personal experience colors one's filtering of information) it's still amusing to see it used against her in a clever fashion. Scott Ott weighs in with a satire piece entitled, "Sotomayor: Wise Latina Would Not Have Picked Me" Supreme ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 5, 2009 08:57
Republican Party of Whites?
A Gallup poll released yesterday finds that, "More than 6 in 10 Republicans today are white conservatives, while most of the rest are whites with other ideological leanings; only 11% of Republicans are Hispanics, or are blacks or members of other races. By contrast, only 12% of Democrats are white conservatives, while about half are white moderates or liberals and ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 2, 2009 08:14
Texas Limits ‘10%’ Admissions
Texas has modified its revolutionary "10 percent" program for higher education admissions after university administrators complained that they were "going to lose control over our class." The "10 percent" plan in Texas has been one of the most successful experiments ever tried to get more minority students into top public universities with race-neutral criteria. It spawned similar (if less ambitious) programs ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 1, 2009 06:57
Colleges Discriminate Against Asians
Kevin Carey, policy director of Education Sector, asserts that, "given the opportunity, elite American universities are prone to implement discriminatory admissions policies that artificially limit the number of American students of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese descent." Matt Yglesias is stunned and rightly appalled: "We’re a country that congratulates itself on having dismantled Jim Crow and the system of 'quotas' that ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 4, 2009 08:10
No Such Thing as Race: So Say We All?
The juxtaposition of George Will's latest column, "The Wreck of the Racial Spoils System," and this odd appearance by Edward James Olmos and the cast of BSG at the United Nations (via Charli Carpenter) bitterly arguing that "there's no such thing as race" except for, naturally, "the human race," is startling. Now, the idea that "race" is a social construct undefinable ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 26, 2009 14:40
Thoughts on the Voting Rights Act Case
One of the Supreme Court's most anticipated decisions this term is likely to deal with the constitutionality of part of one of the landmark laws of the 20th century, the Voting Rights Act of 1965; this may be the most important of a series of cases the court will tackle this term considering civil rights. In this post, I'm ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 19, 2009 22:53
Obama Going Gray!
The Old Gray Lady has another of the epic scoops that made them the Newspaper of Record. Ace correspondent Helene Cooper breaks the news in a piece of journalism titled "For Young President, Flecks of Gray." Well, that didn’t take long. Just 44 days into the job, and President Obama is going gray. It happens to all of them, of course ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on March 5, 2009 08:18
Obama and Monkey Business
Via memeorandum, I see that the Washington Post issued a preemptive apology for this cartoon accompanying Gene Weingarten's humor piece, "Monkey Business - The good news for men: Women love apes" in the Sunday supplement: The apology: The headline, illustration and text of "Below the Beltway," a column in The Washington Post Magazine today, may cause offense to readers. The magazine was ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 23, 2009 13:49
Alabama’s Constitution: A Result of Vote Fraud?
[caption id="attachment_31685" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Constitution of the State of Alabama, 1901"][/caption] A group of voters in Alabama is suing to strike down Alabama's 1901 constitution based on their claim that it was ratified fraudulently: The voters this month sued several state officials in Jefferson County Circuit Court's Bessemer division, claiming they violated voter rights by failing to ensure that Alabama's 108-year-old ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 17, 2009 16:43
Anti-Obama Racism
One of the trends I noted and commented on during the campaign was the insidious suggestion that one could only oppose Barack Obama's election as president out of racism. Now, it seems, we're seeing the evolution of that theme: racism must be behind any opposition to President Obama's policy aims. Megan McArdle defends [here and here] Arnold Kling from insidious charges ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on February 13, 2009 11:18
Tiger Woods and Garth Brooks at Obama Inauguration
The normally reticent Tiger Woods and the all-but-retired Garth Brooks will be featured in Barack Obama's apparently-starting-early inauguration. Tiger Woods, who has tried to stay out of politics during his ascent to become one of the world's most famous athletes, has accepted an invitation to speak at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday as part of President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration festivities. Woods posted ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on January 16, 2009 16:01
McCain Ads That Didn’t Run
Most of John McCain's television spots, going back to the primaries, were simply dreadful. Now, Fred Davis III, the "advertising whiz" behind these atrocious ads, is whining to TIME's Michael Scherer that McCain wouldn't let him run some particularly clever ones. What if the McCain campaign had run ads using footage of Barack Obama dancing with Ellen DeGeneres to show ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 26, 2008 07:55
Jonesing For An Apology
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports today that Bob Jones University's current president has "apologized" for his institution's racist policies, which persisted until the Civil Rights Movement finally made it to their little corner of Greenville, South Carolina in 2000. Per the university's website: For almost two centuries American Christianity, including BJU in its early stages, was characterized by the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 22, 2008 00:26
Goolsbee Victim of Reverse Discrimination?
[caption id="attachment_27730" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Economic advisor Austan Goolsbee, right, listens as Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama answeres questions at a campaign stop in Albuquerque on Feb. 1. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) "][/caption] One would think that a biracial president named "Barack Obama" who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia would feel a certain freedom from the need ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 21, 2008 10:35
Al Qaeda #2 Uses Racial Slur
Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Ladin's deputy, called Barack Obama a "house negro." Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites. The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading Muslims and Arabs that Obama does not represent a change in U.S. ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 19, 2008 15:01
