Rod Dreher

The Limits of American Conservatism

FlashPasses and American Democracy

By Rod Dreher • September 10, 2012, 11:07 AM

Tom Junod uses his family’s experience at an amusement park where bearers of “FlashPasses” can skip lines to explain why he remains a Democrat, despite the Democratic Party. Excerpt:

It sounds like an innovative answer to the problem that everybody faces at an amusement park, and one perfectly in keeping with the approaches currently in place at airports and even on some crowded American highways — perfectly in keeping with the two-tiering of America. You can pay for one level of access, or you can pay for another. If you have the means, you can even pay for freedom. There’s only one problem: Cutting the line is cheating, and everyone knows it. Children know it most acutely, know it in their bones, and so when they’ve been waiting on a line for a half-hour and a family sporting yellow plastic Flash Passes on their wrists walks up and steps in front of them, they can’t help asking why that family has been permitted the privilege of perpetrating what looks like an obvious injustice. And then you have to explain not just that they paid for it but that you haven’t paid enough — that the $100 or so that you’ve ponied up was just enough to teach your children that they are second- or third-class citizens.

It wouldn’t be so bad, if the line still moved. But it doesn’t. It stops, every time a group of people with Flash Passes cut to the front. You used to be able to go on, say, three or four rides an hour, even on the most crowded days. Now you go on one or two. After four hours at Whitewater the other day, my daughter and I had gone on five. And so it’s not just that some people can afford to pay for an enhanced experience. It’s that your experience — what you’ve paid full price for — has been devalued. The experience of the line becomes an infernal humiliation; and the experience of avoiding the line becomes the only way to enjoy the water park. You used to pay for equal access; now you have to pay for access that’s more equal than the access afforded others. The commonality of experience is lost, and the lines are striated not simply by who can pay for a Flash Pass and who can’t; they’re also striated by race and class. The people sporting the Flash Passes are almost exclusively white, and they tend to be in better shape than those stuck on line. They tend to have fewer tattoos, and to look less, well, pagan. And by the end of the day, they start cutting lines where Flash Passes don’t even apply — because they feel entitled to — and none of them, not even their kids, will so much as look at you.

Read the whole thing. It explains to me why I, even though I’m a registered independent and quite alienated from the GOP, still feel more at home with Republicans than Democrats. It has nothing to do with the FlashPass and what it symbolizes — but it does have to do with a fundamental cultural identification.

I was raised in a working-class family (my folks are still registered Democrats) where the idea of FlashPasses are repugnant. Yet we saw, and do see, liberal elites granting FlashPasses to their favored groups. To them, my people — white working class people, and middle-class, or barely middle class people — are an undifferentiated mass of Privilege. We look like the FlashPass people do to Tom Junod.

Similarly, even though the GOP drives me crazy, I find it easier to be among a Republican crowd than among a Democratic crowd. My views on the environment, on nationalism, on foreign policy, and on the economy may not be entirely consonant with their views, but they are church people and cultural conservatives, and so am I. I have found that in general, Democrats don’t care if you sympathize more with them on economic and foreign policy issues; if you are a religious or social conservative, you are the Enemy.

I suppose you would call me a Christian Democrat, in the European sense. And that makes me by default a Republican, even if I no longer officially am.

Anyway, I agree with Junod that FlashPass America is a bad thing. I do not agree with him that the Democrats are against FlashPass-ism in principle.

Posted in Culture war, Economics, Politics. Tagged Democrats, FlashPass, politics, Republicans, Tom Junod.

106 Responses to FlashPasses and American Democracy

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EngineerScotty says:

September 10, 2012 at 6:35 pm

Assuming everything you say about your husband’s situation is accurate (and I do believe you), what happened to him was appalling. Racism in the workplace — anti-black, anti-Hispanic, anti-white, whatever — is always appalling, and ought to be fought. The difference is that liberals generally believe the way to fight pro-white racism is to formally embrace anti-white racism. Why should I embrace a political party that supports legalized discrimination against me and my children in college admissions, hiring, and so forth? Call me crazy, but I believe that my three little children deserve to live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, and the quality of their work.

Here’s the thing, Rod.

You (and I) are both are white male heterosexuals. In all three ways, we are privileged in American society. We’re not privileged in every possible way–neither of us is wealthy (AFAIK, at least I’m not); I’ve got more pounds on my frame than I should, but in many ways we won the genetic lottery.

I suspect that you agree that privilege based on race and/or gender is not equitable or fair. These are mostly immutable characteristics of humans (sex changes and Soul Man notwithstanding), not anything that is indicative of merit or morailty. I’ll leave sexuality out of it for the remainder of this post, as there is disagreement among many here as to whether or not this should be considered a suspect class, but I hear you agreeing with me that Racism Is Bad, and that–correspondingly– white privilege (or black privilege) is a bad thing.

Here’s the rub, though: Racial equality will require a reduction (and in the end, elimination) of white privilege. And in some manner or another, that will adversely affect people like you and me. Maybe not us directly (though I’ve had my run-ins with AA before, in the context of college admissions–though I’m not at all bitter about it), but some other person–possibly a friend, possibly family, possibly a complete stranger, but one who shares our “melanin deficiency”, will find some advantage taken away. Many parts of economics and society are zero-sum; therefore it is a mathematical fact that as the lot for underprivileged groups improves, the lot for the historically privileged will decline.

The problem with programs like AA is that they are often scattershot and arbitrary in their results. But a truly color-blind society and no AA quotas whatsoever would have a similar effect as a racist institution that is compelled to be inclusive–either would reduce the opportunities for whites, because a greater fraction of the opportunities would go to nonwhites.

Which leads to your question of why: “Why should I embrace a political party that supports legalized discrimination against me and my children in college admissions, hiring, and so forth?” While I won’t defend the specific means you claim, what if the question were instead poses “why should I embrace a political party that seeks to reduce the historical privileges granted to me and my children”? And to this, the answer is simple: It’s the right thing to do, and it’s the Christian thing to do. Why (beyond the threat of damnation) should you do any of the non-selfish things that are commanded by your religion?

I’m fully prepared to abandon the advantages given to me by my complexion in exchange for a fairer and more just society.

Are you?
Sam M says:

September 10, 2012 at 6:39 pm

Peter:

“. This guy is obviously a born and bred Democrat, bitter that he can’t afford the same pass as his successful friends (and enemies)”

Are you familiar at all with Junod’s work? I suspect very few of his friends are more successful. I presume he can afford almost anything he wants, too. He might be a lot of things, but envious probably isn’t one of them.
Rebecca Trotter says:

September 10, 2012 at 6:43 pm

And for the record, white victims of discrimination are in no way abstractions to me. It’s happened to me. Because of very public and very false accusations of racism, my reputation was terribly tarnished and I was within hours of losing my job as a resident assitant (the one which allowed me to attend my college as I could afford neither a car to commute nor the cost of room and board). I was able to keep my job, but it definitely meant I got stuck in the crap dorm rather than the much nicer, comfier and easier to manage upperclass dorm across campus. Instead they gave that assignment to a friend of mine with no experience. So yeah, I do know about the effects of reverse discrimination on people.

It was crap and unfair. But you know what? Crappy, unfair things happen all the time. Why should I expect to be able to move through my life without ever having anything unfair happen to me? Life is filled with lots of unfair things. My parents bought all of my siblings a car and paid for their college, but refused to do it for me. Unfair. I once had a woman I work with run a gossipy smear campaign against me that cause no small number of problems for me simply because I was doing her old job better than she had done it. Unfair. Life goes on.

I can say that because those unfair events were anomolies. They don’t characterize how my life generally works. For me to take the unfair things I have dealt with and demand that they be taken as seriously as the persistant, pervasive and deeply rooted unfairness that African Americans deal with is absurd. It would be like me telling someone with a gun shot wound that their injury is just like time I stepped on a sewing needle. They’re both puncture wounds, right?
Peter B. Nelson says:

September 10, 2012 at 6:51 pm

Heh, Sam. I dunno, I’m sure you’re right about him being successful, but he pleaded poverty in the piece. Anyway, nobody says “stuck on line” and he said it a lot!
Rod Dreher says:

September 10, 2012 at 7:04 pm

Yes, I know that I’m making a “the ends justify the means” argument. But frankly, every “means” is imperfect. There are always trade-offs. To argue that the means must never, ever discriminating against whites for any reason must be a bright line we defend because discrimination is bad is a bit rich given the fact that every African American’s life has been defined and shaped by hundreds of years of discrimination against them. Fix that first. Then worry about making our anti-discrimination efforts more perfect so that whites never have to deal with something that has been and continues to be part of everyday life for too many people.

Just so we’re clear that you are asking white people — not just rich white people, not just middle class white people, but working class and poor white people — to give up real opportunities in education and employment in an attempt to correct for centuries of anti-black discrimination carried out by people who were dead before they, the whites, were even born.

Good luck with that.

It seems to me that in your mind, these whites are abstractions, whereas black folks who will benefit from this state of affairs are real. I understand why this is the case with you, given your loved ones’ experiences, but can you not see how this strikes the actual people who stand to be disadvantaged by this attempt to compensate for past discrimination as unjust?

Let me ask: how will we know when the inequities have been corrected, and affirmative action can go? When will the playing field have been leveled?
Turmarion says:

September 10, 2012 at 7:20 pm

Similarly, even though the GOP drives me crazy, I find it easier to be among a Republican crowd than among a Democratic crowd. My views on the environment, on nationalism, on foreign policy, and on the economy may not be entirely consonant with their views, but they are church people and cultural conservatives, and so am I.

But how is this not essentially tribalism?

Culturally, though, you have to understand that I’ve worked in media all my life. It’s a very liberal profession, culturally speaking. A liberal cultural framework is normative in American journalism. Even though most of the people I’ve worked for and worked with over the years are white, just about the most alien thing you can be to MOST (but not all) of these people is a working-class, religious white person.

Well, there you go. You’re a conservative guy who has chosen to work in a very liberal profession, where you’re the odd man out; and that feeling of being the odd man out pisses you off; so you have a chip on your shoulder. I’m sure many women working in traditionally male professions, or blacks in predominantly white professions, etc., often feel the same way. In temperament, in preferences, and in various other ways, I’ve always tended to be an “odd man out”, long before I knew anything about politics. To put it the way John Derbyshire once described mathematical types (one of which I am), I tend to be an anti-social loner with very weak feelings of group affiliation. Thus, while I do go to church and have coworkers (most of whom at most places I’ve ever worked have been markedly more conservative than I) and belong to some organizations, I rarely ever think in terms of “my” people. I almost never think it preferable to cleave to others purely as a matter of group solidarity if I don’t like them or their views or don’t resonate with them. Why should I? Obviously we’re talking two very different worldviews here.

By the way, the late, great Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus, came out of the same socio-cultural background as you, and was a journalist among other things, and turned out Marxist. Go figure.

Geoff: BTW, it’s not odd that you can’t recognize that you’ve been extraordinarily privileged. I only recognized it myself when I moved from being part of the same privileged group to being part of a group on the outs. That puts me in a rather unique position, having experienced being part of both privileged and denigrated classes.

I won’t go into details, but that resonates deeply with me in many ways, Geoff.

I can also say from personal experience that being white is an overall advantage whether one believes this or not. I used to teach in a job training program 80% of the students of which were black; this in a small, 99% white Appalachian town. I used to see how differently the black students were treated out in the community from the white students. Black students I knew were outstanding were stared at and shadowed in stores; while white kids I knew to be punks, pure and simple were given free reign. I also used to read incoming resumes at one job I held; and I saw firsthand coworkers objecting to even interviewing applicants with black-sounding names.

Engineer Scotty and Rebecca, seconded.

MH: My guess is that some fields are ground zero for the culture war, while others are far more apolitical. If you worked in engineering most of your co-workers would likely be libertarians and you would likely have a completely different perspective.

Exactly. They’re libertarians or apolitical, for the most part.

Rod: But you know, there are white around here from old families who own thousands of acres of property that they inherited from their ancestors. I don’t think that is unjust. A man (and a woman) should be able to pass on things they worked for to their descendants.

I’m not sure I agree, beyond a point. Maybe this aspect of your thinking is part of why there seems to be such a sharp divide between you and some of us. Almost certainly, at some point those ancestors acquired at least some of that land by means that were probably not entirely just. Even when they were technically just (buying land from a poor man to whom it seems like a good idea at the time), such means still might not be morally acceptable in the big picture. Remember the Biblical concept of the Jubilee, whereby all property reverts to its original owners even if it was sold fair and square, so that no one group ended up too dominant in the amount of land it owned. I’d also point out that in the past you’ve expressed admiration for Distributivism. One of its tenets is exactly that everyone should have enough land, possessions, etc. to have independent economic opportunity; and that to that end, large chains, corporations, land holdings, etc., are unjust and need to be discouraged or even broken up.
Rebecca Trotter says:

September 10, 2012 at 7:22 pm

Rod, equality of opportunity is impossible to create without doing things to specifically address the accumulated problems that have come from hundreds of years of racist policies. African Americans didn’t end up with a plethora of dysfunction and reduced opportunities due to benign neglect. It happened as the result of deliberate, active policy choices and cultural norms. It’s going to take active policy choices and changed cultural norms to address the problems so that equality of opportunity can be anything more than a fantasy.
EngineerScotty says:

September 10, 2012 at 7:25 pm

It seems to me that in your mind, these whites are abstractions, whereas black folks who will benefit from this state of affairs are real. I understand why this is the case with you, given your loved ones’ experiences, but can you not see how this strikes the actual people who stand to be disadvantaged by this attempt to compensate for past discrimination as unjust?

It’s not designed to “compensate for past discrimination”–it’s designed to correct PRESENT discrimination. If I may presume, you seem to view institutional racism as a historical relic, a thing of the past. It is not. And you seem to also be regarding people as abstractions.

Given that, someone is getting disadvantaged either way, Rod. If corrective actions are implemented and some white guy doesn’t get a job he’s qualified for because of AA, this is injustice. If corrective actions are NOT implemented, and some black guy doesn’t get a job that HE’S qualified for because the boss is a bigot–that is ALSO injustice.

Which is worse? Is it a greater injustice to demand the rich pay alms to support the poor, or to demand that the poor starve lest they inconvenience the wealthy in their goings?

Let me ask: how will we know when the inequities have been corrected, and affirmative action can go? When will the playing field have been leveled?

At a first order approximation, when the percentage of minorities in places like boardrooms–and in places like prisons–approaches the percentage of the minority population overall?

As to what can be done: I suggest you examine the US military–which is, despite its myriad faults, probably one of the most color-blind institutions in the country.
M_Young says:

September 10, 2012 at 7:27 pm

“I’m fully prepared to abandon the advantages given to me by my complexion in exchange for a fairer and more just society.

Are you?”

Hey Scotty, why don’t you email Rod, tell him where you work, and see if he can come up with an African-American replacement for you. Or, since ‘white privilege’ is apparently something that oppresses every person of color, I’m sure we can find a nice South Asian H1-B that can not only assuage your white guilt, but will probably work cheaper and better.

Maybe you can also give away your house to a deserving black family. After all, if it is in a decent neighborhood, odds are that at one time the neighborhood ‘limited access’ to blacks in one way or another.

Finally, how about putting a price tag on this ‘white privilege’ — what’s the value added you think you get from being white? It’s gotta be big, like 30-40% at least, right? So why not give that much of your net worth (minus you now liberated house) to, say, the United Negro College Fund.

Just scan those charity receipts, email the proof to Rod, and he will be able to assure us you aren’t just walking the walk, or handicapping other whites in less fortunate positions than yourself, in order to get that oh so delightful frisson of moral superiority.
M_Young says:

September 10, 2012 at 7:32 pm

“Here’s the rub, though: Racial equality will require a reduction (and in the end, elimination) of white[s] ~~privilege~~. ”

There, fixed that for you.
Rebecca Trotter says:

September 10, 2012 at 7:32 pm

I wrote a comment that appears to have disappeared saying this before, but re victims of reverse discrimination: this is not an abstraction for me. It’s happened to me. I came within hours of losing my job, my reputation was completely tarnished and I was passed over for a more plumb position due to false accusations of racism by a few people who were openly hostile to me due to my race. It was terribly unfair. It’s a long story, but the only reason I wasn’t fired (which would have had really awful repercussions for me) was because I happened to start dating the man who is now my husband right around that time. If we hadn’t met and clicked, I would have been toast.

But you know what? Sometimes life is unfair. My parents bought all of my siblings a car and paid for their college, but didn’t do it for me. Not fair. I once had a woman make my work life hell by starting a gossip campaign against me because she was mad that I was doing her old job better than she had. Unfair. Unfair things happen all the time and there’s no reason to think that I would be exempt from every dealing with unfair things.

The thing is that unfair things happen in my life, but they are generally anomolies. For me to try and argue that unfair things that have happened to me are comperable to the persistant, pervasive and deep rooted unfairness faced by African Americans is absurd. It’s like telling a gun shot victim that I have shared their experience because of this one time I stepped on a sewing needle. They’re both puncture wounds, right?
Greenman says:

September 10, 2012 at 7:37 pm

So Rod, do you think the playing field is level? Or that there are no structural barriers that prevent racial minorities from achieving the same goals as whites – even whites of similar social and economic backgrounds? Exclusion and unfair
treatment persist in America, don’t we
need remedies to deal with them? Do you support any remedies or think they are un-needed?
M_Young says:

September 10, 2012 at 7:45 pm

“assure us you aren’t just ~~walking the walk~~ talking the talk”

There, fixed that for me.
EngineerScotty says:

September 10, 2012 at 7:52 pm

M_Young,

There’s plenty of H1Bs where I work, and I’m good friends with quite a few of ‘em. Diversity at my workplace doesn’t bother me at all. Were I to be replaced in my job, why would I care who it is who replaces me? To be honest, I worry far more about foreign outsourcing than about any brown person taking what is mine.

As far as my neighborhood, my home was constructed in 2000, and the street includes a Somali family, a gay couple, a Mormon mixed-Asian family, my Chinese wife and I (and our beautiful mixed-race kids), and a pair of older white couples.

Here’s the rub, though: Racial equality will require a reduction (and in the end, elimination) of whites

If you really feel that way, I’m awfully sorry for you.
M_Young says:

September 10, 2012 at 7:54 pm

“As to what can be done: I suggest you examine the US military–which is, despite its myriad faults, probably one of the most color-blind institutions in the country.”

That’s because right of the bat it eliminates the bottom 20% of the bell curve, and also folks with criminal records. Still if you look at elite units, or even combat arms units, these are disproportionately white.
reflectionephemeral says:

September 10, 2012 at 8:00 pm

This was a blatant act of discrimination: the only reason I wasn’t being hired for this job was because of my gender and/or the color of my skin. How could that be right?

I understand that made you upset; but what does this have to do with which political party you prefer? What is the Democratic Party specifically enacting or pushing for that makes you dissatisfied with them? I gather that you mentally associate Democrats with Affirmative Action, which you don’t like. How many people does that policy affect in a given year or decade? It seems like an awful slender reed on which to hang partisan alliance. I don’t see how you would support the Ryan budget over the Democratic program.

It sounds like you sympathize with Republicans because they’re “my kind of people”, and Democrats are less so.
Rod Dreher says:

September 10, 2012 at 8:04 pm

But how is this not essentially tribalism?

It’s not tribalism. It’s saying that on the thing that matters the most to me, the Republicans are more welcoming than the Democrats are. I am a dissenter from the mainstream of both parties, but my core convictions are respected by the Republicans in a way that they aren’t by the Democrats.
richao says:

September 10, 2012 at 8:06 pm

There’s a good deal of talking past each other on this board. I think some of what Rod’s critics are missing – and what Rod hasn’t made particularly clear – is that the source of a great deal of the resentment toward affirmative action arises from the perceived injustice in the distribution of burdens among the supposedly privileged white segment of the population. In this respect, it’s a great deal like busing: Policy is driven by the racial or socioeconomic guilt of elite, policy-making whites, but the burden is borne most directly by working class or lower-middle-class whites. While it’s true that those whites who actually bear the brunt of the social costs of these programs are more privileged, generally speaking, than the minorities who benefit, it’s also true that they are far less privileged than the whites who instituted the programs without bearing any of the costs; indeed, on the privilege scale, these poorer whites are arguably closer to the minority beneficiaries of AA than they are to the elite whites who are responsible for driving the policy.

In other words, you might convince me that I and mine should be on the losing side when compared to a historically disadvantaged minority candidate, but that proposition comes across as pernicious, classist, and socially divisive when I’m told that, in the battle for college admission, I or mine – and not the rich kid whose massive privilege derives from deeper implication in the racist power structures of the past than my family ever had, and whose parents support AA but are willing to put him through test prep classes and provide him with extra-curricular activities that my parents were never able to afford – should suffer a disproportionately negative effect on our admission chances (compared to the truly privileged white kid) as a result of our race.

To many of us who came up from broken, working class or lower-middle-class homes where we had access only to substandard education (often because of the religious choices of parents) who then battled those disadvantages to claw our way into a decent academic career, the condescending lectures on the compelling moral need for AA in institutions of higher education seemed like a steaming pile of hypocrisy: The white students who harped on it generally came from far more privileged backgrounds and were extremely unlikely to be affected by affirmative action; I failed – and still fail – to see any moral virtue in their willingness to sacrifice somebody else’s opportunity for advancement to remedy an injustice. Those in the university administration who preached this message from their secure, privileged positions in higher education were not much different. If our truly privileged class were to lead by example in sacrificing their own opportunities for the sake of remedying social injustice, AA might have received greater buy-in among whites; but they never have. And you expect me to cheer that folks with my upbringing are the necessary sacrifice to assuage their moral guilt?
Rod Dreher says:

September 10, 2012 at 8:08 pm

I don’t have the time to answer all of y’all’s objections. I’ve got to go to dinner. Wanted to say here:

At a first order approximation, when the percentage of minorities in places like boardrooms–and in places like prisons–approaches the percentage of the minority population overall?

It won’t ever happen. To make that happen, you would have to ban Jews from being more than two percent of the leadership in any industry. How is that fair? You would have to turn Asians away from the sciences and the computer industry. See what I mean by saying that the attempt to redress grievances by treating actual human beings as abstractions will just replace one set of injustices with another?
Erin Manning says:

September 10, 2012 at 9:11 pm

What Richao says.

I still remember the semester at college where I had to argue and argue on registration day that no, I *didn’t* have to sign up for the school’s meal plan. The few hundred extra dollars that would have cost were more than my scholarships, loans, grants, and pittance of cash could cover. The boy in front of me simply wrote out a check from his father’s account for the whole semester’s tuition. Two white students, but my skin color didn’t seem to mean as much as my redheaded temper that day–and his father’s bank account meant more than that.

I remember the semesters I took off to work, too, and the time I was working a temp job as a receptionist for a group of bank attorneys after I graduated–and there was a young African-American woman working there. As an unpaid intern (a hard gig to land with this prestigious office). Over her summer break from her Ivy League education. But, remember, *I* was the one with the inborn privilege…

It would be nice if we realized that what we mean by “white privilege” is really just the privilege of the 1%, many of whom happen to be white, or from WASP backgrounds. It would, perhaps, end the myopic focus on race and ethnicity and religion and country of origin, and widen the view to realize that the Ruling Class looks out for its own no matter who they are–and is pretty ready to screw over the rest of us.
Turmarion says:

September 10, 2012 at 9:19 pm

Richao does make a valid point about the class aspect of the whole situation, which is I think a big part of what Rod is saying.

Having said that, I’m tempted to put on my Marxist hat and say that a lot of this is classical false consciousness in which the poor working-class blacks and poor working-class whites, who should be natural allies, are bamboozled by the real enemy of both–the entrenched moneyed interests of Wall Street, big corporations, and big finance. They are the ones that control most of the pie, and set the masses of different ethnicities against each other for the paltry scraps, rather than allowing them to attack their real foes.

Rod: It’s saying that on the thing that matters the most to me, the Republicans are more welcoming than the Democrats are.

Earlier: [The GOP] are church people and cultural conservatives, and so am I. I have found that in general, Democrats don’t care if you sympathize more with them on economic and foreign policy issues; if you are a religious or social conservative, you are the Enemy.

Misleading for two reasons: One the Republicans as a party, or if you prefer, the leadership of the GOP, don’t give s*** about religious people beyond getting their vote. Even you have grudgingly admitted that at times. Also, you yourself have frequently admitted that the stuff proposed by the GOP is far from culturally conservative in its belief in no limits, etc.

It would be more accurate, not to say “the GOP are religious, socially conservative, etc.”, but “the religious and socially conservative are more likely to be GOP”. Thus, in effect you’re saying “My people are generally Republican, so despite my disagreements with the GOP, I’ll put up with it for the sake of my people.”

I guess you generally don’t see that as tribal, but I do. The type of people more in line with my temperament are more likely to skew Democratic–but I’ve become very much disillusioned with the Dems over the last several years; and unlike you, I’m not going to sign onto something, or feel more comfortable with it, regardless of what “my people”–insofar as I have a people–do or feel.

Maybe it’s like this: group affiliation means more to you than it does to me, and makes you willing to put up with far, far more for the sake of said affiliation than I (or apparently some of the others here) would be willing to put up with. That doesn’t mean I don’t love my family or my roots, or that I don’t have sympathy or a certain fellow feeling for my those of my cultural leanings; those things just don’t influence me as much or in as many ways.

The second point I wanted to make: you say, “[I]f you are a religious or social conservative, you are the (Democrats’) Enemy.” Like if you’re a religious or social liberal you’re not the Enemy for a lot of Republicans? If you don’t believe that, I can show you plenty of Facebook posts from conservatives I know!
Helen says:

September 10, 2012 at 9:24 pm

Rod said: “I don’t think there is any way around this except to do the best one can to create equality of opportunity. To create equality of outcome would require doing injustice.”

Of course, this is the genesis of the meritocracy.

Roberto, again I agree with you. Judith Warner is insufferable.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

September 10, 2012 at 9:27 pm

I actually read a summary of the EEOC laws yesterday in order to respond to a comment yesterday.

The laws do not require the population of a company to match the general population. They require the population of a company to be within approximately 4/5 of the population of the talent pool based upon the largest group.

So the general population might be 75% white and 25% various minorities. But these numbers don’t matter when the makeup of the talent pool is different from the general population.

In software engineering I’d guestimate a racial makeup of 50% White, 20% Asian, 25% Indian, and 5% black wouldn’t be out of line. This is wildly skewed population compared to the general population, but not compared to the talent pool. Odds are if you tried to force companies to match the general population you would do exactly what Rod said above and discriminate against Asians and Indians.
reflectionephemeral says:

September 10, 2012 at 9:58 pm

It won’t ever happen. To make that happen, you would have to ban Jews from being more than two percent of the leadership in any industry. How is that fair? You would have to turn Asians away from the sciences and the computer industry. See what I mean by saying that the attempt to redress grievances by treating actual human beings as abstractions will just replace one set of injustices with another?

C’mon man. Right now, there are 7 black Fortune 500 CEOs. No one wants to pass a law requiring that every group is equally represented, but it seems like the legacy of centuries of slavery followed by a century of Jim Crow hasn’t entirely gone away in one generation. That doesn’t mean, of course, that one can’t in good faith oppose a given Affirmative Action policy, but your comment shows some unusually glib indifference.
Glaivester says:

September 10, 2012 at 11:13 pm

Affirmative Action would not be a big deal if only 10-15% of the population were eligible for it.

But in a country where we are constantly importing Latinos and other non-whites (anyone who is eligible for racial/ethnic affirmative action is, effectively, non-white according to the government), this is extremely dangerous.

Moreover, why the Hell should any group other than blacks with ancestry here prior to 1970 and Native Americans get Affirmative Action? Why should someone who just moved here suddenly get a leg up over current citizens?
Glaivester says:

September 10, 2012 at 11:15 pm

Maybe not us directly (though I’ve had my run-ins with AA before, in the context of college admissions–though I’m not at all bitter about it), but some other person–possibly a friend, possibly family, possibly a complete stranger, but one who shares our “melanin deficiency”, will find some advantage taken away.

Will everyone stop acting as if race = skin color? Race is about sharing common ancestors that people outside of your race do not share. Skin color is one marker than distinguishes races, but it is not the same thing as race (Congoid Africans and Australoid Aborigines are both dark, but are genetically extremely distinct).

“White” is just another word for “European.”
Sam M says:

September 10, 2012 at 11:17 pm

Reflection:

What do you mean, nobody wants to pass a law. Rod was responding to an actual argument. One that went:

At a first order approximation, when the percentage of minorities in places like boardrooms–and in places like prisons–approaches the percentage of the minority population overall?
Glaivester says:

September 10, 2012 at 11:22 pm

Given that, someone is getting disadvantaged either way, Rod. If corrective actions are implemented and some white guy doesn’t get a job he’s qualified for because of AA, this is injustice. If corrective actions are NOT implemented, and some black guy doesn’t get a job that HE’S qualified for because the boss is a bigot–that is ALSO injustice.

The problem is that most black people today are getting jobs they are not qualified for.

At a first order approximation, when the percentage of minorities in places like boardrooms–and in places like prisons–approaches the percentage of the minority population overall?

But what if that is because on average, fewer blacks are capable of being good managers, and are, on average, more likely to commit violent crime?

All of this talk about institutional racism is largely based on an a priori assumption that there are no significant differences in abilities between different population groups. I don’t think that we should just assume this.
Glaivester says:

September 10, 2012 at 11:48 pm

Rod: have you considered the possibility that you and your white buddy were told that racism prevented you from getting the job because that’s an easier conversation to have then to tell someone that they just weren’t as good as the black guy who beat them?

I don’t know about the specific case, but, e.g., in college admissions, the majority of black people admitted would not be admitted with the same qualifications if they were white. So I don’t think that it is unreasonable to assume that the person was telling the truth.

Civil service hiring is rife with patronage. I would suspect the statement “we’ve got to hire minorities” was a dodge and they actually hired someone better connected

What is the average score of white hires vs. black hires?
Glaivester says:

September 11, 2012 at 12:00 am

Given that, someone is getting disadvantaged either way, Rod. If corrective actions are implemented and some white guy doesn’t get a job he’s qualified for because of AA, this is injustice. If corrective actions are NOT implemented, and some black guy doesn’t get a job that HE’S qualified for because the boss is a bigot–that is ALSO injustice.

I think the number of unqualified people getting a job due to Affirmative Action is higher than the number of qualified people who would be kept out without it.

(This should replace my previous statement “The problem is that most black people today are getting jobs they are not qualified for,” which is not what I meant. Plenty of black people are qualified for their jobs,m I just think that most of them would have the job even without Affirmative Action).
Siarlys Jenkins says:

September 11, 2012 at 12:29 am

Come on people, be a little more creative.

Is this REALLY zero sum?

When it came to handing out land after the original occupants were kicked off, it DID become zero sum for a time. Take Oklahoma. Black and white immigrants were pretty much welcome as long as there was more land to fill in. But once the free land ran out, those “white” settlers who hadn’t gotten any, seeing nothing left to take from “Imjuns,” got the idea “let’s take the niggers’ land.” Racism wasn’t all about ex-slaves with nothing working menial jobs. It was about families who cleared land and built farms being summarily ejected from it by a mob. It was about men who built up grocery businesses and print shops and livery stables having them burned down. Where do you think Americans of African descent got the idea that there is no point in even trying? The Tulsa riot (one of those white-on-black riots) was the ultimate expression.

But, in a moneyed, industrial economy, its not all zero sum. More people working for better wages means more consumers with more money creating more job openings. Black entrepreneurs opening successful businesses means more jobs, many of them for “whites.” Even if they have a “hire black” policy, a lot of their suppliers will hire “whites.”

Now that most colleges that used to be for very very light-skinneded people are more or less open to Americans of African descent, let’s start thinking about the mission of historically black colleges and universities in the 21st century. Its not so easy to think about those campuses becoming more diverse, but that’s on the agenda. How do we do that while preserving and respecting their history?

If I win the lottery, I’m going to sponsor scholarships for students who apply to campuses historically serving a specific demographic who are not part of that demographic. How do they get the scholarship? By writing the winning essay on what the history of that campus means to the applicant. Endowment of improved facilities would help of course. I know from personal experience that Howard doesn’t have all the physical plant a campus of its standing should have. Make it good enough that privileged “white” kids will apply, and the quality of education available to “black” students will also improve.

Of course there are two “historically black” universities in West Virginia that are already 95% “white.” That’s because a larger proportion of “black” people left the state even faster than “white” people when the jobs became scarce. (West Virginia State and Bluefield State, for those not familiar with the area).

Equality does not mean people with congenital melanin deficiencies making doormats of themselves, nor does it mean people of African descent waiting forty generations to let past robbery sort itself out.

A friend of mine started talking about reparations twelve years ago, and I started thinking… That would not be something “white” people owe to “black” people… most “white” people are descended from ancestors who weren’t even considered “white” when slavery existed. But, as with the banks who stole the money of Jewish depositors who were taken to Auschwitz… whoever ended up with the assets inherits the liabilities.

That would be about capital accumulation, not checks to spend on new furniture. The real inheritable deficiency STILL afflicting Americans of African descent is not being able (to a great extent for reasons beyond their control) to accumulate and pass along capital from one generation to the next… the kind of thing Rod is so sentimental about. Those who did accumulate had it snatched away again.

Like I said, be creative. There are real injustices still having an impact, its not all solved, and its not a zero-sum game.
philosopher says:

September 11, 2012 at 1:00 am

“The problem is that most black people today are getting jobs they are not qualified for.”

WTF?!?

[Note from Rod: Glaivester clarified this statement further in the thread.]
EngineerScotty says:

September 11, 2012 at 1:35 am

It’s been a few hours since my last contribution to this thread, so addressing various points:

My “to a first order” above, on statistical comparisons between the general population and the population of some endeavor or group, is only that–to a first order. I’m not here advocating quotas, or any specific policies, so if anyone thinks that I’m proposing a law that 20% (or whatever) of corporate CEOs have to be purple–I’m not. And certainly, more sophisticated models would look at the available pools for such thing–I’m discussing this more as a means of analysis, not as an absolute criteria.

But still–and for example: African-Americans are underrepresented in my career (SW engineering), its useful to understand why. Some of it might be discrimination in employment, or discrimination in feeder university programs, or cultural issues, or whatnot. Without knowing why, it’s probably inappropriate to fathom a solution, at least one that will have a chance of succeeding.

Regarding economic class–absolutely.
philosopher says:

September 11, 2012 at 2:00 am

Oh, thank goodness. Very sorry to have missed the correction earlier!
M_Young says:

September 11, 2012 at 3:09 am

There is a simple way out of this. Let us go our separate ways. You guys who think that somehow blacks are owed, that somehow whites stole something from blacks, that the success that whites had in creating the US is somehow based on the backs of blacks — well, give us a bill once and for all, and you guys can keep paying year after year, generation after generation.

Let us know how much it costs to settle our affairs. I think there are enough of us that would be willing to pony up. And then let us go. Give us — or more properly, permit us to settle, a section of North America for ourselves.

I don’t pretend that most whites feel this way. We are a minority. But still, if 10-20 percent of whites did, that would be 20-40 million folk, more people than a whole lot of nations today, an more than a whole lot of states and provinces. Just let us go, in peace.
Gentillylace says:

September 11, 2012 at 3:12 am

Glaivester,

Affirmative Action would not be a big deal if only 10-15% of the population were eligible for it.

But in a country where we are constantly importing Latinos and other non-whites (anyone who is eligible for racial/ethnic affirmative action is, effectively, non-white according to the government), this is extremely dangerous.

Moreover, why the Hell should any group other than blacks with ancestry here prior to 1970 and Native Americans get Affirmative Action? Why should someone who just moved here suddenly get a leg up over current citizens?

There were Latinos living in the US before 1970: my maternal grandfather (born in Arizona to old-stock New Mexico Hispano parents) was one of them. Do you think that only descendants of Latinos who were living in the US pre-1970 should receive Affirmative Action? Technically, I would qualify under such a rule, though I am as pale as paper and have all the white skin privilege that a French-Canadian surname can bestow (though I did list myself as white/Hispanic/Mexican-American on the latest census).

My thoughts about Affirmative Action is that it should be based on income, not race. There are many poor and working-class whites (et moi aussi, despite Grandfather Garcia: after all, I am only 1/4 Mexican and my Spanish is not that great), and some blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans are well-off. Yet most blacks, Latinos and Native Americans are not as affluent as most whites and Asian Americans. There would be a great deal of overlap between an Affirmative Action based on income and an Affirmative Action based on race, yet it would be more wide-reaching.
Church Lady says:

September 11, 2012 at 3:21 am

I don’t think Rod is getting what “Flash-passims” are. They are when rich and powerful elites buy their way to access to the inner circles of power and personal enrichment, living effectively in another world.

It’s what John Edwards used to call “the two Americas”. It’s not using affirmative action to get civil service jobs, or even ordinary jobs in industry or publishing. Those jobs are not anything elites are interested in anyway. They aren’t getting in line to work at the Post Office, or the Fire Department, or on the newsfloor. They are using their money and eduction and social networking to bypass all of that, and get the jobs and run the businesses that get them into that second America, the one with all the perks.

Affirmative action is merely an attempt to equalize and reverse long-term discrimination, which still does exist in most places. It has its plusses and minusses, but it’s not a form of elitist separation from the mob. It’s a way for people who weren’t even included in the mob, to join the middle class. And it doesn’t benefit the elites’ favorite interests groups. The favorite interest group of the elites, is the elites themselves. Affirmative action is merely a way to ineptly and crudely try to right certain social wrongs. They don’t much mind it, because it doesn’t really effect them.

The most grievous mistake Rod makes is to assume that the elites are mostly liberal. Far from it. The elites are merely the rich and the powerful, which is mostly a conservative class. Of course, even the conservatives among the elites tend to be socially liberal, because, well, they want to enjoy their money and power. They don’t want some religious nut telling them they can’t have a good time, or get their daughters abortions if they get knocked up at some elite university. But liberal or conservative, they socialize with one another, not with the hoi polloi, and they look out for one another’s interests.

One of those interests is social justice – at least among liberal elites. They don’t actually practice affirmative action among themselves, not when it would actually mean lowering their standards. Sure, they let minorities into their colleges and even in some of the higher echelons of business, but that’s only because there’s such a large pool of qualified candidates to choose from, you don’t have to lower standards to skim the cream off the top. The differences tend to be greater in the middle and at the bottom, but elites just aren’t that much concerned about such things, figuring the skill sets required to do a decent job down there couldn’t be that hard to master anyway.

Obviously, Rod has a chip on his shoulder on this issue, and any attempt to knock it off will unleash reams of self-justification we can safely ignore. He just hates liberal elites, we get it. Conservative elites, he seems not to have the same visceral response to. God knows why. Literally.

The thing is, it’s self-defeating. Does Rod literally think the GOP or the conservative movement is the path by which we can bring those two Americas back together, and end the fast-pass route to a separate America for the upper 1%? No, of course not. Does he really think there’s no difference between the social agenda of the GOP and Democratic parties? No again. He isn’t stupid. He just can’t stand the sight of liberals who think they’re better and smarter and more deserving than he is. Or who he imagines might think that way. And so he, like a lot of social conservatives well down there below the upper 1%, is perfectly willing to cut off his own nose to spite his face. The resentment runs that deep. It’s a powerful emotion, and ambitious politicians know how to exploit it, even among smart and thoughtful characters like Rod. It’s what keeps the machine going. The elites use resentment of their own status, and the powerful drive to acquire it, to divide the competition. Works every time.
JonF says:

September 11, 2012 at 6:28 am

Re: I think the number of unqualified people getting a job due to Affirmative Action is higher than the number of qualified people who would be kept out without it.

As a general rule “unqualified” people are not (knowingly) hired under affirmative action. No one is going hire people they believe up front cannot do the job*. For any given job opening there will usually be a plethora of qualified applicants. Under Affirmative Action QUALIFIED minority applicants will be considered ahead of equally qualified non-minorities. By all means feel free to object to this and make the case against it, but no, it is not the case that people without the requisite background and skills will be hired due to affirmative action.

* Every hiring manager who’s been at it for a while can tell their own horror stories of employees they hired who had great resumes and who interviewed well only to be a disaster on the job. HR departments and hiring managers are not gifted with prefect foresight. But that’s a different issue.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

September 11, 2012 at 8:12 am

Glaivester asked:

What is the average score of white hires vs. black hires?

I only have detailed insight into the New York civil service system based upon the experience of my mother and sister who work for the NYS government.

The bottom line is that nobody cares about the scores on the tests. The rule is that you have to interview the top three scorers who apply for a position. However, there are rules about how and why you can disregard the scores and not hire any of them.

In practice some managers try to hire the best candidates, but others seek to hire connected candidates to further their careers. The same is true with promotions.
Mr. Patrick says:

September 11, 2012 at 9:10 am

Institute a 100% inheritance tax and be done with it. If you want to give something to your kids, do it at Christmas while you’re still alive. Wherever you’re going, you’ll find you won’t need it anyway.
reflectionephemeral says:

September 11, 2012 at 9:50 am

Thanks for your reply, Sam M. It seems to me that a better response from Rod might have been, “no, that’s too long a time frame, try again”, rather than, “nope, it’s impossible.” Things change over time; the way they are now isn’t the way the must be. (Consider how many women go to law school today, vs. in an 1872 Supreme Court opinion, the view that “The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. The Constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordinance as well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to the domain and functions of womanhood. … So firmly fixed was this sentiment in the founders of the common law that it became a maxim of that system of jurisprudence that a woman had no legal existence separate from her husband, who was regarded as her head and representative in the social state, and, notwithstanding some recent modifications of this civil status, many of the special rules of law flowing from and dependent upon this cardinal principle still exist in full force in most states. One of these is that a married woman is incapable, without her husband’s consent, of making contracts which shall be binding on her or him. This very incapacity was one circumstance which the Supreme Court of Illinois deemed important in rendering a married woman incompetent fully to perform the duties and trusts that belong to the office of an attorney and counselor.”)

It seems to me that Rod is too willing to imagine a parade of horribles or impossibility decades hence, thereby turning a blind eye to what’s actually happening in the real world right now. But then, I too could have been more charitable in my response to him.

Let’s zoom out here, though. Rod said that he can’t be a Democrat because of FlashPasses. Our conversation has now centered around Affirmative Action. What is Affirmative Action, specifically, as a policy or set of policies? How many people does it affect each year? I’m thinking the answers is, “about 0.7% of government activity, affecting a couple thousand people.” It’s rather slender reed on which to hang one’s partisan affiliation.
CharleyCarp says:

September 11, 2012 at 11:27 am

Mr. Dreher, you say that you find Republicans more respectful of your core convictions than Democrats. Which core convictions are these: are they concerned with how you should be permitted to live your life, or with how other people should be permitted to live their lives? If the latter, who’s not welcoming whom?
Franklin Evans says:

September 11, 2012 at 12:19 pm

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/affirmative1.html

JFK’s executive order (EO) 10925 in 1961 established the concept of equal employment opportunity. Johnson’s EO 11246 in 1965 established AA and its enforcement. The EEOC was and is the primary source of measurement of discrimination in employment, and the primary motivation for enforcement of the law when AA was and is violated. 11246 was revised in 2002, and contains this explicit statement:

Affirmative action is necessary to prevent discrimination and to address stereotypical thinking and biases that still impede employment opportunity. [original emphasis preserved.]

http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/aa.htm

Prior to 11246, there was no recourse. 11246 is Affirmative Action. When you complain about it, that is what you are complaining about, not some nebulous philosophy that conservatives concoct out of thin air.

1969: Initiated by President Richard Nixon, the “Philadelphia Order” was the most forceful plan thus far to guarantee fair hiring practices in construction jobs.

1995: President Clinton asserted in a speech that while Adarand [Constructors, Inc. v. Peña] set “stricter standards to mandate reform of affirmative action, it actually reaffirmed the need for affirmative action and reaffirmed the continuing existence of systematic discrimination in the United States.” In a White House memorandum on the same day, he called for the elimination of any program that “(a) creates a quota; (b) creates preferences for unqualified individuals; (c) creates reverse discrimination; or (d) continues even after its equal opportunity purposes have been achieved.” [emphasis added]

http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/hiring/affirmativeact.htm

[Last link update: 02/03/2010]
Franklin Evans says:

September 11, 2012 at 12:33 pm

There was never any need to guess about the numbers of people involved with the EEOC.

Total charges filed per year since 1997.

Resolution statistics since 1997. Key line: No Reasonable Cause. It varies by year, but around 60% of claims are found to have no reasonable cause. Something to think about.
M_Young says:

September 11, 2012 at 1:07 pm

“The bottom line is that nobody cares about the scores on the tests. ”

LOL. You might want to review the ‘Vulcan Society vs. New York City’.
MH - Secular Misanthropist says:

September 11, 2012 at 1:50 pm

M_Young, that’s an EEOC lawsuit about the NYC fire department, not the NYS Civil service system. The lawsuit itself was challenging the validity of the test itself, and doesn’t conflict with what I said above.

I said that scoring in the top three will get you an interview, not get you hired, as managers have the latitude to ignore the results and hire deeper down the list. Essentially ignoring the results of the exam.

Here the managers actually hired the better scoring candidates and still got sued.
pelyas says:

September 11, 2012 at 4:20 pm

I also consider myself a Christian Democrat, who aligns more with the Democrats on some economic and foreign policy issues but who is church going and culturally conservative. However, I think in this election economic issues take precedence and that’s why I don’t think social issues should come into play. I see a real bright future for Christian Democracy in the U.S. as it would play well with economically disadvantaged but religious groups, namely blacks, Hispanics, and Southern whites.
pelyas says:

September 11, 2012 at 4:21 pm

And by the way, i see nothing wrong with Fast Passes. There is nothing wrong with paying more money for a higher level of service, wherever it can be found. That is the free market at work.
M_Young says:

September 11, 2012 at 4:29 pm

“1969: Initiated by President Richard Nixon, the “Philadelphia Order” was the most forceful plan thus far to guarantee fair hiring practices in construction jobs.”

A few months ago two places near where I live had their windows redone (sills, etc), right at the same time. One crew as entirely ‘Latino’ and spoke Spanish among themselves. The other crew had a couple of American-born Mexican-Americans (they spoke English to themselves) and a couple of Flatbiller white kids. In other words, it looked like where I live.

Now, you tell me where the systematic discrimination is. Yet I’ve never read of the EEOC going after the immigrant ethnic networks that freeze whites and native-born ‘minorities’ out of jobs.
M_Young says:

September 11, 2012 at 4:30 pm

” not the NYS Civil service system.”

Geez, I wasn’t aware this discussion was so specific.