Letter to the Editor:
Government needs to move away from protection, toward equality
Published March 5, 2010
Over the past few days, as news of the cotton incident has swept this campus, I've found myself caught up in a mix of emotions, many of which are hard to clarify. First let me say that what these students did is a crime, and if they are guilty they should be punished. This is not an anarchist piece demanding their release. What I hope it is is a piece that will make some people think. Secondly I hope you'll make it all the way to the end of this before you form a final opinion.
Hate is not a crime. Hate, as Carter Laren says, is an emotion. You cannot be tried for emotions, and you cannot be convicted of emotions. Hate crimes, as Sam Francis says, are a minority privilege. As a white, Protestant, male this topic truly resonates with me. I did not own slaves. I have never been to a Klan rally. I have never oppressed anyone, nor have I ever treated someone with disrespect because of the color of their skin. If I treat people with disrespect it stems from my belief that in whatever that circumstance may be, they do not deserve respect. It should also be noted that I was not born into a world where blacks couldn't drink from the same water fountains as whites. I was not born into a world where blacks could not attend the same schools as whites. I was not born into a world where blacks could not eat at the same restaurant as whites. I was instead born into a world where if a black student and a white student had similar scores the black student would be admitted every time. I was born into a world where a white male had to significantly outperform his peers to get the same job. I was born into a world where being white made it harder, because when racial discrimination is called "affirmative action" it somehow ceases to be racist. Mine is a world where if someone calls a Muslim "towel head" they are guilty of a hate crime, but when an "artist" creates a work entitled "Piss Christ" featuring a crucifix floating in human urine, he is applauded. Mine is a world where a black man killing three white men, after declaring his intention to "seek revenge against whites" is an act of mental instability (see article linked at end), but three white men killing one black man is a hate crime. Mine is a world where students from schools deemed "sub-par" are bussed across town to attend schools that excel, much to the chagrin of the families who have worked hard and earned enough money to live in those upscale neighborhoods and send their kids to those high performing schools. I live in a world of quotas, where schools must accept a set number of minorities, regardless of qualification or ability. Throughout my life, it has been my race that has been the victim of systematic, pervasive, government sponsored racism. Enough is enough. Those responsible for the cotton did two things. They littered and they "race baited". Punish them for littering. Condemn them for race baiting if you would like, but if you do, condemn race baiting every time it comes up. Condemn ChaToyya Sewell for her columns, most of which race bait. Condemn everyone who has ever hidden behind race or used race as an excuse. Condemn white separatists and black separatists alike. Stand up for the Muslim child who is bullied for his beliefs, then stand up for the Christian child who is mocked the next day. Defend your right to a job or a scholarship that you have earned, and defend the right of the next man to his, be he black white or anything in between. It is my dream to someday live in a post-racial world, but that is a two way street. We don't need a black history month. We need to learn about and celebrate the contribution that black people have had in history every month. We don't need a black culture center, we need to celebrate black culture everywhere, and we need to celebrate it along with white culture. We need to do away with the "Hate Crime" designation. The law shouldn't just protect minorities, it should protect everyone. Equally. Because we are all created equal. That's what we as Americans are supposed to believe. Sometimes I'm not so sure that we do.
http://www.vdare.com/francis/hate_not_reported.htm
Comments (17)
4:16 p.m., March 5, 2010
Brandon said:
Casey, we need MORE folks like Richard. Sure, maybe we shouldn't eliminate all gov't protections, but affirmative action, at least in its present form, has got to go. If we truly 'need' AA, it should be CLASS based, not race-based. I mean, surely you know of plenty of suburban minorities, right? I do. I went to school with many of them K-12. Not ALL blacks or hispanics are in the ghetto. And not all white folks are middle or upper-class. Jim Carrey started out poor. So did Bill Clinton. There are plenty of other examples. And in fact, rural towns, areas which are largely white, do have quite a bit of poverty and lower-income folks. And "militant"? lol! nice try, Casey. Plenty of people support much of what he said. Not everyone has this pc ultraliberal worldview like you do. We CAN be nonracist without being TOO anti-racist and race-baiting like Sewell. She really went after white folks, esp. at UCSD, in her last column. It was disgusting. Just b/c a fraternity in a huge campus had some stupid racist party, ALL white folks should be "taught" how to 'accept diversity? Hell no. Live and let live. Racism is our god-given American right. I'm not saying we SHOULD be racists, but racists have every bit a right to coexist with nonracists. They have free speech, too. What we should distinguish is racist actions, esp. crimes. Simply having beliefs about race the majority doesn't like should not be a crime, though.
11:58 a.m., March 8, 2010
Steve said:
So why are white people all mad at "unqualified minorities" getting their spots allegedly when Harvard, Yale, et. al. have been choosing legacy kids whose parents went there over more qualified applicants? If anything, don't get mad at the black guy who might've taken your spot; get mad at the thousands of underqualified kids with rich parents that can pull admissions over to their favor.
1:44 p.m., March 8, 2010
Charles said:
So, you know there was this thing called Bakke vs. The Regents of the University of California where the Supreme Court ruled that specific racial quotas for admission were unconstitutional, right? You clearly have no idea how affirmative action actually works, and are just spewing out more right wing talking points that are misrepresentations of reality (you can include race as a factor in college admissions under the idea of diversity, along with about 50 billion other factors, but you cannot actually say "we are going to admit 10% black students no matter what"). I don't think any college admissions that deviate from purely academic skill are fair criteria, but the current system is still very different than what you think it is. Also, yes, there are black people who attend mostly white schools. However, that still doesn't change the fact that places like East (and north) St. Louis, Paseo in Kansas City, and many inner cities across the country are almost exclusively black or hispanic, and have all kinds of institutionalized ways to not be given anywhere close to the money that is given to students at high schools like Shawnee Mission East or Ladue. To think that we have schools that are integrated and equal means that you have no idea what goes on anywhere outside of your white suburban upbringing, and I suggest you look a lot deeper into just why so many people still think racism is a problem before you spout off your idiotic platitudes about how hard it is to be a middle class white man.
2:43 p.m., March 8, 2010
Charles said:
P.S. VDARE has an extensive history of documented racism. The fact that you browse a site that includes such hilarious gems as an article that both argues that black people have systemically inferior intelligence than white people and which includes the statement "In contrast to New Orleans, there was only minimal looting after the horrendous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan—because, when you get down to it, Japanese aren't blacks" speaks volumes about your sensitivities to the nuances of race relations in America. Anyone sentient at Mizzou should be able to notice the many students here who are both black and extremely intelligent, and that supporting a website which has repeatedly published pseudoscience to try and prove that black people are dumber than white people is something you should be ashamed of.
2:51 p.m., March 8, 2010
Pete said:
"Hate is not a crime. Hate, as Carter Laren says, is an emotion. You cannot be tried for emotions, and you cannot be convicted of emotions." This is wrong, and you would do well to understand the law before you comment on it. "Hate crime," first of all, is a *descriptor*. You can have arson, assault, murder, and so on with the descriptor "hate crime," but it's always associated with a crime already on the books. You can certainly be convicted of arson, assault, or murder. Second, we *do* consider crimes differently based on the offender's state of mind. For instance, premeditated murder (another descriptor!) is worse than a hot-blooded murder, and they're both worse than unintentionally killing someone - even though the result is the same. Similarly, an assault motivated by racial, sexual, or other group hatred is considered worse than one motivated by personal hatred, or one that occurs through negligence rather than malice. Finally, as to *why* these crimes are treated more harshly - they're essentially terroristic threats against an entire community. If a black person is targeted for assault simply because of their dark skin, it sends a message to every black person that they're not safe. If a gay person is assaulted simply because of their sexuality, it's sending a message that "if you're gay, we're going to come after you." Essentially, it's like two crimes in one - both the crime itself, and a larger threat - and thus punished more harshly. Anyone raging against hate crime legislation on the basis laid out in the article simply doesn't understand the law.
8:44 p.m., March 8, 2010
Brian said:
Thank you, Mr. Scheff, for your insightful remarks on this important topic. The civility and perceptiveness of this letter are also appreciated. We are often exhorted to engage in "dialogue" on these issues, though what commonly ensues resembles something closer to lectures with little room for reasoned, self-critical interaction. You have contributed to actual discourse by presenting your own personal experience amidst modern political and social realities, and your reflections and viewpoints. Those who reject your offering out of hand have no interest in dialogue. Those who would react with insults and innuendo demonstrate their own lack of character and sincerity. Let's focus on the issues. We may or may not disagree, but chances are we'll learn to better appreciate where people are coming from, and maybe even establish some common ground. The cotton ball incident is a crime and an offense against decency. Such actions have no place at this university, and are rightly punished by the authorities and condemned by our campus community. The incident itself should not be exploited to advance a larger political agenda. And the realities faced by those not served by the wealth of affirmative action, multicultural, and diversity initiatives in today's society should not be overlooked by even the most passionate and principled advocates of hate crime legislation and the like.
2:45 a.m., March 9, 2010
Charles said:
Yes, whatever would happen to our precious dialogue when one side presents arguments that are not true and the other one rebuts by bringing up empirical facts to poke holes in their opponents arguments? It must be the end of civilized society! Look, you can trot out how anti-dialogue it is to argue against people who present erroneous information, but magically it's the people who hear facts and ignore them who are really the ones that don't want a healthy conversation. You have the protected rights to spout out whatever you want to say about how the arguments in this column are "political and social realities," but when people bring up real world counterexamples and you decide not to pay attention, it is anyone else's first amendment right to not care what you have to say and call you out on it. A dialogue can only work if people try to use some logic and listen to facts.
9:30 a.m., March 11, 2010
Rick (the author) said:
Charles, as someone who cries logic you should know better than to analyze the VDARE article by bringing up other articles hosted there and calling them out. That's a fallacy called ad hominem, and it refers to ignoring the issue at hand and dredging up character flaws. I don't read VDARE, I used google to find articles about this issue when I set out to write this. Secondly I never claimed schools were "integrated and equal". I claimed that your public school should be determined by where you live, like it was drawn out to be... To Casey, why do you say that poverty is inherent in minority social status. I'm from Atlanta, I have seen many, many rich minorities, and I find your assertion racist. Secondly, the government shouldn't be trying to end poverty in the first place. That's what a communist government does, the American government should just be protecting us physically not holding our hands and giving us an allowance... To Steve, I agree it's wrong but at the end of the day schools are trying to make money and make ends meet, and sometimes it's worth a huge donation to let a scrub in.
10:46 a.m., March 11, 2010
Anthony said:
Casey (the first commenter) wrote, and I quote here "What you're suggesting, in ending programs like affirmative action, is proposing that every walk of life is on equal footing and no single race or creed needs assistance to achieve their potential." I think this is really the crux of the issue. You assume that it is a government's fault if not everyone meets "their potential." The government's only obligation is to make sure everyone has a potential to meet. Slavery and discrimination were wrong because they limited the potential of African Americans, but the fact that currently a lot of minorities don't live up to their potential isn't a failure on the government's fault, it's a failure on the individual's part. Unequal results don't mean that the system is broken or unfair. If I play gold against Tiger Woods, I will lose every time. This isn't because the scoring isn't fair, or the sport is racist, it's because Tiger Woods is a better golfer than me. What you're essentially arguing is that until we handicap Tiger Woods so much that he and I get the same score, the system is unfair, because you equate equal results with equal opportunity.
10:55 a.m., March 11, 2010
Rick (the author) said:
To Pete, ok then where do you draw the line? At Florida State a few years ago a few football players were arrested for beating up some greek kids. Is that a hate crime? Feelings between athletes and greek kids at that university might well have contributed to this crime. Why do hate crimes only protect gays, or minorities? If you read the article then why don't you feel the black man who killed whites was guilty of a hate crime? My point was not necessarily that hate crimes in general have to go, it was that they need to stop being selectively enforced. To everyone at least we're making progress here, when I tried to talk to ChaToyya she told me that since I was white I'm racist and that I had to leave her alone. I appreciate that we're actually having a discussion here.
11:47 a.m., March 11, 2010
Rick (the author) said:
Oh and one last thing, to Charles, you said " (you can include race as a factor in college admissions under the idea of diversity". You don't see the problem with that? What if I said "I don't like minorities, I don't hate them, but I just don't like them." So if I owned a company it would follow that if a minority wanted to work for me his race would count against him. Not that I wouldn't ever hire him, he'd just have an uphill battle because race was a handicap. Does that sound very fair to you? That's what you say is ok for schools to do only the other way around. It's not that being a minority gets you in, it just helps. I feel like that's racist. On your application you shouldn't fill out name or race, schools should accept applications from numbers and then put names with them after the decision is made. Then it would be fair because there would be no way to discriminate.
8:21 p.m., March 11, 2010
Charles said:
If you really stumbled on the VDARE article by doing a google search, then you need to do a much better job of researching sources, because you will find that VDARE has been labeled as a hate group and is a website that repeatedly publishes articles that can be documented as both racist and full of factual lies, such as arguments that it is documented that black people are genetically predetermined to be collectively less intelligent than white people. VDARE has no reason for us to find their publications credible, given that they have a documented malicious bias and seem to have no problem publishing articles with fundamentally incorrect information. I will concede that my attack there was ad hominem and would not apply to you in the case of you stumbling on their website through google, but the broader reason for my attack is that VDARE deserves every chance it gets for people to cry out that they are racist so that everyone can learn why that site should be avoided, and people who do legitimately support a site that makes claims such as the one I quoted above have to be called out on it. Racism is a horribly disgusting belief, and I strongly believe it is more worth everyone's time for us to yell racists out of the debate through every means possible than to worry about whether we are engaging in a perfectly logical debate with people who think they are better than others because of who their parents happened to be. Rarely do I allow for special pleading, but racism is horrible enough to get it. As for your other response to my quote, read back through and you will find that I never once said I agree with affirmative action, and in fact explicitly stated the opposite in the very next sentence. I view racial factors in college admissions much the same as I view athletic factors or whether someone won FBLA prizes in high school - antiquated criteria that unfairly punish the students that work harder. I can absolutely buy that affirmative action in the 60s may have been the only way to force a bunch of colleges to accept black students who were qualified, but in today's era, I think progress has been made to the point where we could feasibly remove racial criteria and not see qualified applicants turned away because of their skin color, which was not the case 40 years ago. In any case, my whole argument was that you were not presenting a factual description of modern affirmative action, not that I think affirmative action is a good thing, and given the fact that you apparently still think racial quotas in American colleges exist despite them having been declared unconstitutional over 30 years ago strongly suggests that I am right.
3:58 p.m., March 12, 2010
Rick said:
So you have no problem with any of my conclusions or actual points, only with the way I presented affirmative action? Also that particular VDARE article did cite sources and didn't say anything too awful so it didn't bother me.
9:45 p.m., March 12, 2010
Peter said:
Charles, Talk about spewing affirmative action, about which you know nothing. Bakke said that colleges can't use set a percentage of students admitted that will be of a certain race, but the ruling said (and more to date rulings) that race could be weighted. This gives colleges unlimited discretion in whom they admit, which might be a good thing; colleges choosing who attends is good. But reverse discrimination is terribly backwards, and it once again puts race into the Constitution. Over and over race has been shoved into the Constitution, by both racists and liberal nutjobs like you who think they know what you're talking about. Just the fact that you are bringing up Rick's color and upbringing so often shows your bias, possibly against conservatives, or maybe against money in general (or rather people who have it). The fact is, white kids who are forced to bus 30 miles away to a school with black kids when there is a school 3 miles away are going to wonder why they are being told to do so (see Green v New Kent County). You still have segregation, because the buses are full of white kids exclusively and black kids exclusively. And one asks again: why are people (read:the government) going to such great lengths to point out skin color? It's not only unconstitutional, its terribly backward. So please. Sit down and shut up. You don't understand 1) the constitution, 2) Affirmative action, and 3) probably anything you haven't watched on the daily show.
1:50 p.m., March 13, 2010
Anthony said:
So to be clear, Charles, you admit to using an ad hominem and then defend it by trying to sell it harder? You claim they have inaccurate facts, but you should either point out something in the particular article referenced that is inaccurate or just leave it alone.
9:47 p.m., March 15, 2010
Carlyle Jones said:
"What you're suggesting, in ending programs like affirmative action, is proposing that every walk of life is on equal footing and no single race or creed needs assistance to achieve their potential. This, of course, is not the case." Casey, have little more faith in us minority folk please. We can make a damn good living on our own.
1:28 p.m., March 5, 2010
Casey said:
You have the potential to provide an enlightened and insightful opinion, if you hadn't bogged it down with your own illogical and clearly biased sentiment. We get it, you don't enjoy ChaToyya's columns. I don't know if you understand how journalism works (I'm pretty sure you're from the wrong side of the quad for that), but columns are intended to express opinions and be read by people that appreciate those opinions. Your judgment of Miss Sewall is as laughable as someone claiming that Leonard Maltin's review of a movie is biased based on Leonard's opinion. Past that, your militant nature is really getting the best of anything resembling a debatable idea. Your mentality is obviously stuck in the pre-WWI ideology of self-made wealth and overcoming adversity. What you don't understand is that social mobility is greatly affected by where you start. The idea that an intelligent young black man from an underprivileged neighborhood can't attend a university because his parents couldn't afford to send him to private school, and public school bored him to tears is the basic justification for what you consider to be racist. The government is equipped to hold racial bias in opposition to the racial bias established by society and the economy. If the government wasn't actively trying to end the poverty inherent in minority social status, the dismal conditions would - at best - perpetuate or - at worst - become as bad as ever. What you're suggesting, in ending programs like affirmative action, is proposing that every walk of life is on equal footing and no single race or creed needs assistance to achieve their potential. This, of course, is not the case. Ideally speaking, affirmative action will last as long as it has to: until the median incomes and educations of every people are the same. At that point, it can cease to be and society will go about its merry way without need for interference. Until then, are you really going to argue that helping kids from bad neighborhoods and poor parents is racist?