• About

RealityChek

~ So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time….

Tag Archives: racism

Im-Politic: Most of the Flip Vote Stayed with Trump

09 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Barack Obama, battleground states, election 2016, election 2020, forgotten Americans, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Populism, racism, Trump, Trump flip voters, xenophobia

Since I haven’t yet come across any reason to suppose that the Election 2020 exit polls are any more accurate than most of the surveys throughout the campaign, and especially during the general election, worthwhile post-mortems are going to be really difficult to produce.

One exception: It’s clear what happened with the hundreds of counties across the country that voted twice for Barack Obama for President, and then flipped for Donald Trump in 2016. I’ve written repeatedly (most recently here) that these mainly lower-income counties are especially important because they clearly contain lots of Trump voters who couldn’t possibly be the racists who are so often viewed as the majority of the President’s base.

Moreover, they not only look like a representative sample of voters who bought Mr. Trump’s promise that he would champion their economic interests. They also look like voters who made a smart bet in this regard, as the majority of these counties saw their annual pay grow faster under Trump pre-CCP Virus than during the most comparable Obama administration time frame.

And how did they vote earlier this month? Recounts and challenges could change some of the numbers we have already, but as of this writing, an overwhelming majority of these so-called “forgotten Americans” stuck with the President a second time around. So did nearly all of those whose economic fortunes – at least by that wage measure – improved faster under Mr. Trump than under his predecessor.

First the overall numbers. In 2016, 194 counties for which the aforementioned wage data are available from the Labor Department supported the Trump candidacy after voting Obama in 2008 and 2012. Three other counties for which no such data have been kept followed this pattern.

Of the 194, 173 (89.17 percent) stuck with the President this time around, along with two of the data-less counties. Just as important, of the 194, 116 (59.79 percent) saw faster pay growth under Mr. Trump than under Obama, and 102 of them (87.93 percent) pulled the lever for the President in 2020. To me, that adds up to a pretty powerful case that a great deal of the President’s appeal stemmed from his economic populist pitch.

These outcomes can’t possibly be either-or. That is, just because a flip county prospered more under Mr. Trump than under Obama doesn’t necessarily mean that this performance was foremost in every voter’s mind. And it can’t be assumed that counties that have supported the President despite worse relative economic performance were filled with racists and xenophobes and other deplorables.

Nonetheless, a strong relationship between greater prosperity for these flip counties and their support for the President held up well through Election 2020.

Of course, the presidential vote this time around was awfully close, especially in the six key battleground states where the talleys seem certain to decide the final outcome: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Yet it doesn’t seem that the Trump flippers relatively few flops back to his Democratic opponent made much of a difference in any of these states.

Of the total 49 Trump flip counties in these states, only five flopped back last week. Moreover, the 49 were highly concentrated – 23 in Wisconsin alone, and 12 in Michigan. Arizona had none and Pennsylvania only three. Interestingly, two of the Wisconsin flippers supported Biden in 2020, as did two of their Pennsylvania counterparts. But even given the closeness of the statewide totals, their populations appear too small to have made a difference.

A stronger argument can be made for the floppers’ importance in three states that were not as close as expected. Iowa, for example, was long thought to be up for grabs despite the handy margin it gave candidate Trump four years ago. It’s arguable that his repeat performance in 2020 stemmed in part from the decision of all 27 Trump flip counties to remain in the Republican column.

Minnesota was considered a Trump possibility this year, since Mr. Trump came within five percentage points of victory in this traditional Democratic stronghold. But President Trump actually lost some ground this month, and the decision of four of the state’s 19 Trump flippers to support Joe Biden clearly didn’t help.

Finally, New Hampshire looked like another possible Trump pickup. But two of its three flip counties (including Coos, for which there’s no economic data), opted for Biden.

All told, the numbers represented by these shifts were pretty small, too. But they could have reflected changes in sentiment elsewhere in these states that accounted for the somewhat surprising outcomes. A similar argument can be made for the six high-profile battlegrounds, but in my view the number of floppers returning to the Democratic camp was so small that it’s much weaker.

Again, some or even many of these results could change in the near future. But if they don’t, then no doubt many of the Americans who agree with President Trump that they’d been forgotten before are hoping that they’re remembered better over the next four years.

Im-Politic: Final Grades on the Final Debate

24 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

battleground states, climate change, crime, crime bills, election 2020, energy, fossil fuels, fracking, green energy, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, marijuana, narcotics, natural gas, oil, presidential debates, progressives, racism, systemic racism, Trump

I got something massively wrong about the second (and final) presidential debate of 2020. I thought that my frantic live-tweeting covered every important aspect of the Thursday night event. Upon reading the transcript, I realized there was lots more to say.

Let’s start with the 30,000-foot picture. There’s no question that President Trump performed more effectively than in the first debate. Even his most uncritical admirers, like Fox News talker Sean Hannity, have conceded as much (Check out the video of his post-debate show, in which he acknowledges that long-time Republican political operative Ari Fleischer was right in faulting Mr. Trump’s first debate performance as too overheated.)

But there are plenty of questions left unanswered about the second debate’s impact on the Presidential race. For the record, I’m sticking with the assessment I offered after the first debate: Given his lead even in most battleground state polls, because the Trump campaign and other Trumpers (including Hannity) had set the bar so low for “Sleepy Joe,” all Biden needed to do was show up and not screw up massively in order to win.

Those battleground polls have tightened somewhat, Biden’s perfectly fine first debate performance raised the bar for the second debate, and I’m far from thinking that the race is over. But I’d still rather be in Biden’s shoes than in Mr. Trump’s. And time keeps running out for the President. All the same, it’s important to remember that we haven’t seen any major post-debate nationwide or battleground polls come out yet, so there’s simply no hard evidence to go on at this point.

The time-is-not-the-President’s-friend point, though, brings up my first new debate-related point: Mr. Trump’s improved performance alone (whether he “won” or not either on points or according to the public), indicates that he erred in rejecting the Commission on Presidential Debate’s offer to hold the second debate virtually, due ostensibly to CCP Virus-related reasons.

Especially if Mr. Trump had by that time begun heeding the advice of supporters urging him to dial it down (which isn’t at all clear), he lost an opportunity to square off again against Biden in real time. And although there’s no adequate on-line substitute for the atmosphere and resulting pressures of in-person encounters, the President did lose a valuable opportunity to reassure voters unnerved – rightly or wrongly – by his first debate tactics.

Getting down to specific points, on Thursday night, two issues really do demand further discussion. First, I might have been mistaken in my tweeted view that the Biden comments on natural gas fracking and energy (and related climate change) policy wouldn’t be terribly important.

I did agree that the former Vice President did nothing to help himself in key energy states like Pennsylvania, where voters might worry that his various positions – and the prominence of staunch fossil fuels opponents in Democratic ranks now – would guarantee relatively rapid closures of the coal mines and gas and oil fields that created so much employment in their regions. But I stated that, because these subjects had been aired so thoroughly already, few energy voters’ minds would be changed.

What I clearly underestimated was the impact of an extended discussion of energy and climate subjects before a nation-wide audience. If I’d been right, why would the Trump campaign have almost immediately put out an ad spotlighting Biden’s assorted statements on these topics. And why would the Biden campaign have spent so much time trying to explain the Biden position?

Looking at the transcript helped me understand why energy- and climate-related anxieties in the energy states might have been elevated by the Biden debate remarks. For on the one hand, the Democratic challenger insisted that he was “ruling out” “banning fracking” and claimed that

“What I will do with fracking over time is make sure that we can capture the emissions from the fracking, capture the emissions from gas. We can do that and we can do that by investing money in doing it, but it’s a transition to that.”

And whereas previously, Biden had responded to a primary debate question about whether fossil fuels would have any place in his prospective administration by declaring “We would make sure it’s eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those. Any fossil fuel,” on Thursday night, the former Vice President referred to transitioning from “the old oil industry”–presumably to some (undefined) new kind of oil industry.

Nonetheless, it would be reasonable for energy states residents to question these assurances of gradualness and transformation instead of elimination given Biden’s continued contention that “global warming is an existential threat to humanity,” that “we’re going to pass the point of no return within the next eight to ten years,” and that the energy sector in toto needs “to get to ultimately a complete zero emissions by 2025.” Last time I checked, that’s only five years from now.

Moreover, given the notable split within the Democratic party on climate change and energy issues between progressives and centrists, the Biden statements suggesting that major fossil fuel industries will survive during his administration in some form could depress turnout in their ranks for a candidate who clearly needs to stoke their enthusiasm.

The second set of issues I should have tweeted more about entails crime and race relations. I think Biden deserves a great deal of credit for calling “a mistake” his support for crime bills of the 1980s and 1990s that, in the words of moderator Kristen Welker “contributed to the incarceration of tens of thousands of young Black men who had small amounts of drugs in their possession, they are sons, they are brothers, they are fathers, they are uncles, whose families are still to this day, some of them suffering the consequences.”

He was also correct in pointing out that President Trump – who quite properly pointed to some noteworthy achievements of his administration on behalf of African Americans – took a sweepingly harsh line on crime himself in previous decades.

But two positions taken by Biden should disturb even supporters. First, his argument that “It took too long [during the Obama administration] to get it right. Took too long to get it right. I’ll be President of the United States, not Vice President of the United States,” clearly throws his former boss under the bus. In fact, he also implicitly blamed Obama for the failure to resolve the problem created by children living the United States born to illegal immigrant parents.

The second such position was Biden’s argument that “No one should be going to jail because they have a drug problem. They should be going to rehabilitation, not to jail.”

I personally can support this view when it comes to hard drugs. But marijuana? For whose use so many American blacks have been jailed – and so many more than white Americans? (I’m not a big fan of the American Civil Liberties Union these days, but the data in this study are tough to refute.) Mandatory (government-funded?) therapy for potheads? That could use some rethinking.

But like I said at the outset, I expressed views on many other debate-related subjects on my Twitter feed (@AlanTonelson). So there’s no substitute for following there, as well as checking in with RealityChek, for the most up-to-date thinking on the election — as well as everything else under the sun.

Im-Politic: VP Debate Questions That Should be Asked

07 Wednesday Oct 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1619 Project, African Americans, Barack Obama, Biden, budget deficits, CCP Virus, censorship, China, Confederate monuments, Constitution, coronavirus, COVID 19, education, election 2020, Electoral College, filibuster, Founding Fathers, free speech, healthcare, history, history wars, Im-Politic, inequality, investment, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, national security, Obamacare, police killings, propaganda, protests, racism, riots, semiconductors, slavery, spending, Supreme Court, systemic racism, Taiwan, tariffs, tax cuts, taxes, Trade, trade war, Trump, Vice Presidential debate, Wuhan virus

Since I don’t want to set a record for longest RealityChek post ever, I’ll do my best to limit this list of questions I’d like to see asked at tonight’s Vice Presidential debate to some subjects that I believe deserve the very highest priority, and/or that have been thoroughly neglected so far during this campaign.

>For Vice President Mike Pence: If for whatever reason, President Trump couldn’t keep the CCP Virus under control within his own White House, why should Americans have any faith that any of his policies will bring it under control in the nation as a whole?

>For Democratic candidate Senator Kamala Harris: What exactly should be the near-term goal of U.S. virus policy? Eliminate it almost completely (as was done with polio)? Stop its spread? Slow its spread? Reduce deaths? Reduce hospitalizations? And for goals short of complete elimination, define “slow” and “reduce” in terms of numerical targets.

>For Pence: Given that the administration’s tax cuts and spending levels were greatly ballooning the federal budget deficit even before the virus struck, isn’t it ridiculous for Congressional Republicans to insist that total spending in the stimulus package remain below certain levels?

For Harris: Last month, the bipartisan Congressional Problem Solvers Caucus unveiled a compromise stimulus framework. President Trump has spoken favorably about it, while stopping short of a full endorsement. Does Vice President Biden endorse it? If so, has he asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to sign on? If he doesn’t endorse it, why not?

For Pence: The nation is in the middle of a major pandemic. Whatever faults the administration sees in Obamacare, is this really the time to be asking the Supreme Court to rule it un-Constitutional, and throw the entire national health care system into mass confusion?

For Harris: Would a Biden administration offer free taxpayer-financed healthcare to illegal aliens? Wouldn’t this move strongly encourage unmanageable numbers of migrants to swamp U.S. borders?

For Pence: President Trump has imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese exports headed to U.S. markets. But U.S. investors – including government workers’ pension funds – still keep sending equally large sums into Chinese government coffers. When is the Trump administration finally going to plug this enormous hole?

For Harris: Will a Biden administration lift or reduce any of the Trump China or metals tariffs. Will it do so unconditionally? If not, what will it be seeking in return?

For both: Taiwan now manufactures the world’s most advanced semiconductors, and seems sure to maintain the lead for the foreseeable future. Does the United States now need to promise to protect Taiwan militarily in order to keep this vital defense and economic knowhow out of China’s hands?

For Pence: Since the administration has complained so loudly about activist judges over-ruling elected legislators and making laws themselves, will Mr. Trump support checking this power by proposing term limits or mandatory retirement ages for Supreme Court Justices? If not, why not?

For Harris: Don’t voters deserve to know the Biden Supreme Court-packing position before Election Day? Ditto for his position on abolishing the filibuster in the Senate.

>For Pence: The Electoral College seems to violate the maxim that each votes should count equally. Does the Trump administration favor reform? If not, why not?

>For Harris: Many Democrats argue that the Electoral College gives lightly populated, conservative and Republican-leaning states outsized political power. But why, then, was Barack Obama able to win the White House not once but twice?

>For Pence: Charges that America’s police are killing unarmed African Americans at the drop of a hat are clearly wild exaggerations. But don’t you agree that police stop African-American pedestrians and drivers much more often than whites without probable cause – a problem that has victimized even South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott?

For Harris: Will Biden insist that mayors and governors in cities and states like Oregon and Washington, which have been victimized by chronic antifa violence, investigate, arrest and prosecute its members and leaders immediately? And if they don’t, will he either withhold federal law enforcement aid, or launch such investigations at the federal level?

For Pence: Why should any public places in America honor Confederate figures – who were traitors to the United States? Can’t we easily avoid the “erasing history” danger by putting these monuments in museums with appropriate background material?

For Harris: Would a Biden administration support even peacefully removing from public places statues and monuments to historic figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because their backgrounds included slave-holding?

For both: Shouldn’t voters know much more about the Durham Justice Department investigation of official surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2015 and 2016 before Election Day?

For both: Should the Big Tech companies be broken up on antitrust grounds?

For both: Should internet and social media platforms be permitted to censor any form of Constitutionally permitted speech?

For Pence: Doesn’t the current system of using property taxes to fund most primary and secondary public education guarantee that low-income school children will lack adequate resources?

For Harris: Aren’t such low-income students often held back educationally by non-economic factors like generations of broken families and counter-productive student behavior, as well as by inadequate school funding – as leading figures like Jesse Jackson (at least for one period) and former President Obama have claimed?

For Pence: What’s the difference between the kind of “patriotic education” the President says he supports and official propaganda?

For Harris: Would a Biden administration oppose local school districts using propagandistic material like The New York Times‘ U.S. history-focused 1619 Project for their curricula? Should federal aid to districts that keep using such materials be cut off or reduced?

Now it’s your turn, RealityChek readers! What questions would you add? And which of mine would you deep six?

Im-Politic: Trump’s Decidedly Non-Racist Economic Record

29 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

African Americans, Barack Obama, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, election 2020, families, family income, Federal Reserve, Hispanics, Im-Politic, inquality, Joe Biden, median income, racism, Survey of Consumer Finances, Trump, wealth gap, whites, Wuhan virus, xenophobia

Some pre-debate advice for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden: Don’t rush to trot out your charge that Donald Trump is the first racist President in American history. Because if Mr. Trump has been briefed with any competence, two recent official economic reports have just come out making clear that when it comes to African Americans and Hispanic Americans, – at least before the outbreak of the CCP Virus that has hit minorities especially hard for longstanding structural reasons – the incumbent’s economic record compares quite favorably to that of the Obama administration for which Biden rode shotgun.

The evidence we’ll look at today drawn from the latest edition of the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, contains arguably the most important finding of all: The wealth gap separating African Americans and Hispanic Americans on the one hand from white Americans on the other narrowed more during Mr. Trump’s first three years in office than during the final three years of the Obama administration. (RealityChek regulars know that such time frames provide the best apples-to-apples data needed for comparisons, since they came right next to each other in the same economic cycle – in this case, the post-2009 expansion.)

This racial wealth gap is often described as the most damning indictment of the nation’s longstanding failure to generate equal economic opportunity, since the wealth created by one generation can be passed down to future generations, and thereby boost the odds that beneficiaries are cushioned against major economic and financial stress, and foster all the self-reinforcing social as well as economic advantages flowing from such achievement of the American Dream.

The numbers come both from the Fed’s new survey, which covers the 2016-2019 period, and its previous survey, which covered the 2013-2016 period, and here they are, starting with the growth in median family net worth (the Fed’s preferred measure of wealth) for all American families, for non-Hispanic white families, for non-Hispanic black families, and for Hispanic families.

During the final three Obama years, in pre-inflation dollars, this net worth increased as follows for the aforementioned three groups pre-tax

for all U.S. families: +16.25 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +16.80 percent

for black non-Hispanics: +29.41 percent

for Hispanics: +45.77 percent

As a result, median wealth for black non-Hispanic and Hispanic families as a share of median family wealth for their white counterparts rose as follows:

                                                                   2013                    2016

black non-Hispanic families:              9.29 percent        10.29 percent

Hispanic families:                               9.70 percent        12.11 percent

Alternatively put, black non-Hispanic families closed the wealth gap with white non-Hispanic families by 10.76 percent, and Hispanic families by 24.85 percent. No denying that’s progress.

And the Trump record through 2019 in comparison? We’ll start again with the increases in pre-tax median family net worth from 2016 until then:

for all U.S. families: +17.58 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +3.46 percent

for black non-Hispanics : +32.42 percent

for Hispanics: +65.30 percent

So during the first three Trump years, median family wealth overall grew faster than during the final three Obama years, and minority families far outgained white families in this regard. Moreover, this was especially true for Hispanic families, who belong to an ethnic group Mr. Trump is often accused of despising.

That this minority family outperformance bettered that achieved during the most analogous Obama period comes through even more clearly from the following table, which shows how minority families’ net worth grew as a share of white family net worth between 2016 and 2019:

                                                                    2016                    2019

black non-Hispanic families:              10.01 percent       12.81 percent

Hispanic families:                               12.04 percent       19.23 percent

Again, alternatively put, during the Trump years, these results mean that black non-Hispanic families closed the wealth gap with white families by 27.97 percent, and Hispanic families by 59.72 percent. So both groups made much more relative progress during the Trump supposedly racist and xenophobic Trump administration (pre-CCP Virus) than during the supposedly racially enlightened Obama administration.

The Trump record isn’t as good when it comes to another measure of economic peformance – pre-tax family incomes and their growth. But any fair-minded observer would have to agree that it’s more than respectable, especially considering the President’s reputation among so many of his opponents.

Once more, let’s start with the Obama record on this score between 2013 and 2016. (These results aren’t adjusted for inflation, either. During these years, median family income grew as follows for the groups in question:

for all U.S. families: +9.56 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +6.44 percent

for black non-Hispanics: +9.94 percent

for Hispanics: +14.93 percent

As a result, median incomes for black non-Hispanic and Hispanic families as a share of median income for their white counterparts rose as follows:

                                                                    2013                    2016

black non-Hispanic families:               56.00 percent       57.84 percent

Hispanic families:                                58.26 percent       62.91 percent

So the income gap with white non-Hispanic families shrank by 1.13 percent for black families and by 7.98 percent for Hispanic families. These relative gains generally were far smaller than those registered for wealth, but they were gains all the same

At first glance, it’s clear that the Trump record between 2016 and 2019 lagged the Obama era progress. Here’s how family incomes rose then for the groups concerned:

for all U.S. families: +4.64 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +6.00 percent

for black non-Hispanics: +7.00 percent

for Hispanics: -0.49 percent

The same conclusion flows from examining the changes in minority groups’ family income as a share of non-white Hispanic families’ income:

                                                                    2016                    2019

black non-Hispanic families:               57.76 percent      58.41 percent

Hispanic families:                                62.83 percent      58.99 percent

In fact, Hispanic families actually lost ground on this front.

And not surprisingly, the income gap between Hispanic families and white non-Hispanic families widened by 6.11 percent during these Trump years, while that between black and white non-Hispanic families narrowed by much less than during the final three Obama years (1.13 percent versus 3.29 percent).

These Fed figures hardly show that President Trump, as he likes to claim, has done more for African Americans than any President in history Lincoln aside, or that Hispanic Americans have been special beneficiaries of his policies. But they do show impressive progress for minority groups and, perhaps more important, progress that compares well with such achievements under the nation’s first African American President.

Therefore, Biden (and other Trump opponents) could well be right about the President’s racism and xenophobia when all considerations are taken into account. But if so, he’s clearly the strangest racist and xenophobe in U.S. history – a conclusion that will be supported when RealityChek turns next to the new poverty statistics and another set of income figures just issued by the Census Bureau. .

Im-Politic: A Chinese Link to Black Lives Matter?

17 Thursday Sep 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Alicia Garza, Black Futures Lab, Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter Too, BLM, China, Chinese Progressive Association, election interference, Heritage Foundation, Im-Politic, race relations, racism, reparations, structural racism, systemic racism, The Federalist, wealth gap, white fragility

Our times are so racially fraught that even I (someone who rarely feels defensive about my views) feel the need to start out this post by specifying that I am not a systemic or structural racist or even an unwitting example of white fragility. Indeed, I’m so woke on the issue of continuing racial discrimination in America that I’ve come out for reparations to remedy what I see as one recent example of open-and-shut racial injustice whose victims would be relatively easy to identify and compensate. And I’ve called attention to the still yawning racial wealth gap. 

I don’t even have significant problems with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) – although I like “Black Lives Matter, Too” because it avoids the possibility of either-or interpretations while making clear that there’s a still a racial gap that must be eliminated.

But the various organizations and coalitions invoking this phrase that have sprung up lately? I’m not so sure about many of them, especially since their proclaimed agendas often go far beyond securing racial justice. (See, e.g., here.) And just yesterday I found out about another potential problem with these groups that seems to support a point I made in a recent article about the massive and under-reported scale of Chinese interference in American public life – signs of close connections between a key BLM organization the Chinese government.

As reported in The Federalist, a conservative publication, based on research by the equally conservative Heritage Foundation, an outfit called Black Futures Lab (BFL) is funded mainly by an organization called the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA). The Lab’s own website, moreover, confirms this finding.

It’s true that BFL is only one group in the BLM constellation. But it’s no ordinary group. Its “Principal” is Alicia Garza, who describes herself, and is credited in news reports, as a founder of the BLM movement.

It’s also true that the CPA isn’t officially affiliated with the Chinese government. But Beijing is certainly a fan of what’s been described as its Boston chapter, as this article (cited in the Heritage Foundation report) from its official mouthpiece demonstrates. One charge I could not independently corroborate – the claim that the Chinese flag-raising event the article mentions was “hosted by the Consulate General of China in New York.”

Consulate officials clearly attended the other event – a flag-raiser – and spoke. But unike the aforementioned Boston passport-focused event, I was unable to find evidence that they played any organizing role.

So maybe the cooperation doesn’t go any further than attending (and sometimes organizing) the kinds of celebrations that might simply be ethnic solidarity events. But according to this study (an undergraduate thesis, but one from Stanford University by a student with clearly progressive sympathies), the admiration between CPA and the Chinese government is decidedly mutual:

“The CPA began as a Leftist, pro-People’s Republic of China [PRC] organization, promoting awareness of mainland China’s revolutionary thought and workers rights, and dedicated to self-determination, community control, and ‘serving the people’.

Further, although “Its activities were independent of the Communist Party of China or the US,” it “worked with other pro-PRC groups within the US and San Francisco Bay Area.”

Again, the prospect can’t be ruled out that Beijing is content simply to admire CPA’s efforts to improve social services for Chinese Americans or even help organize Chinese American events with the group. But given the influence I thoroughly documented in the aforementioned magazine article that China has gained over major American institutions; and given the unusual interest displayed by a group like CPA, which is exclusively focused on Chinese Americans (as it makes clear) in an organization that says it’s exclusively focused on African Americans (especially since serious problem of poverty and discrimination still clearly dog Chinese Americans, according to CPA), grounds for further investigation don’t exactly seem to be lacking.

Indeed, as known by anyone with legal or law enforcement experience, or most fans of detective stories, showing that defendants have had “motive, opportunity and means” is a venerable framework for investigating and determining wrongdoing. When it comes to fomenting racial tensions in the United States, the Chinese government surely has all three. So let’s hope that the federal government (both the Exective and Congress), as well as the supposed watchdogs of our democracy, the news media, look into China’s involvement with the Black Lives Matter movement as aggressively as it’s looked into other charges of improper foreign interference in America’s politics.

Im-Politic: You Bet the Mainstream Media Has Become Troublingly Woke – & It Matters

16 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

FredBauerBlog, Im-Politic, Mainstream Media, media bias, MSM, race relations, racism, Tablet, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, wokeness, Zach Goldberg

As RealityChek regulars know, I’ve long been strongly critical of the American Mainstream Media (MSM), and presented any number of examples of its brazen bias – including, and in fact especially, in ostensible straight news reports. My main focus has the pronounced slant of these big, influential news organizations’ in favor of interventionist U.S. foreign policy globalism, supportive of Open Borders-like immigration policies, against any departures from jobs- and growth-killing trade agreements, and unremittingly hostile to anything said or done by President Trump.

But I’ve also paid attention to media bias on largely domestic issues, and in particular on the adoption (notably by The New York Times) of a clear perspective endorsing – and often embodying – the emergence of a highly intolerant strain of progressivism and in American life, and a view of the country’s society, politics, and history stressing the central role of what’s called systemic racism.

At the same time, even though I’ve cited numerous examples of all the above developments, there still aren’t enough to prove a trend. Recently, however, exhaustive evidence has emerged on the systemic racism front, and we can thank a political science student named Zach Goldberg who’s conducted wide-ranging research on the subject for his Ph.D. and just published in the on-line magazine Tablet.

Goldberg has performed the kind of content analysis that’s only become possible with new information technology tools, literally counting the number of times The Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal in particular have used words describing what he calls “wokeness”: “a prevailing new political morality on questions of race and justice that has taken power at The Times and Post—a worldview sometimes abbreviated as “wokeness” that combines the sensibilities of highly educated and hyperliberal white professionals with elements of Black nationalism and academic critical race theory.”

His main finding: this racial wokeness’ takeover of The Times and the Post in particular preceded the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police by several years; that it’s completely unrelated to any change in levels of racism in the United States; and that it at the very least correlates – and may have played a big role in triggering – a significant rise in the numbers of Americans who agree with the woke/systemic racism claims.

This graphic shows the skyrocketing increase in the use of wokeist race relations terms by these publications. The absolute percentages are of course tiny. But keep in mind that they represent shares of all the words in these publications, and that recent years haven’t exactly been devoid of major developments in countless other fields.

This graphic, when combined with the first, indicates how robustly American perceptions of racism’s pervasiveness has risen in tandem with the Mainstream Media’s treatment of the phenonemon. And the strongest effect has been among white liberals.

Indeed, although the graphic below covers a somewhat different timeframe, it makes clear that not only did white Democrats’ views on the power of American racism increase as the Mainstream Media became much more racially woke, but minority Democrats’ views of this subject actually decreased during the December, 2006-June, 2015 period. That’s compelling evidence that these news organizations became woke racially even though the racism-in-America situation might actually have improved.

Although I clearly disagree with most of what I see as the fundamentals of woke thinking, like Voltaire, I would resolutely defend anyone’s right to express them. And that includes Mainstream Media reporters and pundits and editorial writers alike. All I (and others like me) would insist upon is that news writing clearly be labeled newswriting, and opinion clearly be labeled opinion. Goldberg’s research makes a powerful case that way too much of what Americans have always regarded as reporting of the facts that at least tries to be objective has turned into propagandizing, and that the nation is a much more polarized and angrier place as a result.

P.S. Thanks to Fred Bauer, whose FredBauerBlog always makes excellent, important reading, for calling my attention to Goldberg’s work.  

 

Im-Politic: About That Systemic Police Racism Charge

02 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

African Americans, Gallup, Im-Politic, Pew Research Center, police, polls, race relations, racism, systemic racism

For the longest time, it’s been widely noted that polls tend to send two unusually strange and related messages: First, Americans’ views of their own personal situations, and of the national situation, often differ tremendously; and second, the first is much brighter than the second.

So for instance, poll respondents can dismiss Congress as a bunch of incompetent crooks, yet voters keep reelecting their own representatives – in the most important poll of all. They can condemn America’s healthcare system as a mess, but make clear how much they like their own coverage.

But familiar as I am with this pattern, I was stunned to see it appear in a Thursday Gallup poll about African Americans and their encounters with the police.

Taken on their own, the findings seemed narrative-busting enough. The Gallup headline was pretty par for the recent course: “For Black Americans, 41% of Police Encounters Not Positive.” That’s hardly confirmation of the apparently emerging conventional wisdom that American law enforcement is plagued by systemic racism.

After all, even the downbeat wording of the header suggests that 59 percent of these encounters have been positive for African Americans. The actual results are even more surprising, given how systemic the systemic charge has become. Specifically, 73 percent of African Americans polled reported that during their “interactions with police,” they were “treated with respect.” And 74 percent said they were “treated fairly.”

To be sure, these percentages are lower than for whites (by 20 percentage points for the overall positive/non-positive assessment, by 17 percentage points when it comes to respect, and by 19 percentage points when it comes to fairness). But although these gaps are hardly trivial, all the readings are well into majority positivity, respect, and fairness territories. And even the finding that provides the most support for the systemic racism charge is kind of suspect when you think about it. After all, let’s say that any driver is stopped by a police car and (justly) ticketed for speeding. Whatever his or her race, what driver is likely to feel great about the experience?

And these findings also fit the broader polling pattern of individuals assessing their own personal situations as being better than relevant broader situations. For example, in early 2019 (i.e., not so long ago), Gallup  reported that 77 percent of African Americans reported believing that “blacks in their community” are “treated less fairly than whites” in “dealing with the police, such as traffic incidents.” FYI, the questions were asked in 2018.

Moreover, not only does that finding clash pretty loudly with the results from this past Thursday about African Americans’ own personal experiences. It also clashes pretty loudly with the results from that same 2019 poll’s findings on African Americans’ own personal experiences. When asked “Can you think of any occasion in the last 30 days when you felt you were treated unfairly in the following places because you were black?”, only 21 percent of blacks answered “Yes.” Maybe the limited timeframe held down the “yes” responses for individuals. But if police racism really is systemic, you’d think that for the African American respondents as a whole, the time interval problem would fade away.

And here’s an interesting kicker: The 21 percent figure isn’t the all-time high recorded by Gallup. That came in 2004 – during George W. Bush’s Presidency.

Nor is Gallup the only polling organization to report a large gap between African Americans’ views on police racism generally, and on their own experiences with police. An April, 2019 Pew Research Center survey found that 84 percent of African Americans believe that “in general in our country these days, blacks are treated less fairly than whites in dealing with police.” But only 44 percent said they had been unfairly stopped by police.

None of this is to say that there are no racial issues in American law enforcement. After all, that 44 percent Pew figure doesn’t translate into “most,” but it’s still disturbingly high. My own personal conversations with black friends have helped convince me (despite my deep mistrust of the evidentiary value of anecdotes) that there is a tendency on the part of a non-negligible number of police officers across the country to view African American men in particular with special suspicion, and to act on these suspicions. South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott’s alleged experiences in this respect carry weight with me, too.

But recognizing the importance of these instances is a far cry from proving that  American law enforcement as a whole is afflicted with systemic racism, however you define the term. And the Gallup and Pew results represent two more reasons for caution about this conclusion.

Im-Politic: Why the Cancel Culture Can Be Really Useful These Days

14 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1619 Project, Adam Silver, Adrian Wojnarowski, arts, Ben & Jerry's, Black Lives Matter, cancel culture, celebrities, China, Dan Snyder, entertainment, ESPN, free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, history, human rights, Im-Politic, Jefferson Starship, Josh Hawley, National Basketball Association, NBA, Nike, police brutality, racism, Roger Waters, sports, Starbuck's, The New York Times, Washington Redskins, wokeness

Of course, what sports reporter Adrian Wojnarowski thinks about Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, or the Black Lives Matter movement, or racial justice and police brutality issues generally, or even the proper role of politics in sports, has no intrinsic importance.

I mean, he’s a…sports reporter. As a human being, he’s entitled to his views, and in principle he’s entitled to express them in public. But although he’s great at scooping the competition on the latest roster moves by the Minnesota Timberwolves or whoever, he brings no special qualifications to these matters, and based on what we know, has no distinctive, much less especially valuable, insights to offer. Indeed, he does’t even apparently have any interest in offering them (unless you’re the kind of person impressed with the eloquence of an F-bomb).

Nonetheless, Wojnarowski’s outburst, and suspension by his employer, ESPN, represents a particularly informative opportunity for explaining why the industries like sports and entertainment should stay away from politics not necessarily for the good of the country (a subject that’s unexpectedly beside the point for this discussion), but for their own good. Just as important, his moments of fame outside the professional basketball world make clear that the so-called Cancel Culture that’s emerged with special force recently in the United States has some genuinely constructive uses in these current fraught times.

To recap, Wojnarowski covers pro basketball for sports cable network and website ESPN, and clearly has strong feelings about racial justice/policing etc issues. We know this from his reaction last Friday to message sent by Hawley to the National Basketball Association (NBA) protesting its decision for allowing players to wear “messages that promote social justice on its jerseys this summer but not allow messages that support law enforcement or are critical of China’s Communist Party.” He responded by emailing his F-bomb to Hawley, who proceeded to send out a tweet containing the communication’s image. (See this account for the details.)

To his credit, Wojnarowski has apologized completely, and with apparent sincerity for showing disrespect. But regardless of what you think about the issues above, the NBA’s decision under Commissioner Adam Silver, to “uphold” and even “stand for” values that no one of good will could object to in the abstract is bound to be a recipe for continuing trouble and a hornet’s nest it would do well to avoid for two main and overlapping reasons.

First, what non-arbitrary yardsticks, if any, does the NBA, or a similar organization, use to decide which views it endorses. As widely noted, the NBA is a strongly majority African American league, and Silver has explained that he therefore has tried to be sensitive to the concerns of black players, many of whom have experienced firsthand the varied socioeconomic problems and forms of prejudice that have plagued the black community for so long. That’s perfectly fine, and in my opinion laudible, when it comes to supporting these players expressing their views off the court, as individuals. But as representatives of a team or entire league? And when the league itself takes stances?

This is when a raft of thorny issues rears its head, especially if the league’s policy isn’t “anything goes.” For example, what if – as Hawley suggested – a player wants to wear on his jersey a pro-police or pro-military slogan, or perhaps “All Lives Matter”? Would the league allow that? And if not, on what grounds? Does the NBA really want to permit some forms of Constitutionally protected expression but not others? Would it be willing to establish an issue-oriented inspired litmus test for permission to be drafted or otherwise sign a contract? Would non-playing employees be subjected to the same requirements, too? Or would the league impose a “shut up and dribble”-type rule on players who dissent from its orthodoxy?

These questions may seem academic. But what if the day comes when most NBA players aren’t African Americans? As the league keeps proudly observing, athletes from abroad keep pouring in even now. Maybe they’ll care a lot about police brutality in America’s inner cities, either because they’ve been following the issue closely or because their consciousness has been raised by their African American teammates. But what if, some day, Bosnian-born players wanted to wear jerseys decrying what they see as Serbia’s ar crimes during the Balkans wars that broke out in the 1990s? (Intra-ethnic tensions in the region remain high to this day.) What if Lithuanian-born players wanted to use their uniforms to protest Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent designs on their homeland? If enough European players filled NBA rosters, would the league relish the thought of taking institutional stands on these matters? And if it did, how would it decide which positions to take? Majority vote of the players? The owners? Both? The fans?

Or take an international issue on which (as Hawley noted) on which the league has already made clear it prefers not to speak out – human rights in China. What if a player wanted to wear a slogan that slammed Chinese dictator Xi Jinping? What if a player of Chinese descent sought to protest Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong? What if one of the NBA’s Muslim players wanted to publicize atrocities committed by China against his co-religionists in the Xinjiang region? Would such players be censored? That option certainly can’t be ruled out, because the league’s lucrative China business has unmistakably led it to tread warily on this ground – even though its influence in the People’s Republic is considerable precisely because of the huge numbers of ardent Chinese NBA fans. But could the league proscribe this or any other kind of selective censorship on the basis of principle? Good luck with that. In fact, as with the other international issues mentioned above, it’s hard to imagine a better formula for sowing bitter divisions up and down league rosters and throughout the fan base. What intelligently led business would want to stir up that hornet’s nest?

Which brings us to the second major reason to de-politicize the NBA – and the related entertainment industry: They’re businesses. Any efforts to impose official orthodoxies will antagonize significant shares of their customer bases as sure as it’s bound to please others. And the league would expose itself to the Cancel Culture – which would have every right to rear its head, and which in these circumstances arguably would serve useful social, political, and economic purposes. After all, if it’s OK for the NBA as a business to take a stand I don’t like, it’s just as OK for me to register my dislike, and/or try to change its mind through the most effective legal means available to me and other individual customers – our pocketbooks.

These actions would by no means amount to calls to censor the NBA, or deny it or any of its franchises a right to free speech. If business owners want to use their assets to push certain agendas, that’s their prerogative. (I’m much less comfortable with permitting businesses to use unlimited amounts of money to fund campaigns for political office – but let’s leave that subject for another time.) It’s anyone’s prerogative, however, to object by not purchasing the product – just as it’s anyone’s prerogative to turn the channel if they decide they don’t like a TV or radio program. If these consumer actions endanger a business’ profits – too bad for them, and no great loss for the nation. If these organizations aren’t willing to pay a commercial price for their principles, chances are they’re not that deeply held to begin with.

The same rule of thumb, by the way, should apply to organizations as such that are resisting becoming politicized – like the Washington Redskins football team, which just yesterday announced that it will be changing its name because many (though no one knows exactly how many) view that monicker as a racial slur. As I see it, owner Dan Snyder has the God-given right to name the team anything he wants. And fans have the right to object by avoiding games in person or on TV, shunning team merchandise etc.

At this point, it’s crucial to note that skepticism about the wisdom of sports leagues and their teams (and other businesses) taking institutional stands on public issues doesn’t automatically translate into opposition to individual athletes or owners or other employees of sports leagues and other businesses taking such positions as individuals, without identifying themselves with their employers. That freedom needs to be respected – or at least that’s how I see it.

But how I see it, it turns out, isn’t the law. Private businesses generally can fire employees for any reason they like, including speaking out politically outside the workplace, as long as the reason has nothing to do with race, religion, gender and, now, sexual orientation. One reason surely is that such actions can reflect poorly on a business, reduce its earnings, and wreak non-trivial collateral damage – e.g., via a revenue drop big enough to endanger salary and wage levels, and even jobs. In other words, in most cases, you as an individual worker can legally be canceled.

Another reason evidently is that this kind of firing doesn’t inherently prevent you from expressing yourself. It simply prevents you from expressing yourself and holding a particular job. Given how important jobs are, that can easily look like a distinction without a difference. But again, if a principle is held strongly enough, it should be worth an economic price.

Speaking of reflecting poorly on business, that’s apparently what the Washington, D.C. pro football team’s sponsors decided when they started threatening Snyder recently with withdrawing sponsorships if he didn’t relent and drop “Redskins.” In effect, they told him they’d fire his business, as they had every right to do And Snyder quite understandably decided that his profits were more important than preserving his memories of his boyhood sports idols. (He’s a native Washingtonian and lifelong-fan,)

Celebrity status, as in sports, of course, creates interesting wrinkles – mainly, a team could in theory fire an athlete for expressing a view that owners consider objectionable, but enough fans might disagree strongly enough to retaliate commercially against the team. In these cases, the only reasonable conclusions to draw are that (1) life is sometimes unavoidably unfair and (2) some decisions are risky, and businesses that employ and even foster outspoken stars, like sports franchises, need to hope they have the judgment to come out on top. The same goes for keeping or dumping controversial names and mascots.

Generally speaking, Cancel Culture-type entertainment issues play out like Cancel Culture-type sports issues, but some crucial differences should be taken into account. Principally, whereas sports as such have absolutely nothing to do with public issues, literature, music, theater, the movies, and the like have always been closely connected with these matters. How could they not? Of course, the arts have created any amount of pure fluff. Much so-called serious art plays purely to our pure emotions, too.

But from their beginnings, the arts have represented expressions of ideas as well, and any healthy society that wants to stay healthy should hope that individual artists and organizations keep sounding off vigorously on “politics.” Moreover, logically speaking, there’s no built-in problem with entertainment companies and those institutions that organize the industry (and administer awards) championing and condemning specific positions as well.

By the same token, however, whether you denigrate the practice as intolerant Cancel Culture or not, it’s any art or entertainment consumer’s right to choose not to patronize any individual entertainer or artist or entertainment business or organization they disagree with about anything, and even to encourage others to join in. The market and the consciences of individuals and companies and organizations in the arts and entertainment fields will decide what kind of arts and entertainment products will be produced, with whose sponsorship (if any) and how influential and commercially successful they’ll be.

The real dilemmas for consumers come in when, say, your favorite singer makes terrific music but expresses offputting ideas on public affairs. In those cases, there’s no reasonable alternative to each individual figuring out which he or she values more – the instrumentals and vocals, or the lyrics – and there’s no ready formula for doint so. For me, it’s how I justify continuing to play Jefferson Starship’s musically magnificent but politically infantile (putting it mildly) 1970 album “Blows Against the Empire,” but also how I’ve decided that I’ll probably keep ignoring Roger Waters’ new material because I find the Pink Floyd co-founder’s anti-Israel invective so despicable.

Of course, Cancel Culture-type issues have arisen in connection with other industries as well. For me, because they generally have nothing to do with ideas and values, the sports rules of thumb seem to be appropriate for them, too. So I’ll keep passing up Ben & Jerry’s – and not simply because they always put in too many fill-ins and too little ice cream. Ditto for Nike’s various social justice kicks (which the athletic shoe company apparently views as being perfectly compatible with its massive job and production offshoring). And since I can now get a good cup of joe, find a comfortable place to sit, take a load off, and use free WiFi at any number of coffee bars around the country, so long to Starbuck’s and its insufferable in-my-face “commitment to racial justice and social equity.”

Whatever you think of the above arguments, they still leave unresolved three big aspects of the intertwined rise-of-institutional “wokeness/“Cancel Culture debate still unresolved.

The first, concerning historical monuments, markers, and names etc. I’ve already dealt with extensively, and you can examine my views by entering terms like “Confederacy” or “history” in RealityChek‘s search engine.

The second concerns the view that the kind of voting with your pocketbook that I’m recommending clashes with the idea that vigorous debate is a cornerstone of any sound democracy. I strongly agree with that notion. But it strikes me as naive to believe that at present, or in the foreseeable future, the conditions exist or will exist for any kind of helpful debate about the emergence of woke corporate culture.

For decisions like the NBA’s to take up certain causes (but not others) didn’t result from any engagement with the fan base. I’m sure some polls have been taken, but those were undoubtedly market research exercises to try to see whether such moves would pass muster with its customers – or whether they mattered at all. But to my knowledge, neither the league nor any of its corporate counterparts offered the general public the option of commenting substantively, much less indicated that these comments would be taken into account. The decisions were made by fiat. And given the vast disparity between the power and influence of a huge, well-financed business on the one hand, and individual customers or fans on the other, who can reasonably doubt that these debates won’t even happen until it’s clear that fan objections are impacting bottom lines?

If anything, these points are even stronger when it comes to institutions that are widely supposed to be in the debate-fostering business themselves, at least in part. It’s true, I’ve argued, that at least when we’re talking about the news media, or the broader information industries, these suppositions are largely misconceptions. It’s also true that I wouldn’t advise anyone to stop reading, say, The New York Times, because it’s chosen to enter the field of education and create the (in my view recklessly slanted) “1619 Project” to rewrite American history, or because its news coverage too often seems to be shaped by a widely held staff view that the sins of President Trump are great enough to warrant abandoning traditional journalistic ideals like objectivity.

But these Times decisions also were made by fiat, with no substantive input sought from readers. So if at some point I or anyone else concludes that the Times‘ reporting and analysis has become so unreliable as to be useless, I’ll cancel my subscription with a perfectly good conscience, and hope others do likewise.

The third dimension of the wokeness/Cancel Culture debate concerns wrongs committed or controversial remarks made by high profile individuals, and the proper responses both of the general public and of whatever employers or constituencies to which they’re responsible. Simply put, should such words and deeds be forgiven or punished, and if the latter, is there a statute of limitations?

Clearly, some of the deeds (like sex crimes) bring into the picture the criminal justice system, which I assume everyone views as the way society should deal with these actions. More difficult to decide, at least in principle, is how to treat those convicted once they’ve paid their debt (assuming they get released). At this point, I don’t see any viable alternative to engaging in or avoiding Cancel Culture-type responses, since the offenses cover such a wide range of actions, and since the subsequent behavior of the guilty is certain to vary greatly as well. Therefore it seems impossible to figure out a cookie-cutter blueprint for forgiveness or lack thereof. Case-by-case seems to be the best strategy for their employers, too.

Nor do I see any viable alternative to dealing with case-by-case to speech that’s legal but that offends for all sorts of valid reasons. In other words, there’s no escaping judgment calls.

So let’s give the Cancel Culture one or two cheers (as opposed to the full three). I just wish I was more confident that America’s national supply of judgment was adequate or increasing strongly.  

Im-Politic: An Immigration and Racism Link Deserving Much More Attention

12 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

African Americans, Chicago, CNBC, H-1B visa, Hispanics, Im-Politic, Immigration, inequality, Jim Reynolds, minorities, Norman Matloff, race relations, racism, STEM workers, tech jobs, unemployment

“H-1B” and “racial injustice” probably aren’t terms most people would believe have much to do with each other. That’s why a recent CNBC interview with a leading African American financier deserves your attention even if it is two weeks old. Because he shows not only that they’re intimately connected, but that even someone who is focusing on the link needs to think much more about how exactly it works, and what needs to be done about it.

For those who don’t follow immigration issues closely, “H-1B” is the name of the category of visa that the federal government allots business for foreigners they supposedly need to employ because their “specialty” skills can’t be found in the domestic workforce. The skills cover a wide range, but according to this organization (which loves the program) most of the visas requested by U.S. companies are for science and technology occupations, and indeed their prevalence in these fields is responsible for most of the controversy they’ve generated.

For evidence abounds that, contrary to their claims, the tech companies that seek these foreign workers so ardently aren’t using them because they’re geniuses, but because they’re cheap – and because they need to remain tied to the company that sponsored them if they have any hope of getting permanent legal residence in the United States. (My go-to source on this issue is University of California-Davis computer scientist and immigration authority Norman Matloff, whose work can be found at this terrific blog.)

As a result, H-1B opponents argue that their use undercuts American pay levels in science and technology fields, and severely undercuts the argument that gaining these skills is one of the best guarantees available to young Americans of prospering in the turbulent economy of recent decades. But the program damages the economy in a way less often noted by opponents: It guts the incentives American business might develop to invest in American workers’ skills generally, or to press government to get the country’s education act together so as to make sure that the skills they need are available domestically.

And this is where the racial injustice and related economic inequality issues come into play – along with that CNBC interview. The subject, Jim Reynolds, is an inspiring African American success story who’s long been active in civic affairs in a city with one of the nation’s biggest African American populations – his native Chicago. (See this profile.) CNBC brought him on the air on July 2 to talk about racial diversity on Wall Street.

The conversation proceeded along these lines till it was about two thirds of the way through, when Reynolds made this totally unprompted and stunning pivot. Its worth quoting in full, and came in response to a question on whether he thinks Wall Street is genuinely committed to hiring more minorities in the wake of the George Floyd killing and ensuing tsunami of nationwide calls to end racism and related economic injustices.  (I also need to present it because this point didn’t make it into the CNBC news story accompanying the interview video that’s linked above.)   

“You ask if I think this is real…. I was at an Economics Club dinner a couple of years ago…and one of the top CEOs in the city [Chicago], actually, one of the top CEOS in the country – a Fortune 100 company – spoke to the group, and what he said to the group that one of his most frustrating experiences is working with H-1B programs, and why they won’t let his company recruit more of the talent that they need in the tech space….[H]e said that in the middle of downtown Chicago, where we have African American and Hispanic youth in the city, ten minutes from where he was standing, that have…let’s call it 40, 50, 60 percent unemployment, that go to schools that don’t really…teach them this sort of thing, and I wondered why he didn’t even think about this. Sure, you can go to China, and you can go to India, and recruit that talent. And that talent – and I’ve spent a lot of time in China – that talent started getting developed in middle school When they come here, and they go to the quants on Wall Street and the quants in Silicon Valley – and they do dominate that space – they started studying this stuff like when they were eight years old, nine years old. And I’ve started thinking about and talking about and I’m working with our wonderful Mayor Lori Lightfoot about, let’s get these corporations thinking about – and this time is great – investing in these black and Hispanic schools. Now. Let’s grab our young black and Hispanic kids in middle school. Let’s have a Facebook program in the school, Microsoft program, Alphabet program, Apple program in these schools. I think that’s an opportunity.”

I couldn’t have done a better job of making the H-1B-racial injustice connection. But as I suggested above, Reynold is still missing a piece of the puzzle: The CEO he mentions, and others like him, simply aren’t going to make those investments because they don’t have to. And they don’t have to precisely because they have a cheaper alternative – and one that doesn’t require them to deal with the kinds of workforce training challenges they’ve never faced: the H-1B program.

So if Reynolds really wants to expand opportunity for disadvantaged minority youth (and other young Americans) all over the country, he’ll start pressing for the elimination of the H-1B program, and for broader immigration policies that deny businesses in all sectors the easy option of hiring low-cost foreigners – and in the process, creating even more power over workers and thereby intensifying the downward pressure they can keep exerting on their wages and benefits.

Reynolds, moreover, is in a particularly good position to lobby for these changes effectively because, as made clear in the profile linked above, his close friends include a fellow named Barack Obama – who has more than a little influence on the liberals and progressives who have emerged (along with Corporate America) as among the stubbornest opponents of immigration policies that put American workers – including of course minority workers – first.

Im-Politic: Ivy League Princeton Turns Bush League in the History Wars

29 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cancel culture, Christopher L. Eisgruber, Founding Fathers, history wars, Im-Politic, Ivy League, James Madison, Princeton University, race relations, racism, slavery, Washington Post, Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Full disclosure: Although I graduated from Princeton University and believe that I got a great education there (for a princely sum, to be sure), for various reasons, I never felt much affinity to the place (except for the basketball and other athletics teams – long story). As a result, I’ve never given it a dime . Even so, it’s depressing to learn that for the last seven years, the school as been run by a leadership team that’s full either of guilt-driven liberals, ignoramuses, utter ditzes, or some combination of the two.

I know this because the university’s president, Christopher L Eisgruber, has just explained in an op-ed in today’s Washington Post why he persuaded Princeton’s Board of Trustee to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from the university’s School of Public and International Affairs.

My scorn for this move and those responsible for it has nothing to do with any doubt concerning the racist views and policies of a figure who was not only President of the United States, but president of Princeton. I’ve fully recognized Wilson as a racist here and here. Nor do I hold the former Woodrow Wilson School in any special regard. In fact, I’ve long considered “public and international affairs” as being about as legitimate a university course of study as sports communications.

Instead, I view the Wilson name removal as (to quote Eisgruber) “an excess of political correctness” precisely because he’s also expressed strong agreement with one of the few sensible notions that have emerged from America’s recent history wars – that there’s a crucial distinction between figures who are known only or mainly for supporting treasonous and racist and other odious views and policies, and those whose role in U.S. history entailed much much more. More.

In this vein, Eisgruber acknowledges explicitly that Wilson “is a far different figure than John C. Calhoun or Robert E. Lee, people whose pro-slavery commitments defined their careers and who were sometimes honored for the purpose of supporting segregation or racism.” He recognizes that many of Wilson’s achievements both at the university and in the White House can legitimately be called “genuine” and even “grand.” And he goes on to admit that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate his life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

Weirder still: As Eisgruber explains, responding in 2015 to student demands that the university “de-Wilson-ize” itself Eisgruber asked the Board to study how Princeton was presenting Wilson’s record and legacy, and the school ultimately decided to “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.”

In my view, that’s exactly the right way to handle the matter, and I’ve since urged that participants in the national debate to think harder about similarly thoughtful ways to deal with other historical figures who also deserve to be remembered as more than racists whatever flaws on the issue they demonstrated or embodied.

But Eisgruber and the Princeton board have taken the easy, and simplistic way out. Although nowadays the concept of “slippery slope” is abused way too often (because it too conveniently defines out of existence any need and ability to make intelligent choices or draw important distinctions), Princeton’s decision raises the question of why Abraham Lincoln or the Founding Fathers, with their own problematic racial records and actual slave-owning, shouldn’t be expunged from the nation’s public places as well (or from whatever private places honor them).

According to Eisgruber, he changed his mind because even with the 2015 changes, Princeton was still honoring Wilson

“without regard to, and perhaps even in ignorance of, his racism.

“And that, I now believe, is precisely the problem. Princeton is part of an America that has too often disregarded, ignored and turned a blind eye to racism, allowing the persistence of systems that discriminate against black people.”

But of course, the university had taken specific steps to (as Eisgruber told us) “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.” So what’s changed between then and now?

Similar questions arise from Eisgruber’s associated contention that “When a university names its public policy school for a political leader, it inevitably offers the honoree as a role model for its students. However grand some of Wilson’s achievements may have been, his racism disqualifies him from that role.”

If so, however, why keep Wilson’s name on one of its residential colleges and on it’s “highest award for undergraduate alumni”? (As Eisgruber calls the Woodrow Wilson Prize. Unless that, too, has changed? Eisgruber didn’t specify.)

Finally, why have Eisgruber and the Board stopped with Wilson? The university also still honors the slave-owning (and pretty consistent slavery supporter) Founding Father and former President of the United States James Madison in at least two ways: a scholarly program called the James Madison Society, and a dining option called “Madison Society”. What the heck is so special about him? Why not kick this racist SOB’s name off the campus, too? 

Nothing could be clearer than that Eisgruber has no rational answers to these questions – and may not have even asked them. In fact, the only intellectually honest or competent sentence in his entire article is his confession that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate [Wilson’s] life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

In other words, Princeton’s decision stands as a monument – to ignorance. And you can probably throw in intellectual cowardice and faddism as well.

← Older posts

Blogs I Follow

  • Current Thoughts on Trade
  • Protecting U.S. Workers
  • Marc to Market
  • Alastair Winter
  • Smaulgld
  • Reclaim the American Dream
  • Mickey Kaus
  • David Stockman's Contra Corner
  • Washington Decoded
  • Upon Closer inspection
  • Keep America At Work
  • Sober Look
  • Credit Writedowns
  • GubbmintCheese
  • VoxEU.org: Recent Articles
  • Michael Pettis' CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS
  • New Economic Populist
  • George Magnus

(What’s Left Of) Our Economy

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Our So-Called Foreign Policy

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Im-Politic

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Signs of the Apocalypse

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

The Brighter Side

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Those Stubborn Facts

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

The Snide World of Sports

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Guest Posts

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Current Thoughts on Trade

Terence P. Stewart

Protecting U.S. Workers

Marc to Market

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Alastair Winter

Chief Economist at Daniel Stewart & Co - Trying to make sense of Global Markets, Macroeconomics & Politics

Smaulgld

Real Estate + Economics + Gold + Silver

Reclaim the American Dream

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Mickey Kaus

Kausfiles

David Stockman's Contra Corner

Washington Decoded

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Upon Closer inspection

Keep America At Work

Sober Look

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Credit Writedowns

Finance, Economics and Markets

GubbmintCheese

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

VoxEU.org: Recent Articles

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Michael Pettis' CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS

New Economic Populist

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

George Magnus

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy