Monday, March 17, 2008

“AA” Goes to the White House

We live in interesting times. For decades Democrats have been the champions of affirmative action (positive discrimination) in everything from college admissions to jobs and political appointments. We’ve been told that gender and race-based preferences are justified by years of suppression of women and blacks by the white male power structure. We watched as legions of the preferred were given positions they neither earned nor were qualified to hold and we winced as the Peter Principle inflicted its harsh justice.

Imagine our delight in seeing the Democratic Party caught up in an internecine food fight over which preferred class is most compelling, gender or race.

There’s Hillary touting her vast experience as compared to Barack’s merely splendid speech at the Democrat convention. Barack’s surrogates point out that Hillary’s experience amounts to being cheated on and humiliated by a man who happened to be president. Then she was canonized for “standing by her man” (not something she learned at feminist headquarters). But never mind, she’s a woman and as such deserves to be president, if only that uppity half-black male would get out of her way.

Gender preferences have become a tired old saw horse in this country of vast opportunity. Unfortunately feminists never tire of the fight and politically correct (ie. gutless) elites continue bending over for them. One of the latest outrages is chronicled by Christina Hoff Sommers (“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”) in the latest issue of The American.
http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/why-can2019t-a-woman-be-more-like-a-man

Women now earn 57 percent of bachelors degrees, 59 percent of masters degrees and the majority of PhDs. Sounds great, unless you happen to be male. But men are still doing well in the “hard” sciences and engineering: Women comprise just 19 percent of tenure-track professors in math, 11 percent in physics, 10 percent in computer science, and 10 percent in electrical engineering. That’s a “problem” that needs to be addressed.

Debra Rolison, a physical chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory describes herself as an “uppity woman” with a solution. She wants to apply Title IX to science education, and she is supported by the National Science Foundation and a host of female university presidents. (Women now serve as presidents of Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Pennsylvania, Miami,…) Just imagine if there are 100 physics majors in the freshman class at MIT then there must be 100 women physics majors. If MIT can only find 25 qualified women physicists, then 75 males will need to find another major. Or they can admit unqualified women, assuming they can find 75 with the interest. The feminists also advocate reducing the rigors of the course work and downplaying competition so the women will be more likely to stick it out. Believe it – you can’t make up this stuff!


Virginia Valian, a psychologist at Hunter College, is an author­ity in the crusade to achieve “equity” for women in the sciences. She aims to do something about the central problem: Not only do fewer women than men choose to enter the physical sciences, but those who do often give child care and family a higher priority than their male colleagues. Valian believes that our male-dominated society constructs and enforces “gender sche­mas” that encourage men to act and women to emote. To achieve a “gender-fair” society, Valian advocates altering the way we raise our children. For example, “Egalitarian parents can bring up their children so that both boys and girls play with dolls and trucks.... From the standpoint of equality, nothing is more important.” Believing garbage like this, Congress is considering the “Gender Bias Elimination Act.”


Watch out guys! I wonder how Mr. Obama will vote on the Gender Bias act
.

Barrack has more than his share of problems. First his wife Michelle announced that she was for the first time proud to be an American. Next came the flap over the racist church the Obamas attend. Over twenty years ago he joined a church run by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who Obama described as his spiritual mentor. The Obamas were married there and their daughters were baptized in the church. Obama credited Wright with delivering a sermon that he adopted as the title of his book, "The Audacity of Hope."

But in a sermon on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Wright said:

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

In a 2003 sermon, he said blacks should condemn the United States.

"The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme."

He also gave a sermon in December comparing Obama to Jesus.

When questioned by Anderson Cooper, Obama claimed that he knew nothing about Rev. Wright’s outrageous sermons, and that the parishioners did not believe such rhetoric. But videos show Obama’s fellow worshipers clapping and singing out in response to Wright. Methinks Mr. Obama’s got some splain’in to do. Hillary’s minions will be sure to ask him, and ask him some more.