I know, it’s early in the morning, my fellow Americans, and you’re still working on your coffee and cornflakes, but if I have to be exposed to this talking emetic, you get it too. He’s now calling people who demand greater diversity in congress “racists”.
.@RashidaTlaib: Democrats need to give women of color a seat of the table and listen to our voice
Tucker Carlson: "'Give us power bc of our skin color.' That's the argument Tlaib is making … by definition it is a racist pitch." pic.twitter.com/kEDk2ZtIsZ
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) July 9, 2019
That’s perverse. So congress can go on for hundreds of years as a body consisting almost exclusively of white men, and that’s not racist, but anyone suggesting that there be a more balanced representation that includes more women of color is racist. That’s how systems of exclusion and oppression perpetuate themselves, by turning any resistance to a discriminatory system into a feeble rationale about that being discriminatory. You have to be really gullible to accept such a game, but that’s Tucker’s audience.
Tlaib is making a reasonable suggestion that any group that makes decisions for minorities ought to include representation of the target group.
I would not vote for a woman or person of colour with no consideration for their policies but, until the time that representation is balanced, it’s absolutely a factor I consider. I suspect it’s unlikely I’ll live long enough to see the era of balance.
Affirmative action doesn’t mean white males must give all their stuff to women and minorities (as I’ve heard Dinesh D’Souza argue). It’s a tilting of the playing field to correct for the current imbalance.
Diversity is strength.
Tucker should at least give her a few moments to spit out the words he put in her mouth.
Setting aside considerations of equity and justice – because the right oppose such values on principle – affirmative action and other diversity initiatives increase organizational efficiency and productivity because they:
1. pull from the previously untapped talent pools that are marginalized groups, enhancing the variety and potency of skills, and
2. push established actors from dominant groups out of their privileged-induced complacency and mediocrity, forcing them to compete and better themselves.
Selection based on diversity doesn’t need to be solely according to merit because replacing a subpar actor from a dominant group with a median performer from a marginalized group will always be an improvement. A marginalized person just needs to be of average competence in order to be and do better than any of the the incompetent white men who presently run things.
In addition, increased representation boosts self-esteem and encourages self-improvement among marginalized groups and the removal of institutional barriers eliminates some of the costs and wastes of competition.
Thus, representational diversity is not just good for business but good for everybody involved.
Conservatives and other reactionaries oppose affirmative action and other diversity initiatives precisely because these programs roughly approximate meritocratic selection and advancement. Right-wingers are upset that they can no longer enjoy (or at least not to the full extent that they formerly enjoyed) free rides and coast through life by virtue of being affluent, white, male, cis, and straight.
Pardon me, but I’m not going to look to a racist for advice on what does or does not constitute racism.
Actually, Affirmative Action (the official policy, which the OEO tries to enforce) doesn’t require anyone to give anything to anyone. It merely makes people who want to exclude people from disadvantaged groups do a little more work to justify it.
What Affirmative Action actually does is to make government entities and “private” entities that are entagled with the government that hire or accept (to college) someone who is from the advantaged group show an apparently good-faith effort to include some disadvantaged people in the group that they considered.
Back in the day, there were policies that went beyond that, in cases where it could be shown that the organization had been actively and intentionally excluding people from disadvantaged groups. But those policies were not Affirmative Action.
QFT.
I am interested in the reaction of the Washington Establishment when they encounter the Canadian Minister of National Defence.
@5, Allison,
Do you know what the policies that went further are called?
I’m actually fine with that approach in some situations, as long as it’s done carefully. Even realizing that I’m typically in the groups that would be weighted against. The exception being the decade that I worked in child care. I still had to be qualified and good at my job, but being one of very few men in the industry would break a tie when applying for jobs.
Golgafrinchan Captain@1 the irony about D’Souza is that he is effectively a diversity hire. He’s been given a somewhat prominent role so the right can say “See, we’re not racist. There’s a brown guy over there who’s one of us.” A more recent example would be Fox News regulars Diamond and Silk, who let Fox News claim they aren’t prejudiced against African American women.
No mention by the author of “content of character”. Carlson was correct and the author of this piece is a racist.