When many white people say they want "colorblindness" what they really mean is they want not to have to think about "colored people" period. This opinion is reflective of those attitudes. It is an embarrassment and a disgrace, as well as orwellian in its obfuscation of what is really going on.

What exactly was the problem President Bush had with "activist judges, legislating from the bench" again?

I think you meant rolling things back to 1853 not 1953. I suggest reading Frederick Douglass, James Weldon Johnson and Charles W. Chesnutt for how things were in the "good old days". They are also wonderful authors.

A majority of whites think there is no serious discrimination in this country, while blacks think the opposite by a huge margin. I tend to think they know whereof they speak.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

Howard, I don't believe defenses of racial preferences are based on a belief in the validity of race as a category, whether biological, moral, or otherwise. It's rather that without them the effects of racism will persist and thus an invalid category will be sustained.

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

My beige spots might be darker than you think. I repeat: until I have an objective definition of "race", I'm not going to discriminate by it. Classifying by race to avoid discrimination by race is, to me, Orwellian and I won't play by those rules.

Try something more objective than "Well, Howard, don't you think that if you were instead a deep shade of brown or black you might have a different opinion?", and I might have a different response.

Of course there is discrimination for all sorts of reasons. There are those that will discriminate against anyone who is not a lawyer. There are those that discriminate because people are union members, and others that discriminate because people are not union members. Those factors are measurable.

I, personally, commit to treating each person as an individual, and I will not play subjective games for the injured group du jour.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

So you are saying that to avoid categorizing people by a subjective criterion, they must be categorized by subjective criteria to avoid discriminating due to said subjective criterion?

When I am asked for my race, I respond either "human" or "I don't know." As far as I know, people belong to one species. I am going to treat all people as belonging to that species.

I suppose I'm discriminated against because no one in the National Football League will let me try out as a quarterback. There is, however, objectivity in that discrimination.

No, subjective discrimination, of which "racism" is one type, isn't going to go away quickly. My own commitment is to be oblivious to genetics and lifestyle choices that are irrelevant to the matter at hand. In like manner, I detest hate crime legislation, as something equivalent to Orwell's thoughtcrime. My commitment is what is moral to me; I can do nothing else.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

This is a democracy, yes, but not the kind that grows in a petri dish. Votes have real consequences.

I'm not going to condemn anyone for voting for Nader. Indeed, that would be hypocritical on my part since I voted for Barry Commoner in 1980 (because Carter was too conservative for me back then), and thereby probably helped to ensure the election of Ronald Reagan. I wish I were able to go back in time and vote for Carter but of course life doesn't work that way.

In any event, back to real consequences: Nader votes ensured the election of George Bush in 2000, and George Bush has given us a Supreme Court that we and our children will have to live with for decades.

Oh, good, yes, heap scorn on the American people. Not the piece of shit Nader, whose lying, destructiveist candidacy handed the presidency to the fascists.

Fuck you.

This court is capable of almost anything -- adverts for cigarettes on school buses as 'freedom of speech', ending the minimum wage as noted, crushing state environmental laws or federal whichever is effective. Just so the privileged win and everyone else loses. Scalia, alas, looks healthy enough for another decade at least. The only question is how far will Kennedy allow them to go, there are no limits for the others.

global citizen

Howard won't consider giving a leg up to "the injured group du jour" - by which he means African Americans.

Howard must be confusing himself with God, to whom scripture tells us "a day is like a thousand years". That "jour" goes back to Plessy v. Ferguson. It goes back to the Civil War. It goes back to Jefferson's plantation. It goes back to Jamestown.

But four hundred odd years of oppression and the struggle against it are a day, a triviality, a bagatelle, a passing fancy not worth wasting thought or breath over, to the admirably even-handed, remarkably long-lived Howard. He has eternity to waste. Justice delayed for a mere millenium or so? Can't possibly count as justice denied. Obviously, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King were "playing subjective games" over some metrosexual dabbling in some silly flash-in-the-pan fad, and Howard wants no part of it.

You're gonna love this court, Howard. Too bad they're going to be around, piling one mountain of injustice on another, for only three decades or so. To you, it'll feel like the blink of an eye.

Self-righteous posters like you make it exceedingly difficult to have real discussions on here.

I have a suggestion for you: read about 6 dozen postings by Howard over the past 18 months or so, and then tell us whether or not you think you jumped the gun in attacking his integrity. I look forward to your response.

I don't agree with Howard's position (I think the equal protection clause can and should be read to permit race-based considerations in the area of education), but I do understand his genuine concern about race-based governmental intervention. If you don't understand Howard's good faith concern then you are probably not someone who is worthy of engaging in debate.

Pigmentation impacts revascularization rates in people with severe coronary artery disease. These differences persist despite equivalence of income, insurance, and access to institutions performing revascularization procedures.
Darker pigmented females in certain ethnic groups have more aggressive forms of breast cancer than lighter pigmentated women of other ethnicities.
Genomics will not provide a full explanation of the differences in cancer aggressiveness. Proteinomics, is in it's infancy, but may provide a more complete answer regarding the underlying process in disease aggressiveness.
Answers to access to various therapies in different groups will require assessment of how those groups are categorized in society and interactions with health care providers.
"Race" will be with us for awhile longer despite the moe enlightened views of some memers of society.

As a white ("What is white. I never saw a white person"), man ("what's a man. I'm a hu-man) of Jewish ("what's Jewish. I have a Jewish name but I am certainly not Jewish", Howard Berkowitz comes by his insensitivity to African-Americans and other oppressed minorities honestly.
He just has no empathy. He lives in a 1930's popular front dreamworld where we are all just Americans. There are no African Americans denied rights that he can see. Those Jews being tormented in Germany have nothing to do with him.
It's just Howard, all by himself, looking down at the poor dumb ethnics who think they have it bad.

the reality is that in the 2000 election, a vote for Ralph Nader was a vote for George Bush. Only the naive or deluded would claim otherwise.

Being naive and delusional, I will proudly continue to vote against Republicans whether they call themselves Democrats or Republicans. If Democrats want a Democrat in office, nominate one. It is just that simple.

Hey, would you like to tell us how much you would love to have Joe Lieberman president today since you seem to think the anti-choice, conservative alternative would be mighty fine? Would you take responsibility for that abomination? You sure we should be bombing Iran today?

Best, Terry

When I see someone in pain, I don't need to label them to take the appropriate measures to treat the pain. When I see someone who wants to learn some subject, the only label I might use is whether or not they have the requisite background.

No, if empathy means buying into self-pity due to labels, I am proud not to have any. If you wish to have a label, however, I would be happy to offer this one that says "self-righteous".

No, I'm not Jewish. I'm neopagan. As soon as you come up with some genotypes you want to test, provide a prepaid test requisition, signed by a physician, to the appropriate genetics laboratory.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

What "prejudgments" are obvious in my post? Did I attack you without making an argument? I did not. My argument is that you are a bigot, based in part on your statement: "I will not play subjective games for the injured group du jour."

If you weren't referring to black people, then just whom are you talking about? Indians? Latinos? Jews? Inuits?

Your pseudo-ingenous style isn't cute, it's just a smoke screen for lack of substance. "I've never met a black person." Sure. Well, everybody else has. Have you ever met a person whom everyone but you would identify as black, and identifies him- or herself as black? Do we really have to go through such gymnastics for you to face an issue?

And as for your snarky suggestion that I prefer "simplistic answers", it's actually you who refuse to see any shades of grey in this argument. "Anything but color blindness is bigotry," is your message, even quoting Dr. King as support for your argument that blacks and/or other minorities should not get preferential treatment in order to integrate schools. Why, you say, to do so is to run the risk of seeing the Nazis arise once again!

Well, Dr. King was talking about the country he WANTED to live in, not the country that exists. And we're not going to bring it about by pretending inequalities don't exist, and by avoiding doing something about them. Why do you think blacks score, on average, lower on IQ tests than whites? Should we just ignore this fact, or should we try to redress some of the unjust allocation of educational resources that created it? Do you disagree that it's a good thing for kids to be in schools that are ethnically diverse? Or do you disagree that even ARE different ethnic groups?

Or are issues like these just too tedious to contemplate for someone who's bored by the plight of the "injured group du jour?"

No, I find your flailing about, spewing accusations, to be tedious.

Let me be explicit about what I intend to do as a matter of conscience. I really don't care about self-identification based on some subjective criterion. I can't control how someone self-identifies, nor can I necessarily keep track of the group identifications; some have a habit of splintering into subgroups.

If someone scores poorly on an IQ test, that is a start on objective measurement, given all the problems of IQ tests -- and I'm not talking about cultural bias but inherent design problems in the metrics. Such a score does mean that individual deserves further investigation, since IQ does demonstrably change with variants in the testing method, and with appropriate education. A person with dyslexia isn't going to score well on series completion, but may do perfectly well on a different abstract measurement of reasoning.

I haven't the slightest problem with reallocating educational resources to where they will do the most good. I just won't make that decision on assumptions about self-identification on things that are not measurable.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Howard,

If I go out on a date, and you ask me how it went, and I say, "It was a lot of fun. I've never been out with a black girl before." That sentence would have no content to you?

I don't think you answered my other question.

"Nader voters are the ones who made possible what happened."

The problem with this position is it assumes that Gore was entitled to all the votes of everyone left of center, and that Nader voters betrayed Gore and elected Bush by voting for someone other than Gore.

But nobody's entitled to anyone's vote. I really like Gore now, but Gore in 2000 ran a hard-right campaign, repudiating the Democrats' traditional commitment to universal healthcare, agitating for Elian Gonzales to be pried from his father's custody and to stay with his right-wing distant relatives in Miami, repudiating his own longstanding concerns about global warming, etc.

All Gore needed to do is make the sale to Nader voters. He didn't. So they didn't vote for him. That's Gore's fault, not the voters.

Look, if the Democratic Party feels that the way to win election is to nominate ultraconservative reactionary Southerners full of phony piety and toughness, that's their right. But what they don't have a right to is the votes of rational people on the left side of the political spectrum while they do that.

"but Gore in 2000 ran a hard-right campaign"

He certainly did not run a "hard right" campaign. He ran a centrist campaign (way too centrist for me) but he was running against a rightwinger with no qualifications for office. Although I do not oppose 3rd party campaigns in principle, a pure vanity campaign where one knows that winning is impossible and clearly will defeat the better candidate demonstrates an utter lack of concern for the country.

Nader may be alot of things. But he is no patriot. The worst thing about him (see the movie) is that he seems genuinely proud to have defeated Gore, despite everything that has happened since 2000.

you are saying that to avoid categorizing people by a subjective criterion, they must be categorized by subjective criteria to avoid discriminating due to said subjective criterion?

If we use this reasoning Israel should not exist either?  Afterall, To avoid categorizing and persecution of  people by a subjective criterion we need NOT  give them a country based on subjective criteria to avoid persecuting them due to said subjective criterion.

To even suggest such is absurd. It means you are totally dissociating a group of people from their history. You are seeking to ignore the horrific brutality and tribulations that society meted out on them based on that said subjective criteria in order not to own up to any obligation to rectify those wrongs based on the subjective criteria you wielded to terrorirze an entire group society categorized, demeaned and abuse based on the very criteria you now want to render obsolete if they are to benefit from those subjective criteria.  What hypocrisy. 

This is sheer arrogance and bigotry what Roberts has said. If we use his rationale veterans should not recieve benefits based on them fighting in a war. The disabled should not receive benefits based on them being handicapped. The poor should not receive benefits based on being poor, either.  No group should benefit from any subjective criteria as that is discriminatory to all individuals not 'of' those groups.

This ruling is horeshit.

Best HC Berkowitz quote: "Incidentally, where did I refer to black people? I've never met a person who was black, although I'm proud to be considered extended family by a clan, from Sierra Leonean immigrant to second generation here, who include a lot of very strikingly attractive people with purplish-black skin."

It strikes me that HC must be quite advanced in years. No one who grew up any time after the 1960's talks that way. Such precious condescending racist crap.

By the way, there is a specifically Jewish genetic identity. Being a Jew is not some imaginary concept. Nor is being African-American or anything else. The greatness of America is that we are multi-racial, multi-ethnic, etc, and not one of those racial based nationalities. HC's denial of his Jewish background coupled with his racist
way of talking about black people suggests that he is obsessed with race, and not in a good way.

"I'm proud to be considered extended family by a clan, from Sierra Leonean immigrant to second generation here, who include a lot of very strikingly attractive people with purplish-black skin."

Strikingly attractive, no less! And that is tough when you have purple skin.

Okay, well I'll ignore your insults, and apparently you aren't unwilling to reallocate educational resources to minorities as along as we don't CALL them minorities, or don't identify them, or let them identify themselves, in some other convenient way (or something)...

But I still want to know to whom you were referring when you referred to "the injured group du jour?"

The Democrats' failures over the last 10+ years has to do with a lot more than just Ralph Nader.

I won't deny that.  But it's also true that had Nader's name not been on the ballot, George W. Bush would not have won the 2000 election.  Nader's decision to run, and the decisions made by his supporters to vote principle over practicality, had the effect of installing a right-wing government.

This is a winner-take-all system that is not necessarily majoritarian, and you need to take that into account when you are deciding how to cast your vote. 

Pompous! That's about the nicest thing I've ever been labelled on here. Thanks.

But the fact is that you have no idea what's in Howard's heart, and I will give him and even you the benefit of the doubt on that score.

Ideally we shouldn't use race as a factor,....but the reality is that we live in a society that needs to be on the same page

The "Browning" of America will accomplish that. Open up the borders to all the brown peoples of the world!!

don't more people see this decision as another right wing attack on public schools? if schools remain segregated and poor neighboorhoods have poor teaching and poor discipline, conservatives will have more firepower to argue for vouchers and "school choice" for those who can afford it. who is left behind? poor families who don't have enough income to afford private school with the supplemental voucher cash. (unless someone subsidizes certain private schools)

secondly:
please no one argue that as Roberts puts it, not discriminating against discriminators levels the playing field.

and Thomas' "the constitution is color blind"....talk about red herrings. does that mean congress AND THE COURTS don't redress injustice? I suppose because the constitution doesn't mention gender that women shouldn't have the vote. what nonsense these "strict constructionists" spout.

connski

Perhaps someone can explain some of this decision to me. Kennedy apparently supported the decision to overturn the Louisville and Seattle racial integration plans....but still said that race could be a consideration. It seems it's a 5-4 decision to get rid of these two plans; but also 5-4 to allow school districts to use race as a criteria.

What Kennedy apparently did not like about the two plans was the "binary" racial categories--that is, blacks and then everyone else.

Is this an assault on Brown because it seems the justices want more than a binary racial classification which I think Brown created? Is making diversity more than just blacks and everyone else a poor or a bad goal?

I'm also a bit troubled that the Seattle case apparently involved a teenager who had played cello in her school's orchestra and was being transferred to a school without an orchestra in order to meet the district's binary racial percentages. The Louisville case was apparently a 5-year-old kindergartner who was going to be schlepped past his neighborhood school and bused some distance away to meet the district's binary racial percentages.

I havent' given the races on these two children, but would it not disturb us that either of these cases would occur to any child, no matter what their race?

I'm not sure it's worth bothering with this guy. He's expressing some childish, self-involved "idealism" that's impervious to rational argument and real world experience. You feel like taking him on the subway to 125th and Lenox Avenue and telling him, "Look! THESE are black people!" Or maybe just turning the cable box to BET.

It's reminiscent of the conversation Dr. Johnson had when told of Berkeley's logical proof that there was no such thing as physical reality, and that the universe could only be understood as a creation of the human mind. Johnson, on a stroll through the countryside, paused and said that Berkeley's so-called proof was easy to refute. "How can you refute it?" he was asked. Johnson replied, "I refute it thus," and kicked a boulder next to him.

But of course whether the universe is real or not doesn't really "matter." (sorry). But prejudice based on race and ethnicity ARE real and affect millions. So it's really kind of offensive when somebody claims that racial and ethnic prejudices should be ignored because "there's no such thing as race."

But I still want to know to whom you were referring when you referred to "the injured group du jour?"

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

So, Hitler didn't kill any "Jews," just several million people he randomly labeled as "Jews," or labeled themselves as "Jews." And all these holocaust memorials and museums are just expressions of self-pity by self-righteous descendants of these random people who called themselves Jews, or who Hitler labelled as Jews at random. After all, over 50 million people were killed in World war II. Why should these self-labeled "Jews" single themselves out as victims deserving of special remembrance?

I'm sure you're glad that you're not wasting your empathy on these "Jews." That would be "buying into self-pity due to labels", wouldn't it?

The sentence "It was a lot of fun. I've never been out with a $FOO girl before" has rather little meaning for $FOO = blonde, as only her hairdresser knows for sure. For someone of a comparable educational level, no, $FOO = black doesn't have much significance to me. "black" isn't synonymous with "African", as there were different social customs with my immigrant friends from Sierra Leone. Apparently, it had a lot of content to them when I went into the kitchen and started my mad chef routine, since men just didn't do that -- but I couldn't stand to watch one of the teenagers being equally likely to cut her wrist or the tomatoes.

Now, it perhaps made more content when I went to dinner with my Swedish friend Pia, who explained to me that one of the most puzzling things she encountered in the US was the idea of a "date". She told me that it's perfectly common for single Swedes to meet for dinner, and even mutually decide to have sex, but the idea that the man takes out the woman was alien.

Pia speaks perfect English (and, depressingly, about 8-10 languages perfectly or at least professionally, and about the same number at lesser proficiencies). $FOO might have been somewhat more significant with my friend Izumi, whose English is not perfect, but still better than my extremely limited Japanese. We had a great time, when we got stuck on a word, of acting it out, drawing pictures on a napkin, or whatever.

I knew Marion Barry when he was still effective, and supported him politically because, in 1971 or so, he was the best man for the job. He only started playing a race card later in his career.

I apologize, but I seem to have missed your other question.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

I don't think "subjective" means what you seem to think it means. Whether or not someone is a war veteran is most certainly not a subjective judgement -- it can be determined objectively by examining the person's military record. Disability may be a little harder to determine, but it, too, is largely objective, based on fixed medical criteria. Where to draw the line that establishes poverty is open to debate, but once the line is drawn, it's not a subjective judgement which side of the line any given individual falls on.

With all due respect, I think the meaning you have chosen for subjective is far too narrow. The use of the word subjective need not preclude objective measures, rather subjective could have a much broader connotation  in that the society views that a veteran warrants benefits. Just as a boss promotes one person over another based on his sole subjective opinion independent of all the objective measures that may or may not exceed another employee.

 The society is making a highly subjective value judgment just as they do on the basis of race. Whether someone can prove they have been to war is not the issue. No one can prove they belong to any race as Howard as asserted. Rather, race and racism is highly subjective. Ergo, anything that the society subjectively values or devalues reaps benefits and rewards orr merits reprimand and penalties, respectively. 

Thus it is highly subjective that white skin in this society reaps benefits and rewards. Whites are advantaged and white membership has its privileges  The same holds true for veterans, handicapp, poor and aged in this society. The value they hold and/or prejudice they endure is entirely subjective.

You're being unfair to Howard, who is really a very decent guy. You're throwing up all sorts of straw men and arguing against things he never said.

Please do not make accusations you cannot substantiate. Howard is a big boy if he wants he can respond himself. Simply because you do not comprehend an argument does not make it a straw man. Broaden your perspective so that it encompasses a more diverse thought pattern.

 I don't entirely agree with his take on what amounts to affirmative action, but I do understand, and have some sympathy with, his argument. It is rather Orwellian to try to fight the effects of judgements based on race by making judgements based on race. I dont' like doing it -- I just don't know how else to address the problem.

No it is complete hypocrisy to think you can dissociate the history of this country from the discrimination it wields. This is not about eliminating discrimation. It is about redressing wrongs that were perpetrated on a group of people for over twelve generations in this country. For Howard to speak to there not being race, race was defined by law as one drop of black blood so there is an OBJECTIVE criteria.

Perhaps, Robert could use this total BS on the court but it does not fly in reality. What he did was shift the focus to judgements vs. the effects. We can not legislate the judgement of people what we can legislate agaisnt is the IMPACT of those judgements and that is where Roberts arguments fail.  It is the impact that is discriminatory.  The judgement that being white is advantaged and has privledges is not altered by this ruling. Only the disadvantaged judgments are now secure in knowing there will be no consequences for their race based decisions.

>> But he is no patriot

Come on, now ! Do you need to talk like Sean Hannity?

Impugning Nader's patriotism is cheap and
intellectually lazy.

I never voted for the guy, but this kind of rightwing smear is childish. Nader has done as much in living memory to make America a more liveable place as just about anyone I can think of. Isn't that patriotic enough for you?

Many other 3rd party candidates got more votes in Florida than Bush's margin of victory, so why don't you go and blame them, too?

Why not?

Nader had progressive ideas that were represented in neither of the 2 major parties, and so he ran. That's how it works in a democracy. If you don't like it, change the constitution. Don't ask people not to run!

Because if you start asking people not to run, then it's a short step from asking people not to vote...

I think I see where some confusion is seeping in. Correct me if I misunderstand, but when you speak of revascularization, you are talking about the nature and availability of PTCA/CABG. You speak of an especially strong difference in emergent revascularization following myocardial infarction.

As far as I can tell, you are not talking of the results of a procedure when someone gets the procedure. My initial and apparently incorrect reading was that you were talking about something like a rate of reocclusion following a revascularization procedure. If there was a different rate, it sounded like that after correcting for genetics, diet, body mass index, etc., there was an unexplained pathological difference that correlated only with "race".

Did the article correlate insurance coverage and socioeconomic status with the likelihood of the intervention?

As far as my own interventions, you might be amused that I had both good and bad genetics. On the bad side, I was hypertensive by about 30 and had a first anginal episode at 39. My father, at the same age, was in chronic heart failure, but he had not had the hypertension treatment I had had -- it didn't exist then.

After two PTCAs and a CABG, my cardiac function was getting worse, until I got into intensive medical management as part of a study at NIH. Over about 10 years, my ejection fraction rose from 35 to 65 percent, and my left ventricular hypertrophy disappeared. They concluded that I do have the right genetics for my cardiac capillaries to enlarge (angiogenesis, more or less) and do a "self-bypass".

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Even if it can't be objectively defined, do you agree that there are black people and white people?

I wonder if the terms objectivity and subjectivity really capture what a proper critique of race is really all about. The idea that racial categorization can be rooted in biological science has been discredited. Does that mean that racial distinctions are always purely "subjective?" Usually I take this term to mean that the distinction is purely personal or totally open to debate. And yet, individuals in our society are able to apply the terms "black," "white," "Latino," etc., consistently to most of the people they interact with on a daily basis.

The problem with racial categories is not that they are inherently subjective, it is that they are arbitrary. The assumption behind racism is wrong; humanity is not neatly divided into different biological groups, each one possessing its own unique characteristics. Thus, the distinctions we attempt to draw break down at the borders (and this is where they may actually become "subjective"). Attempting to apply them may at times border on the absurd.

So we do have "objective" standards of racial identification (otherwise how would we share them?), although, not being rooted in human biology, they cannot possibly classify every human individual. Our problem is how to eliminate social discrimination based on these standards. One solution would be to eliminate the standards entirely. But that is not necessarily the only, or the best, or the most practical solution.