Natalie Davis on DWB and affirmative action
If you care about either issue -- and in America, you should -- you should read how Natalie Davis connects her opinions about being pulled over for DWB (driving while brown) ...

I swallowed my sudden feelings of anger and humiliation and handed him the crumpled item, which he examined. At that point, I couldn't bear anymore, and tears began to roll down my face.

The cop opened the foil, saw the remains of a partially eaten hamburger, grimaced, and then turned his attention to the quiet, weeping woman before him.

"All right, ma'am, you can go," he said. "I won't write you up, but you should get that light fixed right away."

Tell me that demeaning encounter wasn't about or didn't involve DWB -- the dreaded "driving while brown."

...and affirmative action (aka "AA"):

This member of the one race -- the human race -- does not want to be judged by melanin for any reason: not for "racial" profiling, not for college scholarships, not for preferential or derogatory treatment of any kind. And that is why I can not support affirmative action: If pigmentationism is immoral in cases of "racial" profiling, then it is always immoral, in my estimation.

Responding to a comment, Davis goes on to write:

...I believe focusing on economic disadvantage is the only decent way to achieve all of those things. Few favors are done for those who don't have the ability to achieve and learn in college. No favors are done for melanin-enriched people who earn their accomplishments but are saddled with the hideous AA specter. No favors are done for the majority-group people who pay unjustly for previous generations' sins.

Ms. Davis' post generated a good discussion, including Tony "Ampersand" Deutsch's comment:

I certainly favor economic AA, but I don't think it's a substitute for racial AA. There are at least three problems that economic AA cannot address (limiteing myself to black/white examples to keep the discussion simpler):

1) Racist favoritism of poor whites over poor blacks.
2) Racial discrimination against middle-class blacks.
3) The effects of the enourmous disparity in wealth between whites and blacks at every income level (every economic AA program I've ever seen proposed is based on income and ignores wealth).

In the end, racial AA doesn't ask us to make a choice between pigmentationism and non-pigmentationism. It asks us to make a choice between unmitigated pro-white racism (no AA) or partly mitigated pro-white racism (some AA). The choice we'd all prefer - no discrimination at all - just isn't on the menu. So, for me, saying "we shouldn't favor racial AA because we favor no discrimination" doesn't hold water, because it suggests that "no discrimination" is an option when it isn't.

I suppose none of this is news, but the arguments are well laid out by Davis, Deutsch and others, so go have a look. I think Deutsch's objections to "economic affirmative action" are less telling than he does; race-based favoritism and discrimination could and should be fought as such, as matters of criminal prosecution and administrative decisions, rather than compensated for with race-based preferences. So I prefer the "economic assistance" model Ms. Davis does -- although I also intuitively like schemes like scholarships for the top percentiles from each high school -- schemes which are attractively agnostic about what accounts for disparities between high schools.

But these may be easier issues for me to theorize about than they are for Ms. Davis. So I respect her all the more for taking the position she does -- and I won't do her the disservice of considering the case closed just because she happens to agree with me. I'm just not sure enough of my position for that.


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EDIT, 8/29: last paragraph rewritten, see comments. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:14:00 AM -- |    

 
Amen to that, Glenn
...er, so to speak. Glenn Reynolds, known liberal handwringer, lays down the law on what's at stake in the Alabama Ten Commandments statue case:

So the real question here isn't whether we have a state religion. Rather it's the claim that we do, or should, have a particular state religion. I'd certainly prefer Christianity or Judaism to the Elder Gods, if that's the choice. But I don't believe that the Constitution requires me -- or even permits me -- to make that choice. [...]

I'm willing to ignore, as de minimis, things like "In God We Trust." But there's nothing de minimis about what Roy Moore was attempting. He wanted to make a statement, to the effect that George Washington was wrong, and that the United States is a Christian nation. He wanted, in other words, to establish Christianity as the officially sanctioned religion. And that's not, er, kosher. It's quite obvious that Moore has more in mind than merely making a cultural/historical statement about the role of the Judeo-Christian tradition in law. And to suggest otherwise is either to be completely clueless or to, er, bear false witness.*

Bingo. (Whoever the Elder Gods are.) As a bonus, Reynolds links to this hilarious photochop of the whole business.

Meanwhile, who's going to step up and enforce a federal judge's order to remove the statue, and when are they going to do it? Governor Riley? Dubya? Hello?


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* A quibble: Professor Reynolds attributes a statement to George Washington which was actually part of the Treaty of Tripoli: "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion." While the treaty was signed at the end of Washington's administration, it seems unlikely Washington contributed to its wording. The first President did say that "every man ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience." It seems likely to me he and most of the Founding Fathers would have agreed or did agree with the Tripoli language. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:49:00 PM -- |    

 
California democracy recall
Tony Adragna, defending the California plebiscitary process, answers a reader who finds fault with the California governor recall election:

OK, special interests can use the intiative process to bring their questions to the front. But so can regular citizens. And it's regular citizens who get to decide the answer, instead of leaving it to the political class.

I guess I disagree with Matt Welch, Tony Adragna, and other enthusiasts for the California plebiscitary system. I think that in California, citizen decisions -- made every two, four, or six years -- are too easily unmade, just as their delegation of those decisions is too easily circumvented. The recall petition drive, so easily begun and carried to fruition, undermines the legitimacy of every governor from now on, just as the initiative process itself undermines the role of the legislature. I think both have profoundly undemocratic effects, however unintentionally. Thus, were I still living in California, I believe I'd support making the initiative process and the recall process much more limited in scope and harder to carry out than they currently are. Sorry, Matt; I think the L.A. Times is right both about that and about term limits.

Tony writes earlier of civic legal knowledge:

It's our job, too, to understand the constitution — how else are we to hold the political branches, and the judiciary through them, accountable on their oath to "defend the Constitution"? How else are we to decide that a certain prevailing constitutional understanding not already found wanting by the courts is something that merits a challenge? Notwithstanding that a certain constitutional understanding may be constitutionally permissible, how else are we to conclude that some other understanding may be the better choice? It's not simply the three branches that have an interest in how the Constitution is interpreted & applied, so it oughtn't be just them deciding what the Constitution means. [...]

I think we all should be well enough informed to engage these debates, rather than leaving it up to the political branches & judiciary — it is We the People, and if we leave it to them, then there really is reason to be cynical...

The people definitely have a role in understanding their state and federal constitutions. But that doesn't mean it's wise to provide direct means to unseating governors or bypassing legislators. As currently designed, the California system is arguably not even democratic: it gives special interests far too easy a method of writing their wishes into law and unseating officials they're unhappy with. California is no model for democracy, it's a nightmare. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:58:00 PM -- |