The crisis of elite impunity that is ruining our society cannot be more clearly or convincingly demonstrated than with the fact that all of these people wrote all this stuff into an email and hit Send.
They didn't put a damning trail of evidence in writing because they're naive or ignorant; they did it because they have no fear of consequences. None at all. ...
Wow, finally a good op-ed ...
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j says:
I am statistically as likely to be Ed Burmila as I am to be swallowed by a sperm whale tonight. Which is zero. Unfortunately in the former case, but very happily in the latter case!
j says:
And yet, if you are a minority who is fortunate enough to get the same education and experience as your typical non-minority, there is a slight advantage to being able to enumerate your minority status in some fields such as my own. If you are a minority researcher, there are a number of grants and fellowships that are available to you that are not available to non-minorities. This can translate into cases where, if it's a toss of the coin between two people for one slot then if one has minority status then it's a slight push in their direction.
Given this situation, some people (dirty dirty republicans!) might think it's a bad thing because people aren't judged solely on their merits. Others might think it's a good thing because disenfranchised minorities need help and diversity should be celebrated.
I think it's a great thing for a very different reason: usually minorites who are well-qualified have had to push way harder to get where they are than non-minorities in a similar situation. The conservative rationale is turned on its head.
warmbowski says:
When I first head of Geraldine's remarks, I remembered the stuation between Isiah Thomas and Larry Bird back in the late '80s? Almost the opposite image of the current situation, with a black player (Thomas) playing the Ferraro part and disparaging a white player (Bird) in the context a heated playoff. I looked up the quote and it went something like – if Bird were black he "would be just another good guy".
I don't remember the outfall of these remarks too well, but I think that Thomas at least regretted them.
BTW
Ed says:
Well, J, I understand what you mean. Sometimes in academia one thinks "Man, if I were black I could get a job much more easily." What most people neglect to remind themselves is that if they were black they probably wouldn't be there to ponder that reality.