Obama is a racist. Look around you. Ever seen so many blacks in federal jobs before?
Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Thu, 08/25/2011 - 18:08
Advocates of racial/ethnic affirmative action quotas typically travel under the benign-sounding banner of "diversity," so long as it doesn't involve a diversity of opinion. President Obama's executive order last Thursday, August 18 requiring federal departments and agencies to increase hiring and promotion of nonwhite minorities is yet another example. The mandate, Executive Order 13583, is titled, "A Coordinated Government-Wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce." One notices words such as "efficiency" and "accountability" didn't make the cut. That's because over its four decades, "diversity" from the start has been about the allocation of economic rewards through force and guilt. The result most likely will be a federal bureaucracy committed more fully to racial payback.
There is a certain poetic justice here. In May, I wrote a lengthy article for National Legal and Policy Center, "New Report Shows Federal Race Preferences More Entrenched," centering on a then-new report issued by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) documenting the continued growth in federal affirmative action regulations. A previous CRS review, released in 1995, which was the last time Congress gave serious consideration to undoing these rules, revealed the existence of 172 such requirements. That figure had grown to 276 by this spring. Rules governing such program categories as Agriculture, Defense, and Health & Human Services more than ever stipulate that agencies and/or their beneficiaries demonstrate preference toward nonwhites and/or women in hiring, contracts, grants and other benchmark. Affirmative action, in other words, never went way. More to the point, the natural opponents of affirmative action, white "conservatives," did go away; they shied away from challenging its core assumptions.
Affirmative action - or "diversity" - should be seen as a form of what economists call "rent-seeking behavior." That is, it enables certain people to realize benefits through State intervention that would be less obtainable through the market. Supporters claim that blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other "disadvantaged" classes of persons need enforceable mechanisms to compensate for a legacy of blocked opportunity. By establishing mandatory goals and timetables, whether in percentages or absolute numbers, they argue, our society can ensure more equitable group outcomes. Contractual liberty for firms and individuals, as this logic has it, must be subordinate to social equality.
If mandatory affirmative action is at odds with the principles of a free society, why do so few supporters of freedom challenge it? A good short answer is this: Fear. They are fearful of being publicly stigmatized as racist (if white) or backstabbers (if nonwhite). To be known as an enemy of diversity in today's multiculturalism-obsessed America, as a career move, is tantamount to being banished to Siberia. Few want to see their income or social standing go up in smoke over some stray comment, let alone sustained argument, about race that even appears at odds with pronouncements by anointed nonwhite leaders. And formal organizations generally have to play along. My NLPC article this spring argued as much: read more at.....
Obama Issues Executive Order Mandating Racial Favoritism | National Legal and Policy Center
Pat Buchanan: blacks ‘inordinately overrepresented’ as federal civil servants
Advocates of racial/ethnic affirmative action quotas typically travel under the benign-sounding banner of "diversity," so long as it doesn't involve a diversity of opinion. President Obama's executive order last Thursday, August 18 requiring federal departments and agencies to increase hiring and promotion of nonwhite minorities is yet another example. The mandate, Executive Order 13583, is titled, "A Coordinated Government-Wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce." One notices words such as "efficiency" and "accountability" didn't make the cut. That's because over its four decades, "diversity" from the start has been about the allocation of economic rewards through force and guilt. The result most likely will be a federal bureaucracy committed more fully to racial payback.
There is a certain poetic justice here. In May, I wrote a lengthy article for National Legal and Policy Center, "New Report Shows Federal Race Preferences More Entrenched," centering on a then-new report issued by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) documenting the continued growth in federal affirmative action regulations. A previous CRS review, released in 1995, which was the last time Congress gave serious consideration to undoing these rules, revealed the existence of 172 such requirements. That figure had grown to 276 by this spring. Rules governing such program categories as Agriculture, Defense, and Health & Human Services more than ever stipulate that agencies and/or their beneficiaries demonstrate preference toward nonwhites and/or women in hiring, contracts, grants and other benchmark. Affirmative action, in other words, never went way. More to the point, the natural opponents of affirmative action, white "conservatives," did go away; they shied away from challenging its core assumptions.
Affirmative action - or "diversity" - should be seen as a form of what economists call "rent-seeking behavior." That is, it enables certain people to realize benefits through State intervention that would be less obtainable through the market. Supporters claim that blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other "disadvantaged" classes of persons need enforceable mechanisms to compensate for a legacy of blocked opportunity. By establishing mandatory goals and timetables, whether in percentages or absolute numbers, they argue, our society can ensure more equitable group outcomes. Contractual liberty for firms and individuals, as this logic has it, must be subordinate to social equality.
If mandatory affirmative action is at odds with the principles of a free society, why do so few supporters of freedom challenge it? A good short answer is this: Fear. They are fearful of being publicly stigmatized as racist (if white) or backstabbers (if nonwhite). To be known as an enemy of diversity in today's multiculturalism-obsessed America, as a career move, is tantamount to being banished to Siberia. Few want to see their income or social standing go up in smoke over some stray comment, let alone sustained argument, about race that even appears at odds with pronouncements by anointed nonwhite leaders. And formal organizations generally have to play along. My NLPC article this spring argued as much: read more at.....
Obama Issues Executive Order Mandating Racial Favoritism | National Legal and Policy Center
Pat Buchanan: blacks ‘inordinately overrepresented’ as federal civil servants
