(sent to lawcourts re: a discussion about what affirmative action is and whether certain leaders of the past would support it now, etc).

... yes but the term and concept were new. When I teach this subject, the first thing I have to do is define the terms. Many people (myself included) do not use the term "affirmative action" to mean taking affirmative steps to make sure that applicant pool and flow data are appropriate for their target pools (jobs). If labor pool data were perfect, any skew it had would have to come from systemic discrimination. Affirmative action doesn't mean "stopping discrimination." In fact, when I teach this, I teach labor pools as a non-issue that people. Everyone would want a law that made sure pools are reflective and to sanction statistical discrimination lawsuits. If someone is qualified enough to be in the applicant pool, the rates at which those applications in the aggregate get into the jobs are a telling statistic. So wanting community jobs to reflect their pools is not, in my book, "affirmative action."  Much of Kennedy and King's talk of
the subject simply means for its day, "taking steps to end discrimination." "taking affirmative steps to do something." 

But later on, the term comes to mean something a little different. It comes to mean things like promoting into the pool when the cutoff isn't quite there. Or it comes to mean, if two people are not close in qualifications, give extra preference so that we can "make up past wrongs." This is advocated even where the industry (say college) is not statistically disparate for the criteria in question. It comes to mean "remedial discrimination" or "benign discrimination."  Take a look at the test scores in the Bakke case. I use that in my class, and no one who looks at those scores believes the admission policy was fair. But I have to remind them, of course, it was the early 70s. So we change the facts. What if the scores are "this close," -- would you do it then? When can you give EXTRA on top of the statistical labor pool protections that are already actionable? To what degree and under what circumstances can you consciously intervene to push a
little harder? That is what affirmative action means in some quarters. 

Note that it is a very interesting moral question, one that seems to be generationally dependent (much like living constitutionalism is). I want to suggest quite clearly there is no right answer to it, and we should not demonize our fellow scholars if we have reasonable disagreement about it. We should try to dispassionately comprehend all of the perspectives. You will never logic your way out of this. The only solution is Rortarian. We need empathy here big time. Try to place the students into one another's life -- including Appalachians. You will get there only through the paths of charity and peace rather than  logic and talking about "qualifications." This is one of those issues where you have to try to relate to one another, all the way around.

Regards.
 
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
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Wright State University
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(sent to law courts. This is a discussion asking what Dr. King would think of today's issues. People are debating pro and con. I'm throwing in some logical structure)
 
... there are three issues here:

1. Historical. What did he believe. We ask the same thing of Jefferson. We find great disparity between the historical Jefferson and what me might call "the propositional one" (what philosophy his statements stand for, regardless of what he actually stood for).

2.   Propositional. How ideas that a person announces, for whatever motive, fit into existing modes of belief. The Realists, for example, didn't contribute anything original to philosophy of law (excluding sociological jurisprudence as its own thing), except the idea that Holmes already had espoused about law not being a self-contained, a priori craft. One might say, what did attitudinalists contribute as an idea to philosophy of law? I would argue not a thing (other than confusion). So what does King's symbolic speech stand for in that context? It stands for what it says and asserts, much like the Declaration of Independence stands for what it says. So whatever that is, it is.  If you look at the history of the Declaration of Independence, you find all sorts of things about its authors and signers that do not comport with what it says, philosophically. One cannot find anything propositional about the Framers that is not seriously dimmed and
transformed by looking at history. So my point is that these are two separate things. Just as with Jefferson, you have the historical Martin Luther King Jr., but you also have the naked propositions of "the Dream speech" and what it stands for as a piece of philosophy (moral philosophy). The same exact thing with the Declaration of Independence. When I teach the American revolution, I teach it with two messages -- its history and its ideology. What it was in reality and what an art critic can build its significance into. These are two separate but legitimate enterprises.  

3. Translation. The most difficult of the tasks is then to take the person and imagine what he would think of an issue that has changed over time. What would King today think, e.g., of Bill Cosby's remarks? What would he think of "race norming" test scores or admission practices that changed test scores? What would he think of the Obama and Jesse Jackson discussion that took place during the campaign?  

These are all extremely interesting issues. I don't come close to knowing the answers. If anyone has insights on this, I would love to read them. I had always thought Dr. King to be driven by a moral sense of compassion and fairness and decency. And that, whatever he would have thought, it would have been shaped by both a deep sense of understanding and courageous and warm heart.

Regards and Thanks.
 
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
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(sent to lawcourts)
 
... I think it would be more incoherent to argue "two wrongs" or to argue from idolatry.

Besides, as long as we are talking coherency in belief,  I think it would be more helpful to ask ourselves a couple of questions: (a) what is ideology; and (b) why doesn't the bottom paragraph qualify as one? It seems to me that groups who argue for a group-access policy fundamentally offer a charged belief system. And that if this issue were ever properly inspected -- you know, like we do all hegemony in the academy (cough, cough) -- that we might find that there are more unitary tasks and attributes present in all of us, and that we should find those tasks by looking inside of people and not at their shells. 

For any attribute you find that "women" have, I'm sure you will find it in various formats in all sorts of men, as is the case in reverse. One of the most ridiculous things about this sort of team logic is what it does to people like me. There are literally hoards of people who get thrown into "power groups" when they have nothing to do with the stereotypes of those groups -- just as people purporting to be for "women" very often have traits and beliefs nothing like those for whom they claim to speak. Just as ecological fallacy is a fallacy about averages in statistics, so too is this group-politics rhetoric. 

We need to teach people that they get selected because of traits, not appearances. And if "experiences" count, they have to be delineated rather than just assumed to accompany a chromosome. And once we delineate them, we are going to find that some Appalachian males have them too, as do gay males, as do Iraq war veterans.

Regards.

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
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(sent to law courts in response to a question about whether students get charged up over affirmative action and other kinds of race issues. The original poster said his classes have seen lessened interest) 

I have had an opposite experience.

I taught 90 kids a pop at Penn State for 3 years in a class that tackled all of these sorts of issues. In fact, I created the class. One of the pedagogical approaches I used was to be critical of all positions (left or right0. In other words, to challenge all the views on the subject. I found it exceedingly difficult to reach common ground. Not only would barriers exist along the lines of race, gender, sexual orientation and so forth, but also across ideological grounds that existed for the very purpose of roping groups or interests together. In fact, if you set about in the class to go for "the center" -- as in, judge people as individuals, not as groups --  that alone was seen as mischief  by those indulged with what you call "identity politics." The situation here in Dayton is very, very different -- but not at all "better" (and for reasons I don't want to get into).

From my perspective, this IS a generational issue, but not as you suspect. I sense that kids construct ideologies about these things based on whether it suits their interests. If you are heading out of college and into the job market, you will like preferences that help you but not those that hinder. This would be consistent with a youth culture that has everything, right-now, instantaneously -- and that frequently uses the word "bias" to mean "I didn't get what I wanted." It doesn't help professors inculcate students with a world view defined by "politics, selfishness, passions and ideology" rather than things like ethics, character, rule, virtue, justification and so forth. In fact, if the professors don't think these things exist, why on earth would students not be simply bratty and self-centered about how to stand in line for jobs?

If you look at the exchange between Paul and Scott, all that really existed was a battle of world views. One view says there must be discrimination if a pool doesn't look right; another might say "not unless we have it under a microscope." 

Somewhere down the line, people have to lay down their arms (including professors). I don't think "identity politics" helps us do that. We have to see inside of individuals. We have to transcend cultural form. We should be letting students see the age they live in and that they are existing within a constructed cultural existence. If they could get a bird's eye perspective -- be more philosophical and less combative -- the situation could be approached with more of a level head.  We also have to listen to them when they talk of unfairness, no matter what it is. And we have to be more Rortarian in terms of getting others to see what another's life is like.  And I think we also have to make sure that everyone -- from Appalachians to those in south-side Chicago -- get a fair chance to be judged for what they offer.   
 
Regards.
 
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
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(sent to a friend of mine re: whether the stimulus is a failure)
 

.. well Richey, I think we'll have to wait for history to judge that.

I do note that Democrats themselves are crowing about what Obama put in that package. It seems he slid his agenda into it and called it "stimulus." But I think we have to be careful. His agenda was predicated upon reorganizing segments of market and cultural failure (getting green jobs, getting health care costs under control by making records electronic, promoting new energy, etc.). These programs are predicated upon long term benefits to society and economy no matter whether they are enacted in a crisis or not. And also, we must remember that even as Obama stuck his agenda inside the bill, he also included true "stimulus money." So, as the legislation is appropriated and spent in the next two years, only then will there be a basis for rending at least an argument about judgment.

I also note two other things. The remainder of Obama's plans (particularly the health care reform) seems not to have much steam. In fact, I dare say that Obama is losing his leadership ability with Democrats and that, if this continues, the Carter label may begin to stick. You will recall that Carter could not get Democrats to do anything in Congress except laugh at him. Kennedy also was not the best chief legislator by any stretch of the imagination. So I worry that the steam is already coming out and that the Democrats may find themselves being led internally by Congressional Democrats -- something no one would ever want to see. One thing about Democrats is they organize about as well as children when finger-painting.

But I again note one last thing. Since my last mail to you, the Dow is up yet again, with news of another bank and of GM doing better than expected. So if this thing does get moving again, bailouts and the like may go down in history (yet again) as good medicine. And even for those who no doubt will argue that these things had nothing to do with the recovery, there will still be the nagging realization that this isn't even the central issue. The central issue will be that, once again, Americans will come to see that their futures do not depend upon keeping the extremely rich as pampered as possible, and that the liberal state of the 1950s produced a hell of a lot of prosperity for regular folks (no matter whether one believes the government did it or not). Hence, what is at stake here is the electoral rejection of the Reagan psychology.

If Obama has his way, I bet the top tax bracket is at 50% and that there is some kind of surcharge tax on incomes of gazillionaires. I also bet that, under this regime, the American economy will grow better than under Bush and Reagan. If they are smart, the Democrats will run a morning in America campaign next time around. Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?

  
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
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