[BRIGADE] PJB: Jim Crow Liberalism
Published: Fri, 05/08/09
By Patrick J. Buchanan
May 8, 2009
Having lost both houses of Congress and the White House in two
straight elections, Republicans are going through an identity
crisis, its leaders holding town hall meetings to "listen" to the
people.
"What should we focus on? Should we drop the social issues? How do
we get the young people back?"
Such angst and soul-searching is not the mark of the leader, but
the mark of a man suffering from doubt and despair.
Why is the party in trouble? Simple. Dubya got a hold of the keys,
got high on neocon hooch, and crashed and rolled the family SUV.
He launched an unnecessary war against a country that had not
attacked us. With his utopian No Child Left Behind scheme and his
Medicare drug plan, he did his passable imitation of LBJ, and blew
a hole in the budget.
Touting globalism, he presided over the loss of one in every four
U.S. manufacturing jobs and ran up $5 trillion in trade deficits.
He refused to defend the Mexican border against an invasion, then
pushed an amnesty for the invaders.
This was no Reaganite. This was the neocons' apprentice.
How does the party reconnect with Middle America? How does it win
back the Reagan Democrats who went home disgusted?
Become again the party of Frank Ricci.
And who is Frank Ricci?
He is a fireman in New Haven, Conn., with 11 years in the
department, who suffers from dyslexia, but nonetheless has pursued
his dream of becoming a lieutenant and a captain.
Six months before the promotion test, Ricci quit his second job. He
bought $1,000 worth of the textbooks he was told to study, had a
friend read them onto tapes to compensate for his dyslexia, studied
every spare hour he got, and sat for the test, to compete for one
of eight lieutenant slots open.
Frank made it. Frank Ricci came in sixth.
It was after the results of the test were made known that the
problems arose. For, of the officers who had made the cut, all were
white, except for one Latino.
Concluding the test results would, if used by the department, have
an "adverse impact" on the black community, New Haven tossed out
the results and called for new exams to ensure a "fair" outcome.
Thus, because he is a white man whose people came from Italy, Frank
Ricci is to be denied a promotion he worked for and won, and be
robbed of his American dream by the liberal bigots who run New Haven.
Had Frank Ricci and half of the other top performers been black,
all would be on their way to becoming lieutenants and captains.
What is being done to Frank Ricci is exactly what was done to black
folks for decades. Great black ballplayers who might have become
legends like DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig never got the chance because
they were black. Black students were denied admission to prep
schools, colleges and military academies because of their color.
Now, what was done to them is being done to white folks. And it is
just as wrong as it was then.
In 21st century America, race discrimination endures.
All we have done is switch the color of the victims with the color
of the beneficiaries. Today it is white males applying for jobs and
promotions as cops, firemen, government workers, who are held back
because their color does not comport with the desired "diversity."
What New Haven has done to Frank Ricci is like the U.S. Olympic
Committee throwing out all the trial heat results in the 100- and
200-meter races because not a single white runner qualified.
New Haven contends the "disparate impact" of the test hurts the
black community, proving discrimination. But does the relative
absence of blacks in the National Hockey League prove discrimination?
If the Republican Party wants a future, it will become again the
party that stands on the principle that "No discrimination means no
discrimination," that stands with the victims of state bigotry, and
that stands up to hypocrites like the Jim Crow liberals of New Haven.
Affirmative action began as a mandate to cast a wider net and
ensure all had an equal shot. It has become a mighty engine of
state injustice that seeks to remedy the consequences of past
racial sins and crimes, by committing new ones.
In Michigan, Washington and California, none of them red states,
majorities have voted to abolish affirmative action. Only Colorado
failed in a dead heat last fall. A Republican drive to write into
federal law an end to all race and gender preferences, as well as
to all race and gender discrimination, is a cause whose time has
come.
This is a winning issue for the GOP, for it is rooted in principle
and comports with what is written on the human heart. Down deep,
even liberals know that what is being done to Frank Ricci is not
right.
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SOURCE: http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-jim-crow-liberalism-1524