So, Mr. Blow, we should have affirmative action forever? However you look at it, it’s opaque, state-sanctioned racism. My career was derailed twice in the Deep South, thanks to reverse discrimination. At one college there were two openings. I was already working in one. But the school wanted a black scholar, and he wouldn’t come unless his wife was provided for, so the administration took my job and gave it to this guy’s wife. Another time I was picked first by a search committee. Second was a white woman. Protocol was for the chancellor to interview the first two. But she reached back in the pack, picked a black woman who’d quit once, hired her sans interview and left town. It’s too late for me but I hope my sons don’t have to suffer this inequity. Believe it or not, I’m a fiscal liberal. I want the hungry fed, the homeless housed, and the sick cured. But I don’t believe in state-sponsored racism. Once I heard a (need I say it?) black affirmative-action officer say all new jobs should go to women and minorities. White men could get jobs overseas. She said this in front of a large audience. Unbelievable!
5
I have a suggestion for: accepting applicants in all schools, jobs, scholarships, etc. Pick a committee consisting of minorities, all genders, races, ableness, etc. It will be their jobs to take each application, remove the name & ANY IDENTIFYING INFORMATION, replacing it with a number. Given in order of receipt. Keeping out all extra curricular activities that might describe any of the ‘tags’ & tell someone something particular. Only marks, scholastic awards, jobs (not including ones mostly one group). Once done, from those applications the person to get the spot in a class, job, scholarship, may be picked. Then we can see after say 5 years whether it works or not. If it gives a diverse group, then it will be deemed of value, if not, then back to affirmative action. Any cheating by the committee, those who hire, or those who’s applications are sent in, will cause all those of that group will be removed from all applications for a period of 10 years.
1
Affirmative action is discrimination.
The way to stop discrimination is to stop discriminating.
This isn’t hard.
4
Kavanaugh and Hatch, 'distinguished' hypocrites both...while sending each other 'congrats' for a job well done.
2
To all the commenters who posit that affirmative action favors one group over another, take note. Since its inception, our government has favored one group of citizens over another. I'm tired of the arguments that affirmative action is somehow unjust. Perhaps you forget that people of color had to once ask permission for where to sit in public places, which water fountain to drink from, which (un)sanitary facilities to use. Asking politely was met with terrorism and brutality. When laws changed there was a reluctant, resentful population, so your protestations ring hollow against the facts of history.
Affirmative action is a gesture toward equal access and participation for all. It moves all people closer to fairness, a more perfect union, Justice, domestic tranquility, all that stuff the founders wrote about in the Constitution.
When people speak up about biased racial profiling being wrong with the same enthusiasm as they do about affirmative action, I might believe they are sincere about anything other than preserving their privilege.
6
The obvious argument regarding Mr. Kavanaughs personal preference of affirmative action would be that that is where affirmative action begins and ends, in the personal. However, the Federal government does have accountability to the people.
At this point in time the need for traditional Affirmative Action does need to be reviewed. Preference by: race, gender, ability-dis, nationality, should be nullified in lieu of economic needs. Economically underprivileged Americans statistically, especially by race, have drastically lower chances of obtaining the economic successes of those more wealthy citizens. In the interest of eliminating poverty in the richest nation in the world, I believe that most Americans “might,” get behind. We are a nation built upon the prime tenant that we all have equal rights, if those rights do not translate to equal opportunity for all of its citizens, then we are sorely missing the exceptionalism that we often refer to that makes this country great.
1
He opposes it as policy because his handlers, the Republican Party and the Koch Brothers, also oppose it. When you're bought and paid for, you have to do what you're told.
3
First, let us remember that the female clerks that Kavanaugh selected belong to a privilege group of already empowered women. Ditto for many of the women who became part of the so-called #metoo movement. Those women who don’t have the power also don’t have a voice. Second, the fact that Kavanaugh hired three female law clerks only reflects who he was comfortable to work with, not a deliberate attempt a affirmative action. The fact that he more easily found three women does not surprise me given that men and women are raised differently from the git-go. Nonetheless, the editorial board of the NY Times and so many liberals continues to be befuddled by some apparent contractions, for example why the lower working class so blindly supports Trump and how someone can practice affirmative action on a personal level but not as policy. The answer to these questions requires a class analysis, an analysis so many liberals are incapable of doing because they have no understanding of class and class dynamics. Lenin wrote in his Philosophical Notebooks, in regards to Aristotle and Plato, that when one idealist criticizes another, materialism benefits. Likewise, when the liberal bourgeoisie criticizes the naked capitalists, socialism benefits. This the mainstream press instinctively understands and why it needs to remind us every now and then that recent nominations in the polls don’t really reflect a rise of socialism but only a disgruntlement with the current administration.
Orrin Hatch has dementia. Compare his speeches on the senate floor in 2001 and today.
I know he has dementia because my colleagues in medicine in Salt Lake City watch him come into Sacrament meeting (That’s Mormon for Sunday Mass) helped by two men. Afterward the Ward (Parrish) gets together and talk with each other. Hatch goes with his bodyguards to his vehicle. The talk then centers around:
“He’s going down quickly; he used to be so quick-witted; he really should have just resigned.”
So yes I remember working with Senators Orrin Hatch and Jake Garn in Utah in the 70s (Garn co-authored the Hyde Amendment which doesn’t allow federal money to be used for abortions) and Hatch worked with Ted Kennedy so unbelievably they're both considered “liberal” by Utah standards.
Hatch swung WAY right when his co-senator Bennett was primaried by the Tea Party (?Freedom caucus) and his vote for the right is ALL that matters. Utah got Mike Lee.
I’m a socialist Democrat but it hurts to see the GOP using Orrin Hatch. He simply says what others tell him.
I really LOATHE this administration and congress.
1
nobody should display his kids in public (the way this nominee did); it is intrusive as far as their privacy is concerned; as far as they are instrumentalized in creating their father’s public image, it is a kind of abuse.
(i am a retired non-discrimination lawyer.)
2
It cannot be supported as policy because "IT IS REVERSE DISCRIMINATION AND ALL RACE/GENDER DISCRIMINATION IS WRONG"!!
Private citizens making their own decisions to help/mentor is the private citizens' choice. While it may be great if every private citizen donated their own money to advance a particular cause IT WOULD BE WRONG FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO COMPEL SUCH AN ACTION UNLESS IT WAS LAWFULLY PASSED AND DID NOT VIOLATE ANY CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISION.
The problem you have here in America is that you hate America and love socialism in theory (I don't see you donating more than 60% of your income to the poor which is what you would do if your followed your words with actions). You find other countries more just and equitable, even though such an assertion is patently false. As an American you are free to believe what you want, but you might enjoy more of your life if you moved to another country that is more in line with your socialist views.
5
Vivid are the race-baiting memories of the 1980 Reagan Campaign against affirmative action.
Thanks, Mr Blow, for shaking us awake.
There was a 1981 CITY UPON A HILL production of OG Hatch's "hearings on a constitutional amendment to ban government action to favor any race".
OG Hatch, pugilist. Ed Rollins, pugilist. Donald Trump, punchy. Ask them, DO YOU FIGHT DIRTY? Collective GOP answer: Is there any other kind?
Next serving of pugilist pie - will be lies about Democrats aiming to reduce Medicare benefits. Corry Bliss (Executive Director of Congressional Leadership Fund and American Action Network) already has 60 million dollars of commercials reserved for use in 33 district fights.
Republican strategists run campaigns as gladiator sport. Pundits are used to blame both sides for divisiveness and TO PLAY the "reach across the aisle" role for their MAGA audience. Don't buy their act.
Kavenaugh and his Federalist Society are a league to secure, retain, and exercise power. Kavenaugh's spiels about judicial independence are part of the act. His hiring of women clerks has an important dual purpose of expanding, securing the conservative women's vote.
Partisan decisions are a certainty.
Read Orrin Grant Hatch's disgusting logic of his "duty" is to oppose "Obama" and here's my invented arguments for violating my oath to uphold the Constitution.
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865649951/Orrin-Hatch-Doing-our-duty...
Of all the things to be up in arms about.... We don't need another Catholic, another Federalist Society member, another unthinking knee-jerk Republican on the court. We don't need someone to paper over the crimes of a corrupt president. These are the reasons not to vote for the man. Whether his family of daughters has nudged his tiny little mind in one correct direction is of little importance.
2
NYT please ramp up your coverage of the Supreme Court hearings. Each senator's arguments need to be understood.
Please NYT make breaking headline news about how 90% of Kavanaugh's records have been buried by the Republicans.
THIS IS RADICAL -OUT OF ORDER - NOT NORMAL - WRONG
It's imperative OUR press break these hearings down for the Public because this Supreme Court seat is so VERY critical.
4
Based upon the tone of most comments here, and the comments that follow every NYT article addressing Affirmative Action and race in general, it would seem that most among the racial majority (and economically privileged racial minority) in the US would benefit mightily from introductory courses on race and sex. The kind offered to college freshmen and dismissed by the same naysayers (as non-essential relative to more technical job prep courses), provide the very logic that is always grossly absent in their dissents. It is unconscious bias, not quantifiable data points that underlie the barriers faced by racial minorities and women. The evidence is the historical discrepancies in performance and economic achievement.
It was clearly enunciated by Richard Nixon.
I’m usually in complete agreement with Mr. Blow, but this time I feel he missed the mark. Conservatives always claim to be in favor of equal opportunities, just as they claim to care about the plight of the poor — but it’s only at their discretion. They seem to be unanimously opposed to state-sponsored affirmative action as well as social programs to help the poor and undereducated. This s because they want to be the ones to decide when (and if), how much, and who *specifically* is worthy of their Christian generosity. There is no one they hate more than the undeserving “takers.”
I’ve e spent nearly forty years working on affirmative action and I’m still amazed how misunderstood the policy still is.
Ironically, conservatives like Kavanaugh know exactly why they have fought so hard to destroy it. And it isn’t because of some noble belief in invidual liberty.
The law is political and always has been. Conservatives seem to know this better than liberals do.
Affirmative action was originally conceived as a means to compensate blacks for the many forms of racism they experienced, even while the nation was moving toward the civil rights era. But afffirmative action also bore some ideological similarity to reparations. At first this was attacked from the academy.
But when the legal rationale for affirmative action became described as compensating for “societal discrimination” it became clear that this would not be permitted, no matter how persuasive the legal arguments might be.
Judge Kanenaugh was one of many lawyers assigned to kill affirmative action and they have mostly succeeded. A program originally designed to compensate for the very real, measurable impact of ongoing structural racism has been judicially converted into a modest policy whose legal basis is the degree to which whites in a classroom benefit from the presence of non-white students. And even that hangs on by a thread.
Against that backdrop Kavanaugh isn’t hypocritical. He’s celebrating with his daughters for a job well done. The truth may hurt, even while it sets you free.
1
Unlike Mr. Blow, Judge Kavanaugh understands not every voluntary action with good intention shall be legislated. Making that distinction only proof that he is qualified for the job. With all the good intention of AA, the distortion when it got implemented, failed to deliver what the AA proponent once promised. It's time for race based AA to be abolished.
2
The best way to overcome inequality is by ensuring that disadvantaged children get good schooling. The US schools in poor areas are disgraceful. People in wealthy areas have good schools because the local taxes and fund-raising provides the money.
Affirmative action is divisive and unfair. It institutionalizes racial thinking.
4
I think the NY Times picks did a good job of covering the spectrum of reasonable opinions on this issue. Two points not highlighted in those comments include:
1. People's views can actually change. It's not inconceivable that Kavanaugh has had a change of heart regarding AA sometime in the past 10 years. Most of the evidence cited in the article occurred either before either of his daughters were born or when his oldest daughter would have just been born. It is possible for someone's opinion to change right?
2. To me, his more recent actions, where he had more or less total control over whom he hired as a clerk, are a better indicator of his personal views of AA than his actions 10 to 20 years ago when he was working for an administration and therefore implementing someone else's policy, which obviously may not be totally aligned with his personal views.
1
The first justice in the history of the D.C. Circuit to have an all-female clerk class? ALL-female? Wasn’t Kavanaugh thereby inviting a sex discrimination suit by one of the male clerks he rejected? He couldn’t find an equally well qualified male among all the applicants?
1
The theory behind affirmative action is that you can do right, create good, by doing wrong to another person, denying that person opportunity in the name of correcting historic wrongs. It is a bit like trying to protest what an older brother the bully did by punching the younger brother in the face. This is a deeply problematic concept because all of our lives are short, measured, we only get one chance and the goal, for most US citizens, is to rise as far as they can and pass along the benefits to their families and succesors.
What we don't, and really can't see, is the fact that all of the advantages that our society provides for people are fundamentally unfair. Admission to the more prestigious colleges, job opportunities, social contacts and networking are all based on who you are, where you were born, who your parents were.
The effort to create a perfectly fair society is an impossible dream. Studies indicate that 80% of people who are hired previously know someone inside that company, so where is pure merit to be found?
Our institutions like private schools and big deal, elite colleges were created for the express purpose of conferring unfair advantages on children from wealthy families. That is what they are for, their protests to the contrary not withstanding. How do you fix that? By letting ten more black kids go to Harvard?
People such as Kavanaugh don't like affirmative action because some of their "class" might bear the brunt of trying to correct wrongs.
3
Kavanaugh's stance is not surprising. The differing opinions occur because one comes from his personal knowledge and the other is the result of abstraction and not knowing what the outside world does. He engaged in personal affirmative action by assuring that his contacts in elite schools offered potential clerks with high GPAs. He was comfortable with their credentials. They were his kind of people even if female or of color. But in the abstract he isn't comfortable. He has no confidence in the credentials people he doesn't know for jobs he knows nothing about, so he decides that government imposed affirmative action is bad.
1
Good article, but what caught my attention in a different light, for the first time, were the words "reverse discrimination".
Why, you say?
Because properly read, it is an admission that what they are doing is and like is not "meritocracy", but "discrimination".
2
The federal government, by law, policy, decree or non-enforcement, ACTIVELY discriminated against women and minorities in housing, lending, employment , legal protection and military service and promotion, etc. for 200+ years. Those doing so may have not always understood the ramifications of their policies and actions, thinking "that is just the way it is". Now we DO know better and it is just as valid a federal lawmaking policy to right that wrong of long duration by some federal affirmative action that seeks to balance the playing field until everyone catches up.
1
I work at a state university and back when Affirmative Action was legal in Washington State, it never seemed all that "affirmative" to me. It was exactly as many of the commenters here indicate that they are okay with -- efforts were taken to increase representation in the pool, people were kept in the pool as long as possible, each applicant was evaluated against the other applicants strictly on their merits at each level. As an example, say you had planned to short list and do phone interviews on the top 6 candidates, but there was a member of a protected group ranked at #8. What we were supposed to do in our system was include the top 8 (rather than the top 6) in the short list. Notice that no one "jumped" over someone else and that #7 (a white guy) benefited too. Since the nature of the screening changed at each level, this gave the #8 applicant (as well as 1-7) the chance to try to shine based on this new set of criteria. Perhaps some applications of affirmative action are of the stereotyped kind (less qualified applicant moved ahead of more qualified white males), but that is not the implimentation I saw.
2
Not my experience at all. In college a much less well qualified applicant with lower GPA and lower Board scores than I, and a higher socioeconomic status too was interviewed by a medical school before their interview season even began, on a Saturday, and had a message on their answering machine accepting them before the even got back home. They were “Hispanic” from SPAIN!! The school I went to secretly gave all the “underrepresented minority students” the copies of the prior years exams and special Saturday AM tutoring unbeknownst to everyone else.
4
@LInda
Excellent 'ground level' view of how it actually works! (or at least did in Washington).
thank you.
@Andrew I am sorry for your experience. There are right and wrong ways of doing anything, and it's a shame to "throw the baby out with the bathwater." If they really gave minority students unfair help, such as the previous year's exams, that must really undermine the confidence of the very students that supposedly they want to help, i.e., they cannot do it on their own. As a somewhat related story, though, when I was an undergraduate the fraternity houses kept test files going back years. These were NOT members of underrepresented groups. Not a member myself, but I studied with frat guys and benefited from seeing those old exams. Now, as a college professor, I always make previous exams available to all my students, so that some (based on who they know) do not get an unfair advantage.
1
The reality is that as with all the other quota "diversity" hiring that our government agencies and universities et al have done for 3 decades, this has caused less qualified, just barely qualified mediocre white women from mostly our wealthy class to be hired over better qualified working class and middle class mostly white men! So what is truly a "spectacle" is the contempt that the media and this black columnist have for the intelligence of the black, brown and poor white citizens of this nation, when these "Opinion" elites suggest that giving the privileged white female half of the 1% a government enforced hiring precedence is some kind of an immense social progress.
2
There is an essential difference between personal choice and governmental forced policy. That is what Mr. Blow does not seem to understand.
Judge Kavanaugh felt that, given equal qualifications, he would choose to hire female clerks. His choice, his decision, and clerk qualifications are very subjective.
To give extra points to an individual in an acceptance process for a University due to the fact of their race, for example, is another matter. This is systematic racism, treating persons of one race differently than those of another.
3
Such hypocracy to see these women all smiling and proud of Kavanaugh and his alleged support for women.
The most basic and valued right of a woman is the right to choose matters that concern her own health and body.
He nor they want to give millions of American women the right to govern themselves and their bodies. He nor they want to give millions of women around the world the support to live a healthy and meaningful life - which includes being able to feed their families - sometimes only achievable through family planning.
And why? Because they are conservative Catholics who insist on imposing their conservative religious beliefs on every other woman on this planet!
1
In my years of corporate work, I experienced time and time again men who held the power and staffed their departments with only young women. They were cheaper to hire, nice to look at and not a threat to their power. I also note the professions female dominated with mostly male bosses - ie nurses and school teachers with mostly male administrators and principals. If Brett Kavanaugh really believed in advancing women on the court he should step aside and ask POTUS to nominate a woman in his place.
2
Mr. Blow, the reason for your confusion is that there are two different definitions of Affirmative Action in play.
First, Kavanaugh's voluntary efforts to seek to address historical discrimination in professional employment
Second is requiring employers to hire candidates based on gender.
Judge Kavanagh supports the first definition, but not the second.
Forced vs. voluntary. Its an important distinction.
Unfortunately, we too often take issue with those who have different methods to accomplish shared goals.
There is more than one path to a better society. Judge Kavanaugh's path is admirable.
11
It seems to be certain that Kavanaugh will vote against affirmative action, abortion rights, gun safety and a litany of other issues. Kavanaugh claims to have virtually no opinions during the hearings but writings (those that the public can see) and actions show otherwise.
1
"Affirmative action creates a current preference to counterbalance a historical preference."
It is also completely, utterly and absolutely subjective. As such, it is inherently divisive and ultimately counterproductive.
14
Abortion is settled law. So, I've heard it said. And to disagree will bring the WRATH. Slavery used to be settled law. Sometimes, things change.
2
"This is the kind of illogical social positioning I despise. Kavanaugh ... is now deeply interested in female advancement and equality because he has two daughters."
Can't prove it in court, but it seems that conservatives broadly become interested in a "cause" - a disease, a social condition - only once it has affected them personally. If it's happening to other people, eh, who cares?
3
I support some affirmative action, but this maddening. No one is against expanding the applicant pool or reaching out to excluded groups, the controversy is in using different criteria to judge different groups. A very disingenuous column.
11
When the “truths” of tribal culture conflict with empiric evidence, personal experience, reason, and career ambition ,“ T]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
The Crack-Up (1936), F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Clearly, Judge Kavanaugh is blessed with The first rate intelligence that Fitzgerald illuminated. Our problem is precisely that , when confronted with the cognative dissonance between the force of his own intellect and the resistance of the verities of conservative politics, his tribal politics will usually determine his choice.
1
Charles Blow needs to take a clearer look at the testimony of Brett Kavanaugh and the Republican senator Orrin Hatch that he finds so fascinating: It is two white males, already well-established, justifying discrimination against less established white males so that these two powerful white men can gain even more power. What a joke.
4
Kavanaugh's position is the usual individualistic libertarian argument that when people are free of constraints and realize that the right thing is in their best interests, they will do the right thing. Without the statistical and qualitative accountability, it's just anarchy for the WASP gentlemen's club.
6
"Staggering inconsistency" is a polite way to say these men are despicable liars. Because that's what this farce is -- an effort to cover up the attacks on civil liberties, women's rights, and equal justice that Senator Hatch knows full well Judge Kavanaugh has every intention of carrying out when seated on the Supreme Court. But Hatch also knows it is important politically to pretend otherwise.
2
In Bluman v. Federal Election Commission, Brett Kavanaugh made it easier for foreign governments to interfere in US elections.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/09/how-brett-kavanaugh-made-ru...
3
Civil rights laws like Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act expressly command nondiscrimination in employment against "any person". So, those who think centers of power should be able to treat individual applicants for scarce, valuable benefits like jobs differently based his or her race or gender should be advocating repeal of laws like Title VII. They never seem to do that, however, and it seems to be because they want that law there to protect members of the races and gender they favor, but to toss that law aside when it comes to individuals born into races and a gender they don't favor.
So, if they can do that, can I, as a tenured university professor, assign course grades or decline to write letters of recommendation based on my students' race and gender? I can't imagine stooping to that level, but if the rule is that we can all discriminate based on race and sex as we see fit, notwithstanding the civil rights laws, simply because we've convinced ourselves that we're doing good things, then the intolerant, illiberal left has nothing to say to someone in my position if I wake up tomorrow and decide that I'll also play favorites based on race and sex whenever I think I can get away with it.
Race and sex discrimination by centers of power, including public institutions, is a wonderful thing, wonderful! ... so long as someone else, a member of a race or gender I don't favor, bears the burden.
6
"Staggering inconsistency"? Let's just go with "appalling hypocrisy."
4
Lifetime appointments to the Court were a bad idea.
What I would like to see at a minimum is a Constitutional Amendment providing for the immediate removal from the Court of any Justice who was appointed by a President who is later impeached and removed from office.
What sense does it make to get rid of the big boss without getting rid of his top cronies?
8
There is no inconsistency. Just because something works does not mean that it is constitutional. I could reduce the number of guns on the streets of Chicago with targeted searches of homes, vehicles and persons in high crime areas. I would, however, run afoul of the 4th amendment.
2
When I saw the title of your article I thought it was going to be about the ultimate in affirmative action: Donald Trump. All the old objections about AA apply to him- a guy who has his job only due to his race and who is not qualified for that job. Trump is the least qualified guy to run the country even according now to a bunch of people who actually work with and for him, and yet, there he is.
2
Affirmative action is discrimination, albeit sanctioned discrimination. It is no different than Jim Crow segregation except that it has a professed laudable goal. A society cannot choose one person over another using religious, ethnicity, gender or age factors without overt discrimination. If we want to stop discrimination, then stop discrimination under the ruse of affirmative action.
13
I wonder what Kavanaugh's wife and children think about his opinion that the government should own their ovaries.
5
As a person of privilege who has benefited from a society that values white, male lives over others, Kavanaugh has a shallow view of how Affirmative Action can help those who have been historically neglected by the government and mainstream society. While Kavanaugh advocates for states to use "race-neutral criteria," he fails to acknowledge that America has never been race-neutral, and many of its non-white inhabitants are still facing barriers in housing, education, jobs, health, etc. due to legacies of slavery and segregation that have yet to be addressed. Until the root causes of injustice are understood and steps are taken to remedy them, Affirmative Action should be implemented in schools and jobs in order to grant opportunities for success to those who have been repeatedly denied them before.
Kavanaugh has shown through his conscious effort to hire more women as law clerks that he supports some of the principles of Affirmative Action, yet his outspoken disapproval for such practices in other settings raises questions about why his stances greatly contradict each other. One thought is that his comments on hiring women seek to distract from his record of opposing the goals of civil rights groups, and this idea certainly has merit, but I believe it goes deeper than that. As a father of two daughters, Kavanaugh wants to see his own children prosper, but he cares little for the children of non-white people who he will never meet, who need compassion and resources the most.
1
I was in law school in the early 80's. I also live in a state that looks down on affirmative action outside the big cities. I can attest there was and still is sexism and undoubtedly racism in the law profession. It was fed by people like Kavanaugh.
All the white boys, like the Trumps of this world, are behind Kavanaugh winking and nudging as he appears to be principled. He is not. He is using his daughters to attain a seat on the Supreme Court. That is all. I've seen it before and I'll see it again before I die.
The only way women get ahead "out in the provinces" is to be smarter and better than the men. Any rollback or pushback on affirmative action will put women back where they were thirty years ago. Or more.
And the same argument can be made for racial questions. But I'm a white woman and it isn't my place to argue except in general terms. It strikes me, however, that all progress made in the last thirty or forty years is being threatened by Trump and his merry band of Republican racists.
10
Being a manger and someone who interviews job candidates regularly, I can say with confidence that any business sustained on performance results and subject to intense competition does not care a bit what color, gender, or sexual orientation a good employee is. I don’t care if you are purple with antennas, if you can deliver and you are not disruptive to the companies success, you are hired. And you will be rewarded over the years to retain you. In my experience, most employers think like this. If you are not being hired and you immediately default to it is discrimination and bias for the reason, maybe a little self evaluation is needed. And that has become the issue with the bias, discrimination camp. It’s always the reason for not being hired. It’s never considered they simply were not the best choice.
9
The difference is simple. In Kavanagh's world, it applies to women but should not apply to minorities. I wonder how many of the female law clerks he hired were visible minorities. I suspect that the answer would be not many. This is inconsistent in that the two groups face the same hurdles in progressing in a world dominated still by white men. The population of law schools has changed in the last thirty years but the networks in the profession whether among academics or law firms or the bench have not. They remain, with some exceptions, as they have always been.
I kept waiting for the nominee to talk about minorities when he talked about advancing women. Not a word. That is where he stands. He is an acolyte of the sainted (sarcasm) Scalia. Another right wing judge who makes his desired outcome fit into textual and originalist paradigms, but really advances a far right conservative agenda. He is very political and his cagey answers don't hide it. k
6
The inconsistency is easy to explain: if you are a politician or political appointee you want to look like a supporter of equal rights. If you are a white Republican, you want to make sure that in general, any program, policy or law that actually promotes equality never sees the light of day.
4
Per usual Mr. Blow misses the essence of what a Conservative was explaining. Past racial or sex discrimination can only be remedied by more enlightened thinking which I believe we most certainly have today among society. Promotion due to race and sex is a poor way way to improve society and many times does indeed create ill will such as with University admissions. All Americans need to work to be accepting of others and also to practice personal responsibility and work hard for what they receive.
8
Forget about hot button issues before us today, whether abortion or affirmative action. These Republican Supreme Court proceeding are a sham because Republicans are withholding 90% of the documentation very pertinent to Kavanaugh's long career, as well as classified information neither personal or highly confidential. This is an outrage.
Senator Leahy contends Kavanaugh has lied about emails stolen from the democrats and sent to the Whitehouse and Kavanaugh. Leahy produced one email showing Kavanaugh was in the loop and Republicans have declined to produce the others. Leahy's record of speaking truth is impeccable.If email claims are true it should disqualify the nominee today.
Because confirmation procedures followed for decades have been tossed out and this nominee has opined the president is above the law. I predict, if this radical, Brett Kavanaugh, who indicated he's willing to overturn settled law is ramrodded on to the Supreme Court by the Republicans ,he should, if the Democrats take Congress, and rule of law still stands after Trump, be OUR 1st Supreme Court Justice to be impeached.
6
I was the first woman hired as a manager thanks to Affirmative Action. I would have never been in the running for the job if it wasn't for Affirmative Action. I proved my worth because I was given that chance. There were 8 male managers and one female, me.
I ended up being the most successful of all of the managers and because of that more women were hired when future positions opened up.
Affirmative Action works. It needs to remain in order to make sure more minorities are included in positions of leadership.
8
I disagree that its inconsistent. He made an effort to make sure women were included and considered in the applicant pool. That is different than affirmative action which favors certain applicant within the applicant pool.
7
Amy Klobuchar the senior United States Senator from Minnesota today quoted James Madison à propos of all the concealed documents that GOP would not released for the hearing of Bret Kavanaugh.
"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both."
James Madison
That where we're!
5
@Winston Smith MOT
I was obviously referring to Brett Kavanaugh hearings here.
As of anon manifesto published yesterday from SR. official inside of the WH, he/she should reveal their own identity, otherwise it's not much help for our country.
@Winston Smith MOT
If you remember your history, many of the colonial pamphleteers also wrote anonymously.
Also: kinda hypocritical that most of the people who advocate loudly for the right of anonymity for, say, message board users who spew violently bigoted and misogynistic hate speech online, are the same ones who loudly decry the anonymous Op-ed in these pages yesterday.
I am uneasy about Justice Kavanaugh. I view him as a kind of radical. Maybe even a fanatic.
I didn’t care at all for his fulsome praise of President Trump when he got nominated. I can understand a man desperately wanting to become a Supreme Court Justice, but laying the praise on with a trowel for a man as obviously unstable and demagogic as Trump is seems to me a bridge far-too-far.
Kavanaugh is a firm believer in the idea that government has an interest in “favoring fetal life,” a job I thought was already being relatively well handled by women without much assistance from government. That is his right. But to him I say, where have all the conservatives gone who once-upon-a -time used to want to keep government out-of-our-lives, where they belong?
Then there are his guns. His previous writings reveal him to be a man who has never met up with a machine gun he didn’t like.
I don’t trust people who mentally or physically surround themselves or the country with lots of guns. It seems to me to be an indication of an unhealthy fear of their fellow citizens.
There is a judge now serving on the Federal Bench by the name of Garland who seems to suffer from none of these disabilities.
I am counting on President Biden to make him his first appointment to the Court.
7
I doubt that many readers of The New York Times are supporters of this nominee, and the issue brought up in this editorial is only one of the reasons. What I WOULD like to hear from journalists is what, exactly, we're supposed to do to thwart him being confirmed? HOW can we stop his nomination from going forward? WHAT can we do to limit the damage that having him on the Court will cause? Those are the types of questions that I'd like some answers to. Tell me what to do or how to act in order to roll back the damage being inflicted on our country and lives. Telling me what I already know and venting frustration doesn't solve anything or make me fell better in any way about the current state of affairs, comprising putting this man on the Court for his views that are WAY out of step with mine and over half of this land of ours.
9
What would be worse to hear?
You are highly qualified, among many other highly qualified candidates, but you weren't hired because of your race.
or
You are highly qualified, among many other highly qualified candidates, but you were hired because of your race.
4
All you ‘moderate/liberals’ need to read MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. And all you conservative whiners just need to stop whining and learn some history.
2
Kavanaugh's approach to hiring does reflect the way affirmative action programs work...and why they are largely a charade. His "affirmative action" involved hiring Amy Chua's (the tiger mom's) daughter. (We know this because Amy Chua wrote an article advocating that Kavanaugh be confirmed, largely because of his "diverse" slate of law clerks.) No doubt, people like Blow would consider this a "win" for diversity: he hired someone who is not only a woman, but a "woman of color"! Hurray!
But is it really a win for diversity? He hired the child of two prominent, well-paid professors, who enjoyed the benefit of legacy preferences both in applying for undergraduate admissions and law school admissions. This is not exactly a "lived experience" that is under-represented in the elite legal world.
And this is why affirmative action is so often seen as a charade: What it is really about, in the end, seems to be making sure that the self-perpetuating nepotistic aristocracy that runs this country is sufficiently diverse. Unless they are from the right ethnic group, it has no use for the children of never.
Yes Mr. Blow, today's racist like yesterday's is the same cheat shot artist they have always been. Its the business transaction termed exploitation on the one hand and privilege on the other. As the growing 'racial' turbulence throughout Africa suggest it looks like the old British strategy of personal gain means by-- race first. And has become an emblematic business platform of younger majority Blacks there. Mr. Roger's Neighborhood (business) remains lily white but in the open 'public' fields like sports and entertainment, exceptional individual talent has become self-evident given opportunity. It can't be faked or bought. Who knows but God, but perhaps in time, His Created Humanity will get a clue. We will either live in economic equality together or continue to fight. We do what we can to better manage our social circumstances but I believe The Supreme Judge is the Best of Planners and Will Hold us all to His Account regardless. And if our present world is in social crisis don't blame Blacks we lost control of public affairs hundreds of years ago!
"It [affirmative action] creates a current preference to counterbalance a historical preference. " Actually, affirmative action is necessary to counterbalance current preference as well as historical discrimination. There are numerous studies as well as anecdotal evidence that points to ongoing, active discrimination against women and minorities. Some is due to bias -- some is due to structural and institutional factors. Where are the good jobs located? Who does the hiring? These are all reasons why affirmative action is necessaey.
1
Charles Blow doesn’t understand the difference between affirmative action and discrimination. Kavanaugh chose perfectly qualified women to be his clerks. He didn’t need to give these women preference points or artificially boost their SAT/ACT scores (as it were) to bring them up in the rankings. He recognized that women were not being given an equal footing and personally attempted to level the playing field. Discrimination occurs when institutions don’t treat people equally and “affirmative action” programs that give so-called preference points to certain protected classes of individuals is simply discrimination.
4
Maybe Kavanaugh just likes having pretty young women under his direction. That would also explain his hypocrisy.
4
Affirmative Action for whom, and at whose expense? California eliminated all race-based preferences for university admissions. Asian admissions to top UC campuses are now in excess of 40% for each incoming class. Asians have historically been the most discriminated against 'race' in this state. That legal discrimination included no right to own land, no right to a public education (for US born children!), no right to testify in a trial. All the people of Japanese ancestry in California were thrown in prison in 1942, every one of them.
Affirmative Action is discrimination. What is the argument to discriminate against Asians, in favor of Blacks, or anyone else? Blacks were subject to extreme discrimination in many parts of the US, just as Asians were in California. In 2018, should we discriminate against Asians, to give preference to other racial groups? That's a problem.
In the case of California's higher eduction, should we be discriminating against Asians, in order to favor another 'racial' group? Legislation was introduced and defeated to do exactly that. At what point does state sponsored discrimination based on race end?
To say that predominantly white teachers somehow discriminate in favor of Asians, while at the same time discriminating against Blacks and Hispanics is ridiculous.
To harm Asians, in order to benefit Blacks and Hispanics in higher education in California is unfair. Yet that is exactly what Mr. Blow favors.
7
It seems that Kavanaugh acknowledges that there are underrepresented groups that are not present in work settings, schools, etc. He wants to diversify the workplace. He is insinuating affirmative action.
Affirmative action is necessary because equal opportunity is a myth. We live in a world of systemic bias and that systemic bias makes it harder for some people to perform as well as other people because they don't have the same opportunity. The idea of meritocracy proposes the everyone has the same opportunity to work hard and that one person's hard work will inherently produce the same result as someone else's hard work. However, not everyone is equipped with the same resources or experience the same challenges; everyone's situation is unique. Not everyone has two parents, not everyone comes from wealth or middle class, not everyone goes to an amazing school, not everyone is encouraged to study rather than work.
There is also systemic racial bias. There is evidence to suggest that underrepresented minorities, such as Latinos and African Americans, are not treated the same way. This means they are judged or perceived differently. Some people may treat them differently. They are more likely to be punished compared to another race. This systemic bias starts early on for underrepresented minorities and eventually, it affects and hurts them. It creates an achievement gap between different groups.
Meritocracy cannot be enforced because systemic bias exists.
4
Mr. Blow either misread Judge Kavanaugh's remarks or misunderstand what the definition of affirmative action is. Judge Kavanaugh sought to increase the diversity of the applicant pool. That is NOT the "very definition" of affirmative action. AA implements race-based selection criteria for college admissions and hiring. Hence, Judge Kavanaugh's opposition to this is completely consistent with his previous actions. In the former, the applicant pool is diverse, but every applicant is considered on his or her merits. In the latter, an applicant's race (or gender) is used to make admissions or hiring decisions.
6
Mr. Blow says "People who have long benefited from others being excluded — often white and often male, Christian and heterosexual ....". In some cases probably true, but in others -- for example Asians as well as white males -- they are better qualified. It is when such are excluded that affirmative action becomes discriminatory.
4
Any unfairness to equally or better qualified white individuals that results from affirmative action policies favoring black Americans in education or government contracting is a very small price to pay by this nation for the enslavement of millions of African-Americans and continuing abuse of their descendants by way of segregation and discrimination that continued for more than 100 years after they were freed. Far too many white Americans are ignorant of both this history and its deleterious effects on black Americans that continues to this day. Too many many white Americans are opposed to any policy, even one as anemic as affirmative action, that might impair their belief that black Americans are inferior human beings.
5
@Jamie Nichols
It might be a very small price for whit americans to pay, but what about for Asian Americans? After being discriminated against through de jure actions such as the Chinese Exclusion Acts and internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, they are now also required to suffer for the acts of white americans through further racial discrimination in college admissions?!
2
Hatch is an intellectual and a Mormon. Who knows what strange reality appears in minds constructed so....
He's probably better adjusted than your average atheist who believes life to be a cosmic joke.
Obama's election to President of the United States demonstrated that affirmative action was no longer needed.
7
@jaco
Nice try, but no. Imagine for a moment if Obama was a thrice married aldulterer, with a history of failed businesses and stiffed creditors and suppliers, then heap on a tape of him bragging about sexually assaulting women and going on the record insulting decorated American war veterans. Do you actually believe for a second that he would've still been elected, and actually received a majority of the popular vote to boot?
Women and POC in our country still have to be better than their white male peers to get to the same level. That fact is undeniable.
1
A fair and balanced article, rightly pointing out inconsistencies in Kavanaugh’s attitudes.
Regarding any policy or activity, I really prefer to see something more specific than “it works” or it doesn’t. So, in what way does affirmative action work?
I’m open minded about it, but at the same time cognizant that equal opportunity is difficult to measure and likely is not equivalent to simple numerical/statistical parity. Connie Goldin of Harvard often discusses the gender pay gap based on data with little or no need to invoke discrimination.
I haven’t seen any similar discussion of disparities with respect to race. That racism persists in the US is undeniable. But attitudes have improved markedly since the Civil Rights movement as seen by rising rates of and acceptance of interracial marriage. Most conservatives believe in racial equality. But the vast differences in wealth and income between black and white families is worrisome and it’s not clear what policies can mitigate financial inequality, nor if affirmative action fits the bill.
Affirmative action acts more like a cudgel than a nudge by aiding candidates who are profoundly less qualified than their peers. Proponents of affirmative action deny the scope of the boost and work to prevent research into the negative consequences of this mismatch. See Professor Sanders' failed battle to obtain bar passage rate data with respect to his mismatch theory.
If society is to embrace affirmative action, proponents of the program must be more honest about the size of the boost it offers and more open about the effects of putting less qualified students into competitive environments. For example, some data suggest that graduation rates for minority students at some UC schools increased after passage of Prop 209 because students were being placed into schools where they were qualified. Surely it is better to have more minority students graduate from UC-San Diego at the cost of having fewer minority students enroll at UC-Berkeley.
4
Interesting that Mr. Blow mentions Mr. Kavanaugh's daughters supposed influence on his thinking about affirmative action but he (Mr. Blow) fails to mention that his son was admitted into Yale and how that might have influenced his thinking about affirmative action. Many commenters here decry supposed white privilege but the vast majority of young white men out there are not nearly as privileged as the son of the esteemed NY Times columnist Charles Blow. Was Mr. Blow's son admitted on merit and "the conduct of his character" or did the fact that he happened to be a black man - and one of significant privilege at that - tip the scales in his favor? I hope Mr. Blow would address this topic in a future column to convince the skeptics out there that this was not the case - and if it was why he considers that fair.
5
On this general subject, I have never seen an editorial, news article and even, for that matter, many quotes in news articles opposing "affirmative action for rich white kids" that occurs under legacy preference admissions to "elite" colleges. No marches in the streets, protest signs, fund raising campaigns, either. Nothing.
Legacy preference, for those who don't know what it means, is a system whereby the son or daughter of someone who attended a specific school gets special consideration for admission. A leg up. Affirmative action to make certain that the advantages mom or dad had are passed along to the next generation and, by extension, the parents are more likely to hold a warm spot in their hearts...I mean bank accounts...for giving to that school.
This system has allowed probably several hundred thousand students born to well off parents to attach the prestige of an Ivy League or other big name college to their resume...and, in effect, to the lives they lead, including social connections. In turn, in our society that means billions of dollars flowing in income to people who were given special access to the prestige of a well known brand to their name.
Kavanaugh and thousands of others who climb up professional ladders on "merit" are silent on this issue. The reason is obvious: if you have a great benefit for your family and your "class" of people, why would you want to speak up? Yet, we must not, right?, have affirmative action for those who've been left out.
3
Affirmative Action works against Asians. It works against white kids at Harvard. It works against the poor and working classes everywhere.
It's a racist policy, Charles, and it's based on the presumption that blacks, hispanics and women can NEVER compete on their own merits. That's the dirty little secret Progressives will never admit.
Stop supporting racism, Charles. Support race-blind admissions policies based on financial need. Millionaire black kids do not need a hand up, but we all know AA goodies go to the top 10% of minority communities: children of doctors, lawyers, etc.
The only way to truly stop racism is to stop discriminating by race.
It's that simple.
11
Affirmative action is racial discrimination with a benign motive.
But it still is racial discrimination and wrong.
Nothing would please me better than slapping down Harvard for acting to hold down the number of successful Asian American applicants as they discriminated against Jewish American applicants not so long ago.
8
Whatever “historic preferences” once obtained, they are simply that: part of history. Historic wrongs cannot be expunged by mistreating INDIVIDUALS today; we must repent of our former evil ways and treat everyone the same.
“Historic preferences” excluded Blacks from professional sports. No one took Jackie Robinson and said, “we’re giving you a position for which you are unqualified in order to atone for mistreating your grandfather”. He succeeded because he was the best. Blacks today do rather nicely in professional sports. Because talent will out.
There is 0 evidence that “historic preferences” prevent minorities (or women) from succeeding in the law on their individual merits.
The “people who have long benefited from others being excluded” are long dead. You would visit the sins of the past upon individuals today, despite their innocence of any wrongdoing, based solely upon their group.
At any law school, the women are every bit as qualified as their male counterparts. The same cannot be said of their “minority” classmates (except Asians) – taken as a group. “Affirmative Action” is NOT, and never has been, outreach. It’s Harvard-style quotas.
Compare test scores for women at Harvard to their male counterparts. Now, compare those of “minorities” (except Asians) to those of their “white” classmates. The resulting admissions policy is not “outreach”; it’s admitting lesser qualified people solely on the basis of group.
That’s racist, and wrong.
4
@Brenda True affirmative action is supposed to be applied to people of equal qualification. However among most of the higher-paid jobs, there is a predominance of white men because white men are undeniably promoted over women and minorities. This is not just historical. Look at any bank or big corporation. Women hit that old glass ceiling that hasn't moved and is even going backwards unless there is intervention. If you don't agree we should have equality in the workplace, then go ahead and oppose affirmative action. If you do agree that we should have equality in the workplace, then find something else that works (good luck) or implement affirmative action until it is no longer needed.
2
Charles, I usually agree with you, but this time I think you're off base. Whether you agree with him or not, Kavanaugh makes a distinction between individual initiative and governmental mandate. That's not an inconsistency. The danger posed by this toady of the Federalist Society are his theories of executive privilege and immunity in the age of Trump - you should be writing about that.
7
Affirmative action has not worked for the benefit of black people in the US. Their relative performance since the 1950's has gone down. Performance by achievement rather than preferences is the way the vast majority of people in the US have assimilated and done well here. Affirmative action denies is intended beneficiaries the benefits of merit based achievement. Women also get questionable benefit. Their participation in the workforce has declined as a percentage of the work force since 1998. There is nothing wrong in getting a wide pool of applicants. It is wrong to chose them by race or sex. That is not equal protection under the law. Giving a person a benefit that holds back another person because someone else was discriminated in the past needs to be stopped once and for all time. We should all be able to sue for damages if we have been discriminated against!
4
Mr. Blow: Do you recognize the fact that women far outnumber men in college? Do you recognize that women outnumber men in law school? Are these societal problems? If not, why?
2
He isn’t contradictory at all. And what he did is not EXACTLY, as you state it, what affirmative action is. It’s not affirmative action at all. He asked to make sure he saw qualified candidates from all channels to make sure women and minorities were included. Not just the limited channels that only brought men through the door. Then he interviewed and picked the best. AA is filling a quota based on race regardless of that person being the best person available. And that is EXACTLY what discrimination is.
6
I'm sorry, but when the graduating class of lawyers is made up of more than 50% women, it is hard for me to believe that Kavanaugh should get any serious attention for patting himself on the back for hiring women.
1
If a person cannot answer the simple question of whether someone can pardon himself/herself, then he is no good as a judge...
1
I understood Kavanaugh in his choice of ALL female legal technicians, as having another motivation other than what he said. That other reason is he did not want to deal with one or more males among the females. Such a group may not be more efficient because of the more challenging dynamic that can occur with men and himself AND the mix of men and women who could then have personal lives with each other outside the office that would affect their performance. It might be something I would do for those reasons however I think this is unfair. Affirmative action and the ability of people to know who is black and white /male or female is the real problem. When we chose without knowing we are then color blind and correct.
1
There is a vast difference between what is moral and what should be legally codified. An organization can be justified in attempting to build diversity within its organization. Affirmative action as a legal policy however, perverses the process of private entities hiring or selecting qualified candidates. Legal liability creates a regulatory game whereas selecting candidates becomes as much about limiting liability as any other purpose.
It's no surprise to anyone that the right always applies race-baiting and fear-mongering strategies to political campaigns to gain a voter advantage among their base.
Once you acknowledge the divide, it's easier to conquer.
When affirmative action was put in place, few large companies were hiring African-Americans. The program has been successful and people from groups helped by affirmative action have done well. Today there is a large enough pool of minorities who are socially indistinguishable from whites that companies and schools can choose from to meet their affirmative action goals. Most people do not believe that Obama's daughters need a leg up on college admissions.
America is very far from a race neutral country, but we would do better to make affirmative action based on family income rather than race or ethnicity at this point. Because minority communities remain stubbornly poor, the program would continue to benefit minorities while including a larger base of America's disadvantaged.
3
this Article conflates Affirmative Action the worthy principal with Racial Preferances and incorrectly glosses over the context of its justification. Yes, if diversity is a goal, then expanding the applicant pool through outreach and recruitment is legitimate. That was the original goal. Over time it has morphed into giving a person a leg up over another simply because of the color of their skin or biological gender. That is a racial preference and should have no place in a democracy.
8
Charles, I confess, I am "often white and often male, Christian and heterosexual," and, though at least as far to the left as you, and from what I can tell, more of an activist, as well, I so tire of this language of accusation, shaming, even demonizing, that I am beginning to understand viscerally, if not intellectually, what this Trump backlash is about. There is no circumstance in which I would, so to speak, join in. But when I read you, I get discouraged, in a way that makes me long for the words and example of Gandhi, MLK and Robert Kennedy.
3
I commend Judge Kavanaugh’s recognition of the difference between action that is appropriate for individuals but not for the federal government. The question is not whether Affirmative Action works - it does. The question is who should engage in it. As individuals we have both the right and, perhaps, a social obligation to do so. But the government does not - because to do so favors one group of citizens over another. This recognition distinguishes between politics and legal limitations.
46
@yourname
The distinction you draw is interesting. However, I hasted to add that *Judge* Kavanaugh was just that. A federal judge in one of the most prestigious courts in the land. His actions in that position, including hiring ones, are properly considered gov't ones.
@yourname Universities are not part of the government. The government providing funding for an organization does not mean that organization becomes part of the government. That's how churches can get tax breaks despite the Constitution barring the establishment of a state religion.
Also, it is, plainly, the government's duty to bring about justice. I don't think getting denied your first or second choice of college because someone else needs it more than you do counts as being "harmed" or even favored less. You might as well say that subsidies for the poor are discriminatory against the rich.
1
@yourname But not to do it buys into systemic prejudice which many have but few are aware enough to know it. Research by the Canadian government between mandated targets for women working in government offices and the same but voluntary targets in the private sector between 1976 and 1986 bore this out. Federal government offices fell short of the target but the per-centage of women significantly improved. In the voluntary private sector, the per-centage of women in the work place *decreased*.
Mr. Blow, please...affirmative action as it has been widely implemented for more than 35 -40 years now is discriminatory, racist and ineffective. As is often said, don’t discriminate based on race, religion, sex etc and there will be no discrimination. Diversity we all know does not always represent improvement - is the NBA racist? Would NBA teams be better off if they went off of their way to recruit shorter whiter players because the overall team would perform better? How about the NHL? Would you want your airplane designed by a team of the smartest aeronautical engineers or the most diverse team? Does it matter if your surgeon is male, female, white, black or gay - or do you simply want the best surgeon. Affirmative action is and should be illegal because it’s essence is discriminatory.
3
51% of students in law school are women, so it follows that the university network would recommend a large pool of women for clerk positions...unless the nominating network is biased. Discrimination has been, and continues to be pervasive in our society. Even if women can land a coveted job, they are paid far less than a man. At one point during the hearing, Kavanaugh said that he lives in the real world, implying that he understands the complexities of justice, however so much of his record says otherwise. Furthermore, the spectacle of Hatch, of all people, praising Kavanaugh for his limited version of affirmative action, reeks of white men in power patting themselves on the back for societal progress that they had little involvement supporting (young women are doing the heavy lifting in university), and may have actively undermined. It's similar to Trump claiming he nobly championed women in his business, when it's more likely he hired women because he knew he could pay them far, far less than a man.
1
This exchange just shows how hypocritical the Repubs are. Nothing new here.
Mr. Blow you fail to consider that between 1999 and 2006 when Judge Kavanaugh began to sit on the D.C Circuit Court maybe his belief on affirmative action, hold on, wait for it....changed. Is that possible? It's very convenient for your piece to frame quotes and events to support your belief, but it is incorrect and frankly you are a better writer than that.
2
It makes perfect sense as it accurately reflects the conservative mantra of “we are such good people” we don’t need the government telling us what to do, we’ll just do it out of the goodness of our pure hearts. You see it in the massive push away from coordinated, objective, secular efforts to provide government aid to folks towards more “community” based charity. In other words, the church driven charities can do a better job than the government because they are somehow chosen by a higher power. The founders, if they’re out there somewhere, are trying to find that higher power and asking if they can come back and save the republic.
There is a big difference between aggressively recruiting minorities and women, and giving them preferential treatment. Thus it would clearly be appropriate for Harvard (for example) to send recruiters to schools with significant minority populations, but it would be inappropriate to give minority candidates preferential treatment over more qualified candidates.
There is nothing inconsistent is what Kavanaugh is doing.
2
Kavanaugh’s opening statement was a tour de force. It was folksy,warm,thoughtful and family focused. Hopefully as a member of SCOTUS Kavanaugh will practice what he preached in his opening statement.
2
This contradiction reminds me of what legal scholar Nancy Leong (2013) calls "racial capitalism--the process of deriving social and economic value from the racial identity of another person." Except, in this case, it is also a gender capitalism. I wonder if, in addition to shielding this nominee from the left, Kavanaugh's own practice of affirmative action is more palatable to Hatch because it recruits and elevates women to the right, helping to shield the Republican party from accusations of gender-based oppression.
1
“This is the very definition of affirmative action! He is making a concerted effort to include in the applicant pool people who had traditionally been excluded...”
Unfortunately, the act of “casting a wider net” is not the very definition of AA and, more importantly, it is not the metric used to assess the effectiveness of AA policies. The success of AA is measured by the number of “outsiders” that have been accepted “inside”. With metrics like that, quotas are soon to follow.
I find it disturbing that the judge, drawing from his expanded pool of candidates, should fill all seven openings with women. The chances of that happening from a random draw is exceedingly small. I would suggest that preferential treatment was in play, something that, as Mr. Blow implies, is not the intention of AA.
1
Just a thought, from an experienced female chemical industries professional: when the hard, numerical goals for percentage of women in upper level positions go away, the women in upper level positions tend to go away too.
I wish it weren't this way. I wish we were beyond all of this affirmative action stuff. After all, it's no fun to spend time wondering, "Did I really earn it? Or am I just a token female?" But I gotta look at the numbers. And what they're telling me.
And it's not just me that they're telling. Chemical and Engineering News runs an article, every now and then, on the stagnation - or outright decrease - in the percentage of women in chemistry faculty positions. The hard, numerical goals went away. And so do the women.
Yeah, it's nice when someone in a position of power runs his own personal affirmative action program. Lots of warm fuzzies. No numbers though.
Wonder whether warm fuzzies will be enough for Kavanaugh's (and Gorsuch's) daughters, or whether they will be banging their heads against glass ceilings 20-25 years from now. Or spending their careers knowing that the only reason they got that shiny make-work position was Daddy's position.
Time will tell, I guess.
2
Are people not allowed to evolve in their thinking, Mr. Blow? Obama once stated that marriage is between a man and a woman, a fully discriminatory mindset and not worthy of a President. Still, he wasn’t called on the carpet for it. He later stated that his thinking had evolved, but only after Biden beat him to the punch and stated that gay marriage should be legalized. Let’s be intellectually honest here. If Kavanaugh has indeed come to value AA, whether because he now has daughters or not, it is a good thing. 50 years ago most men didn’t want women in the workplace. All of us evolve in our beliefs...even you, Mr. Blow, and you have been forgiven by the public for your sometimes unappetizing former thought processes.
1
Kavanaugh is the sort of person perfectly moulded for subservience to the powerful, a man so contemptuous of those who dare challenge they who are in control, that he will not dignify questions about this with any comprehensive answers outside of trite and shallow platitudes. He can't wait to be the wrecking ball of liberal traditions and values that support the common man.
2
Today’s Affirmative Action programs benefits Charles’ kids. Charles’ kids have had a far more privileged life than poor white kids growing up in Appalachia/rural/Rust Belt America (from families that voted disproportionately for Trump, that are often overtly racist, but most are forgotten hard working decent people), or poor black kids from inner cites (whose basic humanity is denied, but disproportionately become trapped with drugs - and are then disproportionately punished, but most are forgotten hard working decent people) by or anywhere in America, or poor hispanic kids whose families often live in the shadows (can get trapped in gangs and drugs - disproportionately punished, but most are forgotten hard working decent people), or poor native american kids (many who still live on reservations with crime/drugs/alcohol, but most are forgotten hard working decent people).
But Charles’ son at Yale (who will unfairly face the stigma of did he get in Yale because of Affirmative Action?) had a Yale police officer pull a gun on him from a run to the library. Charles had already had that conversation that every black parent, no matter how rich or privileged, has with their sons - stay calm when the police pull a gun on you or you may be dead (white parents don’t need to have that conversation). So the racism is still very real for Charles’ kids.
Still the Affirmative Action that I would support would be one that levels the playing field based on income and not race/gender only.
10
Charles Blow, thank you for your words here! Just wish you could have been there to question Kavanaugh...
4
I am no fan of Brett Kavanaugh. And a big fan of Charles Blow. But one of Mr. Blow's statements needs correction. He states in "Affirmative Action Spectacle" with regard to Kavanaugh "He is now deeply interested in female advancement and equality because he has two daughters." Without further evidence that the daughters are the cause, Blow should state "and" he has two daughters. We have to be held to a higher standard.
6
@Christine Oliver. Mr. Blow sneers at the idea that men often do wake up and begin to want equality in the workplace when they have daughters. It is not a phenomenon limited to Mr. Kavanaugh, if indeed this is what occurred to change the latter’s mindset.
I suspect neither Kavanaugh nor Hatch can appreciate the irony Mr. Blow reveals. They share a philosophy of philanthropy frequently shared by wealthy, white men that allows aiding individuals while denying opportunity to whole segments of the population. This way they can assuage their feelings while maintianing their privilege for themselves and their offspring.
20
America is not a meritocracy. Exhibit A: Donald Trump. Donald is President for the same reason he got into undergrad at UPenn and Harvey Weinstein stayed on top - powerful friends. Fairness doesn't exist in this country for a whole segment of the populate; those who have horrible schools, minimal healthcare, non-living wage jobs...nobody to ferry them to non-existent after school activities, pack their lunches, get them SAT tutors. And yet, they must be judged against the wealthiest kids who have all the power, and every advantage - including legacy and quid pro quo admissions (Exhibit B: Jared Kushner). Proclaiming "Affirmative Action is unfair!" is the privileged playing the victim, while pulling ladder up and throwing boot straps (minus boots) down at poor brown kids.
19
@H. G.
Great comment.
The absurdity of the unmitigated hypocrisy and carnivalesque sideshow that is the confirmation hearings are made only that much worse by the hopeless prospect of their having any operative effect or significance
2
"And, that was the start of my efforts to make sure that women were not being excluded.
This is the very definition of affirmative action! He is making a concerted effort to include in the applicant pool people who had traditionally been excluded..."
No, Mr. Blow. In practice, it also means measuring the number of persons who are selected for the job position, or spot in an entering college class, and punishing the institution in question if quotas aren't met. It's not merely about who is given a chance to be an applicant.
1
Well, it's just another kind of race-mongering.
Were any of the young women Kavanaugh hired black?
I think not. He simply realized, once he had daughters, that white girls are smart, too.
But not people of color--discriminating against 'them' is fine.
10
@Concerned Mother. You ask if any of the clerks were women of color, then go on a tirade based on mere speculation. Is this what the NYT comment section has become?
Affirmative action is using an un-Constitution act to counter an un-Constitutional act. Affirmative action has been justified on three separate grounds. Now landing on diversity as its basis. The real issue isn't that it is justified or that it works. There are two issues. When affirmative action is used at the expensive not of men and Whites but at other minorities and how long should it continue to be allowed.
1
there is a very important distinction that is ignored, dismissed, or otherwise unmentioned by Mr. Blow.
In his own business, Kavanaugh had the prerogative to make hiring and firing decisioned based on whatever rationale or lack thereof he had.
as a matter of compelled, practiced, and government-sponsored and -enforced policy, he seems to oppose affirmative action in programs at public universities and the like.
this positions are consistent with a philosophy that feels that citizens should not be imposed upon by government agendas.
cf. the issue of welfare and charity, whereby some conservatives give generously as a private matter, and oppose strenuously the idea that government should compel the redistribution of resources with all the enforcement power of the state, under which obedience to the law is ultimately compelled by force or the threat of force.
5
An employer can hire a poorer candidate instead of a similarly capable but richer one on his/her own capacity, but making it a fixed rule is a totally different thing and no employer might want to do it.
The judge is simply normal.
5
To be sure Sen. Harris should again ask the same question today, as was presented to Kavanaugh yesterday, only because Kavanaugh’s mind hasn’t been completely dusted!
https://mobile.twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1037531080402919424?s=12
2
This is a beautifully presented position. The fact that he has discovered discrimination (against females) because he has two daughters is laughable.
Too bad we don’t have the ability to alter people’s race, creed or color, so we can help these poor souls acknowledge the deep prejudices that benefit so many and debilitate so many more.
I am a white male, and I see and feel it.
6
How kind of you to call it inconsistency. I call it hypocrisy.
2
Quotas for race and gender ETC are discriminatory.
Just ask Asian Harvard applicants.
11
@R. R., should take couple more generations to sort this out..
Kavanaugh only employed affirmative action, to be frank, if he bypassed better qualified male candidates. While that's certainly possible, what it sounds like is that he made more efforts to challenge a narrow pipeline of candidates in order to, "see a broad pool of qualified, well-qualified applicants, including women."
There's a subtle but significant difference between seeking out a diverse pool of applicants and prioritizing certain applicants because of criteria like sex, race, or ethnicity. The former seeks to provide equality of opportunity while the latter attempts to socially engineer a desired result.
The goal should never be for the state to intentionally interfere to create an outcome but rather for the state tear down barriers that could hold certain groups back. For example consider Mayor De Blasio's proposal to increase the number of black and Latino students at New York City's specialized high schools. His proposal is to set aside seats at the schools for students from every middle school in the city rather than simply taking top test scorers SHSAT. A more reasonable proposal would say, why do black and Latino students have lower scores and how can we help them achieve higher scores by say providing free SHSAT prep classes and materials. But at the end of the day, it is still about individual achievement. We should not have different standards based on race, which is the system that affirmative action promotes.
9
The conservatives' position on Affirmative Action can be summarized as "diversity, like charity, is a good thing but we shouldn't have government programs to promote it or laws to enforce it." Every time such rules and requirements are maligned as outdated I can't help thinking about America's Great White Hope in the Lesser Whiter House and recognizing how quickly our society can revert to the status quo ante without them.
8
Affirmative action is like a sledgehammer, not pretty but gets the job done when a tinkers hammer would take to much time.
In 1968 I was hired into Kaiser Steel in Fontana Ca. as a labor summer hire. The job in the coke ovens had been traditionally the black entryway to a union job with Kaiser. My father had been able to pull strings to get me hired, but affirmative action put a college educated black man on his all white steel inspectors team, and me a scrawny white high school grad on the black gang, shoveling tar and coal dust in the coke ovens. He was furious!
I learned a lot that summer. I started to wake up to the social ills that racism had created in our society.
The riots in Watts Ca and across the nation confused me. The scenes on the evening news of police dogs attacking black kids who wanted access to all white schools, made me realize that there was something very wrong with traditional America.
In 1968 there were few opportunities for women or people of color to get access to a good education or job without the sledgehammer of “affirmative action” wielded by the federal government.
Its my belief that that if you want to operate a business or a school in America today, and don’t want the government to tell you who to hire or educate, then do the right thing and hire and promote without regard to gender, race, religion or country of national origin.
There are still places in the world where your conservative business might be welcome, Somalia comes to mind.
6
I ended up with an all female crew working in my produce business and never once regretted having hired women. The younger women worked harder than any of the men I hired, as though they had something to prove. The older women better understood what most customers were looking for better than I did. Maybe Kavanaugh took a look at the field of clerks available and, after interviewing them, realized the women would be better qualified, harder working, more understanding employees than the majority of the men on his lists.
5
"Affirmative action" creates a current preference. Ummm no. No one gets something good, over others, "just because they're black". Not in this country.
3
I appreciated his answer, too.
A "qualified" pool. Merit merit merit. Liberals always miss the point. On purpose I'm sure, as Mr. Blow ignored "qualified, or well-qualified".
5
Say you have two candidates for a position, one minority and one majority. If they are equally qualified, the one from the minority wins under affirmative action. This supposedly somehow helps to make up for past sins against the minority. Personally, I see nothing fair about such a procedure.
5
Nominee Kavanaugh is a perfect recipient of affirmative action for the privileged. He attended all the right schools, and slipped comfortably into the perfect series of internships, aid-ships and jobs that become available because of the schools you attended and who your parents and later, friends are.
12
@alcatraz, Exactly. I doubt he spent a summer life-guarding, or washing cars at a car dealer; or his school years working as a partime janitor; or vacations all the way through college babysitting at every opportunity. Nope, that would be the stories of my husband and me, and our 22 year old son. such plebes we are. So removed from the beltway-white-catholic road to "success" that Kavanaugh worked so super-hard to achieve.
You can support diversity and equality and not support affirmative action. It's a policy of another time and era and has achieved it's goals. We are a diverse and becoming equal society. Removing AA would surely be a necessary test of our times. Minorities do have the power now to fight back against discrimination and they do. Making merit, charactor, and qualifications the bar for hiring and admission would be setting a new, empowering and positive tone in society, and would move us all along to a free and equal society. We no longer need to mandate diversity as it is us, reflects us, and we have all learnt, or should have, it's easily and desirably maintained.
2
Mr. Blow
Ha
Never happy about anything, never a positive article, never positive sentiment, everything you spew is negative and conspiratorial.
Does it ever get tiring, does being such a negative person affect you physically, it clearly has affected you mentally. For all the problems we have in this country and in our political system, we have double the blessings, I think it would be great, just for once, to hear you espouse on the things are going right for all of us .
All I’m saying is find something, anything, you can find the good in instead of the problems and negativity, it’s so difficult to scroll down each morning and see your sarcastic or downtrodden headlines
13
@Crossing Overhead. Agreed. He is an elitist with a bully pulpit who doesn’t deserve to be the voice of minorities at the NYT. His overt hatred of everyone is unflattering and is the opposite of the intellectualism he seems to believe he personifies.
Senator Hatch's question was a softball tossed slowly across the fat part of the plate, and one for which Kavanaugh was well prepared. The exchange couldn't have been scripted better. See!! Isn't Kavanaugh a hero, one who will stand up for minorities (well, at least the women who on their own prevailed against discrimination on their way through law school)? And did a PR representative design the seating arrangements to ensure that a group of beaming, fawning women would be to the nominee's right?
And Kavanaugh's comment that 'diversity is a permissible goal but a state must use race-neutral criteria when available' is ludicrous when one takes into consideration that the cards for decades have been stacked against a race, or, for that matter, a gender.
We probably soon will have Justice Kavanaugh, and his true self will emerge. Then we'll see just what kind of 'hero' he is.
14
Hatch painting Kavanaugh as a civil rights hero is about as silly as it gets, but also unfortunately not surprising behavior coming from self-righteous politicians. I take that as the central argument of the piece and agree.
I am surprised at the mechanics of the argument in the sense that a major distinction in different degrees of affirmative action policies has been ignored. When Kav hired women, he indicated that those women ought to be well-qualified. He is never quoted as having gone on record to suggest in any way that a less-qualified candidate be prioritized in order to account for lack of opportunity, which is the issue at the center of all of the most controversial instances of affirmative action. The article uses a broadly acceptable, only borderline progressive hiring practice as a surrogate for affirmative action, which feels kind of disingenuous.
2
I started the morning only watching Democratic senators ask questions of the nominee. He ducked and dodged and obfuscated. Then I watched a couple of Republican senators fawn and preen and tell me how distinguished this man is even though there are 35 months worth of presidential papers none of us have seen. I realized the fix is in and spent the rest of the day watching Netflix. Sad
There are also lots of men who like to surround themselves with competent women who are doing the scut work of a job. These law clerks are no threats to Kavanaugh's job security nor are they in any sense his equals. He is the doctor and they are his nurses.
To me this looks like the patriarchy at work, not affirmative action.
5
@vineyridge. You can’t see that a judge is in fact in a superior position to a law school clerk, and for good reason? Do medical school residents get to play boss to doctors? The world has hierarchies when new professionals are in training whether you like it or not.
Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh,
Where have you been?
Feigning a firm jaw,
Forthright and keen.
Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh,
What would you do?
Faced with the maw
Of a treasonous do.
Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh,
Stare decisis
See any flaw
In an abortion crisis.
Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh,
SCOTUS your goal?
Given facts raw,
Were real glib on the whole.
4
@Larry Eisenberg
"Pussy cat, pussy cat
where have you been?"
"I've been to Washington
to visit the King."
It seems to me fundamentally different for someone (Kavanaugh) voluntarily to try to do something positive by diversifying his staff and supporting mandatory government bureaucracy driven affirmative action problems. And I don't find attacking someone for doing the first but not supporting the second valid or fair.
7
Who's an under represented minority? Elizabeth Warren? Did she actually suffer as a result of her purported American Indian ancestry? Is representation more important than competence? The admissions criteria for black and Hispanic medical school candidates is lower than for other ethnic groups. Should we avoid black and Hispanic doctors.
Many Asians and whites are actual victims of affirmative action, not theoretical historical victims. Should they now receive compensation and preference?
Is it the actual color of your skin that we should measure or where you ancestors came from and visited?
Affirmative action is stupid as is all racism. You are not defined by skin color, but by what you do.
12
@James
Affirmative action is a process by which all people get an equal chance to do what they can do, rather than being shut out of that opportunity because they look different from the people manning the gates.
@willow
Unfortunately, that is by definition contradictory. Affirmative action means that the people manning the gates give unequal chances based upon how they look.
The majority of college students at the under graduate and graduate level are women.
You have a shrinking pool of men to hire from.
In addition there is a browning of the job pool. Look at enrollments by race for schools. There aren't that many white people out there.
Female and minority candidates will have to be hired.
He will evolve his views when it comes time for affirmative action for white men.
Girl pushups will be replaced by boy GRE's
1
Affirmative action as I have understood it in the USA requires identifying a specific subgroup of individuals who will be afforded a benefit. Such subgroups have often been and right now are being identified on the basis of assignment to what the USCB and Charles Blow, for example, call "races".
Each of the USCB "races" - even ethnicities - has been politically constructed, the designation I prefer over "socially" constructed. This practice began in 1790.
If we are to discuss future affirmative action, we must discuss the USCB system. Such discussions have been presented by Kenneth Prewitt and Dorothy Roberts (Google and you will find), by Kwame Anthony Appiah at length, and recently in the Times in interviews of Adrian Piper in which one of the interviewers, Thomas Chatterton Williams, is himself writing a book exploring and arguing against” the way race is defined in the United States.
There is only one genetically defined race as all of the authors named above - and recently David Reich here - have written about at length, so proponents of affirmative action will never be able to select the group to be helped by using genome analysis. And since we all have lines of descent that are mixed, assignment to group HELP US will simply become more and more difficult.
I cannot take any discussion of affirmative action seriously unless it is preceded by and based on a profound discussion of a new system (see ch. 11 in Prewitt).
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
It sounds like he supports those aspects of affirmative action that seek to eliminate unconscious discriminations. He seems aware that many employers, including judges, rely on channels for seeking applicants that are historically biased against women and minorities. Thus, he appears to support taking affirmative actions to rectify that by seeking out potentially qualified candidates who are excluded by biased methods.
Once they are in the pool, however, he believes that they should be judged as individuals without regard to their skin color or sex. Thus he opposes preferences based on race. It is not surprising that if other judges were ignoring some of the most qualified women, that he would find that the women candidates he had to choose from were, on average, more qualified than the men, leading him to choose more women based on merit.
I consider myself a social liberal and generally agree with this form of affirmative action, as long as the process takes into account the obstacles a candidate has overcome or the extra resources the candidate has had access to when judging what they have achieved.
35
@Mark N. Generous analysis at best. Kavanaugh pretty much spells out the argument for affirmative action in his response to Hatch. Essentially: systemic disadvantage that should be rectified through a partial selection process.
Going based on what we know, there is no evidence to suggest that he chose women simply because they were the best candidates in his applicant pool. Conversely, there are a number of facts that suggest he gave them preferential treatment because they were women and he wanted to artificially balance a skewed system. You've invented a plausible story, but one that is not supported by the facts.
Also, what's the real difference between taking affirmative action to from an applicant pool that address systemic disadvantages and taking affirmative action in the final selection process? The end result is that you choose more candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds. (And of course the whole point is that you're taking into account the excessive obstacles that racial minorities and women face.) I see no real point in the distinction you're trying to make other than satisfying some non-contextual idea of what constitutes fairness via a minor semantic change.
2
Mark N.--Rather than RECTIFY a situation, let's just make the offending behavior illegal. Cheaper and more effective, I'd say. Also, it may educate a few million men.
1
Kavanaugh's positions are consistent. There is no reason to believe he did otherwise than to ensure that he had the broadest applicant pool possible, without favoring women within this pool. This is not affirmative action.
Mr. Blow's implication that people who object to affirmative action tend to do so for selfish reasons is scurrilous. Further, even were this the case, the justness of the policy does not hinge on the motivations of either those who attack or defend it, but on the its merits.
2
Imagine my surprise and delight to see my thoughts expressed exactly!!!! i think the only part Mr Blow left out is the fact that what makes Kavanaugh's actions so palatable to the honorable Hatch and his ilk is that it was a white Christian male bestowing these gifts to deserving females. I am patiently waiting for those more informed than i to run this idea to ground: Kavanaugh recognizes that his opinions/thinking changed over time. i refer to his ideas about President's and whether they can be subpoenaed while in office. My question; if Kavanaugh recognizes that more information informs his thinking over time, how can he support originalism when interpreting the Constitution? wouldn't it follow that one's understanding of what the original authors meant would also potentially change over time given that one would possess greater information over time?
thanks
1
From everything he has written, said and done, starting from the beginning of his judicial career, I think Brett Kavanaugh has been calculating what was most likely to put him right where he is today - on track for a spot on the Supreme Court. The arrival of Donald Trump to the presidency, the GOP control of Congress and the seemingly inexorable politicization of the Court have been like a dream come true for this judicial ideologue. That he does not intend to say anything, true or not, to jeopardize his goal, and that “questioners” like Orrin Hatch ( or Susan Collins) will let him get away with it is glaringly obvious.
2
I believe affirmative action is necessary. I also believe it hurts some groups. But the institution of slavery and systemic racism has hurt the black community much more. While affirmative action is a small step to rectify the horror of our past, it must continue until equality is real. I am white and I understand the anger people can feel when they are excluded even if they appear more qualified. But I try to imagine how it feels to be traditionally asssumed to be less qualified or less acceptable.
65
@MLE53 Define race. Define black. Define white. FYI People from the Middle East and North Africa who come to the US are put in the white race box. They of course are not seen as "white" by altRight etc.
I am opposed to classification by fictional race, I just mention the abovel to illustrate that people are white by law or black by law, not by genetics.
Only-NeverInSeden.blogspot.com
@MLE53 Affirmative Action treats all black people the same, including the children of millionaire surgeons who immigrated from Nigeria. It does not discriminate between the descendants of slaves and the descendants of African potentates.
And AA is premised on the notion that minorities are incapable of performing at the same intellectual level as whites. Now THAT'S racist.
@MLE53 Why is affirmative action an imperfect tool? Because when put into practice it leads to quotas which are against the law. If you want to see Affirmative action's future come to California. For decades Asian Americans here had complained that they were being short changed in UC college admissions. They not only argued that race-conscious policies were unfair but proved convincingly that they were victims. In 1996 voters amended the state constitution by voting for Prop 209, to prohibit state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, in public education. By law admission to UC colleges now had to be race neutral. Post Prop-209, Asian students benefited tremendously. They are almost 50% of student body at UC-Berkeley California schools. This an almost 25% increase. Clearly in an open admissions process where affirmative action does not enter into enrollment decisions & where legacy and donor issues are discouraged, Asian-American students compete very well. In the subsequent years, the Asian community has fiercely opposed all measures that seek to return affirmative action to California. California's present is America's future. They are bringing the fight against affirmative action to the Supreme Court. This time around, there's a wealthier, more organized, & vocal group of Asians who are on board — and are very willing to play their part in ending affirmative action forever. Supporting this flawed policy isn't an option for them & soon the rest of the US.
2
It seems to me that the only qualification Kavanaugh has to be a Supreme Court justice is that he is a lawyer. He was put out there and it is left to others to argue why he should not be seated. I feel that he is a lightweight that just serves the purpose politically. The example of his hiring of women as proof that he supports women's rights is weak.
On Kavanaugh and his hiring of female clerks, it is too bad that one of the senators didn’t ask a follow-up question, “isn’t what you did affirmative action?” I wonder what Kavanaugh would have answered. I’m not defending him, but maybe he would have said that it wasn’t affirmative action because all the candidates were equally qualified? I can’t believe he would’ve admitted that what he did was affirmative action.
2
He is probably pro-choice too. But only when it comes to members of his own family.
5
Where affirmative action is concerned, hypocrisy is the coin of the realm. Few of the Americans who are outraged by affirmative action for Blacks and Latinos have similar feelings about affirmative action for white women. Kavanaugh may have swept up a few minority women in his practice of affirmative action for women. But I wil bet my bank account that the great majority of his hires are white women. And for most Americans, that sort of affirmative action is perfectly fine.
Some debates are so persistent they have developed their own shorthand. If you say pro-women in the abortion debate we can fill in all the blanks. In the gun debate,all you need to do is mention Second Amendment rights. Here, you show your cards by saying reverse discrimination instead of affirmative action.
1
The story of Brett Kavanaugh is one of raw, unprincipled, political ambition.
Young Kavanaugh knew that to rise in Republican circles, he needed to oppose affirmative action like the plague, so he did.
He knew that to rise far in Republican circles and to get noticed, he needed to make clever arguments against penalizing white Americans in order to help black Americans. So, he did.
Once elevated to the federal bench, Judge Brett Kavanaugh observed that a smart Republican judge is always smiling and congenial in social settings with his peers and with powerful Republicans in Washington.
Judge Kavanaugh made a great show in those early days of being a regular guy with backyard barbecues and being a soccer dad for his daughters and hiring young women to be his law clerks. He was smart enough to know that personal affability and showing affirmative action for young women would pay dividends.
Sincerity is not Judge Kavanaugh’s strong suit, and fighting for a color-blind equal protection of the laws is not his interest.
This is a very smart, calculating man whose heart, unfortunately, is not in the right place. He is exactly what Donald Trump wants.
2
Aren't Kavanaugh and Hatch trying to make the point that voluntary affirmative action is good, but government-mandated affirmative action is bad? Traditional repub pablum, like G.H.W. Bush's "thousand points of light." As a practical matter, it just won't cover the societal need. As James Madison said, if people were angels, there would be no need of government. They concede that the end is good, and the need is dire. They should be more amenable to constitutional readings and remedies that allow for it.
Sounds like Kavanaugh has taken a page from one of Romney's binders.
And like the latter with his state healthcare system, he thinks that just because something helped people (and himself and his image) locally doesn't mean it should be implemented throughout the US for all to benefit.
Widen the Court, Sane newcomers. End this hideous theft by "covfefe"'s self-serving cronies.
Thank you Mr. Blow for pointing out the inherent hypocrisy in the Federalist Society's Pick of the Year. And that same hypocrisy on show by our very own distinguished traitors - Vichy Republican Senators.
I'd like to suggest two words for a brave soul to say out loud to Brett: Merrick Garland.
1
Do we recall when there were programs for students with limited financial resources. Democracy can and should look to ways to be inclusive. Education is good for the society. The well being of all Americans insures the well being of America.
1
The author describes future Justice Kavanaugh’s action as the “definition” of affirmative action: Broadening and diversifying the pool of candidates so that qualified minorities are available at hiring time. But this is not how it’s practiced in corporate life. In reality, management pressurizes hiring managers to favor incompetent people to hit a target. This is reality.
8
I prefer Kavanaugh's brand of "affirmative action" based on merit rather than Blow's version which is based on identity politics. Identity politics is simply unAmerican.
7
They are funded by forces against "affirmative action," so this shouldn't surprise.
If the American people cared, they would elect presidents to choose judges who aren't craven grifters.
"This is the very definition of affirmative action! He is making a concerted effort to include in the applicant pool people who had traditionally been excluded and had apparently taken that fact into consideration when hiring."
That's not the affirmative action that causes controversy. The affirmative action that causes controversy is the one with the concerted effort to include in the SUCCESSFUL applicant pool people who had traditionally been excluded and had apparently taken that fact into consideration when hiring.
Mr. Blow may wish that affirmative action be about opportunity, but when done at scale, it is always about outcomes. We all want underprivileged strivers to get into med school, but we don't want to be treated by a doctor who may have benefited from a race-normed curve.
The arguments against affirmative action, as practiced, as it must be practiced, needn't be rehearsed here. But it is useful to understand that saying "opportunity" where the only politically meaningful metric is "outcome" is very likely to set the conversation off in the wrong direction.
3
Talking out both sides of one's mouth, and saying one thing while doing another, are both dominant strategies if one can get away with them.
An absence of complaints is usually taken as an approval. When the press reports behavior we disapprove of, we must complain. Otherwise we are condoning the behavior by default.
1
It's called hypocrisy.
Kavenaugh's whole session was a travesty. He won't answer questions about race, torture, lying, anything presidential (although it was not hypothetical as he claimed, since he had written and spoken about Executive Privilege often before...and if he could say "that was how I felt in the past", why can't he answer the question about how he feels now? EVERY case he will encounter is hypothetical! The hearing should be shut down because no real information to evaluate is being answered, and he can go back to being a lower court judge and lie to Congress when he is called just like he did in the past. We have issues. We have a right to know how a SCOTUS justice would perceive those issues. Our government is currently facing a real crisis. And Congress just yawns as long as they think they can get re-elected.
Part of the problem is that our Constitution is so obsolete when it comes to clarifying the meaning of equal treatment. Just read this text from a more modern document (Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms):
(1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
(2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
1
@617to416
“Obsolete” and “ Not my policy preference” are not synonymous terms.
Recency is not equivalent to Justice or obsolescence. Trial by Jury is much older than Jim Crow, and the Nuremberg Laws and Civil Asset Forfeiture but that does not make it obsolete.
Yikes. Once again, Charles Blow's misogyny & resentment towards women rears its head.
Blow's argument here is based on the assumption that affirmative action for females is separate from - & in opposition to & in competition with - affirmative action for other groups, specifically people of color, homosexuals, non-Christians (these are the categories Blow mentions, so I assume they matter most to him). He's assuming that women who benefit from affirmative action are all white, heterosexual & Christian.
But females who benefit from affirmative action can be & often are also people of color, homosexual, &/or non-Christian. Thus affirmative action that Blow sees as only sex-linked & benefitting females can actually benefit a number of different categories of persons.
As always, Blow's main, indeed sole, concern seems to be with increasing opportunities & status for minority MEN. Can the fact that when WOMEN get ahead they often are striking a blow (sorry, couldn't resist) for several minority groups at once really not have occurred to him? Or does he simply resent minority women's progress because he thinks they're taking away benefits he believes rightly should go to minority men instead?
3
Kavanaugh is simply a reflection of the inability of this country to support real democracy in it’s educational system. He can get away with the dichotomy between gender versus race because of a completely incompetent educational process.
This column focuses on Brett Kavanaugh's efforts to hire women as law clerks in order to give female law grads equal opportunity. But it doesn't tell us anything about other aspects of the women Kavanaugh hired as clerks that Blow lists & is more concerned with - namely, whether any were racial minorities, homosexuals, &/or non-Christians.
So it's hard to know if, in fact, Kavanaugh was practicing affirmative action exclusively for females when he hired these women. Were all of the women Kavanaugh considered & ultimately hired as clerks white, heterosexual & Christian, as Blow seems to assume? Among them, was there not any one who was Asian? Latina? Black? Mixed? Lesbian? Bisexual? Celibate? Jewish? Buddhist? Muslim? Sikh? Shinto? Wiccan? Atheist? Or a combination thereof? Only if the answer to these questions is NO in each & every instance does Blow's argument hold up.
Blow tells us Kavanaugh said that an article in the NYT in 2006 made him aware that only 20% of law clerks at the US Supreme Court were women (at a time when women made up nearly 50% of new law school grads) - & he set out to hire women as clerks thereafter. Blow dismisses Kavanaugh's affirmative action as selfish chauvinism stemming from the fact that he has daughters. But isn't it good news that Kavanaugh reads - & says he learned from - the NYT?
Since it's pretty sure that Kavanaugh is headed to SCOTUS, can't we hope & pray his awareness of sex-based discrimination is a gateway to a broader POV?
I see no contradiction either, once you consider that Judge Kavanaugh is capable of wanting to see his daughters treated fairly but not other people's daughters, especially if they're not white....Just as with the issue of drug policy, when it was wrecking black lives it was criminal, now that it is also a white problem it is "substance use disorder".
1
This is not difficult.
Affirmative action is good for white woman according to Kavanaugh who, by coincidence, has two daughters.
Affirmative action for blacks, not so much.
2
"This is the kind of illogical social positioning I despise. Kavanaugh knows firsthand that affirmative action works, but he opposes it as policy. ....The inconsistency is maddening."
Inconsistency to you Mr. Blow. Mr. Kavanaugh's logic is that certain matters may be and should be dealt with at a personal level by those who can, but they should not be established, legal, public policy. They should not be law and required.
One should not of course discriminate against women, minorities et al., but one should not be required to give them preference in hiring or acceptance to programs.
I do not support one view or another here. Rather, I simply seek to point out that Mr. Kavanaugh's logic is not as convoluted as Mr. Blow would describe it.
They disagree; they will not convince one another. The fact that Mr. Blow "despises" Mr. Kavanaugh's opinion does not make one view more logical or illogical than another.
3
I thought the exact same thing today when I heard this exchange.
A friend once defined affirmative action this way: you have never considered me before. You went out of your way to avoid considering me. Now, you have to consider me.
That's all affirmative action is, really. To uplift that concept while opposing it as policy is just self-serving: "look at how generous I am." I'm glad he did this with his clerks. But it is maddeningly naive to think that the answer to centuries of systemic, institutional, and cultural exclusion (and if only that were the extent of it) is for "good people" to take these actions as individuals.
Finally, what is most frustrating for me is the inability of these people to recognize the fact that cis-gendered white men in the U.S. have been the beneficiaries of the greatest, most aggressive affirmative action program ever designed in world history.
To not see this is to not know anything about who we are as a nation or a people. And it makes opposition to affirmative action, which almost always lacks any realistic or effective counter-proposal designed to mitigate centuries of exclusion and privilege, particularly grotesque.
Kavanaugh and Hatch either don't know this, which shows unbelievable ignorance, or they do know it and still get to exist comfortably in a culture that does not recognize, or punish them for, their hypocrisy. Until that culture ends, we can expect a lot more of this.
3
@21st Century White Guy
Very well said!
“ Do as I say, not as I DO. “. The FIRST Law Of Republican
“ principles “. Seriously.
2
I think your Op Ed is very disingenuous.
Expanding recruiting to ensure that women and minorities have a chance to apply for a position or a place in a school is perfectly reasonable and a desirable thing to do.
Making race or sex one of your selection criteria is blatant discrimination and should be illegal whoever it benefits or hurts.
19
Kavanaugh and Hatch are advocating a position of achieving diversity via personal preferences, responsibilities as opposed to government mandated Affirmative Action, which seeks to address both past and present discrimination against under-represented women/minorities/groups by giving preference to those discriminated groups for “equally qualified” (anyone who has hired anyone knows that “equally qualified” is both a mix of both objective measures as well as subjective assessment/bias).
One can agree or disagree with the personal approach or with Affirmative Action approach to achieve a more equal playing field and diversity, but I don’t see the Kavanaugh/Hatch position as inherently hypocritical or inconsistent - it boils down to how much government action we want to address social issues/injustices, if those government actions solve the problem or not, who benefits from those government actions, and if the government actions are constitutional from executive, legislative and judicial perspectives.
Kavanaugh has a very impressive personal hiring record in this area: of the 48 clerks he has hired (he gets 4 per year), 25 women/23 men, 21 of those women went on to SCOTUS clerkships; 13 are minorities, 5 african americans, 6 asians, 2 hispanic. He sees his approach as more successful and effective than a government mandated Affirmative Action program.
The real problem here are all the liberals/progressives who refused to vote for Hillary. Elections have consequences.
1
And this brand of conservative Have Your Cake And Eat It Too hypocrisy surprises you because......?
Name one policy, law or nomination that has emanated from the conservative agenda that does not fully rely on saying one thing and doing something else. Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing is just today's setup of 3 Card Monty, with Orrin Hatch the street barker calling it the most honest game in town. Step right up.
Of course Kavanaugh knows affirmative action works. But, more importantly, he knows how it works for him. It allows him to check off the "Treats women and minorities as equals" box, while simultaneously maintaining the claim of being color and gender blind, a claim that's the hallmark of phony white inclusiveness. The tell in this game is that women and minorities all know that when a white male claims he doesn't see gender or race, what it really means is that they are invisible to him.
And that is why Brett Kavanaugh can hire women as law clerks while denying the value of affirmative action. Because both positions play to his advantage, no matter which card his opponent chooses.
2
Thank you Charles. I had listened to this exchange but I didn't hear. The two gentlemen are such turn offs that I missed the underlying hypocrisy. Judge Kavanaugh's world is such that he feels proud that he provided some women with an opportunity to which,if his kind weren't in charge, they would have had in the normal course of events. He is so beneficent.
4
Conservatives believe in charity, as H.W. said "... a thousand points of light...". Charity keeps control of who the beneficiaries are in the hands of the donor. Instead of increasing graduated taxes to create a pool of money from which all people could benefit under a distribution system controlled by law, conservatives opt for charity. Thus, Brett maintains control of his personal affirmative action program so it doesn't go too far and violate his preferences. In this way conservatives continue to be king of their castle, master of their domains.
1
It’s not perfect, but it’s better than not having it. Work on fixing it - not destroying it. But that’s the Republican way - destroy - not repair. Obamacare, Medicare, Social Security, endless.
To the Republicans, life is black & white - and white trumps black.
4
The affirmative action that Kavanaugh practiced isn't like the racist practices used by Harvard and other "elite" colleges. He is seeking out qualified under-represented candidates and making sure they are encouraged to apply; he is not choosing a less-qualified female over a more-qualified male.
Harvard, on the other hand, selects vastly under-qualified under-represented minority candidates over more-qualified Asians (superior not just in test scores and grades, but extracurriculars AND interviews) and to some extent whites.
I think most opponents of affirmative action would have no objection to Harvard seeking out qualified black and Hispanic applicants who would otherwise not apply and have them compete on equal footing with Asians and whites (which is what Kavanaugh did for female law students). Or better yet, have Harvard use its multi-billion dollar endowment to set up elementary/middle/high schools that could help blacks and Hispanics be as academically prepared as their Asian and white counterparts by the time they apply for college.
2
Thank you for shining a light on the hypocrisy of the specific exchange between these two men and in doing so, revealing that that much if not most of the so-called questioning of the Judge can be genuinely misleading, if not parsed by enlightened, educated folks such as yourself.
2
Contrary to Charles M. Blow's opinion, there is no "staggering inconsistency" in Judge Brett Kavanaugh's "concerted effort to include [women] in [his law clerk] applicant pool." Indeed, there is no inconsistency at all, let alone a "staggering" one. When, in speaking with law school professors, Judge Kavanaugh conveyed that he wanted to see an increase in the number of female applicants, he was expressing a personal choice. He was not imposing his will on other judges. Nor was he implying that there should be a federal policy reflecting his personal views.
8
Very astute observation of Kavanaugh playing politics, using women as a shield, trying to distract from the hypocrisy of his words, actions and likely consequences of his future rulings.
4
Kudos to Charles Blow for writing about something other than President Trump's unfitness for office for a change! Blow is right to point out Judge Kavanaugh's hypocrisy on Affirmative Action.
1
Kavanaugh hires women. He is a devout Catholic. He knows the law. He coaches girl's basketball. He volunteers at a soup kitchen. He teaches kids of low-income parents. He loves his daughters, he loves his parents, he loves his friends....and oh yeah, he loves his wife. Brett is a Republican "boy scout," polished up to make him shine so bright....to blind us to his flaws.
Mr. Blow points out a contradiction on affirmative action between Kavanaugh's views and his act. But there's more.
Read Professor Sean Wilentz's op-ed, "Why Was Kavanaugh Obsessed With Vince Foster?" (The Times) Is boy scout Kavanaugh the same man with dirty hands who devoted 3-years to muckraking and spreading a conspiracy to smear the Clintons? Yes.
Is boy scout Kavanaugh the same man who worked with Manuel Miranda, another Watergate-style Republican operative (and hacker into Democrats computers) to use stolen emails from Senator Leahy's computer to prepare Bush court nominees? Yes.
Did Kavanaugh, as a circuit court judge, decide cases based on the law? Only to the extent that his interpretation of the law fit in with his Republican ideology. He looked for every footnote in every legal text to find ways to justify his personal interpretation.
Is Brett Kavanaugh a squeaky clean Republican "boy scout?" He is a long planned Republican Trojan Horse, groomed and shined up to convince the public that Republicans are not doing what they are doing - putting another radical ideologue on the Supreme Court.
4
@jabarry, great post. Further to use a Scalia quote to boost his view of race-based assistance is spurious at best. If Scalia had been an originalist as he claimed to be, he would have admited that the Constitution was written for the benefit of a single race-- whites. There was no benefits for Native Americans or African Americans baked into it. And let's again be honest: decisions like Dredd Scott and Plessey were institutionalized with the goal of further limiting opportunities for minorities. The whole point of affirmative action has been to lead and force the government to pursue equality. It did not (and cannot) change the history of the country to be that "we are just one race here." What part of pursuing "a more perfect union" do these spoiled white guys not get? (full disclosure-- white democratic feminist speaking)
Where there is no level playing field something is wrong. Minorities and women generally are on the losing end of most playing fields, affirmative action is one effort to realign that field. If you insist on completely equal qualifications for positions that depend on higher education, you believe in leaving the tilted field where it is. The solution begins with making good educations available to all. That in turn relies on good paying jobs for disadvantaged people so their children have the support to study. Equal hiring will only come when those jobs are held by people who some might consider to have lesser qualifications, but who in reality have different qualifications, like overcoming great barriers in their lives. The leveling process has to begin somewhere, some affirmative action is required.
As to Kavanaugh's women clerks, the conventional wisdom is that women have to work twice as hard and be twice as good in order to get a man's job (fortunately, that is not difficult). I suspect Kavanaugh could not justify failing to hire them. I also suspect that their politics lean to the right. Which ones drafted his decision denying an abortion to a refugee woman?
Diversionary, disingenuous, deceiving garbage. Sounds like a republican is in the room. The only affirmative action these grifters understand is any action that pads their personal financial future.
1
I believe hiring decisions must be made on a person's experience and qualifications for the job and then if that person represents a historically under-represented minority then that person should be hired. Thank you.
@Southern Boy
How do I “represent” a whole group of people just because of the color of my skin or genitalia? Does Kanye represent O.J.? Does Judge Kavanaugh represent Weinstein? Does Melanie Trump represent Whoopi Goldberg?
@KBronson,
What in the world do you mean?
In response to Kavanaugh's "one race" comments, Sen. Corey Booker pointed out the Kavanaugh supported law enforcement racial profiling in the Bush White House for "national security" reasons. So, Kavanaugh's position seems to be that it is acceptable to single out a particular minority race for adverse government actions, but not for positive government actions. Regardless of whom he hired as clerks, I expect that is how he would rule.
The entire Kavanaugh hearing is a charade. Does anybody really believe that Trump would have nominated him if he had not clearly told Trump how he would vote on the whole gamut of decisions on issues that the Right has been attacking the Supreme Court since Brown vs. Board of Education? Remember, that was the decision that inspired the Right to invent "States Rights" the first of the many catchy, misleading phrases they have used since. States do not have rights - people have rights and states have powers; Forcing women to carry a pregnancy to term is not "pro-life" - it is an invasion of a woman's body and her right to privately make a decision about her body (and her health); "Second Amendment Rights" were clearly established for almost 200 years as meaning that personal weapons could be owned by individuals, most especially those in the State National Guard - until the NRA got into the business of promoting gun sales and found that the bigger the gun, the bigger the profit, so now it promotes unfettered access to unlimited guns, the bigger and more powerful, the better. It is only a matter of time until the NRA promotes an "individual's right" to own a missile launcher or a bazooka.
The question Kavanaugh needs to be asked is "How did you promise President Trump you would vote on a case that could overturn ...". He will have to lie about what he said to Trump. And then he will "be persuaded to change his mind" when the case comes up.
2
Affirmative action is misguided. The error of our ways begins in early education that is, indeed, unequal. We do have minority students that are deprived of good, quality early education.
You cannot fix it by setting those very same students up to fail by granting them admission preferences at the back end of the educational pipeline. That sows the seeds of racial animus that will persist long after the diplomas are handed out with a handshake.
2
This is easy; it's all about personal, not social, benefit. Affirmative action for white women is, to a certain degree, perfectly acceptable to white men. Their daughters and wives can indeed be hired into decent (rarely top tier) positions. This benefits white men and their families.
On the other hand, Charles, they see no personal benefit from affirmative action on the basis of race. This is totally in tune with the selfish, me first, individualistic mentality that is pervasive in much of American society.
2
Affirmative action is just a Newspeak word for legalized discrimination. It is morally abhorrent and insinuates that members of minority groups cannot compete on a level playing field. The sooner that we get rid of it the better.
8
Affirmative Action is a legitimate tool to seek redress from the historical racial inequities of America. But it is only one tool that, by itself, will accomplish very little.
Without a sustained private and public investment in the development of economically disadvantaged communities, irrespective of race, peripheral tactics like AA will leave communities unimproved.
AA helps a few individuals, some of whom may never have needed it, but the needle on the big gauge remains unmoved.
Charles, when will the elephant in the room vis a vis affirmative action be addressed? I'm speaking of racial representation within US professional sports leagues. Wheat I read about often is opinion that there should be higher % of people of color hired in managerial and executive roles within franchises. Should this same philosophy not also be applied on the field of play as well as the bench/front office/executive suite? If we're going down the road of scrutinizing pro sports in this fashion, we should not withhold any positions within this industry from scrutiny, particularly the positions getting the lion' s share of revenue from pro sports, in the interests of fairness. Between the NFL and NBA, just considering active roster sizes, there are around 2000 positions to fill. The mean salary of these positions is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and balooning every year (as high end contracts bloat into the stratosphere). The demographic representation of those 2k roster slots is highly skewed, and if you bring analysis to a fine grain level per position, particularly in the NFL, you see an undeniable level of bias by race. Amazingly, this phenomenon is never brought up in the media, as if it were an out of bounds subject, yet all other targets of affirmative action, in every other industry & social endeavor, are fair game for scrutiny. Why is that, do you think?
2
The Liberal college professors were practicing discrimination in their choice of potential clerks.
This discriminatory behavior was corrected by Kavanaugh in his own hiring practices and he hired an all woman team.
And Kavanaugh is somehow the racist woman hater.
Sheesh.
4
Apparently, republicans have trouble seeing the merits of people who belong to demographics other than their own. Our "esteemed senator," Rob Portman couldn't fathom why gay people should have "special rights" until his son announced he was gay at which point, the good senator realized that guy people were actual human beings. It kind of makes you wish that more members of congress had relatives with cancer or were born with birth defects so that they would have first hand knowledge of many of life's challenges. Then, maybe they would include compassion in their political calculations.
15
Kavanaugh says he rules based on the law not his politics. What he seems not to see or is willing to admit that law, like the Bible, does not give absolute, clear answers to all questions. Every situation is based on interpretation of the case and how and what law applies in each case. His view of what is settled law, precedence is politically motivated if he sees it that way or not. Kavanaugh’s feeling that he is always following the law correctly, unlike other judges, that he never makes a mistake shows a blind spot to what he considers is the law.
4
@DO5. He's never tried a case, just ruled. Always a bride, never a bridesmaid.
1
Every time I read mention of Orrin Hatch, it is enough to conjure up the past where he is sitting on an all-white male panel during the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill Hearings.
It was at the end of the debacle where the above politician does a hatchet job on Senator Ted Kennedy, reminding the nation of a forever tragedy, that was the cause of a rare state of indignation here. How low we are able to stoop and become slimy to have the last word in a case of self-righteousness, where the two victims are forgotten in the fray.
Now. Two female friends, who are not acquainted, recently inform me they want to become lawyers and since they are no longer in their first flush of youth, this came as a surprise. One is a highly skilled water engineer; the other a public health expert; the first with an interest in criminal law, the second as a justice of the peace.
Tempting as it is to remind them that we are overpopulated with lawyers, we are in America which is still a young nation and where the Press is not the Enemy of the People. The authors among us have also have destroyed a few trees in the paper promotion of a 'positive' attitude.
While Judge Kavanaugh might venture to his female offspring that budding scientists and mathematicians are in demand, he is showing fatherly signs of support, and it is a bit of a paradox if he is planning to do an ax job on limiting women's rights groups.
1
In other words, instead of onerous government rules and regulations, we should just trust people and organizations to do the right thing in hiring and promotions. This philosophy should of course carry over into environmetal issues, home mortgages, consumer lending, and wedding cakes.
Corporations and individuals will always do the right thing as long as they're not forced to by oppressive, deep-state rules and regulations.
Trust us. We know what's best for everybody.
That seems to be the Republican message, and that is why I vote Democratic.
20
@Ralph Averill
When people become government employees, they lose any inclination towards self-interest, bigotry, meanness, moral laziness, stupidity, and avarice. The become flesh and blood paragons; virtually angels. That is why Societies where everything is under the control of the state—U.S.S.R, the Third Reich, Maoist China, Venezuela today, Castro’s Cuba—have always been such shining examples of Earthly Edens of human flourishing that the world has rushed to join them.
This craven consolidation of power into the hands of white males in on full display with women used as decoration.
3
It doesn't matter. Kavanaugh is a foregone conclusion. And it looks like our democracy will be too if Republicans like Hatch don't do their duty to stop the insanity in the White House.
1
What they want is a bunch of people saying "thank you suh fo hepping me git a job" rather than levelling the playing field so all can compete equally.
4
You don't get to be a Republican Supreme Court nominee without toeing the line. The question was designed to get a positive story on the record while ignoring all the other points mentioned here. It was a fluff question. Having Orrin Hatch ask the question is bitterly ironic but rather besides the point. If not Hatch, some other Republican would have lobbed the same anecdote.
We're also putting aside the fact that Kavanaugh could say he would deport Jesus and he still get appointed. Republicans are going to confirm him anyway. This whole show is simply an attempt to blunt public criticism before midterms. For their part, Democrats are attempting to inflame public criticism before midterms. The central figure in the whole proceedings is largely irrelevant.
Moreover, what Kavanaugh did or said in the past has no bearing on what he might do or say in the future. My guess is he'll rule against affirmative action at every opportunity. That's what he's getting appointed to do. His daughters notwithstanding, Kavanaugh is a Republican yes-man first. I'm sure his accumulated wealth and connections will ensure his daughters are adequately secure in their well being.
83
My gut impression of Brett Kavanaugh the man is one who carefully considered every action he took in relationship to its end purpose of helping him sculpt a perfect resume to one day become a Supreme Court justice. Whether it was to reshape his image after his involvement in the prosecution of President Clinton by stating his belief that the Executive branch is beyond the reach of prosecutorial discretion. Or how he carefully cultivated his image by promoting the cause of feminism by hiring all female law clerks. Or his deliberate curation of creating a pattern of ruling in favor of corporations and free trade. His entire judicial career has been scripted down to the tee, just waiting for the moment that the Federalist society would put him at the top of their list to be appointed to the Supreme Court. He believes, like the majority of Conservative in government, that individuals help their fellow man. In practice though, he will always rule in favor of established precedent that supports Corporations to have free rein to practice as they which without the heavy hand of invasive laws and regulations stymying their profits. This extremely choreographed career and personal choices creates the impression that he is both liberal and Conservative, thus making him the perfect fit for the Court. In reality, once he joins the bench, he will be the deciding vote in favor of the Conservative Right's agenda to cement their voting block on the Court.
1
Affirmative action in the U.S.?
It seems largely the opposite method (and applied to any field, discipline, organization other than sports) of how members of an elite sports team are selected. In sports for all nurturing of talent natural gifts are respected. To have a high quality team you search for natural talent as much as possible regardless of how the eventual team is composed along racial or ethnic or religious lines or any other type of classification. You want a team for a purpose and you select members according to a high, natural talent standard as possible.
Now with affirmative action it appears virtually all fields, disciplines, types of organization, teamwork other than sports in the U.S. are precisely NOT to be treated in their construction as a sports team, which is to say we are asked to precisely NOT search for natural talent but to emphasize nurture over nature and if the eventual composition of field, discipline, type of organization, etc. is unbalanced in any racial, ethnic, religious, etc. sense immediately the accusation of discrimination, injustice, unfairness, etc. is made.
This of course is absurd and contradictory. We have natural talent respected in sports but act as if natural talent not only does not operate anywhere else but that we can nurture anyone into any field or discipline or organization anywhere else. If we were to act in this way in sports there would be immediate breakdown in quality of action and thought. Good luck America.
1
"This is the very definition of affirmative action! He is making a concerted effort to include in the applicant pool people..."
Well - No.
OED: "The practice or policy of favouring individuals belonging to groups known to have been discriminated against previously; positive discrimination."
So no - Kavanaugh is not artificially inflating female abilities as reported elsewhere by the NYT (Jan 2017): "A 2009 Princeton study showed Asian-Americans had to score 140 points higher on their SATs than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics and 450 points higher than blacks to have the same chance of admission to leading universities."
Most people have no problems with a diverse pool of equally qualified candidates - where they draw the line is on the use of Quotas that define selection based simply on showing up and being the right color, orientation or sex.
But then Charles already knows that.
2
Watching Orrin Hatch and Brett Kavanaugh colluding on affirmative action during Justice Kavanaugh's
confirmation hearing for a seat on the Supreme Court was a show of an old conservative wooing a young conservative in the interests of making SCOTUS an ultra-right legal factotum for the next several decades. Orrin is 84, Brett is 44, and has decades of judging ahead of him. It's clear they're seeing eye to eye. Yesterday, in the midst of unrelenting political chaos in our White House under president Trump, the SCOTUS Senate hearings were a grotesque diversionary tactic away from the terrifying plight we Americans are suffering daily under an unfit and ignorant president. With democracy falling before our eyes, Hatch and Kavanaugh, the affirmative action duo are "poor players strutting and fretting their hour upon the stage". Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5.
As a Trump appointee it seems logical that Kavanaugh holds (latent, tacit?) white supremacy views. His 'affirmative action' you speak of is for White Women.
1
In those days where Kavanaugh got away with allowing Reverse-Diversity in his applicant pool of female law clerks by only considering women in that pool, we did not yet have Asian-Americans challenging Harvard's Reverse-Diversity policies in the applicants that they admit who otherwise would not be admitted. If we allow for Diversity, we also must allow for Diversity in those that are given special consideration (otherwise it is Reverse-Diversity) and that is the contradiction.
We have all seen that person walking around with a cane , using it as a crutch that is not needed..you know what I mean.
They are probably getting some kind of government assistance for a fake injury.
That is affirmative action.... And as long as those that think they need it rely on it, they will need it.
And those that write about affirmative action?
Well they are not creative enough to come up with something more important.
1
Hypocrisy by powerful men is not new. It's been central to racism and sexism for centuries. No one should be surprised by Brett Kavanaugh's blatant hypocrisy on affirmative action, but it's galling in a Supreme Court nominee in 2018. Any man who aspires to sit on the Supreme Court, which is meant, in theory at least, to impartially rule on the laws of the land, should be disqualified for this alone. Kavanaugh follows a long line of men who created, adhered to, or upheld, rigid classifications on race or sex, yet created exceptions for themselves based upon the idea that they were somehow not bound by the racist or sexist laws they created or perpetuated. Senator Strom Thurmond was a vicious racist, a champion of segregation and of Jim Crow, a great enemy of the Civil Rights Act, who despised interracial relations. He held that no American had the right to an interracial relationship, let alone an interracial child, so he had both. His eldest daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, was black. Do we even need to discuss Benito Mussolini? He was an ardent advocate of Aryan racial purity, backed the Manifesto of Race which was published in July 1938, which led to the enactment of The Racial Laws in the Kingdom of Italy the In October 1938. Yet his great love was Margherita Sarfatti, who was Jewish. Mussolini promised to protect Sarfatti from the racist laws he passed, but she wisely fled for her life rather than trust him. Which begs the point, why should we trust Kavanaugh?
2
We must affirm and act upon a society that has discriminated against a whole host of subsection of human (all constructs) throughout history.
There has been bias, racism, misogyny, slavery and genocide (how soon we forget Native Americans). On top of all that there has been a caste system or one of station that has been grandfathered down through the generations.
How do we correct the ills and biases of the past that still go on today in an equitable fashion for all? - we must remain consistent as you say, from the ground up and not just on the back end when we want to appear gracious or magnanimous in hiring practices.
First and foremost, the most qualified should be at the front of the line for whatever position, but the real question is how much of an advantage did they have in getting there.
It starts far sooner than at the senate confirmation level. It starts at social policy that allows a child to be born into this world with all of the advantages to excel and learn (regardless of sex, skin color, station ,etc...), and be supported by us all equally.
Just a thought.
3
Maybe Kavanaugh just likes to surround himself with young females when he's at work. Nothing wrong with that. Now, if the women were unattractive, THAT would be affirmative action and plainly bad policy, and ought to be prohibited.
4
@Joe***see I think that's funny.. but your asking for it from (I dare say) many of the NY Times commenters.
2
Holy Smokes .. is Charles Blow really writing about something other than Trump ... and it's pretty interesting
4
"Originalists" like Scalia, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh must believe that blacks are 3/5 of a man just like the original Constitution said.
3
@justthefactsma'am
The original constitution didn’t say that. It held slave to count as 3/5 for purposes of apportionment. Free blacks counted the same as everyone else.
The original constitution contained provisions for amendment which originalists accept.
Don’t make up facts ma’am.
1
The people who oppose are not only "male, white and Christians". Increasingly the Asian-Americans oppose it as well. It is not a good policy any more. Consideration of economic and class circumstances is more acceptable morally than consideration of race and gender.
1
Terrific opinion.
1
Very insightful, Mr. Blow, and good to call out the hypocrisy. Is it called the Cheney effect?
I'm glad Kavanaugh got some personal illumination by his daughters and Ms. Greenhouse (what he did before 2006 is anybody's guess), but all he really demonstrates is self-interest, like the rest of today's Republican tribe.
Conflating and confusing gender and color aka race aka national origin aka ethnicity aka faith aka geography is an ignorant spectacle. Affirmative action is a loaded term meant to calm some but inflames others.
There are only two naturally procreative human DNA genetic biological evolutionary fit genders.
There is only one multicolored multiethnic multifaith multi national origin biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species that began in Africa 300, 000 years ago.
What we call race aka is an evolutionary fit pigmented response to varying levels of solar radiation at altitudes and latitudes related to the production of Vitamin D and protecting genes from damaging mutations.
What we call race aka color is a malign white supremacist European Judeo-Christian American socioeconomic political educational demographic historical myth meant to legally and morally justify black African enslavement and separate and unequal black African Jim Crow.
1
Affirmative Action IS legalized race discrimination. It is a handicap applied *individuals* not races or groups, but *individuals* because of the particular race or group they belong to.
The Harvard case is prime example of why Affirmative Action policies are so incredibly toxic to the fabric of our society.
Asians have been discriminated against since the birth of this nation. In 1924 when women gained the right to vote, Asians were still relegated to a non-citizen status established by no less than the Supreme Court (in Singh vs The USA 1923) and did not have the right to vote. This wasn't changed until 1946 (!) with the passage of the Luce Celler Act.
Affirmative Action laws arbitrarily picked Hispanics and African Americans (and not Asians) to receive these benefits.
Today if you are asian, your prize is a 150 point deduction on your SAT scores when applying to college. For what? For being born Asian. Let that sink in for a moment.
This is the very definition of discrimination.
The system should not be race based. It should be based on economic factors. There is no reason why a low income Asian or White child attending a crime / drug ridden school has any leg up in life over a black or Hispanic child in said school. Everyone from the poorest echelon needs help.
And conversely no one from the middle or upper class need help (specifically middle and upper class hispanics and african americans).
Blow is wrong. Affirmative Action needs to go.
12
@Sachmo
You say "Asians have been discriminated against since the birth of this nation" -- And Blacks haven't? When in fact, it was slave labour that BUILT this nation.
Another thing.
If all men were created (and treated) equal, there'd be no need for Affirmative Action in the first place!
2
@Sachmo Great. Systems should not be race-based. What do you propose we do about the long-standing systems that ARE race-based, meaning they advantage white people?
The initial use of the term “affirmative action” was to describe precisely what Kavanaugh described himself as doing: to affirmatively seek to make sure that the under represented group is being encouraged to apply and is being considered. It was initially said that it would not and legally could not do what it now does—apply a different discriminatory standard to individuals based on which group they are in.
Legal non discriminatory productive affirmative action is outreach by a college to get competitive qualified black students to apply. Unfair ( and ultimately counterproductive) and illegal racial discrimination is admitting black students whose qualifications would not get them admitted if they were white or Asian.
8
In an increasingly diverse country, favoring one person over another - based upon skin color - should come to an end. Consider Harvard's blatant discrimination against Asians; Replacing one form of racism with another isn't progress.
27
@Ami
Motivations matter. Harvard is motivated to have a racially balanced student body because Harvard believes it makes it a more vibrant, successful university.
Harvard is not motivated by a belief that Asians are inferior people.
1
We must affirm and act upon a society that has discriminated against a whole host of subsection of human (all constructs) throughout history.
There has been bias, racism, misogyny, slavery and genocide (how soon we forget Native Americans). On top of all that there has been a caste system or one of station that has been grandfathered down through the generations.
How do we correct the ills and biases of the past that still go on today in an equitable fashion for all? - we must remain consistent as you say, from the ground up and not just on the back end when we want to appear gracious or magnanimous in hiring practices.
First and foremost, the most qualified should be at the front of the line for whatever position, but the real question is how much of an advantage did they have in getting there.
It starts far sooner than at the senate confirmation level. It starts at social policy that allows a child to be born into this world with all of the advantages to excel and learn (regardless of sex, skin color, station ,etc...), and be supported by us all equally.
Just a thought.
5
I suppose that the crux of the issue is will people, as Judge Kavanaugh did, become "enlightened" to the need and perform a de facto "affirmative action" policy in their own spheres where they can make change, or, does society overall need a "whip" in the form of a law to force change? The former is more ideal, as it makes diversity and inclusion part of the natural environment. The latter is more harsh, disruptive, and will often stoke a backlash of opposition, particularly if "quotas" for particular group representations are used.
1
This is so accurate. I am a female engineer and some of the men I work with deride female engineers as “quota fillers” until they have daughters who want to go into engineering. After they appreciate their own girls’ work, they try to network and open doors for their girls, but still espouse conservative views. Why is empathy so difficult for conservatives?
5
Maybe he hired all female law clerks because they were the best candidates/applicants.
2
Affirmative action helps already privileged minorities and their off-springs.
3
So, just to confirm, you believe in discrimination based on race when it helps people of your race. That sounds extremely fair.
12
nobody with half a brain can trust anything this partisan hack says in this hearing. even and especially the folks that want him to do their ideological bidding once installed.
1
And, Mr. Blow, as an afterthought in his long home run on the softball toss by Orrin Hatch, Judge Kavanaugh added, "That’s true with minorities as well, by the way." A cynic might sneer, "how very white of him."
Whites and males, yes, Mr. Blow, have been the chief beneficiaries of "affirmative action" since the Mayflower. When a minority or a woman or an "other" wants to get in line for a seat at the table, that's Socialism and "reverse discrimination" against whites to those on the Right.
Before 1981, minority communities pushed back with the civil rights movement. What else did they have? The 9-0 decision in Brown vs. Topeka threw back the curtain on de facto segregation.
One of Judge Kavanaugh's admitted judicial heroes was the Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who, in 1954, lobbied hard as a clerk to Justice Robert Jackson not to vote for the plaintiffs in Brown vs. Topeka. I quote law clerk Rehnquist's memo to his boss in full (from Wiki):
"I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by "liberal" colleagues, but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed. To the argument that a majority may not deprive a minority of its constitutional right, the answer must be made that while this is sound in theory, in the long run it is the majority who will determine what the constitutional rights of the minority are."
Rehnquist brought this mind-set to the Supreme Court. Will his protégé , Judge Kavanaugh?
3
Kavanaugh says he relies deeply on process so as to arrive at the correct judgement in his decisions. What a shame basic fairness and common sense don't play a bigger role in his tortured ruminations clearly designed to satisfy the demands of all sorts of neither well hidden, nor at all admirable loyalties. As for Kavanaugh saying couldn't comment on a hypothetical in response to the question: would it ever be okay for an American President to pardon himself - it was beyond offensive, though it must have satisfied the fifth (or sixth) grader he so obviously had in mind.
It's very simple, Mr. Blow. The original intent of Affirmative Action was to choose the minority when there are two candidates of EQUAL qualifications, but it was subverted to choose unqualified or lesser qualified preferred racial classes over highly qualified non-preferred racial classes. One example of this misuse of AA is the discrimination against more highly qualified Asian American applicants to Harvard.
26
If assistance were provided to all on the basis of need, then in my opinion there would be no need to debate affirmative action.
Affirmative Action IS legalized race discrimination. It is a handicap applied *individuals* not races or groups, but *individuals* because of the particular race or group they belong to.
The Harvard case is prime example of why Affirmative Action policies are so incredibly toxic to the fabric of our society.
Asians have been discriminated against since the birth of this nation. In 1924 when women gained the right to vote, Asians were still relegated to a non-citizen status established by no less than the Supreme Court (in Singh vs The USA 1923) and did not have the right to vote. This wasn't changed until 1946 (!) with the passage of the Luce Celler Act.
Affirmative Action laws arbitrarily picked Hispanics and African Americans (and not Asians) to receive these benefits.
Today if you are asian, your prize is a 150 point deduction on your SAT scores when applying to college. For what? For being born Asian. Let that sink in for a moment.
This is the very definition of discrimination.
The system should not be race based. It should be based on economic factors. There is no reason why a low income Asian or White child attending a crime / drug ridden school has any leg up in life over a black or Hispanic child in said school. Everyone from the poorest echelon needs help.
And conversely no one from the middle or upper class need help (specifically middle and upper class hispanics and african americans).
Blow is wrong. Affirmative Action needs to go.
25
@Sachmo All black people do not need affirmative action just like all white people do not need to fill every vacant job regardless of their inexperience and lack of knowledge, which is the current structure (see current occupant of the White House and his minions for examples).
4
The picture of Kavanaugh and his women behind him smiling like that causes vomiting. A variation of Stepford wives
1
@FoggyTimes, Condoleeza Rice was also sitting behind him. Please don't be so nasty..you can vomit without announcing it.
2
In the end, what Americans respect is performance, not kvetching. In a few weeks, Kavanaugh will be confirmed and Mueller likely will be wrapping up his investigation with no “high crimes and misdemeanors” offered because he has no proof of them despite so long fishing for them, with all manner of bait. What will be remembered is not the entertainment but the facts.
It’s too bad that even when commenting on such enlightened governance as a bevy of female law clerks, Charles needs to back-slap Kavanaugh on his motives. His motives were sterling and very American, and don’t deserve the back-slap.
Both Scalia’s position on strict color-blindness and Kavanaugh’s practices were mainstream American ones. I can understand the disdain with which many Americans view Affirmative Action, but I’ve supported it because, given our entrenched and pervasive racism and ethnic prejudices, I honestly can’t see another solution to obtaining SOME justice, despite the creation of INjustice for some in the process. It’s an imperfect America, as it’s an imperfect world.
But imperfection and “inconsistency” are not alien bedfellows. It remains that Kavanaugh acted in an enlightened way. Of course, in his case, nobody suggested that his female law clerks were in any way LESS qualified than male candidates he might have chosen instead.
1
Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh,
Where have you been?
Feigning a firm jaw,
Forthright and keen.
Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh,
What would you do?
Faced with the maw
Of a treasonous do.
Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh,
Stare decisis
See any flaw
In an abortion crisis.
Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh,
SCOTUS your goal?
Given facts raw,
Were real glib on the whole.
2
What is particularly significant are Kavanaugh’s emails that are entitled, “Racial Profiling” but that have been labeled, “Committee Confidential” which Cory Booker insisted should be seen. The fact that the Republicans are keeping them hidden suggests that the system is rigged according to Booker.
Also, Kavanaugh wouldn’t say if he agreed with Supreme Court precedent on affirmative action and voter rights, to which Booker responded with your answers don’t provide me with comfort.”
Hiring woman clerks does make Kavanaugh a believer in affirmative action.
@Ichabod Aikem
Last line should read: “Hiring woman’s clerks does NOT make Kavanaugh a believer in affirmative action. His own self-serving interest at the time does not a policy make.
Sorry, but statistics aren't on your side
2
Opposition to affirmative action is based in the belief that it enables less qualified people to claim opportunities over more qualified people.
This is a straw man fallacy.
First, there is no objective basis for determining who is more or less qualified for anything. There are objective measures, but all are imperfect measures of qualification. A higher SAT score does not absolutely establish which student will be the best scholar. A higher GPA doesn't absolutely establish which student will be an important leader in the student community. Selection of ANYTHING in the affirmative action conversation is inherently subjective.
Second, all affirmative action does is give people with particular backgrounds a chance. That's it. They still have to seize their opportunities and succeed.
Kavanaugh, I suspect, thinks that if a powerful person like him wants to personally exercise affirmative action that is his perogative. But if an organization wants to formalize an affirmative action program, that's discrimination. So, this is just another way of demonstrating his unfitness for the bench.
3
@Sam I Am
Well Sam, it’s worth noting that Harvard’s invocation of your guidelines also gives many Asian-Americans kids - no chance.
This piece just points out the obvious: affirmative action works for women, just like the #metoo movement but equality for people of color is non-negotiable. To suggest that someone Black be given a “break, pass or gift” implies that we’re lazy and don’t want to work for what we get. Affirmative Action has attempted to Grandfather Minorities into all white arenas because our Grandfathers were forbade admittance. People of color aren’t allowed a break to advance. And yet mere “Whiteness in America” invokes all sorts of “breaks, passes and gifting” of things from basic, like being allowed to get out a ticket, to big like Dylan Roof being offered a meal after being arrested. If that isn’t a break, I don’t know what one is.
1
Racial discrimination is racism
Supporters of racial discrimination are racists.
The matter could not be simpler.
5
Why is affirmative action an imperfect tool? Because when put into practice it leads to quotas which are against the law. If you want to see Affirmative action's future come to California. For decades Asian Americans in here had complained that they were being short changed in UC college admissions. They not only argued that race-conscious policies were unfair but proved convincingly that they were victims. In 1996 voters amended the state constitution by voting for Prop 209, to prohibit state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, in public education. By law admission to UC colleges now had to be race neutral. Post Prop-209, Asian students benefited tremendously. They are almost 50% of student body at UC-Berkeley California schools. This an almost 25% increase. Clearly in an open admissions process where affirmative action does not enter into enrollment decisions & where legacy and donor issues are discouraged, Asian-American students compete very well. In the subsequent years, the Asian community has fiercely opposed all measures that seek to return affirmative action to California. California's present is America's future. They are bringing the fight against affirmative action to the Supreme Court. This time around, there is a wealthier, more organized, & vocal group of Asians who are on board — and are very willing to play their part in ending affirmative action forever. Supporting this flawed policy isn't an option for them & soon the rest of the US.
3
Charles, if your definition of affirmative action as implied by the comparison to Kavanaugh is to look far and wide for qualified applicants until you find a superior woman, black, non-Christian, non-Jew, non-heterosexual applicant, so be it. That is not affirmative action. Affirmative action elevates less qualified applicants displacing qualified applicants in some tortured hierarchy of worthiness. Apparently Asians are less worthy than everyone else and white women Christians are worth less than a Black, Native American lesbian. Atheisist are simply reviled and no presence is ever contemplated
It is a system that reinforces that if you happen to be a minority that gets a job it is fair to presume they are less qualified than others, a terrible burden.
I happen to be a 50 something bi-racial, first generation, non-religious, CIS presenting Male (too bad on the last one - I almost qualified) and firmly oppose a system of unequal access and displacement.
4
@Chris "Affirmative action elevates less qualified applicants displacing qualified applicants in some tortured hierarchy of worthiness." Fact check: false. You did not listen to Charles Blow but substituted your own disgruntled definition in place of his. If this is your attitude toward life and toward your fellow citizens, I would not want to hire you for anything either. Go fish.
1
I've come to think of many Republicans as people who lack empathy until it affects them.
Consider Dick Cheney. He has great empathy for LGBTQ issues because he has a daughter who is a Lesbian.
They see no conflict in their opinions because they don't reason like a normal person. And many of their rank and file fit neatly into the same category.
"Keep your government hands off my social security!"
Cut funding to birth control and deny useful sex education then rail about abortions.
Completely, utterly illogical and selfish.
Oh, does Kavanaugh consciously and deliberately select female law clerks with 400 less points on their SATs than male law clerks?
Since we are in the legal realm, does Kavanaugh go out of his way to select female law clerks with significantly lower LSAT scores and who attended less prestigious law schools?
The answer to these questions is an unequivocal, “No.”
And for the record, I hope Kavanaugh doesn’t get confirmed. Merrick Garland should be a Supreme Court judge. But let’s not make inapt comparisons, Mr. Blow.
1
I remember my dad's college yearbook. A rare appearance. I guess it was the horn-rimmed glasses he was trying to live down. His 22-year-old self was not what caught my eye. It was page after page of white men. Every single square had a photo of a white, ethnic kid from a Italian, Irish and Polish family. It was a Jesuit college.
I think, by the law of averages, and the fact that talent falls like a gentle rain on the women and people of color beneath, that more than half of these graduates would not have gotten in on the merits. Maybe my father, I never asked him what he got on the SATs.
Affirmative action for the first 300 years of this society was white and male.
Fifty years later, as a teacher, I have gone up for positions ear-marked as "diversity" positions. I never had a chance at them. And I am just fine with that. I had a one year visiting assistant professor position in a county in California that was more than 50% Latino. The position went to a Latina. Good.
I celebrate affirmative action in its modern form. 300 years of the old ways, and we want done with it after half a century? That math does not add up.
I still got a good job. I have a little bit of talent. And I'm a white guy.
9
Mr. Blow you are incorrect. Affirmative Action has helped White males. Most plans have a sections for Vets and People with Disabilities--these include white males. Further, in the hiring of women, many were white, married to white males. Affirmative Action has been very helpful to minorities and indirectly in alot of cases White males.
@Hello
So everyone has been given an advantage! But over whom? Space aliens?
Seems that Kavanaugh is willing to alter the rules depending on who's in his court. I find it scary that his actual answers for the most part seem OK but maybe he'll flip and side with his 'team' when push comes to shove.
Besides, we're less than 60 days away from an election, surely we should let The People decide who should be the next SCOTUS judge?
Any minorities on Kavanaugh's daughters' basketball team that he coached?
Kavanaugh began his personal affirmative action in 2006. For cited instances prior to 2006, can we give him some leeway of grace and believe that he was not as sensitive to the inequities as he was when he became a judge?
My questions, then, is what brought about his evolution in his thinking on affirmative action? What affirmative action remedies and strategies would he find acceptable today?
Affirmative action is money.
You can use an employment service, and get a job.
But if you don't, depending upon your color or ethnicity, you may get shut-out.
But all things being equal- a phrase the sends my head spinning, because they so obviously are not- a selection system should be based upon quality uncompromised.
But prejudice is inherited like DNA- like a medical condition you got from grandfather or in a blood transfusion.
The irony is so thick you can swim in it.
Why are we contaminating the body-politic of our Supreme Court with this tainted bag?
Affirmative action now in the selection of a new justice.
One that really understands affirmative action.
The problem, of course Mr. Blow, is actually affirmative inaction. The deliberate 7% decline in African American voter turnout on November 8, 2016 is exactly the reason that Donald Trump was elected President. As always, don't Boo, vote.
1
I wonder if Kavanaugh took his female clerks to NBA games using the season tickets he had. Maybe pregame drinks first?
It is not a spectacle. Affirmative action is charity for minorities who would otherwise be left behind if not for the help of the white man lending a hand to a less qualified person. Kavanagh's law clerks were all brilliant qualified law students, who happened to be women. That is called a judge's personal preference. It is perfectly legal, indeed commendable. But it is not a quota that must be filled upon pain of consequence like Mr. Blow and his ilk love to push for for less qualified minorities. Gender and race are only resume enhancers in a a democrat world where form triumphs over substance. Stay tuned.
1
If this were all there were to "affirmative action", we would not be so riven on this topic in this country. Charles knows this, but he's pretending he doesn't.
The reality of affirmative action, in the contexts we actually care about, is the selection of minorities (or women) over more-qualified applicants. ("What's 'qualified'?" proponents of AA are quick to respond, as if this is some strange concept. Answer: the norms of the relevant organization that predict success therein; lots of leeway here - but there can't be one set of "qualifications" for blacks and another for whites.)
That's not what Blow describes Kavanaugh as doing. The Judge's actions fit the model of "pipeline enhancement", with a side of "ties go the runner." The first is totally unobjectionable. The second is a closer call, but our debates would look very different if that were the extent of affirmative action.
I have lived with the specter of affirmative action my entire life. I look a lot more like Charles Blow than Judge Kavanaugh. It is the unswerving dishonesty of AA proponents that so poisons what would under the best of circumstance be a difficult social debate. Please stop.
2
For the commenters that will lament that affirmative action supposedly gives admission to less qualified applicants and that we should live in a 'meritocracy'..
The criteria for admission to schools, to jobs, and so forth are not truly merit based! Test scores, gpa, etc. are only partially merit based. If everyone had equal preparation or equal lack of preparation for entrance exams (for example) they might be merit based. Access to test prep is NOT merit based! Well-heeled students will always have a leg up because of additional access to better K12 schools often located in wealthier neighborhoods with more funding, additional access to all manner of test prep and tutoring, additional access to extra curricular activities that are costly, extra curricular activities that don't include a wage.. the list is endless really and doesn't stop with entry into college.
There are also many reports about the inability of low income students to take unpaid internships during or immediately after college that bolster one's job prospects. So let's not pretend that we exist or can really even try to exist as a meritocracy as 'merit' is so often determined by money and connections. Are economic situation and professional connections the same as race? No but it is stupid to deny that these are correlated.
1
Blow is full of it! He is dead wrong with his warped view that what Judge Kavanaugh did "is the very definition of affirmative action! He is making a concerted effort to include in the applicant pool people who had traditionally been excluded and had apparently taken that fact into consideration when hiring". Judge Kavanaugh quite properly extended his potential law clerk hiring pool to ALL qualified persons. He did NOT chose UNQUALIFIED women over other qualified other applicants. The everyday definition of Affirmative Action is the latter - more qualified applicants get rejected because of illgal reverse discrimination.
If Blow was nominated to be a federal judge, how would he answer the following question?
Do you endorse racial,ethnic,religious, or gender discrimination or are you opposed?
Yes or No?
These are the type of unfair questions that other nominees, including Kavanaugh, are subjected to.
3
We have always had affirmative action … for the 0.1%. From birth they are on a preplanned course to guaranty admission (by alumni preference or big donations) to a select university and to follow that up with a job offer from the "right" entity to set them up for life.
The original premise of racial affirmative action was that 250 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow had created all white institutions and that if truly equal hiring had started in 1965 it would have take at least a full generation to integrate, say, the Alabama State Police. Unfortunately, in some (but not all) instances that his become effectively a quota system.
The real solution is to change the dynamic so that it is not a zero-sum, winner-take-all game.
Sadly, you would prefer the hiring process to place greater emphasis on a person's color rather than his or her intellectual qualifications. That's the problem with affirmative action.
3
Yet another picture of a man with a wife and daughters who doesn't trust their judgment when it comes to reproductive health choices.
1
We can not end discrimination by continuing to discriminate. Each incident of discrimination by race, gender or ethnicity, for whatever reason someone thinks is good, creates yet another victim, thus adding more fuel to an already hot fire. Defending discrimination because your group benefits from it is exactly what got us into this in the first place. Discrimination must stop, if only we as a country would have the courage to say no to all who want it to continue.
59
@micheal Brousseau
Yeah, now that whites have a huge advantage socially and economically, its time to stop discriminating.
Hmmm. When liberals implement affirmative action programs it is to be condemned, but when conservatives like Kavanaugh implement affirmative action programs, e.g. for their law clerks, it is to be commended.
Got it, thanks.
1
The best way to promote balance is by changing the rules of the game. The 3 point shot in basketball worked for years to promote whites. (That has changed ) the same goes for voter i.d. laws. Those who promote the so-called merit system ignore the fact that they made all the rules of the game.it seems patently obvious that the rules of most games were written by white males
1
@michjas
European males ( white ) wrote the rules for European civilization. Black males wrote the rules in Africa. Chinese males wrote the rules in China. Now most people everywhere play more or less by the rules that the Europeans wrote because they are the better rules. Even China, certainly in control of her own fate, chooses to follow a white male, Marx.
India has no model for remaining a functioning nation without the white make written rules from the British.
This is very simply stated:
If I benefit it must be good....... for me.
If I do not benefit it must be bad....for everyone.
2
All true if the female clerks he hired were less qualified - in terms of grades; academic performance - than white male applicants competing for the same position. But the column does not include that critically important information. Opposition to AA does not come from favoring an applicant from an historically underrepresented class over an equally-credentialed white male candidate. It comes from hiring the objectively less qualified candidate solely because of, say, race. And that opposition comes from across the political spectrum. This opinion piece fails to prove its assertion.
50
@MWR
A reasonable and common response to the vexed issue of AA and Mr. Blow's argument. But what if because of long-term, deeply embedded discrimination ( let's say in the case of racism in America) that precisely because of that discrimination, there are no (or very, very few) equally qualified/credentialed applicants from an under-represented class? Is it possible to move an historically tilted playing field to level without tilting it in the other direction at least for some time?
1
@MWR
No, opposition to affirmative action exists because it means that blacks can be hired for jobs from which they were historically excluded. Blacks do not have certain access, socially and economically, because of historical discrimination. Then they are told that they are "objectively" less qualified, because of that historical discrimination. Duh. What a nice way to keep that historical advantage.
1
If those female law clerks performed as good as or better than the other law clerks, then the rubric by which the others were vetted might not be all that great; i.e. maybe standardized test scores and grades matter less than originally advertised.
These professionally tutored supreme court nominees all use the same coy talk track to get the job and best represent their party. Unfortunate as that is. There are of course exceptions to this but only astute and attentive supreme court watchers can go back and write that the judge did a reversal on what his confirmation hearing. Besides, the appointing president is long gone. Too bad, but legal objectivity will never happen. The constitution is squishy and allows for a lot of wiggle room in its interpretation. Unless a few of these moderates and the democrats are unified against him, Kavanaugh will win this appointment.
To add more; as a federal judge, and so a public employee, Kavanaugh was practicing affirmative action as a matter of public policy (if we believe what he says). He could have been sued for reverse discrimination under the view the Republican espouse, for example under the view in the Michigan case.
Big difference between affirmative action (lowering the objective standards) and giving preference to certain groups of people, in this case female. With the latter, the candidates are equally qualified as their male peers. Kavanaugh's view point is pretty tame: when merit is equal, go with the more demographically marginalized candidate. The tie goes to the vulnerable. But a win is still a win and a loss is still a loss.
1
There seems to be this widespread belief that anyone selection under affirmative action must be second rate. Absolutely no selection process is completely objective. All measures of merit are biased in one direction or another. That is why admissions to a university does not happen by putting all of the ACT/SAT scores in a spreadsheet and starting at the top and going down until the class is filled. I have run a selective program and I can attest that there are surprises both ways. No one indicator is a 100% accurate predictor.
There seems to be far less concern about legacy admissions for example than affirmative action. Perhaps it matters just who's ox is getting gored.
1
This is a simple ends and means debate. Kavanaugh’s end is balance. And he recognizes a personal obligation to pursue the goal. But he does not believe that the government has the right to adopt and impose the goal on anyone. That is the straightforward legal analysis. But that is not the end of the matter. He still needs to explain why he makes the distinction that he makes. He can do that with high minded principles. But let’s be real. He simply believes that balance is less important than the right to discriminate.
Hatch's question wasn't just a softball, it was more like a love letter. Utah is a backward state with a sordid history of racism, female subjugation, and murder (see- Mountain Meadows Massacre), and it's reflected in their Congressional delegation. Old Orrin recognized a soul brother in Kavanaugh, and wanted to give him a boost. They might give a nod to female equality, as a TV showcase to the public, but support unlimited executive power and institutional racism.
I'm tired of these dinosaurs in the Senate, where 17% of our population can form a majority. Let's not disband it, but rather pass a Constitutional Amendment to give it the same amount of power as the House of Lords in Britain. If we are to have a functional democracy, the people's voice must be heard, and not be overruled by sparsely populated rural states, malevolent corporations, and religious fanatics.
As for Kavanaugh, an intellectual lightweight and extreme right wing acolyte, Trump and Citizens United will continue to be a stain on our country. Let's defeat the Republicans and the Kochs so thoroughly in the next two elections that they are swept into the same dustbin of history where the Whigs and Know Nothings currently reside.
5
@Mike Roddy
See “California Indian Genocide”—over 300 massacres of many thousands. See “Chinese Massacre” ( Los Angelos). See “Ignorant Regional Bigotry.”
This is the classic conservative and also libertarian model that embraces an individual's choice to hire or recruite the underserved or disadvantaged. Its a wonderful thing to give someone a chance, etc. But when it becomes a government policy, it is deemed to be wrong. Hence one can brag about their altuisim but if the "Government" decides to get involved, well, thats an entirely different story.
5
"He is now deeply interested in female advancement and equality because he has two daughters."
Not because it's right, but because it affects his family directly.
The conservative mind at work.
72
@mancuroc - CB's statement is a simple assertion. CB cannot demonstrate that Kavanaugh makes that statement because he has daughters and neither can you.
Thomas Chatterton Williams, now a Times columnist, has noted, I believe, that he began work on a book about the American concept of race after he with USCB-defined black father and white mother and white wife had a blonde blue eyed daughter. His essay on this daughter addresses how he might think in the future given such a daughter.
Larry L.
2
Affirmative action as a policy to countervail wrongful discrimination within an organization is entirely appropriate.
In other words, if managers of an organization believe their subordinates may succumb to implicit bias in hiring and promotion decisions, then these managers would be well advised to explore implementing a top-down affirmative action policy to proactively ensure that wrongful bias doesn't result in the best candidate being excluded on the basis of his or her race or gender. Fair hiring and promotion is the goal and affirmative action can be a tool to achieve it.
But the notions that discrimination based on race is morally wrong, as well as counterproductive to an organization, and that people should be treated equally regardless of their race absolutely does NOT justify affirmative action designed to advantage less qualified individuals to try to make up for historical wrongs or systemic social ills. In that case, the affirmative action policy itself is violating the fundamental precept of treating people equally regardless of race.
In that case, the affirmative action policy itself is promoting the less qualified individual due to that person's race.
In that case, the affirmative action policy itself is the wrongful discrimination.
57
@Mmm, thanks for the red herring. The issue is that people of the wrong kind (race, religion, sex, whatever) were systematically held down when better qualified, or as well qualified, as those of the right kind. The first fact is that this historical (and continuing) fact has contemporary consequences that perpetuate the now-inherited advantages of the "right" people. The second fact is that, in general, there are many more qualified applicants for a position like clerkships or college admissions than can be chosen. Subtle distinctions like those claimed in Bakke are known to be not predictive of outcomes. The whole affirmative action project is based on that issue and those facts as well as the continued power of discriminatory attitudes and actions, often not recognized by the holders and perpetrators. All this is well supported by much research. It follows that your worry about affirmative action is mistaken and has a bad influence.
1
@Mmm
Your comment on it's face seems reasonable. It is rational to expect that in all cases the most qualified candidate should be chosen for the position. What is glaringly ignored in this reasoning is that in fact what affirmative action is really trying to accomplish is to compensate for the lack of opportunities that exist for a certain class of individuals to achieve the most qualified candidate position. It is the very fact of discrimination of this class of individuals that they do not have equal opportunities to achieve the position of being the most qualified. If you do not have the opportunity to receive the training necessary to be the best candidate then you will never be the best candidate. By advancing the lesser candidate you are in fact correcting that inequality of opportunity to receive that training that was denied you by the discrimination being addressed by this affirmative action.
1
@Mmm Disagreed. Working in corporate management for 35 years, I saw white women who were advanced because of affirmative action to ensure that minorities stayed in their place but a select few minorities who companies use to count in their reporting numbers to show that they were not discriminated. Affirmative Action has helped so many more white women than minorities. This is the story that gets lost when whites criticize Affirmative Action.
1
Women, yes; people of color, no. A very selective view of which injustices of the past need rectifying.
122
There is nothing in affirmative action programs that require the beneficiarys be less qualified than usual members that are displaced. This would be destructive to the whole idea of filling positions with people who were fully qualified but were passed over because of race, gender, or religion.
1
@Howard Yes, well, as Charles Blow says, he has a personal reason to care about women which does not exist in the case of race. And if the girls end up to have a marginalized sexual orientation, he will make that contortion too. When one is only motivated by personal issues there is no such thing as policy.
@Howard Does Clarence Thomas solve anything?
White women yes; people of color now. A completely consistent position, but a very selective view of what injustices from the past need rectifying.
29
The difference Charles is that Kavanaugh chose amongst candidates who were equally qualified. Few have any qualms with that affirmative action. What most argue with is the subject of the current suit against Harvard; when students who are much more qualified based on objective criteria are denied entrance in order to allow racial balancing. The way to end discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.
167
@Dr B, you think college admission is like a prize contest? You think there are not far more well qualified applicants to Harvard (for one example) than can be admitted? Both views are mistaken.
@Dr B
How do you know they were equally qualified?
1
@Dr B
Your citation of the Harvard issue is flawed. The issue is a cap on high achieving students who are not being replaced by under-achievers. further, admission to Harvard is hardly based solely upon merit. Unless being a legacy somehow makes someone smarter...
1
"This is the kind of illogical social positioning I despise. Kavanaugh knows firsthand that affirmative action works, but he opposes it as policy. He is now deeply interested in female advancement and equality because he has two daughters."
I wonder if Kavanaugh would have tried to remedy the scarcity of female clerks if his kids were boys.
Probably not. From what I've seen of him, body language as well as linguistic mannerisms, he seems like someone whose every action has a very targeted end.
I"m sure as he rose in conservative judicial circles, he figured it couldn't hurt him to have a pro-female hiring bias for clerks.
But remember, clerks are clerks, not full-time hires on his staff or court circuit.
The entire exchange between Hatch and Cavanaugh today smacked of a rehearsed softball-line of questioning the size of Minnesota.
Contrast that with the scorn and scowls he reserved for questions from Corey Booker.
This guy doesn't like to be crossed, whether it's a Parkland father trying to shake his hand or a Democratic senator trying to discern his legal positions and judicial temperament.
About the only (and best) thing we learned today is that this judge's most frequently employed tactic in making decisions is holding up his finger to the wind.
232
Clerks are merely temporary staff? If you knew a thing about the legal world, a clerkship on a federal court of appeals is a golden ticket. Your career is set. You can get any job you want. It’s a massive deal to get such a prestigious clerkship
4
@ChristineMc
If you were in the middle of the most important meeting of your life and one of the most important meetings in Supreme Court history and some guy came out of nowhere talking about a mass shooting, what would you do?
@ChristineMcM - Sorry but I do not think Blow, Mancuroc, or you are justified in making the assertion that Kavanaugh does x because he has daughters.
I recommend Thomas Chatterton Williams essay on his Blonde Blue Eyed daughter because I think he reflects on how having this daughter might change his ways of thinking. (I wrote "I think" because I have to read it again ASAP)
Larry L.
TCW is now a Times columnist.
2
I watched it live on C-Span. It was nauseating to see the Hatch and Kavanaugh performance speak their scripted lines as if they were acting out a stage play. I thought that they might give each other a hug at the end of their act. Regardless that Kavanaugh has two children, the performance was to portray himself as a pro-women justice.
105
From Roger Clegg, Center for Equal Opportunity: First, if you think — as Judge Kavanaugh did —that the incumbent system is not producing the best qualified individuals, and you change that system so that it does, you are not engaging in preferential treatment. Second, the broad remedial rationale that the columnist endorses is one that the Supreme Court has rejected and so no university relies on.
20
The article fails to establish that Kavanaugh has engaged in affirmative action in his clerk hiring.
It would be affirmative action if Kavanaugh, confronted with a male and female applicant of equal merit, consciously chose the female applicant out of a desire to promote women in the legal profession.
But that is not what Kavanaugh has done. Rather he has urged his network of professors to ensure that women are put forward and recommended for his consideration. Nothing in the article suggests that Kavanaugh's consideration of recommended candidates has been based on anything other than merit. It strikes me as unsurprising that, in a given year, the 3 or even 4 most meritorious candidates might all be women and therefore selected.
Accordingly I see no inconsistency in the positions Kavanaugh has adopted. As a matter of policy, affirmative action is rightly to be seen as a last resort. It tends to make its beneficiaries feel undeserving, and the losers feel aggrieved.
The key priority is to ensure that capable women and minorities (of which there are many) are able to get their foot in the door and be considered. Kavanaugh is to be applauded for ensuring that this has occurred in his Chambers.
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@MB, he boasts about his preference for women that you say is not acting preferentially. You can't have it both ways.
@MB Kavanaugh purposely chose all women in 2007 and I’m sure he had a very long list of men to choose from. That’s affirmative action, in its simplest form. He leveled the playing field for women who were underrepresented as clerks.
@MB
Hmmm. Does "capable women and minorities" mean overlooking the best qualified or just choosing from women and minorities who may be less qualified?
1
We should not be surprised by the "game" Hatch and Kavanaugh played at the hearing today. As public life gets increasingly more scripted (think Trump rally), these Supreme Court nominee hearings become increasingly scripted, farcical and decidely lacking in any real information. Now that such nominees are no longer subject to the filibuster, future nominees may be vetted solely on their paperwork. It is a tragic turn of events for anyone who believes the Supreme Court should be a truly co-equal and independent branch of government, not a political arm of the president and the Senate.
80
Brett Kavanaugh is bad for:
Affirmative Action, Gerrymandering, Voting Rights
Equal Rights
Privacy
Corporate ethics
Money in Politics and corruption
He's bad on every possible topic one can imagine. On gun rights, he's so bad he wouldn't look Fred Guttenberg in the face or shake his hand.
Kavanaugh is corrupt. That's why Trump picked him and why the Senate GOP is barreling through on his hearing.
We have have reached the lowest depths of corruption. The entire Republican party is in on it, with a few Democrats thrown in. Trump may look like a fool right now but he was always expendable to those who spent decades and billions of dollars to get to a day when they seize control. Kavanaugh is one of their soldiers.
---
What Trump did while we weren't looking
https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2ZW
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@Rima Regas Kavanaugh is corrupt??? Where's your proof. If he's corrupt why did he receive bi-partisan approval on a 57-36 vote when he was confirmed as an U.S. Appellate Judge.
4
@Rima Regas Pamela Harris is showing that her experience as a prosecutor has made her an excellent questioner of the spoiled child nominee.
3
@Bill Brown
Sice then we've learned he spends money on baseball tickets into the hundreds of thousands on a salary that doesn't support being able to repay his credit cards.
Anthony Kennedy suddenly needed to retire. His son works for Deutsche Bank.
Kavanaugh's used to clerk for Kennedy.
Kavanaugh's thinks presidents can't be impeached.
2+2=4