We previously discussed the bizarre case of Rachel Dolezal, 37, the head of an NAACP chapter accused of lying by her own mother. Worse yet, some have suggested that Rachel Dolezal, who is the head of the NAACP’s chapter in Spokane, planted hate mail at her office. Now it appears that Dolezal once sued Howard University over discriminating against her for being white — before she claimed she was black. If true, it makes a truly bizarre story all the more bizarre.
Dolezal reportedly sued Howard for discrimination in 2002 when she graduated from the historically black college with a Master of Fine Arts degree. She was then known as Rachel Moore and sued Howard and Professor Alfred Smith, chairman of Howard’s Department of Art. The lawsuit is quoted as alleging “discrimination based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender.” She alleged that she was denied a teaching assistant post and that her application was rejected for a post-graduate instructorship in favor of African-American students. The lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Zoe Bush and Bush’s decision was upheld by the D.C. Court of Appeals. In addition to an order forcing her to pay a “Bill of Costs” of $2,728.50, she was ordered to pay the university nearly $1,000.00 in connection with an “obstructive and vexatious” court filing.
The unfolding background reveals a tragic obsession (and transformation) with race. That obsession would lead to the alleged falsification of information on government forms. It is also unclear whether this controversy will produce criminal charges.
Source: Smoking Gun
@ Karen
And none of the rest of us should bother to care unless it begins to spill out of the hood. What they do to each other should be considered as being their problem and not something for Americans to waste resources worrying about.
“We demand jobs. Please disregard all the businesses we just looted and burned to the ground. It is clearly racist for businesses not to open here. And if we don’t get what we want ether this time, or the next court case that comes along, we’ll burn your business down, too. But you’d better build here and employ us. Or else.”
That’s pretty much the unhelpful message they’re sending in Baltimore and Ferguson. The situation in Baltimore must be pretty grim for families trying to survive. It was already the most difficult place in which to climb out of poverty even though they spend quite a bit of money on education, and now it is so very much worse.
Squeeky – the cops have now abandoned pro-active policing in Baltimore, because they will clearly be hung out to dry, and the community doesn’t want the help. They’ve been responding to calls, but no longer driving around looking for suspicious activity for fear of being accused of racism.
The result is that the homicide rate has skyrocketed. The last time I checked, there were over 30 murders in one month alone in Baltimore, a city of 800,000, compared with over 20 murders in NYC, a city of 8 million people. This underscore that the greatest threat to public safety is actually not the police, although of course any wrongdoing should be thoroughly investigated and acted upon appropriately.
Well, whoops. Once again the activists claimed to want to help people, came in, people rioted and were given “room to destroy”, dozens of businesses burned to the ground, jobs dried up, crime went up, and now the community is much worse off than before they arrived to save the day. Meanwhile the activist DA is making no pretense of being impartial or fair, and is clearly, openly biased, declaring so on Prince’s stage. Do people actually thank the activists who just made a complete mess of the community for the people who actually have to live there? They are worse off, not better, in any way. “No justice, no peace” merely excuses bored young people making their neighborhood a toilet, and dangerous for the families who live there. This wasn’t justice. This was an out of control lynch mob uninterested in waiting for all the facts, and hurting their neighbors in the process.
@KarenS
Ken’s point about preferences causing more harm than good, also applies to the constant race-baiting nonsense by the media and the left. My goodness, a cop subdues rowdy black kids, and the national media is there. I mean, if you pick at a scab enough, it is going to bleed. All this unnecessary attention is sending black people into the world with a big chip on their shoulder. IMHO.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
And this is what I’ve clumsily tried to express before on college admissions:
“The sole criterion in finding the members of this class and in defining ‘merit’ should be individual achievement — not just grades and test scores, of course, but a broad range of accomplishments, in athletics, music, student government, drama, school clubs and other extracurricular efforts. But race and ethnicity (or gender or sexual preference) do not have a place on this list; these are traits, not achievements.”
Race and minority issues do not deal with genetic issues. The legacy of slavery is not in the genome.
And then, a miracle happened, and I agreed with Ken. I will frame this moment in internet time:
“We are beginning to see why. Originally conceived as a means to redress discrimination, racial preferences have instead promoted it. And rather than fostering harmony and integration, preferences have divided the campus. In no other area of public life is there a greater disparity between the rhetoric of preferences and the reality.
“Take, for instance, the claim that racial preferences help the ‘disadvantaged.’ In reality, as the Hoover Institution’s Thomas Sowell has observed, preferences primarily benefit minority applicants from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. At the same time, because admissions are a zero-sum game, preferences hurt poor whites and even many Asians (who meet admissions standards in disproportionate numbers). If preferences were truly meant to remedy disadvantage, they would be given on the basis of disadvantage, not on the basis of race. [my emphasis]”
This is very true. When I was in college, the professors I knew complained that they had to teach their classes to two different audiences – the ones who got there, regardless of socioeconomic status, by earning it and studying hard, and the ones who got there on the basis of skin for whom the bar was lowered. The latter were unprepared for the college level work.
I understand why minority preferences would hurt poor whites and Asians, but why do they favor middle class African Americans over poor? Is it because more middle class than poor minority students apply for college in the first place?
I agree with this as well:
“The fundamental unfairness and arbitrariness of preferences — why should the under-qualified son of a black doctor displace the qualified daughter of a Vietnamese boat refugee?”
Since it was very well documented that universities drastically lowered standards to accept quotas of minorities under Affirmative Action, this did great damage to the diploma holder because people have good reason to assume the bar was lowered. This is unfair to the brilliant black neurosurgeon who made it on his own talent and merit.
@ Karen S
1, June 19, 2015 at 3:05 pm
“Well, if no one can tell us who we are, racially, then we are all free to exploit Affirmative Action, or any other efforts to diversify the work place and college campuses.”
Yes, that’s right, no one can tell us who we are, racially. As a matter of fact, no one can tell us who anyone is, “racially,” and certainly not in any biologically objective, i.e., meaningful way:
“One of the major discoveries of the Human Genome study involving DNA was that all human beings are 99.9% alike. They discovered that since all humans belong to one race that discerning a race from DNA was not possible:
‘DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. [emphasis added]
” ‘People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other.’ ”
https://americasraceproblem.wordpress.com/tag/the-human-genome-project/
In addition to that little stumbling block to intelligently, knowledgeably, and realistically managing things based on the illusory foundation of racial discrimination, this essay by two Stanford alumni points out some other very real problems with Affirmative Action in college admissions:
“Over the past quarter of a century, Stanford has been discriminating in favor of racial minorities in admissions, hiring, tenure, contracting and financial aid. But only recently has the University been forced to rethink these policies in the face of an emerging public debate over affirmative action.
“We are beginning to see why. Originally conceived as a means to redress discrimination, racial preferences have instead promoted it. And rather than fostering harmony and integration, preferences have divided the campus. In no other area of public life is there a greater disparity between the rhetoric of preferences and the reality.
“Take, for instance, the claim that racial preferences help the ‘disadvantaged.’ In reality, as the Hoover Institution’s Thomas Sowell has observed, preferences primarily benefit minority applicants from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. At the same time, because admissions are a zero-sum game, preferences hurt poor whites and even many Asians (who meet admissions standards in disproportionate numbers). If preferences were truly meant to remedy disadvantage, they would be given on the basis of disadvantage, not on the basis of race. [my emphasis]
“Another myth is that preferences simply give minority applicants a small ‘plus.’ In reality, the average SAT disparity between Stanford’s African-American and white admittees reached 171 points in 1992, according to data compiled by the Consortium on Financing Higher Education and cited in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s book, The Bell Curve.
“The fundamental unfairness and arbitrariness of preferences — why should the under-qualified son of a black doctor displace the qualified daughter of a Vietnamese boat refugee? — has led supporters to shift rationales in recent years. Instead of a remedy for disadvantage, many supporters now claim that preferences promote ‘diversity.’ This same push for ‘diversity’ also has led Stanford to create racially segregated dormitories, racially segregated freshman orientation programs, racially segregated graduation ceremonies and curricular requirements in race theory and gender studies.
“But if ‘diversity’ were really the goal, then preferences would be given on the basis of unusual characteristics, not on the basis of race. The underlying assumption — that only minorities can add certain ideas or perspectives — is offensive not merely because it is untrue but also because it implies that all minorities think a certain way.
What’s gone wrong? The basic problem is that a racist past cannot be undone through more racism. Race-conscious programs betray Martin Luther King’s dream of a color-blind community, and the heightened racial sensitivity they cause is a source of acrimony and tension instead of healing. [emphasis added]
“When University officials boast of ‘looking for racism everywhere,’ as multicultural educator Greg Ricks did in a 1990 Stanford Daily interview, then perhaps the most sensible (and certainly the most predictable) response will be for white students to avoid dealing with such quarrelsome people. In this way, the stress on ‘diversity’ has made interracial interaction strained and superficial; multiculturalism has caused political correctness.
“None of this is to deny that there are some people in America who are racist and that there are some features of American life that are legacies of a much more racist past. But racism is not everywhere, and there is very little at a place like Stanford. Certainly, no one has accused Stanford’s admissions officers of being racist, so perhaps the real problem with affirmative action is that we are pretending to solve a problem that no longer exists. Moreover, there is a growing sense that if affirmative action has not succeeded in ending discrimination after 25 years of determined implementation, then perhaps it is time to try something else.
“Although Stanford’s admissions office cannot undo the wrongs of history, its mission is still very important — namely, admitting the best class of students it can find. The sole criterion in finding the members of this class and in defining ‘merit’ should be individual achievement — not just grades and test scores, of course, but a broad range of accomplishments, in athletics, music, student government, drama, school clubs and other extracurricular efforts. But race and ethnicity (or gender or sexual preference) do not have a place on this list; these are traits, not achievements.
Perhaps the most tragic side effect of affirmative action is that very significant achievements of minority students can become compromised. It is often not possible to tell whether a given student genuinely deserved admission to Stanford, or whether he is there by virtue of fitting into some sort of diversity matrix. When people do start to suspect the worst — that preferences have skewed the entire class — they are accused of the very racism that justifies these preferences. It is a strange cure that generates its own disease. [my emphasis]
“A Stanford without affirmative action will be a Stanford in which the question of who belongs here will no longer need to be answered. It will no longer need to be answered because it will no longer need to be asked, not even sotto voce.
https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=43448
As the authors say, “If, after 25 years, affirmative action has not succeeded in ending discrimination, perhaps it is time to try something else.”
I agree.
Plus there is the added layer of hypocrisy that a Liberal would make a career out of campaigning for special treatment based on skin color, such as Affirmative Action, and then lie about her own heritage to allegedly take advantage of those programs herself.
Well, if no one can tell us who we are, racially, then we are all free to exploit Affirmative Action, or any other efforts to diversify the work place and college campuses.
Apply for a job, research what minority they are “missing” in their employee pool, and knowingly, fraudulently, claim you belong to that minority. (This reminds me of the Girl with the Green Scarf who claimed she was Finnish.) And when you are caught out for lying, incorporate as many academic power words as possible, declare you are victimized, and that no one but ourselves can decide what race we were supposed to me.
I highly recommend that Asians lie about their race, as it has been well documented that they are penalized for high academic performance in college admissions in order to diversify. So they should claim “American Samoan” (thank you Paul) or “Latvian” or “Indonesian” or pretty much whatever gives them the edge.
Since people are scrambling to defend this behavior, let’s explore the consequences if we all behaved in a similar fashion.
@ Racial Purists
The following excerpt is from an essay by a Russian journalist who identifies himself as “Jewish,” but who has encountered many of the same difficulties in being recognized as such by many people as has Rachel Dolexal about being “black.” This essay may help throw into sharper relief the racist thinking which requires that Rachel Dolezal be either “white” or “black.”
“Following the story of Rachel Dolezal this week I was thinking about how the uncertainty experienced by a person who has to perform many identities simultaneously is compensated with locating oneself in certain and defined boundaries, be those national, sexual, racial, social, or another sort. In case of Rachel Dolezal, this mechanism is extended to other person: She is told she can be either black or white, and this must be clear to society around her.
“During one of the Amsterdam meetings with a rabbi I was told by a member of the congregation that I do not know what being Jewish is, that I was born in a time of little anti-Semitism, that I didn’t experience ‘enough’ of it. The same is being said about Rachel Dolezal—that before becoming a black woman she wasn’t a black girl, that she didn’t live a black life, but [only] performed one.
“I can’t and do not want to get into Rachel Dolezal’s head. But her intentions do not matter: Nobody exclusively owns blackness and no one can tell Rachel Dolezal who she is, as well as demand from her to decide who she is. It was not only she who ‘performed’ black, it was everyone around her who performed her blackness, too.
“In Judaism, a person is considered Jewish if born from a Jewish mother or has undergone a conversion procedure. Speaking in non-religious definitions, the biggest institution that believes it has the right to determine who is a Jew is the State of Israel.
“In 1962, Father Oswald Daniel Rufeisen (‘Brother Daniel’), a Jew who converted to Catholicism during WWII, applied for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return. During the hearings, four justices intended to set, as one scholarly version describes it, ‘some objective boundaries to the concept of Jewishness,’ while Haim Cohen was the only justice arguing that in the absence of secular criteria of who is a Jew, such a definition should be ‘a subjective test.’
“The court ruled 4 to 1 that a Jew who voluntarily converted to Christianity cannot be considered a Jew under the secular Law of Return. Oswald Rufeisen was denied Israeli citizenship, but no ‘objective boundaries’ were set to the secular definition of who is a Jew.
“Israeli Law of Return is based on the Nuremberg Laws’ definition of a Jew, though more than 70 years have passed since the Holocaust.
For Israel, it is still Nazi Germany that defines who is a Jew and who is not. [emphasis added]
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/191559/rachel-dolezal?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=97da8a66a4-Friday_June_19_20156_19_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-97da8a66a4-207311397
Amazing what a wig and bionics can do to help you reach your goals–whatever those goals may be.
Karen S
1, June 18, 2015 at 9:54 pm
“I just got more information on that mass shooting. These cowards always pick soft targets where they know no one is armed. There were allegedly drugs involved. I’m just waiting for the Trifecta of mental illness to come out, but we’ll have to see. Right now we’re just waiting for more information.
“I found the photo of a church filled with a crowd of all races moving in the face of such an unbelievable tragedy. The story of they mother who was shot, and lay there in the blood of her dead son just killed me.
“There is only one thing that stops a homicidal maniac serial killer – and that is being armed. You can’t plead or reason with them.
“I would like to find out more information. What kind of drugs was he on? Did he have a history of mental illness or behavioral problems? Did his family have a history of racism? It is said he reloaded 5 times. Were some people able to get out?”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/18/us/charleston-south-carolina-shooting/index.html
Nick Spinelli
1, June 18, 2015 at 11:25 pm
“Well, It was a good, positive, substantive, thread until this evening.”
Karen S
1, June 18, 2015 at 11:27 pm
“Nick – no kidding.”
Karen, Barney Fife could deduce what has changed to make this thread drama.
I just checked, Blow came out last Fall. He says he’s bisexual. Chris Rock does a hilarious bit on saying you’re bisexual. But, it’s not for this forum.
Karen, The PC handbook says black folk cannot be racist, unless they’re conservative. Capehart and Blow are very liberal, and Capehart is gay. Blow might be, but I’m not certain of that.
Karen, When raised in a strict fundamentalist house that “holier than thou” stink never leaves. It may take different forms, but it is ingrained.