The road to hell is paved with good intentions

Norman Lear has recently spoken of his social conservatism. Maybe he is, but his show, All in the Family was viciously anti-white racism. Every negative stereotype of lower middle-class lumpen caucasia was thrown up. Had he satirized another race in the same manner, he would have never gotten away with it. Maybe the lampooning of the proles was enjoyed in the burbs, but it's been awhile.

Anyway, there was one sketch where Archie Bunker, the series' stooge says to a black neighbor, “I tot you was one of da good ones.” Everybody got the joke, but it has more societal import than that. Not to be discounted is the undertone that for many the president was sold that way in being elected.

For a class of Americans, it is necessary to let others know, they are “one of the good ones” or at least not one of the bad ones. Ted Van Dyk is among them. He must distinguish himself from the unwashed who have no enlightened thoughts. In a Politico article dated August 6, 2015, Ted tells us “School Busing Didn't Work. And To Say So Isn't Racist.” Thanks guy, all along everyone was sure busing had been a roaring success. What took you so long?

Van Dyk wants us to know who the villains were. “In many places, like in Boston as Sokol describes, there was raw racism involved in protests against busing.” He sees the other side, “In many other places, however, there was non-racist consternation based mainly on parents’ concern for the wellbeing of their children.”

Actually, he is being a bit cute. Well, that's the kindest conclusion one can arrive at. I remember the era in Boston well. There certainly was racism, “raw” or “cooked” is how you want to see it and it was not limited to the melanin impaired. Driving a cab while trying to decide on a career, I saw it up close.

Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity delivered his ukase that racial balance must occur from the lowest grades to the end of high school. I doubt Van Dyk or his ilk had a problem with the use of vast force. His quibble was that it would probably not work.

“Elected officials—even those strongly in favor of civil rights—began to conclude that busing was a well-meant mistake. Presidential candidate George McGovern, in 1971, proposed to his advisers, of which I was one, that he would straightforwardly take an anti-busing position. We prevailed on him not to do so because we believed that the issue then was so emotion-laden that busing proponents would misunderstand his opposition.”

So Ted kinda knew it would not work but didn't want his candidate to say it. Huge sums would be spent chasing a mirage and lives and families would be broken, but McGovern's non-existent electability would be preserved.

Ever the racially pure Van Dyk saw with his bien pensant compassion how it was not working. He had two children in the D.C. System. Recounting the failure as he saw it and noted, “Not surprisingly, parents from the neighborhood began looking for private schools for their kids or moved to Maryland or Virginia suburbs—not because of racism but because their neighborhood school no longer was working.”

Families in Boston left as well, but not surely with the same pure motives. Those without sufficient income who were stuck dealt with as best they could. Some transferred to parochial schools that, possibly to Mr. Van Dyk's surprise, had long been to some degree integrated.

For others it did not work out so well. My cousin, who's mom was widowed was helped into an upscale papist high school normally out of reach of the denizens of his downmarket neighborhood. Years later, he related to me that almost all his old public school classmates had legal or drug problems and had not finished school. Well what do raw racists deserve anyway? Without any resources, one might surmise there was some similar devastation in the minority community.

A woman I worked with about ten years after busing told me how they sent their son to a private academy to get him away from the by then broken system. He quickly became friends with all the black students. It might shock Van Dyk, but the woman said this with no sense of horror.

Mr. Van Dyk has made a window into the souls of white people and found some good and others wanting. He has made a similar inquiry of the leaders of the old civil rights movement and here is where he sees them.

“I have no doubt what brave leaders of the civil-rights revolution would be saying as they witnessed today’s so-called dialogue about race. It would go something like this:

We did not see how hard it would be to truly free black Americans. No more talk please of white racism by anyone or denunciations of past and present political leaders by folk who never risked anything in a tough period when it counted. Let us get on with the work. What good does it do if we have a black president, black attorney general, black judicial, execuctive, and legislative leaders at al levels, successful black leaders in business, labor and the arts if black communities, North and South, are plagued by high black-on-black murder and violent crime rates, narcotics dealing and use, horrific school dropout and incarceration rates, high unemployment, and broken or non-existent families? All Americans need to get on this now with tangible, practical initiatives. Enough grandstanding, self-righteous talk. Time to separate the talkers from the doers.”

He might be right, but the capacity of political leaders and revolutionaries to, like the Bourbons, learn and forget nothing is not to be despised. If the old civil-rights heroes had remained at the forefront, no one knows how they would have felt or acted. Nothing ever goes according to the original plan.

The one big thing Van Dyk and all the other well meaning wonks might want to learn is no big dirigiste social project ever works. Then again, what wonk could ever learn that. Their souls only yearn in that direction. No harm ever comes to them.  Policy people are, as a class, Daisy Buchanans, smashing things up and not having to pay the price.

Whether it's busing or invading Iraq, the grand plan is usually a loser. Going back to ancient Greece, that Syracusan invasion looked like a winner to the Athenian assembly. True, that didn't work well for Alcibiades, but Van Dyk did not lose his career and gets published by Politico and all the Iraq shills have not done badly according to Peter Beinart.

Come to think of it, why would anyone learn a lesson?

Indoctrination in New Bedford-Alma Del Mar Charter School is an early intervention re-education camp

On December 13, 2014 in New Bedford, MA a group of scholars, reacting to injustice, protested by chanting and holding signs.  

And what university did this corps of “scholars” attend.  Ah, this advanced group was not post-secondary.  Rather, they are second graders from the Alma Del Mar Charter School.

One has to admit to being impressed.  At their age, to be so enlightened is a gift few possess.  All I remember was that my contemporaries and I thought mostly about escaping the clutches of our pedagogues.  Then again, in second grade, I didn’t consider myself a scholar.

The Boston Globe reported;

“According to Will Gardner, the school’s founder and executive director, a “handful” of the school’s students requested to hold the protest after a lesson on citizenship and the First Amendment, in which topics in the media, including the August death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., were discussed.

The students from Shabrina Guerrier’s class asked the head of school, Emily Stainer, if they could hold the protest.”

Mr. Gardner also said the teacher made clear; “was very clear with the scholars that this was not to be an antipolice event in any way,”

Mr. Gardner used the word scholars* without irony.  There is a video in which he comes across as a bit smarmy.

The Globe also reported that; “The students from Shabrina Guerrier’s class asked the head of school, Emily Stainer, if they could hold the protest.”

Now I’m going out on a limb and guess that Shabrina’s class heard a story that may not have been completely evenhanded.  It is not likely a kid that age will want to do that unless prodded a tad.

Mr. Gardner should stop using the word Scholars and maybe use a more apt term, “Young Pioneers.”

George Borden, a local policeman whose daughter was a protesting scholar was under-amused.

“I don’t think 7-year-olds can come up with the idea to go out and protest on the street,” said Borden, whose daughter Alana was among the students on the sidewalk.

Ah, but Mr. Borden, don’t you see, you are not a scholar.

There are two sides to every story and maybe Officer Wilson should have been indicted.  I was not in the class at Alma Del Mar and cannot say if Scholar-Leader Gurrier was or was not truly even-handed.  My experience, as a kid and a parent makes me a doubter.

Somehow an invitation found its way into Officer Borden’s daughter’s backpack:

“Join us for a peaceful protest in New Bedford to stand up for justice for Michael Brown and Eric Garner and to protest against the unjust systems that allow police officers to kill Black  men and boys with immunity”

This had to be a miracle as Scholar Gardner claimed “The school did not issue any kind of invitation to any protest.”

*When Gardner uses the term “scholar” maybe “snowflake” would be more accurate.

Cowardice in Ferguson

Why did the prosecutor not get an indictment of Officer Wilson in Ferguson?  Why the lengthy and protracted Grand Jury proceedings.

Cowardice.

“The panel of nine white and three black members heard 70 hours of testimony from 60 witnesses and three medical examiners” before they finished work.  The transcripts are public record.

If after a day or two of work they had declined to indict they would have been pilloried in the press as they are now.  They are on record, however, and all attacks must of necessity reference the record. 

For example, Ezra Klein at Vox had an analysis that did not say, but seemed to strongly imply the cop was not displaying absolute fidelity to the truth.  Now, one can say about Klein that what Mandy Rice Davies said about Lord Astor, “He would say that, wouldn’t he” as Mr. Klein is reliably à gauche.  It may be unfair to say that he would have gargled razor blades rather than see merit in the policeman’s case, but then again, maybe not.

The truth is, no matter what the outcome, either side would conclude what they wanted, but with a huge amount of recorded testimony, Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch has covered himself.

He will still be attacked as the Michael Brown’s partisans would only be satisfied by a lynching.

Are Klein and others being irresponsible in pushing the oppression narrative.  For a balanced look at the question we offer a post by Scott Alexander at Slate Star Codex.  The man is no right wing fanatic.  Of course to some of the more paranoid scare mongers, you don’t have to be a right wing fanatic to be a right wing fanatic.

Oh no, Taxajawea took away the fun.

Elizabeth Warren's got some splainin' to do. Except she doesn't. Her buddies are going to call anyone who call her a fraud a hater. truth is not an absolute defense here in the Peoples' Republic of Massachusetts. It seems the great great great grandmother who made her the trumpeted 1/32 Cherokee may have been Skandanavian. Unless someone in her fam stowed away when Leif was going home, the lass is 32/32 fraud. Yeah, I think she knew she was full of it. It's like the guys who claim to be Indians and have the drumming circle in my town. They look they have more relatives in County Cork than I do. Actually, she is going to put it behind her. I wish she would continue to claim that laughable 1/32. The jokes would have been fun. She may have been an Okie, but she is like any Yankee Puritan. always stopping people from having fun.

Reductio ad absurdam

"He should beg my forgiveness."

What Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wants from the Cambridge Cop who arrested him.

Non-obsequiousness is the new lynching.

How Black People Became Irish

It is 1960 and morning at Parochial School. The normal orderly routine of prayer then lessons has been suspended. We are in celebration. An Irish Catholic American has been elected president. There has always been an undercurrent of "We are the better Americans, first to serve in war, yet not really accepted." Now, the validation.

Never mind that a Mick mayor and WASP Texan had done a bit of fancy footwork. That won't come out until it is irrelevant. Forget that Kennedy is not the rosary saying family man as portrayed. That also can wait till it does not matter. Nous sommes arrivé.

Sister Lucille, our teacher had been given a bit of tchotchkes as a gift. A little letter holder in the shape of a dachsund. Gushing, she told us that in celebration of the day, she would call it JFK.

Now, in 2008, in our current quadrennial search for a fuhrer, another ethnic group has their man in the battle for chief executive. And it is their man. They had plighted their troth to another family and it had been expected their support would descend on that pretender. The crown princess had been pandering for years. Yet, when someone entered the fray who bore at least superficial similarities, they abandoned their old patrons in a trice.

There is no praise high enough for Obama. The man is being likened to a deity. Yes, it's silly, but no sillier than JFKmania of my childhood. James Collier of the blog Acting White is pretty level headed even for someone who has an affinity for Nascar and weird bounty hunters, still extrapolates, "It may be that because he was born of two ancestries, one black, one white, he reached a harmony of the two that aides his leadership ability, and just maybe the country's too." Wow, the man is one with the gods. Hey, maybe he is right, maybe not.

When Kennedy won, we celebrated in the burbs, not inner city "Dawchestah"* where I was born. Our postwar dads had moved up a lot of ladders. Vatican II was making the Catholic Church into, "Unitarianism with a Pope."** Assimilation is complete enough to make the whole thing irrelevant.

So will an Obama election change things. Don't know. Is the Black American population on the verge of assimilation? Living in exurbia in self employed and under employed Swamp Yankeeness, I would not be able to say. It is over twenty years since I had any connection to an urban professional environment. People in professions tend to get along because the consequences of non cooperation are obvious. When I was mispending my youth and driving a cab, I would observe a sea of black faces and though not universally unfriendly, hardly palsy walsy. To be fair, in the old white neighborhoods, there was oft a left behind by life ambience. How much has changed?

I doubt the cleansing effect of an Obama presidency. Yeat's line at the beginning of Easter 1916, "Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart" may not have the same import as for Israel/Palestine, Sunni/Shia, or Hutu/Tutsi, but maybe it's close enough for government work.

If he wins, he has one thing going for him. Coming after GWB is not the hardest act to follow.


*English translation, Dorchester.

**D. Keith Mano