Pop Quiz | Center for Equal Opportunity

Who is the famous African American being quoted here?:

[Although crime] is born of poverty, we must also realize that crime is generated by a lack of values that has largely gone unaddressed in our nation as a whole and in the black community in particular. Soaring unwed birthrates, absentee fathers, an aversion to work, an unwillingness to embrace societal standards and time-honored discipline — all these factors have contributed to the problems we must now confront.

Choose from:
A. Ben Carson, surgeon and presidential candidate
B. Thomas Sowell, scholar and columnist
C. Bill Clinton, our first black president
D. Eric Holder, former U.S. attorney general

The answer is D, in 1994, when he was serving in the Clinton administration.

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The New York Times had an article last week on a new school-discipline report being released that documents how, in 13 southern states, black students are suspended or expelled at higher rates than white students. But of course this is discrimination only if black students are not misbehaving more than white students, and there is no effort to answer that question in just-released report. It is unlikely that all racial and ethnic groups misbehave at the same rate, given various cultural differences; see this article in the Journal of Criminal Justice titled “Prior problem behavior accounts for racial gap in school suspensions.”

The executive summary of last week’s report makes a big deal about these being southern states, presumably to make the suggestion of discrimination more plausible. One could quibble a bit about the 13 states selected (why West Virginia and not Maryland, Delaware, or Oklahoma?), but I was more amused by the emphasis that 55 percent of the nation’s suspension of black students and 50 percent of their expulsions took place in the South. That’s because, if you do the math, 51 percent of the nation’s black population is in those 13 states, so they are not out of line with the rest of the country.

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Last May, the Manhattan Institute sponsored a symposium titled, “Prospects for Black America: The Moynihan Report Turns 50.” The various panel discussions were videotaped and are available online. I’m working my way through them and just finished watching the third one, “Restoring the Family,” which is a terrific and lively discussion among Ron Haskins, Glenn Loury, and Bob Woodson, moderated by Kay Hymowitz and introduced by Jason Riley. It’s really, really good — and you won’t be tempted to stop watching it once you start, which is a good thing, because the last question from the audience at the end is a fitting finale.

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Here’s a short letter we recently sent to Scott Maddox of the Tallahassee city commission:

We enjoyed your recent op-ed here — especially the part questioning the “disparity study.” These studies are always a waste of money: Their only purpose is to try to justify racial preferences in government contracting, and such discrimination is wrong whether it’s legal or not, and in our view cannot be justified even as a legal matter by a disparity study. The measures that can (and should) be undertaken to ensure that no one is discriminated against in government contracting should be race-neutral (duh) and do not necessitate a disparity study. … Please keep up the good fight against government waste — and against racial discrimination by the government, whether of the politically correct or politically incorrect kind!

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The Washington Post last week had a breathless piece about how more people support “affirmative action” for women than for minorities, even though the same people think there is more discrimination against minorities than against women. My response:

A methodological point: It’s a problem that “affirmative action” is not defined, since it can mean different things to different people — everything from the original meaning (taking positive steps to ensure equal treatment) to quotas achieved via preferential treatment (the common current meaning). A legal point: The Supreme Court has long rejected societal discrimination as a justification for preferential treatment. A cynical point: Maybe the reason that more people favor affirmative action for women than for minorities is because there are more women in this country than there are minorities — and people favor preferential treatment for their group, deserved or not.

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And speaking of quotas, I’ll end with two other short points:

The use of quotas seems to have created problems in India, too, hasn’t it? That made the front page of the New York Times this week.

But the Obama administration is continuing to push companies to get their numbers right, with its most recent target being, well, Target. The company had asked an outside vendor to come up with some pre-employment tests to use for screening candidates, but the administration didn’t like the fact that the tests had a “disparate impact” on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex.

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