Majorityrights News > Category: U.S. Politics

Referendum 88 in WA State - Affirmative Action Evolved

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Stephen Strasburg wins game 6 over Justin Verlander.

If you are going to try to identify with American sportsball, about the only way to do it from a racial standpoint, is to root against or for individual players.

Otherwise it is practically meaningless. One city’s market of uniformed mercenaries from anywhere in the world against another’s.

In fact, hitting star in game 6 for Washington, securing the game with 5 RBI, was third baseman Anthony Rendon.

Rendon was born and grew up in Houston, even went to Rice University.

How White is he? Not sure, but he identifies as a Christian so, we may guess that all are brothers unto Christ, and that’s all the identity that matters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Rendon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Strasburg

https://www.mlb.com/player/justin-verlander-434378

https://www.mlb.com/gameday/nationals-vs-astros/2019/10/29/599376#game_state=final,lock_state=final,game_tab=box,game=599376

My first impression of Richard Houck was negative because he was attempting to make the case that America was on the wrong side of World War II.

This argument is destructive because it reconstructs a misframing of events that misleads susceptible White American demographics into a framework that pits European peoples against one another.

Isn’t that the point of this frame, you may ask? No brothers wars?

Not if you are honest about Hitler’s war mongering imperialism, his disposition to not value the lives of neighbouring nations, and if you honestly understand those nations’ positions.

If you do care about these things and the truth be known, you don’t suggest that America was on the wrong side but that Hitler was largely to blame for initiating an unnecessary war, catastrophic of itself and catastrophic in an ongoing way beyond, in its implications, stigmatizing with ostensible warrant to prohibit European peoples from rightful prejudice, discrimination and thus, racial self defense.

But while Houck and his interviewer in this case, J.F. Gariepy, are not penetrating enough to think outside of the Jewish box - “Nazis or Jews” and “White identity is right wing and purely objective while non and anti White identity is left and concerned with relative social group interests” - in the name of fairness, I must say that Houck does articulate a kind of social compassion for our people which bespeaks a left ethnonationalist position in this talk.

Related at Majority Rights:

Trump Syrian exit not “anti-war”, “anti-imperialist”, it gives Erdoğan go-ahead to attack the Kurds

https://majorityrights.com/weblog/news_comments/trump_syrian_exit_not_anti_war_anti_imperialist_it_gives_erdoan_go_ahead_to

Why The Asian American Students Lost Their Case Against Harvard (But Should Have Won)

Forbes, 1 Oct 2019:

On Tuesday a federal judge ruled against a group of Asian American students who claimed that Harvard discriminated against them in their admissions policy. The full decision is here. There is no question that Asian American students face a disadvantage in gaining admission to Harvard. The question is why and whether Harvard is responsible for it.

The reason that it is harder for Asian Americans to get into Harvard is that their “personal ratings” (a subjective evaluation of personal qualities) are, on average, significantly lower than for white applicants. The federal judge, Allison D. Burroughs, wrote: “the Court therefore concludes that the data demonstrates a statistically significant and negative relationship between Asian American identity and the personal rating assigned by Harvard admissions officers, holding constant any reasonable set of observable characteristics.”

However, the Judge also held that the plaintiffs could not prove that the lower personal ratings are the result of “animus” or ill-motivated racial hostility towards Asian Americans by Harvard admissions officials.

This leaves the question of why Asian American applicants were being deemed to have, on average, poorer personal qualities than white applicants. The court entertained two theories. Judge Burroughs wrote that: “It is possible that the self-selected group of Asian Americans that applied to Harvard during the years included in the data set used in this case did not possess the personal qualities that Harvard is looking for at the same rate as white applicants . . .”

It is disappointing that a federal judge would indulge in that sort of conjecture. Surely the burden should be on Harvard to prove that its lower evaluation of the personal characteristics of Asian Americans is not the result of racial bias rather than vice versa. The court must be aware of various stereotypes of Asian Americans as “grinds” and math geeks who lack personality. The burden should be on Harvard to prove that such stereotypes are not at play here.

The judge wrote that the racial gap between the evaluation of Asian Americans and whites was small, but they are statistically significant. By definition, that means that it is very unlikely the gap is the result of chance. The court should be demanding that Harvard explain the gap or change their approach. Asian Americans cannot be expected to prove that they have personalities that are as admirable as whites. Given the racial gap, Harvard should have to prove that its evaluation system is fair.

The court’s second explanation for the racial “personal rating” gap is that there is racial bias in the evaluations by teachers and counselors. The judge wrote: “teacher and guidance counselor recommendations seemingly presented Asian Americans as having less favorable personal characteristics than similarly situated non-Asian American applicants . . . Because teacher and guidance counselor recommendation letters are among the most significant inputs for the personal rating, the apparent race-related or race-correlated difference in the strength of guidance counselor and teacher recommendations is significant.” This seems like a smoking gun showing that Asian American applicants are victims of discrimination. Nonetheless, the court ruled in favor of Harvard because she reasoned that: “Harvard’s admissions officers are not responsible for any race-related or race-correlated impact that those letters may have.”

Judge Burroughs should have ruled the other way here. If Harvard is knowingly using instruments that are racially biased (the counselor and teacher recommendations) and does not compensate for that bias, then Harvard’s process is biased. If Harvard didn’t already know the letters were biased, it knows it now.

To be fair to Harvard, it is between a rock and a hard place in some ways. When it relies on objective tests like the SAT’s it is often accused of using an instrument that is biased against African Americans. When it uses a subjective tool such as counselor and teacher letters, it must now contend with the fact that they are biased against Asian Americans. So the Harvard admissions officers are hardly a group of villains. But the judge is wrong to suggest that Harvard can take a “not our fault” approach to demonstrable anti-Asian bias in the letters that it relies upon. Difficult though it may be, Harvard must do better.

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by Evan Gerstmann

I’ve always been interested in how we should balance individual and minority rights with majority rule. After several years practicing law in New York city, I found my true calling as a college professor and researcher. I’ve written about campus free speech, same-sex equality and racial justice for Cambridge University, The University of Chicago, and Harvard University. My latest book is “Campus Sexual Assault: Constitutional Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”.

Related at Majorityrights:

Hyperbolic over-representation of YKW (under-rep. of Whites) in Ivy League not remotely merit based

Chairman of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell. (Patrick Semansky / AP)

The Disaster of Negative Interest Rates

By Ellen Brown for TruthDig.org, 25 Sept 2019:

The dollar strengthened against the euro in August, merely in anticipation of the European Central Bank slashing its key interest rate further into negative territory. Investors were fleeing into the dollar, prompting President Trump to tweet on Aug. 30:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

The Euro is dropping against the Dollar “like crazy,” giving them a big export and manufacturing advantage…and the Fed does NOTHING! Our Dollar is now the strongest in history. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Except to those (manufacturers) that make product for sale outside the U.S.

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When the ECB cut its key rate as anticipated, from a negative 0.4% to a negative 0.5%, the president tweeted on Sept. 11:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

The Federal Reserve should get our interest rates down to ZERO, or less, and we should then start to refinance our debt. INTEREST COST COULD BE BROUGHT WAY DOWN, while at the same time substantially lengthening the term. We have the great currency, power, and balance sheet…..

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And on Sept. 12 he tweeted:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

European Central Bank, acting quickly, Cuts Rates 10 Basis Points. They are trying, and succeeding, in depreciating the Euro against the VERY strong Dollar, hurting U.S. exports…. And the Fed sits, and sits, and sits. They get paid to borrow money, while we are paying interest!

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However, negative interest rates have not been shown to stimulate the economies that have tried them, and they would wreak havoc on the U.S. economy, for reasons unique to the U.S. dollar. The ECB has not gone to negative interest rates to gain an export advantage. It is to keep the European Union from falling apart, something that could happen if the United Kingdom does indeed pull out and Italy follows suit, as it has threatened to do. If what Trump wants is cheap borrowing rates for the U.S. federal government, there is a safer and easier way to get them.

The Real Reason the ECB Has Gone to Negative Interest Rates

Why the ECB has gone negative was nailed by Wolf Richter in a Sept. 18 article on WolfStreet.com. After noting that negative interest rates have not proved to be beneficial for any economy in which they are currently in operation and have had seriously destructive side effects for the people and the banks, he said:

“However, negative interest rates as follow-up and addition to massive QE were effective in keeping the Eurozone glued together because they allowed countries to stay afloat that cannot, but would need to, print their own money to stay afloat. They did so by making funding plentiful and nearly free, or free, or more than free.

This includes Italian government debt, which has a negative yield through three-year maturities. … The ECB’s latest rate cut, minuscule and controversial as it was, was designed to help out Italy further so it wouldn’t have to abandon the euro and break out of the Eurozone.

The U.S. doesn’t need negative interest rates to stay glued together. It can print its own money.”

EU member governments have lost the sovereign power to issue their own money or borrow money issued by their own central banks. The EU experiment was a failed monetarist attempt to maintain a fixed money supply, as if the euro were a commodity in limited supply like gold. The central banks of member countries do not have the power to bail out their governments or failing local banks as the Fed did for US banks with massive quantitative easing after the 2008 financial crisis. Before the Eurozone debt crisis of 2011-12, even the European Central Bank was forbidden to buy sovereign debt.

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