California defeats Affirmative Action

[SassyLady]

And it was epic! Long article but good read.


https://www.takimag.com/article/california-secedes-from-black-america/

California Secedes From Black America
David Cole

“So much for California’s racial reckoning,” the editors mournfully wept.

Meanwhile, establishment conservatives at National Review, Hot Air, and elsewhere took the defeat of Prop. 16 as proof that “minority voters reject identity politics,” because inside every Ibram Kendi is a Thomas Sowell crying to be freed. “Demography is not destiny,” wrote (https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/11/16/californias-rejection-affirmative-action-shows-identity-politics-go-far/) John Sexton at Hot Air; nonwhites are “opting out” of the Democrat identity-politics machine.

Reading these analyses is like watching a barnyard of decapitated chickens. Leftists simply can’t believe that in a year of “racial reckoning,” a minority-majority state like Cali would turn its back on “justice.” So of course, voters must have been “confused.” Conservatives, meanwhile, are torn. The ones who can’t bring themselves to see any good in this state also blame “confusion,” while the flags ’n’ Jesus optimists claim Prop. 16 went down because “nonwhites are natural Republicans we all bleed red” whatever whatever.
Dimwits fellating their confirmation bias.

As the imbeciles on both sides succumb to their intracranial stenosis, let’s indulge in some clearheaded thinkin’.

No, the wording of the proposition was not confusing. The ballot summary was crystal clear: “Proposition 16 permits government decision-making policies to consider race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin to address diversity.” That’s hardly Aramaic. And knowing what Prop. 16 was, whites, Asians, and Latinos in California voted against it. Only blacks overwhelmingly supported it. And at a paltry 5.8% of the state population, black “overwhelming support” plus two bucks buys you a McNugget and Coke.



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Yes, Asians were the strongest in opposition, and they led the field with individual donations to fund the No on 16 campaign (https://californiansforequalrights.org/2020/10/02/no-on-prop-16-campaign-announces-record-small-dollar-donors/). But Asian voters alone cannot decide a statewide initiative; at 15% of the population, they don’t have the numerical strength. It was actually the Latinos wot dun in Prop. 16. All fourteen of California’s Latino-majority counties voted against it.

But no, Prager U grads, Latinos and Asians did not rebuff Prop. 16 because they “rejected identity politics.” Something was indeed “rejected,” but no one wants to acknowledge what it was. Here’s a simple truth that none of the analysts left or right are willing to admit: Prop. 16 was a referendum on blacks. Not “diversity,” not “identity politics,” but blacks. Everyone with half a brain understood that Prop. 16 was there to help blacks, and blacks alone. Asians and Latinos are doing exceptionally well in the UC system (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-07-22/uc-diverse-diversity-class-student-admissions) (Asians are overrepresented, and Latinos, represented at roughly their percentage of the population, outnumber non-Hispanic whites). Blacks are the ones who need the “special help.” They’re the ones who feel like they can’t compete without being given extra points for melanin.

Proposition 16 posed a question to the people of California: Wanna help a brother out?
And Californians said no.

Asians said no for reasons of simple self-interest. For the average California Asian, this wasn’t dim sum but zero sum: A “leg up” for blacks means a kick up the ass for Asians. For every unqualified black who’s affirmative-actioned into college, a qualified Asian is denied.

For Latinos, affirmative action isn’t really their thing…because they don’t need it. Not due to academic excellence (à la Asians), but because Latinos get their way through numerical superiority, not begging, guilt-tripping, and bullying (à la blacks). Give Latinos an open border, and they’ll do the rest. It doesn’t profit them to give blacks special perks that come at the expense of the majority because in many California cities, Latinos are the majority (and they’re the largest plurality statewide).

Latinos see themselves as the future of the state. Blacks are the past (as I’ve covered in previous columns (https://www.takimag.com/article/l-a-is-not-so-black-and-white/)). For Latinos, every current black neighborhood is a future Latino neighborhood. The sooner blacks move out, the better. So there’s no motivation to make it easier for them to stay. You wanna go to college, Ja’Marquis? Move your black ass back to the Deep South and your beloved HBCUs.

Bottom line: California Latinos don’t need no stinkin’ affirmative action. Hispanics might use it when it’s there, because why not? But to them it’s a strategy, not the strategy. Whereas for blacks, it’s all they’ve got.

Now, with whites, one could argue that passing Prop. 16 would’ve been a logical progression of 2020. This has been a year of strong-arming whitey into sacrificing in the name of “racial justice.” Police protection, safety and security, peace and quiet, personal property; whites in cities across the nation have surrendered these things in the name of the “debt” they supposedly owe to blacks. Prop. 16 asked whites to give up even more. And a lot of whites (primarily in L.A. and the Bay Area) did vote yes. But more voted no, and—combined with the Asian and Latino votes—that was enough to beat the bejesus out of the measure…even in the face of an imposing coalition of billionaires, corporations, tech giants, advocacy groups, and top politicos pushing for its passage.

The defeat of Prop. 16 was a black defeat, but not at the hands of conservative whites. That’s what makes this story instructive; it’s an illustration of how the demographics of “new America” will inevitably contribute to a waning of black influence. Nonblack minority-majority California just said “no” not only to blacks, but to every leftist “opinion leader” in the state who interceded on their behalf. It’s thoroughly grim news for black Americans, and it bodes poorly for the future, especially as most of the tricks black advocates have up their sleeve involve getting other demographic groups to act against their own best interests (not just regarding hiring and admissions preferences, but on issues like criminal justice “reform”).

In California, whites who care about their own best interests, combined with and emboldened by Latinos and Asians who do the same, were able to say no to the people to whom you’re never supposed to say no. And they dared to say “no” in this, the Year of Our Lord George Floyd’s martyrdom. When a numerically small community amasses outsize influence via temper tantrums, guilting, violence, and threats of violence, the tactic only works when everyone else buckles before it. On affirmative action, California found its sea legs. If this state contained any intelligent and capable GOP leaders—and it doesn’t—the same coalition that defeated Prop. 16 could in theory be assembled again to reverse some of the most damaging concessions the state has made to blacks in the past two decades (namely, the weakening of law enforcement).

That Asians and Latinos voted against Prop. 16 doesn’t mean they’re “natural Republicans” (sorry, Con Inc.). What it does mean is that in this of all years, white, Asian, and Latino Californians voted self-interest when blacks and their powerful allies told them not to. That’s seismic. A favor was asked by a rapidly declining population that rarely sees fit to prove worthy of those favors, and never returns them. And the favor was denied. Lord help blacks if this catches on. Next thing you know, Californians will realize they don’t have to let their shit get stolen.

Mind you, Prop. 16 lost on its own; the GOP didn’t lift a finger to defeat it. And today’s GOP, which would rather win a few black votes than an actual election, is unlikely to learn any of the lessons that 16’s ignominious end might teach.

Still, a man can dream.

Black Americans and their leftist overseers won a lot of victories this year via intimidation and terrorism. But they lost this one, and it was a key battle in a key state. Whether it’s a one-off or a trend, no one can say. But at least it’s not bad news, and in 2020, “not bad news” is the best we can hope for.

[Kathianne]

Very related:

https://apkmetro.com/the-inauthenticity-behind-black-lives-matter/


Home Opinion
The Inauthenticity Behind Black Lives Matter
November 24, 2020 in Opinion



Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina gave a exceptional speech at this yr’s Republican Nationwide Conference.


Sure, right here was a black man at a GOP occasion, so there was a whiff of id politics. Once we see shade today, we count on ideology to comply with. However Mr. Scott’s charisma that night time was merely that he spoke as an individual, not a spokesperson for his shade.


Burgess Owens, Herschel Walker, Daniel Cameron and a number of other others did the identical. It was a parade of people. And of their speeches the human being stepped out from behind the id, telling private tales that reached for human connections with the American folks—this moderately than the standard posturing for leverage with tales of grievance. In order that they have been all recent and compelling.


Do these Republicans foretell a brand new racial order in America? Clearly they’ve pushed their method via an outdated racial order, as have—it could possibly be argued—many black Trump voters within the latest election. I imagine there may be in truth a brand new racial order slowly and tenuously rising, and that we blacks are swimming via tough seas to succeed in it. However to higher see the brand new, it’s essential to know the outdated.


The outdated started in what may be referred to as America’s Nice Confession. In passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, America successfully confessed to a protracted and horrible collusion with the evil of racism. (President Kennedy was the primary president to acknowledge that civil rights was a “ethical situation.”) This triggered nothing lower than a disaster of ethical authority that threatened the very legitimacy of American democracy.


Even at present, nearly 60 years past the Civil Rights Act, teams like Black Lives Matter, together with an enormous grievance trade, use America’s insecure ethical authority round race as a possibility to claim themselves. Doesn’t BLM dwell in an area made for it by America’s racial self-doubt?


Within the tradition, whites and American establishments are successfully mandated by this confession to show their innocence of racism as a situation of ethical legitimacy. Blacks, in flip, are mandated to honor their new freedom by growing into instructional and financial parity with whites. If whites obtain racial innocence and blacks become parity with whites, then America can have overcome its unique sin. Democracy can have change into manifest.


This was America’s post-confession cut price between the races—innocence on the white hand, growth on the black. It outlined the outdated order with which these conference audio system appeared to interrupt. However there’s a downside with these mandates: To attain their ends, they each want blacks to be victims. Whites want blacks they will save to show their innocence of racism. Blacks should put themselves ahead as victims the higher to make their case for entitlements.


It is a corruption as a result of it makes black struggling into an ethical energy to be wielded, moderately than a situation to be overcome. That is the ability that blacks found within the ’60s. It gained us a Warfare on Poverty, affirmative motion, college busing, public housing and so forth. However it additionally seduced us into turning our id right into a digital cult of victimization—as if our persecution was our everlasting flame, the deepest reality of who we’re, a tragic destiny we commerce on. In spite of everything, in an detached world, it could really feel higher to be the sufferer of an ideal historic injustice than an individual not noted of historical past when that injustice recedes.


But there may be an elephant within the room. It’s merely that we blacks aren’t a lot victimized any extra. Right this moment we’re free to construct a life that gained’t be stunted by racial persecution. Right this moment we’re much more prone to encounter racial preferences than racial discrimination. Furthermore, we stay in a society that typically reveals us goodwill—a society that has remoted racism as its most unforgivable sin.


This lack of victimization quantities to an “absence of malice” that profoundly threatens the victim-focused black id. Who’re we with out the malice of racism? Can we be black with out being victims? The good diminishment (not eradication) of racism for the reason that ’60s implies that our victim-focused id has change into an anachronism. Effectively suited to the previous, it strains for relevance within the current.


Thus, for a lot of blacks at present—particularly the younger—there’s a feeling of inauthenticity, that one is just thinly black as a result of one isn’t racially persecuted. “Systemic racism” is a time period that tries to get better authenticity for a much less and fewer convincing black id. This racism is de facto extra compensatory than systemic. It was invented to make up for the growing absence of the actual factor.


This summer time, in cities from Portland, Ore., to Baltimore, black protest appeared pushed extra by the angst of inauthenticity than by any actual menace. The protests themselves got here off as theater. There have been costumes, masks and well-rehearsed mimes of confrontation and outrage. The violence was harmful, however solely to some extent. In spite of everything it was calibrated to go on for months. In the summertime of 2020, self-consciousness changed spontaneity because the essence of youthful protest in America—yet one more signal that there’s not sufficient actual victimization to gentle the type of hearth that burned down Detroit within the ’60s.


I doubt that any of the black audio system on the RNC would argue that racism has vanished from American life. What makes them harbingers of a brand new racial order is that they unpair victimization from id. Victimization could also be an expertise we endure, nevertheless it ought to by no means be an id that defines us. All of them spoke as Americans in a spirit of citizenship.


That is the nice problem that all the time awaits the oppressed after freedom is achieved. If solely out of loyalty to our previous (all this struggling has to imply one thing), we’ll really feel compelled to make victimization the centerpiece of our id at present. It will appear the genuine and honorable factor to do. However it should solely additional make investments us in exactly the fruitless tangle of id and woundedness that mires us previously. We must always by no means deny the previous, nevertheless it ought to solely inform and encourage.


In the long run, just one achievement will flip us from the outdated victim-focused racial order towards a brand new, nonracial order: the complete and unqualified acceptance of our freedom. We don’t should combat for freedom a lot any extra. We’ve to do one thing tougher—totally settle for that we’re free.


Mr. Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford College’s Hoover Establishment, is writer of “Disgrace: How America’s Previous Sins Have Polarized Our Nation” and author and narrator of the documentary “What Killed Michael Brown?”