More BCR Sexism
 
Thanks to Cal PATRIOT Watch for the heads up.

Looks like BCR, that bastion of racism, homophobia, Student Action-support, and sexism is at it again. This time, they've declared a verbal war against women, urging their supporters to oust politicians who are "girlie." Their simple message: men rule, women should get out of politics. How 19th century of them...






- posted by Progressive @ 6:34 PM |

 
The Soft Bigots of Low Expectations
 
In the recent debate over UC eligibility standards at CalStuff, it's become popular for the conservative wing of the Berkeley blogosphere to argue that affirmative action harms its intended beneficiaries, because affirmative action leads to minority students who get "mismatched" with colleges where they cannot perform academically.  According to this story, minority students will face an academic environment they can't handle and then drop out, leaving themselves worse than they were before.  A version of this argument was recently made by everybody's favorite reactionary, Angry Clam: "They'll still do poorly in college, as it's highly doubtful that the magical day-care fairy will come for them when they show up at the university. Put them somewhere they can do better at, even if it doesn't give them quite the name brand."  The "mismatch" argument is not really new, however, because Thomas Sowell has been making this argument since the 1970s.   The argument is interesting and sounds perfectly plausible, but it also happens to be wrong.
 
According to William Bowen and Derek Bok's The Shape of the River,   
 
If race-sensitive admissions in selective colleges lead to more dropouts, it is more than a little puzzling that in our sample of twenty-eight selective schools, none had a dropout rate for minority students anywhere near as high as the average attrition of 60 percent for black students at all NCAA Division I colleges, many of which are not selective.  Black dropout rates are low at all of the C&B [College & Beyond database-Jon P.] schools (averaging just over 25 percent); moreover, the more selective the college attended, the lower the black dropout rate.
 
Since the C&B schools differ among themselves in their degree of selectivity, as measured by the average SAT score of their students, we were able to perform a much more conclusive test of the claim that black students will do better at schools with average SAT scores more nearly like their own (sometimes called the "fit" hypothesis).  We compared how black students with equivalent test scores performed at colleges where the average score for all students was much higher than their own scores and at colleges where their scores were more like the average score for the entire school (where the "fit" between the black student and the school was presumably better).  The results are completely contrary to the claims made by the critics.  The higher the average SAT score of the college in question, the higher the graduation rate of black students within each SAT interval (including the intervals for students with only very modest SAT scores).  More generally, when we predicted graduation rates for black students within the C&B universe on an "other things being equal" basis (holding constant socioeconomic status, high school grades and test scores), we found that graduation rates were highest for those who attended the most selective schools.  We also found that black students who did drop out were not embittered or demoralized, as some critics of race-sensitive admissions have alleged.  On the contrary, of the relatively small number of black students who dropped out of the most selective schools, a surprisingly large percentage were "very satisfied" with their college experience--indeed, black dropouts from these schools were more likely than white dropouts to be "very satisfied."
 
A broader test of the effect of race-sensitive admissions on graduation rates was carried out by Thomas Kane.  His results confirm our findings.  When Kane compared the graduation rates of black students who attended a much wider range of schools, including some that were not selective at all, he found that blacks admitted to selective schools graduated at significantly higher rates than blacks with equivalent test scores, high school grades, and family backgrounds who attended non-selective schools." [All emphasis in the original.]
 
As the evidence from Bowen and Bok shows, the right wing of the Berkeley blogworld is not doing "underrepresented minorities" any favor by urging them to go to less selective colleges.  If anybody around here is guilty of the soft bigotry of low expectations, it's the conservative movement at Berkeley. 

- posted by Jon @ 11:52 PM |

 
Hoku Jeffrey Debating Opponent Revealed As Violent Anti-Immigrant Vigilante
 
CalStuff and ResIpsaLoquitur have both discussed the recent appearance of Hoku Jeffrey on Comedy Central's fake debate show, "Crossballs."  I think the show is hilarious, but what's getting ignored is the other guy who got hoaxed on the same episode, anti-immigrant vigilante Chris Simcox.  Simcox is the founder of the Tombstone Militia.  In January 2003, Simcox was charged with two misdemeanors for knowingly bringing a firearm onto a national park and then lying about it to a law enforcement official.  In keeping with post-9/11 scaremongering, Simcox later changed the militia's name to Civil Homeland Defense, but despite the attempt to paint himself as an anti-terrorist fighter, he's really just focused on getting rednecks with guns to harass Mexicans, as this list of incidents on the Arizona-Mexico border indicates.    (Never mind that most terrorists in the U.S. have come either through the Canadian border or through perfectly legal student and tourist visas.)  According to Dusty Escapule, the mayor of Tombstone, Arizona, Simcox's vigilante behavior is a menace to his local community: "The guy is a lunatic and is going to get somebody killed."  What's worse is that Simcox has been saluted as a hero on VDARE, an anti-immigrant web site that still remains on Res Ipsa Loquitur's blogroll.   

- posted by Jon @ 6:23 PM |

 
Gobbets of Poison

After Calstuff about the regents and their efforts to change the GPA requirement for admission to Cal degenerated into a discussion of Hoku and his recent appearance on a comedy central game show, one of the bloggers at Res Ipsa Loquitur bragged that they had broken the story first. When I went to check, a review of "I, Robot", a movie which I had recently seen, caught my eye.   I was shocked when I read it.  David Orland had reposted excerpts from a flat out racist rant about the movie and its supposed message to black people.    The following is what appeared on the Res Ipsa Loquitur blog:

The Right Coast's Tom Smith with a very amusing and insightful review of the latest Will Smith disaster, "I, Robot":

"The movie was unusual in that almost all the good guys were black and all the bad guys were white. The robots themselves, in particular the new N5 (or whatever) model, are super-whiteys. With their pale, glutinous faces, they look like somebody shaved all the hair off a convention full of well preserved DAR matrons. The robots are the ultimate ice people, emotionless and menacing.

[...] Heartless, pasty faced white robots attempt to steal the world, and can only be stopped by a passionate, intuitive black cop, who will not be slowed down by the accusations of prejudice thrown his way. The CEO of US Robotics taunts him with 'You just don't like their kind,' which phases Will Smith not a bit. He knows a sub-human when he sees one.

[...] So, in spite of appearances, this little sci-fi nugget lives up to our culture industry's predilection of producing gobbets of poison. In I, Robot we learn that whiteys are smart, but heartless and ultimately evil, even if they profess to have the best of intentions. We learn not to worry if this sounds like racial prejudice; remember the pasty-faces aren't really human. They don't have that inner juiciness that makes a bro a bro. Don't trust white technology; it will turn on you. Street smarts will beat tricknology every time. You go, sun people."

This isn't even thinly vieled racism.   ProgCal's previous reports on racism at the conservative blog had been vigorously denied or argued by some conservative posters, but this most recent, blatant display should lay that debate to rest.

- posted by Mano Negra @ 11:42 AM |

 
Homeland Insecurity

So, my eyes were glued with interest to the TV when I learned that 200 pounds of explosives and bomb-making hardware were stolen from a Bay Area storage facility used by local police and, get this, the FBI. Another black eye for law enforcement. Good job guys, keeping the rest of us "safe"!

How embarrassing. In the bay area, the piggies simply lose 200 pounds of high explosives (and associated hardware -- basically everything you need for a car bomb making kit). You'd perk your ears up too, no? Especially with all the talk of terrorists running amok. So the story did break locally, but it was kept out of the national media. Especially embarrassing because these wieners were so totally at a loss they were appealing to the public for help. "Hey folks, we think we might have lost 200 pounds of explosives, help us look around for them." Like, is Admiral Stockdale about to bust into the press conference and go "Who am I? Why am I here?"

But soon, the story may get even better. So the ATF manages to find the explosives today. Whew! Quick turnaround. So, hopefully, we're going to figure out what happened. Was it an arch terrorist? Was it a crazed libertarian militia? ...speculation deleted... Update as of 7/8 noontime press conf.: Turns out the culprit was a "local doper" who was planning to resell the explosives, probably with more of an eye toward the public safety that the morons he stole them from. They were protecting the explosives, get this, with a SOLAR POWERED alarm system. You gotta love California!

If you are interested in the bigger issue, don't worry, says Agent McKee of the BATF. Apparently, this sort of thing happens all the time! She also has some advice for would be terrorists: "The problem with remote locations is they are very hard to keep an eye on," she added. "Sometimes when there's a will, there's a way."

Meanwhile, as explosives are being stolen from the FBI in the Bay Area, Homeland Security is working hard in a bunker underneath Washington DC. Tom Ridge dutifully passes on the latest Terror Alert News Bulletin(TM) to alert the nation that he is raising the threat level to BROWN (serious bullshit) from Greenish Brown (casual bullshit). More specifically (and you know how specific these folks like to get): "al Qaeda may be moving forward with plans to carry out an large-scale attack on the United States." ACHTUNG! ...Might be! ...Moving forward! ...With plans! ...Or planning! ...Or developing existing plans! ACHTUNG! Terror Alert! ...TERROR! ...ALERT!

And just to let you know how hard Tommy has been working: as usual, this Terror Alert News Bulletin has been based on... "No new specific intelligence exists". You can say that again (minus the adjectives).
- posted by Mano Negra @ 8:29 AM |

 
Governator's Moneyman Appointed to Regents

We all know the Governator can't pronounce California, but can he say conflict of interest? Calstuff blandly identifies the new Regents appointee, Paul Wachter, as an investment banker, but that barely scratches the surface. Wachter is no ordinary banker, but rather the personal financial advisor of Arnold Schwarzenegger. If the needs of Schwarzenegger's investment portfolio conflict with the needs of the University of California, it is unclear which master Regent Wachter will serve.

Take Enron, for instance. A court ruled that the UC system is entitled to $69 million because of Enron's fraudulent business practices. Gropenfuehrer Ahnold, on the other hand, seems to be doing just fine, because of Enron. In the middle of the California energy crisis, Schwarzenegger went to a private meeting with Enron chairman Kenneth Lay, as confirmed by these emails. You remember the energy crisis, don't you? As the Enron tapes now reveal, traders bragged about "fucking" California to the tune of 1 million dollars a day. The next time another Enron tries to drain the public coffers with some corporate scam, Regent Wachter will probably side with whoever fattens the Gropenfuehrer's wallet the most, instead of doing his duty to make tuition more affordable to UC students.
- posted by Jon @ 10:55 PM |