Amy Alkon has thoughts on Secretary of Labor Robert Reich's reverse racism.
Update: Thanks to my readers for pointing out my mistake in using the word reverse.
Update: Thanks to my readers for pointing out my mistake in using the word reverse.
posted by Helen at 6:20 AM
9 Comments:
Pres. Obama spent most of his adult Sundays in a church/mosque listening to anti-white, anti-Jew anti-gay tirades. (None of this happened in Sarah Palin's church.) Do you suppose any of this hate speech sank in? If you are exposed to this stuff long enough, it begins to seem normal. Will it show up subtly, or not so, in his decisions.
http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2008/12/men-are-losing-jobs-at-higher-rate-than.html
Enough said about that.
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Here was my response to his post:
And if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the most -- women, minorities, and the poor and long-term unemployed -- will be shut out.
Several problems here.
First, the lack of minorities in the construction trades is an effect of the unionization of the trades. Unions have a long history of keeping out minorities, especially immigrants. Unions are protectionist dinosaurs that only serve the interests of the people on the inside of them.
If you you truly want to help the average poor man, get rid of any requirement that contracting companies be union companies. Make companies compete on a level playing field. Sure, you won't be paying those high union wages that drive up reckless consumption when a unionized company doesn't get a contract. However, the jobs that are created, while at the expense of tax payers, meaning some other job was not created or done away with, will probably be more in number than those that were created if a unionized company did get the contract. It's simple math. If a unionized company gets a contract for $1,000,000, it has to pay those union employees high union wages. If a non-unionized company gets that same contract, it can pay more employees less and do the same job. Of course, that would put a pretty dent in your boss' plan to get people consuming at a reckless pace again, wouldn't it?
Second, the lack of women in the construction trades is due to preferences. Women tend to gravitate towards service sector jobs. This has always been the case. Women don't want dangerous or labor-intensive jobs. This is why construction companies have to pay them a premium for their labor services. The only way that you're going to attract more women to these jobs is if you pay them more than the men. And of course, we can't be doing that with public dollars now, can we? Oh wait, that's okay because we're not paying women less...
Third, women don't need those jobs! As of early December, employment for women as a whole increased while employment for men decreased. By how much you ask? Well, for women, it was a trivial amount; about 12,000 jobs. For men, it was a non-trivial amount; about 1.1 million jobs. Clearly, if there is a need for jobs anywhere, it is with men as a whole, not women. If anything, Obama ought to appoint someone to see to it that women lose jobs at a faster rate so that men and women can be equal in the labor markets.
What a sad thing it is that someone so blind to reality is the Labor Secretary.
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I probably could have went a little more in depth with this, but I think I made my point. Even if one were to ignore the highly-presumptive statements about how the stimulus package is actually going to do anything but drive us deeper into debt when it doesn't pan out because of the unattractive climate for investors in this country, he makes some really bad claims that aren't backed up by any kind of facts.
I said it before and I'll say it again: it's a sad thing that a person blind to reality is the Labor Secretary. I'm an atheist, but I'm kind of wondering if I ought to start praying for some kind of nuclear attack on Washington.
By the way, I love some of the comments to his post. Perhaps people ought to start doing some letter-writing to their congressmen to see to it that something is done about this special-interest hack.
Why does it need to be called reverse racism? It's racism. Racism is wrong. Moreover, I'd argue that, for many years now, racism has been practiced primarily but people who aren't non-Hispanic Caucasians, just as sexism has been practiced primarily by women.
What Ern said;
It's still racism, even if it's applied to we to the melanin-deficient folks among us.
Refuse to let "them" own the work "racism."
Bill
Again what Ern said. Are white people a "reverse race"? Furthermore, "race" is kind of a ridiculous concept and I wish so much people would realize how stupid it is. We might as well be talking about blood type. "We can't have one o' them AB negatives in office!" *Waits for the type O jokes*
1. I would suggest that you read what Reich said rather than the extract that misconstrues what he really said. Then there might not be this knee-jerk reaction in the comments.
2. Obama spent his adult Sunday's listening to anti-gay and anti-Jewish remarks? And so we now cite Reich, who consults for Obama and is white and Jewish...again, dumb remark.
3. And of course, conservatives attack stimulus package. But how did we get deficit when Bush took office there was surplus? Were you concerned about the deficit back in those good old days under Bush and the huyge and growing deficit? And if no stimulus, what do you suggest the turn things around? Just sit at compute keyboard and make snippy comments?
And this is why I tend to seek out white males as my professionals of choice when I need some service or something done. I know they have earned their credentials, and haven't had their incompetence glossed over by some affirmative-action pass/gender-norming or some other politically correct assbaggery.
Yes, I know ... "Not All" minority/women are necessarily incompetent. But all there needs to be is ONE.
Ern wrote: "It's racism."
Damn straight. The people who ignore or minimize racism by people other than caucasians do it to make money. They are the people who say that Blacks cannot be racist.
They have obviously never been the only white boy at many parties, and it messes with their gig to focus on racism as an abhorrent human problem rather than focusing on racism as a white problem.
Trey
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