Past Injustices: Today's News for August 2nd

New York Times:

Justice Dept. to Take On Affirmative Action in College Admissions

The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

The document, an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”

...Supporters and critics of the project said it was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores.

Look closely art what is said there: "admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups...an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores". If objective data, such as test scores and grade point average (GPA) point to one student being superior to another, why would that student not be chosen, regardless of race?

If we use minority status as a primary criteria in college admissions, explain the difference between that and giving preference to whites for racist reasons? The only answer is "past injustice", which is no excuse for current discrimination, regardless of who is on the receiving end of that discrimination.

Remember, if you use "past injustice" to justify current race-based discrimination, then you are justifying modern racism based on past racism. All you are doing is encouraging the never-ending cycle of hatred, because hatred, even justifiable hatred, only begets more hatred.

Speaking of racism...

USA Today:

Amazon to counter-program 'Confederate' with reparations-themed 'Black America'

Amazon is hoping that viewers who registered their disapproval of HBO's upcoming slavery drama Confederate will have a positive reaction to their own alternate-history series, Black America.

As in Confederate, from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Black America takes place in a universe where the South has seceded from the Union. But where Confederate imagines slavery as a modern-day institution, the Amazon offering focuses on freed slaves who form their own country, New Colonia, out of the states of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, given to them as reparations for the country's original sin.

New Colonia has been at peace with the United States for twenty years following 150 years of fighting. But their newfound accord is endangered by an economic role reversal: the new country has emerged as a new global power player as America slides into decline.

Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana become a global power? Excuse me...

Black or not, those states will never be a global power.

Seriously though, this turning of pipe dreams/nightmares into alternate history fiction is interesting, but hardly realistic.

Consider "Confederate". If the South had been successful in their secession, the series ignores an important historical fact: Slavery was becoming despised in Western Civilization in the 19th century (see the 1815 Congress of Vienna). In addition, most whites in the antebellum South did not own slaves. Between Europe and the Northern U.S., enough international pressure could have been applied to end slavery in the South. It is unlikely slavery could have lasted long into the 20th century, if it lasted at all. Just look towards the ending of South Africa's apartheid for an example of international pressure getting results.