People know about affirmative action in universities, medicine, etc, but what about in government?
What does it mean when constituencies are more worried about their politicians looking like them than performance?
Here's the story of Eddie Jordan, New Orleans DA, 2003-2007 🧵
Jordan was at first a federal prosecutor. He oversaw the prosecution of Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards for corruption.
At the same time, he refused to prosecute politician Cleo Fields, even though the FBI had him on video stuffing $25K from Edwards into his pocket
Why prosecute Edwards and not Fields? We may never know.
In 2002, Jordan was elected District Attorney of Orleans Parish.
Two weeks after taking office, his first priority was to fire 43 employees, of which 42 were white and 1 was Hispanic.
He went on to hire 68 people in their place, 92% of them black. https://t.co/4WdHMH8HB7nola.com/news/crime_pol…
Those who were fired included the majority of his investigative staff. The effects were described as "catastrophic." The blacks that replaced them had little or no experience.
Under Jordan, New Orleans would have the highest murder rate in the nation. https://t.co/zoLoPAhxzDnytimes.com/2007/10/31/us/…
Jordan was sued, and the fired employees were awarded $3.7 million.
Jordan couldn't pay the verdict, and the city wouldn't bail him out. It got to the point where the fired white employees were going to be able to start seizing the furniture of the DA office to get their money.
Jordan therefore resigned in disgrace.
Employees of his office described a lack of office supplies like paper clips, phone lines that didn't work, and a DA who rarely showed up to work.
His only priority was apparently replacing white employees with black ones.
Under Jordan, in 2003 and 2004, the conviction rate for murder and attempted murder in New Orleans was 12%, compared to 80% nationwide. Again, this was in a city that was leading the country in murder. https://t.co/GDk3ac82g7csmonitor.com/2007/0118/p01s…
Days before his resignation, a New Orleans man robbed a liquor store. As it turned out, he had been "visiting" Jordan's girlfriend at the house that they shared, and then returned there after he was done.
As was usual in New Orleans, charges against the man were never pursued.
After resigning in disgrace, Eddie Jordan returned to private practice.
Last time he was in the news, it was for allegedly slipping an envelope with drugs in it to his client while in court. https://t.co/gCHFgvj4BUnola.com/news/crime_pol…
It's important to note that Jordan maintained support throughout the black community while all this was going on. It's possible he would have been releected if he hadn't resigned after bankrupting his office with the civil rights lawsuit.
In July 2007, the community came out in support of Jordan, even after the civil rights lawsuit and years of neglecting to prosecute violent crime. What the NYT described as a "vociferous" black crowd denounced other politicians who tried to hold him accountable.
The story of Eddie Jordan is the story of the American inner city.
Racial voting leads to corrupt and incompetent politicians, who only feel pressure to give their constituents jobs.
Those they hire are incompetent, but that doesn't matter. As long as whites aren't in charge.
It's particularly tragic because the constituents are of course worse off. Eddie Jordan didn't hire that many people! There aren't enough city jobs to uplift black communities. And the whole city suffers from a high crime rate and government incompetence.
But that doesn't matter. Racial voting is psychological, not a matter of group self-interest. It's actually self-destructive.
This is the mistake white racialists make. "They look out for their own, we should do the same."
Yeah, look at how well that's worked out for them.
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A business owned by a white woman sued the Department of Agriculture and the Small Business Administration.
The Section 8(a) program is based on a 1979 bill.
"Disadvantaged" businesses received privileges in contracting, and minority-owned businesses qualified automatically
SFFA v Harvard was decided on Fourteenth Amendment grounds. The reasoning of the decision applies to whenever the government discriminates based on race. That's clearly what's going on here, and the program must be judged under strict scrutiny.
I previously covered the bias suit against NYC for a teachers test that failed a disproportionate share of blacks and Hispanics.
Now, we know that at least 225 failed test takers are going to get at least $1 million.
For failing an exam that too many whites passed.
Biggest payment is to a man named Herman Grim.
He gets $2,055,383.
That's all the money he would have earned as a teacher in back pay, plus interest, and a little extra on top for the racism he suffered by having to take a test showing he could read well enough to teach kids.
In his final weeks in office, Bill DeBlasio set aside $1.8 billion to pay for the racist tests.
But the true cost will be even higher because those who never were hired will have to get pensions too for the jobs they never worked, in addition to health insurance.
Why care about merit? What harm is there in affirmative action programs that reward the less qualified?
Here's the story of the Martin Luther King Jr/Drew Medical Center (King/Drew) in Los Angeles, which operated from 1972 to 2007.
Or as patients called, it "Killer King." 🧵
The hospital was founded in 1972, in response to black riots of the late 1960s. Elites in LA, like elsewhere in the country, determined that racism was the cause of pathologies in the black community.
Therefore they decided to open up a hospital to serve locals.
Officially, as a public institution, it couldn't be a "black hospital." But most employees and administrators were black, and it was said to belong to the community.
California schools practiced massive affirmative action at the time, and graduates would go work at King/Drew.
Woke is an intellectual and spiritual cancer. It has negatively impacted politics and the functioning of institutions. But not enough thought has been given to how it's contributed to artistic stagnation and what Douthat calls decadence. I explain here. richardhanania.com/p/how-woke-cau…
The idea that we see less original storytelling has become a trope.
The problem is that art is supposed to reflect and speak to human nature. When human nature is prohibited, you have to rely on the past to have anything at all compelling.
The biggest problem seems to be the resistance to "gendered" morality, behavior, and ideals. But that's what people want and expect. Reversing the sexes in a template ("female hero saves prince in distress") doesn't work. Neither does treating people as sexless individuals.