Ron Paul, racist?

The blogosphere brouhaha of the day is a New Republic report on Ron Paul, in which they comb through his old newsletters and come across some surprising articles. Some choice excerpts are here. My excerpts from the excerpts:

This 1978 newsletter says the Trilateral Commission is "no longer known only by those who are knowledgeable about international conspiracies, but is routinely mentioned in the daily news."

A 1986 newsletter names Jeane Kirkpatrick and George Will as "two of our enemies" and notes their membership in the Trilateral Commission.

An October 1990 edition of the Political Report ridicules black activists, led by Al Sharpton, for demonstrating at the Statue of Liberty in favor of renaming New York City after Martin Luther King. The newsletter suggests that "Welfaria," "Zooville," "Rapetown," "Dirtburg," and "Lazyopolis" would be better alternatives--and says, "Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house."

The January 1991 edition of the Political Report refers to King as a "world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours" and a "flagrant plagiarist with a phony doctorate."

"A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism" analyzes the Los Angeles riots of 1992: "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. ... What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided."

A January 1994 edition of the Survival Report states that "gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense," adding: "[T]hese men don't really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners." Also, "they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick."

If you want to look at PDFs of the newsletters in question, visit TNR's selections link and click on the red type in each example.

You'll see that I ignored some topics. That's because I'm not that concerned with the sections on Israel, secession and the Mises Institute; I can see principled explanations there.

Libertarians -- and Andrew Sullivan -- are dismayed. Reason Magazine got a comment from Ron Paul, whose campaign later issued a statement. The defense is notable for its blandness and lack of specificity, but the basic argument is that this was old news, and reflective of poor oversight on Paul's part, not racism.

Ron Paul supporters, of course, are apoplectic. Just read some of the comments under TNR's main piece. They do have one valid point: the timing of the piece was a bit precious, coming on the day of the New Hampshire primary. Sure, given that we're in primary season, just about any date will have some timing-related effect. But it wouldn't have killed TNR to publish it tomorrow or Thursday, giving Paul enough time to respond before the next primary.

So how much is smoke and how much is fire?

Let's start with the indisputable facts.

1. For decades, various newsletters went out with Ron Paul's name on them.

2. Some of the issues contained material that was far, far, far beyond the pale of being defensible.

3. Paul himself didn't always edit them, and it's unclear which articles, if any, he wrote himself.

4. In particular, Paul disowns the racist, homophobic issues of the early 1990s, which he said were written and edited by others while he was retired from politics. He accepts a "moral responsibility" for not paying closer attention to what was being said in his name.

5. It's also clear that the views expressed in the newsletter are not what he espouses now. Indeed, he flatly told Reason that he considers MLK a hero and spoke in support of Rosa Parks in a Congressional speech in 1999.

But there are troubling questions involved here.

1. I cannot imagine letting a publication be put out in my name without being aware of -- and concerned about -- its content. So if Paul is to be believed, we're talking about a truly stunning lack of oversight.

2. Paul says this is "old news." I'd be willing to dismiss the conspiracy stuff as too old to be relevant -- except that he continues to believe much of it today. The rest is too recent to simply dismiss. It may indeed not reflect his views, or at least his views today, but they're recent enough to require at least some explanation.

3. The "poor oversight" argument would be more persuasive if we were talking about one bad issue or an article here or there. But I bolded the dates in the excerpts above for a reason. Here's how the categories break down:

Conspiracy theories: 1978-present.

Racism: 1990-92.

Homophobia:1990-94.

Militia movement:1992-95.

These things went on for years. Is it possible to be that completely out of touch with a publication bearing your name?

4. Even if we (rather charitably) accept Paul's claim that he was totally uninvolved with the newsletters and never even read them, we come to the question of who Paul entrusted to edit and publish them. I don't see how he would have consented to let someone use his name unless he knew that person and felt they would reflect his own philosophy more often than not. It seems to me that he must have known the political views of the editor, if not the writers. For one thing, a person capable of publishing some of the newsletters TNR discusses could not hide their extremist views very well or for very long. Indeed, the editor presumably had no desire to hide them, seeing as how he or she volunteered to print them up in a newsletter and mail them off to subscribers.

So the explanation that Ron Paul owes us is severalfold:

1. Did the writings reflect your views?

2. Did you ever read the newsletters published in your name?

3. Why did you lend your name to publications you totally disagree with?

4. How did you pick the editors, publishers or writers of these publications?

5. Who were the editors and writers involved, and do you still associate with them today?

For what it's worth, while I think Paul is a conspiracy-minded extreme conservative from the nutty end of the libertarian spectrum, I never had him pegged for a racist. I'm willing to believe that the newsletters do not reflect his personal views. But he then must explain why and how he put his name on the publication containing such trash.

Update: Stubborn Facts has some cogent commentary.

Ron Paul, politics, midtopia

What would you do?

O.J. Simpson walks into your restaurant with a bunch of friends. Do you serve him?

A Kentucky restaurant owner didn't.

Ruby -- who owns restaurants in Cincinnati, Ohio. Louisville, Kentucky, and Belterra, Indiana, -- said Simpson, who was in town for the Derby on Saturday, came in with a group of about 12 Friday night and was seated at a table in the back. A customer came up to Ruby and was "giddy" about seeing Simpson, Ruby said.

"I didn't want that experience in my restaurant," Ruby said, later adding that seeing Simpson get so much attention "makes me sick to my stomach."

He said he went to Simpson's table and said, "I'm not serving you." Ruby said when Simpson didn't respond, he repeated himself and left the room.

For his part, Simpson showed some class:

Ruby said Simpson soon came up to him and said he understood and would gather the rest of his party to leave.

Far more class than his lawyer:

Simpson's attorney, Yale Galanter, said the incident was about race, and he intended to pursue the matter and possibly go after the restaurant's liquor license.

"He screwed with the wrong guy, he really did," Galanter said by telephone Tuesday night.

But this isn't a celebrity blog. My interest is more philosphical. What would you do in such a case?

I think I would have done what Ruby did. It has always seemed clear to me that Simpson got away with murder. While I respect the verdict of the judicial system and do not advocate harassing him or the like, neither do I have to tolerate his presence in my private place of business. Especially given winking stunts like his "If I Did It" book deal.

But I'm interested in hearing other viewpoints -- both what you would do, and comments on the ethics/legality of what Ruby did.

(h/t: Munko)

Simpson, politics, midtopia

Unexpected vocabulary lessons

From MSNBC's "Peculiar Postings":

Doris Moore was shocked when her new couch was delivered to her home with a label that used a racial slur to describe the dark brown shade of the upholstery.

The situation was even more alarming for Moore because it was her 7-year-old daughter who pointed out “n----- brown” on the tag.

The culprit? An outdated translation program used by the Chinese manufacturer.

He explained that when the Chinese characters for “dark brown” are typed into an older version of its Chinese-English translation software, the offensive N-word description comes up.

“We got the definition from a Chinese-English dictionary. We’ve been using the dictionary for 10 years. Maybe the dictionary was updated, but we probably didn’t follow suit,” he said.

That's one comprehensive dictionary....

The comedy of errors needed for this to happen is pretty impressive.

1. Chinese manufacturer uses faulty translation program to make the initial error.

2. Wholesaler doesn't notice.

3. Couch goes to store owned by an Indian immigrant, who doesn't know what the word means.

But to top off the stupidity, there's this:

Moore is consulting with a lawyer and wants compensation. Last week, she filed a report with the Ontario Human Rights Commission....

Moore, 30, has three young children, and said the issue has taken a toll on her family.

Compensation? For a translation error? Lordy. It would probably be smart business sense for store or manufacturer to offer their apologies and perhaps a discount. But claiming "harm" from something like this is just goofy.

humor, race, politics, midtopia

Minnesota and Muslims

This weekend, the Star Tribune ran an article summarizing recent efforts to accomodate -- or not -- our growing Muslim population. Since then I've been noodling on it, trying to figure out where I stand on particular instances of accomodating minority practices.

First, the background. A while back we had a brouhaha over airport cab drivers refusing to transport alcohol. Then there were the Muslim cashiers at SuperTarget who didn't want to touch (or scan) packages of pork, and now this:

Minneapolis Community and Technical College is poised to become the state's first public school to install a foot-washing basin to help the school's 500 Muslim students perform pre-prayer rituals. "We want to be welcoming," MCTC President Phil Davis said, noting a student was hurt trying to wash in a regular sink.

First, let's put things in perspective. Listing each case like this makes it sound like the Twin Cities are awash in such controversies. They're not. Each of these is an essentially isolated incident in a metro area with a population close to 3 million. We have a sizable Muslim population, so we have more such incidents than cities that don't. But you're still talking about a small number of conflicts.

That said, let's address the philosophical and practical aspects raised in the article.

In each instance, you have a tension between customer service and religious belief. The question is how far do we go to accomodate belief? I'm perfectly willing to make reasonable accomodations. But what constitutes reasonable is a matter of opinion.

Let's take them one at a time:

Taxi drivers. They don't have a leg to stand on. They are licensed (and their numbers limited) by the city to provide transportation services from the airport. If they don't want to carry people who have alcohol, they need to get another job.

Cashiers. It's not that they refuse to sell pork; it's that they don't want to touch it. So they ask a co-worker and sometimes the customer to scan it for them. As a customer, that wouldn't bother me too much, so for me this falls into the "reasonable accomodation" category. But mostly this is a private concern for Target Corp. If it decides accomodating such requests aren't worth the hassle -- or are harming customer relations -- then they can choose to change it. If enough people complain, you can be sure they will.

Foot washer. At first glance this one seems easy. MCTC is a taxpayer-funded two-year college, and so the answer seems obvious: no taxpayer money spent for an explicitly religious purpose.

If students are hurting themselves trying to wash their feet in the sink -- and frankly, I'm having a hard time visualizing how this could be a problem except for the very, very clumsy -- then a cheap and constitutional solution might be to simply educate students on alternative foot-washing methods like, say, carrying an empty water bottle with them that they can fill up and wash with.

But it turns out to be difficult, because there are additional considerations.

As an adult educational institution, MCTC is supposed to accomodate a range of students -- and has a competitive interest in doing so. Would it make competitive sense to turn off potential students simply because of inconvenient lavatory facilities? Building a mosque or a chapel would clearly be both unreasonable and unconstitutional. But a sink? Why not?

In the end, though, what persuades me is another relatively simple argument: A foot washer doesn't just serve Muslim students. Yes, they get a convenient place to wash their feet; but the rest of us benefit by keeping feet out of the regular sinks. Not to mention avoiding the lawsuits from the Clumsy Muslims Student Association.

I strongly support separation of church and state. But remember that the main point of that separation is to prevent a particular religion from exerting undue control over the state, or using the levers of government power to promote itself or force its beliefs on others. Absent such coercion, religion should be treated the same as other interest groups -- not better, but not worse, either.

America remains an overwhelmingly Christian nation; Muslims aren't going to be running things anytime soon. So providing a reasonable accomodation to a minority religion should be just fine, especially when the accomodation is small and benefits all students, not just the minority.

Accomodation is a case-by-case thing, as the mosque example demonstrates. And it's a two-way street as well: members of minority groups have an obligation to adjust their practices to the larger reality of American life as much as practicable before demanding special consideration for their situation. But assuming that has been done, then minor accomodations are not PC run amok or cultural surrender: they are a recognition that Muslims are a part of the American fabric, not a burr stuck upon it. And as that fabric changes, so too will some things that we have "always done" and never thought much about.

Which is a good thing, because that ability to change is one reason the United States has remained a vibrant nation through two centuries of global and social upheaval. Our foundation is strong because it is not overly rigid. And it's why the country will survive this wave of immigrants just like it survived the Italians and the Irish and the blacks and giving women the vote and all the other things that people at the time feared would destroy us. We will survive, and we will remain American in all the ways that matter -- and made stronger by the additional weave brought from overseas.

Just as long as the cab drivers don't give me a hard time for the wine bottle I brought back from vacation....

Minnesota, Islam, politics, midtopia

The meaning of race

Rep. Tom Tancredo is a partisan buffoon. But even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes, and his latest hobby horse manages to hit a target worth skewering -- even if it's not exactly the target he was aiming at.

Tancredo, a Republican from Colorado and an outspoken opponent of diversity who has called Miami a "Third World country", is calling for an end to race-based caucuses. He's specifically taking aim at the Congressional Black Caucus, which has 43 members, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which counts 21 members.

First, let's outline how Tancredo is wrong. To begin with, he apparently doesn't understand what a caucus is.

The purpose of caucuses is to provide a gathering point and support for minorities within a larger group whose views and interests might otherwise be diluted or ignored by the larger group. I'm not talking just race: you could have a female caucus, an opera fan caucus, a sneaker caucus, or what have you.

Check out this list of Congressional caucuses. They're all over the map. The only common principle is that they represent smaller interest groups within the larger body of Congresscritters.

A white caucus would be pointless, because the entire Congress is a white caucus. That said, Tancredo has every right to form one; he would just be displaying ignorance.

Being informal interest groups, caucuses should have the right to include or exclude anyone they want, since their sole purpose is to promote a particular interest, and it should be up to the caucus members to define what that interest is. So race-based caucuses are fine, in my book.

But not all caucuses are equally deserving of respect. And this is where the blind squirrel finds a nut.

Tancredo's latest outburst was prompted by what he said were the efforts of a white Republican, Stephen Cohen, to join the CBC (Cohen's district has a large black majority), only to be rejected because he was white.

Never mind that Cohen never actually sought to join the group. The thought that he might was enough for the CBC's chairwoman, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, to confirm that only blacks are welcome.

I've been underwhelmed by the actions of the CBC in recent weeks; they've seemed determined to put skin color above everything else, including ethics and common sense, as when they gave William "my freezer is my bank" Jefferson a standing ovation, or pressuring Nancy Pelosi to make Alcee Hastings chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Then there is their historic snubbing of a black Republican, Gary Franks, in the early 1990s, which seemed to suggest that to be a CBC member you not only had to be black, but you had to be a Democrat -- or at least hold certain views on civil rights.

So while I respect the CBC's right to have to a "blacks only" policy -- and the policy even makes some sense, if the purpose of the CBC is less about advancing black causes in general and more about increasing the number, power and visibility of black members of Congress -- I'm not so impressed by their actions of late. And the reaffirmation of the "blacks only" policy forces me to wonder:

What constitutes "black"?

It's similar to a question I like to pose to anti-Semites, who rave about Jews controlling the world: How do you define Jew? If it's cultural, how do you determine they are part of the culture? If it's religious, can we exclude nonobservant Jews? If it's racial, how much Jewish blood do you have to have to be considered a Jew for the purposes of world-domination statistics?

So here's the question I would pose to the CBC: How much black blood is required before you can join the CBC?

Is Tiger Woods black enough? Or too Asian? I suspect he'd make it in, because Barack Obama is a member and he's half white. But then where do they draw the line? A quarter black? An eighth? A sixteenth? Just give me a number, that's all I ask.

I suspect it will come down to "looking" black. Which is fine and arguably valid, since "looking black" is at the heart of most racism and discrimination. But seeing them try to define the dividing line would be both entertaining and a reminder of how truly silly and meaningless racial distinctions are.

Thanks, Tom. You're an idiot, but sometimes you're a useful idiot.

race, politics, midtopia

Ellison, Goode, Prager and the Koran

An update on the misguided uproar over Rep. Keith Ellison's Muslim faith.

When last we left the story, Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia was warning that if we didn't act soon, more Muslims might immigrate to this country.

Ellison responded during a CNN interview. He noted that there are already 5 million Muslims in this country, most of whom oppose terrorism and embrace the American dream as much as any other immigrant.

It's at the end of the video, not in the written text, but for me the best part is where Ellison notes that he can trace his American ancestry back to Lousiana -- in 1742. I wonder if Goode can beat that.

Goode, for his part, said he's not backing down. His quote is a little less coherent.

"I will not be putting my hand on the Koran," Goode said at a news conference Thursday.

That's good, Virgil. Nobody is asking you to. Then there was this gem:

Goode also told Fox News he wants to limit legal immigration and do away with "diversity visas," which he said lets in people "not from European countries" and "some terrorist states."

Yeah, no way we should be letting those non-Europeans in.

Goode has been repudiated by politicians on both sides of the aisle, including Virginia's senior senator, John Warner.

Dennis Prager, who started this whole flap with his ignorant commentary, has been chastised by the board of the Holocaust Museum, of which he is a member. Prager responded by making clear that he hadn't heard a word anyone has said.

Mr. Prager said Muslim American groups and others had pressured the museum board. “Everybody knows there’s no bigotry in what I said, but they felt they had to do it,” he said in an interview.

“I completely respect Congressman-Elect Ellison’s right to take an oath on the Koran, and regret any language that suggested otherwise,” Mr. Prager added in a statement, emphasizing that he began reaching out to the Muslims 20 years ago. “My entire effort in the Keith Ellison matter has been to draw attention to the need to acknowledge the Bible as the basis of America’s moral values. Judeo-Christian values are the greatest single protection against another Holocaust.”

Translation: "I respect his right. Except I suggested in my commentary -- which was also historically ignorant -- that Congress should prevent him from taking his seat, and in fact he should be forced to swear on a Bible."

Sure, Dennis.

Glad to see everyone piling on.

Goode, Keith Ellison, Prager, religion, politics, midtopia

More Koran swearing idiocy

A Republican Congressman from Virginia, Virgil Goode, has thrown himself into the debate over Keith Ellison swearing in on a Koran.

If American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.

Oh! The horrors! Funny-sounding people with hard-to-pronounce names might move in next door! They might want to send their children to school with my kids! Aaaaahhhhh!!!

Nativists make no sense (didn't most of them come from Europe originally?). And they really get old after awhile.

immigration, race, Islam, politics, midtopia

Immigration and crime

It seems obvious that new immigrants -- and especially illegal immigrants -- bring with them various short-term ills, including increased crime. There's nothing particularly surprising about that belief; crime is often correlated to poverty and limited opportunity, and new immigrants tend to be poor and face barriers of language and culture that can make social mobility difficult.

One problem though; the popular belief appears to be untrue. As immigration has skyrocketed, crime has fallen.

Ramiro Martinez Jr., a professor of criminal justice at Florida International University, has sifted through homicide records in border cities like San Diego and El Paso, both heavily populated by Mexican immigrants, both places where violent crime has fallen significantly in recent years. “Almost without exception,” he told me, “I’ve discovered that the homicide rate for Hispanics was lower than for other groups, even though their poverty rate was very high, if not the highest, in these metropolitan areas.” He found the same thing in the Haitian neighborhoods of Miami. In his book “New York Murder Mystery,” the criminologist Andrew Karmen examined the trend in New York City and likewise found that the “disproportionately youthful, male and poor immigrants” who arrived during the 1980s and 1990s “were surprisingly law-abiding” and that their settlement into once-decaying neighborhoods helped “put a brake on spiraling crime rates.”

The article quotes other researchers who found similar things. And even David Brooks has noted that as illegal immigration surged in the 1990s, the violent crime rate fell by 57 percent.

There are plenty of alternative explanations for doubters. Perhaps the effect of immigrants was simply overwhelmed by other factors, like the booming economy. One such critic also notes that illegals are less likely to report crime, thus masking the true crime rate in immigrant neighborhoods.

But that doesn't truly explain experiences like this:

In June, Sampson and I drove out to a neighborhood in Little Village, Chicago’s largest Hispanic community. The area we visited is decidedly poor: in terms of per capita income, 84 percent of Chicago neighborhoods are better off and 99 percent have a greater proportion of residents with a high-school education. As we made our way down a side street, Sampson noted that many of the residents make their living as domestic workers and in other low-wage occupations, often paid off the books because they are undocumented. In places of such concentrated disadvantage, a certain level of violence and social disorder is assumed to be inevitable.

As we strolled around, Sampson paused on occasion to make a mental note of potential trouble signs: an alley strewn with garbage nobody had bothered to pick up; a sign in Spanish in several windows, complaining about the lack of a park in the vicinity where children can play. Yet for all of this, the neighborhood was strikingly quiet. And, according to the data Sampson has collected, it is surprisingly safe. The burglary rate in the neighborhood is in the bottom fifth of the city. The overall crime rate is nearly in the bottom third.

Sampson's theory is that many Mexican immigrant communities are tight-knit, with neighbors watching out for neighbors. He also notes that Mexican immigrants are more likely to be married than either blacks or whites. In short, they're more socially conservative, even if they are here illegally.

Two more interesting things researchers have found. One, second-generation immigrants are substantially more likely to commit crimes than their parents; and third-generation immigrants are even more likely still. So the more Americanized they become, the more criminally inclined they become.

Second, one reason why immigrant neighborhoods are linked to crime in the public eye:

The experiment drew on interviews with more than 3,500 Chicago residents, each of whom was asked how serious problems like loitering and public drinking were where they lived. The responses were compared with the actual level of chaos in the neighborhood, culled from police data and by having researchers drive along hundreds of blocks to document every sign of decay and disorder they could spot.

The social and ethnic composition of a neighborhood turned out to have a profound bearing on how residents of Chicago perceived it, irrespective of the actual conditions on the streets. “In particular,” Sampson and Raudenbush found, “the proportion of blacks and the proportion of Latinos in a neighborhood were related positively and significantly to perceived disorder.” Once you adjusted for the ethnic, racial and class composition of a community, “much of the variation in levels of disorder that appeared to be explained by what residents saw was spurious.”

In other words, the fact that people think neighborhoods with large concentrations of brown-skinned immigrants are unsafe makes sense in light of popular stereotypes and subliminal associations. But that doesn’t mean there is any rational basis for their fears.

When something is this counterintuitive, I'm reluctant to accept it at face value. But it's something to consider, at any rate.

crime, immigration, race, politics, midtopia

Xenophobia

Where does the "War on Terror" end and simple racism begin?

In Texas.

A plan to build a mosque in this Houston suburb has triggered a neighborhood dispute, with community members warning the place will become a terrorist hotbed and one man threatening to hold pig races on Fridays just to offend the Muslims.

What did the Muslims do? They bought an 11-acre parcel for $1.1 million, on which they plan to build the mosque, and asked a neighbor to stop pasturing his cattle on it. He got mad and vowed to do pig races.

It could all be a misunderstanding:

Baker ... mistakenly thought the Muslims also wanted him off the land his family has lived on for more than 100 years.

Except Baker still seeks his revenge.

Though he now concedes the Muslims are probably not after his land, Baker said he is obligated to go through with the pig races, probably within the next few weeks, because “I would be like a total idiot if I didn’t. I’d be the laughingstock now because I’ve gone too far.”

Meanwhile, another resident has set up an anti-Islamic Web site that claims residents will have to listen to a call to prayer five times a day, keeps a running tally of terrorist attacks since 9/11 and provides the home addresses of some of the Muslim association members.

And the Sheriff has been fielding calls like this one:

Cynthia Blackman wrote Radack that the center was a security risk: “Would you and your family safely and comfortably live next to this 11-acre Muslim mosque and facilities?”

Xenophobia really brings out the stupid in people.

racism, Islam, religion, politics, midtopia

The educated class

When our children were little, their grandparents really liked talking "baby talk" to them. I'd watch as supposedly intelligent adults spent hours talking nonsense to unresponsive infants. both baby and adult seemed to enjoy it.

I hated it.

Why? Because my wife and I were convinced that it stunted brain development. Because of that, and because we had no desire to turn our own brains to mush by babbling like idiots, we always talked conversationally to our children from the day they were born. Sure, for the first year it was more of a monologue than a dialogue, but that was fine. We got used to speaking to them like they were adults.

We felt strongly enough about this that we eventually asked the grandparents to stop with the babbling. They thought we were killjoys, but they complied.

Vindication is oh-so-sweet. Not only were we right, but we were a living example of why there's an enduring achievement gap in this country.

This according to the New York Times, which hides its best stuff behind the Times Select wall. In an article in the Nov. 26 magazine, writer Paul Tough explores the challenges facing the No Child Left Behind act. After noting that black children are three times more likely to grow up in poverty than white children, he writes, researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley decided to conduct an in-depth study of 42 families. What they found should surprise people only in its scope.

Vocabulary growth differed sharply by class.... By age 3, children whose parents were professionals had vocabularies of about 1,100 words, and children whose parents were on welfare had vocabularies of about 525 words. The children's I.Q.'s correlated closely to their vocabularies. The average I.Q. among the professional children was 117, and the welfare children had an average I.Q. of 79.

... By comparing the vocabulary scores with their observations of each child's home life, they were able to conclude that the size of each child's vocabulary correlated most closely to one simple factor: the number of words the parents spoke to the child. That varied greatly across the homes they visited, and again, it varied by class. In the professional homes, parents directed an average of 487 ''utterances'' -- anything from a one-word command to a full soliloquy -- to their children each hour. In welfare homes, the children heard 178 utterances per hour.

What's more, the kinds of words and statements that children heard varied by class. The most basic difference was in the number of ''discouragements'' a child heard -- prohibitions and words of disapproval -- compared with the number of encouragements, or words of praise and approval. By age 3, the average child of a professional heard about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. For the welfare children, the situation was reversed: they heard, on average, about 75,000 encouragements and 200,000 discouragements. Hart and Risley found that as the number of words a child heard increased, the complexity of that language increased as well. As conversation moved beyond simple instructions, it blossomed into discussions of the past and future, of feelings, of abstractions, of the way one thing causes another -- all of which stimulated intellectual development.

In other words, talk to your kids like they're adults, and they will rise to the challenge. Talk to them like they're servants to be ordered around (or worse yet, don't talk to them much at all) and they will stagnate.

So why do blacks do worse than whites on standardized tests? Trick question, because it's the wrong question. There is a gap in education, but it's not racial. Instead, race has become a misleading proxy for class.

Tough identifies other class-related differences. Poor kids tend to be taught not to question authority, for example, while middle-class kids grow up engaging in back-and-forth conversation and negotiation with their parents -- which is a lot more work for the parent, but ends up producing kids with more self-confidence, who expect their concerns to be taken seriously.

The article goes on to discuss what that means for equalizing academic performance, and it's not pretty: intensive (and expensive) intervention in order to compensate for the shortcomings at home.

But interesting as that is, it's not the point of this post. I'm going to use the article as a springboard to make two related points:

RACE IS OFTEN IRRELEVANT
It's time to look very hard at how race is viewed in our society, because education is not the only place where race is used as a proxy for other issues, with the result that actual causes (and thus actual solutions) are overlooked.

The most controversial way race is accounted for is in college admission and hiring, where schools or companies apply racial preferences as a way to increase minority representation. Laudable as that goal is, it isn't a long-term solution.

Because affirmative action is itself discrimination, it's only legitimate as a way to directly repair damage done by previous discrimination. It would have been unfair, upon repeal of Jim Crow laws, to simply say to blacks "okay, compete." Some degree of remediation was needed to level the playing field and make up for decades of discrimination. But such reverse discrimination must be narrowly tailored and carefully monitored, and ended as soon as the major effects of prior discrimination have been ameliorated. Which requires that objective standards be developed to decide when that has occurred, and that we are careful to separate the effects of racism from other, non-race-based effects for which affirmative action is not the solution.

I'm not saying affirmative-action should be ended; I'm saying it's way past time we had a conversation based around the question "when has the debt been paid, and how will we tell?" The Times article notes that black achievement soared between 1960 and the late 1980s, and then stalled. A reasonable explanation for that might be that by the late 1980s the major effects of racism had been accounted for, and after that the continued focus on race not only did increasingly little good but may have done active harm by diverting attention from underlying causes. It bears looking at.

BARRIERS ARE REAL
While race may not be the barrier it once was, barriers do exist. The biggest barrier, I believe, is class. We have a good degree of social mobility in this country, but the mythical Horatio Alger model simply doesn't work as social policy. From their home environment to the school they attend to the expectations ingrained in them from the day they are born, children from poor families must contend with things that most middle-class children do not.

My wife was raised in a blue-collar household. When she inquired about going to college (an ambition that itself set her apart from many of her peers), her parents didn't encourage her. Their response was "why do you want to do that?" and "don't expect us to pay for it." She was left entirely on her own to find the money, time and initiative to enroll in community college, then transfer to a four-year university. She worked full-time during her entire college career.

My dad has a PhD and my mom has a master's. From early in my childhood I understood that I was expected to go to college. Schoolwork was a priority. Money wasn't a problem; if I hadn't landed an ROTC scholarship, my parents would have paid for everything. Because I didn't have to work, I had plenty of time to study (I didn't, as a rule; but I could have....).

If our roles were reversed, would I have made it to college? Would I have made it through college while working full time? It's impossible to say. But in many situations, the answer would be "no".

And that's the key point. Is it possible to rise above adversity and succeed without help? Of course. But social policy shouldn't be based on the extraordinary exceptions, however convenient that may be for the comfortable.

So the challenge before us is this: identify the true barriers to achievement, and develop policies to address them. I suspect that such an approach would see racial preferences wither and die, while other measures -- primarily, class -- step up to replace them. Extra help for poor students would both address the real cause of disparity and, as a pleasant side effect, increase minority representation and performance.

And our kids? Big vocabularies. Further, one thing we discovered is that to them a concept is a concept. "Tree" is a concept, but so is "black hole." As long as both are explainable, one isn't drastically more intimidating or difficult to grasp than the other. Children teach themselves to talk; they're wired to assemble seemingly unrelated pieces into a coherent whole with minimal clues. If you don't tell them it's complicated (and thus encourage them to give up), more often than not they'll surprise you with their depth of understanding.

Every child deserves that chance.

affirmative action, education, race, politics, midtopia