So one of the readers over at my blog (Sammy) sent me a link to a year long series in the Washington Post about the status of Black men. Here’s the quote from the first two paragraphs:

“What does it mean to be a black man? Imagine three African American boys, kindergartners who are largely alike in intelligence, talent and character, whose potential seems limitless. According to a wealth of statistics and academic studies, in just over a decade one of the boys is likely to be locked up or headed to prison. The second boy — if he hasn’t already dropped out — will seriously weigh leaving high school and be pointed toward an uncertain future. The third boy will be speeding toward success by most measures.

Being a black man in America can mean inhabiting a border area between possibility and peril, to feel connected to, defined by, even responsible for each of those boys — and for other black men. In dozens of interviews, black men described their shared existence, of sometimes wondering whether their accomplishments will be treated as anomalies, their individuality obscured by the narrow images that linger in the minds of others.”

Overall, the introductory article is good. There are a few statistics that are either misinterpreted or wrong, but for the most part the article reflects what I think are the common views on the “problems, perils, and prospects” of Black men. I am admittedly leery of some of the save the Black man rhetoric because, even though it is well intentioned, some of it can be very patriarchal. I don’t think that the first article in this series falls into that trap. The only trap it falls into is the trap of talking about Black men as if they live in a vacuum. To talk about Black men as if they have a a completely autonomous existence from Black women and the larger society misses the point. That sort of framing makes it look like Black men just develop themselves without any outside influence from other race/gender groups. I don’t want to be too harsh though because this is just the first in a very long series, and there are a few places in the article where the author does talk about some of the social forces impacting Black men.

What I would like to do with your help (You gotta let me know when these article come out, as I don’t have Washington Post access.) is take on a particular problem or issue related to the articles. In other words, I’ll let you know what the statistics say, and what sociologists say. (I suspect my guest posting time at Alas will be over by the time these articles come out, so you’ll have to get over to my blog to check out the other entries.)

Here are a few of the topics I expect the Washington post Series to take on: Murder, Imprisonment, Unemployment, Single Parent Homes, Poverty, HIV, Life Expectancy, Parenting, and Pop Culture Images. Even if they do not take on these issues, I will because these are definitely some of the problem areas for some Black men. I am also going to compare Black men to other race gender groups so you can get a sense of how the data compares.

I’m going to go ahead today and start with Black men and graduation/drop out rates.

Before we can talk about Back men and their graduation rates, it is important to place this in a larger context. The graph above looks at racial variations in high school and college graduation. (Asians, who are not included in these charts have a slightly higher graduate rate than Whites, and I could not fin data on American Indians.). The good news is that the drop out rate for Blacks has fallen over the past 30 years and the graduation rate has increased. Here are two charts depicting these trends. Even though the trends are good, the gap stopped closing in the mid 1990s and persists today.

So What About Black Men?

Black Male Primary and Secondary School Performance

The data presented above is disaggregated by race but not by gender and race simultaneously. So what happens if we look at Black males compared to other race gender groups: how are they fairing in school? In 2001 the National Center For Education Statistics Released this report, which details school performance by race and gender. This report compares boys and girls throughout the educational process.

Although my primary focus here is on drop out and graduation rates, I thought it would be useful to include a discussion of a few other issues related to educational achievement. On most measures of early development, Black males and females are relatively similar, and on most measures Black students tend to perform better than Latinos and worse than Whites (Reports for Asians and American Indians are not included). One area where Black boys fair poorly is in their likelihood of repeating a grade. 12.2% of Black boys ages 5-12 had repeated a grade (a higher rate than any other race gender group). This compares to 10.8% of Hispanic boys, 7.1% of Black girls, 6.9% of White boys, 6.7% of Hispanic girls, and 4.4% of White girls. When it came to fighting at school or carrying weapons, Black boys were also considerably more like than any other race/gender group to report doing this, but they were significantly less likely to use alcohol, cigarettes, or marijuana than their male counterparts. They were also less likely to be offered, sold, or given an illegal drug than their male counterparts (but more likely than their female counterparts). In fact, the only race/gender group less likely to use cigarettes or alcohol are Black girls.

The drop out statistics show Black men to be somewhere in the middle of the pack. 13% of Black males 16-24 had dropped out of high school, compared to 31.6% of Hispanic males, 22% of Hispanic females, 9% of Black females, 7.9% of White males, and 6.7% of White females. So when it comes to high school completion rates. Black males are not at the top of the pack, and they are not at the bottom.

The most dramatic problem facing Black men, when it comes to education, is in the areas of college enrollment and completion. When it comes to college enrollment, the gap between Black men and other groups is sizable. In a 2004 issue of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education sociologist Obie Clayton argues that the low enrollment of Black men in college can be directly related to how Black males are treated earlier in their educational careers. He cites several major areas of concern:

1)The type of academic and career counseling Black males receive in high school. 2) The expectations high school teachers, counselors, parents and other adults have of them. 3)Lack of exposure to college-preparatory curriculum. 4)The preparation of their teachers. 5) Their family’s financial standing. 6) Their self-identity and overall attitude toward education and scholarship. 7) Their assessment of jobs and pay available with a high school degree or less, in comparison to a college degree.

My own assessment would be that on some of these issues, 4&5 in particular, Black males and females would not be differentially situated. However, I suspect that the expectations of teachers, counselors, and relatives have a profound impact on Black male college enrollment and high school performance. Clayton and his coauthors, Cynthia Hewitt and Eddie Gaffney, also argue that White female teachers in particular are prone to label Black male students as discipline problems.

The other elephant in the room is the mass incarceration of Black men. In this issue of Contexts Magazine sociologists Bruce Western and Becky Pettit argue that the the wide scale incarceration of Black men is contributing to an increasing divide between Whites and Blacks. Obie Clayton agrees. What should be duly noted is that these same Black male students are less likely to use illegal drugs, but more likely to be arrested for possession of drugs, abuse of drugs, and almost all other drug related charges.

I do think that when it comes to college we are in a crisis, when it comes to Black male enrollment and graduation, but I also think Latino/as are in an even worse crisis. I am not trying to distract from the problems related to Black men, but I have to wonder why the very poor academic performance Latino/as (men and women) is not as well publicized. What we do know is that young Black boys start out with very high expectations, and they like school, but somewhere along the way something happens. Recent studies have found that the “acting White theory” (the notion that doing good in school is a White thing) is not the primary reason for lower performance among Black males. My own sense of this is that the larger cultural expectations cause the funneling of Black boys away from gifted and college prep programs and into special education programs. Then, as Black boys grow into men the labels “less intelligent” and “trouble maker” become internalized. The school administrators, teachers, community members, parents, and other relatives all play a role in shaping this image of Black males. It’s also embedded in the popular culture, where Black men are more likely to be portrayed as violent than intelligent. It doesn’t help that definitions of “manliness” also contributes to this problem. When young Black men are encouraged to be the biggest, baddest, and the toughest, they often end up replicating negative behaviors (behaviors that many young White men can get away with–in particular using or distributing drugs).

So there you have it. Black boys seem to start out very slightly behind Black girls, moderately behind White boys and girls, and well ahead of their Latino/a counterparts. By the time they reach the college level Black men have fallen well behind Black women, and are now performing at the same level as Latinos (men).

I’ll be back with another post on Black men when the next article in the series comes out.

Hugo - who, needless to say, I have a lot of respect for - posted his endorsements for various political races in California, including the Democratic Party primary race for Lt. Governor in California. Hugo endorsed John Garamendi over his two opponents, Jackie Speier and Liz Figueroa. One of Hugo’s readers, Kyle, objected in comments:

How can you call yourself a feminist and vote for Garamendi? No one in that race has done more for women than Jackie Speier. She created the Office of Women’s Health in the Department of Health Services, she authored the Contraceptive Equity Act, and even carried the resolution adopting the ERA in California. Her list of accomplishments in this area goes on and on, unlike those of her competitor.

Kyle’s criticism is over-the-top; “How can you call yourself a feminist and…” type criticisms should be reserved for serious acts of sexism or anti-feminism, and I don’t think that voting for one feminist-friendly candidate rather than another qualifies.

In a new post, Hugo replied to Kyle’s criticism like this:

Feminism makes some serious political and personal claims on my life. That’s as it should be. But I don’t think that feminists must automatically vote for female candidates when they are running against equally qualified men.

Huh? Kyle didn’t say that Hugo should vote for Speier because she’s female. Kyle said Hugo should vote for Speier because she has the best record of feminist accomplishments.

But what Kyle never said, I’ll say: When all else is equal, feminists should always vote for a female candidate over a male candidate. There, now that I’ve said it - thus saving Hugo’s argument from the horrors of strawmanhood :-P - let’s continue reading Hugo’s reply:

Yes, I recognize that men still hold most elected offices. We can and should do more to encourage women to run. But that shouldn’t mean that a progressive woman has an automatic claim on feminist support when she runs against an equally progressive male candidate.

Why not? The two candidates are equal in their policies, but the female candidate (if elected) will slightly improve the problem of too few women in elected office. That makes her the better candidate, from a feminist point of view.

If you think about it, it sure puts women of color in a difficult position! If you’re a feminist Latina, does that mean you must vote for Liz Figueroa? Once we start playing identity politics, things get nasty fast.

Again, Hugo is attacking a strawman. Kyle never said “women must vote for women candidates” or anything approximating that; to extend from Kyle’s position (which was - paraphrasing - “feminists should vote for the candidate who has done the most for feminist issues”) to “people of color must vote for people of color” is illogical.

As for me, I don’t believe that “people of color must vote for people of color,” any more than I believe “women must vote for women.” I do think that, if the candidates are otherwise equally good, anti-racists should support a candidate of color over a white candidate. Why would we endorse a white male candidate, if we could choose someone who is just as good in every way, but who also helps solve the problem of overrepresentation of white men in elected office?

Now, if they’re not just as good in every way, then that changes things. Hugo, for instance, says that he favors John Garamendi because Garamendi is better on environmental issues. That’s fine; I’m not saying that feminists can’t support a white male candidate whose politics are better.

But I resent the hell out of the notion that feminism requires that all else being equal, one always must vote for a woman.

I get that Hugo resents it. I just don’t understand why.

I doubt Hugo would say that total sexblindness or total colorblindness makes for good public policy; in a racist and sexist society, the “blindness” approach often translates into not doing anything to fight the results of racism and sexism. So why should progressives be sexblind or colorblind in the voting booth?

In a world in which our political rulers are disproportionately white and male, supporting non-white and female candidates rather than otherwise equal white male candidates addresses a real and important problem. Shouldn’t we take that into account when we vote - not as the only factor we consider, but as one of many factors we consider?

* * * Please Note * * *
Comments on “Alas” are sometimes heavily moderated. If you want to avoid that, you can post comments on the identical post at Creative Destruction.

Since it’s a magazine that’s pretty solidly liberal, and which usually avoids overt issue cartoons on its cover, I was pretty surprised by the current New Yorker cover, which seems to me to be a pretty blatantly anti-affirmative action piece.

The drawing, by Edward Sorel (one of my favorite current illustrators), is entitled “musical chairs” and shows a bunch of young folks in graduate gowns playing musical chairs.The most central three figures are a white man with a frightened, vulnerable expression surrounded by two smirking, devious-looking figures, one a black man and one a white woman; the black man and white woman have both gotten seats, meaning the central white male figure is out of the game.

In the background, this general theme is repeated - distressed white men, aggressive women or blacks - plus a black woman and a white woman struggle with each other for control of the same chair. (Less prominently positioned, two probably-white guys on the sides of the image have gotten chairs and are happy). In the foreground, a white male tenured professor happily controls the music.

I keep on thinking “surely they wouldn’t have.” But the “look how affirmative action hurts white men” interpretation of the cover is so obvious, it’s hard to imagine how Sorel and the New Yorker editors could have missed it.

This Rolling Stone article by Robert Kennedy Jr. - arguing that if it weren’t for Republican dirty tricks (mostly aimed at preventing Black voters from voting) and other forms of cheating, John Kerry would have won Ohio in 2004 and thus, won the Presidential election - is sure refresh the rage a lot of lefites (not just Democrats) have for the Republican party. The article is very long (and, refreshingly, well-footnoted), but if you want there’s a “highlights” version posted on Daily Kos.

But you should also read this Mother Jones artcle by Marc Hertsgaard from November 2005, which examines much of the same material from a more skeptical view. Although Hersgaard is convinced that the Republicans tried to suppress the vote in many instances, it’s not clear that anti-Democratic acts by the Republicans added up to enough votes to have turned the election. It’s possible that the Republicans cheated, and that Bush legitimately won the 2004 election.

For instance, the Rolling Stone article makes much of an incident in which a non-existent terrorist threat caused ballots to be counted in secret:

The most transparently crooked incident took place in Warren County. In the leadup to the election, Blackwell had illegally sought to keep reporters and election observers at least 100 feet away from the polls. (190) The Sixth Circuit, ruling that the decree represented an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment, noted ominously that ”democracies die behind closed doors.” But the decision didn’t stop officials in Warren County from devising a way to count the vote in secret. Immediately after the polls closed on Election Day, GOP officials — citing the FBI — declared that the county was facing a terrorist threat that ranked ten on a scale of one to ten. The county administration building was hastily locked down, allowing election officials to tabulate the results without any reporters present.

In fact, there was no terrorist threat. The FBI declared that it had issued no such warning, and an investigation by The Cincinnati Enquirer unearthed e-mails showing that the Republican plan to declare a terrorist alert had been in the works for eight days prior to the election. Officials had even refined the plot down to the language they used on signs notifying the public of a lockdown.

That seems damning. But here’s what Rolling Stone isn’t telling us (from the Mother Jones article):

Now to Warren County, where a non-existent terrorist threat allegedly covered up secret counting of ballots. The skeptics are right that the FBI denied issuing any warning. But it’s not true that votes were counted in secret, say both Susan Johnson, the Republican board of elections director, and Sharon Fisher, the Democratic deputy director. Not only were Johnson and Fisher present, so were the four elections board members (two Democrats, two Republicans) and an additional observer from each party. “What brought this to a head,” said Johnson, “was a complaint by a reporter from the Cincinnati Enquirer, who wrote that she wasn’t allowed to observe the vote. But reporters have never been allowed into our counting room before.”

Fitrakis responds that the goal of the lockdown was not to prevent Democrats from observing the count, “it was to divert ballots to an unauthorized warehouse where [Republicans] could manipulate the vote.” He claims to have witnesses who, if subpoenaed, will reveal where that warehouse is. But what exactly would that prove?

Since the Rolling Stone report was published many months after the Mother Jones article, I would expect the Rolling Stone article to rebut, or at least acknowledge, these points. That there were apparently five Democratic Party officials present is too important a fact to be left out of this story, and it was dishonest of Rolling Stone to not mention this aspect of the story.

On the other hand, many of the complaints seem legitimate (as the Mother Jones piece acknowledges) - especially complaints about Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who used his position to try and prevent Democratic voters from voting. Here’s an example cited in both articles (the quote is from the MJ article):

Even prominent Ohio Republicans distanced themselves from other manifestly unfair directives. Take provisional ballots, which by law must be offered to any voter turned away at the polls (say, because the voter’s name doesn’t appear on registration rolls). Blackwell directed that a provisional ballot would count only if cast in the proper precinct…not just the proper county, as before. It was a recipe for chaos, given that some polling places included numerous different precincts, not to mention the fact that Blackwell had re-organized precincts throughout the state, leaving many voters confused (intentionally?) about where to appear on election day. Some election officials made it clear they would disregard the ruling, including Robert Bennett, who chaired both the Cuyahoga County elections board and the Ohio Republican Party. Blackwell threatened to remove Bennett from the board and his directive stood. In the end, an estimated 16,000 provisional ballots went uncounted.

Blackwell also served as the chair of Bush’s re-election committee in Ohio. That’s a conflict of interest too huge to be defensible.

Another big question is the polls. It’s well-known that exit polls showed a likely win for Kerry. There is virtually no chance that the discrepancy between the polls and the vote count occurred by chance; either the polls were bad, or the vote count was. The most popular explanation, repeated by the MJ article, is that Republican voters are systematically less likely to talk to pollsters:

And is it really so strange to imagine that Bush supporters…who tend to distrust the supposedly liberal news media…might not answer questions from pollsters bearing the logos of CBS, CNN, and the other news organizations financing the polling operation?

But the RS article writes:

In fact it was Democrats, not Republicans, who were more disinclined to answer pollsters’ questions on Election Day. In Bush strongholds, Freeman and the other researchers found that fifty-six percent of voters completed the exit survey — compared to only fifty-three percent in Kerry strongholds.(38) ”The data presented to support the claim not only fails to substantiate it,” observes Freeman, ”but actually contradicts it.”

What’s more, Freeman found, the greatest disparities between exit polls and the official vote count came in Republican strongholds. In precincts where Bush received at least eighty percent of the vote, the exit polls were off by an average of ten percent. By contrast, in precincts where Kerry dominated by eighty percent or more, the exit polls were accurate to within three tenths of one percent — a pattern that suggests Republican election officials stuffed the ballot box in Bush country.

(This is a question that would be easy to settle empirically this November; just hire a polling firm to do exit polling while dressing some of the pollsters in uniforms with a CBS logo, others in uniforms with a Foxnews logo, and still others in uniforms labeled “Jones polling corporation” or something like that. The results should show if a systematic bias caused by “CNN” logos on pollsters actually exists.)

I don’t know if Bush really won Ohio in 2004. It seems clear that Blackwell and the Republicans did everything they could to prevent heavily-Democratic areas - which in practice usually means Black areas - from having a fair and equal chance to vote and to have their votes counted. But whether or not Bush “lost” - which probably can never be proved well enough to convince the mainstream media - isn’t relaly important.

The system clearly needs reforming. It shouldn’t take proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Kerry won Ohio in 2004 to justify a major overhauling. The mere fact that there is room for reasonable doubt - and that so much of what’s going on is obviously dirty, whether or not it led to a difference in who won - strikes a significant blow to the legitimacy of the US electoral system.

Additionally, the extent to which vote-blocking in the USA remains racist should be emphasized, not covered up. The Democrats need to realize that they are the black party, by which I mean they are the party that would never, ever win elections if not for the Black vote. It’s time for Democrats to step up and begin screaming in fury every time Republicans attempt dirty tricks - and to point out the racist nature of many of those dirty tricks.

The much-talked about reforms to election machinery should happen, but that won’t be enough. What’s needed is elected officials in charge of all aspects of voting who are not permitted to be affiliated with any political party, let along in charge of a particular candidate’s campaign, in which election monitors (including those from abroad) are legally allowed to watch and document every step of the election process; in which open access laws call for every email, piece of paper and meeting by election officials to be open-access; and in which systematic tampering with access to voting is punishable with serious prison terms. We are not a democratic nation as long as the odds of your vote being counted are correlated with the color of your skin.

Finally, I worry that leftists have focused on the machinery more than they should, and not enough on process issues. As I wrote in January, referring to this interview with a Florida professor, “DeHaven-Smith argues, persuasively, that the real problem in Florida wasn’t just bad technology; it was a system in which partisans with a strong stake in the outcome of elections, are in charge of administrating elections, and also in charge of investigating problems afterwards. This creates a strong bias against both fair elections, and very little motive for anyone to strive for absolute honesty in vote-counting.”

Also worth reading: Transcript of a Democracy Now! interview with two lefties who have taken different sides of the “did Kerry win Ohio?” debate.

* * * Please Note * * *
“Alas” threads are sometimes heavily moderated. If you’d like to avoid all that, you can leave a comment on the identical post at Creative Destruction.

In a recent post about affirmative action in India we had a relatively good discussion going in the comments section, but what I realized is that most people don’t have a real understanding of what affirmative action is and how it is actually implemented. Of course, the reason most people don’t know what it is or how it is used is because most people have never sat on a university admissions committee, or they have never been responsible for making hiring decisions in a corporate or educational setting. Having been involve in a few hiring decisions and having been on an admissions committee, I have a little experience, I thought I would share a little about how these committees work. One of the first things that people should know is that affirmative action is used not only for race. Other factors such as national origin, gender, veteran’s status, and age. (For the sake of brevity, I’m only going to discuss hiring, and not admissions.)

When most universities (not all but most) hire faculty members, they asked that job candidates send their resumes directly to the head of the search committee or the head of the department. Once applications are received candidates are sent a small postcard asking about their basic demographic information, including race and gender (and often a few other questions…like how did you hear about the job, are you a veteran and so on).  That card is then sent back to the human resources department or affirmative action compliance office on campus. The search committee does not see this card, and the race and gender of candidates is never given to the hiring committee.

In the mean time, the hiring committee reviews applications. In both of the committees I have been on there was an initial screening that weeded out unqualified candidates and less qualified candidates. How did we decide who was qualified? It depended on the particular search, but several key issues were…did they have the right area of study, could they teach the classes we were looking for, were they committed to research (at the research school), did they have publications, and would they be done with their dissertation or at least very close to being done. At this stage race and/or gender were not discussed much at all because it was evident that the candidates were not qualified for the particular position described. Once we had a “long short list,” which consisted of our top 10 (or so) candidates. We went through their files more thoroughly to look for other possible problems or prospects that may have been overlooked. In one case, we ended the search because we only had 1 candidate who we thought was qualified for the position. This person was a person of color, but we knew that bringing in one person would not pass the muster with the compliance office or the higher level administrators. There is a strong expectation that at least 3 candidates be brought in for an interview, and there were not 3 in the applicant pool who were qualified. In both cases we did discuss race once we had a long short list (The were not many substantive discussions of gender, as women candidates were well represented in the departments.) Both departments had a severe underrepresentation of racial minorities…one department had all Whites, the other had 3 people of color. People on the committee did not agree about how much of a factor race should play, but it was unanimous on both committees that it would be “good” if we ultimately hired a person of color since the department was not diverse.

But there was a major obstacle when it came to considering race; we did not know the race of the candidates. For the most part it is easy to figure out what gender people are from their applications, so it would be untrue to say that the process is gender blind. Race can sometimes be determined from a close look at the application, and in some cases a references letter would let people know the race of the candidate. In the committees I was on, many people thought they knew the race of the candidates but were wrong in several cases. I say this because I have met some of the candidates after the fact since the world of sociology is relatively small. (I suspect this would not be the case in corporate settings where resumes and applications are significantly shorter and have significantly less information. It is not unusual to have applications that are over 30 pages, including references, teaching evals and so on.) So unless it was readily apparent from the application, we could not determine race, which makes it very difficult to use race as a factor in the hiring process.

Once the top candidates are announced, their names are passed on to the university’s affirmative action compliance or human resources office. The office checks the race and gender of the applicants based on the cards returned to them…many of these are not returned and they are optional. The compliance office usually approves the search. The final candidates might not be approved if the department has a long history of not bringing in diverse applicants. If a search is not approved, the compliance office may ask the department to try to increase the diversity of the applicant pool by extending the search or advertising in other outlets. If the department still doesn’t get a diverse group of candidates, then the search could continue as is or be extended. The whole process of revising a search is rare, but not unprecedented.

Once candidates get to campus they go through a long interview process (which I think is the part of the process that is most opened to racism or sexism). I can say that some people in the interview process strongly believed that if two candidates were equally qualified that candidates from underrepresented minority groups should be offered the position. However, few people thought two candidates were equally qualified. After the interview, most people had a clear favorite candidate, and the department ranked candidates 1-2-3 and decided if they were hirable. It is very difficult get people 20 some people to agree so this part of the process is very difficult. The reason I think the part of the process is most opened to racism is because race seems to dramatically impact how candidates are viewed face to face. But people are allowed to have their biases and do not have to give any particular reason as to why they oppose a candidate. Since the particular hiring committees, I was on didn’t result in hires, I can’t say exactly how the process would have played in those particular cases.

This is actually why I think affirmative action is not particularly powerful at ending discrimination. It is very limited in its scope. In the cases I have seen the only real stop gap on discrimination is the compliance office. This office also does a very good job at tracking hiring trends, which lets a school know if there is a pattern of exclusion, but as far as the decisions, people are pretty much left up to their own devices to decide on which candidates that they like, which of course means that they still have their biases.

I give this very long drawn out discussion to let people know how affirmative action in hiring actually works in at least one real life case. There are no quotas and no hiring requirements. In fact, quotas have been illegal since 1978, when the US Supreme Court ruled that quota based affirmative action was not constitutional (See University of California Regents v. Bakke 1978). So what constitutes affirmative action? Here are a few examples taken from sociologist Barbara Reskin’s book The Realities of Affirmative Action:setting goals and time tables, identifying under utilized talent, using recruitment methods that reach the whole pool of candidates, fully utilizing employees skills, forging alliances with school and community groups to increase pool of possible workers, monitoring sex and race differences in hiring and promotions, self evaluation, advertising as an equal opportunity employer.

What is fascinating about most of these techniques is that they have little or nothing to do with the application review process. Instead they focus more on reaching the full applicant pool, and monitoring overall trends in recruitment. The notion that White applicants or male applicants are put at the back of the pool or ignored is incorrect. Additionally, the idea that women, Blacks, Latinos, or American Indians are put at the front of the pool and some how treated better is also incorrect. In fact, many of the biggest supporters of affirmative action are White business owners and educational leaders, who are mostly male. Most businesses have voluntary affirmative action programs. There have never been laws passed or executive orders issued requiring any type of affirmative action in hiring or promotions for private companies. The reason big businesses want affirmative action is because they benefit tremendously from a diverse workforce, and the impression (often false impression, but image counts) that they do not discriminate. If affirmative action was harmful to Whites, why would White business owners institute affirmative action policies on a voluntary basis.

Having been involved in a few hiring committees and one admissions committee I can assure people that affirmative action doesn’t exclude Whites, especially those highly qualified Whites. In fact, my personal sense is that the very limited scope of most affirmative action programs allows discrimination to remain firmly entrenched in the hiring and promotions process. But it is important for people to know exactly how a hiring process works in order for htem to understand the realities of affirmative action.

I’m not posting this entry at Rachel’s Tavern, but it will be posted at Ally Work if you would like to help me debate with some affirmative action opponents.

Criticizing the Male Privilege Checklist in his livejournal, Chuck writes:

25. There are value-neutral clothing choices available to me; it is possible for me to choose clothing that doesn’t send any particular message to the world.

Really? All clothing denotes class, IMO. I don’t own a single item of designer clothing. What does that say about me as a man?

Chuck’s point about class is well taken.

I would argue, however, that there are more “does this send the wrong message?” wardrobe concerns for women than men. “Will this look too sexy?,” “will this make me look unfeminine,” etc.. As Rougewench wrote in Chuck’s comments, “the vast majority of clothing choices for men, with the exception of what you might find in a clubwear catalog (read as International Male) do not denote messages as to the morality of the wearer.”

In light of all this, I feel I should rewrite item 25, but I’m not certain what the new wording should say. If anyone has any suggestions, please post them in comments.

Of course, there is a male disadvantage that’s a counterpart to the female disadvantage - women are far freer to wear so-called “male” clothing styles without harassment than men are to wear women’s (i.e., a woman in slacks is nothing unusual in the US, a man in a dress is often harassed and sometimes worse). I think sexism harms women more than men, on the whole, but it’s clear to me that men are hurt by this system, too.

26. My wardrobe and grooming are relatively cheap and consume little time.

Metrosexuals, even? I know men who spend an hour every day getting ready.

Yes, there are exceptions to the rule. Exceptions do not represent the whole, however, and do not invalidate the general point.

Besides, being a metrosexual (that is, a man who likes very fashionable clothing and grooms himself with great care) is a choice. But for many women, not only social pressure (which is bad enough) but their jobs require them to spend more on clothing than their male counterparts, regardless of what they’d prefer. The ordinary work wardrobe of an office or retail worker, most of whom don’t have the option of quitting their jobs, is cheaper for men than women - and the disparity is larger still when the costs of hair and makeup are included.

(This is one of a number of posts responding to Chuck’s critique. You can use the category archive to see all posts related to the Male Privilege Checklist.)

Please head over to Abyss2Hope and visit the First Carnival Against Sexual Violence! Marcella has done a great job putting this together (which is typical of her, of course).

And speaking of Marcella, huge thanks to both Marcella and Earlbecke for their amazing guest-postings here over the last month. I’m a big fan of both Earlbecke’s blog, Definition, and Marcella’s blog, Abyss2Hope, and I’d definitely hope that “Alas” readers will add both their blogs to your blogrolls or bookmarks or RSS feeds or whatever it is you use.

Welcome to the Nuthouse is calling for submissions for the fifteenth Carnival of the Feminists. Nut’s happy to see any submission from a feminist point of view, but she’s extra-happy to see posts discussing disability and feminist issues.

And VeganKid is taking submissions for the third Big Fat Carnival. Like Nut, VeganKid has a theme in mind - SEX! - and another theme in mind - size and gender. But VK would also accept any posts that fit into the Big Fat Carnival’s general theme.

Both of these carnivals have deadlines coming up in just a few days, so get those submissions in!

(Also, if you’d be interested in hosting a future Big Fat Carnival, please email me!)

UPDATE: The Fifth Radical Women of Color Carnival is taking submissions, too!