Opposition to affirmative action shows, once again, that Chinese and Indians are natural constituents of the Republican Party

In November of 2012, in the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama's victory over Mitt Romney, many of the so-called pundits in the mainstream media opined that the Republican Party was doomed unless it attempted to broaden its support among blacks and Latinos. One way to do this, according to the pundits, was to support an immigration bill that, among other things, provided a general amnesty to illegal Latino aliens in the US. In a blog post from that time, I pointed out that it would be suicidal for the Republican Party to support citizenship for a group that would eventually find its home in the Democratic Party. Rather, I wrote, the Republican Party should seek to gain support among ethnic groups that were more natural constituencies of the Republican Party:

In my opinion, [immigrants from India, China, and Russia] are natural constituents of the Republican Party. My experience is that they have conservative family values. They believe that one should get ahead through hard work, not government handouts. They understand the financial mess the US finds itself in and find it repugnant. Their value system is decidedly entrepreneurial and meritocratic. Statements like President Obama's "You didn't build that" are counterintuitive to them. ... In sum, the Republican Party should forget about pandering to Latinos and blacks and instead promote real, global diversity by advocating for more non-Latino, non-black immigration into Northern California. Once these new immigrants from Asia and Europe are absorbed into the American melting pot, they will be far more likely to support the many strands of conservative thought that find their natural home in the Republican Party.

The potential that the Republican Party has to increase support among voters of Chinese, Indian, and Eastern European descent has once again become evident as the California Democratic Party has sought to reintroduce affirmative action into the admission process at California public universities through constitutional amendment SCA-5. Anyone familiar with the demographic makeup of the University of California knows that students of Chinese and Indian descent are vastly overrepresented relative to their numbers in the general population. This overrepresentation is not the result of affirmative action, but of the strong support of parents and the hard work and academic excellence of students who come from the families of these ethnic groups. The amendment being pushed by the Democratic Party threatens to reintroduce other considerations besides meritocratic ones into the admissions process. If Chinese and Indians are overrepresented now, it is guaranteed that their enrollment numbers will fall if race-based considerations are reintroduced into the admissions process. For that reason, there has been an outcry of opposition from the Asian-American community against SCA-5, causing it to be tabled. As reported by the San Jose Mercury:

Constitutional Amendment 5 passed the state Senate in late January on a party-line vote [that is, with Democrats voting in favor, and Republicans voting against], but ran into an unexpected wave of resistance -- mostly, from Asian-Americans concerned that affirmative action policies would unfairly disadvantage Asian applicants to the intensely competitive University of California system. ...

After an about-face by three Asian-American senators who voted for the bill in January, Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, is putting the bill on hold -- and making no promises about its revival.

"I'd like to bring it back," Hernandez said. "I believe in it. I believe we need to make sure there's equal opportunity for everyone in the state of California."

Last week, saying they had received thousands of calls and emails from constituents, Senators Leland Yee, D-San Francisco; Ted Lieu, D-Torrance; and Carol Liu, D-La Cañada/Flintridge asked Assembly Speaker John Perez to stop the bill from advancing any further.

"As lifelong advocates for the Asian-American and other communities, we would never support a policy that we believed would negatively impact our children," they wrote in a letter to Perez. ...

Hernandez and others have said that misinformation about what affirmative action would mean -- such as racial quotas for new freshmen -- spread quickly, stoking parents' fears about their children's chances getting into UC, the state's public research university system.

We may conclude from this story that the California Democratic Party has an ongoing desire to "bring back" affirmative action and that they believe that Asians are so dumb that they can be convinced that they have been duped by "misinformation" about what the reintroduction of affirmative action would actually mean for their children.

The fact that Democrats believe that Asians are so dumb is just another aspect of the general prejudice against Asian- and Indian-Americans that permeates the Democratic Party and its supporters on the left. This prejudice manifests itself in a couple of other ways:

1. An unwillingness to consider Asian diversity to be real diversity. To Democrats, the fact that there are so many Asians at the University of California is something not to be celebrated, but to be condemned, since higher numbers of Asian students work to the disadvantage of Democrats' preferred victim groups, blacks and Latinos.
2. The attitude that young high-tech engineers, many of whom are young Asian or Indian or Eastern European men, are not successful contributors to be welcomed to the community, but just increase "income inequality," drive up housing prices, and clog traffic by driving around in "google buses." See my blog post I have to wonder about Rebecca Solnit for an example of just this kind of racist xenophobia about "newcomers" arriving on visas from one of the leading lights of the San Francisco Left.

Of course, Asians would be wise to ignore suggestions by Democratic leaders that they have been misinformed and don't really know where their advantage lies. Instead, they should consider following the advice of Mei Mei Ho, president of a Los Angeles County GOP group:

The safeguard against SCA 5 ever passing is to diminish the Democrats' legislative majority, said Mei Mei Ho, president of a Los Angeles County GOP group. Republican legislators oppose SCA 5. She suggested Silicon Valley Chinese-Americans "adopt" GOP candidates -- sending them contributions -- in the Central Valley and Southern California swing districts.

And Republican leaders would be wise to encourage Asian- and Indian-Americans to reconsider their party affiliation in general and to think hard about which party represents the principles and virtues that are more closely aligned with their own.

Jesse has landed

In 2012 in a blog post entitled The Progressive War on Apple and Other High-Tech Companies, I wrote:

Does the President feel that workers in Silicon Valley are diverse enough? Or does the President believe that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton ought to be invited to Silicon Valley to work with ("strong-arm" is the more appropriate term) CEO's of high-tech companies to establish racial quotas for African-Americans and Hispanics in the engineering workforces of these companies? Can the President explain why Asian and Indian diversity does not count as real diversity?

In 2013, in a blog post entitled The coming impact of disparate impact, I wrote:

Expect disparate impact doctrine to be used by the Justice and Labor Departments and by trial lawyers to extort large settlements from Silicon Valley companies and to strong arm them into hiring more blacks, Hispanics, and women. The fact that the distribution of these groups in the high-tech industry is not the same as their distribution in the general population will be used as evidence that these companies engage in discriminatory employment practices. Yes, high-tech CEO's, despite the fact that you employ the most diverse workforce in the world, you are just a bunch of racist and sexist bigots!

As I have warned elsewhere, I fully expect that soon Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will descend on Silicon Valley to "work with" CEO's of high-tech companies to establish racial quotas for African-Americans and Hispanics in the engineering workforces of these companies.

Well, Jesse has landed:

Jackson led a delegation to Hewlett-Packard's annual shareholders meeting Wednesday to bring attention to Silicon Valley's poor record of including blacks and Latinos in hiring, board appointments and startup funding. ...

Earl "Butch" Graves Jr., president and CEO of Black Enterprise magazine, said Jackson is shining a light on the fact that technology companies don't come close to hiring or spending what is commensurate with the demographics of their customers.

"Hopefully, what Rev. Jackson is doing will bring attention to the 800-pound gorilla in the room that nobody wants to talk about. It's high time that gets addressed," Graves said.

It's widely recognized that the tech industry lacks diversity: About 1 in 14 tech workers is black or Latino, both in Silicon Valley and nationally. Blacks and Hispanics make up 13.1 and 16.9 percent of the U.S. population, respectively, according to the most recent census data.

Lacks diversity? I continue to be amazed at the fact that the presence of many Asian, Indian, and Russian engineers in Silicon Valley does not count for diversity. In a blog post from 2011 entitled To CNN, "Asian diversity" isn't real diversity, I wrote:

In a stupid recent article CNN frets that there may not be enough "diversity" in the workforces of high tech companies of Silicon Valley and subtly insinuates that this state is due to racism and sexism. CNN places great emphasis on one metric, namely, that blacks, Hispanics, and women are underrepresented among Silicon Valley workers, while ignoring the plain implication of a second metric, namely, that Asians are vastly overrepresented among these same workers. Apparently, "Asian" diversity does not count as real diversity. In order to have "real" diversity, in CNN's view, workers must be black or Hispanic or female.

Anyone who claims that there is not enough diversity in Silicon Valley has never worked here, has never walked up University Avenue in Palo Alto on a weekend night, has never walked into a bank in Fremont or down the aisles of the Great Mall Shopping Center in Milpitas. Anyone who has actually done these things knows from first hand experience that Silicon Valley is one of the most diverse places in the entire United States, if, by diversity, you mean a mix of individuals from all corners of the world, and not just from the select "victim" categories of blacks, Hispanics, and women.

In truth, the concern should not even be about "racial diversity," but about hiring the most qualified person regardless of race or other inessential characteristics. That's why I added a warning about the future of Silicon Valley if shakedown artists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (backed by Obama whining about "income inequality") were ever allowed to strong arm companies in the high-tech industry into using racial quotas instead of objective meritocratic considerations in their hiring practices:

One thing is for certain. If high tech companies are ever strongarmed into instituting "diversity programs" to increase the number of Hispanics, blacks, and women in the ranks of the Silicon Valley workforce, it will be the death knell of the area's vibrant economy (the only thing that might be more damaging would be the unionization of the high-tech workforce). Instead of being allocated strictly on merit, jobs will be allocated based on the color of one's skin or gender (or seniority in unions). As I noted above, these are non-essential characteristics that have nothing to do with engineering talent. Any industry that bases its selection of workers on such non-essential characteristics is doomed to failure. You might as well pick me to play center for the Golden State Warriors on the assumption that enhancing the "diversity" of the team will lead them to an NBA title.

It is time for Silicon Valley executives to stand up and defend their hiring practices. These practices are meritocratic in nature and disregard such inessential characteristics as race, gender, sex, and sexual orientation. As Chief Justice John Roberts famously wrote, "[T]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." If Jesse Jackson is allowed to exercise his disgusting brand of racial coercion at high-tech companies, then we are seeing not the end, but just the beginning of racial discrimination in Silicon Valley.

Barack-etology

Maybe if Obama spent more time studying geopolitics and less time filling out his bracket (as he has done every year since 2009), and playing basketball and golf, his foreign policy with respect to countries like Ukraine and Syria would be less amateurish.

Feckless tyrant indeed

In a column in today’s Washington Post, Dana Milbank sarcastically accuses Republicans of being inconsistent when they condemn President Obama for being a tyrant at home while being a feckless weakling abroad:

President Obama is such a weak strongman. What’s more, he is a feeble dictator and a timid tyrant. That, at any rate, is Republicans’ critique of him. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Obama’s critics pivoted seamlessly from complaining about his overreach to fretting that he is being too cautious. Call it Operation Oxymoron. … In theory, it is possible for Obama to rule domestic politics with an iron fist and yet play the 98-pound weakling in foreign affairs. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense that one person would vacillate between those two extremes. A better explanation is Obama’s critics are so convinced that he is wrong about everything that they haven’t paused to consider the consistency of their accusations.

Milbank misses the point entirely. President Obama’s foreign policy is so weak precisely because he tries to make government do too much at home.

Just last week, Secretary of Defense Hagel announced cuts to the defense budget that would return the American military forces to pre-WWII levels. As the New York Times reports:

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the United States Army to its smallest force since before the World War II buildup and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets in a new spending proposal that officials describe as the first Pentagon budget to aggressively push the military off the war footing adopted after the terror attacks of 2001. The proposal, released on Monday, takes into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the political reality of a president who pledged to end two costly and exhausting land wars. A result, the officials argue, will be a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations. [emphasis added]

As Victor Hansen so eloquently wrote in his column today, there is a direct relationship between the fact that Obama has run the highest deficits of any President in American history and our inability to maintain our armed forces at a level adequate to deter aggression:

[Then] came the serial $1 trillion annual deficits, the surge in borrowing for redistributionist payouts, the monetary expansion and zero-interest rates, and finally the vast cuts in the military budget, all of which fleshed out the caricature of a newly isolationist and self-indulgent America.

Yes, President Obama is weak abroad precisely because of his overreach at home. The ideal chief executive is one who projects American strength abroad while leaving the private sector at home alone so that it can maximize its economic potential within the constraints of law. Obama is the exact antithesis of this, constantly meddling in and enfeebling the private sector and extending the soft totalitarianism of government involvement in everything at home. The inescapable outcome is an economy so paralyzed by uncertainty and a country overwhelmed with so much debt that it is no longer able to support the projection of US strength abroad.