Today’s anti-Semitism isn’t like the anti-Semitism of 100 or even 50 years ago. Overwhelmingly, it comes not from society’s winners but from its losers. Jews no longer press their noses against the gates of restrictive country clubs, Ivy League universities or white shoe law firms. Jews no longer yearn to be accepted by America’s elite WASP families. We already are. The man who currently occupies the White House watched with satisfaction as his eldest daughter became an Orthodox Jew. The woman he defeated watched happily as her daughter got married under a chuppah.
Today’s anti-Semitism emanates less from society’s elites than from the people who feel victimized by them. This doesn’t mean the new anti-Semitism isn’t dangerous. It doesn’t mean Jews shouldn’t respond with outrage and mobilization. But it does mean that, if only to protect ourselves, we must combat the economic and cultural dysfunction that is contributing to neo-Nazism’s rise.
Sunday’s Washington Post profiled six young men who marched for white supremacy in Charlottesville. It described victims of “an economy capsized, a job market contracted, a student-loan crisis erupted,” who found a scapegoat for their woes, and a sense of belonging, in organizations that preach hate. Matthew Parrott, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at age 15, grew up in a mobile home. At Indiana University, students from wealthier backgrounds “made fun of my accent and overbite and they called me ‘white trash’ and ‘hillbilly.’ I was never able to identify with a single person.” Until he found white supremacists. Peyton Oubre, from Metairie, Louisiana, couldn’t find a job after high school: “I could put in 500 applications and receive one call,” he said. He blames blacks for taking all the jobs. Tony Hovater, of Dayton, Ohio, grew radicalized while touring with his metal band through decaying, mostly white Rust Belt and Appalachian towns. “You see how a complete system failed a group of people,” he told the Post. Yet the media, he says, discusses only the African-American poor.
How to make well-meaning Americans into antisemites?
Make sure they read Peter Beinart’s Forward article…
Beinart, a light Zionist ‘intellectual’ has kindly revealed how American Jews reacted when they heard the “neo-Nazis” chant, “Jews will not replace us.” Some were fearful, but, Beinart asserts, many others were somehow amused by it. “Replace you? Where, behind the counter at Wendy’s? We’re successful, industrious, upper-middle class. You’re the dregs of society. Replace you? Don’t kid yourselves. When it comes to America’s class hierarchy, we replaced you and your kind long ago.”
One might advise Beinart that looking down on Goyim and calling them ‘neo Nazis’ and ‘supremacists’ while simultaneously engaging in his own tribal self-love, supremacist exercise is a very dangerous game.
Beinart claims that ‘white nationalists’ are largely a dysfunctional group of economy victims. “Studies show that in purely economic terms, white supremacists don’t differ much from the population as a whole. But they do differ from Jews, who are America’s wealthiest religious group.”
But “they [the ‘neo Nazis’] don’t just differ financially,” Beinart continues, “they differ culturally, too. They are far less likely to have been raised in stable homes.” Beinart then quotes a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center that points out that“one of the most common background characteristics [of ‘neo nazis’] is some kind of family disruption, whether that be divorce or parental abandonment, a parent becoming incarcerated, or substance abuse by one or both of the parents.”
Beinart apparently doesn’t know that Right wing thinkers blame the Jewish intelligentsia, largely the cultural Marxists, the Frankfurt School and Wilhelm Reich for the destruction of the Church, the eradication of family values, the obliteration of the patriarchal family and so on. Rightly or wrongly, the white nationalists see the Jewish elite as at the core of their plight. One would expect Beinart to make a minimal effort to learn the white nationalists’ argument before he writes about the topic.
In the most supremacist and stereotypical manner, Beinart counsels his fellow Jews to fool the goyim. “For synagogues, countering the conditions that produce neo-Nazism might involve assisting a church in a troubled area. Why? Because …white working-class Americans who attend church are less likely to experience divorce, addiction and financial distress.”
Beinart advises Jews to throw dollars at churches not because religion bonds the nation, but because it is good for the Jews. The church maintains the Goyim’s tranquillity and stops their kids from drifting toward “neo-Nazism.”
Beinart’s recipe for fixing American society is throwing money at white goyim. I really believe that someone should explain to Beinart that American society isn’t a zoo and white people aren’t monkeys.
Beinart ends his article recycling the usual Jewish Tikun Olam (fixing the world) mantra. “We (the Jews) answer hate by repairing the country in which we live.” This might be the time for Beinart, The Forward and their followers to stop trying to repair countries and the world. They would do better to self reflect. Probably a good place to start is by asking why all of that animosity has happened again, just 70 years after the liberation of Auschwitz.
Posted inAmerica, Jews|Comments Off on Peter Beinart: ‘The One Thing Jews Should Be Doing To Combat White Supremacy’
Ashley Jardina, a political scientist at Duke, puts it this way:
When the dominant status of whites relative to racial and ethnic minorities is secure and unchallenged, white identity likely remains dormant. When whites perceive their group’s dominant status is threatened or their group is unfairly disadvantaged, however, their racial identity may become salient and politically relevant.
White voters for whom racial identity is important include a minority faction of white supremacists, but as a whole they constitute a much broader and encompassing group. In an Aug. 16 essay for The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, Jardina wrote:
The whites marching on Charlottesville were only a small segment of a much larger population for whom the politics of white identity resonates. The vast majority of white Americans who feel threatened by the country’s growing racial and ethnic diversity are not members of the KKK or neo-Nazis. They are much greater in number, and far more mainstream, than the white supremacists who protested in Virginia over the weekend.
In a separate essay on the Post’s Monkey Cage site in March 2016, Tesler and Sides explained that
Both white racial identity and beliefs that whites are treated unfairly are powerful predictors of support for Donald Trump in the Republican primaries.
Once Trump secured this “white identifier” base — making him competitive in a multicandidate field — he was positioned to expand his traction among traditional Republicans, including a decisive majority of those who backed Mitt Romney, John McCain and George W. Bush.
What are the views of “white identifiers”?
According to Jardina, these voters
are more likely to think that the growth of racial or ethnic groups in the United States that are not white is having a negative effect on American culture.
And they are
much more likely to rank illegal immigration the most important issue facing the U.S. today, relative to the budget deficit, health care, the economy, unemployment, outsourcing of jobs to other countries, abortion, same-sex marriage, education, gun control, the environment or terrorism.
Perhaps most important, Jardina found that white identifiers are
an aggrieved group. They are more likely to agree that American society owes white people a better chance in life than they currently have. And white identifiers would like many of the same benefits of identity politics that they believe other groups enjoy.
In other words, most — though by no means all — white identifiers appear to be driven as much by anger at their sense of lost status as by their animosity toward other groups, although these two feelings are clearly linked.
Tesler argued last November, after the election, that the
Trump effect combined with eight years of racialized politics under President Obama, means that racial attitudes are now more closely aligned with white Americans’ partisan preferences than they have been at any time in the history of polling.
Just over a decade ago, political scientists were discounting the significance of white identity in elections.
Posted inAmerica|Comments Off on Donald Trump’s Identity Politics
Steve Sailer writes: “Winners are successful at portraying themselves as deserving their property. The Bible, for example, goes to great lengths to honor Abraham. The reverence paid to him is seen as justifying his distant heirs’ possession of the Holy Land. Conversely, the wickedness of the Canaanites, as recounted in their enemy’s book, explains why they didn’t get to keep their possessions.”
Posted inBible|Comments Off on Why Israel Belongs To The Jews
* And a popular alt-right argument says that, anti-immigration or anti-diversity views will always be frustrated in a democracy because … There is a majority constituted of (1) a minority of male deep cucks, plus (2) a majority of women (who mostly sub-consciously favour importing & encouraging more aggressive young males, very commonly ‘diverse’ ones)
It’s said that USA Trump 2016 was a unique one-off, because you had palpable alpha male candidate (very rare), against super-unpleasant corrupt female with male cuck entourage (worse than usual) … women were drawn to the alpha as well as men
It’s said this explains why anti-immigration etc tends to ‘peak’ around 40% of voters … whereas it is said that anti-immigration would win if women didn’t vote … and that voter profiles look like this
Male voter segments
1 – Oligarchs
2 – Cucks, oligarch fellow-travellers & opportunists
3 – Most males, who have a ‘rebel’ streak, & can be motivated to defeat the minority of 1+2 above
Female voters
1 – Overall tend to get along & go along with dominant oligarch policies
2 – When males around them are significantly cucked & gov-fostered feminist policies – alimony etc – are in place –
– (a) Women’s feminism etc will erupt but never satisfy the women, and
– (b) Women will be drawn to favour non-cucked young male arrivals / minorities – ‘welcome refugees’, & thus support the oligarch programme to import migrants / foster ‘diversity’, against indigenous rebel males … who will always seem ‘weak’ because they didn’t grab power
It is said that men are in fact more ‘shocked’ by migrant or minority crimes, rapes etc than women … women are biologically, sub-consciously drawn to having more young males around who will fight & compete, such men are more instinctively attractive to women, & now migrant / minority males have more of this secretly appealing aggressive image ‘women like the bad boys’
It is said that anti-immigration is basically a male interest … with women voting, anti-immigration cannot triumph, they say … It is said that women sub-consciously have little respect for men who do not seize power against the cucks-plus-women alliance … power-grabbing minorities or migrants are instinctively more attractive to them.
Posted inAlt Right|Comments Off on Anti-Immigration As Politics
Charlottesville has been a depth charge. The Israeli right was loath to condemn the white nationalists at the fringe of Trump’s base, and this has sent a shock through the American Jewish community. There is open argument about Israel; and it’s not going to end.
The best news is that the Forward, America’s leading liberal Jewish publication, published a piece by Naomi Dann of Jewish Voice for Peace last week equating Zionism with racism. That’s revolutionary. Time was when that argument was made by Arabs at the United Nations and then stifled as supposed anti-Semitism. Now it’s in the Forward, from the mouth of a Jew!
Dann says that white nationalist Richard Spencer was right when he expressed common cause with Israel, saying it’s an ethnocracy that discriminates in favor of a privileged group.
Richard Spencer, whose racist views are rightfully abhorred by the majority of the Jewish community, is holding a mirror up to Zionism and the reflection isn’t pretty.
Looking at Israel today, we can see a state premised on the privileging of one group, and all too often perpetuating the erasure and displacement of another. We also see an obsession with demographics and the maintenance of an ethnic majority.
Jane Eisner, from Jewish Boston
It’s a marvel that this piece even ran. Forward editor Jane Eisner then responded angrily to Naomi Dann, denouncing her as a member of “the radical group Jewish Voice for Peace” spreading untruths about Israel. Ouch! Hat’s off to Eisner for allowing the debate to happen. Even if she says it’s all lies.
We work hard to reflect a range of American Jewish opinion, which is why the piece and reaction to it was published. The free flow of ideas is to be cherished. But when a Jew even hints at comparing Israel to Nazis, it must be denounced.
The argument that Zionism is akin to Nazism is not new, and it’s never been correct. Its related equation – that Zionism is racism – was codified by the United Nations when it passed Resolution 3379 in 1975. Though hardly Israel’s best friend, the international body later came to its senses and overwhelmingly rescinded the resolution in 1991.
Eisner is an ardent Zionist. She believes that ideology is necessary to Jewish survival and that the current Israeli government is undoing Zionism (not expressing it) with its discriminatory policies and the occupation and “denial of Palestinian sovereignty.”
That such policies are done in the name of Zionism is painful, a perversion of the Zionist ideal. It is something that all Jews must reckon with. But the imperfections of reality do not negate the underlying fact that Zionism is not inherently racist and can — and, in fact, does — exist side-by-side with democracy.
It’s great that the Forward is hosting this conversation, because people can argue openly about whether Zionism is necessary. That’s all I’ve asked for; I believe the answer (No it’s an anachronism) will change US Jewry and crumble the Israel lobby. Norman Finkelstein once mocked the idea that Americans could or should argue about Zionism because Zionism might as well be “the name of a hairspray” to Americans. Good joke; but he was always wrong about this. People can argue about any idea that’s important, once it’s identified. And this toothpaste is not going back in the tube.
Eisner clearly believes that Jews are unsafe in America, and that’s why we need Zionism:
For Dann to write that Spencer is “holding a mirror up to Zionism and the reflection isn’t pretty” is especially perilous in the current political climate. The intimidating display of Nazi slogans and symbols in Charlottesville, Virginia, legitimized by the shocking statements of President Trump, are a chilling reminder that even in America, Jews are at risk simply because we are Jews.
We need to “recognize our shared vulnerability” and “strengthen our sense of solidarity,” Eisner says. Back to the monolith! Palestinian vulnerability just gets passing mention.
Also addressing the idea of Jewish vulnerability are writers Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon. Last week they published an “open letter to our fellow Jews, in the U.S., Israel, and around the world” declaring that Trump is an anti-Semite who is endangering Jews and it’s time for all Jews to denounce him.
Now he’s coming after you. The question is: what are you going to do about it? If you don’t feel, or can’t show, any concern, pain or understanding for the persecution and demonization of others, at least show a little self-interest. At least show a little sechel. At the very least, show a little self-respect.
To Steven Mnuchin, Gary Cohn, and our other fellow Jews currently serving under this odious regime: We call upon you to resign; and to the President’s lawyer, Michael D. Cohen: Fire your client.
To Sheldon Adelson and our other fellow Jews still engaged in making the repugnant calculation that a hater of Arabs must be a lover of Jews, or that money trumps hate, or that a million dollars’ worth of access can protect you from one boot heel at the door: Wise up.
“Boot heel at the door” is a Gestapo reference. In another traditional phrasing, the writers warn Trump’s Jewish family members Ivanka and Jared Kushner that if they don’t act, You’re dead to us.
To Jared Kushner: You have one minute to do whatever it takes to keep the history of your people from looking back on you as among its greatest traitors, and greatest fools; that minute is nearly past. To Ivanka Trump: Allow us to teach you an ancient and venerable phrase, long employed by Jewish parents and children to one another at such moments of family crisis: I’ll sit shiva for you. Try it out on your father; see how it goes.
Among all the bleak and violent truths that found confirmation or came slouching into view amid the torchlight of Charlottesville is this: Any Jew, anywhere, who does not act to oppose President Donald Trump and his administration acts in favor of anti-Semitism; any Jew who does not condemn the President, directly and by name, for his racism, white supremacism, intolerance and Jew hatred, condones all of those things.
Waldman and Chabon deserve a lot of respect because of their anti-occupation book Kingdom of Olives and Ashes, which contains anti- and non-Zionist voices. I disagree with them about the vulnerability of Jews in the United States. I don’t think history repeats itself; I think that chapter in the west is over and the belief in its endurance is atavistic. But I’m glad to have the debate; especially because that question is at the heart of Zionism.
Finally, here is Chemi Shalev in Haaretz, who is more in the Jane Eisner camp, warning that the Israeli right has shattered American Jewish solidarity with Israel by siding with the enemies of American Jews.
“Rash Embrace of Trump Accelerates the Jewish Schism” is the headline. Shalev says Netanyahu’s animosity toward “liberal, cosmopolitan, universalist Jews” is reminiscent of “the kind of anti-Jewish bile spouted by Jew-haters around the world, from David Duke to Viktor Orban.”
The delineation between the two opposing Jewish camps has never seemed clearer. On one side we have Netanyahu, many of his colleagues, the pro-settler lobby, an unfortunate proportion of Orthodox Jews, supporters of Jewish settlements, Obama-and/or Muslim-hating Israelis along with hyper-hawks and ultranationalists such as Sheldon Adelson. On the other side there are Israeli doves along with American Jewish liberals, Reform and Conservative Jews and other Trump-haters. And increasingly it seems that never the twain shall meet.
Israel’s willingness to embrace Trump above and beyond the call of duty is alienating large chunks of the American Jewish community. Those that supported Israel wholeheartedly are beginning to question themselves, those who had been harboring doubts all along have reached a guilty verdict and those who are sitting on the wall certainly won’t come down in Israel’s favor now or anytime in the future.
Emotions run high in times of conflict. When people fear for their country or for their wellbeing or for the safety of their love ones, there is scant room for moderation and nuance. In the era of Trump, the main question on the minds of his critics is the one Joshua asked when he met God’s emissary: Are you with us or with our enemies? By standing so firmly and so recklessly with Trump, Israel is telling American Jews exactly where it stands: With their enemy.
Posted inIsrael, Jews, Nationalism|Comments Off on Jews argue whether Zionism is racism — in the Forward!
This disturbance became public with a tweet from a black woman who spells her name in Hebrew.
Isn’t snatching and removing someone’s hat a crime? Isn’t it a form of assault? How would black women feel if someone came over and forcibly confiscated their weave?
Two teenagers stirred up controversy at Howard University — a historically black college, or HBCU — on Saturday when they arrived at the campus wearing Make America Great Again paraphernalia, drawing a sharp response from the college’s students and prompting a Twitter thread from the university.
The high school students said Howard students approached them and criticized their Trump gear as they waited in line at the cafeteria — with one Howard student grabbing their hats and another saying “Fuck y’all.”
…The two white students, from Union City High School in Pennsylvania, told BuzzFeed News they were among a group of 30 teenagers on an organized trip to see sites in Washington, DC, where the college is based. They arrived at the campus around lunchtime, and headed for the cafeteria with their school chaperones.
Allie Vandee, 16, was one of the students wearing a MAGA hat and a Trump T-shirt. She complained about the incident on Twitter soon after leaving campus.
“We were not even through the front door to get through the cafeteria, and a man, a black man, walked, had walked through and took my friend Sarah’s hat right off her head,” Vandee said in a phone interview with BuzzFeed News.
I wonder if Nidhi Prakash has a dog in this fight?
Two teenage girls who wore “Make America Great Again” hats to Howard University last weekend are making a play to become the latest countrywide crusaders for free speech. Good luck with that.
The Pennsylvania high school students, who stopped by the historically black university for a bite to eat during a school trip to Washington, strolled into Howard’s campus dining hall Saturday decked out in pro-presidential apparel they had purchased the day before. It did not go over well.
“We were not even through the front door to get through the cafeteria, and a man, a black man, walked … through and took my friend Sarah’s hat right off her head,” one told Buzzfeed on Monday. Another man, she said, cursed at her. …
The Twitter account for Howard’s dining hall was more forthright: “We will take any action necessary to ensure that HU students feel safe& comfortable in our dining spaces. The group is no longer on campus.” …
As stifling to debate as the “safe space” argument can be at schools across the country, Howard is one of the few examples of the term at its purest and most persuasive. “Safety” as many students today use the word has little to do with physical harm and more to do with emotional discomfort. Safety at Howard, from its founding, has meant, well, safety.
… It was about the history of an institution that has always been a place where black students could say what they believed without fear of racist reprisal. On Saturday, that’s exactly what they did.
As many Howard students have already asked about their young visitors, what else did they expect?
Is this brouhaha really about the insensitivity of wearing Trump hats? Or is it about the insensitivity of wearing blonde hair that’s about 8 times longer than their shorts on the black coeds’ home turf?
Some people are just Extra-Citizens with superior rights. Such as the right to snatch a hat from your head because they don’t like what it says.
Look Steve, our country has a long and sad history of white teenage girls killing black men in broad daylight. You need to get #woke.
And what does Molly Roberts look like? Like Becky with good hair:
Here are some definitions of Beckie and Becky on Urban Dictionary:
* beckie is probably the hottest name in the whole world. perfect for a hottie with gorgeous eyes. beckie’s have it all: looks, brains, boobs, you name it. a beckie will never let you down
MAN! She’s definately a ‘beckie.’
#wow#hot#fit#gorgy#rawr
* hot white girls, or snobbish women
look at them beckys over there.
#beckies#beckys#white girls#dem girls#white hoes
* The name of the best girlfriend a guy could wish for. Kind, pretty, good looking and absolutely amazing. If you have a girlfriend like this, then you are extremely lucky.
Guy 1: You going out with that becky girl?
Guy 2: Yeah
Guy 1: You lucky bastard…
#becky#amazing#pretty#sexy#cute
* Wait a minute, who was subject to racist reprisal? Oh well, at least four gorgeous White girls got vaccinated for jungle fever just before college.
* It wasn’t the MAGA hats and had nothing to do with Trump! All the black women on Twitter were outraged because these white girls (the ebonics term is “Beckies”) were getting a lot of attention from the black men. To paraphrase the great Colin Flaherty, “Don’t Make the Black Girls Angry!”
* For “yt’s,” there aren’t just sundown towns, there are plenty of places where one isn’t welcome any time of the day. I’ve had it several times, who else has been on the receiving end of assertive demands of “white boy go back to where you came from”?
They can be lucky they were girls. Had it been fellas who had tried to invade their safe space, the response might have been a little more assertive…
* I thought that Howard was founded to showcase black intellectual achievement in the nation’s capital as a rebuke to racial essentialists, with a student body especially burdened by the need to espouse beliefs concordant with reality in order to avoid racist reprisal against their fellow blacks in places not surrounded by the safety of the Federal government.
But thanks for blacksplaining reality to me. I guess Howard exists so black people can believe whatever the hell they want and have a “safe space” where they can physically intimidate anyone who might challenge those beliefs in any way.
* Those girls need a good rogering from a well endowed Black Man. They were trying to start something. I guarantee you they will be mothers of Children of Color in 5 years. I hope they are blackballed from employment until they apologize for their racism.
* Back in med school we had a lawyer come in and teach us about torts. He has us read a famous case in which a black man who was participating in (I think) a sales meeting at a hotel had a plate of food in his hands and a hotel employee snatched it from him.
The employee was successfully sued for assault (and possibly battery) even though he made no physical contact with the man. The violent snatching of something from someone’s hands was ruled assault.
* In his latest Podcast No. 93 with guest Douglas Murray (The Strange Death of Europe), the Jewish public intellectual Sam Harris said he had no idea what was meant by “The Jews will not replace us.” Evidently he wasn’t curious enough to google it.
* Surely the police for Howard University or Washington are issuing a statement any day about their arrest of the male Negro who assaulted (and what he did is, incontrovertibly, assault) these teenagers (possibly minors?) – or are the police in Washington recruiting officers from Rotherham now as part of an exchange programme?
Another point, though: where is Hell were the father, brother, or other male chaperone of these young ladies, and why in God’s name did he permit them to enter a cafeteria teeming with Negros unaccompanied. What vapid fools are they themselves to not know better?
Instinctively, I want to protect females of my race (its biochemically programmed into us all); intellectually, of course, I realise there is no stopping a determined suicide.
* Sailer for the most part seems to me to be taking a fairly distanced “wait-and-see” stance on Trump as President, which is smart given how unpredictable Trump is. On the current trajectory Trump is doing for HBD and immigration controls what Hitler did for eugenics or the Confederacy did for slavery. Historically extremists defending moderately extreme positions don’t usually succeed in making those positions more socially acceptable, they just make things much, much worse. Scott Adams is looking increasingly insane, don’t want to end up like that guy.
All these attempts to push the Overton window to the right seem to be backfiring badly and empowering even more lefty craziness. And the lefties do have the demographics and a lot of corporate clout behind them. The same way it took conservative Republicans to reach out to China (Nixon) or reach out to the Soviets (Reagan), it will probably require a moderate Democrat, ideally Asian, to speak sense on racial issues. But it may be too late.
Posted inBlacks|Comments Off on Steve Sailer: Washington Post Supports Howard U. Coeds Being Enraged at Skinny Blonde Beckys Wearing MAGA Hats on Their Safe Space Turf
From this one brief encounter with Pfuel, Prince Andrei, owing to his memories of Austerlitz, formed a clear notion of the man’s character for himself. Pfuel was one of those hopelessly, permanently, painfully self-assured men as only Germans can be, and precisely because only Germans can be self-assured on the basis of abstract idea – science, that is, and imaginary knowledge of the perfect truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he considers himself personally, in mind as well as body, irresistibly enchanting for men as well as women. An Englishman is self-assured on the grounds that he is a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore, as an Englishman, he always knows what he must do, and knows that everything he does as an Englishman is unquestionably good. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and others. A Russian is self-assured precisely because he does not know anything and does not want to know anything, because he does not believe it possible to know anything fully. A German is self-assured worst of all, and most firmly of all, and most disgustingly of all, because he imagines that he knows the truth, science, which he has invented himself, but which for him is the absolute truth. Such, obviously was Pfuel. (p. 639)
So where does the Jew fall in this type of accounting? He is most like the German, it seems to me. He knows the truth, the absolute truth.
Posted inNationalism|Comments Off on Tolstoy on National Characteristics
I recently saw a message from the California bar to its attorney members concerning the passing score standard for the bar exam. The goodthinkers in that state have been very concerned that the pass rate (that is, the fraction of test-takers who actually pass) has been going down substantially in recent years. Accordingly, they want to lower the standards for admission to the profession.
As lawyers say, res ipsa loquitur, so I’ll simply reproduce large sections of the message below:
Dear California Attorneys:
As you are probably aware, the bar exam pass rates in California have experienced a continuing trend of decline in recent years. In response to this decline, the State Bar initiated a series of studies to evaluate the bar exam, including its pass line (also known as cut score) and content of the exam. … [T]wo options were presented to the Committee of Bar Examiners for consideration and subsequently issued for comment: 1) keep the current cut score of 1440; 2) reduce it to 1414 as an interim cut score, pending the conclusion of the other studies being conducted.
If a cut score of 1414 were applied to the July 2016 bar exam, the pass rate would have increased from 43 to 47 percent. If the option of reducing the cut score to 1414 were adopted, it could also be applied to the July 2017 bar exam. The study findings and recommendations have been published to solicit public comment until August 25…
In addition to the public comment period that is currently underway, we are seeking additional feedback through this survey… In addition to your views about the cut score and other policy considerations, we are also seeking demographic and other background information to provide appropriate context for your responses. …
The referenced lawyer’s survey, by the way, reads as follows:
Standard Setting Study Regarding Bar Exam Cut Score
1. Select the option below that best represents your view about the cut score for the California bar exam:
Keep the current cut score of 1440
Lower the cut score to 1414
Lower the cut score further below the recommended option of 1414
Other:
2. The following statements are often considered relevant factors in determining an appropriate bar exam cut score. Please rate the importance you assign to each of the statements from 1 (not important at all) to 10 (very important).
a. Declining bar exam pass rates in California
b. The burden of student loan debt for law-school graduates unable to find gainful employment after failing the bar exam
c. The fact that the cut score in California is the second highest in the nation
d. Increasing diversity of attorneys from different backgrounds
e. Increasing access to legal services for underserved populations
f. Maintaining the integrity of the profession
g. Protecting the interest of the public from potentially unqualified attorneys
Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
3. What year were you admitted to the Bar?
4. Select the type of law school that you graduated from
5. How many times did you take the California bar exam before you passed?
Once
Twice
Three or More Times
6. Which of the following best describes your current employment status?
Solo Practice
Small to Medium Firm (<100 Attorneys)
Large Firm (>=100 Attorneys)
Nonprofit
Government
Corporate In-house
Retired
Other
7. What is your gender identity?
Male
Female
Other
8. What is your race/ethnicity identity? (Select all that apply.)
American Indian or Alaska Native
Asian
Black or African American
Hispanic or Latino
Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander
White
Some other race
9. Select the county where you are currently employed (or where you were employed prior to retirement).
No doubt, those intrepid bar association investigators will find that preserving integrity and competency — what I had always thought law licensing was for — is a strong preference of Evil White Men, and therefore the last thing that the bar association of a progressive state of California should seek to uphold.
After all, those two values were literally the last two items on the list of considerations, sitting after — of course — the all-important, nearly religious value of “increasing diversity of attorneys from different backgrounds.”
Remember: Diversity is our strength. That’s why we have to lower our standards.
* Unsurprisingly, the data are fairly well modeled with black performance being 1 SD below white performance (predicted black pass rate: 25%) and Hispanics being 0.5 SDs below whites (predicted Hispanic pass rate: 44%).
* Law schools are having trouble recruiting, so have lowered admissions standards to stay open. That, in turn means they grant diplomas to many more people who have trouble passing the bar, which in turn threatens their marketing and their accreditation.
They should have trouble recruiting. The ratio of working practitioners to professional school graduation cohorts is variable but clusters these days around 22.5. That for the legal profession is 15. Its difficult to find a profession of any size where that ratio is lower. (That ratio for divinity schools and seminaries is quite low – around 3.5 – but it’s quite normal among divinity students to have no intention of seeking out a position as a f/t clergyman).
The problem, really, is the bloat in law schools. What needs to happen to law faculties is what happened to Chrysler between 1979 and 1985: about 1/3 of the workforce needs to be cut. And, no, people with comfortable bourgeois jobs with a certain amount of cachet don’t want that to happen.
The California Bar already made the decision starting last month to cut the length of the exam by one day (from three days to two).
Part of the issue I think is that law schools have increasingly been accepting and graduating marginal candidates. For a few years at the depth of the recession, there was a glut of law school applications and so schools were marginally more selective (to the extent that they weren’t practicing affirmative action under one name or another). There’s been a sharp crash since, leading to closures (e.g., Whittier Law School), and, presumably, a fall in the caliber of the candidate pool.
One other background event that might be relevant as well is that California’s court system since the recession has been severely affected by budget cuts, leading to bureaucratic lassitude, significant delays in cases getting heard, and widespread adoption of poorly-documented and understood “local local” rules and policies in many counties and courthouses that nobody really knows how to navigate (and that can change from clerk to clerk). There actually are cases “rotting in the courts” as a result. That’s a budgeting and bureaucratic problem, not a problem caused by a shortage of (dumber) lawyers, but it can be blamed on the latter.
* Anybody who thinks we need to lower the bar exam standards should spend a Monday morning in the high grade misdemeanor arraignment hearing just to get a glimpse of how horrible and downright stupid some of these attorneys at the bottom of the barrel really are. Now imagine them with an even lower bar to practice law.
Posted inAffirmative Action, California, Law|Comments Off on Good Idea To Lower Standards For Passing California Bar In The Name Of Diversity?
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