I just finished reading a book review about DEI at the University of California at Berkeley. The book The Art of Diversity by Susan Carlson is a memoir of her work between 2010 and 2022 as Vice Provost for Academic Personnel and Programs, where she pushed diversity at UC using her considerable bureaucratic and administrative skills, not to mention wielding the threat of academic defenestration for those that didn’t go along to get along.
Did you know, Dr. Carlson, that the people of California in 1996 passed Proposition 209 that outlawed “affirmative action” in education? That means that you were acting contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Laws of California in pushing diversity. With malice aforethought? Probably not. Probably you think you are doing the Lord’s work. Or at least Gaia’s.
Meanwhile I was reading about the sentencing of Jennifer and James Crumbley, the parents of an underage school shooter. They were convicted for manslaughter because they failed to stop their son from taking a handgun to school and killing four students, and failed to put 2 and 2 together when they were called to the school to discuss a picture of a gun that their son had drawn.
Can you imagine the outrage from all the usual suspects if mothers of teenaged killers in the ‘hood were convicted and sent to jail for similar behavior? Because tearfully telling the TV cameras that he was really a good kid doesn’t cut it.
And let’s not even mention the standard that President Trump has been held to by Judge Engoron in New York City regarding the overvaluation of real-estate properties.
Earth to liberals in the ruling class:
Yes, we know you are the good guys, fighting against all odds as allies of the oppressed peoples against the white oppressors. But have you ever stepped outside your university bubble, or your New York Times bubble, or your NPR bubble and wondered how other people experience the world? And how other people are held to standards of responsibility from which you and your political supporters are exempted?
For instance, if we apply the Trump standard to Vice Provost Susan Carlson at the University of California we might decide that she is personally responsible for the salaries that might-have-been of, say, descendants of Irish that immigrated to the US during the Potato Famine and denied tenure at UC because white oppressors. But wait! The Irish had been oppressed for centuries by the Brits, not excluding Oliver Cromwell in 1643. Does that history of oppression count for nothing in this modern world? I would say that Carlson should surrender her UC pension as a bond against any possible judgments against her due to her wanton disregard for federal and state laws that prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of race or sex or sexual orientation. Especially victims of Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland and the Irish Potato famine.
I believe that our liberal friends live in Cloud Cuckoo Land, the land of Obama that imagines that the arc of history bends towards justice.
Actually, Barack, I believe there is no such thing as justice: only injustice.
By this I mean that if someone is treated unjustly there is nothing the justice system can do to erase that injustice. All a justice system can do is try to reduce or compensate the harm caused. The original injustice, the original harm, the original tort can never be erased.
Here’s an example of what I mean. It’s the Wergild system. Back in the day, when a German killed another German the family of the victim would seek to kill a member of the killer’s family. But if the killer’s family paid Wergild to the family of the victim then it was not necessary to reciprocate with an eye for an eye, or a life for a life.
But the dead man would still be dead. He could never be brought back to life.
Do you get my meaning Barack, or is this over your head?
In my view, the purpose of the legal system is to reduce, a little, the depredations that powerful people have exacted on the less powerful down the ages. And that especially applies to powerful people that imagine they are acting in the interests of powerless people.