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excellent

I have worked as a consultant to many Chicago and midwest companies. Some Blacks (both qualified and unqualified) want to take advantage of the affirmative action programs. Some Blacks (and Hispanics, women, etc.) want to be hired on their merit. There is big pressure on the hiring managers to ONLY hire through the affirmative action programs, and to not hire qualified Blacks outside the programs. The reason is simple. These companies are only allowed to claim credit for participants in the affirmative action programs. They need those numbers to be as big as possible. These companies get no credit for minorities who are there, but outside the approved programs.

The Human Resources people are much worse about this than the line managers. The line managers just want to fill a position, and fill it when it needs to be filled. The Human Resource people want to justify their own existence by having redundant and repetitive minority career fairs and conferences and seminars before they will ever let the line manager meet the applicant. So either the applicant stays unemployed. Or he finds a company with a smaller HR bureaucracy...even if it means that the other company requires him to prove a higher level of qualification or take a lower level position.

The Human Resources industry is the winner....and a major drag on the ability of the company to use its money to pay the employees who are actually productive.

First, one minor disagreement...I would suggest Black America does need a leader in perhaps MLK Jr's mold (we probably *don't* need another Malcolm X, although, truth be told, I've always found his oratory more entrancing than King's) for the sole purpose of GETTING RID of the current False Prophets (and Real Pickpockets). It *will* take forceful leadership on the grassroots level to get these guys out.

Second...I wanted to address this comment:

Ms. Parker can't understand why Republicans are so inept at wooing black voters. The evangelical churches should be central to Republican outreach to blacks, she thinks, given their conservative leanings on many issues. But the GOP all but ignores them. "Democrats campaign on every block and in every church in urban America, yet the Republicans are almost nowhere to be found," she observes. Ms. Parker believes Republican ideas can appeal to another sizable--and growing--black constituency: young professionals. This group, she says, "is attracted to economic empowerment in the form of tax cuts and reduced red tape for small business." But the GOP hasn't shown any more imagination in going after them, she says.

It's true. It's sad. I'm as white as white can be, and quite happy being that way, but I'm damned sick of my party (although I daresay I'm not exactly a party loyalist -- I'm a conservative, dangit! *grin*) being...represented by an entirely white group of folks in Congress (with the most depressing, IMHO, loss of J.C., that is -- although he'll be back, no doubt, and let's hope he shoots for a Senate seat this time around -- at least). Right, too many parenthetical statements. Let me rephrase. I'm sick of the Republican party, in general, writing off the black vote because they just assume they can't win it. Point being, with that attitude, we aren't ever going to win it. The party of Lincoln's conservative message is the message of hope for the black community -- not the self-serving Democratic feed-the-black-rage us-vs-them mentality that's heaped on them by Jesse et al. Clinton never did a damn thing for blacks yet was somehow hailed as the "first black president" -- because the Dems spoonfed the talking points memos to the right people. Again, why do Republicans not forcefully campaign in black areas? They figure it's a waste of money; they'll never win the vote. More Maginot lines. It often amazes me, when speaking with black Democrats, not how misinformed they are, but rather how little anyone has ever done to try to get the conservative message to them. We can't continue to pursue the defeatist strategy of writing off the black/minority vote and expect to ever really change anything (mind you, change takes a long, long time). Maybe you can't get the message out to the deeply urban areas immediately; but you can certainly get it out the young black professionals, and if you get it out to them, eventually it will seep into the urban communities.

Aye, I'm riled up into a rant now -- the over-arching point is it's high time for conservative Republicans to stop being afraid. To stop worrying about being portrayed as "mean" and "nasty" if they make the case against affirmative action. To stop giving recognition, and thus legitimacy, to the shakedown artists like Jackson. The Democrats sure as hell are never going to do anything to help black people -- it's in their interest to keep them relatively empoverished, trapped in welfare programs, and filled with seething hate that the Democrats can easily direct towards those mean and nasty conservatives. Unless we stop this nonsense, unless conservative Republicans go out there and campaign on issues that might actually stir up debate, we'll lose Congress for the forseeable future. I don't care how long it takes and how much temporary political damage we take from it -- the conservatives have got to make our case to blacks that we are the group that has the plan that can get them out of the poverty cycle. We may get booed at first, we may get booed for a decade, but we need to start making the effort, and we need to start making the effort now.

Okay, okay, getting off my soapbox...my blood just boils about this stuff sometimes. Especially the spinelessness present in some of the current Republican members of Congress -- when the message is the right one. When you have the truth on your side, you have no reason to be afraid.

Anyway, great piece by McWhorter, and I tip my hat to him.

--KL