On July 2, I post my thoughts on the 2007 Supreme Court ruling on schools using quotas to make schools "diverse". I think racial quotas are silly, and that people can figure out on their own how to deal with diversity.
UH history professor Marcus Daniel wrote an editorial criticizing the Supreme Court decision.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Jul/03/op/FP707030304.html
I sent him my July 2, 2007 post http://pablothemadtiger.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html (scroll down to July 2, 2007 post)
Here is his silly email to me
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Hiya Pablo,Thanks for your friendly email! I won't bother to go into all this with you as you clearly have opinions that brook no disagreement. The situation in Hawaii is different, mainly because of a history of US colonial occupation, although the "color-blind" approach of the Supreme Court represents a real threat to Hawaiians as well, hence the Akaka Bill. Unlike you I'm interested less in the issues of abstract principle than I am in the creation of a fair and just society. This is not the same as the "color-blind" legalism which has been used in the past (ie in Plessy) to justify profound racial abuses and the trampling of the 14th Amendment. Democracy and Justice are sometimes uneasy bedfellows, and letting people do what they want does not always produce justice viz, in the Jim Crow south which always had a white majority. According to your political principles, the south should be still be segregated. The assumption that animates the recent court decision, that the courts have nothing to say about the existing, and long-standing patterns of residential and racial segregation in our society, I find repellent. I often wonder whether people like you (and our beloved Supreme Court majority) would have been quite as keen advocates of "equality" for all in the period before Brown v. Board...personally I suspect your strident views would not have propelled you into the front lines of the civil rights movement. In fact, your arguments are exactly the same as those used by segregationists in the South, who always dressed white supremacy up in the garb of "equality" and "democracy." The point of my column was to show how this kind of simple-minded thinking will take us right back to a society of racial division and segregation. And the assumption of your message is that everybody prefers it that way anyway...except apparently the whites families clamoring to knock down the walls of "racial segregation" that keep them out of Kamehameha! If only they were as keen to send their kids to Farrington High or Waipahu (instead of maintaining their own exclusive residential/public school enclaves or sending their kids to Punahou and Iolani or one of the other all too numerous private schools in Hawaii) then none of this would be such a problem. Wonder why they aren't?
Aloha,Marcus
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Here is my response to that silly e-mail
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Your debate tactics is just inidirectly stating that "anyone who disagrees with the Radical Left is automatically is a Jim Crow Segregationist" You use those tactics to intimidate those who disagree with you from speaking out! That won't work with me!
The problem with Jim Crow was that Big Government told people where they could live, where they could go to school, where they could sit on the bus, who they could marry, etc. Big Government was interferring with people's choices in the Jim Crow era!
For the Brown vs Board of Ed, the African American family lived closer to the "white school" than the "black school". They argued they had the right to go to the school closer to them. And I agree with them!
And any African-American that wants to live in a mostly European-American suburb in the South should have the right to do that!
If you bothered to read my blogs, I am strong defender of immigration. (risking the strong hatred from the Radical Right) But you'll delibrately ignore that just because I believe government shouldn't chose the race of the school's demographics!
If you really believe I'm a segregationist, then answer the following questions
1) Why is that I (a Mexican/PuertoRican/German/Portuguse) am not living in East LA or South Bronx?
2) Why do I continue to live in areas dominated by Asians and Pacific Islanders?
I like living in Hawaii. If other Latinos want to come, I'll embrace that! If they rather stay in California instead of coming to Hawaii, who am I to tell them no? People have choices!
I've always been a minority in my neighborhood and I dont have any problem with that!
And if an African-American wants to live in Kahala, or a European-American wants to live in Waianae, that's fine with me! If a Guatemalan wants to live in Pearl City, that's fine with me! If a Samoan or a Micronesian wants to move to Hawaii Kai, that's fine with me.People have choices.
If a Filipino CHOOSES to live his whole life in Kalihi with other Filipinos, who is anyone to tell him no? If a Filipino CHOOSES to move to a Manoa or Kahala (areas with mostly Japanese and Euro-Americans) who is anyone to tell him no? (see, I'm being consistent)
You ask why aren't more white families aren't choosing Farrington or Waipahu high schools? Any white family that live in Kalihi or Waipahu would be able to go to those schools! And you will a find a few white kids in those schools. Yes, those families choose to be in a situation where they're a minority, but that's their choice!
Pablo Wegesend
