Reagan Navy Secretary: 'White America' is 'Ethnic Fairy Tale'

[paineinthearse]

Reagan Navy Secretary: 'White America' is 'Ethnic Fairy Tale'

1/24/2005 11:00:00 AM


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To: National Desk

Contact: William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, 303-292-2021 ext. 30

DENVER, Jan. 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A highly-acclaimed historical and cultural examination of America's Scots-Irish was drawn to the attention of a Washington, D.C. court that will decide whether the U.S. Department of Defense's use of racial preferences in its purchase of goods and services is constitutional. According to a legal brief filed last week, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, by James Webb, contains new scholarship that undermines Congress' rationale, in 1977, for federal enacting race-based contracting programs, which still exist. Specifically, Webb writes, "the vast distinctions among white Americans" demonstrate that the "statistical straw man of 'white America'" used to justify racial preferences is "an imaginary facade. Indeed, white America is so variegated that it is an ethnic fairy tale." The brief was filed before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in DynaLantic Corp. v. U.S. Department of Defense, et al.

"We are pleased to bring to the court's attention evidence of the lie Congress told itself when it ordered federal agencies to discriminate against 'White Americans' when awarding contracts," says William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which was asked by the judge hearing the case to file a friend of the court (amicus curiae) brief. "I hope the court and Congress will conclude, not only that racial preferences are unconstitutional, but also, after reading Webb's scholarship, that they lack a factual basis."

Born Fighting argues that racial preferences are based on two false assumptions: "Anyone who was not a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) had grounds for complaint about his or her people's collective 'struggle.' And anyone who was a WASP was by default a privileged, less-than-deserving whipping post." These assumptions were demonstrably false as early as 1974 when the University of Chicago published a groundbreaking study that, writes Webb, revealed "a greater variation within 'white America' than there was between white America and black America." Plus, "thirty years of (these programs) have not altered this reality; instead, they have exacerbated it."

Webb was a decorated Marine officer in Vietnam, served as Reagan's Navy Secretary, and is author of six novels, including Fields of Fire. DynaLantic is a New York corporation, formed in 1984, that designs and manufactures aircraft, submarine, ship, and other simulators and training devices, all of which it provides to the U.S. Department of Defense, particularly the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army. As a "small business," its main competitors are small businesses that use racial preferences given members of various racial and ethnic minority groups on the basis of their race. With the Center for Individual Rights as its attorney, it filed its lawsuit in 1995.

Mountain States Legal Foundation is a nonprofit, public interest law firm dedicated to individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and ethical government, and the free enterprise system. Its 1995 U.S. Supreme Court victory in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena all but ended government racial quotas. Its offices are in the Denver, Colorado, area.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

[Kolesar]

1. Reagan's Interior Sec'y James Watt was Mountain States Legal Foundation

That colossal a**hole

[starroute]

2. Mountain States Legal is a major New Right organization

They're deeply tangled with the anti-environmental movement. Gale Norton was also associated with them. Joseph Coors provided the start-up money and Richard Mellon Scaife was their largest donor back in the 80's.

It's a little disturbing that they're expanding from "Wise Use" to anti-affirmative action issues, but it's not really surprising.

[Romulus]

3. whatever

a Scotch-Irish will bond with a Scandanavian in a heartbeat if it means keeping an African out of a job . . .

[Kweli4Real]

4. His argument is based on falsity ...

He bases his argument on a writing that incorrectly argues that "racial preferences are based on two false assumptions: "Anyone who was not a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) had grounds for complaint about his or her people's collective 'struggle.' And anyone who was a WASP was by default a privileged, less-than-deserving whipping post."

First, racial preferences were developed to remedy 3 centuries of governmentally sanctioned discrimination of Black people, and by extension and application, other people of color. Racial preferences don't address, nor were they intended to address, the grievances of non-Black, non-people of color, with the exception of White women.

The second assumption is equally false. Whether many wish to acknowledge it or not, being a White male in America DOES, in fact, create a priviledge. Or, at the very least, it does not create a barrier that people of color experience.

Racial preferences are not punitive as the writer states, they are merely remedial. A contract provided through a racial preference program does not mean a White was deprived of that contract. To characterize them in the author's light (as less-than-deserving whipping post) is to accept the White Male Superiority myth, where the default setting of deservedness/competence is a White male.