It seems I’ll never learn

I got into a bit of a spat with the Political Science professor during the latter part of last week. I’m sure this is a big surprise to all you regulars here.

The class is PoliSci 202 – US Government. I knew there would be a small bit of trouble when I saw that the text book assigned for the course was co-authored by Larry Sabato. I knew I was about to get a lot of “Living Constitution” crap, and have so far not been disappointed in that regard. But I trundled forward, figuring I could keep my mouth shut and just “get through it”.

I am the oldest person taking this particular course, which isn’t difficult position to be in when 1/3 of the class is made up of high school students taking AP courses at the college. I am the only one with his own blog. This matters because it is an online course and the format consists of reading the material and then participating in multiple discussion forums. There is also a “Weekly News and Editorial” discussion forum. These are, essentially, blog posts where everyone is required to comment within the forum.

Easy enough. I gots me one of them. Had it fer quite some time now.

Last week we were covering Civil Liberties and Civil Rights and the differences between them. I took issue with a couple of the “additional reading” papers that were assigned for the week. One was this 2005 Editorial by the Seattle Times’ Danny Westneat which contended that the Seattle School District having to stop their race-based forced busing program, which they were using to get a “more even racial balance” in the schools, was re-segregation and equivalent to apartheid.

I contended that Westneat was cheapening both of those words by using them to describe the situation, and that being allowed to go to a school in your neighborhood was better for the children and the neighborhood than busing children all over town (for what was quite often up to 90 minutes each way). One of my less eloquent arguments was that just because there are crappy neighborhoods in Seattle did not mean that the school district had the right to force other people’s children to visit them on a daily basis.

The other piece was a 2003 University of Chicago “study” on the topic of whether or not having a “black” or “ethnic” sounding name hurt or helped during a job search. They sent out dozens of similar resumes to businesses in the Chicago and Boston areas, changing only the name. For instance, if one was sent out for “Charles Smith” another duplicate resume was sent out for “Jamal Carter”. Their results were that applicants with “white” sounding names received 50% more call backs than those without.

The problem with this study is that nowhere is it mentioned whether or not they asked those who called back the “applicants” their race. They did not even attempt a control group for this “study”. Hence, it is bullshit. I did not use that word in my complaint.

I did, however, label it as agitprop. Because that is exactly what it is. I was told that I was surely the only one who “assumed” those calling the applicants back were white. I responded that CBS news did a report on it and that they assumed the employers were “white”. I also pointed out that the race-baiting columnist, Leonard Pitts Jr., also wrote about the “study” for multiple weeks. He too spoke as if his assumption was that the employers were white. Another mention I made was of race-hustler, Al Sharpton, has mentioned this “study” on his show multiple times since he’s been on the air, assuming the employers were white.

In short, he stated that we would have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.

While I have fulfilled my obligations in full to this week’s assignments and received 93% on the exam for the week, I do have a rather large term paper coming up. I am currently re-re-reading the requirements of that and am going to get it done above and beyond all the requirements and turned-in early, so as to give him no possible route to sink my grade. It is worth 200 points in a class that runs around 450 for the quarter.

Wish me luck.