This is a mischaracterization of the origin and aims of the 10% plan. No one involved in creating or advocating for it believed that it was anything like fair. But in the wake of Hopwood, there was a very real fear that BIPOC enrollment in Texas public schools would drop to near-zero. In 1996, many of the people involved in the response had grown up in Texas and were locked out of state higher education in the 60’s and 70’s by unwritten racist policies. They were very afraid that we were heading back down that road.
The 10% plan was always known to be heavily compromised, but was politically feasible. The white trustees in College Station and Austin could hardly argue against the merit of 10% students at poorly performing high schools without alienating the TEA and calling attention to the unjust allocation of resources in public schools: 1993’s Robin Hood law and the MALDEF lawsuit that brought it about was still fresh in people’s minds. So it was a squeeze to keep the door open for some people of color. No one thought it was great, but It was a countermeasure to Hopwood that could be implemented quickly and with little push back.
Now, predictably it was immediately weaponized as Latino and Black students in highly competitive high schools graduating outside of the top 10% started to be denied entry. But at the time people took that as evidence that absent the rule, no one would have gotten in anyways.
Not that you need it, but thanks for the rest of your post. You clearly articulated what had been a jumble in my head and helped me clarify how I think about the debt relief efforts.
It was not my point to suggest that the Ten Percent Plan was worse than no action at all, as would be the clear preference for those most privileged. Hopefully that was not your - or any reader's - primary takeaway.
My point was that, as I said, policies tend to benefit the most privileged members of a beneficiary group. In the case of the Texas Ten Percent Plan, that wound up being White students. The context you've added is important, as it emphasizes precisely
why "race neutral" framing was necessary, if not unavoidable, given the composition of the Court, but there's a reason
why it was considered non-threatening enough to face little resistance - and the results bear that out. It disproportionately helped White students, and was designed in such a way that the types of students who wind up suing over "reverse discrimination" would feel
protected rather than threatened. If you were a good little over-achiever, that spot you "earned" at your first-choice school couldn't be "stolen" from you by some line-cutting minority. My sardonic framing was an attempt to capture that attitude.
I also wanted to work in the type of hostage-taking that Rusty alluded to in a prior post, the sort in which poor people of color are passive-aggressively cast as human shields by the proponents of policy choices that will disproportionately benefit the privileged like, "if you raise the minimum wage and offer amnesty to undocumented immigrants, asylum seekers from war-torn countries will lose their employment opportunities and all our grapes will be picked by robots. So go ahead and do that if you want to hurt immigrant families, you monster." "If you impose a wealth tax, Tyler Perry will no longer be a billionaire and he won't be empowered to create as many jobs. Why do you hate Black excellence?"
If you'd prefer a different example than the 10% plan, that's fine. Calling it a "scam" was uncharitable to those with good intentions, so I will apologize on that account, but that doesn't change my central argument:
"Neutrality" is not synonymous with
fairness. An odd plus an even is still odd.
We can't dismantle structural racism without taking race into consideration, just as giving every American $50,000 could deliver millions from the brink of disaster, but would do absolutely nothing, in and of itself, to narrow income inequality.
It's basic stuff, but it's too often taken as truism that "universal" programs are good for everyone. They can be, but they are not necessarily equally
beneficial, and can even wind up furthering group inequality if improperly designed or implemented.
That's the point.
Methodical Management
Methodical Management
Man oh man, I wish I had reason to be as optimistic about socialism’s prospects at having real power in America. I fervently wish that the left is out of power mostly or entirely because of messaging and not massive power imbalances and bipartisan complicity in maintaining capitalist hegemony.
As far as student debt relief and the politics of it goes, I ask, when has a Democratic president maintained or increased their Congressional majorities in a mid term because they were frugal and willing to discipline the left wing of their party? That never happens. What usually happens is turnout falls off due to inaction and justifiable cynicism, felt especially heavily by working class BIPOC. The Republican base comes out and the Democrats get creamed than nothing good can happen at the Federal level and since 2010, Republicans implement voter suppression. Then the only hope is a trifecta in the future and that’s where we are now.
Wins build political capital. They don’t diminish it. As you know, this situation with federal student debt is unique in that it can be done unilaterally and it would give a win to many parts of Joe Biden’s coalition right away. In other cases, we are asking the state to intervene in unequal relations between people and capital or people and a ruthless and biased criminal-legal system. In this case, the Federal government is the creditor here. Joe Biden gets to model how a relationship between creditor and debtor ought to work and he’s letting us know his thoughts on that. Moreover, Joe Biden has in his hands a use it or lose it, non transferable voucher. So to talk about all the other things you’d (as in Joe Biden, not you specifically) like to do, in the context of federal student debt relief, is a cynical distraction. Get this win before you have to really wade into the much more brutal and multifaceted crafting of legislation. Instead, Joe Biden gives credence to the notion that politics is not a vehicle to fundamentally change your life so why bother. And non voting is not really a trait among the privileged, it’s trait among the marginalized because even if you don’t live in a State with photo ID laws, the missed pay required to stand in line all day to vote is a poll tax. If only a political tendency existed that actually cared about stuff like paid time off.
Also, when did I say only do student debt relief or never do racially targeted programs? You and I both know that the wealthy and powerful interests in the centers of power don’t actually care about the racial wealth gap when they want to do means testing. They want means testing as a poison pill so that they can demonize those programs as handouts to “lazy” people. Universal programs won’t necessarily end the racial wealth gap but universality makes them much more politically durable.
Lastly I’ll say, and you all (those mentioned and those reading this) are welcomed and encouraged to tear this idea of mine down. I believe that a lot of liberals believe, deep down, that poor whites kind of deserve to be poor. The thinking being that while black people cannot stop being black (all jokes about Sammy Sosa aside) poor white people are losers because through the osmosis of other white people owning homes, running companies and having so much cultural representation that they have no excuse for being poor. Moreover, whites, who are poor, are blamed for Republican power by the hegemonic capitalist media.
All of this framing comes in handy when a popular universal program has a shot at becoming policy, capitalist media and its liberal allies can swoop in and say “forget about this thing that might become policy, let’s do targeted stuff that has no shot at becoming policy.” Everyone on the broader left yells at each other, we get neither the universal nor the targeted stuff nor does the broader left build power and then finally the GOP wins the mid terms and tightens the screws of minority rule. The capitalist class, including and especially the “woke” capitalists in big tech and finance get even richer and they fortify their bunkers and private armies. Rinse and repeat until we’re living in a world without clouds and for all but an extremely wealthy and powerful minority, we’ll all be struggling to gain the minutest of access-to-potable-water privilege.
I'm tempted to go line for line on this, but 90% of it all boils down to this:
You're attacking people for positions they've never taken in defense of a premise with which you disagree, and then going scorched earth for good measure.
Literally nobody has said that messaging is the only problem. Not one person here needs to be lectured on the threat of GOP minority rule - except perhaps the one who's already so far gone it's not even worth the effort to link to this month's Mother Jones piece he won't read. I haven't seen anybody even object to the $50,000 student debt relief proposal in concept. Rusty flat out said he supported it.
Explain to me what he
actually criticized in this exchange other than the petulance of Bernie Bros acting like "You rainbow capitalist sellouts guilt tripped me into voting for that flesh-eating pedophile and he's been President for two whole days. Where's my CyberTruck? Funny how G.I. Joe has money to pay Northrup Grumman, but I ask for one lousy matte black CyberTruck with 21" arcahnid wheels and suddenly his wallet's in the car. What happened to supporting green energy, you neoliberal corpo-puppet?! I hate it here! I swear to spaghetti monster if there isn't a CyberTruck in my driveway tomorrow morning I'm never voting again. EVER!!!"
He takes
that person to task and suddenly it's like all your manual reprogramming goes out the window to enforce the Prime Directive:
You go out of your way to disclaim Bernie Bros., but when they get called out you holler.
Hard.
This is why your posts have been characterized as White fragility. Nobody even
mentions you, but at the first sign of pushback against dirtbag left/White socialism we get a 2006 retro Rexanglorum shock drop and anyone who disagrees becomes, through some undiagrammable contortion, an Oathkeeper pistol-whipping a pregnant Guyanese asylum-seeker (
you, somehow). When you get called out on
that, you're ready to leave. Everything's good until somebody steps on a rose and then the transformation begins anew. It's like "The Incredible Sulk."
And the sad thing is, the things people are actually criticizing are things you claim to disagree with, too.
It is darkly hilarious to me how fast we go from this:
As far as student debt relief and the politics of it goes, I ask, when has a Democratic president maintained or increased their Congressional majorities in a mid term because they were frugal and willing to discipline the left wing of their party? That never happens.
Which sounds like "when you're right, you can never be too radical," to
this:
All of this framing comes in handy when a popular universal program has a shot at becoming policy, capitalist media and its liberal allies can swoop in and say “forget about this thing that might become policy, let’s do targeted stuff that has no shot at becoming policy.”
"In opposing capitalism, we become the mortal enemy of every powerful government and corporation of the world, but, together, we can defeat them and form a glorious workers' paradise!"
"Do you support reparations?"
"No, that's not realistic."
This is one of the issues people have here - not with the student loan debt relief in itself.
Whose votes do you need to get your candidates elected? And what's the
first priority you have after the inauguration? And what's the
first thing to fly out the window?
ADOS gets dragged and called out as Russian agitprop, but 1) there's a reason it was effective and 2) where's that same energy when Beckett and Ashton start demanding their “tangibles” not even
thirty days into the Biden/Harris administration? Suddenly calls for patience are tantamount to betrayal. We're not even one month into the term, Democrats are putting together the biggest spending bill we'll see in a decade, and White socialists are already willing to throw their "comrades" under the bus if they can settle for $50,000 in college debt relief. So much for class solidarity.
This is the thing they want to go to the mat for.
Anything anyone else may have needed is an acceptable casualty for the sake of pragmatism, but if they don't get what they
really want it's
literally the end of the world.
"Refund my MBA tuition or in two years the only fresh water you'll drink will be the rain dripping off the Kevlar boots of the AmaZoogle storm trooper standing on your neck."
Give me this arrogance for one hour just so I know how it feels.
I believe that a lot of liberals believe, deep down, that poor whites kind of deserve to be poor. The thinking being that while black people cannot stop being black (all jokes about Sammy Sosa aside) poor white people are losers because through the osmosis of other white people owning homes, running companies and having so much cultural representation that they have no excuse for being poor. Moreover, whites, who are poor, are blamed for Republican power by the hegemonic capitalist media.
Everyone deserves a dignified standard of living - full stop. If you're born into poverty, you are at a disadvantage. No one's denying that. The issue is with class reductionism and class primacy.
dacomeup
you're right. You haven’t said any thing bad about socialism in general nor anything bad about specific socialists who are black. 
RustyShackleford
you rarely if ever say anything positive about socialists of any background. Now maybe it’s a selection bias, maybe you read about or see or personally know socialists doing good work, you like what they are doing and you don’t mention it on here. Maybe, and I’m not being sarcastic here, maybe you don’t find socialists doing good things to be something worth posting about. But it’s alienating when every time you talk about socialists here, it’s about how awful they are. From where I’m sitting it’s hard not to conclude, maybe this guy doesn’t like socialism but saying so sounds bad so he makes it about something else like race makes it seem way more sympathetic. But then again maybe I’m expressing subconscious racial biases and then making it about a more sympathetic by making it about socialism versus neoliberal capitalism since that sounds way better. Again, not being facetious here.
