Re: Judge Bork on Ebonics

[snow <snow@smoke.suba.com>]

> Hello, what's this? I thought the Know-Nothing Party disbanded in
> the early 1850's.
> Steve Schear wrote:
> > The following is from pages 300-307 of Robert Bork's brilliant
> > book, "Slouching Towards Gomorrah".  This is a book which should
> > be read by everyone--and especially by liberals.
> I'll pick it out of the library when I'm done with Mein Kampf. I
> don't feel inclined to subsidize this ignorant kook with my money.

    He isn't an ignorant kook--unfortunately. He is a very intelligent 
facist. Don't dismiss him so lightly--would you turn your back on a man
with a gun?  

> > immigrants to be Americans. The schools were agents of cultural
> > unification. They taught patriotism and standards derived from
> > European cultures.
> What do any of those standards have to do with "European cultures"?
> Europe, like every other continent (save Antarctica), has a history
> of conflict among ideas and groups. Tell me, who embodies "European 
<snip>
> de Man? The mark of a bigot is that he reads history selectively to
> find "good" values in his own group, and "bad" values in some other
> group. In fact "culture" is a fractal landscape. This isn't a

     I don't recally him stating that the values from other groups were
"bad", but rather that a nation should have a common base set of values
to avoid just the kind of fractionalization that we see occuring right now.

> > Part of our national lore, and glory, is the fact
> > that youngsters speaking not a word of English were placed in
> > public schools where only English was used and very shortly were
> > proficient in the language.
> 
> Immigrants to the US today learn English twice as fast as did
> immigrants to the US at the turn of the century. Greater access to

     You don't say what percentage of Immigrants learn english v.s. 
the past. I'd bet that they learn twice as fast today only because the
motivated ones bother, the rest just try to force us to learn their language.

> There is far less regional differentiation in English dialects around
> the country today than there was at the turn of the century. Nearly
> all well-educated and socially mobile Americans under age 40 speak 
> a common "broadcast TV english."

     All three of them.

> Southern and Brooklyn accents are
> less pronounced than they were.

     Well, I can't speak for Brooklyn, but having just come back from 
trip thru the south (Tn. Ms. Ga. Al. Fl.) I can say that their accents are
as thick as a brick.

> > That was crucial to the formation of an
> > American identity Now, however, the educational system has
> > become the weapon of choice for modern liberals in their project
> > of dismantling American culture.
> Yup, that's us. It's all a conspiracy to drag America into the
> gutter.

     Deeper into the gutter.

> > Our egalitarians view every culture (other than European) as equal. 
> Nope. There is no "European culture." Only idiot collectivists of the 
> nationalist type group people like this.

     The cultural differences in Europe are minor compared to the differences
between European and Asian for instance.

     Think of it like Operating Systems. Germany is like SCO, France is AT&T,
Italy is BSD, China is Vax/VMS. Turkey is Dos/Windows (well, things do blow up
a lot there...), Libya is running CM/VMS on an 3090. Iran is using OS/2 v1. 

      Yes, there are differences between Germanic and French culture, but no 
where near the difference that exists between French and Libyain. 

> > Vietnamese and Polish children were put into English-speaking
> > classes and were competent into English long before the Hispanics
> > in bilingual schools.
> No evidence for this assertion exists.

     Do you live in a large city? Tell you what, Next time you are in chicago
let me know, and I'll introduce you to my wife. Her mother was born in poland.
My wife speaks standard middle class english. I'll introduce you to her cousins
children, their father _still_ has trouble speaking english, yet the children
speak standard english, as well as polish. They speak english with almost no
accent. Next we'll take a trip to the barrio, and interview as many children
as we can find. Want to take bets on how many hispanic children so as well? 
Hell, those kids (wife's family) go to a neighborhood Catholic School that 
is mixed polish and hispanic--the polish kids ALL learn english as a primary
language (well, almost all) where the hispanic children learn it as a secondary
language. 

     Now, I have met hispanic people who do speak good english, but they--or
at least their parents--made a commitment to being _american_ rather than 
expatriots waiting to go "home".

> No. I choose to call you on the bullshit assertion that Hispanic
> children don't learn English. This prejudice is rooted in the small
> but visible segment of the Hispanic population that comprises recent
> immigrants. It is indubitably true that illegal immigrants doing odd
> jobs and domestic work -- the segment of the Hispanic population most
> visible to sensitive anglos -- tend not to speak English.
> Extrapolations from this population, though, are invalid.

     Or the vocal segment who claims that they should have to "give up their
cultural heritage" to "fit in with the rest of society". In cities with 
large hispanic populations sometimes third and fourth generations speak 
heavily accented spanglish.
 
> Note the only evidence offered by Bork to bolster this straw man
> he's building is a similar slew of bald, unsupported assertions by a
> friend of his. He might as well be quoting himself.

     Where as you are just overflowing with statistics and evidence to
convince us that he is wrong, rather than leveling ad hominiem attacks on
the him.

> > in Washington, D.C., in its 1992 'Curriculum Guidelines for Mul-
> > ticultural Education.' "It too often demands self-denial, self-hatred,
> I see. "Pathetic whine" name-calling in reference to a one-sentence
> quote is the best you can do. At least you give a verifiable reference
> so that people can see what it really says.

     He did. More of a reference than is usually found on this list. 

> > Public dissatisfaction with the linguistic fracturing of society
> > that need be done is the abolition of bilingual education and the
> > repeal of the Voting Rights Act's requirement of different language
> > ballots.
> 
> You'd better hurry, too, so that you can disenfranchise people before
> they know about it.

     How does that disenfrachise people? It just says that if you want to
vote (intelligently is left out) you have to have passable english language
skills. It is already the case that you must have these skills to vote 
with any sort of integrity. Most of the debate on national and state issues
is conducted in english--in the papers, on radio and tv (what debate there 
is--your franchise means less than ever when your choices are reduced)--if 
you can't understand the debate, how can you pick a side? (o.b. crypto--
RNG simulating a coin toss?)

> > once they begin to see its results. Immigrant parents want their
> > children to learn English and become Americans. The opposition
> > to that, manifested in bilingual education, comes from American
> > elites who form an adversarial culture, alienated from the culture
> > of the West and wishing to weaken it.
> Who are these "American elites"? Who's in on the conspiracy? What's
> in it for them?

     Division of the "masses" into groups that can be played off one another.
     Less competition at the upper levels for them and their children (who 
you can be sure don't attend public schools). 
    
    (Ok, never attribute to malice what you can attribute to stupidity so--)
    It is even possible that these people truely believe that what they are 
doing is ethically correct, that they truely believe that American culture 
is evil, and that it needs to be changed or destroyed. I would go so far as 
to agree with them. I just don't think they are heading in the right direction.

> "Less candid"? It's always a sign of trouble when you impugn the
> motives and honesty of your opponent without providing contrary
> evidence.

     Yup. Preach it brother.

> serious college-level audience that favored "uncritical adulation" of
> Columbus. What I believe happened was that the horrors of the two World 
> Wars woke people up to the dangers of propaganda myths (on all sides;
> the anti-German "Hun" stuff from WWI is really disgusting), and

     Then how do you explain the shit shoveled out of D.C. (and other 
National Capitols) on a regular basis? 

> teachers stopped lying to their pupils. Every real historian always

     No, they haven't. 

> knew that Columbus was a complex figure.
> "Loathing and condemnation" is certainly a tad strong, but Bork and
> Bernstein are welcome to their rhetorical excess.

     These days Columbus _is_ treated to loathing and condemnation. Kids 
are taught that he treated people like slaves--and not taught that this
was common in his time. That he "plundered" the "new world", and not taught
a damn thing about the historical context that this "plundering" took place 
in. 

> > emphasis on white males, may be seen from the curriculum it
> > favors. A curriculum designed to foster understanding of other
> > cultures would study those cultures. Multiculturalism does not.
> > Courses are not offered on the cultures of China or India or Brazil
> > or Nigeria, nor does the curriculum require the study of languages
> > without which foreign cultures cannot be fully understood.
> 
> This is bunk. The straw man grows.

     Which part? In the last two colleges that I attended there were 
"Black" studies (later renamed to "Africa-America") and _some_ Chinese
(at the last college there was also "latino") In the case of the "latino" and 
"Black" or "African American" it was more a study of that those two groups
accomplished _here in america_ than in their "home lands". I should note that 
the last school I attened was an Art School, and these "muti-cultural" classes
were taught from the Art History prespective. And yes, there was (IME) a 
bit of white male bashing in many of the courses. 


> > Hence it is that multiculturalists have turned Martin Luther
> > King, Jr.'s dream into a nightmare. He asked that his children "not
> > be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
> > character," which, as Bernstein says, is the "essential ideal of
> > liberalism:' But multiculturalists say, "Judge me by the color of
> > my skin for therein lies my identity and my place in the world."
> 
> They're projecting again. Sure some nonwhite racists call themselves 
> multicultural. Reasonable people see through that. Old bigots who
> harken back to a nonexistent "European culture" are just as bad.

     Look at the fight surrounding Proposition 209 in california. The 
claim has been made that it is unconstitutional because it seeks to 
prevent ANY bias in either direction in the basis of race. The "minority"
"leaders" are the ones seeking to prevent it's enactment.  


> Typical BS from someone who doesn't know what he's talking about. So now, 
> as a result of the "radicals' attack on Stanford's Western Culture 
> program," what do Stanford students study? Shakespeare, Dante, Locke, 
> etc. Also Equiano and Buddha. We only gain.

     Are they studied to the depth that they were before?  

     I doubt it. 

> What is this "inheritors of a tradition" notion? Who died and left me
> Shakespeare, and why?

    Wether you like it or not, wether you acknowlege it or not, a second
rate bullshit artist from the 1400's _has_ worked to shape the character
of English Culture, and hence to a lesser degree American culture. Shakespear
basically invented the Sit-com. Great huh?

> > have been "traditionally excluded" must now reject inclusion.
> There is no such teaching.

      You know what many black peoples objection to Clarence Thomas was? 

      That he was "In the House". 

> Damn, Bork and Bernstein are projecting *again*. It's not modern
> multiculturalist scholarchip that does this, but a bigoted rooting

    It does it just as much as European history.