I found Claudine Gay’s PhD thesis, which has been in the news recently, on ProQuest (locked down tightly so that peasants can’t get access, but free to academic elites… and me). Here’s part of the abstract:
The last part is interesting, if true: “Where African-Americans enjoy political prominence, race becomes the primary lens through which blacks and whites, alike, interpret and experience politics. The end result is an electorate polarized in attitudes, in political preferences, and in political involvement.”
The thesis was completed in 1997. Can we at least give President Gay credit for being a successful prophetess?
What’s in the conclusion?
The only certainty in regards to [Black] constituents is that when it comes to winning the black vote, black incumbents always secure a larger proportion than do other incumbents.
At least some Americans vote purely based on candidate skin color. This supports my previously stated theory that Republicans should run only Black female candidates if they want to win elections. Gay suggests that Democrats, at least as of 1997, could do best by picking white progressives:
The significance of black congressional representation is best measured in white constituents alienated from politics, and white votes lost to Republican challengers.
A white stooge could do everything that Black Americans might want, but without causing white Democrats to stay home on election day or, worse, vote for a Republican. I’m not sure that this is true in 2023, however. First, we have the phenomenon of Barack Obama, which shows that 21st century white Americans, including Republicans, are more than happy to vote for a candidate who identifies as Black. Second, we have vote-by-mail, which requires only a slight amount of engagement for a vote. But perhaps Democrats are being guided to some extent by Claudine Gay’s thesis. Joe Biden and his fellow senior citizen Senator Ed Markey both appear to be white, yet they advocate for discrimination against whites far beyond what, according to the Supreme Court, the Constitution allows.
Part of the conclusion doesn’t make sense to me. The U.S. is huge, far larger than the people who dreamed up our political system could ever have imagined and with the central government in D.C. taking a much bigger role than was ever imagined (via the magic of the Interstate Commerce clause). Except for some billionaires, nobody in the U.S. has representation at the federal level.
For whites, black congressmen compromise the representational experience: they are considered less sympathetic and less helpful to the constituent, and less active in serving the district. Even white constituents who share their representative’s party affiliation are unhappy with the quality of representation they receive. The disapproval only increases over time….
In a country of 336 million (or 346+ million?), any peasant who says “my congressman/woman cares about me” is delusional and that was also true in 1997 (population 273 million; all of the increase due to low-skill immigration). Still, if what was true in 1997 is still true and if we believe Claudine Gay (and/or the sources from which she drew), white people can make themselves happier by moving out of places where Blacks dominate politics. Instead of trying to fit in at an Ayanna Pressley rally in Maskachusetts, for example, a constituent could move to tax-free New Hampshire and be represented by Chris Pappas, Harvard graduate and white guy:
(saves 5-9% income tax and 16% state estate tax, resulting in children who are 40% wealthier)
The #Science of DEI says that it is important for people in victimhood groups to be surrounded by authority figures who “look like me”. Claudine Gay’s PhD thesis found that this is also true for white people. When possible, based on Wikipedia, they should move out of California and New Jersey due to high tax rates combined with Black senators, and out of Al Green‘s Houston district and up to The Woodlands.
Loosely related…
- Greta Van Susteren’s summary of the Hamas bodycam footage (it contains rapes and at least one slow beheading, she says, in addition to freedom fighters calling their parents back in Gaza to relate how many Jews they killed (maybe they were mistaken, though, because the Arabs also killed a fair number of foreigners)) in which she notes, at the end, that Claudine Gay declined the opportunity to watch it prior to her Congressional testimony (relevant because the Harvard/Hamas connection was kicked off when the students said that Israel was “entirely responsible” for the October 7 attack so perhaps President Gay would want to see what Israel was responsible for, according to the best minds of Harvard)
Here’s my PhD thesis:
Legacies and diversities represent a synergistic degradation of meritocracy in America. Largely white and often decadent legacies need diversities to “look like America” in order to produce a superficial facsimile of democratic legitimacy. Diversity hires meanwhile require incompetent legacies, so that their own lack of merit cannot be overshadowed by a capable old guard.
This dynamic draws a contrast between state schools like U of Pennsylvania and formerly prestigious schools like Harvard. The less prestigious school must remove the incompetent administrator for exposing the incompetence of the visual legacy class. The school draped in mystique however must defend the incompetent diversity as removal would impugn the board of directors and reveal the entire institution to be a house of cards.
U of Pennsylvania is a private Ivy League school, with top rated Wharton business school, usually rated above Harvard Business School. You probably mixed it up with Penn State University, one of better state public – private universities.
U of Pennsylvania is a private Ivy League school…You probably mixed it up with Penn State University
U Penn used to be called “safety school.” Calling it a state school is an elitist joke. Glad you caught the joke.
I have heard that Columbia was “safety” school, not UPenn. Thought that lowest – ranking Ivys were Brown U and Dartmouth. Go figure.
Have you read Dr. Jill Biden’s dissertation? Not to spoil the surprise, but if you imagine the lowest level of scholarship possible, this is even lower. I will give her the benefit of the doubt that it is her own work, unlike her plagiarist husband.
N166ER…. Whaaaaa?
I’m always astonished that nobody mentions how we got so many Blacks in Congress. In a laudable but ultimately counterproductive move, the Courts order racial Gerrymandering of Congressional districts to create “Black opportunity” districts. There are some interesting comments buried in the Presidential Libraries about this, comments from old-line pols smacking their heads in frustration and saying things like “Do these idiodts have a clue?” because it was going to end almost all White congressional representation in the south (all the Blacks had been moved) and insure Republican victories. Every time I hear of complaint about Gerrymandering by state legislators, I point out the role played by the Supreme Court and people are truly shocked. Somehow the NYP and WP never mention it.
Re: “children who are 40% wealthier”. Although Chris Pappas married his longtime boyfriend, Vann Bentley, earlier this year, I don’t think he has any children as yet.
> Greta Van Susteren’s summary of the Hamas bodycam footage (it contains rapes)
Actual rapes, or like when Lara Logan claimed she got raped in Egypt, when in reality some locals put their hands up her shirt?