Aaron’s Entire Universe Collides With Itself

6:00 pm, 11/12/05

Aaron's Entire Universe Collides With Itself
[Greetings, Instapundit readers: To clue you in, the joke here is that I'm a real live Southern Illinoisan, an Illinois conservative who was born about 15 minutes from SIU in Williamson County and had also lived there for the last 22 years, though I evacuated to Binghamton, New York literally last week. For a little background, SIU is sometimes jokingly known as "Little Chicago" due to the huge percentage of the student body that comes down from one of the only two outposts of liberalism in the state. Remember to poke around the blog, today's other greatest hits include the continuing burning of Paris and the latest on Somalian pirate attacks, and if you're an Illinoisan, you'll especially want to enjoy the regular heckling of Governor Corruptevich, for whom my white hot loathing continues to burn with the fire of ten thousand exploding suns despite being safe on a frozen hilltop a thousand miles away. Ya'll come back now, ya hear?]

My, my, how stereotypes of the South have changed: In a story that has everything, the DoJ is cracking down on academic discrimination against white people and men, not to mention "non-preferred minorities" (IE Asians).

President Bush's administration has threatened to sue Southern Illinois University, alleging its fellowship programs for minority and female students violate federal civil rights laws by discriminating against whites, men and others. . . .

"The University has engaged in a pattern or practice of intentional discrimination against whites, non-preferred minorities and males,'' says a Justice Department letter sent to the university last week and obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

The letter demands the university cease the fellowship programs, or the department's civil rights division will sue SIU by Nov. 18.

Chancellor Walt Wendler (who I've met, friendly guy) says he doesn't think it's discriminatory, and the school wants more time to discuss with the feds, but the fact is the programs simply hand out big wads of cash to, as one program terms it, "traditionally underrepresented" minorities, and "traditional" and "really" don't always add up.

The Web site describing the Bridge program specifically says it is only open to members of underrepresented minority groups. Several white women who have "overcome hardship" have been awarded the Graduate Dean's Fellowship, even though women outnumber men at the university. White men need not apply, however. "I'll be upfront with you -- no white male will get this award,'' McNeil said....

SIU attorneys, overhearing this virtual confession, immediately blackjacked McNeil, yanked his phone out of the wall, wrapped duct tape around his mouth and locked him in the trunk of their Cadillac. Barack Obama isn't too happy, either:

In a move Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said "just doesn't make sense," the U.S. Justice Department charged that three SIU programs that aim to increase minority enrollment in graduate school exclude whites, other minorities and males, in violation of Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act.

A spokesman for the Justice Department's civil rights division declined comment Thursday, but Illinois' junior U.S. senator ridiculed the maneuver as a "cynical" bid to distract public attention from Bush's sagging popularity.

"One of my concerns has been with all the problems the Bush administration is having, that they'll start resorting to what they consider to be wedge issues as a way of helping themselves politically," Obama said.

"If anything, the White House should be doing everything it can to encourage more engineering students and Ph.D.'s. It strikes me as a completely unnecessary and divisive move and one that I think may be pretty cynical in its motive," Obama said.

Right, "everything it can". As a thought experiment, let's imagine that we create a government-sponsored cash prize handed out just for being a white man, to "defend the traditional educational dominance of the white man against the rising tide of color and estrogen at SIU".

Racist! Sexist! Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton sharing tearful hugs! They'd be right, too. This is an easy question, and Obama, incredibly, gave the wrong answer, which is supremely ironic because of the speech he gave at the Democratic National Convention, catapulting him to national celebrity:

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy; our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."...

If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties....

Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

..."to take back the White House, YEEEEARRRGGGH!" Now he suddenly can't figure out why anyone would be opposed to "slicing up" a student body on the basis of race? I guess if there's someone who's denied access to graduate school assistance because they have unacceptably low melanin levels or are outfitted with the wrong genitalia, that does not threaten Obama's civil liberties, does not matter to him, and, in fact, "makes sense". Of course, the persona the Democratic Party created for him to present nationally had nothing to do with the real Obama, but it was meant to look good and position a relative nobody as a bigtime somebody, since his incredibly lopsided Senate race was destined to be one of the few clear Democratic victories in 2004. Frankly, one could attribute cynical motives to the Big O himself: No one wants to take this money away, just make it available to everyone, regardless of race or gender. What's Obama's problem, he a man-hater or something?

SIU is actually behind the game: Many other schools, including the University of Illinois, have wised up and opened up their fellowship programs. One of the three programs in question at SIU actually does have a qualifier that requires the minority student to "overcome hardship", but if there are really hardships that deter minorities from getting into SIU graduate school, then wouldn't an "overcoming hardship" program open to all races and both genders naturally include more members of "traditionally underrepresented" groups? Don't caucasian males have hardships to overcome, too? If you prick us, do we not bleed, Senator?

Winning the hereditary lottery and becoming an involuntary member of a group based solely on your genetic code does not entitle you to anything, that's why we did away with the feudal concepts of noble title in the first place, and there is no provision in the Civil Rights Act that allows the oppression of or discrimination against certain minorities. That was the point, Barack.

Update: LaShawn Barber has more to say.

Update: Fellow expat Southern Illinoisan Small Town Veteran: "It's about damned time."