Showing posts with label Affirmative Action. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Affirmative Action. Show all posts

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Why African Americans Should be Skeptical of Rand Paul’s New and Improved Republican Party

K
entucky Senator and rising star in the GOP, Rand Paul recently spoke at Howard University, a mostly black campus in Washington DC. He came to the campus to ask black Americans to give conservatism a second look. He appears to be banking on African Americans ignoring decades of controversial stands on racial issues. 

Now that it is clear that the Republican party can no longer win elections by appealing to white prejudices, Paul is trying to re-write history, his own, his father’s and the the Republican conservative movement. African American voters have every reason to be skeptical of Paul’s hollow overture.

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

"Binders Full of Women": Shredding Mitt's Myth

by Nomad

C

ourtesy of The Atlantic, this photograph from last night's 90-minute debate at Hofstra University in Hemptstead, N.Y seems to capture the inner truth about the candidates.

One exchange during the debate which emerged as an online talking point was Romney's remark on hiring women. 
Here's is a transcript of that segment:

CROWLEY: Governor Romney, pay equity for women?

ROMNEY: Thank you. An important topic, and one which I learned a great deal about, particularly as I was serving as governor of my state, because I had the chance to pull together a cabinet and all the applicants seemed to be men.

And I -- and I went to my staff, and I said, "How come all the people for these jobs are -- are all men." They said, "Well, these are the people that have the qualifications." And I said, "Well, gosh, can't we -- can't we find some -- some women that are also qualified?"
And -- and so we -- we took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet.
I went to a number of women's groups and said, "Can you help us find folks," and they brought us whole binders full of women.

I was proud of the fact that after I staffed my Cabinet and my senior staff, that the University of New York in Albany did a survey of all 50 states, and concluded that mine had more women in senior leadership positions than any other state in America. Now one of the reasons I was able to get so many good women to be part of that team was because of our recruiting effort.
His statement seems to contradict his already foggy stand on Affirmative Action. After all, why is hiring from a pre-selected category any different? How is a binder full of women any different than hiring from a binder full of blacks or a binder full of Hispanics? His statement doesn't make sense because, as we shall see, it is based on a misrepresentation of the facts.