YGGDRASIL

Race Bias #38 - "Democratic Delegate Selection"

This series of posts on Race Bias against Euro-Americans, has consistently highlighted the connection between racial preference schemes and the political process.

Racial preferences have nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with maintaining political power.

The excerpt below makes that connection explicit. The excerpt describes the racial quotas that the Democratic Party enforces in its delegate selection process.

The article is written in the form of one of those modern "confessional" pieces by a lawyer for Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. It underscores the degree to which the Democratic party has become the party of non-whites. The problem facing the Democratic party is a simple one.

To benefit politically from racial preferences to minorities, these preferences must be highly visible to the minority beneficiaries but must remain nearly invisible to the majority.

But the Democrats racial preferences are far from invisible to the majority. Exacerbating their problem is the general low education levels and lack of sophistication of the mass of dark skinned voters. Unless these dark skinned voters can actually see large numbers of dark skinned people as political convention delegates, they get suspicious that their interests are not being represented. They cannot accept the benefits of back room deals that would allow the party to appear to be representing the majority.

Absent large numbers of non-white faces, non-white interest in the election wanes and voter turnout falls, hurting the Democrats chances.

But the complexion of floor delegates merely reinforces the image among Euro-Americans of the Democratic party as the anti-white party. In the past, the Democratic party has been able to reward racial aggression of non-whites and exploit it for political purposes without tipping off the majority. Now, that is no longer possible.

The grim reality is that the Democratic party simply cannot get elected unless they energize their dark skinned racial constituencies in ways that are visible to all. They have no choice but to maintain racial preferences in a visible "in-your- face" manner.

They have no choice but to accelerate the balkanization of the United States.

Yggdrasil- Apr. 19, 1995 Wall Street Journal A16

The Democrat's Quota System

BY PHILIP S. FRIEDMAN

In dealing with affirmative action, President Clinton has apparently seized on the slogan "reflect, don't retreat" while he awaits the findings of a bipartisan commission. But before he embarks on yet another timid assertion of presidential leadership, President Clinton would be wise to reflect on the presidential nominating rules of his own party. There, the full extent of the Democratic Party's institutional commitment to race and gender preferences underscores the likely failure of any affirmative action commission that the president might appoint.

Delegate selection rules for the 1996 Democratic National Convention provide that the national and state Democratic parties must "adopt and implement affirmative action programs with specific goals and timetables" for five minority groups: African- Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Asian/Pacific Americans and women. While the rules profess to prohibit quotas, each state delegation, and the convention as a whole, must be divided equally between male and female participants. Moreover, at-large seats are "reserved" for members of the above named minority groups to meet the representation "goals" typically established by a demographic study of the Democratic electorate in each state.

While these rules started as a commendable effort to ensure minority participation, in practice they are enforced with the rigidity of quotas. Indeed, during the 1992 Clinton campaign, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of assisting Mr. Clinton's delegate selection team, like all of its Democratic counterparts, in counting the number of women, African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics and other party-sanctioned minority groups.

* * *

Consequently, in a district with 10 delegates, if the voters elect eight male and two female delegates, the party rules dictate that three male delegates be replaced with three female delegates.

The state party must then tally the ethnic, gender and racial characteristics of all the district delegates. If the tally shows that the makeup does not match the state's representation "goals," then the state's "at-large" delegates are "cherry- picked" from among those individuals possessing the group attributes necessary to bring the entire delegation into compliance with affirmative action criteria.

Ostensibly, the purpose of these rules is to encourage those groups who have historically been underrepresented in the party. But rather than provide for equal opportunities, the Democratic Party's rules-as my own experience revealed-dictate equal outcomes based on race and sex. In short, convention delegates are increasingly selected on the basis of their status as members of defined groups, rather than as individuals with unique ideological principles, commitments and beliefs.

* * *

These quotas can't simply be dismissed as the work of a voluntary organization. The Democratic Party, like the Republican, receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funds. Were there any delegates with the courage--and standing--to challenge the system, the federal courts might well find the Democratic Party's use of federal dollars to promote racial and gender set- asides to be in violation of both Title VI and Title VII of the civil rights laws.

Even more important, however, the Democratic Party's nominating rules embody the ideological commitment of the party and presumably its leader, Bill Clinton, to race and gender set- asides. Until President Clinton revamps these rules, not much credence can be given to his promise for an honest review of this country's affirmative action policies.

Mr. Friedman was the deputy general counsel to the 1992 Clinton campaign. He is an attorney in Washington.


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