Marin County’s Minority Problem (Updated)
I made several attempts to translate that, but my translations were as impenetrable as the original. An example: the County was found to be in preliminary non-compliance with non-discrimination requirements but that finding wasn’t final and shouldn’t be construed to mean that any County agent or employee had actually done anything that may have had an illegal effect, and all agree that the County has not admitted that any of its agents or employees had ever done anything that HUD preliminarily found that they may have done.
Nevertheless, Marin County, being the incomparably liberal county that it is, agreed to take a large number of steps to rectify its possible, but not admitted, discrimination against absent minorities. The specifics include massively documenting “outreach” to minorities, with records of which groups are targeted and very specific racial identification of attendants at meetings over the next five years. The County’s “notes from the meeting(s) shall be relied upon to provide the disability status of attendees and when attendees did not self-identify race/and or ethnicity on the sign-in sheets.”
Racial monitoring is not limited to the meetings: “the Recipient shall ensure all future contracts between the Recipient and sub-recipients contain a requirement for sub-recipients to collect and report data on the race, ethnicity/national origin (Hispanic/Latino or Non-Hispanic/Latino), gender and disability characteristic or waiting list applicants and participants and beneficiaries.” Specific forms and procedures for collecting all this racial data must be revised, submitted, and approved, and training provided to County personnel on how to collect the data.
After all the meetings and forms and data collection and training, of course, is the required affirmative action: wherever “under-representation” was identified, “affirmative marketing and outreach strategies targeting the under-represented groups” must be developed and implemented. Where “Asian and Hispanic populations” with “Limited English Proficiency” are among the under-represented, a “Language Assistance Plan” must be developed “as a means of increasing their participation in affordable housing programs and public service activities.”
These sorts of requirements go on for over eight pages. Many are stellar, but perhaps my favorite is III(E), which requires “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH).” Section 1 requires the County to complete “an Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice (AI)” that must include, among other items, identification and analysis of “the causes of lower racial and ethnic minority residency in the County relative to adjacent counties” and “the actions the Recipient will take to address those impediments.”
So there it is. The biggest “Impediment” to fair housing in Marin, one of America’s 25 richest counties, would seem to be that, according to the 2000 Census, it is only 2.9% black and only 5.7% Mexican. (It is also 0.2% Puerto Rican and 0.1% Cuban; does HUD care if those groups are “under-represented” among the Hispanics who are “represented”?) Both Sonoma County to the north (6.6% black in 2009) and San Francisco County to the south (6.7%) are doing much better. Those counties are also doing far better than Marin in attracting people of Limited English Proficiency. According to this November 2010 “Assessment of Limited English Proficient Populations” in the Bay Area, only 7.5% of Marin’s population speaks English “less than very well,” compared to 10.5% in Sonoma County and 22.1% in San Francisco County.
HUD is right; clearly Marin is falling down on the job of attracting minorities. Perhaps it could offer relocation bonuses, homestead tax exemptions, and other tax benefits to minorities to move there, especially Hispanics and Asians with limited English proficiency, so they could not be discriminated against in public housing and other services.
And, to be sure, HUD should have no difficulty persuading the courts that assessing citizens (and others) different tax rates based on their race or ethnicity does not violate — indeed, according to HUD, is required by — Title VI’s command “that discrimination on the ground of race, color, or national origin shall not occur in connection with programs and activities receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Ha! About time. Marin County residents have fought for decades, to stop ‘people of color’ from settling in their communities. In addition to housing, against all common sense, they’ve gummed up development of the only railroad right-of-way that goes north to Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, from the Bay ferry terminus of Larkspur. Bus routes are few and infrequent-just enough to get the menial labor in at dawn and out by sunset. Been a dirty little secret for years in the Bay Area. Their Member of Congress is the adorable Lynn Woolsey, who would have been looked to for leadership and funding.
So I guess what HUD is trying to tell them is letting a Mexican mow your yard doesn’t comprise “outreach” towards minorities, or those with limited English proficiency, in the eyes of the Federal government? Can’t they just send some money in somewhere as atonement for living large? Dine at an Asian restaurant once in awhile and leave a nice tip? There’s affordable low-income housing in the “greater neighborhood” . . . it’s called “Vallejo”.
Hey!!! bus them puppies in!!..squat, tents, let them kn ow how the rest of us live..
puppies??? make of it what you will…
WHAT EXACTLY CAN YOU COMMENT ON ???????
THIS IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF SCUMBAG LAWYERS TALKING A LOT AND SAYING NOTHING.WHAT THEY DO BEST.
As they say, if you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullsh_t.
“It [Marin County] is only 2.9% black and only 5.7% Mexican.” That much? Those must be the live-in servants who take care of the houses there. After all, it must be cheaper to keep them there than to bus them in every day. Not to worry, though, I’m sure Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer would just LOVE to open up a homeless shelter there, next to the beach with a shore view too. Would help in boosting the homeless people’s spirits, right? And how about a few check-cashing places to help these homeless people out? Not to mention a couple of pawn shops in case they’re short on cash. And we simply MUST have at least two rehab clinics to help the homeless with their drug problems (after all, how do you think they became homeless). And to top it off, some really cheap housing so that when they do get a job in one of the big houses cleaning the toilets or cleaning the pools, they can actually live in debt they could never even dream of paying back (thanks to Fannie May and Freddie Mac). Yep, I just can’t see good-hearted people like Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer turning down these ideas. Because, after all, they’re big-hearted liberals, right? I’m sure the fine people at Marin would simply embrace these progressive ideas. Just try it.
Hey…..Nancy and Barbara. Down here in FlaDuh we’ve got about 50,000 Haitians to loan to you? Interested in taking them off our hands? It’s only costing an additional 12mil to put them into schools. And into an already busting at- the – seams over crowded classrooms which are size limited by law.
And they’ll have a 25% grad rate too. One of out 4′s not bad though.
We can also ship you the entire population of the city of Lake Worth(less) as it’s 95% illegal too. We’ll do that for a nice deal breaker and for free too. We’ll pay all shipping and handling costs.
Whadda ya say Nance?
How utterly Soviet of HUD.
Sooooooooooo. “Racial profiling” is perfectly acceptable as long as it’s for forcing “minorities” into white-majority communities? LOL!
Did I read this right?
Antoine Dodson has sumpin’ ta say ’bout dis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y54yESyq6Io
And, don’t forget Eddie Murphy’s Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/bf0ef51459/mrrobinsons-neighborhood-from-nino
Silly Liberals!
For some strange and perverse reason I got a warm and happy feeling reading this article.
Hey, I would love to buy me a house in Marin County, but I’ve always found their prices way too damn high. Would looking like an arab, though not being actually one (and thank heavens for that), make me qualified to take advantage of one of the ways Mr. Rosemberg suggested Marin County could use in order to increase its ethnic diversity? On the other hand, my English proficiency could turn out to be a minus, and my application would be weeded out for being from an individual who is not “minority enough” to cash in on this new PC/MC initiative.
1. Is the point of all this racial and ethnic “balancing” that each community in the nation represent, in microcosm, the demographics of the entire US population? Because if it is, here’s what the US Census Bureau’s 2009 American Communities Survey indicated:
Race
White alone – 74.8%
Black alone – 12.4%
Some other race – 4.9%
Asian alone – 4.5%
Two or more races – 2.4%
American Indian or Alaska Native alone – .8%
Hawaiian or Pacific Islander – .15%
15.8% of the population in 2009 reported being of Hispanic or Latino
ethnicity. That figure is broken down by race as follows:
White alone – 63%
Some other race – 29.5%
Two or more races – 4.2%
Black alone – 2.0%
American Indian or Alaska Native – 1.0%
Asian alone – .3%
Hawaiian Native or Pacific Islander – .06%
If it’s incumbent on each county or other government subunit to meet this distribution, then it is not just Marin County which is deficient, no? Isn’t LA county deficient? Westchester county? Wayne county in Michigan? Probably 99%+ of American counties?
2. Wouldn’t this kind of racism, er, Procrustean bed thinking, require massive government-enforced population shifting? Who’s going to pay for that?
3. If this is indeed a legitimate method of achieving “diversity”, wouldn’t it follow that the UN, or some other international body, could subsequently claim authority to force whole countries to assume the demographic characteristics of the entire human population? Couldn’t it be used to justify preventing certain people from having children because there are already “too many of X”?
4. Why are progressives so mired in issues of race and racism, anyway? Where does the “diversity” insanity end? Are progressives going to insist that the Chinatowns in New York, San Francisco or LA be “broken up” because they’re not racially diverse enough? Are they going to insist that Muslim communities be forced to admit Christians, Jews and Hindus because they’re not religiously diverse enough? Will it become illegal to move to a community with too many Italian surnames if you have an Italian surname because it fosters ethnic clustering? Will Stephen Spielberg, Whoopi Goldberg, and Leonardo DiCaprio be forced to subdivide their estates to share them with public housing projects because to eliminate the great wealth divide?
The ‘diversity insanity’ industry owns one unbreakable exclusion clause.
That is: No organ of news media, nor governing College or University administration nor Faculty thereof, nor non-profit NGO, nor Federally-funded public broadcasting organization, shall be permitted to operate with more than 0.0025 percent of staff or employees (1) receiving in excess of $60,000 annual combined salary and benefits AND (2) publicly or privately professing, acting on or believing in conservative, patriotic or Constitutional values of the United States of America. Violators of this Section shall be subject to a fine, not to exceed $2,000,000 per Individual in such excess, or at the discretion of the Director of Diversity, enforced residence WITHOUT email or internet-capable devices in the county of Maricopa, State of Arizona, for a period not less than three (3) nor more than five (5) years.
I’d say that at this time, most are in compliance.
I’d say the diversity insanity ends at the basketball court and/or the football field. You know, where only TALENT matters.
“Are they going to insist that Muslim communities be forced to admit Christians, Jews and Hindus because they’re not religiously diverse enough?”
Brilliant…absolutely, positively brilliant!! Want to shove this “multi cultural, diversity, equality “Horse sheet down their throats?
Then this is the way to do it. Show the entire country what frauds, racists and scuzz balls they really are if they don’t welcome ( with open arms ) Religious “diversity”.
The mudslimes will go completely berserk and claim that islam is the only “One True “”"”Religion”"”") when we all know it’s a totalitarian, oppressive political ideology….not unlike fascism or…those nasty Nazis of long ago.
Stick it to them…let’s see if they accept a synagogue, a temple or a cathedral in their 911 “tribute”?
Beautiful…it is….beautiful. Then when CAIR has an apoplectic fit over this diversity law….they’ll implode and be gone.
The question of the “racial” breakdown of the “Latino/Hispanic” category is an insight into the Liberal Psychosis unto itself. Who decided that it’s an “ethnicity” and not a race? In 1977 Jimmy Carter’s OMB convened a star chamber to try and figure out how to count them so as to maximize the % of the total pop. that comes out “white”. They generated a memo that to this day governs this typology. I see the strange way this operates in the schools in a now-majority Mexican county in Calif. (If you ask them what they are that’s what they usually say they are). You should see the parents puzzling over the form that tells them to check a race box after they check the ethnicity. Only a miniscule % actually are white (Spanish-Euro ancestry alone) but if they don’t check any box that’s how they get counted! (the rational solution would be to have a “Central/South Am.Indian” box but that threatens the primacy of the NORTH Am. Indians.
There is nothing so scary as liberal bureaucrats who insist that society should be statistically balanced. Remember the Clinton administration that actually involuntarily relocated black people to Vidor, Texas because that town had no black people living there?
“Voluntary compliance” to remedy “possible” racial/ethnic descrimination is scary, too. George Orwell sure called it right 60 years ago.
As hard as I try, I continue to be “gobsmacked” by the stupidity of liberals/progressives in general, local progressive governments, and our witless federal government. I find this story amusing, and rather quite scary that our burearcrats can be so racist while looking high and low for racism to stamp out. It’s looking more and more like forward to the past, 1984 to be specific.
I’m sorry, but the entire notion of ‘insufficient minority population’ is ludicrous and I’m inclined to reject it outright.
But the idea that hypocrites are exposed for what they are is delicious.
Absolutely true. Marin has had a problem for years obtaining blue-collar and low-skill labor because homes are too expensive for anyone but the affluent. It’s been a job-seeker’s market for the local high school students. Is this a moral problem? No; it’s simply an interesting economic eccentricity in which geography and wealth have limited a community’s growth.
But now HUD has come to call . . .
Ahem. Marin County has had difficulty hiring doctors at Marin General Hospital, on account of high housing costs.
In the name of social justice maybe they should have a law that requires the homeowners of Marin County to provide permanent accommodations inside their homes to any blacks or Hispanics who request it. Refusal to provide room and board inside your house upon demand will be punishable by having your home and belongings confiscated and redistributed by the government. How about they just swap populations altogether. Uproot the people of Marin County (or at least the egregious 80%) and force them to live in Oakland and take Oakland’s residents and let them live in the mansions of Marin. All in the name of “justice,” of course. Certainly those who don’t speak English have an absolute right to live in mansions.
It’s EXACTLY what Barbara Boxer voters deserve & what the rest of us have been putting up w/for years. Finally, it’s Marin County’s turn to sweat….& sweat stinks.
I agree. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of elitist whites. Now if only the EPA could find them in non-compliance of something.
Oh Gawd…I love the idea so much that I just got an MSNBC tingle running down my leg.
Chicken coops, feral cats, dozens of howling dogs….abandoned cars and trucks on the front “lawn”….street side “restaurants” selling the freshest bean soup, salsa….then the constant echo of 9MM’s zinging off the rooftops….the wonderful night side of police helicopters hovering over these manicured lawns with their blazing lights illuminating their midnight pool romps with the coke spoons dangling from their nostrils.
You think I exaggerate? Just take a look at any illegal ghetto in Californicate. Nah…..anywhere in America where these toads have relocated and constructed exact, non functioning, ghettos….like they left behind. They’re so homesick for that good life…that they impose it upon us.
Please do a follow up story, I have a feeling this could become even more absurd, not to mention absurdly hilarious. One scenario: The county will have to hire additional staff to monitor compliance, and they have to increase minority representation, so they post the job positions, which because of Equal Opportunity Employment laws must be open to all, and from all the qualified applications choose new hires based solely on their race. Now these new hires, who’s job it is to look for instances of race based discrimination by the county, will have to investigate the county for discriminating against the other job applicants for rejecting them based on their race.
As silly as this all sounds, I’m guessing that the real outcome of all this will be much sillier, and outrageously expensive.
Stevo
The idea of communities competing for impoverished, illiterate residents with the prize being cash from the Federal Government is just to priceless.
Those who may be worried about the threat to the U.S. from China or Russia can rest easy. The HUD, EPA, FDA, et.al. will be a much more efficient destruction and we will have done it to ourselves.
As a Marin resident, I am indeed mortified.
On my next trip to Whole Foods, I shall endeavor to assuage my guilt by not only purchasing the Mexican-grown organic Belgian endive, but I shall also make it a point to stand in a check-out line manned by a clerk with limited English and a visible dissability.
There. I feel much better.
See you at yoga!
Rick,
Didn’t you find those statistics rather odd? Have they avoided the Canal District of San Rafael altogether? I lived in Novato and Tiburon and I saw plenty of hispanics in my travels throughout Marin County. There’s even a brand new, very large, Hispanic grocery store (Mi Pueblo) near my favorite sushi bar, Yu Shang.
Acknowledging the Canal District would mess up the con game, plus they’d have to admit they haven’t been enforcing zoning and code there for 20 years.
Gee, Marin County almost seems like apartheid-era South Africa. In that case, the “Eloi” lived in the cities while the “Morlocks” lived out of sight in the townships and suburbs and had to commute in to work every day.
Interesting, huh?
Perhaps we could fly in some people from the Third World to get the country in its entirety in line with these racist laws. Then we would go from being preliminarily non-compliant vis a vis 3.02 melainin zone system count under representation to a more healthy 7.33 status thus sustaining the low albedo necessary without which a truly democratic polity cannot exist. Oh wait – we’re already doing that.
Didn’t we pick up rifles a couple centuries ago for no taxation without under representation or maybe it was no representation without taxation? Hard to remember as people like Thomas Jefferson had an arcane way of writing, almost as if he was some kind of a douchebag of a bureaucrat. You need a catchy phrase to topple a government however bungling.
This is a perfect reason to deny tax dollars to our bureaucracy as it has gone entirely mad. Once again European Americans are asked to formally and legally prostrate themselves for a demographic imperative whose goals can be only guessed at despite this clear link with the Civil Rights Act.
Let me say it straight out. I hate America for what it has become and because we have stood by like bleating sheep and taken this and a million other things. I hate the idea of living in a somewhat cleaner version of Orwell’s Oceania where entities like HUD really stand for “Whitey Had Too Much Success With His Imperialism And Here Comes the Racial Road Grader To Level Things Out”. The WHTMSWHIHCRRGLTO; an appropriate acronym since it is non-sensical.
Why not take this to its logical conclusion and simply give back the entire nation to the native Americans? One could argue from a legal point of view that this is setting a precedent whereby indigenous groups in Hawaii and Alaska could claim that colonization and imperialism are against international law and must be undone. We could undo everything we have done.
We could take back the Louisiana Purchase for defective parts, sell back Mexico the parts we extorted from them, rip up the Union Pacific as being unfeasible in retrospect. Mexico could get in the spirit by outlawing the wheel and iron. All blacks could be sent back to Africa on cruise ships in a project called “Marin County and A Mule”.
Once again our government has patronizingly relegated black Americans to the status of second class citizens that can’t cut it and who should buy the Israeli DVD, “How To Create Your Very Own Country In Only 3 Years”. Almost half a century on, it is clear that the solution to Jim Crow has no time limit (surprise) and that it will be based on a mathematical formula.
Perhaps next we shall see black neighborhoods, the NBA, NFL and NCAA Basketball fined for over-compliance. When we all go back to Europe it will be hell to rip out all the non-compliant centuries of infrastructure but I’m sure there will be no lack of native Americans to swarm out of their casinos to do the job.
Lastly, we can take the Statue of Liberty with us and put up a statue of Cabeca de Vaca with an inscription that says, “Don’t Be Like Me”. As a final act of wistful revenge, we can parachute copies of the Constitution into the middle east so they can commit cultural suicide.
No, over-compliance is not conceivable. Have you ever known a liberal to set limits on the amount of good he does for his village.
The best response from Marin Co.would be to tear down the low income housing and refuse all federal funds in the future. Oh wait! Then they might have to pay a locally appropriate living wage to the maid,nanny and gardener without the Federal subsidy for housing. The same with food stamps, Medicaid and earned income tax credits. Do you mean the cost of living would go up for the leftist rich by removing the these programs? Never mind!
Then obviously there will have to be a court-ordered busing program, exchanging residents between Marin and Oakland to match the Federally-mandated racial balance.
Marin and Richmond — it’s closer.
This isn’t funny. This kind of stuff, I believe, is what drives Tea Party protests.
It isn’t high government spending that bothers people per se, so much as it’s mindless government spending like this. HUD is out of control. The department should be closed immediately, all its employees fired, all its real estate sold.
I lived in Marin for 18 years.
I sublet to a young woman who was an American of Hispanic descent. (Legal: I did a background check before signing the tenant agreement.) She was busy pursuing the American Dream, working one full-time and 2 part-time jobs. Her brother was a realtor who helped her buy a foreclosed house in another state for rental income. A clean, quiet, and responsible person, she was any landlord’s ideal tenant.
I lived in San Anselmo at the time, which was over 90% Caucasian. One day, she told me that as she walked home from the bus stop, one of the lily-white female residents looked at her suspiciously.
I explained to her that my neighbors love to expound on how much they care about the poor treatment “those people” suffer at the hands of all the racist xenophobes in America. However, if some of “those people” were to move into San Anselmo, these “caring” people fear their property values will fall because the neighborhood will turn into a barrio.
This is how it is in Marin. There are Hispanics, but they have to live in the Canal District in San Rafael. There are Blacks, but they have to live in the projects in Marin City.
As long as everybody stays in their place, the white liberals can feel good about how much they “care,” without actually doing anything that disturbs their affluent lifestyle. Well, except perhaps to make rest of us do something about our alleged racism, so they can feel good.
Marin performed a great service, by destroying my own liberalism.
Hypocracy is ugly and rampant.
marin is not alone.
the same thing happened last year in the county i live in,Westchester, N.Y.
Two anecdotes on Marin County
My brother worked for Wells Fargo for two weeks in 2007 and he was told, “Marin County is full of old white people who have lived in the same house for at least twenty years and never switch bank accounts”
I worked at a middle school in the biggest city in Marin in 2009 and it was 60% Hispanic, 30% white, 10% other.
Yeah, if you want to see what the state’s going to be in twenty years, look at the school demographics.
Middle to upper-middle metropolitan suburbs up and down the state are as much Asian and Indian as they are white. And within many groups in this strata there’s substantial levels of interbreeding – not a bad thing. ‘White’ kids with Filipino names, sandy-haired ‘Chinese’ kids.
Below that, it’s very heavily Hispanic.
There’s a crust of whites at the top and spread moderately down the rest of the economic ladder, but as a whole the white population is aging.
Similarly, the black population will trend down as a percentage, and in influence. The ‘middle-class black’ population is diffused among the broader community and the poorer black enclaves that were created by WWII industrialization are going to be majority-Hispanic in a decade (where they aren’t already.)
Likewise,
I have relatives on the Central Coast. The community is lily white. Well they have a few Mexicans to cook in the resturants and sweep the streets. They have been giving me a hard time because I live in a gated community in the Central Valley. So the last time they came to visit I “exposed” them to some examples of “Minority culture” and recommended that they do exactly one of these outreach programs to ghetto youth. They didn’t like it.
Has it occurred to these geniuses that minorities don’t want to live with these insufferable white hippy yuppy bobo snobs?
This reminds me in a way of the Boston desegregation battles of the 1970s, which were comically ironic not for the people involved, but for the reaction of the area’s elites, who had spent the better part of the previous 20 years looking down their noses at other “unenlightened” areas of the county (and on the political side, where the hypocrisy was so strong it led to the infamous “60 Minutes” piece showing that Ted Kennedy and other leading supporters of school busing were the ones who sent their kids to private schools).
I often feel that hyper-corrective busing remedies to battle desegregation gave pedophilic priests in the Catholic church and education system a lot more power to bully their victims with. I notice that many cases occurred in archdioses such as Cleveland, Boston, and Chicago, where a kid could be scared away from reporting the priest if it meant having to go to an all-black school across town. I’m not at all denigrating the Catholic education experience.
I notice that many cases occurred in archdioses such as Cleveland, Boston, and Chicago, where a kid could be scared away from reporting the priest if it meant having to go to an all-black school across town.”
So according to you, either in every catholic school in these cities there was a pedophile priest or no person in none of catholic schools would believe kid, because otherwise why write that he/she should go to “all-black school across town” i/o another catholic school?
urbanleftbehind,
I understand that you know about ” these catholic pedophile priests” from MSM. However I also believe (because you post in PM) that you think that MSM often over-dramatize, lies or misrepresent the facts. IF so, why in the case of catholic priests you think MSM did nothing of the above?
Why in one case it can’t be truth or overdramatization and in the other it is nothing but a truth?
If homosexual priests flooded several seminaries after Vatican II (ealry 1960s), it was their fiefdom across whole archdioceses, not just one or two parishes and schools. They probably made it clear to the victim that if they transfered to another Catholic school nearby, the “bad rep” would follow them. I think the MSM does have an agenda in re overblowing the threat of pedophilic priests (in actuality 10% of all ordained clergy, not much different then the reported percentage of homosexuals in society) just on endemic hostility to religion, particularly forms of Christianity. In earlier times (1980s), I also believe the fundamentalist churches also glommed on to these incidents to try to get people to leave Catholicism and convert to various fundamental sects.
The 10% figure has been shown to be bogus; I think it originated in the Kinsey report, which was bad enough, but Kinsey himself made up the numbers. Since then its been repeated through sympathetic media that homosexuality runs at about 10% throughout society, when in any actual surveys it’s never more than 1-2%.
Not to worry white folks!! Babs was very disappointed in the campaign contributions this past year from the wealthy white folks in Marin and ordered this report to encourage their generosity.
put a bunch of prison release halfway homes in there. that will fill the requirements fast.
Yes, the article fails to mention that HUD thinks that, in addition to other inequalities, the crime rate in Marin is far too low. Just as wealth needs to be redistributed, so does the crime.
These diversity laws are just as bad on employment. Fed discrimination regulations state that if you dont have the right % of each group (or at least a low % in any group that the feds track, they dont seem to worry if the % of white males is significantly low, and lately dont seem to worry much about asians either), you are automatically assumed to be guilty of discrimination, and must then affirmatively prove that your employment practices are NOT discriminatory. In effect, the traditional legal concept of innocent before proven guilty is reversed, and the defendent has the burden to prove themselves innocent, having to prove a negative, something that is normally almost impossible. It is no wonder that when facing legal liability like that, companies initiate rigid quota programs, to ensure immunity from discrimination lawsuits. They may not like treating people that way, in effect discriminating against anybody that is NOT in a protected group, but fed law forces them to, to avoid potential legal liability.
All these laws should be modified so having the wrong % can only be used as probable cause for initiating an investigation, but in court a low
% proves nothing, and actual individual discrimination must be individually and affirmatively proved, by actually discriminatory conduct, not just a disparity in outcomes (which could be caused by differences is % of qualified applicants in the various groups), but actual racist statements or practices, before they can be found guilty.
Exceptions should also be made for businesses and neighborhoods with an ethnic character. For example, an Irish pub should be able to hire a lot of Irish, a Chinese resteraunt lots of chinese, a German resteraunt lots of germans, etc, without then becomming vulnerable for not hiring enough of somebody else. (Interesting though, that an all black businesses, like the Harlem globe Trotters never got in any trouble).
adversity.net does the best job I’ve seen of clarifying the race statistics at in the federal government (the policy is “quotas plus”); it’s probably even worse in the liberal ghettoes like Calif. govt. I once inquired from the Marin County government about the racial statistics of it’s workforce and was told that the numbers were not a matter of public record! (Interestingly, San Mateo County had the numbers right on the web site with a nice pie chart and everything, though unsurprisingly the data reflected a strict quota regime). San Fransisco if so f-d up you can’t even identify who to ask the question of (even in the unlikely event they would respond).
As always, the Left wants everybody else to adhere to rigid standards from which they excuse themselves because of their “good” works. Didn’t they count the live-in Guatemalan nannies?
Oh yes. Spent many of my “formative” years in Mill Valley. Marin City was the minority showcase then. I remember it being referred to by most people, young and adult as “Jigaboo Junction”.
It’s progressed, somewhat. I don’t think that word has been uttered publicly for sometime in Marin. However, privately, there are new variations.
Some “progressives” are funny like that.
Can the entire state of Vermont be far behind? Wouldn’t Vermont fit the very definition of apartheid?
Truth is, there are all kinds of 95+% white hippy/yuppy enclaves large and small. I nominate Vashon Island, WA.
I wonder what the demographics are at Martha’s Vinyard? Vail, CO? Sun Valley, ID? Etc, etc…
HUD is another federal department we can get rid off.
Marin’s very diverse. They have the potheads on the coast, the old white folks in towns like Ross…seriously, though, I’m surprised that with San Rafael in the county they couldn’t find more than 5% Hispanic.
As I think one of the other commenters noted, the ethnic demographics of Marin County, at least outside San Rafael, have probably changed less since the ’50s than any other county in the Bay Area. The black population is still largely in Marin City where there were put in 1943 to work in the Sausalito shipyards.
As much fun as it is to poke Marin County in the eye, think what it’s costing the rest of America to administer these idiotic regulations.
Not even to hoist Marin on its own petard is it worth charging this to innocent Texans, Oklahomans, Alabamans, Nebraskans, etc.
I for one am OFFENDED that minorities and others are referred to as “subs” —
“the Recipient shall ensure all future contracts between the Recipient and sub-recipients contain a requirement for sub-recipients to collect and report data on the race, ethnicity/national origin (Hispanic/Latino or Non-Hispanic/Latino), gender and disability characteristic”
Well, there goes the neighborhood !
The 1964 Civil Rights outlawed prejudicial discrimination based upon race, color, national origin, gender, or disability. NOTHING in the Act mandated diversity. It is the government that IS discriminating based upon race and color. Government tax money is being spent to subsidize low earning individuals to live as well as high earning individuals. If diversity is mandated in housing, then diversity must be enforced in the NBA and NFL. The only time when racial discrimination is permitted is when it benefits non-Caucasians. Equal opportunity is not the same as equal results. Why should a 20 hour fast food cook live in the same home as a brain surgeon? One studies and works hard and contributes a lot to society, the other contributes little. What law requires petty thieves to live next to cancer researchers?
Nice catch. Prime example of allowing yourself to be diverted into responding to the re-set goal posts of liberals.
I guess the “elite” of this county best be building low income housing. They want to dictate what others do, now they can live with those dictates also.
Don’t forget the homeless! We’re disproportionately represented here in Reno, but we can put some of them on the westbound Greyhound in a flash …
Next stop, Portland!
Hey, aren’t those diversity rules for everyone else?? Same with taxes and death taxes, liberals shelter theirs, have the feds take yours. Forced busing to schools? Libs pass the law, send theirs to private school. Teddy, down there in the deep depths, can you hear me? Obamacare? Congresspersons have their own, paid for by us, and a separate pot of our money for botox and other incidentals.
It’s all the fault of George W. Bush.
Sarah Palin should share some blame too!
It occurs that HUD’s Deputy Director is an old familiar name out here in Seattle. That would be one Ron Sims, formerly the King County Executive.
He is no stranger to overreaching government. In 2004, with his enthusiastic approval, a ‘Critical Areas Ordinance’ was imposed on rural property owners, which required them to leave untouched 60 percent of their properties ‘for the environment’. It was as if those areas were now seized as County wilderness parks, but without compensation to the owners. A State Appeals Court, four years later, overturned the ‘untouched 60%’ part of Sims’s CAO as over-abusing the owners’ property rights.
Does this mean that the county will be building nice new condos for low income minorities?
The solution is simple. Marin County has the lowest representation of taquerias, dim sum and fried chicken restaurants in the Bay Area (excluding chains such as Taco Bell, KFC and the like which do not count as true ethnic eateries). Public funding should be directed to substantially increase the presence of such businesses. If you build it they will come.
Wow, sounds great I will volunteer to comply. How much does it pay and does it come with a green car (except the Volt!)? I am willing to stay in a guest house (at least 2000 sq. ft. with exercise equipment and internet connection) and to help keep taxes down, I will dust. As for the Language Assistance Plan, I have always wanted to learn Italian and then maybe people will stop making fun of my Ebonics.
Marin County has an “insufficient minority population”. So what? That term in my opinion is at best undefinable – by consensus at least. It is defined by many as approaching zero, I suppose. I lived in Marin for thirty years and I can describe to you at least one consensus opinion: I never once had anyone there say to me, “Gee, I wish there were more Blacks here.” As it happened, in an amazing instance of freakish maldistribution of our precious but “insufficient” supply of minorities, the neighbors on either side of my house were both Black. Nice people and nice friends…and affluent to one degree or another.
And that of course is why they were there. It’s pretty simple doncha know, the most beautiful locale in one of the most beautiful areas in the country is going to cost you. Oh oh, there go the minorities. Once again, so what? It’s purely passive, dear HUD. No racism or any of that evil stuff, just economics. Like anything else, anywhere else, you want to play you got to pay.
Strangely enough I managed to exist in Marin County without getting to see “people of color” every day – though I would have gladly traded some of them into Marin for some of the Lefty wingnuts I had to endure there. Whoops, that just gets you more Lefties, doesn’t it? Never mind. Guess that’s why I’m no longer there…which by the way allows the HUD hit on them to be all the more amusing to me now.
I recall the North Dakota air national guard was identified as having insufficient Americans of African American heritage.
The commander using state statistics identifed the likely existance of 7 African Americans in North Dakota who were not in the Air National Guard, and invited them to join.
Blacks so so under-represented in aviation fields that the feds actually created a new job category inside the FAA to cover it up. This was the Clintons. First they threw out the “wash-out” rule at the air traffic controller academy (you flunk out once you can’t come back) to try and get more “under-represented minorities”. Failing there, they cooked up a bureaucratic solution. BTW, if you want to see some gold-standard Orwellian language take a look at the FAA website and see if you can figure out just who qualifies for special consideration in hiring.
This is one of those issues that has (largely) gone away in Southern California. Non-hispanic whites are now less than 50% of the area as a whole, at least as far as I know, and even neighborhoods like Beverly Hills have their quota of Hispanics, a few blacks, and the occasionaly very wealthy Asian “ghetto”. Here in Glendale (where I live for another week; I’m moving to the S.F. Valley) the majority minority group is Armenians, who comprise just about half the city’s population. Glendale is supposedly the second-largest Armenian city in the world, after Yerevan, the capitol in Armenia.
Anyway, few of the cities up here are all-white any more. The interesting thing would be to see if diversity in skin-color is all that HUD is interested in. Expensive neighborhoods, in California or anywhere else, are expensive because the riff-raff, of any color, doesn’t live nearby. You can’t imagine a wealthy homeowner finding a homeless alcoholic on his doorstep and saying to his wife: “Well at least he’s white!” I seriously doubt that the homeowners in Marin would object to a black CEO of some major corporation moving in next to them. In fact, they probably would be relieved in some way, because this would prove they weren’t being racist. It’s the lower income people, regardless of color, that terrify them. Their children might be tempted to steal a car or two, and they might have even lower-income relatives who would come to visit and perhaps engage in further mayhem…
Apparently it is ‘Blacks for thee, but none for me’.
What a bunch of hypocrites.
The HUD directive not only violates the Civil Rights Law of 1964, but the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, commanding equality under the law.
When the Civil Rights Act was passed, with the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), Hubert Humphrey, who sponsored it, was warned that it would lead to quotas based on race, etc. He denied this, saying that he would “eat his hat” if this occurred, since it would be in violation of the act, and added the clause for no quotas. Parkinson’ s Law defeated him, since the new bureaucrats had to justify themselves. He never did eat his hat.
So if people decline to state their race on the forms, does that throw the county into noncompliance?
I bet all the liberal white folk of 80% white Marin consider the tea party racists.
Oh, c’mon. The ultra-left wing, politicaly correct citizens of Marin County are happy to welcome black residents into their community…as long as the blacks reside in Marin City or San Quentin.
Another example of our great country being socialized before our very eyes. God help us !!
I heard that back in the day they nixed the idea to getting Bart in Marin for fear that it will bring in the undesirables.
I always thought Marin was kind of prozaky, and avoided it at all costs. Then one day, circa 2005 I found myself in a Marin coffee shop eavesdropping on conversations. Two grandfatherly-looking men were trading Bush conspiracies. Gross!
I have rarely read such a delicious group of comments on any article any where. Rosenberg has certainly struck a nerve in the readership of Pajamas. Let’s hope the follow up continues. Great link to INSTAPUNDIT as well. Next stop – a neighborhood near you. Cheers, Helene
“expatiate” !?
Surely you mean “expiate”???
Aspen CO can’t be far behind.
IN ALL MY YEARS AS A MARINITE READER OF PJM, THIS IS THE BEST REPORTAGE EVER. PLEASE KEEP ON THIS STORY.
Boys, y’all do realize you’re chatting about the single biggest marijuana growing county in this US of A?
Just send in the DEA, arrest everyone and presto, no problem. Well, a million angry potheads….
Not even close to correct. You’re talking about Mendocino and Humboldt Counties. Pot cultivation in Marin is pretty much a pittance and certainly a relative pittance compared to those two.
This is a stunningly difficult challenge for Marin administrators and not a laughing matter.
How do you not attract any minorities without actually appearing to be doing that? In other words, how do you insure failure while striving for success?
Reminds me a lot of the Mel Brooks movie “The Producers”. Wouldn’t it be really cool if things in Marin worked out that way, where they were wildly successful, and therefore ultimately failed at their mission. Fingers crossed.
Me, I’m in a town about 30 miles to the southeast of Marin County. In 2000 the town was less than 1% black. Since then, the population of blacks has exploded and is probably well over 2%. If we are not on the HUD radar someone should be fired.
Hat tip to ‘Snake Plissken’ (loved Escape from NY but, Escape from L.A. – come on Snake!) regarding the ‘greater neighborhood.. Vallejo’ comment. I nearly spat my coffee on my monitor! What an armpit of a town..
The ‘diversity’ term is such a convoluted construct now. ‘Diversity’ to me is working, living next-to, conversing with like-minded educated professionals, dual parent, couples involved with our community, schools and attempt to improve every facet of said community. I could care less of your race, sexual preference etc.,
Progressive-speak ‘diversity’ equates to: low income, minority-only, uneducated masses who have a HANDOUT rather than being self-sufficient whose ONLY motivator is to take and have an influx of said moochers to their new digs. In essence, bringing everyone, everything down to their *iss poor idealism.
We lived in Santa Barbara in the early 00′s for Grad School reasons (the ONLY draw to the Golden State is its indefinite eligibility of college credits).
We figured a student adhering, expensive county like S.B. would bring safety and working professionals. Hey, it was also the vacation ranch of the late Ronald Reagan.. it can’t be too bad. Riiight.
Hispanic/Latino gangs, unlicensed illegals clogging, causing and fleeing accidents on the 101 and surrounding areas.
South Santa Barbara homes, though still VERY expensive are occupied by Section 8 vermin and their dozen family members, the public education system being a total joke, Hispanic and Latino teens terrorizing their fellow students, neighbors in a myriad of ways (2 of my neighbors were police officers and 1 married to a dispatcher..), stabbing or shooting (for some ‘odd’ reason these assaults ALWAYS occurred when the ‘nice’ Hispanic/Latino/Mexican youth was returning from church.. sometimes at 3 in the morning..!), high speed car chases the daily norm ad infinitum. Viva la progressivism.. yikes.
Couldn’t move quick enough. Didn’t even attend graduation, diploma sent via mail.
I lived in Marin for 10 years. They don’t like poor whites either. Let alone minorities. But I’m not among the chorus of people who says “serves them right”. I live in Contra Costa county, and we also have diversity quotas, though to a much lesser degree, of course.
I believe a major part of what drives these diversity initiatives is money and power. Everyone wins. Cash strapped real estate developers and contractors get to build more cheap, over crowded, noisy, public housing units in “green zones”, close to public transportation. The self-serving bureaucrats in HUD get to file progress reports, and our Senators and Congressmen get more campaign donations from a few lucky local developers.
“I live in Contra Costa county, and we also have diversity quotas, though to a much lesser degree, of course.”
I also live in Contra Costa County, and I’m not sure what you mean by diversity quotas. Racial breakdown here is about the same as the United States overall. Slightly fewer African people (percentagewise) than in the rest of the USA , but way more Asiatic people.
Marin County is way whiter than Contra Costa.
Don’t know if that means anything…but, there it is. Contra Costa is way more racially diverse than Marin.
Of course, Marin could simply avoid the entire issue by refusing HUD funds. No Fed funds, no Fed rules. But several tens of millions of dollars of shortfall in the county budget, I guess. Oh, well.
I am not a lawyer, so someone might help with this. Is it a requirement that every county in the United States subsidize public housing somewhere in the county? If it is not a requirement, can Marin County stop all County subsidization and refuse Federal subsidization, and therefore not fall under HUD?
“Is it a requirement that every county in the United States subsidize public housing somewhere in the county?”
It is if you’re taking HUD money.
If you take money earmarked for Section 8 housing and spend it on a golf course, they’re going to get all upset about it…unless it’s a course Barbara Boxer (a famous former Marinite communist) wants to play golf on. They might make an exception for that.
I know the state of Cal has an “affordable housing component” requirement for every county’s general plan. What reeks is the striking differential application of the directives, certain counties (like Marin and S.F.) seem to escape a great deal of scrutiny while some of the poorest counties in the state get hammered with dictates to construct said housing regardless of its effects on whatever is already there.
This is fascism, pure and simple. Forced diversity only leads to conflict (just look at what the Jews are doing to Europe). But I have to admit it will be quite funny to see these self hating, white, left-wing idiots of Marin, get the diversity they wish for. If this socialism continues, they’ll see a nice town turn into a crime ridden shithole overnight.
Just wait until SHE comes home with LeRoy!
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