September 30, 2010

UW law prof: Obama rally "overwhelmingly white"

Would somebody please remind Ann Althouse that she lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and that it's absurd to compare her university's student body — African American enrolment 3% — against a similarly-sized Tea Party rally that draws participants from across the country. Where the available population is only 3% black, then obviously a sample drawn from it will also be "overwhelmingly white."

But when the population is 13% black and only a handful turn up to have Sarah Palin or whomever shout at them, that's a different story.

I don't look at that blog very often — and its popularity mystifies me — but every time I do, it's some kind of Rush Limbaugh apologetic.

h/t WisOpinion.

eta: Award-winning calumnist Patrick McIlheran calls it "an unusually low level of melanin." What's so unusual about it? He doesn't say.

Just trolling: what else is new.

I bet he didn't mention it a year ago when an "overwhelmingly white" Tea Party contingent turned out in Milwaukee, which is 40% black.

4 comments:

Michael J. Mathias said...

Indeed. And what concrete steps has Ms. Althouse taken, on her own, to attract more minority students to attend UW-Madison generally and the law school specifically?

Grant said...

To state the obvious, popularity and shameless racial pandering/stroking teabagger martyrdom are not mutually exclusive.

And it's pretty apparent campus diversity ranks far below American Idol and the ego-boosting adrenaline rush of an Instalanche in the Althouse ethos.

Pete Gruett said...

As a faculty member, Althouse should also be well aware of the University's continuing efforts to increase diversity, and the derision those efforts incite from the right even as the Republican legislative caucus actively tries to interfere with them.

If the people she panders to had their way, there would've been almost no non-whites there . . . and none at the podium.

Grant said...

I think that's the difference between her and a Limbaugh or Fred Dooley... she really couldn't care less one way or the other.