Another claim that black people can't measure up

Tell it to these musicians. Or see, “Famous African-American Horn Players”

To Make Orchestras More Diverse, End Blind Auditions (the article is from the NYT, the link leads around the paywall)

This is different from yesterday’s demand by college basketball coaches for the elimination of SAT requirements for their black recruits (all recruits, ostensibly, but since they based their position on a claim that the tests are racist, it’s a fair inference that they mean blacks are the ones who are being denied admission). No one cares whether a star forward is even literate, let alone capable of maintaining a passing GPA during his one year on campus: it’s his ability to play basketball and keep the seats filled that counts, and SAT scores are irrelevant.

But it’s precisely the talent of a musician that’s tested by blind auditions, and it was only when they were implemented by orchestras that Asians and women of all races came to dominate the ranks of performers. To insist on lumping blacks into a specific racial class and demand that they be hired by number rather than individual accomplishment is to, as Jonathan Chiat points out, “collapse all identity into racial categories” to deny them their right to be judged and treated as individuals.

Earlier this week we were told by no less an authority than the Smithsonian Institution that concepts like hard work, deferred gratification, and scientific, linear thinking are hallmarks of “whiteness” and other races should be free to pursue, what? Laziness and irrational thought? Denial of the “white” belief in cause and effect? I doubt Asians would agree, and if I were black I’d be furious at this patronizing (many of the “experts” describing the pitiful capabilities of blacks are white “race counselors” ), demeaning theory.

It’s almost impossible these days to distiguish between the most racist southern Democrat and his liberal counterpart in the rest of the country. That can’t be good.