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May 9, 2006
alphonso jackson - shameless talking android
You know, the Bush Administration really is a talking android goldmine.
HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson (pictured in android glory above) recently bragged to an audience that he likes denying government contracts to qualified minority contractors on the basis of the contractor's political opinions. (Hat tip digby):
After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor."He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'
"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'
"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe." [full article]
Don't get me wrong: telling a hack political appointee that you can't stand the man they fellated in order to get their gig is probably not a tactic that will earn you an A in Procurement Negotiations 101. Still, bragging about fucking over a contractor for political reasons is even dumber, as Jackson has copped to breaking the law. Dude should resign.
Take note that Jackson's comments were made to a minority professional group, as other talking androids will likely seize on the fact to argue that Jackson was only speaking "privately" "in-group" about the "realities" of the contract process. (The deployment of the word "brother" in his little anecdote will figure prominently in any such reading, if not explicitly, than psychologically.) This "in group" defense has roots in the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill controversy, when Harvard prof Orlando Patterson (another talking android) speculated that Thomas was at worst guilty of letting his hair down with Hill on the basis of a mistakenly perceived racial affinity, a faulty assumption on Thomas' part that he was within a circle of racial intimacy.
In so much as there's a grain of experiential truth to that reading then or now, it's just a pinch of salt to flavor the steaming, monumental pile of extruded mediocrity that is the talking android as a general type. It's one thing for James Six-Pack to step over any given line, but it's another for the heads of HUD or EEOC to step over the lines their departments are sworn to enforce. Managing contracts or prosecuting sexual harassment claims are/were Jackson and Thomas' jobs, making their infractions not just political scandals but indications of the rankest incompetence and unfitness. These people complain about affirmative action yet one after the other are revealed as unable to do their jobs without white Republican patronage. But what you do expect? As the old joke/slur about black conservatives puts it, the Alphonso Jacksons and Clarence Thomas's don't switch sides out of principle, but because "the line is shorter over there," and who needs a shorter line more than your average talking android?
Posted by ebogjonson in talking androids, on May 9, 2006 12:48 PM
Comments
don't get me wrong, i'm all about calling out an android, especially one that tells such ridiculous, "hypothetical" "anecdotes."
but, having worked closely with OP for a few years now, i'm inclined to defend him. not on the hill/thomas account, which is news to me. but i think he gets a bad rap for maintaining a certain level of distance from af-am identity politics (although, perhaps, not in the case you cite), which has more to do - i think - with him being a sociologist and a jamaican than an android.
Posted by: w&w at May 10, 2006 11:23 AM
did i miss an editorial or something?
http://hystericalblackness.blogspot.com/2006/05/two-by-ishmael-reed.html
Posted by: w&w at May 10, 2006 11:28 AM
I'm a fan of OP's sociology, but starting with that Hill/Thomas NYT piece dude's stabs at BPIL status (black public intellectual) amount to a string of largely half-baked, tone-deaf essays on the curious perversity of AfAM culture.
Point taken, though. Perhaps there is a more appropriate tagline than talking android?
Posted by: ebog at May 10, 2006 5:16 PM
This man is right. Native Blacks are lazy and blame everything on Racism. In Nigeria there is no opportunity. In America everyone can flourish. I hope Blacks in America continue down the same path. I will throw them something from my Limousine.
Posted by: Mutumbo Osa at January 3, 2007 4:44 AM
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