Here is an example of the white male supremacy paradigm operating even within the Obama Transition Administration:

A Capitol Hill grilling is likely for Timothy Geithner, President-elect Barack Obama's pick to head the Treasury Department, after public revelations he failed to pay $34,000 in taxes several years ago.  Yahoo News

If Geithner were  a Black male, he would never be considered for this position in the first place, because he would not be part of Lawrence A. Summers' white male supremacy support group.  If he were Black make who had failed to pay $34,000 in taxes, he would be led away in chains, and everyone would agree that he deserved it, and his skin color had nothing to do with it.

However, because Timothy Geithner is a white man he is protected by the white male supremacy paradigm, which is the:

belief that white males, no matter how much and how often they fail, are still, by virtue of their male gender and white skin, inherently more qualified than blacks and women who succeed.  Francis L. Holland, DailyKos, December 16, 2006.

The corollary to that definition is that white male supremacy is also:

 

The belief that Blacks and women, no matter how much or how often they succeed, are inherently inferior to white men, no matter how much or how often white men fail. Francis L. Holland, DailyKos, December 16, 2006.

Now, I'm sure that Geithner is a perfectly nice individual (aside from his participation an exclusively and intentionally all white male professional support group that got him nominated for this position in the first place), but Geithner has apparently flouted the tax laws in the very area for which he would be given so much authority, the Internal Revenue Service.  His behavior makes a mockery of all Americans who paid their taxes, sometimes facing tax leins on their homes or losing their homes if they failed to do so.

It's alright, though, because Geithner is a white male.  He won't be led away for chains, as was actor Wesley Snipes.  He won't be subject to a three year jail term after being tried before an all-Black jury.  (Snipes was tried in Louisiana before an all-white jury, although 31% of the population of Louisiana is Black, according to the US Census Bureau.)

So, who will win?  The white male supremacy paradigm and the nomination of Timothy Geithner, who failed to pay his taxes and will now oversee the Internal Revenue Service?  Or will a new sense of justice prevail?  The same rejection of the white male supremacy paradigm that made Obama's election possible in the first place?

Can a Black male president help to perpetuate the white male supremacy paradigm? Obviously he can, because Timothy Geithner's nomination has not been withdrawn, and Obama continues to appoint white males who are guilty rather than women and Blacks and Latinos who are innocent.

Will white men win if the white male supremacy paradigm wins?  Will they be better served by installing a man to lead the IRS who doesn't pay his own taxes?  Would white males have won if that old crank and crackpot, 'the economy is basically strong' John McCain had won the presidency?  Many of them thought not.

There's more...

Cross posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog.

After a long search that began when Meet the Press' ninth consecutive white male moderator, Tom Russert, died, now NBC has finally selected the white male moderator who will be the 11th consecutive white male moderator in the show's history.

Ironically, the show was created in 1947 by a woman, Martha Rountree, who then hosted the show until 1953.  Ever since 1953, however, when NBC has conducted a search for the best white man for the job, NBC has always succeeded in finding him.  (Of course I have no direct evidence that NBC has conducted searches exclusively for white men, and I am drawing this inference from the extraordinary coincidence that although white men are only 30% of American, they have nonetheless been more than 90% of Meet the Press moderators.

Moreover, Media Matters points out that:

. . . the top-rated Sunday show -- Meet the Press -- shows the least diversity of all. The NBC program is the most male and nearly the most white (Face the Nation beats it out by 1 percentage point), and it has the highest proportion of white males to all other guests. Media Matters

Media Matters points out that eight-five percent of guests on Meet the Press are men and eighty-nine percent are white.  Media MattersSo, it was about as likely that the new moderator would not be a white man as it was likely that Hawaii would be blanketed with six meters of snow at the height of the summer holidays.  On Meet the Press, white maleness is, statistically speaking, the gold standard, even though the show was created by a woman.  

There's more...

Cross-posted at the Francis L. Holland Blog.

African American Political Pundit has been sounding the alarm that one Black man in the Oval Office does not diversity make. AAPP's Change Watch: Minority Advocates Watching Obama That point is underscored by a new report by the Government Accountability Office, showing that Blacks and women are still woefully underrepresented among the highest level of civil servants managing the government, and this will not change unless the Obama Administration makes a conscious decision to address rather than exacerbate the inequities.

For example, only 8.5 percent of high level executives were Black, although the nation is 12.8% Black; and only 3.6 percent of the high level executives are Latino, even though Latinos make up 14.8% of the United States.

Meanwhile, white men constitute 60.7 percent of the highest level civil servants, even though they constitute less than thirty percent of the population.  In other words, white men are 100% overrepresented in the highest level civil service jobs.

Some people are going to insist, as a defense of the current demographics, that these jobs should be given out based on merit rather than based on gender, skin color or ethnicity.  While each job should be given to the person most capable of doing the job, the "best candidate" argument assumes that white men are the best candidate twice as often as they are present in the general population.   It's more likely that white men are 100% overrepresented as a result of historic patterns of old-boy networks, the "white male supremacy syndrome".

I define "white male supremacy":  as "the belief that white males, no matter how much and how often they fail, are still, by virtue of their male gender and white skin, inherently more qualified than blacks and women who succeed." -- Francis L. Holland, December 13, 2006 at DailyKos. 

In the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression, it's hard to argue that having 100% over-representation of white men in the highest levels of the Federal Government is an example of choosing the best people for the job regardless of the color.   Instead, it's an example of choosing white men for jobs regardless of whether they are the best people with the best ideas and the most ability to implement them.

The over-representation of white men results, as well, from the superhuman white man myth.

The Strongest American Myth Historically is the Superhuman White Man Myth

To be elected president, Barack Obama had to overcome this powerful myth, helped by being compared with George W. Bush and John McCain in the context of a hugely unpopular war and then an international economic meltdown.

However, some of the "superhuman" white men who created the current meltdown (like leverage proponent Rubin) are being invited back into the Government, packing the upper levels with white men while ignoring the abilities of women and minorities who have not yet been given a chance to discredited their theories and abilities.   Robert E. Rubin is a director and counselor at CitiGroup, where he helped turn Citi into a financial basket case, a microcosm of the financial policies that have turned international financial markets into a freefalling chaos.

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