November 24th marks the birthdays of philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632) and three influential Americans: ragtime composer Scott Joplin (1868), self-help writer Dale Carnegie (1888), and conservative editor, writer, and television personality William F. Buckley Jr. (1925).
“Virginia AG’s office finds elite Loudoun STEM school discriminates against Black, Hispanic students,” declared The Washington Post headline.
Falsely.
On Friday, Attorney General Mark Herring — another blackface-wearing state government leader — issued a 61-page report, saying “the Office of Attorney General Division of Human Rights finds there is reasonable cause to believe that Loudoun County Public Schools’ administration of the Academies of Loudoun program resulted in a discriminatory disparate impact on Black/African-American and Latinx/Hispanic students.”
Though the investigation found the admission process to be “facially-neutral,” The Post informs that the program “in fact barred from admission qualified Black and Hispanic students who applied during the fall 2018 cycle.”
Yet blacks and Latinos were not barred.
This year, 7 percent of black applicants were accepted and 11 percent of Hispanics. True, the acceptance rate for Asians was 13 percent and 15 percent for whites. But this gets tricky. Given their percentage of the overall student body, Asians were 42 percent overrepresented in the applicant pool, while blacks were 4 percent underrepresented, Latinos 6 percent, and whites underrepresented by a whopping 23 percent.
“We request that Loudoun County Public Schools eliminate its discriminatory practices,” the report concludes. But . . . it did not stipulate any specific form of discrimination. Rather, it instructed the school district to work with the Loudoun County NAACP “to begin developing revised policies within 60 days.”
What sort of revisions are likely?
Lower the entry requirements, reduce testing and “take into consideration the principle of geography/socio-economic equity.”
You see, the problem they’re trying to fix isn’t racism, but the lack thereof.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The market is like a lake agitated by the wind, where the water is incessantly seeking its level without ever reaching it.
On November 23, 1644, British poet John Milton published Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship.
Sing it, Paul:
November 22 marks the death dates of a number of eminent writers, including that of English-American novelist and essayist Aldous Huxley and Irish-English novelist, theologian and medieval scholar C.S. Lewis, both of whom died in 1963, the same day as the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy. British novelist Anthony Burgess died exactly 30 years later.
The date also marks the birth of the great British novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), in 1819.
Recommended reading from these authors include:
Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.
Finley Peter Dunne, writing as “Mr. Dooley.”
Yes, Paul’s got a lot on him mind. But he’s kept it under an hour, this week:
On November 21, 1620, Plymouth Colony settlers signed the Mayflower Compact.
On this day in 1922, Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia took the oath of office, becoming the first female United States Senator.
November 21st birthdays include:
1694 – Voltaire, French philosopher (d. 1778) — portrait above.
1729 – Josiah Bartlett, American signer of the Declaration of Independence (d. 1795).
1870 – Alexander Berkman, anarchist (d. 1936), who shot but did not kill industrialist Henry Clay Frick.
Voting is the engine that drives our democracy. It needs a 21st Century update. We need to move past partisanship and start to see the humanity in people.