Tag: race

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education and schooling ideological culture judiciary national politics & policies

Affirmative Action Disaffirmed

affirmative action, quotas, college, race, racism

Congratulations to WHITE
SUPREMACY for winning
a huge victory today.

Thus tweeted Gene Wu, District 137’s representative to the Texas legislature. 

That was his reaction to yesterday’sSupreme Court decision striking down racial discrimination in picking students for colleges and universities.

He’s a Democrat and in a tricky situation. The case was brought to the High Court by Asian Americans, who have been most discriminated against in college placement. Rep. Wu, himself Asian American, talks up the compensatory racial preference cause. 

“Asian Americans have consistently been used as a foil to eliminate Affirmative Action programs which serve to repair centuries of intentional discrimination against Black and Latino AND Asian communities,” he argues. “Having Asian Americans as parties doesn’t make it any less racist.”

Actually, of course, discriminating in favor of “Black and Latino” applicants has hurt Asian Americans’ college placements the most, and provably so. Racial discrimination was the criterion. Not academic achievement, IQ, or ability to pay. Asian Americans were the big losers. 

More than whites.

But all Rep. Wu can think about is WHITE SUPREMACY. In all-​caps, no less.

He worries not one whit about racial discrimination against Asians!

As absurd as what we used to call “reverse” discrimination is, we can be sure that, after this current ruling, DEI-​obsessed administrators will still seek ways to continue their discrimination on the basis of race.

Also being raised? The issue of legacy admissions, rewarding with preferential treatment applicants whose parents and grandparents previously attended the institution. Senator and GOP presidential candidate Tim Scott called for public universities to nix those policies as well. Scott was joined by President Biden and AOC.

Sounds like justice and fairness based on merit is on a roll.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly ideological culture too much government

Apocalypse California

Gavin Newsom, California, reparations, racism

The Democratic Party is a victim of its own success. Nowhere can we see that more clearly than in California.

Democrats have succeeded by pushing “victimhood,” gaining power by focusing on special groups, declaring them oppressed and offering compensation — though still never comes the day of full escape from the burden of this oppression.

Many stories of oppression are true.But no sized sliver of truth can guarantee that compensation attempts will redound to the liberation of the aggrieved.

California’s Democrats will face this soon.

Over slavery! And racism.

Never a slave state, California has been flirting, officially, with reparations. Several cities have “explored” the idea. An official “Reparations Task Force,” established by state law, has recommended a formal apology for slavery (in other states, over a hundred-​and-​fifty years ago). It’s also talking about giving away hundreds of billions of dollars in compensation to Black Californians, descendants of slaves or not. 

The task force is scheduled to make explicit and detailed recommendations —  on July 1.

Which puts Democrats on the spot.

Powerful Democrats such as Governor Gavin Newsom. Considered a rising presidential aspirant should the current 82-​year-​old decide not to run again, Newsom signed the law to officially look at reparations … but then seemed less than fond of the price-​tag. More than twice the yearly state budget!

Now the governor is keeping his mouth shut awaiting the final report.

And, as George Skelton at the L.A. Times asks, then what? Well, that is when “the governor and lawmakers will need to emerge from cover, face the public and devise a better response.”

But up until July they can still pretend.

Then, Democrats will have to face the reparations issue squarely — and in the context of the complete failure of their state, the blame for which they cannot place upon Republicans, much less long-​dead racist slave-owners.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Queen’s Color Guard

Cleopatra, race, history

Does it matter that Netflix will premiere, on May 10, a “docudrama” depicting Cleopatra VII Philopator as black?

She was, after all, a direct descendent of a Macedonian general — and pal of Alexander the Great — “Ptolemy the Savior.” 

European, in other words. White.

Anthony Brian Logan, a conservative African-​American YouTube commentator, notes Netflix’s woke race-​swapping as habit, a trend — which he takes as a “meme” and a “joke” — with the most egregious recent example being Anne Bolyn being portrayed as a “sub-​Saharan African woman.” Mr. Logan argues that this “is the equivalent of casting Tom Hanks to play Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Cannot we have movies “that make some kind of sense”?

The answer may be No; the reason, not at all mysterious. 

After all, race hustlers and ideologues have been spewing out misinformation about ancient Africa for a long time, trying to get ignorant, public-​school-​educated Americans to think of “the dark continent” as a place of one race.

I’m sure many people, reading the above, might wonder if the Ptolemies might not have inter-​married native Egyptians. Well, the Egyptians weren’t sub-​Saharan blacks, either. They were basically lighter-​skinned Mediterranean types. 

But, as Anthony Brian Logan observes, previews of the upcoming series have darkened up some images, suggesting that the producers (one of whom is Will Smith’s notorious wife, Jada Pinkett Smith) may be messing with us. Nevertheless, the big issue remains the “underlying effort to try to change historical fact.”

“Who controls the past controls the future,” Orwell wrote. “Who controls the present controls the past.”

Race isn’t really the issue. It’s lying. For political reasons.

And yes, it matters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people

Police Supremacy

police brutality race

The homicidal beating of Tyre Nichols by five cops made the news, the reels and the opinion columns, quickly and “bigly.” You know that the first reaction was to cry Racism!, and that then, after it came out that the policemen charged with his murder were all black … it was still Racism! 

You might have laughed. If bitterly.

Van Jones’s headline seems, on the face of it, ridiculous: “The police who killed Tyre Nichols were Black. But they might still have been driven by racism” (January 27, 2023).

Yet, the actual arguments aren’t completely absurd.

Just the big picture is.

Today, we’ve been given a new set of definitions. Racism is no longer prejudiced discrimination against individuals based on antipathy against a hated group, now it’s “prejudice plus power,” and … somehow the new anti-​racists don’t realize that power isn’t just about race.

It wasn’t likely internalized hatred for blacks that these black policemen exhibited. Far more likely it was exasperation and contempt for a man who wouldn’t submit to their control.

Police have a job, and are given a lot of license and leeway to take away our liberty after a suspected crime. Tyre Nichols did not readily submit to an arrest for reckless driving, but bolted, running away. When the cops caught up with him, they gave him a beating. Was it because he was black? Not likely, or at least not primarily. It was most likely because he wouldn’t obey.

This old police attitude is more understandable than racism, no?

But “understandable” isn’t excuse. 

We can meaningfully talk about reforms — such as getting rid of qualified immunity — but first, let’s stop calling it racism and “white supremacy.” The issue is cop supremacy, and it’s not really a mystery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets media and media people too much government

Time & Tide & Race

Daylight Saving Time, racism, race

The big news? Daylight Saving Time may soon be history. “The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the Sleep Research Society and other medical groups have advocated for ending the practice, calling for the adoption of a permanent standard time that would not involve shifting forward each spring and falling back each autumn.”

That’s an important organizational voice for getting rid of Congress’s current jury-​rigging scheme for commerce and recreation in America.

It has costs. Imposed on us. On our sleep patterns.

But the passage quoted from CNN was not the news angle that the “Cable News Network” story, by Jacqueline Howard, emphasized.

The deleterious effects of lurching back and forth twice a year is not what CNN headlined. The fact (and commonsense conjecture) that these bi-​annual shifts are bad for us? Not as interesting as that it could all be racist.

The title of Howard’s piece is “Daylight Saving Time sheds light on lack of sleep’s disproportionate impact in communities of color.”

The key piece of information? “Growing evidence shows that lack of sleep and sleep disorders, such as obstructive sleep apnea, remain more prevalent in Black, Asian, and Hispanic or Latino communities, and these inequities can have long-​term detrimental implications for physical health, even raising the risk of certain chronic diseases.”

If true, this is a political reason to get the Social Engineering Class to finally balk at the pseudo-​Saving chronometer-​jiggering laws.

But what does that say about said class? (A class not limited to, but somehow paradigmatically represented by, Democrats?) That they don’t care about the harm they do unless it can be shown to accrue predominantly to racial minorities?

There’s something sick here, oddly racist.

But we can accept this nonsense for the win, if it helps stop our ritual springing forward and falling back.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom

Federally Funded Racism

race quota, science

Can one cosponsor a racially discriminatory program without having any idea of its nature, even if this is implied by the program’s very name?

The University of Oklahoma and other universities are cosponsors of the Oklahoma Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, a program funded by the National Science Foundation that requires beneficiaries be members of certain minority groups: “African American, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.”

The Alliance’s goal is to “increase recruitment, enrollment, and retention of minority students in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] programs.”

Because of the program’s discriminatory criteria, the group Do No Harm has filed civil rights complaints against a dozen Oklahoma universities. Its leader, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, points out that the terms of the federally funded program “specifically exclude white students, students from middle eastern countries, and Asian students.… [B]ut it is illegal to engage in such discrimination based on race.”

When first asked about the complaint, the University of Oklahoma declined comment. But after The College Fix site reported on the matter, OU spokesman Jacob Guthrie said that the university’s site had been amended to reflect the fact that any student may apply, insisting also that the program “has never been restricted by race.”

It sure looks to me as if OU officials, like those of Ithaca College (subject to a similar federal complaint in October), are now suddenly worried about legal consequences. 

Anyway, Do No Harm’s filing is already doing good, helping to re-​establish that old liberal idea that governments must not discriminate on grounds of race.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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