Tag: race

Qualified Backlash

Extreme forms of protest — that is, rioting, looting, and street violence, as well as chanting about killing people, carrying torches, and the like — don’t help the cause of those who engage in it.

You know it; I know it — but is it common knowledge?

So, as a contribution to the common wisdom of Homo (hopefully) sapiens politicus, let us stress the truth, which we can now back up with a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Eric W. Dolan, writing on PsyPost, explains that six experiments involving 3, 399 participants “assessed how different types of protest behaviors influenced support for a variety of progressive and conservative social causes, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the anti-abortion movement. They found that more extreme behaviors — such as the use of inflammatory rhetoric, blocking traffic, and vandalism — consistently resulted in reduced support for social movements.”

While “extreme protest behaviors” garner media attention, they turn away more people than they bring in.

“We found extreme anti-Trump protest actions actually led people to not only dislike the movement and support the cause less, but to be willing to support Trump more,” the researcher who talked to Dolan, said. “It was almost like a backlash.”

Almost?

Protest organizers have to understand that their enemies also know this backlash effect, and have incentives to corrupt peaceful protests by sparking extremism. Infiltrators from governments as well as opposing groups have been known to incite riots or cause destruction simply to discredit protests.

While destruction and mayhem by some do not negate the crying, dying need for criminal justice reform,* the tragedy remains: violence does spoil good will.

And calling in federal troops, as the president threatens, discredits almost everything. What a mess.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Much better than the turn to violence? Protest morphing into specific legislative and administrative reform. Ending “qualified immunity” for public officials, mentioned here Friday, and proposed by Representative Justin Amash (L‑Mich.), would be a great start.

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ideological culture

Beautiful Colors, Ugly Terms

Post author By Redactor
Post date February 24, 2020
1 Comment on Beautiful Colors, Ugly Terms

“My friends were asking for the ‘skin-color’ crayon,” explains 9‑year-old Bellen Woodard.

She realized the request was for the peach-colored crayon but, being the only black kid in her third grade Loudoun County, Virginia, classroom, she also knew her skin wasn’t peach-colored. As her mother told Washington Post columnist Theresa Vargas, it made her daughter feel “uncomfortable.”

Bellen used the term “dis-included.”

She and her mom discussed what to do and her mom proposed, “Just hand them the brown one instead.” But Bellen had an even better idea: “I think I just want to ask them what color they want because it could be any number of beautiful colors.”

Indeed.

“So that’s what she did,” wrote Vargas. “She started saying those words. She then heard her teacher say them, too. And soon, her entire class was talking about skin color in a way that went beyond peach.”

The third-grader also designed a kit called “More Than Peach” featuring not just peach-colored crayons but also colors such as “apricot,” “burnt sienna” and “mahogany.” In no time, her kits have been requested across the nation and now the Virginia Museum of History & Culture is adding one to their collection.

People come in so many wonderful hues and colors. It is something to celebrate — just as young Bellen Woodard has done.

Which reminds me of my distaste for the term “persons of color.”

This term of art has become ubiquitous. Unlike Bellen’s efforts offering inclusion and understanding, “persons of color” serves to separate us. Because I’m labeled “white” … I’m “dis-included.”

But I’m not white (a color) or translucent; I’m peachy — perhaps tan sometimes or bright red when sunburned.

We are all persons of color. Beautiful colors.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people Second Amendment rights

Self-Defense Is for Everybody

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 21, 2020
2 Comments on Self-Defense Is for Everybody

Last week, Virginia’s infamous black-face governor claimed to possess “credible intelligence … of threats of violence surrounding” Monday’s “Lobby Day” gun rights rally in Richmond, including “extremist rhetoric similar to … Charlottesville in 2017.”

Major media outlets went on a rampage, repeating his linkage between gun rights supporters and “white nationalists” faster than semi-automatic fire.

“Big media and mainstream media be damned,” announced a Virginia man recorded at yesterday’s event, and tweeted by social media entrepreneur Michael Coudrey.

The unidentified but obviously black demonstrator jested, at first, that he was “out here because I got roped into it by the group of guys you see standing to my right.” But then he explained his opposition to “Governor Northam and the Democrats’ gun control” as well as “every news piece you’ve seen on this this weekend.…”

He objected especially to the incessant race angle — “as if it’s nothing but white rednecks and hillbillies out here who care for the Second Amendment. I work at a gun store part-time and I can’t tell you the number of customers I see of all races, all colors, all creeds who care about the Second Amendment.”

His account was corroborated by Julio Rosas, a senior writer at Townhall.com, who tweeted “pictures of people carrying rifles at the #VirginiaRally and more evidence that debunks the narrative that the rally is filled with racists and white supremacists.”

Yesterday, more than 22,000 pro-gun people of all races descended on the capitol in a completely peaceful exercise of First Amendment rights in defense of Second Amendment rights … making Richmond the safest city in America.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTE: There was only one arrest at the rally, a woman charged with violating a 1950-era law against wearing face masks (like Hong Kong’s law). Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑NY) voiced her displeasure that there weren’t more arrests.

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ideological culture Popular

A Deplorable Christmas

Just in time for Christmas, Rolling Stone released a recorded interview of Michael Moore showing the Roger & Me filmmaker in pure Scrooge mode.

Shortly before Election Day, 2016, Moore had famously characterized a likely Trump win as middle America’s rebuke of the establishment. “They’re not racist or rednecks,” he sympathetically said of the Trump voters he had talked to, “they’re actually pretty decent people.”

But white men, he now proclaims, are “not good people.”

What’s the ‘deplorable’ ratio?

“Two-thirds of all white guys voted for Trump,” offers Moore. “That means anytime you see three white guys walking … down the street towards you, two of them voted for Trump. You need to move over to the other sidewalk because these are not good people that are walking toward you. You should be afraid of them.”

Before Trump’s election, sympathy; after, antipathy.

Why the change of heart?

He provides one clue. “I refuse to participate in post-racial America,” he fumes. “I refuse to say because we elected Obama that suddenly that means everything is ok, white people have changed. White people have not changed.”

Has it always really been about racism?

Another theory, though, would look at part of Moore’s 2016 prophecy: white working class men would be worse off with Trump.

Yet employment is way up; even Ford is moving back to Michigan, as Tim Poole notes. Could Moore be bitter because his enemy seems to be succeeding where his side has failed?

A movie now in the theaters may get to the real issue. Moore, by engaging in hatred and fear-mongering, has gone over to the Dark Side of the Force.

Power corrupts; partisan powerlust corrupts partisanly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture political challengers

Discriminating Democrats

Democrat, Democratic, candidates, presidential, president, debate, race, quota,

In ten days, the Democratic Party will hold a presidential debate that, according to the rules established by the Democratic National Committee, includes six qualified candidates all of whom are white.

Which is apparently not the right color.

“Of course, there is nothing wrong with Democrats selecting a white presidential candidate to represent the party,” writes David de la Fuente at The Daily Beast. “But that should be up to the voters, and not the DNC by means of their debate inclusion practices.”

Those “practices” or rules seem straightforward enough — at least, they did … until the results were not to the liking of some. To earn a place on the Dec. 19 debate stage, a candidate must have garnered donations from 200,000 individuals, while also reaching 4 percent or higher in four recognized polls, or 6 percent in two polls.

The six qualified pale-faced candidates are: former Vice-President Joe Biden, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D‑Minn.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.), billionaire activist Tom Steyer, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D‑Mass.).

A seventh candidate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, a woman of color, had also qualified for the debate stage — before she dropped out of the race.

Not yet able to jump all the hurdles? African-American Sen. Corey Booker (D‑N.J.); Asian-American entrepreneur Andrew Yang; and Samoan-American Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D‑Hawaii). They have all reached the donation requirement, but not yet met the polling threshold.

I wish them luck, especially my favorite, Gabbard.

Still, the choice is rightly up to Democratic voters. If enough speak up for Booker, Yang or Gabbard in polls, “diversity” will obtain its place.

If not, should Democrats use a racial quota system?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies

Playing Cards with Democrats

Post author By Redactor
Post date July 15, 2019
1 Comment on Playing Cards with Democrats

“[T]he thing that really set me off this week,” former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D‑Missouri) said on NBC’s Meet the Press, “was them going after Sharice Davids.”

The “them” are four freshman congresswomen — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑NY), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D‑Minn.), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D‑Mass.) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D‑Mich.) — but it was specifically Saikat Chakrabarti, Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, who tweeted: “I don’t believe Sharice is a racist person, but her votes* are showing her to enable a racist system.”

“This is the first Native American woman elected to Congress,” McCaskill exasperatedly explained regarding Rep. Davids. “She is the second openly lesbian member of Congress in history. She represents Kansas, from a district that has been held by the Republicans for cycle after cycle after cycle.… The notion that they’re going after her and playing the race card, what are they thinking?”

Perhaps they’re thinking that the race card has worked quite well before.

And isn’t McCaskill tossing out her own “Native American woman” card? Not to mention suggesting that Rep. Davids’ sexual orientation is yet another trump suit, making her further immune to criticism.

Which seems both profoundly racist and sexist.

This comes on top of a wargame of words between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and freshman Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who, after being belittled by Pelosi on 60 Minutes, charged that the Speaker was “singling out … newly elected women of color.”

Perhaps there is another reason as well for this political fixation on race, gender, sexual orientation: the content of their … character?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The issue at hand was emergency legislation to increase border funding for detainees at the infamous “concentration camps” (as AOC called them) for people caught illegally crossing the southern border of the U.S. The “them” voted against the funding.