Tag: racism

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ideological culture national politics & policies

A Great Big “Request”

Van Jones, racist, racism, replacement theory, race, immigration

“You are witnessing the rise of an American demagogue,” said Van Jones.

He was not referring to himself.

The CNN talking head was reacting to something Vivek Ramaswamy said during the last Republican presidential candidates’ forum — another one lacking the main candidate, the overwhelming favorite Donald Trump.

Van Jones, who is African-American, called Vivek, who is Indian-American, “a very, very despicable person.”

At issue is something the Republican candidate discussed: “Great Replacement Theory,” which is the notion that politicians and other insiders are using a variety of means to discourage white people from having babies while encouraging brown people to have babies . . . and for non-Europeans to come into the country both legally and illegally. The idea is that with a white minority in America, a different (or same-old/same-old?) politics will emerge (solidify). 

The theory is plenty controversial, in no small part because a few racists have listed it as an excuse to “justify” mass shootings.

But also controversial? It looks like it is more than a theory, it is a plan.

Vivek pointed this out in a tweet. He produced a video from two years ago in which Van Jones himself outlined the “theory” as a strategy: “The request from the racial justice left: we want the white majority to go from being a majority to being a minority and like it. That’s a tough request, and change is hard.”

Yet Jones regards this “request” as something it would be demagogic — even racist — to refuse.

Jones’s leftism does not look like “racial justice” so much as a racial vendetta.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Amber Ebony Insanity

ebony alert, race, racial preference, racism

Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder had a dream that ebony and ivory would live together in perfect harmony, like the keys on a piano keyboard. If the keyboard can do it, “oh Lord, why don’t we?”

Agreed, let’s do that. But not everybody wants to. And out in California, it is once again being confirmed that history is not a steady march into the light. Sometimes we retreat, and in the silliest ways.

The state has just instituted an amber alert system exclusively for missing black kids called ebony alert. The reason, according to the state senator behind the legislation, Steven Bradford, is that “Our black children and young women are disproportionately represented on the lists of missing persons. This is heartbreaking. . . .”

How will an ebony alert address this in ways an amber alert does not? Will black kids no longer be kidnapped or be more easily found if only there’s a racially divided alert system?

There’s no rhyme or reason. The reporting details how many black kids went missing in 2022, the percentage of missing persons who are black, etc. But it’s all a non sequitur. There’s no explanation of how having an ebony alert will, by itself, provide even one additional benefit. 

If the amber alert currently functions imperfectly and might be improved, this can obviously be done without resorting to racial segregation.

Sen. Bradford says: “Something is better than nothing.”

Senator, that’s true only when the “something” makes sense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture media and media people

“You in Your Whiteness”

struggle session, communism, race, racism

The “antiracist” training now often inflicted in the west resembles the efforts to shame and remake people during Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today’s western cultural revolutionaries are not (yet) going nearly as far as China’s, when people were routinely humiliated, beaten to a pulp, imprisoned, and murdered for “wrong” ideas or background.

In the west of 2023, people with “wrong” politics and background (i.e., white) are merely humiliated, censored, perhaps forced out of a job. But we can now add another similarity to Mao’s era: the possibility that hounded victims will commit suicide, as Richard Bilkszto recently did.

Yes, Mr. Bilkszto killed himself.

In 2021, Kike Ojo-Thompson — hired to conduct “antiracist” struggle sessions that Bilkszto, a fill-in principal in Toronto, was required to attend — blasted him for disagreeing with her officially-approved contention that Canada is “more racist” than the United States.

While the issue could be subject to much debate, most of it would likely be pointless. Neither side stands on firm ground.

According to Bilkszto’s eventual lawsuit against the school district, Ojo-Thompson berated, “We are here to talk about anti-Black racism, but you in your whiteness think that you can tell me what’s really going on for Black people.” She also accused Bilkszto of being a white supremacist.

Repeatedly.

A workplace agency found that Ojo-Thompson had indeed engaged in “harassment and bullying.” And, perhaps because of his complaint with the agency, the school district declined to renew Bilkszto’s contract. His lawsuit contends that his reputation was “systematically demolished.”

Now that he’s safely dead, do those who punished Bilkszto for uttering the “wrong” view of racial claims now regret their conduct? 

No more, I bet, than they regard themselves as the bullies they are.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Sin of Skin Color

education, race, racism

Zack De Piero, who taught English at Pennsylvania State University for several years, was pushed out of his job in 2022 for opposing race-based grading and opposing “diversity” training that tells white people that they are inherently racist. De Piero is white.

With the help of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, he is suing the school for racial discrimination, specifically for being “singled out for ridicule and humiliation because of the color of his skin.”

According to the lawsuit, various of the defendants told De Piero that “outcomes alone — regardless of the legitimacy of methods of evaluation, mastery of subject matter, or intentions — demonstrate whether a faculty member’s actions are racist or not. . . . The logic of Defendants’ demands required that De Piero also penalize students academically on the basis of race.”

The filing details a litany of such conduct.

De Piero told Fox News: “I think there is almost a religious, cult-like environment where you had this original sin. In this case, I’m white. I need to repent for that sin. . . . I think they were waging a psychological war campaign and they’re trying to break people. And they almost broke me. But they didn’t.”

The U.S. Supreme Court took fifty years to rule against discriminatory, race-based university admissions. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another fifty years to rule against the travesties of racist grading, racist “diversity training,” and allied diversity-equity-inclusion racist policies doublespeakingly designed to mandate racism in the name of antiracism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thomas & Thomas

race, racism, Supreme Court, college, education

In the Students for Fair Admissions decision, the Supreme Court rules that using race as a criterion of university admissions is unconstitutional.

Ambiguous aspects of the decision and the determination of some universities to keep using race as a criterion mean that qualified applicants may, alas, still be penalized for being the “wrong” color. Unambiguous, though, is Justice Clarence Thomas’s rebuke of the decision’s dissenters for, among other things, assuming that only racism can explain the different average outcomes of ethnic groups.

“[N]one of those statistics are capable of drawing a direct causal link between race — rather than socioeconomic status or any other factor — and individual outcomes. So Justice Jackson supplies the link herself: the legacy of slavery and the nature of inherited wealth. This, she claims, locks blacks into a seemingly perpetual inferior caste. Such a view is irrational; it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds. . . .”

Has Thomas been perusing the work of Thomas Sowell?

One of Sowell’s career-integrating insights is that statistics summarizing differences in average group outcomes are mute about the causes. 

One must investigate causally relevant facts.

Consider, for example, differences in characteristics and outcomes between subgroups of a broader ethnic group. Sole possible cause: racism? Or the fact that Asians on average perform better than whites in certain academic or economic categories. Sole possible cause: racism?

Just two of many pertinent questions that Dr. Sowell has asked as he, in his numerous books, surveyed our world’s cultures, lands, and histories.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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