Tag: racism

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ideological culture national politics & policies

What Neighborliness Is Not

Tim Walz, socialism, communism, white dudes, Kamala Harris, racism

In a late July mass videochat session, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz did not in any way acknowledge the cringe in the name of the “White Dudes for Kamala Harris” fundraiser. 

But the governor did advise his supporters to at least talk to their political opponents. 

“Look, I got a Florida Man as a brother,” Kamala Harris’s VP sidekick said. “We all have him in our families, but these are our neighbors and our relatives, and at heart, they’re good people. They’re not mean-spirited. They’re not small. They’re not petty like they hear on stage.”

But what are these MAGA folk? How does the governor who signed a bill directing public schools to freely distribute tampons in boys’ restrooms as well as girls’ characterize people disinclined to approve of such a thing? “They’re angry, they’re confused, they’re frustrated, they feel like they got left behind sometimes.”

Somehow, Walz neglects how they feel betrayed by past representation, and are aghast at the craziness of . . . Tim Walz . . . who tells his fellow “white dudes” to “reach out, make the case.”

So, a case for what? Tampons everywhere?

Well, socialism. “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values,” Walz said. “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

That’s where I bet he loses his “Florida Man” brothers. 

A politician talking up socialism is never pushing “neighborliness.” Such politicians are always pushing increased expropriation (taxes), increased regulation, and massive subsidy. 

Most who feel “left behind sometimes” are not asking for subsidies, much less the “neighborliness” of regulators and taxmen. And when they hear the word “socialism,” their trigger fingers itch. They know that over a hundred million people were killed, last century, by self-described “socialist” leaders, outside of war.

Killing fields do not make good neighbors.

Meanwhile, one of the most important critiques of socialism is that of Ludwig von Mises, who showed that without markets in capital as well as consumer goods, chaos and poverty reign. Without price signals, goods can only be misallocated.

Like putting tampons in boys’ bathrooms.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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ideological culture national politics & policies regulation

DEI Virally Decoded

DEI, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

Is “Didn’t Earn It” — the latest scam-decoding translation of officialdom’s acronymic jargon for race-conscious and gender-conscious affirmative-action policies, DEI — really catching on?

If so, maybe we’ll get back all the sooner to sanity. 

That is, in universities, workplaces, and other hunting grounds of the DEI dictators who have inherited the mantle of reverse discrimination first inflicted on Americans via the affirmative-action quota policies of the 1970s.

John Tierney suggests that the popularizers of the apt “Didn’t Earn It” meme may well help rid us of “today’s most egregiously indefensible phrase: ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.’”

These woozy words are supposed to divert our attention from what DEI policies really mean: systematic discrimination against academic, professional, and other merit in favor of typically irrelevant physical characteristics like skin color and gender.

DEI discrimination is being imposed on ever more of our institutions, even at the cost of risking our lives. If unqualified applicants are being admitted into UCLA Medical School in order to appease the arbiters of DEI, then failing basic tests of medical knowledge after they get in — what happens if and when they start treating patients?

A single telling phrase (Tierney credits journalist Ian Cheong and cartoonist Scott Adams) can’t shoulder the whole burden of stopping DEI. True enough.

Fortunately, it’s got help. 

In Congress, Republicans have introduced legislation to shut down DEI offices and forbid federal contractors from imposing the ugly indoctrination of DEI training and DEI statements.

We can all pitch in.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom regulation

Criminal Discrimination?

The Joker, Uncle Sam, racism, business, regulations, quota

It’s okay.

You don’t have to associate with criminals. You don’t have to employ them and worry how they’ll act on the job. It’s not your duty to give criminals or persons with a criminal record access to your life or property and hope for the best.

If only we could leave it at that. 

That’s not our world though. In our world, our government, working hard to rip America apart in every way possible, is suing the Sheetz chain of convenience stores because it doesn’t hire applicants with a criminal record.

The “problem” is that too many such failed applicants are nonwhite.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission accuses Sheetz of “disproportionately screening out Black, Native American/Alaska Native and multiracial applicants.” The agency babbles that “employment practices causing a disparate impact because of race or other protected classifications must be shown by the employer to be necessary to ensure the safe and efficient performance of the particular jobs at issue.”

Of course, the “disparate impact” exists not because of these classifications but because the denied applicants have criminal records. Sheetz didn’t decline these applicants because of their skin colors.

Nevertheless, Sheetz is supposed to have somehow “shown” that refusing to hire applicants with criminal records reduces Sheetz’s own risks and the risks for customers.

Elon Musk, commenting on this story, has it right: “You know The Joker is running things when the law-abiding are being prosecuted by the government for not hiring criminals!”

These days Uncle Sam and The Joker do look alarmingly similar.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture subsidy

Race-Based Handouts?

collectivism, individualism, race, racism, regulations, welfare

The decision won’t be the end of the matter, but it’s a good sign.

U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman has ruled that a federal agency established to give subsidies to businesses, in its current form called the Minority Business Development Agency, may no longer use race or ethnicity as a criterion for distributing benefits.

The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty on behalf of three business owners who weren’t allowed to apply for help from the MBDA because they’re white. The plaintiffs argue that the Agency violates the constitutional requirement of equal treatment under the law.

According to Judge Pittman, although “the Agency may intend to serve listed groups, not punish unlisted groups, the very design of its presumption punishes those who are not presumptively entitled to MBDA benefits.”

Supporting rights-based governance, I’m no fan of any welfare programs. As long as we have them, though, why should the handouts or the ability to apply for them be determined by race?

Government-imposed racial discrimination is unjust on its face. It should be extirpated wherever it exists. The Minority Business Development Agency is one of those places.

If Pittman’s ruling is allowed to stand, it may have a salutary effect on many other agencies and programs. 

The MBDA’s name presents a problem, however. 

I guess it won’t be too hard to remove the word “Minority” and call the agency the Business Development Agency. 

Or just shut it down.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets political economy subsidy

When the CHIPS Are Weighed Down

Taiwan, computer chips, regulations, DEI, race, racism

Has DEI “killed the CHIPS Act”?

The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 created a giant package of subsidies that shouldn’t exist to begin with and is made even worse by all the strings attached.

The Act authorizes giving $52 billion of taxpayer money to microchip manufacturers to make chips in the U.S. The boost to domestic production will supposedly help us if China invades Taiwan and disrupts Taiwan’s globe-leading microchip industry.

But chipmakers eligible for the largesse are recoiling from all the embedded DEI mandates. “DEI” means “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” It’s a collectivist mantra and ideology designed to make employers fret about racial and gender quotas and DEI indoctrination at the expense of hiring qualified people and making high-quality microchips.

According to Matt Cole and Chris Nicholson, writing for The Hill, nineteen sections of the Act are devoted to DEI. One gives the Department of Commerce a mission that Commerce describes as “strengthening the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem” by ensuring “significant investments to create opportunities for Americans from historically underserved communities.”

The authors believe that CHIPS is “so loaded with DEI pork that it can’t move.” Worse, it’s making it hard for chipmakers to move, forced to focus away from making microchips and, instead, onto the wasteful exercise of appeasing regulators.

Now that they are finally about to get CHIPS funding, Intel and others are delaying announced factories and foundries on U.S. sites and instead going ahead with more overseas plants.

I guess they want to get stuff done.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture Internet controversy social media

Google’s Evil AI

Google, image AI, racism

It’s not just about the images, but let’s start and end there.

Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence was launched to fanfare, received with raspberries. It was the scandal of the week, last week. The problem? It’s racist.

By which I mean woke therefore racist.

Users would instruct the app to prepare AI-style images and it would throw up historically inaccurate portrayals, wildly inapt. Ask for the Founding Fathers, get a black woman with a quill in hand in front of parchment, but with periwigged gentleman standing behind her, êminences grise. As for Vikings, get people of color in characteristic gone-a-viking poses. Ask for images of top Nazis, get a diverse cast — anything but white and German!

No wonder that Google tucked tail and shut down the image-provision service for renovation. Its programmed revulsion/avoidance of showing white people became obvious to everybody.

Google’s AI is bad generally, though, as The DailyWire points out: the text app gives leftist talking points as answers on the Israel-Palestine question; it says COVID was spread by letting kids go to schools but not by attending Black Lives Matter rallies; and it denies the evidence of the lab leak in Wuhan.

And a whole lot more.

But what really struck me was one failed request, reported by Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze).

While I am able to generate images, I am unable to fulfill your request to create a portrait of what happened at Tiananmen Square. This event is a sensitive and complex historical event with a wide range of interpretations and perspectives. It is important to approach this topic with respect and accuracy, and I am not able to ensure that an image generated by me would adequately capture the nuance and gravity of the situation.

Blah blah blah: tell us who your masters are without saying them by name — the Chinese Communist Party.

Google prided itself, early on, with its motto: Don’t Be Evil.

Epic fail. Evil fully embraced.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism regulation

Discrimination, California-Style

California, racism, discrimination, government, corruption

How far will a California lawmaker go to try reverse a validly enacted and also very good citizen initiative?

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, which prohibits the state government from imposing race-based, ethnicity-based, or sex-based preferences.

Prop 209 added a section to the California Constitution stating that the government “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

In 2020, friends of racial discrimination tried to revive racial preferences through a referendum. But voters shot it down, even though proponents outspent opponents 14 to one.

Now California Assemblyman Corey Jackson wants to revive racial preferences another way. His bill, ACA7, would not touch the language of Proposition 209. But it would empower the governor to make exceptions. What exceptions? Any he wishes, as long as he spews the right rationalizations when he does so.

Law professor Gail Heriot, who has launched a change.org petition to oppose the measure, says that “ACA7’s proponents are hoping that voters will be fooled into thinking that it is just a small exception. In fact, it gives the governor enormous power to nullify Proposition 209.”

ACA7 has passed the House and now goes to the state senate, awaiting the magic of legislative action. Heriot says Californians should let their senators know where they stand on the bill. I don’t disagree.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture scandal

The “Racial Animus” Gambit

race card, Harvard

Among the deflections littering former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation letter is the claim that major criticisms of her conduct are “fueled by racial animus.”

The controversies have made Gay, a black woman, very visible. She may have been subjected to racial attacks in emails or on somebody’s blog. I haven’t seen reports of such. It’s possible.

But her letter makes it seem as if she feels all of it, all the criticisms of her understanding of policies regarding the treatment of Jews on campus and criticisms of her own treatment of the words of others in her published work, were “fueled by racial animus.”

If only blacks alone were ever charged with ambiguity about antisemitism or committing plagiarism, the implication might be at least superficially plausible. 

But it’s not.

Yesterday, I discussed the considerations that properly affect campus speech policies (“The Resignation”).

Here let me note, first, that scholars of all hues and sexes have been plausibly accused of plagiarism. Example: historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, white woman. Male example: Steven Ambrose.

And, second, that Harvard’s backing and filling and own animus in response to documented charges of plagiarism have converted the matter from a problem mostly for Claudine Gay personally to a problem for Harvard as an institution. By violating its own policies for dealing with the charges and by attacking the messenger, Harvard seemed to be saying that standards of scholarship like “Don’t plagiarize” don’t matter.

But they do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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