Tag: racism

Federally Funded Racism

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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Tags education, quota, race, racism, science

ideological culture judiciary too much government

Right Color Only

The latest battle over race-conscious affirmative action policies is taking place over a loan forgiveness program in the Providence, Rhode Island, public school district.

The Legal Insurrection Foundation is suing to overturn an “overtly racist and discriminatory” program being implemented by a district that receives millions in federal funding. Which means that all taxpayers are indirectly subsidizing this sort of thing.

According to the district’s new policy, an applicant for a teaching post can get up to $25,000 in college loans paid off if he teaches for three years in a row in the district. The incentive seems innocuous enough until you learn that beneficiaries of the grant, being funded by a Rhode Island charity, must “identify as Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latino, biracial, or multi-racial.”

The specification that one must “identify as” a member of one of these races may sound as if persons of unambiguously blanco tint need merely “identify as” Black or Indigenous or the like to get around the whites-need-not-apply exclusion. But such a mode of circumvention — even if, as seems unlikely, it could succeed to the extent that officials pretended to believe the claim — would require applicants to lie or become delusional.

To match this delusional policy, no doubt.

But the policy would still remain racist and discriminatory.

The Foundation’s filing quotes a dictum that if universally accepted would put an end to all this nonsense: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags affirmative action, race, racism

general freedom ideological culture

A Fully Baked Defense

Having your say can have an important impact even if you don’t know about it. Sometimes the people on the front lines are paying surprisingly close attention to what you say.

William Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog has learned how important his posts and the comments of readers have been to the legal team fighting for Gibson’s Bakery.

Gibson’s, you may remember, is the shop in Oberlin, Ohio, that Oberlin College tried to clobber because an employee of the bakery confronted shoplifters. Because the thieves were black, race-conscious student activists erupted in outrage — at the bakery, not against the shoplifters — and college officials echoed the students’ irrational hostility and smears.

Long story short, Gibson’s sued for damages and spent years in court to first win a substantial judgment, then to fight Oberlin’s appeals.

In a recent interview with Professor Jacobson, Lee Plakas, lead trial attorney for the bakery, told him how important Jacobson’s blog has been to the legal team.

They clicked in daily.

“Your readers gave the family the support and the courage that they needed to persevere,” Plakas said. “We had a billion-dollar bully doing everything they possibly could to destroy this iconic bakery.… And we wanted to make sure that in this battle that we didn’t miss any nuance that one of your readers or Professor Jacobson may have identified. So we could incorporate it into our presentation.”

The result? Oberlin College finally agreed to pay the damages: $36.59 million.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment education and schooling

Justice (Almost) Done

It ain’t over until the money’s in the bank. But one wrong, long fought, may soon be righted. Justice done.

Years ago, Gibson’s Bakery won a judgment of $38 million against Oberlin College because of the Ohio school’s role in harassing the bakery and defaming it as “racist” after a 2016 shoplifting incident.

The shopkeeper of the family-donuts, racist, college bakery, Allyn Gibson, caught students trying to steal wine. They attacked him. They were black.

For whatever reasons, students on campus chugged into uproar mode, accusing the bakery of racism as if it prefers to be robbed only by persons of pallor.

The shoplifters eventually pled guilty and acknowledged that the bakery is not racist.

The students’ irrationality was bad enough. Then Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo chimed in, working with protesters to defame the bakery. The school canceled its contract with Gibson’s and would claim in legal filings that the bakery’s “archaic chase-and-detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests.”

In 2017, the bakery sued Oberlin and won.

Oberlin has been appealing. Now it has lost in the Ohio Supreme Court, which refused to hear the appeal.

Only the U.S. Supreme Court can save Oberlin now. But according to the Legal Insurrection blog, the chances that it will even consider the case are slim.

Is $38 million the right award? Perhaps Oberlin should pay Gibson’s $50 million. Or a cool billion.

But Oberlin deserves to be punished just as Gibson’s deserves to be compensated.

May this finally happen.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags hysteria, lynch, protest, racism, Supreme Court

education and schooling ideological culture

Power Theory

CRT, critical race theory, communism, racism, race

What if CRT were precisely about what its advocates say it is?

“Far-right white people are in a moral panic over Critical Race Theory,” Pennsylvania educators are being taught, “because they fear losing political power.”

Beth Brelje, at The Epoch Times, explains that this is the lesson of a “a webinar presented by Justice Leaders Collaborative, a Michigan-based social justice training organization.” Ms. Brelje quotes Shayla Reese Griffin, the webinar leader, who states that these “far-right white people” are “really just using Critical Race Theory as a kind of an umbrella term for any kind of cultural things that the far-right isn’t interested in.”

This is, of course, disingenuous. Critical Race Theory is not merely an umbrella term. It is a theory of power that tracks oppression (which is a specific variety of power) along rigid class lines, the classes being defined by race.

And it is a movement of the “far left.”

Which is why CRT’s defenders and obfuscationists identify their opponents as “far right.”

Heaven forbid were moderates and centrists also to object!

It’s a bluffing tactic, this extremist-identification, aiming to make moderates, centrists, and just normal, non-political people ashamed to criticize CRT.

It’s manipulative.

CRT’s way off, since power, broadly defined, is everywhere and omnipresent and omnidirectional — everybody has some power, nobody has all power. Critical race theorists aim to ply victimhood status as leverage against innocents who do not want to harm anyone; too often they pretend that everybody on one side of a racial divide is a victim and everybody on the other side is an oppressor. It’s a repackaging of a too-familiar “guilt trip,” as we used to say in the Sixties.

As for parents in most school districts, they’ve discovered they have little power to lose. But by confronting the people they vote onto school boards, they gain more.

Democracy proves itself as one method of holding the powerful to account.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Communism, Critical Race Theory, CRT, race, racism

folly ideological culture

Go Slow?

Post author By Redactor
Post date July 6, 2022
No Comments on Go Slow?

Somewhere along the line putative anti-racists forgot what racism is.

“In an email obtained by Reason,” writes Robby Soave at, yes, Reason magazine, “Regional Health Equity Coalition Program Manager Danielle Droppers informed the community that a scheduled conversation between OHA officials and relevant members of the public would not take place as planned.”

And she offered an … interesting … excuse.

“We recognize that urgency is a white supremacy value that can get in the way of more intentional and thoughtful work, and we want to attend to this dynamic. Therefore, we will reach out at a later date to reschedule.”

While it is obvious that Ms. Droppers does not like what she calls “white supremacy,” her blithe acceptance of the notion that punctuality is a racial characteristic is rather bracing.

Referring to blacks as, generally, slow and even lazy was once a common white-racist evaluation of African Americans.

So common, in fact, that it was a joke — one constantly referenced “as a trope” by Steppin Fetchit and other actors as they portrayed the languorous and servile blacks laughed at in a now bygone era.

Then, as now, there were blacks more than capable of speed and competence in matters where time was of the essence, who valued a “sense of urgency.”

To now accept the stereotype as reason enough to extol loose scheduling is … almost … funny.

If not so disturbingly stupid and racist.

Robby Soave briefly touches on the intellectual movement that does this sort of thing consistently. We can thank, it turns out, white anti-racists.

Who are quickly establishing a new stereotype: that white anti-racists are hopelessly witless.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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