Tag: racism

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crime and punishment education and schooling

Justice (Almost) Done

donuts, racist, college

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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Illustration created with DALL-E

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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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folly ideological culture

Go Slow?

racism, Stepin Fechit

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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Accountability education and schooling

Grading on a Skewed Curve

education, race, grading

Oak Park and River Forest High School, a Chicago-area school, is imposing standards of grading designed to equalize academic performance among races.

According to a plan discussed at a recent school meeting, “Traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities and intensify the opportunity gap.”

Teachers must now ignore whether, for example, students miss class, misbehave, or fail to promptly submit homework. It seems that students of certain races commit such lapses, on average, more often than students of other races.

It’s not the first major step taken at the school to promote “diversity, equity, inclusion and justice [sic].” Last year, a teacher there adopted a grading scale under which students had to score as low as 19 percent to get an F and could get an A with 80 percent, a B with 65.

Students who conscientiously try to learn despite the fact that excellence and conscientiousness are no longer being appropriately recognized may do okay despite the perverse incentives being pushed.

But what about students on the margin who need to be rewarded for their efforts? Might they not slide into apathy if, no matter what they do, they’re treated like anybody else? Grades, after all, are there to serve as feedback — signalling successes and failures in learning, rewarding for excellence and warning for error. Take that away and one incentive to adjust studying habits flies out the window.

Even under the new plan, there will perhaps be some remnant of recognition of actual individual performance at Oak Park and River High. But precedents have been established that pave the way to further erosion of standards.

Unless the whole noxious egalitarian approach is repudiated, things there can only get worse.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Enforcers of Conformity

Joshua Katz

In the American academe of 2022, you never know who will be next on the chopping block for disputing the latest insanities. At the moment, that someone is former Princeton University classics professor Joshua Katz.

Katz is supposedly being fired for a relationship he had with a student 15 years ago and for which he was penalized in 2017. Actually, it’s for exposing the racist assumptions of so-called antiracism in a 2020 article.

It seems Princeton has been itching for an excuse to can him. Last year, the university found its excuse when the student involved in the older controversy, provoked by the new one, revived the old complaint.

Katz’s lawyer, Samantha Harris, says “the message to would-be dissenters is clear: the price of speaking out is having your personal life turned inside out looking for information to destroy you.”

Only a few colleagues have publicly supported Professor Katz.

Or even still talk to him. 

More have joined the bandwagon against him. When it’s been most urgent to profess the truth, these professors have preferred a “safer” path.

In 2020, Katz wrote: “The pressure to apologize . . . to appease one’s tormentors can be tremendous, but do not give in to the pressure. If you feel you did no wrong, do not apologize.”

If Professor Katz wants to put this nightmare behind him, I’d understand. If he wants to sue Princeton for a billion dollars or so, well, I’d understand that too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Quota Requirement Overturned

Jerry Brown, California, racism, quota, colors

In 2018, Jerry Brown, then California governor, signed a bill requiring corporate boards to include a high percentage of women. 

Now a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has determined that the state failed to show that “gender-based classification was necessary to boost California’s economy, improve opportunities for women in the workplace, and protect California taxpayers, public employees, pensions and retirees.”

No news yet on whether the state will appeal.

In 2018, Brown had conceded that the law was probably doomed to be judged unconstitutional. But he apparently regarded questions of legality or constitutionality as irrelevant.

“It’s high time corporate boards include the people who constitute more than half the ‘persons’ in America,” he burbled in his signing message.

Fines for disobedience were to be steep: $100,000 for initial violations, $300,000 for subsequent violations.

Of course, it is neither immoral nor a crime to choose a man instead of a woman for a post. Making specific hires criminal depending upon the complexion of a business’s other hires amounts to the politicization of everything, swapping the goals of business for the goals of ideologues. It is destructive of individual rights and the requirements of conducting business profitably to compel employers choosing personnel to be guided by any considerations other than relevant qualifications. Or by any assessment but their own.

Managers of all non-government organizations should be free to use their own best judgment in hiring and contracting, whether the work involved is that of clerk, CEO, or board member. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment

Oberlin Must Pay

Oberlin College, bakery, racism

Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio, helped students defame a local business, Gibson’s Bakery, as “racist.”

The two organizations were not strangers, however: Gibson’s Bakery had an agreement with Oberlin to provide baked goods to the school.

It all began when a black Oberlin student shoplifted wine from the bakery. When an employee acted to stop the shoplifter, the thief and two others attacked the employee.

The assailants were arrested. The shoplifter and the others later pled guilty.

But instead of protesting against the thief and his thuggish cohorts, Oberlin students turned against Gibson’s . . . for acting to stop the theft. College officials helped students conduct their protests and later issued an official statement expressing gratitude “for the determination of our students and for the leadership demonstrated by Student Senate” in launching the protests and smear campaign.

The college also suspended its contract with Gibson’s Bakery.

Oberlin College said that it would consider resuming the contract if Gibson’s agreed to drop charges. In a legal filing, Oberlin asserted that the bakery’s “archaic chase-and-detain policy regarding suspected shoplifters was the catalyst for the protests. The guilt or innocence of the students is irrelevant to both the root cause of the protests and this litigation.”

I guess protecting private property and defending ownership rights is “archaic” — it being so much more progressive to let thieves carry on their thievery.

But that’s not the law of the land. At least yet. A state appeals court has upheld a judgment against the college of $31 million — compensatory damages plus legal fees.

Progressives’ race-based undermining of property rights has lost — for now. Crime still doesn’t pay. And socialists can be reined in.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

Cowardice 101

racism, reverse discrimination, quota

An anonymous author at Quillette reports a 2017 conversation between the author, a professor, and a student, Daniel. Daniel had carefully analyzed abundant evidence of race-based “affirmative action” policies at their university and the destructiveness of those policies.

The author says he stressed that “it would be unwise for Daniel to launch a campaign against the admissions committee,” no matter how solid the data.

Bury the findings, was his advice. The campaign would fail and “probably” do no long-run good. (Implying that bad cultural trends are not even partly reversible, or at least “probably” aren’t; ergo, good men, do nothing.)

Also, publishing “would probably end up hurting him rather than helping him.”

Suppose a scholar like Thomas Sowell, who has compiled massive evidence contradicting the assumption that racism or the legacy of slavery “explains” all economic patterns and disparate outcomes, had followed such vicious advice when starting out?

“Don’t do it! Don’t report your research and conclusions, Mr. Sowell! You’ll never advance by pursuing the truth! Just go along to get along. Like me.”

According to the professor, Daniel was not entirely consistent in his indictment of quotas. The professor could have encouraged him to be more consistent. Instead, he encouraged him to give up.

Our quisling Quillette academic could have told Daniel: “You’re right, and I can help you to strengthen your argument. Why don’t we co-author something about this so that you won’t have to deal with the flak alone?”

Did the possibility even occur to him?

What an education.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access national politics & policies

The Other Big Lie

Joe Biden

“Let me be clear,” President Joe Biden told a Georgia crowd yesterday, addressing changes proposed by the Democrats to election laws nationally, “this is not about me or Vice-President Harris or our party.”

Of course not. Who would even suggest such a thing? 

On this same “voting rights” subject six months ago, Biden called Republicans “bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies” who “are threatening the very foundation of our country.” Though less colorful, yesterday’s address was merely more of the same. 

“Pass the Freedom to Vote Act! Pass it now!” the president shouted, arguing that it “would prevent voter suppression.”  

How? Well, that’s less than clear. 

For years, Democrats slammed laws requiring voters to show photo identification as “racist,” contending the requirement disproportionately suppressed black voters. But then, when polls demonstrated that voters “of color” are even more supportive of Voter ID laws than are whites, Democrats quickly insisted they had always been for such laws.

Now — keep up! — voter ID laws are back to being suppressive. And the very purpose of the Dems’ Freedom to Vote Act is to strike down all such state laws.

When Georgia’s Secretary of State called for photo ID requirements last Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, host Margaret Brennan offered, “The Freedom to Vote Act actually does promote a national standard for states that have an ID requirement for in-person voting,” adding, “You could use a bank statement or utility bill.”

Neither of which constitutes a photo ID, as the secretary pointed out.

Democrats battling former President Trump’s so-called Big Lie have concocted one of their very own.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people

Black & White & NPR

three white men, racism

The NPR headline mentioned race: “3 white men are found guilty of murder in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery.”

Before the verdict, I had mentioned the case on my This Week in Common Sense podcast, expecting and supportive of that ultimate outcome. So I left it at that.

But Sean Malone, the brilliant videographer, had something to say about that headline: “Dear NPR: You don’t need to put race in every headline. Please stop. Alternatively, if you’re hell-bent on doing this, then do it consistently.”

Legacy news media outfits seem committed to a racial double standard, which Mr. Malone calls our attention to: “I notice that you didn’t put ‘black suspect’ in this article,” linking to “The Waukesha death toll rises to 6, and the suspect faces homicide charges.” The suspect in this horrific crime is African-American, but NPR doesn’t give that fact banner billing in this or a separate headline on the same horrific incident.

Yet, on November 4, the title was “A nearly all-white jury will hear evidence in the Ahmaud Arbery case.”

Selective race identification is journalistic practice. 

The pattern used to be that newspapers went out of their way to identify black criminals and white victims, but not vice-versa. Now it seems to be the reverse.

Are NPR and other outfits deliberately fanning the flames of racism, with a constant stream of implied and sometimes explicit ‘Hate Whitey’ themes? 

Relentlessly focusing on race as the ultimate driver of our society is not likely to reduce racism but to encourage it. 

To the detriment of individuals of all races.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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