Tag Archive for: Black

University to Hold ‘Segregated’ Diversity Workshops on Race

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This month, to relatively little outrage or public notice, Oregon State University is holding segregated “diversity” sessions for students, staff, and faculty. At “retreats,” students and faculty will learn about identity and micro-agressions (for example: expressing a belief in merit, wearing an offensive Halloween costume, or having someone feel like she does not belong).

The Daily Caller reports that a total of four workshops will be held: one for non-white students, another for white students (to educate them about their “white privilege”), one for multi-racial students, and one for white faculty and staff called “Examining White Identity.”

The testimonials at the university’s website indicate that the sessions are sure to foster more “cry-bullies,” as we saw on campuses across the country in 2015. And it seems that among Oregon State’s 30,000 students, none raised significant objections to funding being spent on segregated sessions.

This same outrage almost happened in 2013 at Hamilton College, too. But that proposed segregated “dialogue” never went forward, thanks to students affiliated with the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI).

In 2013, from the lavishly funded on-campus Days-Massolo Center (ironically founded “to embrace the importance of supporting a diverse and inclusive community”), an email was sent inviting students to participate in a “dialogue about internalized racism.” The “dialogue,” however, was for “people of color” only. Another dialogue for white students and faculty was promised for the following semester, and the program would have culminated in a non-segregated session.

AHI students, led by senior Dean Ball, got the administration to back down.

Ball described what happened in a blog post at Legal Insurrection, a site run by Cornell law professor William A. Jacobson, a Hamilton College alum who has been dismayed by what’s been going on at the small elite liberal arts college.

Ball described speaking to Amit Taneja — Hamilton College’s “Director of Diversity & Inclusion” — and expressing dismay at this new form of segregation. Taneja, without any evidence, told Ball that his views were in the “minority” of the student body.

Ball pointed out that Taneja’s job description was to protect minorities.

Ball was a leader of the 150-member student body at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, an independent non-profit education corporation founded by three Hamilton College faculty members: history professors Robert Paquette and Douglas Ambrose, and economics professor James Bradfield. The three were concerned about the decline of academic standards and loss of freedom. As Paquette puts it, AHI upholds the “ethos of a liberal arts education,” countering the all-too common liberal arts college’s “political agenda that masks a totalitarian impulse in a utopian illusion.”

The AHI offers students educational opportunities they rarely get in college: exposure to Augustine, Plato, and Leo Strauss through reading groups; lectures on and off campus by distinguished scholars and writers; the opportunity to write for a student newspaper, Enquiry, that respects their opinions; and internships, directed readings, and social gatherings at the AHI building on the village square, about 1.5 miles from the campus on the hill.

The center was originally to be on campus, but found itself the target of a faculty-led hostile takeover attempt. The story is related in the New Criterion; I now live in the building as one of two resident fellows.

The AHI students contacted the media, prepared a petition for Hamilton’s board of trustees, and wrote an op-ed for the student newspaper. They also sent out a campus-wide email with the heading “RACIAL SEGREGATION AT HAMILTON.” The email stated:

“The Alexander Hamilton Institute believes that no safe zone is worth the price of segregation. All are welcome to join us for a conversation on race.”

That was enough to get Taneja to open the “dialogue” to all races. That victory, however, marked the beginning of the harassment of Ball and other AHI students.

That very night, Ball was threatened with violence and accused of white supremacy, almost entirely by students he had never met. His Twitter and Facebook feeds were filled with “both fury and support over what the AHI had done.”

The following Monday, September 23, his character was attacked at the Student Assembly meeting, which, according to the SA president, drew more students than he’d ever seen. The next morning Ball found the campus littered with “hundreds of pieces of paper posted on trees, windows, doors, and everywhere else imaginable” with sayings about social justice from luminaries like Tupac Shakur.

Ball concluded:

“Hamilton’s campus was no ‘safe zone’ for me or anyone sympathetic to what the Alexander Hamilton Institute did.”

Now manager of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute, Ball recalls those days. Although it was a student-led initiative, “[w]e always knew we had the full-throated support of [Executive Director] Professor Paquette and everyone else at AHI.” The agreement was implicit: “Professor Paquette and I had been through enough of these incidents at this point that this dynamic between us was understood.”

Paquette had challenged Taneja from the time of the self-identified social-justice activist’s hiring. Paquette recalls sending the trustees a lengthy letter in 2011 that used Taneja’s own words to describe who he was and to inform of what he intended to do as director of the “so-called cultural education (indoctrination) center.” Although the trustees and administration did not heed Paquette’s words in 2011, in 2013 AHI students forced Taneja’s hand.

To be sure, places like AHI can’t cure political correctness on our campuses. But when 19 year olds are surrounded by guest speakers like performance artist Rhodessa Jones, are ridiculed by their professors in class, and are punished for failing to complete assignments to their political specifications, it just takes a professor or two and a handful of peers to give them the confidence to face down the mobs of angry students and hostile administrators. Per Dean Ball:

“The AHI connected me to all of the like-minded students on campus and the AHI gave me the intellectual firepower I needed in the first place to effectively counter the administration’s tactics.”

In 20 years of teaching college English, I’ve rarely seen such poised, polite, well-rounded, and confident young people. They are polished writers and public speakers. I also recognize the students giving testimonials for the Oregon workshops, ending statements on question marks and repeating slogans like zombies. Sadly, they are far more common and their numbers have increased in recent years.

It looks like there is a need for something like the AHI in Oregon. Surely, there must be enough students there to confront this new form of Jim Crow: campus brainwashing sessions.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on PJMedia.com.

Trump and the Black Vote

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The year 2015 brought tectonic changes in several areas of our lives that the media has totally ignored or under-reported.  Too often media, both left and right, only talk to people who view the world from the same prism as they do.

The same argument can be made about the political establishment from both parties.  There is a total disconnect between the establishment of both parties and their respective bases.  This disconnect is personified in the presidential candidacies of both businessman Donald Trump and Independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.

To this end, the Republican establishment is by far the biggest loser of 2015.

They told Republican voters that if they raised and contributed money to help them gain control of congress, they would shrink the size of government, defund Obama’s amnesty for illegals, and stop these trade deals that would subjugate America’s sovereignty to international organizations.

We helped Republicans to gain control of congress and then they quickly began to do the moonwalk on every issue they promised us they would fight for.

Then along comes Donald Trump launching his presidential campaign based on all the promises the Republican congress made and broke.  The Republican congress created Donald Trump’s candidacy.

Now the same Republican establishment that created Trump is actively trying to destroy and sabotage his campaign.  Message to the establishment:  Trump is not the problem. Republican voters don’t want amnesty for illegals, they don’t want increased debt ceilings, they don’t want more H1-B visas, they don’t want all these trade deals, they don’t want more continuing resolutions (CRs); and they don’t want omnibus budget bills passed, just to name a few.

However impolitic you may think Trump’s verbiage is; he makes voters believe he is sincere in what he says.  He projects strength and leadership and has proven that he is willing to take it hard to Bill & Hillary Clinton.

Trump has the uncanny ability to connect with the average voter and tap into what they are feeling at any given moment.  Most of the other candidates wait on polls to tell them what to think and what to believe; but Trump somehow always seems to just instinctively know what is going on within the electorate.

If the establishment would spend more time fighting for the values that they campaigned on; there would be no Trump candidacy.

Trump is totally rewriting the playbook on how to run for president.  He is the only candidate to actively engage with the Black community in any meaningful way during the primary. He has even gone so far as to hire Blacks and then put them on TV representing his campaign.  WOW, what a novel thought!

Because of Trump’s business background, I think he understands that the Black community is open to a message of economic empowerment; I think he understands how to penetrate or create a new market, i.e. the Black vote.

Most of the other candidates are too busy listening to their pollsters and other establishment figures tell them that going after the Black vote is a waste of time.

As I have written repeatedly, Blacks are looking for the Republican Party to give them a reason to vote for them, but only Trump has even remotely began to see this possibility.

Republicans have absolutely no idea of the chasm that exists between Blacks and Hillary Clinton.  She doesn’t have the connection to Blacks like Bill Clinton and to a lesser extent, Barak Obama.

She will attempt to scare Blacks into voting for her by telling them that Republicans are racists, etc., etc., etc.  She will also pay Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to do their dirty work for her.

Hillary has no substantive track record to take to the Black community.  She shows up for all the right symbolic events in the Black community, but has done nothing of any substance.

She insults the Black community by equating homosexual entitlements to Civil Rights.  She supports amnesty for illegals though everyone knows it will devastate the Black community.

The real sign of what these Republican presidential candidates think about the Black vote will be shown in two weeks when the nation celebrates Martin Luther King’s birthday on January 18.

If a candidate only issues a perfunctory press statement, then you know that campaign is not serious about the Black vote.

Each campaign should do an event on King’s birthday within the Black community and give a major policy speech on their vision for Civil Rights should they become president.

I will be stunned if any campaign does anything substantive on King’s holiday.

In order for any Republican to win the White House, he will have to think outside the box and be able to get at least 15% of the Black vote.

The only person I see willing to invest the time, money and effort to do this is Donald Trump.

RELATED VIDEO: Stump for Trump duo at Mississippi rally:

Samuel L. Jackson’s America-Bashing, a Huge Disservice

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Okay, I will say it out loud. Far too many Hollywood celebs are self-aggrandizing idiots when it comes to politics and culture. Their worldview makes them feel superior to the rest us. Neither facts nor common sense will change their minds. Ronald Reagan nailed it when he said, “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.”

Here’s a prime example of a liberal making void-of-reality statements while thinking himself superior. Black superstar actor Samuel L. Jackson said he wished the San Bernardino shooters “was another crazy white dude” rather than Muslims. Jackson said such attacks gives people “legitimate reason” to look at their Muslim neighbors and friends the way they look at young black men. 

Mr Jackson, I am black. I resent your assumption that Americans are racists looking for reasons to look cross-eyed at Muslims and young black men. Frankly, members of both groups (Muslims and blacks) have declared war on Americans.

So tell me Mr Jackson. How are we suppose to deal with the fact that practically every terrorist attack resulting in the maiming and murder of Americans has been by Muslims? Also, though under reported, black youth flash mob attacks, the knock-out game and polar bear hunting attacks on innocent whites are frequent.

The Black Lives Matter hate group which Mr Jackson and his Hollywood homeys hold in high regard have declared it open season on killing cops and “crackas” (white people). How are Americans suppose to process that?

A white friend was mugged on a Baltimore street. My friend admitted he was preoccupied. Had he been paying attention, upon seeing the group of thuggish young black males approaching, his street-smarts would have kicked in causing him to cross over to the opposite side of the street. Mr Jackson would deem my friend a racist guilty of profiling. In the minds of liberals, politically correctness trumps everything; even self-preservation instincts and life-experiences.

What I find so scary about the Muslim thing is we have no way of knowing who is for us or “a-gin” us. All the successful terrorist attacks maiming and murdering Americans were by Muslims who presented themselves as harmless neighbors, friends and co-workers.

The Boston Marathon was bombed by the seemingly Americanized Tsarnaev brothers. They killed 3 and wounded over 260, many maimed for life.

For crying out loud, the Muslim terrorist at Ft Hood was a major in the U.S. Army. Major Nidal Hasan, shot and killed 13 and injured over 30 while yelling, “Allahu akbar! (God is great)”

The San Bernardino shooters were undercover Muslim terrorists. They left their company’s Christmas party, returned later wearing combat gear and killed 14 co-workers.

Again I ask Mr Jackson, how should we as responsible reasonable Americans respond?

And another thing. What is up with Jackson and other mega-rich black celebs constantly trashing white Americans whose patronage made them ga-zillionaires.

While promoting her movie, “Selma”, Oprah made the absurd claim that the 1950s persecution of blacks featured in her film still happens daily in America. With all due respect Oprah, your accusation is irresponsible, divisive and insulting.

Oprah Winfrey and I were co-workers at WJZ-TV in Baltimore before she became nationally renowned “Oprah.” Oprah co-hosted our local morning talk show. Blacks were a bit suspicious of her for being comfortable with whites. Black viewers did not make Oprah a mega star. White viewers made Oprah.

Sameul L. Jackson, Oprah and other black celebs relentlessly bashing America is a huge disservice to all Americans, particularly black youths. Rather than saying their success is “because” of America, most black celebs promote the liberal spin; saying their success is “in spite of” America. The truth is America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all who choose to go for it. The Left is relentless in its efforts to insidiously hide the blessing of America from minorities.

Proverbs says, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” In other words, belief is a powerful thing. So when black superstars tell black youths that America is forever racist and white cops shoot them on sight, they believe it. The lies become truth in their minds. Angry young blacks respond accordingly. WARNING: Video has explicit language:

Mr Jackson and other black celebs, your insistence on portraying America as a hellhole of racism towards minorities is irresponsible, divisive and hate-generating. Your supportive public deserves much, much better.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of Samuel L. Jackson is courtesy of Marvel Studios.

On the ‘White Privilege’ movement

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We close out the year with more protests and demands than ever, as our intellectuals engage in more and more “conversations” about race.

The protests spilled over to restaurants and shopping venues, even as Americans celebrated Christmas.  The incubators are the schools and college campuses, where students are taught about injustices invisible to the common man.  Textbooks offering lessons for deep classroom discussion include the sociology textbook, Color Lines and Racial Angles, published by Norton.  It includes such thought-provoking gems as “Asian American Exceptionalism and ‘Stereotype Promise,'” “The Fascination and Frustration with Native American Mascots,” “White Trash: The Social Origins of a Stigmatype,” and “Thinking about Trayvon [Martin, of course]: Privileged Responses and Media Discourse.”

Another gem from the once esteemed textbook publisher is Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, with offerings from professors in various fields, such as biology, history, anthropology, sociology…and education, with a contribution by Bill Ayers’ choice for Obama’s Secretary of Education, Linda Darling-Hammond.  The Obama education transition team leader and developer of one of the two national Common Core tests offers her thoughts on education in an essay titled, “Structured for Failure: Race, Resources, and Student Achievement.”

At the K-12 level, materials for sensitizing students to oppression abound.  There is  (Re)Teaching Trayvon: Education for Racial Justice.  Curriculum materials on “teaching the ongoing murders of black men” are also readily available at Rethinking Schools.The George Soros-funded Teaching for Change also has some incendiary curriculum materials for the tykes.

White Privilege: All these materials are intended to instill an understanding of “white privilege,” which arose as more obvious methods such as slurs and discrimination disappeared.  White privilege is a kind of unconscious superiority that must be reviewed constantly–replacing the Puritan scouring for sin.  To gain an understanding, students can read “Beyond the Big, Bad Racist: Shared Meanings of White Identity and Supremacy” in theirColor Lines textbook.

The common wisdom in academe is that all white people are racist because they have white privilege.  An exponent of this theory, George Yancy, was recently hired by Emory University to teach philosophy.  His letter to “White America” appeared on Christmas Eve in the New York Times. Following in the footsteps of Ta-Nehisi Coates, a MacArthur Genius Grant winner and National Book Award winner for his stream-of-consciousness racial complaint in the style of James Baldwin, Yancy invoked James Baldwin.

“Dear White America,” wrote Yancy, as he set out to berate her,

I have a weighty request. As you read this letter, I want you to listen with love, a sort of love that demands that you look at parts of yourself that might cause pain and terror, as James Baldwin would say. Did you hear that? You may have missed it. I repeat: I want you to listen with love. Well, at least try.

Yancy, here, managed to combine demand and insult.  No doubt, millions of white masochistic Americans did just that: they tried very, very, very hard to listen, with love (as difficult as it is for them to grasp the concept).

This man who occupies an office once occupied by a real philosopher, continued,

We don’t talk much about the urgency of love these days, especially within the public sphere. Much of our discourse these days is about revenge, name calling, hate, and divisiveness. I have yet to hear it from our presidential hopefuls, or our political pundits. I don’t mean the Hollywood type of love, but the scary kind, the kind that risks not being reciprocated, the kind that refuses to flee in the face of danger. To make it a bit easier for you, I’ve decided to model, as best as I can, what I’m asking of you. Let me demonstrate the vulnerability that I wish you to show. As a child of Socrates, James Baldwin and Audre Lorde, let me speak the truth, refuse to err on the side of caution.

Now, the Dissident Prof has taken some classes in philosophy, but never has she heard a professor declare himself a “child of” any historical figure, much less of such a disparate triad as Socrates, James Baldwin, and Audre Lorde.  Furthermore, they told their students that philosophy is the love of wisdom and that according to Socrates, the beginning of wisdom comes with the admission of ignorance.

Professor Yancy, however, declares that he speaks the truth, or at least a truth that does not hold back, has no doubt.

Lest anyone get the impression that Professor Yancy feels himself in any way superior to White America, or to anyone else, he confesses his own sin of sexism, or male privilege.  But then again that must mean he is superior because he confessed his privilege.  So unless you, White America, confess the privilege that Professor Yancy says you enjoy (because he knows), you are guilty.

Richard WrightRichard Wright I will not claim to be a child of Richard Wright, just someone who, in spite of her white privilege, read and taught (at Emory) his autobiographical account of a show trial put on by the American Communists in the 1930s.  Wright got entangled with them in his efforts to break into writing.  The poor soul who is the target, his friend Ross, is NOT a privileged white American, but a black American, one of many targeted and exploited by the communists.

Wright is asked to come to the trial so that he might “learn what happened to ‘enemies of the working class.'”

The following day, a Sunday, Ross is confronted by his accusers.  Over the course of three hours, the accusers describe “Fascism’s aggression in Germany, Italy, and Japan,” “the role of the Soviet Union as the world’s lone workers’ state,” and the “suffering and handicaps” of the Negro population on Chicago’s South Side and the relation to “world struggle.” The direct charges against Ross are made, with dates, conversations, and scenes.

Then it is time for Ross to defend himself:

He stood trembling; he tried to talk and his words would not come.  The hall was as still as death.  Guilt was written in every pore of his black skin.  His hands shook.  He held on to the edge of the table to keep on his feet. . . .

“Comrades,” he said in a low, charged voice.  “I’m guilty of all the charges, all of them.”

"TheGodThatFailed" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia“TheGodThatFailed” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via WikipediaIn a similar manner, those of us benefiting from “privilege,” must confess as we are blamed for such things as the “school to prison pipeline” and the deplorable conditions on the South Side of Chicago.  Those who wish to be in the good graces of those like Professor Yancy must confess these over and over and over.

Fortunately, there are still a few legitimate philosophy professors around, such as Jack Kerwick, one of the contributors to the Dissident Prof collection, Exiled.  Kerwick, who keeps a very busy schedule teaching, also is a frequent contributor to such sites as Townhall and American Thinker.  Those who have enjoyed his application of logic to the issues of the day can now enjoy his razor sharp analyses in a new collection, The American Offensive: Dispatches from the Front, where he tackles such topics as Immigration, Academia, Religion, and Race.  As a matter of fact, I think George Yancy should read it.  I cannot think of anyone who would benefit more.

A couple reminders: The deadline for public comment on the U.S. Dept. of Education’s “family engagement” plan is Jan.4.  The deadline for 2015 charitable contributions is Dec. 31.

Best wishes for a Happy New Year!

Ideas in Exile: The Bullies Win at Yale by Diana Furchtgott-Roth

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The student speech bullies have won at Yale. Erika Christakis, Assistant Master of Yale’s Silliman College, who had the temerity to suggest that college students should choose their own Halloween costumes, has resigned from teaching. Her husband, sociology professor Nicholas Christakis, Master of Silliman College, will take a sabbatical next semester.

One of the bullies’ demands to Yale President Salovey was that the couple be dismissed, and a resignation and sabbatical are a close second.

As had been widely reported, Erika Christakis said,

Is there no room any more for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious, a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.

At issue are costumes such as wearing a sombrero, which might be offensive to Mexicans; wearing a feathered headdress, which might offend Native Americans, previously termed Red Indians; and wearing blackface to dress up as an African American.

Dr. Christakis’s comment is so obvious that it hardly needs to be said. Students who are admitted to Yale are some of the brightest in the country, and it should not be the role of the University to tell them how, or whether, to dress up at Halloween.

The speech bullies want mandatory diversity training, rules against hate speech, the dismissal of Nicholas and Erika Christakis, and the renaming of Calhoun College because its namesake, John Calhoun, defended slavery.

If America is to be whitewashed of the names of individuals from prior centuries who fall short of the political standards of the 21st century, we will be a nation not only without names but also without a past. The names of our states, our municipalities, and even our universities would disappear. Elihu Yale was a governor of the East India Company, which may have occasionally engaged in the slavery trade. It is easy to condemn the dead who cannot defend themselves. But if we curse the past, what fate awaits us from our progeny?

Not all Yale students agree with the tactics employed by the bullies. Freshman Connor Wood said,

The acceptance or rejection of coercive tactics is a choice that will literally decide the fate of our democracy. Our republic will not survive without a culture of robust public debate. And the far more immediate threat is to academia: how can we expect to learn when people are afraid to speak out?

The Committee for the Defense of Freedom at Yale has organized a petition in the form of a letter to President to express concern with the bullies’ demands. Over 800 members of the Yale community have signed. Zachary Young, a junior at Yale and one of the organizers of the petition, told me in an email, “We want to promote free speech and free minds at Yale, and don’t think the loudest voices should set the agenda.”

Nevertheless, it appears that the loudest voices are indeed influencing President Salovey. He has given in to protesters by announcing a new center for the study of race, ethnicity, and social identity; creating four new faculty positions to study “unrepresented and under-represented communities;” launching “a five-year series of conferences on issues of race, gender, inequality, and inclusion;” spending $50 million over the next five years to enhance faculty diversity; doubling the budgets of cultural centers (Western culture not included); and increasing financial aid for low-income students.

In addition, President Salovey volunteered, along with other members of the faculty and administration, to “receive training on recognizing and combating racism and other forms of discrimination.”

With an endowment of $24 billion, these expenses are a proverbial drop in the bucket for Yale. But it doesn’t mean that the administration should cave. Isaac Cohen, a Yale senior, wrote in the student newspaper,

Our administrators, who ought to act with prudence and foresight, appear helpless in the face of these indictments. Consider President Salovey’s email to the Yale community this week. Without any fight or pushback — indeed, with no thoughts as to burdens versus benefits — he capitulated in most respects to the demands of a small faction of theatrically aggrieved students.

Yale’s protests, and others around the country, including Claremont-McKenna, the University of Missouri, and Princeton, stem from the efforts of a small group of students to shield themselves from difficult situations. Students want to get rid of speech that might be offensive to someone that they term a “micro-aggressions.” This limits what can be said because everything can be interpreted as offensive if looked at in a particular context.

For instance, when I write (as I have done) that the wage gap between men and women is due to the sexes choosing different university majors, different hours of work, and different professions, this potentially represents a micro-aggression, even though it is true. Even the term “the sexes” is potentially offensive, because it implies two sexes, male and female, and leaves out gays, lesbians, and transgenders. The term “gender” is preferred to “sex.”

What about a discussion of the contribution of affirmative action to the alienation of some groups on campuses today? Under affirmative action, students are admitted who otherwise might not qualify. In Supreme Court hearings on Wednesday, Justice Antonin Scalia said, “There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to — to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well.”

The majority of students at Yale want an open discussion of all subjects, but the attack on the Christakises have frightened them into silence. Zach Young told me,

If the accusers’ intent was to enlighten and persuade, their result was to silence and instill fear. I worry that because of this backlash, fewer students or faculty — including people of color and those of liberal persuasions — will feel comfortable expressing views that dissent from the campus norms. Why risk getting so much hate, disgust, calls against your firing, just for the sake of expressing an opinion?

Why indeed? The answer is that arguing about opinions is the only way to get a real education. Let’s hope that another university stands up for freedom of speech and offers the Christakises teaching positions next semester.

This article first appeared at CapX.

Diana Furchtgott-RothDiana Furchtgott-Roth

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, is director of Economics21 and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Silly Season at School, Protests and a Cowboy Song

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One, two, three, four!  What are we protesting for?  There seems to be some confusion on campuses across the nation.  But we do know that so far groups on 73 campuses have joined the Black Liberation Collective and issued “demands.”  Like a lover’s spat gone on too long, the aggrieved party hardly knows what it is that is bothering them.  We hear that there is “institutional racism” that permeates campuses; “microaggressions” abound.  Long-standing sculptures and paintings suddenly make students hyperventilate as they undergo collective PTSD syndrome.

It’s even in a name. Over at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania the Black Student Union is demanding the renaming of Lynch Memorial Hall. Inside Higher Edreports, “Students who are pushing for the name change say that the name ‘Lynch’ has racist associations because of lynching.”

A Memorial to Lynching? Is the building a memorial to the act of lynching? “The building is named for Clyde A. Lynch, an alumnus who was president of the college from 1932 to 1950, and who died in office. He is credited with helping to keep the college functioning and growing during the Depression, no easy task for a small college without a large endowment.”

Shh, don’t tell them about our new Attorney General.  They might suffer trauma at hearing the name Loretta Lynch.  Or what about Lynchburg?  Should the city be renamed?  Yes, we have a problem in education, but it has little to do with racial discrimination and everything to do with intellectual discernment.  If anything, we need to be more discriminating about whom we admit to college.

At Emory University where I taught for seven years, the administration has promised all kinds of things, such as hiring more faculty from the preferred groups and holding more and more expensive and time-consuming workshops that breed racial resentment.  (I think I see the activists’ strategy!)

Having spent so many years on campuses I like to think of myself as inured to such craziness.  But a couple things jumped out in the Emory administration’s response.  (Apparently, the Emory students’ “Wall of Love” was not enough.)  Rod Dreher at American Conservative was particularly alarmed by capitulation to the demand that students judge professors on end-of-course evaluations with

at least two open-ended questions such as: “Has this professor made any microaggressions towards you on account of your race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language, and/or other identity?” and “Do you think that this professor fits into the vision of Emory University being a community of care for individuals of all racial, gender, ability, and class identities?”

Student evaluations report on faculty sensitivity.  In other words, students will evaluate faculty not on their teaching ability, but on their microaggressive-ness and fitting “the vision” of a “community of care.”

Sensitivity to Need for Psychological Services: The Dissident Prof, however, was struck by the fact that the administration suggested that the need for psychological counseling services is greater among “students of color.”  They are happily capitulating to “demands” that more resources be available to Black students through Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS).

The administrators, Ajay Nair, Senior Vice President and Dean of Campus Life, and Claire E. Sterk, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, proclaim, “Recognizing that mental health is an important part of student success, last spring we created a new executive-level position to lead the CAPS office.”

They note that currently, “half of the CAPS staff are people of color and 43 percent of the clients served last year were students of color, including 13 percent who identified as Black or African American.”  This seems to be a disproportionate number compared to the student population.

The Wall of Love: In addition to improvements in “bias incident reporting” (yes, there are teams to handle that on campuses nationwide) more academic support, diversity inisatives, increased representation in faculty, staff, and administrators, and an expansion of GED programs to the cafeteria staff, the administrators remind protestors that The Wall of Love was led by students and supported by the Office of Multicultural Programs and Services.  It was offered as “as a space for healing in light of racist comments on social media.”

More healing promised:  As the traumatic week of final exams approaches, a program is scheduled “to help students prepare for exams and engage in self-care.”

"My little pony friendship is magic group shot r" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - “My little pony friendship is magic group shot r” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – Happiness Boot Camp for Black Students: Even more healing is planned for the spring semester: “For spring semester, the Office of Health Promotion (OHP) is developing a Happiness Boot Camp for Black students as part of Flourish Emory.”  (Maybe they should just give a pony to every student.)

They conclude, “We look forward to further dialogue and collaborative planning on these issues in the very near future.”

At Hamilton College: Closer to where I live now, Hamilton College’s The Movement was ridiculed by the Daily Beast for its “demands” presented in such style: “We, the Students of Hamilton College, demand that white faculty are discouraged from leading departments about demographics and societies colonized, massacred, and enslaved.”  The college website, however, described the goings-on as “Hamilton College Student Group Joins National Conversation”:

On Tuesday, Nov. 17, Hamilton’s Days-Massolo Center sponsored the first of a series of “crucial conversations” about students and faculty of color, inclusivity, intolerance and offensive social media posts. About 85 people attended.

The next afternoon, students marched from the Kirner- Johnson Building to Burke Library and Buttrick Hall, where the President’s office is located. On Tuesday, Dec. 1, an anonymous group of students calling themselves the Movement sent a list of demands to college administrators. That afternoon about two dozen students came to the regularly scheduled monthly faculty meeting; some read from the Movement’s demands and others asked questions or made statements. The meeting was peaceful and discussion was civil.

That’s a more than slightly different take than even the student newspaper The Spectator had.  Their photos showed students at the faculty meeting in t-shirts labeled “token”–clearly there to “occupy” the meeting and take it over.  Another photo shows students occupying Buttrick Hall, crowding inside and disrupting workday activities.

Editor-in-chief of Enquiry Mike Adamo suggested that Stewart could learn what “a discussion is, because it sure doesn’t involve ‘demands.'” Adamo is one of the AHI undergraduate fellows. In September, he questioned Dean of Faculty, Patrick Reynolds, and Dean of Students, Nancy Thompson, about their invitation to Rhodessa Jones.  He received a generic reply from Phyllis Breland of the Days-Massolo Center, which did not even mention his request for “comment on how programming like this reflects the quality of political discussion at Hamilton.”  That was after he quoted a positive review in SF Gate that described Jones’s film Birthright in which women scream, ” ‘Burn, mother—, burn.’ . . . .it is screamed, yelped, escaping primally from the women’s vocal cords. Projected onto the back of the stage is an image of the White House, and then picture after picture of Republican political figures — Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz.”

Executive Director of AHI (which sponsors Enquiry) and Hamilton College History Professor Robert Paquette made a comment on the college website post about the nationwide student “conversation.”  Paquette noted that during his 35-year tenure at Hamilton, he has seen

no dearth of conversations by Joan Hinde Stewart or her administrators when it comes to having conversations with groups with what might be called a progressive agenda. She intends to claim “diversity” as one of her greatest legacies of her Hamilton presidency. She has no intention of being stand-offish to those who claim to be acting for the benefit of historically underprivileged groups.

Students with a right-of-center bent, however, “seem to be unworthy of conversation,” he added.

Indeed, deans at Hamilton did not deem an inquiry by an AHI undergraduate fellow regarding Rhodessa Jones’s appearance worthy of “conversation,” or even the courtesy of a reply.

"JenningsNelsonWaylon&Willie" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia “JenningsNelsonWaylon&Willie” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia

Laugh, cry, or sing?  Alas, one does not know whether to laugh or cry.  But a song came to mind, a country Western song, as so often happens to the Dissident Prof, especially as she cries into her beer over the state of the academy.  Lyrics follow below (with apologies to Ed Bruce, and Waylon and Willie).  Most will know the tune when they see the words.  But if not, there are links below, including to some karaoke music so you can sing along:

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Go to College, by Mary Grabar, the Dissident Prof:

Students ain’t easy to love and they’re harder to mold
They’d rather give you a song than high grades or gold
Cry-baby babbles and old faded slogans
And a complaint begin a new day
If you don’t understand him, you’re racist
And you should just go away.

Mamas, don’t let your babies go to college
Don’t let ‘em take classes and spend them big bucks
Make em be plumbers and welders and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies go to college
Cause they’ll never stay sane; they’re always deranged
Even with someone they love

Students like sparkly new dorm rooms and clear trigger warnings
Nice shiny trophies and victims and talks late in the night
Them that don’t know them will hate them and them that do
Sometimes won’t know how take them
No one’s wrong, they’re just different but their pride won’t let them
Do things to make you think they’re bright.

Mamas, don’t let your babies go to college
Don’t let ‘em take classes and spend them big bucks
Make em be plumbers and welders and such
Mamas, don’t let your babies go to college
Cause they’ll never stay sane; they’re always deranged
Even with someone they love.

Sing along with karaoke music by clicking here.

The original version by Ed Bruce by clicking here.

The Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson version by clicking here.

RELATED ARTICLE: College Student Takes a Stand Against Campus Free Speech Policy, Sues School

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of the Black Liberation Collective.

The Invisible Black Republican

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I have been asking and will continue to ask, where are the Black Republicans?  Race will be one of the top issues in the 2016 elections and none of our presidential campaigns have any Blacks in the media representing their respective campaigns.

Why in the hell do Republicans continue to have white staffers try to address racial issues within the Black community?  Are these campaigns really that stupid?

Black Republicans have absolutely no presence in the media when it comes to representing any official Republican entity:  RNC, House Campaign Committee, Senatorial Committee, presidential campaigns, Republican Governor’s Association, etc.

The response I constantly get is that “they” can only “pitch” Blacks to various media outlets; but they can’t make a CNN or MSNBC put Black Republicans on the air.  Factually, this is a true statement; they can’t make a news network do anything.

My response is very simple, if these Republican communications staffers can’t get the job done; then they should be fired.  Each of these entities has their own internal PR/communications staff and has proven to be totally incompetent when it comes to Black surrogates.

Can you imagine a private sector company retaining a PR firm to place their employees in various media outlets and they came to you and told you they couldn’t get your employees placed?  You would fire them immediately and get a new firm who will get the job done.

Where are people like Sean Moss?  He served as regional administrator for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under George W. Bush.  He should be all over the media discussing the disastrous decline of Black home ownership under the Obama administration.

Where is Allegra McCullough?  She served as regional administration for the Small Business Administration (SBA) under George W. Bush.  She should be all over the media highlighting how loans to Black business went from 8% under Bush to 1.8% under Obama.

Where is Bob Brown?  He was the highest serving Black in the Nixon administration and a personal confidant of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and former South African president Nelson Mandela.  He should be all over the media discussing civil and voting rights; after all, he was at the table during these discussions in the 1960s.

Where is Bob Woodson?  He worked with former congressman Jack Kemp when he was secretary of HUD for former president George H.W. Bush.  He should be all over the media talking about Ferguson and Baltimore since he works in inner city communities all across the country with stunning success.

Where is Shannon Reeves?  He’s a former RNC staffer, former congressional candidate, lifetime member of the NAACP and a former board member, and finishing his PhD in political statistics.  He should be all over the media talking about voting and civil rights.  He also should be working within the party on data metrics for the Black community.

These are just a few people that come to mind immediately.  So to my Republican friends, I am quite tired of you telling me that you can’t find or don’t know any Blacks you can hire.

To Republicans who are paid to do communications within various party entities listed above, if you can’t get “real” Black surrogates in various media forums; simply man-up and resign because you are not up to the job.

Republicans will not win next year’s presidential election without getting more than the usual 9% of the Black vote.  Blacks are totally disillusioned with Obama and the Democrats; but unfortunately Republicans have continued to ignore the Black community.

I have presented Republicans many opportunities to speak directly to the Black community via radio, TV, and newspapers; but their all white staffers continue to see no value in engaging with the Black community; and unfortunately, many of the few Black staffers feel the same way.

Do Republicans not understand how out of touch they look showing up at a Black church with an all-white staff or showing up at the National Urban League’s annual conference with not one Black on staff?

I’ve said it once and I will say it a thousand times, how can you seek to be president of the United States and not have any Blacks on your staff?  How is it even remotely fathomable in the 21st century for me to have to continue to write about the lack of diversity within the Republican Party?

But just as distressing is the silence of Black Republicans who are too afraid to voice publicly what they constantly voice to me privately.  What exactly are they afraid of? Losing their low level job? Or not being patted on the head and told “that’er boy?”

I want to win the elections next year and if I have to continue to criticize my party until they heed my advice; then look for more columns like this.  When will Republicans learn that they can’t win elections by only appealing to white voters?  Mathematically it is not possible.

But at the same time, don’t just go out there and hire a couple of Black twenty year olds who don’t have the necessary experience or institutional knowledge to know who the relevant Black Republicans are.  Most party leaders and Black staffer have no idea who the people I listed above are.

Republicans should be embarrassed that they have to be chided into doing what’s in their own best interest.  But Black Republicans should also be embarrassed for being so silent and invisible on this issue.

Republicans Constantly Validate Black Democrats

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I am fond of saying that many times Republicans try to do the right thing, but do it the wrong way.

Branch Rickey, former president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, scoured the Negro Leagues in 1943 to find the best and brightest baseball players who he could sign to integrate baseball.  He wasn’t just looking for raw talent; he was also looking for the “right” person(s).

Jackie Robinson was not the only good ball player in the league back then; for sure he was definitely one of the elite.  But he also had the other skill-sets that would allow him to endure the racist taunts he was about to encounter as the first Black to play professional baseball with white folks.

Rickey chose Robinson not only because of his skill, but also because of his personality which would allow him to keep his composure under the strain of hostility he was about to face.  Rickey constantly validated Robinson specifically and constantly discussed publicly the need for diversity within baseball and ultimately America.

Where are the Branch Rickey’s of the Republican Party today?  There are none.  The last one was former N.F.L. quarterback and former congressman Jack Kemp who died in 2009.

I was plucked out of obscurity by the Bush family in St. Louis when I was fresh out of college from Oral Roberts University.  They had no prior relationship with me, but they, like Rickey, scoured Missouri politics to find the best person(s) with the right political background; but also with the right temperament to proudly represent the Bush family’s name as the then vice president was about to launch his presidential campaign in 1988.  According to them, “they had been following my career and noticing my work in the Republican Party in Missouri.”

My work got me noticed, but my relationships got me opportunity.  I didn’t have to run to be a delegate to our party’s national convention, I was told I would be a delegate; and thus it was so.

My point is very simple, I grew up in a Republican Party when relationships mattered and the party took care of their own.  This is no longer the case.

Republicans today spend more time rewarding their enemies versus rewarding their friends.

Why would Rand Paul have lunch with Al Sharpton last November in the Senate dining room?  By doing it in the Senate dining room, he meant for the media and other members of the U.S. Senate to see them together; thus validating Sharpton as someone to be sought out for private counsel.  I wonder why there is no account of Paul making a similar validation of a Black Republican with relevant party credentials.

Why would Jeb Bush meet with members of the Black Lives Matter group when he has never met with any relevant Black Republicans?  Are you kidding me?  When you have no Blacks in your inner circle you tend to make foolish decisions like this.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is the most recent example of validating Black Democrats and ignoring Black Republicans.  She was in town last week to speak before the National Press Club.  I thought the section of her speech about her accomplishments as governor was very good; but the speech was horrible when she began to talk about race relations and the Black community.  I also found it to be very offensive.

It was quite obvious that the speech was written by a White staffer.  Memo to Republicans, you cannot have a White person write a speech about Blacks and race relations!  Period.  End of discussion.  I found the speech like the tinkling cymbal or sounding brass, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The most offensive part of her speech was when she began to gush over her budding friendship with Jesse Jackson.  I have known Jesse since my high school days in St. Louis and will acknowledge that he has done some good things for America.

But again, why would she not use the occasion of her speech to validate some Black Republicans, not only from her state; but from around the country.  I will tell you why; because she doesn’t know any.  She doesn’t know Bob Brown, Harold Doley, Kay James, Shannon Reeves, Sarah Harper, or Buster Soaries.

When have you ever heard Obama effusively praise a Black Republican other than when someone like former Sen. Ed Brooks dies?  When have you ever heard Massachusetts Gov. Devall Patrick singing the praises of a Black Republican?  When have you ever heard DNC chair Debbie Wassermann Schultz ever praise a Black Republican.

But yet you hear our leaders showering praise upon known Democrats like Bob Johnson and Cathy Hughes; who are both good people and very accomplished.  Yet, their media empires constantly bash Republicans, especially those from the Black community.

If you can’t acknowledge Black Republicans in a speech, should we be surprised that we are not acknowledged in your staffing decisions or your consultant decisions?

As I often say, “the best way to get attention as a Black in the Republican Party is to be a Black Democrat.”

Members of #FukYoFlag movement call for the lynching of white people and cops

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Sunshine. Source: Twitter

Days before the execution of a Texas police officer by a black man a Texas blog radio show aired “calling for the lynching of white people and cops.” Below is a tape of the show Sunshine’s F***ing Opinion Radio Show hosted by a black anarchist called Sunshine.

Sunshine on her Twitter account “LOLatWhiteFear” describes herself as “The noncompliant negro female formerly known as founder of  campaign. 1 of the organizers of .”

Here is the excerpt from Sunshine’s show – WARNING GRAPHIC LANGUAGE:

SNAPSHOT-Twitter-Radio-Call-Invite

Sunshine Tweet calling for racial anarchy.

Lana Shadwick from Breitbart reports:

One of the #F**YoFlag movement supporters allegedly told a veteran who infiltrated their publicly posted conference call, “We are going to rape and gut your pregnant wife, and your f***ing piece of sh*t unborn creature will be hung from a tree.”

Breitbart Texas previously encountered Sunshine at a Sandra Bland protest at the Waller County Jail in Texas, where she said all white people should be killed. She told journalists and photographers, “You see this nappy-ass hair on my head? … That means I am one of those more militant Negroes.” She said she was at the protest because “these redneck mother-f**kers murdered Sandra Bland because she had nappy hair like me.”

#FYF911 black radicals say they will be holding the “imperial powers” that are actually responsible for the terrorist attacks on September 11th accountable on that day, asreported by Breitbart Texas. There are several websites and Twitter handles for the movement.

“Palmetto Star” describes himself as one of the head organizers. He said in a YouTube video that supporters will be burning their symbols of “the illusion of their superiority,” their “false white supremacy,” like the American flag, the British flag, police uniforms, and Ku Klux Klan hoods.

Read more.

Days after this broadcast a Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy was shot execution style by a black man at a gas station while reportedly in full uniform. The deputy was filling up his patrol car.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of a black woman named Nocturnus Libertus a member of the FukYoFlag movement. Source: Twitter

Real Hero Jesse Owens: “Hitler Didn’t Snub Me — It Was Our President” by Lawrence W. Reed

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James Cleveland “Jesse” Owens famously won four gold medals, all at the 1936 games in Berlin, Germany. But in the hearts of Americans who know their Olympic history, this African American man did more than win races: he struggled against racism.

At the time of Owens’s death in 1980 at age 66, President Jimmy Carter paid this tribute to him:

Perhaps no athlete better symbolized the human struggle against tyranny, poverty, and racial bigotry. His personal triumphs as a world-class athlete and record holder were the prelude to a career devoted to helping others. His work with young athletes, as an unofficial ambassador overseas, and a spokesman for freedom are a rich legacy to his fellow Americans.

Carter’s words were especially fitting in light of an unfortunate fact in Owens’s life: unforgivably, a previous American president had given him the brush-off.

Born in Alabama in 1913, James Owens at the age of nine moved with his family to the town in Ohio that bore his middle name, Cleveland. His first school teacher there asked him his name. With a deep Southern twang, he replied “J.C. Owens.” She heard “Jesse,” so that’s what she wrote down. The name stuck for the next 57 years.

Jesse could run like the wind and jump like a kangaroo. He broke junior high school records in the high jump and the broad jump. In high school, he won every major track event in which he competed, tying or breaking world records in the 100-yard and 220-yard dashes and setting a new world record in the broad jump. Universities showered him with scholarship offers, but he turned them all down and chose Ohio State, which wasn’t extending track scholarships at the time.

Imagine it. You come from a relatively poor family. You could go to any number of colleges for next to nothing, but you pick one you have to pay for. At 21, you have a wife to support as well. So what do you do? If you are Jesse Owens, you work your way through school as a gas station attendant, a waiter, an all-night elevator operator, a library assistant, even a page in the Ohio legislature. Owens worked, studied, practiced on the field, and set more records in track during his years at OSU.

The biography at JesseOwens.com tells the stunning story that unfolded in 1935:

Jesse gave the world a preview of things to come in Berlin while at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor on May 25, 1935, [where] he set three world records and tied a fourth, all in a span of about 45 minutes. Jesse was uncertain as to whether he would be able to participate at all, as he was suffering from a sore back as a result of a fall down a flight of stairs. He convinced his coach to allow him to run the 100-yard dash as a test for his back, and amazingly he recorded an official time of 9.4 seconds, once again tying the world record. Despite the pain, he then went on to participate in three other events, setting a world record in each event. In a span of 45 minutes, Jesse accomplished what many experts still feel is the greatest athletic feat in history — setting three world records and tying a fourth in four grueling track and field events.

Ohio wasn’t the Deep South, but in the mid-1930s, it wasn’t a paradise of racial equality, either. OSU required Owens and other black athletes to live together off campus. They had to order carryout or eat at “black-only” restaurants and stay in segregated hotels when traveling with the team.

The eyes of the world were focused on Berlin in early August 1936. Five years earlier and before the Nazis came to power, the German capital had been selected as the site for the summer 1936 Olympic games. An effort to boycott them because of Hitler’s racism fizzled. It would be a few more years before events convinced the world of the socialist dictator’s evil intentions. Jesse Owens entered the competition with Americans thrilled at his prospects but wondering how Hitler would react if “Aryan superiority” fell short of his expectations.

Jesse didn’t go to Berlin with a political axe to grind. “I wanted no part of politics,” he said. “And I wasn’t in Berlin to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I’d learned long ago … the only victory that counts is the one over yourself.”

If, a hundred years from now, only one name is remembered among those who competed at the Berlin games, it will surely be that of Jesse Owens.

Owens won the 100-meter sprint, the long jump, the 200-meter sprint, and the 4 x 100 sprint relay. In the process, he became the first American to claim four gold medals in a single Olympiad. Owens waved at Hitler and Hitler waved back, but the nasty little paper-hanger expressed his annoyance privately to fellow Nazi Albert Speer. He opined that blacks should never be allowed to compete in the games again.

A side story of Owens’s Berlin experience was the friendship he made with a German competitor named Lutz Long. A decent man by any measure, Long exhibited no racial animosity and even offered tips to Owens that the American found helpful during the games. Of Long, Owens would later tell an interviewer,

It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler.… You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Lutz Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy watching us embrace. The sad part of the story is I never saw Long again. He was killed in World War II.

Back home, ticker tape parades feted Owens in New York City and Cleveland. Hundreds of thousands of Americans came out to cheer him. Letters, phone calls, and telegrams streamed in from around the world to congratulate him. From one important man, however, no word of recognition ever came. As Owens later put it, “Hitler didn’t snub me; it was our president who snubbed me. The president didn’t even send a telegram.”

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, leader of a major political party with deep roots in racism, couldn’t bring himself to utter a word of support, which may have been a factor in Owens’s decision to campaign for Republican Alf Landon in the 1936 presidential election.

“It all goes so fast, and character makes the difference when it’s close,” Owens once said about athletic competition. He could have taught FDR a few lessons in character, but the president never gave him the chance. Owens wouldn’t be invited to the White House for almost 20 years — not until Dwight Eisenhower named him “Ambassador of Sports” in 1955.

Life after the Olympics wasn’t always kind to Jesse Owens. When he wanted to earn money from commercial endorsements, athletic officials yanked his amateur status. Then the commercial offers dried up. He was forced to file for bankruptcy. He felt the sting of racial discrimination again. But for the last 30 years of his life, until he died in 1980 of lung cancer, he found helping underprivileged teenagers to be even more personally satisfying that his Olympic gold medals.

For further information, see:

Jeremy Schaap’s Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics

David Clay Large’s Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936

Lawrence W. Reed
Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of FEE in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s.

EDITORS NOTE: Each week, Mr. Reed will relate the stories of people whose choices and actions make them heroes. See the table of contents for previous installments.

Did You Know that on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list 9 are Muslims and one is a Black Woman?

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fbi most crime causes by gangs graphicHave you ever wondered why the bad guys in movies, on TV and in the daily news are white Anglo-Saxon Protestants? Do you wonder why the Obama administrations Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) policy does not mention Muslims, jihad or Islam. Are you frustrated by what you see happening in places like Ferguson, Missouri where blacks are allowed to loot and burn, and the police get all of the blame?

The Department of Homeland Security defines Domestic Terrorism as:

Any act of violence that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources committed by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States or its territories without direction or inspiration from a foreign terrorist group. [Emphasis added]

Well, perhaps it is time to look at the facts as listed on the FBI’s own website to learn who the terrorists really are.

joanne deborah chesimard

Joanne Chesimard

The FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list consists of 9 Muslims and one black woman. We all know that it is Muslims who are predominantly terrorists, except in Hollywood movies. The 9 Muslims listed were definitely inspired by foreign terrorist groups.

However, it was the black woman who caught my attention. Her name is Joanne Deborah Chesimard. She is wanted for: an act of terrorism, domestic terrorism, unlawful flight to avoid confinement and murder. There is a reward: The FBI is offering a reward of up to $1,000,000 for information directly leading to the apprehension of Joanne Chesimard. Here is her description according to the FBI:

Joanne Chesimard is wanted for escaping from prison in Clinton, New Jersey, while serving a life sentence for murder. On May 2, 1973, Chesimard, who was part of a revolutionary extremist organization known as the Black Liberation Army, and two accomplices were stopped for a motor vehicle violation on the New Jersey Turnpike by two troopers with the New Jersey State Police. At the time, Chesimard was wanted for her involvement in several felonies, including bank robbery. Chesimard and her accomplices opened fire on the troopers. One trooper was wounded and the other was shot and killed execution-style at point-blank range. Chesimard fled the scene, but was subsequently apprehended. One of her accomplices was killed in the shoot-out and the other was also apprehended and remains in jail.

In 1977, Chesimard was found guilty of first degree murder, assault and battery of a police officer, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault with intent to kill, illegal possession of a weapon, and armed robbery. She was sentenced to life in prison. On November 2, 1979, Chesimard escaped from prison and lived underground before being located in Cuba in 1984. She is thought to currently still be living in Cuba.

She may wear her hair in a variety of styles and dress in African tribal clothing.

Black_Liberation_Army_(emblem)The Black Liberation Army is an off shoot of the Black Panthers. According to the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium:

The Black Liberation Army (BLA) was an underground, black nationalist militant organization that operated from 1970 to 1981. Composed largely of former Black Panthers, the organization’s program was one of armed struggle for the “liberation and self-determination of black people in the United States.”  The Black Liberation Army developed as a splinter group of the Black Panther Party. Founded by followers of Eldridge Cleaver, as a response to what the more violent factions of the Black Panthers perceived as “selling out” the “armed struggle”  under the leadership of Huey Newton.The BLA carried out a series of bombings, murders, robberies, and prison breaks.

[ … ]

Black Liberation Army (BLA) – United States, also known as Afro-American Liberation Army is an inactive group formed c. 1970.

Perhaps Hollywood, TV producers, the media and President Obama need to understand who is, and who is not, a terrorist. They aren’t white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

RELATED ARTICLE: Muslim U.S. Navy Engineer Busted Red-Handed in Major Act of Treason

Leftists Use Black Lives Matter to Exploit Blacks, Again

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animals versus human babyRecently, my black brother shared an unfortunate incident. Years ago, police in two unmarked cars blocked his car. They jumped out pointing guns, demanding that he exit his car. My brother immediately raised his hands, but did not exit his car because he was frozen with fear. An officer pulled him out of his car onto the ground. My brother said, “Calm down! I am not resisting!”

After checking him out, the officers realized he was not their suspect. Rather than sending my brother on his way with an apology, the police framed him. My brother had an unopened six pack of beer on the floor. An officer opened one of the beers and said, “You’re under arrest for drunk driving.” The bogus charge did not stick and my brother was released hours later, angry, with a bitter taste in his mouth.

Ironically, my brother’s reason for telling me about the incident was to defend the police in the recent shooting and arrests covered 24/7 on CNN. He said the cops who framed him were a few bad apples which are everywhere in every profession. Amen to that. Jesus had 12 disciples and one was a bad apple. My brother made the point that he was not harmed because he submitted to the police’s authority. He noted that the blacks in the videos shown on TV did not submit to the police.

My brother’s point is correct. In each incident caught on video in which people are second-guessing officer’s behavior, bad outcomes could have been avoided had the persons simply respected authority and complied.

A friend of mine is a veteran Baltimore black cop. He told me upon arriving at a scene, a cop must immediately take control of the situation. If not, the cop could end up dead – stabbed in the back by a weepy girlfriend or mom. The most hazardous part of a police officer’s job is the routine traffic stop; 62 officers killed 2002- 2011.

Democrats, CNN and other liberal bias media have an insidiously evil agenda to convince black America that Republicans, conservatives and police are out to get them. These Leftists would love to feature my brother’s bad boy cops story 24/7; claiming the cops were unequivocally motivated by white racism.

Meanwhile, the Left avoids experiences like mine with police like the plague. In the 80’s, an interracial couple robbed a bank, their description matching my wife, me and our car. Police surrounded our car with guns drawn and ordered us out of our car. We complied. They checked us out, apologized and went on their way. We were stopped on another occasion years later. Again, the officers were respectful and professional.

black lives matter bill boardAs a young adult, my cousins wife called me in a panic to their home in the hood. My black cousin had a nervous breakdown. He held their two toddler sons hostage in the basement, threatening to kill himself and their boys. First on the scene were two white cops – one young and fit, the other much older and morbidly obese. Masterfully, the old obese cop gained my cousin’s trust and talked him out of the basement. “C’mon son, I know life gets tough, but you don’t want to do this.” My cousin was arrested, given the mental health assistance he needed and was later released. My cousin is alive, well and a great dad.

Folks, cops kill whites at almost double the rate of blacks. As a matter of fact, blacks are killed by blacks 93% of the time. The Left does not want you to know the biggest threat to black lives is other blacks. Despite the Left’s Black Lives Matter (blame and hate white America) movement, incidents of blacks killing blacks are on the rise.

The Left is ignoring the stunning numbers of blacks murdered in Chicago by blacks.

In July, Baltimore homicides reached its highest in 43 years, up 60%. 

The mainstream media deliberately creating the false impression that cops are the biggest threat to blacks is reprehensible. Proving they do not give a rat’s derriere about blacks, the Left refuses to address real issues plaguing black America; multi-generational government dependency; increasing numbers of fatherless households; unprecedented high unemployment under Obama; epidemic school dropouts; black on black homicides and Leftist encouraged moral and cultural decline. 

White guys in white hoods, the Aryan nation nor cops are infiltrating black neighborhoods, victimizing residents and murdering blacks. The Left has been fooling blacks with its blame-everything-on-whitey tactic for decades; keeping blacks voting for their supposed Democrat saviors.

As young as 9 or 10, I realized the blame-everything-on-whitey excuse was a lie. My family lived on the sixth floor of a Baltimore project high-rise building. The elevators were often not working due to vandalism. The stairwells were pitch black due to broken light bulbs and smelled of urine. The crunch sound under foot echoing off the concrete walls was due to broken liquor bottles. I knew whites were not sneaking in at night, peeing in our stairwells.

Not to indict everyone who lived in the projects, some neighbors kept their apartments immaculate. Even as a child, I concluded that poverty (and ghetto) was a mindset rather than simply an absence of money.

The Black Lives Matter movement, “white privilege” and so on are founded on lies. They are despicable tools to exploit blacks’ emotions. These Leftist scams have resulted in what can be described as black terror cells. Police are assassinated, outbreaks of black flash mob attacks and innocent whites assaulted, raped and murdered.

Outrageously, Black Lives Matter thugs threaten to “shut down” the Republican National Convention. Notice the stupid, hateful and racist assumption that white Republicans are a threat to black lives? Imagine if the Tea Party announced a plan to shut down the Democrat National Convention. After recovering from multiple convulsions of pleasure from being given such an opportunity to demonize the Tea Party, Leftist media would bombard the public with 24/7 news coverage; branding the Tea Party racist, sexist and homophobic.

Rest assured, you will not hear any meaningful criticism from the MSM, Democrats or Obama regarding Black Lives Matter thugs arrogantly assaulting free speech. Quite the opposite. Leftists are behind the scene cheering on the Black Lives Matter thugs.

Wake up black America. The Left is playin’ y’all, again.

Immigrant Woman Shocked by Suffering on U.S. Campuses

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GAINESVILLE, FL – Reading reports from a conference on white privilege held at the University of Florida, local immigrant Diana Yahaira Vasquez Alban, couldn’t help but empathize with the pain and suffering of minority students and academic staff in American colleges, which appeared to be much worse than the poverty and crime she had experienced in her native South America.

“I had no idea that such discrimination existed in this country, and I feel bad for these poor people,” said the 26-year-old Green Card holder from Peru, who was moved to tears by the coverage of the event in the UF’s online student newspaper, Independent Florida Alligator.

Held at the University of Florida’s Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations, the conference focused on drawing attention to white privilege, which is the science that explains how persons born with white skin are granted certain advantages that are denied to persons born with darker skin, but also encompassed other privileges such as male privilege, heterosexual privilege, and Christian privilege.

McIntosh3

Peggy McIntosh

The event’s keynote speaker was Peggy McIntosh, author of “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” who explained that “white privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks,” and that “those who happen to be born into the group that is given the benefit of the doubt, given jobs, assumed to be good with money, assumed to be reliable with families are given a tremendous power. I urge all whites here to use your white power, which you have more of than you were taught, to weaken the system of white power.”

But it was the accounts from attendees of the conference that broke Alban’s heart. “The lady told her listeners to turn to people around them and talk about ways they had been discriminated against,” she said.

“There was a video of one lady, and she had such a hard life that she was crying and yelling at everyone,” recalled Alban, referring to a video clip of UF Levin College of Law 3L Alejandra Garcia, local activist and granddaughter of Cuban refugees. “She screamed a lot of things, like people thought she was a Mexican, that boys stare at her butt, that she should be able to use any bathroom she wants, and that her professors don’t… I didn’t understand about the professors.” A review of the video clarified that professors at the law school failed to nurture the goddess within Garcia.

Lowering her gaze, Alban sadly commented, “I saw many very bad things happen to women in Lima, but my house didn’t have electricity or water, so we didn’t have to suffer about bathrooms like the lady. I didn’t like when rats would crawl on me at night and I would wake up and have to break their necks, but I…” Alban paused briefly to compose herself. “I’m sorry, I just don’t understand why Americans are so mean to that lady to make her act like that.”

Alban was particularly shocked by the story of UF sophomore Delvim Maclin, who said that before being awarded a “Bright Futures” scholarship to the state’s flagship university, he lived in a depressed, predominantly African-American neighborhood of Jacksonville, and that he often received suspicious stares from clerks as he used food stamps to shop for groceries.

Alban, who grew up in Peru sharing a single room with her grandmother, mother, and aunt, felt particular pain at Maclin’s plight. “We mostly ate just rice, but sometimes we could buy a chicken. Gato on the corner would smile at me as he killed the chicken, put it in hot water for just a little bit, and pulled out the feathers. He knew we didn’t have money, so he was happy when I could buy a chicken from him. I wish the black guy’s grocery store was more like Gato.”

“There was also this professor from Iran, he was very angry about the weird looks he gets from people at airports,” continued Alban. “And he can never get a seat in the exit row or first class because the airline people are racist, and that hurts his feelings a lot. The poor man is suffering, and I can’t believe that it’s America’s fault.”

Alban brought home the inequalities highlighted by the conference: “I had a hard time when two years ago I came to USA. I couldn’t get a job because my English is no good and I don’t have experience. But I improved my English and just worked any place I could, and it was ok. I have a job now that I don’t like, but is full time and I could buy a Hyundai and learned to drive. I hope I can find a better job next. But those poor people at the university… I’m going to ask Jesus to help them.”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Peoples Cube.

Real Hero Joe Louis: A Fighter on Many Fronts by Lawrence W. Reed

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If you remember the famous 1938 fight for the world heavyweight boxing title between Detroit’s Joe Louis and Germany’s Max Schmeling, you’ve been around awhile. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about it from your father or grandfather. It was a rematch that Louis, known as the “Brown Bomber,” won in just 124 seconds.

Joe Louis was a hero not only for who and what he fought and beat but also for maintaining his integrity along the way. He dealt personally with poverty and racism. He overcame a speech impediment and the loss of his father at an early age. He took on the best boxers of his day. He battled the Nazis. He crossed swords with the Internal Revenue Service. When he died at age 66 in 1981, he was widely revered as a champion of character and was beloved by good people of every color.

The grandson of slaves, Joe Louis Barrow was born in 1914 in Lafayette, Alabama. He barely spoke until he was in the second grade. At age 12, he moved with his mother, his stepdad, and his seven siblings to Detroit after a scare from the Ku Klux Klan. To his credit, Joe never viewed the racism of a few as indicative of the many. He judged men and women the way he wanted them to judge him: namely, by what Martin Luther King would call “the content of their character.” In spite of his mother’s desire that he pursue either cabinetmaking or the violin, he showed an early penchant for pugilism. He dropped “Barrow” and became simply “Joe Louis” when he started competing in the ring as a teenager, apparently because he didn’t want his mom to know he was boxing. She soon found out, as did the rest of the world.

Louis judged men and women the way he wanted them to judge him.

The Great Depression was in full swing when Louis fought the first big match of his amateur career in 1932. He lost to a future Olympian. Undaunted, he went on to win all but 3 of his next 53 fights (43 were knockouts) and caught the attention of boxing promoters. He went pro in 1934.

One of the most famous dates in boxing history is June 22, 1937. That’s when Louis went up against heavyweight titleholder James Braddock, knocking him out in the eighth round. Americans black and white stayed up all night across the country in celebration, but the joy was especially high in black communities. Here’s how author Langston Hughes described it:

Each time Joe Louis won a fight in those depression years, even before he became champion, thousands of black Americans on relief or W.P.A. and poor, would throng out into the streets all across the land to march and cheer and yell and cry because of Joe’s one-man triumphs. No one else in the United States has ever had such an effect on Negro emotions — or on mine. I marched and cheered and yelled and cried, too.

Of 72 professional fights, Louis scored 57 knockouts and lost only three matches. For 12 years (1937–1949), he held the heavyweight championship. It was the longest stretch of winning titles in the sport’s history. His closely watched 1938 defeat of Max Schmeling embarrassed the Third Reich because it said to the world, “This Aryan superiority thing is nothing more than propaganda.”

A month after Pearl Harbor, Louis enlisted in the US Army and went off for basic training to a segregated cavalry unit at Fort Riley, Kansas. The army used him to cheer up the troops by sending him some 20,000 miles for 96 boxing matches in front of two million soldiers. He was eventually given the Legion of Merit for his “incalculable contribution to the general morale.” It was in the army that he befriended Jackie Robinson, the future major league baseball player. Louis persuaded a commanding officer to drop charges against Robinson for punching out a fellow soldier who called him the N-word.

Nobody who ever really knew Joe Louis, it seems, had an unkind word for him. Perhaps the worst ever said was actually spoken in jest, by fellow boxer Max Baer: “I define fear as standing across the ring from Joe Louis and knowing he wants to go home early.”

A very different fight that Louis waged is less well known than his boxing. It was with the Internal Revenue Service. As we do in our day, Louis had to contend in his with a president whose fingers itched to get into the pockets of wealthy Americans. I first learned of this story from historian Burton Folsom, author of the superb book New Deal or Raw Deal?

In 1935, President Roosevelt pushed Congress to raise the top income tax rate to 79 percent, then later to 90 percent during and after World War II. In the war years, Joe Louis donated money to military charities, but the complicated tax laws wouldn’t allow him to deduct those gifts. Although Louis saw almost none of the money he won in charity fights, the IRS credited the full amounts as taxable income paid to Louis. He had even voluntarily paid back to the city of Detroit all the money he and his family had received in welfare years before, but that counted for nothing with the feds.

Louis retired as heavyweight champion in 1949, but his tax debt was approaching $500,000. After an IRS ruling in 1950, the debt began accumulating interest each year. Louis felt compelled to come out of retirement in 1950 to fight Ezzard Charles, the new champion. After the fight, his mother begged him to stop but, he said, “she couldn’t understand how much money I owed…. The government wanted their money, and I had to try to get it to them.”

The next year, Louis fought Rocky Marciano and lost. The fight earned him $300,000. With a 90 percent tax rate on high incomes, what he had left was peanuts, but he gave it all to the government. When his mother died in 1953, the IRS swiped the $667 she left him in her will. With interest compounding, his debt by 1960 had soared to more than $1 million.

According to Folsom, “Louis refereed wrestling matches, made guest appearances on quiz shows and served as a greeter at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas — anything to bring in money” for the IRS.

The notorious mobster Frank Lucas (still living today at 85) was so disgusted with the IRS’s treatment of Louis that he once paid a $50,000 tax lien against the boxer. Even Max Schmeling came to the rescue, assisting with money when Louis was alive and then paying funeral expenses when the boxer died in 1981.

You may not think of Louis in connection with the game of golf, but he made an impact there as well. Golf was his longtime, personal hobby. In 1952, he became the first black American to play at a PGA Tour event. Just as Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, Joe Louis broke it in golf. He cofounded The First Tee, a charity that introduces golf to underprivileged children. Today, his 68-year-old son, Joe Louis Barrow Jr., is the organization’s CEO.

Joe Louis, a decorated army veteran and world-class athlete, remained a symbol of black achievement in spite of his tax troubles, which finally came to an end when the IRS settled and the US government — to which he had given so much — finally got off his back.

When Louis died, President Reagan waived the rules to allow him to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. He was a man who fought on many fronts and emerged as a great example every time.

For further information, see:

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of FEE in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s.

EDITORS NOTE: Each week, Mr. Reed will relate the stories of people whose choices and actions make them heroes. See the table of contents for previous installments.

Baltimore Lawmakers, Not its Citizens, Are the Problem

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Sadly, what’s happening in Baltimore shouldn’t surprise anyone.

You cannot have an environment where the political leaders leverage chaos for personal political gain and expect those on the side of law and order to sweep in and win the day. The real tragedy here is the growing fear now residing in the hearts of the good citizens of Baltimore, those being subjected to daily threats of deadly violence because of the disturbing and irresponsible actions of its political elite.

Baltimore Shooting Stats
Baltimore Arrests Stats

By now, most of us know the name Freddie Gray. But how many of us know the name Eladio Bennett or Kester Browne? And, how many of us have heard the name Shaquil Hinton? These are but a few of the more than 50 lives taken before their time since the death of Freddie Gray, yet their lives and untimely passing have drawn but a sliver of the attention paid to Freddie Gray.

We can’t help the good citizens of Baltimore, and America’s many struggling inner cities, if we are afraid to shine a spotlight on the real problem. The problem is an organized far-left cabal, which has hijacked the party of JFK, and an opposing political party with few leaders willing to confront them. The organized far-left has accurately calculated that they can leverage chaos and use it to place blame, and divide us into their (not our) pre-selected racial, cultural, religious, gender, and sexual preference silos. They also use this blame strategy to highlight the fictitious failings of our system of government, bed-rocked in freedom and individual liberty. Then, once the division and blame propaganda has set in, with few in the mainstream media willing to fight back against this narrative, they propose a better way “forward” where, conveniently, they are empowered, not you.

The new “way forward” relies on more of your money going to them through higher taxes and expensive government programs. It takes away your ability to make basic health care decisions for your family, and it orders your child to attend the school they choose, not the one you choose. If you were designing a system to fail then you couldn’t design it any better than this “way forward.”

It’s not just the political penalty we pay, where we lose control over our money through their relentless push for government empowerment subsequent to a crisis, we can also lose our lives. The complete lack of leadership in Baltimore and the constant apologies for lawbreakers who were given “room to destroy,” while ensuring an expedited rush to judgment for the police officers involved in the Freddie Gray incident, has broken what has made this country the global, historical exception; fidelity to process. Process, and the rule of law and order, has enabled us to prosper economically and become a global example for freedom and liberty. When this process breaks down and we become a country of rule by discretion, rather than rule by law, the entire system breaks down and it filters down to the police officers on the street.

Having been a law enforcement officer with the N.Y.P.D. and the U.S. Secret Service I have seen first-hand the dangers law enforcement officers knowingly face every day for little money, and even less accolades. All these men and women ask is that the cities and towns they have pledged to protect and serve grant them the same process and legal rights as the citizens they protect. I don’t know what happened behind those doors of the van Freddie Gray was placed in and, if it turns out that the officers involved committed a crime, then they should be prosecuted. But, when far-left legal scholars and conservative thought leaders agree that the charges leveled against the police officers by Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby were political, and not firmly based on evidence, then we have a serious problem.

Police officers are an intelligent lot and they see this street justice prosecution as a direct attack on their ability to fight crime. Police officers are given tremendous discretion to combat crime and do their jobs and they are not legally mandated to arrest every person for every violation of the law they witness. I can imagine a scenario where many of these formerly discretionary police actions for non-violent, nuisance-crime-type activities, are not happening because the officers feel that the city of Baltimore will not be on their side if a police action for public urination turns into a use-of-force scenario. Sadly, it is this man or woman, who is engaged in this nuisance crime, and who is not confronted by law enforcement, that is typically the one who walks out of the alley and robs, rapes or kills someone.

In short, politicians and government are the problem in Baltimore, not the citizens. Nothing will change in Baltimore until the political leaders, who worship at the altar of big government are replaced by those who believe that the future of Baltimore is in the hands of the liberty of its citizens, fidelity to the rule of law, order and process, and not the permission of its government.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Conservative Review. The featured image of the Mayor of Baltimore is by Patrick Semansky | AP Photo.