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Critical Race Theory And Gender Ideology Are Ubiquitous In U.S. Schools, New Study Shows

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Last month, the Manhattan Institute released a groundbreaking new study, titled “School Choice Is Not Enough: The Impact of Critical Social Justice Ideology in American Education.”

The study presents survey results of a representative sample of over 1,500 Americans aged 18-20. Their primary finding was that “Ninety-three percent of American 18- to 20-year-olds said that they had heard about at least one of eight [Critical Social Justice] concepts from a teacher or other adult at school, including ‘white privilege,’ ‘systemic racism,’ ‘patriarchy,’ or the idea that gender is a choice unrelated to biological sex.'” Also included on the list of Critical Social Justice (CSJ) concepts are the ideas that discrimination is primarily responsible for disparities, that America is built on stolen land, and that there are many genders.

This study is significant because, over the past two years, debates about education policy have occupied an increasingly prominent place in political discourse. In particular, ideas on the proper way to instruct on subjects like race and gender have been hotly disputed. Backlash over perceived indoctrination into extreme theories of race and gender — as well as the exclusion of parents in the educational process — have decided major elections in some states.

However, up to this point, there has been a glaring issue with these debates: they have been largely based on anecdotes. The findings of the Manhattan Institute’s study are important because they represent the first time we have been able to put some real numbers to phenomena that many have only observed anecdotally.

Thus, we should examine the findings in more detail to find out how we ought to move forward.

Ever since journalists such as Christopher Rufo and Bari Weiss began highlighting examples of “institutional capture” of the education system by politically-driven actors, skeptics have often claimed that CSJ concepts are not being taught in schools. This assertion has been promoted by the leaders of teacher unions, cable news hosts, and politicians.

The issue is, and this study confirms, that their claim is simply not accurate. As noted, 93 percent of respondents affirmed that they had heard at least one CSJ concept “from a teacher or other adult at school.”

If these concepts were being introduced as one perspective among many, then there would be no issue with the fact students have been exposed to them. After all, if one wishes to give students an accurate picture of the competing visions of society, then it would be dishonest to exclude all CSJ concepts.

The issue is that the Manhattan Institute study confirms that K-12 schools are effectively indoctrinating students into radical — revolutionary, even — political ideologies. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said that, when taught, “These concepts are introduced as the only respectable approach to race, gender, and sexuality in American society.” This means various perspectives were not weighed against one another, but rather kids are being led to believe that only one view is legitimate. When one considers how impressionable K-12 students are, along with the fact teachers have a fair amount of sway over the way their students think, the issue here becomes apparent.

Click here for Deltapoll Survey results.

This is also concerning because CSJ presents a vision of America that is at best unorthodox and at worst destructive. In Critical Race Theory: An Introduction — which is among the most influential textbooks on the subject — the authors write that “critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” In other words, critical race theory opposes the basic tenants of the American founding. Ibram X. Kendi, a leading “anti-racist” author — whose writing has been brought into many schools — has written that “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

There is simply no justification for schools across the country to present this as the only viable perspective.

The study demonstrates that the prevalence of CSJ concepts — and the way they have been introduced — is having real effects on students. Data presented in the report show that the more CSJ concepts kids have been exposed to, the more left-wing they are in their politics — as measured in a variety of ways in the study.

It should be clear that this approach is an improper use of the state — which should be educating, not indoctrinating, students. It not only gives children an incomplete picture of the world around them, but also creates a civil society that is more prone to intolerance of dissenting views. After all, if one was led to believe only one perspective was legitimate, then it is natural to then believe that it is important to shut out all “illegitimate” views — both socially and maybe even legislatively. This is concerning because pluralism and tolerance are indispensable to a healthy and vibrant political culture.

Critics of the educational approach detailed above often assume their enemies are the traditional public school system and public sector teacher unions. One thing that this study demonstrates, though, is that this problem is by no means exclusive to traditional public schools. Rather, this type of instruction on race and gender has made its way into private schools, parochial schools, and even homeschools; indeed, CSJ was shown to be just as prevalent in private schools as it is in public schools.

This observation is why the title of the study is “School Choice Is Not Enough.” The authors recognize that this issue is not relegated to traditional public schools, which means that advancing choice and privatization will not make the problem go away.

This is true, but it does not mean school choice should not still be promoted. After all, studies show that school choice programs are associated with better educational outcomes. Additionally, public sector teacher unions inflict considerable damage on the traditional public school system — and, by extension, the children in those schools. This means that we should recognize school choice as beneficial, but not as a panacea.

The fact that these ideas are being taught everywhere — not just in traditional public schools — suggests a deeper problem than is often assumed. It is not just about the traditional public school structure, but about an ascendant culture that — much like the instruction outlined — assumes that CSJ concepts are the capital-T Truth. Thus, in order to fight against it, and remove indoctrination in schools, it is important to address it on a cultural level. Private and parochial schools will only stop if, culturally, the tide turns decisively away from these ideas and towards those that have traditionally characterized American philosophy — ideas of liberty, virtue, pluralism, and meritocracy.

The significant exception to this “cultural argument” is when it comes to public schools. The reason is simple: the government decides the curriculum. Taking action on this front would therefore be a way of correcting government overreach. In particular, impartiality laws, curriculum transparency laws, and audits of existing instruction and employee training — as the study recommends — are reasonable measures to ensure the government is not being used as a tool of indoctrination for CSJ.

This would hopefully, in turn, help shift the culture towards a more balanced classroom in all schools.

This issue has been brewing for a long time, but only now do we have the data to back up our suspicions and anecdotal understanding. This study represents a comprehensive statement of the problem.

Now it is our job to fight back.

AUTHOR

Jack Elbaum

Jack Elbaum was a Hazlitt Writing Fellow at FEE and is a junior at George Washington University. His writing has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The New York Post, and the Washington Examiner. You can contact him at jackelbaum16@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @Jack_Elbaum.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Why Do The Woke Hate Clarence Thomas So Much?

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Justice Clarence Thomas, being African American, is seen as a traitor to the woke cause.

After the overturning of Roe v Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas has been a particular target of venomous attack from the woke mob. Why do they hate him so much? One might be forgiven for thinking that it is due to his staunch anti-abortion views. But that explanation does not work.

Pope Francis has long expressed that opposing abortion is “closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right”, and yet, the Left is not obsessed with him (in fact, many even take a liking). At some point, even Joe Biden supported letting States overturn Roe v Wade, and again, the Left did not go ballistic on him.

Not behaving as expected

So, why the animus against Thomas? There can only be one explanation: race. In 1991, as he was accused of sexually harassing Anita Hill, Thomas countered that he was the victim of “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you.”

This was loose talk, as it trivialised the suffering of real lynching victims in America’s troubled history of race relations. But Thomas did have a point in arguing that in the United States, any black person who dares to deviate from the official narrative of how blacks are supposed to act, will face severe harassment.

In 1991, he anticipated a trend that would become mainstream in our times: if you are born with a particular skin colour, you are supposed to behave in a certain way, and uphold a specific ideology. If not, you are a race traitor. As Biden so neatly phrased it:

“[I]f you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

Any competent scholar of the history of racism would immediately recognise this as race essentialism. As Angelo Corlett explains in his book Race, Racism and Reparations,
“proponents of race essentialism define human races by a set of genetic or cultural traits shared by all members of a ‘racial’ group.”

Who are the neo-Nazis now?

In the first half of the 20th Century, this view was popular amongst proponents of so-called “racial science”. They believed that racial biological traits determine how people behave. Hitler believed that no matter how much a person with Jewish ancestry tried to assimilate to German society (even converting to another religion), he or she would still be a dangerous Jew, because it was in his or her essence.

Race essentialism is abhorrent, and one might think that after 1945, the world learned a lesson. And yet, race essentialism is alive and kicking, but this time, under the guise of woke progressivism. As per today’s woke rules, if you are black, you must embrace the whole woke mindset.

White people (such as Pope Francis) may occasionally be forgiven for having anti-abortion views, but if you are black and you deviate from the woke line (such as Clarence Thomas), you are a race traitor, an Uncle Tom. Unsurprisingly, Thomas has been called “Uncle Clarence” multiple times.

If you are black, not only do you have to act a certain way, but you must also have a special sexual preference. The woke pay lip service to interracial relationships, but amongst them there is a sense of unease when they contemplate a successful black man marrying a white woman.

For example, when Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States, USA Today columnist Barbara Reynolds wrote: “Here’s a man who’s going to decide crucial issues for the country and he has already said no to blacks; he has already said if he can’t paint himself white he’ll think white and marry a white woman.” Russell Adams, chairman of African American studies at Howard University, said that Thomas “marrying a white woman is a sign of his rejection of the black community.”

Truly racist

Frantz Fanon is a figure beloved by the Left. In 1952, he published Black Skin, White Masks, a canonical text of wokeness. In that book, he also scorns black men who fall in love with white women. Fanon castigates himself for, at some point, having had these thoughts: “Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white. I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white… I marry white culture, white beauty, white whiteness.” The implication of this passage is that loving a white woman is an act of racial treason.

Fanon felt disdain for black people who embraced Western values. He claimed they were wearing white masks, as if somehow, they were deviating from their real essence, and were therefore living an inauthentic life. Therefore — so Fanon believed — Western civilisation must be rejected entirely. As he explained in The Wretched of the Earth, “When the colonized hear a speech on Western culture, they draw their machetes or at least check to see they are close to hand.” He who admires Western values is a sellout.

Ever since Fanon, racial essentialism in the name of progress has only grown worse. People of color are now encouraged not to honour punctuality, because being on time is part of whiteness. Black kids who are academically talented run the risk of being told they are “acting white”. Analysing things objectively is an act of white supremacy. And so on.

Consequently, Clarence Thomas is not allowed to have anti-abortion views. Nobody cares about his anti-abortion arguments, because he is not supposed to make them in the first place. Other jurists, philosophers or theologians will be allowed to oppose abortion, but only if they are white. Thomas is hated not because of his views, but because of his skin colour. He upsets the arbitrary racial classifications that the woke are so eager to embrace.

As per woke taxonomy, black people cannot be conservative, and if they are, they are only wearing a “white mask”. To paraphrase the late Christopher Hitchens, “identity politics poisons everything”. We can no longer have a meaningful discussion about anything as vital as the ontological status of a fetus, because the race of the discussants will determine who is allowed to uphold a particular view. It’s time to push back against this madness.

AUTHOR

Gabriel Andrade

Gabriel Andrade is a university professor originally from Venezuela. He writes about politics, philosophy, history, religion and psychology. More by Gabriel Andrade

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WC4BL: Doctors Stop Practicing Medicine Now Treat Patients Based Solely on Race

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“I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation—to reckon him who taught me this Art equally…” – Hippocratic Oath (c. 400 BC) as translated from Greek by Francis Adams (1849).

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.” –  Dr. Josef Mengele German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and physician, as quoted in Surfing the Tao : A Revolution of Free Will (2004) by Angela V. Michaels.

“White Coats for Black Lives (WC4BL) aims to dismantle racism in medicine and fight for the health of Black people and other people of color.” – WC4BL website.

We now are seeing doctors and other medical professionals who only treat patients based on their race and not on the patients’ medical needs. Equality is gone in medicine. How do we know this?

Let’s look at a group calling themselves White Coats 4 Black Lives (WC4BL). The mission of WC4BL, according to their website, reads:

To dismantle racism and accompanying systems of oppression in health, while simultaneously cultivating means for collective liberation that center the needs, priorities, and self-determination of Black people and other people of color, particularly those most marginalized in our communities. [Emphasis added]

We were astounded when we read the WC4BL values and vision document. The WC4BL document reads in part:

Medical practice in the U.S. is informed by race as a political system, and works to legitimize race through false biological arguments. The very existence of American chattel slavery relied on scientific and medical justifications for Black inferiority. Race was created as a tool for exploitation by white people who placed themselves at the top of their invented racial hierarchy, in opposition to Blackness in particular. [Emphasis added]

After reading the WC4BL values and vision document we were reminded of the words of President John F. Kennedy given at a Commencement Address at Yale University on June 11 1962:

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

Are the leaders and chapter members of WC4BL engaged in spreading myths that are persistent, persuasive and unrealistic?

WC4BL Chapters in American Medical Schools

WC4BL website states: Active White Coats for Black Lives chapters are listed below, along with their contact information. Want to start a chapter at your medical school or hospital? Check out our Chapter Guide to learn more.

Here’s the list of WC4BL Chapters:

Bastyr University (Kenmore, WA) – bukwc4bl@gmail.com
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston, MA) – bidmc.wc4bl@gmail.com
Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine (University Park, NM) – bcomwc4bl@gmail.com
Chicago Health Coalition for Black Lives (Chicago, IL) – chc4bl@gmail.com
Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University (North Chicago, IL) – rfuwc4bl@gmail.com, https://sites.google.com/my.rfums.org/rfumsalliesforblacklives/home
College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI) – msuchmwc4bl@gmail.com
College of Osteopathic Medicine at Kansas City University (Kansas City, MO) – KCUWc4bl@gmail.com
Creighton University School of Medicine (Omaha, NE) – creightonwc4bl@gmail.com
East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine (Greenville, NC) – brodywc4bl@gmail.com
Eastern Virginia Medical School (Norfolk, VA) – evmswc4bl@gmail.com
Florida State University College of Medicine (Tallahassee, FL) – fsuwc4bl@gmail.com
Frank H. Netter School of Medicine (North Haven, CT) – netterWC4BL@gmail.com
Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth (Hanover, NH) – dartmouthwc4bl@gmail.com
Georgetown University School of Medicine (Washington, D.C.) – georgetownwc4bl@gmail.com
GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences (Washington, D.C.) – gwuwc4bl@gmail.com
Kaiser Northern California (CA) – kaisernorcalwc4bl@gmail.com
Kansas University School of Medicine (Kansas City, KS) – KUMCwhitecoats4blacklives@gmail.com
Lincoln Memorial University DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine (Harrogate, TN) – lmudcomwc4bl@gmail.com
Louisiana State University School of Medicine (New Orleans, LA) – lsu.nola.WC4BL@gmail.com
Loyola University Chicago Stricht School of Medicine (Maywood, IL) – whitecoats4blacklives.stritch@gmail.com
Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, MA) – MGHWC4BL@gmail.com
McGill University – Faculty of Medicine (Montreal, Quebec) – mcgillwc4bl@gmail.com
McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas at Houston Health Science Center (Houston, TX) – uthwc4bl@gmail.com
Medical College of Georgia (Augusta, GA) – mcgwc4bl@gmail.com
Meharry Medical College (Nashville, TN) – meharrywc4bl@gmail.com
Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida (Tampa, FL) – usf.wc4bl@gmail.com
New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine (Old Westbury, NY) – nyitcom.wc4bl@gmail.com
Northwestern Medicine (Chicago, IL) – NorthwesternMedicineWC4BL@gmail.com
Nova Southeastern University Fort Lauderdale (Fort Lauderdale, FL) – novaftl.wc4bl@gmail.com
Oregon Health & Science University (Portland, OR) – orwc4bl@gmail.com
PCOM South Georgia (Moultrie, GA) PCOM SGA – pcomsga.wc4bl@gmail.com
Penn State College of Medicine (Hershey, PA) – pscomwc4bl@gmail.com
Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (Philadelphia, PA) – pcomwc4bl@gmail.com
Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine (Iowa City, IA) – uiowaWC4BL@gmail.com
Rush University Medical College (Chicago, IL) – rushuniversitywc4bl@gmail.com
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (Newark, NJ) – rwjmswc4bl@gmail.com
School of Medicine – University of Mississippi Medical Center (Jackson, MS) – mississippisomwc4bl@gmail.com
Sidney Kimmel Medical College – Thomas Jefferson University (Philadelphia, PA) – jeffersonwc4bl@gmail.com
Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine (Tempe, AZ) – scnmwc4bl@gmail.com
St. George’s University (True Blue, Grenada) – st.georgeswc4bl@gmail.com
TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine (Fort Worth, TX) – tcu.unthsc.wc4bl@gmail.com
Texas Tech Health Science Center El Paso (El Paso, TX) – FosterSOMWC4BL@gmail.com
The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine (Chicago, IL) – wc4blpritzker@gmail.com
Touro College of Medicine (New York, NY) – tourocomharlemwc4bl@gmail.com
Tufts University School of Medicine (Boston, MA) – tuftswc4bl@gmail.com
UAB School of Medicine (Birmingham, AL) – uasom.wc4bl@gmail.com
UC Davis School of Medicine (Sacramento, CA) – wc4bl.ucdsom@gmail.com
UMass Medical School (Worcester, MA) – wc4blumms@gmail.com
UNC School of Medicine (Chapel Hill, NC) – uncsomwc4bl@gmail.com
University at Buffalo Residency Programs (Buffalo, NY) – ubresidentswc4bl@gmail.com
University of Arizona College of Medicine (Tucson, AZ) – uacompwc4bl@gmail.com
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (Little Rock, AR) – uamswc4bl@gmail.com
University of Colorado School of Medicine (Aurora, CO) – cusomwhitecoats4blacklives@gmail.com
University of Illinois College of Medicine – Chicago (Chicago, IL) – UIWC4BL@gmail.com
University of Kentucky College of Medicine (Lexington, KY) – ukcom.wcfbl@gmail.com
University of Maryland School of Medicine (Baltimore, MD) – umaryland.wc4bl@gmail.com
University of Michigan Medical School (Ann Arbor, MI) – ummswhitecoats4blacklives@gmail.com
University of Minnesota Medical School (Minneapolis, MN) – whitecoats4blacklivesumn@gmail.com
University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM) – wc4bil@gmail.com
University of Pennsylvania Residencies (Philadelphia, PA) – pennresidentswc4bl@gmail.com
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (Pittsburgh, PA) – UPSOMWC4BL@gmail.com
University of Rochester School of Medicine (Rochester, NY) – urochesterwc4bl@gmail.com
University of the Pacific (California) – uop.wc4bl@gmail.com
University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences (Toledo, OH) – utcomwhitecoats4blacklives@gmail.com
University of Utah School of Medicine (Salt Lake City, UT) – uusomWC4BL@gmail.com
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine (Madison, WI) – UWSMPHWC4BL@gmail.com
Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University (New York, NY) – columbiawc4bl@gmail.com
Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University (Providence, RI) – whitecoats4blacklivesams@gmail.com
Washington University School of Medicine (St. Louis, MO)
Weill Cornell Medicine (New York, NY) – wcmwc4bl@gmail.com
Westchester Medical Center (Valhalla, NY) – wmc.wc4bl@gmail.com
Western University of Health Sciences (Lebanon, OR) – WesternUPomWC4BL@gmail.com
Western University of Health Sciences (Pomona, CA) – WC4BLLebanon@westernu.edu
Wright State University – Boonshoft School of Medicine (Fairborn, OH) – WC4BLwsubsom@gmail.com
Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra University (Hempstead, NY) – zsomwc4bl@gmail.com

It appears that WC4BL is creating the next generation of doctors bent on using race as a primary goal of practicing and giving healthcare.

The Bottom Line

WC4BL believes:

Our job is two-fold: 1) dismantling dominant, exploitative systems in the United States, which are largely reliant on anti-Black racism, colonialism, cisheteropatriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism; and 2) rebuilding a future that supports the health and well-being of marginalized communities.

Doctors are trained in their specialty to provide their services to all of their patients regardless of race. When healthcare becomes political, healthcare suffers and patients suffer. When healthcare becomes a weapon to “dismantling dominant, exploitive systems in the United States” then medicine and doctors have become “fundamentally transformed” into political activists. We have seen doctors become agents of the state before, think of German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and physician Dr. Josef Mengele who became the Nazi Party’s “angle of death.”

Hate for America, hate for those who believe that gender is binary (male and female), hate of capitalism, hate of whites are not about treating those who need treatment. There appears to be a Marxist based movement that’s now taking over the medical profession and some medical schools.

This movement is dangerous, unhealthy and can only lead to the destruction of the medical profession.

Medicine has become weaponized for political purposes.

In our column “The Rise of the Bio-Medical Security State” we wrote:

In February 1920, Hitler presented a 25-point Program (the Nazi Party Platform) at a Nazi Party meeting. In the 25-point program, Nazi Party members publicly declared their intention to segregate Jews from “Aryan” society and to abrogate Jews’ political, legal and civil rights.

Fast forward to January 2022 and we now see a Democrat Party Platform, enforced by federal bureaucrats, Democrat members of Congress and party leaders, to segregate the “unvaccinated” from “American” society and to abrogate the political, legal and civil rights of the unvaxxed.

Now, sadly, we can add doctors to the ranks of the Bio-Medical Security State.

Next time you visit your doctor ask if they are a member of WC4BL. If their answer is yes then you may want to find another doctor.

Sad, but true.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Watch: CDC Made It Official Policy to Withhold Covid Vaccines on Basis of Race

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Where I Come From We Judge People by the Content of Their Characters

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“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Character: The mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.

After having served in the U.S. Army for 23-years I have learned to judge individuals by the content of their character, not by the color of their skin.

I served in a military where men of all colors swore an oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution. Those with whom I served, and all those who have served honorably, are my brothers for he who sheds his blood with me is forever my brother.

As an officer, and commander of multiple units, I was responsible to judge the characters of those who served under me. I had the authority, under Article 15 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, to be the judge, jury and punisher of those soldiers who broke military laws and regulations. Just as I was subject to the same codes, laws and regulations.

Having served in combat I know about the content of others, and my own, characters. There is nothing like the heat of battle to bring out both the best and worst in men, and now women, in our military.

Understanding the character of individuals is a fundamental key to effective leadership.

Sadly today, character has taken a backseat to the color of one’s skin.

Today:

  • If you are white you are automatically labeled a racist.
  • If you are black you are automatically given a free pass on the content of your character.
  • If you are neither white or black, you are considered to be irrelevant or marginalized.

In a column titled “The Vague Grounds of ‘Systemic’ Racism” David Carlin asks:

Is “systemic racism” real?  Or is it an abuse of language, stretching the meaning of the word “racism” beyond its legitimate bounds?

The Oxford English Dictionary‘s first recorded utterance of the word racism was by a man named Richard Henry Pratt in 1902. Pratt was railing against the evils of racial segregation.

Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or makes their growth very slow. Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism and classism.

Racism has become a construct that has been turned into an effective weapon used by some to create racial division both in America and globally.

Their goal isn’t to unite Americans but to divide us. Their goal isn’t to unite the world it’s to divide it.

A divided people are easily manipulated and controlled.

It is an easily used word to win an argument with someone whom you disagree with. If you want to shut down any discussion with a white, black, Hispanic, oriental or American Indian then just call him or her a “racist.”

Racism is the ultimate political club.

When we judge people by what they do, by their character, then we are judging outcomes, not the color of one’s skin. Do good, do well and you are contributing to yourself, your family, your community, your state and the nation.

Do badly and you harm yourself and others.

You see, character has a moral basis. It is a religious construct.

1 Corinthians 15:33 warns,

Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”

Character is a choice between doing good or doing evil.

Without character what are we but mere animals?

How do you judge people?

Where I Come From by Alan Jackson

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Leonydus Johnson – An Advocate for Post Racial Identity

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The popular woke notion that a white person has no right to express their opinion to a black person is a preposterous canard. Of course whites can speak out, because year after year, the Democratic party relies on black voters to change the outcome of every close election in America. When someone is altering your future, sending it careening into an abyss, you have the right to try to talk them out of it.

Nonetheless, it is always a relief to find another black influencer who is willing to challenge the Democratic machine. At the risk of playing the same game at which the woke Left excels, we’ll just state for the record that of the 348 records now populating the Winston84 directory, 58 of those individuals are black. That’s almost 17 percent. And today we proudly add another, Leonydus Johnson, who bills himself on Twitter as “an advocate for post racial identity.”

Until the next wave of cancellations, influencers like Leonydus Johnson may not be boosted by the big platforms, but they’re making their presence known. With 111,000 followers on Twitter, and a growing presence on the other mainstream venues – Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube – Johnson is a man to watch. It would be a shame if he had to move onto the alternative platforms, but how he has been harassed so far is an indication of how the threshold for tolerable speech is being relentlessly lowered.

For example, on his Instagram account, Johnson has a screenshot of a Tweet where he wrote “How can Americans be so arrogant as to believe that what happened in places like Maoist China cannot possibly happen here?” Good question! And for his trouble, Twitter notified Johnson that “Your post didn’t follow our Community Standards on hate speech. No one else can see your post.”

Are you kidding?

Johnson’s website is called “Informed Dissent,” where he discloses that “His sociopolitical and economic views are heavily influenced by the likes of Murray Rothbard, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Milton Friedman, and Jordan Peterson.” His content is fact based, rational, and delivered with a controlled passion that will move the uncommitted.

People like Leonydus Johnson are going to save America. Because they are rising up, as post-racial individuals, and demanding that “Who I am has very little to do with my skin color.” These awakened warriors against the woke Left are a sleeping giant. They are the heart of America, they are united, and they will prevail.

EDITORS NOTE: This Winston84 Project column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Why I Painted Over the BLM Mural in NYC.

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This new episode of The Glazov Gang features Bevelyn Beatty, a Christian evangelist who is co-Founder of atwellministries.org.

Bevelyn explains Why I Painted Over the BLM Mural in NYC, revealing the war we’re in – and why she’s on the frontlines.

WATCH:

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Homosexuality Is the New Black

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In order to have a fully functioning society, we must have some common baseline of beliefs that join us together, whether it’s a fraternity, a church, or a political party. Without this commonality, belonging to a group or a society is impossible.

We hold these trues to be self-evident: the Earth is round, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, Barack Obama is the president of the United States, and if you are born with a penis you are a male. If you are born with a vagina you are a female.

Oh-oh! These last two are going to get me in trouble. Now I will be called homophobic, hateful, un-Christian, a divider, not fit for public service, unfit for management in corporate America, etc., but the question is, “Why?”

In God’s senility, he has become so old and feeble that he is making a lot of mistakes. He is mistakenly putting penises on girls and vaginas on boys. As the philosopher Protagoras argued, “Man has become the measure of all things.” This was the essence of the philosophy called relativism.

Many Christians and conservatives have willingly bowed at the altar of political correctness for political gain. Why do we feel the need to apologize for not wanting a man going to same bathroom as our 14 year-old daughter? Why do we feel the need to apologize for not wanting a woman going to the same bathroom as our 16 year-old son?

Spineless corporate America has never shown in any principles when it has come to issues of right and wrong. They respond only to profit and liberal orthodoxy. Why would a business oppose legislation describing those born with a penis as male and those born with a vagina as female?

These orbiters of “moral hypocrisy” have come out of the closet, literally, against the state of North Carolina because their governor, Pat McCrory, recently signed legislation codifying the biological principle of male and female.

How this bill, HB2, is being described as hateful and discriminatory is baffling to me. Singer Bruce Springsteen has made this his cause célèbre by cancelling his upcoming concert in Greensboro, North Carolina. Bruce seemed to have gotten laryngitis when it came to the lack of any Black actor nominees for the past two years for the Academy Awards, but I digress.

If the corporate community showed the same amount of outrage over the “real” discrimination towards the Black community, we would have more Blacks in the executive suites and on their corporate boards.

According to 2013 research by Richard L. Zweigenhaft of Guilford College, the board of directors of Fortune 500 companies are 87.2 percent White (about 75 percent male), 6.8 percent Black (5.3 percent male), 3.1 percent Latino (2.4 percent male), and 2.4 percent Asian (2 percent male).

Now let’s look at sports.

Based on 2013 research from Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, 19 percent of NBA players are White, but 98 percent of majority owners and 64 percent of the league office staff is White. In comparison, Blacks account for 76 percent of NBA players, and roughly 2 percent of majority owners and 18 percent of league office staff. In the NFL, Whites account for 30 percent of the players and 97 percent of majority owners. Even though 66 percent of NFL players are Black, not a single majority owner in the NFL is African American. When it comes to diversity in ownership, coaching positions and league office staff in the NBA and the NFL, Hispanics and Asians often fare worse.

Blacks account for 13.2 percent of the U.S. population, Hispanics make up 17.4 percent of the population and Asians account for 5.4 percent of the population. Homosexuals are estimated to be 3 percent of the U.S. population, but corporations are more aggressively seeking diversity based on sexual preferences than other measures of diversity.

Based on the above numbers, corporations, the NBA and the NFL should focus more on the lack of diversity among Blacks and Latinos on their corporate boards and the ownership and management of professional sporting teams;, not on this radical leftist agenda to allow confused people to go into bathrooms with people of the opposite sex.

The homosexual community has done a masterful job at the old art of bait and switch. They have portrayed their issue as one of equality, but their real goal is to obtain “legal status” as a protected class in order to get their radical agenda codified into law. All this other stuff is simply background noise.

Isn’t it amazing that former homosexual football player, Michael Sam, recently told Attitude Magazine, “It’s terrible. You want to be accepted by other people, but you don’t even accept someone just because of the color of their skin? I just don’t understand that at all. How are you saying that, “oh, I want people to accept me because I’m gay, but I don’t accept you because you’re Black or because you’re White or because you’re Asian.”

But yet, the corporate community throws millions of dollars at the white homosexual community despite their well-known discrimination of Black homosexuals. Can someone please reconcile this fact for me?

These same corporations that are criticizing HB2 in North Carolina are actively doing and pursuing business in countries that are the most repressive in the world in their treatment of homosexuals.

The NBA plays several exhibition games in China and spends millions of dollars advertising in this country. Google, PayPal, Facebook, Delta Airlines, Hilton Hotels, and Coca-Cola do millions of dollars of business in Saudi Arabia, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc.

So, if they are so concerned about the treatment of homosexuals, why do they do business in these repressive countries?

This has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with the politics. Homosexuals don’t deserve special treatment based on their sexual preferences, but they do deserve equal treatment based on their humanity.

RELATED VIDEO: Homosexuality – Persons with same sex attractions deserve our respect and compassion. But the militant gay movement’s message that ‘gay’ is good is completely false. This lie is confusing society and hurting the individuals themselves.

RELATED ARTICLE: What goes on at a school “gay straight alliance” club event? Here’s the horrific truth.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in Black Press USA.

U.S. Census Bureau: Demographic and Economic Profiles of Iowa’s Electorate

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WASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — In advance of the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1, the Census Bureau presents a variety of statistics that give an overall profile of each state’s voting-age population and industries. This is the first in a series of such profiles for all the states holding primaries or caucuses. Statistics include:

cb16-tps09_graphic_voting_iowa

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau http://www.census.gov

The Rampant Racists of Tinsel Town by Ivan Betinov

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37270-Whats-black-and-never-works---Racist-meme

Graphic by Navigator.

It’s official, movie fans: all of the cinema celebrities, heretofore the paragons of Progressive thought, are actually a sinister conspiracy of racists.

For the SECOND year in a row, not a single actress actor performer of color was nominated for ANY of the top slots in the Oscars. This can obviously be due to ONLY one thing: RACISM!

Of the some 2,900 films released in 2015, only eight were nominated. And not one of those eight were primarily about Black topics or starred black actors in the lead. This means that some TWO THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO films were denied nomination. And the ONLY cause a film can be denied nomination is RACISM!

There are over 7,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Twenty performers were nominated, total, for best actor or actress, or supporting actor or actress. Not ONE of them is an actor or actress of color. That means that THOUSANDS of actors and actresses DID NOT RECEIVE A NOMINATION for these awards. And the only reason an actor or actress can be denied a nomination is RACISM!

The only possible way to remedy this situation is to mandate that at least one out of every three nominations goes to a person of color, and that at least one award in each category go to one of the nominees of color.

This mandated win will affirm that black actors, actresses, and film makers will know that their peers truly respect their talent on the basis solely of their race, as that is the important thing.

EDITORS NOTE: This political satire originally appeared on The Peoples Cube.

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.

How Affirmative Action Backfires by Richard Sander

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Affirmative action is before the Supreme Court again this week, as it rehears arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas. (I’ve discussed the legal issues in Fisher here.)

But perhaps the most important question about racial preferences is one that’s not directly raised by the case: do they even work? Do they help underrepresented minorities to achieve their goals, and foster interracial interaction and understanding on elite campuses? Or do large preferences often “mismatch” students in campuses where they will struggle and fail?

Scholars began empirically studying the mismatch issue in the 1990s, but in the past five years the field has matured. There are now dozens of careful, peer-reviewed studies that find strong evidence of mismatch.

None of the authors of these studies claim that mismatch is a universal or inevitable consequence of affirmative action. But in my view, only demagogues (of which there is, unfortunately, no shortage) or people who haven’t read the relevant literature can still claim that mismatch is not a genuine problem.

It is helpful to think about mismatch as three interrelated phenomena that could affect a student of any race — let’s call her Sally — who receives a large admissions preference, so that she attends a college where her level of academic preparation is substantially below that of her peers.

First, “learning mismatch” occurs if Sally learns less than she would at a less competitive school, because the pace is too fast or her professors are pitching their material at a level that’s not ideal for her.

Others and I have argued that learning mismatch occurs on a massive scale in American law schools, where African-Americans (and some other students) tend to receive very large preferences and then, very often, are never able to practice law because they cannot pass bar exams.

Our best estimate is that only about one-third of black students who start law school in America successfully graduate and pass the bar exam on their first attempt (see my September 2006 blog post here).

A second form of mismatch — “competition” mismatch — occurs when students abandon particular fields, or college itself, because of the practical and psychological effects of competing with better-prepared students.

Suppose that Sally dreams of becoming a chemist, does very well in a standard high school chemistry course, and receives a preference into an elite school where most of her classmates have taken AP Chemistry. Even if Sally does not experience “learning” mismatch, she may nonetheless end up with a B- or a C in chemistry simply because of the strength of the competition.

A long line of studies (e.g., this excellent study by two psychologists) have shown that students receiving large preferences, facing these pressures, tend to abandon STEM fields in large numbers. Competition mismatch thus appears to have large and damaging effects on the number of African-Americans, in particular, graduating with science or engineering degrees.

The third type of mismatch — “social mismatch” — is in some ways the most intriguing.

Several studies have now found that college students are much more likely to form friendships with students who have similar levels of academic preparation or performance at college. The phenomenon operates even within racial groups, but when a college’s preferences are highly correlated with race (as they are at many elite schools), social mismatch can lead to self-segregation by minority students.

The result is decreased social interaction across racial lines. That’s particularly relevant to the Supreme Court’s deliberations because its tolerance of racial preferences has been based on the idea that a diverse racial campus promotes interracial contact and learning.

But if preferences promote substantial social mismatch, then race-conscious admissions actually decrease interracial contact and learning — not only at the school where the preferences are used, but also at the college that the preferenced minority student would have attended in the absence of preferences.

Of course, new studies of higher education come out all the time, and one can point to some study to argue almost any point. What makes the evidence of mismatch so compelling is the large number of very high-quality studies that have appeared in the past few years, performed by a wide array of scholars and appearing in the strongest academic journals that exercise the most stringent peer review.

For example, the highly-respected Journal of Economic Literature last year commissioned two economists to summarize the state of research on higher education mismatch. To ensure an impartial study, the two economists JEL selected started out with different views of mismatch: one was a skeptic, the other the author of research that had found evidence of mismatch. JEL also asked seven other economists, again representing a wide range of perspectives, to peer review the article when it was drafted.

The resulting article is circumspect, but unequivocal in finding that much of the evidence on mismatch (especially in law school and the sciences) is compelling.

The American Economic Review — one of the three or four top journals in the social sciences — also recently announced that it is publishing a comprehensive study of mismatch in the sciences. It takes advantage of an unusually large database from eight campuses of the University of California, covering the period before and after California voters, through Prop 209, made it illegal to consider of race in public college admissions.

The study could thus examine how UC students who, through racial preferences, attended the most elite UC campuses before Prop 209 compared with very similar students who attended less elite campuses after Prop 209.

Peter Arcidiacono, Esteban Aucejo, and Joseph Hotz conclude unequivocally: “We find less-prepared minority students at top-ranked campuses would have higher science graduation rates had they attended lower-ranked campuses.”

The gold standard for empirical research is a genuine experimental design, where a group of subjects are randomly assigned to “treatment” and “control” groups. While random experiments are routine in medical research, they are still uncommon in the social sciences. A revealing study of that kind was recently conducted by three economists working with the Air Force Academy. 

Based on other work, the researchers hypothesized that students entering the Academy with relatively weak academic preparation would learn more and do better if they were assigned to squadrons with particularly academically strong cadets, thus creating opportunities for mentoring and tutoring. The Academy agreed to do a large randomized experiment, assigning some of the targeted students to the experimental squadrons with strong peers, and other students to “control” groups comprised of more typical students.

Again, the results were unequivocal: academically weak students in the experimental group learned less and got worse grades. Having much stronger students in the same squadron increased the weaker students’ tendency to form study groups with other weak students — a strong demonstration of “social mismatch.”

All this impressive research — and much more in a similar vein — has had little impact upon educational institutions. Even though many educational leaders will admit in private that the research is compelling, they believe that any public admission that racial preferences are counterproductive would be met with the sort of campus reaction that routinely drives college presidents from office.

For the same reason, university presidents and other educational leaders aggressively block the release of information vital to mismatch research — data which could, for example, help determine the border between small, safe preferences and large, harmful ones.

All of this should give the Supreme Court pause in assessing racial preferences. Past Court decisions have invoked a traditional deference to the independence of educational institutions. But colleges and universities have demonstrated that they are politically incapable of acting as good fiduciaries for their most vulnerable students.

A version of this post first appeared at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

Richard Sander
Richard Sander

Richard Sander is an economist and law professor at UCLA, where he has taught since 1989.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Mismatched’ black students pay the price of affirmative action – The Boston Globe

Student Demands: Conformity, Thought Police, Show Trials by Walter Olson

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Of the demands being made by protesters in the current wave of unrest on American campuses, some no doubt are well grounded and worth considering. Some of them, on the other hand, challenge academic freedom head on.

Some would take control of curriculum and hiring out of the hands of faculty. Some would enforce conformity of thought. Some would attack the rights of dissenters. Some would merely gut the seriousness of the university.

Last night I did a long series of tweets drawing on a website which sympathetically compiles demands from campus protests — TheDemands.org — and noting some of the more troublesome instances:

  • From Dartmouth: “All professors will be required to be trained in not only cultural competency but also the importance of social justice in their day-to-day work.”
  • From Wesleyan: “An anonymous student reporting system for cases of bias, including microaggressions, perpetrated by faculty and staff.”
  • From the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: “White professors must be discouraged from leading and teaching departments about demographics and societies colonized, massacred, or enslaved under white supremacy.”
  • From Guilford College: “We suggest that every week a faculty member come forward and publicly admit their participation in racism inside the classroom via a letter to the editor” in the college paper.

My series drew and continues to draw a strong reaction. Now I’ve Storified the tweets as a single narrative, including some of the responses. Read it here.

Cross-posted from Overlawyered.

Walter OlsonWalter Olson

Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies.

Biker Shootout: Libs Going Wacko over Race in Waco

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Leftists are upset about what they view as a double standard with respect to the Baltimore/Ferguson affair and the recent Waco gang shootout. They’re right, too — there sure is a double standard.

And, as usual, it’s their own.

Consider, for example, an Associated Press piece by one Jesse J. Holland titled “Differing perceptions of Waco, Baltimore bothering some.” Holland starts out writing that the “prevailing images of protests in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, over police killings of black men were of police in riot gear, handcuffed protesters, tear gas and mass arrests. The main images of a fatal gun battle between armed bikers and police in Waco, Texas, also showed mass arrests — carried out by nonchalant-looking officers sitting around calm bikers on cellphones.” The idea is that while the black thugs in Baltimore and Ferguson received harsh treatment and coverage, the primarily white thugs in Waco were, relatively speaking, handled with kid gloves.

But pardon my tongue, this brings us to another complaint. Holland cites people who say that while Barack Obama and other politicians called the Baltimore miscreants “thugs,” no such descriptive is applied to the white Waco punks. He mentions in particular radio and TV commentator Roland Martin, who tweeted, “So the mainstream media refuses to talk (hashtag)WacoThugs, huh?” And Martin has a point: While the black Baltimore rioters and looters were called thugs, no white Waco rioters and looters were thus characterized. I wonder, why might that be?

Oh, yeah, that’s right: there are no white rioters and looters in Waco.

Minor details such as this seem to escape the notice of two-brain-cell journalists in search of a story, but a prerequisite for having “police in riot gear” is actually having, you know, a riot. The incident in Waco was an unforeseen event, meaning, the cops had no time to don any kind of special gear.

Perhaps they don’t teach proper analogizing in journalism school, but the Waco biker thugs aren’t analogous to the Baltimore rioter thugs; rather, they’re analogous to the person the latter were rioting over: drug dealer Freddie Gray. And no one went out of his way to call Gray a thug.

Martin also lamented that we won’t have a “panel discussion on their [the bikers’] childhood” or on “fatherless homes”; no doubt, as the media will soon drop the story. This is largely because they don’t have a black-on-white racial angle to play up, but also for another reason:

Whites won’t be rallying to the defense of the biker thugs.

Matters are proceeding as they should. The police went to the scene of the crime, fired on the thugs when necessary (perhaps killing some), brought matters to a conclusion and they made arrests — 170 of them. Moreover, all people, including whites, want to see justice done. In fact, no small number of whites would no doubt say that more of the thugs should have been shot.

Oh, as for the adjectives, it’s self-evident that the Waco criminals are thugs. The reason why the point had to be made in Baltimore is that politicians, media propagandists and race-baiting activists had euphemized the rioters as “protesters” who cared about Freddie Gray (whom they would have knifed in a second for 50 bucks) and had legitimate grievances. So even Obama, in a rare and fleeting moment of lucidity, pointed out the obvious: get off it — they’re just thugs.

The irony of the Lamestream Media’s reporting on what’s a flawed conception of a double standard is that it was created by their own exercise of a true double standard. As black pundit Larry Elder reported, police shootings of black suspects are down 75 percent over the last several decades, but you wouldn’t know it from cherry-picked reportage that seems designed to incite racial unrest. Consider the following list of perspective-lending realities the media refuses to cover:

  • As Elder also wrote, “In 2012, according to the CDC, 140 blacks were killed by police. That same year 386 whites were killed by police. Over the 13-year period from 1999 to 2011, the CDC reports that 2,151 whites were killed by cops — and 1,130 blacks were killed by cops.”
  • Of course, blacks are only 13 percent of the population. So far more significantly and as this recent Washington State University study shows, police are actually more willing to shoot white than black suspects. Why? Because police know that, as Ferguson officer Darren Wilson’s experience illustrates, shooting a black criminal can mean media crucifixion, career destruction, death threats and, basically, the end of your life as you know it.
  • Black suspects are as likely to shoot at police as to be shot at.
  • Relative to whites, blacks are shot by police at a lower rate than their involvement in crime would suggest. As sociologist and ex-cop Professor Peter Moskos writes, “Adjusted for the homicide rate, whites are 1.7 times more likely than blacks [to] die at the hands of police. Adjusted for the racial disparity at which police are feloniously killed, whites are 1.3 times more likely than blacks to die at the hands of police.”
  • According to FBI statistics, 46 percent of those who’ve murdered police officers during the last decade have been black.
  • Blacks commit more than half of all murders nationwide. And 93 percent of all black homicide victims are murdered by other blacks.
  • Stories of generally “unarmed” white suspects being shot by minority police abound but are never reported nationally. There was 20-year old white man Dillon Taylor, who was shot by a Hispanic cop last year; Iraq military veteran James Whitehead, shot by off-duty black police officer Robert Arnold in Texas in 2011 after a verbal altercation; white teen Gil Collar, shot by a black officer at the University of Alabama in 2012; and 46-year-old white man John Geer, shot with his hands up (according to four police officers on the scene) by a Hispanic cop with “anger issues.”

This isn’t to imply that all the above shootings were unjust, but such a standard is hardly necessary for the media to play the race card when reporting the rare white-on-black shootings. In fact, the media will trumpet the causes of obvious thugs, such as Ferguson’s Michael Brown, Baltimore’s Freddie Gray and Trayvon Martin, even in the face of evidence that thugs are precisely what they are.

Speaking of which, what do you think about the coverage of that unarmed 17-year-old shot by that grown man?

No, not cute little Trayvon.

Seventeen-year-old white kid Chris Cervini, shot by black martial artist Roderick Scott in Greece, NY, in 2009. Scott is built like a brick outhouse and admits Cervini never laid a hand on him, but says he thought his life could be in danger. He was acquitted by a mostly white jury, and I don’t question the verdict. But the verdict on the media is clear:

Guilty of using lies that have evoked hatred, fomented racial unrest, sparked riots, caused property destruction and led to innocent people’s deaths.

Guilty of gross malpractice and, by proxy, murder.

Guilty of being destroyers of civilization that have no moral right to exist.

Yes, #MediaLiesMatter.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com

A Pox on Baltimore

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Thanks to an infection and the antibiotics taken to rid myself of it, I have had several days of being able to do little more than watch the news on television, listen to it on the radio, and reading about it in my daily edition of The Wall Street Journal. If there was anything else happening in the world, you would not know it because it was 24-7 Baltimore, Baltimore, Baltimore.

Specifically, it was about the arrest and death of Freddie Gray, a known drug dealer and user with an extensive rap sheet. There are different descriptions of the manner of his death, but the details of the autopsy are still obscure beyond a reference to having received a blow to his spine. This is attributed to having been placed in the police van, shackled hand and foot, but not having a safety belt applied.

The response from a certain element of Baltimoreans was to begin to loot, vandalize and set fire to their own neighborhoods by way of protesting alleged police brutality. This followed his funeral on Monday. The Mayor’s response was to tell the police to stand down and let the protesters have their way. When that predictably did not work, the National Guard was called in and a curfew imposed.

Capping these events was the indictment of the six arresting officers by the State’s Attorney General, Marilyn Mosby that included charges of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. That seemed to appease the mob that passes for Baltimore’s citizens.

I wish I could say I have sympathy for Freddie Gray and his family, but I don’t. I wish I could say that I feel sorry that Baltimore has been a state of decline and decay since the last riots in 1968, but no one asks why the trillions of dollars poured in comparable cities since the days of Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” hasn’t demonstrated any results.

I wish I could say that the connecting factor between Baltimore, Detroit, and other Democrat-controlled cities was the primary reason that their citizens suffer unemployment, why their children attend schools that fail to teach them even fundamental skills, but what has evolved in these distressed cities is a culture that does not emphasize the traditional family, demand better education, and replaces the work ethic with the “entitlement” check. The Baltimore mother who chastised her son to keep him from participating in the riot is single and has five other children.

These cities are daily crime scenes. The riot was a crime scene.

And who is accused of Freddie Gray’s death? Members of the Baltimore Police Force who initially spotted Gray, a 25 year old with a criminal record, and went to investigate what they had observed. He ran. They ran after him. That’s what we want and expect our police to do.

The indictment, a purely political act intended to quell the angry mood of those Baltimoreans who protested by committing crimes, is an attack on every police officer in America. Most are good men and women, but like any other profession, there are some bad ones. The legion of police who protect us do not go around murdering suspects indiscriminately.

Tell that to State Attorney Mosby. Then consider that Freddie Gray’s attorney, William H. Murphy, Jr. donated $5,000 to her campaign. Consider that her husband, Nick Mosby, is a Baltimore city councilman with lots of reason to see the riots quelled.

What these cities and the decades reaching back to the 1960s all represent is a vocal resentment of police authority. Back then they were called “pigs.” America has been drifting away from the traditional respect and regard we have had for our police.

The problem isn’t the police.

It’s liberal notion that raising taxes and heavily regulating businesses large and small will somehow attract them to our cities. It doesn’t work that way. Our cities have become great dumping grounds for people who interest the Democratic Party only around election time.

And that is a problem for the police. It will be a growing problem for everyone if we cannot return to a decent respect for our police.

So, for now, a pox on Baltimore and on all the politicians from the President on down who keep telling us the police are the problem, not the world of Freddie Gray’s roaming our city’s streets.

© Alan Caruba, 2015

We’re ALL Out of Africa

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I think if we were honest enough to admit it, we are all bigoted in some way. Our gender or religion doesn’t really qualify us as superior to anyone else, but we tend to fall back on these identities and, consciously or not, assume they give us a reason to feel that we are not only in possession of a special truth, but that it grants us the privilege to feel better than others.

When we examine the issue of race, however, the bigotry is inherent because racial groups are inclined to assign superior characteristics to their own. It’s called human nature.

There is something else “human” that we need to address, over and above skin color, eye color, hair and other visible differences.

“All human variants in DNA in all people alive today trace their origins to countless common ancestors, all of whom lived in Africa more than sixty thousand years ago. As humans, everyone is related by common ancient ancestry, and ultimately, everyone is African.”

Cover - Everyone is AfricanThat is the message of a new book by Daniel J. Fairbanks, the dean of the College of Science and Health at Utah Valley University, a distinguished research geneticist and author. “Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race” ($18.00. Prometheus Books, softcover). In a world where race is a component of our lives, Fairbanks says, “Unfortunately, few people are aware of how much is known about the genetic basis of race—or more accurately, the lack thereof.”

“To many, the notion that race is inherited seems self-evident. Yet extensive genetic research has demonstrated that the genetic variation associated with what most people perceive as race represents a small proportion of overall genetic variation. When viewed on a global scale, there are no discrete genetic boundaries separating so-called races.”

DNA1It’s hard to argue with DNA, a molecule that encodes the genetic instructions of all known living organisms. Its scientific name is deoxyribonucleic acid and, along with proteins and carbohydrates, it composes the three major macromolecules deemed essential for all known forms of life. Most DNA molecules consist of two biopolymer stands coiled around each other to form a double helix.

What we take to be “race” traces back some one hundred thousand years ago when our species, humans, all lived in Africa. Those early ancestors began to migrate from Africa eventually inhabiting the entire globe. That makes the “human race” one race.

So much evil has been done in the name of race that much of our history and the world’s stems from the notion that the variations, Caucasian, Negro, Asian, are determinative of various traits we attribute to these and other “races.” If we step back a bit, we will conclude we are talking about cultural differences, often the result of geological differences. As Fairbanks notes, regarding the findings of DNA research, “According to their estimates, people worldwide differ on average by about 0.1 percent, evidence that all humans are genetically quite similar to one another.”

It is hard, if not impossible, to argue with the science involved. “The oldest remains of what anthropologists call ‘anatomically modern humans’ (skeletons with features that resemble modern humans) are exclusively from Africa, dating to about two hundred thousand years ago. By contrast, the earliest remains of anatomically modern humans outside of Africa thus far discovered are about one hundred thousand years old.”

The migration out of Africa is dated to about sixty thousand to seventy thousand years ago “and their descendants, through many generations, eventually populated the rest of the world.”

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, “most of the mutations that became variants affecting skin, eye, and hair pigmentation happened outside of Africa in the distant descendants of people who originally left Africa..” Those variations then spread through their descendants within broad geographic regions.”

Those other people you see around you? You are related to all of them.

© Alan Caruba, 2015