Race and racial bias
August 14, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The answer to that question is, sometimes. One would think this is clearly such an instance: Minneapolis teachers union contract calls for layoffs of white teachers first. That sounds like naked race discrimination by a government entity, but is it illegal? First, some facts: A Minneapolis teachers union contract stipulates that white teachers will be laid off or reassigned before “educators of color” in the event Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
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June 30, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The great Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has set off the lunatic left that powers the throbbing heart of the Democratic Party and its media adjunct. He has set the left off ever since his nomination to the Court by President Bush in 1991. I’m so old I recall Joe Biden’s idiotic performance as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the confirmation hearing (and Biden’s descent from 1991 has
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June 7, 2022 — Steven Hayward
A few years back we flagged the article in Gender, Place and Culture on “Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity in Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Oregon,” wondering if it was a hoax. And it indeed was a hoax—part of the very successful Pluckrose/Boghossian/Lindsay project to plant absurd articles in postmodern academic journals. I thought we might have a sequel involving on our hands in the current issue
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May 17, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I’m so old I can remember Bill Clinton blaming the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing on Rush Limbaugh. Heck, I’m so old I can recall MSNBC and the rest of the leftist hive mind blaming the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords on Sarah Palin, when 30 seconds of observation showed clearly the shooter was severely mentally ill. Oh, wait—you don’t need to be old for that: the New York Times
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May 12, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Liz Collin’s Alpha News story exposing the fraudulent story retailed by Toshira Garraway about the death of her fiancé, Justin Teigen — supposedly beaten to death by the St. Paul police in 2009 — deserves the clichéd appellation “bombshell.” Liz quotes Garraway in a local media interview: “They caught him. They beat him to death. They threw him in the garbage…” Etc., etc., rinse, wash, and repeat. Liz reports: “Teigen’s
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May 8, 2022 — Scott Johnson
President Biden went to United Performance Metals in Hamilton, Ohio to talk up the Bipartisan Innovation Act this past Friday. The act has passed into law, so I can’t say don’t let it be. It is. The White House has posted the text of Biden’s remarks here. Biden took the occasion to look back on his career and reminisce about the good old days in the United States Senate. The
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March 25, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Harvard screwed Roland Fryer. That’s what happened to Roland Fryer. National Association of Scholars President Peter Wood’s Spectator column “When Harvard canceled a black professor” {UPDATE: published in accessible form by the New York Post here] applies Wood’s academic expertise to tell the story. As if we didn’t have enough to be indignant about, we now have the case — the rise and fall — of Professor Fryer to digest.
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March 5, 2022 — Scott Johnson
James Hankins is professor of history at Harvard. He is a distinguished intellectual historian of the Renaissance and the author, most recently, of Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy. I happened on to Professor Hankins through the Claremont Review of Books, as in his Spring 2021 essay “Political Thought in an Age of Conformity” (more here). Paul Rahe reviewed Virtue Politics for the CRB in “The Petrarchan moment.”
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March 3, 2022 — Scott Johnson
In his review of Stalin’s Library: A Dictator and His Books, by Geoffrey Roberts, Nigel Jones writes in the Spectator: Roberts takes us through Stalin’s life and shows how his reading molded his actions. Books transformed the bright seminary student into a ferocious revolutionary, prepared to sacrifice family, friends and a vast array of enemies — capitalists, kulaks, fellow Bolsheviks, imperialists, Trotskyist deviationists and millions of ordinary Soviet citizens —
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March 2, 2022 — Steven Hayward
• Guess what’s racist this week? Mainstream media reporting on Ukraine! Behold the Washington Post: Opinion: Coverage of Ukraine has exposed long-standing racist biases in Western media Putin’s criminal invasion of Ukraine has generated an inspiring wave of solidarity around the world, but for many — especially non-White observers — it has been impossible to tune out the racist biases in Western media and politics. Yes, it’s “impossible to tune
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February 21, 2022 — Steven Hayward
One of the mysteries of the COVID era is that there has been no attack on vaccine mandates for their racial “disparate impact,” since vaccination rates are so much lower among blacks especially. When New York City imposed vaccine mandates for access to restaurants and other public accommodations, I expected some eager civil rights lawyer to file suit because of its racially discriminatory effects. After all, as reported here last
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February 21, 2022 — Scott Johnson
TCM held a 24-hour Sidney Poitier movie marathon over the weekend. I’ve watched each one of the films included in the marathon more than once. I saw In the Heat of the Night in the theater when it was released in 1967 and several times since. However, I have never enjoyed it as much as I did this weekend. For those who may have missed it — are there any
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February 10, 2022 — Steven Hayward
That race has become the central obsession of the left is hardly news, but reaching new levels of racial absurdity is always good copy. Today’s racial ridiculousness come to us courtesy of National Public Radio (figures). Start with this tweet, which is authentic and not a Babylon Bee parody: “Some academics argue.” Always a promising start. And here’s some of the actual article, in case you don’t believe it: A
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February 3, 2022 — Paul Mirengoff
Last month, I wrote about Brian Flores, the moderately successful black coach of the Miami Dolphins, who was fired after three seasons. I said that the firing of Flores raised suspicions of racism, but that it’s extremely unlikely the dismissal really was race based. The Dolphins defended the decision to sack Flores, at least in part, on the basis that the coach clashed with the Dolphins’ general manager, who is
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February 2, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Those who recognize the name Aaron Wildavsky will rightly wonder how the great political scientist could possibly comment on the Whoopi’s whoopsie, since he died in 1993. But I want to suggest he was highly prescient about what is going on today on racial politics in America. In a classic 1990 essay on “The Search for the Oppressed” (not available online unfortunately), Wildavsky noted how the left was trying to
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January 28, 2022 — Steven Hayward
“The Underhandedness of Affirmative Action” is the title of Harvey Mansfield’s prescient article in National Review way back in 1984 (unfortunately not available online easily that I can find). A key sample: To understand the threat [that affirmative action poses to constitutional government], let us return to the necessity that affirmative action conceal the help it renders its beneficiaries. As a policy, it cannot claim success, because to announce an
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January 17, 2022 — Steven Hayward
It is not news that today’s so-called “civil rights movement” has turned fully away from Martin Luther King’s vision of a color-blind America. Today’s evidence comes from Psychology Today magazine: Colorblind Ideology Is a Form of Racism Monnica T Williams Ph.D. At its face value, colorblindness seems like a good thing—really taking MLK seriously on his call to judge people on the content of their character rather than the color
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