Race and racial bias
May 20, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Cast your mind back about ten years or so to a series of speeches that got Bill Cosby in a lot of trouble, especially his 2004 speech to the NAACP Awards dinner. The Cos took aim at dysfunctions in the black community . . . and he was slammed for “blaming the victim” and taking focus away from white racism. Here’s an extended excerpt: Ladies and gentlemen, I really have to
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May 13, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I didn’t know Jason Richwine very well during his post-doc fellowship at AEI, but in my rare interactions I was favorably impressed. But as background to pondering his shameful dismissal from Heritage last week, I want to recall the time in the late 1980s when I first met James Q. Wilson, arguably America’s greatest social scientist at the time, shortly after he left Harvard for UCLA. In the course of
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May 6, 2013 — John Hinderaker
It is not easy to select the dumbest article to appear in the New York Times in any given week. Even if we exclude columns by Paul Krugman and Tom Friedman on the ground of lifetime achievement, there is plenty of idiocy to choose from. My nominee for this week is this piece by Nancy DiTomaso, titled “How Social Networks Drive Black Unemployment.” Ms. DiTomaso, a professor at Rutgers business
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May 4, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Outgoing South Carolina Democratic Chairman Dick Harpootlian told a Democratic rally that next year his party will win the gubernatorial election and “send Nikki Haley back to wherever the hell she came from.” Haley is an Indian-American who was raised in South Carolina. Her parents are Sikh immigrants. Harpootlian claims he meant the election results would send Gov. Haley back to Lexington County where she used to live. Last year,
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April 30, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Liberals will never tire of calling conservatives racist, because it’s always a show-stopper, a way of cutting off further debate on any issue where a liberal is likely to lose. So don’t expect it to go away any time soon. (Though why Republicans aren’t better at “punching back twice as hard,” e.g., by pointing out the permanent racist legacy of the Democratic Party, noting the vote tally for the 1964
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April 14, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The film 42, released nationally this weekend, is a conventional Hollywood biopic in the heroic mold. The film is tightly focused on Jackie Robinson’s epochal 1947 season that broke baseball’s color line. Despite its conventional form, the film is inspiring and distinctive in a number of respects that justify attention. We went to see the film in a suburban St. Paul theater last night and enjoyed it immensely. After seeing
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March 30, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In an excellent Wall Street Journal column James Taranto holds out hope that the Supreme Court is on the verge of ending the regime of racial discrimination that it has licensed in higher education. I hope Taranto is right, but I think pessimism is warranted. I’m taking the liberty of reiterating my own observations on the subject below. The principle of equal treatment without regard to race is one that
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March 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Over at City Journal, Heather Mac Donald calls out the New York Times: It takes determination to out-demagogue New York City’s anti-cop advocates, but the New York Times has done just that. A front-page article in Friday’s print edition announces: BRONX INSPECTOR, SECRETLY TAPED, SUGGESTS RACE IS A FACTOR IN STOPS. The story goes on to claim in its lead paragraph that a secretly taped recording “suggests that, in at
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March 17, 2013 — Scott Johnson
On Twitter via John Podhoretz, I see that Kay Hymovitz points to the demographic breakdown of the entering freshman class at Stuyvesant High School. Stuyvesant is one of New York’s specialized public high schools where entrance is determined solely by Specialized High School Admission Test scores: —Stuyvesant offered admission to 9 black students; 24 Latino students; 177 white students; and 620 students who identify as Asian. Hymowitz just says “wow,”
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March 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, the Justice Department’s Inspector General released a damning report about the Voting Section of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. The Civil Rights Divison is run by Tom Perez, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Labor. You can read the Report, which exceeds 250 pages, here. I’ll provide a few of the lowlights: [W]e found that starting in April 2009, there were serious discussions among senior leadership in the Division and
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February 23, 2013 — John Hinderaker
We noted here the confusion that was engendered in local media by a melee at South High School in Minneapolis between Somali immigrants and native-born black students. It was hard to make the usual narratives fit. So today, the Minneapolis Star Tribune enlisted two Macalester College professors in a further effort at explication: The brawl between Somali-Americans and black students at Minneapolis’ South High School caught the outside world by
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February 20, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
As far as I’m concerned, Ted Cruz hasn’t put a foot wrong since he took his Senate seat early last month. In fact, he has been the star of the legislative session to date. You can tell by the fact that he has incurred the ire of Democratic Senators, the MSM, and John McCain. Today, though, comes a report that Cruz said that some of the attacks on fellow Republican
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February 17, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Dozens of protesters rallied outside the Los Angeles Police Department headquarters yesterday in a show of support for Christopher Dorner and his claims of racism on the part of the LAPD. Among the signs the protesters carried were: “If you’re not enraged, you’re not paying attention.” “Why couldn’t we hear his side?” “Clear his name! Christopher Dorner” Support for the deranged killer wasn’t limited to the protesters. According to the
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February 15, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, Judicial Watch has compelled the powers-that-be to cough up the video of one self-described citizen of the world (Thomas Betances) conducting government-approved, government-sponsored, government funded racial harassment (i.e., “cultural sensitivity training”) at the United States Department of Agriculture. It took the USDA eight months to cough it up, but it was worth waiting for. Judicial Watch plucks out quotable quotes with film clips
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February 15, 2013 — Scott Johnson
A cafeteria food fight turned into a riot at South High School in Minneapolis yesterday. The school’s security officers were insufficient to the task. Police officers dispatched to the scene sprayed mace and placed the school on lockdown to get a handle on the situation. Three or four students and a staff member ended up in the hospital. What’s going on? The Star Tribune discreetly reports that parents and students
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February 10, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck cuts a fine figure on television as he condemns killer Charles Dorner and promises to bring him to justice. He even looks a little like that police commissioner Tom Selleck plays on television. But Beck has disgraced himself by ordering a reexamination of the disciplinary case that led to the firing of Dorner. Beck explained that he wants to assure the city that his
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February 4, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
I am against Black History Month because, as argued here, it presents impressionable young students with a distorted, negative view of American History. The following tale is “illustrative” (as Chuck Hagel might say) of that effect and how I once tried, in a very limited way, to counter it. By the time my older daughter Laura reached Sixth Grade, she was on at least her sixth Black History Month. The
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