Race and racial bias
June 14, 2013 — Steven Hayward
My post yesterday about liberals and racism, and the way the Left attacks any mention of “states’ rights” as code for racist oppression, brought a note from Prof. Jack Pitney at Claremont McKenna College (not to worry Jack—you’ll make the Power Line 100 roster, though maybe as a group entry since your whole department makes the cut) about how contemporary liberals have suddenly rediscovered the virtue of states’ rights in
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June 13, 2013 — Steven Hayward
John’s post last week on “What Did Lee Atwater Really Say” is a hugely important piece of revisionist journalism, and its theme deserves sustained attention, as the Left these days defaults immediately to calling conservatives and Republicans “racist” because their arguments are otherwise so weak. Notice, in this regard, the new ABC News poll out yesterday finding that a whopping 76 percent of Americans oppose race-conscious college admissions. Rather than
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June 9, 2013 — John Hinderaker
I was blissfully unaware of Lee Atwater’s most famous quote (or alleged quote) until I ran across it in connection with Martin Bashir’s demented claim that Republican criticisms of the IRS are “racist.” Bashir explained that everything Republicans do or say is racist, regardless of whether there is any apparent connection to race. As authority, Bashir cited Lee Atwater, the most successful Republican campaign manager of his time. In Bashir’s
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June 4, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The Tawana Brawley case dominated the news for a time in 1987. Brawley was a black teenager who claimed to have been raped and abused by six white men. Her handlers, led by the “Reverend” Al Sharpton, falsely accused a policeman (who couldn’t defend himself because he had committed suicide, presumably the reason they chose him) and an Assistant District Attorney of being involved in the attack. Brawley’s accusations turned
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May 31, 2013 — Steven Hayward
We have commented before about the Sensitivity Police who use electron microscopes to spot the most minuscule trace of racism wherever it can be found, such as this Volkswagen ad, and this ad for the Discovery Card. Here’s the latest entry in the Racism Overreaction Playbook: a Cheerios ad featuring a mixed-race couple (below), which you would think would receive the approval of the Multidiversiculturalites. But apparently it has caused
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May 31, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I wrote here the other day about how “diversity” has become a latter-day Stalinist concept, when it doesn’t imply downright hate from the left, just as “multiculturalism” is cover for self-loathing of Western civilization rather than a genuine curiosity about what might be learned from other cultures. (I think it was Allan Bloom who pointed out, for example, how few of the devotees of “multiculturalism” actually bother to learn a
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May 30, 2013 — Scott Johnson
We are all familiar with the Democratic hit and run operation, metaphorically speaking, in which the cry of “racism” is followed by the “move on” maneuver. Louisiana state senator Karen Carter Peterson — the chairman of the state Democratic party — brings the metaphor to life as she runs away from local television reporters who ask about her declaration that opponents of Obamacare are driven by racism. NRO’s Jim Geraghty
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May 24, 2013 — Steven Hayward
If memory serves, Irving Kristol once remarked that the term “peace,” as it was used by the left, “is a Stalinist concept,” since the intent of the so-called “peace movement” was the unilateral disarmament of the West and the triumph of Communism. Today the term “diversity” works the same way: it has become a term meaning the opposite of its dictionary meaning, and is a vehicle for racial division and
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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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