Race and racial bias
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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January 17, 2022 — Scott Johnson
When Martin Luther King, Jr., brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connor’s Birmingham, he laid siege to the bastion of Jim Crow. In Birmingham between 1957 and 1962, black homes and churches had been subjected to a series of horrific bombings intended to terrorize the community. In April 1963 King answered the call to bring his campaign to Birmingham. When King landed in jail on Good Friday for
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January 15, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Guess what’s racist now? Yes, everything is racist, as we know, but specifically what new thing is racist? Traffic cameras. ProPublica reports: A ProPublica analysis found that traffic cameras in Chicago disproportionately ticket Black and Latino motorists. . . An analysis of millions of citations found that households in majority Black and Hispanic ZIP codes received tickets at around twice the rate of those in white areas between 2015 and
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January 13, 2022 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about the fact that the State of Minnesota, under Governor Tim Walz, was engaging in blatant race discrimination in the distribution of monoclonal antibodies as a treatment for covid. In determining eligibility for such treatment, the state awarded points simply for being “BIPOC,” thereby irrationality and illegally discriminating against whites. As a result of criticism by me and others, as well as threatened civil rights litigation, the
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January 2, 2022 — Scott Johnson
A look, a book, and a crook (or a crock). What is the question, according to Carnac the Magnificent? I don’t know, but it is the miscellany that I need this morning. Thinking of Carnac makes me laugh. I think I was studying high school physics when I heard him divine the question to the answer: “One fig to a cookie.” The question: “What is Newton’s first law?” It still
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December 16, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post moans that “despite diversity vows, wide racial gaps persist in corporate leadership” (the quote is from the print edition headline). The “vows” occurred after the death of George Floyd. The “wide gap” amounts to the difference between black representation in the U.S. population (12 percent) and black representation among the “highest corporate leaders” (8 percent, according to the Post). If one takes this story at face value,
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December 9, 2021 — Steven Hayward
Paul has commented below on the unsurprising Smollett verdict. Here I merely want to contrast two perspectives among blacks about the whole Smollett Affair. First, Black Lives Matter, which issued a statement a couple days ago, while the trial was still under way, that includes this passage: In our commitment to abolition, we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who
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December 1, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Leftists like Kamala Harris want us to believe that white supremacism is a major threat to America. What about black supremacism? To Harris and the left, it’s a myth, and worrying about it is racist. Daniel Greenfield at FrontPage has the details on Harris’ quest to render black supremacism a non-concept and to bar the Department of Justice from preventing terrorism by black supremacists: Two years ago, Senator Kamala Harris,
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