Race
September 7, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Observing Rosh Hashanah today, I scheduled this otherwise tardy post to appear this morning. For some reason or other, little note was taken of the thirtieth anniversary of the Crown Heights riots of August 1991 that kicked off with the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum. Anticipating the silence, the Washington Free Beacon assembled a package of stories and columns to commemorate the event. The pieces are assembled here. I commend to
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August 13, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
I keep reading in leftist outlets like the Washington Post that conservatives are prolonging the pandemic and putting innocent lives at risk by not being vaccinated against the coronavirus. I don’t see many articles about Blacks who refuse the vaccine. However, the New York Times reports that only 28 percent of New York City Blacks between the ages of 18-44 have been vaccinated. This, despite months of encouragement to take
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August 12, 2021 — Steven Hayward
As everyone knows, the obsession with identity politics and pronoun correctness attempts to impose a lot of terminological exactitude on everyone, none more so that than use of “Latinx” for people of Hispanic descent. There have been some polls showing that actual hispanics dislike the term or are at best indifferent to it. The Gallup Poll is out with a new survey on ethnic nomenclature, finding that only 4 percent
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August 10, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Considering how much I hate receiving parking tickets, this is one war on standards I might get behind. However, it also extends to compliance with driving, vehicle registration, and fine-paying requirements. The Washington Post assigned a team to investigate ticketing in Washington, D.C. The team collected five years of traffic and parking enforcement data containing more than 10 million records of infractions. It then merged that information with data from
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August 9, 2021 — Steven Hayward
John wrote yesterday about the absurdity of the University of Wisconsin spending $50,000 to move a racist (checks notes) . . . rock. Oh—kay. Not to be outdone, I give you the Colorado Rockies baseball team. Keep in mind that Major League Baseball moved this year’s All Star Game to Denver because Denver is a more racially tolerant city than Atlanta. (Stifle your chortles now, please.) What to make, then,
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August 5, 2021 — John Hinderaker
Classical music is under attack by the “woke” because the overwhelming majority of classical musicians are either Asian or white. Heather Mac Donald tells the depressing story. Her whole article is worth reading, but for now I want to focus on this: in recent history, orchestra auditions have generally been “blind,” i.e., the performer is behind a screen so that the judges are not influenced by his or her gender,
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July 30, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Bettina Love is a leading proponent of the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT). Stanley Kurtz calls her 2019 book We Want to Do More Than Survive “arguably the single most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the ideology of the CRT movement in education.” I call it incendiary, and if you read Kurtz’s summary of the book, you will probably agree. So might Love. Love is a co-founder of the
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July 28, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
You might think that white supremacists would be the ones to inject race into discussions of African-American gymnast Simone Biles cracking under the enormous pressure of these Olympic games. For all I know, white supremacists might be doing so. However, the only piece I’ve read that puts a racial twist on this subject is by Candace Buckner, a Black sportswriter for the Washington Post. According to Buckner, exceptional Black women
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July 27, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Bob Moses, the civil rights leader, died a few days ago. He led voter registration drives in Mississippi during the 1960s and later founded the Algebra Project to teach math to Black students in rural areas and inner cities. Moses didn’t believe math is racist. He believed that math literacy “is the tool to elevate the young into the first class economically.” How did the civil rights movement devolve from
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July 26, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The following passage is from a letter that reportedly was circulated by an outfit called Dallas Justice Now (DJN), a “racial equity group.” The letter reads like a parody, but apparently it is not: We are writing to you because we understand you are white and live within the Highland Park Independent School District and thus benefit from enormous privileges taken at the expense of communities of color. You live
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July 26, 2021 — Steven Hayward
When I first saw the letter reproduced here from something called “Dallas Justice Now,” calling on wealthy whites living in the affluent Highland Park neighborhood of Dallas not to have their kids apply to elite colleges so that there would be more room for minority applicants, I assumed that it was a satire or a hoax. But it turns out to be authentic. And there’s actually much to recommend this if
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July 24, 2021 — Scott Johnson
We continue our preview of the new (Summer) issue of the Claremont Review of Books with Eric Kaufmann’s timely review of Isabel Wilkerson’s celebrated Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Wilkerson is the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter and, unfortunately, her book meets the moment. This is the book: Wilkerson aims to awaken American blacks to the arbitrary caste hierarchy pressing upon them and to open the eyes of
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July 23, 2021 — Steven Hayward
I’ve had occasion in the past to reference the “bootleggers and Baptists” coalition idea that economist Bruce Yandle first suggested as a way of explaining a central aspect public choice theory which holds that seemingly opposite interests some times line up on the same side of an issue because it benefits both sides against the public interest. In the case of “bootleggers and Baptists,” you’d find in certain southern counties
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July 18, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Minnesota Reformer’s Deena Winter has this update from a spokesman for Minnesota state representative John Thompson. Winter quotes a press release from former Thompson campaign manager Jamar Nelson: John Thompson was elected in November to do the will of the people and as a legislator that’s what he has gotten right to work and done. These latest malicious accusations are an attempted political distraction orchestrated by both parties and
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July 15, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The prominent historian C. Vann Woodward saw The Strange Career of Jim Crow through three editions. Originally published in 1955, the book was last updated in a third revised edition published in 1974. I believe it remains a useful book for anyone seeking to understand the phenomenon and its legacy. Indeed, as Woodward sought to keep the book current, I think that each of the three editions of the book
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July 13, 2021 — Scott Johnson
DFL state representative John Thompson is a bully, thug, liar, and race hustler supreme. He made a name for himself threatening to burn down Hugo, Minnesota, in a threatening diatribe outside the home of then Minneapolis police union president Bob Kroll last summer. As a result of his good works, he was elected to the legislature in November 2020 from St. Paul’s East Side. Thompson has held a Wisconsin driver’s
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July 12, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Richard E. Myers II is the Chief District Judge of the United States District Court, Eastern District of North Carolina. He was nominated by Donald Trump and took office on January 1, 2021. Judge Meyers was born in Jamaica. He is of mixed race. Today, he testified before a congressional committee on the subject of “The Importance of a Diverse Federal Judiciary: The Selection and Confirmation Process.” I found his
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