Race
December 12, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Once upon a time, Stanley Fish was a state of the art radical professor — “a scrappy advocate of multiculturalism, affirmative-action hiring quotas, campus speech codes and openly subversive strains of post-structuralist critical theory,” to quote the view attributed to his critics by the New York Times. Fish transformed the Duke University English department into a bastion of “deconstructionism” — the view that literary texts acquire meaning only as a
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December 10, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Is this the dumbest thing I have ever read? It definitely is a contender: “Making Black Women Scientists under White Empiricism: The Racialization of Epistemology in Physics.” The link goes to an abstract of an article that was published by the University of Chicago–God help us!–by one Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Department of Women’s and Gender Studies University of New Hampshire. You
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December 5, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
John wrote below about Democrats gone wild. Let’s file the following story under left-wing Democrats gone wild. Pete Buttigieg hasn’t been able to garner significant support from blacks. One reason is said to be his disagreements with black activists over policing in South Bend, Indiana, where Buttigieg is mayor. I doubt that this is Buttigieg’s main problem with black voters, but I’m sure it doesn’t help him. In any case,
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December 4, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Cory Booker moans that the Democrats are “spiraling towards a debate stage that could have six people with no diversity whatsoever.” This statement is flatly false. The six Dems who have locked up places on the debate stage are Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Tom Steyer. On this list are two women, a gay male, and a Jew. Clearly, it is a diverse group.
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November 19, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, I discussed Pete Buttigieg’s impressive surge in Iowa, but noted that will face a big, if not insuperable, barrier when the primaries come to states with a large number of African-American voters. The first of those states is South Carolina where, according to a new Quinnipiac poll, Buttigieg’s support among black voters is zero percent. Buttigieg’s rivals have attacked Buttigieg over police practices in South Bend and his response,
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November 14, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The Virginia attorney general’s office is undertaking an investigation of the Loudoun County Public Schools to determine whether the school system denies African-American students equal access to advanced programs. The investigation is a response to claims by the NAACP that Loudoun County does so. What is meant here by equal access? No particular racial group is entitled to equal participation in advanced programs. But everyone, regardless of race, has the
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October 5, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday my wife and I attended Turning Point USA’s Black Leadership Summit, including a visit to the White House and a small dinner afterward. Like last year’s event, which I reported on here, it was an inspiring day. The White House event took place in the East Room. It took an hour or so to get through security, but it was a beautiful afternoon in D.C. and the crowd was
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September 29, 2019 — Steven Hayward
What would we do without the New York Times warning us about the menace of . . . (checks notes) . . . surf Nazis! From yesterday’s Times: The first time I saw a swastika in the wild, I happened to be carrying a surfboard. . . At the time, the term “surf Nazi” often got applied to any surfer ferociously committed to the sport and territorial about his local
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September 29, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I’m a little late getting this week’s episode put together, but just in time for your Sunday afternoon walk or Monday morning commute, another installment in our special series critiquing the 1619 Project. For this episode I gave a field promotion to co-host for “Lucretia,” because we have a very special guest Lucas Morel, who is professor of politics and head of the politics department at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia,
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September 24, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
This story from the Washington Post appears regularly these days in something like this form: The [name of county in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area] school system is well regarded. However, minority students continue to lag behind, and some parents complain that the school system isn’t doing right by their children. The latest version pertains to the Arlington, Virginia public schools. The Post reports: There is no shortage of praise
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September 23, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Steve has written about the New York Times’ 1619 Project, an attempt to re-educate Americans about our history through the lens of African American slavery — in other words, to convince us that America is racist to its core. I hadn’t realized that it’s a newspaper’s role to teach history, but the Times has an irresistible urge to delegitimize America. It wants to be in the vanguard of this effort.
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September 23, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Today’s climate strike makes apparent that the left can do more than one thing at a time, though I am sure if I look close enough I will find “environmental racism” a feature of today’s protest somewhere. In any case, I got to wondering whether and how I might connect the climatistas with the left’s race baiters, and I can’t believe it took me so long to see the obvious
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September 21, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on National Security and Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing on “confronting white supremacy.” This is part of the Democrats’ battlespace preparation for the 2020 elections. White supremacy is everywhere! Actually, it is hard to find. I have yet to meet my first white supremacist. But the Democrats have a story and they are sticking to it. Candace Owens
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September 19, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been engulfed in a blackface controversy, and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving twit. As more old photos and videos tumble out of the closet, the BBC headlines: “Canada’s Justin Trudeau cannot say how often he wore blackface.” Three or four instances have come to light so far, and Trudeau says there may be more. He really can’t remember, despite being only 47
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September 13, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Towards the end of the second hour of last night’s Democratic debate, Joe Biden delivered a rambling and mostly incoherent answer to a question about the Iraq war that hadn’t been asked. I wondered whether Biden was losing command, but I didn’t stick around for the third hour to find out. Now, I gather that Biden was, indeed, losing command. A rambling answer to a question in the third hour
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September 13, 2019 — Steven Hayward
“Lucretia,” Power Line’s international woman of mystery, is back with me again this week with the third installment in our special series confronting the pernicious New York Times “1619 Project,” this time taking on the argument that slavery is the central factor in the rise of modern industrial capitalism—a proposal so laughable that we actually spend a lot of our time talking about entirely tangential subjects. (For listeners interested in a serious compilation
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September 12, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, I discussed the special congressional election in North Carolina’s Ninth District. Bolstered by a rally held by President Trump the day before the election, Republican Dan Bishop won the race. However, because his margin of victory — 2 percentage points — was well below the norm in this Republican district, some in the mainstream media are viewing the election as a good sign for Democrats. Here’s the Washington Post’s
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