Racial Preferences
March 2, 2023 — John Hinderaker
On February 16, Joe Biden issued an order titled “Executive Order on Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” The order demands “equity” throughout federal agencies. “Equity” is simply a fancy word for race discrimination. Earlier today, U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow wrote to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, urging Congress to take action against Biden’s race discrimination order. Kirsanow’s letter is
»
February 8, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Left’s attack on meritocracy is one of the most dangerous elements of its effort to undermine our society. Heather Mac Donald has been writing and speaking about this issue for a while, and in April she has a new book coming out titled When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. It is available now for pre-order on Amazon. This is
»
January 22, 2023 — Steven Hayward
One of Stan Evans‘s many great quips was that it was fortunate Republican politicians were pro-life, since they spend so much time in the fetal position. The lack of fight in congressional Republicans was a source of endless frustration for Stan, and despite some indications the new House GOP majority may pick some worthy fights, in some areas they are already proving to be a colossal failure. The Washington Free
»
January 16, 2023 — John Hinderaker
We wrote here about a task force of the State of California that is developing a proposal to pay reparations to the state’s black residents, to the tune of perhaps $800,000 apiece. But that is chump change compared with what is being demanded in San Francisco. The City of San Francisco appointed an African American Reparations Advisory Committee which delivered its draft Plan in December. The Plan is embedded below,
»
January 15, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Perhaps the saddest fact in a sad era is that we are officially a racist society. Our governments at all levels, along with all of our major private institutions, divide Americans into a bizarre schema of racial categories and treat them differently based on those classifications. The whole system is both crazy and corrupt. Law professor David Bernstein is the author of Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in
»
January 12, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Race discrimination has been widespread in America ever since affirmative action became entrenched in the early 1970s. Now, the Supreme Court may finally be poised to bring it to an end, at least in some contexts. Much as litigation was needed to bring an earlier iteration of race discrimination to an end, lawsuits will be necessary to stop institutions from continuing discriminatory practices to which they are deeply attached. Our
»
December 22, 2022 — Scott Johnson
A friend forwards Valley News columnist Jim Kenyon’s report from the frontiers of social equity in Vermont. High times have come in legal form to Vermont. Vermont’s Cannabis Control Board began issuing licenses for cannabis retail stores (a/k/a “recreational dispensaries”) on October 1. Kenyon celebrates the license awarded Miriam Wood to open a store in Hartford, Vermont, up the road a few miles from White River Junction: Wood, who is
»
December 16, 2022 — John Hinderaker
In an era in which bad ideas abound, reparations must be among the worst. The state of California has nevertheless appointed a “Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans.” The study having been undertaken, reparations, in some form, must inevitably follow. It is inconceivable that the task force would study the matter for a year or two and conclude that the state should forget the whole
»
November 1, 2022 — John Hinderaker
It is sad that 161 years after Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, and 154 years after the adoption of the 14th Amendment, we are still debating whether public institutions like the University of North Carolina should be able to engage in race discrimination. One might have thought that by now, that issue would have been settled. Liberals seem resigned to the fact that that they now will have to pretend,
»
November 1, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The subject of what goes under the shibboleth of “affirmative action” is both close to my heart and one about which I have frequently written, usually drawing on Andrew Kull’s legal history The Color-Blind Constitution, Published by Harvard University Press in 1998, it remains a terrific book. If Kull updated it to take cases of the past 25 years into account, the update would vindicate his analysis. One cannot miss
»
October 31, 2022 — Steven Hayward
I listened to all five hours of the Supreme Court oral argument today while on a long car drive home, and am hoping to post a special podcast tomorrow going over the whole scene, but for me, one single moment especially stands out. Seth Waxman, the primary attorney defending Harvard (a former solicitor general under President Clinton), was going head-to-head with Chief Justice John Roberts about whether race is a
»
October 31, 2022 — John Hinderaker
I haven’t seen or read a transcript of today’s Supreme Court hearing. Scott or Steve may offer more informed commentary shortly. But, based on news accounts, the day seems to have gone well for opponents of race discrimination in higher education. The pro-discrimination Washington Post is inconsolable: Conservative justices on Monday seemed open to ending decades of Supreme Court precedent allowing race-conscious admission decisions at colleges and universities, repeatedly expressing
»
October 31, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Today the Supreme Court heard historic arguments on legal challenges to anti-Asian race discrimination by Harvard and the University of North Carolina. I will have more to say about that shortly, but first I want to note a missive that Harvard’s President, Lawrence Bacow, sent to the university’s alumni this morning via email. The communication (signed “Larry”) is also viewable here. Bacow rehearses the tired excuses for race discrimination: Whatever
»
August 23, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Last week Alpha News reported on the blatantly racist contract provision in the new teachers’ union contract with the Minneapolis school district. John drew attention to the Alpha News story the same day. The contract provision is not only blatantly racist, it is blatantly illegal. Alpha News (on whose board I site) performed a public service in reporting on the provision and it has since become a national story. Teachers’
»
August 14, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The answer to that question is, sometimes. One would think this is clearly such an instance: Minneapolis teachers union contract calls for layoffs of white teachers first. That sounds like naked race discrimination by a government entity, but is it illegal? First, some facts: A Minneapolis teachers union contract stipulates that white teachers will be laid off or reassigned before “educators of color” in the event Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS)
»
August 10, 2022 — Steven Hayward
With Supreme Court oral arguments now scheduled for the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative action cases, I’ve started reading through some of the amicus briefs filed in the case, and will comment on some of them in due course. Meanwhile, an exchange of letters between Macklin Fleming, a Justice of the Court of Appeals, State of California at Los Angeles, and Louis Pollak, Dean of the Yale Law School, that was
»
April 23, 2022 — John Hinderaker
David Horowitz throws a cold dash of reality onto the shibboleths of progressive dogma. Are progressives crazy? No, David says, the truth is worse than that. Perhaps the most common conservative reaction to progressive ideas is one of bewilderment. They’re from a different planet, inhabit an alternate universe; they’re insane! Even moderates employ these phrases to express their inability to understand the progressive mentality. And this is so even in
»
