John McWhorter, Losing the Race

At Amazon, John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.

Will Amazon Suppress the True Michael Brown Story?

Interesting. And I'm just learning about this. It's a Shelby Steele joint.

Watch the trailer of Vimeo (here), apparently since YouTube won't host is. 

Jason Riley wrote about it a WSJ (paywall) and City Journal:

Shelby Steele’s new film takes a critical look at the prevailing narrative. It’s now under ‘content review.’

August was the sixth anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the black teenager who was shot dead by a white police officer in Ferguson, Mo. The incident, and the nationwide coverage it attracted, marked the beginning of a period of mass protests against police, which culminated (let’s hope) after the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis this May.

The fashionable explanation for what happened to Brown, Floyd and others—such as Freddie Gray in 2015 and Philando Castile in 2016—is so-called systemic racism. The activist left and the mainstream media insist that law enforcement targeted these men because they were black—and that if they weren’t black, they would still be alive. The truth is more complicated and less politically correct, and it’s the subject of an engrossing new documentary that is scheduled to premiere Oct. 16.

The film, titled “What Killed Michael Brown?,” is written and narrated by the noted race scholar Shelby Steele and directed by his son, Eli Steele. Readers of these pages probably know the elder Mr. Steele through his best-selling books and occasional Journal op-eds. But earlier in his career, Mr. Steele also won acclaim for his work in television. In 1990 he co-wrote and produced “Seven Days in Bensonhurst,” an Emmy-winning documentary about Yusef Hawkins, the black teenager from Brooklyn who was fatally shot in 1989 after he and some friends were attacked by a white mob.

In an interview this week, Mr. Steele, who is based at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, explained the significance of Brown’s death and what it tells us about race relations today. “Michael Brown represented, even more so than Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray and others, the distortion of truth, of reality,” he said. Mr. Steele added that when it comes to racial controversies, liberals have developed what he calls a “poetic truth,” which may be at complete odds with objective truth but nevertheless helps them advance a desirable narrative. In the case of Michael Brown, reality was turned on its head.

“It was almost absolute,” Mr. Steele said. “The language—he was ‘executed,’ he was ‘assassinated,’ ‘hands up, don’t shoot’—it was a stunning example of poetic truth, of the lies that a society can entertain in pursuit of power.” Despite ample forensic evidence, the grand-jury reports and the multiple Justice Department investigations clearing the police officer of any wrongdoing, “there are blacks today, right now in Ferguson, as I point out in the film, who still truly believe that Michael Brown was killed out of racial animus,” he said. “In a microcosm, that’s where race relations are today. The truth has no chance. It’s smothered by the politics of victimization.”

Yet Mr. Steele sees a better future, and the interviews highlighted in “What Killed Michael Brown?” help to explain his optimism. One of the film’s strong suits is showcasing the words and deeds of everyday community leaders in places like Ferguson, St. Louis and Chicago. These people are far more focused on black self-development than on badgering whites or blaming society for problems in poor black communities. They understand and accept objective truth but mostly toil in obscurity while liberal billionaires cut million-dollar checks to subsidize Black Lives Matter activism and antiracism gibberish from “woke” academics.

“It’s easy to say, ‘The white man, the white man,’ and point the finger,” says a pastor in the film whose church is located in one of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. “In reality, we have to take a very close look at ourselves.” His focus is on “the transformation of the person. And we’re telling them, hey, educationally, you gotta get it together. Economically, you gotta get it together. Family and spiritually, you gotta get it together. And you have to take responsibility.”

The president of the St. Louis NAACP chapter told Mr. Steele there was no evidence that the Ferguson protests had done anything to help the black people who live there. Property values have fallen, crime has increased, and schools continue to underperform. “Let’s be clear. The progressive agenda is not the black agenda,” he says. “The people in that community are no better off than they were prior to the death of that young black child. They’re no better off, and everybody knows it.”

Amazon, which was scheduled to stream the movie, is now having second thoughts and has placed it under “content review.” Eli Steele, the director, told me that he will resort to other streaming platforms if he has to and is referring people to the film’s website, WhatKilledMichaelBrown.com, for more details on how to view it. The progressive agenda may not be the black agenda, but it is the media’s agenda. Sadly, speaking plain truths about racial inequality in America today remains controversial.

 More here. 

Viral Video of Abuse

I watched this yesterday.

Story at WaPo, via Memeorandum, "He held a BLM sign in what he called 'America's most racist town.' The result? A viral video of abuse."

😧😧😧 holy crap https://t.co/BWgrRFx9xn

— ErickaAndersen (@ErickaAndersen) July 30, 2020

White Privilege

It's the rage right now, or, atoning for it is.

At LAT, "‘Something is not right.’ George Floyd protests push white Americans to think about their privilege":

The police killing of George Floyd and resulting protests have led white Americans to reckon with racism more vigorously than at any moment in recent history. https://t.co/tpRqGetRha

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 28, 2020

GUALALA, Calif. —  Mike Sexton is white and a Republican who lives in an affluent suburb of Fort Worth, where many neighbors back President Trump and some work in law enforcement. Rage wells up in his voice as he says that George Floyd, a Black man, was “basically lynched.” 

Shawn Ashmore is an independent who lives nearby in east Dallas. He’s using Floyd’s killing to teach his young sons uncomfortable lessons about the privileges their family enjoys because they’re white — how, for instance, they’ll never fear for their lives during an encounter with the police the way some Black men do.

Lisa Joakimides lives in rural Northern California and considers herself a well-meaning Democrat. After the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Joakimides, who is white, convinced herself that America was finally making amends for its history of mistreating Black people.

As Joakimides got down on both knees to honor Floyd at a roadside demonstration in early June, she wondered how she could have been so naive.

Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis, captured in witness videos showing then-Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, has led white Americans to call out racism against Black Americans more vigorously than at any moment in recent memory. And it’s prompting many white people to think more deeply about the color of their own skin.

Why now? Chicago-based sociology professor Jacqueline Battalora believes that after three wearying months of social isolation and economic upheaval brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Floyd’s killing was yet another blow to the illusions of safety, security and equality that many white people harbor about America.

“The police are fair; institutions are fair — white people have been so happy to believe those things,” said Battalora, a former police officer and author of “Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today.” “What this signals is that a good chunk of white people now have some recognition that something’s not right.”

For Sexton, Ashmore and Joakimides, the killing of Floyd and outpourings of rage have forced them to see that expressions of sympathy and displays of solidarity with Black people are only the beginning. America won’t change its racist ways, they say, unless white people use this period of protest and reflection to change, too.

What’s different this time, Sexton said, is that white people have gained a better sense of where that outrage comes from, and how insulated they are from the racial injustices that provoke it.

Sexton, 45, said he can’t sit on the sidelines of the protest movement, or shy away from the national conversation about racism and police brutality, simply because he votes red instead of blue.

“It’s not right versus left,” he said. “It’s right versus wrong.”

Sexton said he wasn’t oblivious to racial discrimination. Every Black person he knows has shared stories of being followed and stopped for no reason by police.

But the video of Floyd’s killing, which captured him crying out “I can’t breathe” and calling out for his dead mother, made Sexton realize the powerlessness and sheer panic that Black people often experience in the presence of officers.

He said it’s crazy that it took so long for him and other white people to fully grasp that horror of police brutality, “but for us, we wouldn’t have understood were it not for the video.”

“Now,” he said, “we’re listening.”

Sexton, a salesman, recently organized a rally for police accountability in a high school parking lot near where he lives in Grapevine, Texas. It drew about 200 demonstrators, most of them white.

Members of the clergy and Grapevine Police Chief Mike Hamlin attended. One of the speakers was a Trump supporter.

A Black teen told the crowd that she was afraid to bring children into the world because she feared she wouldn’t be able to protect them from law enforcement or the country’s racism.

“That broke my heart into a thousand pieces,” Sexton said.

After weeks of protest, opinions about police violence appear to be shifting, but there’s still a large gap between white and Black people about whether it represents a national crisis.

In an AP-NORC poll taken in mid-June, fewer than half of white respondents — 39% — believe that police violence against the public is either an extreme or very serious problem, compared with 80% of Black respondents.

Those numbers did show a shrinking of the gulf between the way white and Black Americans view the issue. The same poll was taken in the early stages of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2015, and then only 19% of white people said police violence was an extreme or serious problem, compared with 73% of Black people.

“It created this opening for white people,” Battalora said of Floyd‘s killing. “But that’s different from saying we ‘get it.’ That will be more of a process.”

It remains to be seen whether the spectacle in recent days of white people locking hands to protect Black demonstrators from riot police, or taking part in the toppling of monuments to Confederate soldiers and slaveholders, represents a turning point...

Still more.

America's Jacobin Moment

At WSJ, "The cultural putsch in America’s institutions strikes at liberal values":

The Editorial Board: If liberals won’t stop the Jacobin left, expect a political backlash and social fracture that will make Donald Trump’s Presidency look like a tea party. https://t.co/O0A91qmF9f

— WSJ Editorial Page (@WSJopinion) June 23, 2020

Anger at the killing of George Floyd has spurred useful reflection about race and perhaps some important police reform. But the political and cultural forces have transformed in recent weeks into something far less healthy—a ferocious campaign of political conformity sweeping across American artistic, educational, business and entertainment institutions.

This coercive cultural turn threatens to devour what remains of America’s civic comity and push durable social progress on race and politics out of reach.

***

We describe this as a Jacobin moment because it has the fervor and indiscriminate judgment of the revolutionary mind. The guillotine isn’t in use, but the impulse is the same to destroy careers, livelihoods and reputations. The wave of resignations, firings, disavowals and forced apologies at institutions large and small is moving so fast it is difficult to keep track...

Social comity in a polarized society will not be achieved through coercion and struggle sessions. If liberals won’t stop the Jacobin left, expect a political backlash and social fracture that will make Donald Trump’s Presidency look like a tea party.

RTWT.

Terrifying Collapse of Rule of Law Across America

I've been waiting for this, from Heather Mac Donald, at City Journal, "Darkness Falls: The collapse of the rule of law across the country, intensified by Antifa radicals, is terrifying":

Savagery is spreading with lightning speed across the United States, with murderous assaults on police officers and civilians.

Welcome to a real civilization-destroying pandemic.

My latest @CityJournal https://t.co/mTZef4vnZP

— Heather Mac Donald (@HMDatMI) June 1, 2020

This pandemic of civil violence is more widespread than anything seen during the Black Lives Matter movement of the Obama years, and it will likely have an even deadlier toll on law enforcement officers than the targeted assassinations we saw from 2014 onward. It’s worse this time because the country has absorbed another five years of academically inspired racial victimology. From Ta-Nehisi Coates to the New York Times’s 1619 project, the constant narrative about America’s endemic white supremacy and its deliberate destruction of the “black body” has been thoroughly injected into the political bloodstream.

Facts don’t matter to the academic victimology narrative. Far from destroying the black body, whites are the overwhelming target of interracial violence. Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white). That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimization, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks. Blacks are less than 13 percent of the national population.

If white mobs were rampaging through black business districts, assaulting passersby and looting stores, we would have heard about it on the national news every night. But the black flash mob phenomenon is grudgingly covered, if at all, and only locally.

The national media have been insisting on the theme of the allegedly brutal Minneapolis police department. They said nothing as black-on-white robberies rose in downtown Minneapolis late last year, along with savage assaults on passersby. Why are the Minneapolis police in black neighborhoods? Because that’s where violent crime is happening, including shootings of two-year-olds and lethal beatings of 75-year-olds. Just as during the Obama years, the discussion of the allegedly oppressive police is being conducted in the complete absence of any recognition of street crime and the breakdown of the black family that drives it.

Once the violence began, any effort to “understand” it should have stopped, since that understanding is inevitably exculpatory. The looters are not grieving over the stomach-churning arrest and death of George Floyd; they are having the time of their lives. You don’t protest or mourn a victim by stealing oxycontin, electronics, jewelry, and sneakers...

RTWT.

Blacks Flee Chicago

At NYT, "Black Families Came to Chicago by the Thousands. Why Are They Leaving?":

There is an exodus of African-American families from Chicago. I spent months with one family, in its three, complicated generations, who told the story of why. https://t.co/yhB3krBFtd

— Julie Bosman (@juliebosman) February 17, 2020

HILLSIDE, Ill. — Hardis White, 78, could hardly wait to break out of suburbia.

He dressed in a flannel shirt, jeans and a Bears cap, strode out of the rectangular bungalow he shares with his wife and daughter and folded his tall frame behind the wheel of his silver Nissan sedan.

Forty minutes away from his suburban neighborhood of Hillside, he arrived in Chicago, on Laporte Avenue, to see what he had come to see: a handsome brick house with white trim, two stories tall, as solid as the first day he saw it in 1967.

For a moment, he gazed at the house. Marvin Gaye played softly on the radio. The grass seemed a little long, he murmured. He put the car back in gear and started back to the suburbs.

“I don’t know why I keep coming back,” he said. “I guess I just miss the neighborhood.”

Some people, lured by nostalgia and curiosity, drive past their old houses now and then. Mr. White does it nearly every day.

Today, he is one of the more than 200,000 African-Americans who have moved out of Chicago in the last two decades, though in some ways, he never left. For more than a year, he has taken this daily pilgrimage back to the house on Laporte, to the city where his children grew up and where two of his daughters still live.

The steady exodus of African-Americans has caused alarm and grief in Chicago, the nation’s third largest city, where black people have shaped the history, culture and political life. The population of 2.7 million is still nearly split in thirds among whites, blacks and Latinos, but the balance is shifting. Chicago saw its population decline in 2018, the fourth year in a row. Since 2015, almost 50,000 black residents have left.

They have been driven out of the city by segregation, gun violence, discriminatory policing, racial disparities in employment, the uneven quality of public schools and frustration at life in neighborhoods whose once-humming commercial districts have gone quiet, as well as more universal urban complaints like rising rents and taxes. At the same time, white, Latino and Asian residents are flowing in, and Chicago’s wealthier, whiter downtown, West Loop and North Side have been booming. Lori Lightfoot, the city’s first black mayor in decades, has vowed to stem the loss of longtime residents, and the city has collectively grasped for solutions.

The White family is a living symbol of what Chicago has kept and lost.

Members of three generations of the White family have grappled with the choice of whether to stay in Chicago or leave. Each family member’s story offers a glimpse into the city’s shifting migration pattern. Each story reveals what has made Chicagoans decide to leave the city or made them more determined to remain.

Mr. White, who arrived in Chicago from Mississippi when he was a teenager, moved to the suburbs because of the growing needs of his wife, Velma, who has dementia. Like many Chicagoans of his generation, he left the city only reluctantly.

The couple moved in with Dora, their oldest daughter, who traded Chicago for Hillside for a very different reason: She was fed up with drug sales and violence in the family’s neighborhood on the West Side.

But the couple’s other adult daughters, Nesan and Tshena, still live in the family home on Laporte, confident that their neighborhood is showing signs of a turnaround.

And in the next generation, Ke’Oisha, the Whites’ oldest grandchild, left Chicago for job opportunities elsewhere, following a path out of the city that many other black college graduates have taken. She headed south, finding a career in Houston, a growing metropolis teeming with young transplants and opportunity.

In one sense, the Whites are an archetypal Chicago family, said Rob Paral, a demographer who studies the city’s population.

Many black Chicagoans have taken only small steps away from the city, resettling in nearby suburbs in Illinois or Indiana that offer more highly rated schools and a lower cost of living. Others have followed the path of a reverse migration, making homes in places like Atlanta, many decades after black families came to Chicago and other Northern cities in large numbers in search of opportunity.

“It’s an American tragedy,” said the Rev. Marshall Hatch, a pastor on the West Side whose congregants have been disappearing for years, heading to cities throughout the Midwest and the South. “Look at the legacy that the African-American community had in national politics, in culture, with blues and gospel and jazz, and sports, from Michael Jordan to Ernie Banks. African-American Chicago is being destroyed.”

The Chicago story of the White family begins in 1956, with 13-year-old Hardis riding a train north with his uncle. They started their journey in Tupelo, Miss. Their destination was Chicago’s Union Station. They were part of the Great Migration, when millions of African-Americans moved north, seeking a better life.

Life in Mississippi had often been grueling. Young Hardis was required to pick cotton, usually bringing in 150 pounds a day. Chicago was an instant wonder, with its skyscrapers and buzzing street life. He and his uncle, who came to Chicago to join family members who had already settled there, arrived days before the city hosted the 1956 Democratic convention.

“I loved it right away,” he said.

When he was 23, he married Velma, a fellow transplant from the South. In 1967, they bought the house on Laporte — a two-flat, in Chicago parlance, on the city’s West Side — for $23,500. They were among the first African-American couples on the block.

But the next year, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and riots tore through Chicago. “That’s when most of the businesses started moving out,” Mr. White said. “Car dealerships, supermarkets. When the business goes out of the neighborhood, that’s the neighborhood.”

White families were fleeing, urged on by unscrupulous real estate agents.

“Things were changing fast,” Mr. White said. “They had rumors going around, telling the whites that blacks were moving in, so they’d better sell their property.”

Some white neighbors vowed to stay, then left anyway. “One guy, three doors down, told me he wouldn’t sell his place just because blacks were moving in,” Mr. White said. “And that’s the last time I saw him.”

The house on Laporte was the center of the White family’s world. Dora, Nesan and Tshena attended school around the corner. Mr. White worked overnights as a meatpacker in an Oscar Mayer plant, stirring vats of sausage in bone-chilling temperatures on the factory floor, and Velma was a nurse at Cook County’s public hospital. More family members — Mr. White’s mother and his sister and brother-in-law and their children — lived in the upper flat...

Keep reading.

Black Americans Deeply Pessimistic Under Trump

Well, more than 95 percent of blacks voted for Obama, twice. If Dems can't maintain those numbers in November it could be trouble for the party.

There is a "blexit" exodus going on, with lots of black conservatives leading the movement to get African-Americans off the Democrat plantation.

I love it.

At WaPo, FWIW, "Black Americans deeply pessimistic about country under Trump, whom more than 8 in 10 describe as ‘a racist,’ Post-Ipsos poll finds":

“If I’m in a room with white women, I know that 50 percent of them voted for Trump and they believe in his ideas,” said a university researcher. “I look at them and think, ‘How do you see me? What is my humanity to you?’ ” https://t.co/LP1BCOj0G4

— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) January 17, 2020

President Trump made a stark appeal to black Americans during the 2016 election when he asked, “What have you got to lose?” Three years later, black Americans have rendered their verdict on his presidency with a deeply pessimistic assessment of their place in the United States under a leader seen by an overwhelming majority as racist.

The findings come from a Washington Post-Ipsos poll of African Americans nationwide, which reveals fears about whether their children will have a fair shot to succeed and a belief that white Americans don’t fully appreciate the discrimination that black people experience.

While personally optimistic about their own lives, black Americans today offer a bleaker view about their community as a whole. They also express determination to try to limit Trump to a single term in office.

More than 8 in 10 black Americans say they believe Trump is a racist and that he has made racism a bigger problem in the country. Nine in 10 disapprove of his job performance overall.

The pessimism goes well beyond assessments of the president. A 65 percent majority of African Americans say it is a “bad time” to be a black person in America. That view is widely shared by clear majorities of black adults across income, generational and political lines. By contrast, 77 percent of black Americans say it is a “good time” to be a white person, with a wide majority saying white people don’t understand the discrimination faced by black Americans.

Courtney Tate, 40, an elementary school teacher in Irving, Tex., outside Dallas, said that since Trump was elected, he’s been having more conversations with his co-workers — discussions that are simultaneously enlightening and exhausting — about racial issues he and his students face everyday.

“As a black person, you’ve always seen all the racism, the microaggressions, but as white people they don't understand this is how things are going for me,” said Tate, who said he is the only black male teacher in his school. “They don’t live those experiences. They don’t live in those neighborhoods. They moved out. It’s so easy to be white and oblivious in this country.”

Francine Cartwright, a 44-year-old mother of three from Moorestown, N.J., said the ascent of Trump has altered the way she thinks about the white people in her life.

“If I’m in a room with white women, I know that 50 percent of them voted for Trump and they believe in his ideas,” said Cartwright, a university researcher. “I look at them and think, ‘How do you see me? What is my humanity to you?’ ”

The president routinely talks about how a steadily growing economy and historically low unemployment have resulted in more African Americans with jobs and the lowest jobless rate for black Americans recorded. Months ago he said, “What I’ve done for African Americans in two-and-a-half years, no president has been able to do anything like it.”

But those factors have not translated positively for the president. A 77 percent majority of black Americans say Trump deserves “only some” or “hardly any” credit for the 5.5 percent unemployment rate among black adults compared with 20 percent who say Trump deserves significant credit.

In follow-up interviews, many said former president Barack Obama deserves more credit for the improvement in the unemployment rate, which declined from a high of 16.8 percent in 2010 to 7.5 percent when he left office.

Others said their personal financial situation is more a product of their own efforts than anything the president has done.

“I don’t think [Trump] has anything to do with unemployment among African Americans,” said Ethel Smith, a 72-year-old nanny who lives in Lithonia, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. “I’ve always been a working poor person. That’s just who I am.”

Black Americans report little change in their personal financial situations in the past few years, with 19 percent saying it has been getting better and 26 percent saying it has been getting worse. Most, 54 percent, say their financial situation has stayed the same...

Remember, all polls are questionable in the current era --- because "shy" voters don't want to reveal their real preferences, and that goes for blacks too.

If 20 percent of blacks vote for Trump in the key Midwest battleground states in November, the Dems can kiss it goodbye.

Lots of folks are talkin' about a Trump landslide. I can't wait.

Still more.

Angry Black Lady Gets Angry at Celebrity Fitness Trainer Jillian Michaels, Who Suggested Lizzo's Morbid Obesity Isn't Something to Be Celebrating

Michaels is doubly guilty in that, yes, it's gauche to criticize someone's weight publicly, but it's particularly objectionable if the critic is white.

Do let us know when you can twerk and play the flute at the same time, Jillian. Until then, shut your mouth. https://t.co/jvvYlNK5Fu

— Imani Gandy (@AngryBlackLady) January 8, 2020

Democrats 'Rethink' Primary Campaign Strategy Around Race and Identity

I don't think they're really "rethinking" things so much as officially abandoning any effort to appeal to working class voters, especially white working class men in the Rustbelt. Frankly, this is like a replay of 2016, but with some scenes re-shot. More identity politics racism. More cowbell.

At Politico:

The Democratic primary, a contest once largely defined by ideology, is suddenly being re-framed around questions of race and identity https://t.co/2PDG0RCwkh

— POLITICO (@politico) November 25, 2019

Teaching That America is Hopelessly Racist

A great piece, from Peter Wood, at Minding the Campus.

Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told

At Amazon, Edward E. Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.

Why Kamala Harris' Ancestry is Relevant

At the Other McCain, "The Media Smear Machine (and Why Kamala Harris’s Ancestry Is Relevant)."

Neither of Kamala Harris’s parents are Americans. Her mother is from India and her father is from Jamaica. Harris spent most of her childhood in Canada. She thus has little in common with most black people in the United States whose ancestors were slaves here. Before this fact became controversial, it was referenced by such “far-right” personalities as . . . CNN’s Don Lemon.

Keep reading.

D Is for Damaged, Dangerous and Delusional

From Dennis Prager, at American Greatness:

D Is for Damaged, Dangerous and Delusional https://t.co/fVKUdAmhqL pic.twitter.com/SgTSe8vocc

— American Greatness (@theamgreatness) July 3, 2019

If you watched either or both of the two Democratic Party presidential candidate debates, and if you are a liberal, a conservative or a centrist, you had to have been depressed. The intellectual shallowness, the demagoguery and the alienation from reality were probably unprecedented in American political history. Only a leftist, a socialist or a communist could have gone to bed a happy person on either night.

If you think this is a baseless generalization, here are a few of myriad examples from the first night:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): “(The economy is not doing great) for the African Americans and Latinx whose families are torn apart, whose lives are destroyed and whose communities are ruined.”

Two things stand out: First is Warren’s morally reprehensible and false description of the economy. She never explains how the American economy is tearing families apart, destroying lives or ruining communities. Aside from being baseless, it is another left-wing libel against America.

She went on to explain economic inequality in America: “Corruption, pure and simple. We need to call it out.” It is difficult to overstate the contempt she and the rest of the left have for America.

Even more troubling was Warren’s use of the term “Latinx.” When leftist Orwellian newspeak makes its way into the United States Senate and into the vocabulary of a presidential candidate, the country is in trouble.

Here is how HuffPost explains the term (of which it approves):

“Latinx is the gender-neutral alternative to Latino, Latina and even Latin@. … Latinx is quickly gaining popularity among the general public. It’s part of a ‘linguistic revolution’ that aims to move beyond gender binaries and is inclusive of the intersecting identities of Latin American descendants. In addition to men and women from all racial backgrounds, Latinx also makes room for people who are trans, queer, agender, non-binary, gender non-conforming or gender fluid.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.): “If billionaires can pay off their yachts, students should be able to pay off their student loans.”

My only response to this statement is to ask, Do most Democrats find that a compelling argument? Do they not realize what a non sequitur it is—and therefore how demagogic?

Billionaires, like non-billionaires, pay off their debts because they do not incur debts they cannot repay, not because they are billionaires. Senator Klobuchar apparently believes that non-billionaires need not pay off their debts. Every Democrat who addressed this issue said American society should repay student debts—which amount to $1.6 trillion. The party of “fairness” thinks it’s fair that every student who repaid his or college debts—and every young American who never went to college—must pay off that debt.

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro spoke in Spanish. Perhaps they—like all on the left—are unaware of the importance of all Americans speaking English in uniting the most ethnically disparate nation in human history. You cannot say “diversity is our strength” if you do not work to unite all the diverse cultures into Americans. And you cannot unite Americans without one language.

Their speaking Spanish was so transparently pandering to Latin, Latino, Latina, Latin@ and Latinx Americans that, for that reason alone, that group should decline to vote Democrat.

O’Rourke: “This economy has got to work for everyone. And right now, we know that it isn’t.”

This is just not true. Given some of the lowest unemployment rates in modern American history, this economy seems to be working quite well—certainly for all those willing to work.

Booker: “This is actually an economy that’s hurting small businesses and not allowing them to compete.”

The question I always want answered when someone on the left tells an outright lie is, Does he or she believe it? Someone should ask this of Booker. As the National Federation of Independent Businesses announced last month:

“Optimism among small business owners has surged back to historically high levels, thanks to strong hiring, investment, and sales,” said NFIB President and CEO Juanita D. Duggan. “The small business half of the economy is leading the way, taking advantage of lower taxes and fewer regulations, and reinvesting in their businesses, their employees, and the economy as a whole.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: “There’s plenty of money in this country. It’s just in the wrong hands. Democrats have to fix that.”

The notion that America’s money is “in the wrong hands, (and) Democrats have to fix that” should frighten every American who believes in private property and who opposes dictatorships and theft.

Castro: “I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom; I believe in reproductive justice.”

Here’s an important rule: Whenever anyone adds an adjective to the word “justice,” know that the person is not speaking about justice but about something else entirely. “Social” justice is another such example.

Castro boldly proclaimed his view that unauthorized border crossing should be decriminalized and announced, “In my first 100 days with immigration reform (I) would put undocumented (i.e., illegal) immigrants, as long as they haven’t committed a serious crime, on a pathway to citizenship.”

Though not one Democrat candidate used the term, every single one believes in open borders...

Kamala Harris Wants to Bring Back Forced Busing

This is at the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Kamala Harris and Classmates Were Bused Across Berkeley. The Experience Changed Them."

She's on record as supporting a return to the failed desegregation polices of the 1970s.

And at the Los Angeles Times, "School busing in Berkeley during Kamala Harris’ childhood was both voluntary and volatile":

Kamala Harris, Berkeley and busing >>> "Even in a city that had become a worldwide symbol of 1960s counterculture revolt, systemic racial prejudice in education and housing remained deeply entrenched." https://t.co/3sBXbF6yHe Excellent @LATSeema @melmason @finneganLAT

— Shelby Grad (@shelbygrad) July 1, 2019

.@KamalaHarris: “I support busing. Listen, the schools of America are as segregated, if not more segregated, today than when I was in [school]...need to put every effort, including busing, into play to de-segregate the schools...fed govt has a role & a responsibility to step up." pic.twitter.com/a7ujueP0Bu

— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) June 30, 2019

The school bus ride was less than three miles from one side of Berkeley to the other, but from 1969 to 1973 it transported Carole Porter to an entirely different world.

Like her neighbor and friend Kamala Harris, Porter was one of thousands of black children bused into predominantly white neighborhoods to learn. It was part of Berkeley’s bold experiment in desegregation.

But even in a city that had become a worldwide symbol of 1960s counterculture revolt, systemic racial prejudice in education and housing remained deeply entrenched.

“That’s a really hard thing to reconcile,” said Porter, 55. “Berkeley was an oxymoron. It was a contradiction in many ways.”

Harris’ three years of busing from her family’s mainly black working-class neighborhood to a prosperous white enclave in the hills overlooking San Francisco Bay was at once universal and uniquely Berkeley.

As in many American cities, the discriminatory housing policy known as redlining kept blacks from moving into white neighborhoods in Berkeley and busing fueled some white flight to the suburbs.

But unlike other sizable cities, Berkeley undertook its busing program voluntarily and required both white and black families to travel into unfamiliar neighborhoods. Rapid demographic and political changes shielded the community from the most extreme pushback, including violence, that hobbled busing efforts nationwide.

More than 50 years after Berkeley launched its busing program, Harris, one of its most famous participants, thrust it back into the spotlight in last week’s Democratic presidential debate.

As California’s first black senator chastised her rival Joe Biden for his fight against forced busing in the ’70s, she leaned on her personal history in Berkeley, portraying herself as a beneficiary of the charged battle for educational equality.

“There was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day,” Harris said. “And that little girl was me.”

Contrary to its enduring reputation as a progressive mecca, the Berkeley of Harris’ childhood was more politically muddled. The conservative John Birch Society operated two bookstores in the area. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that Democrats cracked a Republican stronghold on the city council. Black residents were restricted to living to the southern and western flats, while whites resided in the northern hills.

Thelette A. Bennett, 71, a retired vice principal of Berkeley High School, grew up in the same neighborhood as Harris.

Bennett’s father, a black World War II Navy veteran, was an airplane mechanic at a local naval air station in 1945, when redlining blocked him and his wife from buying a house in a white neighborhood. Even in the black neighborhood where they settled, she said, they needed to get a white real estate agent to buy a home and transfer it to them.

“There were only certain areas where they could buy a home,” Bennett said. “We lived where they allowed us to live.”

But a large influx of African Americans during and after World War II and whites affiliated with UC Berkeley were pulling the local politics to the left, paving the way for desegregation. Black leaders raised concerns about segregation in the city starting in the late 1950s.

In response, the school board studied the matter, concluding that all but three of the district’s 17 elementary schools and two of the three junior high schools were segregated. (Berkeley High, the city’s only high school, was integrated by default.) In 1964, the school board voted to desegregate its junior high schools.

Residents’ reactions were not as extreme as the segregation battles elsewhere in the country, such as the South, but “it wasn’t as far from that as you might assume,” said Natalie Orenstein, a reporter for local news site Berkeleyside. “There were definitely really angry parents and hours-long school meetings.”

Desegregation opponents launched recall campaigns of multiple school board members over the junior high busing program, but lost by a wide margin.

Democrats Move Left --- Frankly, It's Just All Out in the Open Now

It's not like the Dems haven't been a far-left extremist party. It's now that they're not afraid to come out as the crypto-Marxists they truly are.

At LAT, "This is not your father’s Democratic Party: Debate shows how leftward it has moved":

The Democratic Party opened its 2020 presidential debates with a remarkably policy-focused exchange that illustrated how consistently to the left they have moved. For the night, at least, this was Elizabeth Warren’s party.

The Democratic senator from Massachusetts, who entered the debate with momentum behind her campaign, set the tone and dominated the early part of the debate, which focused on economic policy.

“When you've got a government, when you've got an economy that does great for those with money and isn't doing great for everyone else, that is corruption, pure and simple,” she said. “We need to make structural change in our government, in our economy and in our country.”

Even those of her rivals who don’t fully share that assessment declined chances to put themselves at odds with Warren. Instead, they sang from the same hymnal of left-wing economic populism declaring the need for broad reforms of the political and economic system.

“It is time we have an economy that works for everybody,” said Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, after minimizing his differences with Warren’s plan to break up big tech companies.

The shift in the party goes beyond economics. As the debate made clear, it includes gun control, abortion, climate change and immigration, among other issues. On each of those, candidates took positions to the left of those embraced by either of the last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who was barely mentioned by any of the candidates.

Rather than Clinton’s call for abortion to be “safe, legal and rare,” for example, the debate featured candidates stressing that the universal healthcare plans they backed would include public funds to pay for abortions for poor women.

On healthcare, only two candidates — Warren and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio — raised their hands when asked who would favor fully abolishing private health insurance plans in favor of instituting “Medicare for all.” But even those who favored a more moderate approach, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, for example, said they preferred a new government health insurance option for all — an idea that was considered too radical to pass when Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act less than a decade ago.

On immigration, former Obama Cabinet official Julián Castro pressed for decriminalizing illegal border crossings, making that a civil rather than a criminal offense. While Castro was correct in saying that the Trump administration had used the criminal law in a far more aggressive way than its predecessors, the law that makes unauthorized border crossings a criminal offense has been on the books for decades. Eliminating it is a move popular with some activists.

At least three of the candidates — Warren, Booker and Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio — share Castro’s view. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke disagreed, and the clash between the two Texans over decriminalizing the border made for one of the night’s most intense moments, but it was notable that the disagreement came on a proposal that went far beyond anything that the Obama administration, in which Castro served, ever talked about.

And there was broad party consensus on gun control, an issue that Democrats for years shied from. Booker’s proposal to require gun licensing goes significantly further than what gun-safety advocates have dreamed of proposing.

The leftward tilt of the party did give some candidates pause.

“We have a perception problem with the Democratic Party that we are not connecting to the working class,” said Ryan, who represents the Youngstown, Ohio, area. “We have to change the center of gravity from being coastal elites and Ivy League.”

Klobuchar took a veiled swipe at Warren’s promises to enact broad changes in the political and economic system.

“I don’t make all the promises others up here make,” Klobuchar said. “I’m going to govern.”

But others argued for going further left, notably De Blasio, struggling for a breakout moment and calling the primary a “battle for the heart and soul of our party.”

“This Democratic Party has to be strong and bold and progressive,” he said.

Joe Biden 'Dated Himself', 'Underperformed' — and 'Was Eaten Alive'

It was really terrible. Following-up, "Joe Biden Damage Control (VIDEO)."

At Politico, "Biden ‘Dated Himself,’ ‘Underperformed’—and ‘Was Eaten Alive’."

And, "Joe Biden's rivals pummel him after shaky debate performance: The Democratic contenders question whether the former vice president is ‘up to this challenge'":

Joe Biden’s Democratic rivals delivered blow after blow on Friday morning, seeking to further diminish the presidential front-runner’s prospects after he delivered a shaky performance on Thursday night’s debate stage.

“I think that we have to have a nominee that’s up to this challenge, and I think that we’re going to see whether or not Joe Biden is,” Cory Booker warned Friday morning in an interview on CNN’s “New Day.”

“And I don't think you can fault folks like me for calling him out if he fails to live up to the standard our next nominee should have and speak to the real pain and real hurt that I think Kamala spoke to last night,” the New Jersey senator said.

In the most vivid scene from Thursday’s forum of 10 Democratic presidential candidates, Kamala Harris launched a raw onslaught against Biden, the primary field’s leader, for his opposition to federally mandated school busing in the 1970s.

The California senator revealed during the confrontation that she was bused during her childhood as part of the second class to integrate public schools in Berkeley, Calif., and also described as “hurtful” comments Biden made earlier this month about working with segregationist Mississippi Sen. James Eastland during his time in the Senate.

Asked Friday whether the comments and Biden’s busing record disqualify him as a candidate, Harris said that was “a decision for the voters to make.” She also brushed off accusations that raising those controversies Thursday amounted to a “low blow” against Biden.

“It was about just speaking truth,” Harris said on “CBS This Morning.”

“As I’ve said many times, I have a great deal of respect for Joe Biden. He has served our country over many years in a very noble way, but he and I disagree on that,” she said. “And it is a debate, this is a campaign where we should be discussing issues, and there will be contrast. And on this issue … there is a contrast of opinion on the significance of people who have served in the United States Senate and what they have done in terms of their policies.”

Speaking Friday at the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition convention in Chicago, Biden asserted that he “never, ever opposed voluntary busing” and instead supported “federal action to address root causes of segregation in our schools and our communities” — insisting that he has “always been in favor of using federal authority to overcome state initiated segregation.”

Joe Biden Damage Control (VIDEO)

It went badly for Biden last night. Very badly, and now he's doing damage control. He spoke today in Chicago at a Rainbow Push gathering. I can's see how that helps him with the hardcore radical base of the party.

 Watch the full thing, at Bloomberg Tic Toc, "Biden Defends Civil Rights Record In First Remarks Since Harris Debate Attack."

And on Twitter:

Joe Biden defends his civil rights record after debate: “I heard and I listened to and I respect Sen. Harris. But, you know, we all know that 30 seconds to 60 seconds on a campaign debate exchange can’t do justice to a lifetime committed to civil rights" https://t.co/aGy3S7MpAG pic.twitter.com/sOgPdJf1vt

— CNN (@CNN) June 28, 2019

I am still thinking about six minutes ago. Harris directly confronting Biden on busing/segregationists was historic, powerful, and unimaginable on a presidential stage until very recently, which is itself symptomatic of a world Biden is struggling to defend.

— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) June 28, 2019

Kamala Harris Breaks Out (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Joe Biden Hammered at Second Democrat Party Debate (VIDEO)."

At LAT, "Kamala Harris, known for caution, finds a risky move pays off against Joe Biden":

There was a little girl in California who was bussed to school. That little girl was me. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/XKm2xP1MDH

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 28, 2019

For weeks, supporters of Sen. Kamala Harris had pointed to the first Democratic debate as the opportunity to break out of her campaign doldrums.

What no one said — and few would have predicted — was that she would do so by taking on the candidate at center stage, former Vice President Joe Biden, upbraiding him for his opposition to busing for school integration and his nostalgic reminiscences about his relationships with segregationist senators early in his career.

“I do not believe you are a racist,” Harris began, turning to face Biden. But, she added, “it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.

“And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing. And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was a part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.”

Biden, sputtering in response, declared Harris’ accusation “a mischaracterization of my position across the board.” He rattled off civil rights measures he had supported in his long career as a senator and tried to defend his opposition to busing during the 1970s and 1980s.

“I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education,” he said, reprising the states’-rights position that he, as a senator from a border state with a history of segregation, had taken decades earlier.

Harris shot back: “That’s where the federal government must step in, that’s why we have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act … because there are moments in history where states fail to preserve the civil rights of all people.”

The ambush seemed carefully planned. Harris’ campaign aides were armed with photos of the candidate as a little girl, which they tweeted out moments after the clash. It was a surprising risk for Harris, a candidate often described as cautious to a fault...

Risky or not, it worked.

Ms. Harris got her breakout moment. Let's see if it lasts.

Joe Biden Hammered at Second Democrat Party Debate (VIDEO)

I gotta admit it really was something else, man.

She had that attack all cued up and ready for firing. And she blasted Biden, and he struggled and stammered, and he's in damage control now.

She won the debate, but damn, what a nightmare if she were to secure the Democrat nomination. Terrible.

At LAT, "Democratic debate: Joe Biden pushed on the defensive by Kamala Harris and others":

.@hookjan and @evanhalper wrap tonight's second presidential debate: Biden on the defensive, Harris on the upswing https://t.co/96JNwSQ30Z

— Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) June 28, 2019

Joe Biden, after months of trying to stay above the campaign fray, joined his 2020 rivals in debate Thursday and immediately faced challenges on issues of race, his relationship with Republicans, his support for the Iraq war and the need for generational change in the party.

The former vice president, who has been the front-runner in early polls, was thrown on the defensive by California Sen. Kamala Harris over recent remarks in which he sounded nostalgic about an era in the Senate when he could work civilly with segregationists.

In an intense flash of anger, Biden defended his record on civil rights, including his opposition in the 1970s to federally ordered school busing for desegregation — one of several occasions when he hunkered down to defend his record over 40 years in Washington and the reputation of the Obama administration.

“If you want to have this campaign litigated on who supports civil rights … I am ready to do that,” he said.

It was a dramatic, personal challenge that overshadowed the expected clash between Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the democratic socialist who is his ideological foil and is running second among Democratic primary voters in most polls.

It was the second of two evenings of debates on MSNBC, under rules set by the Democratic National Committee, marking the beginning of a new phase of the 2020 campaign that reached beyond the party’s most politically active members to a broader electorate.

The debate also exposed divisions among the 10 candidates onstage Thursday — over healthcare, immigration and what it will take to beat President Trump in 2020. It was something of a free-for-all of cross-talk and interruptions, as candidates — especially the lesser-known ones — struggled to be heard.

At one point, Harris interjected, “America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we are going to put food on their table.”

The raucous debate may unsettle some of the dynamics of the race.

Harris’ confrontation with Biden was a signal moment for the senator, whose campaign had been stalled below the top tier in polling. She took the high-profile opportunity to stake out ground as a fresh and compelling voice on race — an issue Democrats continue to struggle with, at a time when African American voters will be crucial to the party’s success. And Harris, unafraid to confront Biden directly on this uncomfortable issue, was the only rival who truly knocked him off his game.

Sanders, by contrast, staked out no new ground, even as his chief rival for voters on the left wing of the party, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, dominated the Wednesday debate.

Sanders offered his trademark call for dramatic change, including the expansion of Medicare for all Americans and free public college.

Eight takeaways from Night 1 of the Democratic debate »
“We have a new vision for America,” said Sanders. “We think it is time for change. Real change.”

He acknowledged he would impose higher taxes on the middle class but said that would be offset by the dramatically lower costs of healthcare. It was a statement that Republicans immediately seized on as ammunition.

“Bernie Sanders boasted that middle class Americans are going to have to pay more in taxes if his socialist policies are enacted,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said on Twitter. “The contrast could not be clearer - @realDonaldTrump cut taxes for the middle class, and Democrats want to tax middle class Americans into oblivion.”

Sanders made no apologies for his agenda, saying it would not doom the party’s chances to beat Trump...