Showing posts with label Civil Rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civil Rights. Show all posts

Saturday, July 24, 2021

C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow

At Amazon, C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow.




Biden Splits with Voting Rights Activists on New Federal Legislation

Maybe he's not that radical after all. Thus far, it seems nothing on the extreme left's wish-list hasn't been granted.  

At NYT, "Democrats’ Divide on Voting Rights Widens as Biden Faces Pressure":

WASHINGTON — A quiet divide between President Biden and the leaders of the voting rights movement burst into the open on Thursday, as 150 organizations urged him to use his political mettle to push for two expansive federal voting rights bills that would combat a Republican wave of balloting restrictions.

In the letter, signed by civil rights groups including the Leadership Conference and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, activists argued that with the “ideal of bipartisan cooperation on voting rights” nowhere to be found in a sharply divided Senate, Mr. Biden must “support the passage of these bills by whatever means necessary.”

The issue is of paramount importance to Democrats: Republicans have passed roughly 30 laws in states across the country this year that are likely to make voting harder, especially in Black and Latino communities, which lean Democratic. Several of the laws give state legislators more power over how elections are run and make it easier to challenge the results.

In a fiery speech in Philadelphia last week, Mr. Biden warned that the G.O.P. effort was the “most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.”

But the president and voting rights advocates are increasingly in disagreement about how to pass that test.

Mr. Biden, a veteran of the Senate who for decades has believed in negotiating on the particulars of voting rights legislation, has faced calls to push Democratic senators to eliminate the filibuster, which would allow the two major voting bills proposed by the party to pass with a simple majority. The president and his advisers have repeatedly pointed out that he does not have the votes within his own party to pass federal voting legislation, and does not have the power to unilaterally roll back the filibuster even if he supported doing so.

But voting rights groups say that Mr. Biden is not expending sufficient political capital or using the full force of his bully pulpit to persuade Congress. They point to the contrast between his soaring language — “Jim Crow on steroids,” he has called the G.O.P. voting laws — and his opposition to abolishing the Senate filibuster.

“As you noted in your speech, our democracy is in peril,” the groups said in their letter. “We certainly cannot allow an arcane Senate procedural rule to derail efforts that a majority of Americans support.”

Ultimately, the advocates fear that the Biden administration — currently focused on a bipartisan infrastructure deal and an ambitious spending proposal — has largely accepted the Republican restrictions as baked in, and is now dedicating more of its effort to juicing Democratic turnout.

In private calls with voting rights groups and civil rights leaders, White House officials and close allies of the president have expressed confidence that it is possible to “out-organize voter suppression,” according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.

“I have heard an emphasis on organizing,” said Sherrilyn A. Ifill, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who visited the Oval Office to meet with the president two weeks ago. But, she added, “we cannot litigate our way out of this and we cannot organize our way out of this.”

Several Biden advisers involved in the private calls said this week that they did not recall telling attendees that voter suppression could be out-organized, but said organizing was integral to the administration’s efforts.

Broadly, Mr. Biden’s advisers insist that the administration is committed to protecting access to the ballot and passing two federal bills: the For the People Act, an overhaul of federal election laws that was considered more of a political statement than viable legislation when it was first introduced in 2019, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore important parts of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court stripped away in 2013.

Republicans have castigated the For the People Act as overreaching and partisan. And Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, has said there is no need for a bill restoring parts of the Voting Rights Act.

White House officials privately note that even if Mr. Biden came out in support of ending the filibuster, moderate Democrats, including Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have publicly resisted such a move. Mr. Manchin has also called the For the People Act a piece of “partisan” legislation...

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Charles W. Mills, From Class to Race

 At Amazon, Charles W. Mills, From Class to Race.




'Critical Race Weary'

From Buck Sexton:

Much of the recent attention on Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) has been a result of the increase in Zoom teaching during the COVID-19 school shutdowns. Parents became aware of the kind of identity-politics indoctrination forced on their kids. Students who hadn’t even reached high-school age were being told that they were part of systematic oppression based on their skin color.

It has been known for a long time that academia is riddled with CRT nonsense, and college campuses have been demanding that students worship at the altar of “Diversity and Inclusion.” But corporate America has also been infiltrated with similar politically correct brainwashing.

The Marxist rot of CRT has spread into the executive suites of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world. Case in point: Raytheon Technologies. It’s the second-largest defense contractor in the world, with around 181,000 employees and revenue over $56 billion in 2020.

It’s not the kind of place one might expect to be nagging employees about “checking their privilege” or “confronting historical oppression.” This is a place that makes missiles that blow people up, among other things.

Yet thanks to an industrious think-tank scholar at the Manhattan Institute named Christopher Rufo, we know that when Raytheon isn’t coming up with new ways to drop bombs on the Third World, its employees sit through some of the most absurd and offensive racial sensitivity training imaginable.

Rufo got his hands on the actual training materials from Raytheon’s version of CRT training. He writes in City Journal about some of the most insane PC training modules, such as when:

Raytheon asks white employees to deconstruct their identities and identify [their] privilege. The company argues that white, straight, Christian, able-bodied, English-speaking men are at the top of the intersectional hierarchy – and must work on recognizing [their] privilege” and step aside in favor of other identity groups. According to outside diversity consultant Michelle Saahene, whites “have the privilege of individuality,” while minorities “don’t have that privilege.”

Divisive Diversity

Deconstruct their identities? Intersectional hierarchy? These are Leftist absurdities, but they have to be taken seriously in so far as they’re part of a vast and growing “diversity and inclusion” complex. There are frauds who travel around from company to company to preach this nonsense, and they’re shockingly well-compensated and culturally influential.

In fact, there’s real power now behind CRT. As anyone who has been called into human resources at a Fortune 500 company for a “sensitivity” issue will be able to tell you, the HR policies of major companies now reflect the philosophy of CRT. Employees are expected to abide by the ever-changing dictates of these Diversity Czars or face the consequences.

These expectations even extend to the way colleagues are allowed to speak to each other...

Still more.

Yet again, contra Sexton, C.R.T. is not Marxist. See Kimberley Crenshaw, Critical Race Theory.

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey

At Amazon, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights




The C.R.T. Scam

 From Jason Riley, at WSJ, "Critical Race Theory Is a Hustle":


A majority of American fourth- and eighth-graders can’t read or do math at grade level, according to the Education Department. And that assessment is from 2019, before the learning losses from pandemic school closures. Whenever someone asks me about critical race theory, that statistic comes to mind. What’s the priority, teaching math and reading, or turning elementary schools into social-justice boot camps?

Given that black and Hispanic students are more likely to be lagging academically, it’s a question that anyone professing to care deeply about social inequality might consider. Learning gaps manifest themselves in all kinds of ways later in life, from unemployment rates and income levels to the likelihood of teenage pregnancy, substance abuse and involvement with the criminal-justice system. Our jails and prisons already have too many woke illiterates.

Wealthier parents will make sure their kids receive a decent education, even if it means using private schools or hiring tutors. But the majority of children are relegated to the traditional public-school system, where progressives now want to prioritize the teaching of critical race theory. In addition to being a horrible idea, the timing couldn’t be worse. As the country rapidly diversifies—for more than a decade, U.S. population growth has been driven primarily by Asians and Hispanics—liberals want to teach children to obsess over racial and ethnic differences. What could go wrong?

Recently, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, announced that they had jumped on the bandwagon. At its annual meeting earlier this month, the NEA adopted a proposal stating that it is “reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.” More, the organization pledged to “fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric” and issue a study that “critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.” There was no proposal vowing to improve math and reading test scores, alas.

Meanwhile, the NEA’s sister outfit, the American Federation of Teachers, has joined forces with Ibram X. Kendi, an activist-scholar who openly embraces racial discrimination against whites. “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” Mr. Kendi asserted in “How to Be an Anti-Racist.” Sadly, that sort of circular drivel is what passes for deep thinking on race today. Mr. Kendi spoke at an AFT conference last week, and the union announced that it will donate copies of his writings to schools, AFT members, educators and youth mentors.

Critical-race ideology is also entering the classroom via the New York Times “1619 Project,” which claims that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery and earned its creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize. In a forthcoming book, “Woke Racism,” the humanities professor John McWhorter argues that proponents like Mr. Kendi and Ms. Hannah-Jones have mostly been given a pass because they’re racial minorities, they’re on the left, and criticizing them is politically incorrect.

“On the issue of the Revolutionary War, Hannah-Jones’s claim is simply false, but our current cultural etiquette requires pretending that isn’t true—because she’s black,” Mr. McWhorter writes. “Someone has received a Pulitzer Prize for a mistaken interpretation of historical documents about which legions of actual scholars are expert. Meanwhile, the claim is being broadcast, unquestioned, in educational materials being distributed across the nation.”

Mr. McWhorter is right to point out the racial double standards at work in elevating shoddy pseudoscholarship...

A lot could go wrong, apparently.

Still more


My Black Generation Is Fighting Like Hell to Stop the Whitelash

Pfft. 

This guy, Elie Mystal, is a freakin' dork.

At the Nation, "My Black Generation Is Fighting Like Hell to Stop the Whitelash":


It now appears likely that I will be part of the first generation of Black people to do worse than my parents and leave a crueler world for my children than the one I inherited.

When I say “worse,” I don’t mean by a metric of homes owned or acres plowed or yachts docked or whatever measure white people mean when they bemoan doing worse than their parents. In fact, I’m doing better than my parents economically, as are a visible minority of Black people my age (I’m 43). Instead, I mean that I inherited a legacy of civil rights, a stone of freedom each Black generation since emancipation has pushed relentlessly through peaks and valleys towards the summit of equality, but mine will be the first generation to lose more ground than we’ve gained. We will leave our kids further from the promised land than our parents left us.

White Americans my age are one step removed from their “Greatest Generation.” It was their grandparents who went to Europe to fight the Nazis and then returned and settled right back into the apartheid system that was well-established here. The Black civil rights generation, our greatest generation, fought those forces of fascism and white supremacy here, on the home front, several years later, and in so doing forced America to live up to its empty promises of freedom and equality for all.

Thanks to their efforts, my generation was born into more opportunity than any generation of Black folks in the history of the New World. We haven’t squandered it. My Black generation has enjoyed unprecedented social and cultural influence. Some of us have achieved wild economic success. We even got to see the very first Black president. If you start the clock in April 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball, you’ll see that Black Americans have accomplished one of the most successful nonviolent political and social revolutions in human history.

But my generation has not been the cause of those victories, merely the beneficiaries of our parents’ and grandparents’ successes. Even Barack Obama understood that. When he met Ruby Bridges, the woman who, at the age of 6, integrated the first elementary school in Louisiana, Obama said, “I think it’s fair to say that if it wasn’t for you guys, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Maybe that’s why white people are trying to ban Bridges’s story today. A new Tennessee law bars the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools. While there is, obviously, no such teaching going on in Tennessee public schools—Critical Race Theory is, for the 1,000th time, an academic legal discipline—the white parents pushing this know what they’re after. They highlighted four books they wanted taken out of the Tennessee curriculum; Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story, by Ruby Bridges, was one of them.

Bridges’s generation made Obama possible. My generation has lived to see white people try to erase those gains...

Still more.

RELATED: I don't actually believe this story, at Truthout, "Right-Wingers Are Taking Over Library Boards to Remove Books on Racism."

Pfft.


Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Been Busy *Shrugs*

Sorry for the lack of posting of late, dear readers. I don't mean to let anybody down, heh.

The fact is I've been swamped with work and a lot of stuff at home --- home issues especially dealing with my two sons (which, come to think of it, isn't "My Three Sons," and I'm glad, sheesh). 

I did score an Instalanche over the weekend, for this post, "New Capitol 'Attack' Investigative Report Released: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Indeed Called for Capitol Police to 'Stand Down', and the Feds 'Botched' Everything With Clueless Mixed-Messages and Incompetence (VIDEO)," which was nice. 

And of course, as many of you know, I'm a blogger at Theo Spark's, and often my babe-blogging hits posted there generate a little traffic back this way, as this one did last week, "Twins?"

So, to that end, here's a couple of more hotties, at Babe Gallery, and this lovely lady below from the University of North Carolina, via Rad Chicks:




Thursday, April 15, 2021

New Capitol 'Attack' Investigative Report Released: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Indeed Called for Capitol Police to 'Stand Down', and the Feds 'Botched' Everything With Clueless Mixed-Messages and Incompetence (VIDEO)

Now, as you know by now, I do check out CBS This Morning when I can, and as noted previously, it's the only national morning show I can watch, because the others previously mentioned are so far to the loony left that, well, it's just impossible for me to even contemplate taking these goons seriously. 

And very interestingly here, CBS's investigative reporter is none other than former Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge, who is freakin' good, and I'll bet she got a hefty pay raise to take the job at CBS; and, from what I've heard, Fox News already pays its reporters handsomely, so good for her for making bank AND still being able to report honestly on this blockbuster cluster of a situation (and CBS should be lauded for that). 

My long headline above pretty much includes all the relevant points I might expand on in the post here, but I just have to note that if anyone looks bad --- and all the relevant official parties in D.C. and in the federal government look bad, except for former President Trump, who indeed requested a full deployment to the Capitol building, as a "preemptive" measure to guarantee security there, so I can't see how anyone in the leftist media can still blame him (but they will) --- it's Mayor Bowser; but of course all of the "M.S.M." ghouls will certainly find a way to praise her, so just f*ck 'em, as they're the biggest asshole lying media hacks anywhere, even worse than those in the official state media of Communist China or the evil propagandists for Vladmir Putin's extremely repressive regime in Moscow, now basically murdering dissident Alex Navalny by imprisoning him and denying him healthcare, after he came down with some mysterious new and suspicious COVID-like symptoms; but don't worry, the Biden administration will indeed find a way to beat out these two murderously un-democratic monster regimes, and that really is really something, when you think about it. 

Watch: 



CBS This Morning had another literally bombshell report, with some interesting twists involving the correspondent in question, but as I hate to post from the same sources back-to-back all the time, I'll try to add some variety of posts later today, if I have the chance. Until then, thanks always for reading my humble blog.

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Tony Dokoupil Covers Government Housing Policies Discriminating Against Black Americans (VIDEO)

I was discussing previous my news watching habits, and one of the great recent stories, from CBS Evening News, it turns out, is the tale of the man who adopted a "rescue dog" who was apparently afraid of men, but the guy adopted the dog anyway, and it turns out the dog returned the favor, and saved his life by dragging the man over to the phone, so he could call 911 as he was suffering from a stroke. This was a really heartwarming, down to earth report. Here, "Rescue dog that nobody wanted saves life of new owner."

And a few weeks back, Tony Dokoupil, at CBS This Morning, did a really good personal-story-style report on racial segregation in the neighborhood where his grandparents bought a home, in Linwood, New Jersey. 

This report, which is interesting to me because this kind of "redlining" was (and to some extent still is) a real example of insidious racism against black Americans. And I also liked the way Dokoupil handled the story, and the interviews he conducted, as he doesn't make it all about himself, but puts it in the context of how folks at the time felt, and what can be done now. 

And I didn't know it until this morning, but Dokoupil is married to Katy Tur, who is the super left-wing news anchor at MSNBC, who's biggest claim to fame is that she was once called out by Donald Trump while covering his campaign back in the day, and she published a best-seller out of it. Well, she and Dokoupil have three kids (two from Dokoupil's previous relationships), and they're expecting another baby in April, in contrast to the "baby bust" that is happening of late, especially because of the lockdowns, and the terrible life chances for young people nowadays, who really do have it worse than their parents and grandparents generations. Now good for Dokoupil, because Ms. Tur is actually pretty hot, but I'm surprised he comes off nothing like her in his reporting, and is more of a "straight news man," which I like, a lot. 

In any case, here's the segment on housing discrimination against blacks in New Jersey. Very well done:



Saturday, February 27, 2021

Anti-C.R.T. Activist Christopher Rufo Challenges N.Y.T.'s Michelle Goldberg to Debate

Actually, Rufo's challenging the entire leftist cadre of "woke journalists" and lefty columnists, like Ms. Goldberg, to debate, and that's not a bad idea. 

He writes on Twitter:

Today, the New York Times claimed that I want to ban critical race theory because I am afraid to debate it. This is false. In fact, I will debate any prominent critical race theorist on the floor of the New York Times. I will give them home field advantage—and dismantle them.

I give the New York Times and the professors of critical race theory—including those quotes in the article—five calendar days to accept this challenge. If they do not, we'll know who is afraid to debate, and who uses it as an excuse to shelter their ideas from public criticism.

Actually, though, when it comes to critical race theory (C.R.T.), Ms. Goldberg, may have a point. (And I note this with the full understanding that, Ms. Goldberg, who is Jewish, and perhaps has faced some anti-Semitism in her life, is nevertheless about as "privileged" as anyone could be today, with a "journalistic" perch at the "exalted" New York Times, which ain't nothing to sniff at, considering the sheer power of that institution). 

Here's her column, "The Campaign to Cancel Wokeness."

You can RTWT (besides the screenshot below), but what I've noticed is that Rufo, indeed, is somewhat "totalitarian" in his approach. I've seen him interviewed a least a couple of times on cable news, and he claims to be assembling a "high-powered" network of attorneys not just to challenge C.R.T, but to get it banned altogether from U.S. schools. 

Now, I'm obviously no big defender of C.R.T. --- and especially the "antiracism" corollary --- but if conservatives say they're truly for free speech --- the point Ms. Goldberg hammers --- hers is not an idle critique. I mean, if one is really conservative, the point of greatest impact should be at the local level, empowering, with conservative pro bono lawyers and lawsuits, the parents of kids who're being indoctrinated by such crap. Further, Rufo's approach, ideologically, mimics what so-called "right-wing" critics of leftist education doctrine always say --- that it's all "top down," especially driven by genuinely powerful teachers' unions, particularly the N.E.A. and A.F.T., both loathsome citadels of educational hatred, not to mention despicable indifference to the lives and welfare of the students they're supposed to represent. 

So, while I'm probably overthinking this too much, I'm looking forward to local conservative and traditional parent-activists to take it right to the authoritative bodies that are reaming their kids, and robbing them of the true "critical" thinking that youngins today so obviously need --- their local school boards. 

And to add, I personally favor Professor William Jacobson's approach, with his "Critical Race Training" initiative, which is a place where parents can find facts and be educated about what the situation is, so they can then make choices for themselves. So then, if some of those families indeed pursue litigation, at least it will be from a position of "choice," or in fact of "choice" denied, as many families aren't privileged, like Ms. Goldberg, who attended U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, with Berkeley being generally regarded as the top public university in the country.  

So I guess with that, you be the judge. *Shrug.* A lot of the ideological battles we're having these days are, in fact, dumb. 




Wednesday, February 24, 2021

For 'Woke' Progressives, Asian-American Achievement is An Embarrassment

It's Bill McGurn, at WSJ, "The Woke ‘Model Minority’ Myth":

The North Thurston Public Schools in Lacey, Wash., made headlines in November when their “equity report” classified Asian-Americans along with whites instead of as “students of color.” Apparently the Asian-Americans were doing too well academically to be students of color. After what the district said was “an overwhelming public response,” it admitted its “category choices” had “racist implications” and dropped the equity report from its website.

To normal Americans, it makes no sense. How are Asian-Americans not “people of color”? But give the North Thurston folks credit for following progressive logic to its conclusion. Modern progressive theory more or less divides the nation between the oppressors, defined as whites, and the oppressed, defined as everyone else. In this framework, achieving success puts you on the side of the oppressors and thus makes you white or “white-adjacent”—even if your family came from China or India.

Calling it progressive to send children of color the message that achievement is white is an irony lost on the woke. Bigoted laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 or actions such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II were once thought among the worst stains on American history left by anti-Asian racism. But these days the characterization of Asian-Americans as the “model minority” triggers the woke.

“Asian-Americans are caught in a bind—condemn the system of white supremacy and privilege along with other people of color or be ‘banished’ from the victim group as white-adjacent,” says Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights. “The end goal here is to pit people against each other as if our hyphenated identities are bigger than our common destiny as Americans.”

The principal reason for this is the fact of Asian-American achievement. This is an embarrassment to progressives because it undermines the claim that structural racism dooms nonwhite citizens to the margins of the American dream. So Asian-American achievement must either be dismissed as somehow white or sacrificed at the altar of equity.

Examples abound. A report last year called “The Secret Shame” notes how public schools in America’s most progressive cities have been failing their black and Latino children for decades. How does New York Mayor Bill de Blasio respond? In January America’s self-styled progressive in chief announced that New York will abolish the entrance exam for the city’s gifted-and-talented programs for young students. If you can’t fix the schools that are broken, you cut down to size the schools that are working.

In 2019 Mr. de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group reported that though Asians are only 17% of New York’s kindergarten population, they account for 42% of the gifted-and-talented seats. Plainly the mayor’s “success” requires reducing the number of Asian-Americans no matter how qualified they are. The mayor has also tried to abolish the entrance exam for the city’s high-performing high schools, where Asian-American students again are “overrepresented.” And the progressive war on merit is by no means confined to New York. San Francisco’s renowned Lowell High School abolished its own merit-based admissions this month, again in large part because a student body selected by merit will have too many Asian-Americans and too few students from other minority groups.

The progressive contention is that admitting students on individual merit is really about upholding white dominance...

Seriously.

I teach this in my classes. I mean, the horrendous discrimination Chinese and Japanese Americans have endured in this country goes all the way back to the Gold Rush era in California. Now, of course, times change, but you see it's actually radical leftists now who're harming --- actually obliterating --- the basic civil rights of these groups.

It's disgusting.

Still more, in any case.