What is Critical Race Theory?

Professor William Jacobson's interview with Chris Berg, host of Point of View with Chris Berg on KX4 and West Dakota Fox (North Dakota), "'The likelihood that you’re going to have a book in kindergarten or third grade called ‘Critical Race Theory’ is extremely remote. That is not what happens'."

America Gone Mad

It's Victor David Hanson, at the American Mind, "The American Descent into Madness: America went from the freest country in the world in December 2019 to a repressive and frightening place by July 2021. How did that happen?":

Nations have often gone mad in a matter of months. The French abandoned their supposedly idealistic revolutionary project and turned it into a monstrous hell for a year between July 1793 and 1794. After the election of November 1860, in a matter of weeks, Americans went from thinking secession was taboo to visions of killing the greatest number of their fellow citizens on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Mao’s China went from a failed communist state to the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno, when he unleashed the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

In the last six months, we have seen absurdities never quite witnessed in modern America. Madness, not politics, defines it. There are three characteristics of all these upheavals. One, the events are unsustainable. They will either cease or they will destroy the nation, at least as we know it. Two, the law has largely been rendered meaningless. Three, left-wing political agendas justify any means necessary to achieve them.

Citizenship as Mere Residency

Two million people are anticipated to cross the southern border, en masse and illegally, over a 12-month period. If that absurdity were to continue, we would be adding the equivalent of a major U.S. city every year. The new arrivals have three things in common: Their first act was to break U.S. law by entering the country. Their second was to break the law by residing here illegally. And their third will be to find false identification or other illegal means to continue breaking the law. One does not arrive as a guest in a foreign country and immediately violate the laws of his host—unless one holds those laws in contempt.

Arrivals now cross a border that had been virtually closed to illegal immigration by January 2021. In the cynical and immoral logic of illegal immigration (that cares little for the concerns either of would-be legal immigrants or U.S. citizens), arrivals will be dependent upon the state and thus become constituents of progressives who engineered their arrival.

Yet the issue is not illegal immigration per se. If protests were to continue in Cuba, and 1 million Cubans boated to Miami, the Biden Administration would stop the influx, in terror that so many anti-Communists might tip Florida red forever.

How strange that the U.S. government is considering going door-to-door to bully the unvaccinated, even as it ignores the daily influx of thousands from Mexico and Latin America, without worrying whether they are carrying or vaccinated for COVID-19. Meanwhile, the progressive media shrilly warns that the new Delta Variant of the virus is exploding south of the border. Note how the administration applies standards to its own citizens that it does not apply to foreign nationals illegally entering the country.

Crime as Construct

Crime is another current absurdity. There exists a mini-industry of internet videos depicting young people, disproportionately African American males, stealing luxury goods from Nieman-Marcus in San Francisco, clearing a shelf from a Walgreens with impunity, or assaulting Asian Americans. These iconic moments may be unrepresentative of reality, but given the mass transfers and retirements of police, and the frightening statistics of large increases in violent crime in certain cities, the popular conception is now entrenched that it is dangerous to walk in our major metropolises, either by day or at night. Chicago has turned into Tombstone or Dodge City in the popular imagination.

Scarier still is the realization that if one is robbed, assaulted, or finds one’s car vandalized, it is near certain the miscreant will never be held to account. Either the police have pulled back and find arrests of criminals a lose-lose situation, or radical big-city district attorneys see the law as a critical legal theory construct, and thus will not enforce it. Or the criminal will be arrested and released within hours.

So a subculture has developed among Americans, of passing information about where in the country it is safe, where it is not, and where one can go, where one cannot. This is clearly not America, but something bizarre out of Sao Paulo, Durban, or Caracas.

The Campus Con 

The universities over the past 40 years were intolerant, hard Left, and increasingly anti-constitutional. But they also fostered a golden-goose confidence scheme that administrators dared not injure, given the precious eggs of federally guaranteed student loans that ensured zero academic accountability and sent tuition costs into the stratosphere. There was an unquestioned supposition that a degree of any sort, of any major, was the ticket to American success. In cynical fashion, we shrugged that most prestigious institutions were little more than cattle branders that stamped graduates with imprints that gave them unearned privilege for life.

Yet universities now have both hands around their golden goose’s neck and are determined to strangle it. The public is becoming repulsed at the woke McCarthyite culture on campus, and will be more turned off when campuses open in the fall in 2019-style. At the Ivy League or major state university campuses, admissions are no longer based on proportional representation in the context of affirmative action, but are defined increasingly by a reparatory character.

Grades, test scores, and “activities” of the white and Asian male college applicants are growing less relevant. Only “privileged” white males with sports skills, connections, or families who give lots of money are exempt from the new racial reparation quotas. The new woke admission policy ironically is targeting the liberal suburban professional family, the Left’s constituency, whose lives are so fixated on whether children graduate from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, or like campuses.

Given the radical change in incoming student profiles, the faculty increasingly will have to choose between accusations of racism, or grading regardless of actual performance, given thousands of new enrollees do not meet the entrance standards of just two or three years ago. Remember that since wokeism was always a top-down elite industry, minority progressives still will fight it out with white leftists in intramural scraps over titles, salaries, and managerial posts.

The public has had enough. For the first time, people will ask why are we subsidizing student loans, why are multibillion-dollar endowments not taxed, and why do we think a B.A. in sociology or psychology or gender studies is an “investment” that prepares anyone for anything? ...

A great piece. 

Keep reading.

 

Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well

From one of the premier legal theorists of critical race theory, at Amazon, Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism.

Challenging Critical Race Theory, Rhode Island Mom Demands School Curriculum from South Kingstown School District (VIDEO)

This is getting to be a very big thing. Democrats can't be that stupid. The 2022 midterms aren't that far off, and Lord knows the country's turned to hell since Trump left office. 

And this takes courage. The freakin' school district is threatening a lawsuit? No, this isn't right. Public schools are for the public, right? Well then the people shouldn't have to go to hell and back to get the most basic information on what schools are teaching their kids. Applause for this brave woman, wow.

It's Nicole Solas, at Legal Insurrecion, "I’m a Mom Seeking Records of Critical Race and Gender Curriculum, Now the School Committee May Sue to Stop Me (Update)":

I am a mother in the South Kingstown School District in Rhode Island investigating through public records requests how critical race and gender theories are integrated into lessons, school policies, and contracts. Now the School Committee is considering suing me to stop me.

My child is enrolled in kindergarten and I became concerned that Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender theory were integrated into lessons when an elementary school principal told me that teachers don’t refer to students as “boys” and “girls.” Additionally, I was told a kindergarten teacher asks five-year-olds, “what could have been done differently on the first Thanksgiving” in order to build upon a “line of thinking about history.” I asked why kids could not be called “boys” and “girls” and was told it was “common practice.” I asked for clarification on the “line of thinking” about history but got no answers. The more questions I asked, the less answers I received.

Then I asked for a tour of the elementary school and the Superintendent offered me an in-person or virtual tour, but never responded with a date and time despite my numerous follow-up emails and phone calls. After almost a month of radio silence the Superintendent then told me that now they were not offering tours due to Covid restrictions. Yet the Superintendent offered tours of other schools to campaign for a school bond.

I also asked to see the elementary school curriculum. I asked the principal, the school committee, the superintendent, the director of curriculum, and even the legal department at the Rhode Island Department of Education to allow me to view the curriculum. The school’s Director of Curriculum told me she was unavailable and never responded when I said I could view the curriculum on any day and time. Then a school committee member directed me to file an Access to Public Records Act (APRA) request on the school district website to obtain the curriculum. After thirty days, I received an incomplete curriculum and filed an APRA complaint with the Attorney General.

By contrast, curriculum for two charters schools in South Kingstown (Kingston Hill Academy and The Compass School) is available on their websites. I scheduled a tour of a private school in five minutes. Why was it so hard to get a tour and see the curriculum in my own public school district?

At this point I had reason to believe that the school district was hiding information and deliberately stonewalling me. I started using the APRA request google link on the school district’s website to request public documents that might answer my questions about CRT, gender theory, and other concerns. When I requested the emails of a school committee member the estimate of what they would charge me came back as $9,570. Who can afford that?

Under the APRA, “a reasonable charge may be made for the search or retrieval of documents. Hourly costs for a search and retrieval shall not exceed fifteen dollars ($15.00) per hour and no costs shall be charged for the first hour of a search or retrieval.” Additionally, each copy costs 15 cents.

I amended my request to narrow the scope of requested emails to six months and requested digital copies instead of hard copies. That $9,570 estimate dropped to $79.50. I quickly realized that if I structured many specific and narrow requests, I could afford to purchase the public information which was otherwise inaccessible to me due to the non-responsiveness of my school leadership. I felt like I had cracked the code to this mystery of inaccessible information.

These initial high estimates of public records requests are common barriers to parents obtaining information about their children’s school district. A parent in another Rhode Island school district received an estimate of $17,295.75 to obtain public information related to the cost of an athletic field. Access to public information is not cheap. Or equitable.

I continued to submit small and numerous public record requests to investigate my school district. The school department continued to respond in the statutory time period of ten days. A school committee member even made a snarky reference to my APRA requests in an email. Evidently my APRA requests were not problematic if they were the subject of sarcasm from a school committee member. No one in the school department ever told me it was a problem while I was in constant contact with them to request and purchase information. I purchased over $300 worth of public information and shared it to a private Facebook group to raise awareness about indoctrination in Rhode Island schools. I developed a growing network of likeminded teachers, parents, and community members who gave me information about CRT and gender theory infiltrating Rhode Island school districts.

Then, on Friday, May 28, the school committee set an agenda item for a public meeting to discuss “filing litigation against Nicole Solas to challenge the filing of over 160 APRA requests.”

My school committee now is considering suing me because I submitted a lot of public records requests to get answers to my questions which the School District would not answer. This same school committee which told me to use a statutorily prescribed process to obtain one piece of information (curriculum) is now having a public meeting to discuss suing me for using the same statutorily prescribed process to obtain other information. The message was clear: ask too many questions about your child’s education and we will come after you.

The most puzzling part of this shameful abuse of government power is that numerous attorneys with whom I’ve consulted cannot figure out the basis of a claim against me. There is no limit to submitting public record requests. Further, the APRA statute contemplates multiple requests made in a 30-day period for the purpose of cost. It states: “[M]ultiple requests from any person or entity to the same public body within a thirty (30) day time period shall be considered one request.” Accordingly, I did not submit 160 requests – I submitted ONE.

I suspect the South Kingstown School Department is displeased that a parent has found a way to legally compel responses to difficult questions surrounding CRT and gender theory in public school. I suspect they are also displeased about my criticism of the antiracism policy and appointment and hiring policy, both of which are under review and breathtakingly racist.

The Access to Public Records Act prohibits a government body from compelling a citizen to justify or explain her requests for public information. But, here I am attending my first in-person school committee meeting where my own name is one of two agenda items in open session. Here I am feeling immense pressure to explain and justify my public information requests to this shameful government body on pains of potential litigation against me. A school committee scheduling a public meeting to discuss “filing lawsuit against Nicole Solas to challenge filing of over 160 APRA requests” is nothing short of an attempt to deprive me of my civil rights to obtain public information about my child’s school.

I can think of a dozen better ways my APRA requests could have been addressed. The Superintendent could have hired a temporary assistant for $12 an hour to retrieve documents. If the school department is concerned about this extra cost of fulfilling my public record requests, it should use its 64 million dollar budget more wisely than to hire a consultant to manage School District’s Facebook page for $50 an hour to post important messages like memes that say “Happy Mother’s Day.”

The school committee also could have reached out to me and asked if they could answer my questions directly. But no. Instead, they sought to publicly vilify a mother.

Although I am shocked that a government body would use the threat of litigation to publicly bully, harass, and intimidate a mother who was advocating for her child’s education, I am not afraid. And I will not stop asking questions.

This shameful retaliation against a parent who demand transparency from public schools will not be tolerated. Every parent needs to keep asking questions. Every parent needs to submit more public records requests when they do not receive answers to their questions from school leaders. Hold your elected representatives accountable and do not allow them to prevent you from protecting and advocating for your children.

If the school system starts to bully you because you are asking too many questions, then you’re winning. Don’t give up.

Dad and His Beautiful Daughter Go Viral in Video Rebutting 'Critical Race Theory'

So cool. 

What a wonderful little cutie.

At Pajamas, "THIS Is How You Handle the Race-Hustlers," and Fox News, "Dad-daughter duo go viral with video rejecting critical race theory: 'Your skin color does not matter': Kory Yeshua tells 'Fox & Friends' why he pushed back on CRT in daughter's school":

One of the best videos opposing Critical Race Theory that you’ll ever see. 👏🏼🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/cXOfheV0kJ

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 1, 2021

Two Dead After 32-Year-Old Man Stabs Mother and Her Brother During Live Zoom Session With Four Others Watching (VIDEO)

Honestly, if it wasn't for my wife, who uses some news app on her phone, which bombards her all the time with stories (and me, as I had to finally download that sucker, as my wife constantly forward articles to me), I doubt I would've caught it.

The New York Times reported on the story last week, with a lot of details there, "Woman Is Fatally Stabbed by Her Son During Video Call, Authorities Say: At least four people were on a work video call when Carol Brown and her brother were stabbed in an Altadena, Calif., residence on Monday."

Also at KABC Eyewitness News 7 Los Angeles, "2 fatally stabbed at Altadena home in incident partially witnessed on Zoom, officials say: Part of the incident was witnessed on a Zoom call, officials say."

Apparently, Ms. Brown worked as "a coordinator of Pasadena City College's Black STEM Program," according to London's Daily Mail, and her son, Robert, is black.

So, there's not much point in belaboring the argument, but as Altadena is in Los Angeles County, which foolishly elected the radical, Soros-backed District Attorney George Gascón last year, it's hard to see how justice will be forthcoming for Ms. Brown and her brother.

And while it's likely that her son had mental issues, and as I don't see anything about the motive for the killings, one can bet that that ghoul Gascón will find some way, perhaps justified, but likely not so much, to let this man, Robert, get away with murder.

And I'm already grieving for the four witnesses, because no matter how much psychotherapy they're offered or go through, they'll never get those heinous images out of their minds. 

Corporations Get Political With 'Cancelling' Georgia After State Passes New Voting Rights Legislation (VIDEO)

At the video, Tucker Carlson shreds "woke" corporations who have, really, no business getting involved with "racial" politics in Georgia (or for any other state, frankly), and the only bummer about the video is it doesn't include the Turcker's interview with Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who sounds like a stand-up guy, and pledged not to back down to our wannabe corporate dictators (and it ain't just Coca Cola and Delta Airlines, to say nothing, sadly, of Major League Baseball).

Of course, there's "mainstream" news coverage at the Los Angeles Times, "‘There is no middle ground’: Corporate America feels the pressure on voting rights."

And, naturally, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, "Companies, facing new expectations, struggle with pressure to take stand on Georgia voting bill":

Companies are finding it increasingly difficult to stay on the sidelines of the nation’s social and political debates after a year of intense protests that led many firms to declare their support for racial justice and opposition to attempts to overturn the presidential election.

On Friday, executives from more than 170 companies -- including Dow, HP and Estee Lauder -- joined the corporate push to protect voting access not only in Georgia but in states across the country, writing in a statement that “our elections are not improved when lawmakers impose barriers that result in longer lines at the polls or that reduce access to secure ballot dropboxes.”

“There are hundreds of bills threatening to make voting more difficult in dozens of states nationwide,” the companies said in the statement, which also included signatures from the CEOs of Target, Salesforce and ViacomCBS. “We call on elected leaders in every state capitol and in Congress to work across the aisle and ensure that every eligible American has the freedom to easily cast their ballot and participate fully in our democracy.”

But as major corporations speaking out about Georgia’s controversial voting law discovered earlier this week, deciding when to step in, how far to go and whether to follow up with actions, can be fraught.

On Fox News Thursday, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) compared early-voting rules in Georgia to other states and defended the measure. “They’re not going to get back on board because they’ve been pressured by their board of directors, who have been pressured by these activists. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”

He also said: “They’ll have to answer to their shareholders. There’s a lot of people that work for them and have done business with them who are very upset,” and said that “We are not going to back down when we have a bill that expands the opportunity for people to vote on the weekends in Georgia.”

After initially mild criticism of the measure, which was signed into law last week, companies scrambled to issue more forceful statements. James Quincey, the CEO of Coca-Cola, described the bill as “wrong” and “a step backward.” Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian offered up an abrupt change in tone, calling the legislation “unacceptable” and contrary to the company’s values.

Those statements won guarded praise from activists — as well as calls for more concrete action. “Delta’s statement finally tells the truth — even if it’s late,” Nsé Ufot, head of the activist group New Georgia Project Action Fund, said in a statement.

But companies have struggled with growing expectations from the public and employees that they take stands on important social issues, forcing corporate leaders into positions on issues they’d probably prefer to avoid, from Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the national anthem to the “bathroom bills” that targeted transgender people to President Donald Trump’s statements about voter fraud in the 2020 elections.

Last summer, it was the Black Lives Matter protests, when many companies made clear their support for racial justice.

And now: voting rights.

At a time when public faith in a number of institutions — the presidency, Congress, the electoral process and the media — is faltering, many Americans continue to look at big companies and entrepreneurs with admiration.

“The whole idea of companies getting involved in political issues, it’s all pretty new. They prefer to stay above the fray,” said Bruce Barry, a management professor who teaches business ethics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “But now they are getting religion on these issues, including voting rights.”

For weeks, activists and civil liberties groups had been complaining about the proposed changes to Georgia’s voting laws — long before companies took serious notice. At first, the corporate reaction was mostly muted. The Georgia U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a statement expressing “concern and opposition.”

But on Wednesday, an open letter from 72 Black executives seemed to open the floodgates. The letter said the new Georgia voting bill would make it “unquestionably” harder for Black voters in particular to vote. The letter also said, “The stakes for our democracy are too high to remain on the sidelines.”

Executives from the companies that made Friday’s statement acknowledged these leaders, saying they “stand in solidarity with voters 一 and with the Black executives and leaders at the helm of this movement.”

“What we have heard from corporations is general statements about their support for voting rights and against voter suppression. But now we’re asking, put those words into action,” Kenneth Chenault, managing director and chairman of venture capital firm General Catalyst and the former CEO of American Express, who helped organize the letter from the Black executives, said in a CNBC interview... 

 

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. 

William Jacobson Launches 'Critical Race Training In Higher Education' Website (VIDEO)

I was watching this segment on Tucker tonight. William Jacobson started out pretty much as an everyday blogger about 10 years ago, and he's turned his blog into an entire project to literally hit-back at the radical left, across the entire country, in this case, with initiatives and programs that are available to all. He's a real mensch, heh.

In any case, see, "[W]hat’s being taught on campuses is that the … most important thing … is the color of your skin":

My appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight about our new database and interactive map of Critical Race Training in Higher Education, criticalrace.org: "we’re trying to empower parents and students."

Cancel Abraham Lincoln?

Following-up, "The Canceling: America's Growing Political Crisis."

At LAT, "Cancel Abraham Lincoln? San Francisco grapples with the president’s legacy":

The statue sat like a red stain on the lawn in front of San Francisco City Hall. Abraham Lincoln’s chiseled face was covered in paint, his etched name highlighted in the bloody color at the base of the monument.

As San Francisco, like many parts of the country, grapples with how best to memorialize historic figures, the statue of the 16th president sat red-faced — literally — in front of the government building the day after Christmas.

City workers cleaned the sculpted artwork on Monday, said San Francisco County sheriff’s director of communications Nancy Hayden Crowley.

“The damage to the statue was superficial,” Crowley wrote in an email. “President Lincoln has been restored.”

But questions about a San Francisco-sized blot on Lincoln’s legacy remain.

Some social media users opined that the vandalism intentionally coincided with the 158th anniversary of the Dec. 26, 1862, hanging of 38 Native Americans on the president’s watch. According to the Associated Press, a U.S. military commission sentenced 303 Sioux fighters to execution, following the 1862 Dakota War, also known as the Sioux Uprising. Lincoln reportedly reviewed each case and decided there was evidence to convict 38 of them. The sentences of the remaining 265 were commuted.

Regina Brave, an elder in the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said the event’s history had been handed down among her people for generations. Living in South Dakota as an activist, the 79-year-old said she once supported the idea of tearing down Mt. Rushmore. But ultimately she concluded that monuments ought to remain intact, saying they are a useful way to remember bygone leaders — and their faults, including Lincoln’s.

“Hey, he’s dead,” Brave said. “But it’s worth remembering. That’s part of our history — to remember these events...

Well, at least somebody on the left has some common sense, but Ms. Regina really is brave!

Still more.

The Canceling: America's Growing Political Crisis

At the Other McCain, "Skepticism and Silence: ‘Cancel Culture’ and America’s Growing Political Crisis.

One of the things that separates 21st-century Americans from previous generations is a loss of liberty that few acknowledge. In particular, Americans have abandoned their First Amendment right to express their opinions, due to fear of what has become known as “cancel culture.”

Consider, for example, how one-sided the public discussion has been about removing Confederate monuments. In Virginia, for example, a number of communities — including the former Confederate capital of Richmond — have voted to rename Jefferson Davis Highway. What is remarkable about this is the near-total lack of vocal opposition to such projects. Arguments against this destructive iconoclasm are not difficult to make, but people are so afraid of being called “racist” that they are silent; this silence creates the false impression of a unanimous consensus in support of the radical “Black Lives Matter” agenda.

Fear of reprisal — indeed, mob violence — has introduced into our public discourse an element of dishonesty and hypocrisy. The consequence is a loss of trust. When people are compelled to endorse beliefs that they do not actually believe, they become suspicious and skeptical about the sincerity of others. One reason the news media are so widely despised in America is because partisan prejudice so controls what is reported in the media that every intelligent person recognizes their dishonesty...

Keep reading.

 

Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories

At Amazon, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody.

Is Substack the Media Future We Want?

It's Anna Wiener (whoever that is), at the New Yorker, "The newsletter service is a software company that, by mimicking some of the functions of newsrooms, has made itself difficult to categorize."

Establishment media outlets fear Substack, so they're out to destroy it. Big Media doesn't want you to read folks like Glenn Greenwald, a leftist who on Israel I can't stand, but who is amazingly good on a lot of other current stuff. See his great piece this week, "The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing to Do With Trump."

Or, Andrew Sullivan, also someone who's got a really sketchy and devious political pedigree, but has lately been on fire, "Do All Black Lives Matter? Or Just Some?"

And Matt Taibbai, "The YouTube Ban Is Un-American, Wrong, and Will Backfire: Silicon Valley couldn't have designed a better way to further radicalize Trump voters."

All of these guys are leftists, which tells you something, as they've been excommunicated form the leftist media precincts (especially Greenwald and Sullivan).

Public Schools Are Losing Their Captive Audience of Children

At Reason.

But see this, from L.A.T, a couple of weeks ago, "L.A. Unified will not give Fs this semester and instead give students a second chance to pass."

And this passage especially is killing me, about the push-back against the "no fail" policy:

In April, L.A. Unified prohibited failing grades for the spring semester and also determined that no student’s grade would be lower than it was on March 13, the final day of on-campus instruction. At the time, many teachers and some principals complained that the policy undermined student motivation and some reported a subsequent drop-off in student effort.

Stocks surge. Retail rises. Unemployment continues to decline. Post-election markets set record highs while online shopping contributed to recovery. How did this month fare overall?

Such concerns resurfaced Monday during a faculty meeting at a high school in the San Fernando Valley, according to an English teacher who did not wish to be identified because she was not authorized to speak.

“Yes, it’s COVID time,” the teacher said. “But this soft bigotry of low expectations — including us being banned from demanding students ever comment with their voices or actually show themselves on camera during Zoom — will indeed help our low-income students stay on the bottom of the pile of learning.”

A high school principal from a different campus was more supportive. Given the unprecedented crisis, the principal said, students who earn A’s and B’s should get to keep them but that the only other grade handed out should be a pass. This principal — who also was not authorized to comment — requested anonymity...

Astonishing, really.

Notice how everybody speaks off the record, obviously so they won't face the guillotine.  

How Critical Race Training Is Harming Higher Education

I attended this event. Really great stuff and crucial work they're doing.

At Legal Insurrection, "VIDEO: Critical Race Training is “a series of dated ideas that basic analysis often debunks”."

Mike Gonzalez, The Plot to Change America

Mike Gonzalez, The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free.

The Inauthenticity Behind Black Lives Matter

It's Shelby Steele, at WSJ, "Insisting on the prevalence of ‘systemic racism’ is a way of defending a victim-focused racial identity":

Insisting on the prevalence of ‘systemic racism’ is a way of defending a victim-focused racial identity. But blacks today are far more likely to encounter racial preferences than racial discrimination, writes Shelby Steele. https://t.co/zg7k3WbJBc

— Ayaan Hirsi Ali (@Ayaan) November 23, 2020

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina gave a remarkable speech at this year’s Republican National Convention. Yes, here was a black man at a GOP event, so there was a whiff of identity politics. When we see color these days, we expect ideology to follow. But Mr. Scott’s charisma that night was simply that he spoke as a person, not a spokesperson for his color.

Burgess Owens, Herschel Walker, Daniel Cameron and several others did the same. It was a parade of individuals. And in their speeches the human being stepped out from behind the identity, telling personal stories that reached for human connections with the American people—this rather than the usual posturing for leverage with tales of grievance. So they were all fresh and compelling.

Do these Republicans foretell a new racial order in America? Clearly they have pushed their way through an old racial order, as have—it could be argued—many black Trump voters in the recent election. I believe there is in fact a new racial order slowly and tenuously emerging, and that we blacks are swimming through rough seas to reach it. But to better see the new, it is necessary to know the old.

The old began in what might be called America’s Great Confession. In passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, America effectively confessed to a long and terrible collusion with the evil of racism. (President Kennedy was the first president to acknowledge that civil rights was a “moral issue.”) This triggered nothing less than a crisis of moral authority that threatened the very legitimacy of American democracy.

Even today, almost 60 years beyond the Civil Rights Act, groups like Black Lives Matter, along with a vast grievance industry, use America’s insecure moral authority around race as an opportunity to assert themselves. Doesn’t BLM dwell in a space made for it by America’s racial self-doubt?

In the culture, whites and American institutions are effectively mandated by this confession to prove their innocence of racism as a condition of moral legitimacy. Blacks, in turn, are mandated to honor their new freedom by developing into educational and economic parity with whites. If whites achieve racial innocence and blacks develop into parity with whites, then America will have overcome its original sin. Democracy will have become manifest.

This was America’s post-confession bargain between the races—innocence on the white hand, development on the black. It defined the old order with which those convention speakers seemed to break. But there is a problem with these mandates: To achieve their ends, they both need blacks to be victims. Whites need blacks they can save to prove their innocence of racism. Blacks must put themselves forward as victims the better to make their case for entitlements.

This is a corruption because it makes black suffering into a moral power to be wielded, rather than a condition to be overcome. This is the power that blacks discovered in the ’60s. It gained us a War on Poverty, affirmative action, school busing, public housing and so on. But it also seduced us into turning our identity into a virtual cult of victimization—as if our persecution was our eternal flame, the deepest truth of who we are, a tragic fate we trade on. After all, in an indifferent world, it may feel better to be the victim of a great historical injustice than a person left out of history when that injustice recedes.

Yet there is an elephant in the room. It is simply that we blacks aren’t much victimized any more. Today we are free to build a life that won’t be stunted by racial persecution. Today we are far more likely to encounter racial preferences than racial discrimination. Moreover, we live in a society that generally shows us goodwill—a society that has isolated racism as its most unforgivable sin.

This lack of victimization amounts to an “absence of malice” that profoundly threatens the victim-focused black identity. Who are we without the malice of racism? Can we be black without being victims? The great diminishment (not eradication) of racism since the ’60s means that our victim-focused identity has become an anachronism. Well suited for the past, it strains for relevance in the present.

Thus, for many blacks today—especially the young—there is a feeling of inauthenticity, that one is only thinly black because one isn’t racially persecuted. “Systemic racism” is a term that tries to recover authenticity for a less and less convincing black identity. This racism is really more compensatory than systemic. It was invented to make up for the increasing absence of the real thing.

Keep reading.