Rachel Nichols Will Not Work as Sideline Reporter for NBA Finals After Allegedly 'Racist' Comments

At NYT, "Rachel Nichols Out for N.B.A. Finals Coverage on ABC":

Comments made by Nichols that were caught on tape caused tremendous upheaval within ESPN over the past year. Nichols, who is white, suggested that a Black colleague, Maria Taylor, had been selected for a marquee job because of her race.

When a sideline reporter first appeared on ABC’s broadcast of the N.B.A. finals on Tuesday night, it was not Rachel Nichols, an abrupt change announced by ESPN earlier in the day. It was an attempt to stanch a yearlong scandal that has spilled into public view about the company’s handling of conflicts centered around race.

The decision to have Malika Andrews be the sideline reporter instead was made after The New York Times reported that Nichols, who is white, made disparaging comments about a Black colleague, Maria Taylor, last year. Among other things, Nichols said that Taylor was picked to host N.B.A. finals coverage last season because ESPN was “feeling pressure” about diversity.

Nichols’s comments came during a private phone conversation while she was quarantined in a Florida hotel last July before the N.B.A. resumed its season, which had been paused because of the coronavirus pandemic. She was seeking career guidance from Adam Mendelsohn, the adviser and political strategist who works closely with the Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James. The phone call was accidentally captured on camera and uploaded to a server at the company’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn., then quickly spread widely among ESPN employees.

“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football, she covers basketball,” Nichols told Mendelsohn during the call. “If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.”

There have been wide-ranging discussions about the comments inside and outside of ESPN over the last two days, with former employees and even N.B.A. players weighing in. The Memphis Grizzlies point guard Ja Morant tweeted in support of Taylor, while some high-profile former ESPN employees — including Dan Le Batard and Jemele Hill — discussed the matter on Le Batard’s show Tuesday morning.

In a sign of the sprawling complexity of the scandal, commentators weighed in on numerous topics, including ESPN’s discipline and management as well as the friendship and professional relationship between Nichols and Mendelsohn. Some focused on the privacy issues at play with the recorded phone call. Others, in a discussion about white privilege and career advancement, raised that Nichols is related by marriage to the famed broadcast journalist Diane Sawyer and the Academy Award-winning director Mike Nichols.

Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A., addressed the situation at length during a news conference before tip-off of Game 1 between the Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks.

“It’s disheartening,” Silver said. He said that both Nichols and Taylor are “terrific” at their jobs, and that it was “unfortunate that two women in the industry are pitted against each other.” He said he would have thought that through difficult conversations “ESPN would have found a way to be able to work through it. Obviously not.”

Critical Race Theory Rapidly Destroying American Health Care

A great, great piece from Katie Herzog, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "What Happens When Doctors Can't Tell the Truth?":

‘People Are Afraid to Speak Honestly’

They meet once a month on Zoom: a dozen doctors from around the country with distinguished careers in different specialities. They vary in ethnicity, age and sexual orientation. Some work for the best hospitals in the U.S. or teach at top medical schools. Others are dedicated to serving the most vulnerable populations in their communities.

The meetings are largely a support group. The members share their concerns about what’s going on in their hospitals and universities, and strategize about what to do. What is happening, they say, is the rapid spread of a deeply illiberal ideology in the country’s most important medical institutions.

This dogma goes by many imperfect names — wokeness, social justice, critical race theory, anti-racism — but whatever it’s called, the doctors say this ideology is stifling critical thinking and dissent in the name of progress. They say that it’s turning students against their teachers and patients and racializing even the smallest interpersonal interactions. Most concerning, they insist that it is threatening the foundations of patient care, of research, and of medicine itself.

These aren’t secret bigots who long for the “good old days” that were bad for so many. They are largely politically progressive, and they are the first to say that there are inequities in medicine that must be addressed. Sometimes it’s overt racism from colleagues or patients, but more often the problem is deeper, baked into the very systems clinicians use to determine treatment.

“There’s a calculator that people have used for decades that predicts the likelihood of having a successful vaginal delivery after you've had a cesarean,” one obstetrician in the Northeast told me. “You put in the age of the person, how much they weigh, and their race. And if they’re black, it calculates that they are less likely to have successful vaginal delivery. That means clinicians are more likely to counsel black patients to get c-sections, a surgery they might not actually need.”

There’s no biological reason for race to be a factor here, which is why the calculator just changed this year. But this is an example of how system-wide bias can harm black mothers, who are two to three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women even when you control for factors like income and education, which often make racial disparities disappear.

But while this obstetrician and others see the problems endemic in their field, they’re also alarmed by the dogma currently spreading throughout medical schools and hospitals.

I’ve heard from doctors who’ve been reported to their departments for criticizing residents for being late. (It was seen by their trainees as an act of racism.) I’ve heard from doctors who’ve stopped giving trainees honest feedback for fear of retaliation. I’ve spoken to those who have seen clinicians and residents refuse to treat patients based on their race or their perceived conservative politics.

Some of these doctors say that there is a “purge” underway in the world of American medicine: question the current orthodoxy and you will be pushed out. They are so worried about the dangers of speaking out about their concerns that they will not let me identify them except by the region of the country where they work.

“People are afraid to speak honestly,” said a doctor who immigrated to the U.S. from the Soviet Union. “It’s like back to the USSR, where you could only speak to the ones you trust.” If the authorities found out, you could lose your job, your status, you could go to jail or worse. The fear here is not dissimilar.

When doctors do speak out, shared another, “the reaction is savage. And you better be tenured and you better have very thick skin.”

“We’re afraid of what's happening to other people happening to us,” a doctor on the West Coast told me. “We are seeing people being fired. We are seeing people's reputations being sullied. There are members of our group who say, ‘I will be asked to leave a board. I will endanger the work of the nonprofit that I lead if this comes out.’ People are at risk of being totally marginalized and having to leave their institutions.”

While the hyper focus on identity is seen by many proponents of social justice ideology as a necessary corrective to America’s past sins, some people working in medicine are deeply concerned by what “justice” and “equity” actually look like in practice.

“The intellectual foundation for this movement is the Marxist view of the world, but stripped of economics and replaced with race determinism,” one psychologist explained. “Because you have a huge group of people, mostly people of color, who have been underserved, it was inevitable that this model was going to be applied to the world of medicine. And it has been.”

‘Whole Areas of Research Are Off-Limits’

“Wokeness feels like an existential threat,” a doctor from the Northwest said. “In health care, innovation depends on open, objective inquiry into complex problems, but that’s now undermined by this simplistic and racialized worldview where racism is seen as the cause of all disparities, despite robust data showing it’s not that simple.”

“Whole research areas are off-limits,” he said, adding that some of what is being published in the nation’s top journals is “shoddy as hell.”

Here, he was referring in part to a study published last year in the Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. The study was covered all over the news, with headlines like “Black Newborns More Likely to Die When Looked After by White Doctors” (CNN), “The Lack of Black Doctors is Killing Black Babies” (Fortune), and “Black Babies More Likely to Survive when Cared for by Black Doctors” (The Guardian).

Despite these breathless headlines, the study was so methodologically flawed that, according to several of the doctors I spoke with, it’s impossible to extrapolate any conclusions about how the race of the treating doctor impacts patient outcomes at all. And yet very few people were willing to publicly criticize it. As Vinay Prasad, a clinician and a professor at the University of California San Francisco, put it on Twitter: “I am aware of dozens of people who agree with my assessment of this paper and are scared to comment.”

“It’s some of the most shoddy, methodologically flawed research we’ve ever seen published in these journals,” the doctor in the Zoom meeting said, “with sensational conclusions that seem totally unjustified from the results of the study.”

“It’s frustrating because we all know how hard it is to get good, sound research published,” he added. “So do those rules and quality standards no longer apply to this topic, or to these authors, or for a certain time period?”

At the same time that the bar appears to be lower for articles and studies that push an anti-racist agenda, the consequences for questioning or criticizing that agenda can be high.

Just ask Norman Wang. Last year, the University of Pittsburgh cardiologist was demoted by his department after he published a paper in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) analyzing and criticizing diversity initiatives in cardiology. Looking at 50 years of data, Wang argued that affirmative action and other diversity initiatives have failed to both meaningfully increase the percentage of black and Hispanic clinicians in his field or to improve patient outcomes. Rather than admitting, hiring and promoting clinicians based on their race, he argued for race-neutral policies in medicine.

“Long-term academic solutions and excellence should not be sacrificed for short-term demographic optics,” Wang wrote. “Ultimately, all who aspire to a profession in medicine and cardiology must be assessed as individuals on the basis of their personal merits, not their racial and ethnic identities.”

At first, there was little response. But four months after it was published, screenshots of the paper began circulating on Twitter and others in the field began accusing Wang of racism. Sharonne Hayes, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic, implored colleagues to “rise up.” “The fact that this is published in ‘our’ journal should both enrage & activate all of us,” she wrote, adding the hashtag #RetractRacists.

Soon after, Barry London, the editor in chief of JAHA, issued an apology and the journal retracted the work over Wang’s objection. London cited no specific errors in Wang’s paper in his statement, just that publishing it was antithetical to his and the journal’s values. Retraction, in a case like this, is exceedingly rare: When papers are retracted, it’s generally because of the data or the study has been discredited. A search of the journal’s website and the Retraction Database found records of just two retractions in JAHA: Wang’s paper and a 2019 paper that erroneously linked heart attacks to vaping.

After the outcry, the American Heart Association (AHA), which publishes the journal, issued a statement denouncing Wang’s paper and promising an investigation. In a tweet, the organization said it “does NOT represent AHA values. JAHA is editorially independent but that’s no excuse. We’ll investigate. We’ll do better. We’re invested in helping to build a diverse health care and research community.”

As the criticism mounted, Wang was removed from his position as the director of a fellowship program in clinical cardiac electrophysiology at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and was prohibited from making any contact with students. His boss reportedly told him that his classroom was “inherently unsafe” due to the views he expressed.

Wang is now suing both the AHA and the University of Pittsburgh for defamation and violating his First Amendment rights. To the doctors on the Zoom call, his case was a stark warning of what can happen when one questions policies like affirmative action, which, according to recent polling, is opposed by nearly two-thirds of Americans, including majorities of blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.

“I’m into efforts to make medicine more diverse,” a doctor from the Zoom group said. “But what’s gone off the rails here is that there is an intolerance of people that have another point of view. And that's going to hurt us all.”

JAHA isn’t the only journal issuing apologies. In February, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) released a podcast hosted by surgeon and then-deputy journal editor Edward Livingston, who questioned the value of the hyper focus on race in medicine as well as the idea that medicine is systemically racist.

“Personally, I think taking racism out of the conversation will help,” Livingston said at one point. “Many of us are offended by the concept that we are racist.”

It’s possible Livingston’s comments would have gone unnoticed but JAMA promoted the podcast on Twitter with the tone-deaf text: “No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care?”

Even more than in the case of Norman Wang, this tweet, and the podcast it promoted, led to a massive uproar. A number of researchers vowed to boycott the journal, and a petition condemning JAMA has received over 9,000 signatures. In response to the backlash, JAMA quickly deleted the episode, promised to investigate, and asked Livingston to resign from his job. He did.

If you try to access the podcast today, you find an apology in its place from JAMA editor-in-chief Howard Bauchner, who called Livingston’s statements, “inaccurate, offensive, hurtful and inconsistent with the standards of JAMA.” Bauchner was also suspended by JAMA pending an independent investigation. This Tuesday, JAMA announced that Bauchner officially stepped down. In a statement, he said he is “profoundly disappointed in myself for the lapses that led to the publishing of the tweet and podcast. Although I did not write or even see the tweet, or create the podcast, as editor in chief, I am ultimately responsible for them.”

Shortly after this announcement, the New York Times reported that “JAMA’s reckoning” led to a backlash from some JAMA members, who wrote in a letter to the organization that “there is a general feeling that the firing of the editors involved in the podcast was perhaps precipitous, possibly a blot on free speech and also possibly an example of reverse discrimination.” Bauchner’s last day at JAMA is June 30...

Keep reading.

 

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

Republicans Fight Back Against Critical Race Theory

Republicans are fighting critical race theory, but what about conservatives? 

It's not hard to see the C.R.T. is going to be with us for the long haul. The problem is what to do with it. What's I'm seeing in response so far isn't very appealing, much less conservative. It's a lot of cancel culture coming from the right. It's too bad, too, for the solutions aren't too far and away. Folks should look to first principles, especially federalism. That is, push education policy down to the local level as much as possible, and as fast as you can. Get Congress out of the picture. Give states and localities the money, and then let them decide their own curricula. The real conservative bet would be abolishing the Department of Education. Can the Republicans do that? They're the putative conservative party. They should go big and call for a massive downsizing of the federal government, devolving more and more responsibilities to the states. I can't recall really any Republican administration doing that, not even Ronald Reagan's. 

Maybe you'd have to go back to Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative for such bold initiatives to reinvent government? 

Downsize, devolve, and delegate education policy down from the federal government to the states. And then get government out of the way and let the people decide what's best for their kids and communities. 

We'll see.

At NYT, "Disputing Racism’s Reach, Republicans Rattle American Schools":

In Loudoun County, Va., a group of parents led by a former Trump appointee are pushing to recall school board members after the school district called for mandatory teacher training in “systemic oppression and implicit bias.”

In Washington, 39 Republican senators called history education that focuses on systemic racism a form of “activist indoctrination.”

And across the country, Republican-led legislatures have passed bills recently to ban or limit schools from teaching that racism is infused in American institutions. After Oklahoma’s G.O.P. governor signed his state’s version in early May, he was ousted from the centennial commission for the 1921 Race Massacre in Tulsa, which President Biden visited on Tuesday to memorialize one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history.

From school boards to the halls of Congress, Republicans are mounting an energetic campaign aiming to dictate how historical and modern racism in America are taught, meeting pushback from Democrats and educators in a politically thorny clash that has deep ramifications for how children learn about their country.

Republicans have focused their attacks on the influence of “critical race theory,” a graduate school framework that has found its way into K-12 public education. The concept argues that historical patterns of racism are ingrained in law and other modern institutions, and that the legacies of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow still create an uneven playing field for Black people and other people of color.

Many conservatives portray critical race theory and invocations of systemic racism as a gauntlet thrown down to accuse white Americans of being individually racist. Republicans accuse the left of trying to indoctrinate children with the belief that the United States is inherently wicked.

Democrats are conflicted. Some worry that arguing America is racist to the root — a view embraced by elements of the party’s progressive wing — contradicts the opinion of a majority of voters and is handing Republicans an issue to use as a political cudgel. But large parts of the party’s base, including many voters of color, support more discussion in schools about racism’s reach, and believe that such conversations are an educational imperative that should stand apart from partisan politics.

“History is already undertaught — we’ve been undereducated, and these laws are going to get us even less educated,” said Prudence L. Carter, the dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Attempts to suppress what is still a nascent movement to teach young Americans more explicitly about racist public policy, like redlining or the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, amount to “a gaslighting of history,” she said, adding, “It’s a form of denialism.”

The debate over the real or perceived influence of critical race theory — not just in schools but also in corporate, government and media settings — comes as both parties increasingly make issues of identity central to politics. And it accelerated during the presidency of Donald J. Trump, when discussions over racism in the country were supercharged by his racist comments and by a wave of protests last year over police killings of Black people.

 

After the Massacre: Black Property Owners Leveraged Land to Bring Businesses Back

I don't think I've ever read so much about the Tulsa race massacre. Leftist media folks didn't seem to care so much about Tulsa before the 100th anniversary. Didn't see nothin' about it on the 75th anniversary, or the 80th or 90th. That's not usually how these things work when remember big, important historical events. But it's all race all the time now, so perhaps diabolical race-baiters are making up for lost time.

That said, this is good, at WSJ, "Black Land Ownership Primed Greenwood’s Rebound After Massacre":

For the past 17 months, a group of WSJ's Black journalists, along with other journalists of color worked on a series of 9 stories examining the economic ramifications of the Tulsa Race Massacre.
I'm extremely proud to share our work. (outside the paywall) https://t.co/oujuQb1r5i

— Kimberly S. Johnson (@KimberlyReports) May 29, 2021

TULSA, Okla.—After all the destruction and loss of life, what survived the 1921 attack in the Greenwood district proved the most valuable and enduring in the neighborhood’s midcentury recovery: the ambition of Black entrepreneurs and landowners.

The ability of property owners to raise money by leveraging the land beneath the rubble helped seed a local economy of Black-owned businesses for the next decades, according to interviews, court filings, newspaper articles and an analysis of Tulsa County real-estate records by The Wall Street Journal.

Rebuilding Greenwood after the massacre had seemed a long shot. There was little or no government assistance. Insurers largely denied claims from people who had lost their homes and didn’t compensate business owners for lost inventory. Many residents instead used their property as collateral to secure short-term mortgages from financial institutions, more affluent individuals and community lending pools, records show.

The loans helped the neighborhood flourish in the 1940s and 1950s, residents and historians said. In 1940, the homeownership rate among Black residents in Tulsa was 49%, surpassing the rate of 45% among white residents, U.S. Census data show. In those decades, grocery stores lined the commercial spine of North Greenwood Avenue, and the district featured chili parlors, movie theaters, barbecue restaurants, drugstores, pool halls and doctors’ offices. By 1942, Greenwood was home to more than 240 businesses, according to Hannibal B. Johnson’s “Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Greenwood District.”

“All the odds were against us, and we survived anyway,” said James O. Goodwin, publisher of the Oklahoma Eagle, Greenwood’s century-old Black newspaper. Yet, this second renaissance would, too, meet its own calamity.

The story of Black property ownership in Oklahoma began well before the 1921 massacre. Many of the territory’s early Black residents were descendants of those formerly enslaved by Native Americans who had been pushed west by the U.S. government in the 19th century, according to Larry O’Dell, director of development and special projects at the Oklahoma Historical Society. In later agreements with the U.S., these Native Americans and the more than 23,000 formerly enslaved Black men and women of the tribes—known as freedmen—became eligible for allotments of as much as 160 acres in Oklahoma, Mr. O’Dell said. Many formed all-black towns in Oklahoma, largely in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The opportunity to own land drew Black migrants from other states to Tulsa. Many found work as skilled laborers and in service jobs in an economy buoyed by agriculture and, later, the oil industry. Some who settled in Greenwood started businesses and bought property.

P.S. Thompson was among the Greenwood residents who mortgaged property to rebuild after the massacre. He filed a claim against the city for failing to protect his house and drugstore from destruction, fires and looting, according to documents with the Tulsa Historical Society & Museum and research compiled by the Oklahoma Historical Society. The following year, Mr. Thompson and his wife, E.B. Thompson, used their property as collateral to obtain a $750 loan from L.S. Cogswell Lumber Co., about $12,000 when adjusted for inflation. The loan was for 15 months at an annual interest rate of 10%, according to records from the Tulsa County Clerk. The average U.S. mortgage rate was around 6% at the time. The couple paid off the loan and obtained several more short-term mortgages in amounts from $500 to $1,500.

Well-to-do Greenwood residents made loans to other members of the community. In the 1920s and 1930s, James Henri Goodwin, a businessman and real-estate investor, extended mortgage loans to local residents, according to county clerk documents, and borrowed himself. Some Greenwood property owners were able to borrow from savings-and-loan associations.

Restrictive real-estate covenants limited the mobility of Black residents and property owners beyond Greenwood’s boundaries. Private-lending practices, common across the U.S., rated the presence of Blacks in a neighborhood as an elevated property risk, historians said, and blocked many Black home buyers from getting mortgages.

By 1958, the proportion of white home buyers had grown dramatically. Black residents made up 10% of Tulsa’s population but only 3% of buyers of new housing in the city, according to a Tulsa Urban League report issued that year.

Even with new homes being built, very few Black buyers could qualify for financing, according to the report, provided by the University of Tulsa’s Department of Special Collections. The passage of civil-rights legislation in the 1960s began to open up opportunities for some residents to move out of Greenwood amid efforts to desegregate communities, a move that cut into business owners’ clientele...

Still more.

 

Birding While White

*Shrug.*

This lady is a real character. 

At NYT, "Amy Cooper, White Woman Who Called 911 on Black Birder, Sues Over Firing."

Ms. Cooper, who made the call after a man asked her to leash her dog in Central Park, says that she was discriminated against because of her race.

 

Old World Hatreds in the New World

Excellent piece.

It's Peter Savodnik, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "The New Furies of the Oldest Hatred."

Tulsi Gabbard: 'Please let us stop the RACIALIZATION of everyone and everything — i.e., racialism (VIDEO)

One of the greatest American patriots alive today, and I say this after thinking she was bonkers for a while during her campaign, but she's been proved right more and more often, especially on U.S. government intelligence scandals, Russia overreach in U.S. foreign policy, the China threat, and now the existential danger (from within) of "woke" racialism --- "racism," racism," racism" --- "you're racist" all-hate Democrat, well, racism.

Watch:

Shades of Blue

From Thomas Chatterton Williams, a fellow I read from time to time at the Old Gray Lady, who hits the nail on the head here like Thor smashing some enemy antagonist to dust. 

At Harper's Magazine (surprisingly):

Late on election night, when the betting markets were just realizing that Trump’s path to victory had narrowed, and leading voices on the left were lamenting the failure of anything resembling a blue wave to swell up and wash the country clean, Ruben Gallego, a Democratic congressman from Arizona and an Iraq War veteran, tweeted a triumphant message to his supporters: “Az Latino vote delivered! This was a 10 year project.” Gallego had ample reason to rejoice. For the first time since 1996, a Democratic presidential candidate had won the state of Arizona, thanks in large part to strong Hispanic support. This development stood in sharp contrast to outcomes in Texas and Florida, where Latinos provided crucial votes for Trump, and in California, where they even helped to doom a pro–affirmative action ballot measure. In light of this fragmented result—and amid much hand-wringing in the media over whether Latinos still form a coherent category in our obsessively charted racial landscape—one user responded:

Ruben, honest question, how do we as a party improve our work with the LatinX community across the country as well as we’ve done in AZ? Its so frustrating to see so many republican LatinX voters, but I know its on people like me to help convince them dems are the place to be.

Gallego’s blunt reply went viral: “First start by not using the term Latinx,” he told him. The MSNBC host Joy Reid, who only hours earlier had referred to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as “Uncle Clarence,” popped into the thread dumbfounded, seeming surprisingly out of touch for a professional commentator. “Can you elaborate on this a bit more?” she asked Gallego, with what seemed like genuine incredulity. “I was under the impression that this was the preferred term, and as a Black person, I’m definitely sensitive to what people prefer to be called.”

In fact, not only is “Latinx” decidedly not the term most Latinos choose, but a significant number—about three fourths of the Latino population—have never even heard of it. A bilingual national survey conducted in December 2019 by the Pew Research Center found that a mere 3 percent of Latinos use the descriptor. And yet, the “new, gender-neutral, pan-ethnic label, Latinx, has emerged as an alternative,” the report observes. It is what prominent progressives—from Elizabeth Warren to Ibram X. Kendi—insist on using to describe a community to which they do not themselves belong. During the Democratic primaries, Senator Warren tweeted, “When I become president, Latinx families will have a champion in the White House. #LatinxHeritageMonth.”

“When [Latinx] is used I feel someone is taking away some of my culture,” Gallego wrote in response to Reid’s question. “Instead of trying to understand my culture they decided to change it to fit their perspective.”

The disagreement over such progressive jargon may seem like inside baseball to those who aren’t extremely online, but it is worth considering seriously, emblematic as it is of deeper fissures in the always tenuous patchwork of identity groups and economic classes that constitutes the contemporary Democratic coalition. The lives of progressive, college-educated, predominantly white “coastal elites” have become far removed from those of white Republicans, but more significantly from those of the nonwhite voters their party depends on to remain electorally viable—and whose validation lends them an air of virtuousness. The battle over “Latinx” might be understood as an instance of what the conservative commentator Reihan Salam has called “intra-white status jockeying”—an opportunity for “those who see themselves as (for lack of a better term) upper-whites . . . to disaffiliate themselves from those they’ve deemed lower-whites.” What Gallego knows, and can’t help but bristle at, is the fact that this semantic gatekeeping is ultimately not even about Latinos.

Last February, whites on the left expressed shock and disappointment when Joe Biden beat the surging Bernie Sanders in the South Carolina primary, due in large part to moderate and conservative black primary voters who chose to reject the socialism they’d been told was in their best interest. Why should this have been surprising? Again, according to widely publicized research conducted by Pew, black Americans’ self-reported ideology has remained relatively stable throughout the twenty-first century. In 2019, about 40 percent of black Democratic voters considered themselves “moderate,” while an additional 25 percent identified as conservative. Just 29 percent of black Democrats described their views as “liberal.”

Yet these glimpses into the heterogeneity of black and Latino—to say nothing of Asian—political preferences did not prepare influential progressives for the far less welcome November revelation that Donald Trump—whose behavior and associations have earned him the reputation of a kleptocratic xenophobe, if not an outright fascist—had gained traction with every major demographic (including Muslim voters, despite his travel ban). In a year of inescapable talk of racial identity and white supremacy, mass protests against systemic and interpersonal racism, and a fifteen-thousand-person rally in Brooklyn for black trans lives during the height of the pandemic, the extraordinary irony was that one of the very few groups whose support for Trump declined even modestly was white males.

“This is so personally devastating to me,” began an emotional thread of tweets from the New York Times columnist Charles Blow the morning after the election. “The black male vote for Trump INCREASED from 13% in 2016 to 18% this year. The black female vote for Trump doubled from 4% in 2016 to 8% this year.” Analyzing the exit polls (which are admittedly imperfect), he also picked out white women and LGBTQ voters for opprobrium—“the percentage of LGBT voting for Trump doubled from 2016. DOUBLED!!!”—before landing on an insight that should spur an enormous amount of introspection on the left:

The percentage of Latinos and Asians voting for Trump INCREASED from 2016, according to exit polls. Yet more evidence that we can’t depend on the “browning of America” to dismantle white supremacy and erase anti-blackness.

Not only did Latinos, Asians, and, it must be reiterated, black voters join whites in delivering Trump more votes than the record 69.5 million Barack Obama got in 2008—more votes, that is, than any candidate in the history of the United States except Biden—they also upended assumptions down-ballot as well. In California, Proposition 16, the lavishly funded proposal to once again allow race and gender to be considered in government hiring and contracting and in public-university admissions, was roundly defeated, despite the state’s shifting demographics in the twenty-four years since the ban on affirmative action was imposed (white people now make up 36 percent of the population, second to Latinos at 39 percent).

The measure commanded strong support in just five counties in the Bay Area as well as the city of Los Angeles, Alexei Koseff noted in the San Francisco Chronicle: The “yes” campaign “vastly outspent opponents and drew high-profile endorsements from across the political spectrum,” yet the supposed progressive landslide didn’t come.

Fashionable narratives about the Democratic coalition and its members’ goals and ambitions can efface what many minorities think is in their best interest. Such misreadings are not just insensitive but dangerous. They can lead Democrats to pursue ill-conceived, poorly articulated policies that backfire to the benefit of conservatives, or worse, inflict harm on vulnerable communities. The recent push to defund the police is one of the most extravagant examples of what is, at best, high-minded intellectual recklessness. Those calling to do so “have shown a complete disregard for the voices and perspectives of many members of the African American community,” Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil-rights lawyer who formerly led the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, told the Star Tribune in July, after the city council moved to defund the MPD in the wake of George Floyd’s killing. “We have not been consulted as the city makes its decisions, even though our community is the one most heavily impacted by both police violence and community violence.”

The tragic reality is that homicides in Minneapolis increased by 50 percent in 2020. More than 500 people had been shot by December, the most in a decade and a half. Meanwhile, the city’s mayor noted a “historic” rate of attrition among Minneapolis police, with twice as many leaving the force as in a typical year. Though 2020 was exceptionally frustrating for many reasons, most notably the substantial loss of life and of economic security wrought by COVID-19, it’s hard to imagine that a stark drop in officer morale didn’t contribute to the mayhem.

Like the niche semantic preference for “Latinx,” but with far more direct and dire consequences, viral slogans such as “abolish the police”—created by people of color, but powerfully amplified by whites situated at a considerable remove—have been foisted on black communities that have a far more equivocal relationship with policing than is often acknowledged.

Online, some very audible voices argue for the abolition of prisons and police departments. Offline, countless black Americans are forced to confront the harsh inadequacy of stark rhetorical binaries. They are overpoliced and underpoliced at the same time. Outside the brutal videotaped killings by police that fill our news feeds, or the numbing grind of quotidian degradations like stop-and-frisk, it is underpolicing that causes the most harm. Jill Leovy’s masterly 2015 book, Ghettoside, presents a thorough, unsentimental account of the social dynamics plaguing American cities and the senseless killings that routinely occur in them—often perpetrated, as we are so frequently reminded, by other black people. Leovy quotes the Harvard legal scholar Randall Kennedy: “The principal injury suffered by African-Americans in relation to criminal matters is not overenforcement but underenforcement of the laws.” The late Tupac Shakur put it most vividly in making a case for black self-defense in a 1994 BET interview: “We next door to the killer,” he practically screamed. “We next door to ’em, you know, ’cause we up in the projects, where there’s eighty n——s in the building. All them killers that they letting out, they right there in that building. But it’s better just ’cause we black, we get along with the killers or something? We get along with the rapists ’cause we black and we from the same hood? What is that? We need protection, too!” Anyone who speaks with black people outside of academic or activist circles knows that this is hardly a fringe view...

Still more.

 

Tammy Duckworth Blames Trump for Border Crisis, and Margaret Brennan Botches Follow-Up on Recent Attacks on Asian-Americans (VIDEO)

You know, I actually think Tammy Duckworth's a freakin' patriot. She lost both legs after her Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Iraq, when she was "over there" working on troop support missions, and she did multiple tours, if I recall correctly. And she made an amazing health recovery (because losing both legs, and dealing with all the initial trauma and surgeries, and rehab, and PTSD, and whatnot, is incredible), and she was elected to the Senate, and that's no small achievement, and I don't care what party, in that respect. So that's all good.

What's not so good is she's an extremely partisan Democrat, and she's got the blame-game and the "woke" left's victimology down to a "T". I mean, c'mon, what is it with all these "poor" and "marginalized" and "weak" Asian women? They are none of these things, so cut me a freakin' break. It's Duckworth who's actually being "racist" when she lowers the bar for folks like this, who are actually hard workers and entrepreneurs. (Though, of course, I abhor the attacks on them, which is f*cked up, and bad, even if the dude really did have a "sex addiction" --- you just don't kill people when you should be getting your own damned psychiatric treatment, the motherf*cker.)

And y'all know I love that hottie Margaret Brennan, but she screwed up by not following-up on her decent questioning by pressing Duckworth on the race of the perpetrators. That is, Brennan let stand Duckworth's false meme of "white supremacist" violence against these "poor, helpless" "communities of color." What bull.

So, Brennan should have pressed on the background of the perps, because we have the data, both at the federal, state, and local levels, regarding exactly what ethnic groups are committing the most crimes, and as I've noted before, if you just watch the many, many videos posted to social media, and YouTube, or whatever, it's mostly black street thugs in "hoodies" who're knocking down and killing the old Asian folks, and it needs to stop, and fast. Sheesh.  

At "Face the Nation" earlier:

Well, That Didn't Take Long: Sharon Osbourne Out at 'The Talk' as Unhinged Leftists Claim Another Scalp Over Imaginary Racism (VIDEO)

So, my wife was on target, naturally. 

Sharon Osbourne is definitely out at "The Talk," and just one quick search for "Sharon Osbourne" on Twitter gives you a glimpse into the radical --- and so "pure" --- left's utter ideological fury over the audacity that this woman might actually stand up for something, that thing being, er, the truth.

Here's my earlier entry, "'The Talk' Extends Hiatus After Sharon Osbourne's 'Controversial' Defense of Friend Piers Morgan (VIDEO)."

And now at OK Magazine, with, what looks like, a bit of actual news on some likely nasty litigation to be forthcoming: "CBS Will Reportedly Have to Pay Sharon Osbourne a 'Sizeable Settlement to Keep Her Quiet' Amid 'The Talk' Investigation." Also, "'It's All Out of Control': Sharon Osbourne 'Not Expected to Return' to 'The Talk' After Shocking On-Air Meltdown, Says Source."

It wasn't a "shocking on-air meltdown." 

Indeed, Ms. Osbourne was freakin' ambushed, and she's right to claim she was set up, for whatever reason, the most likely being that this black race-mongering beatdown queen, Sheryl Underwood, came to the taping all ready to go for the big "you be racist!" backstab --- and the rest is history, or it will be, once we get more on the true juicy details of exactly how this degenerate bull came down.

The kicker is this Don Lemon segment at CNN from the other night (below), which I did not see in real time, in which he "discusses" how "calm" was Ms. Underwood in responding to the "privileged Ms. Osbourne, who shoulda just sucked it up. And further, neither has the "brother" Mr. Lemon, nor the "I ain't never seen no white person who wasn't no racist cracka" Ms. Hill, accepted Ms. Osbourne's apology, which I had not seen until today; and they claimed Osbourne's mea culpa wasn't "really" addressing" the "underlying" issue, which is that if muthaf*ckin' black folks call you out for your "enabling" of alleged "racist" treatment of "people of color" (and a "coloured" royal, no less), then you best be shuttin' the f*ck up, bitch.

And don't forget, Ms Hill was first suspended at then basically fired from  --- after a year of turmoil, and with Ms. Hill brokering some kind of "settlement," er, payoff --- ESPN, after she basically attacked Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones (on Twitter, of course) as the second coming of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. 

And this lady's been bad news for a long time. See the Washington Examiner, for example, "Lessons from Trader Jose and Jemele Hill: Calling everything racist is a really bad way to fight racism."

I'm am done.

I can barely get through Wolf Blitzer's "The Situation Room" anymore, and if I continue to watch the network, it's going to be just to monitor how low Zucker's FUBAR programming will go down the hole of despicable and hysterically deranged leftist racial paranoia (and obvious pro-Biden/Dem "white supremacist" propaganda).

Oh brother, Sharon Osbourne should just turn the tables and retort, "Bitch Better Have My Money." (*Eyes rolling into the back of my head.*)

San Francisco Asian Woman Who Fought Back Now Has 'GoFundMe' Campaign Closing-In on $1 Million (VIDEO)

It's been a big day, again, with work and family stuff, so blogging has been light.

But I did see the story earlier this morning, on "CBS This Morning," when at that time the San Francisco lady's "GoFundMe" hadn't yet reached $600,000.

Now the Guardian's reporting it's getting up to $800,000, and I won't be surprised if it passes a cool million over the weekend. (And I hope that helps the woman with all her medical bills, and what not, and perhaps she'll be able to "spread the wealth" to some of her neighbors, who many, no doubt, could use a hand, as this pandemic hurts everybody, even generally hard-working Asian families living up that way).  

See, "Nearly $800,000 raised for two elderly Asian people attacked in San Francisco: Video of an injured and crying Xiao Zhen Xie standing on a street corner prompted thousands to share messages and donate." 

(ADDED: Of course the Guardian had to get in the obligatory, "Anti-Asian rhetoric, fueled by Donald Trump and the far right’s insistence on using offensive, stigmatizing language to describe the coronavirus, has helped provoke violence," blah, blah.)

In any case, and good for them, but some of lady's younger Asian-American neighbors are forming "citizens' patrols" to, frankly, stand guard and protect their communities from these kinds of attacks; and remember, most of these attacks are not from "white crackers," but black "hoodlums" whose culture is already anti-social, and committing crime for these idiots is just another day "on the job."

At KPIX News 5 San Francisco: 

Now That's What I'm Talkin' About! 75-Year-Old San Francisco Woman Beats and Bloodies Her Anti-Asian Attacker! (VIDEO)

Now this is some story!

And it's interesting, because, if you think about it, it doesn't follow the script regarding recent attacks on Asian-Americans in San Francisco (so far, it's been mostly black urban hoodlums). I mean, here's some young white dude, who hates Asians, and let's say, he comes from outside the city to mount his attack? Where'd he come from? Who taught him this clearly racist and violent attitude? Because you know, while Gavin Newsom's overplaying his hand on all the "white supremacists" sponsoring the recall, it's not like we don't have any in this state. 

I mean, you have the "State of Jefferson" secession movement, and those folks, probably many of them, are no doubt "white crackers." They live in the northeast part of the state, in some of the most remote counties, including Tehama County (just south of Redding), Modoc County (at literally the most northeast corner of the state), and Yuba Country (which abuts, on the east side, State Highway 99, which following it up north, about 100 miles or so, connects back over to Interstate 5 at Red Bluff).

So, yeah, it's just a hypothesis, but still --- who is this guy and where'd he come from?

So, that brings us back to the 75-five-year old Asian lady. She was carrying a stick, and though she suffered a horrible black eye, she gave as good as it gets. Now, what should really happen is San Francisco should expedite concealed-carry permits for local Asian-Americans who want to get armed, and frankly, the city should subsidize firearms training, to put their money where it counts (but not where it "is," sadly, because S.F. District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, is a "red-diaper baby," and he'll resist anything that conflicts with the Soros-leftist's "criminals are really vicitims" stupidity, which is one of the massive drivers of residents right the hell out of this dumphole of a state).

In any case, three cheers for this woman. I hope she sets an example and emboldens other S.F. Asians (especially those of the Chinese-American community) to do the same.

Via KPIX News 5 San Francisco:

Neighbors Step-Up Support of Asian American Family in Ladera Ranch (VIDEO)

Following-up from yesterday, "Neighbors Stand Guard as Gangs of 'Youth Thugs' Racially Harass and Threaten Chinese Immigrant Family."

Here's my local CBS/KCAL affiliate with an on-the-ground report:

And here's more, from KPIX CBS News San Francisco, the supposed "tolerant" leftist enclave, apparently full of racist haters, and thus, it's almost the entire "Left Coast" of California that's not too keen and friendly to our Asian-American sisters and brothers. It makes me sick. WATCH: "Bay Area Group Mounting Foot Patrols to Protect Asians After Rash of Attacks."

Let's just all be nice to one another. This state has enough problems as it is, especially with our loser "French Laundry" Governor, Gavin Newsom. *Eye-roll.*

Neighbors Stand Guard as Gangs of 'Youth Thugs' Racially Harass and Threaten Chinese Immigrant Family

Now this is an interesting story.

Keep in mind that I live in Irvine, well north of Ladera Ranch (in south O.C.), and I've long joked (in a kinda "racist" way, frankly), about how Irvine is actually "Beijing West," and for years, especially when my oldest son was getting his driver's license, I used to constantly rag about how "Chinese drivers" are the absolute worst, which isn't racist to me, because they are the worst. Back in the 1980s, "No Jap Drivers" bumper stickers were very popular (and racist, with slant eyes and buck teeth poking out over thin lips). But that's not something I'd ever put on my car, and of course, in Irvine, Chinese and Korean immigrant families are in fact model members of the community. 

One thing that always amazes me is the huge number of Asian-American churches, especially Korean-American. And while you see lots of recent immigrants, wearing big dark face shields to protect their skin, and, frankly, a lot of Chinese women --- fresh off the boat --- who wear Mao jackets and such, they never bother anybody. Both my sons attended Irvine High School, and the diversity there was between different Asian-American student groups, with some Hispanic, white, and not too many black kids. 

So, it's all good, and you get used to it, and some of my Asian neighbors are the kindest, nicest people you could ever meet.

Which brings me back to this story, at LAT, which is actually horrifying, despicable, and a f*cking shame. Some of this can be traced back to Trump and his moniker, the "China virus," etc. But most if is just plain old intolerance --- and if you know the history of the O.C., so called "far-right" groups did in fact often originate here, and there are K.K.K. types that abound. So, as someone who is "mixed-race," and I've taught "Black Politics" at the upper-division level, it's not lost on me, this resurgence of racist hatred. And it's bad. Just bad for everybody, especially the victims. 

See, "An Asian American family in O.C. was being harassed. Now their neighbors stand guard":

Every night, the neighbors converge on the Si family’s two-story home, which has large windows and an expansive porch adorned with columns.

The Sis moved to this upscale Ladera Ranch neighborhood a few months ago, with the country deep in the COVID-19 pandemic and hate crimes against Asian Americans on the rise.

Almost immediately, teenagers swooped in for nightly visits, repeatedly ringing the doorbell, yelling and pounding on the door.

“I did not understand the extent of the harassment and how often it was occurring, at first,” said Layla Parks, who organized the nightly neighborhood watch. “I was immediately outraged and wanted to help.”

Violence and hate incidents directed at Asian Americans have surged across California, including in Orange County, since the beginning of the pandemic, with some blaming Asians because of the coronavirus’ origins in Wuhan, China.

A recent spate of violent attacks in Oakland, San Francisco, New York City and elsewhere has attracted national attention and sparked fear among Asian Americans, though it is not clear whether some of the incidents were racially motivated.

In February in Koreatown, two men hurled anti-Asian slurs at a 27-year-old Korean American U.S. Air Force veteran, calling him “Chinese virus” and then swinging at him, he told KTLA.

“We’re seeing an epidemic of hate right now, and we have to stand together,” state Sen. Dave Min (D-Irvine), who represents the district just west of Ladera Ranch, said last week at an event to show support for the Si family.

While officials in Orange County are still compiling information on reports made in 2020, preliminary statistics indicate a tenfold increase in hate incidents against Asian Americans, said Alison Edwards, chief executive of the nonprofit OC Human Relations.

It’s a troubling uptick that experts have blamed in part on Donald Trump’s rhetoric about the pandemic, including his use of terms such as “China virus” and “kung flu.”

Last year, California saw a consistent increase in hate incidents and crimes targeting Asian Americans, said Brian Levin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

Stereotyping and conspiracy theories identifying Asians as responsible for COVID-19 have been embraced by wide swaths of the country, Levin said, with a new Center for Public Integrity/Ipsos poll showing that nearly 1 in 4 Americans have concerns about being physically near Asian people.

“My kids are scared. I’m very annoyed,” said Si, 48. “At night, my wife and I could not sleep for more than three or four hours. Please, parents, tell your kids don’t do that again.”

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has been called to the home seven times between October 2020 and February. Deputies have ramped up patrols in the area, and the department has launched an investigation, said Sgt. Dennis Breckner.

Still, the doorbell kept ringing, Si said. Nothing helped until his neighbors stepped in, vowing to put an end to the harassment.

Parks, who takes daily walks around the neighborhood, had introduced herself to Si and his family when she noticed them moving in last year.

In early February, Si reached out to Parks for advice.

He had already told her about the constant doorbell ringing, and she had offered to help if needed.

At first, she figured it was a harmless childhood prank of “ding-dong ditch.”

But as the harassment continued, including racial slurs against the family, Parks realized this was something uglier...

Still more.

 

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:

Inside a Battle Over Race, Class and Power at Smith College (VIDEO)

Following-up from the other day, "Whistleblower Jodi Shaw Out at Smith College (VIDEO)."

It turns out that the New York Times, of all place, has published a long and detailed "investigative"-style report on Smith College, and it's a real humdinger. 

Christina Hoff Sommers reacted on Twitter, "Why I can’t yet give up on @NYTimes. Such excellent reporting by Michael Powell."

And Lee Fung, a former far-left "reporter" at Media Matters, wrote, "This story is a must-read, just incredible. Not unique at all to Smith College, though. This kind of cowardice and character destruction is permeating almost every institution dominated by highly educated liberals."

And Batya Ungar-Sargon, the not-very conservative opinion editor of the (Jewish Daily) Forward, also wrote, "A student at Smith got a janitor put on leave and a security officer tarred as racist, both of whom make less than her $78,000 yearly tuition, because she insisted on eating in a deserted dorm she wasn't meant to be in. Wokeness is a smokescreen for class."

It's a long article (link here), so I'll just copy a little, and hopefully the subscription "wall" won't prevent readers from accessing the whole thing: 

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — In midsummer of 2018, Oumou Kanoute, a Black student at Smith College, recounted a distressing American tale: She was eating lunch in a dorm lounge when a janitor and a campus police officer walked over and asked her what she was doing there.

The officer, who could have been carrying a “lethal weapon,” left her near “meltdown,” Ms. Kanoute wrote on Facebook, saying that this encounter continued a yearlong pattern of harassment at Smith.

“All I did was be Black,” Ms. Kanoute wrote. “It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a woman of color.”

The college’s president, Kathleen McCartney, offered profuse apologies and put the janitor on paid leave. “This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias,” the president wrote, “in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their ordinary lives.”

The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN picked up the story of a young female student harassed by white workers. The American Civil Liberties Union, which took the student’s case, said she was profiled for “eating while Black.”

Less attention was paid three months later when a law firm hired by Smith College to investigate the episode found no persuasive evidence of bias. Ms. Kanoute was determined to have eaten in a deserted dorm that had been closed for the summer; the janitor had been encouraged to notify security if he saw unauthorized people there. The officer, like all campus police, was unarmed.

Smith College officials emphasized “reconciliation and healing” after the incident. In the months to come they announced a raft of anti-bias training for all staff, a revamped and more sensitive campus police force and the creation of dormitories — as demanded by Ms. Kanoute and her A.C.L.U. lawyer — set aside for Black students and other students of color.

But they did not offer any public apology or amends to the workers whose lives were gravely disrupted by the student’s accusation.

This is a tale of how race, class and power collided at the elite 145-year-old liberal arts college, where tuition, room and board top $78,000 a year and where the employees who keep the school running often come from working-class enclaves beyond the school’s elegant wrought iron gates. The story highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.

Those tensions come at a time when few in the Smith community feel comfortable publicly questioning liberal orthodoxy on race and identity, and some professors worry the administration is too deferential to its increasingly emboldened students.

“My perception is that if you’re on the wrong side of issues of identity politics, you’re not just mistaken, you’re evil,” said James Miller, an economics professor at Smith College and a conservative.

In an interview, Ms. McCartney said that Ms. Kanoute’s encounter with the campus staff was part of a spate of cases of “living while Black” harassment across the nation. There was, she noted, great pressure to act. “We always try to show compassion for everyone involved,” she said.

President McCartney, like all the workers Ms. Kanoute interacted with on that day, is white.

Faculty members, however, pointed to a pattern that they say reflects the college’s growing timidity in the face of allegations from students, especially around the issue of race and ethnicity. In 2016, students denounced faculty at Smith’s social work program as racist after some professors questioned whether admissions standards for the program had been lowered and this was affecting the quality of the field work. Dennis Miehls, one of the professors they decried, left the school not long after.

Then in the autumn of 2019, the religious studies department proposed a class on Native American religion and spirituality. A full complement of students registered but well before classes began, a small contingent of Native American students and allies pasted bright red posters on buildings on campus reviling the course as harmful, intrusive and disrespectful and attacking the instructor, who was young, white and not on a tenure track. He had an academic background in this field and had modeled his course on that of his mentor, who was a well-known professor and a member of the Choctaw Nation.

The administration declined to challenge the student protesters and had the instructor submit to sessions of “radical listening” with the protesters. In the end, the religious studies department dropped the class...

Still more.

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.

 

L.A. Teachers' Union Demands Vaccinations Before School Reopenings

Well, I can't say I'm surprised. 

This whole state is completely messed up. Well, actually, Newhall schools, up by Santa Clarita, announced they'll open up for in-person instruction, but they're obviously an outlier from the leftist insanity.

At LAT, "No quick path to reopening L.A. Unified is emerging as school year slips away":

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new plan to vaccinate school staff more quickly does little to move campuses toward reopening in Los Angeles, where the teachers union remains opposed until community infection rates drop further and vaccines take full effect for returning workers — calling into question whether a robust return to in-person instruction is possible before the end of the school year.

The union’s posture — similar to that of school employee unions in San Francisco and of the California Teachers Assn. — comes as union leaders in the nation’s second-largest school district continue protracted negotiations with officials over what a return to school will look like and as parents in diverse areas of the city express passionate and opposing views over reopening.

United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz said the union is holding firm to protect the health of students and their families as well as its members, who include teachers, librarians, counselors and nurses.

“Now more than ever we are feeling the pressure to return to physical schools before we have the necessary conditions and measures in place to ensure the safety of everyone. And the pressure is coming from all sides,” Myart-Cruz said in a Friday broadcast to members and the public. “Local and state officials did not help create the right conditions to reopen schools for in-person instruction and educators are being targeted for trying to protect our students and our communities.”

Myart-Cruz also left open the possibility that union members would refuse to return to work if their safety concerns are not fully addressed. Union members will vote internally to clarify their position in early March, she said.

Schools Supt. Austin Beutner has not announced any firm plans for reopening campuses — and has also echoed concerns that vaccinated school employees and lower coronavirus rates are critical elements to the safe reopening of campuses for the 465,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

The stances of both the union and Beutner are more cautious than the latest guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which endorses the immediate reopening of elementary campuses, provided they follow strict safety procedures.

Students and parents allied with the union expressed their fears about reopening too quickly during a downtown car caravan rally and news conference Saturday. Parents emphasized that Black and Latino families have been devastated by the virus and said they do not believe community conditions are safe enough to reopen...

"Black and Latino" students? Are there any others attending L.A.U.S.D.? 

Well, in fact, the district has a small number, 8.8 percent, of white students, stuck in the circus, and those kids are being held hostage by "woke" teachers, and especially "woke" and lazy parents, whose kids are no doubt eating up all the free food supplied by the district, while lounging around all day, with their parents letting those kids' minds "go to waste," and terribly so.