Euphemism of the Year? | Center for Equal Opportunity

Once upon a time, “juvenile delinquent” was a nice way to say “young criminal.” As often happens, however, eventually even the euphemism is thought to be too harsh, and so a better one has to be found. And so one has: This Obama-administration press release last week talked a lot about “justice-involved youth.”

Then, to top itself, the administration broadened the euphemism to include criminals of all ages, with Attorney General Lynch referring to “justice-involved individuals.”

And then, after that, it continued still further in this vein last week, referring to “justice-involved Veterans.”

After my noting it, the Washington Times picked up on this in an editorial this week, and other conservative sites have now noted it, too.

Law and Loyalty — Last week the White House also released presidential proclamations for Law Day and Loyalty Day, each observed on May 1. They are exactly what you would expect from this administration.

The latter proclamation is not about loyalty at all, and the former is all about one of the Warren Court’s signature decisions, Miranda v. Arizona. (For a different perspective on the Warren Court’s criminal justice jurisprudence in general, and the Miranda decision in particular, view this clip.)

The Bigger Problem — In a New York Times op-ed over the weekend, the author asserts that Donald Trump’s “candidacy has brought prejudice into the open, and I’m glad” since it proves that racism is alive and well in America. My response:

The fact is that there are racists out there, and the fact is that there are people out there who exaggerate the number of racists we have. No serious person thinks that racism has vanished from our country, and only a delusional person denies that the amount of racism in our country has declined dramatically in the past 50 years. The fact that there are some racists does not vindicate the claims of those who would like to believe that we suffer from “systemic racism,” just as the fact that we have a black president doesn’t prove that there is no longer any racism.

So how do we continue to make progress? We’ve made discrimination illegal in just about any activity, and racism is not socially acceptable in most circles, and that’s all to the good. But the persistence of the racial disparities faced by African Americans is more a result of culture — and particularly the catastrophic (71 percent) out-of-wedlock birthrate — than of discrimination, and that has to be acknowledged and addressed, too.

Jayson Blair, Call Your Office — From the Washington Post:

“News industry leaders are forever proclaiming that diversity is an organizational priority. Such pronouncements usually come paired with apologies for having failed on this front in the past, along with vague plans to do better.

“New York Times Chief Executive Mark Thompson defied this tradition yesterday in a presentation before a gathering of managers on the business and news sides of the newspaper. He identified three areas toward which diversity efforts must be channeled: recruitment, hiring and promotion.

“Supervisors who fail to meet upper management’s requirements in recruiting and hiring minority candidates or who fail to seek out minority candidates for promotions face some stern consequences: They’ll be either encouraged to leave or be fired.”

I commented: “It’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex in recruiting, hiring, and promotion. Oh, and it’s also unfair, divisive, inefficient, and immoral.” And: “Oh, and remember Jayson Blair?”

Onion or Not? — Well, yes, it’s an Onion article that’s titled, “College Encourages Lively Exchange Of Idea / Students, Faculty Invited To Freely Express Single Viewpoint.” But you have to admit that it’s hard to distinguish parodies from straight reporting on the higher ed beat.

Thank You Sperry Much — Many thanks to Paul Sperry, for his recent New York Post op-ed titled, “You’re now a racist if you say schools need to be safer.” In it, he illuminates the Obama administration’s insane application of a “disparate impact” theory to school discipline.

If a suspension policy does not consider a student’s race, is adopted with no racial intent, and is applied evenhandedly, then it’s not racial discrimination. Period. The “disparate impact” approach ignores this and is wrongheaded in all contexts, including this one.

The fact that a school has more suspensions for members of some racial groups than others is not racial discrimination: It simply reflects the reality that some demographic have more members at some point in time who present discipline problems. This, in turn, is because of disparities in culture and out-of-wedlock birthrates — again, not because of discrimination.

Finally, kudos to Mr. Sperry for blowing the whistle on those U.S. Senators who would increase the federal funding for this nonsense!

The Republican Candidates and “Affirmative Action” – Finally, just a brief scorecard on the three remaining Republican candidates and their respective views on racial preferences. Despite his anti-p.c. reputation, Donald Trump is on record this campaign as saying that he is “fine with affirmative action,” and he criticized Justice Scalia when the late justice raised the “mismatch” point at oral argument in the Fisher v. University of Texas case. Likewise, last August, there were a number of news stories in which Ohio governor (and presidential hopeful) John Kasich crowed that the state’s minority contracting goal (read “quota”) had at long last been achieved. But Ted Cruz said earlier this year in this context that the focus should be on merit, not race. Just saying.

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