Category Archive

Who is the famous African American being quoted here?: [Although crime] is born of poverty, we must also realize that crime is generated by a lack of values that has largely gone unaddressed in our nation as a whole and in the black community in particular. Soaring unwed birthrates, absentee fathers, an aversion to work, an unwillingness to embrace societal standards and time-honored discipline — all these factors have contributed to the problems we must now confront. Choose from: A.  Ben Carson, surgeon and presidential candidate B.  Thomas Sowell, scholar and columnist C.  Bill Clinton, our first black president D.  …

My email this week features two long quotes, and I’m warning you beforehand that neither should be read on an empty stomach.  But you’ll see that at least I’m not being partisan. *          *          * Here’s the set-up for the first item:  I’ve noted before that those bemoaning the “institutional racism” of Amerikkka seem to have very little idea of what it is they would propose as a corrective in 2015.  They can’t ask for laws abolishing slavery or Jim Crow or prohibiting racial discrimination; they can’t demand an African American president or attorney general either. There was more evidence …

The Obama administration has figured out yet another way to push preferential treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex: Convene a big White House conference and extract “diversity”commitments from corporations. The administration has done it twice this month already. Big business is terrible on this issue anyway, and is certainly not going to resist any pressure from the federal government. So everyone wins — except, of course, the principle of nondiscrimination, the law, and those who end up getting discriminated against in the name of “diversity.” *          *          * Allow me to elaborate, starting with the point that business is all-too-often happy …

The Washington Post had a great big front-page story on Sunday, headlined “Black and Unarmed,” that analyzes fatal police shootings over the past year (that is, since Michael Brown was shot in Ferguson, Missouri), focusing especially on ones where the person shot was, you guessed it, black and unarmed.  A few observations: First, it was a little hard to get past the first paragraph, which calls burglary “a relatively minor incident.” Try telling that to anyone who has been home when someone’s broken into it, or even someone who’s gone through having a home broken into when they weren’t home — especially …

I’ll be traveling to Chicago this week for the American Bar Association’s annual meeting, where I’ve been invited to talk about voting law issues and the upcoming elections in 2016.  I plan to make three points. First, lawmakers should resist demands that felons be automatically re-enfranchised on the day they walk out of prison (currently, only two states — Maine and Vermont — allow prison inmates to vote).  If you aren’t willing to follow the law yourself, then you can’t demand a role in making the law for everyone else, which is what you do when you vote.  Or, to …

There is, again, an amusing disconnect on the Left between diagnosis and prescription for what ails American race relations. Last year, the outrage prompted by supposedly entrenched racism and the asserted brutality of our police led to a passionate demand for … fewer traffic tickets and less vigorous enforcement of our drug laws. Now, the murderous racism that allegedly permeates all White Amerikkka must be remedied by … fewer Confederate flags. What’s going on here, of course, is that the amount of racism that remains in America is being exaggerated by the Left in order to advance its political agenda. …

“Tough Tests for Teachers, With Question of Bias” was the front-page, above-the-fold headline on a story last week in the New York Times. It discusses the fact that “minority candidates” — meaning African Americans and Hispanics — are not doing as well as whites in passing teacher-licensing exams. I have low expectations of the Times for a story like this, so I was pleasantly surprised that it at least acknowledged the arguments that, gee, maybe there’s some logic to requiring some basic level of competence among schoolteachers. But I still have several complaints. First, the article (starting with the headline) suggests …

Two items of note late last week, race-wise (alas, of course, there are always more than that, but just two for now).  First — as we noted early but was since then widely discussed here, there, and everywhere — the head of the Spokane branch of the NAACP now stands accused of being white. Of course, you can be white and still be a member of the NAACP, but the claim is that this lady knowingly misrepresented her melanin content.  Comparisons with faux–Native American Elizabeth Warren and faux-woman Caitlyn Jenner were, of course, inevitable. Second, there was an interesting article in …

Supporters of the Center for Equal Opportunity know that I don’t like the “disparate impact” approach to civil-rights enforcement.  And while it’s a bad idea when used to challenge firefighter exams, criminal background checks, English proficiency, school discipline policies, policing, mortgage lending, and voter ID laws — to give just a few examples — I’ve always had a special place in my heart for its use by bureaucrats to challenge pollution that fails to strike the right racial balance. But, “[i]n recognition of Earth Day and Arbor Day,” the Obama administration recently highlighted those efforts in its own publication. Now, I’m …

A new report is out, purporting to document racial stereotyping and “microaggression” at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  The latter is another addition to the jargon of political correctness, and is defined as slights or snubs, often unintentional, but which communicate derogatory or negative messages.  From the first news story I saw on this study: “‘They [i.e., students] shared very detailed personal stories of experiencing racism on campus,’ [report coauthor Stacy] Harwood said. For example, some students said they heard classmates comment that racial minorities were less qualified and only admitted because of affirmative action. Others said their advisers encouraged them …