DECEMBER 28, 2021 06:30 AM
BY GLENN LOURY
I am a black American intellectual living in an age of persistent racial inequality in my country. As a black man, I feel compelled to represent the interests of “my people.” But that reference is not unambiguous. As an intellectual, I feel that I must seek out the truth and speak such truths as I am given to know. As an American, at this critical moment of “racial reckoning,” I feel that imperative all the more urgently. But, I ask, what are my responsibilities? Do they conflict with one another? I will explore this question tonight.

My conclusion: “My responsibilities as a black man, as an American, and as an intellectual are not in conflict.” I defend this position as best I can in what follows. I also try to illustrate the threat “cancel culture” poses to a rational discourse about racial inequality in America that our country now so desperately requires. Finally, I will try to model how an intellectual who truly loves “his people” should respond. I will do this by enunciating out loud what have increasingly become some unspeakable truths. So, brace yourselves!

Do you believe systemic racism is present in America? Why or why not?

I don’t believe that America is systemically racist in the way that term is used by so-called “anti-racist” activists. Our system and laws stand against racism, and that is embedded at almost every level of government and increasingly the rest of society. The goal should be to help this systemic anti-discrimination live up to its promise, not to tear down the system itself or engage in our own retaliatory discrimination. //

Glenn Loury, Professor at Brown University, wrote an amazing column at The Washington Examiner, that is a must read, Unspeakable truths about racial inequality in America. Read the whole thing, here’s an excerpt:

The first unspeakable truth: Downplaying behavioral disparities by race is actually a “bluff”

Socially mediated behavioral issues lie at the root of today’s racial inequality problem. They are real and must be faced squarely if we are to grasp why racial disparities persist. This is a painful necessity. Activists on the Left of American politics claim that “white supremacy,” “implicit bias,” and old-fashioned “anti-black racism” are sufficient to account for black disadvantage. But this is a bluff that relies on “cancel culture” to be sustained. Those making such arguments are, in effect, daring you to disagree with them. They are threatening to “cancel” you if you do not accept their account: You must be a “racist,” you must believe something is intrinsically wrong with black people if you do not attribute pathological behavior among them to systemic injustice. You must think blacks are inferior, for how else could one explain the disparities? “Blaming the victim” is the offense they will convict you of — if you’re lucky.

I claim this is a dare, a debater’s trick. Because, at the end of the day, what are those folks saying when they declare that “mass incarceration” is “racism” — that the high number of blacks in jails is, self-evidently, a sign of racial antipathy? To respond, “No, it’s mainly a sign of anti-social behavior by criminals who happen to be black,” one risks being dismissed as a moral reprobate. This is so, even if the speaker is black. Just ask Justice Clarence Thomas. Nobody wants to be canceled.

But we should all want to stay in touch with reality. Common sense and much evidence suggest that, on the whole, people are not being arrested, convicted, and sentenced because of their race. Those in prison are, in the main, those who have broken the law — who have hurt others or stolen things or otherwise violated the basic behavioral norms which make civil society possible. Seeing prisons as a racist conspiracy to confine black people is an absurd proposition….

Nor does anybody actually believe that 70% of African American babies being born to a woman without a husband is (1) a good thing or (2) due to anti-black racism. People say this, but they don’t believe it. They are bluffing — daring you to observe that the 21st-century failures of African Americans to take full advantage of the opportunities created by the 20th century’s revolution of civil rights are palpable and damning. These failures are being denied at every turn, and these denials are sustained by a threat to “cancel” dissenters for being “racists.” This position is simply not tenable. The end of Jim Crow segregation and the advent of the era of equal rights was transformative for blacks. And now, a half-century down the line, we still have these disparities. This is a shameful blight on our society, I agree. But the plain fact of the matter is that some considerable responsibility for this sorry state of affairs lies with black people ourselves. Dare we Americans acknowledge this?

Prof. Loury focused on being “cancelled” to contesting systemic racism, and that just happened to U. San Diego Law Professor Lawrence Alexander. He wasn’t fired, but he did have a scholarly article rejected by the Emory Law Journal precisely because he questioned systemic racism.

While it didn’t change how he did his job, the fact that he’s black and protecting a man the Left has reflexively labeled a “white supremacist” or “racist” put “a different perspective [on things] and I guess being black, obviously, for someone that was being called a racist for over a year and a half … no, they are definitely not racist.”

Willis says he was interviewed with the permission of the Rittenhouse family.

In the end, Cisneros learned that the offensive language couldn't be removed. That is often the case in other cities if officials there believe that it's wrong to erase a covenant from the public record. Instead, the county agreed to attach a piece of paper to Cisneros' covenant disavowing the language. //

After her ordeal, Cisneros started Just Deeds, a coalition of attorneys and others who work together to help homeowners file the paperwork to rid the discriminatory language from their property records. //

The bill allows property owners and homeowners associations to remove the offensive and unlawful language from covenants for no more than $10 through their recorder of deeds office and in 30 days or less, Johnson said. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, signed the bill into law in July. It takes effect in January 2022. //

Illinois becomes the latest state to enact a law to remove or amend racially restrictive covenants from property records. Maryland passed a law in 2020 that allows property owners to go to court and have the covenants removed for free. And in September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed a bill that streamlines the process to remove the language. Several other states, including Connecticut and Virginia, have similar laws. //

"History can be ugly, and we've got to look at the ugliness," said Richter, who is white. "We can't just say, 'Oh, that's horrible.' I feel like it [covenants] should be in a museum, maybe, or in schoolbooks, but not still a legal thing attached to this land."

This survey, and Kendi’s approving retweet, seem to be in direct contrast with his grift…I mean hypothesis. If being White gave you an advantage on college applications, which “White privilege” would imply, then you’d expect to find BIPOC applicants saying they are White. If the survey is anywhere near correct, it points to the fact that about half of all college students perceive claiming minority status as the easiest way to obtain college admission and scholarships. None of this screams “systemic racism” or “White privilege.” //

WillGanness
3 hours ago
CRT is a narcistic classroom cosplay of two very privileged groups in the elite urban class - one one hand you have white liberals who are seeking absolution for sins they never committed and on the other black liberal seeking empathy for injustices they didnt endure. Black Institutionalized racist hucksters (bred from 60's Post Modernism academia) are scamming White wealthy people and taking advantage of their success and associated guilt. The result is the framework that Democrats gain their political power from.

But while Democrats far and wide continue to state that CRT is not being taught in any public school classrooms, some in the education system are speaking out, including Tony Kinnett, whose LinkedIn profile lists him as a “District Science Coordinator & Instructional Coach at Indianapolis Public Schools.”

Kinnett, who says he “writes the science curriculum for over 30,000 students,” took to the Twitter machine earlier today and posted a short video explaining that yes, CRT was being taught in the public school system there, but not under the official banner of “CRT.” In other words, the typical deceptive word games are being played by leftist educators in the state in an attempt to assure concerned parents that schools there are not doing what they are, in fact, doing – just under different wording so parents won’t actually realize it’s CRT:

CalNativist
13 hours ago
Wait a minute. Affirmative Action has been a real "thing". For like 50 years. Everything the federal government touches is infused with racial policing and many liberal metro enclaves have been run on a racially-driven basis for decades.

Consider the case of Oakland. It has a department of Race and Equity in the municipal government. Look up the ghastly tale of the "Ghost Ship" fire and see how much good that did.

This is why you should not be able to get out of Sociology 1 or maybe even high school history without learning about the Moynihan Report "Crisis o the Negro Family". The stunning reality that black and white social statistics were roughly equivalent in the 1950s has to be considered in light of what has come since.

There is a false premise that "nothing has changed". No, every statistical indicator has gotten WORSE. Except for one: income, which did go up in part through lessening of legal discrimination but largely by the acquisition of public sector jobs. There is a treasure trove of historical material at a web site called TheBlackPast. Look at the page they have on the Moynihan Report; the story is encapsulated in one graphic at the top of the page.

Education itself, what should have been the Great Levelor, has instead been weaponized by corrupt political elements who I would accuse of outright sabotage because they want to cultivate dependence on the government.

But remember you get another cohort to educate every year. Look up the young man who was the first black Valedictorian in the long history of Oakland Technical High School, whose story I first learned about right here (it "went viral" later after his speech went up on Youtube).

I appreciate Condi stepping up to this extent but we are not where we are because of what happened in the distant past. We are where we are because of policies that were implemented SINCE that past was over. And now Harvared and Yale discriminate AGAINST Asians while a newly-annointed Nobel Prize winning economist endorses it? (That's Card the one from UC Berkeley).

I went to segregated schools till we moved to Denver. My parents never thought I was going to grow up in a world without prejudice. But they also told me “that’s somebody else’s problem, not yours, you’re going to overcome it, and you are going to be anything you want to be.” And that’s the message that I think we ought to be sending to kids. //

One of the worries that I have about the way that we’re talking about race is that it either seems so big that somehow white people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past. //

The former secretary of state also said she doesn’t think it’s “very productive” that “black people have to feel disempowered by race.” She continued:

I would like black kids to be completely empowered to know that they are beautiful in their blackness. But in order to do that, I don’t have to make white kids feel bad for being white. So somehow this is a conversation that has gone in the wrong direction. //

If leftists truly wished to diminish the impact of racism, they would focus more on doing what Rice said: Empowering black people. Instead of lowering learning standards so that more black students can graduate, it would make far more sense to focus on improving the quality of education that many black students receive. Despite constantly asking for more funding, they have not done much to provide better education for minority children. Indeed, they oppose measures like school choice, which would empower black parents to ensure their kids attend the best schools. //

During her appearance on “The View,” Rice never pretended racism didn’t exist. She never even downplayed it or pretended that it has no impact. Her contention is that black people can succeed despite the effects of bigotry. It is a sentiment expressed by people like Malcolm X, who routinely chastised black Americans for not focusing on building in their own communities instead of soliciting whites for relief.

Yes, racism does exist. Yes, it has an impact on black Americans and, by extension, the United States. But attempting to villainize nonracist white people is not the way to help black America.

Identity politics and the left’s desire to eliminate the middle class so that more Americans are reliant on the government have created a crisis that is worth fixing.... //

“I think we have to just assume that government — and that’s not just our elected officials but mostly the 2 million federal employees that are combining in their own offices, legislative, executive, and judicial power — that they want people to be dependent upon them because then they will support the expansion of that class and the greater remuneration and pensioning and power and influence and reputation of that class,” Hanson said. //

One example, Hanson argued, is that of military leaders who are more focused on profiting off of defense contracting and infiltrating their ranks with identity politics than on their service members dying in places such as Afghanistan.

“I think things are gonna change because I think in a year or two, there’s going to be a radical change in the government — legislative branch first and executive likely — and these generals are going to be shocked when they see that they don’t have a constituency anymore and the left never liked them and never supported them. They just found that they were useful idiots for a while. I think what they’ve done to traditional America is shocking.”

Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️
@realchrisrufo
WINNING: Fox Business' @CGasparino is reporting that major Wall Street firms are ditching critical race theory training programs, partially in response to my reporting that embarrassed American Express and other companies.

Public exposure works.
Big Biz has found that Critical Race Theory is bad for business
nypost.com //

And sure, it’d be easy to read these newer shifts away from CRT off as too marginal of a victory. Those companies will still have “diversity training” of some sort. Yet, how long has it been since the right has gained any real ground culturally, especially in the arena of how we view race as an aspect of society? Any battles won against CRT are noteworthy, even if the war continues.

Most people familiar with these matters understand that the gun control movement was rooted in racism. Despite attempts by hard leftists like those at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to convince the American public that the roots of the creation of the Second Amendment are racist, history clearly demonstrates that the first gun control laws were specifically designed to prevent black Americans from obtaining firearms.

But one of the issues that is not highlighted nearly enough is the fact that gun control laws never actually stopped being racist. What the gun-grabbing crowd won’t tell you is that in many major cities with high black populations, the gun laws are very much prohibitive against black and brown Americans. //

This issue was highlighted recently in an amicus brief that was filed in a Supreme Court case. The brief was filed by an organization called The Black Attorneys of Legal Aid in the case of New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Corlett. The plaintiffs in the case argue that New York’s system for issuing permits to carry guns is unconstitutional. //

For our clients, New York’s licensing regime renders the Second Amendment a legal fiction. Worse, virtually all our clients whom New York prosecutes for exercising their Second Amendment right are Black or Hispanic.

New York enacted its firearm licensing requirements to criminalize gun ownership by racial and ethnic minorities. That remains the effect of its enforcement by police and prosecutors today. //

This is only a small sampling of the laws Democrats have championed that have made it more difficult for black and brown people to obtain firearms. It has created a situation in which minorities living in high-crime areas have to purchase guns illegally in order to defend themselves.

Indeed, it is a common belief that those who obtain illegal firearms are doing so to engage in gang violence. But most often, these individuals are getting them for self-protection. They figure the risk of catching a possession case is not as dangerous as being unarmed if an assailant attempts to harm them.

By rewriting America’s history and 'recontextualizing' her founding documents, Biden’s National Archives is seeking to undermine our country's founders. //

Words matter, and few words have mattered more in the history of the United States than those contained within the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and other founding-era documents stewarded by the National Archives.

Protecting and celebrating the most important works in U.S. history isn’t only important because the Constitution and Bill of Rights, as well as other documents in the National Archives, are still legally binding, but also because they tell a story of who we are as a nation and what it means to be American. Today leftists, including many officials in the Biden administration, are actively working to rewrite that story, and to undermine every part of America’s exceptional past. //

Since the National Archives contains more than 100 million records, there are bound to be some that are offensive. But rather than identify prominent documents that are indeed offensive as such, the Archives chose to issue a “Harmful Language” warning across the board, knowing full well the documents read most often on its website and in its halls are founding-era materials like the Constitution.

You might be tempted to chalk up the Archives’ warning label to pure laziness. Being woke and accurate is hard when you’re in charge of maintaining millions of records, I’m sure. But it’s worth noting that the warning label emerged from the National Archives’ radical Task Force on Racism, which has developed dozens of other plans meant to give the impression that America’s history is full of racism, hatred, and violence, rather than highlight the nation’s incredible achievements.

In a 105-page report issued by the task force in April 2021, the National Archives suggested it, like the United States, is full of “structural racism,” including “a Rotunda in our flagship building that lauds wealthy White men in the nation’s founding while marginalizing BIPOC [black, indigenous, people of color], women, and other communities.” Since the report’s release in April, Archivist of the United States David Ferriero has “accepted the recommendations in full.” //

Additionally, the Archives will transform its famous Rotunda to “create a more inclusive and historically accurate tribute to the nation’s founding.” Its “Reimagine the Rotunda” plan includes “contemporary views on the men who framed the founding documents and their participation in and positions on slavery,” new sculptures, and a “recontextualizing” of the murals now in the Rotunda.

The woman who’d asked the question says, “It’s fine, thanks,” but the look on her face is one of frustration.

No, Ms. Redmond, it’s not good that none of your “narratives” about “white WASP culture” are good. Aren’t we told that unless we are part of a certain ethnic group we cannot take it upon ourselves to define that culture? Well, two white women were telling you that there are many “white” cultures in the United States but you were having none of it. What would have happened if they pushed back further? They clearly did not feel safe to, and they were forced to sit there and listen to that drivel as part of their job. Will they now be vilified and targeted as not being sufficiently anti-racist? Will white students on the 23 California State University campuses be pilloried if they refuse to accept your “narratives” about a culture they’re a part of? We already know the answer to that question, but this openly hostile attitude toward one race is despicable and morally unacceptable.

The failed link alone is mirthful, but the implication that baseball is harboring a racial problem is also off-target. The MLB has one of the most diverse rosters in sports across all of its teams, probably second only to the NHL. Roughly 250 players from around 20 countries play in the big leagues. To look at the sport as a white man’s game is a conclusion you do not arrive at but one you show up with.

This is what happens when a journalist declares there just has to be a problem. A lack of evidence to support the claim does little to impede the reporting, while missing the much larger point.

[R]acial discrimination is not inherently racist. … The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. – Ibram Kendi, How to Be an Anti-Racist. //

Liberal tv personalities like to accuse conservatives of being obsessed with CRT but what they are obsessed with is avoiding the return of segregation. This principal felt completely comfortable not only segregating her students, but doing it without even bothering to inform parents. That type of woke arrogance is too dangerous to tolerate.

But that is where we are all heading if the progressive left has their way. Joe Biden has repeatedly told us that election integrity reforms in states like Georgia and Texas are like “Jim Crow on steroids.” Yet here is a liberal educator (and presumed Democrat voter) who is literally resurrecting Jim Crow in her school and calling it a “special service.” Democrats are the ones who are going to have us all back in chains if we’re not careful.

Jon Heyman
@JonHeyman
It sounds like the fellow in Denver may have been yelling “Dinger,” not what folks originally heard, at least to many who listen. MLB has been looking into it but so far no one nearby said they heard a racial epithet. So that may actually be positive news.

rhysta
@vrhysta
Replying to @Rockies
if you look closely he was trying to get the attention of “Dinger” the Rockies mascot. //

The mind has a way of hearing what you tell it to hear. There are many mind-twisters where a piece of audio is played and subtitled in a way that makes you hear something that it’s not actually saying. //

Because of the similarities between the n-word and the name Dinger, it was easy for people to trick themselves into hearing what they wanted to hear, not what was actually being said. That’s why those in the crowd didn’t hear the n-word. They were not predisposed to hear it so they heard the actual word, in this case, Dinger.

But woke-ism is a disease, and that means they will never admit this was yet another made-up racial incident. Instead, they’ll keep doubling down because, in their eyes, racism is everywhere and is part of everything. It’s a really sad existence when you think about it.

JULY 29, 2021 By Robert Busek
Rather than trying to reform an educational system that has betrayed us, we should starve it of access to its favorite fodder: our children.

The only winning move is not to play. //

We have experienced the shift in thinking in a personal way. After years of unabashedly voicing their concerns about our kids’ homeschool education, our extended family has been curiously (and blessedly) silent ever since COVID-19 started wreaking havoc on our educational infrastructure. For once, we are ahead of the curve, and it is thrilling. //

A funny thing happened when students began remote learning during lockdown: parents started paying attention to what their kids were being taught. Many were not pleased with what they discovered. They felt betrayed by the system to which they had entrusted their kids and their money. Quite a few are fighting back, much to the chagrin of teachers’ unions, administrators and their political allies.

the question for any movement is not whether it is righteous on paper, but rather if it betters or worsens a given situation. On that front, I believe I can make a definitive judgment – the woke movement has failed. //

What’s so depressing about this is that it was imminently preventable. Nothing substantive in our laws has changed to cause such divisions. We didn’t start implementing segregation or other forms of state-mandated discrimination again over the last eight years, for example. Instead, every bit of the above collapse can be explained by political rhetoric, almost exclusively coming from the left under the guise of “being woke.”

Victimhood is not only addictive, it has become a form of currency. That’s not to say that there are no actual victims. It is to say that the idea of collective victimization, i.e. all black people are being oppressed at this very moment because one police officer did something bad in a single instance, on a single street, to a single person, is an incredibly divisive way of thinking. Victimization should logically be based on personal impact, and when it is, it can be dealt with. Yet, when John Doe in Sacramento is a “victim” because of something that happened to Sally Sue in New York, that leaves nowhere to go. Everything becomes so abstract as to have no solution.

Perceptions brought about largely by a well-funded activist class, not actual realities on the ground in individual lives, have caused the absolute collapse in race relations we are now seeing in the country. And again, has anyone actually been helped along the way, black people included? Objectively, the answer has to be no because when relations are trashed based purely on politically pushed narratives, again, there is no end game. There is no big issue to rally around to say “ok, let’s change this specific law and it will fix this specific problem.” //

Zaid Jilani
@ZaidJilani
·
Jul 22, 2021

During other periods of high tension, like the civil war, great depression, 1960s, there were substantive issues impacting the reality for Americans. What sharply changed in 2013 besides media (traditional and social)?

Zaid Jilani
@ZaidJilani
Obama also was critical of some voting laws but I don't remember him talking like this. This kind of racial fear tactic is so common now.

Matt Viser
@mviser
“This is Jim Crow on steroids,” President Biden says of the GOP-led changes in voting laws. //

The division is the point for the woke. //

This is not healthy, and it’s not a situation that a country can survive long-term. A political movement should be judged by its fruit, not by whatever righteousness it bestows upon itself. The fruit of the woke movement has been bitter and rotten. It serves no purpose except to divide and worsen whatever situation it claims to be fixing. For that, it does not deserve respect, but destruction.

Another celebration of the founding of the United States of America has arrived and, as always, it is yet another reflection upon the history of this nation. This year, Independence Day comes amid heightened racial tensions, a raucous debate over a controversial election, and an increasingly noxious political discourse. //

Echoes of abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ speech asking “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” continue to reverberate more than 150 years later. While addressing an audience in 1852, he said:

The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. //

So how do I, as a black American conservative, reconcile these realities?

I recognize that the pain and oppression that my ancestors suffered is an inexcusable part of America’s story. In addition, I do not deny that black Americans – descendants of slaves especially – have a unique and complex history, much of which still has an impact today.

However, I can also acknowledge that from this great evil came a people and culture that has stood strong against what was inflicted upon us. In many cases, we have thrived despite it all. We have a strong culture that has influenced the evolution of American society.

As black Americans, we are an embodiment of the sentiment expressed by Joseph after confronting his wicked brothers who sold him into slavery:

You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good.

I love being black. I love my culture. I love being an American. To me, none of these things are mutually exclusive.

It is for this reason that I can celebrate the Fourth of July, despite the fact that it did not always apply to my ancestors. Like every other nation in antiquity, America has sins. But she has worked and fought vigorously to move closer to the ideals upon which she was founded.

Until Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, recently stood up as the voice of reason, and blocked a museum dedicated to those Americans the government hives off as “Hispanic” or “Latino,” it looked like conservatives had learned all the wrong lessons from their recent success with those voters.

“I understand what my colleagues are trying to do and why. I respect what they’re trying to do. I even share their interests in ensuring that these stories are told. But the last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation with an array of segregated, separate-but-equal museums for hyphenated identity groups,” said Lee in a statement from the Senate floor about the Smithsonian Institution museum that up to that point seemed all but a fait accompli, having gathered bipartisan support.

“At this moment in the history of our diverse nation, we need our federal government and the Smithsonian Institution itself to pull us closer together and not further apart,” the Utah Republican went on.

The Smithsonian, a taxpayer-funded institution, “should not have an exclusive museum of American Latino history or a museum of women’s history or museum of American men’s history or Mormon history or Asian American history or Catholic history. American history is an inclusive story that should unite us.”