Daily Archives: 18 September 2017

Manufactured Racism

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A Democratic congresswoman said drawing attention to a colleague’s first job in the fast food industry is racist.

Seriously.

Congressman Joe Wilson (R, SC) was talking up the value of a fast food job as a means of gaining valuable experience and life/work lessons while on the job, and he mentioned that Senator Tim Scott (R, SC) had started out in such a starter job in a Chick-fil-A franchise, and now he was a sitting Senator.

[Franchises] provide entry level jobs for people to have first-time employment, improve themselves, and succeed.  In South Carolina we particularly recognize this. US Senator Tim Scott had his first job at a Chick-fil-A franchise.

It’s true enough that Wilson was factually wrong about Scott’s relationship with the franchise—he was mentored by a franchisee rather than having his first job at one.  However, it’s crystalline that Wilson was not being racist in referencing Scott’s employment history.

That didn’t stop Congresswoman Marcia Fudge (D, OH) from deciding to get her knickers in a twist over the reference.

I have to say this. I am trying to figure out for the life of me what Tim Scott has to do with what we are talking about today. So he worked at Chick-fil-A? So what? I mean did [Wilson] bring it up because he’s black?

No, Wilson brought it up to show the value of starter jobs of the sort a franchise can offer.

Fudge knows this.  She manufactured her beef for her own political ends.  Making up a racist beef, though, where it’s clear that no racism exists is itself racist.  She could have served her personal politics in other ways.  Unless this is her personal politics.

Discrimination

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Now FEMA is doing it, and it’s religious discrimination.  Churches, bastions of succor in times of disaster—like Hurricanes Harvey and Irma—suffer their own damages in those disasters, as they did in Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.  However, unlike other charitable organizations in similar straits, churches are being denied FEMA assistance to recover.

Law on this is not clear because separation of church and state, New York University Law Professor Burt Neuborne is claiming.

The difficulty is that the Constitution has two provisions in it. It has a freedom of religion, but it also has kind of a freedom from religion which prevents government money from being used for religious purposes, worship purposes.

No, it doesn’t.  This is, at best, mistaken.  The two relevant 1st Amendment clauses are the Free Exercise Clause—Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise thereof [of religion]—and the Establishment Clause—Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.  There’s nothing in there about freedom from religion; that’s just the distortionate drivel used by crowds like the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the like.

The Federal government cannot favor one religion over another or favor religion over atheism; there’s nothing in there that prohibits the Feds from providing disaster recovery help to religious organizations along with the same sort of help for secular non-profit organizations.  In fact, refusing to do so violates the Establishment Clause by actively disfavoring religion rather than acting neutrally toward it—as the Clause requires.

Neuborne wasn’t finished.

The question is: can they get the money and rebuild their worship facilities? Because then the money would be going towards worship, not to help people from not getting skinned knees on the playground, or being able to get food at the food bank.

This is just disingenuous.  No, the money would not be going toward worship, it would be going toward restoring a building.  A building that comes in critically handy for sheltering those displaced by disasters, natural or otherwise.  Regardless of the religions (or lack) of the sheltered or the shelter.

The attacks on religion from continues.