Category Archives: culture

Arithmetic and Social Justice

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California education officials—at least that’s how Williamson Evers, Senior Fellow, Director of the Center on Educational Excellence, refers to them; you and I might have different, colorfully metaphoric terms—want to base arithmetic training in K-12 on whether the classes have sufficient social justice in them, rather than on whether 2+2 equals 4 (Polish proverbs are not allowed, either). California’s Instructional Quality Commission is looking at requiring arithmetic to be taught in accordance with A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.

This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy. It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear fashion,” requiring students to “show their work” and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity’.”

This, of course, is…nonsense.

If the Left, or their so-called educators, were truly interested in “social justice,” they would desist from their blithe, if carefully unspoken, assumption that blacks (all minorities, come to that) are inherently inferior, intrinsically incapable of mastering arithmetic—or anything else—as well as can any other group of human beings.

But if they did that, the Left would have to find a different means of feeling superior to others so that they could feel good about themselves.

Instead, they cling desperately to their (not so) soft bigotry of low expectations.

“Merely as Districts”

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Recall the spendiferous $1.9 trillion bill enacted in March that President Joe Biden (D) and his fellow Progressive-Democrats have been pleased to call their “American Rescue Plan.” This enactment included funding explicitly for the States. Recall further that this…plan…seeks to bar recipient States from reducing their own tax rates as a condition of receiving the money.

…can’t use their share of the funds to “directly or indirectly offset a reduction” in “net tax revenue.”

Ohio demurred from that Federal intrusion into State prerogatives, as those prerogatives are made explicit in our Constitution’s 10th Amendment.

It’s possible that the Biden administration will lose on Constitutional grounds, as the Editors noted at the end of their piece, which centered on a Federal trial judge’s ruling allowing Ohio’s suit to go forward:

[I]n a preliminary opinion last week, federal Judge Douglas Cole found the state has a “substantial likelihood of success on that [Spending Clause] argument.”

But this is just an early skirmish in the Progressive-Democrats’ war on our federal republican system of governance. After all, this is the position of Biden and his brethren:

It is my first wish to see the United States assume and merit the character of one great nation, whose territory is divided into different States merely for more convenient government and the more easy and prompt administration of justice, just as our several States are divided into counties and townships for the like purpose.

And

…one of the first wishes of my heart, viz., to see the people of America become one nation in every respect; for, as to the separate [state] legislatures, I would have them considered, with relation to the Confederacy, in the same light in which counties stand to the State of which they are parts, viz., merely as districts to facilitate the purposes of domestic order and good government….

No, wait—that was John Jay, both times, regarding the power he wanted in our then nascent central government prior to the Constitutional Convention.

Biden is just bent on reviving that. Americans successfully defeated Jay in those early days. We Americans need to defeat the Progressive-Democrats’ assault today.

The Party of Systemic Racism

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Recall that the chairman of the Lamar County Democratic Party, Gary O’Connor, called Senator Tim Scott (R, SC) an oreo over Scott’s speech responding to President Joe Biden’s (D) speech to a sparsely populated joint Congress.

In response to the backlash to his blatantly racist and deliberately cast slur, O’Connor tendered his resignation from his position in the party.

Now we have the truth of those Progressive-Democrats:

Representatives of the Lamar County Democrats met Tuesday to consider the resignation of Gary O’Connor, the Lamar County Democratic Party chair. However, the party said in a statement that they decided not to accept the resignation after taking the “last few days to reflect upon this incident.”

O’Connor has apologized to Scott. The Lamar County branch of the Progressive-Democratic Party has its own, nominally parallel, claims regarding O’Connor’s racist slur:

Lamar County Democrats recommit ourselves to conduct our private conversations and our public social media discussions with anti-racist, pro-reconciling attitudes and language. We strongly condemn bigotry of any kind and will continue our historic efforts to work for justice and equality for all our fellow citizens.

Leave aside the fact that “anti-racist…language” includes such racist moves as attempting to force the 1619 Project into children’s school curriculum and into college and university required coursework, trying to force children to “deconstruct” their racial status and “privilege,” trying to force children and their parents explicitly to support “anti-racism” and activists like BLM, and so on.

Apologies, however sincere as O’Connor’s seems to be, at least in its construction, are nothing but empty words, though, absent sustained and observably changed behavior. Such a thing takes open, improved behavior over a considerable amount of time. Especially, it requires that behavior; simply going to ground and being silent and hidden doesn’t cut it.

Recommittals like the Lamar Progressive-Democrats’ are meaningless unless they’re accompanied by sustained, measurably improved performance. Such a thing by an organization takes changed behavior over an even longer period, and it’s best accompanied by a change in management personnel, including here those Representatives of the Lamar County Democrats.

The Lamar Progressive-Democrats’ statement, though, is especially noncredible given their decision actually to do nothing: their refusal to accept O’Connor’s resignation as their chairman. Insisting he stay on is simply their empirical (as opposed to rhetorical) demonstration that the branch, as a body, condones racism. Had that gang valued O’Connor’s contributions while decrying his racist spew, they would have accepted his resignation as chairman and reassigned him to another, lesser position within the branch.

Allen West, Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, has the right of it. He said he was

sick and tired of the duplicitous hypocrisy of the true party of racism.

And

He said he would be sending a box of Oreos to the Texas Democratic Party.