Category Archives: culture

Affirmative Action in California

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The good citizens of California banned discrimination on the basis of race and sex when they voted up Proposition 209 nearly 25 years ago. That proposition barred affirmative action programs.

Those citizens of a generation ago understood that affirmative action programs, by their deliberate use of race and sex as selection criteria, are fundamentally racist and sexist.

Here we have the California Assembly affirmatively supporting just that racism and sexism.

California Legislative Black Caucus Chair Dr Shirley Weber, primary sponsor of ACA 5, which is designed to rescind Prop 209 and to that end puts the matter on the November ballot, said this about her bill, claiming that the current political and social environment is

forcing Californians to acknowledge the deep-seated inequality and far-reaching institutional failures that show that your race and gender still matters[.]

However, rather than addressing the root causes of “inequality” (carefully undefined, that—inequality of outcome? of initial opportunity? of…?—of whatever seems convenient to the politician, apparently) and of “institutional failures,” the California Assembly has chosen to expand those failures, to strengthen the prejudice, by reverting to those inherently bigoted programs.

My irony alarm is sounding.

And the Assembly as a whole is proud of its bigotry.

Censoring the Media

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The censors have expanded their operation from the Facebooks, Alphabets, Twitters of our nation to our newsroom simulacra. Daniel Henninger noted the latest examples of the invasion:

In the past week, the editorial page editor of the New York Times, the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the editors of Bon Appétit magazine and the young women’s website Refinery 29 have been forced out by the staff and owners of their publications for offenses regarded as at odds with the beliefs of the current protests.

It’s more than mere censorship, though. It’s George Orwell and Franz Kafka in the press room collaborating on the press’ editorials.

The…news…outlets and the society gossip magazines cited by Henninger are canonical examples.

Henninger, though, is mistaken in one respect. These editors may have been forced out by the institutions’ owners, but staff played virtually no role—it was those editors’ abject cowardice in the face of opprobrium from their subordinates that assumed that character’s place in the tragedy.

So Much for a Free Press

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The editors of The Wall Street Journal call it simply a milestone in the march of identity politics and cancel culture. It’s much worse than that. It marks the beginning of the end of a free press in our nation.

The long-time editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer…was pushed out over a headline, Buildings Matter, Too. … Staff members deemed the headline an offense to Black Lives Matter.

And

At the New York Times, editorial page editor James Bennet resigned Sunday after a staff uproar over an op-ed by a US Senator [and his deputy, James Dao, reassigned]. … A staff revolt deemed the piece fascist, unconstitutional, and too offensive for adults to read and decide for themselves.

There is only one correct viewpoint, and that’s all that’s fit to publish. There are not two sides to every issue; some have only one, and that one is the only one that’s fit to allow into the public square.

Irredeemable, Deplorable

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That’s not the Progressive-Democrat Hillary Clinton. This time it’s the Progressive-Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Do we really think this is as good as we can be as a nation? I don’t think the vast majority of people think that. There are probably anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of the people out there who are just not very good people, but that’s not who we are.

Ten to fifteen per cent of us Americans just aren’t very good. Between thirty-three million and fifty million of us Americans are just beneath contempt.

Biden’s contempt for Americans generally is an expansion of his contempt for, his outright bigotry toward, black Americans, which he exposed when he said to a black interviewer,

I tell you if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black[.]

This is the second Party campaign in a row where the Progressive-Democrats demonstrate such utter contempt for Americans.

This is the Party that wants to rule over the United States.

What kind of government can we expect from a ruling organization that so hates the subjects over whom it would rule?

Which Lives Matter?

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For the Black Lives Matter group, lives do not matter equally: black lives matter more than blue lives, white lives, Asian lives, Hispanic lives—black lives are first among All Lives.

Not even all black lives matter to BLM.

Not David Patrick Underwood’s, a Federal contractor who was murdered guarding a Federal building in Oakland during the current spate of rioting. Not David Dorn’s, a retired St Louis police captain murdered while guarding a friend’s small business during the current spate of rioting. BLM is silent on these snuffed black lives.

Not the lives of millions of black men, women, and children killed by black thugs. BLM is silent on these snuffed black lives.

Not the neighborhood businesses owned or operated by blacks, not the neighborhood businesses employing blacks. BLM is silent on these badly damaged black lives.

Not the neighborhood businesses that are the only places millions of blacks can go to shop—for necessities like food or for nice-to-haves like haircuts or hair styling. BLM is silent on these badly damaged black lives.

BLM doesn’t care about other minorities’ welfare, either; certainly not the neighborhood businesses similarly situated by and for Hispanics, Asians, women.

BLM isn’t even an efficiently racist organization—its members just indiscriminately [sic] hate anyone not in the BLM movement.

Nestride Yumga is clear on this, as she wrote in her WSJ op-ed:

[T]he Black Lives Matter movement throws racial antagonism into this equation to create an even bigger problem by turning Americans against each other, tearing down our cities, and bringing shame and disgrace to our great country.
They don’t organize nationwide protests for other issues that seriously affect our communities. They don’t protest the police department for letting homicides go unsolved. They don’t protest Congress or the Federal Reserve for access to capital. They don’t protest the school system for failing African-American children.
…
This movement’s agenda is to make sure we feel oppressed and depressed, so that we hate ourselves more and despise our fellow Americans.
The person who makes you believe you’re oppressed also limits how far you can go. If African-Americans are oppressed, it is by the people who tell us we are….

The stench of racism is oppressive no matter from whom it vents.