Category Archives: morality

Disparate Impact

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Disparate impact is the racist theory that if practices result in an imbalance (as defined by disparate impact aficionados) in racial representation in this or that arena (see housing, for instance), than the practices must stop until—based solely on race—sufficient races are brought into the arena to achieve an acceptable balance of races. Notice that none of disparate impact has anything to do with the wishes of members of this or that race, already present or absent from the arena. By design, it has nothing to do, also, with the intent of the managers of the arena.

Consider, now, a case brought by

64 organizations alleging that Harvard uses de facto quotas to limit Asian-Americans on campus.

The case was brought to the Civil Rights division of the Department of Education—who promptly dismissed the case, ostensibly because of “pending litigation.” There is a case pending, but as DoE knows full well it’s unlikely to be finally adjudicated for another two or three—or more—years.

Never mind that

Asian-Americans need to score 140 points higher on the SAT than white students to be considered equal applicants on paper, and 450 points higher than African-Americans

and that they’re still underrepresented in Harvard admissions.

Never mind, either, how insulting that 450 point handicap is for blacks–the very group Harvard pretends to be wanting to help.  Or the insult of those 140 points for whites.  But that’s OK, whites have too much privilege; they need to be insulted every now and then.

Apparently, disparate impact is applicable only to certain government-favored groups of Americans. But then, such special treatment is at the very hearts of racism and of bigotry in general.

Fools and Statistics

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You’ve already heard about Pseudo-Republican Donald Trump’s remarks about Mexican illegal immigrants and the murderous, drug-hazed rampage in the US he says they’re on. Although he assumes there are some good people among them, too. Real white of ol’ Trump to toss that in.

Now we get Ann Coulter:

I will bet you by the end of the weekend, more Americans will have been killed by Mexicans than by ISIS or by sharks[.]

Coulter is very carefully abusing statistics in the same way that her BFF Trump is doing. What’s the immigration rate—illegal or otherwise—of Daesh or sharks? Compared with the Mexican immigration rate? What per centage of those Daesh or shark immigrants, after entry, become fine, upstanding members of the local community?

What’s the Daesh or sharks per, umm, capita kill rate of Americans compared to that of Mexicans?

Microaggression

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It’s all the latest rage in the PC fascism that’s running amok in our United States these days.

There are these, for instance, from a list of allegedly microaggressive statements put out by Janet Napolitano, late of DHS and now President of the University of California system:

  • I believe the most qualified person should get the job.
  • Of course he’ll get tenure, even though he hasn’t published much—he’s Black!
  • Men and women have equal opportunities for achievement.
  • Gender plays no part in who we hire.
  • America is the land of opportunity.
  • Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough.
  • Affirmative action is racist.

The whole list goes on in this vein, but these are the ones most directly and deliberately aimed at the fabric of Americanism.

Of course it could be argued that the second on the list is, indeed, racist, but it’s a direct fallout of the last item on the list. Affirmative action isn’t only racist, though, it’s sexist, too, and by design: deliberately, race and gender are additional selection criteria, and for the explicitly racist and sexist purpose of achieving “diversity”–because, so the Liberals believe, blacks, minorities generally, and women simply are incapable of competing on their own–while simultaneously downplaying qualification, much less merit, in the selection.

Another problem with foolishness like this is that while many remarks are certainly rude, and polite people shouldn’t use them, courtesy is a thing that can come only from within the person; it cannot be imposed from without, and certainly not by diktat. That only leads to rule-following, or rule-breaking; the courtesy of the thing will have been wholly removed.

Lists like these are themselves plainly microaggressions.

Keep in mind, too, that the Napolitano of this list is also the Napolitano of the DHS lists that called American military veterans “right-wing extremists” and that cynically, if not cowardly, substituted “man-caused disaster” for “act of terrorism,” and on and on.

Now that’s microaggression of a hugely macro nature.

Paying Ransom

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President Obama on Wednesday announced a new US government policy for dealing with Americans who are kidnapped abroad, and as always he stressed compassion for the hostages and their families.

Compassion? Where’s Obama’s compassion for the kidnap victim, who’s exposed to further kidnapping, since snatching him clearly pays off? Where’s Obama’s compassion for other Americans, now at increased risk or kidnapping themselves, by ransom paying that is nothing more than aiding and abetting the criminals/terrorists masqueraded as “compassion?”

…a government-wide review of US hostage policy, which has drawn criticism for inconsistency and lack of coordination. “The families of hostages have told us—and they’ve told me directly—about their frequent frustrations in dealing with their own government: How different departments and agencies aren’t always coordinated,” Mr. Obama said[.]

Those departments also don’t inform very much, if at all, the victim’s families of the status of efforts to get the victim back. The right answer, though, is not to reward the kidnappers for their efforts but to create consistency and coordination—and to summarily fire those bureaucrats who fail at this—and to pass information freely and on demand to the victims’ families. Certainly, many efforts are and should remain secret, but in those events, swear the families to secrecy—they need to be inside the loop, not outside of it.

A UN Group May Have Committed War Crimes

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Joe Lauria’s article in Monday’s Wall Street Journal was headlined U.N.: Israel and Palestinian Groups May Have Committed War Crimes, but here’s the thing: the United Nations Human Rights Commission is accusing Israel of war crimes for defending itself against what its report is only willing to “strongly suggest” was the Palestinian Authority’s terrorist war against Israel.

Oh, wait: the UN doesn’t even address the Palestinian Authority in any serious sense—in only goes on about “Palestinian armed groups” as the ones committing the terrorism and the PA’s claimed inability to control its own territory. Never mind that the PA’s terror war was done explicitly under the auspices of the Hamas branch of the unity government that is the Palestinian Authority.

The UN did decry the toll,

In Gaza, the scale of the devastation was unprecedented. The death toll alone speaks volumes: 2,251 Palestinians were killed, including 1,462 Palestinian civilians with 299 women and 551 children.

Never mind that the vast majority of these civilian deaths were from Hamas shooting from residential buildings from which the civilian occupants were prevented from leaving—they were shields for the terrorists and bodies for the publicity.

The UN’s report also had this:

In the cases in which attacks were directed at military objectives located amidst or in close vicinity to civilians or civilian objects, mortars are not the most appropriate weapon. The imprecise nature of mortars makes it difficult for an attacking party using this weapon in an area in which there is a concentration of civilians to distinguish between civilians and civilian objects and the military objective of the attack, and to limit its effects as required by international humanitarian law. Therefore, the use of such weapons with wide area effects by Palestinian armed groups against targets located in Israeli towns and villages, and the possible indiscriminate effects, are likely to constitute a violation of the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks.

The UN, though, carefully omits the reason those military objectives were “located amidst or in close vicinity to civilians or civilian objects” in the first place. The PA were using those civilians as shields and as body count.

Even though the Israelis were at pains to warn the occupants of these putative “civilian objects” prior to a strike, the report’s “investigators” were careful to trot out their witnesses who said there were no warnings. Except for a slip of the tongue by a UNRWA “witness.”

The UN, in its report, also made light of its own UNHCR storing many of the PA’s weapons for it and that when caught the UNRWA turned those weapons over to the PA. The report does decry Israel, though, for warning the UNRWA (that tongue slip) of an impending strike against a PA (the report says “Hamas”) arsenal staged below a cluster of UNRWA buildings—and then carrying out the strike.

The UN’s report goes on in this vein.

The UNHRC is complicit after the fact in the Palestinian Authority’s terror war fought from Gaza last summer.