Tag Archives: culture

The New Racism

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Shanta Driver, who argued Schuette v BAMN before the Supreme Court and lost, 6-2, is protesting her loss:

This is a racist decision that takes us back to an era of state’s rights. This decision cannot stand.

Yeah. The 10th Amendment can’t be allowed to stand. It must be struck, and never mind that Article V bit; that’s just in the way.

Oh, and never mind that the outcome of the Supremes’ ruling was to uphold a decision by the citizens of Michigan to codify in their constitution the concept that race (or gender, ethnicity, or national origin) cannot be used as a criterion for selection for admission to college.

Because to be color-blind, to not use race as a mechanism for preferential treatment, is racist. The new racism.

A Museum Kerfuffle

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A bunch of self-important clergy are all in a tizzy because of a 7-minute film, “The Rise of al Qaeda,” planned for the opening of the National September 11 Memorial Museum. Sheik Mostafa Elazabawy, the Imam of Masjid Manhattan wrote to the NS11MM director,

The screening of this film in its present state would greatly offend our local Muslim believers as well as any foreign Muslim visitor to the museum.

Unsophisticated visitors who do not understand the difference between Al Qaeda and Muslims may come away with a prejudiced view of Islam, leading to antagonism and even confrontation toward Muslim believers near the site.

Unsophisticated. Because Americans are just too stupid to form the “correct” conclusions without the instruction of our betters.

And that difference between al Qaeda and Muslims about which the imam worries so? There surely are differences, but we wouldn’t know that from the words of any mullahs or imams identifying them, or from their decrying al Qaeda or other jihadists conducting terrorism in the name of Islam.  Their silence has been as loud as the roar of the fires in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.  No, we had to figure out those differences all by ourselves.  And we did.  Go figure.

Professor Akbar Ahmed, Chairman of Islamic Studies at American University, added this bit of contempt for Americans:

[W]hen you associate their [al Qaeda’s] religion with what they did, then you are automatically including, by association, one and a half billion people who had nothing to do with these actions….

You might, because you don’t think about what you’re doing; you only project your own failings onto others, as this example illustrates. I don’t at all make such associations, and neither do the folks I know. We think more clearly than that.

The museum plans to proceed with the showing, and that’s all to the good.

Standards and Government Mendacity

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Some of you are familiar with EEOC v Kaplan, a case in which the EEOC sued Kaplan Higher Education Corporation for the crime of using background checks to screen job applicants prior to hiring them.  EEOC’s case centered on the nonsense of disparate impact: in the present case, since blacks have more bad debts than whites—for reasons wholly unrelated to the questions at issue in Kaplan—they were more often disqualified from hiring by Kaplan than were whites.

The EEOC’s case was further centered on something called multicultural, multiracial, treatment outcome research.  I can’t tell you what this thing is; it exists solely within the mind of EEOC’s “expert” witness, a person who has constructed this thing, whatever it is, out of the æther.  Interestingly, the EEOC was unable to tell the district judge what that was, either; they elided a definition altogether.

The 6th Circuit, in upholding the district court’s dismissal of the EEOC’s case, had this to say, among other things:

The EEOC brought this case on the basis of a homemade methodology, crafted by a witness with no particular expertise to craft it, administered by persons with no particular expertise to administer it, tested by no one, and accepted only by the witness himself.  The district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding Murphy’s [the “expert’s”] testimony.

This is the pseudoscience that our Progressive administration routinely brings to bear in its many wars—on religion, on women, on climate, on….

Demonstrating, perhaps accidentally, another aspect of this administration’s level of integrity, the 6th Circuit opened its opinion with this statement:

In this case the EEOC sued the defendants for using the same type of background check that the EEOC itself uses.

Going on,

The EEOC’s personnel handbook recites that “[o]verdue just debts increase temptation to commit illegal or unethical acts as a means of gaining funds to meet financial obligations.”  Because of that concern, the EEOC runs credit checks on applicants for 84 of the agency’s 97 positions.  The defendants (collectively, “Kaplan”) have the same concern; and thus Kaplan runs credit checks on applicants for positions that provide access to students’ financial-loan information, among other positions.  For that practice, the EEOC sued Kaplan.

The Circuit ruling can be read here.

Another Blow

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…in the Progressives’ war on diversity, this one struck against the concept of free speech.

Brandeis University in Massachusetts announced Tuesday that it had withdrawn the planned awarding of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a staunch critic of Islam and its treatment of women….

Their “rationale?”

She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world.  That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.

Apparently those core values don’t include the sanctity, or a recognition of the necessity to a free society, of freedom to express an opinion different from that of an authority figure, nor do they seem to include a respect for diversity of opinion.

Ali’s offensive speech?

Once [Islam]’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful.  It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now.  They’re not interested in peace.  I think that we are at war with Islam.  And there’s no middle ground in wars.

Even truth is offensive at Brandeis, because, according to Joseph Lumbard, Chairman of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis

This makes Muslim students feel very uneasy.  They feel unwelcome here.

Well.  There it is.  Discomfort is a crime at this place.  When it concerns the appropriate groups.

The Progressives’ War on Freedom and Diversity

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The forced resignation of (ex-)Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich over a viewpoint he held of which Progressives disapproved—in the name of diversity of opinion, yet.

(Ex-)Harvard President Larry Summers, forced out because he disapproved of a rap album that was liked by Progressives, and because he suggested the under-representation of women in science and engineering might be due to differences in aptitude—Progressives insist that equality includes identical capacity.

Mark Steyn, National Review, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute sued for defamation by Michael Mann for ridiculing Mann’s hockey stick and for disparaging the anthropogenic “aspect” of Global Warming—Progressives consider this settled science so much they even tout the efficacy of lying in support of it.

The Gannet newspapers—in particular, the Lower Hudson Journal News—published a map of names and addresses of registered New York gun owners and tried to sue for more such data—knowing as they did so that they were identifying those honest Americans (Conservatives, though, so not so honest, after all, eh?) as targets.

The Los Angeles Times closing off and refusing to accept further commentary disputing anthropogenic global warning—see above.

Chik-fil-A threatened with boycott because its owners held a view of marriage that is disapproved by Progressives.

The IRS targeting and actively suppressing the free speech of organizations of which our Progressive government disapproves—and which now is finalizing a set of rules that would formalize the abuse.

Conservative women routinely smeared for not toeing the Progressive womanhood line—with one Progressive “commentator” insisting that Governor Sara Palin should be tied down and defecated into her mouth.  Progressive approval of this behavior is demonstrated by their silence on the despicable nature of this insistence.

Conservative blacks routinely smeared as Uncle Toms, or worse, for not toeing the Progressive Black-American line (and notice that—not “Progressive black line:” that hyphen matters to Progressives).

The steady drumbeat of slurs against Tea Partiers as racists, tea baggers, and so on—because they hold opinions of which Progressives disapprove.

The routine smearing of those with tales of damage, even ruination, due to Obamacare as liars, as tellers only of “horror stories, all of them untrue”—solely because Progressives find these truths uncomfortable.

Vice President Joe Biden openly agreeing with Congressman Mike Doyle (D, PA) as the latter called Republicans terrorists for disagreeing with Progressive views of the Federal debt ceiling.

The list goes on, without end.  It’s time we Conservatives—and Independents, and middle-of-the-roaders, and anyone else—with an opinion, or a fact, we wish to speak without murderous assault responded.  With facts and logic, because most Americans aren’t as droolingly imbecilic as Progressives make us out to be.

 

h/t Belmont Club