Why Race Will Always Be an Issue

For every white racist there are at least three whites who see having a (e.g.) black friend as a mark of elite status and a rite of passage to the inner circle.

Morgan Freeman gets it right; but he's fighting a losing battle. 

Some Courageous Princeton Students Fight Back!

Their letter to the president of Princeton here.

The difference between the activist left and right explained in a single paragraph:

Academic discourse consists of reasoned arguments. We simply wish to present our own reasoned arguments and engage you and other senior administrators in dialogue. We will not occupy your office, and, though we respectfully request a minimum of an hour of your time, we will only stay for as long as you wish. We will conduct ourselves in the civil manner that it is our hope to maintain and reinforce as the norm at Princeton.

White Student Union Challenges "Black Lives Matter" Radicals

Cartoon from the Facebook page

Here is the Facebook page.


Well, what do you really expect when the left says that racism can't be eliminated by ignoring race as an insignificant property (even though there is no such thing in exta-mental reality!) and when race is only used one way as a political bludgeon?  

From the Washington Post:

A Facebook page ostensibly created for an audience at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign called “Illini White Students Union” has drawn fire after it characterized the national Black Lives Matter movement as “terrorism.”

The Facebook page seems to be taking a satirical stance with "terrorism."  If the radical protesters intimidating students in libraries--as well as cowardly administrators who have it coming--are genuinely powerless victims (contrast with genuine victims of terror in Paris, not privileged students in college), then their acts of intimidation might as well be labeled acts of terror.

"Colorblindness Will Not End Racism"

From our Public Broadcasting Network (PBS).

Pay attention to 9 and 10:

TEN THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT RACE

Our eyes tell us that people look different. No one has trouble distinguishing a Czech from a Chinese. But what do those differences mean? Are they biological? Has race always been with us? How does race affect people today?

There's less - and more - to race than meets the eye:

1. Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, class, even language. The English language didn't even have the word 'race' until it turns up in 1508 in a poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings.

2. Race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic, trait or even gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race.

3. Human subspecies don't exist. Unlike many animals, modern humans simply haven't been around long enough or isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or races. Despite surface appearances, we are one of the most similar of all species.

4. Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone's skin color doesn't necessarily tell you anything else about him or her.

5. Most variation is within, not between, "races." Of the small amount of total human variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian.

6. Slavery predates race. Throughout much of human history, societies have enslaved others, often as a result of conquest or war, even debt, but not because of physical characteristics or a belief in natural inferiority. Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, ours was the first slave system where all the slaves shared similar physical characteristics.

7. Race and freedom evolved together. The U.S. was founded on the radical new principle that "All men are created equal." But our early economy was based largely on slavery. How could this anomaly be rationalized? The new idea of race helped explain why some people could be denied the rights and freedoms that others took for granted.

8. Race justified social inequalities as natural. As the race idea evolved, white superiority became "common sense" in America. It justified not only slavery but also the extermination of Indians, exclusion of Asian immigrants, and the taking of Mexican lands by a nation that professed a belief in democracy. Racial practices were institutionalized within American government, laws, and society.

9. Race isn't biological, but racism is still real. Race is a powerful social idea that gives people different access to opportunities and resources. Our government and social institutions have created advantages that disproportionately channel wealth, power, and resources to white people. This affects everyone, whether we are aware of it or not.

10. Colorblindness will not end racism. Pretending race doesn't exist is not the same as creating equality. Race is more than stereotypes and individual prejudice. To combat racism, we need to identify and remedy social policies and institutional practices that advantage some groups at the expense of others.

RACE - The Power of an Illusion was produced by California Newsreel in association with the Independent Television Service (ITVS). Major funding provided by the Ford Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Diversity Fund.

9 says that race isn't biological, but racism is real.  Is race biological?  No, if we mean biological in the natural kind sense of the term.  Races are neither like species nor like different breeds of cats or dogs since the people who normally fall under our race terms (e.g. Caucasian, black, etc.) have no significant genetic dissimilarity; for instance, one is likely to find more genetic similarity between some who we call "black" and "hispanic" than between some who we call "black" and others who we call "black."  This leaves open whether races are (a) unreal (that is, there is nothing which our race terms and ideas refer to), or are (b) real but not natural kinds; instead they are social kinds (like citizens or bankers) perhaps partly grounded in phenotypical features, or (c) some other thing altogether.

According to 9, race isn't grounded in phenotypical features at all; rather race is simply an idea. And there seems to be nothing to which the idea of race refers.  Moreover it's an idea which privileges whites. How?  In what way?  No examples are given.  But these advantages are there, even if we aren't aware of it.  (Trust us.  They.  Are.  There.)  Presumably, though, these advantages do not exist in the form of affirmative action programs!

According to 10, we shouldn't presume that race doesn't exist.  What does this mean?  If 9 is correct, race is only an idea--and nothing whatsoever is mentioned about any extra-mental reality to which our idea refers.  Blacks and whites are like unicorns and centaurs.  Still, racism is real.  Even though there are no blacks to which our idea of race refers, a Klansman can still be a racist.  Racism is real, but race is an idea.  Got that?

Still, we need the idea of race.  Why?  10 tells us.  So that we can have social policies and institutional practices that advantage some groups (non-whites) over others (whites).  In other words, even though the idea of a particular race does not refer to anything in the world--it's a mental fiction--we need to pretend there are extra-mental races, so that people like Al Sharpton, race studies professors, diversity officers, etc. have employment and can privilege some over others--in the name, of course, of remedying alleged advantages given to whites by institutions and policies.  Ignoring race as the (alleged) fiction that it is would have the undesirable result that affirmative action policies and institutions go out of business.

One wonders, if colorblindness would not end racism, what would?

Blacks Kicked Out of White-Only "Healing Space"

Disgusting.  Racism won't end until people start treating color as the insignificant property that it is.

ESPN is Wrong (as usual) on Mizzou

Howard Bryant begins his article with the following:

Despite its complex web of allegiances and rivals, the dynamic that doomed Missouri system president Tim Wolfe and school chancellor R. Bowen Loftin was quite simple: It was the workers versus the owners, the little versus the big, the invisible versus the invincible.

The power of the Missouri football team provided the fulcrum, because money ultimately forced the action. But so much of the uprising was rooted in the frustration of minority students facing years of entrenched racism. 

 It all stemmed from a movement addressing major offenses that were deemed too trivial by an administration whose only response had been to advise that the slapped get tougher, have thicker skin, get over it.

First, there are no owners of universities, unless, since Missouri is a state school, one thinks that the owners are the tax-payers.  But the president is no more of an owner than the board which appoints him, and no more of an owner than the faculty or the students.  They all "own" the university if we want to call it that.  Second, it's not true that the administration's only response had been to advise that the "slapped get tougher."  It has been reported that the president met with students personally.  As well, it has been reported that one of the drunken students who made the racial slurs was removed from campus until campus disciplinary proceedings run their course.  Third, the reported evidence of "entrenched racism" consisted of a nut who scrawled feces (!) and a couple jerks who spat racial epithets at a school with over 35,000 students.  Are we to think that the student body, professors, and administration at large are by and large racists?  Fourth, though the football team no doubt provided the final muscle to upend the president from his presidency, the power of the football team is overrated.  It is only the action of the football team in combination with the progressive radicals that provided the impetus.  As David French writes,

If you think football players are suddenly all-powerful, imagine a counter-factual — like a “strike” by a few players in solidarity with an athlete wrongfully convicted by a campus sex assault tribunal, or a stand in solidarity with a team chaplain under fire for allegedly offending the LGBT community. Would ESPN fawn all over them, celebrating their courage? Would faculty and radical students extol them as heroes? Would a university president and chancellor step down within 48 hours in response to an athletic cry for religious liberty? Student-athletes can’t even figure out a way to be fairly compensated for the billions in revenue they bring to college athletics. Powerful? Only when weaponized by the campus Left. The story at Mizzou is the same old story we’ve reading and watching since the Sixties. Radicals rule.

Read French's other devastating critique.  Excerpt:

Closeted campus conservatives are worse than useless. Indeed, their very timidity contributes to the narrative that there is something shameful about their beliefs. To read anonymous letters from professors who are afraid to “out” themselves in a hostile campus culture is to read the sad dispatches of people too pitiful for their profession. Do something else, anything else, than merely sit and watch while the revolutionaries shred the Constitution, reject our culture, and assert their own will to power.The true shame is that it doesn’t even require actual courage to defeat the university Left, just a tiny bit of will — a small measure of staying power. No one is shooting at trustees. No one is beheading professors. There’s no guillotine in the quad. Instead, campus “leaders” tremble before hashtags and weep at the notion of losing a football team so inept that it couldn’t score a touchdownthrough most of the month of October. Let them strike. With an offense that inept, the SEC won’t even notice.These are the times that try men’s souls? No. These are the times of men without chests. The Left has the will to power. University leaders have no will at all. They have earned nothing but contempt.

Chicago Violence

Any serious conversation about the recent violence in Chicago has to begin with the breakdown of the family--especially in the black community--the causes, and what (if anything) can be done about that by way of public policy. This will be a hard conversation to have with a supporter of the recent Obergefell decision for whom biological "marriage" and "family" have no special meaning or pride of place.  

Here is a slightly dated but timely piece by Heather MacDonald.  It is long but well worth reading in full.  Excerpt:

"None of the prominent voices calling for an end to youth violence—from Mayor Washington to Jesse Jackson to school administrators—noted that all of Wilson’s killers came from fatherless families (or that he had fathered an illegitimate child himself). Nor did the would-be reformers mention the all-important fact that a staggering 75 percent of Chicago’s black children were being born out of wedlock."

White (outside?) Woman Chooses not to Have Any White Kids

Ali Michael, Ph.D., who is Professor of Economics, Professor of Physics, Professor of Mathematics, Professor of....?   Administrator of....?  Director of P-12 Consulting and Professional Development at the Center for the Study of Race Equity in Education at the University of Pennsylvania decided to adopt rather than populate the world with more white privilege.  

Well, good for her.  Given all that "Whiteness has done" it's probably a good thing that she doesn't have offspring.  [All that "whiteness has done?"  Doesn't she mean all that "Whitey has done?"  Do abstract entities like whiteness have causal powers?]

The Confederate Flag

 I'm from the North but now live in the South. As such I have no strong ties to the Confederate Flag (in fact, I have no emotional ties at all.) But I have a friend Jay who is Southern. Let it be noted that Jay is the furthest thing from a racist as anyone who knows him will tell you; he also loves the South and thinks the following about "the flag": It is sometimes thought of as a symbol of racism. But for him, he does not think of it as a symbol of racism. He realizes that some think of it as (at least in part) a symbol of racism, but as he views the matter it is one of the primary symbols of the South (the land of BBQ, blues, the SEC, etc.) with which he identifies. In fact, he wants to take the flag back and reclaim it, not as a symbol of racism but as a symbol of all (and only) the good things he thinks it once stood for and can stand for. Moreover, he argues that the flag is a symbol of a region (or states or nation) which has a complicated past and that all flags are symbols of a similar mixed bag. (A number of progressives I know shutter in horror more at the U.S. flag than the "Hammer and Sickle."  I know numerous Christians who loathe their own Christian flag.)

When I was growing up in the Midwest, the Confederate Flag was rarely thought of as a symbol of racism. Everyone I knew identified it with the Dukes of Hazard and country music. For various reasons, race relations have gotten worse in the last couple decades and the Confederate Flag is thought of by many now as (only) a symbol of racism.   As few as four years ago, most blacks did not have a negative view of the flag. 

Some questions: Why is that?  How was it that people in favor of Clinton were able to use the flag seen above just a few years ago without weeping and gnashing of teeth?  Why is it that some say today that the flag is "too toxic for public use."  (Do they think it caused nine murders?) How did that happen and who turned it toxic?

The who is fairly easy: the left (and people who jump on the bandwagon--the mindless "memers" who want to be on the "right side of history" and form beliefs on the basis of volume and not arguments.)  But why?  Well here is a theory subject to empirical disconfirmation.  The South, post-Clinton has turned strongly Republican.  Moreover, the South is one of the final strongholds in support of traditional marriage, gun-rights, anti-abortion, Federalism, and all the things progressives hate.  Slavery and racism are only a small part of what accounts for today's reaction to the flag I reckon, except insofar as progressives would be out of a job if not for their Marxist bent to turn every issue into an issue of class, race, and gender warfare and then exploit said warfare.  If there is one group that has universal scorn heaped upon it in my own corner of the cultural elite--academia--it is the South.  Your chance of landing a job drops if you are a white man with a southern accent.  (If you ask your favorite professor if this is true and he denies it, he is either lying or a dolt.)  And how many people in the media have a southern accent?  Hardly any because they don't want to sound southern.

So the hatred of the Confederate Flag, I suggest, is not due entirely to its history with slavery or racism.  And it is not because the South has become more racist in the last couple decades that the ire is hire.  (Ask yourself this: how many white Southerners do you actually know who are racists?  How many do you know who are not?  Are there more or fewer racists today than 20, 50, 100 years ago?  What are the percentages?)

The flag is a symbol.  And like any other symbol its meaning can be complicated and its meaning can change.  

So we are faced with either of two options:

(1) Get rid of the flag.
(2) Change its meaning for good.

The KKK burns crosses in yards.  For some, the sign of the cross is associated with hatred and racism.  One could thereby not use the cross as a symbol.  Or one could redeem the symbol.
Is the Confederate Flag as a symbol irredeemable? I fail to see that it is.  (And please, no swastika comparisons unless you care to fully tease out the analogy.)  If Obama, Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, and so forth all stood together and said,

"We know the flag has such and such a history.  We know that in the eyes of many it is a symbol of slavery and racism....But we also know the good of the South and how far it has come.   The Confederate Flag was once a symbol of division and racism but we will not let racists own the meaning of the flag just like we will not let the KKK own the meaning of the Cross...."

you cannot tell me that if there were this concerted effort by the right and left to pour new meaning into the Confederate Flag that eventually more people would think of it positively than negatively.

So those are the options and I have no dog in this fight.  I can predict that (1) will prevail and not (2).  That is because progressivism is on the upswing and there is no great love of the South therein.  Slacktivism is too tempting especially when accompanied with a feeling of moral superiority.   

Dylann Roof

UPDATE: It looks like Salon has ruled Roof is not mentally ill.  It's the death penalty for Salon (unless he gets off on "societal-illness".)

Will many be arguing in the mainstream press that he should be spared the death penalty?

Right and Left on Race

This seems about right from KBJ:

Examine the following diagram (click to enlarge), which I just constructed:

Today's Left ranks the categories as follows: 4 > 2 > 1 > 3. Thurgood Marshall, the former Supreme Court justice, was not just biologically black; he was psychologically and culturally black. If you can't be in category 4 with the likes of Marshall, the next best place to be, to the Left, is in category 2. Individuals in category 2 are biologically white but think, feel, and act black.

It gets interesting after this. I think the Left ranks category 1 over category 3. Clarence Thomas is biologically black, like Marshall, but he's psychologically and culturally white, like John Roberts Jr. (Indeed, he has a white wife.) The Left hates this. I'm sure you know the names Thomas has been called, such as "Uncle Tom," "Oreo," and "Stepin Fetchit." The Left prefers the likes of John Roberts Jr, who is both biologically and culturally white, to the likes of Thomas. They would say that Roberts, but not Thomas, is authentic.

Rachel Dolezal was at one time in category 1. She wanted desperately to be in category 4, but, alas, that was ruled out by biology, so she did the next best thing: she moved to category 2. What say you?

Starbucks and Race

I was asked my thoughts on the whole Starbucks "Race Together" catastrophe.  I really don't have any great thoughts on the matter.  What thoughts I do have are summed up by this:

Selma is Now. No, not Really.

Some perspective from James B. LaGrand:

[I]n his acceptance remarks after winning the Oscar for Best Original Song, co-writer John Legend again connected past and present. He tried to set straight any viewers who might be thinking that 1965 was a long time ago. “Selma is now because the struggle for justice is right now.”

Statements similar to Legend’s “Selma is now” have been made many times in the months since Michael Brown’s tragic death at the hands of policeman Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. In fact, Ferguson has become a Rorschach test – not just on the state of race relations today, but on the past as well through the power of historical analogy. Like John Legend, congressman and civil rights veteran John Lewis has compared Ferguson to Selma in 1965. On college campuses, analogies comparing Ferguson to 1950s Little Rock and Michael Brown to Emmett Till have been heard.

...

These statements and actions are all rooted in the belief that little to nothing has changed in race relations from the Jim Crow era of the 1890s-1950s to the present day. If one of the tasks of History is to assess the complex relationship between change and continuity over time, these voices suggest that on the issue of race and race relations, the answer is pretty simple. 2014 = 1965 or 1955 or the 1890s.

But in looking at the past, it’s hard to make these claims hold up. The Jim Crow era stands as a distinctly grim, brutal period in America’s history for its Black citizens. After the end of Reconstruction, Black men who had recently won the franchise had it effectively taken away. The promise that Black Americans would own the product of their labor too became a bitter lie. All public spaces in the Jim Crow South became divided by the color line.

This racial code was enforced through lynchings and other forms of brutal violence. The Equal Justice Initiative has recently documented 3,959 African-Americans lynched between 1877 and 1950. Lynch mobs cast a wide net. They targeted Black men accused of crimes, those accused or suspected of sexual relations with white women, and those seen as being “impudent to white man,” in the words of one lynching record. Lynchings were barbaric, often involving the ritualistic burning and dismemberment of dead bodies. Not for nothing do many historians refer to 1890-1920 as the nadir of African-American history

...

They see their motives are earnest. By their way of thinking, a continued insistence that little to nothing has changed in race relations will hold white Americans’ feet to the fire. This approach will confront and challenge them, and prevent them from becoming prideful or complacent. Some teachers and administrators on college campuses say that a focus on continuity in race relations will allow for “teaching opportunities.”

But what if such a determined focus on racial continuity from the 1890s to today doesn’t bring about these results? The discipline of History is based on a reasonable confidence about concrete, particular things, not just a fuzzy mood or spirit. Activists who tout continuity believe that their cause will result in “consciousness-raising” about a range of racial issues. But it’s just as likely to lead to cynicism and disengagement if it’s thought that events have been manipulated and comparisons over-drawn.

Read the rest here.

It's also worth noting that, as the NY Times mentions, in the decade between 2000-2010 more black Africans have voluntarily come to the U.S. "than were imported directly to North America during the more than three centuries of the slave trade."

"We've come long way, baby."  Are there still racists in the U.S.?  Of course, as there are in every country.  But how racist is the U.S.?  Adam Carolla thinks, not that racist:

"We shall be rid of the last vestiges of Goldsteinism when the language has been cleaned."

Fortunately (or unfortunately), activists will never be out of a job.

Do Black Lives Really Matter?

"Do black lives really matter, or does it matter only if you are shot by a white person or a white policeman?"

That's from the testimony of Jamiel Shaw whose son was slain by, as he says, an "illegal alien," or what the Obama administration might prefer to refer to as "an American-in-Waiting."   I'll bet Al Sharpton is on his way to the Arizona border as we speak.  (This is all we're going to be hearing about on NPR for the next month).

Heartbreaking testimony:

Two L.A. Cops Shoot Unarmed Mentally Ill Black Man in the Back

Have you heard about this story?  Another tragic death.  The story is also buried over at the L.A. Times local section here.

Let's see if this story gets as much media attention as Ferguson since (a) there was a round fired through someone's back, (b) the man was mentally ill, and (c) the police kept the autopsy under wraps as long as they could. I won't hold my breath.

Police officials say no officer was hurt in the incident. The Los Angeles Times has reported that the officers involved in the scuffle with Ford were Asian-American and Latino.

I bet Al Sharpton is flying to L.A. right now and Obama is gearing up for a press conference.

Broken Window Policing

What is the point of all the protests?  What's the concrete goal?  Whatever the concrete goal is supposed to be--if there are any--has not been made clear by all the vocal activists.  If there is a concrete goal, they have been absolutely abysmal in making the goal known to the general public.  Is the goal like owning a Prius--to develop some good lefty-street cred?

Is the goal to reduce police shootings such as in the Eric Garner case or to reduce violent crime more generally?  But Eric Garner cases are rare and crime has been falling.  Focusing in on one or two emotional cases is like arguing for or against global warming because today it's warm or cold.

Here would be a concrete goal: protest until the government gets rid of certain Jim Crow laws.  That was a concrete goal which was achieved.  But vague platitudes such as "raise awareness about racial structures" or "remove institutionalized racism" are utterly worthless, except insofar as saying such things might be self-serving to those who make a living race-baiting or who try to solidify their place in the media, university, left-wing establishment.

This is an intelligent piece on Broken Window Policing which some liberals I've heard ignorantly refer to as "racial profiling."  Read the whole thing.  Here are a couple short excerpts:

The numbers also dispute the commonplace assertion that Broken Windows arrests lead to abusive use of police force, heightening the risk that minor offenders (like Eric Garner) might be killed. Force is rarely used during New York City arrests. In the 141,836 misdemeanor arrests made in the first half of 2014, police used force 2,481 times, or 1.7 percent of the total. In misdemeanor arrests for violations of minor local laws, force was used just 21 times, or 0.6 percent of the total. In the 321 misdemeanor arrests for untaxed cigarettes in the first half of 2014, force was used zero times. Force was also reported in only 0.3 percent of narcotics and marijuana arrests. These figures highlight how anomalous the use of force was in the Garner case.

NPR on the Houston Unarmed Case

Go to NPR and search for "Michael Brown."  You'll find 1120 results.  Type "Darren Wilson" and you get 294 results.  Now type "Juventino Castro" (or just Juventino).

Zero results.

I wonder why?

Houston Racial Profiling?

The protests continue to swell and the media doggedly persists in bringing the story to light about an unarmed black man (Jordan Baker) killed in Houston recently by officer, Juventino Castro.

Since Castro is apparently not black but of Hispanic descent, a question has been raised about whether he violated the Houston policy against racial profiling--this is why the story has been receiving so much media scrutiny.

Activist Deric Muhammad said the decision confirmed Houston as "Ferguson, Texas."

"Jordan Baker was bothering nobody. He didn't have a weapon on him," Muhammad said. "He was racially profiled."

So are the activists right?  Or have parts of their brains been addled by political correctness such that they are no longer able to think straight on such matters?  What do we know and what does Houston consider racial profiling to be? What is racial profiling?

Did I Just Racially Profile Someone?

Scary

I just went out of my way to walk around (rather than through or by) three teens aimlessly lingering on the sidewalk, one with hat backwards nervously opening and closing a knife with a four inch blade.  Was it at all probable that walking through the teens would have resulted in anything untoward?  Nope.  Nonetheless, why take unnecessary risks?  The one with the knife was about 5'10, 200 lbs (about my size), white, no facial hair (unfortunately for him), somewhere between 16 years old and 21--kinda hard to tell--and not particularly handsome.  That is about the best I can do for a profile.

So I have profiled a teen.  In addition, I have included his being white in the profile.  Have I then racially profiled him?  Am I a racial profiler?  Am I now going to hell?  If I were a black woman and walked around the teens, in part because they were white, would I have been guilty of racial profiling?  I don't know, because it's not always clear what "racial profiling" is supposed to mean or what the argument is for why it is such a terrible thing as this post aptly makes clear.   In one of my next posts I will take a stab at trying to understand "racial profiling" (pun intended, yuk-yuk-yuk).

Liberal Activists Say Houston Cop Not White Enough to Warrant Violent Protests

Read about it here.