Outrage at MSNBC after Al Sharpton took cash from Kamala pre-interview https://t.co/fPKsGCA8eX via @MailOnline — Paul Epps (@paulepps) November 14, 2024 Sharpton has been doing this for decades — giving his blessing to people, companies and organizations in exchange for money. Given his history, why anyone would want to tout his blessing is a mystery. The payments to Sharpton’s organization came as part of a $5.4 million fund the Harris campaign dished out to black and Hispanic advocacy groups to help bolster her candidacy among minority voters. Given that minority group voters migrated en masse to Trump, I think Harris should be entitled to a refund. I’m not sure about this, but I don’t think Trump paid anyone to endorse him or give him a softball interview. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Race
33 Ways to Leave Your Party
This document should be in the Smithsonian. It should be preserved as part of the written history of American democracy. I can hear the spirit of Thomas Paine saying, "Well done." https://t.co/vSs4BpfBU4 — Paul Epps (@paulepps) October 13, 2024 Read more →
A Simple Equation That No One Can Figure Out
‘A Disaster’: Black Chicago Residents Slam Democrats For Ignoring Them In Favor Of Migrants https://t.co/Eg1Zy6gThR via @dailycaller — Paul Epps (@paulepps) August 24, 2024 Black Americans vote for Democrats in very high numbers. They have an unswerving loyalty to the Democratic party. If Kamala Harris literally spit in their face, they would still vote for her. This isn’t the way to exercise political power, or any other kind of power. The way to exercise political power is “I’ll give you what you want but only if you give me what I want.” If you announce in advance “I’ll give you what you want (my vote) no matter what.” you’ll spend your life begging for a few crumbs, which will not be forthcoming. No elected official cares what you want, or what you think, or what you say, because you’ve already given them what they want. Chicago has probably not elected… Read more →
The Melting Pot
https://t.co/NJuaJumx5R, https://t.co/DaaxpAmyoB — Paul Epps (@paulepps) August 7, 2024 The “outrage” seems to be over Trump’s implication that Kamala Harris is using racial identity in an opportunistic manner. Which she probably is, making it a fair topic of discussion. Let’s go back a few years to President Obama. His mother was white, his father was black. I never heard anyone refer to him as anything other than black. Do you think it would have been silly if President Obama had identified as white? It would have been silly, right? But he had one white parent and one black parent, so if you can just pick the race of one parent and say “that’s what I am”, ignoring the race of the other parent, what difference does it make which one you pick? To me, the only accurate description would be to say that he’s mixed-race, but mixed-race doesn’t get you… Read more →
And That’s the Truth: Mass Shootings
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth– PE] Lansing, Michigan shooting leaves 7 shot, 1 teenager dead: Police — usatoday.com I hates to say it but when the number of people killed is low compared to the number of people shot, it’s always black folks. They just randomly firing bullets at each other. This ain’t being reported as a mass shooting, even though that’s what it is. It ain’t being reported as a national news story. You probably won’t even hear about it. And that’s the Truth! Read more →
The Importance of Messaging
Teens come up with trigonometry proof for Pythagorean Theorem, a problem that stumped math world for centuries https://t.co/g0z8IObsu4 via @60minutes — Paul Epps (@paulepps) May 18, 2024 These young ladies attended St. Mary’s Academy, a Catholic school for young Black women in New Orleans. The school has a 100 percent graduation rate and a 100 percent college acceptance rate. There’s no test to get in, but expectations are high and rules are strict: no cellphones, modest skirts, hair must be its natural color. The success formula seems to be pretty simple and that is that the school instills in students the idea that they have the ability to accomplish anything. I’ve always thought that would work. It seems like the message that most Black Americans, kids and adults, get is that if you’re Black, you can’t be successful in America because of racism. Your efforts will not be rewarded fairly.… Read more →
White Rural Rage?
There’s a new book out called White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. I haven’t read it but it did give me an idea for a fun drinking game. Every time you hear the phrase “threat to democracy” or a variant thereof between now and the presidential election, you take a drink. The downside is you’ll be dead long before November and you’ll never find out who gets elected. The authors of the book were interviewed on MSNBC this past week. One of the authors, Tom Schaller, said this: “First of all, [white rural voters] are the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay demographic in the country. Second, they’re the most conspiracist group: QAnon support and subscribers, election denialism, Covid denialism and scientific skepticism, Obama birtherism. Third: anti-democratic sentiments. They don’t believe in an independent press, free speech, they’re most likely to say the president should be able to act… Read more →
Gun Laws Don’t Work Even When They Do Work
Police Officer Paul ElmstrandPolice Officer Matthew RugeFirefighter Adam Finseth They were shot and kiIIed yesterday near Minneapolis. Another officer was injured. The alleged shooter is Shannon Gooden. Gooden applied for a gun in 2020 and was rejected due to his violent… pic.twitter.com/wV8eTbHa6F — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 19, 2024 Gun laws don’t work, even when they do work. The shooter in this case tried to buy a gun but was rejected because of his violent criminal history. Amazingly, he was still able to get his hands on a gun, despite the legal prohibition, and the victims are just as dead. I haven’t seen anything about this case except a mention in an X account. I can’t help thinking that if you flipped the script and a police officer shot a black man, there’d be a thousand times more media coverage than a black man shooting a police officer, or shooting… Read more →
Pharmacy Deserts — The Struggle is Real?
Drugstore closures are leaving millions without easy access to a pharmacy — washingtonpost.com The nation’s largest drugstore chains — Rite Aid (which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week), CVS and Walgreens plan to collectively close more than 1,500 stores. Public health experts have already seen the fallout, noting that the first neighborhoods to lose their pharmacies are often predominantly Black, Latinx and low-income. That sentence is written in a way that makes the world sound worse to the casual reader than it probably is. How have public health experts “already seen the fallout” of something that hasn’t happened yet? Predominantly Black, Latinx and low-income neighborhoods are “often” the first to lose pharmacies. Not always, but often. Ok, that makes sense. But it’s phrased in a way that sounds like the pharmacies are being closed because of the demographics. If pharmacies didn’t want to be in predominantly Black, Latinx… Read more →
Supreme Court Kills Affirmative Action
The Supreme Court Has Killed Affirmative Action. Mediocre Whites Can Rest Easier. — thenation.com The author of that piece really hates white people. I don’t recommend reading it, you will not be a better person for having done so, as it consists solely of sweeping generalizations, broad judgments, unfounded inferences and racial insults. Even if five points (out of a possible 100) were deducted for each verifiable fact, it still scores at least a 95. Grammar and spelling are passable. The only “fact” I remember being cited in support of affirmative action is actually false: In California, which ended its affirmative action policies over 25 years ago, the studies show that, without affirmative action, Black enrollment plummets, Latino enrollment plummets, AAPI enrollment goes up a little bit, and whites flood the remaining opportunities. The article that the author links to doesn’t even say that. Black and Latino enrollment in the… Read more →
Diversity at Harvard
The Harvard University president, vice president, provost, and 15 deans signed an email reaffirming the institution’s commitment to diversity after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action on Thursday. The Supreme Court ruled that the race-conscious admissions policies practiced by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The email states that “diversity and difference are essential to academic excellence” and “to prepare leaders for a complex world, Harvard must admit and educate a student body whose members reflect, and have lived, multiple facets of human experience.” Whatever that means. But what does race have to do with it? Why is race the deciding factor? I think it would be easy to find a young black person and a young white person who’ve lived very similar lives. Or to find two young white people who’ve led very different… Read more →
2 + 2 = White Supremacy
2 + 2 = White Supremacy: How Woke Ideologues Corrupted Canada’s Math Curriculum — nationalreview.com White supremacy? Wasn’t arithmetic invented by the Babylonians? Were Babylonians white? How great a threat is white supremacy in Canada? I’m thinking not much since when I’ve been in Canada, I didn’t see anything but white people and a few Asians. From the above-linked article: Two plus two no longer equals four, according to members of the Ontario Mathematics Coordinators Association (OMCA), who consider the equation to be a white-supremacist dog whistle instead of a basic mathematical truth. According to a webinar created by OMCA president Jason To, proponents of math’s political neutrality who use the phrasing “2 + 2 = 4” are engaged in an act of “Covert White Supremacy.” Former OMCA president Heather Theijsmeijer, who originally publicized the webinar, pointed to commentary by Laurie Rubel, an associate professor of mathematics education, explaining that… Read more →
The Meaning of “Woke” By Example
What does “woke” mean? I’ve heard a lot of different definitions, some with a positive connotation, some with a negative connotation. I’d say a woke person is one who makes sweeping, prejudicial judgments about others based on race, gender and sexual preferences. People are sorted into identity groups and the groups are stack-ranked from best to worst. Riley Gaines is attacked by violent trans activists mob, physically assaulted by a man in a dress, and then held hostage by the vicious mob because she dared to speak out to save women’s sports. The left is SILENT. pic.twitter.com/4Db0NGLa85 — Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) April 7, 2023 The woke left is silent about things like this because trans is the best identity group you can be in right now. It doesn’t matter that the trans branding is “We are militant, violent and delusional.” It doesn’t even matter that you shoot up a school… Read more →
Unintended Consequences of DEI
Scott Yenor’s recent report on the rise of the equity regime at Texas A&M (TAMU) provides a glimpse into the gap between DEI’s public claims and its real, material meaning. Formally, Yenor notes, “diversity” is portrayed as the principle that “everyone and every group should be valued” by “embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of difference”; in practice, it represents “an identity-based approach to society,” intended to box out “now-disfavored groups like whites and males through ‘political quotas.’” Formally, “equity” is allegedly aimed at “overcoming challenges and bias to achieve equal opportunity”; in practice, it redounds to “equality of outcomes plus reparations.” Formally, “inclusion” means “bringing the formerly excluded into activities and decision-making so as to share power”; in practice, it’s “enforced segregation of people by race” and “restrictions on speech” for disfavored groups. Yenor substantiates those claims with a startling statistic: As the DEI regime advanced through TAMU —… Read more →
And That’s the Truth: Learn to Read!
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth– PE] Chicago Democrat sounds alarm as 55 schools report no proficiency in math or reading: ‘Very serious’ — foxnews.com “No proficiency” means there ain’t one kid can read or do math in the whole school. Not one. A Illinois state senator named Willie Preston says “I think that we have to reengage parents, have parents actively take a role inside the schools when they can be, but in addition, we need to make certain that we … spend our money in the right way as it pertains to our children’s education.” You gotta engage parents, I don’t see why you gotta reengage em. Damn schools were closed for two years. Parents had to school their own kids. If there ain’t one kid in the whole school that can read or do math, you tellin me the parents… Read more →
Black Queer History in APAAS
Pritzker Demands Black Queer History in AP African-American Studies — nationalreview.com In case you don’t know who “Pritzker” is, which I didn’t, J.B. Pritzker is the governor of Illinois. The College Board is putting together a new AP African-American Studies (APAAS) course. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, whom you probably do know, recently rejected the APAAS course, said he would not allow it to be taught in Florida, because the curriculum includes topics that seem to be included for political purposes rather than their relevance to African-American studies. Like “queer history.” I’m not aware of any state ever previously vetoing an AP course. Pritzker sent a letter to the College Board in which he attacked what he called “Florida’s racist and homophobic laws” and pledged that Illinois would “reject any curriculum modifications designed to appease extremists like the Florida Governor and his allies.” I don’t think until fairly recently, it would… Read more →
Is Diversity Training Doing More Harm Than Good?
From the New York Times: Diversity trainings have been around for decades, long before the country’s latest round of racial reckoning. But after George Floyd’s murder — as companies faced pressure to demonstrate a commitment to racial justice — interest in the diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) industry exploded. The American market reached an estimated $3.4 billion in 2020. Though diversity trainings have been around in one form or another since at least the 1960s, few of them are ever subjected to rigorous evaluation, and those that are mostly appear to have little or no positive long-term effects. The lack of evidence is “disappointing,” wrote Elizabeth Levy Paluck of Princeton and her co-authors in a 2021 Annual Review of Psychology article, “considering the frequency with which calls for diversity training emerge in the wake of widely publicized instances of discriminatory conduct.” But there’s a darker possibility: Some diversity initiatives might… Read more →
Median Income by Ethnicity
It would be nice if modesty prevented me from saying that my household income is much higher than the median Indian household income. A lot of you white people out there are pulling down the average. Read more →
The Law of Unintended Consequences Strikes Again
Black Lives Matter wants LAPD to stop responding to minor traffic incidents https://t.co/zHvBVAJnDI — O.C. Register (@ocregister) January 17, 2023 Well, the Law of Unintended Consequences has already kicked in on this one. I feel like if I know this, someone at BLM should know it. In the aftermath of George Floyd and Defund the Police, cops — the ones who were still funded — didn’t engage with Black citizens because, you know, if that’s the way you feel about cops, go ahead and do whatever you want. One result, as you can see in the chart, is a spike in traffic fatalities for both Black men and women. The same unintended consequence affected the murder rate: Read more →
Why Is a Same-Sex Marriage Bill Historic When It’s Already Legal in Every State?
I’ve seen a lot of coverage on this and I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve seen the bill described as “historic.” I can, however, count the number of times I’ve seen mention of the fact that same-sex marriage and interracial marriage are already legal in all 50 states: Zero. I know people, probably you do as well, who’ve been in same-sex marriages for decades. I know people (including me) who’ve been in interracial marriages for decades. So what is historic? Read more →