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 →
EppsNet Archive: Race
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 →
What Does “Woke” Mean?
Recently I’ve heard “woke” defined as being awake to injustice, particularly racial injustice. That takes the edge off it. It makes it sound like a good thing, except to the extent that it propagates untrue ideas like racism is everywhere, or anything you don’t like is racist. Having an awareness of injustice is universal though, isn’t it? Although people have very different ideas about what’s just or unjust, everyone has their own sense of it. It doesn’t require a new word. We have words like “compassionate” and “empathetic” that seem to mean the same thing. I don’t think even the person or persons who coined the word “woke” meant it to be as inoffensive as “being awake to injustice.” I think it was intended to be confrontational. Here’s another possible definition: Making sweeping, prejudicial generalizations about race, gender and sexual orientation. I like that definition better. I think it’s useful… Read more →
Can You Pass the Harvard Entrance Exam?
Yes! On the question that asks for your race, the correct answer is Black. Veritas! Read more →
When a Mass Murder is of No Interest
Three University of Virginia football players were shot to death a few days ago. This has not set off a national media frenzy despite the fact that the victims were young, black, unarmed and not involved in the commission of a crime at the time of their death. They won’t get the “say his name,” George Floyd martyr treatment, no Black Lives Matter protests or condemnations, and very little press coverage at all, considering we’re talking about a mass murder of three black college students sitting on a bus. Why? Because the shooter looks like this: Read more →
Harvard, Yale, Berkeley Pull Out of Law School Rankings
Law schools at Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley have pulled out of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings over concerns that the system is biased against equity programs. It seems unlikely that the system is biased against equity programs or that the rankings even consider equity programs, but if “equity programs” means what I think it does, it means that the schools reject accomplished candidates who are White, Asian or Jewish in favor of less accomplished candidates who are not White, Asian or Jewish. That would show up indirectly in rankings if the rankings look, as I’m sure they do, at LSAT scores, GPA and other indications of merit. It seems like one of two things can happen as a result of equity programs. One is that the schools teach classes to the level of the students, so if you reduce the qualifications of the students, you teach classes at… Read more →
Abolish the Police
Last night a POC tried to mug me. I said he was more than welcome to my purse or if interested in we could fool around behind the dumpsters over there. He ran away. It hurt my feelings but it’s proof social workers can handle these crimes. #abolishThePolice — Dr. Carol X Lunz PhD She/Him,GED Alumni,commentary (@marinasmigielsk) October 21, 2022 Read more →
Rachel Dolezal on OnlyFans
There’s nothing that Rachel Dolezal (who still self-identifies as black, btw) could post on OnlyFans that would induce me to pay money to see it, but if you disagree then it’s your lucky day, because her nude photos have been leaked on social media. The success of OnlyFans has always puzzled me given the quantity of free pornography (so I’ve heard) available online, and obviously even OnlyFans content can turn up for free. Read more →