She was a software engineer interviewing for a job teaching high school computer science. One of the interviewers read a question: XYZ School District is committed to effective learning for all students. Key in this work is improving the success of historically underrepresented, low-income and/or students of color. What are your experiences implementing instructional strategies shown to be most effective in increasing the success of these populations? She knew what the “right” answer looked like but after a momentary hesitation decided to answer honestly. “I think it’s probably counterproductive to single out groups of students as needing special handling to be up to the standards of the other students.” “We’re not saying that they’re not up to the standards of the other students,” the interviewer said. “Okay, let me say it another way. We have four labels available: ‘historically underrepresented,’ ‘low-income,’ ‘students of color’ and ‘none of the above.’ “From… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Race
And That’s the Truth: Held Back by History
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth– PE] Black folks been treated very poorly over the years. Jews been killed and run out of almost every country on earth. Asians been slave labor, ostracized, put into prison camps. Now Jews and Asians are doing all right for theirselves. Why are black folks held back by history and other folks aren’t? Never been a Jewish president, never been an Asian president, maybe never will be. Politicians never helped nobody. They promise to give you this or that, or such and such a privilege, if you will give ’em your vote and your money, and when the time comes, they recollect nothing of the kind. Don’t wait for people to do things for you. Keep your families together and make sure your kids get a good education in school. And that’s the Truth! Read more →
See You in Hell: Fake News Edition
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings from the Underworld, my friends and foes! I’m reading about a hostage situation, including a fatal shooting of one of the hostages, at a Trader Joe’s in Los Angeles over the weekend. It was covered nationally and even internationally. Here’s a photo from a British news site of the suspect being taken away: I looked at the major US news sites — CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC — and about a dozen smaller sites . . . no one mentioned the race of the suspect, no one gave the suspect’s name, and no one ran a photo. I could understand a media policy where, in reporting shootings, we consider race to always be relevant, or we consider race to never be relevant, but not a policy where race is only considered relevant when the victim is… Read more →
There is No Doubt = There is Doubt
There is no doubt about it. The scenario that took place at Starbucks back in April is serious. Targeting someone because of their skin color in 2018 seems ridiculous, because it is. Haven’t we come far beyond this sort of thing in the past fifty years? — Jim Bohn When someone says “There is no doubt about it” or “It is an indisputable fact” or “Everyone knows . . .”, rest assured that what follows will be an opinion about which there is nothing but doubt and the speaker wants to sidestep having to make a case for whatever he or she is putting forward. It doesn’t make sense to preface something about which there really is no doubt by saying “There is no doubt about it.” It’s superfluous and silly. If I were one of the Starbucks employees, I’d be suing for defamation. What evidence are you relying on… Read more →
Fact Checking the Fact Checkers
PolitiFact has a article headlined “Donald Trump’s NRA speech, fact-checked”. Here’s a sample: “African-American unemployment has reached another all-time, in history, record low … And the same thing with Hispanic American unemployment, which is also at the lowest level in history — unemployment, lowest level in history. And women’s unemployment — women, many women — is at the lowest level in almost 20 years. Think of that.” The “fact check” starts out like this: As far as the numbers go, Trump is correct. It then goes on for another five paragraphs to say that Barack Obama deserves “at least as much” credit as Trump for low unemployment. That’s a fact check?! Trump didn’t even say anything about who deserves the credit, although the listener is invited to make a favorable inference. Had he added “. . . and I deserve all the credit,” it would be fair in that case… Read more →
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] A woman was sucked out the window of a Southwest Airlines plane . . . not a black woman, fortunately, so Southwest won’t have to shut down for racial bias training. In other news, David Hogg is telling his Twitter followers to boycott the BlackRock and Vanguard investment firms. “David Hogg’s Twitter followers” . . . might be a good name for an improv group. See you in Hell! Read more →
David Hogg’s College Prospects
A CNN news anchor asked Parkland shooting survivor and graduating senior David Hogg “what kind of dumbass colleges” would reject his application. As it happens, the dumbass colleges include UCLA and three other UC schools: UC San Diego, UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara. Hogg scored a 1270 on the SAT. 1270 SAT scores are a dime a dozen. If his name were, say, Emma Gonzalez, he might get into a UC school with a 1270 SAT, but a white boy from Florida is not getting into a UC school with a 1270 SAT. Unlike Laura Ingraham, I will not lose any advertisers for pointing this out because I don’t have any advertisers. Hogg puts himself out there as a guy who’s going to play hardball with profane takedowns of anyone who doesn’t see the world the same way he does, but he feels victimized when someone says a 1270… Read more →
And That’s the Truth: Me Too
[And That’s the Truth is a feature by our guest blogger, Sojourner Truth– PE] If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it. I have as much rights as any man, and can do as much work as any man. And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman? That little man in… Read more →
What Did You Think “Woke” Meant?
It's weird that sweeping, prejudicial generalizations about race, gender and sexual orientation are now offered by some and accepted by others as woke. https://t.co/A8udKbtVh6 — Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) December 12, 2017 Read more →
Liberalism and the Wrath of the Privileged Whites
The largely white and affluent solid liberals are notionally egalitarian and opposed to white privilege, but they include many of the most privileged whites in America. . . . Millions of working-class whites felt that Obama was talking about them, too, when he said, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.” And many of those same Americans knew that Hillary Clinton was talking about them when she ranted about the “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it” deplorables. — Pete Spiliakos | First Things Read more →
I Think the NFL is Shooting Itself in the Nuts
I think the NFL is shooting itself in the nuts with these anthem protests . . . One of the things I thought was problematic with the original Kaepernick protests is that they were inarticulate. He was protesting (I think) police treatment of black citizens but what does that have to do with kneeling for the national anthem at a football game? If he were leading a demonstration in front of police headquarters, there wouldn’t be any ambiguity about the purpose of the protest. But kneeling for the anthem at a football game? There’s no obvious connection. It requires an explanation. So people are free to supply their own explanation, like “They’re protesting the anthem,” “They’re desecrating the flag,” “They’re disrespecting our men and women in uniform.” And once they’ve supplied their own explanation, they can get angry at the NFL about it. The NFL is now trying to dumb… Read more →
The Jemele Hills of the World
Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists. — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 11, 2017 Trump is the most ignorant, offensive president of my lifetime. His rise is a direct result of white supremacy. Period. — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 11, 2017 He has surrounded himself with white supremacists — no they are not "alt right" — and you want me to believe he isn't a white supremacist? — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 11, 2017 He is unqualified and unfit to be president. He is not a leader. And if he were not white, he never would have been elected — Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 12, 2017 That’s a great opinion. It’s intelligent, well thought out . . . haha no it’s insane. I hope ESPN gets this woman some professional help. Oh you don’t see the world the same way I do?… Read more →
What Happened?
According to this review by Piers Morgan, Hillary has narrowed down the list of people and entities responsible for her 2016 election defeat to James Comey, Vladimir Putin, Julian Assange, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders and his supporters, Mitch McConnell, the mainstream media, the New York Times, Matt Lauer, Fox News, Jill Stein, men, women, white people, black people, Joe Biden, Anthony Weiner, and the Electoral College. Notably absent from the list: Hillary Clinton and the people she paid to win the election. Read more →
Making it Through High School Alive
Baltimore schools spend a staggering $16,000 per student – the fourth-highest rate in the nation – and still an investigation by Fox45’s Project Baltimore revealed that at six city schools, not one student scored proficient on the statewide tests for English and math. At West Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass High, one of five high schools and one middle school where not one student scored a four or a five on the state test, only one out of 185 students who took the test last year scored a three, while 165 students scored a one, the lowest possible score. — Zero Hedge The schools are: Booker T. Washington Middle School Frederick Douglass High School Achievement Academy at Harbor City New Era Academy Excel Academy at Francis M. Wood High New Hope Academy It looks like if you live in Baltimore, you want to avoid sending your child to a school whose name… Read more →
For Some Reason, I Thought Transgender Models Would Be Smarter Than Regular Models
L’Oreal SACKS its first transgender model after she blasted ‘ALL white people are racist’ in shocking Facebook rant — The Sun The Facebook post, since deleted, said (WARNING: British spellings ahead): Honestly I don’t have energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes ALL white people. Because most of ya’ll don’t even realise or refuse to acknowledge that your existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour. Your entire existence is drenched in racism. From micro-aggression to terrorism, you guys built the blueprint for this s***. Come see me when you realise that racism isn’t learned, it’s inherited and consciously or unconsciously passed down through privilege. Once white people begin to admit that their race is the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth… then we can talk. Until then stay acting… Read more →
When You Lose the Mayor of Berkeley, You’ve Lost America
In the aftermath of a right-wing rally Sunday that ended with anarchists chasing attendees from a downtown park, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley on Monday to cancel conservatives’ plans for a Free Speech Week next month to avoid making the city the center of more violent unrest. “I’m very concerned about Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter and some of these other right-wing speakers coming to the Berkeley campus, because it’s just a target for black bloc to come out and commit mayhem on the Berkeley campus and have that potentially spill out on the street,” Arreguin said, referring to militants who have also been called anti-fascists or antifa. — San Francisco Chronicle Read more →
An Insignificant Number of Confused, Poorly Organized Losers
News networks have been running a two-week-long (with no end in sight) infomercial on white supremacists and white nationalists and neo-Nazis as though they represent a powerful force that has to be reckoned with, a vast army of domestic terrorists, which they don’t. The most important thing to know about white supremacists and neo-Nazis is that there are actually not very many of them. The leading white supremacist organization is the Ku Klux Klan. How many members do you think the KKK currently has? Take a guess. Keep in mind we live in a country of more than 320 million people. Estimates of current KKK membership run between 5,000 and 8,000 members. Is that less than you thought? As for neo-Nazis, the New York Times ran an article a few years ago on the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which they identified as the largest neo-Nazi group in the country. Take… Read more →
Poll: Most Black Americans Don’t Want Confederate Statues Removed
NPR and PBS News Hour conducted a poll asking whether statues “honoring leaders of the Confederacy” should “remain as a historical symbol” or “be removed because they are offensive to some people.” Results by race: White: 65 percent of respondents said the statues should stay, 25 percent said they should be taken down and 8 percent were unsure. (I know these numbers don’t sum to 100 percent but I’m taking them directly from the link above.) Black: 44 percent stay, 40 percent remove, 11 percent unsure. (Same comment as previous.) Latino: 65 percent stay, 24 percent remove, 11 percent unsure. The media, which according to a Harvard University study are very biased against Donald Trump, have been flogging him with this issue for the past week and a half, the thinking being that anyone who doesn’t support the removal of Confederate statues is a white supremacist, in which case 75… Read more →
Overheard
Man reading news story from his phone: “‘A 4-year-old boy is among at least 29 people shot in Chicago this weekend as violence across the city left two dead and more than two dozen others wounded.’” “Twenty-nine people shot and only two dead? Thank god black people can’t shoot straight.” “How do you know they were black people?” “OK, you got me there, Inspector Clouseau.” Read more →
One Thing I Can’t Tolerate is Intolerance
One of my “progressive” Facebook friends posted: I’ve always wondered why white people who use the defense “I have black friends” to defend their “I’m not a racist because” arguments, never seem to tag their supposed black friends. Where are they? Fresh take! Now I’ve always wondered why some people think they have the moral authority and supernatural power to look into the hearts of others and label them racists. I’m all about tolerance and love and anyone who doesn’t think the same way I do is a racist, sexist, homophobic Nazi! We seem to be living in a time when the first person to call “racist” is ceded the moral high ground. I’m not a racist because I called you a racist first! Read more →