1. I have some ethics observations on this thing that was sent out to white parents in the Highland Park area of Texas by a Black Lives Matter-affiliated group:
Here they are:
- As long as white individuals hesitate to push back on BLM’s outrageous assertions and demands, the group will continue to grow more audacious and arrogant
- The logic of this demand can only make sense to someone who has no concept of right, wrong, and fairness. “We want you to handicap your own children in order to clear the way for our children, who can’t compete and who shouldn’t have to work especially hard to overcome obstacles that you and your children are not responsible for placing in their path.”
- The screed is an excellent example of how the concept of equal opportunity has been warped into “equity,” meaning not just equality of results, which life never guarantees, but punitive measures to ensure advantages of favored groups over those that are disfavored, aka whites and males.
- The extension of the argument in the letter would require athletes fortunate to have advantages of strength, speed, and skill to pledge not to compete against those not so “privileged” as to be born with these advantages, and job applicants of superior talent, intelligence and character to refuse to place themselves in a position where they would be chosen for a job over less fortunate job-seekers.
2. I originally had the photo of a thoughtful chimp above. Then, after I decided on the first item, I thought: “Hmmm. Will someone accuse me of using that image to suggest that the BLM strategy outlined in the letter was the brainstorm of chimps?” In the interests of being more safe than sorry, I defaulted to “The Thinker.” But I resent having to live in a society where racism is presumed in order to constrain expression and humor, and where people are actively looking for excuses to be offended, and to apply the worst motives to all rather than the best. I resent it, and detest those who are making life this way.
3. Why is any company using Megan Rapinoe in its ads and promotion? She is a negative presence, always. She is austere and androgynous, almost never smiles, radiates anger and resentment, and carries a negative effect from the Cognitive Dissonance Scale around with her. The defiant, angry, anti-American pink-haired lesbian market can’t possibly be that large. I have now seen nearly ten TV adds featuring Rapinoe, and as a casting director, former marketing professional and critic I can say with complete confidence that she has the presence of a dishrag while emitting the positive vibe of the average scorpion. And she isn’t even trying to project anything but a perpetual snit. A corporation using her isn’t just virtue-signalling, it’s self-destructively virtue-signalling. Here’s a typically charming Megan moment:
4. I know I already touched on this, but how can anyone, even Nancy Pelosi, say such a thing with a straight face? How can any journalist not immediately vivisect and mock it? From Byron York of the Washington Examiner: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she barred Representatives Jim Jordan and Jim Banks from the Capitol riot investigating committee because the two Republicans “had made statements and taken actions that I think would impact the integrity of the committee.” Pelosi said Jordan and Banks also “made statements and took actions that just made it ridiculous to put them on such a committee seeking the truth.” Wow. Pelosi appointed GOP Rep. Liz Cheney specifically because she has already made it clear that she blames Donald Trump for the Capitol riot and regards it as an “insurrection.” Every one of the Democrats on the Committee voted to impeach Trump based on little evidence, contrary evidence, and in some cases false evidence. Rep. Adam Schiff is on the committee!
Meanwhile, if you would like to read as tortured a defense of Pelosi’s kangaroo committee as any mind deeply sunk into the mouth of madness could concoct, read this in the Columbia Journalism Review. The bias is aflame: who wouldn’t detect it immediately and recoil? Yet this passed the standards of a “distinguished” journalism magazine.
5. It’s already face to the wall…I guess now I have to paint over my diploma. Gee, maybe all whites should refuse to apply to Harvard.
The “No Label Academy” is a non-profit founded by Harvard alumni and created “from a place of wanting to bring Harvard together, like finding a medium by which to bring students together regardless of race, socioeconomic status, etc,” according to student founder Miles Weddle, whose statement proves that Harvard’s English program has hit th skids along with everything else. How strange, then, that the organization now has a no-whites-allowed program. Maryland rapper IDK will teach a tuition-free music business seminar at Harvard for BIPOC students under the auspices of No Label Academy this August The Harvard Crimson reported this month. Sponsors of the racially-segregated event include Nike and Converse.
That looked bad, and a University of Michigan-Flint professor named Mark Perry filed a federal civil rights complaint stating, “This program discriminates on the basis of skin color by operating exclusively for BIPOC individuals only and illegally excluding and discriminating against non-BIPOC individuals on the basis of skin color,.”
Now Harvard is playing games. After Perry filed his federal Title VI complaint, the group’s website was changed to read, “No Label is not affiliated with Harvard University, nor is No Label Academy a Harvard University program or activity.” It’s not affiliated with Harvard, but its seminar will be taking place on Harvard’s campus. Why is Harvard allowing a racially discriminating program to take place at the Business School? Surely it wouldn’t allow a whites-only seminar, even if it was devoted to the music of Lawrence Welk.
If no group of white students has the guts to go to the seminar and demand admission, Harvard is lost.
Hell, I would have done that.
Ethics Alarms 
https://conservativefiringline.com/letter-demands-wealthy-white-liberal-parents-keep-kids-out-of-ivy-league-schools-to-make-room-for-black-brown-students/
They’ll go further than demands – they’ll dox you if you don’t comply.
There’s every reason to believe that as they already have the person’s name, address, skin color and how the person votes.
1. Well, enlisting people to stop shopping for privileged and woke degree programs could have unintended consequences of meeting other students and programs less embedded. (more racial, religious, culturally diverse and students interested in gaining knowledge and want to get value for time and expense.
3. I have no idea. Barrier breakers have a responsibility to be good examples and ambassadors to help persuade the larger culture that change is needed. Jackie Robinson is among this list. It’s only anger and arrogance to think you can effect positive change while consistently acting poorly in public. This is worse than the brattiness of MacEnroe because it’s not just the usual ego or trash talk but toxic to the fans, their industry, and the general public who helped enable their platform.
I have never seen a shot or video where she looks happy or content with anything. Very strange for someone whose success is undeniable. If she is that unhappy, a career or lifestyle shift might bring her more happiness than this one.
She is austere and androgynous, almost never smiles, radiates anger and resentment, and carries a negative effect from the Cognitive Dissonance Scale around with her. The defiant, angry, anti-American pink-haired lesbian market can’t possibly be that large.
Au contraire, I’d say Rapinoe is (that favorite gay and lesbian term) an ICON. I think a lot of companies could go broke underestimating the defiant, angry, anti-American pink-haired lesbian (and their numerous fellow travelers) market. “You go girl!” is the response she elicits among the faithful. Defiance sells. She’s James Dean on steroids.
And what good lefty ever smiles? These are not normal times. Who can afford to smile?
1) The vast majority of wealth is *multi-generational*. Yes, America is replete with the starry examples of rags-to-riches stories, but even those are generally isolated exceptions. For the rest of anyone who has wealth, it’s mostly because the generation before them made tiny sacrifices in their lives that they didn’t have to make, because those sacrifices were essentially investments in their children that paid off for their children in dividends worth VASTLY more than the sacrifice.
This is multi-generational “deferring gratification”. And often times, the parents of THOSE parents also had made small sacrifices or even big sacrifices to set them up with a goal for them to be *just a little bit* better off than they were.
I’m a landscape architect, who served as an officer in the United States Army. I got there because my parents – a school teacher and a secretary – lived thrifty lives – we bought off-brands – we only ate out with coupons – we didn’t vacation in places we didn’t have friends we could stay with.
THEIR parents – dirt poor farmers – got THEM there because when they weren’t farming – they were hustling side jobs (leaving them with almost NO personal time) that eventually turned into small scale rentals and a grocery store.
THEIR parents – dirt poor farmers just worked and worked and worked and saved.
THEIR parents – recovered from the ravages of the Civil War – one of whom was on track to be a surgeon until being drafted into the Confederate Army as a hospital aide disgusted him to no end and he ended up a farmer. Another was the child of people constantly wandering because of run-ins with the law – with at least one relative hanged as a horse thief.
Multi-generational marginal sacrifices do not always work out, as the author of Ecclesiastes bemoans “I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool?” But, based on the centuries-long practice, it seems to work out much more successfully than it does not.
One of the undeniable results of capitalism is that NOW, in all eras, even “poor” people live at a level of comfort, convenience, and luxury that “middle class” people could never have imagined 100 years ago. Capitalism, which affords a small sliver of society opulence that can’t be fathomed by the average brain (which partially accounts for some of the animosity) ALSO affords the rest of that society down to the least-well-to-do comforts, needs and wants far outpacing previous generations of their peers.
Part of the backbone of this system is the “unfair” luck that some people are born into wealthy families and some people are born into families that are sacrifice-oriented, with an eye to future wealth. But that backbone is a subcomponent on the promise made, not to the children, but to the parents in our capitalist system – “You get to choose how to dispose of what you produce”.
So, what then of the obvious fact that African-American families *on average* got a late start to wealth generation game than non-African-American families *on average*? Are we to break the essential promise that “What is yours is yours”?
We could essentially up-end the system (which is what most of the Left-wingers are aiming for) and take most of what people make and re-distribute it to those who aren’t “equal”. Which will lead to people no longer putting in the kind of effort that makes capitalist societies so opulent.
We could go half-way and punish the crap out of inheritors, which will essentially lead parents to find ways to cheat the system OR to simply spend like drunken sailors in their own lifetimes – breaking the good habits described paragraphs above that lead to better lives for not just their own children, but for everyone.
Or, my answer, we can just leave it alone and live with large disparities, knowing that even with the wild differences, *everyone* who tries is going upward.
So, what then of the obvious fact that African-American families *on average* got a late start to wealth generation game than non-African-American families *on average*?
To that I say that there is not much to be done about it other than to stop being racist now if racism is still a fundamental practice of any person now. Does it mean that American society will still seem to be “racially” striated? Maybe for another century – at a stretch. But even those lines have blurred like crazy with the explosion of the African American middle class.
What I find remarkably annoying – the average aggrieved African American is comparing themselves to Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk as those the average peer non-African American is really in the same boat. It’s not like Elon Musk walks past a qualified African American to the white drug-addict and says “I need you because you are white”. No, the beauty of the free-market that most grievance hucksters will never admit is that for the vast majority of interactions on the market – race plays NO role – or if it plays a role, it plays a vanishingly small role compared to the myriad other tiny reasons anyone makes a decision in the market.
But as Frederick Douglass and Booker T Washington both observed about the free market – skill, hard work, and personality are worth more than skin color – to even people with some amount of prejudice.
No, the only answer is to stop looking at people and evaluating them as a carrier or melanin and to look at them as individuals, and to stop giving any particular individual an excuse other than their own conduct and effort to avoid accountability. And the flip side of that coin is to also accept that sometimes, on occasion, someone else gets more rewards than you do, and accept it without animus – because to do otherwise – makes sure that EVERYONE gets EVERYTHING *you* think they deserve will create a system so onerous and oppressive that NO ONE gets ANYTHING.
Comment of the Day, Michael. You were overdue!
Thanks! I see it replete with typos and bad grammar. If I could market that skill, I’d be wealthier than Elon Musk.
I’ll be cleaning it up. Not to worry.
“What I find remarkably annoying – the average aggrieved African American is comparing themselves to Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk as those the average peer non-African American is really in the same boat.”
Should say:
“What I find remarkably annoying – the average aggrieved African American is comparing themselves to Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk as though the average peer non-African American isn’t in the same boat.”
“as a carrier or melanin”
should be
“as a carrier OF melanin”
“Part of the backbone of this system is the “unfair” luck that some people are born into wealthy families and some people are born into families that are sacrifice-oriented, with an eye to future wealth.”
should have included the contrast:
“Part of the backbone of this system is the “unfair” luck that some people are born into wealthy families and some people are born into families that are sacrifice-oriented, with an eye to future wealth; and yes, some people are born into poverty with parents who don’t look to the future.”
You know, one of the first things the early Soviet Union abolished was inheritance. It was also one of the things they reinstated, since no one was willing to work more than the minimum if what he produced would simply become the state’s property. That’s saying something. BTW, my own family’s history, at least on my dad’s side, mirrors yours to some degree. My great grandparents came here from Italy and only one of the four could read or write in ANY language. However, that man started a small business selling coal, feed and ice. It was hard, dirty work. My grandfather inherited that and built on it by selling a heap of scrap iron he somehow acquired, and had his own business selling coal and later oil in three towns. My dad was the first to go to college and became a military officer and later an MBA. I was the first to go to graduate school and become an attorney (no mean feat when you have Asperger’s Syndrome), and I stand to inherit, well, quite a bit when Dad is gone (mom is already gone, for better or for worse, I will not be one of those sons who has to care for an aging mother into her 90s). This was all hard work. This is why I get irked when I hear talk of white privilege. However, the left isn’t interested in hearing it, and just calls you racist for daring to disagree with their narrative.
Thanks for the response.
Here’s where I get even more infuriated with the Left.
Since emancipation and the struggles of the Civil Rights era – the African American community was *vibrantly* on it’s way *UP* as is the trajectory of every immigrant group that has come to America (even while African American’s immigrant story is fundamentally unique).
Until about the time of the 50s – when Leftists hijacked their story and hyped up their victim status and oppressed status. Yes the Civil Rights advances were essential – but inside that movement the Left hid the eventual monster of the grievance industry that undid *ONE HUNDRED* years of slow growth.
And now, going for the kill, the Left will inevitably produce a permanent angry class that will never get out of the hole its in because it’s been taught that the very culture and attitudes that will lift it out are by definition the foundations of racism and the solutions offered will never accomplish anything but a maintenance of dependency.
As I tell anyone who wants me to check my privilege, privilege is what my parents conferred upon me and what my wife and I tried our best to confer on our children. Who are now trying their best to confer privilege on our grand children (as are we).
Excellent analysis.
jvb
The letter inadvertently (I believe) highlighted a problem with “privilege” that the left denies.
Proponents of the “privilege concept” like to insist that privilege should not cause feelings of guilt or cause one to be defensive.
However, the letter suggests that white people enjoy “privilege” at the “expense” of people of color. They affirm what other proponents of the “privilege-mindset” disavow and its detractors put forth as a criticism.
Yet, in Dallas, they just lay it out: you have it good at the expense of black people.
Of course, I don’t think all who spout about “privilege” think this way. I just think “privilege” is such a vague concept as to be useless in most contexts.
And, in this context, it is worse than useless.
-Jut
I enjoy privilege at the expense of the sacrifices my parents made but didn’t have to.
1. Reminds me of the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut. Seems we are headed this way.
The YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
The letter thing is so egregious that I’m almost convinced that it’s a false flag being performed by a KKK offshoot. Not that I think there aren’t sincere people that would do that, but I expect – scratch that, more like hope – that they are rarer than actual klan members.
This Twitter thread indicates that it is indeed a false flag:
Great. Asshole, whoever is responsible. I’ll wait a bit until that’s confirmed, and make the appropriate correction.
I reviewed the website and it is full of leftist propaganda. If this letter is a false flag operation it is surrounded by material espoused by the Texas Dems enscounced in DC as well as those claiming white fragility and other racial mantras. Just because something appears to be unbelievable does not make it so.
The further the Left goes towards the inevitable conclusion of it’s current first principles – the more their rhetoric will be indiscernible from the most unbelievable insanity.
G, I can’t find any confirmation that this was a false flag, and have seen several pieces where someone assuming it was investigating and deciding it was genuine.
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/whos-behind-dallas-justice-nows-dont-send-white-kids-to-ivy-league-controversy-12098228
Geoff Bowser is a Democrat operative. His background image of his Twitter page is a table of obstruction of justice charges he created against Trump and Flynn. This makes his claims as suspect as the letter. But he cannot refute that the Dallas City Wire wrote a story about DallasJustice Now in November of 2020 at the time of their organizing.
It’s a shame you didn’t use the monkey reference. You could have been another Howard Cosell!