Race

SCOTUS Leak Freakout Update: The Times’ Unethical Editorial Of The Month

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

It’s rare that one sees blunt incivility in an old and revered political publication like the National Review, but here was the headline of Charles Cook’s column there yesterday:

The New York Times’ Editorial Board Is Apparently Extremely Stupid

I had read the editorial and my reaction had been the same, except that I would have been tempted to leave out “apparently.” I’d also categorize this as old news, at least to readers of Ethics Alarms. Then, for a nonce, I regretted the absence of self-exiled commenter “A Friend,” since his predictable efforts to defend the indefensible in the Times would have been particularly entertaining in this case.

Here’s the the paragraph Cooke was reacting to:

Imagine that every state were free to choose whether to allow Black people and white people to marry. Some states would permit such marriages; others probably wouldn’t. The laws would be a mishmash, and interracial couples would suffer, legally consigned to second-class status depending on where they lived.

This is the newspaper that is regarded as the flagship of the news media. This is the newspaper that holds itself up as a paragon of objective news analysis. This is a newspaper that claims that its perspective isn’t skewed by a progressive bias.

This is the newspaper I have been paying almost 90 bucks a month to have delivered every day for four years. Yes, I’m stupid too.

Here, in part, is what Cooke writes in his understandable disgust: Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The Washington Post Herschel Walker Attack Piece

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The Washington Post has published a full-on attack piece against Herschel Walker, the former college football star and pro player who has been endorsed by Donald Trump in his effort to become a Republican Senator in Georgia. Walker is running against Democrat Raphael Warnock, who probably only won his seat in the January 2021 special election because Trump wouldn’t shut up about how he really won the 2020 election, and then a mob of idiots triggered by those claims stormed the Capitol. The Post’s anti-Walker piece is unusually tough, but Walker is an unusually inviting target. I would be more charitable to the Post’s motives if I had ever seen the paper be similarly critical of a black Democrat.

There is a rebuttable presumption that the Post’s anti-Walker fervor is at least partially a product of Trump Derangement: if Trump has endorsed him, Walker must be…well, cue the Birds Lady:

However, as Ethics Alarms has already noted, Walker does show the signs of an untrustworthy candidate, Trump notwithstanding. Thus the Post’s examination of other disturbing aspects of his character, background and statements would be just good journalism—if it devoted similar efforts to Democrats and progressives. It doesn’t. The Post looked the other way when Warnock was running for the Senate and his wife made credible accusations of spousal abuse, for example. That doesn’t mean the the Post should ignore Walker’s unsavory side, but playing favorites is unethical journalism.

One of the Walker statements quoted by the Post is enough for me: I wouldn’t need more to decide to write in the Easter Bunny rather than vote for him. At a Sugar Hill, Georgia church Walker said in March, “At one time, science said man came from apes. Did it not? Well, this is what’s interesting, though. If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.”

Yikes. I have thought about it, and anyone who would say or think something like that has the critical thinking skills of a sea sponge and is brick-ignorant to boot. That’s signature significance for a candidate who shouldn’t get into the Senate without a ticket. Everything else the Post reveals, including disturbing stories about Walker’s emotional stability, is piling on after that.

Additional Observations:

Continue reading →

The No-White Men Allowed MBA Programs: An Ethics Inquiry

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I was considering making this an ethics quiz, but it would be too easy: of course graduate programs that practice gender and racial discrimination in admission are unethical, though the dead-ethics alarms administrators who approve such monstrosities apparently don’t think so. Thus this is an inquiry into who, what, when, and why, all addressing the question of how this could happen?

Perhaps I should rephrase that slightly: How the hell could this happen?

Yum! Brands, which owns Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC, operated a franchise owner training and business degree program at two universities, the University of Louisville (where Jack Marshall Sr. attended college until he transferred) and Howard University. The Yum! Franchise Accelerator MBA was limited, according to its materials, to “underrepresented people of color and women.” Following a federal investigation, the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education announced in a letter last week that the two universities had agreed to make the “Yum! Franchise Accelerator Fellowship is open to all eligible students regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or age.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbid discrimination on the basis of race at institutions that receive federal funding. Did the two institutions miss it? It was in all the papers. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 forbids discrimination on the basis of sex. This, I thought, was also rather well-publicized. Not enough, apparently.

And yet here we are, or were.

Continue reading →

The First Rule of “Anti-Racism Fight Club” Is Do Not Talk About “Anti-Racism Fight Club”…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Nah, the public schools aren’t indoctrinating children!

Admittedly, this happened in Washington D.C., which has an anti-white, racist, Black Lives Matter-supporting mayor, but still…

The principal of Janney Elementary School in the District casually informed parents in a letter last November that

Today students in grades pre-k through third grade participated in the Anti-Racism Fight Club presentation with Doyin Richards. As part of this work, each student has a fist book to help continue the dialogue at school and home (be sure to check out the helpful links on page 18). We recognize that any time we engage topics such as race and equity, we may experience a variety of emotions. This is a normal part of the learning and growing process. As a school community we want to continue the dialogue with our students and understand this is just the beginning.

“Just the beginning!” Richards, a Critical Race Theory consultant and propagandist, spoke about the themes in his  “Anti-Racism Fight Club Fistbook for Kids” explaining that “white people are a part of a society that benefits them in almost every instance,” and that “it’s as if white people walk around with an invisible force field because they hold all of the power in America.”

“If you are a white person,” the Fistbook for Kids” explains, “white privilege is something you were born with and it simply means that your life is not more difficult due to the color of your skin. Put differently, it’s not your fault for having white privilege, but it is your fault if you choose to ignore it.”

Continue reading →

Showing Cotton Bolls As Part Of A Lesson On Slavery: OK. Making Black Students PICK Cotton Bolls? Uh, NO. Is This Really A Difficult Line To See?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Apparently so, at least for some members of the teaching profession whose judgment parents are supposed to trust blindly, according to President Biden and others.

Just a few days ago, Ethics Alarms discussed [#3] the vile treatment of a social studies teacher by the San Francisco’s Creative Arts Charter School, which suspended her and forced her to grovel an apology for bringing cotton bolls, into her class as part of a lesson on the cotton gin and its impact on slavery and the Industrial Revolution. Commenter Curmie, a teacher himself, properly condemned the school’s reaction in a post on his own blog, here.

However, a Rochester, NY white middle school teacher told his class of mostly black students to pick seeds out of cotton bolls during his lessons on slavery in a seventh-grade social studies class. In another fun exercise, the same teacher brought in handcuffs and shackles for the black students to put on. White children were allowed to opt out of the cotton-picking, reportedly, while black students were not. When a black child balked at putting on the shackles, the teacher threatened her with punishment.

Continue reading →

The Unethical Student Loan Debt Cancellation Ploy

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

The push to cancel student loan debt is another example of the Left embracing a terrible, foolish, indefensibly unethical policy for no better reason than hope that it will allow them it to gain political power. Word around Washington is that President Biden is “seriously considering” canceling up to $50,000 in student debt for all. Translation: Biden’s puppeteers/handlers/advisers are probably trying to get him to do it, insane and irresponsible as it may be, but Joe may be inclined to do it on his own, because 1) he’s just not very bright; 2) he’s not very bright and his cognitive functions have been deteriorating in front of the whole nation; and 3) he never had any integrity anyway.

The late Rush Limbaugh, commenting on Mitt Romney’s loss to Barack Obama in 2012, lamented that “You can’t beat free stuff!” He said that Democrats were always willing to buy votes by promising to pay for more or making “the rich” or private business do so, from living wages for jobs not worth them, to national health, to free college degrees and more. Tilting the U.S. to socialism and a “nanny state”? If that’s what it takes to win, sure! Turning the national debt into a ticking time bomb that future generations will have to suffer for? Why not? Student loan forgiveness is as good an example of Rush’s point as I can imagine.

It is unethical in so many ways…

Continue reading →

The Six Conservative Judges Had To Know That This Decision Would Guarantee Cries of “Systemic Racism!” But They Had The Integrity To Rule Correctly Anyway [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Good for them. If only more Americans had similar courage….but having a guaranteed lifetime position definitely helps.

The Supreme Court last week silently rejected an appeal by a death row inmate in Texas arguing that his conviction was unjust because a juror had admitted  to racial bias. Kristopher Love (above) is black, and his lawyer had been forced to accept  a juror whose answer to a potential juror questionnaire query, “Do you believe that some races and/or ethnic groups tend to be more violent than others?” was “Yes.” Asked about that answer, the white juror said, “Statistics show more violent crimes are committed by certain races. I believe in statistics.”

The prospective juror in question, who is white, said yes. Pressed by defense lawyers, he said he based his views on “news reports and criminology classes” rather than his “personal feelings toward one race or another,” and that he did not “think because of somebody’s race they’re more likely to commit a crime than somebody of a different race.” He insisted that he did not feel  animosity or suspicions toward Love “because he’s an African American.”

Continue reading →

The Immediate Benefit Of Musk’s Twitter Takeover: The Left Is Revealing Its Fear Of Free Speech

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

That depressing exhortation above was released by the president of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson. It is signature significance for a man, and presumably the organization he has led and spoken for since 2017, who favors censorship, content-based control of communications media, and a manipulated political system. It also reveals a leader of an influential organization who sees no danger that his members and his organization’s supporters will react negatively to his open embrace of totalitarian principles.

“Hate speech” is free speech, and groups like the NAACP (and the Democratic Party, and too frequently the mainstream media) define as hate speech any speech that they hate, because it is critical of their positions, agendas or members. “Disinformation and misinformation” have always been welcome on Twitter as long as it advanced progressive goals. “Do not allow 45 to return to the platform”? What is that but a demand that a prominent political figure who was recently President be handicapped in his efforts to seek political office? How would the NAACP have responded to a call from white supremacy group to keep Barack Obama from a communication platform in 2008?

The organization is only about power. It has no integrity or principles.

Or self-awareness. Or comprehension of the words it uses and the concepts it claims to revere. Censoring speech and political opinions along with a recent President and current political leader protects democracy.

War is Peace

Ignorance is Strength

Slavery is Freedom

Silly me, I did not expect the NAACP to reveal itself as such a fan of Big Brother; I somehow thought that last motto would be a deal-breaker.

Well, now we know. It’s sad, and scary, but that’s what’s so great about letting people say what they think.

Among other benefits, we learn who can’t be trusted.

A “Curmie” Comment Of The Day Double-Header, #1: “Ethics Verdict: Non-Math Propaganda Does Not Belong In Math Textbooks”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“Curmie,” whose lively and erudite blog has been a favorite of mine for many years, weighed in on Ethics Alarms with his usual force on several substantial issues last week. Here is his first of two Comments of the Day (the other will be along shortly), both involving Florida controversies. This one takes off from the post, “Ethics Verdict: Non-Math Propaganda Does Not Belong In Math Textbooks”…

***

Meh.

Certainly the injection of any kind of political agenda into elementary school math textbooks is a significant problem. Or at least it would be, if it actually happened on anything like a regular basis. What I find most interesting about this case is the fact that neither Governor DeSantis nor anyone on the Board of Education has (yet, as I write this) shown an example of the offending material from any of the books that have been sanctioned. I presumed that since the list of books has indeed been made public, numerous such examples will soon be forthcoming. Then we can make an informed judgment. Except, of course, now the governor is claiming the specifics are “proprietary information” as publishers weigh possible appeals to the rejections. Were I of a cynical disposition (perish the thought!), I might suggest that that delay ought to get him past the November elections. [JM Note: Subsequent to Curmie’s comment, some examples of varying persuasiveness (see above) were made public.]

What we have by way of example, at least that I can find, is an obviously absurd question that appeared on a homework sheet in a Missouri school. Back when I was blogging more regularly, I’d write about similarly stupid assignments several times a year. I’ve got to yield here to Florida State Representative Carlos Smith’s observation that “The best his [DeSantis’s] propaganda machine could do was deflect to a Missouri district that apologized for a homework assignment they didn’t approve.” Importantly, the worksheet was pulled from a website, not a textbook. So we can’t blame McGraw-Hill or Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt for that particular outrageousness. Continue reading →

This, Apparently, Is Ethical “Misinformation”…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The New York Time Book Review this week includes a review by novelist Mitchell S. Jackson of Elizabeth Alexander’s book “The Trayvon Generation.” I haven’t read the book itself, but it’s goals and orientation are clear from the review by Jackson. Jackson is, like Alexander, a Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory endorsing activist. If I were editing a book review supplement, I would think it mandatory to assign a reviewer to Alexander’s work who wasn’t so obviously predisposed to agree with her views and praise them, but that’s just not how the Times rolls these days. But this isn’t the point of my post.

This is: in the middle of his review, Alexander wrote—and the Times printed—

Never forget — on Feb. 26, 2012, a hella overzealous volunteer neighborhood watch captain named George Zimmerman stalked and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

Never forget — on July 13, 2013, a jury acquitted Zimmerman, an egregious verdict that fomented the Black Lives Matter movement into being.

Continue reading →