Race

Oh, Fine: Now Baseball Players Are Looking For Excuses To Cry Racism

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Today’s contrived controversy shows what a bang-up job Barack Obama and race-baiting progressives have done “improving” race relations in the U.S.

A week ago, black White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson and white Yankee third baseman Josh Donaldson got into a small confrontation when the latter appeared to push Anderson off third base, prompting Anderson to shoving Donaldson in return and the two exchanging words. Coaches got between the two before anything further occurred. The two crossed paths again today twice, in the seventh inning after Donaldson walked and was forced at second on a double play ball. Anderson turned and seemed to say something to Donaldson, who seemed to be laughing as he ran back to the dugout. Earlier, in the fifth, Anderson had run toward the Yankee at home plate as benches emptied.

What was going on? Anderson claimed that Donaldson had directed a “racist comment” his way. The accusation was picked up by White Sox manager Tony La Russa and White Sox catcher Yasmani Grandal. For once, the news media told us what the “racist comment” was.

Guess.

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Princeton Tries To Get Away With What The University Of Central Florida Couldn’t: Forced Ideological Conformity

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I had lots of quick reactions to this nauseating story:

  • It is comforting to know that Princeton has joined Yale and my alma mater as once-great colleges that are embarrassing alumni in their embrace of racial bias and progressive oppression.
  • It is also comforting to know that not all of the professors abused in this way are weenies who will grovel an apology to keep their jobs with  unethical institutions.
  • Colleges and universities have become a primary threat to democracy,and that is no longer an unreasonable suspicion. It is fact.
  • The news media keeps telling us that conservatives present an existential threat to democracy anyway.

Just last night, I posted [Item #2]on the recent decision by an arbitrator that an arbitrator has reinstated Prof. Charles Negy with full back pay after he was fired by the University of Central Florida for opining in two tweets that the “systemic racism” claim was less than persuasive and that there was abundant “back privilege” in American society conferring special benefits while suppressing legitimate criticism. The school’s clever scheme—well, not so clever, since it ultimately was tagged as the wrongful tactic it was—consisted of searching for some other pretense for firing the non-conforming prof, since using his opinions wouldn’t work. Now, less than 24 hours later, I learn that Princeton is attempting to do the same thing to one of its professors.

“Well, we’re not some podunk state university in Florida,” its leaders are apparently thinking. “We’re Princeton! We are wise, and we know best!”

 Classics Professor Professor Joshua Katz  properly found fault with some aspects of a proposed anti-racism program of benefits for minority faculty and has the audacity to publicize his objections. Can’t have that, so Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber has asked the university board to fire Katz. The sinister WrongThink purveyor questioned a proposal in a faculty letter to offer special benefits for “professors of color,” who somehow were deemed innately worthy of a summer salary and additional sabbatical time because a black drug addict and petty crook resisted arrest and ended up dead in part because of the brutality of bad Minnesota cop. I know I’m being repetitious, but this really is the cause and effect that launched The Great Stupid. It amazes me every time I think about it.

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Tag-Team Comment Of The Day: “And This Is What The Great Stupid Looks Like…”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

JutGory and Steve-O-In NJ gave us a spontaneous call and response Comment of the Day on the topic of “white supremacy,” which has seemingly taken over for “racist” as the progressive/Democrat/mainstream reflex term to demonize conservatives, Republicans, patriots, anyone who believes in the Constitution, or anyone who opposes in good faith the Black Lives Matter agenda.

Here is their joint Comment of the Day on the post, “And This Is What The Great Stupid Looks Like…”:

***

JutGory:

White Supremacy has been pretty meaningless for quite a while now.

What really annoys me about this is that the “problem” pointed out here has exactly no solution that will satisfy the complainers.

Whites should be barred from watching the NBA?
Whites should stop supporting the NBA?

That is the point: no matter what happens, they will not be satisfied.

Before you know it, we are back to the Negro Leagues again. And, you know what they will complain about then?

White Supremacy.

Steve-O-in NJ responds:

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Morning Ethics Heat-Up, 5/18/2022: More Judicial Review And Lies

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Because I was otherwise obsessed, I missed noting yesterday a true landmark in law and ethics. It was that date in 1954 when a unanimous the  Supreme Court handed down the unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Linda Brown, a young African American girl had been denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.

Written in 1896 as the KKK roamed the South, the SCOTUS ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson held that “separate but equal” accommodations in railroad cars conformed to the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. Plessy was interpreted as justifying segregation in everything from buses to water fountains to elementary schools. The white school Brown attempted to attend was far superior to her the segregation-mandated alternative and miles closer to her home, so The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  took up Linda’s cause. Thurgood Marshall led Brown’s legal team, and on May 17, 1954, Plessy was overturned after 58 years as “the law of the land” despite the siren call of stare decisus. The opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that “separate but equal” was an unconstitutional doctrine in ringing terms: “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”  A year later, the Supreme Court published guidelines requiring public school systems to integrate “with all deliberate speed.”

1. Prudent and responsible, if not courageous. Speaking of SCOTUS, newly confirmed Justice-in-Waiting Ketanji Brown Jackson sat for an interview by the Washington Post and was asked about the leak of Justice Alito’s draft opinion in the Dobbs abortion case. Conservative media was triggered by this section:

Q: What was your response when you when you saw the draft leak [of a Supreme Court opinion that would strike down Roe v. Wade]?

A: Everybody who is familiar with the court and the way in which it works was shocked by that. Such a departure from normal order.

Q: Do you think it was a good thing or a bad thing?

A: I can’t answer that.

Q: What do you think about peaceful protests outside of Supreme Court justices’ homes?

A: I don’t have any comment.

Charles Cooke at the National Review writes, “This ranges from somewhere between cowardly and sinister, much like the failure of the justices to issue a joint statement that echoes the chief justice’s condemnation of the leak and statement of determination to identify the leaker, and that condemns the protests, which violate federal law.”

Wrong. SCOTUS justices should not issue opinions on such matters. Her statement that the leak was a breach of the normal order was factual, and breaches of normal order in any institution are unethical. She was right to go no further. As for the demonstrators, some of them may be arrested at some point, and a statement by a Supreme Court Justice regarding their conduct could interfere with a fair trial.

Her responses give me more reason to trust Jackson’s judgment, not less.

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Oh-Oh! The President’s New Paid Liar Is Incompetent At Lying

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

When the name Karine Jean-Pierre was first mentioned on Ethics Alarms (here, Item 4), it was after the lead-in, “Biden’s not even trying to be responsible at this point.” Her major qualification to take over the press secretary job—aka “Pofficial paid liar”— from the unbearable Jen Psaki, it seemed, was that Jean-Pierre is a black lesbian, which White House flacks (echoed by the mainstream media of course, boot-licking as usual) hailed as “historic.” (My reaction, then and now: who cares?) She also has a major conflict of interest, being married to CNN correspondent Suzanne Malveaux. Later, after non-bootlicking reporters did some digging, we learned that she has been a habitual race-baiter. The New York Post reported that between 2015 and 2020 the new voice of the White House had accused people, policies, ideas, or words of being “racist” 57 times on Twitter and 43 times in TV appearances on CNN and MSNBC.

To be fair, being a knee-jerk race-baiter is a valid qualification for being a Democratic President’s press secretary in 2022.

However, the main objective in appointing Jean-Pierre, as with any job, has to be that she be able to do it competently. That means lie, which is what people in her position do and have done since the role came into being. The job is easier now that it has been for many past occupants of the position, because, as already noted, most of the reporters likely to toss questions at a Democrat President’s paid liar aren’t seeking the truth, and nearly completely unwilling to make her boss look bad. (That might risk his losing re-election, which, we are told daily, would endanger democracy.)

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And The Shackles Tighten: Weaponizing Accreditation For Ideological Conformity

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC) has voted to downgrade the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media to “provisional accreditation” status. Why? ACEJMC felt that the school’s commitment to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) was less than robust after journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones turned down a tenured position there. A controversy over her hiring arose in 2021 when  Hannah-Jones was offered the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, but only as a five-year contract position instead of tenure. Then, after her supporters forced the trustees to offer tenure by accusing them of racism—it always works! —Hannah-Jones rejected the school to take a tenured position at Howard University.

“[T]he UNC Hussman School is dealing with an existential crisis both internally and externally,” the ACEJMC wrote. “The [Hannah-Jones] controversy… exposed long-standing problems. Many stem from inconsistencies in executing the goals in the 2016 Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan.”

No, the fact that the school offered a thoroughly exposed fake historian and fact-manipulating, racist journalist  a teaching position at all raise questions about Hussman being fit to train journalists. Nikole Hannah-Jones is an unscrupulous activist, not a journalist, and the dishonesty and misrepresentations of American history in her polemic “1619 Project” are not in serious dispute. She should not have been offered the chair in the first place. The should not be employed as a journalist, never mind being paid to teach journalism. Continue reading →

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:

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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.

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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.”

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