The New York Times Asks A Question About Racism

The New York Times put up a feature on their website asking its readers to “tell us about a time you judged someone based on a stereotype — have racial stereotypes led you to mistreat a neighbor, a colleague, a schoolmate, a fellow commuter, a customer at a store? What happened as a result, and what did you learn from the experience?”

After rattling off a list of non-event headlines in recent race relations in the U.S. (idiotic incidents such at the Philly Starbucks “Brew”haha and the Napping Yale Student), the Times goes on to prompt:

Now, we want to hear from you, our readers, about how the racial stereotypes you hold may have led you to wrongly suspect someone of misconduct — or even to call the police. How did the interaction unfold? What did you learn from it? What happened to the person who was wronged?

Here’s how I answered their questions. I urge my readers to tell their stories as well.

Failed Leadership in The State of Nature: Sacramento Edition

A few weeks ago, a Black man was shot and killed by police officers in Sacramento. Based on initial media accounts, the cops were responding one night to reports of a man breaking car windows in a certain neighborhood; they arrived in that area and confronted one Stephon Clark, 22, who feld. They chased him as he ran into the back yard of a house that turned out to belong his grandparents. When Mr. Clark stopped and turned around, the police officers proceeded to shoot him twenty times. The cops have stated that they thought they saw a gun on Mr. Clark’s hands, but it turns out that he only had a cell phone on him. An internal affairs investigation is in progress.

Predictably, the natives are restless at this Latest Outrage Against Innocent Black Bodies and have no patience for such silly things as “investigations” and “due process.” Protests and disorder have simmered in Sacramento since this event.

One image sums it all up:

Stephon Clark’s brother, Ste’vante Clark, interrupts a special meeting of the Sacramento City Council called to address residents’ concerns in the wake of Stephon’s shooting.

What do we see here? Ste’vante Clark, brother of the deceased, large and in charge, dressed inappropriately, sitting legs open with a broad chest on the edge of the mayor’s lectern like it was a city park bench — and he owned the city park. He’s howling at the top of his lungs to a braying crowd and clearly is the focus of the room.

How to Lie With Statistics: NYTimes Edition

On February 7, 2018, the New York Times’ editorial board published one of its usual doses of pro-illegal-immigration pablum. There is plenty there to refute and not enough time to refute it, but the one point I want to dwell on is the utter bad faith they display when framing their arguments.

When attempting to justify the proposition that the “United States ought to admit more skilled immigrants” and that the debate should center around “what criteria it uses to screen applications,” the New York Times quotes an opinion polling statistic: “A Gallup poll last June found 62 percent of Americans support maintaining current levels of immigration or even increasing them.”

Well, 62 percent. That’s a clear majority of Americans. What kind of evil anti-American are you, Mr. Trump, if you are not willing to listen to the will of the people and flood the land with immigrants?

But the New York Times is lying with statistics, of course.

The Damore Lawsuit: Just a Quick Pat on My Back

Back in August 2017, when the Google “diversity memo” (and James Damore’s firing for having penned it) was all the rage, I published a blog post pointing out that “Google has just earned itself a lawsuit,” and cited to California Labor Code §§ 1101, 1102 and 1102.5 as potential bases for such a suit.

So I was pleased to learn that on January 8, 2018, James Damore filed a lawsuit against Google citing, among other things, California Labor Code §§ 1101, 1102 and 1102.5. It’s right there on the front page of the complaint. I’m right again. Surprise, surprise.

Keep Up the Deportations

The mainstream press has gone in for another round of illegal immigrant sob-stories, now that DACA reforms are prominently on the table and immigration is once again a topic of national conversation. The Washington Post just published a piece about an illegal alien who was finally forced to leave the country, a *mere* nine years after receiving a removal order from an immigration court in 2009.

Clearly, the piece was meant to evoke sympathy for poor old lawbreaking Jorge Garcia:

President Trump Ends DACA

Shockingly, The Atlantic, of all outlets, gives a relatively factual and unemotional account of the facts:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday that the administration will end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children from deportation, with a six-month delay.

…

The administration’s decision to end DACA means that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services won’t consider new applications, but will allow anyone who has a DACA permit expiring between now and March 5, 2018, to apply for a two-year renewal by October 5. Thousands have already applied for renewals. Between August and  December 2017, 201,678 recipients are set to have DACA expire. Of those, 55,258 have pending requests for renewal, according to DHS officials. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will continue to operations per usual, assessing DACA recipients as has been done in the past.

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On Monday, Sessions sent a letter to Duke with his legal determination. He cited previous legal challenges, noting that because DACA “has the same legal and constitutional defects that the courts recognized as to DAPA, it is likely that potentially imminent litigation would yield similar results with respect to DACA.”

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The administration’s decision now puts the onus on Congress to find a legislative solution. “Congress should carefully and thoughtfully pursue the types of reforms that are right for the American people,” Sessions said Tuesday. Earlier in the day, Trump tweeted, “Congress, get ready to do your job—DACA!”

I congratulate President Trump for doing the right thing.

DACA was a legally unsound executive overreach on the part of President Obama from Day 1. Yes, setting enforcement priorities is the prerogative of the executive. At most, that justifies a memo to the immigration authorities saying: “I don’t want to hear of a single non-criminal childhood arrivee being deported until you tell me that each and every criminal alien has already been deported.” It never justified the creation of a whole new federal bureaucracy to hand out work permits that were not authorized by statute and which, in fact, contravene the law establishing which people do and don’t have work rights in the United States.

Joe Arpaio Pardoned!

A few weeks ago, I put up a blog post strongly recommending that former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio be pardoned after he was trumped up on misdemeanor contempt of court charges.

This past weekend, President Trump did just that.

Thank you, President Trump, for doing a good and humane thing.

For posterity, I post here the statement released by President Trump explaining the decision to grant this pardon. Reading through it, I’m forced to the realization that Joe Arpaio was probably one of the most upstanding citizens ever to find himself in need of a presidential pardon. Certainly more deserving than pretty much any of those hardened death row cases that the Looney Left loves to fawn over.

Now THAT’s How It’s Done!

On August 17, 2017, a suspected “Irish drunk driver” rammed a van into a crowd of tourists on a major shopping street in Barcelona, Spain. Thirteen people were killed and at least 50 were wounded. I pause for my usual statement: May God have mercy on the souls of the dead, bring healing to the injured and comfort to the bereaved.

This is just another in a seemingly endless list of such attacks, so there is very little I feel like adding to the main topic at hand; that is, to the unusually strong propensity for people from certain religious and ethnic backgrounds to run around murdering their fellow townsmen seemingly at random. Anyone who hasn’t by now concluded that the incremental risk posed by such populations is hardly worth the virtue-signalling benefits of encouraging more such people to move to town will never learn. A Goodwhite of that purity will go to his dying day wishing for more — whether that dying day is peaceful, in bed at a ripe old age, or whether it is untimely and violent, met on the streets or in a theater or cafe, and at the point of a jihadi’s knife, or under the wheels of his van, tasting hot lead from his semiautomatic rifle, or blasted with shrapnel from his suicide bomb vest. Some people will never learn. But the rational among us have concluded: Stop inviting more in. Kick out the ones who may legally be kicked out. And try really hard both to assimilate and police those who remain. There’s little else that a sane man can do.

This incident brings us back to reality. It reminds us what real terrorism is. After the unfortunate ramming incident in Charlottesville less than a week ago, where a disaffected participant in the right-wing protest apparently rammed his car into a crowd of left-wing anti-protesters, killing one and injuring 19, there were howls from the idiot leftist press to hold this incident up as “Radical White Terrorism.” This was a silly label to whip out so quickly and gleefully, and President Trump was right to avoid it.

Onion Singularity — The Onion Edition

The Onion singularity is kind of like the Turing Test — it’s when the average reader can no longer reliability differentiate between a serious publication and satire.

Our culture is long past the event horizon.

From The Onion, in 2015:

The Life And Works Of Dr. Seuss

 

A 50-year-old manuscript by the late Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, is being released this week, captivating nostalgic readers who grew up on seven decades of children’s books from the prolific author. Here are some highlights from Dr. Seuss’ life and work:

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2005: A doctoral student taking a course in children’s literature reads way too much into Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?

…

Recently posted in The Atlantic:

Reading Racism in Dr. Seuss

A children’s-literature scholar argues it’s time to acknowledge the perturbing themes in some of the most beloved books.

Reminiscing about the Dr. Seuss books we loved as children is usually a happy time for adults. We might remember first learning about equality in Horton Hears a Who! or getting starry-eyed about our futures reading Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (of course, for some of us there’s also a bit of residual terror about that green-food-obsessed apparition in Green Eggs and Ham).

But Philip Nel, a scholar and professor of children’s literature whose specialties include Dr. Seuss and Harry Potter, is pushing readers to grapple with the political and social implications of the stories that inspire such warm, fuzzy memories. In his new book, Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books, Nel argues that, yes, the Cat in the Hat was black—or, more precisely, that Seuss’s depiction of the character was based on racial stereotypes and inspired by traditions of blackface minstrel entertainment—and that dozens more children’s books of decades past are brimming with insidious, racist themes…

Q.E.D.

Diversity is Our Strength — California Lowers its Standards Edition

I recently saw a message from the California bar to its attorney members concerning the passing score standard for the bar exam. The goodthinkers in that state have been very concerned that the pass rate (that is, the fraction of test-takers who actually pass) has been going down substantially in recent years. Accordingly, they want to lower the standards for admission to the profession.

As lawyers say, res ipsa loquitur, so I’ll simply reproduce large sections of the message below: