Tag: race

“White Guilt”: Absolution & Narcissism

A couple of nights ago I had a brief conversation with Allen West—who is currently serving as chairman of the Republican Party of Texas—about the subject of “White Guilt.” He expressed the opinion that affluent white women are being terribly manipulated by ruthless actors who harp on their feelings of guilt about the injustices suffered by black people in the past.

I replied that these women are not suffering from a genuinely guilty conscience, but enjoy congratulating themselves for the sense of moral superiority they obtain by ruminating on and discussing their “guilt.”

This feeling is akin to the genuine sense of relief and liberation we achieve when we confess and make amends for our true transgressions against others. Only, in the case of affluent white women indulging in feelings of “white guilt,” they get to enjoy this gratification not for the absolution of their own sins, but for the sins of other, less enlightened souls. Thus, the emotional exercise is not a form of humility, but of self-aggrandizement.

Oscar Wilde characterized this kind of self-indulgent emotion as sentimentality.

A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. We think we can have our emotions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing emotions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.

In the 2001 film Storytelling, a dark satire directed by Todd Solondz, a young white female—a literary major at a prestigious university—puts herself in a life threatening situation with a literature professor (who happens to be black) in order to absolve herself of her white guilt. For her, the professor’s moral trait lies not in his character—which is obviously predatory and exploitative—but in his dark skin color. By yielding to his predatory conduct, she not only corrupts herself, but also contributes to the further moral corruption of her professor.

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Female, black applicants who failed Maryland State Police tests likely to receive $2.75M in back pay from discrimination suit

The Maryland Department of State Police agreed to settle a Department of Justice lawsuit to the tune of $2.75 million, which will provide back pay to female and black applicants who failed the physical fitness and written tests.

The physical fitness exam, called the Functional Fitness Assessment Test, required applicants to complete 18 push-ups in one minute, 27 sit-ups in one minute, run 1.5 miles within 15 minutes and 20 seconds, and reach approximately 1.5 inches past their toes while seated. Candidates were allowed to take the test up to three times in one year.

“The rate at which female applicants passed the FFAT at least once is statistically significantly lower than the rate at which male applicants passed the FFAT at least once; and the female applicant pass rate is less than 80% of the male applicant pass rate,” the complaint read.

The written exam, the Police Officer Selection Test, included four components: mathematics, reading comprehension, grammar, and report writing skills. To pass, candidates had to achieve an aggregate score of at least 70% on all sections combined and minimally 70% on reading comprehension, grammar, and report writing skills. There was no minimum required score for the math component. Candidates could take the test four times within a year.

The lawsuit said that roughly 91% of white and 71% of black applicants passed at least once.

The lawsuit claimed that both the FFAT and the POST, which are used by MDSP to screen trooper applicants, are “not job related or consistent with business necessity.”

The DOJ argued that MDSP’s screening “results in a disparate impact” on female and black candidates.

“MDSP’s use of the POST has disproportionately excluded African-American applicants, and its use of the FFAT has disproportionately excluded female applicants, from employment as troopers,” the lawsuit stated.

MDSP was accused of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.

On Wednesday, the DOJ announced that the MDSP has agreed to settle the lawsuit.

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Minnesota food pantry bans white people, says ‘resources’ are only for ‘Black & Indigenous Folx’

A Minneapolis, Minn. food pantry is only giving food to “Black and Indigenous” people, those who are hungry and white are told not to take the “resources” available. Mykelo ‘Keiko’ Jackson, who runs the food pantry, was awarded a Minnesota State grant to open the food pantry.

The sign on the pantry reads: “The resources found in here are intended for Black & Indigenous Folx. Please refrain from taking anything if you’re not.” An August post emphasized the mission, saying “With the help of our community and MDH: African American Health Office we’ve distributed 2,249 lbs of food to Black & Indigenous Folx in North Minneapolis. This is what liberation looks like on a small scale. We’d like to say THANK YOU to everyone that has supported this initiative, donated their time or resources to be in aid of commUNITY.”

Jackson’s policy forced the food pantry to close down and open in another location. After opening on July 27 on the north side of the city, near the Sanctuary Covenant Church, Jackson let it be known that white people were not welcome to the food for the poor. Local chaplain Howard Dotson, 54, said that he went to the food pantry but was denied entry due to his race. He’s white.

“This is not building community, it’s destroying it,” he told Alpha News. “I went over there and confronted her. I told her that I saw the sign and I asked if she really thought she could take grant money from the state and discriminate against poor white people.” He filed a complaint, which Jackson said was an exhibition of his “white privilege.”

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‘White Fragility’ author slams conservative podcaster Matt Walsh, who duped her into giving black producer reparations in new documentary

“White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo slammed well-known conservative podcaster Matt Walsh, who posed as an anti-racist activist and duped her into giving a black producer reparations in an upcoming flick that she called a “Borat-style mockumentary.”

DiAngelo vowed in a statement on Thursday not to watch the film she argued is “designed to humiliate and discredit anti-racist educators and activists,” and addressed the uncomfortable scene that played out between her and right-wing personality Matt Walsh in the documentary “Am I Racist?”

Walsh, 38, went undercover when he sat down with DiAngelo and claimed to be interested in anti-racist sentiments before asking his producer, Ben, who is black, to join them.

Walsh, who works at conservative outlet the Daily Wire, convinced her to give Ben some cash in the form of reparations after Walsh also doled out some of his own dough in the awkward moment.

DiAngelo, 68, said in her lengthy statement that when she was contacted by a group about the doc in 2023, it was supposed to be named “Shades of Justice” and about efforts to combat racism in the US.

She was paid $15,000 (that she later donated) to participate, but when she showed up for the interview, “a few things felt off,” including the “ill-fitting wig” Walsh had on as a man bun.

But she said Walsh seemed “earnest” about anti-racist work and his questions were not adversarial until “things got weird” at the end in which she delved into the cringeworthy reparations scene that left DiAngelo visibly bewildered.

“I was so unsettled by the way Matt manipulated this last scene that I emailed the contact person – who went by the name of ‘Lee Hampton’ – to explain that this scene was not an example of reparations and could mislead viewers,” DiAngelo explained.

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Father of 11-Year-Old Boy Killed by Haitian Migrant Says He Wished His Son Had Been “Killed by a 60-Year-Old White Man Instead”

The father of an 11-year-old boy who was tragically killed by a Haitian illegal migrant said wished his son had been “killed by a 60-year-old white man instead” in order to prevent advocates of border control and the Trump campaign using the death for political purposes.

Aiden Clark was killed by 35-year-old Hermanio Joseph last year near Springfield, Ohio, after the Haitian drove on the wrong side of the road, causing a school bus full of children to crash, killing Clark and injuring 20 others.

Joseph was driving without a license.

During a speech at a City Commission meeting, Aiden Clark’s father, Nathan Clark, slammed the Trump campaign and its supporters for using his son’s death for political purposes.

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Michigan judge loses docket after she’s recorded insulting gay people and Black people

A suburban Detroit judge is no longer handling cases after a court official turned over recordings of her making anti-gay insults and referring to Black people as lazy.

Oakland County Probate Judge Kathleen Ryan was removed from her docket on Aug. 27 for unspecified misconduct. Now the court’s administrator has stepped forward to say he blew the whistle on her, secretly recording their phone calls.

“I just want to make it right. … I want to keep my job and do it in peace,” Edward Hutton told WXYZ-TV. “And I want the people in Oakland County that come to court to get a fair shake, to have their day in court, to have an unbiased trier of fact.”

The judge didn’t talk to the TV station, but her attorneys, Gerald Gleeson and Thomas Cranmer, said: “We look forward to vindicating Judge Ryan in the appropriate forum.”

Probate judges in Michigan handle wills and estates, guardianships and cases that involve the state’s mental health laws.

In the phone recordings, Ryan uses a anti-gay slur against David Coulter, the county’s highest elected official, who is gay. She also referred to Blacks in the U.S. as lazy.

“I’m not systemically racist. I’m a new racist,” said Ryan, who was first elected in 2010.

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CDC-backed report claiming ‘white people’ didn’t care if ‘people of color’ died from Covid released by Washington health dept

The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) has released a taxpayer-funded report claiming white people didn’t care that people of color were dying during the pandemic, a document that provided no sources to back up the outrageous claim.

The DOH posted “A Chorus of COVID – Voices from the Frontlines” on X, claiming the “insight report” would “help us all reflect on lessons learned” during the pandemic. Funding for the report was provided in part through a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to the report, “Sometimes white people disengaged on safety when they learned people of color needed help.” However, the document provided no sources to substantiate the claim, or any others made throughout the report.

Ironically, after making the racist and divisive claim, the report added, “Don’t foster divisions in our community. It collectively costs us human lives.”

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Mayo, Cleveland Clinic, And Other Major Hospital Systems Put White People At Back Of Treatment Lines

DEI is coming for your health care, and maybe even your health. In the name of “equity,” America’s top health care systems are now segregating or excluding some patients from life-saving programs based on race. These new programs mark a dangerous turn for American health care, where picking and choosing among preferred racial groups is the new standard of care.    

Take Cleveland Clinic, for instance. This world-class health care system runs a “Minority Men’s Health Center” and a “Minority Stroke Program” for addressing numerous medical conditions, including stroke, diabetes, and other stroke risk factors; men’s health conditions; and various mental health issues. These programs tout a range of benefits from disease prevention and treatment to specialized providers, transportation assistance, prescription assistance, support groups, and education events.

These are top-notch programs. But they’re “tailored” to minorities. For example, the Minority Stroke Program’s stated focus and goal is “preventing and treating stroke in racial and ethnic minorities.” And so minorities (and only minorities) are encouraged to reach out to the “Minority Stroke Program team” to set up an appointment.

While a recent challenge to these race-based programs apparently prompted Cleveland Clinic to quietly remove all traces of the Minority Men’s Health Center from its website, the clinic’s Minority Stroke Program appears to remain otherwise intact at this time.

Cleveland Clinic defends its racially distinctive stroke program by saying that it helps patients “who need it most” and that the programs are necessary to combat racial disparities. Black and Latino patients, for example, see worse stroke outcomes on average.

But if treating these racial disparities is a valid goal, then why not other disparities? Whites are more likely to suffer from Parkinson’s, macular degeneration, Type 1 diabetes, COPD, skin cancer, cystic fibrosis, osteoporosis, and MS, just to name a few. Should Cleveland Clinic open an MS clinic for white persons? Of course not.

The problem with such racial health equity models is that they use race as a proxy for legitimate health risks. A higher incidence of stroke in a given race does not necessarily mean that race itself is causing strokes. A leading study of racial disparities in stroke outcomes identifies various risk and potential factors: diabetes; hypertension; heart disease or other cardiovascular-related conditions; smoking; low socioeconomic status (such as education level); obesity or physical inactivity; inflammation; vascular factors; sleep apnea; and mental health. Race is not on the list.

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Kamala’s Biggest Lie on Race and Inequality

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is being hailed as practically Joan of Arc for having been bused to a white elementary school in Berkeley in 1969. At the Democratic National Convention last week, Oprah Winfrey whooped that being bused helped instill in Harris “a passion for justice and freedom and the glorious fighting spirit necessary to pursue that passion.”

But what if school busing instead epitomizes the folly and dishonesty of iron-fisted progressive decrees that force other people to pay any price for a mirage of equality? 

During her failed campaign for the 2020 presidential nomination, Harris’s touting of her busing experience was “perhaps the biggest moment of Harris’s [presidential] campaign,” the Washington Post reported on Sunday. The Harris campaign even sold t-shirts in 2019 hyping her confrontation with Joe Biden during a candidates debate on that issue. Harris declared that forced busing was necessary “because there are moments in history where states fail to preserve the civil rights of all people”—and thus the federal government must intervene. Harris championed Senate legislation to increase the federal push for school desegregation. 

But busing in Berkeley actually illustrates the folly of letting politicians domineer kids and parents in the name of equality. 

In 1967, the Berkeley school superintendent proposed a sweeping busing program to “set an example for all the cities of America.” The first step was effectively to scorn federal law. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 specified that “‘Desegregation’ means the assignment of students to public schools and within such schools without regard to their race, color, religion, or national origin, but ‘desegregation’ shall not mean the assignment of students to public schools in order to overcome racial imbalance.” There was no history of government-mandated segregation in Berkeley. But politicians decided they could no longer tolerate black children going to school in black neighborhoods and white children going to school in white neighborhoods. Busing kids far from their homes destroyed neighborhood schools in the name of equality and made it far more difficult for parents to be involved in their kids’ education. 

More than 50 years after Berkeley started busing, the city’s schools have the worst racial achievement gaps in America, except for those of the District of Columbia. Black students are on average five years behind white students despite endless special programs and interventions to close the gap. Five years is not “close enough for government educational work.”

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‘White Fragility’ author Robin DiAngelo accused of plagiarizing minority scholars in Ph.D thesis

Robin DiAngelo, the author and “anti-racism consultant” who rose to fame and made a fortune scolding white people for their inherent bigotry, has been accused of ripping off the work of two Asian American scholars in her 2004 doctoral thesis.

A complaint filed with the University of Washington and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon outlines 20 examples of alleged plagiarism in the “White Fragility” author’s dissertation, “Whiteness in Racial Dialogue: A Discourse Analysis.”

Among the examples cited are two paragraphs reproduced almost entirely from Northeastern University’s Thomas Nakayama — who is Asian-American — and coauthor Robert Krizek, in which DiAngelo fails to provide adequate attribution.

Another example in the complaint shows DiAngelo allegedly playing fast and loose with a paragraph written by Asian-American professor Stacey Lee of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In it, rather than clearly delineating that Lee had summarized the work of scholar David Theo Goldberg, the information was presented in such a way to appear as though DiAngelo herself was providing the summary herself.

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