Tag: racism

The Left Seems to be Waking Up to Racist Gun Control Laws

What does one’s race have to do with one’s right to keep and bear arms? Well, nothing. The Second Amendment covers all American citizens and legal immigrants. Asking race is, at most, an identifier to help differentiate a black John Smith from a white one, and that’s about it.

Unfortunately for us all, that wasn’t how many people viewed it back in the day. They thought anyone who wasn’t white was someone who needed to be disarmed. Whether it was because they didn’t want to be overthrown or they just thought non-whites (and Catholics, for some reason) were particularly dangerous isn’t relevant. The truth was, they did.

Luckily, we’re more enlightened these days, right?

Not really.

We’ve talked a fair bit about the issues in New Jersey, particularly with racial disparity in permit issuance. Our own John Petrolino, who unfortunately lives there, has done a lot of work bringing this issue to light.

But let’s be real here. None of the people who need to be outraged are probably reading pro-gun sits like Bearing Arms. They’re reading Slate, and what are the odds of Slate covering this?

Well, better than I thought they were. Aymann Ismail’s firsthand account of the exhausting process of becoming a New Jersey gun owner may be eye-opening to the website’s more progressive readers. 

So in 2020, I applied for a Firearm Purchaser Identification, a permit to purchase a firearm that is required in New Jersey. After fingerprints, references, application fees, and months of waiting, I was told over the phone that I had no choice but to withdraw my application. The issue was a misdemeanor trespassing charge in New York from my street-photographer days. Under New Jersey law, that should not have disqualified me from owning a gun. I had never been convicted of a felony. No domestic violence charges. No mental health issues. It didn’t matter. The Newark Police Department’s firearm permitting office told me my application was being withdrawn. They insisted they were doing me a favor, and that a denial would bar me from reapplying if I got my record expunged.

Again, I wasn’t even sure I wanted a gun. But the interaction was curious. It didn’t matter that I pointed out I met the legal requirements. Again and again, I was unsuccessful. It had me thinking about who is presumed “safe” to own a gun, and who isn’t. I began speaking with Black and brown gun owners across northern New Jersey, particularly in cities where violence, policing, and race overlap in complicated ways. An Afro-Cuban neighborhood friend I went to high school with in Newark told me he had applied for his own permit and received it in just two weeks. When I explained that I tried multiple times and was still waiting months after my latest application, he looked genuinely confused. Then he asked what race I’d listed on the paperwork. “Other,” I told him. He burst out laughing. “You idiot,” he said. “You’re supposed to put white.”

The more people I spoke to, the more I learned I was far from alone in making that “mistake.” The greater question of who gets to, and should, own a gun turned out to far more complicated than I knew. Few people—on the left or the right—want to talk about it. The ending of my own story helps explain why.

Oh, on this side of the right, we’re more than willing to talk about it. It’s just that no one on the left seems interested in listening.

Now, the author did, finally, get his license and didn’t have to lie about his race on his application, which is good news, but the fact that New Jersey did that in the first place is a major issue. It’s one that does need to be talked about because it clearly illustrates the bright string from the racist gun laws of the old days, and how little has changed.

Here in Georgia, many of our now dead gun control laws could be similarly linked. The prohibition of carrying a firearm at a “public gathering” was a reaction to armed black men and women responding to a violent attack that’s now called the Camilla Massacre. It wasn’t the shooting itself, but the fact that marchers, after being attacked, went home and got their own guns to fight back.

So it’s unsurprising that New Jersey didn’t have a law in place forbidding black gun ownership or concealed carry, but the application wasn’t much different than if they did.

It’s why subjective gun laws are always going to be an issue, and largely an issue for minorities. It’s part of why Bruen stuck them down. Anything that can be misused to cause harm to a particular group–any particular group–will be used or misused to cause harm to some group or another for no reason other than the people impacted are part of that group.

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DOJ: By Its Own Admission, Yale Med School Illegally Discriminates Against White, Asian Applicants

As Yale celebrated its 325th commencement last week, the institution’s medical school faced new scrutiny for alleged racial discrimination in admissions. The Department of Justice sent a letter to Yale School of Medicine on May 14 notifying it that “the Department finds that Yale continues to intentionally discriminate against applicants based on their race.”

That letter presents evidence that black and Hispanic students were significantly more likely to be admitted than white and Asian students with the same MCAT scores and grade point averages, an outcome that “cannot be explained by a coincidence.” Specifically, “Yale’s use of race resulted in a Black applicant being as much as 29 times higher odds of getting an interview for admission than an equally strong Asian applicant with similar academic credentials.”

The finding by the department that Yale Medical School continues to racially discriminate in its admissions was greeted by criticisms that seem to misunderstand what constitutes racial discrimination. For example, a radiologist named Jeff Anderson responded on X that all groups of students who were admitted to Yale Medical School had very high standardized scores: “Every last one of these are overly qualified I assure you. There’s just simply not enough seats.” The implicit argument is that once applicants have met a certain threshold on their scores, race can be used as a tie-breaker to allocate the limited number of spots.

But as far as the law is concerned, “good enough” is not good enough: Race simply cannot be used as a criterion in admissions decisions no matter how high applicants’ scores are. Yale Medical School is not obligated to accept the students with the highest test scores and is free to consider other factors, as long as race or ethnicity (or factors that are proxies for race and ethnicity) are not among them. Given the staggering differences by race in the odds of receiving an interview among similarly academically situated students, it strains credibility that Yale passes the test.

Neither the Supreme Court nor the Department of Justice is suggesting that test scores are the only indication of merit. But they are both clearly stating that the racial background of the applicant is not a lawful consideration for admission.

A prominent surgeon, Terry Simpson, seemed to confuse racial background with the merit of overcoming challenges when he argued on X: “If you have 100 applicants from privileged, high-performing educational pipelines with nearly identical scores, resumes, research access, tutoring, and opportunities, it is not irrational to also value the applicant who achieved similar academic success despite poverty, instability, underfunded schools, family hardship, or lack of institutional advantages.”

Dr. Simpson oddly assumed, with no information from Yale Medical School, that white and Asian applicants are privileged while black and Hispanic applicants are disadvantaged. But making this assumption is built on nothing more than racist stereotypes, attributing to all black and Hispanic applicants the merit of having overcome challenges based on nothing more than the color of their skin, without any other individualized evidence whatsoever. An applicant’s race, by itself, does not indicate this type of merit or lack thereof.

So, why does the Department of Justice believe that Yale has in fact used race in this impermissible way rather than having collected and considered information about personal challenges that happen to correlate with race? According to the DOJ, first, Yale gave its admissions staff a “holistic metrics model” developed by the Association of American Medical Colleges to guide the school’s assessment of applicants. That model specifically listed “race” and “national origin” as criteria for the admissions staff to consider, which is clearly prohibited by the Students for Fair Admissions decision.

Second, the Department of Justice noted that Yale Medical School’s test score differences between accepted students by race had not changed following the Students for Fair Admissions decision. More than three years ago in that case, Yale argued in its amicus brief that “no workable race-neutral alternatives [would yield] the level of racial diversity … necessary.” As the department notes, “Given this statement, the lack of any change in Yale’s admissions outcomes after Harvard [is] evidence [of] a willful failure to comply with that decision.”

That is, Yale asserted that its admissions demographics would change if the school ceased considering race; yet its admissions demographics have remained unchanged, pointing to ongoing noncompliance with civil rights laws forbidding racial discrimination.

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ICE Recruitment Tweets Are So Racist That Cops Feared They Could Incite Neo-Nazi Violence

Colorado law enforcement officials warned their counterparts across the country that social media posts by the Department of Homeland Security recruiting for ICE contained so many white supremacist themes that they could endanger the public, according to internal records obtained by The Intercept.

The Colorado Information Analysis Center cautioned in a March bulletin that “violent extremists” might perceive “White Supremacy Ideology in ICE Recruitment Materials, Leading to a Potentially Increased Threat Environment.”

The bulletin from an agency tasked with preventing terrorism advised law enforcement offices throughout the United States that these posts could create a “permissive environment to engage in vigilante action and/or violence against individuals perceived to be immigrants.”

These DHS posts, the analysts warned, could convince “white supremacist violent extremists to attempt to join or infiltrate ICE and engage in bias motivated violence, endangering the public, other ICE personnel, and local law enforcement.”

The bulletin circulated following months of inflammatory social media posts by the Department of Homeland Security intended to drive ICE recruitment and promote the Trump administration’s agenda of violent mass deportation.

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“DOUBLE DIPPING?” — Jim Jordan Demands Answers After Explosive Claim January 6 “Human Sources” May Have Been Paid by BOTH Biden DOJ and SPLC

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan just dropped another political bombshell tied to January 6.

During a fiery interview Thursday, Jordan revealed that congressional investigators are now probing whether confidential human sources operating around January 6 may have been receiving money not only from the Biden Justice Department, but also from the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center.

In other words: federally connected informants potentially “double dipping” while infiltrating groups tied to January 6.

Jordan made the remarks while discussing a new subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee as Republicans intensify their investigation into the SPLC and its alleged network of paid “field sources.”

Rep. Jordan: “Here’s a key question I have too. Were any of the guys they were paying— was the Biden Justice Department paying these same guys confidential human sources? We know 26 confidential human sources were at the Capitol on January 6th. 4 went in the Capitol. They weren’t authorized to do so. I want to know if any of these guys were double dipping and taking money from the government and from the Southern Poverty Law Center. That’s one of the things we want to find out. That would be another new chapter if true and if proven.”

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Hey Guys! Did You Know It’s Racist to Have to Go to School in Your Own School District?

What happens when you give leftists everything they want? That’s a trick question. They never get everything they want, because if you give them everything they say they want, they’ll always come up with something more to want. They are never satisfied. I think the word “greed” applies here.

Case in point: let’s go to one of the bluest states in the nation and check in on a lawsuit that alleges racism in the way school district borders impact minority students. While the issue at the center of the Massachusetts case is pretty simple, the framing of it all will likely get complex.

A group of minor children are suing the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Massachusetts Board of Education, and several educational leaders in state government. Since the kids are too young to even comprehend why they are suing the state, their “next friends” are signed onto the complaint. Typically, in legal terms, if you’re a minor your “next friend” could be your parent or someone else with certain guardianship responsibilities.

See what I mean? The left is already making it complicated, and I haven’t even told you what this is all about yet.

So, let’s get to that. These kids are suing the state because their lawyers maintain they are being denied a better education because of where they live. Most, if not all, of them live within the boundaries of the Boston Public Schools district. But they’re not asking to be given the opportunity to go to another school within their district. They’re not asking for more money, resources, or staffing for their own school district.

Instead, they want to be able to go outside of their school district into the better neighboring school districts in the suburbs. They want to essentially erase the geographic borders that separate the city from the suburbs.

It’s as simple as that. If I’m that eight-year-old minority child in the Boston Public Schools district who is a party to this lawsuit, I don’t want to go to school where I live in the city. I want to go to school where you live if you live in the suburbs. And if I don’t get what the adults in my life tell me that I want, then you’re a racist.

That’s about as simple as this will get.

Now, for some much-needed background. The operating budget for Boston Public Schools in this current year is roughly $1.6 billion. This is spent to educate more than 50,000 students, which translates into about $31,000 spent on each student each year. This cost is comparable to sending your kid to a private school and paying $31,000 per year in tuition. Only in this case, you’re not footing the bill; the Boston taxpayers are.

So, what does that mean to academic performance?

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Arkansas whites–only community sued for discrimination by woman with black husband whose application to buy land was denied

A whites-only community in Arkansas is being sued by a Caucasian woman who claims her membership application was rejected because she has a black husband.

Michelle Walker, 49, claims in a lawsuit that she was discriminated against when her request to join Return to the Land (RTTL)’s 160-acre site near the rural town of Ravenden was refused in November last year.

RTTL, which was launched in 2023, is described on its website as a private association ‘for individuals and families with traditional views and common continental ancestry.’ 

Walker, a real estate worker who lives in St. Louis, Missouri, said she was not drawn to RTTL for its principles but was simply captivated by its ‘exceptionally low’ sale price. 

RTTL is selling an acre of land for $1,000, significantly lower than the average price of land in the Ozarks which is around $4,000 per acre.

Walker, who ‘self–identifies as white,’ believed she would be eligible to join the community based on its requirements and disclosed that she has Jewish ancestry on her mother’s side, according to the complaint filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas viewed by the Daily Mail.

Her husband is black and they have three biracial children, per the legal filing.

She was given an interview by the community in which her background was explored, and about a month later her application was denied, the lawsuit states.

On Wednesday, she sued RTTL for ‘refusing to sell her land on the basis of race and religion,’ marking the first civil case against the group.

She cited the Fair Housing Act and civil rights laws stretching back to 1866 in support of her argument.

Walker said in her filing that her application saw her complete the group’s application form in which she answered questions about her ancestry and religion.

Walker said her father’s side of the family came to the US in the 1600s and that her mother’s side of the family was made up of Russian Jewish immigrants, per the complaint.

The filing added that Walker’s husband was specifically of Irish and African descent.

When asked about her religion, Walker allegedly replied: ‘I am a Christian. I believe Jesus died for my sins and through believing in him, I will have a heavenly eternal life.’

Walker also faced questions about whether she supported ‘segregation,’ ‘multiculturalism,’ ‘gay marriage’ and ‘transgenderism,’ the filing added.

Per the lawsuit, Walker was ‘surprised’ to see those sorts of questions on the housing application.

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Biden DOJ Protected the SPLC Grift Because the Hate Group Was Literally Training Its Prosecutors: Report

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan (OH-4) exposed how the Biden Justice Department opened—then deliberately shelved—a criminal investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). 

Jordan claimed the previous administration’s DOJ, under then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, discovered the SPLC was operating what has been described as a lucrative scam. 

“They had opened an investigation. They were looking into this group. They knew the Southern Poverty Law Center was running a scam, but they dropped the case,” Jordan said. 

He detailed how the group had become so deeply embedded with the department, training prosecutors and serving as a key source for efforts that labeled pro-life Catholics and conservatives as domestic extremists.

“When you meet with them, consult with them, have them train your prosecutors, well, guess what? You’re not gonna prosecute them,” Jordan explained. “They’re too valuable politically. You gotta use them for your political advantage. And that’s exactly what the Biden administration did.”

The Ohio congressman noted how the SPLC used the now-infamous “Richmond Memo” in an effort to portray traditional Catholics as politically extremist. 

“That memo says, if you’re a pro-life Catholic, well, you’re an extremist, you’re dangerous,” Jordan said. “The SPLC became part of the weaponized effort of the Garland Biden Justice Department against the American people.”

Jordan also highlighted a stunning example from the SPLC’s own operations that underscores the alleged hate-for-profit model, which has been covered here at RedState. The Justice Department last month filed an 11-count federal indictment charging the SPLC with wire fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering for secretly funneling more than $3 million in donor cash to actual extremists.

Among those nefarious payments was a staggering $270,000 allegedly paid to a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. That paid insider attended the event at the SPLC’s direction, helped coordinate transportation for attendees, and even made racist postings under the group’s supervision.

“The Southern Poverty Law Center almost tripled their income. They went from $51 million annual income to $133 million,” Jordan said. “Turned out for them, creating hate was more profitable than fighting it. That’s exactly what they did. They ran a scam, they became the standard, they didn’t get prosecuted, and they made a ton of money.”

That rally, of course, led to the wholly media-manufactured “fine people” hoax. As Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche noted, the group had been caught “manufacturing racism,” which, in this particular case, indirectly led to the death of a rally attendee.

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Shooters And Motives Revealed In San Diego Mosque Shooting That Killed Three

The two young alleged gunmen who descended upon a San Diego Islamic facility on Monday — killing three men and themselves — have been identified, along with early indications of their motives. Police sources have told multiple outlets that 17-year-old Cain Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Velasquez — driven by hate — scrawled racist themes on their weapons and carried a gas can emblazoned with a Nazi SS sticker. One of them left a suicide note emphasizing “racial pride.” 

The attack was carried out on the Islamic Center of San Diego, which is roughly eight miles north of downtown and is home to the county’s largest mosque, and Bright Horizon Academy, a K-12 Islamic school. While the shooting began around 11:40 am, one of the shooter’s mothers contacted police at 9:42 am. She told them her son was missing, that he was suicidal, and that her firearms and her car were gone. She also reported that he was with a companion, both of them dressed in camouflage clothing. Police tried to track them down using license plate readers, at one point responding to a possible matching plate near a shopping mall. Other officers were dispatched to a high school that one of the alleged shooters attended. 

Police say that, after leaving the Islamic center, the alleged young murderers fired shots at a landscaper two blocks away, with one of the rounds grazing his helmet. He wasn’t wounded. Soon after, the two were found dead inside a white BMW another block away from the Islamic center, having apparently died of self-inflicted gunshots. Inside the vehicle, investigators found some type of anti-Islamic writing. In addition, the BMW contained a gasoline can that had a Nazi SS sticker on it, and police say unspecified “hate speech” was written on their firearms. They haven’t described the weapons yet.  

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San Diego mosque shooter Cain Clark identified as former high school wrestler

The alleged gunmen in a shooting rampage that left three people dead outside a San Diego mosque have been identified as 17-year-old Cain Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Velasquez, according to a law enforcement source.

At least one of the suspects took a weapon from his parents’ home and left a suicide note that talked about racial pride, a law enforcement source told The Post.

Clark attended Madison High School and was a standout wrestler, according to the school’s social media page. His grandfather, David Clark, 78, said: ”We’re very sorry for what happened. We know as much as you do. It’s a shock.”

Clark and Velasquez were found dead inside a BMW from self-inflicted gunshot wounds only a few blocks from the Islamic Center of San Diego.

Anti-Islamic writings were found in the suspects’ vehicle and “hate speech” was written on the firearms used in the shooting, according to the source.

A shotgun and gas can with an “SS” sticker on the side were located at the scene where the gunmen’s bodies were discovered.

The “SS” sticker appears to represent the Schutzstaffel, the paramilitary organization led by Heinrich Himmler under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany.

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UK Schools Push Radical Race Doctrine On Kids, Claiming Black People ‘Cannot Be Racist’

Schools in the north of England are teaching pupils that black people cannot be racist towards white people.

According to materials adopted by a group of Sheffield schools, led by Notre Dame High School, teenagers are explicitly told: “Black people can be racially prejudiced towards a white person which is wrong and totally unacceptable. However, this is not racism. Racism is racial prejudice plus power. In the UK, white people hold the cultural power.”

For children as young as 7, lessons focus on “empathy building” around “privilege,” asserting that white people are “likely to be privileged by the colour of their skin” and have a “responsibility” to reduce racism by monitoring their language, challenging friends, and reporting incidents.

Handouts for older pupils push narratives on criminal justice, claiming black people are disproportionately targeted by police due to racism, with questions guiding students toward that conclusion.

The scheme aims to “interrupt systemic racism” and promote “strong social justice values,” according to its creators.

Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott slammed the materials, noting “It is deeply alarming that children as young as seven are being exposed to divisive identity politics in schools under the banner of ‘anti-racism education’… Labelling children by race and teaching them to focus on what divides them will only foster resentment and deepen division.”

Shadow minister Neil O’Brien called it “political indoctrination” and vowed to tackle such content.

These latest examples highlight a disturbing pattern in UK education: grooming children with critical race theory concepts, framing whiteness as inherently privileged and problematic, while shielding certain groups from accountability and cracking down on any dissent.

This comes as nurseries in Wales, funded by over £1.3 million in taxpayer money, have been urged to report “racist” incidents involving toddlers to police, turning playgrounds into surveillance hubs for the state’s anti-racism agenda.

Childcare workers are being trained to spot and log “racist incidents” by children barely out of nappies, with instructions to contact police via 999 or 101 if it could amount to a hate crime.

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