A Minority View (Townhall.com)

Townhall.com ^ | August 28, 2013 | Walter E. Williams

Posted on Wednesday, August 28, 2013 6:28:40 AM by Kaslin

This week begins my 34th year serving on George Mason University's distinguished economics faculty. You might imagine my surprise when I received a letter from its Office of Equity and Diversity Services notifying me that I was required to "complete the in-person Equal Opportunity and Prevention of Sexual Harassment Policies and Procedures training." This is a leftist agenda for indoctrination, thought control and free speech suppression to which I shall refuse to submit. Let's look at it.

Ideas such as equity and equal opportunity, while having high emotional value, are vacuous analytical concepts. For example, I've asked students whether they plan to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them when they graduate. To a person, they always answer no. If they aren't going to give every employer an equal opportunity to hire them, what's fair about forcing employers to give them an equal opportunity to be hired?

I'm guilty of gross violation of equality of opportunity, racism and possibly sexism. Back in 1960, when interviewing people to establish a marital contract, every woman wasn't given an equal opportunity. I discriminated against not only white, Indian, Asian, Mexican and handicapped women but men of any race. My choices were confined to good-looking black women. You say, "Williams, that kind of discrimination doesn't harm anyone!" Nonsense! When I married Mrs. Williams, other women were harmed by having a reduced opportunity set.

George Mason's Office of Equity and Diversity Services has far more challenging equity and diversity work than worrying about the re-education of Professor Williams. They must know that courts have long held that gross racial disparities are probative of a pattern and practice of discrimination. The most notable gross racial disparity on campus, and hence probative of discrimination, can be found on GMU's fabulous men's basketball team. Blacks are less than 9 percent of student enrollment but are 85 percent of our varsity basketball team and dominate its starting five. It's not just GMU. Watch any Saturday afternoon college basketball game and ask yourself the question fixated in the minds of equity, diversity and inclusion hunters: Does this look like America? Among the 10 players on the court, at best there might be two white players. In 2010, 61 percent of Division I basketball players were black, and only 31 percent were white.

Allied with the purveyors of equity, diversity and inclusion are the multiculturalists, who call for the celebration of cultures. For them, all cultures are morally equivalent and to deem otherwise is Eurocentrism. That's unbridled nonsense. Ask your multiculturalist: Is forcible female genital mutilation, as practiced in nearly 30 sub-Saharan Africa and Middle Eastern countries, a morally equivalent cultural value? Slavery is practiced in Sudan and Niger; is that a cultural equivalent? In most of the Middle East, there are numerous limits on women -- such as prohibitions on driving, employment, voting and education. Under Islamic law, in some countries, female adulterers face death by stoning, and thieves face the punishment of having their hand severed. Are these cultural values morally equivalent, superior or inferior to those of the West?

Western values are superior to all others. Why? The greatest achievement of the West was the concept of individual rights. The Western transition from barbarism to civility didn't happen overnight. It emerged feebly -- mainly in England, starting with the Magna Carta of 1215 -- and took centuries to get where it is today.

One need not be a Westerner to hold Western values. A person can be Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, African or Arab and hold Western values. It's no accident that Western values of reason and individual rights have produced unprecedented health, life expectancy, wealth and comfort for the ordinary person.

Western values are under ruthless attack by the academic elite on college campuses across America. They want to replace personal liberty with government control and replace equality before the law with entitlement. The multiculturalism and diversity agenda is a cancer on our society, and our tax dollars and charitable donations are supporting it.

Douthat Can't Say It, But I Can (American Thinker)

 

By Christopher Chantrill

It would be easy to critique Ross Douthat's column "A Different Kind of Division" as lily-livered RINOism. He is gently, ever so gently telling his liberal audience that, fifty years after Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, today's Obama race wars do not divide the country like Bull Connor's dogs and water hoses in 1963. And really, he waffles, there are good ideas for reform from both sides of the aisle. Get this:

Meanwhile, in the broader socioeconomic landscape, the big story of the last generation in American life is that problems that were seen as specifically "black problems" in the 1970s and 1980s -- persistent unemployment, especially for men, family breakdown and social disarray -- are now problems affecting the pan-ethnic working class.

Do you see what he is doing? He is referring to Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report on "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action" and to Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010. Moynihan is unmentionable because he was so embarrassingly right and Charles Murray is unmentionable because long ago in a galaxy far away he wrote a book that allowed as how blacks scored lower on IQ tests than whites. Cue Noel Coward and "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Lib'rals."

Back in the good old days they used to advise rabble-rousers not to frighten the horses in the street. Today it's important not to frighten the NYT-reading termagents of a certain age in the faculty lounge.

Allow me to translate Douthat's gentle words. Liberals: You Suck! You're the ruling class; you're the evolved ones, the educated, the compassionate ones, yet you've been playing the race card, shamelessly and cynically, man and boy, for the last 50 years and now it's like you're on crack. You'll do anything to rile up and harvest that 90 percent of the African American vote that you need to stay in the game, and with the Obama race wars you're just about hitting bottom.

Remember? You liberals were the guys that said never again would the U.S. countenance racist thugs like Lester Maddox and George Wallace. Today, in 2013, it is liberals that not merely condone but actually encourage the racist Reverends who go out every morning to remind African Americans that Jim Crow is just around the corner.

So it's a different kind of division now? Are you kidding? Jim Crow got started after the dead-heat 1876 election because Republicans were tired of occupying the South. So Rutherford B. Hayes took office in a deal that allowed the white ruling class down south to resurrect a kind of slavery-lite for the next 80 years. Shame on the Republicans.

Fast-forward to today. The liberal administrative state has been exposed as an utter failure, from its failing schools, its failing pensions, its monstrous health-care, to its inflationist Keynesianism. Conservatives have been offering sensible, practical reforms for a generation, but liberals know better. Just like the defeated South and the Bourbons before them, they have forgotten nothing and learned nothing. They are the ruling class, to the manor born, and we once and future slaves better get down on our knees and obey the mandates of the latest 2,000 page omnibus bill to the letter, or they'll sic the IRS on us.

So what is the difference?

The difference is in what comes next. After the pride of Hubris comes the avenging sword of Nemesis. It's all just a Greek myth, of course, but it's telling that Nemesis was female, on the idea that Heaven hath no fury like a woman scorned by the pride of a ruling-class liberal.

We've got the recovery that isn't. We've got the ObamaCare train wreck. We've got the global warming that didn't. Now we've got the #HATE THEM hashtaggers proudly broadcasting their racist thuggery on Twitter and acting on it. There's your fundamental transformation.

We conservatives, if we were as mean-spirited as the liberals insist we are, could be setting up the bleachers right now to cheer on an epic political meltdown. But the truth is that we love America too much for that, and hate what is coming in the next three years, even if that's what it takes to put a Republican president into office with a Republican Congress on January 20, 2017.

We know who will be hardest hit. It will be the folks that took the welfare bait and backed off their work effort. It will be the twentysomethings buried in Obama student debt slavery. It will be the government retirees beached by the dismasted government pensions. It will be the teachers marooned by the shipwreck of education.

The dream has become a nightmare.

Christopher Chantrill (mailto:chrischantrill@gmail.com) is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his usgovernmentspending.com and also usgovernmentdebt.us. At americanmanifesto.org he is blogging and writing An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism. Get his Road to the Middle Class.

Faces of Evil in a Violent Underclass (American Thinker)

 

By Bryce Buchanan

See also: Is There Anything about Race We Can Agree On?

Faces of Evil - that was the headline of the Australian Herald Sun when reporting the depraved murder of Aussie Christopher Lane.  It is instructive to carry that theme further with a few more faces.

James Edwards and his buddies murdered Chris Lane "for the fun of it".  James Edwards shot him in the back.  It was reported that Edwards danced and laughed in the police station after his arrest.  Ending a stranger's life was funny to him.

He boasted on twitter that he had "knocked out 5 woods [whites] since Zimmerman court".  He advised others to "HATE" white people, and a few days before the murder he said he wanted to be "with my niggas when it's time to start taken lifes".

This is De'Marquise Elkins and his mother and aunt. 

De'Marquise approached Sherri West in Brunswick, Georgia in March and asked for money.  When she refused, he shot her 13 month old baby between the eyes.  Elkins' mother and aunt were arrested for obstructing justice when they lied to cover-up the crime.

On August 12, a recent graduate from nursing school, David Santucci, was walking home from a birthday party.  According to witnesses, Dondre Johnson, Mario Patterson and Jerrica Norfleet drove up to him, shot him to death and drove away. 

They were captured shortly after the murder. Some news outlets reported this as a robbery rather than a racist hate crime, but witnesses said nothing was taken from the victim; nothing but his life.

In another recent Memphis story, police say that the two people pictured above doused a man with gasoline in a vacant field and set him on fire.  He was severely burned over most of his body.  A neighbor heard the screams and saw the victim's skin falling off.  He said the devil himself would not deserve such treatment.

Several years ago in Knoxville, Tennessee, Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian were carjacked by the degenerate savages pictured to the left.  Newsom was gagged, bound, brutally raped, beaten, shot and set on fire.  Then they went to work on Channon.  She was taken into the back room of a home where she was beaten and brutally raped in every way imaginable for hours.  Bleach was poured down her throat.  Then she was placed in a garbage bag to suffocate to death.

News of this horrendous, racist hate crime was mostly covered up.  Much of the media are happy to lie in cases like Martin/Zimmerman or Duke Lacrosse, but they are not willing to tell the truth in cases like this. The typical cover-up approach was demonstrated by the Norfolk newspaper, The Virginian-Pilot, last year when two of their reporters were beaten by a black mob of about 30 people.  They did not report the story at all until they were shamed into it two weeks after the assault.  'News' organizations are political organizations and filter stories to suit their political agenda.

"Shorty" Belton died late last week.  He was 88.  He fought for our country in Okinawa and was wounded there. 

Shorty had been brutally beaten by two 'unarmed children'.

I sure hope Shorty didn't try to defend himself, because, as we all now know, it is just wrong to defend yourself when black teenagers decide to pound on you.

The alleged savages are Demetrius Glenn, 16, who is now in custody (above), and Keenan Adams-Kinard (below).

In a similar case, Pat Mahaney was beaten by 'unarmed' 13 and 14 year olds.  Pat died last week.

In Washington, DC, last August, T.C. Maslin was walking home from a baseball game.  His wife and two-year-old son were at home.  Tommy Branch (left) and two other young black thugs approached Maslin.  With a two-fisted grip, Branch swung an aluminum bat into the side of Maslin's head, shattering his skull and severing an optic nerve.  Maslin lived, but he is severely disabled.  The national media ignored this story.

Last Monday in Pensacola, Florida, 77-year-old John Garland Redick was chased, beaten with sticks and pelted with cans by a mob of very young black teens.  Two of the attackers are pictured below, Keyon Black and Shaknee Golay.

On March 17, 2012, police found 32 year old Terry Moore lying in his own blood outside an Appleby's Restaurant in North Carolina.  Moore said the group of predators pictured below approached him calling him a "tree honkey" and a "cracker". 

They knocked him to the ground and amused themselves punching and kicking him.

It would not be difficult at all to post pictures and tell stories of degenerate predators like this ad nauseam.  There is an explosion of black mob violence.  If you doubt that, read "White Girl Bleed A Lot" by Colin Flaherty.  Across the country, degenerate people are violently attacking strangers in "the knockout game" ...  just for 'fun'.  Flash mobs swarm stores to plunder and pillage.  They are eliminating the government middle-man and taking what they want directly.

Even though we don't speak much about this violence, and even though the press works to cover it up, we all understand that we have a huge problem with a violent, racist, uncivilized underclass.  We are taught, incorrectly, that it is not appropriate to talk honestly about it.  But ignoring or denying the problem is the most foolish approach of all.  We must acknowledge it and we must talk about it.

Consider these statistics:

§  Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.

§  The best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percent of the population that is black and Hispanic.

§  Blacks are 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against whites then vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit a robbery.

§  The death toll from murder in Chicago over the last decade exceeds the death toll of our soldiers in Afghanistan since the beginning of that war.  [Handgun purchases are not allowed in Chicago.]

§  Nearly 3/4 of black children are born out of wedlock.  Generations of children are being raise without fathers.

§  Academic achievement for black students is appallingly low, despite a large amount of money being spent to provide that group with educational opportunities.

Now consider the fact that decent black people are the people who are most harmed by this violent subculture.  They are the closest to the problem and suffer the most from it. But we all suffer from this growing cancer and ignoring the problem is simply one way to commit national suicide.

This problem is not about skin color.  The real problem is bad values.  There is nothing about having melanin in your skin that will protect you from the natural consequences of destructive values.  Violent, hostile, uneducated, misogynistic men who do not care for their children will not be successful... anywhere, ever.  And no civilization can survive the degradation of its women.  Thug culture celebrates the degradation of women.

Think about the Vietnamese refugees or other Asian refugees who came to this country from lives of severe deprivation.  They had nothing...except good values.  With hard work, education, family values, self-discipline and perseverance, most achieved the American Dream in a short amount of time.  In one generation, they were often small business owners and valedictorians.  Fortunately for them, they had no putative leaders teaching them victimhood and hopelessness.  No one told them it was someone else's job to make their lives successful.

If we discuss this problem openly we will be called racists.  People will say we are finally "showing our true colors".  We will be called liars.  Thug culture will be defended.  They will say we are afraid of black masculinity, as though violent bravado is praiseworthy.  There will be a large leftist effort to stop people from saying what needs to be said.

We should ignore the criticism and steadfastly pursue Martin Luther King's dream of living in a nation where people "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."  This dream strikes fear in the hearts of current civil rights 'leaders' who abhor the idea of character judgments.  They live in the past.  For them, it is all about skin color.

In my view, no one has done more to impede the progress of black people than black 'leaders" and other leftists in the racial grievance industry.  They sell exactly the wrong message of victimhood, telling blacks on the dependency plantation that none of their problems are their fault and nothing is their responsibility.  Could you find a better formula for creating an angry, dependent population than to tell them that all of their problems are caused by others and all of their needs are someone else's job to fill.  From Sharpton to Obama, the message is destructive, though it does maintain the desired voting block.

Accepting lower standards of behavior for black people is a form of racism.  Only a racist would say that black people are not capable of joining civilized society on an equal footing.  Do blacks need lower standards because they are inferior people?  This is the soft bigotry of low expectations.  Violent, ignorant, parasitic thug culture is not a built- in defect.  It comes from bad values which are created and supported by bad social policy.  The violent subculture persists because of an absurd level of tolerance on our part.

Today's "GFY" Entry: Obama (From The Market-Ticker)

Market-Ticker

Our racist (refuses to stand up and call the crime by three young punks who posted on Twitter that they hated white people -- then executed a white jogger by shooting him in the back of the head a hate crime), jihad-ignoring (has willfully and intentionally refused to call Hasan's murder of American Servicemen and women on a US military base, while yelling "Allah Akhbar!", Muslim Terrorism) POS (that's shortened from POTUS) now spewed:

"Students need ways to manage and afford debt" (to go to college.)

Oh really?

Let me guess -- we need massive Collegiate Football palaces, thousands of deans, provosts and other non-educators in these "hallowed halls", and we must continue to innovate in teaching such rapidly-evolving and difficult to instill subjects such as Differential Equations, Organic Chemistry and Physics?

Uh huh.

Calculus hasn't changed since, well.... calculus.  Neither has Organic Chem; I seem to recall that the last seminal event that re-ordered how chemical reactions (whether organic or not) took place some many millions of years ago.  I also seem to remember that same event being the previous instance where how physics works might have been altered as well.

It would appear to me that the cost of a textbook for such a class should in fact approach zero.  After all, copyright has long since lapsed in the intervening years.  It would also seem to me that with said lecture being delivered a few hundred thousand times in the intervening period that the marginal value of same also approaches zero.  This leaves the marginal cost and utility value of someone to answer your questions when you don't understand why a particular concept works the way it does.

That cost and therefore at (some multiple thereof) price should approach (but not reach) zero.

In addition it appears to me that a Raspberry Pi, a fully-functional $35 computer that can be coupled to virtually any flat-screen TV, is sufficient resource for someone to be able to access said store of knowledge and learn, should you want to do so.  Of course there are other options, some that are paid for with public funds (e.g. computers in the library) but even if you're (truly) poor and have little there is no barrier to entry when it comes to the knowledge that colleges supposedly impart.

No, what you have is a POS (again, shortened from POTUS) who thinks that (debt) slavery is just fine, and who is perfectly ok with arrogating to himself the bully pulpit to advocate for exactly that.  After all, as a black man he wouldn't have any cultural sensitivity to slavery -- right?

It's especially amusing to watch this POS advocate for ways for people to "manage" said slavery.  I'm sure all the black people on the plantations felt exactly the same way.  Isn't it funny how today's plantation is found with a nice pair of ivory columns in front of the door and a bunch of professors and administrators sitting in the tower?

And people wonder why I think this nation is about to find itself gripped in the convulsions of a people tearing each other -- and themselves -- apart?