This document is part of an archive of postings on Political Correctness Watch, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written.
This is a backup copy of the original blog
With particular attention to religious, ethnic and sexual matters. By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
25 May, 2021
Grand jury refuses to indict police who restrained drugged up and aggressive black man
I have removed most commentary from this NYT article and just left the facts
Some of the witnesses who were called by prosecutors appeared to absolve the officers of wrongdoing. The revelation prompted fierce criticism of Ms. James specifically, and anger more broadly over a legal process that often seems to shield the police from criminal consequences.
Only prosecutors may call witnesses during grand jury hearings, and jurors never hear from the defense. In the case involving Mr. Prude’s death, prosecutors from Ms. James’s office called police trainers who testified that the officers who restrained him did not violate protocol with their techniques. The state’s lawyers also presented a California doctor who is known for defending police actions. He said the officers had not caused Mr. Prude’s death.
The officers testified that they decided to use force after Mr. Prude did not follow their instructions to stay on the ground.
“We told him to calm down, and he’s telling us he wants to take our firearms,” one of the officers, whose name is redacted in the transcripts, said. “And then we tell him to stay down and he still tries to get up.”
Mr. Prude encountered the Rochester police on March 23, 2020, shortly after he became emotionally unstable and sprinted out of his brother’s home. Fearful for Mr. Prude’s safety, his brother called 911.
Responding officers found Mr. Prude several blocks away. He was naked and spitting and claiming that he had the coronavirus. They put a mesh hood, or spit sock, over his head and handcuffed him, then pressed his head to the pavement until he lost consciousness. Although it was snowing, no one covered his body or helped him when he vomited, body camera footage shows.
Mr. Prude died a week later. The medical examiner determined that his death was caused by factors that included oxygen deprivation and PCP drug intoxication.
Body camera footage showed Mr. Prude becoming more agitated after the officers placed the hood over his head. The officers said they feared contracting the coronavirus.
The transcripts revealed Ms. James’s selection of an important expert witness: Gary Vilke, a San Diego doctor who is typically hired by the police to defend them. (All witnesses’ names were redacted in the transcript, but some were easily identifiable.)
Dr. Vilke testified that the weight of the officers pressing on Mr. Prude’s back and legs did not impair his breathing, the transcript showed, leading him to conclude that the officers had not contributed to Mr. Prude’s death
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Critical Race Theory Weakens Society and Breeds Hate, Minorities Say
Critical race theory, at one time limited primarily to academia, has become a controversial issue as it increasingly is showing up in K-12 school curriculums and in training in government agencies and corporate America.
Speakers at a May 6 virtual event sponsored by Latinos for Tennessee, a traditional values advocacy group, explained what critical race theory is and why it’s so pernicious.
The Rev. C.L. Bryant, a Baptist minister and a senior fellow at FreedomWorks, had been a proponent of critical race theory as a young man, but has since turned against it.
“Critical race theory was something that was formed back in the 1950s, along with black liberation theology,” he explained.
Though its proponents are often compared to civil rights advocates of the past, Bryant said, their goal is really to ensure that the efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. and others were all for nought.
One of the more prominent aspects of critical race theory, Bryant says, is how it changes the definition of racism.
“When you change the definition, you change the destination,” he said, and that destination is moving people away from traditional ideas about education, family, gender, and marriage.
“What it has done is, it has weakened society as far as its core values are concerned,” Bryant said.
Also, among its most pernicious aspects, the minister said, is how critical race theory ideology makes Americans hate one another and hate their country.
“Critical race theory is a tool, a mechanism,” Bryant said, to make young people of all colors think America was founded in slavery and racism.
Bryant explained that he grew up experiencing actual “systemic” racism under segregation and that his parents had been civil rights advocates. But the legal segregation that was present in America’s past no longer exists.
“Is there anything you can do in America today where the color of your skin would stop you from doing it?” he asked.
He said that most critical race theory proponents have no clue what actual systemic racism is, and that if anything, it’s critical race theory ideas that are becoming so common.
Robby Starbuck, a director and producer, spoke about how critical race theory mirrors how Marxists have used racial division in other countries to empower their ideas.
Starbuck, who is Cuban American, said Cuban communists used racial division to seize power in that Caribbean island nation.
Another way radicals usher in revolution is through the changing of shared language, he said, and that is one of the core tenets of critical race theory.
Starbuck cited the word “Latinx”—widely used as a gender-neutral stand-in for “Latino” and “Latina” in left-wing academic circles—that has now become commonly used in the media.
That’s despite the fact that very few Hispanic people actually want to be called that, he said.
Despite many of the concepts and ideas of critical race theory being unpopular, the constant exposure to them, Starbuck said, “creates reality for people.”
Indoctrination is a powerful tool in the hands of left-wing ideologues, he said, and that’s unfortunate because America’s children deserve a “politically neutral education.”
While critical race theory may be becoming pervasive in America, Starbuck offered that there is hope in countering and defeating it. He cited the May 1 election in a Dallas suburb in which candidates who supported critical race theory curriculum were resoundingly defeated at the polls.
Dr. Ming Wang, a surgeon, author, and refugee from Communist China, said there are parallels between what is being peddled by advocates of critical race theory and what he encountered living in a communist country.
“To me, America is so unprecedentedly polarized, it’s deadly,” he said. “And that polarization is defined by the increasing fixation on our differences, rather than appreciating what we have in common.
The problem is, we are told to focus on our differences rather than what unites us, he explained
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House Republicans Target Teaching of Critical Race Theory
House Republicans seek passage of legislation to push back against a rule proposed by the Biden administration to promote teaching Americans to judge each other based on skin color.
At least three House GOP members last week announced legislation, with two bills targeting schools, one the military, and one all federal institutions.
Public comment closes Wednesday on the Department of Education’s proposed rule to prioritize K-12 grants based in part on whether schools teach critical race theory. This would include teaching The New York Times’ disputed 1619 Project, as well as the teachings of controversial author Ibram X. Kendi.
Critical race theory is a theoretical framework that contends individuals either are oppressed or are oppressors based on their skin color; it makes race the prism through which proponents analyze all aspects of American life.
Rep. Burgess Owens, R-Utah, introduced two measures last Thursday in response to the Biden administration’s proposed rule to fund education based on the teaching of critical race theory.
“I grew up attending segregated schools in the Jim Crow South during a time when people were treated differently based on the color of their skin,” Owens, who is black, said in a public statement. He added:
Critical race theory preserves this way of thinking and undermines civil rights, constitutionally guaranteed equal protection before the law, and U.S. institutions at large. This is the United States of America, and no one should ever be subjected to the discrimination that our laws so clearly prohibit.
One of the proposals by Owens, a former pro football player, is a bill that would prohibit teaching of critical race theory within federal institutions, according to a press release. The other is a resolution highlighting the dangers of teaching critical race theory in U.S. schools and decrying the “damaging philosophy within this prejudicial ideological tool.”
Both measures have 30 co-sponsors.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, proposed legislation to block federal tax dollars from going to schools that teach critical race theory. Roy calls his bill the Combating Racist Teaching in Schools Act, or the CRT Act, using the same initials as critical race theory.
Roy’s bill would include any elementary school, secondary school, or institution of higher education.
“Critical race theory, like all its racist derivations, is a direct affront to our core values as Americans,” Roy said in a public statement, adding:
No one in America—be they students, servicemen and women, government employees, or anyone—should be indoctrinated to hate our country, its founding, or our fellow citizens. Worse yet is its pernicious demands to ‘divvy us up by race’ and perpetuate the lie that we should be treated differently by virtue of our skin color. There is no room for state-sanctioned racism anywhere in our society, and we must oppose it with all our might. …
As Americans we believe that all are created equal by God Almighty, regardless of their skin color. That self-evident truth, and the American promise that comes with it, are worth fighting for.
Specifically, the Roy legislation would ban federal funding for teaching that any race is inherently superior or inferior to any other race, color, or national origin; teaching that the United States is a fundamentally racist country; that the Declaration of Independence or Constitution are fundamentally racist documents; and that an individual’s moral character or worth is determined by the individual’s race, color, or national origin.
It also would ban federal tax dollars from being used for teaching that an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race, is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; and prohibit money for schools teaching that an individual, because of the individual’s race, bears responsibility for the actions committed by other members of the individual’s race, color, or national origin.
Roy’s legislation has 26 co-sponsors.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/05/18/house-republicans-target-teaching-of-critical-race-theory
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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23 May, 2021
Tech Companies That Made #BlackLivesMatter Pledges Have Fewer Black Employees
After the killing of George Floyd last year prompted widespread protests, dozens of companies released public pledges to promote racial justice. However, their support of the Black community wasn’t reflected in the demographics of their workforces.
A new study of diversity in the technology industry found companies that made statements of solidarity had 20% fewer Black employees on average than those that didn’t. The finding highlights a gap between what companies say about social issues and what they do in their own workplaces, said Stephanie Lampkin, the founder and chief executive officer of Blendoor, which conducted the study set to be published Monday.
Blendoor, a startup that helps companies recruit a diverse group of candidates, crunched publicly available data on 240 of the most prominent tech companies. Despite the shortcomings of many companies that put out Black Lives Matter statements, the pledges could have a serious impact. Their financial commitments surpassed $4.6 billion, more than double the amount of pledges made in the previous six years combined, according to the report
Reviewing information released by companies over the past six years, Blendoor analyzed trends in workplace diversity, inclusion policies and human-resources programs, such as parental leave, flexible work arrangements and recruitment of underrepresented groups. It found, for example, that Pinterest Inc. had the most robust policies and programs for recruiting women; Mozilla Corp. had the best for recruiting underrepresented minorities. McKesson Corp. scored highest in Blendoor’s rating of supporting women in leadership, while HP Inc. tops the list for underrepresented minorities in leadership.
The analysis surfaced broader findings, as well, across hundreds of companies. Asian Americans have the widest gap between their representation in entry-level tech jobs and in leadership, and Asian-American women are the least likely to advance to executive roles. Women executives more commonly have C-level jobs that focus on areas such as HR, marketing or diversity, and those roles are among the least likely to be appointed to corporate boards. The analysis also found that 36% of board directors are women or people of color but that most of those are White women or Asian men.
Lampkin, who started coding as a teenager and holds degrees from Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has spent years trying to find the right technological tools to bolster diversity efforts. She founded Blendoor in 2015 as a mobile job-matching app—swiping left and right on candidates. Then, as more employers became interested in preventing unconscious bias in hiring, the app started presenting candidates in a blind setting, without pictures or names. In 2017, Blendoor started rating companies’ overall diversity efforts, using similar methodology to the latest report.
Outside of her company, Lampkin also runs a network for Black women in tech, called Visible Figures, where members trade funding, press advice, recommendations and connections. Lampkin said she’s optimistic about the push for diversity in tech given the rate of change in the last few decades but that the industry is a long way from parity. “We need all hands on deck if this is really going to change,” Lampkin said. “It has to be a paradigm shift that I don’t think is happening yet. Right now, I think it’s a lot of preaching to choirs.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/blm-pledges-came-from-companies-with-fewer-black-employees
*******************************Female student, 29, who said 'women have vaginas' and are 'not as strong as men' faces disciplinary action by university
A student who said women were born with female genitals and claimed the difference in physical strength between men and women 'was a fact' is facing disciplinary action by her university.
Lisa Keogh, 29, who studies law at Abertay University in Dundee was reported to university chiefs by her classmates after she said that women were not as physically strong as men.
The mature student, who is in her final year, is now facing a formal investigation by the university for the 'offensive' and 'discriminatory' comments.
The mother-of-two said she had been taking part in a video seminar about gender feminism and the law when she raised concerns about trans women taking part in mixed martial arts.
After telling her classmates that a women who had testosterone in her body for 32 years would be genetically stronger than the average woman, the mature student was accused of calling women the 'weaker sex'.
She told The Times: 'I thought it was a joke. I thought there was no way that the university would pursue me for utilising my legal right to freedom of speech.'
Following the debate, in which Ms Keogh claims she was muted by her lecturer, the mature student was met with a flurry of abuse from her fellow classmates.
Ms Keogh, who is being supported by Joanna Cherry QC, the SNP MP for Edinburgh South West, continued: 'I didn't intend to be offensive but I did take part in a debate and outlined my sincerely held views.'
She added: 'I wasn't being mean, transphobic or offensive. I was stating a basic biological fact.'
The mother-of-two now fears her ambitions of becoming a lawyer may be jeopardised by the disciplinary action by her university.
MailOnline has contacted Abertay University for comment.
The incident comes just a year after economics lecturer Dr Eva Poen was accused of transphobia by feminist and LGBT students over a tweet in which she said 'only female people menstruate'.
Furious undergraduates at the University of Exeter condemned the lecturer accusing her of 'openly singling out trans people' in the posts.
The row erupted when Dr Poen responded to a tweet by a Twitter user which read: 'Not everyone who menstruates is female. Not everyone who is female menstruates. Let's shift our language.'
The lecturer, who strongly denied accusations of transphobia, wrote back: 'Only female people menstruate. Only female people go through menopause.'
In 2018, student lecturer Angelos Sofocleous, who was assistant editor at Durham University's philosophy journal 'Critique', was fired in a transphobia row after he tweeted that 'women don't have penises'.
Mr Sofocleous was sacked from his post after just three days for writing a tweet deemed 'transphobic' by fellow students.
The student lecturer re-tweeted an article by The Spectator on his Twitter titled 'Is it a crime to say women don't have penises?', with the comment: 'RT if women don't have penises'.
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The Vital Signs of American Christianity: Critical but Not Terminal?
When I visit my family physician, he starts by checking my vitals. It’s amazing how critical are simple things like blood pressure, temperature, and pulse.
We social scientists know that vital signs matter in organized religion, too. There are a lot of details we can look at, but basics such as how many people identify with churches, whether they attend services regularly, or apply their faith to their daily lives, are awful important. Here is what we know: the vital signs of American Christianity are in serious decline.
Recently, I compared crucial vital signs for Americans aged 18 to 44, surveyed in the respected National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). I compared the data released in 2013 to the same survey released just six years later, in 2019. Here’s what the data show:
For both males and females, membership in Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant, and historically Black Protestant churches declined a lot. Meanwhile, those professing no religious faith — called “Nones” in sociological circles — rose sharply: from 26% to 38% among males, and from 22% to 28% among females. Within each of these three divisions of Protestantism, the percentages of both males and females who reported attending church every week or more declined quite a bit, while those who attended rarely or never increased. The percentages of both males and females who claimed that their faith is “very important” in their daily lives also sank in each of these Protestant groups.
Mainline Protestantism, especially, is on life support. In this survey and age group, the numbers went down one-fifth, and were only 12% in the latest NSFG. Among mainliners, only 20% of males and 28% of females went to church every week, 28% of males and 18% of females said they that they never go to church, and only 28% of males and 40% of females considered their faith to be very important. Optimistically, this means that less than 5% of Americans from 18-to-44 are actively committed to a Mainline Protestant church.
This is a double decline whammy. The numbers are dropping, and the commitment of those who remain is also falling among our young and early middle-aged adults. The future of American Protestantism is in steep decline.
What about Catholics? Their percentages have declined for males but not females, and they are holding at a little under one quarter of those 18 to 44. However, their church attendance levels edged downward for both males and females. In the last NSFG, less than one in five Catholic males, and a little over one in three females, attended Mass weekly. Those never or rarely going to Mass increased. And while the percentage of Catholic women in this age group who consider their faith “very important” has held steady at about half, males have declined somewhat in this category and are now down to less than one in three.
So, every major wing of American Christianity declined just in this latest six-year period. To make matters worse, these were the alarming vital signs well before the COVID-19 tsunami. By all accounts, church involvement has plummeted enormously since Spring 2020, and will struggle to revive to even close to these dismal 2019 levels. The only question is how much steeper the ongoing decline will be because of the pandemic, not whether there will be one.
This is not a problem that will only impact the survival of churches representing most of American Christianity. Committed religious faith has long been associated with numerous goods in American life, such as higher marriage and fertility rates, lower divorce, more charitable giving, and the vitality of religious organizations serving their local communities.
This is a loss for all of us.
The patient is gravely ill, but she is not dead. Many of us know, and are even part of, flourishing churches. Most of us are not “Nones” yet, and most of us who are not are professing Christians.
Churches should certainly be doing outreach, but more than that, we need to do a lot more “in-reach.” That is, we need to aggressively reach out to those who claim to be part of our church families but lack commitment, to gather with the church week by week, and to live consistently with the faith we profess. If our commitment is lackluster, how can our churches recapture the Nones? Why would they even want to join us?
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Men Give Birth. America Was Founded in 1619. And Israel Is the Aggressor
Dennis Prager
When you meditate for a moment on what the left expects honest and decent people to believe, you confront the world of absurdities and lies in which we live.
The left demands we believe and announce that men menstruate and give birth, and that it’s in no way unfair to girls and women when biological men compete in girls’ and women’s sports.
In tens of thousands of American schools, students are brainwashed to believe that America wasn’t founded in 1776 but in 1619, the year the first Africans were brought to North America as indentured servants or slaves. This is the “1619 Project” lie: It was labeled a lie by almost every leading historian of early America, many of whom are Democrats and liberals who supported the impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
And now, with Hamas—a totalitarian theocratic Islamist terror group—unleashing thousands of rockets on Israel’s civilian population and Israel responding to this latest of repeated attempts at mass murder, the world’s left demands that we believe Israel is the villain and Hamas is the victim.
The left’s condemnation of Israel and sympathy for Hamas is just another example of the morally inverted world the left has constructed.
We live in a world in which the mass media and academia—all nothing more than mouthpieces of the left—repeatedly tell the world that America fought the Revolutionary War in order to preserve slavery, that men menstruate, and that Hamas is a victim of Israeli aggression.
How such gargantuan lies have become mainstream truths is a question for another column. Suffice it to say they are all as absurd as they are mendacious.
The reason there is a war right now between Israel and Hamas is that Israel exists. It has nothing to do with anything Israel has actually done. Hamas and its backers in Iran don’t have disputes with Israel. They have a dispute with Israel’s existence.
There is, therefore, nothing Israel can do that would satisfy its enemies except agree to destroy itself as the one Jewish state in the world.
For most (not all) Muslims and for most (not all) Muslim states and for the left, there is room in the world for 22 Arab countries and for more than 50 Muslim countries, but there is no room for one Jewish state, even one the size of New Jersey and smaller than El Salvador.
Hamas and its supporters in Iran regularly announce they seek Israel’s destruction. There is no parallel to this in the world. No groups or nations seek the obliteration of any other nation in the world. This is in keeping with the history of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is not just another ethnic or racial bigotry. I wish it were. Anti-Semitism, unlike every other form of racism or ethnic bigotry, is exterminationist. Jew-haters don’t merely hate Jews; they want Jews dead.
That’s one of the many reasons that every honest person understands that anti-Zionism is merely the latest expression of anti-Semitism. The anti-Zionist claim is that Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is illegitimate.
Why do those on the left (again, as I always point out, leftists; not liberals) deny this?
Because the left hates the good and often supports the enemies of the good. Leftism is a moral sickness in the human condition. As I have previously written, it is not even an issue of the left having a broken moral compass. A broken moral compass is occasionally accurate. The left’s moral compass always shows north as south and east as west.
That is why the left hates America. Precisely because it has been, in Abraham Lincoln’s incomparable words, “the last best hope of earth.” And that is why the left hates Israel. With all its flaws, Israel, too, has been a moral beacon. Israel’s prime minister has just tweeted out a video made by Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, released by PragerU shortly after the last Israel-Hamas war in 2014. The title of the video says it all: “Israel: The World’s Most Moral Army.”
In Kemp’s words: “I was the commander of British forces in Afghanistan. I have fought in combat zones around the world, including Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Iraq. I was also present throughout the conflict in Gaza in 2014.
“Based on my experience and on my observations, the Israel Defense Force, the IDF, does more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”
Which is why the left hates Israel. It’s morally better than its neighbors, not to mention its enemies. Just as America has been. But if you believe America was founded in 1619 and that men give birth, you will also believe Israel is the villain in its war with Hamas.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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19 May, 2021
American Medical Association Embraces Critical Race Theory, Rejects Meritocracy
The American Medical Association (AMA), the largest national organization representing physicians and medical students in the United States, says it will set aside its long-held concept of meritocracy in favor of “racial justice” and “health equity.”
In an 86-page strategic plan released May 11, the AMA set out a three-year road map detailing how the advocacy group will use its influence to dismantle “structural and institutional racism” and advance “social and racial justice” in America’s health care system.
According to its plan, the AMA will be following a host of strategies, including implementing “racial and social justice” throughout the AMA enterprise culture, systems, policies, and practices; expanding medical education to include critical race theory; and pushing toward “racial healing, reconciliation, and transformation” regarding the organization’s own “racially discriminatory” past.
The AMA also makes clear that it now rejects the concepts of “equality” and “meritocracy,” which have been goals in the fields of medical science and medical care.
“Equality as a process means providing the same amounts and types of resources across populations,” the association said. “Seeking to treat everyone the ‘same,’ ignores the historical legacy of disinvestment and deprivation through historical policy and practice of marginalizing and minoritizing communities.”
While the AMA doesn’t run America’s health care system, it holds tremendous influence over medical schools and teaching hospitals that train physicians and other health professionals. Those institutes, the AMA says, must reject meritocracy, which it describes as a harmful narrative that “ignores the inequitably distributed social, structural and political resources.”
“The commonly held narrative of meritocracy is the idea that people are successful purely because of their individual effort,” it states. “Medical education has largely been based on such flawed meritocratic ideals, and it will take intentional focus and effort to recognize, review and revise this deeply flawed interpretation.”
Instead, the AMA suggests, medical schools should incorporate into their programs critical race theory, an offshoot of Marxism that views society through the lens of a power struggle between the race of oppressors and that of the oppressed. As a result, according to the theory, all long-established institutions of Western society are considered to be tools of racial oppression.
“Expand medical school and physician education to include equity, anti-racism, structural competency, public health and social sciences, critical race theory and historical basis of disease,” reads the document, which is loaded with critical race theory vocabulary.
In a statement that accompanied the plan, AMA President Gerald Harmon said he is “fully committed to this cause” and called on the medical community to join the effort.
“We believe that by leveraging the power of our membership, our influence, and our reach we can help bring real and lasting change to medicine,” he said.
The controversy around critical race theory in U.S. institutions gained more attention in 2020, when President Donald Trump banned the use of training materials based on “divisive and harmful sex and race-based ideologies” in federal workplaces. President Joe Biden rescinded the order, instead issuing an order stating that his administration would pursue “a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.”
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Coming to America: Africans, Caribbeans Flock to ‘Systemically Racist’ US
If AmeriKKKa is so bigoted, why do Africans and Caribbeans leave black-run, predominantly black nations and come to the United States of America, which the Democrat left condemns as Earth’s headwaters of “systemic racism” and white supremacy?
According to the most recent Department of Homeland Security data, 548,891 African immigrants became permanent U.S. residents between 2015 and 2019. In 2020, these were the top 10 African sources for such new green card holders —plus each nation’s black population percentage, courtesy of the CIA “World Factbook.”
Nigeria: 12,247 individuals from a 99% black country.
Democratic Republic of Congo: 11,752; 100%.
Ethiopia: 5,461; 87.4%.
Ghana: 4,532; 98.5%.
Kenya: 3,063; 91.8%.
Eritrea: 2,845; 95%.
Cameroon: 2,747; 95.5%.
Somalia: 2,636; 85%.
South Africa: 2,372; 79.2%.
Sudan: 2,017; 70%.
Total: 49,672 permanent residents from 10 nations that are 90.1% black, on average. America’s population is 13.4% black.
Each of these African nations yielded more permanent residents to America in 2020 than did the 944 from Sweden. Largely blond, blue-eyed Sweden is 82.3% white. Swedes, at least ethnically, are precisely the type whom a “systemically racist,” white supremacist nation would greet with pompoms aflutter. And yet Swedish green card recipients totaled fewer than half of those from Sudan.
Between 2015 and 2019, Caribbean green card awardees totaled 816,522. They, too, swapped black-ruled islands for this allegedly racist superpower. Here is 2020’s top five snapshot:
Jamaica: 12,719 individuals; 92.1% black.
Haiti: 9,285; 95.5%.
Trinidad & Tobago: 1,656; 34.2%.
Bahamas: 549; 90%.
St. Lucia: 449; 95%.
Total: 24,668 new permanent residents from five nations that are 81.4% black, on average.
Each of these Caribbean islands generated more new green card bearers than the 410 who hailed from Denmark, a Scandinavian nation whose 86.3% white population is just what U.S. “systemic racism” would demand. But more St. Lucians than Danes decided to call America home.
So, if America is so irretrievably racist, why does it keep giving green cards to these Africans and Caribbeans? Coping with native-born black Americans should keep “systemic racism” plenty busy. Why would it import even more blacks?
It should be incredibly easy for “systemic racism” to deny these people visas, long before green cards entered the picture. Every application from a Kenyan or Haitian who wanted in could be nixed by a systemically racist consular officer at the corresponding U.S. Embassy. Surely, the State Department is “systemically racist.” And yet, these visas for black foreigners keep getting approved.
Is “systemic racism” on the fritz?
Beyond legal immigration, which “systemic racism” could control, African and Caribbean illegal aliens keep running across America’s borders and breaking into this country without permission. Between 2015 and 2019, DHS apprehended 16,210 African illegal aliens, including 9,003 from the 10 nations analyzed above. During those years, 14,534 illegal aliens came from the five aforementioned Caribbean states.
It’s much harder for “systemic racism” to control this illegal black influx. But beyond that, one wonders why these Africans and Caribbeans leave their majority-black nations to penetrate Earth’s supposed headquarters of anti-black bigotry.
Moreover, they do so while risking drowning in the Rio Grande, rattlesnake attacks, Gila monster bites, fatal dehydration amid cacti, and robbery and rape by human traffickers. Why would blacks overseas confront these dangers merely to be crushed beneath the cold, hard heel of America’s racist boot?
This grim picture surely puzzles such successful African immigrants as Somali-born human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Nigerian-born neuropathologist Bennet Omalu (portrayed by Will Smith in the motion picture “Concussion”). Such influential Caribbeans as Jamaican-born basketball legend Patrick Ewing and Trinidad-born Howard University President Wayne A.I. Frederick must be equally baffled.
Black immigrants like these treasure America’s abundant freedom and ample opportunity, never mind the “systemic racism” big lie relentlessly chanted by the America-hating Democrat left
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A U.S. Space Force commanding officer was removed from his post after publishing a book that warned of the spread of Marxism and critical race theory in the military
The Space Force confirmed that it relieved Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, a former instructor and fighter pilot, as commander of the 11th Space Warning Squadron.
“Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, Space Operations Command commander, relieved Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier of command of the 11th Space Warning Squadron, Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado, May 14, due to loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead,” the Space Force said in a statement to various news outlets over the weekend.
“This decision was based on public comments made by Lt. Col. Lohmeier in a recent podcast. Lt. Gen. Whiting has initiated a Command Directed Investigation (CDI) on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity,” according to the statement.
The “public comments” that he made in a podcast were likely in reference to the spread of Marxist ideology within the military, which was detailed in Lohmeier’s recently self-published book, “Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military.”
Lohmeier had appeared on the podcast “Information Operation” to promote his book, and during the show, he criticized Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s agenda. After Austin’s confirmation, he ordered a “stand down” to deal with alleged extremism within the ranks of the U.S. military coming after the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
“I don’t demonize the man, but I want to make it clear to both him and every service member this agenda—it will divide us. It will not unify us,” Lohmeier said, adding that Austin is promoting “diversity, inclusion, and equity,” which he and others have said are “rooted in critical race theory, which is rooted in Marxism.”
Critical race theory, which draws heavily upon Marxist and postmodernist theories, denounces U.S. and Western culture as a form of oppression. Critics have said its proponents apply the Marxist tactic of “class struggle” to divide people along lines of race, gender, and ethnicity to label them “oppressors” and the “oppressed.”
In recent days, a number of GOP-led states have barred schools from using curriculum based on critical race theory or The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which critics have denounced as ahistorical and inaccurate. Recently, White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended both the 1619 Project and critical race theory.
“What you see happening in the U.S. military at the moment is that if you’re a conservative, then you’re lumped into a group of people who are labeled extremists, if you’re willing to voice your views. And if you’re aligned with the left, then it’s OK to be an activist online because no one’s gonna hold you accountable,” Lohmeier also said, according to the Washington Examiner.
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The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take up the case of a Mississippi state law that bans almost all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy – giving it the chance to substantially weaken the 1973 Roe. v. Wade decision.
The case will be the first abortion case to be heard in its entirety since the Republican Senate confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the last weeks of President Donald Trump's administration.
The case is setting up to be a major test of the court's new 6-3 conservative majority.
By hearing the case, the justices will look at whether to overturn a central part of the landmark ruling, a longstanding goal of religious conservatives.
In the Roe v. Wade decision, subsequently reaffirmed in 1992, the court said that states could not ban abortion before the viability of the fetus outside the womb, which is generally viewed by doctors as between 24 and 28 weeks. The Mississippi law would ban abortion much earlier than that.
The Roe v. Wade ruling recognized that a constitutional right to personal privacy protects a woman's ability to obtain an abortion. The court in its 1992 decision, coming in the case Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, reaffirmed the ruling and prohibited laws that place an "undue burden" on a woman's ability to obtain an abortion.
Coney Barrett joined the court in October after then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed through her confirmation while voting for the November elections was already underway.
She replaced the pro-choice Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last year.
Last year, Chief Justice John Roberts, joined the court's four liberals at the time to rule against a Louisiana abortion law in a 5-4 decision, finding its restrictions were virtually identical to a Texas law the Court had struck down in 2016.
Abortion opponents are hopeful that the Supreme Court will narrow or overturn the Roe v. Wade decision. The court moved from a 5-4 to a 6-3 conservative majority following Senate confirmation last year of Republican former President Donald Trump's third appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
The 2018 Mississippi law, like others similar to it passed by Republican-led states, was enacted with full knowledge that was a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.
After the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, Jackson Women's Health Organization, sued to try to block the measure, a federal judge in 2018 ruled against the state. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2019 reached the same conclusion, prompting the state to appeal to the Supreme Court.
By taking up the case, the court could hear arguments on the contentious issue the summer of 2022, an election year with control of the House and Senate up for grabs.
The state law prohibits all abortions if the 'the probable gestational age of the unborn human' was found to be more than 15 weeks 'except in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe fetal abnormality.'
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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14 May, 2021
Here’s the new US Army ad drawing controversy as ‘woke’ or ‘great to see’
A quite idiotic depiction of the typical American soldier but it is probably harmless as long as recruitment standards are maintained
The United States Army released a new series of recruitment advertisements titled “The Calling” last week, including one featuring an LGBT rights parade and lesbian wedding that has been slammed as “woke” or praised as “great to see.”
“This is the story of a soldier who operates your nation’s Patriot Missile Defense Systems,” the ad begins as an animated female soldier called “Emma” appears on screen. “It begins in California with a little girl raised by two moms.”
“Although I had a fairly typical childhood, took ballet, played violin, I also marched for equality,” Emma says, as images of a “Pride” demonstration are shown. “I like to think I’ve been defending freedom from an early age.”
The female soldier goes on to tell the story of one of her moms becoming paralyzed after an accident, but then working hard “to get back on her feet, eventually standing at the altar to marry my other mom.”
Emma then says she graduated at the top of her high school class, attended university and joined a sorority, but felt empty.
“Sure, I’d spent my life around inspiring women, but what had I really achieved on my own?” she asks, later adding, “I needed my own adventures. My own challenge. And after meeting with an Army recruiter, I found it.”
“A way to prove my inner strength and maybe shatter some stereotypes along the way,” she says, before introducing herself as U.S. Army Corporal Emma Malonelord.
“And I answered my calling” she adds.
The advertisement ends with the words “What calls you?”
The advertisement became the subject of mockery on Twitter, with one user pointing out its similarities with the recent “woke” Central Intelligence Agency recruitment advertisements.
“Wow. First it was the woke CIA ad, now it is a super-woke woke animated army recruitment ad featuring a lesbian wedding, an LGBT rights parade and women “shattering stereotypes” by joining the world’s largest killing machine,” Mint Press News staff writer Alan MacLeod tweeted.
Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh also lambasted the “woke” ad, asserting it makes America appear weak.
“Army ad about a woman with two lesbian moms who joined the Army to ‘discover her inner strength’ and ‘shatter stereotypes,” Walsh wrote on Twitter.
“We are the laughing stock of the world,” he added.
Others praised the ad, saying it was “great to see” the military embracing LGBT advocacy.
“Great to see the military embracing – and soldiers being able to enjoy – the freedom and individual liberty it’s always claimed our armed forces are there to fight for and defend,” one user tweeted.
“A lesbian woman enlisting to defend her right and freedom to marry and have a family with another woman – against those who would forcefully deny her this, would be an actual legitimate reason to fight, and for the military to exist,” the user continued.
“We WILL defend ourselves, and our freedoms.”
The CIA has released a similar series of recruitment ads over the last several months as part of a series dubbed “Humans of CIA,” including ads featuring an agent who described herself as a “cisgender millennial,” a man who “[grew] up gay in a small Southern town,” and a blind employee who talks about the agency’s push to “create a more inclusive environment.”
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Biden Administration Is Mocking Age-old Wisdom
Human nature stays the same across time and space. That is why there used to be predictable political, economic, and social behavior that all countries understood.
The supply of money governs inflation. Print it without either greater productivity or more goods and services, and the currency cheapens. Yet America apparently rejects that primordial truism.
The United States is more than $28 trillion in debt—about 130% of the country’s annual gross domestic product. The government will run up a $2.3 trillion budget deficit for 2021 after a record $3.1 trillion deficit the year before.
The Biden administration still wants to borrow more—another $2 trillion in new social programs and “infrastructure.”
In the crazy last 100 days, the price of everything from lumber, food, and gas to cars and houses has soared. Yet many interest rates are still stuck at or below 3%.
Jobs are plentiful; workers are not. Is it a surprise when government handouts discourage the unemployed from taking a pay cut to go back to work?
After being freed from 13 months of quarantine, Americans are splurging. But this huge pent-up demand is causing shortages. Producers fear the Biden administration’s loose talk of higher taxes, greater regulation, and cutbacks in energy development.
Are the old principles really obsolete? Should we be printing money while expanding government debt? Is it wise to keep interest rates close to zero and to discourage employment, production, and thrift? This dangerous behavior used to ensure inflation, followed by ruinous stagflation.
After George Floyd died while in police custody in Minneapolis, some U.S. cities slashed police spending. Police response times have slowed in many places, perhaps because officers are worried about being fired for using force.
The result? In major cities such as New York and Los Angeles, homicide and violent crime rates have increased by double digits.
State and local governments believed they were exempt from primeval laws of deterrence that warned when criminals assumed they would not be caught and punished, then they committed more crimes.
The same dangers of ignoring unchanging human nature apply to foreign policy.
Aggressive opponents such as Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia expect that the Biden administration will ignore their brinkmanship. They assume the administration will cut American defenses. And President Joe Biden sounds to them more critical of Trump foreign policy than of America’s enemies. Why not take previously unwarranted risks?
So, Russian troops predictably mass on the Ukrainian border. China steps up its harassment of Taiwan. North Korea launches more missiles. Iran hazes U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf. And now, rockets from Gaza pour into Israel.
Apparently, the Biden administration did not believe that dictatorships and theocracies would interpret its virtue signaling as weakness to be exploited rather than as magnanimity to be returned in kind.
The old dictum of the Roman writer Vegetius—if you want peace, prepare for war—was just too much of a downer to take seriously.
In the old days, the greater the impediments to crossing a nation’s border—walls and the enforcement of laws—the less likely was illegal immigration. Here too, the Biden administration apparently rejected the ancient warnings.
Stopping construction of the border wall, promising amnesties in advance, and damning the tough enforcement of the previous administration has only led to more illegal immigration.
Refusing to call the chaos at the southern border a “crisis” did not mean it was not a disaster.
Wisdom of the ages also warned that humans’ first allegiance was to their own tribe, as defined by race, ethnicity, or religion. That existential danger is why multiracial nations always wisely sought to tamp down tribal differences, and to emphasize common ties of citizenship and transcendent common interests. Otherwise, a diverse country ended up like Lebanon, Rwanda, or the former Yugoslavia, where tribal feuding turned bloody and barbaric.
Yet for three months, the Biden administration has emphasized racial differences rather than our melting-pot commonalities. It has stereotyped America’s white population—hardly uniform in terms of class and ethnicity—as somehow uniformly enjoying unearned privilege and acting systemically racist.
Amid such talk, the danger is that racial tensions will increase, hate crimes will spike, racial demagogues will dominate, meritocracy will vanish, and tribal solidarity will replace it. And the ancient idea of America will unwind.
When an arrogant present dismisses the wisdom of the past, then an all too predictable future becomes terrifying.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/05/13/biden-administration-is-mocking-ancient-wisdom
**************************************Swedish Hospital Bans Puberty Blockers, Cross-Sex Hormones for Gender Dysphoric Youths Under 16. We Should, Too.
Sweden, arguably one of the most politically and socially liberal countries in the world, has nonetheless taken a giant step toward protecting gender dysphoric minors and their mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
The Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine reported on Wednesday that the Astrid Lindgren’s Children’s Hospital—an arm of the one of the most renowned hospitals in Sweden, the Karolinska University Hospital—recently released a policy statement that included new guidelines for the care of youths with gender dysphoria under the age of 16.
The guidelines, which took effect April 1, are profound: They contradict many of the assertions of the transgender lobby, which encourage parents and children to accept that cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers are normal, healthy treatments for minors with gender dysphoria and should be pursued with little hesitation.
In the unofficial English translation of the original Swedish text provided by the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine, the statement from the Children’s Hospital reads in part:
In December 2019, the [Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services] published an overview of the knowledge base, which showed a lack of evidence for both the long-term consequences of the treatments, and the reasons for the large influx of patients in recent years.
These treatments are potentially fraught with extensive and irreversible adverse consequences, such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, infertility, increased cancer risk, and thrombosis.
This makes it challenging to assess the risk/benefit for the individual patient, and even more challenging for the minors and their guardians to be in a position of an informed stance regarding these treatments.
The guidelines appear to lean on the U.K. High Court’s Dec. 1 ruling in the Keira Bell case, saying it “established overarching problems associated with puberty-blocking treatment,” adding:
Further, the ruling specifically establishes that it is highly unlikely, if at all possible, for an individual under the age of 16 to give informed consent to this treatment.
Influenced by that ruling, the Children’s Hospital said that “it has been decided that hormonal treatments (i.e., puberty-blocking and cross-sex hormones) will not be initiated in gender dysphoric patients under the age of 16.”
Patients between the ages of 16 and 18 may only receive treatment within clinical trial settings approved by the Ethical Review Agency/Swedish Institutional Review Board. The Children’s Hospital said it would be doing a “careful individual assessment” of patients currently receiving puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to determine whether those treatments should continue.
Those new guidelines mean the Children’s Hospital has stopped following what the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine called the “Dutch Protocol,” which it says “allows for administration of puberty blockers at age 12 (and increasingly, as young as 8-9, at the early stage of puberty known as Tanner 2), and cross-sex hormones at the age of 16.”
Even to liberal Sweden, that seemed astoundingly young.
The new protocol also makes Sweden the first country to officially deviate from World Professional Association for Transgender Health guidance, which continues to promote puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on children under age 16.
It’s hard to fathom that left-wing ideology in American culture, dragging the medical community with it, has ceded so much ground to LGBTQ activists that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are even discussed as options—let alone healthy ones—for children.
For years, medical professionals didn’t even know what puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones would do to a child. Little research was available because it had rarely been tried, tested, and evaluated, yet now the medical community—bolstered by leftist ideologues—push them.
The American Academy of Pediatrics endorses a “gender-affirming” approach that includes supporting insurance plans that include coverage for, “when appropriate, surgical interventions.”
Caution seems far more prudent when it comes to a child’s growing body, especially through puberty, but when it comes to transgenderism, prudence, research, and facts have been actively cast aside. Patience, talk therapy, and time are rarely discussed as viable options within the LGBTQ community.
On this issue, much of the medical community, and culture with it, has surrendered to the pressure of the LGBTQ lobby, which usually suggests that the only “cure” to gender dysphoric symptoms a child has is a medical transition via cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers.
Unfortunately, often the end result is akin to that of someone like Bell, whose case the Children’s Hospital guidelines alluded to (but without mentioning her name). She began a transition at the behest of medical professionals, and now lives as a biological female without breasts and regrets her decision.
Lawmakers, concerned parents, and medical professionals who seek to err on the side of caution need to come together and push for statewide bans of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children under 18 years of age.
As the new Swedish Children’s Hospital guidelines stated, the medical evidence against utilizing these treatments is compelling. They are drastic treatments that deliver irreversible, life-altering results.
In April, Arkansas became the first state to ban cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers for minors. Other states should follow suit. Children’s minds and bodies must be protected before it’s too late.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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For the notes appearing at the side of the original blog see HERE
Pictures put up on a blog sometimes do not last long. They stay up only as long as the original host keeps them up. I therefore keep archives of all the pictures that I use. The recent archives are online and are in two parts:
Archive of side pictures here
Most pictures that I use in the body of the blog should stay up throughout the year. But how long they stay up after that is uncertain. At the end of every year therefore I intend to put up a collection of all pictures used on the blog in that year. That should enable missing pictures to be replaced. The archive of last year's pictures on this blog is therefore now up. Note that the filename of the picture is clickable and reflects the date on which the picture was posted. See here
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