Category Archives: Race and race relations

Did Southern Poverty Law Center and James Madison Museum Team Up to Put ‘Anti-racist’ Curriculum in Virginia Schools?

Posted on March 27, 2023 by | 33 comments

by Brenda Hafera

The Albemarle County school district in Virginia has been subjected to two lawsuits related to its implementation of an “anti-racist” curriculum, which one parent said was “incubating a culture rooted in grievance, discord, and victimhood.” But parents in the school district near Charlottesville may be alarmed to discover that it is not just the school board that is working against them.

Powerful political organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center and one of Virginia’s own beloved historic sites may be involved. The Albemarle County anti-racist curriculum appears to have originated at President James Madison’s home, Montpelier, an historic site that has ties to the SPLC.

Montpelier, which is owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and operated by the Montpelier Foundation, has been reconstructed and converted into a museum. While some of Madison’s accomplishments are discussed during part of the main house tour and through a brief video in the visitor center, there are currently no exhibits focused on his importance as the Father of the Constitution, according to Montpelier’s website.

Staff members have also reportedly said that they have no interest in honoring a “dead white president and a dead white president’s Constitution.”
Continue reading →

33 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Race and race relations, Uncategorized, Virginia history

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Arlington CPS Seizes Baby Girl Over Tylenol

Posted on March 23, 2023 by | 9 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani and Debra Tisler

Late Wednesday afternoon, in Courtroom 4B of Arlington County’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, Sean Jackson beamed widely as a judge granted him and his parents, Carlos Makle and Kim Jackson-Makle, joint custody of Sean’s baby girl, Amoria, instead of relegating her to foster care or instability with a mother struggling with drug addiction.

Kim later said, “Hallelujah,” thinking the nightmare they had been living for over a year with the County’s inept Division of Child Protective Services was finally over. But it was just about to begin all over again. Arlington County’s Child Protective Services was about to dispatch a social worker to an apartment in Arlington to seize Amoria’s second cousin, London, also a cute baby girl, from her mother, Paris Adams.

Why?

Over an alleged missed dosage of Tylenol Wednesday morning that the baby wasn’t even required to get, per doctor’s orders, but was rather prescribed “as needed.” With so much written in the news about public policy, legislation and politics, this story is disturbing because of the sheer inhumanity of bureaucrats operating with complete disregard for actual child welfare or a mother’s heartache.

First, a rewind.
Continue reading →

9 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Courts and law, Demographics, Efficiency in government, Government Oversight, Individual liberties, Parental Rights, Race and race relations, Social services, Uncategorized, Virginia Law

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The Left’s New DEI Bureaucracies at Virginia’s Colleges and Universities – What Do They Do All Day?

Posted on March 21, 2023 by | 106 comments

Dean Stephanie Rowley, UVa School of Education and Human Development

by James C. Sherlock

We are left to imagine what Dean of the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development Stephanie Rowley would possibly do without the assistance of LaRon Scott, her Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

How in heaven’s name without Mr. Scott could she keep reactionaries like Catherine Bradshaw, Nancy Deutsch, Scott Gest and Stephanie van Hover and the Center on Race, Public Education, and the South and Youth-Nex Center to Promote Youth Development from preaching white supremacist doctrine and organizing torchlit marches on NAACP offices?

I am not singling out UVa for special criticism. I just know a lot more of the details about my alma mater than other schools. Virginia Tech reportedly has a very aggressive program.

Virginia has 41 public colleges and universities, so we are paying for a lot of DEI personnel.  UVa alone has 84 DEI staffers.  Let’s estimate 1,000 statewide.

The point is that we have to try to figure out why modern American universities in 2021 suddenly needed large and growing DEI bureaucracies. And what they do all day?

And if we need them, how many is enough?

The left had won the war in academia before DEI. It would be unkind to think the DEI apparatchiks are formed as a paramilitary wing to execute enemy survivors.

So, if not that, what do they do? Continue reading →

106 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Governance, Race and race relations

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Virginia is the Future

Posted on March 9, 2023 by | 27 comments

by Arthur Bloom

I want to tell you why I like The 1619 Project. It has nothing to do with the history, all of which is known to any well-educated Virginian. Of course, these things are fundamentally propagandistic exercises, any leftist worth his salt would tell you that too. But it was symbolically very important. Here’s what it did: The New York Times shifted the locus and timeline of the American Founding from Plymouth Bay to Virginia, where it belongs.

It’s a common gripe of Virginians that when most Americans today think of the Founding, they tend to think of pilgrims in black-and-white, with buckles on their shoes, even though we were there first. The 1619 Project is helping to rectify this situation. I’m holding out for a 1607 Project. Give it time, the actual Jamestown fort wasn’t even rediscovered until around 25 years ago.

The New York Times was engaged in some powerful voodoo, not to be trifled with — if you look at everything through the lens of race you won’t see it — but it’s very real. Catholic education molded Nikole Hannah-Jones, and she went on to strike a hammer blow against Yankee cultural power. The Empire of Guadalupe rises.

This was necessary, because if the affirmative action lawsuit at Harvard is successful, Harvard will become even more Chinese, and its prestige will fall. Our people won’t go there anymore. That’s why I’m rooting for Conservative, Inc.’s devious plan to turn Harvard into a Chinese enclave, it’ll be the greatest thing they’ve ever done. These two things are mortal blows to the cultural prestige of Massachusetts. And as Massachusetts falls, Virginia rises.
Continue reading →

27 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Civil Rights, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Economic development, Freedom, Individual liberties, Labor & workforce, Media, Political Influence, Politics, Race and race relations, Uncategorized, Virginia history

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Black Students Disappearing from Classrooms Disproportionately in Ten of our Largest School Divisions

Posted on March 8, 2023 by | 173 comments

by James C. Sherlock

For those who support local control of schools no matter what, I will offer you a “what” to consider.

For those who are nervous about even discussing why some jurisdictions in Virginia have failed to ensure “an educational program of high quality is established and continually maintained” for Black children, that works for Black children no matter their circumstances, you are reading the wrong article.

Twenty percent of Virginians are Black, as were 22% of our public school students in 2022.

Virginia lost 4% of its Black public school student registrations in the last three years, compared to 2.6% of all students including Black students. Black chronic absenteeism statewide jumped from 13.1% to over 25%. All student chronic absenteeism including Black students was 20%.

Ten jurisdictions with at least 2,000 Black students at the start of that period lost higher percentages of their Black students than the state average. Some much higher.

Those ten lost 8,668 Black student registrations. The entire state lost 10,674. Chronic absenteeism of black students in those jurisdictions increased in line with statewide increases.

Without even bringing up school quality, this is unacceptable if we care about the futures of Black kids.

We have to get them in school. I say “we” because it will be a long-term disaster for both these children and Virginia if we don’t.

Lots of different things have to be done to get them there, which is where school quality comes in. But I will share some of the raw numbers. Continue reading →

173 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Civil Rights, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Government Oversight, Race and race relations

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UVa’s Lawn Applications Down… Again. Why?

Posted on March 1, 2023 by | 66 comments

Photo credit: The University of Virginia

by James A. Bacon

Forty-seven University of Virginia students have been offered a room on the Lawn for the 2023-24 academic year. They were selected from a pool of 152 applicants, reports The Cavalier Daily. The number of applications was down from 189 last year and 221 two years ago.

Why the decline?

There was a time when residence on the Lawn was a coveted honor. Does the fall-off in applications reflect a sentiment among UVa students that life on the Lawn is less of a privilege than it once was? Are students today more likely to find the living conditions — such as the necessity to walk outside to reach a bathroom — too primitive for comfort? Alternatively, do some students believe the Lawn selection is stacked and see no point in applying?

The Cavalier Daily does not ask the question. Those of us who are not part of the selection process are left to speculate.

Here’s a clue: the newspaper article reports the demographic make-up of the Lawn residents. The collection and dissemination of such data reflects upon the priorities of those involved in the selection process. As the old saying goes, you manage what you measure. Continue reading →

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Posted in Race and race relations

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Gov. Youngkin’s Latest Event Undermines Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Attack

Posted on February 27, 2023 by | 88 comments

by Tyler O’Neil

Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, on Tuesday, joined fourth graders at Fort Monroe outside Newport News, Virginia, hosting an event teaching about the history of the fort, where Black slaves fled during the Civil War to become freemen at what became known as “Freedom’s Fortress.”

The Youngkin event came two days after Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times’ “The 1619 Project,” claimed that Youngkin “does not want children to learn that history.”

“The 1619 Project” author spoke on Feb. 19 at the McLean Community Center in a one-hour speech for which the Fairfax County Public Library system paid her $29,350 and the community center paid her an additional $6,000. She acknowledged that her project rewrites history and urged her audience to support reparations to Blacks for slavery and to “subvert” America’s economic system, which she claimed is beset by institutional racism. She also suggested that the Confederates understood the Constitution accurately, establishing the United States as a “slave nation.”

Hannah-Jones spoke about the central role Virginia plays in the history of American slavery, stating that the “entire legal architecture of what is race, who’s black, who’s not, whose children will be born enslaved, whose children will be born free, it all is created in Virginia.”

“Massive resistance to Brown v. Board, the strategy is born here, and yet you have a governor who does not want children to learn that history even as they still sit in segregated classrooms,” The 1619 Project author claimed. She has previously criticized Youngkin’s efforts to remove critical race theory (a lens encouraging students to view America as institutionally racist) from school curricula, saying he aims to provide a “sanitized” history for “White kids.”

Yet two days after Hannah-Jones attacked Youngkin, the governor was teaching Virginia’s children about slavery, according to footage of the Fort Monroe event obtained by The Daily Signal.

“We just covered in that lesson over 400 years of history, and it’s really important history, starting in 1619, where the first Africans were brought to this country as slaves, and it was a terrible, terrible, terrible beginning,” the governor said after Jess Meadows, education programs manager at the Fort Monroe Authority, led students through a lesson.
Continue reading →

88 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Culture wars, Education (K-12), Race and race relations, Uncategorized, Virginia history

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“Social Justice” Comes for Henrico’s Gifted Program

Posted on February 22, 2023 by | 38 comments

by James A. Bacon

Here we go again. The Richmond Times-Dispatch is using “statistical disparities” as evidence of racial bias in Henrico County schools.

Under pressure from federal authorities to address racial disparities, Henrico County is endeavoring to enroll more students from minorities in the county’s “gifted” programs. States the article: “The Richmond Times-Dispatch reviewed annual reports on the demographics of the Henrico students identified as gifted and compared them with the division’s enrollment demographics…. As of the 2021-22 school year, Asian and white students were 4.9 times and 3.5 times likelier than Black students to be determined gifted.”

Why does such a disparity exist? Black parents in Henrico, wrote the RTD, claim that Black students are not being identified as gifted due to behavioral issues, according to an external audit of the program.

The article leads with a story of a bright biracial lad whose teachers acknowledged that he was mathematically gifted but did not admit him into Henrico’s gifted program on the grounds of immaturity. He acted out because he was bored by remote learning during the COVID shutdowns, said his mother, Amanda Reisner. “That didn’t set right by me. Maturity has nothing to do with giftedness.”

Reisner’s remark raises an interesting question of whether students (of whatever race) should be denied admittance to a gifted program if they are unable to conform to expected behavioral standards. But let’s set that aside and focus on how the RTD uses statistics to make admissions into the gifted program a racial issue. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12), Race and race relations, Uncategorized

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The Players and the Dispute in the High Level Cage Match at UVa – Can a Racism Charge be Far Behind?

Posted on February 21, 2023 by | 20 comments

By James C. Sherlock

Loren Lomasky,
Cory Professor of Political Philosophy, Policy & Law.       Courtesy UVa.

I read yesterday morning on BR “Tragedies in Charlottesville” by UVa professor Loren Lomasky, who wrote:

It is reasonable to judge that in either the longer or shorter version of the history of the university, no single individual has done it as grievous a harm as the man who now serves as its chief academic officer.

Among the few propositions on which Loren Lomasky and provost Ian Baucom agree is that the University of Virginia would be better off with exactly one of them gone.

Wow! Cage match!

I guess you could say that Dr. Lomasky has had enough.

He opposes, obviously strongly, Provost Baucom’s strange intervention into academics school-wide after the November shooting of three young men at the University.

We also suspect the fight might reflect the history between the two men. Baucom was Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences during most of Professor Lomasky’s tenure there.

Libertarians like Dr. Lomasky seek, in his case as a career, to minimize encroachments on and violations of individual liberties and to maximize personal autonomy and political freedom.

They are believers in personal agency and taking responsibility for ones actions. They insist on academic freedom.

Nice to see the professor, who advocates all of that, call out the University of Virginia leadership in the person of provost Ian Baucom, who emphatically does not advocate any of it.

Not a word about that story yet that I can find in the mainstream media that cover Virginia.  Fair enough.  Perhaps we will see it tomorrow.

Nothing in The Cavalier Daily yet, which does,however, offer a riveting story pressing for free menstrual products in the dorms.

But Professor Lomasky also called out the DEI bureaucracy at UVa in the strongest terms.

I have no doubt that they have opened a “case.” (Update.  I understand that Prof. Lomasky has been the subject of at least three investigations by the EOCR division of DEI).

Continue reading →

20 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Ethics, Freedom, Individual liberties, Race and race relations

Another Social-Justice Narrative Circles Down the Drain

Posted on February 14, 2023 by | 64 comments

by James A. Bacon

Now that Democrats have de-confirmed Virginia’s state health commissioner, Colin Greene, they have effectively set a new qualification for the office: it is no longer permissible to express skepticism that “systemic racism” is, in the words of Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, “a public health crisis.”

Ironically, only a few days after senate Democrats sent Greene packing, Old Dominion University has published a graph in its 2022 State of the Commonwealth report that dismembers any idea of systemic racism playing a role in the biggest public health crisis of our generation — the COVID pandemic.  The graph above, taken from the study, compares the percentage of COVID-related deaths for each race to its percentage of Virginia’s population.

African Americans accounted for 23% of COVID deaths through October 22 compared to only 19.2% of the state’s population — a four-percentage point gap.

But it turns out that Whites accounted for 68.1% of COVID-related deaths compared to 60.8% of the population — an eight-percentage point gap. Is that evidence of systemic anti-White racism? Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

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School Discipline in Virginia – Part 3 — A Sharp Policy Turn to the Left after 2009

Posted on February 1, 2023 by | 13 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Here is the information from a slide briefing to the Loudon County school board on February 6, 2013.

“Experimentally.”

The slide itself was actually produced in 2008 by pbis.org. It seems like a bad joke now, but that was how it was presented.

Not a word about race there, but there surely is in a presentation linked by that organization now. Risk index and risk ratios? With cartoon figures of Black children? Seriously?

Did I mention that Newport News Public Schools is rated fluent in PBIS by the state ed school consortium that trains and rates PBIS schools? They probably would take issue with all of those promises.

As would most of the working staff of schools across Virginia that use PBIS.

So how did we get here? Continue reading →

13 Comments

Posted in Attendance, Discipline and disorder, Education - Early Childhood, Education (K-12), Race and race relations, teacher education

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Fairfax County Officials Pay Big Bucks to Another Controversial Author

Posted on January 27, 2023 by | 81 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani

Fairfax County Public Library officials are paying controversial writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of The 1619 Project, $35,350 for a one-hour lecture on Feb. 19 at the McLean Community Center, with a price tag that amounts to $589 per minute, according to a copy of the contract obtained by the Fairfax County Times.

Fairfax County Public Library, a county government agency, is paying $29,350 of the  total fee and the McLean Community Center is paying $6,000, according to Jessica Hudson, library director.

Local taxpayers are raising issues with the expenditure, coupled with the $22,500 that the Fairfax County Library paid for divisive author Ibram X. Kendi for a 60-minute virtual discussion last month. The combined amount to both speakers comes to $57,850, or about the annual starting salary of $54,421 for a librarian in Fairfax County. This past August, library officials announced they were curtailing operating hours because of “ongoing staff recruitment challenges.”

“By my estimates, the Fairfax County Public Library is using over $60,000 in taxpayer funds to host Ibram Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones as speakers,” said William Denk, a local resident who first alerted the Fairfax County Times to the bill, after discovering the fee. “I would like to see the Board of Supervisors reach out to Kendi and Hannah-Jones to ask that they return these funds to Fairfax County to help our local homeless population.” Continue reading →

81 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Race and race relations, Uncategorized, Virginia history

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School Discipline, Part III: Reframing Discipline in Virginia and Considerations for Making New Policy

Posted on January 20, 2023 by | 39 comments

by Matthew Hurt and Kathleen Smith

Reframing School Discipline

The Student Behavior and Administrative Response (SBAR) data collection was implemented in response to reframing school discipline from that of criminal, punishment, and exclusionary practices from 1991-2020 to that of restorative, intervention, and inclusionary practices in 2021 and beyond. The SBAR reports on behaviors that impede academic progress, behaviors related to school operations, relationship behaviors, behaviors that present a safety concern, behaviors that endanger self or others, and behaviors identified as persistently dangerous.

The SBAR records responses to discipline such as class removals, suspensions, expulsions with or without instructional services, and loss of privileges; behavioral interventions such as parents contacts, referrals, restorative practices; and instructional supports such as changes in placement, virtual programs, and support with and without face-to-face teacher contact.

The collection will always have inherent problems. Some data are clear: suspension or expulsion. Some data are not clear: support with or without face-to-face teacher contact. What if that contact was made by an administrator? Would removal for the last five minutes of class period be considered a removal? The reporting individual could inadvertently make the data very unreliable.

A cursory literature review demonstrated that “reframing discipline” occurred not only in Virginia, but throughout most educational institutions and juvenile justice organizations. Tight discipline policies in the late 1990s and early 2000s were replaced by less rigid or loose policies as early as 2010. After expulsions and suspensions catapulted, deterrent policies that used police, cameras, metal detectors, and locker searches were replaced by progressive policies that allow for a continuum of responses, prevention, intervention, supports, and consequences that foster positive behaviors.

Unintended Consequences of Both Tight and Loose Policies

Tight discipline policies do not allow for mitigation. The teacher uses minimal discretion for enforcement of rules. Breaking a rule, no matter the circumstance, is followed by a prescribed consequence. Loose discipline policies allow for more teacher and principal latitude over managing students. Loose discipline policies allow them to navigate the circumstance and use their professional judgment and expertise to decide on how much or how little  consequence should be received.

Our efforts to address disproportionality through looser policies that allow more educator discretion and at the same time provide better reporting and hold schools accountable may have inadvertently caused additional problems. Continue reading →

39 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Discipline and disorder, Education (K-12), Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

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Leave Arlington’s Confederate Memorial Intact

Posted on January 19, 2023 by | 52 comments

Cherry trees bloom in Jackson Circle around the Confederate Monument in Section 16 of Arlington National Cemetery, April 7, 2015, in Arlington, Va. The Confederate Monument was unveiled June 4, 1914, according to the ANC website. (Arlington National Cemetery photo by Rachel Larue)

by Phil Leigh

Arlington National Cemetery’s Confederate Memorial should remain intact. Although four of the first seven cotton states arguably seceded from the union over slavery, they did not cause the Civil War. They had no purpose to overthrow the federal government. After forming the seven state Confederacy in February 1861, they promptly sent commissioners to Washington to “preserve the most friendly relations” with the truncated Union. Instead of letting the cotton states depart in peace, the North’s resolve to force them back into the Union caused the war.

With half of the military-aged white men of the eventual 11-state Confederacy, the four states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas only joined the original seven after President Lincoln called upon them to provide volunteers to force the first seven back into the Union. In response to a telegram from Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin Stanton directing that Virginia provide her quota of such volunteers, Governor John Letcher replied that his state would not comply and concluded: “You have chosen to inaugurate Civil War….”

On the eve of the war, Northerners and Southerners differed on their relative loyalties to the federal and state governments. According to historians Edward Channing and Eva Moore, Northerners had

the general opinion that the Union was sovereign, and the states were part of it…. The idea that the people of the United States formed one nation had been reinforced by the coming of immigrants from abroad. These people had no conception of a ‘state’ or a sentimental attachment to a ‘state.’ They had come to America to better their condition….

By mostly settling in the North, they reinforced the Northerners’ belief that they owed their loyalty to the Union first and only secondarily to the state. Continue reading →

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Posted in Culture wars, Government Oversight, Political Influence, Race and race relations, Transparency, Uncategorized, Virginia history, Virginians at War

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Part II: School Discipline, Virginia Data and Virginia’s Disproportionality Concerns

Posted on January 19, 2023 by | 34 comments

This is the second of a three-part series on school discipline. The authors present information and provide discussion questions for the audience to respond. We hope the discussion will further an understanding of the complexity of school discipline and safe and orderly schools within the context of the presented data.

by Matthew Hurt and Kathleen Smith

Findings from Virginia Data

Data on school discipline are abundant, but not always reliable. The reasons are many. Overall, data are reported by infraction to the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) and to the Office of Civil Rights by each school division. One kind of infraction in one school division may be deemed another kind of infraction by another division. For example, using a curse word while talking to a teacher could be considered disrespect or a threat, depending on who is entering the data in the system. Although the VDOE has attempted to clarify the language over time, it still may not be reliable. For this reason, the data used herein refer to only a few data points of what is reported to the Office of Civil Rights by divisions for each school every two years in 2015-2016 and 2017-2018. This data can be found here. Some data are highlighted below.

Congruency Matters in Learning and Discipline Data

Congruency means that percent of total of a discipline indicator should be similar or equal to the enrollment percent of total. In other words, in 2017-2018, if 22 percent of students are Black, then 22 percent of Black students should have been suspended. In 2017-2018, 51 percent of the total number of suspensions were of Black students. This means that the Black population’s results are not congruent to the actual percent of the Black students in the total population. Continue reading →

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Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Demographics, Discipline and disorder, Education (K-12), Government Oversight, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

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