Category: Race and Race Relations
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Driving While Black Redux
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Some participants on this blog have voiced skepticism regarding the claim that Black drivers are more likely than white drivers to be pulled over by law enforcement. Jim Bacon even went to great lengths to demonstrate that it was difficult to determine the race of a driver in a moving vehicle. These…
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Nine Years Later, Bon Secours Still Hasn’t Made Good on Promises
by James A. Bacon In October 2012, the City of Richmond negotiated a $40 million deal with the Washington Redskins and the Bon Secours Virginia Health System to build a Redskins training camp in the city. The complex deal had many moving parts. To make it happen, the city gave Bon Secours a long-term lease…
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Another Sign of the Education Apocalypse
by James A. Bacon Tom Allison, a staff analyst with the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) has uncovered quite the conundrum. How does the Commonwealth reverse the plummeting rate at which low-income students are completing the Free Application for Federal Student Assistance (FAFSA) form? The free-fall in applications, which are necessary to…
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Uh, Oh, Now Conservation Easements Are Racist
by James A. Bacon There’s a lot of talk in the environmental community about “environmental justice,” but here in Virginia, nearly all of the $1.8 billion spent on land conservation over the past two decades mostly benefited well-to-do white people. That observation doesn’t come from me (although it sounds like something I would say). It…
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VMI, Media Bias, and Lies by Omission
by Larry Houseworth Charlie Beckett of the London School of Economics addressed journalism’s turn to emotionalism in a talk given at the 2015 Science Festival in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England (“How journalism is turning emotional and what that might mean for news.”) He stated, “the value of objective journalism is the idea that journalism can…
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More “Not CRT” Indoctrination at JMU
by James A. Bacon Gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe calls the outcry over Critical Race Theory in Virginia public schools as a “right-wing conspiracy.” Governor Ralph Northam terms it “a dog whistle that Republicans are using to frighten people.” Defining CRT narrowly, as an abstract legal theory dating back to the 1930s, Virginia media outlets from…
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2020 Census: 8.2% of Virginians Classify Themselves as Multiracial
The share of Virginians who identify as more than one race nearly tripled during the 2010s to 8.2% of the population, reports the Virginia Public Access Project. Some of the surge was driven by demographic trends, but some might be attributed to modifications of the Census reform, which was designed to capture more nuance in…
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Gloucester School Board Nixes CRT
by Carol J. Bova The Gloucester County Public School Board spelled out its opposition to indoctrination or teaching that encourages hate and division in Gloucester public schools in its Tuesday meeting. The Board voted 6 to 0 for a resolution opposing Critical Race Theory in their school district’s curriculum. The resolution printed in the Mathews…
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Bacon Bits: Invisible No Longer
“We are invisible.” Albemarle County resident Diana Kim, who has Korean ancestry, thinks Virginia public schools don’t teach enough Asian-American history — little beyond the contribution of Chinese laborers to building the trans-continental railroad. Now she’s petitioning the General Assembly to pass legislation requiring more Asian-American history in Virginia schools, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. “The…
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Kendi Blames Capitalism, Prescribes Discrimination
By Steve Haner The book was one the local librarian chose to display on the new acquisitions shelf, my curiosity was high, and by all accounts some leaders in Virginia’s educational establishment are taken with and listening to the author. So I read Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist.” I will largely let…
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The Left Is Lying: CRT Is Peddling Hate in Our Schools
by Elizabeth Schultz After claiming endlessly that Critical Race Theory (CRT) does not exist, or that it is not being ‘taught’ in schools, the two largest teachers’ unions – the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, funded with teachers’ dues, – finally admitted they support it. In fact, AFT is so committed to CRT that…
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UVa and Tech Are Leaders in Building Massive Diversity Bureaucracies
by James A. Bacon The University of Virginia and Virginia Tech have the second and fifth largest bureaucracies devoted to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion among 65 large public universities studied by the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy. UVa has 94 DEI personnel, while Tech has 83, according to Jay P. Greene and James D.…
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The Border Crisis Is Here, Virginia
by James A. Bacon Off the top of your head, which states would you expect to be the top destinations for illegal immigrants? California, of course. Texas. Florida. New York. Would you expect Virginia to be in the Top 10? By at least one metric — the number of pending immigration cases — Virginia is…
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Nuking the Schools
by James A. Bacon The COVID-19-related shutdowns of K-12 schools across the country have been educational disaster of historic proportions, according to data published in a new McKinsey & Company report. McKinsey doesn’t use the phrase “disaster of historic proportions,” but how else can one describe a response to the pandemic that left students on…
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Hmmm… Implementing DE&I Might Be Trickier Than It Sounds
Here follows the transcript of an entirely fictional videoconference between University of Virginia President Jim Ryan and his Executive Cabinet. The author is not intending to be satirical. He is illuminating the issues that any honest effort to implement a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion agenda will encounter. — JAB by Jon Jewett President Ryan: I…