Category: Race and Race Relations
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The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
Two days ago, a bureaucratic entity known as the “Special Committee to Review the Standards of Accreditation” held a teleconference to discuss, among other issues, the disproportionality of punishments meted out to students of different races in Virginia public schools. In that discussion, Leah Walker, director of equity and community for the Virginia Department of…
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Racist Nurses Need Indoctrination, Too, UVa Agrees
by Walter Smith After the widely publicized killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police last year, University of Virginia nursing students Milania Harris and Zara Alisa founded Advocates for Medical Equality. Their mission was to confront bias, bigotry and racism in healthcare. They won a Martin Luther King, Jr., UVA Health System Award for their efforts,…
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Is U.S. 460 Really a “Race Trap” for Blacks?
by James A. Bacon On April 17 The Virginian-Pilot published an article with the following headline: “Not a speed trap, a race trap: Black Virginians say they’ve been racially profiled in and around Windsor for decades.” The highly publicized traffic-stop encounter in which two white policemen pepper-sprayed Caron Nazario, a black army lieutenant, on U.S.…
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Journalism, Confirmation Bias and the Presumption of Racism
by James A. Bacon People believe what they want to believe. They seek information that affirms their worldview, and they downplay or ignore evidence that conflicts with it. Psychologists have term for this proclivity: “confirmation bias.” Confirmation bias is extremely well documented in the psychological literature. Everyone falls prey to it. It doesn’t matter how…
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Here’s What You Look Like to a Traffic Cop
by James A. Bacon After a recent incident in which two Windsor policemen stopped black army officer Caron Nazario, pepper sprayed him, and forced him out of his car and onto the ground, the driving-while-black phenomenon is back in the news. Most people would agree that the behavior of the senior officer, Joe Gutierrez, was…
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School-Discipline Statistics Straight out of an Opium Fog
by James A. Bacon Several years ago, the Obama administration, the ACLU, and social-justice groups took a look at the disparate rates at which black and white students were being suspended from school or referred to law-enforcement authorities. The notion of the school-to-prison pipeline was born, and a movement took hold — first in select…
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GOP and Virginia Election Laws, Part I
by Steve Haner Let us elevate a discussion from the comment string to the main page: Having examined Richard Hall-Sizemore’s offered examples of Virginia Republicans seeking to discourage voting in Virginia, I reject his assertion (part of a coordinated national campaign) that those bills “would result in fewer people voting.” The broadest Republican bill he…
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Justice For All
by Michael D. Purzycki I commend Dick Hall-Sizemore for his column of April 10. I agree with his outrage at the behavior of police in Windsor. There is no reason for an officer to point a gun at a person, or pepper-spray them, for anything to do with a license plate. And I agree that…
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Keydets Too Busy to Be Racist
by Mark Reed My wife and I, Lexington residents since 2016, adopt” VMI “Rats” through a local church. We’ve had the pleasure of serving these fine young people in our home every Sunday during the school year, and we’ve been fortunate to continue our relationship with them and their families as they pursue their degrees…
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Woke Privilege at the University of Richmond
by James A. Bacon Faculty and students are up in arms at the University of Richmond, demanding the renaming of buildings that are named after a president and long-time rector the segregationist era. Faculty have voted to approve a statement of “no confidence” in Rector Paul Queally and have called for him to resign. Meanwhile,…
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Two Police Officers Made Windsor Famous
by Kerry Dougherty Looks like Windsor, Virginia, is finally on the map. For all the wrong reasons. The tiny incorporated town in Isle of Wight County, just west of Suffolk, is home to about 2,758 people. It’s not a place that makes much news and the folks there probably like it that way. But a…
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Richmond’s Rage of the Woke
by Catesby Leigh Beautifully landscaped with ample medians and harmoniously lined with gracious houses in various historic styles, Richmond, Virginia’s block-paved Monument Avenue and its several statuary tributes to Confederate leaders were once recognized as a triumph of American urban design. The residential frontages served admirably as a variegated frame for the monuments, creating a…
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Where’s the Vaccine Outreach to Southwest Virginia?
by James A. Bacon It turns out that blacks and Hispanics are not the only population sub-groups in Virginia who are resisting the idea of getting vaccinated against COVID-19. So are rural, non-college-educated whites in Appalachia, reports the Roanoke Times. Hesitancy has dropped among blacks and Hispanics, but concerns among rural whites have increased that…
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Driving While Black
By Dick Hall-Sizemore If anyone ever doubted there was a need for society to address the problem of police officers stopping Black drivers, a recent event in the town of Windsor should dispel those doubts. The incident is reported in today’s on-line Virginian-Pilot. Like incidents at Virginia institutions of higher education that have been recently…
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McAuliffe Goes Full “Racist, Racist, Racist”
by James A. Bacon Here’s how you know Terry McAuliffe now thinks the Republican to beat in the race for governor this fall is no longer Amanda Chase, but Kirk Cox: He’s shifted the animus of his race-mongering fund-raising emails from the one to the other. “I will never stop fighting for the right to…