Category: Race and Race Relations
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What Should We Make of the Uptick in Anti-Semitic Hate Crimes?
by James A. Bacon On his first day as Governor, Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order establishing the Commission to Combat Anti-Semitism. “Our nation and our commonwealth have seen an intolerable rise in antisemitism in recent years,” said the order. “Sadly, in 2020, Virginia experienced a record number of antisemitic incidents…. Every incident of antisemitism…
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DEI For Thee But Not For Me
by James A. Bacon On Jan. 16, the University of Virginia announced that Provost Liz Magill had been chosen to serve as the President of the University of Pennsylvania. The same day, President Jim Ryan announced her replacement, Ian Baucom, dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Baucom had been widely…
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Please, Please, Make This Study Go Away!
by James A. Bacon A General Assembly-ordered study has published its findings for making housing more affordable and accessible for lower-income Virginians and minorities. One can only pray that the report is relegated to one of those proverbial shelves that collects dust, and is never to be seen again. Its recommendations, if followed, would steer…
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Imprisoned by the Past
by James A. Bacon As a parting gift to Virginia, outgoing Attorney General Mark Herring has overturned 58 opinions issued by attorneys general between 1904 and 1967 that supported racially discriminatory laws from poll taxes to the prohibition of interracial marriage. “While these discriminatory and racist laws are no longer on the books in Virginia,…
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How to Discriminate by Race… Without Admitting You’re Discriminating by Race
New board emails, texts reveal “embarrassing” politics with “bonus points” by Asra Q. Nomani In fall 2020, Fairfax County, Va., school board members said the quiet part out loud. As school district officials engineered race-based admissions changes to America’s No. 1 high school, to increase the numbers of Black and Hispanic students, school board member…
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One More Race Baiting for the Road
by James A. Bacon Days before leaving office, Attorney General Mark Herring has filed a complaint against the Town of Windsor in Isle of Wight County, charging the police department with a pattern of unlawful racial discrimination. The lawsuit cites data showing that between July 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, 42% of the traffic…
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A Broken Meritocracy
The following post has been extracted with permission from the book, An Inconvenient Minority: The Attack on Asian American Excellence and the Fight for Meritocracy. by Kenny Xu There were just too many Asians. Thomas Jefferson High School for Mathematics and Science in Arlington, Virginia, is widely considered the best high school for math and…
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Diversity Statements Snuff Out Academic Freedom
by Allan Stam Why should you care about faculty review policies at the University of Virginia and other public Virginia universities? You should care because they affect which faculty are likely to stay at a university and which faculty are likely to move on. In other words, they affect who will teach your children and…
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Enforcing the New Diversity Dogma
by James A. Bacon This month University of Virginia departments embark upon a four- to five-month “peer review” of faculty members. The stakes are high. Scores from the review will affect merit raises and prospects for promotion. New this year: twenty percent of the scores will be awarded on the basis of the faculty member’s…
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The Woke Never Rest: Public Health Edition
by James A. Bacon The forces of Wokeness are like a zombie horde. They keep coming, and coming… and coming. You might have thought that the November election that turned Virginia from Blue to Red, driven in large measure by voter revulsion to “social justice” initiatives seeping into schools, universities and every nook and cranny…
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Cop Who Shot Donovan Lynch Acted in Self Defense
by Kerry Dougherty On a balmy spring Friday night last March — the 26th to be exact — the Virginia Beach resort strip was packed with young people as an orgy of violence exploded. By the time the gunfire stopped and the crowds were dispersed, 10 people had been shot. Two were dead. And scores…
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A Mathematical Impossibility
by James A. Bacon Someone needs to teach Washington Post reporters basic arithmetic. In an article published today, writers Nick Anderson and Susan Svrluga write how Virginia’s higher-ed institutions face a “racial reckoning.” That reckoning won’t end with the purge of memorials to men who were slaveowners and segregationists, or when memorials are erected to…
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Who Decides What Ethnicity You Are?
by James A. Bacon Jasmine Anderson wants to enroll as a member of Virginia’s Pamunkey Indian Tribe. Her mother is a Pamunkey and Mattaponi, and her father a Chippewa, she says. But she’s been turned down three times, she claims, because her ancestors helped Black people in the 1860s. “It’s flat-out racism,” she claims, according…
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A Curious Coincidence Regarding Those Price-Gouging Actions
by James A. Bacon Earlier this week, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring announced a successful enforcement action against a gas station under the state’s price-gouging statute. Richmond-based 7HC Inc., doing business as 7 Heaven BP in eastern Henrico County, will be required to refund $2,858 to 152 customers for jacking up the price per gallon…
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The Intellectual Laziness of the Mainstream Media
by Kerry Dougherty How much longer will the mainstream media get away with pretending that it’s conservatives who are racist and never liberals? Perhaps you noticed. As they tried to explain away the breathtaking Republican sweep of Virginia in last week’s elections, pundits and journalists alike couldn’t stop yapping about dog whistles and white supremacy.…