Imagine, too, if people with all the opinions about racism
were actually required at an academic forum to have a clue of what racism is:
In which academic discipline is this circular, naive, deer-caught-in-the-headlights response to a basic and urgent question considered insightful or excellent?
A national culture exempting this (which, sadly, is typical of him) from judgment is unintentionally racist itself. pic.twitter.com/n493NpjFmx
Ibram X. Kendi is not a top Critical Race Theory theorist,
yet is the inventor of anti-racism, which is linked to CRT. And in the video to
which McWhorter links, Kendi states "racism, I would define it, as a
collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are
substantiated by racist ideas."
After members of the audience understandably laugh
nervously, Kendi continues
Sure- a collection of racist policies that lead to racial
inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas. And anti-racism is pretty
simple using the same terms. Anti-racism is a collection of anti-racist
policies leading to racial- anyone want to take a guess?- equity that are
substantiated by anti-racist ideas.
Such splendid double-talk from the author of "How to be
an Antiracist" should not go unnoticed.
In a mere 22 words- four of them "I would define it"- Kendi
uses racism, racial, or racist four times. He might as well have been a second
grade English/language arts teacher giving his students an example of how not
to define a word.
No one is more closely identified with "anti-racism" than the former Ibram Henry Rogers- and he cannot define racism. However, the problem is not him, but rather the propensity to describe concepts in whatever ways are most advantageous at the time, devaluing the language while elevating race to an undeserved status.
In the video below, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin notes
"this is a big legal cause of conservatives in America, which is telling
religious instittuions and religios people that they don't hve to follow the
laws that everyone else has to follow." In a case which was decided
unanimously, and which Toobin and CNN
Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic thus caution was probably narrowly tailored
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously condemned
Philadelphia’s decision to terminate a long-standing contract with a Catholic
social services agency over its refusal to consider same-sex married couples as
potential foster parents.
The justices agreed that that the city’s 2018 move to end
its relationship with Catholic Social Services, which had cited its religious
beliefs about marriage in refusing to work with LGBTQ couples, violated its
constitutional rights to free religious expression.
The city may have been hoisted by its own petard because the
Chief Justice, who wrote the opinion, contended
that because the city allowed some exceptions to the
non-discrimination clause standard in all of its contracts, it must provide one
in this case.
But the court’s majority sidestepped those larger questions
by deciding the case on specific language in Philadelphia’s contracts with
foster screening agencies that grants the city’s Commissioner of Human Services
discretion to grant exceptions to the non-discrimination rules.
The city maintained that the matter was moot because,
despite the language in the contract, no exemptions had ever been made.
The decision had not yet been read by the CNN panelists as
of the airing of the segment. However, Biskupic recognizes "it's another
step, and I'm sure it's another step no matter what the legal reasoning is,
because we've seen this pattern over time, to allowing more exemptions for
religious groups from general laws." Toobin explains
You know, you can write these things as narrowly as you
want. But the message that it sends by cases like this and by the results in
this case, no matter what the words the Chief Justice used are, is that
religious organizations- and it's almost always Christian and it's usually
Catholic organziations- do not have to follow the laws that everybody else has
to follow. They can excuse themselves when they have religious objections and
that is a message that is being sent loud and clear, whether it's holding
religious services during Covid, whether it is fulfilling the requirements to
pay for contraception for employees, whether it is baking a cake for a same-sex
wedding, that you can get out of obligations that are imposed on everyone else
if you have a religious objection.... We should expect lots more cases in this
direction.
Tradition and common sense be damned, "religious liberty," it appears, no longer applies primarily to
worshipping as one chooses. It's now about a claim of religious
privilege, a sort of "get out of jail card" for religious
organizations, or for any organization or person who claims that a requirement
violates his (or its) its religious principle.
When "religious liberty" is stretched beyond its original
meaning, judges increasingly infer that equal justice under the law is an
un-Christian value. Christianity deserves better.
From an economics professor and chairperson of President
Obama's Council of Economic Advisers:
The federal minimum wage has been cut 2% in inflation-adjusted terms so far this year. It has been cut 20% in inflation-adjusted terms since it was last increased in 2009. It would seem worthwhile to get back to the discussion about how to increase it.
The Economic Policy Institute has found "from 1979 to
2019, net productivity rose 72.2 percent, while the hourly pay of typical
workers essentially stagnated—increasing only 17.2 percent over 40 years (after
adjusting for inflation)." Dean Baker calculates that if the minimum wage had
grown at the same rate as prodcutivity from 1968 to 2020, it would
currently be more than $24 an hour
Low wage employees often are called upon to perform duties,
sometimes even dangerous ones, which should be the responsibility of
management. That came to mind with an incident in Georgia, in which the
perpetrator and the Deputy Sheriff now are hospitalized in stable condition.
However
DeKalb County police said Laquitta Willis, 41, was the
victim in Monday's shooting at Big Bear grocery store in Decatur, just outside
of Atlanta.
Willis was killed after an argument over a face mask, the
Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.
The GBI said Victor Lee Tucker Jr., 30, of Palmetto,
Georgia, entered the store shortly after 1 p.m. and "got into an argument
with a cashier about his face mask" during checkout.
Tucker left the store without making a purchase but
immediately returned, the GBI said. He walked directly up to the cashier, later
identified as Willis, pulled out a handgun and shot her, authorities said.
Tucker then exchanged gunfire with a DeKalb County sheriff's
deputy who was working security at the store, the GBI said.
DeKalb County Sheriff Melody Maddox said the reserve deputy
was a 30-year veteran of the force prior to retiring and joining the reserve
unit.
Tucker was arrested by two responding DeKalb County police
officers "as he was attempting to crawl out the front door of the
supermarket," according to the GBI.
With Democrats holding only a very slim majority in both the
United States House of Representatives and the Senate, prospects for an
increase in the minimum wage are slim. I don't know how much Laquitta Willis
was paid, but, with the minimum wage in Georgia of $7.25 an
hour, it probably wasn't a whole lot. Perhaps something dubbed the "Laquitta Willis
Fair Wage Act" would change that. Coming out (presumably) of a pandemic,
it's the least we could do.
The Hall of Fame New York Yankee shortstop and terrible Yankee broadcaster Phil Rizzuto was known in his latter career for a signature phrase. Were he still alive, he wouldn't- but should- be shouting "holy cow!"
Recognizing the horrors of the Holocaust is obtaining a mere middle school grasp of history. However, Greene does grasp what precious few public figures do- an understanding of the meaning of apology.
Not the fake apology. Declaring that one is issuing an "apology" does not constitute an apology. "I regret the statement I made" may have been prompted by the realization that the remark harmed the reputation of the speaker. "I apologize for" or "I regret" the "hurt this has caused" suggests that the problem lies not with the statement or the speaker, but with the target, who was overly sensitive.
Instead, Representative Greene can be seen in the embedded video below saying
One of the best lessons that my father always taught me was when you make a mistake, you should own it. And I have made a mistake and it's reallly bothered me for a couple of weeks now and I want to own it.
And I have made a mistake is the essence of an apology. It means "I should not have said what I said" and is unequivocal. Further, "I want to own it" implies that it was her mistake and her mistake alone.
In that same vein, at the conclusion of this portion of her remarks, Greene added "I believe that if we're going to lead, we need to be able to lead in a way where if we've messed up, it's very important to say we're sorry." That was a mere cherry on top of already having admitted a mistake, one which was her responsibility alone.
Greene, already removed from the committees on which she served and facing possible censure, may not have been sincere. Neither do we know in any instance whether someone who has given what the media rushes to call an "apology"- and is usually not one- is sincere.
We know only that Marjorie Taylor Greene has done what too few individuals in the arena do- she apologized. She is still a dangerous, extreme right-winger and someone who puts the reprehensible in "reprehensible." But she at least has issued an actual apology for a religiously inappopriate remark, something Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and a few other figures have failed to do.
Many Republican governors have
taken SARS-CoV-2 lightly and tried to keep businesses "open,"
public health be damned. In Democratic states, supplemented by the two reasonable
cable news networks, individuals were vigorously encouraged to maintain a
six-foot distance from persons not of their household, to be outdoors when
possible, and (above all) to wear masks. Notwithstanding some concern over a few extreme instances, there was little emphasis on not
socializing- rather, the message was "socialize, but take
precautions."
In some states 70% were deemed “essential workers” and given no protection. Far in excess of the rest of the world. They weren’t socializing. They were serving everybody else.
At 1:18 of the embedded video, Slavitt can be seen noting
There are a couple of different things. One is that the
people who for so long lived so close to the edge that don't have a great safety
net, that don't have great health insurance, but they're forced to
work day in, day out to serve us. They're growing crops, they're delivering
food to our warehousese. They're working in grocery stores, they're delivering
food to our door. All of these people are at risk all of the time....
They were working in home improvement stores, Walgreen's,
CVS, Rite-Aid and other chain drugstores, and even in small pharmacies and the
other "mom 'n pop" stores which stayed open. They worked in banks, in doctor's offices, in
meat packing plants, and elsewhere. Some
were handymen who had to keep working. They kept the country from falling
apart, and a sizeable minority even now are making less than the $15 per hour (mostly)
GOP legislators want to deny them.
And in public conveyances, lest we forget the people such as
Jason Hargrove (who) was behind the wheel of a bus in
Detroit when he said a passenger began to cough. The middle-aged woman let
loose four or five times without covering her mouth, he said, and watching her
do this — at the same time Michigan was under a state of emergency for the
coronavirus — got him so upset, he felt compelled to vent his frustrations in a
video afterward.
"I'm mad right about now because that s*** was uncalled
for. I'm trying to be the professional that they want me to be, and I kept my
mouth closed," he said, voice breaking with emotion. "I kept my mouth
closed, but it's at some point in time we've got to draw the line and say
enough is enough."
Now, nearly two weeks after he recorded the video, which
viewers shared widely on Facebook Live, Hargrove himself has died of COVID-19.
The Amalgamated Transit Union confirmed his death in a tweet posted Thursday.
There are tens of thousands of people such as Jason Hargrove
who should still be alive. Some among us, however, would not make the small sacrifices necessary.
After the Vice President of the USA was interviewed on June
8, news reports typically emphasized one particular exchange with Lester Holt (seen beginning at 3:57 of the video below). Administration officials
acknowledged it was a sound bite that would likely stick
with Harris as she continues to confront the issue at the southern border.
The response came during an interview with NBC's Lester Holt
that aired Tuesday in which Harris was pressed about the fact that she hasn't
yet visited the US-Mexico border.
"At some point, you know, we are going to the
border," Harris said in the interview. "We've been to the border. So
this whole, this whole, this whole thing about the border. We've been to the
border. We've been to the border."
Holt responded: "You haven't been to the border."
"I, and I haven't been to Europe. And I mean, I don't
-- I don't understand the point that you're making," Harris said with a
laugh. She added: "I'm not discounting the importance of the border."
Of course, Harris assignment is not Europe but rather, NBC News learned, from "a senior Administration official, " "both
curbing the current flow of migrants and implementing a long-term strategy that
addresses the root causes of migration." Nor has she been at the border,
which she acknowledged when confronted by Holt after the V.P.had twice maintained
"we've been to the border."
However, the more telling remark in the long run may prove
to be one which Harris made earlier in the interview. At 1:26, Holt can be seen
asking "And so the question has come up and you've heard it here and
you'll hear it again, I'm sure, is why not visit the border? Why not see what
Americans are seeing in this crisis?"
Listen very closely because Harris actually responded (without the emphasis below)
Well, we aren't going to the border. We have to deal with
what's happening at the border. There's no question about that. That's not a
debatable point. But we have to understand that there's a reason that people
are arriving at our border and ask what is that reason and then identify the
problem so we can fix it.
The more substantive takeaway is that Harris is narrowing
her mission, from addressing both the short-term problem (or crisis) and the
long-term problem, to merely the latter. While she may have meant "we are going to the border," the Vice President maintained "we aren't going to the
border."
No one knows for sure what Kamala Harris means by we.
Perhaps she said we aren't going to the border and maybe not. It doesn't matter
because remarking "we are going to the border" or we aren't
going to the border" bears no relation to whether there will be a trip to
the border.
In the presidential debate in late June, 2020, Harris self-righteously excoriated Joe Biden for having joined "forces and individuals and
supposed leaders in our country who actively worked against the integration of
schools based on race." She maintained "there
is not a black man I know, be he a relative, a friend, or a coworker who has
not been the subject of some form of profiling or discrimination."Following the debate, Jill Biden strongly implied that her husband had
been accused of being a "racist."
A few days later, Harris declared "Busing is a tool
among many that should be considered" but not mandated, which
was Biden's position all along.
Nonetheless, Harris never acknowledged that she was- ahem-
disingenous when she kicked Joe Biden in the rear end. Instead, she was
nominated by that same fellow to be Vice-President, in line to being the
Democratic presidential nominee four or eight years hence.
She has learned well.
She has learned that whatever price dishonesty bears, it may prove of
even greater benefit. Ultimately, then, it matters not at all whether Kamala
Harris says she will, or will not, visit the USA-Mexico border.
It was a shoddy bit of bothsiderism. However, it still would have been a fairly innocuous, even forgettable question of a Secretary of State about domestic courts and the
International Criminal Court.
.
We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.
Tensions among Democrats over Israel grew Thursday after a
group of 12 Jewish Democratic lawmakers criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) over
a tweet she wrote that seemed to equate the actions of the United States and
Israel with those of Hamas and the Taliban, calling it “offensive” and
demanding she “clarify” her words.
Omar said her comments were misconstrued and that she was
not suggesting a moral equivalency. She and other Democratic women of color in
the House accused their colleagues of advancing Islamophobia and, in one case,
“anti-blackness” in their public chastising of the lawmaker.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and her Democratic
leadership team addressed Omar’s comments in a joint statement, saying that
equating the United States and Israel and terrorist groups such as Hamas and
the Taliban “foments prejudice.” They said they welcomed Omar’s
clarification.....
The Jewish Democrats, led by Rep. Bradley Schneider of
Illinois, released a joint statement late Wednesday denouncing Omar’s tweet.
“Equating the United States and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban
is as offensive as it is misguided,” they wrote. “Ignoring the differences
between democracies governed by the rule of law and contemptible organizations
that engage in terrorism at best discredits one’s intended argument and at
worst reflects deep-seated prejudice.
“The United States and Israel are imperfect and, like all
democracies, at times deserving of critique, but false equivalencies give cover
to terrorist groups. We urge Congresswoman Omar to clarify her words placing
the US and Israel in the same category as Hamas and the Taliban.”
Later, Omar did offer a clarification, saying she was not
making “a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and
Israel.”
If Wikipedia is accurate, there actually are 21 Jewish
members of the House of Representatives, which suggests that there are several who curiously believe the USA and Israel act in a similar fashion to Hamas and the Taliban. Or they feared criticizing a colleague.
The questioning of the Secretary Blinken by Representative
Omar probably would have gone unnoticed and not become an incident if the
congresswoman had not unwisely issued the tweet. It was there, and only there,
that she reprehensibly stated "We have seen unthinkable atrocities
committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban. "
Notwithstanding Omar's claim, that is making "a moral comparison between
Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and Israel." Failure to substantiate a comparison does not obviate the effort.
Ilhan Omar isn't the first politician to express on Twitter
something stupid, bigoted, or untethered to reality. Some public figures evidently think
that Twitter is a platform upon which their most unacceptable thoughts can be
harmlessly disclosed.
Presumably, most politicians
have a social media director responsible for posting tweets. However, they need
to realize that what's posted there is
there, and is there until and unless it's deleted, which will not be before a
critic(s) takes a screenshot. Individuals are accountable for their use of social media.and ultimately their remarks may expose they themselves as loathsome. Of this, someone as acquainted with anti-Semitism as Ilhan Omar should be keenly aware.
