Skin color trumps all

The Washington Times:

A popular gifted-student program at a New York City elementary school is getting the ax after school officials decided it lacked diversity.

PS 139 Principal Mary McDonald told parents in a letter Jan. 24 that Students of Academic Rigor, or SOAR, would no longer accept applications for incoming kindergartners, the New York Daily News reported.

"Our Kindergarten classes will be heterogeneously grouped to reflect the diversity of our student body and the community we live in," Miss McDonald said in the letter posted on Flickr.com.

Let me see if I have this right. We have a popular program, presumably serving a need, that is being discontinued solely because of the students' skin color.

How is that not blatant racism?

In a follow-up letter sent to parents Monday, Miss McDonald wrote: "At PS 193, we believe that all children can learn and achieve high standards. We also know that we want all children at PS 193 to have equal access to high quality, challenging curriculum, and to have ample opportunities to master complex material and build academic and personal self-confidence. We also want our classes to reflect the diversity of our community. We believe we can have both: classrooms characterized by rigor and diversity."

Any time you hear the word diversity, you can be sure it's being used to justify an act of racism.

This principle is dishonest when she claims the school is seeking both rigor and diversity. By her own admission, a program called Students of Academic Rigor is being canned because skin color is deemed more important.

Why should kids suffer simply because the world doesn't look the way some government bureaucrats think it should?

The solution to racism? More racism!

Washington Examiner:

Black federal judges, inspired by racial “solidarity” and “conditioned” in life to sympathize with other blacks, side with African-Americans filing discrimination cases in significantly higher percentages than white judges, according to a first-of-its-kind study.

The California State University, Northridge study of 516 discrimination cases in federal courts over eight years found that black federal judges side with black claimants 32.9 percent of the time. For white judges it was 20.6 percent.

But when the study looked at how black and white judges ruled on discrimination claims made by "non-black claimants," there wasn't any difference.

Interesting, and somewhat understandable, I suppose. But also unfair and unjust. A judge's job is to be impartial, and we can't have them treating people differently based on the color of their skin. That's simple racism.

So what solution does the study's author propose?

Morin’s solution to black judicial favoritism might be unexpected. He argues for more black judges, claiming that blacks are underrepresented on the bench when compared to the racial makeup of discrimination claims, which are majority African-American.

“Black claimants may continue to face an uphill battle since African-American judges continue to be underrepresented in the federal courts,” said Morin.

So we've got Black judges practicing racism from the bench, and this guy's solution is to simply hire more Black judges? No attempt to address the actual problem. Just paint Black claimants as victims -- for being given preferential treatment! -- and hire more judges who will, presumably, also practice racism from the bench.

Off the reservation

Actress Maria Conchita Alonso, best known for her work in Moscow on the Hudson, lost her job with a theater company in San Francisco’s Mission District because she voiced support for Tim Donnelly, a conservative candidate for California governor.

The show's producer, Eliana Lopez, had this to say:

We really cannot have her in the show, unfortunately. Of course she has the right to say whatever she wants. But we’re in the middle of the Mission. Doing what she is doing is against what we believe.

It's a shame that people routinely lose their jobs over such innocuous things as voicing an opinion -- that whole "free country" thing, and all -- but that's where we are. Still, it works both ways. Alonso can say what she wants; her employer can hire who she wants. Assuming no one broke any contracts, that's about right, I think, as far as fairness goes. But I also think we have gotten a little too sensitive about people expressing opinions -- and by we, I mostly mean those on the "tolerant" Left.

What was it Alonso said that was so offensive? According to the Washington Examiner, she used the word illegal to describe those who entered the country illegally. Say it isn't so!

This is what is so maddening. The term illegal immigrant is about as neutral and accurate a description of the people at issue as the English language allows. They literally immigrated here illegally, and it is that precise behavior that is at issue. The Left insists that we abandon this perfectly apt phrase and instead refer to these people as undocumented workers -- a term that is misleading and inaccurate.

We have no way of knowing whether they are workers or not, and their employment status is not what is at issue. Undocumented downplays the the whole deliberately violated our sovereign borders thing as if it were a mere clerical error.

But this is the go-to move of the Left. They can't win arguments on the merits, so they bully people by trying to control the language. Force people to use meaningless, innocuous phrases and they will think meaningless, innocuous thoughts. It's pure propaganda, but, too often, it works.

Alonso was also called out for her use of "vulgar language" in the ad. After watching the ad twice, I gather this refers to Alonso's comedic reduction of a host of California's chronic ills to "We're screwed." Pretty tame stuff as vulgarities go, and also ironic considering the show she was canned from: The Vagina Monologues.

But as one hyper-sensitive Mission District residents put it, “We don’t act like that. First of all, that is not a typical Latina."

A typical Latina? Now there's something to be offended about. How insulting is it to suggest that members of a group have to act, think, and talk alike? Think about that. This is the "tolerant" Left, calling for heads because someone dared to color outside the lines of their racial group. Can't have those Brownie's going off the reservation, now, can we?

Sad, and disgusting.

Media foments racism

It's been a long while since I've had any motivation for blogging, but I came across something so egregious that I want to make a note of it. It regards the reporting of the George Zimmerman shooting of Trayvon Martin.

This is a story I have not followed and, frankly, don't care much about. I'm sickened by the amount of violent crime in our society, but this story doesn't seem any more, or less, news worthy than many others. Except that the media have chosen, for some reason, to make it so. And rather than simply reporting it, they are going out of their way to distort it.

As reported on Breitbart, here's an excerpt from the 911 call Zimmerman made shortly before killing Martin:

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about.

911 DISPATCHER: Okay, is this guy, is he white, black, or Hispanic?

ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.

Now here's what MSNBC/NBC published:

"This guy looks like he’s up to no good … he looks black,” Zimmerman told a police dispatcher from his car. His father has said that Zimmerman is Hispanic, grew up in a multiracial family, and is not racist.

See what they did there? They made it look like Zimmerman equates being black with being up to no good. They hid the fact that it was the 911 dispatcher who brought up race, and that Zimmerman was simply answering a direct question. They intentionally made Zimmerman look like a racist.

This is blatantly dishonest, and whoever is responsible should be fired. They should also be brought up on charges, if possible. Aside from misrepresenting material facts, they have violated the public trust and damaged a man's reputation. Worse, there is an organized effort to brand Zimmerman a White racist, and this type of unethical and immoral reporting certainly feeds irresponsible behavior that leads to race-based hysteria. (Spike Lee should also be brought up on charges.)

The reputations of MSNBC and NBC have also been severely tarnished. I know I'll never take their reporting seriously.

The question is, why do this? Why try to paint someone as a racist? What's the agenda?

And there is an agenda, one that goes beyond the perfidy of MSNBC/NBC. Take, as further example, the reporting of Zimmerman's race by various media outlets. As indicated above, Zimmerman is Hispanic. But I keep coming across bloggers who are upset that the media is intent on pointing out that Zimmerman is a white Hispanic. And sure enough, an Internet search of "Zimmerman white Hispanic" turns up links to stories by the New York Times, the Associated Press, MSNBC, CNN, and others, all describing Zimmerman as a white Hispanic.

I'd never heard the term "white Hispanic" before. Indeed, blogger Luke Ford reports,

I just did a search on the New York Times website and I can’t find another result for a person in the last 30 years called a “white hispanic.” An actual person called “white hispanic.” This appears to be the first time in the history of the New York Times.

So what's going on here? What is it that has major media outlets abandoning the sacred "one drop rule" and going out of their way to make sure we know an Hispanic of mixed blood is "white?"

They obviously are trying to stir up racial animosity between Blacks and Whites, and particularly to cast Blacks as the victims of rampant White racism. But it's hard for me to imagine people who would do such a thing, and it's sickening to think they pervade our media.

As a final note, I have no idea what happened in the Zimmerman/Martin case. That's for a court to decide. I have no idea if Zimmerman is a racist. Aside from the whole "hate crime" nonsense, that strikes me as irrelevant to whether he committed murder. 

I do hope that justice is done.

And I do know that the role the media has taken in this is disgusting.