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Mainstream Media Goes Ape…

Move over Frederick Jackson Turner. He’s the historian whose “frontier thesis” explained the national nerve tapped by the official closing of the frontier. In “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” an address delivered to a gathering of historians in 1893, he asserted: This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic […]

The Current Confusion Of Black Protest Politics

It is almost amusing to watch practitioners of the old black protest politics try hold on to their old positions as the threats to them come from new and unexpected directions. Take this lament by noted black protest author/journalist Earl Ofari Hutchinson that “the number of black elected officials has been stagnant at best and, […]

More Contributions To The Racial Conversation From Non-Cowards

Most of the criticism of Attorney General Holder’s recent speech lamenting that “Black History Month” was separate and unequal has concentrated on his accusation that we (or at least those of us who are pigment-impaired) are a “nation of cowards.” Now a second wave of criticism has begun to appear, and it is even more […]

Obama: “Spooky”?

Is calling someone “spooky” the same as calling him a spook? If so, Christopher Edley, Dean of Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, should prepare for an onslaught by the politically correct language police since spook, for those of you too young or protected to be familiar with it, is “Offensive Slang Used as a […]

Virginia Admissions Conflicts: Residence, Region, “Diversity”

[NOTE: This post has been UPDATED] Admissions to very selective public universities like the University of Virginia (or at least nominally public; UVa receives only 8% or so of its operating budget from the state) are trickier and more fraught with conflict than admission to selective private institutions. There are debates, for example, over how […]

Affirmative Action No Longer Needed?

Conventional wisdom has it that Obama’s election has shown that affirmative action is no longer necessary, but according to Rasmussen’s surveys more people think it necessary now than thought so before his election. In a survey taken last August, “46% [said] such programs are no longer necessary. But nearly a third (32%) [believed] that affirmative […]

The Washington Post: Chimp Chump

[NOTE: This post has been UPDATED] In its Sunday Magazine section yesterday the Washington Post ran a perfectly innocuous (and not very funny) humor column, “Below The Beltway,” by Gene Weingarten on the sexual appetites of men and women. It began: In a study described recently in the New York Times, men and women were […]

Law School Admissions: Not Colorblind, Not Blind-Friendly

Law school admissions, as readers of DISCRIMINATIONS know all too well, is not colorblind, but according to a new lawsuit it is completely blind to the needs of one group, the blind. Inside Higher Ed reports this morning: The National Federation of the Blind and a blind law school applicant sued the Law School Admission […]

Why Do We Need Affirmative Action? Ebonics!

Rachel Steindel is the “Language Columnist” for the Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina. In a recent column she argues that some students admitted under affirmative action are “at a disadvantage” because “they speak a different language.” That language? “African-American English, or AAE, has many names, but you’ve probably heard it referred […]

Fear Of Massive Deficits And Tax Increases Is “Insensitive”

Hauling out the most overworked and overheated rhetorical weapon in the Democrats’ arsenal, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and others accused the Republican governors who are threatening to refuse some of the “stimulus” funds for their states as, you guessed it, insenstive. Other Democratic critics weren’t so, well, sensitive. Critics such as Rep. Jim Clyburn of […]