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Political Correctness Tag

Posted by Miriam Elman on October 15, 2017 28 Comments
A recently published monograph by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA) offers a sobering example of how biased teaching materials about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the history and practice of Islam were used for years in the curriculum of two public high schools in Newton, Massachusetts. As we highlighted in a post which reviewed the book, CAMERA’s important new study meticulously analyzes hundreds of highly skewed materials used by the Newton Public Schools system in its two high schools to teach 9th and 10th graders about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Islamic history and culture.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on October 14, 2017 18 Comments
The Biloxi school district has pulled Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird from its 8th grade syllabi because it contains the "N-word." This kind of thing drives me straight up the wall.  What on earth makes the left think that hiding, banning, and otherwise destroying our nation's history and culture will achieve anything positive or good?  Not only do we need to know where we came from to know how far we've come as a nation, but we also need an historical and literary reference for some of the left's politically-correct mandates. Black rappers, athletes, comedians, politicians, pundits, et al. are the only ones who can use the "N-word" because they are "reclaiming it" and "taking back its power."  That's all well and good, but we're raising a couple of generations who will have no idea from what they are reclaiming the word or what its power once was and why it needed to be taken back in the first place.

Posted by Occam's Razor on September 22, 2017 33 Comments
This post is a follow up to a story we ran earlier this week, Third World Quarterly publishes “The Case for Colonialism” leading to censorship demands. An article (pdf) by Portland State University’s Bruce Gilley, in Third World Quarterly arguing the “Case for Colonialism” provoked a backlash that was professionally threatening to the author. Here is the abstract of the article:

Posted by Occam's Razor on September 17, 2017 73 Comments
Bruce Gilley of Portland State University (image above) published an article titled “The Case for Colonialism” in the decidedly anti-Colonial journal Third World Quarterly (home of the Edward Said Award). In its self-description, Third World Quarterly writes:
TWQ examines all the issues that affect the many Third Worlds and is not averse to publishing provocative and exploratory articles, especially if they have the merit of opening up emerging areas of research that have not been given sufficient attention.
Gilley is no newcomer to controversy.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 28, 2017 26 Comments
Increasingly, campus "social justice" activism is resembling the tactics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, particularly the public shaming of those deemed ideologically incorrect, including professors. In The new Cultural Revolution on Campuses in late April 2017, I reviewed recent examples, including Yale, Cornell, Middlebury and Claremont McKenna:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 27, 2017 43 Comments
When the statues began being pulled down in the wake of the Charlottesville demonstration, many of us joked that films and songs featuring the Civil War would be next. The jokes have morphed into a chilling reality. The Orpheum Theater in Memphis has pulled the iconic American film Gone with the Wind from summer movie series after receiving complaints it was not racially sensitive.
The Orpheum Theatre Group decided not to include the 1939 movie about a plantation in the Civil War-era South in its 2018 Summer Movie Series after feedback from patrons following the last screening Aug. 11.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 26, 2017 45 Comments
Charlottesville is being exploited to justify some of the worst aspects of the leftist culture war. Internet censorship by left-leaning internet oligopolies based on demonization of political opposition as "hate" and "extremist" groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center is one aspect. But the culture war has moved with rapid speed to statues and monuments and names, and it's not stopping at the confederacy. Protesters are taking matters into their own hands and defacing or destroying statues, like this memorial to Christopher Columbus in Baltimore, the oldest such monument in the U.S.:

Posted by Leslie Eastman on August 19, 2017 53 Comments
The scorched-history tactics of American press and progressive social justice warriors, which were in full display this past week, may have inspired the pepper-spraying of of Confederate re-enactors who were marching in a North Carolina parade.
Police arrested a man after Confederate veteran re-enactors were pepper sprayed during the 2017 Soldiers Reunion parade in Newton on Thursday.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 11, 2017 41 Comments
Some interesting developments in the case of James Damore, the Google Senior Software Engineer who now is a former Google Senior Software Engineer. He was fired after Google reacted badly to Damore's memo challenging explanations for the relative lack of women in software engineering. The memo was grossly misrepresented as being anti-diversity and anti-female in both the mainstream and tech media. The most senior Google executives joined in that tactic. One of the worst posts was by the CEO of Google's YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, who used her daughter as a prop to attack Damore:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 09, 2017 40 Comments
The controversy regarding Google (former) employee James Damore may have peaked, but it's not going away. Most of the mainstream and tech media coverage has been completely dishonest. As mentioned in my first post about the diversity memo Damore wrote, the media was describing the memo and Damore as being "anti-diversity." That plainly was false, as I wrote in Google Senior Engineer commits diversity heresy:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 06, 2017 33 Comments
There is no religious doctrine as unassailable as the claim that differences in achievement in areas where women and/or racial/ethnic minorities are UNDERrepresented is caused by systemic sexism/racism etc. That religious doctrine, however, never is applied to fields in which women and/or racial/ethnic minorities are OVERrepresented. The claim that differences in outcome are caused by discrimination drives the "diversity" agenda on campuses and at companies. That one might support diversity as a goal, yet question whether the problem is systemic discrimination and whether MORE discrimination really is the answer, is considered heresy and is punishable by firing, harassment, and on campuses, being shouted down.

Posted by Mike LaChance on June 14, 2017 31 Comments
The progressive concept of cultural appropriation has gone international. A group of advocates for indigenous peoples wants the United Nations to make the practice a crime. What could go wrong? The CBC reports via Yahoo News:
Cultural appropriation: Make it illegal worldwide, Indigenous advocates say Indigenous advocates from around the world are calling on a UN committee to ban the appropriation of Indigenous cultures — and to do it quickly. Delegates from 189 countries, including Canada, are in Geneva this week as part of a specialized international committee within the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a United Nations agency.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 15, 2017 25 Comments
Oh boy. Another controversy over conservative comments at Miss USA. Remember in 2009 when Miss California Carrie Prejean said she believes that marriage is between a man and a woman? The left tore her apart over her answer. Now they have a new target. Last night, Miss District of Columbia Kara McCullough, a scientist, told the audience and judges that she rejects modern day feminism and believes health care is a privilege, not a right.
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