race card | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 4
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Posted by Jonathan Levin on December 11, 2015 12 Comments
Notwithstanding a modest consensus that affirmative action is doomed after Wednesday's arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, there are hints the Court might delay a substantive decision, dissatisfying all parties. For background on the case, see Legal Insurrection's preview, here.  The full transcript of Wednesday's oral arguments is here. There were a number of tense and emotional moments both between the Justices and the parties' attorneys and among the Justices themselves.  From the tenor of the questioning, it is likely the University of Texas's ("UT") admissions system will be struck down despite its minimal reliance on race, if the case is decided on its merits.  If so, the result may explicitly or implicitly ban affirmative action on the basis of race in public university admissions. But the Court, including presumptive deciding vote Justice Kennedy, repeatedly returned to procedural issues.

Posted by Amy Miller on October 21, 2015 28 Comments
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is really not having a good year. Her candidates, her colleagues, even the friendly media at MSNBC have all turned on her over the strict limitations she has elected to put on the primary cycle's debate schedule. Her response to this criticism has been crystal clear: I will not sanction any additional debates. Then came the Black Lives Matter movement with one simple request: add a racial justice-themed debate to the schedule! Whether this is sincere (and I think it is) or the world's greatest troll remains to be seen; but anyone who has been watching the news cycle over the past few years knows that her response to this request is going to haunt the DNC for a long time. She said no. Of course she said no---she had to. The DNC sent a very nice letter back to the group, saying, "We believe that your organization would be an ideal host for a presidential candidate forum — where all of the Democratic candidates can showcase their ideas and policy positions that will expand opportunity for all, strengthen the middle class and address racism in America... The DNC would be happy to help promote the event."

Posted by Amy Miller on October 21, 2015 20 Comments
This story just keeps getting weirder. Remember Ahmed Mohamed? He's the Texas teen who sailed into his (extended) 15 minutes of fame after one of his teachers mistook a "homemade clock" for a homemade bomb. The Social Justice Warriors rushed to Ahmed's cause, crying racism; President Obama even invited him to the White House. After the incident, Ahmed used the media attention to his advantage, saying that his teacher and the authorities made him "feel like he was a criminal," and that the whole thing seemed contrary to America's live-and-let-live spirit.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 26, 2015 53 Comments
I'm glad that I'm late to the story of Ahmed Mohamed, because others have done the work to debunk much of the media narrative of a young tinkerer and inventor wrongly singled out because he is Muslim and abused by police and the school for the crime of "being brown." The story has unfolded much like prior racial media and activist narratives. Trayvon Martin was not shot because he was a black teenager wearing a hoodie by someone who "shot first and asked questions later." That media narrative was demonstrably proven false through a lengthy public trial at which the evidence showed that Trayvon Martin was shot as he beat the crap out of George Zimmerman, Mixed Martial Arts style, as Trayvon had Zimmerman pinned to the ground, after smashing Zimmeran's head into the concrete repeatedly. The eyewitness and forensic evidence (including ballistic analysis) fully supported that Zimmerman used legally justifiable deadly force. So too, the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson was not as the media initially portrayed. An exhaustive investigation and analysis by Eric Holder's Justice Department proved that Brown was shot while grabbing Officer Darren Wilson's gun, after having assaulted Wilson as Wilson sat in his police vehicle. The Justice Department also concluded that Brown did now have his hands raised at the time of the shooting. The "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" narrative was pure mythology, yet it persists as a slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement. So getting back to Ahmed, the original racial and religious narrative played out immediately, and is believed as the gospel truth by liberals.

Posted by Mike LaChance on September 17, 2015 70 Comments
Yesterday a Texas teenager, who happens to be a Muslim, brought a homemade clock to school and was arrested because the clock was mistaken for a bomb. Some people are blaming racism but zero tolerance policies are the real problem. NBC News reports that he won't be charged:
No Charges For Ahmed Mohamed, Teen Arrested After Bringing Homemade Clock to School Police in Texas said Wednesday that charges will not be filed against a 14-year-old Muslim high school student who was arrested after he brought in a homemade clock that a teacher said looked like a bomb. The arrest drew an outcry on social media. Hundreds of thousands of people used the hashtag #IStandWithAhmed — and President Barack Obama invited the teen to the White House. Ahmed Mohamed, who is Sudanese-American, was arrested on Monday in the Dallas suburb of Irving after he took the clock to his high school. He told The Dallas Morning News that he had been in robotics club in middle school, and he wanted to show his new teacher what he could do.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on September 05, 2015 17 Comments
A new poll by Rasmussen asks the question: has Obama widened the racial divide?  And 47% believe that he has.  Rasmussen reports:
Americans hoped the election of the first black president in 2008 would help heal the racial division that has plagued this country for much of its history, but nearly half of voters think just the opposite has occurred. Only 20% of Likely U.S. Voters believe President Obama has brought Americans of different races closer together, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Forty-seven percent (47%) think Obama has driven those of different races further apart instead. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say his words and actions have had no major impact either way . . . . Forty-four percent (44%) of black voters feel the president has brought us closer together, but just 16% of whites and 21% of other minority voters agree. Most whites (54%) believe Obama has driven the races further apart, a view shared by only 21% of blacks and 38% of other minority voters.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on August 16, 2015 26 Comments
Racial politics has not spared modern feminists. The latest "intersectionality" social justice warrior campaign rails against "White Feminism." That's right, White Feminism. Because every single bit of life, society, and culture must now be parsed into political subsections... As is typical in the Land of Social Justice, each attempt to further define the the model social justice warrior leads to the alienation of the reigning Champion of the Cause. Such is the case with this video on White Feminism. "You may have heard the term "White Feminism" lately, but what does it mean? Basically, White Feminism is feminism that ignores intersectionality. So, not all feminists who are white are White Feminists, but most White Feminists are white because white people just don't have to think about things like race on a daily basis," explains the video from the Huffington Post. Language Warning:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 25, 2015 16 Comments
Some of you may remember my August 22, 2013 post,The Great Oberlin College Racism Hoax of 2013:
A massive racism hoax took place at Oberlin College in February 2013 in which two students made seemingly racist, anti-Semitic and other such posters, graffiti and emails for the purpose of getting a reaction on campus, not because they believed the hostile messages. At least one of the two was an Obama supporter with strong progressive, anti-racist politics. School officials and local police knew the identity of the culprits, who were responsible for most if not all of such incidents on campus, yet remained silent as the campus reacted as if the incidents were real. National media attention focused on campus racism at Oberlin for weeks without knowing it was a hoax. The hoax was confirmed when Chuck Ross of The Daily Caller recently obtained police records. Now it’s out in the open. Here is the history of how the hoax developed, played out in the media, and was covered up by the Oberlin administration.
Things would get much worse after that at Oberlin, even after the hoax was fully revealed, as we described in Oberlin racism hoax exploited to advance “even more extreme policies”. I explained the Oberlin situation in a radio interview:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on July 02, 2015 41 Comments
Why, Mr. Sulu? WHY? George Takei of Star Trek fame made a wild accusation in an interview with Phoenix-based Fox affiliate. The televised portion of the interview went as you'd expect: long-time gay rights advocate is thrilled with advances in gay rights. "We're overjoyed, we're proud, and we feel fully American," said Takei. George discussed having to stay in the closet so he could have a career in Hollywood and the disappointment he felt when Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed California's gay marriage legislation. "We're doing this for the straight couples of today because they're going to having the gay babies of tomorrow and they won't have to have those discussions." The televised interview:

Posted by Amy Miller on June 23, 2015 10 Comments
Can we be done with Rachel Dolezal? I think we're ready to be done with Rachel Dolezal. If the left's reaction to the general backlash against a decades-long exercise in blackface is any indication, we may be nearly free of seeing her face in the news. Acknowledging that the story is quickly fading into the background, Salon (#SalonPitches, still going strong!) published a missive dragging the issue back into the racial limelight: "What we can’t afford to forget about Rachel Dolezal: A master class in white victimology." I'm not going to pull a quote from this thing, because to do so would be to jump down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, and into a world of intellectual pain; suffice it to say, the author attempts to make academic hay and fails (or succeeds, depending on how you feel about academia) spectacularly. On a more serious note, officials associated with the NAACP and other organizations continue to take Dolezal to task, bristling at the idea that we can change our racial heritage as a matter of "identity." The rest of the world, however, seems happy to hand over the story to comedians and the entertainment establishment. On a recent episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers, Maya Rudolph succumbed to demands that she take on the character and pulled it off with flair (and an afro):

Posted by Amy Miller on June 20, 2015 31 Comments
This week's attack on a historical black church in Charleston has sent the liberal political and media classes into a political feeding frenzy. The families of the dead, by contrast, has defied the odds embraced love and forgiveness. Here are five examples how some people sought to exploit the murders for political gain:

1. When in doubt, blame Fox News

The left has always had an abusive relationship with the journalists at Fox News, and never waits long before trying to tie the latest domestic tragedy to the "hate filled rhetoric" "spewing" from the conservative network. South Carolina Democratic Representative Todd Rutherford all but blamed the Charleston massacre on "things like Fox News," and when confronted by Bill O'Reilly, doubled down. Watch: Newsbusters has the breakdown:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 17, 2015 67 Comments
If Rachel Dolezal didn't exist, someone would have had to invent her because she so embodies everything that is wrong with race-based politics and theories so prevalent in Higher Ed. Dolezal is white. Elizabeth Warren white. As Mark Steyn once put it with regard to Warren, "the whitest white since Frosty the Snowman fell in a vat of Wite-Out." Warren passed herself off as Native American, but mostly in secret so she could get put on a list of Minority Law Teachers in a 1980s directory used for hiring. Dolezal was very public in her adoption of a black identity. And she's standing by it. Because Dolezal feels black, she says she is. It's what is called among the campus activist class "lived experience."
It is a well-worn script:

Posted by Amy Miller on June 15, 2015 43 Comments
I officially need a flowchart to handle the strange and offensive racial evolution of Rachel Dolezal. Last week, the internet exploded with stories about Rachel, a white woman who has spent the majority of her career "identifying" as an African-American woman. While I still haven't figured out how one can with a straight face "identify" as someone of another race, especially in the historical context of slavery and discrimination, I think it's pretty clear that Dolezal's actions have activists on both sides of the aisle crying foul. Today, The Smoking Gun revealed that she has a history of playing both sides of the race card. Back in 2002, Dolezal (then Rachel Moore) sued Howard University on the basis of racial discrimination after she claimed she was discriminated against---as a white woman:
Dolezal, then known as Rachel Moore, named the university and Professor Alfred Smith as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C.’s Superior Court. During the pendency of the civil case, Smith was chairman of Howard’s Department of Art.

Posted by Amy Miller on June 12, 2015 61 Comments
When I first saw the story break on Twitter about Rachel Dolezal's politically unfortunate natural skin color, I set out to write some sort of think piece about how the racial movement in America has become so convoluted that activists would now rather alter their appearances than admit to any sort of connection with anglo heritage. Then, I thought about it some more and concluded that giving this issue the actual intellectual treatment wasn't really worth the time. In case you've been hiding from the Internet, Rachel Dolezal, 37, identifies as an African-American woman and is the president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP. A Howard U grad and civil rights activist, she's spent the majority of her career positioning herself as a fierce advocate for equality. I said "identifies as" because she's not African-American at all---and she just got called out for it. Behold:

Posted by David Gerstman on June 01, 2015 22 Comments
Baltimore has been out of the national conversation for a couple of weeks. Freddie Gray is dead. Six police officer have now been indicted in his death. Last weekend, Memorial Day weekend, Baltimore was one of several cities that saw a spike in violence. At that point Baltimore had 35 homicides for the month of May, making it the deadliest month in the city since 1999. But the killings didn't stop. Late last week a 31 year old woman and her seven year old son were shot in the head in southwest Baltimore. Little information has been reported. Police have not released any speculation about the motive behind the slayings. With three more murders Sunday, the murder count in Baltimore stands at 43, the highest toll in 40 years. What's going on in Baltimore (and elsewhere as we saw last weekend) is part of what Heather MacDonald calls A New Nationwide Crime Wave (Google link). After seeing crime drop for nearly two decades, crime is rising. The reason isn't complicated. With politicians claiming that the main problem in law enforcement is policing, a theme echoed by many in the media, and police realizing that they can be prosecuted and vilified for doing their jobs; arrests are down and crime is up.

Posted by Amy Miller on May 26, 2015 29 Comments
Byron Allen is a TV personality and entertainment executive turned concerned citizen, and he wants you to know that he is not happy with the way Obama's presidency has affected the well-being of the black community. In a street interview with TMZ, Allen lashed out at President Obama, saying that he hasn't done enough to give black people in America a leg up. Via the Hollywood Reporter [emphasis mine]:
"Black people have fallen further behind under President Obama," said Allen, who also criticized Obama for having referred to the looters and arsonists in last month's Baltimore riots as "thugs." "President Obama is, at this point, a white president in blackface," Allen said. "Black America would have done much better with a white president."

Posted by Amy Miller on May 23, 2015 30 Comments
I hate the N-word. Everyone should hate the N-word. (We can have the "hip-hop" culture debate some other time.) It represents an ugly underbelly of a culture that should be ready to give up on words like the N-word; yet somehow, it keeps popping up in the lexicon---and the "social justice warriors" (#SJW on Twitter, for those of you playing at home) aren't making it any better. Late last month the internet went into full meltdown mode after the Rev. Jamal Bryant addressed the riots in Baltimore by claiming that "thug" is the 21st Century's N-word. Some pundits and activists (including CNN's Don Lemon) cried foul---and renewed their objections in the wake of the biker gang shootout in Waco, TX---but it takes more than a few pundits to make a dent once the SJW set has had their way with an issue. Conservtive pundit Steven Crowder took to the streets recently to figure out just how far Team SJW had gotten with regards to convincing the general public that the T-word is the new N-word. Watch:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 03, 2015 44 Comments
Rep. Vanessa Summers understood the cries of an 18-month-old as racism. According to the Washington Times:
Democratic Rep. Vanessa Summers made the comment during a debate on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the House, referencing Republican Rep. Jud McMillin’s child. “I told Jud McMillin I love his son, but he’s scare of me because of my color,” Ms. Summers said to Mr. McMmillin, who is white, during last week’s debate, the Indy Star reported March 24. Ms. Summers later defended her comment, recalling the meeting with Mr. McMillin’s son earlier in the session. “He looked at me like I was a monster and turned around and cried,” Ms. Summer said, the newspaper reported. “And I told him you need to introduce your child to some people that are dark-skinned so he will not be scared.” Mr. McMillin said Ms. Summers‘ comment was “unfortunate.”
Take a look: