How things work in today's America

Innocent question about racism in TV commercials

The Niagara Parks Commission is an independent agency of the Ontario government which is responsible for Niagara Parks [duh. Ed.], the lovely stretch of parkland which runs for 35 miles from Fort Erie to Niagara-on-the-Lake, along the western side -- the pretty side -- of the Niagara River.

The main attraction for visitors is, of course, the famous falls, at the brink of which sits Niagara Parks' most-visited attraction, Table Rock Centre -- a comples which houses restaurants, gift shops, and "experiences" such as  "Jouiney Behind the Falls" and "Niagara's Fury", the latter a Disney production. 

Entrance to the Parks is free. It's by the "experiences" that they get you. (Did I mention the gift shops?) Niagara's Fury -- a Disney-produced movie projected on curve screens that surround the viewer -- opened in 2008. It was getting a little long in the tooth so was closed last season, to be replaced by a new and even more wonderful attraction called "Niagara Takes Flight". 

What you see below is a screen shot from the recently-released promotional video.

Niagara Falls is still "the honeymoon capital of the world", or so the tourism hucksters would have us believe. How better to illustrate that idea than with a picture of a happy couple in a romantic pose. A bi-racial couple, of course, because this is the Age of Woke. Portraying races mixing effortlessly and happily, in perfect harmony, is the vision of reality at the core of the woke, anti-racist, we're-all-the-same-under-the-skin canon.

It's not just Niagara Parks. If you watch TV or streaming services or anything of that nature, you'll see couples like this more times than you can count, in much greater proportion than their existence in the reality of Western society. We are encouraged to believe that iner-racial coupling is normal... or should I say "more normal" than the old-fashioned, pre-woke idea of sticking to your own kind.

Did you notice that this couple consists of a black -- well, brown actually, not too black -- man and a very white woman. [Well, she could have been blonde! Ed.] This too is very normal. Roughly 99.44% of bi-racial couples you see in TV commercials looks like this. The other 0.56% are the other way `round -- white man and black woman.

Walt's innocent question: Why is this? Do the creators of these fantastical videos not know that for decades sociologists have been studying and bemoaning the complaints of black women that so many black men "marry out", preferring white women to women of colour? Many black women have told researchers that they feel they can't compete with women who look like the ones in the picture.

To make matters worse (for black women), a lot of black men don't care what the white woman looks like as long as she likes... really likes... black men, to the point of doing anything... anything... to get one.

You don't believe me? Take a look at the real world as seen on TV newscasts. If you watch a story about a black(ish) or mulatto kid who was either the victim or the perpetrator of a crime, you've got a better-than-even chance that the baby momma standing by home because "he's a good boy, just trying to get his life together and become a rap artist" will be a rotund white woman. Where, you may wonder, is the kid's father? Long gone, Jackson!

But hey, that's just the difference between the fake world of advertising (Why do those bi-racial couples always live in a better house than mine?) and the real world in which you and I live. All the affirmative action and DEI in the world ain't gonna change that.

VIDEOS: USAid defunding leaves African AIDS sufferers stuck for meds

Walt was in South Africa in the mid-90s when the white-run country was handed over to the Marxist African National Congress. Predictably, it has slid downhill ever since, and is now just a small cut above Zimbabwe in terms of standard of living and everything else that matters. Now they want to seize white farms -- what took them so long? -- to ensure starvation.

South Africa is also (and again predictably) home to one of the world's worst epidemics of HIV/AIDS. At least 8.5 million of its people are living with HIV, and Sky News (the woke British version, not the painfully honest Aussie site) is whining that their treatment is in doubt thanks to President Trump's executive order freezing foreign aid for 90 days.

Until the introduction of Dubya's President Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003, African sufferers from the deadly disease were at the mercy of their witch doctors (not kidding -- look it up!) there was no medication. Nelly Zulu, an activist and mother living with HIV in Soweto told Sky News, "The government would tell us to take beetroot and garlic. It was very difficult for the government to give us treatment but we fought very hard to win this battle. Now, the challenge is that we are going back to the struggle." 

In this video, a prostitute walks up to the security guards outside a shuttered USAid-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg's inner-city district. She looks around with confusion when she is told the clinic is closed. She tells Sky's reporter it has only been two months since she came here to receive her usual care. Now, she must scramble to find another safe place for her sexual health screenings and pre-exposure prophylaxis. Like many sex workers, free sexual health clinics are her lifeline. "You don't have to quit working. Just keep taking these pills, provided by those nice Americans." 

  

Too bad, eh. But ask yourself why South Africa, still a comparitively wealthy nation -- compared with Zimbabwe, say -- should be receiving handouts from American taxpayers to mitigate the poor lifestyle... and political... choices of its citizens.

Meanwhile, South African boers (white farmers) say they are deeply worried by a land seizure bill has been signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa. Basically, this bill gives the government power to take the farmers' land, and even their domestic houses, and not pay any compensation, if there is "good reason" for so doing. What constitutes "good reason" has not been stated, but "to give it to blacks" is Walt's guess. (Lifetime pct .989)

Farmers who choose to move to someplace where they won't experience reverse racism will be looking to Australia, Canada, maybe even the US of A, where their agricultural expertise will be welcome. Souoth Africa's loss will be our gain! And here's a shining example... 

Susanna Heystek's family migrated to Canada around the turn of the century. Things have gotten worse in South Africa since then. They're getting worse in the Great No Longer White North too, but for the time being, it's a better bet than the land they left.

2024 Wally Awards: Most Egregious Reverse Racism

Rather than do a lengthy yearend review of stuff you already know and will read about elsewhere, we've decided to just hand out the coveted Wallies, without further ado. There were plenty of submissions from the US of A for the Wally for Most Egregious Reverse Racism, but they were pipped at the post by news from Montréal of the cancelling of this year's Shake La Cabane FAM-JAM, a community dance planned for December 23rd. Here's a photo of last year's soirée.

The organizers of the Shake La Cabane party said on Instagram, "we looked around and were not satisfied with the diversity of our parties." They quoted an American (of course) group saying, "micro-reparations in the name of solidarity, not charity, like these stand to gesture towards ways we can create more access."

"Micro-reparations"? What did they mean? Just this: White people would have paid a premium to attend the multiculti bash. The cost of a ticket was $15 for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, or People of Colour) adults, but the price jumped close to $26 for adults with paler complexions. 

But wait, there's more! While "racialized" yoofs under 12 could attent for free, their white peers under 18 would have paid $13. 

Reaction from the larger community was instantaneous and negative. Lawyer Julius Grey said the pricing policy was not only discriminatory, but unlawful. "This flies in the face of the Québec Charter of Rights," said lawyer Julius Grey. "All of the charters have exceptions for affirmative action...but this is not one of them." 

Université Laval law professor Louis-Phillipe Lampron called the scheme "a clear cut case of direct discrimination." Mathieu Lacombe, Québec's Minister of Culture, wrote on X, "This is completely unacceptable." Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon said, "[this] now opens to the door to laws and social programs that would apply by racial group, again increasing tensions and finger-pointing."

On Saturday night, La Cabane posted on Instagram and Facebook that they had cancelled the event after their team was flooded with hateful and "threatening" comments, and would refund all ticket holders. "We received SO much hate and misunderstanding about our BIPOC ticket pricing, that for the safety and security of all, we prefer to stay on the safe side with this one. We really regret this situation and are so deeply disappointed."

Walt hopes receiving the prestigious Wally Award will assuage their hurt feelings.

"Me want skool!" is good enough for the Toronto District School Board

The Toronto District School Board (hereinafter "TDSB") is the wokest in the fairyland of Canuckistan. And in a country which includes such hotbeds of wokeism as the Waterloo Region District School Board which forbids any discussion of gender ideology, pronouns or sex change operations * [Isn't there a more PC name for that? Ed.], that's really saying something.

The TDSB is not only the wokest in the land, but the biggest. Its catchment area encompasses numerous "ethnic" neighbourhoods, including Little India, the notorious Jane-Finch `hood, and a part of Scarborough which, to look at it, is majority Chinese... and so it is.

The ultra-progressive TDSB is all in favour of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) of course. As Mr Socks sez, "Diversity is our strength!" (Cue guffaws from most Canadians. See "Shocking news: Majority of Canucks think diversity is causing problems!", WWW 25/11/23. To serve various diverse sections of the community, the Board has established several dozen Central Student Interest Programmes (CSIP), both at the secondary (opens in a new tab)and elementary (opens in a new tab)level, including those specializing in arts, athletics, science, math and many others. 

But it seems some groups need a little more equity than others. According to the TDSB website, 20% per cent of the spaces in CSIP are reserved for students who are Black, Indigenous, Latin American and Middle Eastern, while 50% cent of the spaces in math, science and technology programmes are for students self-identifying as female.

That doesn't sit well with the Chinese community (or the south Asians, for that matter), who, along with the "old stock Canadians" (read: palefaces), are regarded as "privileged", thus not deserving of extra help. Trustee Weidong Pei of Ward 12, Willowdale, told CTV News Toronto the policy doesn't address the socio-economic barriers standing in the way of enriched education, but instead creates more division in schools and waters down talent. 

What to do? The performance-based process of entry, which had been criticized for "favouring students from wealthier families" (read: racist!) had to go. So, in 2022, the Board trustees voted to move away from a model that only accepts those with demonstrated strength and/or ability, by removing all tests, exams, auditions and grade-entry requirements from CSIP applications.

In came the new, woker, "interest-based model", which is now "under review". Trustee James Li of Ward 13, Don Valley North,  told CTV, "When we implemented the program in 2023, we didn't ask the students to prove or demonstrate anything. We only asked the students to write their name down, which was disappointing." Now, he continued, "We expect them to demonstrate that they're interested in [an enriched programme] to the point where they want to go above and beyond the curriculum, and they're ready and willing to work towards it.”

Mr Pei calls the expression of interest requirement "meaningless". "The formal expression of interest is not being evaluated. An entry consisting of 'Me want skool' is given the same weight as a student filming themselves playing 'Flight of the Bumblebee' on the tuba!

"Everybody I know, including me, is concerned about socio-economic barriers, but the policies don’t adjust for socio-economics, they use self-identified race as a proxy for socio-economics. The average Asian family's income at TDSB is below the overall average of TDSB families, and South Asians' incomes are even lower. Yet Asian families are considered a privileged group."

Ah so... but Messrs Pei and Li should know that in Emperor Justin's Canada, affirmative action (read: reverse racism) is the New Equity. So let it be preached. So let it be done.

* See "Court victory for teacher silenced for transgender-book criticism", National Post, 25/11/23. 

VIDEO: Thomas Sowell told the truth about affirmative action in college admissions... 33 years ago!

As Walt told you in "SCOTUS bans racial discrimination in college admissions", today was a great day for America! President Trump said so and Walt agrees, not just because The Donald said it, but because the decision corrects an injustice that has been perpetuated in the name of "social justice" (more recently "DEI" -- "diversity, equity and inclusion") for decades.

Thomas Sowell, an American economist, author, and social commentator, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, recognized and talked about the unintended negative consequences of affirmative action 23 years ago.

This video is clipped from a C-SPAN Booknotes interview on 10 June 1990. Dr Sowell, while discussing his book Preferential Policies: An International Perspective, explained how affirmative action and campus ideologues create a vicious cycle of black student failure and resentment by both blacks and whites. Give a listen.

 

A brief history of the affirmative action debate.

Affirmative action has its pros and cons. [Some say affirmative action is itself a "con". Ed.] The issue has been hotly debated since the 1970s, when colleges and universities on the east and west coast, in a paroxysm of white liberal guilt, started to give priority to applicants for admission whose SAT scores were lower than others because the tests were Eurocentric, racist, yada yada yada.

Thet issue had been canvassed by the Supreme Court for half a century (!), and until now SCOTUS has geneally upheld affirmative action (read: reverse discrimination), with some limits. Racial quotas that reserve a certain number of seats for minority students have been deemed unconstitutional, but the court has said colleges can consider race as long as it's one of many factors in the decision. 

Prospective students' race can be used as a "plus factor" to give them an edge, said the court, can't be the defining factor. Schools must be able to show they consider race in a "narrowly tailored" way, because there is no "race-neutral" approach that would meet the same "compelling interest" in increasing student diversity.

That language comes from Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 Supreme Court decision which upheld admissions policies at the University of Michigan's law school. SCOTUS last examined affirmative action in 2016 -- 26 years after the publication of Dr Sowell's book -- when it upheld the admissions process at the University of Texas in a suit filed by a white Texan who was denied admission to the university

The lawsuits which were decided today were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a Virginia-based group that says race should play no part in the admission process. The group argued that Harvard and the University of North Carolina intentionally discriminate against Asian-American applicants.

Examining six years of data at Harvard, the group found that-Asian American applicants had the strongest academics but were admitted at the lowest rates compared to students of other races. It also found that Harvard's admissions officers gave Asian Americans lower scores on a subjective "personal" rating designed to measure attributes such as likeability and kindness... as if these things were indicators of intelligence or the likelihood of academic success!

In 2019, a federal judge upheld Harvard's admissions practices, saying they were "not perfect" but not unconstituional. The judge said race-conscious practices always penalize groups that don’t get an advantage, but are justified "by the compelling interest in diversity" on college campuses. An appeals court upheld the ruling in 2020. 

Students for Fair Admission brought similar claims against UNC, saying its process disadvantages white and Asian-American students. A federal judge sided with the university last year. In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the group asked the Supreme Court to review both cases, and also to overturn Grutter v. Bollinger, saying it was impossible to construct a "narrowly tailored" approach which would not offend the equal rights provisions of the Constitution. 

The Supreme Court of the United States agreed at last! It's a great day for America!

SCOTUS bans racial discrimination in college admissions

Two former US presidents disagreed strongly on today's ruling by the Supreme Court striking down affirmative action in college admissons, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies. President Donald Trump wrote on his social media network that the decision is "a great day for America. People with extraordinary ability and everything else necessary for success, including future greatness for our country, are finally being rewarded." 

His predecessor, President Barack Hussein Obama, wrote "Affirmative action was never a complete answer in the drive towards a more just society. But for generations of students who had been systematically excluded from most of America’s key institutions -- it gave us the chance to show we more than deserved a seat at the table." A little problem with the structure of that last sentence doesn't prove that the Prez was himself a beneficiary of reverse discrimination.

The SCOTUS decision to which the presidents referred His predecessor  overturned admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have "concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice." 

In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas, who had long called for an end to affirmative action (and who happens to be black), said that the decision "sees the universities' admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes."

Both Justice Thomas and Justice Sonia Sotomayor -- a Latina -- acknowledged that affirmative action played a role in their admissions to college and law school. They took the unusual step of reading a summary of their opinions aloud in the courtroom. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor said the decision "rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress." 

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court's poster child for affirmative action, called the decision "truly a tragedy for us all." She took no took no part in the case against Harvard because she had been a member of an advisory governing board. In the UNC case, she wrote, "With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life."

The vote was 6-3 in the North Carolina case and 6-2 in the Harvard case. The third dissenter in the Harvard case was Justice (((Elena Kagan))). All six men on the Supreme Court joined in the majority decisions. 

Further reading: "Democrats Devastated As Supreme Court Bans Racism", from the Bablyon Bee (of course!), 29/6/23.

VIDEO coming later today: Thomas Sowell on the unintended consequences of affirmative action. 

VIDEO: Fed-up teacher slams Loudon VA school board's insane racism

Meet Lilit Vanetsyan, a self-described "educator" [Is "teacher" too simple a word for "educators"? Ed.] and reporter with Right Side Broadcasting Network. In only one minute, Ms Vanetsyan exposed the insanity of Marxist critical race theory, as embraced by the Loudoun County (VA) Public Schools.

This "extreme wokeness" (or "woke extremism?") teaches that hidden racism permeates American society, and encourages students to deconstruct the world around them to find hidden racism. Here's what Ms Vanetsyan thinks of it.

 

Critical race theory is the ideology which fueled the violent Black Lives Matter and antifa riots last summer. "Woke" school districts across the Excited States of America have rushed to get on the reverse racism bandwagon, but few more so than Loudoun County Public Schools, in the suburbs of Virginia, northwest of Washington DC.

For the sake of combatting perceived "systemic racism", the LCPS adopted curriculum from the far-Left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and removed the still-popular Dr. Seuss books from its library shelves. See "Walt wishes Dr Seuss a Belated Happy Birthday" and "'The Cat in the Hat' tops Amazon's US best-seller list", and , both WWW 4/3/21.

The LCPS plan also includes the obligatory "anti-racism training' (read" brainwashing) for teachers. Walt has heard that one of the "modules" is entitled "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty", with the text being a book of the same name by Garry Trudeau.  [Ed., you'd better check this.] 

It is also rumoured that "educators" will be required to instruct their impressionable pupils on how to draft and circulate petitions calling for the renaming of the Loudoun County seat, which happens to be, errr... Leesburg... named after... you know who.

Don't be misled by the self-proclaimed good intentions of the SJWs. In the name of promoting "sensitivity" and "tolerance", critical race theory promotes racism and division. 

It's not just whites who are targetted. In a statement released on 23 February, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York declared, "Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a hateful, divisive, manipulative fraud. One way or another, CRT wants to get rid of ​too many Asians​ in good schools. Asians are over-represented.​ CRT is today’s Chinese Exclusion Act. CRT is the real ​hate crime​ against Asians....

"CRT appears in our workplaces under the cover of ​implicit bias/sensitivity​ ​training​. It infiltrates our schools pretending to be ​culturally/ethnically responsive​ ​pedagogy​, with curricula such as the New York Times' ​1619 Project​ and Seattle’s ​ethnomathematics​. From its very roots, CRT is racist, repressive, discriminatory, and divisive."

VIDEO: "The Birth of a Nation" (full) - a lesson for our times?

Just about 100% of the reviews you'll read for D.W. Griffiths' masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation focus on the racism, pro-South bias, "glorification" of the Ku Klux Klan, yada yada yada. There is no dbout about the bias, but there is also no doubt that the events depicted are real, a cautionary tale about what happens when you turn society on its head.

In another masterpiece, The Civil War, film-maker Ken Burns quotes a freed slave as telling his master "Bottom rail on top now!" As the film shows, the aim of many radical abolitionists before, during and after the Civil War was nothing less than to make downtrodden black Americans rulers over the privileged whites. To do so, they used rigged elections (in which whites were disenfranchised), mob violence, and occupation of southern cities and states by the federal army.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? The KKK was undeniably racist, but would not have come into being were it not for the necessity of defending southern society and, dare we say it, civilization, in a country which had descended into chaos. Watching The Birth of a Nation may make some people uncomfortable, but it would be foolish to let the political incorrectness blind us to the realities of the culture war which America experienced then... and now.

 

President Woodrow Wilson is famously rumored to have responded to the film with the remark: "It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." His published works as a historian are closely aligned with the film's negative portrayal of Reconstruction. Some of his writings are even quoted onscreen in certain prints of the film.

Also worth watching (and free of bias!) Mississippi's War: Slavery and Secession, a production of Mississippi Public Broadcasting, 2014.

Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. (George Santayana)

Guilty of plagiarism? Princeton profs publish "anti-racism" demands

Seems like just yesterday [It was just yesterday! Ed.] Walt told you about the ridiculous list of demands made by the Faculty Association of California State University (not to be confused with the University of California) to combat the "systemic racism" which exists in their alleged university, as well as American society generally. See "Reverse racism demanded by California State U faculty", WWW 8/7/20.

Many of those demands, including a "dedicated black-only student space" (read: segregated housing) on campus, have started to pop up at universities across the country, including Princeton, which just last month bowed to the anti-racist mob by voting to remove the name of former President (of both Princeton and the USA) Woodrow Wilson from its School of Public Policy and International Affairs.

The Daily Princetonian reports that over 350 faculty members at the once-prestigious Ivy League university have published an open letter charging the school for its alleged "anti-Black racismL, and demanding "anti-racist action" and "diversity in decision-making". But the target is not just Princeton, but the whole world! "Given Princeton's influence," the signatories write, these "principled steps" are designed to "move the dial further toward justice for...the world."

Let's have a look at the 48 "anti-racist" demands. Some of them seem, errr, kind of racist, but you be the judge.

The letter calls for non-white faculty (only) to receive extra sabbaticals, extra pay and extra awards to compensate for the "invisible work" they do. Such as what? The letter states that minority professors are called upon to "chiefly and constantly 'serve' and 'represent' [racial diversity] in the interest of administrative goals."  Back in the `60s some people called that "hiring a niggler to sit beside the door."

The authors complain that just 7% of tenure-track faculty are non-white. How do they know? In South Africa, in the apartheid days, they measured people's lips and checked the texture of their hair. Anyway, the writers suggest giving those oppressed few "a full year of course relief" (meaning no teaching) so they can seek out and recruit more faculty of colour.

More ominously, an "outside committee of academics, law professors, artists, and cultural advisors from communities of color" are to be brought in to make decisions about "race, racism, anti-racism, and racial equity" that will impact the entire campus, while an "internal committee of faculty and students of color" must be appointed to hold the university accountable for carrying out these outsiders' orders.

The university's departments will be rewarded for making diversity hires, but those who don't will be punished! The letter-writers want Princeton to "enforce repercussions" for those departments that "show no progress in appointing faculty of color." Any hiring process that shows "no evidence of a concerted effort to assemble a diverse candidate pool" is to be quashed, and (presumably) the HR people re-educated.

The push for de facto segregation -- let's not beat about the bush here -- includes paying minority students to mentor underclass(wo)men of their own race. Administrators are to hold "semesterly open conversations" only with "students, faculty and staff of color" – no whites allowed!

The Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity is ordered to work with individual departments to devise tailored plans for "anti-racist research, teaching, hiring, and retention", to ensure that no discipline can squirm out from under its responsibility to redress centuries-old grievances.

All faculty must undergo anti-bias training, and standardized testing should probably be abolished because it's "strongly correlated with the underrepresentation of people of color on college campuses."

Princeton's website must include a line on its homepage acknowledging that the campus is built on "indigenous land". But wait, there's more....

The letter-writers want a faculty committee -- themselves??? -- tasked with "investigation and discipline of racist behaviors, incidents, research, and publication on the part of faculty." Sounds like an Orwellian type of thought police to enforce the parody of tolerance that has become the new normal in academia, the media and liberal politics. See "Noam Chomsky on the 'Crisis of Democracy'", WWW 1/7/20.

But let's give credit where credit is due. The authors of the letter suggest that Princeton "acknowledge, credit, and incentivize anti-racist student activism". To start with, there should be a "formal public University apology to the members of the Black Justice League" and other sometime students provoking, orchestrating and taking part in the wave of "anti-racist activism" -- complete with riots, vandalism and violence -- that is now sweeping over America's universities, and indeed, the Excited States of America itself.

Further reading: "Now It's Woodrow Wilson's Turn", by Patrick J. buchanan, Taki's Magazine, 30/6/20. "The cultural revolution has come to the Ivy League..."

Reverse racism demanded by California State U faculty

I see that, following the death of George Floyd, the Faculty Association of California State University (CFA) has made some demands, reported [a bit belatedly? Ed.] by the Daily Caller. The faculty union has a lengthy shopping list of concessions, handouts and other assistance for "Black, Native and Indigenous" students who have been so terribly, terribly hurt by the systemic racism in the university and American society generally.

What, I wonder, is the difference between "native" and "indigenous" students? Do they mean the folks we used to call "Indians" or "Native Americans"? After four centuries, aren't black people indigenous to America? White people too? But let's get on with it. Ed. will highlight [in blue, of course. Ed.] the buzzwords and loaded phrases currently fashionable with the anti-everything left.

The CFA states that "it is not enough to condemn this public execution [of George Floyd] that calls lynching to mind," and that the university needs to fight racism by:

- Making tuition free for minority students, to reverse the decades-long trend of declining enrollments among these demographics. This means overturning Proposition 209, which was approved in 1996 and prohibited California's state institution from considering race, sex, or ethnicity in public employment, effectively banning affirmative action.

- Requiring at least one "ethnic studies" course as a graduation requirement, because the infrastructures of universities are grounded in a "white supremacist colonial discourse and culture" and "the current course content condones 'spirit murdering'."

- Mandating consistent campus-wide training on "unconscious bias" for all university personnel who interact with students and faculty.

- Recognize the "cultural taxation" placed on black students and faculty, who "are asked to speak for all Blackness on the campuses in committee meetings, as advisors for student groups, as well as in their classrooms", creating a "unique burden placed on ethnic minority faculty in carrying out their responsibility to service within the university."

- Heeding "the voices of Black students across the country as they call for universities to divest from police institutions, for the removal of this deeply racist institution from our sites of higher learning, and toward the full abolition of the police."

- And, last but certainly not least... Creating a black student centre [complete with basketball court? Ed.] to serve as "respite for black students".

That's enough demands for help [preferential treatment? Ed.] for "Black, Native and Indigenous" students. I am waiting for the faculty associations of Howard, Tuskegee, Fisk and other historically black universities to publish similar lists of demands for the equal treatment of minority white students at those institutions. But I'm not holding my breath.

Black lives matter... only in America?

"Stop blaming white people" month ends tomorrow

Agent 2 reminded me today that it is still February. Somehow I omitted to post this... errr... poster.

You still have a day and a half left to call this to the attention of people who aren't... errr... white.

VIDEO: Why Ron Paul voted against Martin Luther King Day

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday in the USA, although not widely celebrated everywhere, including in my corner of the woods. The law proclaiming the holiday was passed by Congress in 1983. Dr Ron Paul was a member of the House of Representatives then. In this 21-minute video he explains why.

South Africans won't slaughter white farmers... at least not right now

"White cars, white houses, white women!" That's what black African terrorists were told they get, once they had wrested independence from the colonialists and white settlers. That's what they were fighting for. Not democracy but white cars, white houses and white women!

On 24 October 1964 Britain granted independence to Northern Rhodesia, which was promptly renamed Zambia. One of the first things the new black government of the Marxist Kenneth Kaunda did was to expel the mostly white commercial farmers, so their farms could be "indigenized" -- turned over to his relatives and cronies. The new farmers knew nothing about commercial farming (or even subsistence farming, in some cases) and to no-one's surprise the fertile land went back to bush. Zambia went from being an exporter of food to a net importer.

One of the countries Zambia imported food from was Rhodesia, which was run by white settlers. Rhodesia was the second-most prosperous country in sub-Saharan Africa, after South Africa, which was also run by, errr, white volk. The perfidious Brits sold out their Rhodesian kith and kin in 1980, handing the country over to Comrade Robert Mugabe and his merry band of kleptomaniacs. It took them until 2000 to seize the famously productive white farms, which were handed over to Mugabe's family and friends.

I was there, and on doctor's advice left, just in the nick of time. The botched and often violent redistribution (read: theft) of land left many farms in ruins, and the drop in production triggered an economic crisis that still haunts the country. Uncle Bob's cronies and comrades not only were ignorant of large-scale farming, but had no interest in it. They treated their farms as good places for a Sunday braai, nothing more, and just as in Zambia, the land went out of production and Zimbabwe was plunged into permanent food insecurity.

The other country Zambia, and later Zimbabwe import food from, even today, is South Africa. That country had been independent for a century or so, but didn't come under the control of black Africans until 1994, when the whites saw the black writing on the wall and made a deal with the Nelson Mandela-led African National Congress under which there was to be no wholesale seizure of farms or other sectors of the economy. I was there for that too, and remember a friend warning me "Don't be fooled. In another ten years things will be just like up north." He was wrong, but only about the timeline.

When apartheid ended in 1994, white farmers -- the word in Afrikaans is "boers" -- owned about 85% of South Africa's better farmland. A 2017 government audit found the percentage had fallen to 72%. That is 72% too much, according to Julius Malema, the avowed Marxist leader of the opposition in the country's parliament. This week he introduced a motion, which passed almost unanimously, calling for the amendment of South Africa's constitution to allow for the confiscation of white-owned land without compensation... as was done in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The Honourable Mr Malema has a long-standing commitment to taking land (or houses or cars, etc) without compensation. In 2016 he told his supporters he was "not calling for the slaughter of white people -- at least for now." The policy was a key factor in new president Cyril Ramaphosa's platform after he took over from the incredibly corrupt Jacob Zuma in February.

In introducing the motion, Mr Malema called white farmers "criminals", and said "the time for reconciliation is now over. Now is the time for justice!" Justice for white South African farmers will look something like this.

"We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land," said the Honourable Mr Malema. The ruling ANC's rural affairs minister "There is no doubt about it, land shall be expropriated without compensation."

One small point that neither speaker addressed was the likely effect on South Africa's agricultural output. Ernst Roets, the deputy chief executive of civil rights group Afriforum, said the motion was a violation of agreements made at the end of apartheid. "This motion is based on a distorted image of the past," he explained. "The term 'expropriation without compensation' is a form of semantic fraud. It is nothing more than racist theft."

Freedom Front Plus party leader Pieter Groenewald said the decision to strip white farmers of their land would cause "unforeseen consequences that is not in the interest of South Africa." Leaving aside the grammatical lapse (for which we'll forgive Mr Groenewald since his first language is Afrikaans), he is wrong only in his use of the word "unforeseen". It is easy to foresee that this will all end badly, just as it has in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

A classic paradigm of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting to get a different result. By that definition, the decision taken by South Africa's parliament last week is indeed insane.

Further reading:
"South Africa's Farmers Look North for Opportunities", Ventures Africa, 20/11/12. And [Walt adds] where might "north" be? Answer: Zambia, Zimbabwe and other places which chased out the "white settlers" and are now begging them to come back!
"Trump is Petitioned for White Farmers From South Africa to Come to U.S. As Refugees", Absolute Truth from the Word of God, 2/3/18. Includes link to petition which you can (and should!) sign.

Reverse racism rules at the Canadian Broadcorping Castration

In Adios America!, Ann Coulter dissects and gives numerous examples of the extraordinary lengths the (((controlled))) lamestream media -- Hello, New York Times ! -- goes to to suppress any information about the race, ethnicity, religion and/or immigration status of persons accused of crimes. Descriptions of perps routinely omit words, such as "black", which might help the general public to indentify the wrong-doers and thus assist the police in bringing them to what we laughingly call "justice".

Here's a case in point from the Great No-longer-white North. Last Saturday, a young man by the name of Yosif Al-Hasnawi (religion and immigration status unreported) had just left his mosque in downtown Hamilton ON, when he spotted two men accosting another man. Mr Al-Hasnawi tried to intervene and was subsequently shot by one of the assailants. Hamilton police issued a warrant for James Burningsky King, pictured below.

The picture at right was the first one released, apparently taken from police files. The picture at left was released a couple of days later, by which time Mr King had cut his hair and shaved off his facial hair, thus rendering himself less identifiable as a... errr... First Nations person, or indigenous person, or, to use the now proscribed, politically incorrect term, Indian.

Canadians (and probably Americans too) would have figured out his race anyway, from his name. Unless of course they listened to Canada's state broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcorping Castration. Reporting on his arrest yesterday (in the vicinity of the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation reserve near Hagersville ON), the CBC used only the left-hand picture and identified the accused, now facing a murder charge, as plain old "James Kind". The ultra-PC broadcaster has thus done its bit to avert race war between Muslim migrants and the warriors of the Six Nations. Good for them!

UPDATED: Black racist shoots up Nashville church

No, we're not talking about how Dylan Roof, an avowed white supremacist shot up the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston SC, back in June of 2015. He killed nine people and wounded three others, in hopes (the state alleged) of starting a race war. Mr Roof was found competent to stand trial in federal court, and in December 2016 was convicted of 33 federal hate crime and murder charges stemming from the shooting. On January 10th of this year, he was sentenced to death.

Mr Roof was separately charged with nine counts of murder in the South Carolina state courts. This past April, he pleaded guilty to all nine state charges in order to avoid a second death sentence and was sentenced to life imprisonment for each, clearing the way for his eventual federal execution.

Mr Roof was white. His victims were black. The massacre was undoubtedly a hate crime, and rightly denounced as such by all right-thinking people (and I mean "right-thinking" in a moral, not political sense). Let us see what happens now that the roles have been reversed.

Yesterday, in Antioch TN (just down the road from Nashville), one woman was killed and seven other people were hurt after a suspect identified as a Sudanese immigrant opened fire at the predominantly white Burnette Chapel Church of Christ.

Law enforcement officials identified the the perp as Emanuel Kidega Samson, 25, who immigrated, with his family, from Sudan in 1996. The family qualified as refugees from the civil war which was then (and still is) raging in that impoverished and backward country.

Mr Samson is suspected (LOL - "suspected") of bringing at least two pistols to the church, along with a ski mask which he donned before opening fire. An usher, Robert Engle, confronted the gunman at one point and was pistol-whipped, causing significant injury around his head. During the scuffle, Mr Samson too was injured. It was initially reported that he had shot himself, but police now say it might have been that his gun discharged unintentionally.

Nashville police took Mr Samson to the hospital. Following treatment he was released, and is expected to be charged with murder and attempted murder. The FBI and the US Attorney's office have opened a civil rights investigation. It is not yet clear whether the "civil rights" which may have been violated are those of Mr Samson or his victims. In today's America, who knows...

No word has reached us, yet, of demonstrations being planned by SPLC, BLM, the masked marauders of AntiFa or other SJWs.

UPDATE ADDED 30/9/17: The Washington Post reported yesterday that a note in Mr Samson's car indicated a possible plot spurred by the fatal 2015 shootings at Emanuel AME church in Charleston. Reuters tried to get confirmation or at least a comment from representatives of the US Attorney's Office, the FBI and the Nashville police. No-one would utter a word because, as we all know, racism is a white thing... only a white thing.

Majority of US college freshmen not ready for higher education

The test results are in, with proof -- if proof is needed -- that when it comes to formal, post-secondary education, the Excited States of America does poorly compared with other developed countries. A disturbingly high percentage of US college graduates can't read, write or do basic math properly. The freshmen are even worse. Many 1000s of American yoofs graduate from high school unable to read their diplomas. GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Just over a year ago, the College Board reported that SAT scores dropped significantly for that year's class of college-bound seniors. All three sections saw declines, with the numbers were down for male and female students alike. At the same time, SAT scores showed continued patterns in which white and Asian students, on average, receive higher scores than do black and Latino students. So don't be calling Walt a white supremacist. I'm just repeating the facts.

Many academics, including Dr. Walter E. Williams*, argue that a very large percentage of all incoming freshmen have no business being admitted to college. According to the College Board's report, the average combined SAT score for white students was 1576 out of a possible 2400. Black student SAT scores, at 1277, were the lowest of the seven reported racial groups. The College Board considers a SAT score of 1550 as the benchmark that indicates a readiness for college-level work.

Only 32% of white students scored at or above "proficient" in math. Only 7% of black students achieved that level. 46% of white test takers, but just 17% of blacks, were considered proficient in reading. Yet because of the reverse racism which is euphemistically called "affirmative action", black students are actually given preference in admission to many US colleges and universities.

Another test used for admission to college is the American College Testing Program (ACT). The ACT test was taken by 2,090,342 students in the high school graduating class of 2016. Just over 13% of the test takers were black. The average composite score for black test takers on the ACT was 17.0 (on a scale of 1 to 36). That was lower than the average score for any other racial or ethnic group including American Indians, Hispanics, and Pacific Islanders. The average composite score for whites was 22.2. The racial gap in ACT test scores has remained relatively stable for decades.

Leaving aside the racial disparity, some truly shocking numbers are revealed in "A Major Crisis in College Readiness for Black Students", a report in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. The majority of students -- white as well as black -- simply are not well-enough educated to be going to college! Only 34% of whites who took the ACT were deemed college-ready in all four areas: English, mathematics, reading and science. For blacks, the figure was just 6%.

Dr Williams* argues that "the most pervasive form of racial discrimination at most colleges is affirmative action. In the name of helping people from groups that have suffered past discrimination, colleges admit black students whose academic preparation differs significantly with that of their white peers. Those differences are not subtle. It should not come as a surprise that the intended beneficiaries of that 'benign' discrimination feel themselves ridiculed, isolated and treated differently. As a result, students who might be successes in a less competitive environment are turned into failures."

Dr Williams goes on to say that the problem of black education begins long before college. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as "The Nation's Report Card", shows that in 2015, only 7% percent of black 12th-graders were considered proficient in math, and only 17% in reading. "This suggests that the average black 12th-grader has the academic proficiency of a white 8th- or 9th-grader. Consider the following question: If one admits 1000 randomly selected 8th- and 9th-graders to college and admits 1000 randomly selected 12th-graders, who do you think is going to come out on top? Who would be surprised if the 8th- and 9th-graders felt inferiority, oppression, and insensitivity?

"The academic elite feel righteous seeing blacks on campus, even if they are severely mismatched. Black people must ask: Are we going to sacrifice our youngsters so that white liberals can feel good about themselves?"

* Based on "Cruelty to Black Students", by Walter E. Williams, on the Lew Rockwell blog. Dr Williams is an American economist, commentator, and academic. He is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University. And he is black.

Further reading: The chapters on the crisis in American education in War on the Middle Class, by Lou Dobbs (Viking Penguin 2007); Why Johnny Can't Read, by Dr. Rudolf Flesch (latest edition: Buccaneer Books 1998)

Confederate flags flying proudly in... wait for it... Brazil!

The pushback against the reverse-racist campaign to take down the Confederate battle flag is growing by the hour! Walt has just been alerted to a feature story on the BBC News website headed "The town in Brazil that embraces the Confederate flag". That would be Santa Barbara D'Oeste, where, once a year, the descendants of about 10,000 Confederates that fled the United States to Brazil after the US Civil War have a sort of family reunion. Here's a group of them, showing that, even after a century and a half, they're still proud to be Southerners!

Can you imagine the reaction in the state capitals of South Carolina or Texas or Virginia if the descendants of the sons and daughters of the Confederacy posed like this in public? Why, in Texas the state won't even sell you a vanity licence plate bearing the Dixie flag any more, because it's politically incorrect. Shame!

Asher Levine, Reuters' man in Sao Paolo, reports that despite being six or seven generations removed from their antebellum ancestry, many local Brazilians still maintain strong ties to Southern culture, and proudly wave the Confederate flag. At their annual get-together, he told BBC, "they all take part in stereotypically southern things like square dances, eating fried chicken and biscuits, and listening to George Strait." [George Strait? Who he? Ed.] Here's another photo.

Now there's something you don't see every day, even in the Ole South! Kinda warms the cockles of your heart, doesn't it? (If your cockles get too warm, rub them with ice.)
 
Over time, the article continues, the white Southerners who came from the USA [CSA, surely! Ed.] mixed with the darker Brazilians, resulting in people with a variety of skin colours waving the Confederate flag. "A lot of people who are descendants of these confederates have African blood as well, so you'll see at the party people with dark skin waving the Confederate flag."

Strange, isn't it, that people in Brazil and Canada (see previous post) are willing and able to associate themselves with the Confederate battle flag, in spite of its supposed negative connotations, yet Americans who are proud to be Southerners are being demonized and denied the right to show their Southern pride, all because of the actions of one deranged young man. But that's the USA in the Age of Obama. Political correctness rules!

The end of affirmative action? Charles Krauthammer talks about the Schuette case

Affirmative action is a fraud, a sham, a dirty trick played on the people of the USA in the name of "racial equality" and "fairness". From the getgo, it was a plot by the usual gang of "progressive thinkers" and "anti-racists" to get even with the white people of America for "centuries of oppression of people of colour".

The argument was that African-Americans -- not all vizmins, just the blacks -- weren't getting ahead in society and in life because they were being held back by things like segregated schools. A decade after Brown v. Board of Education ended segregation, blacks were still found to be under-represented in US colleges and universities because, evidently, they couldn't cut the mustard on the admissions tests.

The solution proposed by the guilt-wracked liberals was not to help the poorly educated African-Americans with things like, say, Remedial English, but to make the "Eurocentric" tests easier! When that didn't work, hundreds of "civil rights" laws and regulations were put in place to effect give "minorities" preferential treatment in getting into school, getting government jobs, getting public housing, and so on.

America being the most litigious country on earth, it didn't take long -- about a decade -- for hundreds of lawsuits to be brought challenging this state-mandated reverse discrimination. Eventually one such action reached the United States Supreme Court: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In that landlmark case, Justice Lewis Powell found "diversity in the classroom" to be "a compelling state interest". So, he said, affirmative action was allowed under the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act.

But, a majority of the justices found, the university's programme went too far, so it was struck down and Mr. Bakke (a white man) was admitted to the U.C.-David medical school. The practical effect of Bakke was that most affirmative action programs continued without change.

But was Bakke a binding precedent -- the law of the land -- or merely a non-binding plurality opinion? In 2003, the majority of the Supreme Court upheld Powell's position in Grutter v. Bollinger. They found that a "race-conscious admissions process that may favor underrepresented minority groups" did not amount to a "quota system", which would have been unconstitutional under Bakke.

However, Chief Justice Rehnquist, joined by three other justices, dissented. He called the University of Michigan Law School's system a thinly veiled and unconstitutional quota system, citing the fact that the percentage of African-American applicants closely mirrored the percentage of African-American applicants that were accepted. Still, the 5-4 decision was hailed by the usual suspects as a victory for progressive thinkers over racists, yada yada yada, and reverse discimination was apparently enshrined as the law of the land.

Last week, however, the Supreme Court appeared to reverse itself. Its just-released decision in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action upheld the right of the citizens of Michigan to ban race conscious admissions at the state’s colleges and universities, and in many other governmental activities as well.

The phrase which I've emphasized is the key. The Supreme Court is saying, in Schuette, that the final decision as to the necessity for or rightness of schemes like affirmative action rests with the people, not the courts!

Two propositions were accepted by the parties and the Court:
(1) In certain limited circumstances, the constitution permits race-conscious admissions (affirmative action), and
(2) Although the Constitution permits affirmative action it does not require it.
The second proposition means that a public university can decide not to engage in affirmative action, and that a university’s board of trustees or regents can forbid the university it governs from considering a student’s race in the admissions process.

That is essentially what the Court said -- although not so clearly -- in Grutter. Here's how Charles Krauthammer explains it.



Here's how Mr. Krauthammer put it in his syndicated column. "After 36 years since the Bakke case, years of endless pettifoggery — parsing exactly how many spoonfuls of racial discrimination are permitted in exactly which circumstance — the court has its epiphany: Let the people decide. Not our business. We will not ban affirmative action. But we will not impose it, as the Schuette plaintiffs would have us do by ruling that no state is permitted to ban affirmative action." [The emphasis is mine. Walt]

Does this mean that a judicial stake has at last been driven through the heart of affirmative action? Hardly. What is clear, though, is that the majority of Americans (and their British and Canadian cousins) are fed up with anti-white racism. If the majority is allowed to have its say and have its way, as the US Supreme Court now says it should be, the end of reverse discrimination may well be in sight.

Further reading: "Ethnic politics, public opinion forcing a second look at U.S. affirmative action: Two recent Supreme Court decisions throw the ball to state legislatures", a well-balanced analysis by Neil Macdonald on the CBC News website.

Footnote: Walt has just acquired a copy of Charles Krauthammer's latest book, Things That Matter (Crown Forum, 2013). In a blurb on the back cover, David Brooks says that Mr. Krauthammer's writing "transcends the crush of daily events and can be read, with profit, always." Indeed.