Free Republic

After the Vergara v. California decision in California’s state Supreme Court, which held that key job protections for teachers are unconstitutional, anti-union advocates everywhere began spawning copycat lawsuits. But while reformers may genuinely want to fix education for everyone, their efforts will only worsen diversity in the teaching corps. The truth is that an attack on bad teacher tenure laws (and ineffective teachers in general) is actually an attack on black professionals. If the Vergara clones succeed, black children will lose effective teachers and the black community will lose even more middle-class jobs. Black workers are most likely to hold...

Attorney general Eric Holder and Missouri Democratic leaders need to apologize to the law-enforcement community for impugning officers’ motives in light of the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., according to one prominent county sheriff. Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke, who gained notoriety last year for encouraging gun ownership within his Wisconsin community, said Holder, Governor Jay Nixon, and Senator Claire McCaskill made the situation in Ferguson worse with their “irresponsible, inflammatory” comments about the city’s police force and its supposed problem with race relations. Clarke argued on Fox News on Friday that the trio was “insinuating that our law-enforcement officers across...

Since Barack Obama was elected president, only 10 percent of Americans believe that race relations have gotten better, according to a New York Times/CBS Poll published today. The poll found 17 percent of blacks and 8 percent of whites believe race relations have improved under Obama. Thirty five percent of Americans believe that race relations have gotten worse in the Obama era -- including 40 percent of whites and 21 percent of blacks. Fifty-two percent of Americans polled said that race relations have stayed about the same.

Perhaps it’s time to finally concede that Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and their fellow civil-rights crusaders have apparently been correct all along: There is indeed a whole lot of racism in America that just won’t go away. It may be time to admit that Sharpton is justified in so passionately condemning the recent police “execution” of Michael Brown in Missouri—calling it a “defining moment” for our country, a moment where the nation itself, with all its weighty, racist baggage, “is on trial.” The numbers, after all, don’t lie. During the most recent five-year period for which single-offender, interracial crime statistics...

Did you know that these pop stars had black heritage? Pete Wentz musician Troian Bellisario (Pretty Little Liars) Wentworth Miller actor Nicole Richie fashion designer Slash musician Rashida Jones actress Adriana Lima model Maya Rudolph Carol Channing Mariah Carey singer

......................"A visibly angry [Missouri State Police Capt. Ron ] Johnson said that officers had come under heavy gunfire from protesters and at least two people had been shot. Johnson said he did not know the condition of the shooting victims. Four officers had been injured when they were struck by rocks or bottles, though Johnson claimed that police had not fired a single shot. Citing what he called a "dangerous dynamic in the night," Johnson requested that protests take place during the daylight hours, so that officers could effectively isolate any troublemakers. However, Johnson said that his forces could not...

LA GRANGE, Texas (KXAN) – The Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, with the help of the Texas Rangers, are investigating a murder in La Grange. Randy Noviskie, Chief Deputy with the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office, said a 16-year-old boy allegedly killed a woman on Truesdale Road on Monday just before 10 a.m. After the murder, the teenager left the scene in the victim’s car but he was arrested a few hours later in Smithville. According to authorities, the teenager ran away from a juvenile detention facility last week and since then he had been involved in an auto theft spree in...

I thought this would be a good place to post video links of the rioting in Ferguson Missouri and links to news coverage and live stream recordings.

The family of the black teenager shot dead by a policeman in St Louis are haunted by the image of him holding his hands up at the moment he was killed, a family member claimed today. Ty Pruitt said that the mental picture of Michael Brown surrendering was stuck in his relatives’ minds as it showed he was ‘killed like an animal’. Pruitt spoke out at an emotional Sunday church service during which Brown’s mother Lesley McSpadden sobbed and wiped the tears away from her eyes with a tissue. His father Michael Brown Sr stood grim faced whilst wearing a...

The police department in a St. Louis suburb where a man was shot and killed by a police officer is asking protesters to gather only during daylight. Ferguson has been the site of nightly protests and unrest since 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed during a confrontation with an officer on Saturday. In a news release issued Wednesday, the department asked that all people who assemble to pray or protest do so in “an organized and respectful” manner and disperse well before evening to ensure the safety of participants and the community. “The City of Ferguson mourns the loss of...

<p>What began as a peaceful protest of the shooting of an 18-year-old unarmed black man by a police officer in a St. Louis suburb turned into what the town's mayor called a "huge mess" as several businesses were looted and cars were vandalized.</p>

It's always interesting to see what sort of people a President wants to surround himself with. The following is a list of some of the most powerful politicians in the country. All were either nominated by President Obama and then confirmed by the United States Senate, or else were simply appointed to their positions without Senate approval.

People, like Obama and the race-baiting reverends, are in part to blame for the Black on White violence of the Knockout Game The race riots have begun. The Black Panthers have gotten their wish. Racist violence in order to create even more division has begun. . . by design. Barack Obama is at the center of the blame. He understands that culture is politics, division creates crisis, and during times of crisis the government can do things that the citizens would not normally allow them to do.

There's a weekly trial on the Internet about who may be stealing culture from whom. Earlier this week, the defendants were Iggy Azalea and white gay men. A while back, it was Macklemore and the Harlem Shakers. Now, we have come across a story from the Jim Crow era about cultural mimicry between people of color.In mid-20th century America, the turban was a tool that people of color used for "confounding the color lines," writes Manan Desai, board member of the South Asian American Digital Archive.At the time, ideas of race in America were quite literally black and white. In...

Absentee voting started Friday, six weeks ahead of primary elections. Already there are strong allegations of voter fraud. The attorney for Phyllis Kahn says he got word Thursday night; there might be hundreds of people who are registering and voting using an address that's not their home. Absentee voting kicked-off Friday morning in a hotly contested democratic primary race for the state house between incumbent Phyllis Kahn and Mohamud Noor. Brian Rice, attorney for the Phyllis Kahn Volunteer Committee, claims there's voter fraud. "I think there is a coordinated effort to use this address to bring voters into the DFL...

Consider this your Friday evening palate cleanser — and a very welcome one at that. As the ritual center-right circular firing squad gathers over the very ugly mess in Mississippi, I give you a delightful and clever web ad produced by an African-American conservative running for office in a neighboring state. Meet Darius Foster, a black Republican from the deep South who will not be pigeonholed:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO “Now that you know a little about me, do I really fit in a box?” The spot startles at the onset (is that her voice?), arresting the viewer’s...

#YesWeCode looks to close the coding inequality gap Shortly after Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in February 2012, liberal activist Van Jones was talking with his friend Prince—yes, that Prince—about the circumstances of the shooting. More “I think he made the observation,” Jones told TIME, “that when African-American young people wear hoodies people think they’re thugs, but when white kids wear hoodies you assume that they’re going to be dot-com billionaires,” a reference to the outerwear favored by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk. “We just started thinking: ‘Well, how do we turn that around?’” Out of that...

“The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act was passed in to law nearly five decades ago…The real voter fraud is people trying to deny our rights by making voting harder in the first place.” President Barack Obama, 2014 National Action Network Convention in New York City. Though many believe them to be an effort at voter disenfranchisement, a recent poll suggest most Americans are actually in support of voter identification laws, perhaps making them harder to combat. A total of 31 states have active voter ID laws....

Black Beach Week used to get all the glory: Every Memorial Day weekend, 300,000 black people gathered in Miami Beach to get their freak on. And also create a tsunami of violence, robbery, shootings, carjackings, vandalism, mayhem, noise and trash. snip... Last year, a local radio personality said all the ruckus was just one big misunderstanding. She could speak for all of those who still refuse to believe that black mob violence exists out of proportion on Memorial Day. And every other day: "You had many more people up that way than previous years," said Jill Tracey. "You have that...

Randallstown High School students dressed in cap and gowns–fighting on graduation day. The video is going viral with thousands of views. Two people are now under arrest. snip... It was graduation day for Randallstown High’s Class of 2014. Cell phone video captured quick shots of adults and students throwing punches. It was an all-out brawl outside Towson University’s SECU Arena just as the ceremony ended.