Free Republic

While taking some flak for doing so, City of Phoenix officials are standing by their decision to accept non-swimming minorities as pool lifeguards. “The problem with requiring swimming proficiency as a condition of employment is that minorities would be under-represented among those we hire,” City Parks and Recreation Administrator Alfredo Zote observed. “The Mayor has asked us to strive for a workforce that mirrors the composition of the City’s population. We can’t do that if we impose qualifications that have a disproportionate impact on any racial or ethnic groups.” As to whether the ability to swim might not be a...

Many ideas presented as "new" are just rehashes of old ideas that have been tried before — and have failed before. So it is no surprise that the recent "Growth and Opportunity Project" report to the Republican National Committee is a classic example of what previous generations called "Me too" Republicanism. These are Republicans who think that the key to winning elections is to do more of what the Democrats are doing. In effect, they say "me too" on issues such as immigration, in hopes of gaining more new votes than they lose by betraying their existing supporters. In the...

The catfight between former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and his replacement, Reince Priebus, has reached screech level, with Steele belittling the party's new focus on minorities as old news. Appearing on the "Andrea Tantaros Show," a nationally syndicated radio show, Steele called the GOP establishment that on Monday unveiled a $10 million minority outreach effort a bunch of "numb nuts" for ignoring the plan he instituted four years ago. Steele also sounded ready to beat up Priebus. Asked by Tantaros who would win in a cage fight, Steele said, "Oh, no question, I would clean his clock." How?...

The chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus said she is concerned that President Obama has not yet appointed African-Americans to his second-term Cabinet. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) said Obama's appointees do not reflect the nation's diverse population — at least, so far. “I am concerned that you have moved forward with new cabinet appointments and yet, to date, none of them have been African American,” her letter to Obama states. “You have publicly expressed your commitment to retaining diversity within your cabinet. However, the people you have chosen to appoint in this new term have hardly been reflective of this...

Chicago Public Schools’ plans to close under-enrolled schools to save money could lead to lawsuits. An analysis of the 129 schools that CPS could close finds that African Americans will bear a large burden of the closures. The Sun-Times report found 117 of the 129 schools that could close are made up of a majority African-American students. Nine of the schools are majority Hispanic. In comparison, CPS, as a whole, is 41.6 percent African American, 44 percent Hispanic and 8 percent white. Meanwhile, the commission reviewing the district’s plan is siding with CPS in its final report. However, while CPS...

As CBSSports.com's Mike Freeman pointed out Thursday night, none of the eight coaches hired this offseason was of color. In all, teams went 0-for-8 in hiring minorities (or as Freeman wrote, “0-fer-black”). Though the Rooney Rule is in place and does lead to minority candidates legitimately interviewing for head coaching jobs, you also have to wonder how effective that mandate is. Well, the NFL has taken notice and plans to do something about it. Here's the statement from Robert Gulliver, the NFL's executive vice president of human resources:

As the battle for the gun rages on, an intriguing question came to mind: what if the NRA was mostly black and brown folks, would we even be having this conversation? Let’s take it a step further; what if mass murderer Adam Lanza was a young black, Hispanic or Middle Eastern male? The National Rifle Association is politically and socially powerful, there is no disputing that. They have their tentacles deeply buried in our legislative discourse and have successfully maintained their stronghold through many gun massacres and other gun violence over the years. Until this latest school tragedy, which is...

The biggest story of the past election was how President Obama’s team was able to get his interest groups to the polls and how correspondingly the Republicans feel behind on certain interest groups. It is clear Republican failed to capture the votes of Hispanics, Asians and other groups. So let’s take a look at where they are and what they need to do. To discover what happened one has to look at what the Republicans have been doing and why they failed to attract certain voters. The first and most important point is not that they have failed policies or...

Greek mythology, with its tales of Zeus, Apollo and Hera doesn't have a thing on the mythology that liberals have created around themselves. There's Bubba, the President who can feel your pain, BO the leader who has the ability to never be blamed for anything and, of course, the wronged woman Fluke who the gods granted free birth control for the rest of her life for not being allowed to speak to a committee...or something. Still, as you're about to see, the real face of liberalism looks a lot more like Medusa than Aphrodite. 1) Liberals are pro-capitalism: Many liberals...

When the election was finally over, and Barack Obama had been re-elected despite the bad economy and other strikes against him, there was a single quiet moment where the question was raised: What would the Republicans learn from their defeat? How, chastened, would they return to the national stage, humbled but committed to fix our common problems? Ah, hahahahaha . . . “In the afterglow of Obama’s victory, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Ayatollah Khamenei, Vladimir Putin and Chris Matthews, as well as millions of pot-heads, sodomites, pro-aborts and all common moochers, are sharing a collective thrill,” wrote Joel Richardson, in his “A...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The housing crisis hurt low-income communities and minorities more severely than other groups, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Thursday. "Lower-income and minority communities are often disproportionately affected by problems in the national economy, and the effects of the housing bust have followed that unfortunate pattern," Bernanke said in prepared remarks presented at the Operation HOPE Global Financial Dignity Summit in Atlanta. Bernanke pointed to homeownership rates for African Americans, which fell 5 percentage points over the last eight years, compared to a 2 percentage-point drop for other groups. While there has always been a gap...

The most widely offered explanation for Mitt Romney's defeat is that the Republican Party is disproportionately composed of -- aging -- white males. That is, alas, true. But the real question is what Republicans should do with this truth. There are two responses. The nearly universal response -- meaning the response offered by the liberal media and liberal academics (and some Republicans) -- is that the Republican Party needs to rethink its positions, moving away from conservatism and toward the political center. The other response is for conservatives and the Republican Party to embark on a massive campaign to influence,...

The Corner The one and only. Live Free . . . Or Die By Mark Steyn November 6, 2012 11:03 P.M. As disappointing for me as Mitt losing New Hampshire has been the down-ticket races in the Granite State. In 2010, Republicans won both House seats, the Senate seat, three-quarters of State Reps, 80 percent of State Senate seats, and 100 percent of the Executive Council. Two years later, Democrats have taken the governorship and may well take both House seats, and the vote tallies they’re racking up in hardcore plaid-clad North Country towns far from the Massachusetts border are...

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - The last weekend before the election means campaign volunteers will knock on doors and make their final phone calls. A group of volunteers focus their efforts on the minoriy vote: African Americans, Latinos, and Asians. "Lots of people have been knocking on our doors,� said Word of Faith Pentecostal Church Senior Pastor Wendell Beets. Volunteers from campaigns frequently stop by Word of Faith Pentecostal Church on the southwest side of Cedar Rapids. It’s a predominantly black church where sounds of worship bellow through the building Sunday morning. "We don't tell people who to vote for, but...

Maryland Republicans are driving efforts to overturn the state’s newly drawn congressional map in a referendum next month, but they are joined by a number of Democrats who say their own party has gone too far in crafting districts for political gain. Numerous Montgomery County Democrats are scheduled to hold a news conference Monday in Rockville during which they are expected to urge a “no” vote on ballot Question 5, which would reject the district map drawn last year by Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley and approved by the General Assembly. Critics have accused the map’s makers of lumping disparate communities...

MSNBC host Chuck Todd asked the co-chair of the Democratic party's convention, L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, why there are more Republican women and Hispanic governors: "Let me ask you though, this one question, why is it that the Republicans have elected more women governors and have two Hispanic governors and the Democrats don’t?," asked Todd. "Don’t have as many women governors and don’t have Hispanic governors, why do you think that is?"

I’m confident a significant portion (enough to win) of minorities and young voters can be “fruit to be picked” if the nitwit GOP establishment will at give it a try! The GOP establishment is long been locked in the prison of "conventional wisdom"... (and DAMN sure better break out soon!!!). Many college grads are graduating with mortgage sized student debt, no job prospects and living in mom's basement on dad's insurance. Yet they support Obama 2 to 1???? (Funny "math" indeed). I suspect much of their support is thin and can be wrestled away. If Romney/GOP can muster half a...

State leaders should revise school testing and funding, extend health care coverage for those aging out of foster care, and make it harder for schools to suspend and expel - all to improve the odds of success for boys and young men of color in California.Those are among dozens of recommendations from a state legislative committee that spent the past year and a half looking into why the state's minority youth are less healthy, have lower test scores and are more likely to be incarcerated than other young people......Assembly Select Committee on the Status of Boys and Men of Color,...

In March 2010, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that his department was “going to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement” in the nation’s schools. What was the pervasive racial injustice that led Mr. Duncan to redouble such efforts? Black elementary and high school students are three and a half times more likely to get suspended or expelled than their white peers, according to federal data. And so the Departments of Education and Justice have launched a campaign against disproportionate minority discipline rates, which show up in virtually every school district with significant numbers of black and Hispanic students. The possibility that...

President Barack Obama tends to skim lightly over the details of his health care law in speeches. But his administration has a far more specific pitch to black and Hispanic audiences. The message: Blacks and Hispanics, among whom uninsured rates are significantly higher than among whites, stand to benefit disproportionately under the health law, gaining access to free preventive care and other services that will help reduce existing health care disparities. The sustained outreach from the White House aims to make voters eligible for new benefits aware of them and how to get them. Obama’s staff has invited groups of...

Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday reinforced his opposition to Texas’ new voter ID law, saying during an NAACP convention in Houston that it hurts minorities and that politics is the driving force behind the issue.

Contrary to the oft-repeated media narrative that the Republican Party is not inclusive, there are actually more female Republican governors than female Democratic governors, and considerably more minority Republican governors than minority Democratic governors.

Something isn’t kosher about a CUNY scheme to single out Jews, angry professors charge. Touting a move to make its faculty more diverse, CUNY administrators have broken out Jews into a separate minority group: “White/Jewish.” CUNY insists “some faculty” want the label, instead of being lumped in as just white. But the theistic tag has outraged both Jewish and non-Jewish professors, and sparked a furor.

Chicago Alderman Anthony Beale gave new meaning to constituent advocacy yesterday when he told Metra’s executive director “people are going to get hurt” in the dispute over how many minorities they decide to hire for a railroad bridge project, the “Englewood Flyer.” The Chicago Sun-Times reports Beale did not specify who would “get hurt” or who would do the hurting. No matter the victims or perpetrators, this is a rather alarming prediction for a locally elected official to make. Beal warned, “I’m trying to help you help yourself. When I say that, problems could arise.

An influential alderman warned Metra’s executive director on Thursday that “people are going to get hurt” if the commuter rail agency fails to bolster minority participation on a $133-million South Side railroad bridge known as the “Englewood Flyover.” Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, did not explain who he believed would “get hurt” or who the perpetrators might be. But, he was clearly referring to civil disobedience or maybe even violence at the construction site. “I’m trying to help you help yourself. When I say that, problems could arise. When you look at a community...

Late last week, Forbes magazine released its annual list of the 100 World’s Most Powerful Celebrities. Seven of the top ten on the list were women — including the top two, Jennifer Lopez and Oprah Winfrey. On Sunday night’s “The Adam Carolla Show” podcast, comedian and host Adam Carolla said chastising America as a discriminatory country is bizarre when members of minority groups can attain such a high status in society. “Let me hear the top 10 or 15 and then let’s all just close our eyes and picture what a horrible sexist, racist society we live in,” Carolla asked...

If Democratic voters were rapidly increasing in number and Republican voters rapidly decreasing, it should be pretty big news, shouldn’t it? Not when at issue is a third rail of American social commentary: race. Recently I wrote a piece on race and voting patterns, using as a lede the story about how white births now account for less than 50 percent of the U.S. total for the first time in history. And while most respondents agreed with my analysis, some reacted predictably: Uncomfortable even hearing about race and/or frightened by what lies ahead, they rationalized away obvious facts. And here...

NEW YORK -- Major League Baseball received a high grade for racial diversity among its employees but a middling mark when it comes to hiring women. Baseball received its fourth straight A for race hiring in the annual report by Richard Lapchick's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida.

Washington has begun asking if the Secret Service needs more women in the organization in the wake of the prostitution incident in Cartagena, Colombia that has led to six agents being fired or resigning. The call comes after it became public on Saturday that a woman named Paula Reid, who heads the Miami field office for the Secret Service, which also overseas South America, was the supervisor who moved quickly to contain last week's scandal.

Two friends who had planned to visit a Seattle sports bar claim they ended up being kicked, arrested at gunpoint and held in jail for several hours by a cop who said he intended to "make stuff up." Part of the arrest of Josh Lawson, 23, and Christopher Franklin, 22, on Nov. 16, 2010 is caught on tape by the officer's dashboard camera. But key moments of the arrest that should have been captured on video are missing and it was unclear whether the officer intentionally neglected to turn on the dash cam. None of the released footage shows the...

Racist Supremacist Islamic Iranian [so-called] "aryans" found their excuse to target Azeris THE OPPORTUNITY/EXCUSE Iran summons Azeri envoy over Mossad allegations Beaver County Times - Feb. 13, 2012 Iran's state-run news agency says the country's foreign ministry has summoned Azerbaijan's ambassador to protest alleged Israeli intelligence activity in..http://www.timesonline.com/news/world/middle-east/iran-summons-azeri-envoy-over-mossad-allegations/article_0987bf4c-f8df-5f6f-8cef-b25bce4ca604.html THE TRUTHNew statesman: Volume 21, Issues 1036-1049 – Page 7 – New Statesman Ltd., 2008 Tehran terror Your report "Inside Iran" (15 September) covered many important issues, but neglected one of the most fundamental: the racist, Persian-supremacist character of the Tehran regime and its neocolonial subjugation of the country's national minorities, especially...

President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign will be the first in modern political history to abandon white working-class voters, strategists claim. For decades, Democrats have been losing more and more blue collar whites. Their alienation helped lead to the massive Republican wave in 2010, when the GOP wooed 30 percent more of them than the Democrats could. Democratic strategists say President Obama is focusing his attention, instead, on poor black and Hispanic voters and educated white professionals. 'All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left...

Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart pooh-poohed the idea that GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain could win a substantial share of the Black vote in a contest against Barack Obama. “While it may be true that Eisenhower won 41% of the Black vote in 1956, times are very different today,” Capehart wrote. “President Johnson’s Great Society War on Poverty put many more Blacks on the government teat than there were in 1956. Democrats that previously might have been seen as heirs of the Klan are now the Party of free stuff to many Blacks. As a conservative, Cain is seen as...

A white progressive who organized Occupy Wall Street excluded white allies from a critical meeting with New York’s Local 1199 union, which has since thrown its enormous resources behind the media-magnified protest. The local, which has up to 350,000 members, is part of the Service Employees Union International (SEIU). It invited the one of the leading OWS organizers to a Sept. 30 meeting after the organizers sought its support. The protester invited to the Sept. 30 meeting was Jesse Myerson, a white male who describes himself as an “independent journalist and activist.” In an email to the other organizers, he...

99% what? ‘Occupy Wall Street’ organizers look for minoritiesBy Matthew Boyle The Daily Caller – 22 hrs ago **SNIP** One minority activist has appeared to speak to the Wall Street protesters: socialist and Princeton professor Cornel West. Malkin and Gainor also told TheDC that while news organizations have failed to report on these protesters’ lack of minority representation, tea party rallies attracted accusations of racism for what some reporters perceived was a similar lack of racial diversity. “The liberal media will only engage in racial bean-counting of protest crowds when it serves their political ends: Namely, painting the Right as...

Black Unemployment: Highest In 27 Years By Annalyn Censky September 2, 2011 The unemployment rate for blacks surged to 16.7% in August, its highest rate since 1984, the Labor Department reported Friday. NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The August jobs report was dismal for plenty of reasons, but perhaps most striking was the picture it painted of racial inequality in the job market. Black unemployment surged to 16.7% in August, its highest level since 1984, while the unemployment rate for whites fell slightly to 8%, the Labor Department reported. "This month's numbers continue to bear out that longstanding pattern that minorities...

Minorities Become A Majority In Washington Region By Carol Morello and Ted Mellnik August 30 Washington is among eight big-city metropolitan regions in which minorities became a majority in the past decade, according to a new analysis of census data showing white population declines in many of the largest metro areas. Along with Washington, the regions surrounding New York, San Diego, Las Vegas and Memphis have become majority-minority since 2000. Non-Hispanic whites are a minority in 22 of the countryÂ’s 100-biggest urban areas. The white population shrank in raw numbers in 42 of those big-city regions. But every large metro...

During construction of the Hiawatha Line, the joint venture in charge of the light-rail project told federal authorities that minority and disadvantaged subcontractors were being included. Now it has agreed to pay the government $4.6 million to resolve allegations that those claims were false. According to the Justice Department, Minnesota Transit Constructors Inc. violated the federal false claims act by telling federal transportation officials that it hired companies qualified as Disadvantaged Business Enterprises to work on the light rail. The program helps businesses owned by minorities, women and other disadvantaged individuals obtain work on federal construction projects.

President Barack Obama has signed an executive order directing the federal government to design a new strategy for hiring, promoting and keeping workers of diverse backgrounds. The three-page order released Thursday directs the head of the Office of Personnel Management, a deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget and two other agencies to develop the strategy within 90 days. Agencies then have 120 days to implement it. An Office of Personnel Management report says that in fiscal year 2010, the federal workforce was 66.2 percent white, 17.7 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic, 5.6 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, 1.8 percent...

London is reeling from three nights of rioting that's poured hundreds of people into the streets, leaving several local neighborhoods in shambles. One man is dead, dozens injured and arrested. The protests have now spread to other cities, with violence reported in parts of Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol. Great Britain and other parts of the world are experiencing unrest at a time of global economic uncertainty and stock market volatility. Here's a look at what's happening around the world and how economic downturns are bringing protestors into the streets. Great Britain Police in London say the violence began during a...

Rolling coverage of the third night of violent disturbances in London, with arson and looting reported at several locations across the capital.

MSNBC Contributor Goldie Taylor Says Corporate America Is "Literally Raping" Minorities (VIDEO) Megan Angelo Jul. 27, 2011, 4:40 PM MSNBC contributor Goldie Taylor just made a very questionable word choice. When Martin Bashir asked her about the recession's "catastrophic" effect on minorities, this was her answer: "Catastrophic is right, you know. If you look at african-american and hispanic households, fully a third of them report zero wealth. Not even a dollar in positive wealth. A lot of that wealth was tied up in the homes that they spent more than 75% of their income either buying or maintaining, and so...

The Great Recession may have affected Americans from all walks of life, but it took a dramatically lopsided toll on the personal wealth of blacks and Hispanics, erasing many of the gains made over the past two decades, a new report shows. The report, released early Tuesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, found the median wealth of white households at the official end of the recession in 2009 was 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households — the biggest gap since the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting such data a quarter century ago.

A cadre of racialists bent on achieving social justice via reparations from banks to minority communities has been installed by Eric Holder in the Department of Justice. They are using legal bullying tactics to intimidate banks into once again loaning mortgage money to people who have no ability to pay it back. Banks have even been forced to post signs in the facilities informing customers that welfare payments can count as income to apply to mortgage applications.In a stunning article from Investor's Business Daily, Paul Sperry lays out how the DoJ activists work, and how they think.Most damning of all,...

In what could be a repeat of the easy-lending cycle that led to the housing crisis, the Justice Department has asked several banks to relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination, according to court documents reviewed by IBD. Prosecutions have already generated more than $20 million in loan set-asides and other subsidies from banks that have settled out of court rather than battle the federal government and risk being branded racist.

How did we reach the point where the only group whose feelings need to be consulted are minorities? Liberalism. Part of liberalism is the notion that minorities need special help, attention, and heightened sensitivity. Along with that, liberalism promotes white guilt and the peculiar desire to "help people" at any cost. The result is that the media gives credence and coverage to mere feelings when real people are being attacked. Of course, the worse the violence gets, the more sensitive we'll have to be. The flash mobs and mob attacks will require the utmost sensitivity from us, as they are...

What is the most important thing about mobs of black teens attacking and seriously injuring innocent pedestrians and businesses?  The feelings of teenagers who share the race of the attackers, according to Chicago's local CBS affiliate.That's right: Mobs of teenagers have unleashed terror in the streets of Chicago and other cities in "flash mobs," and the best thing CBS in Chicago has to say about that is that black teenagers are worried about racial profiling.George Orwell would shudder after reading this headline: "Some Worry Mob Attacks Are Encouraging Racial Profiling."  In the story, a journalist interviews young black teens...

Non-Hispanic white children now make up the minority of babies born in the US for the first time, according to latest census estimates, highlighting demographic changes that could reshape US government policy. The findings offer a preview of final 2010 census results, released this summer, that provide detailed household breakdowns by age, race and relationship. Demographers say the numbers provide the clearest indication yet that non-white minority groups will become the majority in the US by the middle of the century. Alabama became the latest state this month to pass a wide-ranging anti-immigration law which requires schools to report their...

'We're living in a different world than the 1950s' WASHINGTON — For the first time, minorities make up a majority of babies in the U.S., part of a sweeping race change and a growing age divide between mostly white, older Americans and predominantly minority youths that could reshape government policies. Preliminary census estimates also show the share of African-American households headed by women — mostly single mothers — now exceeds African-American households with married couples, a sign of declining U.S. marriages overall but also of continuing challenges for black youths without involved fathers. The findings, based on the latest government...

Obama cracks down on abuses by big-city police departmentsBy Justin Elliott AP/Julio Cortez Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, center, talks about a federal investigation of the Newark Police Department during a May 9 news conference with Newark Mayor Cory Booker, far left. In a marked shift from the Bush administration, President Obama's Justice Department is aggressively investigating several big urban police departments for systematic civil rights abuses such as harassment of racial minorities, false arrests, and excessive use of force.In interviews, activists and attorneys on the ground in several cities where the DOJ has dispatched...