Free Republic

An 11-year-old Latino boy whose singing of the national anthem at the NBA Finals set off a barrage of racist tweets earned a roaring ovation in an encore performance before Game 4 between the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat on Thursday night.

WASHINGTON: For the first time, America's racial and ethnic minorities make up about half of the under-5 age group, the US government said on Thursday. It's a historic shift that shows how young people are at the forefront of sweeping changes by race and class. The new census estimates, a snapshot of the US population as of July 2012, come a year after the Census Bureau reported that whites had fallen to a minority among babies. Fueled by immigration and high rates of birth, particularly among Hispanics, racial and ethnic minorities are now growing more rapidly in numbers than whites....

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced a lawsuit against BMW on Tuesday, alleging that one of its facilities in South Carolina adopted a criminal background check policy that led to a disproportionate impact on African-Americans. According to the EEOC, BMW switched contractors at its South Carolina plant in 2008 and instructed employees of the old contractor who had been working at the site to reapply with the new firm. This new firm was instructed to conduct fresh criminal background checks on all applicants. ...The result was that out of 645 experienced employees, 88 were denied rehire, including 70 blacks,...

For a movement that gets queasy at the thought of most war, the modern left surely fancies itself as experts on what war looks like-- and through their eyes, war breaks out at the very glint of opposition to their agenda. Stand up for the unborn, and you are engaged in a “War on Women.” Stand up for traditional marriage, and it is an act of war against gay people. So get ready for the summer of “War on Hispanics,” the battle garb painted on any conservative expressing conservative views on immigration, and just about anything else, for that...

“I demand justice for Trayvon Martin! Sanford PD should be ashamed of themselves.” On March 19, 2012, those were the first words I ever vocalized in regard to the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. I had been driving home that day from a long day on the road, and while listening to my satellite radio, I heard for the first time the story of this young, 17 year old, unarmed kid who was walking home from the store, minding his own business, carrying nothing but a can of iced tea and some Skittles that he’d bought for his younger brother...

A day after a European PGA Tour official was forced to apologize for referring African-Americans as “colored” in the ongoing Tiger Woods/Sergio Garcia flap, a Bronx school teacher has now been fired for calling a student “negro” in one of her classes. Petrona Smith, 65, has now filed suit, claiming at the time she was simply “using the Spanish word for the color black,” according to The New York Post. A seventh-grader from the bilingual school PS 211 later reported the March 2012 incident and Smith, who is black and a native of the West Indies, was dismissed. In her...

h/t Kirby

The family of a Boynton Beach man who died in a hail of police gunfire on Miami Beach two years ago over Memorial Day weekend filed a wrongful death suit against Miami Beach and cities whose police officers were involved in shooting. The shooting took place around 4 a.m. on May 30th, 2011. Police said Ray Herisse, 22, was driving erratically and tried to hit an officer with his car on a crowded Collins Avenue when they tried to pull him over. “There was an indication he may have been driving under the influence. But if it is Miami beach’s...

Sergio Garcia's spat with Tiger Woods went to another level Tuesday. Asked in jest at the European Tour awards dinner in London whether he'd invite Woods over for dinner during next month's U.S. Open, Garcia replied, according to The Guardian: "We will have him round every night. We will serve fried chicken." Garcia later apologized, issuing this statement: “I apologize for any offense that may have been caused by my comment on stage during the European Tour Players' Awards dinner. I answered a question that was clearly made towards me as a joke with a silly remark, but in no...

In Milwaukee, the homicide rate for black residents is 27.9 per 100,000 compared to 9.7 for Latinos and 1.7 per 100,000 white residents. Of known 2011 homicide suspects in Milwaukee, 93 percent are black, while 4 percent are white and Latino. The city itself is 40 percent black, 17 percent Latino, and 37 percent white, according to Census figures. {SNIP} Milwaukee is among the 20 most violent cities in America. The largest number of homicides in Milwaukee occurred in the 53206 Zip Code. {SNIP} In 2011, 17 of the 86 homicides in Milwaukee occurred in 53206. Between 2005-2009, there were...

It all started with some people criticizing Darius Rucker for covering the Bob Dylan (and Ketch Secor) song “Wagon Wheel,” a tune that gained some popularity when Old Crow Medicine Show released it in 2004. That escalated into this post Sunday (May 19) on Twitter from someone identified as pqkullman, whose profile wasn’t coming up Monday: “@dariusrucker Leave country to the white folk” And that set Darius off. “WOW,” he replied at first, “is this 2013 or 1913[?]” Darius’ next post: “Ill take my grand ole Opry membership and leave your racism. Wow.”

PROFESSOR: Affirmative Action Isn't Helping The Right People Erin Fuchs May 20, 2013, 12:19 PM Kevin Brown Affirmative Action Indiana University/Maurer School of Law Professor Kevin Brown says he was a beneficiary of affirmative action when he went to Yale Law School. As the Supreme Court considers whether affirmative action is legal, it may be a good time to ask if it's working as intended. Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor Kevin Brown supports considering race as a factor in admissions but says there is a problem in how affirmative action is implemented. Colleges are giving fewer and fewer...

On Tuesday, May 7, I had one of my most productive days as an employee of the Heritage Foundation. Our big report on the fiscal cost of amnesty had just been released, and I packed in 18 radio interviews to promote it. I expected more of the same on Wednesday. Instead, I found myself unplugging my office phone to avoid pesky reporters, trying in vain to do any real work, and watching helplessly as a public-relations crisis sprang up around me. Two days later I would resign. I’m telling this story not because I want or expect pity for my...

...Obama on Sunday summoned the graduates of historically black Morehouse College to “transform the way we think about manhood,” urging the young men to avoid the temptation to make excuses and to take responsibility for their families and their communities... acknowledged that “the bitter legacies of slavery and segregation” have not vanished, that discrimination still exists. “As Morehouse men, many of you know what it’s like to be an outsider, to be marginalized, to feel the sting of discrimination. That’s an experience that a lot of Americans share,” Obama said. Hispanic Americans, Obama lamented, are told to “go back” home...

Went to make application for a gun I ordered and the form has two new identifiers: 1. Ethnicity (Hispanic or Non-Hispanic) and 2. Race These are in sections 10a and 10b on the form.

Jim Crow may be dead in most of America — but not at Columbia University. Almost 50 years after the Civil Rights Act ended legal discrimination, the bastion of liberalism is finally trying to change one of its scholarships, which is restricted to “whites only.” The Ivy League school’s Lydia C. Roberts Graduate Fellowship stipulates that the funds be given only to “a person of the Caucasian race.”

Being white is pretty awesome. Don't get me wrong, if I were a white male instead of a white woman, my life would be even more awesome, but being a white female is still powerful. Being white is an unearned privilege; I did absolutely nothing to get the white skin I have. Yet my white skin gives me power and credibility. I am not just a member of the club; I am a member of THE club. And the best part is that I don't have to show a membership card; the color of my skin is my membership card,...

... "She connects the dots," Crump told the media excitedly. "She completely blows Zimmerman's absurd defense claim out of the water." According to Crump, the heavy-set, twenty-eight year old "loose cannon" had no intention of going back to his truck. He pursued Martin and shot him down. Dee Dee heard it all. The witnesses confirmed her testimony. Cried the outraged Crump at the end of his presentation, "Arrest George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin in cold blood today." Crump got his point across. Gutman headlined his piece on ABC.com, "Trayvon Martin's Last Phone Call Triggers Demand for Arrest...

There are a ton of clips of Jason Richwine talking about race and immigration floating around the Internets. For example, Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed posted a one-minute excerpt from an AEI event that Richwine attended and wrote: Here’s Video Of Another Time The Heritage Analyst Said Blacks and Hispanics Have Lower IQsJason Richwine, a senior policy analyst at the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and co-author of a controversial report on the economic costs of immigration reform, said at a 2008 event that the “most important way” race was different was in IQ. He made similar comments in...

Reclusive soul superstar Lauryn Hill has been jailed over an enormous unpaid tax bill. Fugees singer Hill, 37, was sentenced to three months' jail followed by three months' home confinement for failing to pay $500,000 to the taxman in the United States. Hill claimed the sum was outstanding because she had "withdrawn from society" after alleged threats against her family. She was imprisoned after failing to pay the amount within the stipulated two-week timeframe. During her trial, Hill was ordered by the judge in Newark, New Jersey to undergo counselling because of her conspiracy theories - including that artists are...

CBS promos indicating the contestants will be required to take a picture with the president during tonight's final leg which concludes in Washington DC. I wasn't sure if this would actually happen in the episode but host Phil Keoghan said in an interview "We even got the president involved". Guess it's not enough for our president to appear at sporting events all the time - now he's on reality TV too!

More than 200 Wisconsin teachers and school administrators traveled to Green Bay last week to attend CREATE Wisconsin’s 2013 state conference. EAGnews decided to join them, to get a first-hand look at what the program, sponsored by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, is all about. State officials contend the CREATE program is nothing more than an effort to help teachers better understand and serve minority students. But as EAGnews previously reported, CREATE appears to have a much more broad and progressive agenda than simply working to close the achievement gap between students of color and their white counterparts. Many...

WASHINGTON — Millions of Americans suffered a loss of wealth during the recession and the sluggish recovery that followed. But the last half-decade has proved far worse for black and Hispanic families than for white families, starkly widening the already large gulf in wealth between non-Hispanic white Americans and most minority groups, according to a new study from the Urban Institute. “It was already dismal,” Darrick Hamilton, a professor at the New School in New York, said of the wealth gap between black and white households. “It got even worse.” Given the dynamics of the housing recovery and the rebound...

"I am not one of your locally home grown house negroes. I don’t shuffle, I don’t tap dance, and I don’t take out the garbage… Some of the citizens in Martinsville need to wake up because I am black. I am also a voice for black people and we are tired, we are fed up and we are not taking it anymore” said Sharon Brooks Hodge, a member of Martinsville City Council, speaking to a Martinsville television reporter.

As Quanesha Wallace remembers, it was around this time last year when the idea first came up at Wilcox County High School. It was nothing big, just chatter about prom, school, what comes next, what they’d change. If things were different, someone said, we’d all go to the same prom. For as long as anyone could remember, students in their South Georgia community went to separate proms, and homecoming dances, too. White students from Wilcox County attend one. Black students, another. They’re private events organized by parents and students, not the school district. Schools have long been desegregated, but in...

Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court set the terms for boosting college admissions of African Americans and other minorities, the court may be about to issue a ruling that could restrict universities' use of race in deciding who is awarded places. The case before the justices was brought by Abigail Fisher, a white suburban Houston student who asserted she was wrongly rejected by the University of Texas at Austin while minority students with similar grades and test scores were admitted.

America's blacks voted at a higher rate than other minority groups in 2012 and by most measures surpassed the white turnout for the first time, reflecting a deeply polarized presidential election in which blacks strongly supported Barack Obama while many whites stayed home. Had people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for The Associated Press. Census data and exit polling show that whites and blacks will remain the two largest racial groups of eligible...

Affirmative Action In America Is A Total Failure The EconomistApr. 27, 2013, 10:00 AM . Reuters - University of Michigan students Ruben Duran (L) and James Justin Wilson protest affirmative action in front of the Supreme Court in June 2003. WILLIAM POWERS is the president of the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin). Lino Graglia holds an endowed chair at its law school. Both have kindly demeanours, impressive records and that crucial perk of academic success, offices with great views: Mr Powers looks out over the heart of the university’s campus, Mr Graglia at its football stadium. They also hold...

Demographics Overtakes Economy as Prime Presidential Election Indicator Geoffrey Skelley, Political Analyst, U.Va. Center for Politics April 25th, 2013 One of the questions we asked prior to the 2012 election was whether or not state-level unemployment figures would matter much on Election Day. As it turned out, the answer was “probably not much.” Throughout the 2012 election cycle, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly jobs report became a highly anticipated event. Politicians, journalists and election handicappers (the Crystal Ball included) waited eagerly every first Friday of the month, anticipating what the national unemployment number would say about President Obama’s reelection...

An arbitrator on Wednesday ruled in favor of a former Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue captain who was demoted after he posted comments to Facebook about Trayvon Martin following the teenager's shooting death. Brian Beckmann was demoted in May 2012 after posting: "I and my co-workers could rewrite the book on whether our urban youths are victims of racist profiling or products of their failed, (expletive), ignorant, pathetic, welfare dependent excuses for parents." A blogger published the post, which sparked protest in Miami's African-American community.

“It takes a village too raise a child” is a mantra that the left-wing likes to say. Obama has also said it takes “courage to be a father.” Other people think that it takes a mother and a father to raise a child, and the male parent is supposed to be a “father.” They aren’t supposed to get a special award. They don’t expect nor want to to be called “courageous” by the president for doing something they are supposed to do. Comedian Adam Carolla compared the presidents statement to saying “anyone can eat at an IHOP, it takes courage...

"Well, I have embarrassed the black community. At least that's what this woman told me. She was educated. She told me she had her masters degree and she said, "You are an embarrassment to the black community the way you badmouth Barack Obama! You should be ashamed of yourself! No self-respecting educated negro would ever speak publicly about a black man they way you do about Barack Obama.' She said that she "is so embarrassed to even be affiliated with the black race because of me." That I am a "total disgrace" of the black community because of the way...

Progressives can’t help themselves. When a normal person hears of a tragedy, they feel the natural range of emotions – fear, anger, sympathy, etc. But progressives are not normal humans. When they hear news of a tragedy their first thought is “How can this help the cause?” There’s something oddly perverse about this mental defect that somehow overrides decency in tragedy’s aftermath, but it’s as widespread amongst the political left as freckles are on redheads. Harsh? Perhaps. But sometimes the truth hurts. In the hours after the Boston Marathon bombing, the usual suspects of progressive grave-dancers succumbed to the music...

Racist 'Retail Redlining' Is Still A Big Problem In America Emily Badger, The Atlantic CitiesApril 18, 2013 David Mekarski, the village administrator for the south Chicago suburb of Olympia Fields, told a startling story this week at the American Planning Association's annual conference about a debate he recently had with a restaurant official. Why, he wanted to know, wouldn't quality restaurants come to his mixed-race community, where the average annual household income is $77,000, above the county average? The reply: "Black folks don’t tip, and so managers can’t maintain a quality staff. And if they can’t maintain a quality staff,...

Foxx, who will receive the MTV Generation Award tonight, is wearing a shirt featuring the late Trayvon Martin's face on the red carpet. As we all know, Martin died last year after getting into an altercation with George Zimmerman, who became suspicious of the teenager's hoodie. The whole story was tragic on so many levels, but Foxx showed his support for the young man wh died before his time at tonight's show. "As a comedian, Academy award-winning actor and Grammy award-winning artist, Jamie Foxx is a triple threat superstar unlike any we've seen in a long time," Stephen Friedman, MTV...

A majority of white Americans are unhappy with President Barack Obama's job performance, suggest recent Gallup polling data, and it's not just because of his race, say political scientists from two of the nation's top universities. The latest weekly snapshot of President Obama's approval rating provided by Gallup shows the president with a national approval rating of 48 percent among all adults. When that number is broken down by racial demographics, however, the distance between the approval ratings of white and non-white Americans is staggering. Reflecting a weekly decline of just one percent, 76 percent of non-white Americans approve of...

Are women equal to men? Are Jews equal to gentiles? Are blacks equal to Italians, Irish, Polish and other white people? The answer is probably a big fat no, and the pretense or assumption that we are equal -- or should be equal -- is foolhardy and creates mischief. Let's look at it. Male geniuses outnumber female geniuses 7-to-1. Female intelligence is packed much closer to the middle of the bell curve, whereas men's intelligence has far greater variability. That means that though there are many more male geniuses, there are also many more male idiots. The latter might partially...

As recently as 1956, nearly 39 percent of blacks voted Republican in that year's presidential election. After the Civil War, Abe Lincoln's Republican Party easily carried the black vote -- where blacks were allowed to vote. Unwelcome in the Democratic Party, most blacks voted Republican and continued to do so through the early part of the 20th century. It wasn't until 1948, when 77 percent of the black vote went to Harry Truman, who had desegregated the military, that a majority of blacks identified themselves as Democrats. Yet, as a percentage of the party, more Republicans voted for the passage...

MSNBC host Touré tore into both artists LL Cool J and Brad Paisley over the release of their lighthearted duet “Accidental Racist,” which tackled persistent racial tensions through song. Touré, an experienced music critic as well as an outspoken expert on race relations, found no redeeming value in their song. RELATED: LL Cool J Defends ‘Accidental Racist,’ Compares Confederate Flag With Pirate Flag Co-host S.E. Cupp said that she could “appreciate” the effort made by both artists in the effort to cool racial tensions though verse. “I like the effort… maybe,” Cupp said waveringly. “Okay,” Touré interjected. “No, I’m not...

Brad Paisley’s new album Wheelhouse isn’t even in stores yet (it’s set for release tomorrow), but already one of the songs is causing controversy for its lyrics that attempt to address racial tensions in the South. Called “Accidental Racist,” the song appears aimed at helping to bridge misunderstandings. The song starts out with a guy apologizing for the Confederate flag on his T-shirt to a a worker he encountered at the local Starbucks. As his protagonist sings, “when I put on that T-shirt, the only thing I meant to say, is I’m a Skynyrd fan.” “I’m proud of where I’m...

You know our political discourse has lost its moorings when it’s the Republicans who play that famous race card in defending one of their own. The person in need of defense is Dr. Ben Carson, a renowned Johns Hopkins surgeon. Carson happens to be black, Yale-educated — and conservative. After his impassioned criticism of President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast, many in the GOP thought they’d found their 2016 standard-bearer. But however brilliant, Carson has raised eyebrows since coming into the spotlight. Last week, he told Sean Hannity, “Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be...

The STATE'S RESPONSE TO DEFENDANT'S MOTION FOR SANCTIONS AGAINST STATE ATTORNEY'S OFFICE FOR DISCOVERY VIOLATIONS, while pointed, has little substance that addresses the very serious motion we have before the Court... As we prepare for a jury trial in June, we have real concerns about George’s ability to receive a fair trial.

~snip~ An interview with the Hoover economist on his new book, Intellectuals and Race.AmSpec: You’ve written a lot about intellectuals and also a lot about race. Why did you feel a need to put out a separate book on intellectuals and race? Sowell: Parts of this were published originally in the second edition of Intellectuals and Society, although other parts are new. But I wrote it in part because I was correcting a mistake I made, which was that I didn’t listen to my research assistant when she told me that this material should be published as a separate book....

~snip~ AmSpec: In the book you have a definition of “multiculturalism.” Can you talk about that and its implications? Sowell: The central premise of multiculturalism is that no culture is superior to another. The proponents of this draw conclusions such as it is wrong for school teachers to insist that black kids from the ghetto speak standard English. The idea that no culture is superior is another fact-free premise. If you look at the actual history of any society, they borrow from other societies. That’s why I believe that isolated societies are almost invariably lagging because they can’t borrow from...

Take a minute and try to imagine what would happen in this country if the following scenario had taken place. A report describing how in broad daylight two White teenaged boys tried to rob a Black Brunswick, Georgia woman at gunpoint as she was peacefully pushing her 13 month old son in his stroller. When she resisted pleading, “I don’t have any money” they callously shot and killed the baby. The gun did not “go off by accident.” The White thug meant to shoot the...

The shootings of a Brunswick mother and her 1-year-old son last week in which the boy was killed were random, Glynn County Police Chief Matt Doering said at a news conference Wednesday. De'Marquise Elkins, 17, and Dominique Lang, 15, were each indicted Wednesday on a count of first-degree murder in the killing of 13-month-old Antonio Santiago. Doering said it had been a judgment call about releasing the information that the location and victims of the shootings were random, but he said investigators are now comfortable in revealing that.

The dire implications of these numbers is evident in a Children's Defense Fund report that included a chilling historical perspective: The 44,038 black children killed by guns since 1979 (when national data on the age of gun violence victims was first collected) is "nearly 13 times more" than all the black people killed by lynching in the 86-year period of 1882 to 1968.Almost 50 years ago, when the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, the national out-of-wedlock birthrate was 7%. Today it is over 40%. According to the CDC, the out-of-wedlock birthrate for white children was just 2% in the...

A couple of recent news items illustrate the close-mindedness, aggressiveness and oppressiveness of modern liberalism's thought police. MSNBC's Toure issued a scathing commentary against the GOP for considering outreach efforts toward African-Americans. Toure said: "Such is the dysfunctional, abusive relationship the GOP insists on with black folks. They say they want a new relationship while continuing to try to screw us over." Toure went on to lambaste Dr. Ben Carson, a black person, for daring to stray from leftist ideas and endorsing conservative ones, such as a flat tax. Carson has "intellectual tumors in his mind, like a flat tax,...

If laughter really is the best medicine, it's no wonder race relations are in a state of ill health. Many years ago I spent quite a bit of time with a Zambian friend. He remarked one day that he found America's hang-up with racial humor a bit strange, as racial jokes were not at all off-limits in his country. And call it my one concession to multiculturalism, but neither were they off-limits in our relationship. We would occasionally engage in innocent racial humor just as we would any other kind of jesting - and no hate-speech charges were contemplated. The...

[snip] I think one of the featured panelists at last week's discussion identified the key reason for the depth and scale of the negative reaction to the article. "When you talk about race, you have to keep two things in mind: the messenger and the message," said Farah Jimenez, who runs the People's Emergency Shelter, a social-service agency in West Philadelphia. "And I think for Philly Mag, the challenge was that it is viewed as an inappropriate messenger for this conversation." In other words, imagine the reaction if Ebony or Jet magazine chose to publish a harsh, class-conscious critique of...