Free Republic

There’s a reason they call it “progressivism” — for years, the main legal question contested in affirmative-action cases, from Bakke to Grutter, was whether the state should be allowed to engage in racial discrimination. In the Michigan affirmative-action case decided today, Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the question was whether the state should be required to engage in racial discrimination. The progress, then, has followed the Left’s familiar ratchet-effect model, inching its way from “not forbidden” to “compulsory.” Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal put it, the question here was not whether the use of racial discrimination for...

After 14 years of marriage to Oprah's father Vernon, Barbara Winfrey is being forced out of her marital home by Oprah, leaving her homeless Barbara refused to sign a confidentiality agreement with Oprah 'You say I never talk to you,' Oprah told Barbara in a birthday phone call. 'I'm talking to you now. You have until Monday to get out of MY house' When Oprah threw her Legends' Ball, Vernon and Barbara weren't on the main floor with the A-listers but tucked in a corner on the second floor. 'We weren't allowed to mingle with the celebrities,' says Barbara

The grandson of former President Jimmy Carter, who is running for governor in Georgia, suggested Monday that if he wins the gubernatorial race he will not stop the state from issuing license plates featuring the Confederate battle flag. During an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown,” state Sen. Jason Carter, a Democrat, said people have the right to sport the Sons of Confederate Veterans-backed license plate, which features an image of the Confederate flag. He also said he would rather have people focus their attention on the role that Georgia and its leaders played in the civil rights movement.

On Aug. 28, 1964, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke the immortal words, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Amen. The people judging his children by the color of their skin at the time were Democrats who ruled the south, birthed Jim Crow and lynched thousands. Today, 50 years after that speech, Democrats still judge people by the color of their skin but now have added sexual orientation, gender and any...

Few mixtures in American life are more emotionally combustible than the one formed by the combination of politics and race. That helps explain why Democrats, in general, and President Obama, in particular, have tended to steer clear of overtly raising race as an issue to explain some of the opposition to Obama's presidency and agenda. There seems to be a shift in recent days, however. Top Democratic party officials have either directly or indirectly blamed race for some of the hostility to Obama, his policies, or both. Is this partly about activating minority voters during a midterm election year in...

Listening to Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama address Al Sharpton’s National Action Network 16th annual convention last week, one would think Americans were living in the year 1964 not 2014. Holder pulled the race card blaming Republicans for criticizing him and Obama, merely because they’re black. Speaking prior to Obama, Holder suggested to the all black crowd that both he and the president had been treated badly by Republicans because they are black. “It has nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president...

According to a recent study, babies tend to play with others that look more like them. Researchers from the University of Washington noticed that babies were more willing to share their toys with others who shared their ethnicity....

Toddlers show racial bias when picking playmates, a study reveals. They also take account of how fairly others behave. Researchers tested the reaction of white 15-month-olds as toys were distributed.Two white adults divided the toys, one equally and the other unequally. Seventy per cent of the toddlers chose to play with the researcher who distributed the toys fairly. But in a second test, when one researcher favoured a white recipient over an Asian one, they picked the ‘fair’ researcher less often, the journal Frontiers in Psychology reports. And the babies are more likely to help those who share the same...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (WJBK) -- Detroit high school student Brooke Kimbrough, along with the pro-affirmative action group By Any Means Necessary, staged a protest Tuesday to demand more diversity at the University of Michigan. BAMN is demanding an immediate appeal on behalf of Kimbrough and Birmingham Seaholm student Daisha Martin. Both applied to the university school and were denied admission. Kimbrough, who is black, says she carries a 3.6 GPA, scored a 23 (out of 36) on the ACT test and is a leader of University Prep High School's winning debate team. Martin's is president of Seaholm's Black Student Union,...

Editor’s note: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence. Roger Winter arrived in Rwanda shortly after one of the worst genocides in modern history began unfolding in April 1994. His self-imposed task as director for the U.S. Committee for Refugees: document atrocity. Two decades later, his memories are vivid: “What you see in photographs, I see in my mind frequently. You really don’t lose it.” This April marks the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide—an abominable campaign of violence that left some 800,000 victims dead in 100 days....

A young man with two handguns walked up to a group of people in front of a Liberty City market on Monday evening and opened fire, killing a 52-year-old woman and wounding two men, Miami police said

A 24-year-old man shot in West Pullman Sunday night was at least the 37th person shot in a violent three-day stretch in Chicago. Four people were killed on the first weekend of the year to feature a stretch of warm weather....

RALEIGH, N.C. — Two runners who died Sunday morning as participants in the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon may fit the profile of the most common fatalities in such events, according to a Duke sports medicine specialist: men in their 30s with pre-existing, undiagnosed cardio abnormalities. Saying the runners’ families wanted privacy, race organizers did not release the names of the men who died or give any indication of their causes of death. “We regret to confirm that two participants passed away at today’s half-marathon,” said Dr. P.Z. Pearce, the event’s medical director. “We are greatly saddened by these tragic losses,...

On "Fox News Sunday," Washington Post columnist George Will criticized Attorney General Eric Holder who claim racism is behind his political adversaries' attacks: “Liberalism has a kind of Tourette Syndrome these days," Will said. "It's constantly saying the words racism and racist. There’s an old saying, 'If you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have neither, pound the table.' This is pounding the table. There’s a kind of intellectual poverty now. Liberalism hasn’t had a new idea since the 1960s, except Obamacare, and the...

Overall, the acquittal of Tim Burton and the judge's rulings on the case were a victory on two fronts and maybe not so much on a third. The judge ruled that a few tweets, even intemperate and even relating to a Muslim person, cannot be construed as harassment. He clearly said that the Harassment Act was intended for entirely different situations from this one, like stalking somebody or shouting through his letterbox. He also, if not explicitly accepted, took into account the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya. This can be a turning point for the counterjihad movement. Muslims are generally...

DETROIT (AP) — A Detroit teenager was charged Thursday with assault and a hate crime in the brutal mob beating of a suburban motorist who stopped to help a boy he accidentally struck with his pickup truck. The 16-year-old boy is the only one of five people charged in the April 2 attack on Steve Utash to face an ethnic intimidation count. Utash, 54, is white. The teen and four adults charged in his beating are black.

State Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, a Democrat from Aurora, took to the House floor Wednesday afternoon to defend a bill that would curtail the growth of charter schools in Illinois. She was at times sarcastic, at times defensive. She regularly interrupted House members who asked challenging questions about the bill. No surprise there. The debate in Springfield can be sharp. Chapa LaVia is not shy. But as she railed against charter schools — she claimed they're becoming segregated "between the haves and the have nots" — she turned to her fellow Democrats, waved her arms and said: "Listen to me,...

An officer was shot and injured Monday night when a man opened fire in the front desk area of a Los Angeles Police Department building in Mid-City, police said.

Will this lead to busing so liberals can feel good about themselves? A new report from the UCLA Civil Rights Project has named New York’s schools the most segregated in America. Other deep blue Democrat controlled states like Illinois, Michigan, Maryland and New Jersey were cited just behind New York for maintaining the most segregated schools in the nation. While the absence of both Detroit and Washington DC from the top of this list makes its conclusions suspect, the fact remains: New York and the rest of these Oh so Blue states are very segregated. In the latest period for...

Two men were arrested in connection with the severe mob beating of a suburban motorist who had accidentally hit a 10-year-old boy who stepped in front of his truck, police said Monday.Detroit police Sgt. Michael Woody said a 30-year-old man was arrested Sunday night and a 24-year-old on Monday afternoon. That brings to four the number of people arrested in the assault of 54-year-old Steve Utash after the accident Wednesday.

Newt Gingrich laid it out perfectly on Sunday. The forced ouster of Mozilla co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich this week was a sign of the "new fascism" of liberalism that's sweeping American life. "People need to realize, if you're a young faculty member, in a lot of places if you're a young member of a news department and you have the wrong views – meaning conservative – you have no career," Gingrich said on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "This is just the most open and blatant example of the new fascism, which says, 'if you don't agree with us...

On Tuesday 8 April at 10am Tim Burton’s trial at Birmingham Magistrates' Court will settle the question of whether the defendant, by calling Muslim Fiyaz Mujhal “a mendacious grievance-mongering taqiyya-artist” on Twitter, committed racially aggravated harassment, as he is accused of having done by the West Midlands Police. Mujhal was exposed by The Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan for exaggerating the numbers and seriousness of “anti-Muslim attacks” following the Woolwich murder of soldier Lee Rigby, and had his organisation Tell MAMA’s public funding discontinued. Many of these “attacks” were in fact simple posts on Facebook and other social media, similar to...

I like Megyn Kelly. The Fox News anchor is smart, lively and gorgeous. But she's managed to walk right into a controversy over race and ethnicity, and it's not the first time. These are treacherous waters for anyone in media -- but especially so for media personalities who are perceived as conservative. (Full disclosure: I am also a Fox News commentator.) The current brouhaha involves Kelly's decision on Wednesday during her eponymous show not to name the shooter in the deadly attack at Ft. Hood. Here's what she said: "Authorities are identifying the shooter. If you are interested, you can...

Photo taken from EPA promotional video. THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW GETTING LONGER: The number of law enforcement agents, such as these from the Environmental Protection Agency, have grown in recent years.  By Rob Nikolewski │ New Mexico WatchdogSANTA FE, N.M. — In late February, four federal agents carrying side arms with a drug-sniffing dog descended on the Taos Ski Valley in what was called a “saturation patrol.”Authorities were working on tips of possible drug selling and impaired driving in the ski resort’s parking lot and surrounding area.But the agents weren’t from the FBI, ATF or even the Drug...

Purpose A large body of empirical research finds a significant racial gap in the use of exclusionary school discipline with black students punished at rates disproportionate to whites. Furthermore, no variable or set of variables have yet to account for this discrepancy, inviting speculation that this association is caused by racial bias or racial antipathy. We investigate this link and the possibility that differential behavior may play a role. Methods Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class (ECLS-K), the largest sample of school-aged children in the United States, we first replicate the results of prior studies. We...

Witnessin the Democrats do what no Republican leader of the modern era has unable to do, expose the Democrat Party for the hypocritical, corrupt and devious entity they have become. In the brief span of one minute eleven seconds, every cornerstone of progressive-liberalism is unearthed, with the typical rhetorical touches, overt and otherwise, designed to elicit the emotion that is their conduit to power.

Bill Maher took on Paul Ryan‘s recent comments about black culture and while he didn’t necessarily agree with Ryan, he did find it striking that prominent black people have made the same point he did but haven’t been attacked by the left... Maher then read a quote from Paul Ryan about how lazy kids are these days and how they need to aspire to be more than “ballers” and “rappers”… except that Ryan didn’t say it. Michelle Obama did. Maher asked, “Is something less true if a white person says it about black people?”

A Macomb County public school superintendent says the teachers union contract for her district has a provision that would cost the school all the concessions it negotiated if language believed to be against the law is removed. Two years ago, before Deb Wahlstrom took over as superintendent of Mount Clemens Community Schools, she said she was aware of issues in the union contract. Specifically, the union contract includes provisions that the board would not authorize any public school academies (charter public schools) and would implement an affirmative action program in the recruitment, hiring and retention of "multi-ethnic teachers." The full...

The problem isn’t that we can’t take a joke. The problem is that white comedians and their fans believe they are above reproach.... It seems “freedom of speech” has the assumed caveat “freedom of speech — for white men.”

Actually, my headline’s not right. It’s hard to be sure since the New Yorker piece that contains the money quote is behind a reg wall, but I don’t think he’s taking a position on the case. He’s taking a position on people who took a position on the case without having heard both sides. The reporter apparently asked him about this photo specifically: #WeAreTrayvonMartin #Hoodies #Stereotyped #WeWantJustice http://t.co/tH6baAVo— LeBron James (@KingJames) March 23, 2012 To which Bryant replied: “I won’t react to something just because I’m supposed to, because I’m an African-American,” he said. “That argument doesn’t make any sense...

No excerpt allowed from this source, story here.

<p>As for Mara's ethnicity? She's not Native American. Folks are passing around an online petition that asks Warner Bros. to "stop casting white actors to play people of color."</p> <p>2. If you're particularly ticked off when a white character is played by a person of color, then you're probably not pleased that Michael B. Jordan (Friday Night Lights, The Wire, Fruitvale Station), who is black, was cast as the Human Torch in Fantastic Four. Human Torch is a superhero who, as his name hints, can engulf his body in flames, control nearby fires and fly. When he's not on fire (though he usually is), the comics show that he's a blonde, white guy named Johnny Storm. (There was an android Human Torch once. To the extent that androids have ethnic identities, the android's was probably Anglo-Saxon.) If casting a black actor to play a white superhero irks you, this probably will, too.</p>

A black student who says his suite mates at a California university put a bike lock around his neck and racially harassed him has filed a $5 million claim against the school. Four white students — Logan Beaschler and Colin Warren, both 18, Joseph Bomgardner, 19, and an unidentified juvenile — have pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor hate crime charges. They shared a suite with Williams and are accused of putting the bike lock on him, taunting him with racial slurs, barricading him in his room and putting up a Confederate flag.

Racial minorities are more likely than white students to be suspended from school, to have less access to rigorous math and science classes, and to be taught by lower-paid teachers with less experience, according to comprehensive data released Friday by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. In the first analysis in nearly 15 years of information from all of the country’s 97,000 public schools, the Education Department found a pattern of inequality on a number of fronts, with race as the dividing factor. Black students are suspended and expelled at three times the rate of white students. A...

Two recent events, one on the West Coast and one on the East Coast, demonstrate that after half a century, support for racial preferences in college admissions is getting more and more unsustainable — both politically and intellectually. In California, liberals have long deplored the 1996 passage of Proposition 209, which banned racial preferences at state universities. Its backers pointed out that the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which is often cited as the authority for mandating preferential treatment for racial minorities, actually forbids all racial discrimination. “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,” Supreme Court chief...

A panel at the Center for American Progress discussed “The Meaning of Race in a 21st-Century America,” billed as an “in-depth discussion on the meaning of race and ethnicity in a changing America.” Julie Dowling, associate professor of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, spoke, in great detail, of how the U.S. Census questions have evolved over time. Historically, Dowling pointed out that Hispanics did not want to be label themselves as Latinos for fear of discrimination and actually called themselves “white” on early Census Bureau reports to avoid being labeled as such. Mexicans in the U.S....

When the Provisional Irish Republican Army agreed to end its paramilitary insurgency (and/or terrorist campaign) against British rule in Northern Ireland with the Good Friday accords of 1998, it was unambiguously a good thing for the people of Ireland and their British next-door neighbors. It’s not like everything suddenly became hunky-dory in the long and troubled historical relationship between those islands, but the peace has largely held – splinter groups and isolated sectarian violence aside – and an era of relative normalcy and increasing prosperity has followed. Given the global context of the 21st century, an intractable religious-cum-nationalist dispute between...

...Obama will correct a historical act of discrimination next month when he awards the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest commendation for combat valor, to a group of Hispanic, Jewish and African-American veterans who were passed over because of their racial or ethnic backgrounds. The unusual presentation will culminate a 12-year Pentagon review ordered by Congress into past discrimination in the ranks and will hold a particular poignancy when conducted by the nation’s first African-American president....

"Arguing with liberals...it's like playing chess with a pigeon; no matter how good I am at chess, the pigeon is just going to knock over the pieces, crap on the board and strut around like it's victorious." -- Anonymous "If you can somehow force a liberal into a point-counterpoint argument, his retorts will bear no relation to what you’ve said — unless you were in fact talking about your looks, your age, your weight, your personal obsessions, or whether you are a fascist. In the famous liberal two-step, they leap from one idiotic point to the next, so you...

Activists from around the country marched on Tallahassee Monday to protest what one writer for Salon is calling “open season on black teenagers: The onslaught of white murder.” Speakers such as Al Sharpton reminded the crowd of the most famous example of this onslaught from two years ago, when George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. A jury ruled it was self defense. The next example was last year, when Michael Dunn shot Jordan Davis after feeling threatened by Davis and his friends.Earlier this month, a jury found Dunn guilty of three charges of second degree murder for firing several bullets into...

....Al Sharpton has led a group of several hundred people on a march to the state Capitol to protest Florida's "stand your ground" law. Among the people who joined them Monday were Trayvon Martin's father and the family of Marissa Alexander, who was sentenced to 20 years for firing a gun near her estranged husband.

The Rev. Al Sharpton will lead a rally against the state’s “stand your ground” law Monday morning in the Capitol courtyard, according to the website of his National Action Network. Sharpton, also an MSNBC host and commentator, will be joined by the parents of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis.

WESTMINSTER, Md. (WJZ) — Controversy on campus. A fraternity and sorority at McDaniel College are under fire after allegations of ethnic stereotyping during a party. Mike Hellgren explains why the party’s theme is upsetting so many. It has generated heated debate both on and off campus and could result in anything from a warning for the fraternity and sorority involved to the loss of their charters. A fraternity and sorority at McDaniel College are under investigation after holding a party in January with the theme “Country Music Television versus Black Entertainment Television.” In a statement, a McDaniel vice president...

Some high school students in Westchester County were under fire Wednesday evening, after their basketball team lost a close game. As CBS 2’s Don Champion reported, Mahopac High School fell to Mount Vernon High School in the semifinals, and after the game, some students took to social media after the game, and many people said what they posted online was racist.

President Obama announced last week a new race-based initiative, My Brother’s Keeper. According to the White House, the program will coordinate government agencies and private foundations to help young men and boys of color. “Of color” basically means blacks and Latinos. In fact, it’s pretty obvious the program is aimed at young black men. This fact has invited some conservative criticism. The Weekly Standard’s Terry Eastland notes that the program is likely unconstitutional. Doling out benefits explicitly based on race is generally a no-no, according to the Supreme Court. Even more frowned on: discrimination against women. The program will categorically...

Reading the transcript isn't enough. Roll the video, listen carefully, and at the end you'll catch Ronan Farrow's nervous little laugh as he asks an African-American guest whether, in assessing movie-industry diversity, it "matters" that the black director whose film has been nominated for an Oscar is British. Such are the PC pitfalls once one wades into the bog of diversity bean-counting. But beyond the specific subject matter, Farrow's teensy twitter suggests, as other critics have noted, as here and here, how young and unsure of himself is the young man MSNBC hopes to make a star. View the video...

Rick Ross has been forced to defend a controversial lyric involving Trayvon Martin found on his upcoming album Mastermind. In new song "Black and White," Ross rhymes, "Forbes dot com, I'm the Teflon Don/ Too close to a n---a as a motherf*****g bomb/Trayvon Martin, I'm never missing my target/Bitch n---as hating, tell me it's what I'm parking.

For much of Barack Obama’s presidency, he has sought to avoid being defined by his race or gender, often emphasizing that he is the leader of all Americans. On Thursday, Mr. Obama will use the power of his office to focus on helping young black men succeed. Stymied by Congress on many of the economic policies he considers central to the lives of blacks, Mr. Obama is seeking to prod nonprofit foundations, business groups and civic leaders to provide more opportunities for a struggling part of the American family. His new “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative is aimed at finding ways...

A homophobic Harlem pastor is using a giant sign outside of his church to make yet another bizarre and shocking claim about President Obama, black men and homosexuality — and local residents are calling on him to take it down. “Obama Has Released The Homo Demons On The Black Man,” states Pastor James David Manning’s bizarre sign, which was unveiled Sunday in front of the ATLAH World Missionary Church near the corner of W. 123rd St and Lenox Ave. “Look Out Black Woman,” it continues. “A White Homo May Take Your Man.”

Full title - "Only Fox Cares: 'Hannity' Guest Confronts Lawmaker Who Called Clarence Thomas a ‘Very Prolific Uncle Tom’" The plight of black conservatives took center stage during Monday's edition of Hannity, a weeknight program on the Fox News Channel. The segment featured footage of African-American radio host David Webb interviewing Alvin Holmes, a Democratic state representative in Alabama who had used the racial slur “Uncle Tom” to describe Clarence Thomas, the black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Only the Fox News Channel has reported this story on TV. Holmes said he stands behind his previous statement because Thomas...