Free Republic

Yamhill County’s Board of Commissioners approved a series of diversity training classes Thursday after debating the merits earlier in the month, when two of three board members argued that the training should not include the phrases “white privilege” or “microaggressions.” After opposition Aug. 6 and again Tuesday, the training was approved in McMinnville in a 2-1 vote. After the vote, Commissioner Mary Starrett said over email that she voted no on “a training that would have included training on ‘White Privilege,’ ” but that the other board members approved it.(snip) Starrett said the training had “red flags” and included “a...

For such an ambitious project examining America’s history of racism; the 1619 Project falls short on multiple levels. Right out of the gate, Nikole Hannah-Jones essay misleads on the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. First, it’s worth noting that NY Times publisher Dean Baquet admitted that since the Russia 24/7 narrative didn’t work as planned, exploring the roots of racism because Trump! is Plan B. Hannah-Jones went further when introducing the project. ““What if I told you that the year 1619 is as important to the American story as the year 1776? What if I told you that...

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg held a self-described grassroots campaign rally in Bronzeville on Tuesday night, but the overwhelmingly white audience he drew to the event in a historic black neighborhood reinforced the difficulty the Democratic presidential hopeful has had in connecting with African American voters. Buttigieg did not acknowledge the makeup of the audience in his remarks or in answering questions from the 1,000 people at the sold-out event, but did touch on it briefly as he closed the hourlong rally with a plea for his supporters.

ST. CROIX — Six of the ten contestants who participated in Sunday evening’s Miss Universe U.S. Virgin Islands were women from outside the USVI, most with no known ties to the territory and some of whom had participated in other pageants just months prior. The competition, held in a banquet room at the Divi Carina Bay Casino, was the qualifying event whose winner will represent the U.S. Virgin Islands on the world’s biggest and most prominent pageantry stage: Miss Universe. But what was a relatively engaged audience turned somewhat raucous when not one of the four local young women who...

Over the weekend, The New York Times launched "The 1619 Project," an attempt to reframe American history around the idea that the United States was truly founded in 1619 when the first black slaves came to America, rather than in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was signed. The project reframes many aspects of American life as rooted in slavery and oppression, including capitalism, the consumption of sugar, and the U.S.'s rejection of 100 percent government-funded health care. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), the candidate of radical identity politics in the 2020 Democratic primary race, praised the project as "a masterpiece."...

This week, the NFL, with its $42 million-per man at the wheel, committed another act of putting up while shutting up. It named Jay-Z and his entertainment/rep company Roc Nation to “enhance the NFL’s live game experiences and to amplify the league’s social justice efforts.” Jay-Z also will contribute to and supervise Super Bowl halftime acts. Of course, having named the fabulously wealthy and popular rapper its “social justice” monitor, no one from the NFL — certainly not Goodell — would dare read the lyrics of the scores of numbers that have brought Jay-Z his fame, fortune and, now, NFL-assigned...

Presidential primary candidate Beto O’Rourke has an unusual message for Democrat voters. America was founded on racism and America is still a racist country today, 243 years later. How’s that for an inspiring message? Beto’s re-launch of his presidential campaign is off to a rocky start, just like the previous re-launches. This time around he’s gone to a dark place and now insists that racism in America is his primary concern. He went off on a tangent Saturday night as the speaker at the third annual Arkansas Democratic Party Clinton Dinner in Little Rock.

When it comes to racial shakedowns, few organizations succumb on a grander scale than the National Football League. This tendency was on full display on Tuesday when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and black rapper/business mogul Jay-Z announced a multiyear partnership “to enhance the NFL’s live game experiences and to amplify the league’s social justice efforts.” More plainly, the league is about to entangle itself further with political radicalism. Goodell and company may believe that the pact is good for public relations, but they could not be more wrong. The NFL for many years has been a prime target of black...

If the news is any indication, Democrats and the progressive left generally have virtually nothing left in their political arsenal except for claims that their opponents are "racists" and "white supremacists." This pointless strategy -- evidence of Democrats' desperation -- is doomed to failure, for at least two reasons. First, the word "racist" has become so overused and contorted that it no longer has any meaning. The term used to refer to someone who believed that his or her race was superior to others, and who behaved accordingly. But as the number of actual racists dwindled in the past few...

A Penn Township couple alleges that a porch party was disrupted Saturday by a neighbor hitting their backyard fence with an aluminum baseball bat as she yelled threatening racial epithets toward the gathering, township police said. Beth D. Knapp, 50, of Nancy Drive was charged with ethnic intimidation, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct by township police after the 10:54 p.m. incident. The complaints were served on Knapp via mailed summons by Harrison City District Judge Helen Kistler’s office. Patrolman Thomas Seefeld said the male victim who hosted the porch party is black. Seefeld reported in court documents that the couple...

I think I really do love all of these dunces we laughingly refer to as celebrities. The latest "absolutely awesome talent" that's in quotes, is this Sarah Silverman person. Apparently she did a sketch in black face 12 years ago and now she's being called out for her mortal sin against mankind. It really is heartening to see the very leftists that she is supposedly in league with turn on her and then rip her to shreds. More fun than the Roman coliseum at its height of glory. So many, many other stars have been so-called "called out" for past...

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) is demanding answers from the 2020 Democrats. In Kentucky, African-American Republican AG candidate Daniel Cameron was the victim of a Democrat's racial slur, yet not a single one of the Democratic presidential candidates has bothered to speak out about it. In an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal, a liberal civil rights attorney named Dawn Elliott accused Cameron of eating "Coon Flakes" the White House is serving. She went on.“Daniel is slapping all the black ancestors in the face," Elliott said. "All their hard work, struggles and even death means nothing to him.”Cameron clapped back on Twitter and said...

Yeah, he decorated his departure a little with some pleasant words about needing to nurture his son: We all like that father/son fishing image, it's somehow comforting. Isn't it more likley that they SUSPENDED Tucker..? Isn't this just a LITTLE bit suspicious..? He says White Supremacy Is a Hoax, then there's this emergency father/son fishing trip..?

There is a tool at the federal government’s disposal that was created in 1970 to take down mob bosses, mafia families and organized criminal enterprises — groups of people with a common ideology who made the United States less safe. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) allowed the FBI and the Justice Department to hold accountable not just the low-level henchmen doing the dirty work, but the leaders and organizers behind desks who were making plans and issuing directives.

In a feisty segment on Sunday’s “A.M. Joy,” Elie Mystal of Above the Law made an inflammatory comment in which he said white people who voted for Donald Trump should be destroyed. This came after a segment in which he argued there is no moral difference between avowed white supremacists and any white person who votes for Trump. In the clip, host Joy Reid asked how those who are “drugged” by the president’s rhetoric should be communicated to and convinced they are wrong. That’s when Mystal got even more heated, saying:

Rosanna Arquette, actress, and #MeToo activist is a member of a Hollywood family that frequently gets political. This week she announced her disgust with her own skin color. She literally took old-school liberal white guilt to a whole new level.Wednesday Arquette tweeted: “I’m sorry I was born white and privileged. It disgusts me. And I feel so much shame.” I would include her tweet here but alas, the actress has “protected” her account, which means only approved followers can see her tweets. She was advised to do so by the FBI, according to her representative. She has more than...

Author James Baldwin wrote that Americans need to conduct an “unflinching assessment of the record” in reckoning with the nation’s racial past. But when a professor used Baldwin’s writing to do just that, her university launched a racial discrimination investigation against her. Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education calls on The New School to stand by its laudable but broken “legacy of academic freedom, tolerance, and free intellectual exchange” by immediately dropping its investigation of professor Laurie Sheck. Sheck, a poet and novelist who is white, teaches a graduate course on “radical questioning” in writing. The course includes...

Donald Trump is no racist. I have known him since 1973 and have never seen any indication or any form of racism. In fact, quite the contrary. When I was Manhattan Borough president and president of the New York City Council, I asked him numerous times to help black or Hispanic groups, and he always came through, many times without publicity. When a hurricane ravished Puerto Rico in the mid 1980s, I asked many big companies to give various forms of assistance — but the problem was how to get all of this aid down to Puerto Rico. I called...

MIAMI, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- Miami Dolphins wide receiver Kenny Stills criticized owner Stephen Ross for hosting a Donald Trump fundraiser Wednesday on Twitter. The Dolphins' billionaire owner responded with a statement hours later. "You can't have a nonprofit with this mission statement [and] then open your doors to Trump," Stills tweeted.

Helen Hudson will tell you what the 15th Ward was like when she was a girl. In the 1950s and early ’60s, the Syracuse neighborhood was home to thousands of predominantly black residents who had settled in the growing upstate New York city during and after the Great Migration. Those who remember it, like Hudson, describe it as thriving, self-sufficient community they were proud to call home. “Oh my god, the things we had,” she said recently, her voice softening with the distinct twang of nostalgia. “We had two bowling alleys. We had meat markets.” Charlie Pierce-El will tell you...