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Covid-19 has devastated small businesses nationwide, and New York’s entrepreneurs and landlords have been particularly hard hit. In response, Governor Andrew Cuomo has awarded millions of dollars to affected small businesses through the New York Forward Loan Fund. But to get these taxpayer-funded loans, it helps to be a minority-owned business, as designated by the state, because Cuomo’s office has announced that it will be “focusing on” Covid relief for minority- and women-owned firms. Relief was welcome news for those receiving grants, but small-business owners unable to obtain aid may feel like they have been shunned because of their race....

Nasdaq Inc. aims to require listed companies to include women and people of diverse racial identities or sexual orientation on their boards, the exchange operator said Tuesday. Nasdaq filed a proposal with the Securities and Exchange Commission that would require listed companies to have at least one female board member, plus one board member from an underrepresented minority or who is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Companies that don’t meet the standard would be required to explain why not. Nasdaq has determined that over the past six months, more than three-quarters of its listed companies would have fallen short of...

On Monday, the network introduced an initiative that requires these shows to ensure that 50% of their casts are Black, Indigenous or People of Color, or BIPOC. Additionally, the network has committed to putting at least 25% of its development budget towards creators and producers who are BIPOC. These reality TV targets will kick off during the 2021-22 broadcast season. “The reality TV genre is an area that’s especially underrepresented, and needs to be more inclusive across development, casting, production and all phases of storytelling,” George Cheeks, president and CEO for the CBS Entertainment Group, said in a statement.

State Dept Officials Were Skeptical about Christopher Steele Reports The Left’s Plan for Election Violence After Chinese Steal Billions in Research, We Finally Ban Them Judicial Watch is Suing to Colorado to Clean Up Its Voter Rolls Stopping California’s Diversity Quotas for Corporate Boards Judicial Watch Contested Virginia Officials’ Secret Meeting on BLM Riot State Dept Officials Were Skeptical about Christopher Steele Reports We have now received 48 pages of emails among top Obama State Department officials and a U.S. Ambassador expressing skepticism about Steele reports by Steele’s London-based private intelligence firm Orbis Business Intelligence. Steele was the author...

President Trump has ordered an end to training on “white privilege” and “critical race theory” in the federal bureaucracy. The directive is a good first step toward removing identity politics from federal operations. Next up should be the millions of taxpayer dollars devoted annually to cultivating race- and sex-based grievance in the sciences. The National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have all embraced the idea that science is pervaded by systemic bias that handicaps minorities and women. Those agencies have taken on the job of extirpating such inequity on the...

Ahead of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy’s fifth anniversary, the Academy has announced a new set of inclusion requirements films must meet to be awards-eligible. To be eligible for best picture, films must meet the standards of two out of four categories laid out in a press release on Tuesday: “Onscreen Representation, Themes and Narratives,” “Creative Leadership and Project Team,” “Industry Access and Opportunities” and “Audience Development.” Recent best picture nominees including “1917” and “The Irishman” may have struggled to meet the new onscreen standards that will require at least one of the following criterion to be met: at least one of...

As promised when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its Academy Aperture 2025 initiative in June, new standards of representation and inclusion have been announced by AMPAS today that will gradually be put in place for the 94th (2022) and 95th (2023) Oscars, but in full effect beginning with the 96th Academy Awards in 2024. In its most dramatic swing towards true diversity, Oscar is laying down significant requirements in order to be eligible for Hollywood’s most sought after prize: Best Picture. Having at least one Asian, Hispanic/Latinx, Black/African American, Indigenous/Native American/Alaskan Native, Middle Eastern/North African, Native...

Boeing is seeking to increase black US employees throughout the company by 20 percent and mandate benchmarks for hiring people of color, Chief Executive Dave Calhoun told employees in a memo on Friday reviewed by Reuters. US corporations have become more responsive to complaints related to racial equality following a summer of sweeping anti-racism protests over the slaying of black people by police. The changes at Boeing, a stalwart defense contractor with its corporate headquarters in Chicago and largest factories in Washington state and South Carolina, appeared to mark the first concrete steps by the planemaker to address the issue....

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209 by an impressive 56-to-44 percent majority. Prop 209 amended the state’s constitution to prohibit the granting of preferences based on race or gender. It inaugurated a series of campaigns, led by businessman and University of California Regent Ward Connerly, that by 2006 had established similar prohibitions in 10 states. A few weeks ago, in a move perfectly in sync with the racial politics of 2020, the California legislature put a referendum on the November ballot that invites voters to repeal Prop 209. The new Proposition 16 would allow the state government, and state...

As bad as the New York Times can be right now, that will be nothing compared to how truly miserable it can become if it institutes the asinine race quotas and other demands that the paper's worker union is demanding. In a series of tweets on Friday, the News Guild of New York, representing the New York Times editorial staff, laid out several race-based items for the paper's leadership to start working on. Among them were for the company's workforce demographics to reflect that of New York City (race quotas); for each stage of the hiring process for a new...

At least two COVID-19 vaccines are scoring major successes in trials. That means a vaccine might be ready by year’s end, but not in sufficient quantity to vaccinate more than 300 million Americans. Frontline health workers and national-security personnel will be top priority, but after that, who comes next? A federal committee is considering pushing blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans to the front of the line, ahead of whites. Dr. José Romero, who chairs the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, wants minority groups to get favored treatment. Billionaire donor Melinda Gates likewise is pushing for blacks to get vaccinated...

After just over a month in his new job as head of the newly formed NBC-Universal News Group, combining NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, and all streaming operations, Cesar Conde is making news himself. In a video and memo to the approximately 3,000 employees he supervises, Conde announced a goal of 50% of employees being female and 50% "people of color," an expression commonly taken to mean non-Caucasians. Since Caucasians account for more than 76% of the United States population according to the Census Bureau, this amounts to a vow of racial discriminati After just over a month in his new...

No excerpt allowed from Bloomberg, story here.

Here's a part: Let’s say you’re a progressive. In fact, let’s say you are a progressive gay man in a gay marriage, with two adopted children. The civil rights version of the country is everything to you. Your whole way of life depends on it. How can you back a party or a politician who even wavers on it? Quite likely, your whole moral idea of yourself depends on it, too. You may have marched in gay pride parades carrying signs reading “Stop the Hate,” and you believe that people who opposed the campaign that made possible your way of...

The University of Montana asked students, staff and community members to participate in an essay contest on the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. When the school released the results last month, Montana students and race activists across the country accused university officials of racism and disrespect. That’s because all four winners were white. Turns out some would rather the school had honored King by judging entrants on the color of their skin rather than the content of their submissions. The four contest winners started receiving threats, and the African-American studies program, which had sponsored the contest, removed...

Last November, the voters of Washington State shocked their betters in board rooms, editorial offices, university administrations, and the leadership of both parties by rejecting Referendum 88, an attempt by state Democrats to bring back affirmative action, which had been prohibited in a 1998 referendum. This new, revived affirmative action, they claimed, would not permit quotas or preferential treatment. Referendum 88 disingenuously defined preferential treatment as using race, sex, or ethnicity “as the sole qualifying factor to select a less qualified applicant over a more qualified applicant” in public education, employment, or contracting. This would have offered an open door...

The University of California has been requiring prospective faculty members to affirm that they support diversity. This was Orwellian in its own right—reminiscent of the university system's 1950s loyalty oaths, which required faculty to attest that they were not members of the Communist Party. It now appears that at one campus, UC-Berkeley, the diversity initiative goes much further than previously understood. Whether a candidate has proposed a specific, concrete plan to advance diversity is now being used as a litmus test for some positions. No candidate who fails the test can even be considered for employment. Abigail Thompson, a UC-Davis...

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon demonstrated his social enlightenment in Davos this week by announcing that the white-shoe investment bank would no longer help companies with exclusively white, male boards go public—as long as its boycott doesn’t hurt business too much. “Starting on July 1 in the U.S. and Europe, we’re not going to take a company public unless there’s at least one diverse board candidate, with a focus on women,” Mr. Solomon said on CNBC Thursday. “We might miss some business, but in the long run, this I think is the best advice for companies that want to drive...

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said Thursday that the powerful investment bank will only finance initial public offerings (IPOs) for companies that have at least one nonwhite male board member. Solomon said during a Thursday interview with CNBC that as of July 1 in the U.S. and Europe, Goldman “is not going to take a company public unless there is at least one diverse board candidate, with a focus on women.” “Diversity on boards is a very very important issue, and we've been very very focused on it and so we're trying to find ways to encourage that,” Solomon told...

New York’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Letitia James, is going after . . . law enforcement. On Monday, James said she’s probing the NYPD’s fare-evasion policing for racial bias. It’s a disgraceful pander. “If NYers have been targeted because of the color of their skin, we will not hesitate to take legal action,” she tweeted. Well, sure: If cops were singling out minorities, she’d be remiss not to act. Yet there’s no evidence — none — of such targeting. From October 2017 to June 2019, James notes, minorities got 70% of the fare-evasion summonses and accounted for 90% of arrests,...