Free Republic

The largest public school district in Washington state is reportedly training white teachers to “bankrupt their privilege” by focusing on social justice in the classroom, Discovery Institute scholar Christopher Rufo reported. A series of reportedly leaked documents shows what appears to be a training on critical race theory at Seattle Public Schools, prompting teachers to explain how they will promulgate racial justice in the classroom. The slides begin by asking teachers to acknowledge that they are meeting on “the ancestral lands and traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish People,” which is followed by “Stolen Labor Acknowledgments” asking them...

District officials in San Diego evidently believe that the practice of grading students based on average scores is racist.K-12 students in large public school districts across the country spent much of the fall semester at home, a less-than-ideal result of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Zoom learning was hardly the only significant change to the education system. Some school districts are embracing trendy but dubious ideas about how to fight racism in the classroom. The San Diego Unified School District, for instance, moved this fall to abolish its traditional grading system. Students will still receive letter grades, but they won't reflect...

NEW YORK (AP) - The first significant attention that the Kansas City Star gave to hometown hero and jazz legend Charlie “Bird” Parker came when he died in 1955 - and the newspaper spelled his name wrong. That detail came to light when the Star investigated, and apologized for, its mistreatment of Black citizens over many decades in a self-reckoning that came in a series of stories published on Sunday. In its blunt self-assessment, the Star found that for many decades of its 140-year history, Black residents were rarely mentioned in anything but crime stories. It was a newspaper produced...

Just when you thought they couldn’t be any more divisive…If you just arrived on the planet you’d swear the Democratic Party was trying to start a civil war. It wouldn’t be possible to divide people in more ways than Democrats do, all for their own benefit. The people without jobs are taught to resent those lucky enough to have them. People without savings are trained to be angry at those with. Everyone one is conditioned to hate people with more than them, more of anything. Further down the left-wing hate spiral, Democrats have indoctrinated people to distrust and dislike people...

When the church doors open, only white people will be allowed inside. That’s the message the Asatru Folk Assembly in Murdock, Minnesota, is sending after being granted a conditional use permit to open a church there and practice its pre-Christian religion that originated in northern Europe. Despite a council vote officially approving the permit this month, residents are pushing back against the decision. “I think they thought they could fly under the radar in a small town like this, but we’d like to keep the pressure on them,” said Peter Kennedy, a longtime Murdock resident. “Racism is not welcome here."...

One is thriving after switching from online public school to in-person private education. The other is struggling, stuck in her virtual classroom. The lives of these two girls, Ella Pierick and Afiya Harris, encapsulate the growing divide in U.S. education as more affluent parents flee public schools. In Connecticut, enrollment fell 3%. Colorado reported a similar decline, with the steepest losses in one of its wealthiest counties. Chicago’s rosters dipped 4.1%, the most in 20 years. Parents with means are instead homeschooling; joining with other families to hire teachers in so-called pandemic pods; or signing up for private schools. Poor...

One of NYC’s poshest private schools is in an uproar over an anti-racist manifesto signed by dozens of faculty members with a sweeping list of demands. The Dalton School - which boasts stars Anderson Cooper, Christian Slater and Claire Danes as alumni - is wrestling with eight pages of “proposals” to overhaul the staffing, curriculum and treatment of black students. Yearly tuition for grades K-12 at the Upper East Side institution is $54,180 a year. The wide-ranging faculty demands include: -Hiring 12 full-time diversity officers, and multiple psychologists to support students “coping with race-based traumatic stress.” -Assigning a staffer dedicated...

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City officials announced a series of admissions changes for hundreds of middle and high schools Friday in one of the most significant steps the nation’s largest school system has taken in years to address racial segregation. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is suspending merit-based screening systems for its selective middle schools for at least a year. That means that academic records, auditions and other assessments will no longer be used by schools to skim off the top-performing elementary school kids and segregate them from other children. A lottery would be used when...

This cruelest of years has claimed the life of another consequential scholar whose passing warrants some reflection. James Flynn, who died last week at 86, was an American social scientist born in Washington and educated at the University of Chicago. He spent most of his academic career on the other side of the planet, at the University of Otago in southern New Zealand. Flynn specialized in the study of mental tests and human intelligence, and he distinguished himself by bringing far more light than heat to this fraught debate. Many earlier researchers of group differences in mental performance were convinced...

Black Lives Matter is putting the forthcoming Biden-Harris administration on notice for failing to respond to a meeting request from the group. The activists say they were also excluded from a Tuesday meeting between the president- and vice president-elect, Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond and several civil rights groups. “On the night of the Biden Harris victory, BLM sent a letter requesting a meeting,” the movement wrote Wednesday on its Instagram. The post includes a graphic stating “It has been … 32 days since we’ve requested a meeting with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. We’ve heard no response.” Black life cannot...

According to a lengthy new article and a recent book, a driving force behind white evangelical support for Donald Trump was the preservation of white America. This factor, we are told, and not just Trump’s support for other causes of importance to white evangelicals, such as being pro-life and pro-Israel, helps explain why so many of these Christian conservatives got behind such an unlikely candidate. Is this true?According to Sarah Posner in her book Unholy: Why White Evangelicals Worship at the Altar of Trump, a key factor in white evangelical support for Trump was “the realization that Trump was the...

So: according to the Woke, if you don’t see color, you are a racist. But if you see color, you are also a racist. You cannot win. If they want to destroy you with accusations of racism, they will. What you have actually done, and what you actually thought, doesn’t matter. All that matters is what those with the power to destroy you on the basis of accusation alone say you have done. Do you understand now why the people who grew up under Soviet communism are so alarmed now? Do you understand why I wrote Live Not By Lies?...

LOS ANGELES, CA—Hollywood is hard at work remaking the Jimmy Stewart classic It's A Wonderful Life for modern audiences, and film critics are praising some recent plot leaks from the new script. In the new version of the film, George Bailey's guardian angel will explain to him that since he is a straight white male, he should probably just go ahead and jump in the river.

Facebook has updated its hate speech algorithm, reversing years of neutrality to prioritize anti-black comments while making anti-white slurs the lowest priority. The tech giant’s new system for detecting hate speech, known internally as the WoW Project, will automatically delete hateful language directed at the LGBTQ community, Jews, Muslims and African Americans — which has been dubbed by Facebook engineers as the “worst of the worst,” the Washington Post reported. The company will now begin scoring hate speech and offensive posts, and remarks about “men,” “whites” and “Americans” will be marked “low sensitivity,” the report said.

WASHINGTON - The heads of legacy civil rights groups say they are struggling to participate in President-elect Joe Biden’s transition, vying to be included as the incoming administration tries to make good on a promise to Black voters to be the most diverse in history. Prominent civil rights advocates say they haven't been consulted about key cabinet picks and are frustrated they haven't met with Biden since the election. “We aren’t asking for some kind of veto, we are asking for some kind of consultation,” said Marc Morial, head of the National Urban League. “We are still in a wait-and-see...

Addressing racial disparities in the U.S. coronavirus crisis cannot be an afterthought, a top adviser to President-elect Joe Biden on the COVID-19 pandemic response said Tuesday. That means when testing and vaccination programs are designed and implemented, for example, they must consider fairness and equity along with efficiency in order to be truly effective, said Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, an expert on health care inequality at Yale University, in an interview with The Associated Press. “We cannot get this pandemic under control if we do not address head-on the issues of inequity in our country,” she said. “There is no other...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Racism is being declared a public health crisis in Louisville. Mayor Greg Fischer signed an executive order on Tuesday outlining a plan to advance racial equity for Black residents of the city. This comes after months of protests. Fischer says, "The protests we've seen are about people's absence of those things in their lives and for generations past. We must always strive to understand the long standing and justifiable grievances behind the protest." The executive order outlines seven key areas for city government to address the city's racial equity challenges: public safety; children and families; Black...

The year 2020 will be remembered for a lot of things - not least the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement around the world. The organisation has led huge street rallies and high-profile campaigns against racism and police brutality. Now the three women who founded the movement told the BBC they believe it has transformed politics. "Black people alongside our allies stood up to change the course of history and we won," said Alicia Garza. Garza and her BLM co-founders, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, spoke as part of the BBC 100 Women Masterclass 2020, a digital live event...

A popular black separatist Instagram page called “Independent Black Businesses” became embroiled in controversy this week after black followers learned that the account – which has routinely solicited PayPal and Patreon donations – is actually not managed by a black person, but a middle-aged white female from Brighton and Hove, U.K. “Independent Black Businesses” was created this year and routinely posts photos of “black-owned businesses” accompanied by emojis and phraseology associated with black media activists, while soliciting PayPal and Patreon donations from followers.

As the first Black woman to serve as a deputy fire chief in the city of Boynton Beach’s history, Latosha Clemons isn’t afraid to continue to demand change in her community. Clemons met with reporters on Friday after saying she has been having difficulty sleeping because the city employees who harmed her...