Free Republic

U.S. Senate candidate Loretta Sanchez was criticized Saturday by her chief rival, Attorney General Kamala Harris, after a videotape surfaced showing her making a whooping cry in reference to Native Americans during an apparent joke. Harris called the gesture "shocking.'' A video posted on The Sacramento Bee website shows Sanchez, a 10-term congresswoman, fluttering her hand against her mouth and making a whooping sound while speaking to a group of delegates at a state Democratic Party convention.

A Subway sandwich shop worker whose social media posts about Saturday's killing of two police officers in Mississippi sparked outrage online said her comments were misconstrued — and now she's being threatened. "They took the status the wrong way," Sierra McCurdy of Laurel, Mississippi, told NBC News Monday. McCurdy wrote the Facebook post following news of the fatal shooting of two officers, Benjamin J. Deen, 34, and Liquori Tate, 25, during a traffic stop in Hattiesburg. "2 police officers was shot in hattiesburg tonight…GOT EM," read the post, which also included a crying-laughing emoticon and a gun emoji. "They took...

Mississippi Subway 'sandwich artist' has been fired after she created a social media firestorm Sunday by posting messages applauding the deaths of two police officers killed in the line of duty. After Benjamin Deen, 34, and Liquori Tate, 25, were killed on Saturday night about 30 miles away in Hattiesburg, Laurel woman Sierra 'C-Babi' Mccurdy posted a message while wearing her uniform. She wrote: 'Two police officers shot tonight in Hattiesburg,' followed by 'GOT EM' and a gun pointed at the words as well as a laughing emoji.

CNN's Brooke Baldwin is hoping to return to the good graces of U.S. veterans with an apology after suggesting that some of them are to blame for Baltimore's rioting. The cable news anchor issued a humbling on-air mea culpa Wednesday after making her incriminating statement the day before on live TV but without offering a single scrap of evidence to support such a claim. "A lot of these young people, and I love our nation's veterans, but some of them are coming back from war, they don't know the communities, and they're ready to do battle," she told Rep. Elijah...

According to Professor Cody Pogue, the riots occurring in Baltimore are, in part, due to white privilege. Pogue teaches at Houston Community College and San Jacinto College. Today Pogue wrote an article titled, “The Baltimore riots within the context of White Privilege.” His article begins, “I do not approve of the riots in Baltimore. At the same time, I do not understand what else we expect them to do. Numerous studies have proven that, in America today, white people are more privileged than black people.” Pogue then writes about “white privilege,” saying that, “White people nearly always get the benefit...

Apparently, just being in certain rooms is a microaggression. According to a new report released by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, just “walking into or sitting in” a classroom full of white people is a microaggression in itself. “Students of color reported feeling uncomfortable and unwelcomed just walking into or sitting in the classroom, especially if they were the only person of color, or one of a few,” stated the report, which designated the experience a microaggression. “People do not necessarily say I do not belong, but I feel as if I do not when I am in a...

Over a year ago, I posted a column here titled “Why Equal Opportunity Is Immoral And Wrong.” http://clashdaily.com/2014/02/equal-opportunity-immoral-wrong/ As I expected, my message sailed over some readers’ heads. Multiple commenters weighed in with the typical, programmed response: “Well, it’s bad to try to force equal outcomes — but guaranteeing equal opportunity is good and right, and what our system is about,” etc. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. I had tried to explain that if the doctrine of equal opportunity is really applied in principle, some third-party entity (government, of course) would by necessity always have to step in to...

In the latest chapter of the left’s ongoing campaign to immortalize the grandfather clause of social justice, but more specifically to compensate America along racial lines, comes the politically convenient creation of “White Privilege”. Because the word “racism” obviously doesn’t denote enough singular intent to indict white America as the sole purveyors of hate, victimization has now evolved into blaming the pale subjects of suburbia as the greatest impetus for urban crime, poverty, civil unrest, and societal division. If “White Privilege” is truly designed to infer advantage or favoritism, then why did I grow up in a blue collar home,...

The notion of checking one’s privilege — white, male, cisgendered, and otherwise — has caught on to the point of triggering the inevitable backlash. And while the right has always scoffed at the notion as being divisive and unhelpful, even when they agree with the idea of class war (sort of), the left is beginning to find it all a bit heckle-worthy too. Over at the heady and increasingly influential Jacobin, Connor Kilpatrick condemns the idea of privilege-checking as a deviation from issues of real power: Right now Americans are inundated with a variety of liberal politics that try to...

"...............Though I did not teach at the U of I when this survey was conducted, I’m pretty sure that the reactions of these offended students is accurate for the simple reason that many blacks and Hispanics are in over their heads. Beginning in 1975 I regularly taught classes with affirmative action blacks (the university at that time identified them) and their academic deficiencies were obvious (but not true for Asians). Their classroom comments were often uninformed and thus treated with disdain judged by the facial reactions of their smarter classmates. Their grades were also often dismal.Now, how is all this...

A black sociology professor at Vanderbilt University is arguing that “white privilege” is to blame for last week’s riots and looting in Baltimore, Md. The professor, Tony N. Brown, took to the op-ed pages of The Tennessean late last week to make the claim. White people act “routinely to harm, demean, and damage black and brown people,” Brown wrote in Nashville’s main newspaper. These actions “explain the lofty levels of frustration and despair among black and brown youth.” The professor, who has a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, cites other unrelated incidents as evidence of the riots after the...

Over the past decade or so as $10 million apartments have prevailed in New York and more and more neighborhoods have been given over to the kind of luxury shopping required to fill them, it has been common to say that the city has turned into a “playground for the rich.” At the same time, of course, New York has turned into a playground of the more literal kind, with a child-centric ethos bearing well-established variants of urban nuisance: stroller gridlock in gentrifying areas, car services that cater to 5-year-olds, sidewalk whining that in some cases becomes its own source...

In their first response since the case sparked a national race debate months ago, lawyers for Midwest Sperm Bank this week pushed for the suit's dismissal because they said Illinois law does not recognize damages or extra costs associated with raising a healthy child. In her lawsuit, filed last fall, Jennifer Cramblett said she became pregnant in December 2011 through artificial insemination with sperm donated by a black man instead of a white donor as she and her same-sex partner had intended. Cramblett said she learned of the alleged mistake five months into her pregnancy, when she called the sperm...

Dr. Adam Kotsko, an assistant professor at Shimer College in Chicago, Illinois, believes that there is no such thing as sexism against men and that Christianity is just another way to say "White Supremacy." Voicing his opinion on twitter, Dr. Kotsko has repeatedly slammed Christianity, going so far as calling it another name for "White Supremacist Patriarchy." Here is just a small sample of his tweets and retweets on the subject:

Chelsea Clinton is opening up about life in the public eye, being a new mother and whether or not she would like to see her own mother become president in a new interview. Clinton, whose mother Hillary is expected to formally announce her presidential campaign this Sunday, said it is time the United States had a female leader. 'One of our core values in this country is that we are the land of equal opportunity, but when equal hasn't yet included gender, there is a fundamental challenge there that, I believe, having our first woman president—whenever that is—will help resolve,'...

A middle school teacher at Hempstead's Alverta B. Gray Schultz Middle School was in a classroom Wednesday afternoon when a parent went past a security checkpoint and waited outside her door to confront her, police and union officials said. The parent, later identified as Annika McKenzie, 34, insisted in engaging the teacher for reasons that haven't been disclosed. The teacher was heard asking the woman to get a security pass and then calling for security before things got worse, police said.

The crash near the interchange of the 118 and 210 freeways left others hospitalized in critical conditionA big rig driver suffered what authorities described as a "coughing attack" at the wheel before crashing off a Southern California freeway and slamming into a pickup in a fatal collision that involved several other vehicles. The northern San Fernando Valley crash, which left four people hospitalized in critical condition, occurred under the 210 Freeway-118 Freeway interchange near the Paxton Street exit. The big rig crashed off the 210 Freeway freeway and down an embankment before crossing an exit ramp and slamming into the...

How many Americans die in fatal encounters with police officers? In the absence of political will and bureaucratic ability, Americans are rising up to count for themselves. The best findings so far — 3.15 citizens each day; 22 per week; 96 a month — adding up to an average of 1,150 dead Americans a year, according to data painstakingly compiled by the website fatalencounters.org. Founder D. Brian Burghart, who launched the not-for-profit Fatal Encounters project in February 2014, stands by those findings as “better than 95 per cent accurate.” “What we don’t know yet are the trends going back to...

In hundreds of police departments across the country, the percentage of whites on the force is more than 30 percentage points higher than in the communities they serve, according to an analysis of a government survey of police departments. Minorities make up a quarter of police forces, according to the 2007 survey, the most recent comprehensive data available. Experts say that diversity in the police force increases a department’s credibility with its community. “Even if police officers of whatever race enforce the law in relatively the same way, there is a huge image problem with a department that is so...

South Africa's University of Cape Town (UCT) has removed a statue of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes that had become the focus of protests. The monument, taken down in front of cheering protesters, will be stored for "safe keeping", UCT's council said. Students have been campaigning for the removal of the statue of the 19th Century figure, unveiled in 1934. Other monuments to colonial-era leaders have also been the target of protest in South Africa. The BBC's Mohammed Allie told Focus On Africa radio that there was a "festive atmosphere" as students, academics, members of political parties and ordinary Cape Town...