Category: Social Justice

Justin Trudeau’s old school in Newton, Maskachusetts makes the news

by philg

I hope that everyone (except, perhaps, that notorious reprobate Toucan Sam) has been celebrating Black History Month.

Some news from Newton, Massachusetts… “… Blackface classroom activity was used to ‘celebrate’ Black History Month” (MassLive):

When Nadirah Pierce picked up her children from IC Kids Montessori earlier this week, she noticed they were covered in black paint. They said it was for a Black History Month project.

Pierce didn’t think much of it until the school posted photos from the activity for parents online on Wednesday. That’s when she saw the children had painted faces on paper plates using the black paint and were holding them up to their faces.

IC Kids Montessori in Newton issued an apology for the Blackface incident but removed the post about an hour later and subsequently removed the school’s Facebook account entirely.

“To all who are offended, we sincerely apologize for what happened with one of our classroom activities: black face,” the school originally wrote on Facebook. “Our intention was to celebrate Black History Month. Unfortunately we didn’t do enough research on black history and carried out a wrong activity. We are sorry about it and we mean it!”

The photos also included children planking in rows. This and the popular 2011 trend by the same name mirror the way slaves were often transported on slave ships.

“Planking was a way to transport slaves on ships during the slave trade, its [sic] not funny,” Xzibit tweeted, according to the Washington Post. “Educate yourselves.”

But the National Museum of African American History and Culture told CNN that’s not an excuse.

“Minstrelsy, comedic performances of ‘blackness’ by whites in exaggerated costumes and makeup, cannot be separated fully from the racial derision and stereotyping at its core,” it said.

“I hope this is a lesson for all daycare centers,” she said. “Do your research. Ask people in your community, reach out to the parents.”

From the BBC, a successful graduate of this Montessori school:

Speaking of following Science, the current personification of Science is from Newton, MA: Rochelle Walensky.

Related:

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The Maskachusetts Righteous debate public housing policy

by philg

Recent discussion involving two residents of of a rich Massachusetts suburb….

From a woman who gets paid to help migrants from South Sudan settle in Massachusetts:

Good morning! I can tell you that the cost of housing is completely out of control. I work with many low income folks and housing is a huge issue.
A woman who works at Amazon making $17.75 an hour and has four kids does not qualify for Emergency Housing?. She makes too much money.
A man who had tb of the spine and is on disability and his wife works as a home health aid making $15 an hour four kids- can not find housing. Anywhere! The man in this family goes to Divinity School at Bu. They will likely have to move out of state. Great family.
I could go on and on?.
As a small nonprofit we have had to hire someone to help navigate the housing maze for clients.
I got an email yesterday for an affordable house in waylaid [Wayland, Maskachusetts] for over $300,000!! Affordable for whom????
We all need to raise our voices!!!
Lynn two bedrooms is going for $2200
Woburn two bedroom $2300
Salem three bedroom $2100 and is considered a steal!!
SSEF has many families that need housing and good schools.
Likely they will live in horrible housing in towns with terrible schools and the cycle goes on and on. Let’s blame them?..
We are increasing our funding for summer educational programs which is better than nothing but better that people lived in towns where the kids educational needs where being addressed.
On a happier note- several lincoln people helped a woman and her kids find housing- a wonderful volunteer from lincoln worked endlessly to find housing and financial resources; three incredible lincoln folks helped completely furnish an apartment. A lincoln man and others helped co-sign her lease. Gives me hope. Please help in any way

From a neighbor who is not paid to work with migrants:

let’s work on balancing protecting our beautiful little town with our moral obligation to help provide more affordable housing.

We can all agree that housing is a human right and that we are morally obligated to house anyone who shows up in the U.S., but achieving “balance” might require the next crop of 59 million migrants to live somewhere other than in our own neighborhood….

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What is Harvard’s argument for race-based admissions in the #StopAsianHate age?

by philg

“Supreme Court to hear Harvard admissions challenge” (Harvard Gazette):

“The Supreme Court decision to review the unanimous decisions of the lower federal courts puts at risk 40 years of legal precedent granting colleges and universities the freedom and flexibility to create diverse campus communities. Considering race as one factor among many in admissions decisions produces a more diverse student body which strengthens the learning environment for all,” he said. “The U.S. Solicitor General rightfully recognized that neither the district court’s factual findings, nor the court of appeals’ application of the Supreme Court’s precedents to those findings, warrants further review. Harvard will continue to defend vigorously its admissions practices and to reiterate the unequivocal decisions of those two federal courts: Harvard does not discriminate; our practices are consistent with Supreme Court precedent; there is no persuasive, credible evidence warranting a different outcome. The University remains committed to academic excellence, expanded opportunity, and diverse educational experiences—and to the perennial work of preparing students for fruitful careers and meaningful lives.”

The case was first tried in 2018. Federal District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs found in favor of Harvard in her October 2019 decision on all counts, ruling that the College didn’t discriminate based on race, engage in racial balancing or the use of quotas, and that it had no suitable race-neutral alternatives that would allow it to achieve its pedagogical and diversity-related goals. Just over a year later, in November 2020, the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Burroughs’ decision.

Based on the above, Harvard’s argument seems to be that race-based admissions is a sacred tradition and also that diversity is critical to learning, which explains why people in China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are ignorant of everything except how to implement a 3 nanometer process for integrated circuits.

A lot has changed since 2018, however. Stop Asian Hate began in March 2021, months after the appeals court upheld Harvard’s scheme. The term “AAPI,” lumping together half a globe of humanity into a single victimhood category, is more or less new since the 2018 trial as well.

The effect of Harvard’s race-based system is summarized pretty well in this video, from a friend of a friend:

Now that racism against Asians is considered, by all of the best people, to be bad, what is Harvard’s argument for perpetuating its current system of race-based discrimination?

Related:

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MIT: Groundbreaking research on politics and racial justice

by philg

The December issue of MIT’s alumni magazine, Technology Review, arrived. this includes a special sub-magazine that is only about things that happen on the MIT campus or that are done by MIT alumni. The cover story: “MIT’s new chancellor laid a foundation for leadership through her groundbreaking research on politics and racial justice.”

What else was in the issue? “Discrimination by the numbers”:

When Phyllis Ann Wallace reached Yale University, in the mid-1940s, she was used to facing obstacles and proceeding anyway. Women weren’t expected to go into economics, especially at the graduate level, and for Black women like herself, breaking into the field decades before schools, buses, or workplaces were legally integrated was practically unheard-of.

Her book MBAs on the Fast Track chronicled how the experiences of men and women with equal education differ, and why women work longer hours for the same compensation.

She arrived [at MIT] as a visiting scholar at the Sloan School and quickly moved up to become the school’s first female professor, in 1975. In her office overlooking the Charles River, she wrote books and papers on women in the labor force, particularly Black women, often inviting students to coauthor or co-edit. She worked to ensure that male MIT students were aware of equity issues, believing that “if you can really educate them now, hopefully they will go out and bring about the revolution wherever they are.”

(Note: Americans upset by “why women work longer hours for the same compensation” and who want to work for just one hour and earn a lot more than the average MBA can refer to “Child Support Litigation without a Marriage” and/or the $2.5 million tax-free example of Hunter Biden’s plaintiff (she didn’t waste time getting an MBA!))

Anything about Science (the new capitalized-like-God version)? A brief interior article noted that David Julius, Class of ’77, “shared the 2021 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries about how the body senses touch and temperature.” In other Nobel-ish news, a current MIT professor won the Nobel in economics.

Speaking of elite university experts on comparative victimology, “‘Rhodes Scholar’ claimed she grew up poor and abused — then her story started to unravel” (New York Post):

In November 2020, when University of Pennsylvania graduate student Mackenzie Fierceton won the prestigious and highly competitive Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford — one of just 32 scholars selected from a pool of 2,300 applicants — she was praised by the Ivy League school’s president in a newsletter.

“Mackenzie is so deserving of this prestigious opportunity,” declared president Amy Gutmann of the 23-year-old from suburban St. Louis. “As a first-generation [to go to college] low-income student and a former foster youth, Mackenzie is passionate about championing young people [and] dedicating herself to a life of public service.”

Multiple college consultants told The Post that the college application process now features more questions about overcoming obstacles. The 2021-2022 essay prompts from Common App, the organization that oversees undergrad applications for more than 900 schools, include “Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure.”

Categorizing herself as a first-generation, low-income student with a history of horrific abuse — who also earned nearly straight A’s and was student body president in high school — Fierceton certainly fit the bill. She was admitted to Penn in 2015 to study political science, then began studying for a clinical master’s degree in social work in 2018.

When Fierceton’s Rhodes Scholarship was announced, the Philadelphia Inquirer profiled the academic star in November 2020, noting that she “grew up poor, cycling through the rocky child welfare system [and] bounced from one foster home to the next.”

As Fierceton said in that story: “I would trade [the Rhodes honor] to have been adopted and have a family.”

But after that Nov. 22, 2020, profile ran, an anonymous accuser sent an email to Penn and the Rhodes Trust, claiming Fierceton’s story was “blatantly dishonest.” The email reportedly alleged that Fierceton grew up in St. Louis, Mo., with her mother, an educated radiologist; that her family was upper-middle class; and that she had attended a fancy private high school and enjoyed such high-end hobbies as horseback riding.

According to Winkelstein’s subsequent report, Fierceton was raised in an upper-middle-class household; it also notes her mother is a radiologist and that her grandfather had graduated from college.

The Penn victimological bureaucrats criticize the young student for purportedly lying, but take no responsibility for their own incompetence. These are paid full-time victimologists and they can’t distinguish between true victims and the child of a radiologist? How are ordinary Americans supposed to accept the Ivy League say-gooders as experts on social and racial justice?

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Kwanzaa stamps an expression of hate?

by philg

I went to the Post Office today to get some stamps for our New Year’s cards. It’s Florida so naturally the guy working the counter wasn’t wearing a mask and didn’t ask any customers to wear one either. A handful of stamp designs were available, one of which features a personal favorite holiday:

(A 2018 design, so apparently not a big seller. The office also had the 2020 Kwanzaa stamp.)

Is this image of an apparently mixed-gender-ID nuclear family acceptable in our 2SLGBTQQIA+ world? Or can it be considered cisgender-normative and heteronormative hate?

The image can’t be excused on the ground that what is shown is the typical Black American family structure. Wikipedia:

About 67 percent of black children are born into a single parent household.

There is no corresponding 1950s-style nuclear white family image on any modern USPS stamp that I could find, so the anti-2SLGBTQQIA+ message seems to be specifically associated with Kwanzaa.

Current Hanukkah stamps show a family of just two people, one taller than the other, i.e., potentially a single-parent family (or maybe the depicted individuals are two kids and the same-gender parents are off camera?).

What about Christmas stamps? Believe it or not, not only has the USPS removed the Christ from Christmas, the agency has removed Christmas from Christmas. There are stamps featuring snow and one depicting Santa flying, but I couldn’t find any that actually showed a religious ritual, as with the Kwanzaa and Hanukkah stamps. The Diwali stamp has a ritual lamp. The Eid stamp has an inscription in Arabic that I can’t read, but USPS says it means “May your Eid be bountiful (or blessed)”.

Note: Of course I bought one Kwanzaa stamp for every card addressed to a friend back in Maskachusetts with a BLM sign on his/her/zir/their lawn!

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Happy Kwanzaa

by philg

Happy Kwanzaa to everyone.

The holiday reminds us just how far we have to go in our quest for social justice. Shutterfly, for example, shows only one or two people with light skin as sample images for their Kwanzaa cards. The implication is that, for example, nobody who identifies as Asian celebrates this most important of world holidays:

Here’s a worksheet that a second grader was recently sentenced to fill out:

Note the Freudian slip at the bottom: “White any customs from that country that you know about.” The second-grader did not learn about which region of Africa enjoys a harvest season starting the day after Christmas. Nor, sadly, did the second grade class learn about the colorful biography of Kwanzaa’s inventor:

In 1971, [Maulana Ndabezitha Karenga (born Ronald McKinley Everett)] was sentenced to one to 10 years in prison on counts of felony assault and false imprisonment. One of the victims gave testimony of how Karenga and other men tortured her and another woman. The woman described having been stripped naked and beaten with an electrical cord. Karenga’s estranged wife, Brenda Lorraine Karenga, testified that she sat on the other woman’s stomach while another man forced water into her mouth through a hose.

From the LA Times:

Deborah Jones, who once was given the Swahili title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electrical cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vise. Karenga, head of [US Organization], also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said. They also were hit on the heads with toasters.

Related:

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Jussie Smollett convicted

by philg

A friend texted me that Jussie Smollett had been convicted. I replied “Racism and homophobia in the U.S. are a lot worse than we thought.”

(How can I be sure that Mr. Smollett was innocent and, therefore, convicted unanimously by 12 jurors only because of their racism and homophobia? From our leaders…

The top reply to then-candidate Biden’s tweet:

)

Related:

  • Merry Christmas from the iPhone 12 Pro Max (Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing are leaving the courtroom after arguing on behalf of Donald Trump and they get hit by a taxpayer-funded empty city bus. God meets them at the pearly gates and asks if they have any questions. … )
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Immigrant comments on the Alice Sebold/Anthony Broadwater situation

by philg

Why we need the Daily Mail:

What other news outlet would highlight the inequality of the situation? (The liar enjoys freedom (well, until the lockdowns) and a $6 million house, paid for partly from the profits of writing about the lie; the person who tells the truth goes to prison for 16 years and then tries to live and work as a convicted felon and sex offender.)

An immigrant friend sent a photo to our chat group from within this article:

The immigrant’s take on the situation?

I love this. Mask outside, reusable bag, San Francisco. So many markers of virtue. Except for putting an innocent black man in prison.

A native-born friend in Maskachusetts responded:

Saw a woman biking today with a mask on. On a rural road.

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Doctors admit stealing property, but refuse to give it back

by philg

From the American Medical Association’s Organization Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity:

We acknowledge that we are all living off the taken ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples for thousands of years.

From “Prioritizing Equity video series: Police Brutality & COVID-19” (AMA):

I am Dr. Aletha Maybank, I am chief health equity officer at the American Medical Association over the Center for Health Equity. … We work to ensure equitable opportunities and conditions and innovation for marginalized and minoritized people and communities. … So I first want to recognize and acknowledge the land in which we are all sitting on and the Indigenous people who have been here for thousands of years before us, whose land was dispossessed at the same time, able to thrive and survive till this day.

(Doctors accuse the police of “brutality” (see the title), but aren’t doctors collectively a principal reason why lower income Americans end up entangled with the police? Medical bills, oftentimes starting at 5-10X what an insurance company would have paid, lead to evictions and personal bankruptcy (see “Enforcing Eviction: As a national housing crisis approaches, the police side with property against people.” (The Nation)).)

From the American Medical Association’s Advancing Health Equity: Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts:

The Association of American Medical Colleges’ headquarters is located in Washington, D.C., the traditional homelands of the Nacotchtank, Piscataway and Pamunkey people. The American Medical Association’s headquarters is located in the Chicago area on taken ancestral lands of indigenous tribes, such as the Council of the Three Fires, composed of the Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi Nations, as well as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, Fox, Kickapoo and Illinois Nations.

Doctors are fairly rich. If they admit that they’re on stolen (“taken”) land, why don’t they give the land back to the nearest Native American and then pay him/her/zir/them rent?

Separately, the above language guide contains some helpful tips. It is not “individuals” but “survivors”; it is not “the obese” but “people with severe obesity” (remember that, whatever the term used, the #science-informed optimum medical response to a virus that attacks the obese is a next-to-the-fridge lockdown!):

Sometimes it is not that hard to achieve equity:

Sometimes it is, in fact, way easier than you’d think:

A revenue source by any other name would be just as lucrative?

If you hire people of only one skin color, that’s a “race-conscious” process:

How many enslaved persons show up at the typical U.S. healthcare facility?

If Justin Trudeau’s use of 2SLGBTQQIA+ has you scratching your head, turn to the glossary:

(“It is also not a term that can be used by a non-Indigenous person” yet there is no indication that a Native American contributed to this document. Isn’t putting the term in a glossary a “use” of the term?)

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