Category: Social Justice

Whites who fled to Latinx-free New Hampshire demand due process for the Latinx

by philg

Continuing our coverage of National Immigrant Heritage Month for those who celebrate…

Below is a friend who used to live in a 93% white part of Maskachusetts. He fled to a 95% white region of New Hampshire, a U.S. state that is perfect for those who wish to avoid encountering our Latinx brothers, sisters, and binary resisters. Wokipedia says that Keene, NH is enriched by only 1.6% Latinx. His Facebook post:

Spotted at the rally for democracy in Keene NH today. Note my hat showing support for Artificial Intelligence in our schools.

It’s a mystery to me that people who’ve chosen to live a Latinx-free lifestyle are this passionate about ensuring that other parts of the U.S. receive maximum enrichment. As part of my effort to be defriended by 100 percent of Facebook users, of course I asked “Nobody could persuade a Black or Latinx person to join the rally?” Response 1: “My wife tells me that I should just let it go and not engage with people who may not be well-informed, so I hereby disengage.” Response 2 (from one of his friends, with an unknown gender ID but a conventionally male Jewish name): “No pearls to swine!”

Here’s an all-white crowd featured by the BBC…

a little farther down in the article:

Here’s a video from Portland, Maine. Even after importing half of Somalia, the righteous Mainers apparently couldn’t find a single Black person to join their (mostly unmasked) mass gathering:

Another “sea of whiteness” video:

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If inequality is bad, why isn’t the prospect of rich people moving out of New York City welcome?

by philg

“Experts” are upset that the next New York City mayor might drive out the rich (New York Post):

The candidate himself seems to accept the idea that rich people moving away is bad:

Responding to the criticism of his costly plans, Mamdani campaign spokesman Andrew Epstein said, “I know the wealthy have a lot of big feelings about paying a bit more in taxes but here are the facts: working and middle class families are already fleeing because they can’t afford the cost of living.

“The rich leave less than any other income group and when they do, it’s often to other high tax states. The 4.25% corporate tax increase Zohran proposes is still far less than Donald Trump’s 14% cut. So too is the additional 2% tax on millionaires.”

I’m confused. Why is a “mass exodus” of the rich a bad thing? Most New Yorkers agree that inequality is bad. If the richest New Yorkers leave then there will be less inequality among those who remain.

According to the Queers for Palestine (Harvard), inequality is “one of America’s most vexing problems”. Wouldn’t a smaller tax base and a lower standard of living be reasonable prices to pay in order to move a community toward a solution to a “vexing problem”?

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George Floyd Remembrance Day, Five Years Later

by philg

It’s been five years since the life of the greatest of all Americans was cut short and Tim Walz reminds us that we should “honor him”:

What have we actually done for Americans like George Floyd? The Boston Globe says that $1 billion was spent in Maskachusetts and there is nothing to show for it.

The most significant change to American society since May 2020 is that the borders were fully open for about four years, thus leading to a massive increase in low-skill immigration. In addition to at least 4 million green cards (permanent residence) issued (“legal immigrants”), there were approximately10 million undocumented migrants (combined total of more people than live in New York City and Los Angeles put together). “Effects of Immigration on African-American Employment and Incarceration” (NBER 2007):

For white men, an immigration boost of 10 percent caused their employment rate to fall just 0.7 percentage points; for black men, it fell 2.4 percentage points.

That same immigration rise was also correlated with a rise in incarceration rates. For white men, a 10 percent rise in immigration appeared to cause a 0.1 percentage point increase in the incarceration rate for white men. But for black men, it meant a nearly 1 percentage-point rise.

Readers: What are you doing to honor George Floyd today?

Related:

  • “How the Right Has Reshaped the Narrative Around George Floyd” (New York Times, May 24, 2025), which points out that it is a right-wing lie for anyone to say that George Floyd had a criminal record (the NYT certainly does not list any examples of crimes in which Mr. Floyd might have been involved)
  • Apple reminds us about the “sacred” nature of today:

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BLM and chin diapers in 2025

by philg

Our AI Overlords at Meta want me to become Facebook friends with our son’s former kindergarten teacher. She works at an all-white private school in an all-white suburb of Boston. Here’s what her profile looked like in April 2025 (I did some blurring in Photoshop):

Masks are still relevant, but wearing them underneath one’s chin works just fine. Black Lives Matter remains a high-priority social justice cause among those who’ve chosen to live and work in Black-free parts of a notably white state.

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Should Elon Musk get an award for reducing inequality?

by philg

Any time that money is spent in a richer-than-average state, e.g., via a federal handout to Harvard University or a Medicare/Medicaid purchase of pharma from California or New Jersey, America’s income inequality level is increased (and it’s already “a public health crisis” according to Stanford and “obscene” according to our best lawmaker).

We have tremendous inequality among U.S. states. Household income in California was $95,500 in 2023 dollars (Wokipedia) while Texas households enjoyed only $75,800 in income and in Mississippi the median household income was only $54,000. Who works to redress this inequality? Not the federal government, which keeps spending taxpayer money in the richest states, either directly (grants to universities, student loan subsidies, tuition subsidies) or indirectly (pharma and health care purchases).

But let’s consider Elon Musk. He has moved at least four companies from richer-than-average California to poorer-than-average Texas: Tesla, X, SpaceX, and The Boring Company. Is there anyone else alive who can be said to have done as much to reduce inequality among the states? If not, we must anoint Elon Musk as America’s Greatest Social Justice Warrior.

BBC:

The company is also getting an injection of $17.3m (£13.4m) from the Texas government to develop the site, a grant that officials say is expected to create more than 400 jobs and $280m in capital investment in Bastrop.

Although I can’t blame Elon for taking the state’s money, that last bit is upsetting to me as a 14th Amendment Equal Protection purist. Why is it acceptable for a government (state, in this case) to favor one business with tax breaks while hitting smaller and less-connected businesses with the full force of taxation. I would like to see all of these state programs eliminated so that 2-person company is on a more level playing field with a 2,000-person company.

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Grab your masks for an anti-Zionist Passover Seder

by philg

Flash back to 2024 when the Western Washington University Jewish Voice for Peace (unclear if there are any actual Jews involved in JVP; major funding is from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Lannan Foundation, neither of which seem to have any Jewish heritage) invited everyone who hates Israel and loves wearing masks (“required”) to a Seder starting at 5:30 pm (Jewish law says to start at 8:13 pm, sunset in Bellingham, Washington).

Readers: What are you doing for Passover this year? I’m going to join a medical school professor and his kids. Maybe masks will be required since, as an MD and PhD, he personifies The Science.

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Progressive town in Maskachusetts admits being 60 years late to the feminist party

by philg

Happy International Women’s Day to those who celebrate.

A January 7, 2025 post from the suburb of Boston where we used to live:

History was made today in Lincoln. Town Clerk Valerie Fox swore in Sergeant Jennifer McNaught as the newest member of the department. Sgt. McNaught becomes the first woman supervisor in the department’s history.

More than 60 years after second wave feminism made it through the United States, the righteous progressive town finally appoints a female to a position of responsibility. Why admit being this late to the feminism party? (Also, if the town has been working for years on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, & Anti-Racism (“IDEA”, not the discredited “DEI”) why are both of the employees in the photo white? They wanted to hire some non-white people, but couldn’t find anyone qualified?)

Massachusetts progressives love to talk about how stupid, racist, and sexist folks in Alabama are, for example, yet Birmingham, Alabama appointed Annetta Nunn captain in 1995 (CBS) and police chief for the whole city in 2003. If we assume the “captain” job in Alabama is comparable to the “supervisor” job in Maskachusetts, it took the progressives of Lincoln, MA 30 years to catch up to the people whom they enjoy characterizing as primitive and prejudiced.

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Evolution of the Telluride Association Summer Seminar

by philg

I’m listening to The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen (“One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023”). The author was born in 1963, just as I was. Unlike me, he did not drop out of high school but, by contrast, was admitted to a highly selective Telluride Association Summer Seminar (not in Telluride, Colorado, but in Ithaca, NY and Baltimore, MD). The choices circa 1980:

Telluride was offering three seminars that summer, one on literature and revolution, one on the life of the American city, and the third on sociobiology,

I was curious to see if the program still existed. It does. The choices of topic for 2025: Critical Black Studies and Anti-Oppressive Studies.

Maybe the author would have benefitted from one of these programs. Here’s the beginning of a story of how he ends up in the hospital:’

Early in the second week, as Michael and I were cutting across the sweeping [New Rochelle, NY] high school grounds on our way home, talking about classes and the usual bullshit, I noticed a group of Black guys up ahead on the bank of the lake to my left. They seemed about our age, or a few grades older, but did not look like they had spent the day in school. Several were lounging against the low, thick branch of a weeping willow; others were horsing around, tagging each other and darting out of range; and one or two were sitting on the ground.

(There was no motivation for the subsequent attack and facial disfigurement other than the victim being white.)

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DEI at the Fort Lauderdale Airport

by philg

Thanks to Alaska Airlines’s focus on DEI rather than on starting and/or completing flights, I had a multi-hour opportunity to inspect the gates and the art collection at FLL.

As we look back with nostalgia on Black History Month, here’s a Southwest gate:

Remember that 15 pieces of flair is the minimum:

How about art? Here’s an exhibit from someone who “has challenged societal barriers as an LGBTQ+ female artist”:

Note the featuring of Frida Kahlo, who broke through a lot of barriers by having sex with the married already-successful artist Diego Rivera, and Georgia O’Keefe, who broke through a lot of barriers by having sex with the already-married Alfred Stieglitz (more than 20 years older), an already-successful art dealer and photographer.

Intrigued by Southwest Airlines’s “I am Black 365 Days a Year” flair, I asked ChatGPT and Grok to make “I am Golden 365 Days of Year” signs. Both systems were provided with one of Southwest’s as an example. ChatGPT:

Grok:

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Today’s “economic blackout”

by philg

From state-sponsored NPR:

An organization is calling for a national boycott in the form of an “economic blackout” on Friday, urging Americans not to shop for 24 hours.

This movement, spearheaded by The People’s Union USA, a grassroots group, follows the rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at several companies, including Target. The boycott coincides with protests against President Donald Trump’s plans to reduce the government workforce and mass firings at federal agencies.

I don’t know why retailers are the focus given that healthcare is nearly 20 percent of the GDP. Are these folks suggesting that Americans boycott getting their COVID boosters, flu shots, and healing marijuana? What about government? That’s a huge slice of the economy. Does the The People’s Union USA suggest that employers don’t send withheld taxes to the government today? Given that the federal government is now run by an illegitimate fascist dictator, i.e., Donald Trump, why would a righteous individual pay federal taxes on any day of the year? Surely a progressive wouldn’t want to advance Nazism by sending tens of thousands of dollars to a Nazi.

Speaking of Nazis… is the name racist? Why is a boycott a “BLACKout”? State-sponsored NPR reassures us:

What are you all doing to support this grassroots movement? As it happens, my first stop in the morning was Home Depot (Deplorable-founded) to pick up some parts for our electrician (see Electrifinflation).

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