Education
The “Covington Catholic HS student vs. Native American activist” viral video saga has entered its farcical phase, judging by a ridiculous, if not slanderous report from the New York Daily News, headlined online “SEE IT: Covington Catholic High students in blackface at past basketball game.” The story is attributed to the Daily News Sports Staff (names withheld to protect the ignorant?): "This won’t help Kentucky student Nick Sandmann’s case. A photo said to be featuring Covington Catholic High School students clad in blackface during a 2015 basketball game made the rounds on Twitter Monday morning amid last week’s Indigenous Peoples March controversy."
Imagine a Christian school that believes what Christians have believed for 2,000 years, and what everybody believed until the day before yesterday! Now imagine a believing Christian agreeing to work for that believing Christian school! Now, (and get ready to shift your outrage gear to nuclear) imagine that Christian was none other than second lady of the United States Karen Pence, an unapologetic Christian married to unapologetic Christian and VP Mike Pence.
In reference to efforts to teach black children, the president of the St. Petersburg, Florida, chapter of the NAACP, Maria Scruggs, said: “The (school) district has shown they just can't do it....Now it's time for the community to step in.” That's a recognition that politicians and the education establishment, after decades of promises, cannot do much to narrow the huge educational achievement gap between Asians and whites on the one hand and blacks on the other.
Much is made about observed differences between sexes and among races. The nation's academic and legal elite try to sell us on the notion that men and women and people of all races should be proportionally represented in socio-economic characteristics. They make statements such as “Though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately 32 percent of the US population, they (constituted) 56 percent of all incarcerated people in 2015" and “20 percent of Congress is women. Only 5 percent of CEOs are.
The front page of Tuesday’s New York Times focused on the Trump administration “planning to roll back Obama-era policies aimed at ensuring that minority children are not unfairly disciplined, arguing that the efforts have eased up on punishment and contributed to rising violence in the nation’s schools.” Reporters Erica Green and Katie Benner don’t seem to approve of the move, though they make a stronger attempt at balance than the headlines: "Trump’s Parkland Inquiry Shifts To Attack on an Obama Legacy.” The inside-page headline: “Trump Parkland Panel Attacks Obama Policy On Race and Schools.”
What do you think of the proposition that no black youngsters should be saved from educational rot until all can be saved? Black people cannot afford to accept such a proposition. Actions by the education establishment, black and white liberal politicians, and some civil rights organizations appear to support the proposition. Let's look at it with the help of some data developed by my friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell.
The Asian-American author of a New York Times column claims that ending discrimination against Asian-Americans in college admissions would do them "egregious harm." It's not simply that The New York Times found an Asian-American willing to write a column—in the context of the lawsuit against Harvard— supporting continued discrimination against Asian-Americans in college admissions.
I sat through all ten episodes of the second season of Netflix’s Big Mouth, an animated adult sitcom, so you don't have to and all I can say is, that is five hours I’ll never get back. You're welcome. I honestly don’t know why this series was brought back for another season unless it was to simply appease the liberal universe with their 30-minute ode to Planned Parenthood.
President Barack Obama's first education secretary, Arne Duncan, gave a speech on the 45th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where, in 1965, state troopers beat and tear-gassed hundreds of peaceful civil rights marchers who were demanding voting rights.
I'm thankful that increasing attention is being paid to the dire state of higher education in our country. Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has just published “The Diversity Delusion.” Its subtitle captures much of the book's content: “How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.” Part of the gender pandering at our universities is seen in the effort to satisfy the diversity-obsessed National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, each of which gives millions of dollars of grant money to universities.
On Friday's Real Time show on HBO, liberal host Bill Maher and actor Jim Carrey celebrated recent Democratic candidates running on far-left platforms and identifying themselves as "socialists," leading Carrey to proclaim: "We have to say yes to socialism -- to the word and everything. We have to stop apologizing."
Eager to attack a potential new Trump administration policy dealing with sexual assault on college campuses, on Thursday, NBC’s Today show actually ignored its own reporting on the litany of problems with existing Obama-era policy. Instead, the story feared that Trump’s Department of Education was getting ready to silence sexual assault victims.