Free Republic

Liberal CNN commentators lashed out at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday for stating that he received worse race-based treatment from New England liberals than from fellow Georgians during his youth in the 1960s. “The worst I have been treated was by northern liberal elites,” said the justice. “The absolute worst I have ever been treated.” (1) Thomas had prefaced his comment with the recollection that race “rarely came up” while he was a child in the deep South. “In the mid-60s, when he was a kid, you could get killed if you were a black person for speaking...

In 2009, I attended the NAACP’s 100th annual convention at the Midtown Hilton in New York. Not just the centenary celebration for the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, this was also the group’s first convention under our newly inaugurated black president. The theme of the week’s events was to pay homage to the great civil rights victories of the past while at the same time defining a new mission for the next century. But on the night NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous took the stage for his big speech, when the subject turned to affirmative action, he didn’t sound like...

America’s Declaration of Independence enshrines the idea that all men are created equal. What it actually means is that everyone has the same rights to enjoy or suffer the consequences of their own decisions under the law, and to freely exist in whatever circumstances earned, given, or legally bequeathed to them. When debating topics like affirmative action, and the more in-vogue topic of “income inequality,” fair-minded and conscientious conservatives are always quick to add the caveat that while they are against socially-engineered mandates to force uniform equality of outcomes, they nonetheless will nobly fight for the supposed equal opportunity of...

Five years ago, while fervently supporting the candidacy of the man who would become America’s first black president, I came to the realization that I didn’t actually know any black people....One,maybe two,was the norm....I wanted to know why integration—actual,genuine integration—had failed so spectacularly. The result....was Some of My Best Friends Are Black:The Strange Story of Integration in America, which traced the history of the color line back through all the places I have lived and chronicled the various efforts to erase it:school busing, affirmative action, air housing, etc.......after eight miserable years of George W. Bush and the euphoria of the...

Members of the University of Michigan Black Student Union said they would have to resort to “physical action” if a list of seven demands issued on Martin Luther King Day are not met within seven days, The Ann Arbor News reported. “If negotiations are not complete we will be forced to do more, beginning to increase valiantly our activism for social progress and take physical actions on the University of Michigan’s campus,” said senior Shayla Scales to a group of students gathered on campus, according to the Ann Arbor News. The seven demands, read aloud by an activist associated with...

There are three different types of ideas: good ideas, bad ideas, and ideas so horrifically stupid that they will be mocked and scorned by our descendants for centuries to come. Modern left-wingers typically trade in the second sort of idea, while occasionally conjuring up something that unquestionably falls into the third category. Speaking of which, there’s this. After discovering that half of the female Marines can’t meet the minimum physical fitness requirements, usually failing to do three pull-ups, the Corps has decided to delay the standards. This is all part of the process of “equalizing” physical requirements so as to...

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A new study by the University of Central Florida's Diversity and Ethics in Sport released Thursday shows that the top leadership positions at Football Bowl Subdivision schools and conferences remain mostly white and male. [...] Study author Richard Lapchick called those numbers "unacceptable" and said part of the problem with getting more diversity throughout the system falls on the lack of penalties or sanctions for institutions that aren't more diverse.

I’m not a very good Christian, but even a backslider such as yours truly can observe and comment on the sick sacrilege of having a president who professes to be a Christian (Jeremiah Wright has gone on record saying Bathhouse Barry never really converted), yet speaks and acts as if he’d have taken the Virgin Mary straight to Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s chop-shop upon learning of her “condition” related to her “reproductive rights.” Well, if it would’ve been fine and dandy, in the Democrat playbook, to have Jesus Christ Himself aborted, what would be the big deal about Barry Soetoro (or...

Robert Chao Romero, an ethnic studies professor at UCLA who also runs a Christian youth ministry in Los Angeles, argues students are often taught Christianity and social justice causes such as immigration reform and affirmative action stand opposed. But the way Romero sees it, Jesus would support immigration reform, affirmative action – even the Affordable Care Act – and it’s part of a message he gives to college students to teach them about “Jesus’ heart for justice,” he tells The College Fix. Romero recently published a free ebook, “Jesus For Revolutionaries,” which spells out in detail why he believes Jesus...

Dear UNC Board of Governors: I appreciate very much the interest you have shown in meeting with me after my current case against UNC Wilmington heads to court in just a few months. I also appreciate the efforts of key members of the Senate to set up such a meeting now that Republicans control the NC Senate, State General Assembly, and the Governor's mansion. When we meet in the spring, I am going to present you with a specific proposal which will help start to reform the UNC system in three important ways: 1) It will cut administrative overhead. 2)...

A conservative women's group says that Yesh Atid leader, Finance Minister Yair Lapid, is helping the extreme Left appoint hundreds of its supporters to key positions, and masking the ploy as “affirmative action” for women and Arabs. Kati Cohen, who heads Women for Israel (NELI), addressed an urgent letter to several key Knesset Members from Likud-Beytenu and the Jewish Home (Bayit Yehudi), in which she explained how the scam allegedly works. Cohen notes that the Finance Ministry recently published a message to the general public, inviting people to take part in a tender for the appointment of 500 directors to...

The newly installed tapestry of President Obama casts a warm smile over guests at an event @USAinUK last night.

Much has been said lately about something called ‘white privilege’. I had never actually seen this creature, so I decided to do a little bit of investigating. ‘What does it look like? How will I know if I cross its path?’ I have asked several people. The problem then is the responses: no two are alike. It seems this white privilege thing is quite controversial, and while no two people who believe in this thing can agree on specifics, they all agree it exists. Apparently it’s not a physical creature at all but a ‘societal truth’. It’s kind of like...

For all his accomplishments, Henry Louis Gates might be doomed to being best remembered as the man whose arrest led to the "Beer Summit." But the Harvard prof had something surprising to say on today's Morning Joe: Gates questioned the need for affirmative action for affluent African-Americans, saying instead such programs should seek to help poor people, regardless of race. Gates made the personal political, citing the case of his own two daughters, whom Gates described as having a "privileged" life." Do they really need to benefit from affirmative action?", asked Gates rhetorically. View the video here.

There is a question that all of us need to ask. How we respond makes all the difference in what type of life we lead and what type of world we make. That question is: Does an action feel good or do good? Let me give three areas of examples -- personal life, the left and most recently, unfortunately, the right. In the personal sphere, many parents, especially in this last generation, have done what feels good rather than what does good. It feels good to give one's children what they want, but it rarely does good. It feels good...

But Justice Antonin Scalia balked at that interpretation. “My goodness, I thought we’ve held that the 14th Amendment protects all races,” he said. “I mean, that was the argument in the early years, that it protected only the blacks. But I thought we rejected that.” He challenged Ms. Driver to cite one Supreme Court precedent that agreed the Equal Protection Clause was designed only to apply to blacks. She said she could not. The amendment in Michigan, known as ballot Proposal 2, targeted policies adopted by the governing boards and faculty at state schools including the University of Michigan, Michigan...

We have yet more evidence that parts of academia are fully engaged in dividing Americans along racial lines and indoctrinating students with fringe and toxic racial ideas. From the Cornell Daily Sun: Kimberle Crenshaw ’81, Critical Race Theorist, Returns to The Hill (emphasis all mine): Visiting Cornell, a prominent theorist on issues of race and gender equality said recent Supreme Court cases addressing affirmative action and voting rights have devastated the progress of the civil rights era at a lecture Thursday. Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw ’81, law, University of California, Los Angeles and Columbia Law School spoke as part of her...

Prologue to a Nightmare of Good Intentions President John F. Kennedy on March 6, 1961 signed Executive Order 10925 which created Affirmative action and required that government employers “not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin” and “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Affirmative action has less to do with equality than with egalitarianism (equality of results); less to do with remedying historical slavery and Jim Crow discrimination against Blacks and...

Likely DHS Secretary Jeh JohnsonThis week President Obama announced his pick to head the Department of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson. In addition to being the chief legal proponent of international drone assassinations, long-time Democrat advocate Mr. Johnson argued the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, one of the most significant steps in the progressive subversion of our military men and women through pro-homosexual indoctrination. Mr. Johnson is, like Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama, of largely African heritage.If it seems like a disproportionate number of President Obama’s appointees are minorities, that’s because it is indeed disproportionate. For example, of...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday is scheduled to hear arguments over the Michigan Constitutional amendment that prohibits race and gender-based affirmative action in public employment, public education and public contracting. The case, Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, dates back to 2006 and the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), which was on the statewide ballot as Proposal 2. At the time, it was opposed by the Democrat and Republican parties, most corporations and unions, most political candidates, and the vast majority of the news media. Nonetheless, it passed with a solid majority, 58 percent to 42 percent. Jennifer...