Free Republic

Few academic ideas have been as eagerly absorbed into public discourse in recent years as “implicit bias.” Embraced by a president, a would-be president, and the nation’s top law-enforcement official, the implicit-bias conceit has launched a movement to remove the concept of individual agency from the law and spawned a multimillion-dollar consulting industry. The statistical basis on which it rests is now crumbling, but don’t expect its influence to wane anytime soon. Implicit bias purports to answer the question: Why do racial disparities persist in household income, job status, and incarceration rates, when explicit racism has, by all measures, greatly...

The British Transport Police are disadvantaging white, male applicants by excluding them from recruitment workshops. The force is holding the workshops in London, Manchester, and Birmingham — but one would-be officer was turned away after being told they were for “women and black or ethnic minority” candidates only, reports The Metro. “I am a white heterosexual male and also a member of the armed forces, how can a public service blatantly support this kind of discrimination and inequality in 2017?” he told the newspaper. “I am going to withdraw my application due to having been treated in such a manner.” Metro’s correspondent Harley Tamplin seemed...

Francisco Salinas is the Director of Student Diversity and Inclusion at Boise State University (BSU). He is perhaps the most intellectually constipated college administrator working west of the Mississippi and outside of the State of California. Due to his relative obscurity, his mendacity was well hidden until he decided to lash out at BSU Professor Scott Yenor. I am writing today in Yenor’s defense.The motivation for Salinas’ vicious attack on his colleague was that Professor Yenor decided to write an article in which he criticized feminism in general and gender identity politics in particular. In other words, he decided to...

This week, the league will begin taking applications for the MLB Diversity Fellowship Program, an initiative that will provide people of color and women 18- to 24-month jobs in 20 front offices across the game. Combined with three more spots in a three-year program with the commissioner’s office, it is MLB’s strongest foray yet into widening its talent base by recruiting those who don’t typically consider baseball a viable career path. “It’s not necessarily that baseball needs someone who’s black or a woman,” Tirado said. “Baseball needs the absolute best talent possible to stay competitive and become a global entertainment...

The Ghanaian migrant accused of raping a German student whilst threatening to kill her boyfriend if he intervened has branded his victim a “prostitute” in court. Identified only as Eric X. in local media, the failed asylum seeker is accused of raping the 23-year-old victim in a meadow near Bonn, after slashing the camping couple’s tent with a machete and demanding their valuables. The pair handed over six euros and a portable set of speakers, before hearing their assailant tell the woman, “Come out, bitch. I wanna f*** you,” in English — threatening to kill her 26-year-old boyfriend if he...

The swelling population of illegal immigrants and their kids is costing American taxpayers $135 billion a year, the highest ever, driven by free medical care, education and a huge law enforcement bill, according to the the most authoritative report on the issue yet. And despite claims from pro-illegal immigration advocates that the aliens pay significant off-setting taxes back to federal, state and local treasuries, the Federation for American Immigration Reform report tallied just $19 billion, making the final hit to taxpayers about $116 billion. State and local governments are getting ravaged by the costs, at over $88 billion. The federal...

Son of a gun. This is the SECOND brilliant email rant on another vital subject sent me by a very bright friend today. I would be remiss if I failed to share it with you and urge you to share it with YOUR bright friends so they, too, will consider you equally bright, pleasing our modern god of egalitarianism. And what appear to be misspellings are, in fact, how our learned English cousins spell stuff This should be posted in every college and university, every courthouse, every city hall, every state house and upon every statue and memorial to our...

New York is losing its diversity cred. Affluent Starbucks-swilling, kale-grazing white people are taking over the city’s multiracial ecosystem. At least that’s what the sophisticates tell us. The truth is Gotham’s population — even apart from the famously immigrant-rich Queens County — is way more diverse and way less white than it was 25 years ago. According to the Census Bureau, 43 percent of the denizens of the five boroughs were white in 1990. As of 2010, the figure was only 33.3 percent. Over the span of those same two decades, the total population of the Big Apple increased by...

A student government official recently resigned from his post due to the inclusion of “conservative students” in a discussion on “inclusive dialogue.” Lafayette College’s Intercultural Affairs Chair Jovanté Anderson, one of five student officials who chose to resign before the student government’s first meeting, announced his resignation via Facebook, saying it was was necessary to hold “student government accountable for the ways it failed students of color.”

The head of the British Red Cross has admitted the charity struggled with the Grenfell disaster because its workforce is too white.

SIERRA VISTA – A Hispanic-owned construction company from Sierra Vista won one of four contracts awarded this week to build prototypes of President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico, the second round of awards in as many weeks. KWR Construction Inc. was chosen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to build a demonstration section of wall near San Diego using materials other than concrete. The award comes a week after CBP awarded four contracts for wall prototypes made of concrete, one of which was won by Fisher Industries of Tempe. Construction on all the prototypes should begin this fall...

Mandy Patinkin isn't an A-list movie star. He's a huge draw on Broadway all the same. It's why the minds behind “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812” cast him to boost lagging ticket sales. Not so fast. The veteran performer wasn't the right skin color, apparently. The "Homeland" star dropped out after some complained he was replacing an actor of color. The play subsequently closed. A similar event happened this week. Actor Ed Skrein ("The Transformer Refueled," "Deadpool") snared a role in the upcoming "Hellboy" reboot. Skrein celebrated the news on Twitter. Then the Social Justice Warriors pounced....

About 70% of Los Angeles high school graduates enroll in two- or four-year colleges, but only 25% graduate within six years. ... it’s hard to assess recent district efforts that could be seen as pushing in different directions. On one hand, the district is touting higher standards: a high school graduation requirement that all students pass the courses necessary for applying to a four-year state college. On the other hand, the district requires a grade of D only in these classes and the colleges require a C or better to apply. The district also offers an array of “credit recovery”...

WOODLAWN — The Obama Foundation is asking the four construction teams vying to build the presidential center to set high standards for local and minority hiring. The foundation announced four finalists Thursday morning and also the standards for hiring the foundation is setting for each. Each of the firms has to lay out how it would meet a commitment to awarding half of its subcontracts to “diverse suppliers,” which expands the normal definition of firms from women and minority-owned firms to also include veteran-, disabled- or LGBTQ-owned firms. As the definition of inclusive hiring is broadened, the foundation is specifying...

Shareholder activists say they shake up companies by bringing in new, better ideas. What they don't bring, it turns out, is women. Or people of color. Firms targeted by activists end up with more white men on their boards, often replacing women and minorities in the process, according to a study by proxy-voting firm ISS. The researchers looked at 380 board seats spread across 93 companies in the S&P 1500 index targeted by activists between 2011 and 2015. A separate Bloomberg News analysis of the same period found that five of the biggest U.S. activist funds sought 174 board positions...

Local entities involved in the proposed Interstate 15 Siphon Road interchange signed off this week on plans to start construction on a project expected to dramatically increase the Pocatello area’s population and greatly improve the local economy. Those behind the effort to build the interchange say that with its construction, the area north of Pocatello and Chubbuck will see massive development in the future, including a technology park employing thousands of people, shopping centers, dozens of new neighborhoods, parks, trails and even new concert venues. But before such unheralded growth can occur, the interchange needs to be built. While the...

Universities are now factories of conformism; only the brave and resilient will survive them In a few weeks, a new intake of students will arrive, all fresh-faced and excited, at universities around the country. They’ll be thrilled at the prospect of escaping the wagging finger of mum and dad, eager to absorb new ideas. But I’m afraid they are in for a rude awakening. Unless they’re very fortunate, they will soon find themselves enveloped in a world that’s more censorious than stimulating and taught not to question ideas but to learn by heart the progressive creed. It will take...

A few years ago, Cleveland-based MetroHealth noticed that although registration staffers were supposed to ask all patients their race, ethnicity and preferred language, it wasn't happening consistently enough. “We realized we needed to support our frontline staff with the right information and resources to consistently and appropriately ask for this information,” said Lourdes Negron-McDaniel, director of inclusion and diversity at MetroHealth. After all, knowing a patient's race, ethnicity and preferred language can help address the wide disparities that exist in healthcare. This personal information can offer insight into the differences in quality of care given to people of different cultural...

Bakery owners and a chef are pushing fairness, equity and hoping to change the status quo. Debates on racism are raging today. You’ve seen the images and read the stories of what’s happening around the country. Very close to home, in Providence, bakery owners and a chef are addressing difficult issues that are simmering in their businesses. The hospitality community, it seems, is hardly immune to many forms of racism. Last week, an argument between patrons at Seven Stars Bakery on Hope Street took on racial overtones that the store manager didn’t recognize and deal with. A woman of color...

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is calling for the National Park Service to revoke the permit for a Patriot Prayer event because she says it’s a “white supremacist rally” – even though the organizer and all but one speaker are not white. “The National Park Service’s decision to permit a white supremacist rally at Crissy Field raises grave and ongoing concerns about public safety,” House Minority Leader Pelosi declared in a statement calling for cancellation of the conservative event scheduled for Aug. 26 in San Francisco, California. In a further effort to villainize the event, Pelosi implied that the Trump Administration...