Free Republic

In her first year in office, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan lost two top aides, watched a well-regarded police chief resign, saw a parcel tax she had pushed get crushed at the ballot box and became the subject of two recall campaigns. And much of that was even before the city's Oct. 25 raid on the Occupy Oakland encampment, a violent clash between police and protesters on the City Hall lawn that made Quan a national lightning rod for criticism, particularly after she allowed the protesters to re-establish their camp the next day. "It was very tough," Quan said of her...

The petitions to recall embattled Oakland Mayor Jean Quan have been all but cleared for takeoff and could be on the streets by next week. Once Quan's opponents make a few minor wording changes, they'll have 160 days to collect the 19,800 signatures needed to qualify the measure for the ballot, said City Clerk LaTonda Simmons. Gene Hazzard, the legally designated head of the recall effort, said his forces could be gathering signatures by next week. "I'm very methodical, surgical and lethal," Hazzard said. Being Oakland, however, things are never that cut and dried. There's already a split within the...

When Sarah Palin dissed Herman Cain as the "flavor of the week" in September, the Republican presidential candidate pushed back on her assessment. "I got some substance here. Okay? I'm Häagen-Dazs Black Walnut. It lasts longer than a week," Cain told Tonight Show host Jay Leno, apparently unaware the flavor was a limited edition..........

It is a truism to say that Marxist thought has done much to undermine the quality of today’s college experience. But few people realize just how deeply Marxist thought has penetrated education in America. Its influence is not restricted to the realm of higher education. Nor is it restricted to the realm of economics. Marxism also affects our moral reasoning and it begins to do so in grammar school. The case of Mrs. White is illustrative. Mrs. White was a first grade teacher in the 1960s. She taught in a small school in Alabama just a few years after the...

It's not just conservatives who are frustrated today. It is all Americans who long to see their nation regain its vitality, restoring freedom and prosperity at home and shining the light of human potential across the planet. What is particularly frustrating is that the party out of power, the Republican Party, is supposed to be carrying the torch for these values. But it's barely happening. The Party has become bogged down with careerists, rearview-mirror thinkers and its own inside-the-beltway elite. Nothing could speak more to this problem than establishment attitudes toward the remarkable Herman Cain.

The U.S. Department of Justice is looking for fluent Ebonics speakers to fill nine drug enforcement jobs, giving merit to a dialect that experts say is often mimicked and little understood. The federal Drug Enforcment Administration translators would work out of the Atlanta field office according to a Justice Department request, posted online today by The Smoking Gun.

Speak Ebonics? You may have a future at the Drug Enforcement Administration. Yes, academics and culture warriors may argue endlessly over the merits of "black English" as a subject to be taught or whether it is a separate language. But the DEA has little doubt about its usefulness. The federal agency has put out a request for linguists who are fluent in "Ebonics."

The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records. A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media”

The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records. A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media” The DEA’s need for full-time linguists specializing in Ebonics is detailed in bid documents related to the agency’s mid-May issuance of a request...

Some people call them “wiggers” but I just call them “idiots”. I used to wonder where they learned to be so racially condescending - presuming that dressing and “talking black” was a cool thing to do. But now I suspect that many of them have taken a course under Maurice Martinez, an education professor at UNC-Wilmington. The class “Teacher, School, and Society” (EDN 200) is required of all education majors. When students take Maurice Martinez for the class they get a special treat. Maurice teaches them “Black English.” In 2003, he even copyrighted course materials to make white future teachers...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Republican Party chief called on Senator Harry Reid on Sunday to step down as Senate majority leader over racial comments about President Barack Obama, while Democrats tried to put the issue behind them. Reid, a key figure in pushing Obama's agenda through Congress, apologized to the president on Saturday over remarks published in a new book calling Obama a "light-skinned" black man "with no Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one." Both Obama and Reid are Democrats. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Reid should step aside as Senate majority leader, saying if a...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has apologized for racial remarks he made during the 2008 presidential campaign about then-candidate Barack Obama after they were revealed in a forth-coming campaign book, “Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.” The book recounts private remarks made by Reid during the campaign — in support of Obama — that the country was ready for a “light-skinned” African-American president with “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”In a statement, Reid confirmed his remarks and apologized for them.“I deeply regret using such a poor choice of...

President Barack Obama deflected criticism Monday that he has not been attentive enough to the African-American community, telling American Urban Radio Networks that he was unconcerned to see that kind of message coming from former supporters such as actor Danny Glover. "If you want me to line up all the black actors, for example, who support me and put them on one side of the room and a couple who are grumbling on the other, I'm happy to have that," Obama said, adding that polls show African-Americans express "overwhelming support for what we've tried to do." In an interview with...

Thank you very, very much. You see us poor helpless inferior blacks (oh forgive me, I must be politically correct, "African Americans"), and you want to help us using your superior intellect. After all, we could not possibly succeed in this racist, homophobic and greedy country without your assistance. I first met you guys in the 70s when I attended the prestigious Maryland Institute College of Art on a scholarship. A black kid from the ghetto, I found myself amongst white kids from well to do families. I worked a part-time job to cover my books and art supplies. You...

The title says it all. NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and please refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread. Thank you!

When ebonics slang loses its meaning with regard to Barack Obama, comedy can result! NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and plrease refrain from copying his cartoon within this thread. Thanks!

Prince Harry has become embroiled in a new race row after allegedly telling a comedian, Stephen K Amos, that he did not "sound like a black chap". Mr Amos has claimed that the Prince made the remark when they met after the stand-up show We Are Not Amused for the Prince of Wales' 60th birthday celebrations in November 2008. Mr Amos, from south-west London, made the disclosure on Five's The Wright Stuff on Tuesday. He told presenter Matthew Wright that Prince Harry, 24, congratulated him on his performance before saying: "You don't sound like a black chap." As Mr Wright...

Police Want To Speak With Resident Who Posted Sign.

"The belief that moribund institutions, rather than individuals are at the root of the problem, keep SAM’s energies alive.,,," The highly indicative sentence above comes from an 1800-word article that Barack Obama wrote for Columbia’s weekly news magazine, Sundial, at the height of the KGB-generated anti-nuke craze in March 1983. Obama was twenty-one at the time. The sentence nicely captures Obama’s skill as a writer. The noun, “belief,” and the verb, “keep,” don’t agree—one of an appalling five such noun-verb mismatches in the essay--and the punctuation is fully random. More problematically, the word choice sucks all logic out of the...

There is always one guy in a bar spoiling for a fight and will take any movement or glance, any sound, any word as his excuse at bellicosity. In the race mongering biz the equivalent would be people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, both men who take immediate umbrage at the un-umbragable, just so that they can use the excuse to extort money out of businesses or get their mugs splashed across the papers and TV. In Dallas County the loudmouth looking for a fight is Commissioner John Wiley Price who foolishly decided that the scientific term "black hole"...

A special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets turned tense and bizarre Tuesday afternoon. County commissioners were discussing problems with the central collections office that is used to process traffic ticket payments and handle other paperwork normally done by the JP Courts. Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office. Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole." That prompted Judge Thomas Jones,...

A fyoo duhzen ambishuhss intelectchooals, a handful ov British skool teechers and wuhn rokit siuhntist ar triing to chang the way we spel. They are the leaders of the spelling-reform movement, a passionate but sporadic 800-year-old campaign to simplify English orthography. In its long and failure-ridden history, the movement has tried to convince an indifferent public of the need for a spelling system based on pronunciation. Reformers, including Mark Twain, Charles Darwin and Theodore Roosevelt, argued that phonetic spellings would make it easier for children, foreigners and adults with learning disabilities to read and write. For centuries, few listened, and...

Greetings of IMANI (FAITH) President McKinney: May our Divine Creator and Beloved Ancestors find you and the extended family in the best of spirit and health. Welcome back to the land of the original OHLONE people, to what is currently called the “california bay area.” It is so disappointing not to be able to greet you personally this weekend—when WE are commemorating the birthdays of freedom fighters EL HAJJ MALIK EL SHABAZZ (Brother Minister Malcolm X), Mother Yuri Kochiyama and HO CHI MINH—due to a previously-scheduled family commitment. However, it was a pleasure to speak to you briefly after the...

FReepers, what do you think about requesting Cal Thomas or someone like him to address the "Gutter Language" now infesting much of our political discourse? We, meaning others and myself have grudgingly been forced to know about vulgar meanings of words that before now had no use in our everyday conversations. Last week my nine-year-old third grade daughter came home and asked me what Mack Daddy meant. I asked her where she heard the word and she stated that "the other night on television news a man called someone a Mack Daddy". I told her the man was probably talking...

I'm eavesdropping on a locker room conversation, one guy showing another his girlfriend's picture on a cell phone, a younger man talking about how he struggles to find reliable help for his restaurant, another talking about his nephew playing in a big all-star game in Las Vegas, three others piping about woman trouble, an older man cautioning against contradicting an officer of the law. And I'm lost. Everybody in the locker room in this YMCA is speaking English, and, at times, I feel as if I can't understand them. "I'm telling ya, bruh, both y'all's messed up." "Turn up the...

HOUSTON (AP) - A school district suspended a police officer as it investigates his distribution of a "Ghetto Handbook" and the three-month lapse before top district officials were informed of it. The eight-page booklet, subtitled "Wucha dun did now?", was handed out to about 15 Houston Independent School District police officers at a May meeting, district spokesman Terry Abbott said. Officials declined to identify the officer who handed them out, but said he had been ordered to attend diversity training. A supervisor immediately collected the booklets, Abbott said, but district officials said they didn't learn about the incident until someone...

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday she sees her sometimes Southern accent as a virtue. "I think America is ready for a multilingual president," Clinton said during a campaign stop at a charter school in Greenville, S.C. The New York senator—who said she's been thinking about critics who've suggested that she tried to put on a fake Southern accent in Selma, Ala.—noted that she's split her life between Arkansas, Illinois and the East Coast. Clinton added a Southern lilt to her voice last week when addressing a civil rights group in New York City headed by the Rev....

I did a search and didn't find this posted in the past on FR. I also checked Snopes and found this is TRUE. They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain't, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be.. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it's important to speak English... except these knuckleheads. Mushmouth is what they speak! You can't be a doctor with that...

Actually, it's sad. The Rochester City School District has moved to “normalize” ebonics, saying that “Black English Vernacular” is as valid as conventional English and that students and teachers are welcome to use it. Teachers, in fact, are even encouraged to use ebonics themselves in the classroom. It's part of the multiculturalism and diversity cult. The belief that all things are equal, even when they clearly aren't. And the deep thinkers at the worst school district in the state have decided that their students will have better self-esteem if their “home language” is respected in school. A recent district newsletter...

(Rochester, N.Y.) – It’s called Black English Vernacular – or more commonly – Ebonics. In a newsletter to staff, Rochester City School District officials say it is okay for students and teachers to speak Ebonics in class. The newsletter is called Diversity Dialogue. It suggests teachers use BEV to communicate with students. It says teachers can: • “Switch into BEV in specific situations or informal discussion.” • "Translate common phrases in Standard English into BEV.” • “Read and retell stories in both BEV and Standard English.” “We need to embrace the diversity they bring into our schools,” said the district’s...

VICTORVILLE —Victor Valley Union High School District teachers have been coached on a new approach to disciplining students. At issue is whether teachers need to adjust how they interact with and discipline students who misbehave, particularly students from difficult backgrounds. Culberson, director of youth services for the San Bernardino City Unified School District, said at a back-to-school inservice meeting that students today have less respect for authority than they did when many teachers were in school and consequently, some teachers have unrealistic expectations of their students. The district superintendent, Julian Weaver, said Culberson’s message does not represent a change in...

IN the last few years, it has seemed that perhaps America's long-buried history of blackface is being allowed to peek out of the closet. Bob Dylan named his most recent studio album "Love and Theft," after Eric Lott's landmark 1993 study of the form; and in his curious 2003 film, "Masked and Anonymous," Dylan even got Ed Harris to "black up" for a scene. Spike Lee also explored the subject in "Bamboozled," and competing biographies of Stepin Fetchit joined "Where Dead Voices Gather," Nick Tosches' meditation on the minstrel superstar Emmett Miller, on bookshelves. "Old Dan Tucker," the opening track...

Fresh from rehab, Rep. Patrick Kennedy said yesterday he wants to be treated like an African-American from Washington if and when he gets charged for crashing his car on Capitol Hill. Denying that he was drunk and or that he asked the Capitol Police for preferential treatment, Kennedy, a Rhode Island congressman, said he's prepared "in terms of bookings, in terms of mug shots, fingerprints, whatever they might have me do." "It's what anyone else would have done to them if they were an African-American in Anacostia," Kennedy said in a shaky voice, referring to the mostly minority neighborhood in...

A man who tried to force his way into two houses on Friedland Church Road was shot dead this morning, a spokesman for the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office said today. The sheriff's office is investigating the shooting and did not release the names of anyone involved. Sheriff's officers were trying to obtain search warrants this afternoon. Sheriff's Capt. Brad Stanley said a man tried to force his way into the front door of 2804 Friedland Church Road, where a woman who may have been his former girlfriend lives. The man shot off the locks of the front door with a...

NEWPORT NEWS - A student says, "Janae need a marker." How does a teacher respond? Usually this way: "We don't say, 'Janae need a marker.' We say, 'Janae needs a marker.'" What the teacher needs is a new approach, according to two local educators promoting an alternative way of teaching grammar. "I would say, 'We're in school right now. We're speaking formal English. How would you say that formally?'" said Rachel Swords, a third -grade teacher at Newsome Park Elementary School in Newport News. Swords and Rebecca Wheeler, an associate professor of English at Christopher Newport University, have co-written a...

BRITAIN’S most senior policeman Sir Ian Blair is facing a race relations dilemma after the release of figures that reveal almost half the number of people arrested in relation to car crime in London are black. Blair, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has signed off a report by his force’s traffic unit which shows that black people account for 46% of all arrests generated by new automatic numberplate recognition (ANPR) cameras. The technology allows car registration plates to be scanned and automatically run through databases to determine whether a vehicle is stolen, uninsured or has not had its road tax paid....

Democrats sought to turn gas prices — like Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war — into an issue that hurts Bush's standing with voters. "What happen to Iraq oil, Mr. President? You said Iraqi oil would pay for the war. Ain't seen no money. Ain't seen no oil," Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland said.

Someone needs to sit our people down and have a healthy discussion about the names we as African Americans are giving our children. We are hurting our kids and putting their futures in peril from the moment they are born. That’s right, I said it. We are KILLING our kids and crippling their futures with the names we give them. Don’t you want your kids to get JOBS someday? Good jobs, and serious careers? With a name like Jaquez Ja’Quan Diante’, you’re dooming your sons to a life of drug dealing on some seedy street corner. Our Black men face...

Did anyone notice the ebonics correction last night on Hannity & Colmes? A black man was on to talk about how he opposed white organizations supporting black history month. He said something like "we're just givin' it to ya back." Then Hannity said "Giving it to you back? Is that what you said?" I was surprised to hear that on TV. You'd think Sharpton and Farrakhan would be in an uproar.And then at the end, the guest held up the "black power" fist, but his hand was just offscreen. Hilarious.

E-mail Author Send to a Friend Version January 27, 2006, 8:23 a.m. You Go, Girl! A missing consonant and the race card. By Mark Goldblatt Something about that clip of Hillary Clinton insisting, in front of a predominantly black audience on Martin Luther King Day, that Republicans were running the House of Representatives like a "plantation," had been gnawing at me for almost a week, and even after replaying the video over and over again — ah, the curse of the Internet! — I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I knew it wasn't the comparison of congressional...

Mandisa likes Abercrombie & Fitch, not FUBU. She speaks proper English, not Ebonics. She takes honor classes and belongs to the Beta Club and National Arts Honors Society at Parkview High. She plays the violin and has danced and sung in area productions of “The Nutcracker” and “My Fair Lady.” Mandisa Surpris, a 15-year-old sophomore, is all this. And she’s black. Some of the other black students don’t know what to make of her. The way she dresses, the way she talks, the grades she earns. She’s an anomaly. To them, she’s more white than black. They’ve even told her...

The San Bernadino, Calif. high school district is now discussing the implementation of Ebonics – the street language of young African Americans – to be taught as if it were a foreign language. This is sheer idiocy, and anybody who would even consider such an outrageous idea has certainly never been to Africa. This Ebonics nonsense will do nothing but hold back black youngsters, keeping them behind such immigrants as the Vietnamese, who are struggling to make their way in a nation whose language they know they must learn to get ahead. When I read this Ebonics story I recalled...

A Brooklyn College professor says Ebonics is superior to the tongue of White Devils --Assistant Professor of Adolescence Education at Brooklyn College --Teaches that rap music is an effective tool for teaching English literacy to schoolchildren, and that proper English is language of white "oppressors" --Required students to view Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 Priya Parmar is an Assistant Professor of Adolescence Education at Brooklyn College's School of Education in New York, where she teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses to aspiring teachers. Of special interest to Parmar, whose doctoral dissertation is titled "KRS-One Going Against the Grain: A Critical Study...

It’s easy to understand the vernacular of a Montanan. While there is an accent of sorts, a bit of a flinty, semi-drawl with colloquial phraseology, you never wander off scratching your head over the location of the next branding party. Big Sky residents prefer an economy of words, and a simple “yup,” or “uh huh” or “reckon so” can speak volumes. Folks in South Florida also possess understandable diction. The homogenizing population boom of the lower Gulf has basically eliminated twangs, guttural noises, clicks and whistles. The only time you can’t comprehend the words of a south Floridian is if...

I've submitted an opinion piece to the San Bernadino Sun. I shouldn't have to explain why I was compelled to comment; I think you'll understand as soon as you start reading: Ebonics Suggested For District By Irma Lemus Staff Writer SAN BERNARDINO - Incorporating Ebonics into a new school policy that targets black students, the lowest-achieving group in the San Bernardino City Unified School District, may provide students a more well-rounded curriculum, said a local sociologist. The goal of the district's policy is to improve black students' academic performance by keeping them interested in school. Compared with other racial groups...

Incorporating Ebonics into a new school policy that targets black students, the lowest-achieving group in the San Bernardino City Unified School District, may provide students a more well-rounded curriculum, said a local sociologist. The goal of the district's policy is to improve black students' academic performance by keeping them interested in school. Compared with other racial groups in the district, black students go to college the least and have the most dropouts and suspensions. Blacks make up the second largest racial group in the district, trailing Latinos. A pilot of the policy, known as the Students Accumulating New Knowledge Optimizing...

 the dismal scienceA Roshanda by Any Other NameHow do babies with super-black names fare?By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. DubnerPosted Monday, April 11, 2005, at 3:32 AM PT <SNIP>These are the sort of questions that led to "The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names," a research paper written by a white economist (Steven Levitt, a co-author of this article) and a black economist (Roland G. Fryer Jr., a young Harvard scholar who studies race). The paper acknowledged the social and economic gulf between blacks and whites but paid particular attention to the gulf between black and white culture....

PIKEVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A new class that seeks to teach youngsters how to lose their Appalachian accents has set off an age-old phonetic debate: Should mountain natives drop the drawl or hold tightly to their twang? The class, put on by an eastern Kentucky theater group, is designed for children in middle and high schools who want to reduce their accent to "broaden their performance opportunities and improve overall marketability." "We don't want people to be held back just because they have an accent," said Martin Childers, managing director of Jenny Wiley Theatre in Prestonsburg. "If you want to...

LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) - It didn't take a nuclear physicist to realize changes were needed after a $40,000 ceramic mural was unveiled outside the city's new library and everyone could see the misspelled names of Einstein, Shakespeare, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo and seven other historical figures. "Our library director is very frustrated that she has this lovely new library and it has all these misspellings in front," said city councilwoman Lorraine Dietrich, one of three council members who voted Monday to authorize paying another $6,000, plus expenses, to fly the artist up from Miami to fix the errors. Reached at...

WASHINGTON — Protesters delivered a message yesterday to the national spelling bee: Enuf is enuf! Members of the American Literacy Society picketed the 77th annual spelling bee, which is sponsored every year by Cincinnati-based Scripps Howard. The protesters' complaints: English spelling is illogical, and the national spelling bee only reinforces the crazy spellings that they say contribute to dyslexia, high illiteracy and harder lives for immigrants. "We advocate the modernization of English spelling," said Pete Boardman, 58, of Groton, N.Y. The Cornell University bus driver admitted to being a terrible speller. Protester Elizabeth Kuizenga, 56, is such a good speller...