Free Republic

The Seattle City Council unanimously voted Monday to ditch an ordinance allowing police officers to arrest loiterers if they’re suspected of drug dealing or prostitution, citing its racial origins. The rejection of the loitering bill, which reportedly affected black communities at a higher rate, has moved to Democratic Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s desk for final approval before the law is no more. The law has been used to arrest about 300 suspected criminals since 2009, according to The Seattle Times. “These laws were never appropriate, they were wrong when they were enacted and they are wrong now,” said Councilman Andrew...

Microsoft founder Bill Gates harshly criticized the United States' response to the coronavirus pandemic saying its refusal to work with other countries has caused a 'vacuum' in solving the global problem. Gates said that the U.S. had been more concerned with 'trying to cast blame' for the spread of the virus instead of collaborating with other countries in eradicating it, blasting the 'inward' approach the country has taken. He added that he believed 'rationality will reappear from someone' and the U.S. will rejoin the efforts of the World Health Organization, which President Trump said he was withdrawing from earlier this...

Analysis carried out by the Pew Research Center has revealed that just one in six protesters turning out at BLM demonstrations in the US are actually black. The research notes that the plurality of those present at the gatherings have been white people.

Harley-Davidson said this week it was done with a dealer in Tennessee over a racist social media post. In a now-familiar ritual, the dealer has denied writing the post, saying it got hacked. The dealer also owns a Honda store, and Honda said it was investigating. Harley decided this week it had seen enough. The post in question was attributed to Russell Abernathy, the owner of the Honda and Harley stores, in addition to a Polaris store, all in Union City, Tennessee. It was flagged by a local activist group on Twitter and is almost cartoonishly racist: Abernathy then put...

I am used to talking about race. I am a Black woman and an attorney. I am also an equal employment opportunity officer, a position referred to as chief diversity officer in some organizations. My office investigates employees’ allegations of discrimination based on race, sex, disability, sexual orientation and other categories specified in various laws. Employees’ complaints have included accusations of sexual harassment, harassment because of a disability, being called a racial epithet and being denied a salary increase because of their race or gender. In addition to making determinations about whether discrimination has occurred in particular cases, I also...

A street party erupted into violence last night in Brixton as a mob overpowered police and injured 'almost 30' officers, forcing them to flee the streets as a block party descended into a mini riot. Footage circulating on social media showed hundreds of people congregating near Overton Road, in south London, at around 7pm for an unlicensed music event. The evening descended into anarchy as police were confronted by revellers and chased by a mob screaming 'run them out', as well as being pelted by bottles.

...Though recent protests and riots have been centered around racial tensions with law enforcement, only 17 percent of protesters have been black, while 46 percent are white, 22 percent are Hispanic, and eight percent are Asian, the analysis shows...The protesters are overwhelmingly Democrats as well. Almost four-in-five of the protesters said they are Democrats or Democrat-leaning voters. Less than 17 percent of the protesters said they are Republicans...

On Wednesday, BET Founder Robert Johnson mocked those who are destroying statues across the U.S. and who are trying to cancel television shows because they think that’s what black people want. During an interview with Fox News, Johnson said that those who are destroying statues across the country “have the mistaken assumption that black people are sitting around cheering for them saying ‘Oh, my God, look at these white people. They’re doing something so important to us. They’re taking down the statue of a Civil War general who fought for the South.'” “You know, black people, in my opinion, black...

A man shot near Seattle's "Capitol Hill Organized Protest" zone, or CHOP, said those who attacked him did so for racial reasons. Dejuan Young was shot on Saturday just hours after another shooting in the CHOP area during which one teenager was killed and three others were wounded. Young says he was attacked just a block away from where the first shooting took place. “So basically I was shot by, I’m not sure if they’re ‘Proud Boys’ or KKK,” he told KIRO 7 on Tuesday. “But the verbiage that they said was, 'Hold this n-----’ and shot me." He said...

Since the museum has already explicitly stated Roosevelt had 'troubling views on race,' its condemnation is not merely of the monument, but of the man. As the woke mob continues its crusade, pillaging cities and purging history, the next victim of the “tear it all down” impulse is Theodore Roosevelt, or at least a statue of him. But if Teddy is so problematic he must be canceled, mustn’t we also cleanse all the artifacts connected to his legacy, including thousands of animals?The desecraters never intended to stop at Confederate monuments, of course, and now the sculpture honoring the 26th president...

It is taking longer than originally expected for crews to remove a statue of John C. Calhoun from Charleston’s Marion Square Wednesday morning. ....Work began to remove the monument began shortly before 1 a.m. Wednesday, hours after Charleston City Council voted in favor of relocating it. But shortly before 6 a.m. Wednesday, word came from crews at the scene that it would be another hour to an hour-and-a-half because...

Disgraced comedian Jimmy Kimmel has fled LA for a secret location in an attempt to avoid the race row sparked after photos emerged of him doing skits while in blackface, DailyMail.com can reveal. Kimmel is also under fire after being caught using the n word repeatedly while imitating rapper Snoop Dogg in newly unearthed audio that dates from 1996. In the song, Kimmel can be heard rapping: 'Me and my n***er down in LBC, we'll smoke that motherf***er Christmas tree.'

A Baltimore restaurant issued an apology Monday after video showed a Black woman and her son being denied service because of the boy’s clothes while a white child dressed a similar way had been served. Atlas Restaurant Group, which owns Ouzo Bay, said it was disturbed by the incident and placed the manager seen in the video on “indefinite leave,”

You need to watch this. It’s painful, but necessary. A gay Seattle black man, Karlos Dillard, torments a white woman he claims cut him off in traffic, flipped him off, and called him a n-gger. If you are a normal human being, you want to run protect that woman. He torments her, calling her “Karen.” She sobs and screams that he’s going to put this on the web and ruin her life. She tries to hide her license plate from him. She screams that she has a black husband. This vicious, hateful monster, Karlos Dillard, relishes tormenting her. According to...

What the hell is going on with white people? Just stop! Stop embarrassing yourselves and the memory of those who have come before you. Have some dignity! Black people do not respect this! Nobody respects it...

As more details around the death of George Floyd are revealed, other developments, including that the ex-officer charged with murder in the case was married to a Hmong American woman, have prompted discussion. It's also led to a spate of hateful online remarks in the Asian American community around interracial relationships. The ex-officer, Derek Chauvin, was fired the day after Floyd's death and now faces murder and manslaughter charges. The day after his arrest last month, his wife, Kellie, filed for divorce, citing "an irretrievable breakdown" in the marriage. She also indicated her intention to change her name.

The Confederate monuments that are coming down across the United States have once again ignited a generations-old American argument. Though the idea that the war was really about the “noble cause” of states’ rights retains its mystique for some, historians agree that the root cause of the Civil War was slavery. The worst American war in the nation’s history—from the standpoint of casualties, direct costs and indirect consequences—was fought in a vain attempt by the Confederate States to preserve that “peculiar institution.” Now, 155 years later, not only are statues of Confederate leaders being removed in cities from Richmond to...

A former Florida State football player, Kendrick Scott, started a petition for the school to rename Doak Campbell Stadium. Now the university’s president, John Thrasher, has responded to the petition with a statement. Dr. Kendrick Scott, who played for Florida State from 1991-94, penned a petition on Change.org. In it, he asked that Doak Campbell Stadium be renamed. Scott also suggested that Bobby Bowden be honored as the next coach the stadium is named after and suggested that Bobby Bowden Field be renamed Charlie Ward Field.

I remember African Americans in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, protesting the violent racism they endured when I was a young woman in the 1960s. I remember thinking that it had nothing to do with me. I have learned since that everyone, but, particularly white people, must address our insidious negative beliefs about Black people that cause us to tolerate the reality that Black people are disproportionately harmed by policing and the legal system.

One recent afternoon, while washing his car, Greg Reese, a white stay-at-home dad in Campton, Ky., peeled off the Confederate flag magnet he had placed on its trunk six years earlier. He did not put it back on. It was a small act for which he expected no accolades. It should not have taken the police killing of George Floyd, Mr. Reese knew, to face what he had long known to be true, that the flag he had grown up thinking of as “a beautiful trophy” was “a symbol of hate, and it’s obviously wrong to glorify it.”