Free Republic

The rightish television presenter Tucker Carlson today offered his Twitter followers one of the best "tweetstorms" I've ever seen: #100RacistThings. You can see the thread here, but it's so good I'm going to preserve it for posterity in this post - because this is the sort of thing that gets people banned from Twitter these days. 1. Tamarisk trees in Palm Springs, California. 2. The ice cream truck song. 3. Credit scores. 4. Car insurance. 5. Crime statistics. 6. Halloween costumes. 7. Calling Elizabeth Warren "Pocahontas." 8. Most of the better Disney movies. 9. Dr. Seuss. 10. White flight. 11....

The New York Times has blasted France for “shamefully caving in to racism” after a prominent black journalist was sacked from a government-sponsored internet advisory body because of her controversial views. “(President Emmanuel) Macron has tried to project the image of a forward-looking, inclusive leader. This is a blot on that image and highlights the pressing need in France for an open debate on racism,” the newspaper wrote in an editorial. Rokhaya Diallo was sacked earlier this month from the National Digital Council (CNNum), prompting almost all its members to resign in protest from the body that advises the government...

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who was accused by a United Airlines passenger of bumping her from a first-class seat, said in a Twitter screed on Tuesday that she believes the incident is all about race. “Since this was not any fault of mine, the way the individual continued to act appeared to be, upon reflection, because I was an African American woman, seemingly an easy target along with the African American flight attendant who was very, very nice,” the Texas Democrat wrote in a post. “This saddens me, especially at this time of year given all of the things we...

December 24, 2017 Daniel Greenfield Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D - Enron) is entitled to the privileges of her position. Like discriminating against the disabled and other people's airline seats. A judge has refused to dismiss a federal lawsuit accusing Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of discriminating against and mocking a disabled staffer — charges the Texas Democrat denies. Mrs. Jackson Lee’s legal team sought to have the complaint dismissed, arguing in part that actions concerning her staff are protected under the Speech or Debate clause of the Constitution. In a lengthy ruling, the judge disagreed. And as a civil rights...

(CNN)Parents like to see themselves as purveyors of possibility. We want our children to inhabit a world in which identities are both mutable and equal, and imagination and empathy reign supreme! But young children, as dictated by their tastes in popular culture, have something else in mind. They're drawn to worlds in which identities are fixed, order trumps imagination and transgressions are met with routine punishment. This clash between what parents desire for their children and what children desire for themselves is most easily observable in cartoon preferences. So often, the more parents dislike a show, the more their children...

A row of 'racist' trees standing between an African-American neighborhood and a city golf course will be removed, local officials in Palm Springs, California, told neighborhood residents. On Sunday, Palm Springs Mayor Robert Moon told residents of the historically black Crossley Tract neighborhood that the city would remove the line of tamarisk trees and a chain link fence that runs between the neighborhood and the Tahquitz Creek Golf Course, reports the Desert Sun. The decision to remove the trees and fence comes after neighborhood residents complained that the 50-foot tall tamarisk trees — an invasive species that blocks views of...

...To Damon Young, a columnist for GQ.com, Wadnan’s kind deed was a glaring symbol of white American racism. Young’s article, “The Video of the Man Saving the Rabbit from the Fire Captures Everything Wrong with Whiteness in 30 Seconds” ... contends that Wadnan’s act of bravery proves that whites care more for animals than for black people.

Bunch of Bible-thumpin’ racists . . . That’s in essence how a Joy Reid guest has described Roy Moore’s supporters. On Reid’s MSNBC show this morning, Eric Guster, an Alabama lawyer, said: “Roy Moore’s coalition, they [are] in the rural counties. The Bible Belt. The people who love to go to church on Sunday. The ones who want to build a wall and keep brown people out of the United States.” Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

The Washington Post faced swift backlash on Twitter Sunday evening after tweeting “White nationalists angered by Mexican immigrant’s acquittal in Kate Steinle’s killing.” While yes, White Nationalists are in fact angry about the slaying and subsequent acquittal, they certainly aren’t alone — and being angry doesn’t mean that you are one. Angry Twitter users promptly seized upon the tweet to slam the outlet for their poor-taste in framing the issue: "So if you're mad a seven time convicted felon got away with murder you must be a white nationalist. " "You guys have been taking too many lessons from the...

In his commentary "Unions ignore long history of excluding minorities from jobs," Missouri Rep. Shamed Dogan (R) highlighted past discriminatory practices in organized labor’s history as reason for implementing our state’s currently pending "right to work" law, along with other anti-worker measures such as ending prevailing wage and minimum wage requirements. To claim that unions continue to exclude minorities and are detrimental to working people is ridiculous and erroneous in the face of the facts. The truth is, enacting right to work and other anti-worker laws would only hurt the minority communities Dogan seeks to protect, by lowering wages, reducing benefits and...

We didn’t go there, did we? I mean seriously? Did Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), the third ranking member of the House Democratic Caucus, pretty much insinuate that the accusations against Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) shouldn’t be believed because the accusers are white? Conyers is under fire for sexual misconduct. In 2015, he settled a sexual harassment claim to the tune of $27,000 in taxpayer money. Melanie Sloan, a Washington lawyer, claimed to be the subject of verbal abuse by Conyers, even walking into his office to have the Michigan Democrat half-dressed. She has not alleged any sexual harassment, but Deanna...

It was the thick of Black History Month and I worked as an art administrator for a program in Baltimore City. The site I was assigned to was managed by a white woman who cloaked her racism with a bright smile and photos on Facebook with Black students that garnered “ooo’s” and “ahh’s” from the white liberal peanut gallery in the comment section. I once told her that since we celebrated Latinx Heritage Month, that we should celebrate Black History Month with our students. Her response, dripping with anti-Blackness, was that celebrating Black History Month would be “too overwhelming”. I...

The director of the Homeland Security Department’s office of faith-based partnerships has resigned following a CNN report on racially inflammatory remarks he made before joining the federal government. Rev. Jamie Johnson was appointed in April to lead DHS’ Center for Faith-Based & Neighborhood Partnerships, which works with churches and community organizations on disaster response. […] In one clip posted by CNN, Johnson said, “America’s black community … has turned America’s major cities into slums because of laziness, drug use and sexual promiscuity.” …

The theory goes that Trump was the only politician to speak to the working class’s financial fears, exacerbated by the daunting forces of globalization, immigration and mechanization. This ignores Trump’s overt sexist and racist appeals during the campaign and repackages them as legitimate economic grievances. In this world, it wasn’t Trump’s conflation of Mexican immigrants with rapists that motivated his supporters; it was his criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler announced he will not participate in this year’s Veterans Day Parade, held Saturday on Congress Avenue, because some groups signed up to march will be carrying the Confederate flag. “Veterans Day should only be about honoring United States Military Veterans,” Adler said in a statement Thursday morning. “Symbols of racism, Civil War secession, and white supremacy should not be forgotten or erased, but they need to be remembered and studied in museums and classrooms not cheered and applauded in parades.”

Minneapolis has elected two black transgender representatives to its City Council, adding to what advocacy groups have described as a banner election for transgender people in public office. Andrea Jenkins easily won the race Tuesday night for an open seat in south Minneapolis, with roughly 73 percent of the vote. Jenkins, a 56-year-old poet and historian who transitioned in her 30s, spent years as a policy aide to two previous council members in the same ward. Phillipe Cunningham’s victory took longer because of Minneapolis’ instant-runoff voting system. But by Wednesday afternoon, the city announced Cunningham — a 29-year old transgender...

An unnamed woman was recorded calling a Taco Bell employee racist for not letting her order french fries. The video, reportedly taken in an unidentified Taco Bell restaurant in the U.S., shows a possibly drunk woman looking up at the menu while trying to order a medium-sized french fries at the counter. The employee tells the woman that they do not carry french fries, to which the woman responds, “You’re Burger King, you don’t sell french fries?”

In a night of many firsts, several minority and LGBT candidates won local elections that echoed the blue wave in which Democrats won races large and small. Two openly transgender candidates won races as well as the first Sikh mayor in New Jersey and first African-American mayors in major cities.

MSNBC. MS-13. Same struggle? In an amusing stumble on her MSNBC show this morning, Joy Reid momentarily seemed to confuse her own network with the notorious MS-13 criminal gang. Claiming that Virginia Republican candidate Ed Gillespie is running as a “neo-Confederate,” Reid said that he is using racial scare ads, “where he’s saying brown people are coming to kill you, because they’re all in MSN –" Reid seemed about to say “MSNBC,” before catching herself: “MS-13.” Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

As we have from the start, we are committed to supporting DFA's endorsed candidates in Virginia through election day, but we cannot remain silent as an outdated faction of national and state Democratic Party staffers and consultants run the same old, broken, and racist playbook that lost Democrats over 1000 elected offices since 2008 and allowed a bigoted billionaire to squeak into the White House last Fall. Our country and our party deserve much, much better." -- Charles Chamberlain, Executive Director, Democracy for America DFA is a member-driven, people-powered progressive PAC with 41,719 members in the Commonwealth of Virginia and...