Free Republic

While we might like to think that voters research the issues, review the candidates, and then vote for the candidate that best reflects their views; the reality, based on political science research, is much different. According to George Washington University Professor Danny Hayes' research paper "When Gender and Party Collide: Stereotyping in Candidate Trait Attribution," "Stereotypes are relevant in politics because citizens are willing to devote only limited time to thinking about political matters. As a result, political judgments -- whether about issues, events or candidates -- are often the result of a few salient cues. Stereotyping is the assignment...

In a rare triumph for common sense in Washington, it is being reported that the Justice Department intends to allow “tactical leeway” to the FBI to use ethnic profiling. This is welcome news for the security of our country. Profiling and stereotyping are a fact of life. Liberals vehemently argue that our law enforcement agencies should be prohibited from employing any form of profiling, arguing that you can’t tell anything significant about a potential terrorist just based on their religion, ethnicity or nationality. As is often the case, liberals manage to deny reality and embrace hypocrisy in one fell swoop....

If you believe press reports, Twelve Years a Slave is undeniably one of the greatest -- perhaps the greatest -- film of 2013. Not due to any skill in filmmaking, which remains to be seen, or audience response -- the film was only released last weekend. But solely because Slave (directed by Steve McQueen, not the dead one with the motorcycle, I'm pretty sure), is this year's PC film, one made for the single purpose of preaching a very contemporary and meticulously constructed racial message. In this it joins a number of other recent pictures such as The Help and...

A federal grand jury indicted nine Baltimore retail storeowners for a food stamp fraud scheme that netted at least $7 million over the last three years. According to officials, the storeowners would allegedly debit food stamp cards for cash instead of food and split the proceeds. The food stamp scheme has been going on since 2010, officials said during a Sept. 17 news conference. U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein, Special Agent in Charge William G. Squires Jr. of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General and Special Agent in Charge Stephen E. Vogt of the Federal Bureau of...

Delbert Belton. Chris Lane. An unnamed 13-year-old boy riding a school bus in Florida. What do these people have in common? They are all whites who have been violently assaulted by blacks recently. And on Mother’s Day of this year, 20 people were gunned down in New Orleans by Akein Scott, also black. All of his victims were black. Not white-blacks or white-Hispanic-blacks, but blacks. Alas for these departed souls, unless you attract the narcissistic attention of Barack Obama, you’re unlikely to get the maudlin media mourning mash-up that Trayvon Martin received as a reward for beating George Zimmerman’s face...

If you think Ice T is a delicious, summer-time drink and not a west coast rapper. If your treble is turned up higher than your bass in your Toyota Prius. If you think booty is goods or property seized through piracy. If you think Tupac Shakur is a Jewish holiday. If you can't wait to start journaling in your new faux leather alligator embossed diary. If you DVR Glee. If you think eating hummus makes you exotic, and thus, hip. If you enjoy rollerblading while listening to Tony Robbins. If you wear a Polo shirt with the collar flipped up....

The man who walks out of his house with a mind devoid of stereotypes is like the man who goes to the Antarctic without having inquired about the weather. But there is no such man: for even to know that the Antarctic exists is to know that it tends to be cold there. Our minds are necessarily full of stereotypes and we could not negotiate the world without them. George Zimmerman is accused by his detractors of having acted upon a stereotype. He saw a young black man allegedly pursuing an erratic course in a gated community and he concluded...

I contend that much of the problem with current right-of-center electoral efforts involves conservatism as currently practiced. This has nothing to do with conservative principles, or any public preference for moderation in politics. It has to do with how conservatism is expressed, and can be summed up as conservatism's failure to sell itself.**snip** Several common stereotypes of conservatism exist and are utilized to define and destroy conservative candidates and movements.**snip** What all these have in common is that they are clown images -- laughable, easily caricatured, and, like all clowns, sinister and menacing at base..virtually any GOP or conservative spokesman...

By now, you've surely heard of Herman Cain, the latest phenom in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Cain, a black businessman, has ridden the popularity among conservatives of his 9-9-9 tax plan to surge in national polls; he leads both former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in Iowa and is neck-and-neck with the erstwhile frontrunner in Florida. Some people see in Cain simply a charismatic former Godfather's Pizza CEO ("The Pizza You Can't Refuse"). I see something else: a troubling statement about the role of race in our politics. Recently, the New York Times ran a story suggesting that...

It is safe to say that no other Republican on the campaign trail this year — or ever — has begun a speech with the phrase “Awww, shucky ducky!” the way Herman Cain did this year to the utter delight of his audience, which responded with wild applause. snip And while his casual style of racially inflected humor works to ingratiate him with mostly white audiences at campaign rallies, it has angered some black critics, who believe he uses age-old stereotypes. He has no qualms, for instance, about playing off black clichés: should he become president, his Secret Service codename...

Recently I wrote an article about women's tendency to support statist candidates. As my emails attest, it was met with quite a positive response. Yet, not surprisingly, there was also a very predictable one: complaints about generalizations. For instance, one respondent wrote that she was tired of the "all men are this and all women are that" tripe. Of course, people only complain about generalizations when they hear one they don't like and, perhaps, are unable to refute. But you can rest assured that they generalize just like anyone else; in fact, generalizations are woven so seamlessly into our thinking...

CARMEI TZUR, West Bank (JTA) -- Yana Kisluk tosses her long ponytail over one shoulder and adjusts her M-16 over the other. The pretty 21-year-old, who wears diamond stud earrings and perfect eye makeup, looks like any other young Israeli doing her compulsory military service. As a paramedic in the Israel Defense Forces, however, Kisluk belongs to a small group of Israeli soldiers whose job is to provide care for Palestinians rather than simply defend against them. On a recent morning, Kisluk’s team of two paramedics and a driver get a call about a newly arrested Palestinian prisoner who says...

On a J Street conference call Thursday evening, Jan Schakowsky thanked the group for its financial and moral support. Her opponent, she said, was "an Orthodox Jewish Republican, Tea Party-endorsed candidate." It wasn't the first time Schakowsky alluded to my Orthodoxy: she did it in a July fundraising letter, and hinted at it again at an Israel forum we addressed in October, which she has since described as an "enemy camp." In some contexts, there is nothing wrong with referring to someone's religion. I have occasionally drawn attention to my Orthodox Jewish faith, usually to explain where my values come...

In the last week the following incidents have occurred; 1. Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar left the set of The View in protest over Bill O’Reilly’s comment that “Muslims killed us on 9/11″ 2. The NAACP released a report on ‘Tea Party Racism“ 3. Juan Williams was fired from NPR for admitting to getting nervous if he were to see a man on a plane in “Muslim garb”. What do these events all have in common? Liberal orthodoxy and deeply ingrained liberal stereotyping. The left has pushed the meme that anyone that disagrees with them is racist. The liberal belief...

The nation’s first African-American President has severely damaged his fellow blacks citizens in three crucial ways: By his economic policies, by making blacks less independent, and by showing his own incompetence as leader of a country. Obama undoubtedly has dashed the hopes of many of the 96 percent of black voters who supported Obama for the presidency, as measured by exit polls. The U.S. Department of Labor in September reported that black unemployment rose to 16.3 in August from 15.6 percent in July, according to a Sept. 8 Politico story. The increase was considerably more than for either Whites or...

What the world looks like in stereotypes

It’s a well-known fact that the $20 billion dollar video gaming industry is producing products that glorify “guns, car theft and gang violence” that make parents cringe, according to Peter L. Knudson in the Harvard Crimson. A game developer recently had to come up with $20 million because of a sex scene in the highly-publicized Grand Theft Auto game, already loaded with violence and drug use. In this highly politically correct environment, charges of racism are increasingly surfacing as “Mafia 2” was tagged as a “pile of racist nonsense” by members of an Italian-American service group who pointed out gamers...

National Mall Left Spotless After Beck Rally (Video)

To many Asian-Americans, Charlie Chan is an offensive stereotype, another sort of Uncle Tom. Chan, the hero of six detective novels by Earl Derr Biggers and 47 Hollywood movies between 1926 and 1949, not to mention a 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, is pudgy, slant-eyed and inscrutable, and he speaks in singsong fortune-cookie English, saying things like, “If befriend donkey, expect to be kicked.” The California-born author and playwright Frank Chin, who has written essays denouncing Chan, would like to see him disappear altogether. But Yunte Huang, who was born and grew up in China, can’t get enough of Chan and...

It’s hard to give a whole lot of credibility to the NAACP these days. As a young boy, I eagerly supported their efforts in the 60s as most idealists did in the day. We WANTED equality for our black brothers and sisters. Many of us attended rallies with our African American friends to show solidarity. But in 2010, the NAACP has become a pathetic, embarrassing shell of the organization it once was, resorting to the ridiculous in an attempt to perpetuate African Americans as victims of racism.