In 2007, I want the America envisioned by Frederick Douglass, the former slave turned abolitionist. On January 26, 1865, with the Civil War grinding to halt, Mr. Douglass delivered a speech that has largely been forgotten by contemporary America, that nation of racial-pimps, racial set-asides and perpetual (and phony) racial injustices and the staged marches to address each. While Douglass's words received loud cheers and a standing ovation in 1865, these same words and ideals, if uttered in 2007, would be met by blacks with hissing, booing and maybe even rioting. Such words would be deemed "offensive" in these hyper-sensitive times.
Attempting to answer a popular question of the day -- "What does the black man want?" -- Mr. Douglass forcefully said:
"What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us. I have had one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played mischief with us."
Mr. Douglass continued, offering his thoughts on a post Civil War America and freed blacks:
"If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall."
He completes his analogy with the following:
"And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is given him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! Your interference is doing him positive injury!"
Powerful sentiments from a man who knew slavery firsthand, a man who fought and scratched for everything he had in a time when the deck was legally stacked against him. Frederick Douglass hated slavery, and as a teen continually sought ways to escape it. Yet he still believed in the promise of America.
Can anyone imagine any politician, especially a black politician, saying anything remotely similar to these words? Would Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, the two self-inflated and self-appointed leaders of "Black America," ever give a speech calling for blacks to be responsible for themselves and accountable for their actions? Would either of these hucksters ever tell black folks, as Douglass did, to "sink or swim?" The answer is a definitive "no." However, these two scheisters are Pavlovian-like in their "blame-whitey-for-every-black-person's-problems." In a time when he could could have rightly done such, Frederick Douglass demurred, asking white folks to get out of the way and give blacks a chance.
Frederick Douglass, America needs you, or someone espousing your positions.
I have often wondered what Frederick Douglass would think of America in 2007. He would certainly be impressed with many things regarding black people. American blacks are the richest and best educated blacks on the planet. Many black citizens have risen to powerful positions in the corporate world and in governments, at the local, state and federal level. A black man, Barack Obama, is a leading candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 2008. Yes, there is much Frederick Douglass would celebrate.
However, there is much he would disdain.
I believe he would find the current definition of "civil rights" a bit awry. After all, for him in 1865, civil rights were something else entirely, namely ending slavery. In 2007, civil rights means "special rights." In many colleges, blacks only compete with blacks for admission. Government contracts and jobs are "set-aside" for blacks only. Sometime since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, equal opportunity became "equal outcomes," which, of course, will never happen naturally, so the government forces such. As currently practiced, civil rights is nothing more than "cultural Marxism," where the cream is never allowed to rise to the top, settling instead at the bottom. American society is the lesser for this also. Massive mediocrity is the result of the cultural Marxism that is the current civil rights movement.
America, since that God-awful decade of the 1960s, has done the exact opposite of what Frederick Douglass desired. Instead of getting out of the way, the government has been a permanent crutch. Beginning with Lyndon B, Johnson's "War on Poverty" to Richard Nixon's signing the first affirmative action program, the government has done nothing to empower the black man, preferring instead to placate him and prop him up. Entitlement programs were not what Mr. Douglass wanted. He wanted black people to succeed on their own merit.
What would Frederick Douglass think of the current civil rights establishment? What would he make of marches such as the one held in September 2006 in Jena, Louisiana? What would Mr. Douglass think of thousands of black people converging on this small town to call for the release of and dismissal of charges against six young black men who attacked and beat a white classmate at Jena High School. I wonder what Mr. Douglass would think of the "New Black Panthers" descending on the small community of Pasadena, Texas to protest Joe Horn's shooting of two burglars who were coming out of a window of his neighbor's home? What would he think of the numerous "hate crime" hoaxes perpetrated by blacks like Donald Maynard, A Baltimore fireman, who wrote racist notes to himself and hung a noose in the station house in an attempt to garner some Jena-like sympathy. What would Mr. Douglass make of a professor at Columbia University who said a noose appeared on her office door, a noose that she most likely placed there herself to gain attention? What would Douglass think of the current civil rights movement, one based on pseudo-outrage, pompous indignation and political theater?
What would Mr. Douglass make of illegitimacy in the black community? Fully 70% of black children are born to a single mother. The government picks up the tab in most cases. Illegitimacy creates so many problems for the mom and the kids -- government dependence, poor school performance, poor health, criminally-inclined young men, more illegitimacy.
What would Frederick Douglass think of many young black males and their seeming lust for criminality? The Crips, Bloods, Vice-Lords and Gangster Disciples have become the extracurricular activity of choice for many school age black males. Crime has become a way of life for many black males aged 18-34. In some cities, one in three black males in this age group is connected to the justice system in some manner: awaiting trial, on probation or in jail. Homicide is leading cause of death for this age group, although it should be labeled "fratricide," as the majority of the deaths are at the hands of another black male in the demographic.
Since it was illegal to educate a slave, Frederick Douglass risked his own safety to learn how to read and write. In today's urban schools, one has to threaten the lives of some black males to make them read or learn anything outside of the latest filth from the rap community. Many American school systems struggle to graduate black students. In Detroit, just 21% of its students ever graduate from high school. In many other cities, the percentage rarely gets over 40-50%. Nationwide, just half of black students graduate from high school. A free education is on the table, and many refuse to take advantage of it. Billions have been (and are being) spent, yet this money might as well be tossed into a hole, for all the good it does.
America needs someone like Frederick Douglass, someone to say the things -- as ugly as they may be -- that need to be said, someone whose example is one to be lauded and emulated.
Of course, Mr. Douglass could rise from the grave and deliver this same speech on college campuses nationwide, and many blacks would simply call him an "Uncle Tom" and move on to their next march for set-asides and hate crime legislation.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Waging Jihad on the Boy Scouts
In the mid-1970s, I was a member of Boy Scout Troop 3115, a ribald collection of teens from the Orange Mound section of Memphis (black) and the Poplar-Higland corrider (white). Roughly half white and half black, the troop was stationed at the Tennessee National Guard Armory and headed up by Mr. Bill Lanier, a sargent in the guard. We caused Mr. Lanier untold nightmares, as we were mischievious and full of devilment. While we were good at "scout" things -- we had numerous awards we'd won at scout events -- we were also good at fighting (often each other) and finding other assorted trouble. I often think of this period as my "Huck Finn" period, as I learned of the woods via the numerous camping trips and of black folks, whom I had never been around much prior to the scouts. Some of my fondest memories of my youth can be found in the camping trip weekends I shared with Jesse Green, Andrew Phillips, Michael Prichard and other members of Troop 3115. Bill Lanier is/was a great man for giving so much of himself during this time. Lord knows, many members of the troop would have found "other" things to get into were it not for the Boy Scouts.
My personal experience with the Boy Scouts is why I am so angered by the Do-gooder-social-engineers and their attempts to destroy the Boy Scouts of America. The latest assault in Philadelphia is outrageous and merely the latest attempt by the left to impose "San Francisco" values on the normal and decent.
The left has a long history of hating the Boy Scouts. The ACLU filed the first lawsuit against the Boy Scouts in 1980. This was the beginning of a litany of forays brought against the Boy Scouts. The year 2000 was a particularly brutal year for the scouts. With the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the scouts -- their policy to deny homosexuals access to boys as Scout leaders -- and the real threat George W. Bush would win the 2000 election, the liberals stepped up the attacks on the Boy Scouts:
- The Clinton Administration launched investigations into the Scouts and ties to federal agencies, particularly its relationships with national parks and military installations.
- Al Gore called for a law demanding that the Boy Scouts allow homosexuals in its ranks.
- The city of Los Angeles voted to evict the Boy Scouts from public facilities.
- Broward County's school board also voted to evict 60 troops and Cub Scout packs from its schools.
- Private business Knight-Ridder, Inc. and Levi's stopped funding the scouts.
- United Way chapters also cut off funding for the scouts.
The message was clear: run afoul of the newest preferred minority -- homosexuals -- and you'll be punished.
The situation in the "City of Brotherly (literally) Love" is beyond outrageous.
Addressing more than 30,000 scouts in August 2005, President Bush reminided the scouts that "At times, you may be come across people who say that moral truth is relative, or call a relgious faith a comforting illusion." The President must have been thinking of Philadelphia's city solicitor Romulo Diaz.
The "Cradle of Liberty Council" serves more than 64,000 boys, mostly from the inner-city and fatherless homes (just like many of the kids in my Troop 3115). Since 1928, the council has been headquartered at the Beaux-Arts Building -- a building the Boy Scouts built in 1928 -- for the symbolic sum of $1.00 a year. But because a Boy Scout pledges to live "morally straight" and because the city of Philadelphia has bought into the phony homosexual civil right movement, the Boy Scouts are being threatened with eviciton from their longitme home. Romulo Diaz, an open homosexual and the city solicitor, has given the Cradle of Liberty Council until December 3, 2007 to come up with $200,000.00 -- fair market rent -- or they must vacate the building. Of course, the council could remain, their $1.00 agreement in place, if they give homosexuals access to the council's 64,000 boys.
What an outrage.
Has America not learned a thing from the experience of the Catholic Church and its homosexual priest problem of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s? The U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released the John Jay Report in 2004, and it revealed that 4,392 accusations had been levied against homosexual priests, with most sexual assaults occuring between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. Fully four percent of Catholic priests had engaged in molesting adolescent boys, resulting in millions of dollars being granted to victims via settlements reached in courts across the country. In 2006, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid $60 million to settle 45 cases of abuse, only to shell out $660 million in 2007. The Dioceses of Dallas, Boston, Louisville, Orange, and Phoenix all agreed to settle cases in the nine year period between 1997 and 2006 to the tune of $242 million. Because they had lawsuits and trial dates pending, several dioceses -- Portland, Spokane, Tucson, Davenport and San Diego -- filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to save their parishes from financial ruin.
Is this the fate we want the Boy Scouts to suffer?
If you ask the radical homosexuals and their mafia-like backers, the answer is a loud "yes." How dare any organization believe in moral absolutes in this day and age of "secular-progressives" and their gospel where right and wrong are merely matters of interpretation.
Radical homosexuals and their defenders will view the example of the Catholic Church and say the problem was "pedophilia" and not homosexuality. Au contrare, I would add. The overwheliming majority of the complaints in the Catholic Church scandal regarded priests molesting adolescent boys, not young children. Pedophiles like pre-pubescent boys and girls. While NAMBLA -- a prominent member of the homosexual mafia -- might enjoy groping young boys, the homosexual priests preyed upon adolescent boys, young men, if you will.
Romulo Diaz can say, "We will not subsidize...discrimination..." in Philadelphia, but what he really means is, "Unless we homosexuals get a shot at these teenage boys, the Boy Scouts will not be allowed to use city property, no matter what the Supreme Court says."
Joseph Farah of World Net Daily has written extensively of the phony homosexual movement and, in particular, of its hostility towards the Boy Scouts. He poses the following question for all to consider: "Would you rather live in a community populated by the Boy Scouts and Scout leaders or one populated by members of ACT-UP?" Discuss. (Oh, and by the way, don't answer until June 2008
My personal experience with the Boy Scouts is why I am so angered by the Do-gooder-social-engineers and their attempts to destroy the Boy Scouts of America. The latest assault in Philadelphia is outrageous and merely the latest attempt by the left to impose "San Francisco" values on the normal and decent.
The left has a long history of hating the Boy Scouts. The ACLU filed the first lawsuit against the Boy Scouts in 1980. This was the beginning of a litany of forays brought against the Boy Scouts. The year 2000 was a particularly brutal year for the scouts. With the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the scouts -- their policy to deny homosexuals access to boys as Scout leaders -- and the real threat George W. Bush would win the 2000 election, the liberals stepped up the attacks on the Boy Scouts:
- The Clinton Administration launched investigations into the Scouts and ties to federal agencies, particularly its relationships with national parks and military installations.
- Al Gore called for a law demanding that the Boy Scouts allow homosexuals in its ranks.
- The city of Los Angeles voted to evict the Boy Scouts from public facilities.
- Broward County's school board also voted to evict 60 troops and Cub Scout packs from its schools.
- Private business Knight-Ridder, Inc. and Levi's stopped funding the scouts.
- United Way chapters also cut off funding for the scouts.
The message was clear: run afoul of the newest preferred minority -- homosexuals -- and you'll be punished.
The situation in the "City of Brotherly (literally) Love" is beyond outrageous.
Addressing more than 30,000 scouts in August 2005, President Bush reminided the scouts that "At times, you may be come across people who say that moral truth is relative, or call a relgious faith a comforting illusion." The President must have been thinking of Philadelphia's city solicitor Romulo Diaz.
The "Cradle of Liberty Council" serves more than 64,000 boys, mostly from the inner-city and fatherless homes (just like many of the kids in my Troop 3115). Since 1928, the council has been headquartered at the Beaux-Arts Building -- a building the Boy Scouts built in 1928 -- for the symbolic sum of $1.00 a year. But because a Boy Scout pledges to live "morally straight" and because the city of Philadelphia has bought into the phony homosexual civil right movement, the Boy Scouts are being threatened with eviciton from their longitme home. Romulo Diaz, an open homosexual and the city solicitor, has given the Cradle of Liberty Council until December 3, 2007 to come up with $200,000.00 -- fair market rent -- or they must vacate the building. Of course, the council could remain, their $1.00 agreement in place, if they give homosexuals access to the council's 64,000 boys.
What an outrage.
Has America not learned a thing from the experience of the Catholic Church and its homosexual priest problem of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s? The U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released the John Jay Report in 2004, and it revealed that 4,392 accusations had been levied against homosexual priests, with most sexual assaults occuring between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. Fully four percent of Catholic priests had engaged in molesting adolescent boys, resulting in millions of dollars being granted to victims via settlements reached in courts across the country. In 2006, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles paid $60 million to settle 45 cases of abuse, only to shell out $660 million in 2007. The Dioceses of Dallas, Boston, Louisville, Orange, and Phoenix all agreed to settle cases in the nine year period between 1997 and 2006 to the tune of $242 million. Because they had lawsuits and trial dates pending, several dioceses -- Portland, Spokane, Tucson, Davenport and San Diego -- filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to save their parishes from financial ruin.
Is this the fate we want the Boy Scouts to suffer?
If you ask the radical homosexuals and their mafia-like backers, the answer is a loud "yes." How dare any organization believe in moral absolutes in this day and age of "secular-progressives" and their gospel where right and wrong are merely matters of interpretation.
Radical homosexuals and their defenders will view the example of the Catholic Church and say the problem was "pedophilia" and not homosexuality. Au contrare, I would add. The overwheliming majority of the complaints in the Catholic Church scandal regarded priests molesting adolescent boys, not young children. Pedophiles like pre-pubescent boys and girls. While NAMBLA -- a prominent member of the homosexual mafia -- might enjoy groping young boys, the homosexual priests preyed upon adolescent boys, young men, if you will.
Romulo Diaz can say, "We will not subsidize...discrimination..." in Philadelphia, but what he really means is, "Unless we homosexuals get a shot at these teenage boys, the Boy Scouts will not be allowed to use city property, no matter what the Supreme Court says."
Joseph Farah of World Net Daily has written extensively of the phony homosexual movement and, in particular, of its hostility towards the Boy Scouts. He poses the following question for all to consider: "Would you rather live in a community populated by the Boy Scouts and Scout leaders or one populated by members of ACT-UP?" Discuss. (Oh, and by the way, don't answer until June 2008
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Racism Forever -- Please!
On June 14, 1997, President Bill Clinton announced with great zeal his proposed "dialogue" on race, his "One America in the 21st Century" initiative. America's "first black" president, I guess Mr. Clinton felt it his responsibility to lead such a conversation. In a 1995 speech, Mr. Clinton bandied about his racial bona-fides: "I graduated from a segregated high school seven years after President Dwight Eisenhower integrated Little Rock Central High School. My experiences with discrimination are rooted in the South and the legacy slavery left."
I dismissed the effort at the time because such -- a discussion on race -- was not possible then. Nor is it possible now. For whatever reason, any conversation on race evolves into a monologue, with blacks on one side, wagging their fingers at whites and saying, "Shame, shame, shame." Ward Connerly said the initiative was "the sound of one hand clapping." With the lefty panel Clinton appointed to head these "conversations," there would plenty of guilt trips laid out, and little conversation held.
At one time, I believed -- naively, it turns out -- that my generation, those born in the 1960s, would be the generation to put the "race" issue to bed. After all, we came of age after the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Jim Crow was someone we never knew. We attended integrated schools. We were raised -- at least, my two brothers and I were -- not to judge someone on the color of their skin. We were the first generation to have some regular, and even daily, contact with that "other" race. Surely, all the mistrust, strife, anger and bitterness of the past, a past we had only heard of, would be buried by us.
How wrong I was.
I believe race relations are worse in 2007 than they were thirty years ago in 1977, my tenth grade year in high school. And things are only getting worse.
What the hell happened?
The "Racism Industry" is what. An amalgamation of activists (s--t starters), attorneys (well-dressed parasites with law degrees) and black-only organizations (Marxists with an axe to grind), the Racism Industry finds prosperity and political clout in keeping, not hope, but strife alive. If something causes animosity, bitterness or anger between the races, then there's a good chance you will find a member of the Racism Industry behind it. Long gone are the days of peaceful groups of well-dressed and well-spoken people rallying for the right to vote and a fair shot at the American Dream. They have been replaced with activists demanding equal outcomes and other assorted aims of the Racism Industry:
Of course, this sort of grievance-mongering is not new. Booker T. Washington spoke of such as early as the late 1800s: "There is a another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances because they do not want to lose their jobs."
Mr. Washington was speaking of many of his critics, most notably W. E. B. DuBois, the Harvard grad noted for his "talented tenth" theory that the talented ten percent of blacks would lead the race. Mr. Washington's words aptly describe the latter-day crop of "DuBoisian" fellows: Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al. These two (and other like-minded players) have never met a racial stir -- real or perceived -- that they did not want to exploit for their own gain.
Jesse Jackson has established a profitable career for himself and his family. Like Tony Soprano used his "waste management" position to cover his illegal activities, so too does Jesse Jackson. His "Operation PUSH"-- People United to Save Humanity -- is a non-profit front used by Jackson to wash literally millions that have come Jackson's way. Kenneth Timmerman's 2002 book Shakedown highlights the good reverend's tactics and windfalls of his activism. Using 18 chapters, 400+ pages and an astounding 1,000 plus footnotes, Mr. Timmerman paints the picture of a guy always out looking for the next score. During the Carter Administration, Mr. Jackson was able to get millions of dollars in federal grants funneled into the education wing of PUSH. The jig was up, however, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The Reagan Administration and its audits led Reverend Jackson to his true calling: the corporate shakedown. Beginning with Coca-Cola in 1981, Jackson has used his tried and true tactics to extort millions from American corporations. The M-O is simple. First, find an alleged racial slight with a company (like Coca-Cola's dealings with apartheid South Africa). Secondly, threaten boycotts or protests of the company. By the second step, companies usually settle with Jackson. Literally. While other blacks have benefited from Jackson's efforts, no one has benefited like Jackson himself and those closest to him. His half brother, Noah Robinson, was awarded a syrup distributorship by Coca-Cola in September 1981, one month after a $30 million settlement had been reached. Jackson's two sons own a beer distributorship in Chicago -- gained in the same manner. Anheuser-Busch, Texaco and Nike have all felt the brunt of Jackson's "work." Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Jackson's mau-mauing toward corporations was as automatic as the John Stockton-Karl Malone pick and roll of the same era: guaranteed to deliver. Seeking "justice," Jackson got himself a lot of it in the form of dollar bills.
While Jesse Jackson is a racial extortionist, Al Sharpton is a racial arsonist. Jackson seeks financial gain, while Sharpton is out for political chits. The Reverend Al cut his teeth in the 1980s, when he, like some sleazy lawyer at an accident scene, would show up at any incident that hinted of a racial angle that could be exploited. With his James Brown hair-do, sweat suits and vituperative tongue, Sharpton fanned any racial flames he could, often making a tragic situation even worse. No incident shows Sharpton's dishonesty like the Tawana Brawley affair. In November 1987, fifteen year old Tawana Brawley claimed she was abducted, raped and smeared with feces by a group of white men, some of whom were police officers with the Duchess County (New York) police department. A grand jury determined that Brawley's story was a hoax, designed to cover her being out too late one night. Despite any evidence to support Brawley's claim, Al Sharpton and his goons -- in this case, attorneys Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason -- arrived to exploit the race aspect of the case. The three even went as far as to accuse Duchess County assistant district attorney Steven Pagones of taking part in the fictional assault and rape. Sharpton even told Pagones to "sue" him if he was lying, which Pagones did in 1997. A jury awarded Pagones a $345,000.00 judgement, of which the good reverend has yet to pay one red cent.
Similar protests by Sharpton in 1991 (Crown Heights) and and 1995 (Harlem's Freddy's Fashion Mart) actually resulted in the deaths of people. Jackson, while dishonest to the core, does not cause the deaths of people in his wake.
One might think that such shady dealings and outrageous rhetoric would take away the credibility of someone. Think again. Both Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have run for the presidency (as Democrats, of course). If anything, it appears that each's record has heightened their profile. Judging from events of the past year, Jackson and Sharpton have taken on Christ-like proportions, as white people who make "insensitive racial remarks" must trek to Jackson or Sharpton and pay tribute and beg for forgiveness. Michael Richards, the former Seinfeld star, went to Jackson to beg forgiveness for his use of the word "nigger" on a comedy stage. Don Imus used "nappy-headed hos" to describe the Rutgers women's basketball team, and the next week he appeared on Sharpton's radio show to grovel and kiss the ass of Sharpton. At this writing, it is not certain which of the race-hustlers Dog the Bounty Hunter will appeal to to atone for his racial comments made during a private conversation with his son.
What irony. Al Sharpton, who has called Jews "diamond merchants, and Jesse Jackson, who referred to New York City as "Hymietown," are now the arbiters of the speech police. What a country.
I dismissed the effort at the time because such -- a discussion on race -- was not possible then. Nor is it possible now. For whatever reason, any conversation on race evolves into a monologue, with blacks on one side, wagging their fingers at whites and saying, "Shame, shame, shame." Ward Connerly said the initiative was "the sound of one hand clapping." With the lefty panel Clinton appointed to head these "conversations," there would plenty of guilt trips laid out, and little conversation held.
At one time, I believed -- naively, it turns out -- that my generation, those born in the 1960s, would be the generation to put the "race" issue to bed. After all, we came of age after the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Jim Crow was someone we never knew. We attended integrated schools. We were raised -- at least, my two brothers and I were -- not to judge someone on the color of their skin. We were the first generation to have some regular, and even daily, contact with that "other" race. Surely, all the mistrust, strife, anger and bitterness of the past, a past we had only heard of, would be buried by us.
How wrong I was.
I believe race relations are worse in 2007 than they were thirty years ago in 1977, my tenth grade year in high school. And things are only getting worse.
What the hell happened?
The "Racism Industry" is what. An amalgamation of activists (s--t starters), attorneys (well-dressed parasites with law degrees) and black-only organizations (Marxists with an axe to grind), the Racism Industry finds prosperity and political clout in keeping, not hope, but strife alive. If something causes animosity, bitterness or anger between the races, then there's a good chance you will find a member of the Racism Industry behind it. Long gone are the days of peaceful groups of well-dressed and well-spoken people rallying for the right to vote and a fair shot at the American Dream. They have been replaced with activists demanding equal outcomes and other assorted aims of the Racism Industry:
Of course, this sort of grievance-mongering is not new. Booker T. Washington spoke of such as early as the late 1800s: "There is a another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs -- partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances because they do not want to lose their jobs."
Mr. Washington was speaking of many of his critics, most notably W. E. B. DuBois, the Harvard grad noted for his "talented tenth" theory that the talented ten percent of blacks would lead the race. Mr. Washington's words aptly describe the latter-day crop of "DuBoisian" fellows: Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al. These two (and other like-minded players) have never met a racial stir -- real or perceived -- that they did not want to exploit for their own gain.
Jesse Jackson has established a profitable career for himself and his family. Like Tony Soprano used his "waste management" position to cover his illegal activities, so too does Jesse Jackson. His "Operation PUSH"-- People United to Save Humanity -- is a non-profit front used by Jackson to wash literally millions that have come Jackson's way. Kenneth Timmerman's 2002 book Shakedown highlights the good reverend's tactics and windfalls of his activism. Using 18 chapters, 400+ pages and an astounding 1,000 plus footnotes, Mr. Timmerman paints the picture of a guy always out looking for the next score. During the Carter Administration, Mr. Jackson was able to get millions of dollars in federal grants funneled into the education wing of PUSH. The jig was up, however, with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. The Reagan Administration and its audits led Reverend Jackson to his true calling: the corporate shakedown. Beginning with Coca-Cola in 1981, Jackson has used his tried and true tactics to extort millions from American corporations. The M-O is simple. First, find an alleged racial slight with a company (like Coca-Cola's dealings with apartheid South Africa). Secondly, threaten boycotts or protests of the company. By the second step, companies usually settle with Jackson. Literally. While other blacks have benefited from Jackson's efforts, no one has benefited like Jackson himself and those closest to him. His half brother, Noah Robinson, was awarded a syrup distributorship by Coca-Cola in September 1981, one month after a $30 million settlement had been reached. Jackson's two sons own a beer distributorship in Chicago -- gained in the same manner. Anheuser-Busch, Texaco and Nike have all felt the brunt of Jackson's "work." Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Jackson's mau-mauing toward corporations was as automatic as the John Stockton-Karl Malone pick and roll of the same era: guaranteed to deliver. Seeking "justice," Jackson got himself a lot of it in the form of dollar bills.
While Jesse Jackson is a racial extortionist, Al Sharpton is a racial arsonist. Jackson seeks financial gain, while Sharpton is out for political chits. The Reverend Al cut his teeth in the 1980s, when he, like some sleazy lawyer at an accident scene, would show up at any incident that hinted of a racial angle that could be exploited. With his James Brown hair-do, sweat suits and vituperative tongue, Sharpton fanned any racial flames he could, often making a tragic situation even worse. No incident shows Sharpton's dishonesty like the Tawana Brawley affair. In November 1987, fifteen year old Tawana Brawley claimed she was abducted, raped and smeared with feces by a group of white men, some of whom were police officers with the Duchess County (New York) police department. A grand jury determined that Brawley's story was a hoax, designed to cover her being out too late one night. Despite any evidence to support Brawley's claim, Al Sharpton and his goons -- in this case, attorneys Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason -- arrived to exploit the race aspect of the case. The three even went as far as to accuse Duchess County assistant district attorney Steven Pagones of taking part in the fictional assault and rape. Sharpton even told Pagones to "sue" him if he was lying, which Pagones did in 1997. A jury awarded Pagones a $345,000.00 judgement, of which the good reverend has yet to pay one red cent.
Similar protests by Sharpton in 1991 (Crown Heights) and and 1995 (Harlem's Freddy's Fashion Mart) actually resulted in the deaths of people. Jackson, while dishonest to the core, does not cause the deaths of people in his wake.
One might think that such shady dealings and outrageous rhetoric would take away the credibility of someone. Think again. Both Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have run for the presidency (as Democrats, of course). If anything, it appears that each's record has heightened their profile. Judging from events of the past year, Jackson and Sharpton have taken on Christ-like proportions, as white people who make "insensitive racial remarks" must trek to Jackson or Sharpton and pay tribute and beg for forgiveness. Michael Richards, the former Seinfeld star, went to Jackson to beg forgiveness for his use of the word "nigger" on a comedy stage. Don Imus used "nappy-headed hos" to describe the Rutgers women's basketball team, and the next week he appeared on Sharpton's radio show to grovel and kiss the ass of Sharpton. At this writing, it is not certain which of the race-hustlers Dog the Bounty Hunter will appeal to to atone for his racial comments made during a private conversation with his son.
What irony. Al Sharpton, who has called Jews "diamond merchants, and Jesse Jackson, who referred to New York City as "Hymietown," are now the arbiters of the speech police. What a country.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Huck Finn: Still Troublesome After All These Years
"We do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking."
-- Mark Twain
As an English teacher since 1991, I get aggravated each year at the inevitable attacks on Mark Twain, as school districts wrestle with demands from one of the permanently dour to ban the teaching of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Birdsville High School (Texas) is the latest in a long, long list of school districts forced to deal with the complaints of parents (or, as is the case in Birdsville, a parent) and activists who are outraged this "racist" tome is taught to high school students.
Seventeen year old junior Ibrahim Mohamed took offense with a lesson plan designed to alleviate such umbrage. The lesson obviously didn't work. Entitled "Word Magic (How To Deal With the N-word When Reading Huck Finn)," the lesson called for the teacher to write several offensive words and phrases, including "nigger," on the board; the intent was to open a discussion on the use of the terms and if context matters. The lesson never got to step two because Ibrahim demanded that the word be removed from the board and any discussion. When the teacher did not remove it, Ibrahim complained to his mother, Tunya Mohamed, who enlisted the usual suspects of the Racism Industry -- the NAACP -- to protest the lesson and have the book removed from the school's reading lists. In addition, the activists want the teacher to do community service for their organization and to apologize in writing, as if she was some sort of pedophile or drunk driver. Ibrahim, according to his mother, is "really upset and very, very depressed."
I have two words for young Ibrahim: Grow up! If, at age 17, you are so despondent upon seeing one word on the board -- a word you probably say with glee while listening to your favorite thug rapper -- how are you going to survive in the "real world," where no one gives a damn about you or your feelings?
A teacher in the 87% black Memphis City Schools, I typically scoff when I hear of another call to ban Huck Finn, especially for the reason cited for banning it: its racist use of the word nigger. Yes, the word does appear in the novel 215 times, which is about the average number of times I hear it in the hallways each day from black adolescents. No, the irony has never escaped my grasp.
It is intellectually dishonest to claim Huck Finn racist, when any analytical reading of the book shows quite the opposite to be true. Twain's classic intended to demean and vilify the slave-holding society of the pre-Civil War south, of which Missouri was a like-minded territory. The frequent use of the word accomplishes this, while giving the reader an insight into a long forgotten era. Frankly, to avoid use of the word in the book would not have been realistic. Like it or not, the word was used by whites in daily conversations then-- much like rappers do now-- to refer to blacks.
Of course, anyone with an IQ above a brick understands that Huck Finn is an "anti-racism" novel. Ralph Ellison, the noted black author, understood Twain's intent: "Huckleberry Finn knew, as did Mark Twain, that Jim was not only a slave but a human being, a symbol of humanity...and in freeing Jim, Huck makes a bid to free himself of the conventionalized evil taken from civilization by the town -- in other words, of the abomination of slavery itself."
A learned man, Mr. Ellison was ruled by his intellect, as opposed to guided by his emotions. Not everyone is predisposed to such.
For the emotionally-guided who refuse to read between the lines of the novel, Russell Baker provides a vivid image these child-like folks can get: "The people Huck and Jim encounter are drunkards, murderers, bullies, swindlers, lynchers, thieves, liars, frauds, child abusers, numb-skulls, hypocrites, windbags, and traders in flesh. All are white. The one man of honor in this phantasmagoria is black Jim, the runaway slave." It doesn't take a PhD to "get" Twain's indictment of the slave-owning society of the south. Jim is the only noble character in the book, and he is the one the other characters (society) hold in contempt. In 2007, how do people not "get" this?
The measure of great art is found in its ability to evoke a response or reaction. Nothing has done just such like Twain's The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. Earnest Hemingway called the book the "source" of all American literature. The book has managed to inspire and offend in not only the 19th century of its creation, but also in the 20th and now 21st centuries.
It is my guess Mark Twain is smiling when viewing all the trouble his little story has created. He might look at his critics and say these words again: "Be yourself is about the worst advice to give people."
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Title IX: Revenge of the Shrews
President Richard M. Nixon, an otherwise brilliant man, suffered a lapse of naivety on June 23, 1972, when he signed into law these thirty-seven words: "No person in the United States shall on the basis of gender, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." Where was President Nixon's cynicism when he needed it? Signed at the height of the feminist movement -- erstwhile known as that "era of bitterness, anger and resentment" -- did he actually believe the law-- Title IX -- would not be twisted, contorted and used by the testosterone-hating-shrews within the feminist cause to attack men in some manner?
Nixon's sense of fair play colored his judgement. Of course, girls should be afforded the same opportunities in education that boys enjoyed. Unfortunately, Title IX in its current form is a sledgehammer wielded by angry and bitter women to exact revenge for the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to pass. Any effort to inject common sense into the law is met with feminazi lawyers and their threats of litigation.
In her book Women Who Make The World Worse, Kate O'Beirn exposes the real aim of Title IX-activists: "The feminists' signature brew of dishonesty, intimidation, and hypocrisy has been he familiar recipe in the campaign they claim is designed to increase the number of women who engage in sports...In the name of leveling the playing field, these women are determined to tackle the male dominance in sports, which they see as a despised vestige of male privilege and powers, and a precursor to male violence." By using Title IX to attack sports at the collegiate and high school levels, it is the goal of the feminists to castrate men (in a figurative sense, of course -- however, with this group of nags, one never knows for sure) and male dominated ventures because all of it is a prelude to some bum beating his wife.
I began coaching wrestling in 1995 at Westside High School in Memphis. Like the average American, I knew little of Title IX or its pernicious enforcement. As my wrestlers became more involved in wrestling, they would ask about wrestling in college. All "inner-city" kids, they loved the sport and were good at it. Other athletes had a chance at a scholarship. Why not them? I began to look into wrestling on the collegiate level and found little to speak of. In Tennessee, for example, there is just one Division 1 school that wrestles: the University of Tennessee- Chattanooga. No Vanderbilt. No University of Tennessee. No University of Memphis. I became very anti-Title IX the more I investigated it. I had wrestlers capable of wrestling in college, but there were no opportunities for them to do such. Courtney Guy was the TSSAA State Runner-up at 215 pounds in 1998. Going into his senior year, he would have been a highly recruited wrestler -- if it was 1972, when there were 777 colleges and universities with wrestling teams. Unfortunately, in 1999, his year of graduation, there were fewer than 100 Division 1 wrestling teams. A scholarship was his only chance at college, as was the case with all the wrestlers on my team. In a sensible world, he would have been competing in college after his high school graduation. Of course, "sensible" is not a word to be used when liberals with an agenda and a chip on their shoulders take hold of anything.
The truth of Title IX is ugly. It is nothing more than government sanctioned discrimination aimed at eliminating male sports. While football and basketball are untouchable to the shrews -- someone has to pay for the social engineering and women's crew teams -- other male sports are not. In 1972, as mentioned, there were 777 wrestling teams in the NCAA. According to Intermat, an amateur wrestling site, 447 collegiate teams have been eliminated since 1972, despite the fact that high school wrestling grows each year and is very popular. The Southeastern Conference, arguably the best athletic conference in the nation, has not one school with a wrestling team. Wrestling is not the only affected sport. Baseball, track, tennis, water polo, swimming, fencing and any other male sport is subject to be eliminated by the insane demands of Title IX compliance. UCLA's swimming team earned 22 medals at the Olympics, yet it was ended in 1993. According to the NCAA, between 1992 and 1997, 20,000 male athletes -- or "athletic opportunities" -- were eliminated. The NCAA now reports that there are more women's teams than there are men's teams; this is entirely due to Title IX. When surveyed, men typically express more interest in athletic competition than women. (Do we need surveys to know this? Look at any elementary playground.) Intramural athletics on college campuses, which are strictly voluntary, are overwhelmingly male, yet female athletes take precedent at colleges due to Title IX and its threat of non-compliance, which can result in a loss of federal money.
While feminists routinely and loudly hail Title IX now, they paid little attention to the law its first decade of existence. It was only after the expiration of the ERA in 1982 that the perpetually-aggrieved of the feminist movement turned its sights on athletics. At midnight on June 30, 1982, the ERA expired, and the "jihad" on male athletes began. Phyllis N. Segal, then legal director of the National Organization of Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund, said at the time: "What we need to do, in the absence of a national mandate and clear policy statement, is to apply and defend the progress that has been made and to develop tools to take the profit and habit out of sexual discrimination." The "tool" of choice would be Title IX. Jessica Gavora, author of Tilting the Playing Field, writes of the outlook of feminists in the early 1980s: "Many of the gains that feminists had hoped to secure with the ERA, they saw, could be achieved through expansion and manipulation of the law (Title IX) against discrimination."
Using a 1979 policy interpretation of the law, the Title IX-mafia would use just one prong of the "three prong test" to dismantle male team after male team. While there are three ways to be in compliance with Title IX, only one -- the proportionality prong -- has been used to determine if a school is in compliance: "Providing athletic opportunities that are substantially proportionate to the student enrollment." Translated this means that if a school has a student body that is 60% female, then 60% of all things athletic must also be female: athletes, scholarships, teams, etc. Failure to be in compliance means costly lawsuits and the aforementioned loss of federal funds. Rather than fight the good fight, spineless bureaucrats and administrators would rather cower at the first sight of the NOW-gang lawyers.
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) oversees Title IX enforcement and compliance. During the Reagan and Bush I administrations, the office performed its job much like a cop does his: react and respond to a complaint or crime. A police officer cannot be proactive and "create" a crime on a slow night. That is profiling, harassment or entrapment. This, however, is exactly what the OCR did throughout the 1990s. It created Title IX "problems" where none existed. Consequently, the 1990s is the decade that saw the most males' teams eliminated.
The election of Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992 brought with it many 1960s radicals and their agendas. No one was more radical than Ms. Norma Cantu, longtime member of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Dubbed one of Clinton's "quota queens," Ms. Cantu would live up to the moniker as the head "capo" in the OCR. Under her stewardship, Title IX became an official quota, as Representative Maxine Waters, a liberal Democrat, in a rare moment of honesty and candor, once noted: "It is the biggest quota you've ever seen. It is 50-50. It's a quota -- a big, round quota."
Unlike the cop on the beat, Ms. Cantu's OCR would not just react to Title IX complaints or problems; her OCR would create them. Unduly influenced by the Women's Sports Foundation, a radical organization formed by lesbian-activist Billie Jean King, Norma Cantu's OCR, it its first nineteen months alone, attacked 240 schools. launching investigative "reviews" into their Title IX practices. Not a single school targeted had ever been the subject of even one complaint. Furthermore, Ms.Cantu ordered the OCR's ten regional offices to "double" the number of its complaints. In other words, it became official policy to harass and intimidate universities and to create problems where none existed.
Norma Cantu's tenure at the OCR was one of spite. Football was never to be discussed as the sport relates to Title IX enforcement. Carrying 100 scholarships/slots per year, if football were removed from the equation, it would allow many schools to be in compliance with the asinine quotas set by Title IX. Cantu and her tribe would never agree with excluding football from the equation, even though there is no female-equivalent sport. It is as if Cantu and the rest of the angry spinsters don't want schools to comply. Full compliance would negate their jobs. Walk-on players, who don't get scholarships and play for love of the game, are included in the numbers game. Consequently, walk-on slots have been radically reduced due to the numbers demands of Title IX. Potential walk-ons have to be "invited" to walk-on by coaches. So committed to proportionality is the OCR that even private citizens, alumni, and boosters cannot fund a team that has been eliminated. The University of Southern California and Princeton ran afoul of the bean-counters in the mid-1990s and chose to shut down their swimming and wrestling teams. Private money and boosters stepped forward to fund each team, but the universities shut them down anyway. Said Carol Zaleski of United States Swimming, "It's not a question of money. It's a question of numbers."
Many in the anti-quota crowd took a sigh of relief with the election of George W. Bush in 2000. Finally, some thought, common sense will find its way into Title IX. Such wasn't meant to be.
In 2002, Rod Paige, Bush's Secretary of Education, announced the formation of the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics (COA), a panel of former sports figures and policy wonks who would look into Title IX and its enforcement. The commission hoped to find ways to improve the law. Four townhall-style meetings were held across the nation to allow the public to express their views and offer suggestions for improving the law. The reaction from the usual suspects was immediate and hysterical. Feminists were apoplectic at the mere mention of altering Title IX. "We are deeply troubled by the commission's action," said Jocelyn Samuels, the vice-president of the National Women's Law Center, adding, "This allows the secretary of education to radically restructure current practices..." The irony of Ms. Samuel's words flies right over her head; "radically restructure" Title IX is exactly what Norma Cantu did from her first day on the job. Donna Lopiano, the executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, chimed in also: "The commission has opened the barn door for the Bush administration to weaken Title IX. This gives the education secretary license to do pretty much anything he wants." And Norma Cantu didn't do whatever she felt?
Ultimately, the COA and the townhall meetings were a sham. The Title IX-mafia won in the end. Though all the recommendations of the COA, including eliminating quotas, were approved by an 8-5 vote of the commission's members, Secretary Paige said he would only act on those measures that were unanimous, thus giving a veto to the very people who caused the problems with Title IX and the reason for the commission in the first place. In a future Republican administration -- such would never happen in a Democratic one -- Title IX might be revisited. One can only hope.
Title IX is what happens whenever an angry member of the permanently indignant with an axe to grind gets to exorcise the permanent chip on their shoulder. Common sense is tossed aside in favor of an agenda. More often than not that agenda is about "getting someone" or "atoning" for past sins. It might be the wealthy one moment, or corporations the next, but someone is going to pay when it comes to radicals and their agendas. Men are the "despised sex" for feminists, so male athletes paid the price. Such is the price for "social justice," a term that should make any sane person cringe when hearing it because at some point "they" could be the target for the do-gooders.
Nixon's sense of fair play colored his judgement. Of course, girls should be afforded the same opportunities in education that boys enjoyed. Unfortunately, Title IX in its current form is a sledgehammer wielded by angry and bitter women to exact revenge for the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to pass. Any effort to inject common sense into the law is met with feminazi lawyers and their threats of litigation.
In her book Women Who Make The World Worse, Kate O'Beirn exposes the real aim of Title IX-activists: "The feminists' signature brew of dishonesty, intimidation, and hypocrisy has been he familiar recipe in the campaign they claim is designed to increase the number of women who engage in sports...In the name of leveling the playing field, these women are determined to tackle the male dominance in sports, which they see as a despised vestige of male privilege and powers, and a precursor to male violence." By using Title IX to attack sports at the collegiate and high school levels, it is the goal of the feminists to castrate men (in a figurative sense, of course -- however, with this group of nags, one never knows for sure) and male dominated ventures because all of it is a prelude to some bum beating his wife.
I began coaching wrestling in 1995 at Westside High School in Memphis. Like the average American, I knew little of Title IX or its pernicious enforcement. As my wrestlers became more involved in wrestling, they would ask about wrestling in college. All "inner-city" kids, they loved the sport and were good at it. Other athletes had a chance at a scholarship. Why not them? I began to look into wrestling on the collegiate level and found little to speak of. In Tennessee, for example, there is just one Division 1 school that wrestles: the University of Tennessee- Chattanooga. No Vanderbilt. No University of Tennessee. No University of Memphis. I became very anti-Title IX the more I investigated it. I had wrestlers capable of wrestling in college, but there were no opportunities for them to do such. Courtney Guy was the TSSAA State Runner-up at 215 pounds in 1998. Going into his senior year, he would have been a highly recruited wrestler -- if it was 1972, when there were 777 colleges and universities with wrestling teams. Unfortunately, in 1999, his year of graduation, there were fewer than 100 Division 1 wrestling teams. A scholarship was his only chance at college, as was the case with all the wrestlers on my team. In a sensible world, he would have been competing in college after his high school graduation. Of course, "sensible" is not a word to be used when liberals with an agenda and a chip on their shoulders take hold of anything.
The truth of Title IX is ugly. It is nothing more than government sanctioned discrimination aimed at eliminating male sports. While football and basketball are untouchable to the shrews -- someone has to pay for the social engineering and women's crew teams -- other male sports are not. In 1972, as mentioned, there were 777 wrestling teams in the NCAA. According to Intermat, an amateur wrestling site, 447 collegiate teams have been eliminated since 1972, despite the fact that high school wrestling grows each year and is very popular. The Southeastern Conference, arguably the best athletic conference in the nation, has not one school with a wrestling team. Wrestling is not the only affected sport. Baseball, track, tennis, water polo, swimming, fencing and any other male sport is subject to be eliminated by the insane demands of Title IX compliance. UCLA's swimming team earned 22 medals at the Olympics, yet it was ended in 1993. According to the NCAA, between 1992 and 1997, 20,000 male athletes -- or "athletic opportunities" -- were eliminated. The NCAA now reports that there are more women's teams than there are men's teams; this is entirely due to Title IX. When surveyed, men typically express more interest in athletic competition than women. (Do we need surveys to know this? Look at any elementary playground.) Intramural athletics on college campuses, which are strictly voluntary, are overwhelmingly male, yet female athletes take precedent at colleges due to Title IX and its threat of non-compliance, which can result in a loss of federal money.
While feminists routinely and loudly hail Title IX now, they paid little attention to the law its first decade of existence. It was only after the expiration of the ERA in 1982 that the perpetually-aggrieved of the feminist movement turned its sights on athletics. At midnight on June 30, 1982, the ERA expired, and the "jihad" on male athletes began. Phyllis N. Segal, then legal director of the National Organization of Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund, said at the time: "What we need to do, in the absence of a national mandate and clear policy statement, is to apply and defend the progress that has been made and to develop tools to take the profit and habit out of sexual discrimination." The "tool" of choice would be Title IX. Jessica Gavora, author of Tilting the Playing Field, writes of the outlook of feminists in the early 1980s: "Many of the gains that feminists had hoped to secure with the ERA, they saw, could be achieved through expansion and manipulation of the law (Title IX) against discrimination."
Using a 1979 policy interpretation of the law, the Title IX-mafia would use just one prong of the "three prong test" to dismantle male team after male team. While there are three ways to be in compliance with Title IX, only one -- the proportionality prong -- has been used to determine if a school is in compliance: "Providing athletic opportunities that are substantially proportionate to the student enrollment." Translated this means that if a school has a student body that is 60% female, then 60% of all things athletic must also be female: athletes, scholarships, teams, etc. Failure to be in compliance means costly lawsuits and the aforementioned loss of federal funds. Rather than fight the good fight, spineless bureaucrats and administrators would rather cower at the first sight of the NOW-gang lawyers.
The Office of Civil Rights (OCR) oversees Title IX enforcement and compliance. During the Reagan and Bush I administrations, the office performed its job much like a cop does his: react and respond to a complaint or crime. A police officer cannot be proactive and "create" a crime on a slow night. That is profiling, harassment or entrapment. This, however, is exactly what the OCR did throughout the 1990s. It created Title IX "problems" where none existed. Consequently, the 1990s is the decade that saw the most males' teams eliminated.
The election of Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992 brought with it many 1960s radicals and their agendas. No one was more radical than Ms. Norma Cantu, longtime member of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund. Dubbed one of Clinton's "quota queens," Ms. Cantu would live up to the moniker as the head "capo" in the OCR. Under her stewardship, Title IX became an official quota, as Representative Maxine Waters, a liberal Democrat, in a rare moment of honesty and candor, once noted: "It is the biggest quota you've ever seen. It is 50-50. It's a quota -- a big, round quota."
Unlike the cop on the beat, Ms. Cantu's OCR would not just react to Title IX complaints or problems; her OCR would create them. Unduly influenced by the Women's Sports Foundation, a radical organization formed by lesbian-activist Billie Jean King, Norma Cantu's OCR, it its first nineteen months alone, attacked 240 schools. launching investigative "reviews" into their Title IX practices. Not a single school targeted had ever been the subject of even one complaint. Furthermore, Ms.Cantu ordered the OCR's ten regional offices to "double" the number of its complaints. In other words, it became official policy to harass and intimidate universities and to create problems where none existed.
Norma Cantu's tenure at the OCR was one of spite. Football was never to be discussed as the sport relates to Title IX enforcement. Carrying 100 scholarships/slots per year, if football were removed from the equation, it would allow many schools to be in compliance with the asinine quotas set by Title IX. Cantu and her tribe would never agree with excluding football from the equation, even though there is no female-equivalent sport. It is as if Cantu and the rest of the angry spinsters don't want schools to comply. Full compliance would negate their jobs. Walk-on players, who don't get scholarships and play for love of the game, are included in the numbers game. Consequently, walk-on slots have been radically reduced due to the numbers demands of Title IX. Potential walk-ons have to be "invited" to walk-on by coaches. So committed to proportionality is the OCR that even private citizens, alumni, and boosters cannot fund a team that has been eliminated. The University of Southern California and Princeton ran afoul of the bean-counters in the mid-1990s and chose to shut down their swimming and wrestling teams. Private money and boosters stepped forward to fund each team, but the universities shut them down anyway. Said Carol Zaleski of United States Swimming, "It's not a question of money. It's a question of numbers."
Many in the anti-quota crowd took a sigh of relief with the election of George W. Bush in 2000. Finally, some thought, common sense will find its way into Title IX. Such wasn't meant to be.
In 2002, Rod Paige, Bush's Secretary of Education, announced the formation of the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics (COA), a panel of former sports figures and policy wonks who would look into Title IX and its enforcement. The commission hoped to find ways to improve the law. Four townhall-style meetings were held across the nation to allow the public to express their views and offer suggestions for improving the law. The reaction from the usual suspects was immediate and hysterical. Feminists were apoplectic at the mere mention of altering Title IX. "We are deeply troubled by the commission's action," said Jocelyn Samuels, the vice-president of the National Women's Law Center, adding, "This allows the secretary of education to radically restructure current practices..." The irony of Ms. Samuel's words flies right over her head; "radically restructure" Title IX is exactly what Norma Cantu did from her first day on the job. Donna Lopiano, the executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, chimed in also: "The commission has opened the barn door for the Bush administration to weaken Title IX. This gives the education secretary license to do pretty much anything he wants." And Norma Cantu didn't do whatever she felt?
Ultimately, the COA and the townhall meetings were a sham. The Title IX-mafia won in the end. Though all the recommendations of the COA, including eliminating quotas, were approved by an 8-5 vote of the commission's members, Secretary Paige said he would only act on those measures that were unanimous, thus giving a veto to the very people who caused the problems with Title IX and the reason for the commission in the first place. In a future Republican administration -- such would never happen in a Democratic one -- Title IX might be revisited. One can only hope.
Title IX is what happens whenever an angry member of the permanently indignant with an axe to grind gets to exorcise the permanent chip on their shoulder. Common sense is tossed aside in favor of an agenda. More often than not that agenda is about "getting someone" or "atoning" for past sins. It might be the wealthy one moment, or corporations the next, but someone is going to pay when it comes to radicals and their agendas. Men are the "despised sex" for feminists, so male athletes paid the price. Such is the price for "social justice," a term that should make any sane person cringe when hearing it because at some point "they" could be the target for the do-gooders.
Monday, October 22, 2007
It's The Thugs, Stupid!
In my sixteen plus years in the Memphis City Schools (MCS), there was a time when I was shocked at seeing a former student of mine's name in the paper accused of one crime or another. However, I am no longer shocked or even surprised when I read familiar names in the daily newspaper or see familiar faces on the 10:00 news -- names and faces often attached to one heinous crime after another. In most instances, I could have predicted such for these individuals. Such was their behavior in my class, when I tried to teach them English, the operative word being "tried." These non-learners of the first order simply would have none of it. In fact, most of these reprobates I speak of were outright hostile to any and all things school-related: English, math, science, rules, authority, order, etc.
It goes without saying that I was not the least bit surprised to see the mug of Christian Taylor on the August 30, 2007 10 PM newscast. He had escaped a work detail in Frayser, and the story told of his capture after a brief period of freedom in the 38127 area. That Christian Taylor was on the run from the police only seemed fitting to me, as the entire time he was a "student" at Westside High School, all he did was run the hallways, peeking around corners for administrators, taking momentary breaks to curse a teacher, harass a co-ed, disrupt a class, smoke some dope or vandalize the building in some manner. The kid was a chaotic, disrespectful and anti-intellectual ball of dysfunction and a royal pain-in-the-ass at the age of fourteen. God only knows...no, actually everyone knows...the type person he is now. It was not a real stretch to see prison in his future; it was a certainty.
Because the MCS did not expel -- the system does not expel in the numbers it should -- this non-learner, the system, in essence, is partly responsible for the plight of Christian Taylor, for it, by its non-action, told Christian that he could behave in any way he desired without consequence. Christian Taylor figured he could do the same in the "real world." Taylor is an MCS "success story," in that what he did in school prepped him for what he would do in his life after school -- running from the law (after committing burglary or robbery, of course). This is not to say his career is going well, as witnessed by his conviction and prison term.
There are many "Christian Taylors" in MCS high schools right now. For these non-learners, the arrival of their first pubic hair brings with it a wholesale rejection of all that is civilized and decent and a full embrace of the uncivilized and abnormal. The "Three R's" of academia are scoffed at by these types, who much prefer the values of hip-hop/gang/prison culture: sex, drugs and violence. For these non-learners, a book is merely a square projectile to hurl at another student; profanity is often their first language; dope-dealing and home invasions are legitimate career options for these anti-intellectual types. Homework to these non-learners means selling dope to a relative.
I do not exaggerate. Daily, I venture to the Shelby County Jail website. I am seldom surprised by the names or crimes of these former students of mine. A May 2007 visit to the kiosk found 18 former students of mine locked-up for an array of charges ranging from the mild (possession) to the violent (first-degree murder). I am sometimes bothered by what I see, for some of these perps had good heads on their shoulders. They did not, however, possess any desire for anything decent. lusting instead for the "thug life" championed by the dead hoodlum (and sometime rapper) Tupac Shakur.
It is disheartening to see young people -- some as young as thirteen years of age -- willingly and lustfully choosing to join gangs and the life of crime it entails.
I do not believe the schools can do anything to save these type of non-learners. These young people bring problems with them that the school did not create. Therefore, there is not a thing the schools can do to fix them. A school's job is to educate and to prepare the young to be productive and good citizens. It is not a school's job to be a parent. Unfortunately, this has been forgotten, and teachers have to spend an inordinate amount of time on these "nut-jobs," thus hurting the well-intended "real" students.
I got into teaching out of a real concern for young people. I believed that as a coach, I could help young folks navigate their high school years and have a real impact on their lives. Instead, I (and other teachers) have become nothing more than a cog in the "expensive baby-sitting arrangement" Ann Coulter writes of in her best-seller Godless, providing the needed service of "keeping hoodlums off the street during daylight hours."
While not the career I envisioned, I do have a great desk and get the summers off.
It goes without saying that I was not the least bit surprised to see the mug of Christian Taylor on the August 30, 2007 10 PM newscast. He had escaped a work detail in Frayser, and the story told of his capture after a brief period of freedom in the 38127 area. That Christian Taylor was on the run from the police only seemed fitting to me, as the entire time he was a "student" at Westside High School, all he did was run the hallways, peeking around corners for administrators, taking momentary breaks to curse a teacher, harass a co-ed, disrupt a class, smoke some dope or vandalize the building in some manner. The kid was a chaotic, disrespectful and anti-intellectual ball of dysfunction and a royal pain-in-the-ass at the age of fourteen. God only knows...no, actually everyone knows...the type person he is now. It was not a real stretch to see prison in his future; it was a certainty.
Because the MCS did not expel -- the system does not expel in the numbers it should -- this non-learner, the system, in essence, is partly responsible for the plight of Christian Taylor, for it, by its non-action, told Christian that he could behave in any way he desired without consequence. Christian Taylor figured he could do the same in the "real world." Taylor is an MCS "success story," in that what he did in school prepped him for what he would do in his life after school -- running from the law (after committing burglary or robbery, of course). This is not to say his career is going well, as witnessed by his conviction and prison term.
There are many "Christian Taylors" in MCS high schools right now. For these non-learners, the arrival of their first pubic hair brings with it a wholesale rejection of all that is civilized and decent and a full embrace of the uncivilized and abnormal. The "Three R's" of academia are scoffed at by these types, who much prefer the values of hip-hop/gang/prison culture: sex, drugs and violence. For these non-learners, a book is merely a square projectile to hurl at another student; profanity is often their first language; dope-dealing and home invasions are legitimate career options for these anti-intellectual types. Homework to these non-learners means selling dope to a relative.
I do not exaggerate. Daily, I venture to the Shelby County Jail website. I am seldom surprised by the names or crimes of these former students of mine. A May 2007 visit to the kiosk found 18 former students of mine locked-up for an array of charges ranging from the mild (possession) to the violent (first-degree murder). I am sometimes bothered by what I see, for some of these perps had good heads on their shoulders. They did not, however, possess any desire for anything decent. lusting instead for the "thug life" championed by the dead hoodlum (and sometime rapper) Tupac Shakur.
It is disheartening to see young people -- some as young as thirteen years of age -- willingly and lustfully choosing to join gangs and the life of crime it entails.
I do not believe the schools can do anything to save these type of non-learners. These young people bring problems with them that the school did not create. Therefore, there is not a thing the schools can do to fix them. A school's job is to educate and to prepare the young to be productive and good citizens. It is not a school's job to be a parent. Unfortunately, this has been forgotten, and teachers have to spend an inordinate amount of time on these "nut-jobs," thus hurting the well-intended "real" students.
I got into teaching out of a real concern for young people. I believed that as a coach, I could help young folks navigate their high school years and have a real impact on their lives. Instead, I (and other teachers) have become nothing more than a cog in the "expensive baby-sitting arrangement" Ann Coulter writes of in her best-seller Godless, providing the needed service of "keeping hoodlums off the street during daylight hours."
While not the career I envisioned, I do have a great desk and get the summers off.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
The Return of the I-Man
Don Imus is set to return to the airwaves in December at WABS-AM in New York City. He will return better known than at any point in his long career, an unintended consequence of his detractors and their successful efforts to get him canned this past April. His return comes after his firing in April form CBS Radio for his now infamous "nappy headed hos" gibe aimed at the Rutgers women's basketball team. Even though the I-Man apologized privately, publicly (and profusely) to the Rutgers team, a debate has begun among the thought-control left, those jackals who believe Imus: a) was not out of work long enough, or b) should not be allowed ever to ply his trade again.
The decision by Citadel Broadcasting to hire Don Imus has caused hyper-sensitive liberals to do what they love to do: feel indignant and outraged. Do these people ever just rise in the morning and enjoy the day?
Barbara Ciara of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) feels Imus didn't suffer enough or long enough for his "despicable" actions: "To put him on the air now makes light of his serious and offensive racial remarks that are still ringing in the ears of people all over the country." Stephan A. Smith of ESPN launched into a ten minute tirade on the subject of Imus, saying Imus should be suspended at least "a year." Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization of Women, called the hiring of Imus "a bad dream," asking, "Didn't they learn anything?"
This is all so odd. Back in April, the hypersensitive-thought and speech-police were screaming that Imus should be fired. They got that. Now, they are demanding that he be "suspended a year," as if the firing, the ultimate penalty for an employee, never occurred. Are Stephan A. Smith and his fellow travelers calling on privately-owned broadcast companies never to hire Imus? Though they will never admit it, the answer is an obvious "Yes." If they could "tar and feather" Imus, they would. Don Imus joins the ranks of Al Campanis, Jimmy the Greek, John Rocker and others in the "club," white guys who broke the unofficial 11Th Commandment: "Thou, if thee are white, shall not say (even in jest) an ill word about black people."
The entire incident is disturbing. It says much for the current political environment. A shock-jock, unknown to many, becomes a household name for a comment made with no malice intended whatsoever. Sure, it was dumb thing to say, but are those three little words worthy of a national debate? Or the psuedo-outrage from the usual quarters? I think not.
Abraham Lincoln used just 266 words in his famous address at Gettysburg, yet Vivian Stringer, the Rutgers head coach, spent over thirty minutes before a cable tv audience talking of the hurtful impact of Don Imus's dumb comments. It is a sign of the times that "nappy headed hos" carries as much seriousness as "Fourscore and seven years ago..." How far as we as a nation really come?
I have taught and coached largely black children in my 16 years in the 87% black Memphis City Schools. I have heard much worse language used by black male students toward their female classmates in that time, with "bitch" being the preferred term of address. However, because of all the fuss over the Imus situation, there has been a resurgence in the usage of "nappy headed hos." Prior to April 12, 2007, most, if not all, of my students did not know who Don Imus was. Now, because of this imbroglio, almost all know who he is. And his alleged crime is now commonplace.
Don Imus was not the problem on April 12, 2007; he never was the problem. Getting Imus canned from CBS Radio will be hailed as civil rights win, but it will not help the first black person. It's simply style over substance. Sadly, much of what passes for "civil rights victories" is the same. Black liberals will point and say, "See, we got Imus. We speak for and defend the voiceless." The impact of this type of protest is thimble-deep.
Jason Whitlock, a columnist for the Kansas City Star, sums up the Imus mess and its impact quite succinctly: "We know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old whtie guy with a bad radio show. There's no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out."
The decision by Citadel Broadcasting to hire Don Imus has caused hyper-sensitive liberals to do what they love to do: feel indignant and outraged. Do these people ever just rise in the morning and enjoy the day?
Barbara Ciara of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) feels Imus didn't suffer enough or long enough for his "despicable" actions: "To put him on the air now makes light of his serious and offensive racial remarks that are still ringing in the ears of people all over the country." Stephan A. Smith of ESPN launched into a ten minute tirade on the subject of Imus, saying Imus should be suspended at least "a year." Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization of Women, called the hiring of Imus "a bad dream," asking, "Didn't they learn anything?"
This is all so odd. Back in April, the hypersensitive-thought and speech-police were screaming that Imus should be fired. They got that. Now, they are demanding that he be "suspended a year," as if the firing, the ultimate penalty for an employee, never occurred. Are Stephan A. Smith and his fellow travelers calling on privately-owned broadcast companies never to hire Imus? Though they will never admit it, the answer is an obvious "Yes." If they could "tar and feather" Imus, they would. Don Imus joins the ranks of Al Campanis, Jimmy the Greek, John Rocker and others in the "club," white guys who broke the unofficial 11Th Commandment: "Thou, if thee are white, shall not say (even in jest) an ill word about black people."
The entire incident is disturbing. It says much for the current political environment. A shock-jock, unknown to many, becomes a household name for a comment made with no malice intended whatsoever. Sure, it was dumb thing to say, but are those three little words worthy of a national debate? Or the psuedo-outrage from the usual quarters? I think not.
Abraham Lincoln used just 266 words in his famous address at Gettysburg, yet Vivian Stringer, the Rutgers head coach, spent over thirty minutes before a cable tv audience talking of the hurtful impact of Don Imus's dumb comments. It is a sign of the times that "nappy headed hos" carries as much seriousness as "Fourscore and seven years ago..." How far as we as a nation really come?
I have taught and coached largely black children in my 16 years in the 87% black Memphis City Schools. I have heard much worse language used by black male students toward their female classmates in that time, with "bitch" being the preferred term of address. However, because of all the fuss over the Imus situation, there has been a resurgence in the usage of "nappy headed hos." Prior to April 12, 2007, most, if not all, of my students did not know who Don Imus was. Now, because of this imbroglio, almost all know who he is. And his alleged crime is now commonplace.
Don Imus was not the problem on April 12, 2007; he never was the problem. Getting Imus canned from CBS Radio will be hailed as civil rights win, but it will not help the first black person. It's simply style over substance. Sadly, much of what passes for "civil rights victories" is the same. Black liberals will point and say, "See, we got Imus. We speak for and defend the voiceless." The impact of this type of protest is thimble-deep.
Jason Whitlock, a columnist for the Kansas City Star, sums up the Imus mess and its impact quite succinctly: "We know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old whtie guy with a bad radio show. There's no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out."
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