Tuesday, February 21, 2012


British boy, 7, branded a racist for asking schoolmate: 'Are you brown because you come from Africa?'

And the thought-police are not backing down

The mother of a seven-year-old boy was told to sign a school form admitting he was racist after he asked another pupil about the colour of his skin. Elliott Dearlove had asked a five-year-old boy in the playground whether he was ‘brown because he was from Africa’.

His mother, Hayley White, 29, said she received a phone call last month to say her son had been at the centre of a ‘racist incident’. She was then summoned to a meeting with Elliott, his teacher and the deputy head of Griffin Primary School in Hull.

Ms White, an NHS healthcare assistant, said: ‘When I arrived at the school and asked Elliott what had happened, he became extremely upset. 'He kept saying to me, “I was just asking a question. I didn’t mean it to be nasty” and he was extremely distressed by it all.’

Ms White claimed she was asked at the meeting to read a copy of the school rules and in particular its zero-tolerance policy on racism. ‘I was told I would have to sign a form acknowledging my son had made a racist remark which would be submitted to the local education authority for further investigation,’ she said.

‘I refused to sign it and I told the teacher in no way did I agree the comment was racist. My son is inquisitive. He always likes to ask questions, but that doesn’t make him a racist.’

The school had launched an investigation after the younger boy told his mother about Elliott’s comment and she complained.

Ms White, who lives in a three-bedroom house with her son and nine-year-old daughter Olivia, has now applied to have Elliott moved from the school. She claimed she was told there were places at nearby Thanet Primary School, but the council informed her last Friday that this was not the case. ‘I am going to appeal against this decision because I think Elliott is being victimised,’ she said.

Karl Turner, Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull East, last night insisted that the school and Hull City Council had a statutory duty to take racism seriously. ‘However, having spoken to Hayley, I’m satisfied that her seven-year-old son, Elliott, was not being racist in his remarks but just inquisitive,’ he said. ‘It seems the matter has been taken out of all proportion and common sense seems to have gone completely out of the window.’

In a statement, Griffin Primary head teacher Janet Adamson said the school had acted ‘in accordance with the council’s guidance for schools on the reporting of racist incidents’.

Vanessa Harvey-Samuel, head of localities and learning at Hull City Council, said: ‘There is a statutory duty to report any incident that is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.’

Last year, it was revealed that teachers are branding thousands of children racist or homophobic following playground squabbles. More than 20,000 pupils aged 11 or younger were put on record for so-called hate crimes such as using the word ‘gaylord’.

SOURCE




Australians to be healed from 'Islamophobia' by head of global Islamic organisation -- at the invitation of Foreign Minister Rudd

This week Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd has invited Professor Ekmelledin Ihsanoglu, the Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), to discuss “Transition and Change: The OIC and the Islamic World”

Events take place on February 15th and 16th at the National Press Club of Australia and at Griffith University, Brisbane. Following similar events in Europe and Washington, Mr Rudd’s visitor is here to educate and help us overcome “Islamophobia” in Australia.

The OIC, which represents 56 Islamic states, makes up the largest voting bloc of the UN.

United in their effort to limit critical discussion of the Islamic religion and sharia law, these countries refuse to sign the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. OIC members construed the ‘Cairo Declaration’, in which human rights are subject to interpretation by Islamic clergy and sharia law. The OIC is headquartered in Saudi Arabia, a feudal monarchy renown for violation of basic human rights under strict sharia law.

The feigned concern of the OIC with discrimination against Islam and more notably views not supportive of Islam is in contrast to the violent intolerance experienced by non-Muslim minorities in many Islamic countries. Indigenous religious minorities, which are not afforded the same respect, recognition or equality demanded by the OIC for Muslim immigrants in the West.

Author and human rights activist Ayan Hirsi Ali‘s recent article 'The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World' highlights “... an unrecognised battle costing thousands of lives.” With these facts in mind, there are serious questions democratic governments should be asking the OIC, before taking advice from Professor Ihsanoglu.

Q Society appeals to Mr Rudd to show courage and openly address this discrepancy and the discrimination against non-Muslims, evident in almost every OIC country.

Vilifying critics of Islam and sharia practices as 'islamophobic' is in fact aiding and abetting those who seek to silence the debate about the rise of Islamic sharia, both in the West and in the once secular countries of the OIC.

SOURCE




Political Correctness is Hurting America

I recently ran across an old Internet joke that attempts to define the term “political correctness.” The joke reads: “Political correctness is a doctrine – fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rapidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media – which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end.” It’s as funny as it is nakedly true. It started me thinking about how political correctness affects us.

I know it does not help us – because as a nation we have come far through fundamental honesty with each other. I am passionate that our success as a nation stems in large part from the brilliance of our founders starting with the freedom embodied in the First Amendment. This freedom has been complemented by a culture which, until recently, encourages and rewards the type of Will Rodgers honesty, entrepreneurial challenge to the status quo, and an immigrant-inspired push for something better. The precise antithesis of political correctness.

Political correctness is the enemy of honest communication. We saw it last year with the firing of Juan Williams from NPR after he said: “I’m not a bigot … But when I get on a plane, I’ve got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

What’s troubling about this episode is that Williams was attempting to begin an honest discussion and got canned for it. As one who has spoken and written about civil rights, he was clearly doing some introspection and contrasting his feelings against what he had knew was the “correct” feeling. All Williams’ firing did was reinforce the concept that we should not have honest discussions about tough issues like religion and ethnicity.

But it’s not just in the political-pundit realm that political correctness has shut down the First Amendment. Take the laws protecting anyone in a “suspect class” from hiring, promotion or firing discrimination. As any lawyer, HR manager or employer knows, this means that an employer incurs more legal risk in hiring or firing anyone who is not a white male under 40. That means it is safer and less risky to hire a white male under 40. Given what these laws are trying to accomplish, does that make any sense at all?

Political correctness does not allow us to have a discussion on the harmful impact these laws may be having on hiring of females, minorities, disabled and those who are older. Many employers have encountered an employee who doesn’t work out, hires a lawyer and extorts a settlement from the employer. We hired an employee who was over 60 and insisted on a nap every day. When terminated for poor performance she hired an attorney who said we were discriminating against her on the basis of her age.

Political correctness prevents the type of honest discussion we need to solve our biggest problems. Our nation is in trouble. We are struggling largely because we are not being honest with each other. We are selecting politicians who promise easy solutions and avoid tough discussions.

We cannot expect to recover our economic prosperity when we pillory any politician, pundit or organization that dares to touch the third-rail. We should reward the Juan Williamses of the world for asking the tough questions. The difference between a culture of honesty, respect and diversity is different from a legal and elite mandate of a code of silence that precludes discussion of the toughest issues.

America can and should do better. We can begin by discussing and recognizing that political correctness is neither healthy nor helpful in the type of honest discussion we need to solve the big problems we face. This does not mean we need to change laws or start discriminating. It means we need to stop the censors and confront our divisive issues. Americans have turned on each other, and political correctness is the weapon of choice in ensuring we stay divided.

SOURCE




Rising Black Social Pathology

Walter E. Williams

The Philadelphia Inquirer's big story Feb. 4 was about how a budget crunch at the Philadelphia School District had caused the district to lay off 91 school police officers. Over the years, there's been no discussion of what has happened to our youth that makes a school police force necessary in the first place. The Inquirer's series "Assault on Learning" (March 2011) reported that in the 2010 school year, "690 teachers were assaulted; in the last five years, 4,000 were." The newspaper reported that in Philadelphia's 268 schools, "on an average day 25 students, teachers, or other staff members were beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted, or victims of other violent crimes. That doesn't even include thousands more who are extorted, threatened, or bullied in a school year."

I graduated from Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin High School in 1954. Franklin's students were from the poorest North Philadelphia neighborhoods -- such as the Richard Allen housing project, where I lived -- but there were no policemen patrolling the hallways. There were occasional after-school fights -- rumbles, we called them -- but within the school, there was order. Students didn't use foul language to teachers, much less assault them.

How might one explain the greater civility of Philadelphia and other big-city, predominantly black schools during earlier periods compared with today? Would anyone argue that during the '40s and '50s, back when Williams attended Philadelphia schools, there was less racial discrimination and poverty and there were greater opportunities for blacks and that's why academic performance was higher and there was greater civility? Or how about "in earlier periods, there was more funding for predominantly black schools"? Or how about "in earlier periods, black students had more black role models in the forms of black principals, teachers and guidance counselors"? If such arguments were to be made, it would be sheer lunacy. If white and black liberals and civil rights leaders want to make such arguments, they'd best wait until those of us who lived during the '40s and '50s have departed the scene.

Over the past couple of decades, I've attended neighborhood reunions. I've asked whether any of us recall classmates who couldn't read, write or perform simple calculations, and none of us does. Back in those days, most Philadelphia school principals, teachers and counselors were white. At Stoddart-Fleisher junior high school, where I attended, I recall that only one teacher was black, and at Benjamin Franklin, there might have been two. What does that say about the role model theory? By the way, Asian-Americans are at the top of the academic ladder, and, at least historically, they rarely experience an Asian-American teacher during their K-through-12 schooling.

Many black students are alien and hostile to the education process. They are permitted to make education impossible for other students. Their misbehavior and violence require schools to divert resources away from education and spend them on security, such as hiring school police and purchasing metal detectors, all of which does little for school safety. The violent school climate discourages the highest-skilled teachers from teaching at schools where they risk assaults, intimidation and theft. At a bare minimum, part of the solution to school violence and poor academic performance should be the expulsion of students who engage in assaults and disrespectful behavior. You say, "What's to be done for these students?" Even if we don't know what to do with them, how compassionate and intelligent is it to permit them to make education impossible for other students?

The fact that black parents, teachers, politicians and civil rights organizations tolerate and make excuses for the despicable and destructive behavior of so many young blacks is a gross betrayal of the memory, struggle, sacrifice, sweat and blood of our ancestors. The sorry and tragic state of black education is not going to be turned around until there's a change in what's acceptable and unacceptable behavior by young people. That change has to come from within the black community.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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