Monday, June 23, 2014


Why I will never check my privilege

The idea of “white privilege” has been a hot topic for the left-wing media. The phrase “check your privilege” is commonly used by leftist activists as a way of telling a person who is making a political point that they should remember they are speaking from a privileged position, because they are white, male, heterosexual, or wealthy.

After watching the footage captured by Progressives Today at the 2014 White Privilege Conference, I became highly suspicious of what these activists are asking for when they demand someone to check their privilege.

One of the presenters was Kim Radersma, a former high school English teacher in California and Colorado. Radersma is currently working toward her Ph. D. in critical whiteness studies at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. After hearing Radersma’s speech, I find it hard to believe this wasn’t actually a conference for white supremacists.

“Being a white person who does anti-racist work is like being an alcoholic. I will never be recovered by my alcoholism, to use the metaphor,” Radersma said. “I have to everyday wake up and acknowledge that I am so deeply imbedded with racist thoughts and notions and actions in my body that I have to choose everyday to do anti-racist work and think in an anti-racist way.”

Another topic of discussion was how altruistic actions performed by white people, like donating to charity, are inherently racist. A white attendee of the conference told a story about how her family donated school supplies to one of her classmates when she was in elementary school because the family could not afford them. According to the attendee, the family had just moved from India. While she was happy to be helping when it happened years ago, she is now questioning her family’s motives.

“It was like ‘well why don’t you swoop in and save the day and give her all this stuff because we can afford to do that for them’ kind of mentality,” she said in the session. Radersma agreed and said the receiving family likely felt discriminated against.

“It’s that savior mentality, like ‘save them, because they are not like us,’ and that normalization of whiteness. Whiteness is best and those poor others aren’t as good as us,” she said. “So, we need to think of them and give them our sympathy and our charity and our generosity, which is so demeaning to the people on the receiving end. It’s so demoralizing and disempowering to be receiving it.”

I am absolutely appalled by the blatant racism these WPC attendees and speakers displayed. I don’t feel the need to check my white privilege because, unlike Radersma, I don’t see skin color – I see people. It truly breaks my heart to see these supposedly “anti-racism activists” undermining everything people of color have fought for and accomplished.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” I thought we had finally reached that point and I’m not alone.  In a brilliantly written article “White Privilege explained” Kevin Jackson claims, “As a black man, I long to experience white privilege. Until the National White Privilege Conference came along, I thought I was getting as much privilege as any white man. Apparently not.”

Speakers and attendees of the White Privilege Convention have made the content of their character very clear and it’s not pretty. They should be more honest in 2015 and declare their bigoted and hateful speeches a “White Supremacy Convention.”

SOURCE






Jews face rising anti-Semitism in France

In a country where Jewish leaders are decrying the worst climate of anti-Semitism in decades, Dieudonné, a long time comedian and erstwhile politician whose attacks on Jews have grown progressively worse, is a sign of the times. French authorities issued an effective ban on his latest show in January for inciting hate. So he reworked the material to get back on stage, cutting, for instance, one joke lamenting the lack of modern day gas chambers.

But the Afro-French comedian, whose stage name is simply Dieudonné, managed to salvage other bits, including his signature “quenelle” salute. Across Europe, the downward arm gesture that looks like an inverted Nazi salute has now gone so viral that it has popped up on army bases, in parliaments, at weddings, and professional soccer matches. Neo-Nazis have used it in front of synagogues and Holocaust memorials. Earlier this year, bands of Dieudonné supporters flashed it during a street protest in Paris while shouting, “Jews, out of France!”

In Western Europe, no nation has seen the climate for Jews deteriorate more than France.

Anti-Semitism has ebbed and flowed both here and throughout the region since the end of World War II, with outbreaks of violence and international terror -- particularly in the 1980s and early 2000s -- often linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Jewish leaders here are now warning of a recent and fundamental shift tied to a spurt of homegrown anti-Semitism.

Earlier this month, authorities arrested Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year old French national, for the May killings of 4 people inside a Jewish museum in Brussels. The attack was the deadliest act of anti-Semitism since a gunmen killed seven people, including three children at a Jewish day school, in Toulouse in 2012. Memmouche allegedly launched his attack after a tour of duty with rebels in Syria, prompting a wave of fear of additional violence to come here as more of the hundreds of French nationals fighting there make their way home.

In a country that harbors the largest Jewish community in Europe, the first three months of the year saw reported acts of anti-Semitic violence in France skyrocket to 140 incidents, a 40 percent increase compared to the same period last year. This month, two young Jewish men were jumped and severely beaten on their way to synagogue in an eastern suburb of Paris.

Near the city’s Montmartre district, home to the Moulin Rouge and the Church of the Sacre-Coeur, a white woman verbally accosted a Jewish mother before rattling the carriage of her six-month old child and shouting “dirty Jewess…you Jews have too many children,” according to a report filed by France’s National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, not far from the rolling vineyards of Bordeaux, Stars of David were recently spray painted on the homes of Jews.

A recent global survey by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League suggested that France now has the highest percentage in Western Europe – 37 percent -- of people openly harboring anti-Semitic views. That compares to 8 percent in Britain, 20 percent in Italy and 27 percent in Germany. Jewish leaders chalk that up in part to growing radicalization of youths in France’s Muslim population – the largest in Europe – as well as outrage in the general public and French media over Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

But it is also far more complex.

Anti-Semitism, Jewish activists fear, is becoming more socially acceptable. In May, for instance, the far-right National Front -- a party long rooted in anti-Semitism but that sought to portray itself as a reformed --- came in first in elections here for the European Parliament, winning a whopping 25 percent of the national vote. Yet last week, its patriarch, Jean-Marie Le Pen, suggested just how unreformed a segment of the party remains. In a video posted on the party’s website, he suggested a Jewish folk singer should be thrown “in an oven”

Le Pen’s daughter and current party leader, Marine Le Pen , offered a rare rebuke of her father’s words, and ordered footage of the comments off the party’s website. But the elder Le Pen’s musings were nevertheless seen as unsurprising within a party whose older members have long harken back to the days of Vichy France, the Nazi collaborators who allowed tens of thousands of French Jews to go to their deaths.

“I walked into my kosher sandwich shop the other day and the owner asked me, ‘is it time to leave? Are we Nazi Germany yet?” said Shimon Samuels, the Paris-based International Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “We’ve got the National Front in first place. We’ve got Dieudonné, spreading his hate. So I told him, ‘well, do you really want to be the last to go?’”

Indeed, French migration to Israel in 2013 jumped to 3,200, up 64 percent from 2012. A huge uptick in departures already this year has Jewish leaders here predicting at least 5,000 French Jews will leave in 2014.

“We’ve been thinking about moving for a long time, but the climate was not as dangerous as it is now,” said Alain, a 30 year old Persian medical equipment specialist who is moving to Israel in July with his wife and three children. He declined to give his last name out of fear for his family’s security.

Sitting at his modest dining room table in eastern Paris, a set of moving boxes in the next room, he added “it bothers me because this is not normal, this is not how I remember France when I was growing up.”

Two weeks ago, Alain said, he woke up to find his 13-year old daughter, Michele, crying. After a recent attack against two Jewish boys not far from her school, she said she was too afraid to join her regular carpool. Instead, she demanded that he personally take her to school, and pick her up, standing guard as she entered and exited each day. He has moved his work schedule around to accommodate her request.

Asked what she was scared of, Michele, an elegant French teenager in a fashionable black skirt and white T-shirt, looked down, and said: “I’m afraid that what happened in Toulouse will happen at my school too…I hear what people say about Jews. And I am scared.”

SOURCE





Cincinnati Station Says ‘No’ to PC Reporting on Racially Motivated Crime

A remarkable thing happened in Cincinnati on Thursday. WKRC-TV, which has taken to calling itself “Local 12,” did a story on the growing problem of black-on-white teen mob violence — and called it black-on-white teen mob violence.

The event where the violence occurred took place two weeks earlier during Memorial Day weekend at the city’s Taste of Cincinnati event downtown.

Maybe it was the fact that the county prosecutor’s son was among those assaulted. Or perhaps it was the perceived threat to the city’s most beloved fall event. Whatever the cause, Local 12 followed through on Dixon’s original outrage. The station didn’t sweep the larger story under the rug. It even introduced a word — “black” — into its June 12 video and print story which wasn’t in its or the Enquirer’s original reports.

Among the refreshing truths told — refreshing because, despite their ugliness, they represent the truth:

11 victims filed reports saying they were kicked, punched or stomped by a group of black teenagers or young adults, boys and girls. Ten of the victims were white, one was Asian. Two reported racial slurs. Noelle Findlay was so certain the assault (on her and her husband while they were in their car) was racially motivated; the police report says “hate crime” … because she believes there was no other motive.

(on the general problem of black teen violence targeting non-blacks)

… Dr. John Wright, a criminal justice professor at UC (University of Cincinnati), said, “I think it is racist behavior, racist behavior when you target a group based on their race, sexual orientation, it’s the very nature of a hate crime.”

… “We are unwilling to speak about race when it comes to crime because it is a sensitive matter,” said Wright. “Allegations of racism ruins careers, ruin lives. The media remains silent or targets the people who bring up the issue.”

… Pastor Peterson Mingo of Evanston (a Cincinnati neighborhood) said, “Not too many ways to explain that behavior, have to condemn it, can’t be tolerated.”

Sociologists weighing in suggest high unemployment and resentment fueled by segregation are possible causes.

Mingo says there is something else, “There is a thing about loyalty. You with me or you ain’t. If you with me I’m getting ready to knock dude up side head lets go. It’s not where you can say I’m not going to. You’re either with me or you’re not.”

The station also has additional video of its interview with Dr. Wright, who minced no words:

Partial transcript:

If groups of white students, white kids, were running around, violating blacks, beating up black fathers, beating up 13-year-old black girls, there would be the hue and cry sounded. We would take it as seriously as we take anything else. Time magazine, the New York Times, everybody would cover this. Everybody.

… But if it’s turned the other way around, everybody is so afraid to speak about race and crime that they are silent. That silence is killing people. That silence allows this to continue.

But there can be no acceptable excuse for mob violence. None.

… The attorney general said that we’re “a nation of cowards” when it comes to speaking about race. At one level he’s right, but there’s a reason why people are uncomfortable talking about race and are uncomfortable talking about the dynamics of black behavior. Not all black behavior. Let’s be very clear about this. The vast majority of African-Americans are law-abiding people. … They deserve our support and encouragement. They deserve our protection.

… It’s better to be honest, even if the honesty is dirty, than to live a lie that is clean.

Author Colin Flaherty has been looking at black teen crimes targeting whites for some time. He has compiled a list of incidents “in more than a dozen cities around the country. Some fatal” — just this past Memorial Day weekend. His latest book ”documents more than 500 cases of black mob violence in more than 100 cities around the country.” The vast majority have barely made a media ripple — and when they do, the obvious racial element is deliberately ignored.

Local 12′s and Flaherty’s efforts at shining the light of truth are praiseworthy and important, but still far from complete. Two larger questions loom.

The first: What can be done to reverse the shocking growth in race-based hatred among blacks?

The second: Why have the nation’s first black president and his “nation of cowards” attorney general made virtually no attempt to attack this problem head-on?

SOURCE






I may have been wrong to condemn Christian B&B owners for banning gay couple because those with religious beliefs have rights too, says top judge

A judge who condemned a Christian couple for turning away gay guests from their hotel  yesterday said her decision may have been wrong.

Supreme Court deputy president Baroness Hale called for a rethink on religious and gay rights six months after she rejected the B&B owners’ arguments in a key test case.

Lady Hale said in a speech that the law has done too little to protect the beliefs of Christians. And she cast doubts over her own judgment in the landmark case in which a gay couple sued Christian hoteliers Peter and Hazelmary Bull.

Mr Bull, 74, and his 70-year-old wife refused a double room at their Cornish hotel to Steven Preddy and Martyn Hall in 2008 because they were not a married heterosexual couple.

The incident led to a string of court cases, which culminated in defeat for the Bulls at the Supreme Court – where Lady Hale, leading four other judges, ruled that the rights of the gay couple outweighed the conscience of the Christian couple. Lady Hale declared in her Supreme Court ruling that we should be ‘slow to accept’ the right of Christians to discriminate against gay people.

But in March she acknowledged that the laws which ignore Christian consciences might not be ‘sustainable’. Last week, in a highly unusual move, Lady Hale and her fellow judges ordered that the Bulls will not be liable for legal costs – a decision which spares them a huge bill which would pay for the lawyers who represented Mr Preddy and Mr Hall.

And in a speech to Irish lawyers yesterday she gave an indication that her judgment against the Bulls may have been too harsh, asking whether courts would be better off taking a ‘more nuanced approach’.

Lady Hale suggested that the law should develop a ‘conscience clause’ for Christians like the Bulls.

She said: ‘I am not sure our law has found a reasonable accommodation of all these different strands’, adding: ‘An example of treatment which Christians may feel to be unfair is the recent case of Bull v Hall. Should we be developing an explicit requirement upon providers of employment, goods and services to make reasonable accommodation for the manifestation of religious beliefs?’

Last year the Bulls were on the point of selling their hotel, Chymorvah House in Marazion. However they said they have managed to stay in business thanks to help from supporters. Mrs Bull said: ‘The pendulum has swung too far one way.

‘Why can’t two lifestyles live together? It is too late for us, but we are glad the issue hasn’t gone away. It is being debated so there may be an opportunity for more balance to be brought into this.’

And Colin Hart, from the Christian Institute, said: ‘The penny is beginning to drop among judges that the law is unfair. I hope the Supreme Court will find more room to protect Christian consciences.’

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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