Woke Washington State School District Board Member Draws Fire for Cutting Music Program With Claim It Fosters ‘White Supremacy’ and ‘Institutional Violence’

An Olympia School District board member in Washington state is the recipient of intense criticism for attempting to justify budget cuts by eliminating the district’s music classes with the claims the classes promote “white supremacy culture” and “significant institutional violence.”

According to Jason Rantz, host of The Jason Rantz Show on 770KTTH, with an expected district budget shortfall of $11.5 million, School Board Director Scott Clifthorne told parents the music program for fourth and fifth-grade students would be eliminated to make the budget cuts.

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Commentary: America Is a Land of Systemic Justice

Abraham Lincoln described America as a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Today’s Left portrays America as a nation conceived in slavery, and dedicated to the perpetuation of racial oppression. When CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell asked Joe Biden in the summer of 2020, “Do you believe there is ‘systemic racism’ in law enforcement,” Biden answered, “Absolutely. But it’s not just in law enforcement. It’s across the board. It’s in housing. It’s in education. It’s in everything we do.” 

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California School District Hires CRT Critic Consultant to Teach Staff, Parents, and Students

The governing board of the Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD) in California has voted, 3-2, to approve a consulting contract with an anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) attorney who will educate teachers, parents, and students about the ideology and the “myth” of systemic racism.

The board approved a consulting agreement with Attorney Christopher Arend, 71, of Paso Robles.

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College Board Announces Revision of AP African American Studies Course After DeSantis Rejects Pilot for Florida

The College Board announced Tuesday that it will be updating its framework for its Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies (APAAS) course following its rejection by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and his state’s Department of Education (FDOE).

The College Board said in a statement its final framework for the course will be released on Feb. 1, reported WESH.

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White House Equity Initiative Celebrates ‘B.L.A.C.K. to School’ Event to Recruit and Retain Black K-12 Teachers

The White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Black Americans is featuring a “roundtable” event that seeks to promote K-12 public school systems that recruit and retain black teachers.

The invitation for the event, scheduled for Tuesday, August 23, says “B.L.A.C.K. to School” seeks to support “Black school, district, and state educational leaders and creating K12 systems that effectively recruit and retain Black teachers.”

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Commentary: Taxpayers Are Now Funding These 90 Plus ‘Equity’ Plans Across the Federal Government

Under the Biden administration, more than 90 federal agencies have pledged their commitment to equity by adopting action plans that put gender, race and other such factors at the center of their governmental missions.

The Equity Action Plans, which have received little notice since they were posted online last month following a document request from RealClearInvestigations, represent a “whole of government” fight against “entrenched disparities” and the “unbearable human costs of systemic racism.”

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Commentary: The Medical Industry’s Embrace of Woke Science

group of doctors

Just a few years ago, concepts such as “white supremacy,” “systemic racism,” and “structural intersectionality” were not the standard fare of prestigious medical journals. These are now the guiding ideas in a February special issue of “Health Affairs” that focuses on medicine and race.

Featuring nearly two dozen articles with titles such as “Racism Runs Through It” and “Sick and Tired of Being Excluded,” as well as a poem called “Identity,” the Washington, D.C.-based, peer-reviewed journal analyzes racial health disparities not through biology, behavior, or culture, but through the lens of  “whiteness,” along with concepts such as power, systems of oppression, state-sanctioned violence, and critical race praxis – a sampling of terms that come up in the February issue.

Health Affairs, dubbed by a Washington Post columnist as “the bible of health policy,” represents something much more ambitious than woke virtue signaling. Its February issue reflects the effort of newly empowered “anti-racist” scholars to transform concepts that are still considered speculative and controversial – and some say unprovable – into scientific fact. This growing effort to document, measure, and quantify racism is being advanced by other high-profile publications, including The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and Scientific American, which last year ran articles entitled “Modern Mathematics Confronts Its White, Patriarchal Past” and “Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy.”

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Washington State School District Adopts Race-Based Student Discipline Policy

A Washington State school board has adopted a revised “culturally responsive” student discipline policy that weighs a student’s race before deciding on consequences for inappropriate behavior.

Conservative radio host Jason Rantz reported at MyNorthwest this week the Clover Park School Board adopted the new policy by a vote of 3-2 after contentious debate.

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1619 Project’s Nikole Hannah-Jones: ‘Europe Not a Continent,’ Alarm over Ukraine a Racial ‘Dog Whistle’

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the primary author of the widely-discredited “1619 Project,” drew more criticism and ridicule from fellow Twitter users over the weekend when she declared Europe is “not a continent by definition,” and referred to the alarm over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its people, who “appear white,” as a racial “dog whistle.”

“What if I told you Europe is not a continent by definition, but a geopolitical fiction to separate it from Asia and so the alarm about a European, or civilized, or First World nation being invaded is a dog whistle to tell us we should care because they are like us,” Hannah-Jones tweeted, as Fox News noted.

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Anti-Defamation League Redefines Racism for the Second Time Since Summer 2020

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) redefined racism again on Monday with what it called an “interim definition.”

Racism is now defined by the group as occurring “when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or group based on race or ethnicity,” according to Professor Robert Livingston of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University.

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Law Student Government Rejects Free Speech Group Because Debate Can Cause ‘Real Harm’

Emory Law School exterior

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For the second time recently, Emory Law School in Atlanta is dealing with a controversy involving a student-run organization seeking to squelch debate in the name of preventing harmful speech.

Its Student Bar Association, the law school equivalent of student government, denied a charter to the Emory Free Speech Forum (EFSF) in part based on the “lack of mechanisms in place to ensure respectful discourse and engagement” at its events, such as a moderator.

This could cause a “precarious environment” and “potential and real harm” on fraught topics such as race and gender, “when these issues directly affect and harm your peers’ lives in demonstrable and quantitative ways,” the rejection letter said.

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Law Journal Bans ‘Hurtful’ Questioning of Systemic Racism, Prompting Exodus of Contributors

Emory University’s student-led law review is facing a revolt by contributors for demanding that one drop “insensitive language” from a “hurtful and unnecessarily divisive” critique of the concept of systemic racism.

Two contributors confirmed to Just the News they withdrew their essays from a forthcoming “festschrift” issue honoring the work of Emory’s Michael Perry, in protest of Emory Law Journal’s attempt to censor an essay by the University of San Diego’s Larry Alexander.

Alexander told Just the News that he, USD’s Steve Smith and Northwestern’s Andrew Koppelman are now publishing their essays in the Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues, which he edits.

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Healthcare Activists Push for Policies to Hardwire Marxism in Medicine

Healthcare worker in hair net and mask on

The Biden administration proposed giving bonus payments to physicians who acknowledge systemic racism as the primary cause of health differences between racial groups and incorporate so-called “anti-racism” into their medical practices.

The move to pressure healthcare professionals to repeat the claim that racial health disparities are caused by racism and not lifestyle choices is part of a broader, years-long push to hardwire “race Marxism” into the medical field. The effort stretches from medical schools and research institutions to patient care and medical administration, with potentially devastating effects for patients and the healthcare system as a whole.

“Race Marxism,” analogous to “anti-racism” as popularized by Ibram X. Kendi, seeks to promote equal outcomes across racial groups, as opposed to a “colorblind” approach which favors equal opportunity and does not take race into account.

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Indianapolis Equity Administrator Lectures Middle Schoolers About ‘Environmental Racism,’ ‘Racism Against Unborn Black Babies’

A top equity administrator at the biggest school district in Indiana spent nearly an hour lecturing students about systemic racism and encouraged them to become activists, according to video taken of the lecture obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) has conducted numerous equity and racial justice initiatives, including student lectures and lessons, according to documents reviewed by the DCNF. In one Jan. 15 video, Dr. Patricia Payne, the director of the IPS Racial Equity Office explained to students that their black peers are sometimes considered “less than” and encouraged students to “stop all this madness,” as part of a “Racial Justice Speaker Series.”

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Missouri Teachers Told ‘White Supremacy’ Includes ‘All Lives Matter,’ Calling Police on Blacks

Sign that reads "What happened to all lives matter?"

Training materials for the Springfield, Mo., school district told teachers they could be engaging in white supremacy simply by insisting the English language be used or calling police on a black suspect, according to records released under a freedom of information request.

The materials, provided to Just the News, include a 40-plus slide training deck that proclaimed its goal was to train teachers on how to address “systemic racism and xenophobia” in the school district and to understand the difference between oppressors and the oppressed. Critics say the slide deck is part of a larger Critical Race Theory curriculum that parents are increasingly rejecting.

It included an “oppression matrix” that identified privileged social groups capable of oppression as including “white people,” “male assigned at birth,” “gender conforming CIS men and women,” “heterosexuals,” “rich, upper-class people” and “Protestants.”

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Commentary: Medical Journals Pour Forth Hundreds of Articles on Race and Racism

Black Lives Matter protest

The prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association and its JAMA network of other periodicals have published about 950 articles on race, racism, and racial and ethnic disparities and inequities in the past five years – about a third appearing in just the past year.

A search for “health disparities” on the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed.gov search page shows an exponential “hockey stick” trend in recent years, with articles through October already surpassing last year’s total of 10,719. By comparison, “ovarian cancer” yields 7,134 search results last year, while “aortic aneurysm” yields fewer than 4,000.

These numbers attest to the fact that the academic study of racial justice, power and privilege is no longer the sole domain of non-scientific university departments, such as sociology, literature and education. The trendy topic has migrated to peer-reviewed medical journals, where editors now view systemic racism as a leading cause of disproportionate illness and premature mortality among black people.

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Commentary: Medical Research Rapidly Adopts ‘Systemic Racism’ as Undisputed Truth, Risking Scientific Credibility

Rejection used to be common for medical sociologist Thomas LaVeist when he tried to get his research published on the effects of racism on the health of black people. “Now,” said the 60-year-old dean of Tulane University’s School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, “I have those same journals asking me to write articles for them.”

LaVeist’s experience illustrates the dramatic transformation in medical research, accelerating in the past few years. While few would dispute that black Americans are more prone to chronic health problems and have shorter life expectancies than whites, the medical community generally sought answers in biology, genetics and lifestyle. Research, like LaVeist’s, that focused on racism was frowned upon as lacking rigor or relevance, an amateurish detour from serious intellectual inquiry.

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Commentary: Parents Aren’t Domestic Terrorists

It is probably an understatement to say that when one group designates another as a terrorist organization, diplomatic relations between the two become strained.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights.”

Truths. Equal. Creator. Rights. Concerned parents want schools to teach truths, not ideologies; operate under equality, not equity; and respect faith in our Creator and our parental rights. These are the fundamental principles from our Declaration that are at stake in American education today.

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North Carolina School District to Discipline Educators Who Teach America is Racist

A North Carolina county school board has passed a policy that will discipline or fire teachers who undermine the U.S. Constitution, tell students that American historical figures weren’t heroes or portray racism as systemic in America.

The vote Friday by the Johnston County school board is part of a larger campaign to stamp out critical race theory from American schools.

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Commentary: Understanding the 1619 Project

The cover of the August 18, 2019, issue of the New York Times Magazine was adorned with a photograph of a blackish, foreboding ocean captioned by these words: “In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the British colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the 250 years of slavery that followed. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.”

What greeted the reader once he turned past an advertisement for a new, highly revisionist Broadway production of To Kill a Mockingbird was a reiteration of the initial message, boldly announced in giant white type. The number 1619 took up two-thirds of the vertical space against a black background. An introduction by New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein appeared beneath the giant “1619” in the same white print, but much smaller: “It is not a year that most Americans know as a notable date in our country’s history. Those who do are at most a tiny fraction of those who can tell you that 1776 is the year of our nation’s birth.”

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Soros-Funded Group Sends Letter to FCC Calling for Murder of Republicans

A far-left group funded by radical billionaire George Soros submitted a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) calling for Republicans to be murdered, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The group in question is Free Press, which is funded by Soros’s Open Society Foundation, as well as the Center for American Progress, the Tides Foundation, and other far-left organizations. Free Press, whose stated goal is to “reshape media” in the United States, submitted a letter signed by almost 5,000 of its members baselessly accusing the FCC of systemic racism.

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Princeton Instructs Freshmen That Professor Who Criticized Black Student Group Is Part of ‘Systemic Racism’

Princeton University is allegedly teaching freshmen that a current faculty member is racist for criticizing a defunct black student organization. What’s not clear is how many freshmen are paying attention to the lesson.

The Ivy League school included classics professor Joshua Katz in a “virtual gallery” about its history of systemic racism that was featured in a 50-minute orientation video for the class of 2025.

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Commentary: As Race ‘Equity’ Advances in Health Care, Signs of a Chilling Effect on Dissent

by John Murawski   The national movement to eradicate what activists call systemic racism and white privilege from medicine and health care has few public critics in the medical profession. A possible reason: Skeptics who have questioned these efforts have been subject to harsh Twitter campaigns, professional demotions and other blowback. A podcast of the Journal of the American Medical Association caused a furor this year when one of its editors suggested that discussion of systemic racism is an unfortunate distraction that should be taken off the table. In response to a protest petition, the AMA launched an internal investigation into the creation of the podcast (and a since deleted Tweet that promoted it). Eventually, the Journal’s top two editors, who are both white, resigned – the editor-in-chief’s departure coming after he issued a public apology in which he affirmed the existence of structural racism in the United States and in the health care field. In Minneapolis, Hennepin Healthcare System removed gynecologist Tara Gustilo, of Filipino descent, from her position as chair of the OB/GYN department after members of her department questioned her “ability to lead.” The demotion followed her series of Facebook posts criticizing critical race theory, Black Lives Matter and “How to Be an Antiracist”…

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Commentary: Conservatives Shouldn’t Accept the Idea of ‘Systemic Racism’

Black Lives Matter protest

The official “Conservative Case Against Banning Critical Race Theory” appeared in the New York Times last week. Penned by a progressive Yale professor, two non-progressives, and the allegedly conservative David French, the article claims state efforts to ban CRT undermine a good, free-thinking education. Others have dissected this silly claim in detail, so it’s not worth rehashing all of that here. What readers should take away from the Times op-ed is an increasing willingness among respectable conservatives to grant the idea of “systemic racism.” They believe there is nothing wrong with accepting this core tenet of modern liberalism and that it’s absolutely true. 

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Commentary: The Systemic Con Behind Wokeism

Group protesting; "no justice no peace" sign

There are lots of reasons why wokeism spread like wildfire once America lost its collective mind during the pandemic, quarantine, self-induced recession, and rioting of 2020. 

Wokeism was never really about racism, sexism, or other -isms. Instead, for some, it illustrated a psychological pathology of projection: fobbing one’s own concrete prejudices onto others in order to alleviate or mask them. 

So should we laugh or cry that Black Lives Matter’s self-described Marxist co-founder turns out to be a corporate grifter? Patrisse Cullors has accumulated several upscale homes and is under investigation by the IRS for allegations of the misuse of funds from one of her foundations.

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New Method Allows Loudoun County, Virginia Students to Make False Hate Reports, Parents Warn

Administrators within the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) are calling on students to report — anonymously — any acts of bias, discrimination, harassment, or intimidation motivated by prejudice. LCPS spokesman Wayde Byard told The Virginia Star Wednesday that students may use what they call the Share, Speak Up, Speak Out: Bias Reporting Form to report instances of prejudice or bias.

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Education Group Files Federal Civil Rights Complaint Against School District That Admitted to ‘Systemic Racism’

A national advocacy organization has filed a federal civil rights complaint against the Columbus City Schools after its board said there is “systemic racism” within the system.

Parents’ Defending Education’s complaint to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights came after The College Fix asked it about the statement from the school system.

The Fix asked the legal nonprofit if it planned to file a complaint, similar to the one the group filed against Webster Groves schools in Missouri.

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Commentary: Beware of Academics Offering ‘Expertise’ on Systemic Racism, Equity

Person walking through library aisle

If it’s been said once, it’s been said many times: The academic language surrounding “equity,” “systemic racism” and the like is always ambiguous, vacuous and flowery.

This is on purpose, mind you. Because when challenged, so-called experts can define the terms as they wish. The words are ever-malleable.

In a recent Education Week piece, the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Jennifer Cheatham and John Diamond of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education offer tips to help determine whether a school district’s “way of decisionmaking” serves to maintain systemic racism.

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Major School District in Virginia Eyes ‘Anti-Racism’ Instead of Questioning Assumptions

Students dancing in classroom

Parents in one of the nation’s largest school districts are being asked about how schools should teach their children about systemic racism, “multiple identities,” and ways to “challenge power and privilege.”

Virginia’s Fairfax County Public Schools sent a survey Thursday to parents and teachers seeking input about the school system’s future “anti-racism” and “anti-bias” policy. 

“One key strategy to achieve educational equity is to analyze and address the beliefs and policies that inform teaching practices along with what is taught in schools,” Schools Superintendent Scott S. Brabrand said in an email message introducing the survey to parents and teachers. 

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Disney Pushes ‘Critical Race Theory’ in Employee Training Materials

Walt Disney Cinderella's castle

A new report claims the Walt Disney Company is pushing “critical race theory” on its employees as part of an internal training program, teaching them “race consciousness” and other concepts to address “systemic racism” in the U.S.

Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo on Friday published what he says are a “trove of whistleblower documents” detailing a program titled “Reimagine Tomorrow.”

Rudo also provides in his report what he says are primary-source documents that appear to be pages of a training manual.

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Commentary: Biden’s Chamber of Confected Hatreds

President Joe Biden

The collapse of the Trump-hate fraud is forcing the American national political media, with infinite regret and trepidation, to subject the Biden Administration to an elemental level of oversight.

When Joe Biden accuses 40 states—including, implicitly, his own home state of Delaware—of “Jim Crow” racial bias in administering elections, the media simply cannot allow such nonsense to go unnoticed. In their delirium of happiness at having won the presidential election, the Democrats naïvely believed that they could go on running against Donald Trump, presumably because they believed that he could not possibly be less noisy and productive of a target-rich area of easily denigrated utterances than he was as president.

The former president has outsmarted his enemies, however, and has graciously allowed his successor to take center stage and blunder and misspeak on a level never approached in the history of his great office. Warren Harding invented the word “bloviate,” and both Presidents Bush were inexhaustible storehouses of malapropisms: “We’ve got them on the run, and they’re running,” said George W. Bush. But with Joe Biden, it never stops.

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University of Tennessee Chattanooga Hosts ‘White Allies and Accountability’ Lecture

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) is kicking off their spring semester focus on social justice with a discussion of white allyship and accountability. The virtual session, titled, “Moving Forward Together: White Allies and Accountability,” is part of Moving Our Campus (MOC) Forward, a series of events and talks focused on equity and inclusion. Facilitators mentioned that this first session falls within the overarching theme for their 2020-2021 schedule: dismantling racism.

The event host, Dr. Beth Douthirt-Cohen, is a facilitator at the Social Justice Training Institute (SJTI) and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Executive Director at Frederick Community College.

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St. Olaf Prof Echoes Call for School to ‘Repent’ of Systemic Racism

The director of St. Olaf College’s Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community echoed a call for the school to “repent” of systemic racism.

Deanna Thompson wrote an article for the Minnesota school’s blog entitled “Uncomfortable Grace: Drawing on St. Olaf’s Lutheran Identity to Guide Our Path to Anti-Racism,” in which she argued that “racism is embedded deep within institutions across the United States, including St. Olaf College.”

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Loudoun County Schools Superintendent Announced Sudden Departure for Texas Superintendent Position, Parents in New District React

Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) Superintendent Eric Williams announced his departure last week without warning. The Clear Creek Independent School District (CCISD) in Houston, Texas selected Williams as their sole finalist for superintendent in a nationwide search.

LCPS parents and concerned CCISD parents flooded the comments of the official CCISD Facebook page announcement on Williams’ new position. LCPS parents warned CCISD parents that Williams would impose the same social justice initiatives that he’d done while overseeing LCPS, such as through the Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee (MSAAC).

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Virginia Military Institute Hires First Black Interim Superintendent After Northam Pays $1 Million to Investigate Systemic Racism

The Virginia Military Institute (VMI) hired its first Black superintendent shortly after Governor Ralph Northam allotted $1 million to investigate allegations of systemic racism there. VMI announced the appointment of retired U.S. Army Major General Cedric T. Wins on Friday.

Wins will serve as the interim superintendent at VMI – he is also a 1985 graduate. In his remarks on accepting the interim position with VMI, Wins only had positive words for the institution’s history.

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Non-Colored Students Need Not Apply: Loudoun County Public Schools Initially Barred White Students from Equity Ambassador Program

In the initial draft of a student equity ambassador program informational packet, Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) barred students who weren’t colored from admission into the program.

Under “III. Process for Selecting Student Equity Ambassadors” the second process listing guidelines specifically mentioned students’ skin color as a qualifying factor.

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Cancel Culture Claims Another: Virginia Military Institute Superintendent General Peay Resigns

Virginia Military Institute (VMI) Superintendent, retired four-star Army General J.H. Binford Peay III (’62), resigned on Monday. Peay shared that Governor Ralph Northam prompted the resignation.
“On Friday, 23 October 2020, the Governor’s Chief of Staff conveyed that the Governor and certain legislative leaders had lost confidence in my leadership as Superintendent of Virginia Military Institute and desired my resignation.”

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Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Morales Joins Political Organization to Defund the Police and Shrink the Justice System

Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Morales is on the steering committee of “Our Black Party,” a political organization to defund the police. Morales has stated explicitly that she wants to defund the police and shrink the criminal justice system.
The Code of Virginia states that Commonwealth’s Attorneys are “a part of the department of law enforcement of the county or city in which [s]he is elected or appointed.” It is unclear whether Morales’s leadership within Our Black Party conflicts with her duties as a Commonwealth attorney.

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More Madness in Virginia’s School Systems: Free Speech… Unless We Disagree

The Loudoun County School Board will vote on a policy silencing employees who disagree with racial equity practices. The proposal would extend the school’s jurisdiction over off-campus speech, including social media, speeches, and any written forms of communication.
The new policy would govern employee speech “during and after school or work hours, whether on or off school board property, including the property of any school, office, or facility.”

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Commentary: The Ivory Tower’s ‘Anti-Racist’ Olympics

Are the lofty lords of higher education beginning to realize that the dictates of social justice would require a “largely peaceful” defenestration of these “educators” along with their cushy, taxpayer-subsidized sinecures?

Academia’s elites are engaged in a heated competition at the Anti-Racist Olympics. The no-fun and games are a decided public spectacle, one demanded by the contestants’ leftist ideology and fellow-traveling peers to prove one’s fealty to the hideous myth of America’s systemic racism.

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Commentary: Time to Adopt a ‘Second Tower’ Mentality

Few who were alive at the time can forget the moment the first plane hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Over the intervening 18 minutes, people remarked that there were 10,000 people in those buildings on any given workday. And some talked about a B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building in dense fog in 1945. Nearly all were wondering how those kinds of accidents can still happen in the 21st century. In those tense minutes, everyone knew something was terribly wrong, but they were in a First Tower Mentality.

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