Inclusiveness

A few years ago New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman fired Carl Williams, the state police superintendent, within hours of the publication of an interview in which he said:

“If you’re looking at the methamphetamine market, that seems to be controlled by the motorcycle gangs, which are basically predominately white. If you’re looking at heroin and

Reports from the front suggest that life in the business world ain’t as much fun as it was. Hours are up, security is down, and managements are increasingly turning to various “management by terror” systems, such as employee evaluation programs that require some fixed percentage of employees in every department to be declared deadwood and … More ...

Religious tolerance in America: Honor guardsman at military cemetery fired for blessings. He apparently followed written policy by mentioning God when the mourners were religious, but his superior thought it violated the First Amendment and New Jersey anti-harassment policy.

The emerging rule seems to be that any act in any public setting that gives … More ...

In America today, everything is supposed to depend on what experts say, so it’s worth looking at the experts and expertise behind the anti-profiling movement: Better Unsafe Than (Occasionally) Sorry. It turns out that when the anti-profiling case is put in order it really does claim—as we suggested somewhat ironically a few days ago—that … More ...

The affirmative-action approach to public safety that has given us Chief Moose and a great many dead bodies becomes formalized: Racial profiling settlement up for vote in Maryland. Under the settlement, troopers would give motorists they pull over a brochure about how to file racial-profiling complaints. There would be a statewide 800 number, a … More ...

There couldn’t have been anything good or true in Strom Thurman’s views on race in 1948, so anyone 54 years later who says anything nice about his presidential campaign is rightly tarred with sheer unmitigated undeniable evil. If you’re a black sociologist, though, you can come out in favor of overturning Brown v. Board of … More ...

How can current public discussions of race be explained? Why the belief that sick and evil motives are everywhere, polluting whatever they touch? Why is defense against accusation impossible, so that suspicion and conviction are the same?

Part of the answer, surely, is bad conscience. The absolute irrelevance of race to any legitimate concern may … More ...

On the occasion of a long-time colleague’s hundredth birthday Trent Lott paid a compliment that suggested that Federally-mandated integration had been a mistake, and that some other way forward would have been better—perhaps one that preserved at least the legality of voluntary separation. The response of many people, including some prominent in the conservative movement, … More ...

A suggestion that there are limitations to manipulation: How anti-racism advertising can backfire. It seems that if someone doesn’t fully accept the official line that all groups are equally good in all respects, antiracist advertising can make him think about the issues and drop the official line altogether.

An odd feature of the piece … More ...

A common Leftist claim is that established moral principles serve the interests of the ruling classes. Oddly, the claim isn’t applied to moral principles of which the Left approves. In particular, it is not applied to a principle that in spite of its novelty seems to outrank all others today, the principle that “discrimination” is … More ...