On that “Antiracism” authority, Ibram X. Kendi, who had this to say in response to Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to SCOTUS

The New Neo Posted on by

Kendi is molding young minds at Boston University as the recently-appointed head of the Center for Anti-Racist Research. He’s a popular author who’s ridden the anti-racism wave as it has been building over the last few years.

Now he weighs in on multi-racial adoption from third-world countries, in response to Amy Coney Barrett, who apparently has seven children, two of whom are adopted from Haiti:

Go to the tweet and take a look at the responses. Let’s just say that the readers there don’t think this tweet was Kendi’s finest hour – or anyone’s finest hour.

But I doubt Kendi will miss a step, because his fellow academics probably think such sentiments are insightful and “courageous ” (a word sometimes used to describe his book How to Be an Antiracist). He’s won many writing awards and has been the subject of admiring articles (see this in GQ). Kendi’s thinking is what passes for wisdom in academia and publishing these days.

And then there’s the following: “In 2020, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.” I don’t think that’s empty hyperbole, either. Right now, Kendi just might be one of the most influential people in the world. The fact that his ideas are toxic probably makes him more influential rather than less.

Kendi is also the author of a picture book for young children called Antiracist Baby.” And no, I am not making this up:

…[It’s] a new 9×9 picture book that empowers parents and children to uproot racism in our society and in ourselves, now with added discussion prompts to help readers recognize and reflect on bias in their daily lives.

Take your first steps with Antiracist Baby! Or rather, follow Antiracist Baby‘s nine easy steps for building a more equitable world.

With bold art and thoughtful yet playful text, Antiracist Baby introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of antiracism. Providing the language necessary to begin critical conversations at the earliest age, Antiracist Baby is the perfect gift for readers of all ages dedicated to forming a just society.

Which brings us full circle. Maybe if white people who are adopting children from Haiti read Antiracist Baby to their children, Kendi will forgive them their colonialist adoption virtue-signaling, which is not the approved sort of virtue-signaling – unlike his book, which is the “perfect gift for readers of all ages dedicated to forming a just society.”

And a lot of people must want that perfect book, because as I wrote this, the book is #1 on Amazon in children’s Values Books, #1 in Children’s Books in the US, #2 in Children’s Prejudice and Racism books, and #133 in Books of all types. So yes, Kendi is a highly influential person, both with the older and the younger set.

Only 5% of the thousands of reviews at Amazon are one-star, with 81% 5-star. But among the one-star reviews you can find this, for example:

This book is probably the worst thing I have ever bought for my kids. Reading some of the positive reviews, I thought this would be great to help facilitate racism discussions with my kids. Wow was I wrong. This book is absolute garbage. The majority of the book doesn’t make sense and it has zero truth within it. I started to read this with my children and had to quickly stop as I realized it’s promoting violence and I do not condone that. The book explicitly states there won’t be a stop to the violence until we stop being silent. Are you kidding me? Why in the world would I promote that, much less tell my children that.

Because you’ll get virtue points for it, that’s why.

As far as I can tell from reading his Wiki page, some interviews, and his website, Kendi doesn’t appear to have much if any third-world experience and no particular Haitian nor adoption expertise. He seems to have been the child of an intact family in Queens and then Virginia (last name: Rogers, a name he later changed), with parents who were a tax accountant and a health care business analyst but who then became Methodist ministers (of Black liberation theology bent). So what qualifies him to speak about people who adopt children from other countries and/or of other races? Well, I found this interview from November of 2019:

For Kendi, the “civilized theology” often espoused in middle-class black churches meets his definition of racism. Civilized theology is the idea that the function of the church is to bring wayward people into the church to save and civilize them. Those wayward people tend to be working-class and poor black people. According to Kendi, the church is saying that behavior-deficiency is causing their plight. “The reason why this is racist is because it suggests that there is something wrong groups of people,” said Kendi, who revealed that he is not a member of any church. “Racism is anytime we perceive the problem as the people instead of addressing the problems of the people,” he asserts.

To further explain his theory, Kendi compared two types of preachers. “There are preachers who fundamentally preach about the problem being structural, racism, and society. They use Jesus and the word to galvanize people to challenge society,” he said. This is what most people know as liberation theology.

Then there are those preachers who focus on the individual. “You have preachers who say the fundamental problem is the laziness of people, or the inability to not be violent,” Kendi said. Further, “Basically, people need to change. The way you change people first is by becoming saved?”

Wow, just wow. So religion is not about the individual, and Christianity is not about the need of the individual to be saved, but it is or should be political in nature. The sinner is not to ever be blamed, and only by changing society can that person be helped or saved. I’m no expert on Christianity, but I don’t think that’s the basis of the faith, nor have I ever heard it as the basis for any faith on earth. It’s the basis for political movements, not religious ones. But of course, everything’s political these days.

That said, I think Kendi takes it even further than replacing the religious with the political. He believes that a church (even a black church) is racist if it tries to tell a black person that “wayward behavior” needs changing. And not only that, but Kendi conflates a black pastor telling a black person to straighten out his/her life with “suggest[ing] that there is something wrong [with] groups of people.” Did you catch that transition from the individual to the group? Kendi makes it, although the pastor didn’t.

What is Kendi suggesting here? That black individuals who make bad choices cannot change until some undefined “systemic” change happens in all of society? That they have no – to use a popular word these days – agency? No responsibility for their actions, and no hope? And does this only apply to “middle-class” black churches? What’s middle-class got to do with it? And what of white people in churches – middle-class or otherwise? Do they have agency? Are they a “group” when a pastor speaks to them as individuals with individual responsibility? Do they have an ability to change as individuals, because of white privilege (of course), that black people lack?

And why is this man considered a person who should be instructing anyone in anything?

[NOTE: I will add that one possible result of his tweet is that any black child, adopted by white parents, who might be reading Kendi’s tweets (such as, for example, teenagers), might react by feeling that he or she was adopted not out of love but in a narcissistic parental desire to deny that parent’s innate racism. Can you imagine the effect on some of those children and their parents, on reading that the great antiracist guru Kendi has spoken thusly?]

The “antiracism” big picture: the new meanings of “diversity,” “inclusion,” and “equity”

The New Neo Posted on by

Get up to speed on the new meaning of such terms that sound good but have been redefined to mean something quite different:

We’re being lied to, and it’s been costing us a fortune, both economically and socially. For most of the last decade, the industry selling these lies has operated within the ten billion dollars a year range (with a B), selling a product they know doesn’t work, and it’s now growing exponentially. This industry produces no tangible product, makes workplaces less effective and efficient, and reliably leads to toxic and hostile working cultures that can tear companies—and our society—apart, and yet we can’t get enough of it. It’s a particular kind of madness that’s almost impossible to understand, explain, or stop.

What does this industry sell? “Diversity,” “Inclusion,” and “Equity” (DIE) consulting, training, and administration.

Two aspects of how this industry is so successful are immediately comprehensible. First, it sounds good and so plays on our best instincts, which is genuinely an evil thing to do to people. Advancing oneself and one’s interests through distortion and emotional manipulation is always bad, but there’s something genuinely evil about defrauding people by means of the best parts of their natures: the parts that care, that want to do better, and that are horrified to have possibly hurt someone.

Second, and more to an actionable point, the Theory from which DIE originates manipulates the language we use so that we sign up for what it’s selling while we think we’re buying something else. This is how it achieves most of what it achieves, and it’s so central to how the DIE industry operates that it’s something of a marvel that we haven’t figured out the con well enough yet to apply consumer protection laws against it, just like we did a century ago in countless other damaging and fraudulent industries.

Please read the whole thing.

Another profile in courage: Noah Feldman

The New Neo Posted on by

This sort of thing is unusual these days on the left:

And here I want to be extremely clear. Regardless of what you or I may think of the circumstances of this nomination [Feldman disapproves], Barrett is highly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.

I disagree with much of her judicial philosophy and expect to disagree with many, maybe even most of her future votes and opinions. Yet despite this disagreement, I know her to be a brilliant and conscientious lawyer who will analyze and decide cases in good faith, applying the jurisprudential principles to which she is committed. Those are the basic criteria for being a good justice. Barrett meets and exceeds them.

The Democrats are challenged by the Barrett nomination. If they attack her religion, they risk alienating some Catholics. If they attack her competence, they risk alienating women. They have already tried to attack the process by which she was nominated – and they will continue to attack it – but then they appear hypocritical. It will be hard to accuse her of the old tried and true, sexual harrasment or abuse, although they may somehow try that.

By the way, here’s a refresher on another attack long ago:

[NOTE: At Ann Althouse’s, you can read Clarence Thomas’ account of how Joe Biden lied and tricked him.]

Trump and thinking outside the box

The New Neo Posted on by

To even conceive of Trump as president, and then to vote for him – particularly in 2016 – a person had to think outside the box. That wasn’t a sufficient condition, but it was a necessary one.

Trump himself also thinks outside the box. It may be his most salient characteristic, particularly in foreign policy. That gives him several advantages. One is the element of surprise. Another is that it inspires fear in enemies, linked to that element of surprise. They wonder – what on earth will Trump do next? Hard if not impossible to predict.

The killing of Soleimani was a manifestation of this. For a long time, all the experts had said doing it would be a disaster. Would have terrible repercussions. But Trump didn’t think so, and at least so far he was right about that. Agreements between Israel and the Arab world, between Kosovo and Serbia – to achieve those results, Trump thought of a different approach and he executed it. This has left a lot of people blinking in astonishment.

It’s risky for Trump to act that way. But his track record so far (knock wood) has engendered approval of Trump in those people who are willing to take an objective look at that record.

I remember back during the 2016 campaign, I often said I’d be happy to be proven wrong in my assessment that Trump would be a loose cannon and make a lot of mistakes that would have bad consequences. Well, so far I’ve been wrong, and I’m very happy to say it.

Trump is one of the most unusual men who’s been president in my lifetime. Perhaps ever. In his rallies he’s a combination of cheerleader and stand-up comic, not an orator. But it works. He’s a real New Yorker but far more popular elsewhere. As many observe, he keeps his promises, something quite unusual in a politician.

And he is hated with more viciousness and vehemence than any president I can ever recall, and that includes many presidents who’ve been hated quite a lot. None of that hatred can hold a candle to the truly murderous hatred that has been directed at Trump on a daily basis throughout his entire presidency so far. And if he manages to get re-elected, I don’t foresee that it will stop.

Perhaps it will even grow worse.

Why did he run? Why be president? I think that this is why (1988 interview):

Trump’s basic approach is surprisingly consistent. The details may be different, but the basic principle is the same. This was in 1987:

A movement to bring back teaching about the ancient Greek and Roman worlds

The New Neo Posted on by

So fascinating. Some excerpts:

[In the 18th Century in the US] Both elementary education and higher education taught the classical world, but for different reasons. For the vast majority, whose only access was to elementary education, the ancient world was taught to provide a common referent for participating as a citizen in the new American Republic. The over-arching intention was to provide citizens with an understanding of what the Founders were trying to accomplish when they used classical republics as their model to create the United States. Students needed to understand what “tyranny” was and why the Founders wantedto avoid it, what the difference was between a “republic” and a “kingdom,” why the former was to be preferred to the latter, and how, in turn, a “republic” differed from a “democracy.” The classical world provided many such examples that had inspired the Founders, so they were taught to young citizens to help them understand the Founders’ intentions…

The advent of the Progressive movement in the early twentieth century led to a pernicious change in elementary education, namely, the replacement of history with “social studies.” Ralph Ketcham, Anders Lewis, and Sandra Stotsky write: “In 1913 a committee led by Thomas Jesse Jones, a Welsh immigrant deeply interested in the education of African Americans, created a report entitled ‘Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education.’ Jones and other members of the committee believed that education had to be made “relevant” to students. And history, according to Jones was not relevant to the vast majority of students who would, after a few years of schooling, go off into factories and never have to bother themselves with the boring, arcane facts of the past. In place of history, schools should offer “social studies” classes that would help children accept their lot in life by teaching them skills they would need in the factories of the modern world.”

The Jones report was widely adopted by Progressive education reformers throughout the country and led many states to replace history with social studies. As Ketcham and his colleagues point out, “History was too far removed from the immediate needs and wants of children. It was too arcane, too academic, and too likely to involve abstract thoughts. The fragile minds of so many American youngsters could simply not handle history.”24 As late as 1967, an article entitled “Let’s Abolish History,” argued that “no teacher at any grade level … should teach a course in history as content.”

I was taught “social studies” in grade school, but everyone knew it was just a strange name for history. My teachers were old, most of them born in the 19th century, and they weren’t into anything newfangled. We were taught at least something about the Greeks and Romans back in grade school, and more again in high school. But I remember it being more about dates and battles and names rather than concepts.

The article has excerpts from some current textbooks that had an almost instantaneous soporific effect on me, a reminder of how much I hated history in school even though history really does interest me. How do they manage to leach all the life out of it?

Trump unveils…

The New Neo Posted on by

…his Platinum Plan to help Black Americans. Among other things, it designates the KKK and Antifa as terrorist organizations, but the major focus is on economics:

The president is expected to tout the plan as “a bold vision that we can and will achieve over the next four years.”

The president’s plan, according to the campaign, will increase access to capital in Black communities by almost $500 billion, help to create 500,000 new Black-owned businesses, and help to create 3 million new jobs for the Black community.

If the plan succeeded in doing this, it would help all of us.

More and more and more on Russiagate and on the pursuit of Flynn

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s so much coming out that I’m mostly going to offer links.

The Federalist details how one FBI agent who later was assigned to the Mueller team has testified about enormous and systemic (that word is appropriate here) misuse of the system to get Trump and his associates:

Barnett painted a picture of a Special Counsel that was run the opposite of the way a typical FBI investigation would be. “Typically investigators push for legal process and have to explain the need for the request to the attorneys. Barnett said the SCO attorneys were pushing for legal process and just wanted investigators to sign affidavits they prepared,” he said, according to the report. He said every request was “green-lighted” and that seasoned FBI agents were viewed as a “speed bump” to the attorneys leading the investigations.

The situation was so extreme that Barnett and others joked about how it was like a game, which they referred to as Collusion Clue. “In the hypothetical game, investigators are able to choose any character conducting any activity, in any location, and pair this individual with another character and interpret it as evidence of collusion,” Barnett said, according to the report of his interview.

Please read the whole thing.

Much more on Barnett here:

…Barnett is identified as the original Case Agent on the “Crossfire Razor” investigation, the foreign counterintelligence investigation of General Michael Flynn…

…Working with his supervisor, the Case Agent makes operational decisions about what investigative techniques to use, and how to exploit information that is developed by those efforts. The Case Agent assigns “leads” to other squad agents — investigative tasks to be performed as part of developing as much information as possible about the target.

The first thing to understand is that William Barnett appears to be a highly experienced agent…

The second thing to understand is that he’s a “brick agent.” He is not in FBI management. He is not a supervisor. He is a working case agent who goes out into the field and gathers information…

Barnett did not “Open” Crossfire Razor investigation and he was never clear what the people who did open it wanted the investigation to look at or do. It was never clear to him what the purpose was for opening Razor.

Barnett didn’t get anywhere with the investigation and was about to close it when he was instructed not to do so and told to look into a Logan Act violation for the Kislyak phone call. He found no reason to charge Flynn under that act, and then:

After the January 24 interview of Gen. Flynn [the one that tried to entrap Flynn and then charge he lied], the Razor investigation became “top-down” — meaning all the instructions on Razor were coming from high FBI management without the Case Agent being involved. He was not invited to meetings or asked for input.

Barnett believes he was purposely “cut out” of the January 24 interview. Normally, a Case Agent and a supervisor would conduct such an interview. Barnett was not told the interview was planned. He only found out about the interview the day after it had taken place.

After that, Barnett asked to be taken off the case because he suspected it would be investigated by an IG.

There’s a lot more at the link. But the whole thing makes me wonder why Barnett didn’t become a whistleblower way back then. I said I wonder, but I think I know the answer: fear.

In a separate but related topic, there’s Brennan’s role in suppressing evidence that Putin and Russia actually favored Hillary Clinton’s election.

Steele’s primary subsource was a person the FBI knew had been suspected of being a Russian agent

The New Neo Posted on by

Isn’t everyone? A Russian agent, that is.

Sometimes it seems that way. But that didn’t stand in the way of the FBI resting much of its investigation of the Trump administration on the reported word (secondhand) of someone suspected of being one:

The Crossfire Hurricane team identified this source in December 2016. The members “became familiar with the 2009 investigation.” Despite this, they interviewed the course “over the course of three sequential days in January 2017.”…

A declassified summary of interviews with this source came out over the summer. The source told the FBI in January and March 2017 “the information contained in the anti-Trump dossier was unreliable.”

The source’s information “that served as the basis of the dossier was ‘second and third-hand information and rumors at best.’”

The document released over the summer showed the “FBI was on notice of the dossier’s credibility problem, yet continued to seek further FISA warrants renewals for Page.”

So the credibility problem was on two levels – the suspect nature of the source as well as the fact that the source told the FBI that the Steele dossier information he had supposedly relayed to Steele was unreliable and that Steele had mischaracterized what the source had actually told him.

Other than that, no problem.

I doubt any of this will matter in the end. No one important in the case has been indicted, and if Biden is elected none of the higher-ups who perpetrated this massive conspiracy to frame a president of the United States ever will be indicted. And half the public either doesn’t care about any of it or applauds what was done to Trump and his aides.

If I had to choose one single undertaking that has set this country on its present banana republic (or worse) course, it would be Crossfire Hurricane.

Why was the guy who derailed a NYC subway set free with no bail after a previous offense?

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Ace.]

A man with the wonderful name of Demetrius Harvard caused tremendous damage – and could have caused a lot more – when he was witnessed putting metal debris on the subway tracks, which managed to derail a NYC subway to the tune of about a million dollars in damages.

My first thought on reading that was hmmm, I wonder why the terrorists didn’t do that in the 60s. My second thought was that I hoped this doesn’t inspire copycats. And my third and fourth thoughts – on reading the rest of the article and learning that Harvard had been freed without bail and was on “supervised release” after a previous offense of damaging an MTA bus by striking it with a metal barricade – was that no-bail release for such an offense is stark raving madness, and that “supervised release” is some sort of bitter joke.

This guy allegedly did something potentially very dangerous in the previous offense against the bus, attacking city property that may or may not have been carrying passengers. And yet, no bail necessary. I couldn’t find any article that answered the question of where the bus was when attacked and whether it had passengers, but I very much doubt that it was unoccupied and in some storage place. My guess is that it did have passengers, and if so it makes Harvard’s act and his easy release that much worse.

And that’s not all – there’s more [emphasis mine]:

A man accused of attempting to derail a New York City subway train was released without bail in a prior case despite having an open warrant for failing to appear in court.

Demetrius Harvard was arrested and arraigned on Sept. 5 after he struck a bus with a metal street barricade. He was charged with misdemeanor criminal mischief and granted supervised release. Prosecutors did not ask for bail.

At the time of his arrest, he had an open warrant for failing to appear in court in a March case in which he threatened employees at a mobile phone store with a metal pipe and threw a trash can at the store’s sign, according to the New York Post. The judge released him without bail in that case despite prosecutors requesting a $1,000 bail.

It’s not as though the city of New York didn’t have plenty of warning about this man’s dangerousness. But their policies are the opposite of “broken windows.”

This time, Harvard’s bail was set at $50,000. That’s actually not all that much, considering the magnitude of his crime. I wonder why he isn’t being charged with terrorism, because I believe that his latest offense may fail into that category.

And how was Harvard caught? By the quick and courageous actions of a man named Rikien Wilder:

Wilder said he noticed a strange man walking on the tracks, and then placing debris on the rails. When the man came up to the platform, Wilder jumped into action and headed down to the tracks, himself.

“I removed what I could see and I got up out of there because you know, I could hear, I could feel the turbulence from the train coming,” Wilder said. “It kind of angered me a little bit because he seemed to get some joy out of, you know, wrecking the train and potentially harming people.”

Wilder went to alert MTA workers at the station, while the man, who police identified as Demetrius Harvard, allegedly went back down to the tracks and placed more debris on the rails. The next train that passed derailed, injuring three people.

“Normally, we don’t encourage riders, customers to go down onto the tracks,” MTA Chairman Pat Foye said.

But Wilder wasn’t done. He then chased the suspect and held him for 15 minutes until police arrived. Chairman Foye said that for Wilder’s heroism the MTA would “extend the highest award the MTA can provide to a civilian” — a year of unlimited MetroCard rides.

I think someone should donate some reward money to him, as well.

By the way, since everything seems to be about race these days, both the perpetrator and the hero of this story are black.