You might think that the leftists who run California would be worried about the rapid decline of that state, but no: they are doing all they can to accelerate it. In the Wall Street Journal, Heather Mac Donald outlines California’s latest descent into racialist madness:
What would happen if lawmakers reinvented the criminal-justice system to target “systemic racism” instead of crime? California is about to find out. Thanks to a 2020 law called the California Racial Justice Act, every felon serving time in the state’s prisons and jails can now retroactively challenge his conviction and sentencing on the ground of systemic bias.
To prevail, the incarcerated prisoner need not show that the police officers, prosecutors, judge or jurors in his case were motivated by racism or that his proceedings were unfair. If he can demonstrate that in the past, criminal suspects of his race were arrested, prosecuted or sentenced more often or more severely than members of other racial groups, he will be entitled to a new trial or sentence.
We all know what this is about. Blacks are arrested, prosecuted and convicted more often than members of other races because they commit more crimes. Heather has some of the numbers for California:
In Los Angeles, blacks are 21 times as likely as whites to commit a violent crime, 36 times as likely to commit a robbery, and 57 times as likely to commit a homicide, according to police department data. Those data come from reports filed by victims and witnesses, who are themselves disproportionately black.
Blacks over-offend to an appalling degree in other states, too. But liberals cling to the hoary myth that “disparities” in law enforcement can only be due to racial bias in criminal jutice.
The Racial Justice Act is turning California’ criminal justice system into a farce:
When a felon in San Francisco contested his arrest and prosecution for having a loaded handgun in his car, a “race expert” testified that the arresting officer’s use of the phrase “high crime area” demonstrated “bias against people of color.” The trial judge disagreed, but an appeals court reversed and allowed the felon’s claim to proceed. (Speaking of bias, that same expert, Dante King, asserted at the University of California, San Francisco, on Feb. 8 that “whites are psychopaths” whose “behavior represents an underlying, biologically transmitted proclivity.”)
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A case from Contra Costa County last year shows the snowballing potential of the Racial Justice Act. A judge found that four black gang members who had committed murder as part of a bloody feud between two Oakland gangs had been improperly sentenced to life in prison without parole. That conclusion wasn’t based on flaws in the four defendants’ trials, but simply on an alleged historical pattern of sentencing bias toward black gang murderers. The black comparison group in the case was made up of 30 black defendants who had also committed gang murder in Contra Costa County from 2015 to 2022 and who had also received life without parole. All 30 can now sue to erase those sentences.
It is hard to understand how there can be a political movement in favor of more crime, but there you have it. In California, that movement evidently represents the majority. If, for some reason, you still live in California, you should get out while you can.
Black college athletes do, according to the NAACP. The NAACP is urging black athletes not to go to college in Florida:
The NAACP asked Black student-athletes to reconsider their decisions to attend public colleges and universities in the state of Florida, in response to the University of Florida and other state schools recently eliminating their diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
In a letter sent to NCAA president Charlie Baker and addressed to current and prospective student-athletes Monday, NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson wrote, “This is not about politics. It’s about the protection of our community, the progression of our culture, and most of all, it’s about your education, and your future.”
The idea that black athletes at major sports schools like Florida and Florida State need DEI departments to…what? Prevent them from being discriminated against? The idea is laughable, as is the NCAAP’s apparent suggestion that DEI bureaucrats are somehow helpful to a student’s education.
My guess is that not a single black athlete who otherwise wants to play for Florida, Florida State or any other public Florida college will be deterred by the NCAAP’s advice. What this episode really shows is how useless the once-relevant NCAAP has become. And also, how Florida has taken the lead in adopting common-sense policies that have put the state in the Left’s cross-hairs.
Biden's campaign launched the ad buy in the wake of the state Supreme Court's decision to uphold an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions.
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West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) leads the race for the state’s Republican gubernatorial nomination, according to a Research America/Metro News West poll.
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An internal poll shows Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown is dominating the GOP primary field by more than 50 points and would tack on another 16 points to his support should former President Donald Trump endorse him.
The post Exclusive – Poll: Sam Brown Towers over Nevada’s GOP Senate Primary Field, Would Surge Further with Trump Endorsement appeared first on Breitbart.
CNN political commentator Ashley Allison said Friday on CNN's "News Central" that O.J. Simpson "represented something for the black community in that moment in that trial, particularly because there were two white people who had been killed."
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Grace Kelley, the daughter of country star Wynonna Judd, was arrested after allegedly exposing herself on a busy Alabama highway during which she reportedly flashed her breasts while waving a “Ride for a Ride” sign.
The post Wynonna Judd’s Daughter Faces Prostitution Charges After Allegedly Flashing Her Breasts on Alabama Highway appeared first on Breitbart.
Orlando attorney Dan Newlin raised over $8 million for former President Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign at a fundraiser at his home in Central Florida Wednesday night.
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Former President Donald Trump is elevating leading Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown after an internal poll showed him dominating his primary opponents.
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Former President Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States if everyone does their part, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said Saturday.
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A strong majority of voters believe Joe Biden's America is on the wrong track, as voters look more fondly on Donald Trump's presidency, a poll found.
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The federal government increasingly looks like an Ivy League classroom, combining therapy for fragile souls with indoctrination into specious ideology.
Nowhere is this more apparent than at the State Department, where employees are encouraged to take courses in the name of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, or DEIA, that stress their differences, trauma, and status on the victim-oppressor continuum.
As reported by The Daily Wire, the State Department spent a whopping $77 million on DEIA programs last year for its staffing shop, the Bureau of Global Talent Management.
Just this past month, the State Department offered a training session called “Unveiling the Hidden Wounds: Exploring Racial Trauma and Minority Stress.” It promised a “space for empathy” where “voices are heard, wounds are acknowledged, and action is taken towards justice and equity.”
Then there was “A Conversation on Racial Equity and Social Justice” with Bryan Stevenson, who pulled in $55,000 in donations per minute for a single TED Talk.
Employees could also take the half-day course “Intersectional Gender Analysis Training,” which “explores how gender and systems of power shape an individual’s lived experience.” Alternatively, they could attend a seminar called “Embrace Equity and Inspire Change” or a series of female empowerment sessions such as “Elevating Women in Technology and Beyond.”
Anticipating resistance, the State Department offered the course “Understanding Backlash to DEIA and How to Address It,” in which psychologist Kimberly Rios claimed to “highlight evidence demonstrating that DEIA initiatives can challenge the power, values, status, belonging, and cultural identity of dominant group members, particularly White Americans whose racial identity is important to their sense of self.” Rios will do this, the announcement said with unwitting irony, “to promote intergroup harmony.”
Government employees are required to take a variety of training courses to advance in their careers. Even five years ago, most of these were about doing your job better—courses on leadership, management, and other skills. But in the “woke” era, employees are also subjected to ideological sessions such as those mentioned above.
Given what all these courses and speakers cost taxpayers to provide, is there any evidence that they are based on sound information or that they improve the workforce?
Let’s examine one offering more closely.
The State Department runs a “DEIA Distinguished Scholar Speaker Series” that “highlights cutting-edge scientific research,” under which the agency recently brought in Yale professor John Dovidio to give a talk titled “Racism Among the Well-Intentioned—Challenges and Solutions.”
In a 2013 speech, Dovidio said: “About 80% of white Americans will say they are not sexist or they’re not racist … but work with the IAT will show that 60% to 75% of the population are both racist and sexist at an implicit level.”
So, what is this “IAT” that Dovidio cites?
Harvard’s Implicit Association Test is a favorite tool of social scientists who want to prove that people are inherently racist and sexist. This is a necessary premise for critical race theory, which posits that nebulous concepts such as “structural bias” and “systems of oppression” can explain all variances in performance between racial groups rather than individual factors such as education, industry, and behavior. The Implicit Association Test offers the evidence the Left needs to support this theory.
But the Implicit Association Test isn’t an accepted measure of bias. One of its own inventors said, “I and my colleagues and collaborators do not call the IAT results a measure of implicit prejudice [or] implicit racism.”
And in a 2015 review, Hart Blanton of Texas A&M wrote that “all of the meta-analyses converge on the conclusion that … IAT scores are not good predictors of ethnic or racial discrimination and explain, at most, small fractions of the variance in discriminatory behavior in controlled laboratory setting.”
In a 2021 academic paper, Ulrich Schimmack came to the same conclusion, writing that “IATs are widely used without psychometric evidence of construct or predictive validity.”
As far back as 2008, in an article for the American Psychological Association, Beth Azar wrote that a person’s scores on the Implicit Association Test “often change from one test to another.” German Lopez, writing for Vox, took the test two days apart and found that in the first, he “had a slight automatic preference for white people,” and in the second, “a slight automatic preference … in favor of black people.”
Summing up, Greg Mitchell of the University of Virginia said, “The IAT is not yet ready for prime time.”
That’s hardly a firm foundation for using taxpayers’ money to train federal staff in a worldview that will affect their careers and lives. And of course, all of the hours employees spend auto-flagellating with critical race theory is paid time they are not working on matters of national interest.
One can’t put too much blame on race merchants such as Dovidio, Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Nikole Hannah-Jones for simply trying to sell their product. But the question is: Why is the government buying it with our money?
Taxpayer-funded institutions shouldn’t pay for courses and speakers whose premises are contentious and whose efforts won’t measurably improve the workforce.
Federal employees are free to explore social theory on their own time. On our dime, they should get on with their real job.
Originally published by the Washington Examiner
The post Taxpayers Shouldn’t Have to Fund State Department’s DEI Pseudoscience appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Vivek Ramaswamy has endorsed Army veteran Kevin Virgil, who is primarying Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-IA) in Iowa’s Fourth Congressional District.
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Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Wednesday on Fox News Channel's "America's Newsroom" that he will support Donald Trump in November.
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Former President Donald Trump said his political opponents are trying to get him off the campaign trail and suggested it does not seem to be working.
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Donald Trump continued to rip Justice Merchan for implementing an "unconstitutional" gag order that prevents him from "telling the truth."
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Biden, a self-professed Catholic, made the sign of the cross while Florida Democratic Party chairperson Nikki Fried decried the state's six-week abortion limit.
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Republican businessman Dave McCormick and Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) formally clinched their parties' respective nominations for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night after both men ran unopposed.
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Floridians "are not buying what Joe Biden is selling," DeSantis told reporters ahead of the president's abortion-focused visits to Tampa.
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Pennsylvania Trump-backed Republican Senate nominee Dave McCormick predicted to Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday that Pennsylvania will be a red state by 2028.
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It would send a strong message if former President Donald Trump visits minority communities in New York, showing he is a "man of the people," Lee Zeldin said.
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Republican Dave McCormick is within striking distance of Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) in Pennsylvania’s race for the U.S. Senate, per a poll.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once praised former President Barack Obama as a "good" president, which serves as a reminder for voters ahead of the presidential election.
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Vice President Kamala Harris is continuing her "Fight for Reproductive Freedoms" tour in Florida on Wednesday — the same day a six-week abortion restriction is set to take effect in the state.
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Joe Biden's aides spliced a 24-second scripted video of the president 8 times, raising concerns about whether he can deliver simple remarks.
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Joe Biden’s fascist lawfare assault on former President Trump is backfiring, according to the latest polling.
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A majority of Americans see former President Donald Trump as a strong leader, while most see President Joe Biden as a weak leader, per a poll.
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Former Republican congressional candidate Bryan E. Leib has officially entered the 2024 GOP primary in the Sunshine State’s 25th District, advocating for fresh leadership in Congress to uphold “common sense,” Judeo-Christian values, and Trump's “America First” agenda; he is challenging long-serving Democrat Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
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Donald Trump ripped Joe Biden for Friday's weaker than expected jobs report and promised new economic policies.
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President Joe Biden would not receive more votes if former President Donald Trump is convicted of a crime, a recent survey by Leger found.
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Former President Donald Trump will be making a historic move by speaking at the Libertarian party's national convention.
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Republican Mara Macie, who is challenging establishment Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL) in Florida’s conservative Fifth Congressional District primary, told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday that her “salesman” opponent consistently votes the opposite of what his constituents want and is facing
The post Exclusive–Florida GOP Congressional Candidate Mara Macie: Constituents Fed Up with Establishment Rep. Rutherford’s Voting Record appeared first on Breitbart.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is challenging former President Donald Trump to debate at the Libertarian convention.
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The pro-Sam Brown super PAC, Duty First Nevada, slammed one of Brown’s opponents in the Republican Senate primary, Jeff Gunter, as a “con man” in its latest ad.
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Independent voters are not buying the establishment media's claim that Donald Trump is a greater threat to democracy than Joe Biden.
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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he believes abortion, even at full term, should be a decision made by the mother.
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Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) is changing his stance on the Laken Riley Act after voting against it as an amendment in March.
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Former President Donald Trump on Thursday called Special Counsel Jack Smith's documents case an "Election Interference Scam" after he recently admitted in a recent filing the FBI messed with boxes of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.
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West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, the leading candidate in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary, told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday that he is “the one proven conservative” in a field that features opponents from political families and dynasties.
The post Exclusive – West Virginia A.G. Patrick Morrisey: ‘I’m the One Proven Conservative’ in Governor’s Race Against ‘Political Dynasties’ appeared first on Breitbart.