Category Archives: Race and race relations

Five Questions: An Interview with Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears

Posted on April 11, 2023 by | 108 comments

by Shaun Kenney

Last week, The Republican Standard had the opportunity to follow Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears as she toured the Richmond Slave Trail — which included not only the site of the notorious Lumpkins Slave Jail but also the site where Gabriel Prosser was executed and presumably buried in 1800.

Winsome Earle-Sears brought a narrative rooted in the role of hope in human liberation, whether it was in her own tradition from Jamaica to the hopelessness that seems to infect so much of our political discourse today. TRS was able to sit down with the Lieutenant Governor in order to explore her thoughts on this topic and many others.

We just toured Lumpkin’s Slave Jail site. Clearly this is a place with a lot of hurt and anguish, but a little bit of courage and heroism. Where do you think that resilience — that hope — comes from given the experiences of the past?

People look at me and think that I have courage, but I don’t. I have no special store of courage more than the next guy, but I have counted the cost and what I say and do comes with consequences.
There are times when people believe that I am not willing to take that stand, but God comes along and tells me to pick up my cross. Many people attribute that to me being a Marine, but it is really not: it is attributable to my Christian Faith.
Continue reading →

108 Comments

Posted in Abortion, Business and Economy, Children and families, Civil Rights, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Elections, Feminism and women's rights, Freedom, Immigration, Individual liberties, Political Influence, Politics, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

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Pilot Editorial Shows Glimmers of Insight

Posted on March 29, 2023 by | 94 comments

A glimmer of light… but just a glimmer

by James A. Bacon

The editorial board of The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press is committed to the proposition that the United States is afflicted by “systemic inequalities” between the races. The publication’s analysis is more nuanced, however, than much of what we read and hear. Opining on the role of credit scores in building wealth in America, the Pilot wrote in a column yesterday, “Race plays a role, but is not in itself the determining factor.”

It’s refreshing to see the Pilot’s pundits not using racism as the universal explanation for all social ills besetting minorities today. But they still have a bit to learn.

African Americans have lower credit scores on average than the general population, the Pilot notes, drawing from research conducted by The Washington Post. The reason isn’t overt racism or even bias in the credit-reporting systems, it appears, but the fact that credit scores are lower in Southern states… and the African-American population is concentrated in the South. Why are credit scores lower in the South? Because of medical debt. Says the Pilot: “The South has a lot more unpaid medical bills than other regions.”

Unpaid medical bills may not sound like institutional racism, but the Pilot’s pontificators imply that it really is.

For starters the South has more than our share of unhealthy people. Much of that poor health is a result of systemic inequalities that lead to poverty and related problems such as food “deserts” where inner-city people have limited access to healthy foods.

Plus, the South was slower to expand Medicaid than other regions of the country.

Thus, in the worldview of the Pilot’s editorial writers, the chain of causality runs like this: (1) Racism created food deserts; (2) which made people overweight; (3) which put more people in the hospital; (4) which resulted in bigger medical bills; which people could not always repay until Medicaid came along; (5) which hurt credit scores; (6) which contributed to a wealth gap. Continue reading →

94 Comments

Posted in Poverty & income gap, Race and race relations

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Woke Liberalism Is a Dead End for African Americans

Posted on March 28, 2023 by | 37 comments

by James A. Bacon

Earlier this month the Isle of Wight School Board passed a resolution declaring, “There is no systemic racism or bigotry perpetuated by the United States or any governmental entity.”

Timothy Sullivan, a former president of William & Mary, James W. Dyke, a former state Secretary of Education, and Alvin J. Schexnider, president of Thomas Nelson Community College, took exception to the statement. In a column published by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, they noted that Isle of Wight was a leader in the 1950s-era Massive Resistance to school desegregation, and proceeded to draw a straight line to Virginia schools that are “racially isolated and underserved” today.

Part of the remedy to segregation, the authors argue, is teaching about slavery, segregation, and racism in Virginia schools.

We believe the entirety of Virginia’s history must finally be addressed in our curriculum so that our children understand that intentional racism and discrimination have detrimentally affected all aspects of Virginia life, from opportunities for education, advancement and the concomitant accumulation of wealth resulting in the average Black family’s wealth being one-eighth the average white family’s, to the physical and mental health of generations of children, both Black and white.

A proper teaching of racism, they argue, will “[prepare] our students and our future workforce to function effectively in a global economy that is multiethnic and multicultural.”

The op-ed is dismaying in so many ways. Continue reading →

37 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (K-12), Race and race relations

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Crime in Virginia — the Statistics of Race and their Causes

Posted on March 27, 2023 by | 121 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Crime, especially violent crime, is a constant topic in private conversations and in public politics, and thus here on Bacon’s Rebellion.

Comments on BR crime-related articles turn quickly to race, often without basis in fact.

I will offer below the actual crime statistics by race from 2021, the latest available year, in an attempt to cure that.

Then I will write about the causes.

I will almost certainly be called a racist. Continue reading →

121 Comments

Posted in Budgets, Children and families, Civil Rights, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Efficiency in government, General Assembly, Governance, Government Oversight, Health Care, Housing, Land use & development, Law enforcement, Mental illness and substance abuse, Parental Rights, Politics, Public corruption, Public safety & health, Race and race relations

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Did Southern Poverty Law Center and James Madison Museum Team Up to Put ‘Anti-racist’ Curriculum in Virginia Schools?

Posted on March 27, 2023 by | 33 comments

by Brenda Hafera

The Albemarle County school district in Virginia has been subjected to two lawsuits related to its implementation of an “anti-racist” curriculum, which one parent said was “incubating a culture rooted in grievance, discord, and victimhood.” But parents in the school district near Charlottesville may be alarmed to discover that it is not just the school board that is working against them.

Powerful political organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center and one of Virginia’s own beloved historic sites may be involved. The Albemarle County anti-racist curriculum appears to have originated at President James Madison’s home, Montpelier, an historic site that has ties to the SPLC.

Montpelier, which is owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and operated by the Montpelier Foundation, has been reconstructed and converted into a museum. While some of Madison’s accomplishments are discussed during part of the main house tour and through a brief video in the visitor center, there are currently no exhibits focused on his importance as the Father of the Constitution, according to Montpelier’s website.

Staff members have also reportedly said that they have no interest in honoring a “dead white president and a dead white president’s Constitution.”
Continue reading →

33 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Race and race relations, Uncategorized, Virginia history

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Arlington CPS Seizes Baby Girl Over Tylenol

Posted on March 23, 2023 by | 9 comments

by Asra Q. Nomani and Debra Tisler

Late Wednesday afternoon, in Courtroom 4B of Arlington County’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, Sean Jackson beamed widely as a judge granted him and his parents, Carlos Makle and Kim Jackson-Makle, joint custody of Sean’s baby girl, Amoria, instead of relegating her to foster care or instability with a mother struggling with drug addiction.

Kim later said, “Hallelujah,” thinking the nightmare they had been living for over a year with the County’s inept Division of Child Protective Services was finally over. But it was just about to begin all over again. Arlington County’s Child Protective Services was about to dispatch a social worker to an apartment in Arlington to seize Amoria’s second cousin, London, also a cute baby girl, from her mother, Paris Adams.

Why?

Over an alleged missed dosage of Tylenol Wednesday morning that the baby wasn’t even required to get, per doctor’s orders, but was rather prescribed “as needed.” With so much written in the news about public policy, legislation and politics, this story is disturbing because of the sheer inhumanity of bureaucrats operating with complete disregard for actual child welfare or a mother’s heartache.

First, a rewind.
Continue reading →

9 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Courts and law, Demographics, Efficiency in government, Government Oversight, Individual liberties, Parental Rights, Race and race relations, Social services, Uncategorized, Virginia Law

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The Left’s New DEI Bureaucracies at Virginia’s Colleges and Universities – What Do They Do All Day?

Posted on March 21, 2023 by | 106 comments

Dean Stephanie Rowley, UVa School of Education and Human Development

by James C. Sherlock

We are left to imagine what Dean of the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development Stephanie Rowley would possibly do without the assistance of LaRon Scott, her Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

How in heaven’s name without Mr. Scott could she keep reactionaries like Catherine Bradshaw, Nancy Deutsch, Scott Gest and Stephanie van Hover and the Center on Race, Public Education, and the South and Youth-Nex Center to Promote Youth Development from preaching white supremacist doctrine and organizing torchlit marches on NAACP offices?

I am not singling out UVa for special criticism. I just know a lot more of the details about my alma mater than other schools. Virginia Tech reportedly has a very aggressive program.

Virginia has 41 public colleges and universities, so we are paying for a lot of DEI personnel.  UVa alone has 84 DEI staffers.  Let’s estimate 1,000 statewide.

The point is that we have to try to figure out why modern American universities in 2021 suddenly needed large and growing DEI bureaucracies. And what they do all day?

And if we need them, how many is enough?

The left had won the war in academia before DEI. It would be unkind to think the DEI apparatchiks are formed as a paramilitary wing to execute enemy survivors.

So, if not that, what do they do? Continue reading →

106 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Governance, Race and race relations

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Virginia is the Future

Posted on March 9, 2023 by | 27 comments

by Arthur Bloom

I want to tell you why I like The 1619 Project. It has nothing to do with the history, all of which is known to any well-educated Virginian. Of course, these things are fundamentally propagandistic exercises, any leftist worth his salt would tell you that too. But it was symbolically very important. Here’s what it did: The New York Times shifted the locus and timeline of the American Founding from Plymouth Bay to Virginia, where it belongs.

It’s a common gripe of Virginians that when most Americans today think of the Founding, they tend to think of pilgrims in black-and-white, with buckles on their shoes, even though we were there first. The 1619 Project is helping to rectify this situation. I’m holding out for a 1607 Project. Give it time, the actual Jamestown fort wasn’t even rediscovered until around 25 years ago.

The New York Times was engaged in some powerful voodoo, not to be trifled with — if you look at everything through the lens of race you won’t see it — but it’s very real. Catholic education molded Nikole Hannah-Jones, and she went on to strike a hammer blow against Yankee cultural power. The Empire of Guadalupe rises.

This was necessary, because if the affirmative action lawsuit at Harvard is successful, Harvard will become even more Chinese, and its prestige will fall. Our people won’t go there anymore. That’s why I’m rooting for Conservative, Inc.’s devious plan to turn Harvard into a Chinese enclave, it’ll be the greatest thing they’ve ever done. These two things are mortal blows to the cultural prestige of Massachusetts. And as Massachusetts falls, Virginia rises.
Continue reading →

27 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Civil Rights, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Economic development, Freedom, Individual liberties, Labor & workforce, Media, Political Influence, Politics, Race and race relations, Uncategorized, Virginia history

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Black Students Disappearing from Classrooms Disproportionately in Ten of our Largest School Divisions

Posted on March 8, 2023 by | 173 comments

by James C. Sherlock

For those who support local control of schools no matter what, I will offer you a “what” to consider.

For those who are nervous about even discussing why some jurisdictions in Virginia have failed to ensure “an educational program of high quality is established and continually maintained” for Black children, that works for Black children no matter their circumstances, you are reading the wrong article.

Twenty percent of Virginians are Black, as were 22% of our public school students in 2022.

Virginia lost 4% of its Black public school student registrations in the last three years, compared to 2.6% of all students including Black students. Black chronic absenteeism statewide jumped from 13.1% to over 25%. All student chronic absenteeism including Black students was 20%.

Ten jurisdictions with at least 2,000 Black students at the start of that period lost higher percentages of their Black students than the state average. Some much higher.

Those ten lost 8,668 Black student registrations. The entire state lost 10,674. Chronic absenteeism of black students in those jurisdictions increased in line with statewide increases.

Without even bringing up school quality, this is unacceptable if we care about the futures of Black kids.

We have to get them in school. I say “we” because it will be a long-term disaster for both these children and Virginia if we don’t.

Lots of different things have to be done to get them there, which is where school quality comes in. But I will share some of the raw numbers. Continue reading →

173 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Civil Rights, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Government Oversight, Race and race relations

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UVa’s Lawn Applications Down… Again. Why?

Posted on March 1, 2023 by | 66 comments

Photo credit: The University of Virginia

by James A. Bacon

Forty-seven University of Virginia students have been offered a room on the Lawn for the 2023-24 academic year. They were selected from a pool of 152 applicants, reports The Cavalier Daily. The number of applications was down from 189 last year and 221 two years ago.

Why the decline?

There was a time when residence on the Lawn was a coveted honor. Does the fall-off in applications reflect a sentiment among UVa students that life on the Lawn is less of a privilege than it once was? Are students today more likely to find the living conditions — such as the necessity to walk outside to reach a bathroom — too primitive for comfort? Alternatively, do some students believe the Lawn selection is stacked and see no point in applying?

The Cavalier Daily does not ask the question. Those of us who are not part of the selection process are left to speculate.

Here’s a clue: the newspaper article reports the demographic make-up of the Lawn residents. The collection and dissemination of such data reflects upon the priorities of those involved in the selection process. As the old saying goes, you manage what you measure. Continue reading →

66 Comments

Posted in Race and race relations

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Gov. Youngkin’s Latest Event Undermines Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Attack

Posted on February 27, 2023 by | 88 comments

by Tyler O’Neil

Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, on Tuesday, joined fourth graders at Fort Monroe outside Newport News, Virginia, hosting an event teaching about the history of the fort, where Black slaves fled during the Civil War to become freemen at what became known as “Freedom’s Fortress.”

The Youngkin event came two days after Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times’ “The 1619 Project,” claimed that Youngkin “does not want children to learn that history.”

“The 1619 Project” author spoke on Feb. 19 at the McLean Community Center in a one-hour speech for which the Fairfax County Public Library system paid her $29,350 and the community center paid her an additional $6,000. She acknowledged that her project rewrites history and urged her audience to support reparations to Blacks for slavery and to “subvert” America’s economic system, which she claimed is beset by institutional racism. She also suggested that the Confederates understood the Constitution accurately, establishing the United States as a “slave nation.”

Hannah-Jones spoke about the central role Virginia plays in the history of American slavery, stating that the “entire legal architecture of what is race, who’s black, who’s not, whose children will be born enslaved, whose children will be born free, it all is created in Virginia.”

“Massive resistance to Brown v. Board, the strategy is born here, and yet you have a governor who does not want children to learn that history even as they still sit in segregated classrooms,” The 1619 Project author claimed. She has previously criticized Youngkin’s efforts to remove critical race theory (a lens encouraging students to view America as institutionally racist) from school curricula, saying he aims to provide a “sanitized” history for “White kids.”

Yet two days after Hannah-Jones attacked Youngkin, the governor was teaching Virginia’s children about slavery, according to footage of the Fort Monroe event obtained by The Daily Signal.

“We just covered in that lesson over 400 years of history, and it’s really important history, starting in 1619, where the first Africans were brought to this country as slaves, and it was a terrible, terrible, terrible beginning,” the governor said after Jess Meadows, education programs manager at the Fort Monroe Authority, led students through a lesson.
Continue reading →

88 Comments

Posted in Civil Rights, Culture wars, Education (K-12), Race and race relations, Uncategorized, Virginia history

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“Social Justice” Comes for Henrico’s Gifted Program

Posted on February 22, 2023 by | 38 comments

by James A. Bacon

Here we go again. The Richmond Times-Dispatch is using “statistical disparities” as evidence of racial bias in Henrico County schools.

Under pressure from federal authorities to address racial disparities, Henrico County is endeavoring to enroll more students from minorities in the county’s “gifted” programs. States the article: “The Richmond Times-Dispatch reviewed annual reports on the demographics of the Henrico students identified as gifted and compared them with the division’s enrollment demographics…. As of the 2021-22 school year, Asian and white students were 4.9 times and 3.5 times likelier than Black students to be determined gifted.”

Why does such a disparity exist? Black parents in Henrico, wrote the RTD, claim that Black students are not being identified as gifted due to behavioral issues, according to an external audit of the program.

The article leads with a story of a bright biracial lad whose teachers acknowledged that he was mathematically gifted but did not admit him into Henrico’s gifted program on the grounds of immaturity. He acted out because he was bored by remote learning during the COVID shutdowns, said his mother, Amanda Reisner. “That didn’t set right by me. Maturity has nothing to do with giftedness.”

Reisner’s remark raises an interesting question of whether students (of whatever race) should be denied admittance to a gifted program if they are unable to conform to expected behavioral standards. But let’s set that aside and focus on how the RTD uses statistics to make admissions into the gifted program a racial issue. Continue reading →

38 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), Race and race relations, Uncategorized

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The Players and the Dispute in the High Level Cage Match at UVa – Can a Racism Charge be Far Behind?

Posted on February 21, 2023 by | 20 comments

By James C. Sherlock

Loren Lomasky,
Cory Professor of Political Philosophy, Policy & Law.       Courtesy UVa.

I read yesterday morning on BR “Tragedies in Charlottesville” by UVa professor Loren Lomasky, who wrote:

It is reasonable to judge that in either the longer or shorter version of the history of the university, no single individual has done it as grievous a harm as the man who now serves as its chief academic officer.

Among the few propositions on which Loren Lomasky and provost Ian Baucom agree is that the University of Virginia would be better off with exactly one of them gone.

Wow! Cage match!

I guess you could say that Dr. Lomasky has had enough.

He opposes, obviously strongly, Provost Baucom’s strange intervention into academics school-wide after the November shooting of three young men at the University.

We also suspect the fight might reflect the history between the two men. Baucom was Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences during most of Professor Lomasky’s tenure there.

Libertarians like Dr. Lomasky seek, in his case as a career, to minimize encroachments on and violations of individual liberties and to maximize personal autonomy and political freedom.

They are believers in personal agency and taking responsibility for ones actions. They insist on academic freedom.

Nice to see the professor, who advocates all of that, call out the University of Virginia leadership in the person of provost Ian Baucom, who emphatically does not advocate any of it.

Not a word about that story yet that I can find in the mainstream media that cover Virginia.  Fair enough.  Perhaps we will see it tomorrow.

Nothing in The Cavalier Daily yet, which does,however, offer a riveting story pressing for free menstrual products in the dorms.

But Professor Lomasky also called out the DEI bureaucracy at UVa in the strongest terms.

I have no doubt that they have opened a “case.” (Update.  I understand that Prof. Lomasky has been the subject of at least three investigations by the EOCR division of DEI).

Continue reading →

20 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Ethics, Freedom, Individual liberties, Race and race relations

Another Social-Justice Narrative Circles Down the Drain

Posted on February 14, 2023 by | 64 comments

by James A. Bacon

Now that Democrats have de-confirmed Virginia’s state health commissioner, Colin Greene, they have effectively set a new qualification for the office: it is no longer permissible to express skepticism that “systemic racism” is, in the words of Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, “a public health crisis.”

Ironically, only a few days after senate Democrats sent Greene packing, Old Dominion University has published a graph in its 2022 State of the Commonwealth report that dismembers any idea of systemic racism playing a role in the biggest public health crisis of our generation — the COVID pandemic.  The graph above, taken from the study, compares the percentage of COVID-related deaths for each race to its percentage of Virginia’s population.

African Americans accounted for 23% of COVID deaths through October 22 compared to only 19.2% of the state’s population — a four-percentage point gap.

But it turns out that Whites accounted for 68.1% of COVID-related deaths compared to 60.8% of the population — an eight-percentage point gap. Is that evidence of systemic anti-White racism? Continue reading →

64 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

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School Discipline in Virginia – Part 3 — A Sharp Policy Turn to the Left after 2009

Posted on February 1, 2023 by | 13 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Here is the information from a slide briefing to the Loudon County school board on February 6, 2013.

“Experimentally.”

The slide itself was actually produced in 2008 by pbis.org. It seems like a bad joke now, but that was how it was presented.

Not a word about race there, but there surely is in a presentation linked by that organization now. Risk index and risk ratios? With cartoon figures of Black children? Seriously?

Did I mention that Newport News Public Schools is rated fluent in PBIS by the state ed school consortium that trains and rates PBIS schools? They probably would take issue with all of those promises.

As would most of the working staff of schools across Virginia that use PBIS.

So how did we get here? Continue reading →

13 Comments

Posted in Attendance, Discipline and disorder, Education - Early Childhood, Education (K-12), Race and race relations, teacher education

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