Category Archives: Race and Race Relations

Debunking Another Junk Study from the Left

Posted on July 25, 2022 by | 25 comments

Source: The Prison Policy Initiative

by James A. Bacon

The Prison Policy Initiative, a group dedicated to exposing “the broader harm of mass criminalization,” has published data detailing the incarceration rate of communities across Virginia. Among Virginia’s 95 counties and 38 cities, 26 are missing at least 1% of their population to incarceration, finds “The geography of mass incarceration in Virginia.”

Among the more notable findings: while the cities of Norfolk and Richmond send the largest numbers of people to prison, less populous localities — Martinsville, Petersburg, Franklin, Buchanan, Lee, Dickenson and Brunswick — are missing a larger share of their populations. Moreover, within localities incarceration rates differ widely by neighborhood.

The data is interesting and potentially useful, but the analysis that accompanies it is atrocious. If the numbers prove anything, it’s that “mass incarceration” knows no racial boundaries. The poverty-ridden Appalachian counties of Lee, Buchanan and Dickenson are overwhelmingly White. But the authors slight that obvious fact in favor of linking incarceration with “systemic racism.”

This passage is typical: “Decades of systematic oppression and divestment from these poorer communities of color — which we know are overpoliced — have left these historically redlined communities particularly vulnerable to Virginia’s modern-day reliance on mass incarceration.”

Where do I begin? Continue reading →

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Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Race and Race Relations

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Crime, Asians, and “Whiteness”

Posted on July 15, 2022 by | 33 comments

Source: Crime in Virginia 2021

by James A. Bacon

In his classic treatise on race in America, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Thomas Sowell advanced the argument that African-Americans inherited a cultural propensity to violence from the rural Southern, White-dominated culture in which they were immersed. When Blacks migrated to northern cities to escape Jim Crow and pursue jobs in the booming manufacturing centers, they brought that undesirable proclivity with them. So did the hillbillies of Appalachia, says Sowell. Locals looked down upon both groups with scorn and prejudice.

Southern Whites and African-Americans, traditionally at odds with one another, are far more alike than they commonly recognize. I am reminded of this every time I watch football, an enjoyable but indisputably violent sport, on television. I see a lot of Black football players and a lot of White football players. I rarely see a single Hispanic or Asian on the field, even though those two groups now comprise a quarter of the U.S. population.

Sadly, we can see this cultural brothers-by-a-different-mother phenomenon in the Virginia crime statistics. Yes, as many observers point out, Blacks commit a disproportionate number of homicides and aggravated assaults. But criminal behavior is rampant in Virginia’s White population, too. Though drowned out in all the discussion of systemic racism and White privilege, there is a large White underclass in Virginia in which broken families, substance abuse, and criminal behavior are widespread. Whites commit a majority of violent crimes in Virginia. Continue reading →

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Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Race and Race Relations

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College Admissions and the Legacy Dilemma

Posted on July 13, 2022 by | 22 comments

The Williams family — Wahoos all. Photo credit: The New York Times

by James A. Bacon

The issue of legacy admissions to prestigious colleges and universities poses a ticklish problem for conservatives who support meritocratic criteria and oppose racial preferences. There is nothing meritocratic about giving preferential treatment to family members of alumni who, by virtue of having graduated from a prestigious institution, already enjoy a leg up on life.

Stereotypically, one thinks of White youngsters named Biff or Muffy benefiting from the legacy system, but that’s changing now that African-Americans and other minorities have begun graduating from America’s top institutions in large numbers.

Such is the case of Anastasia and Sanford Williams and their children, all of whom have graduated from the University of Virginia. Pictured in a New York Times article about admissions, they feel conflicted. Sanford wants to open up opportunities for other African-Americans. Yet he supports legacy preferences, reports the NYTimes, “as long as they are a small part of the admissions process.”

In America today, the top tier of universities give preference to two groups in admissions: the offspring of alumni (mostly but decreasingly White) and favored racial/ethnic minorities (namely Blacks and Hispanics but not Asians). Everyone else suffers a significantly diminished chance of being selected. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (higher ed), Race and Race Relations

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The Only Thing “Systemic” About VMI Is the WaPo’s Cherry Picking of Data

Posted on July 5, 2022 by | 26 comments

by James A. Bacon

Washington Post reporter Ian Shapira was up to his old tricks in an article published over the weekend about Governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointments to the Virginia Military Institute Board of Visitors. Predictably, he portrayed the divisions at VMI as between rival camps of those who “support change” and “those resisting it” — a vacuous description of the controversies dogging the military academy. It is more accurate today to characterize the rival camps as those who believe VMI needs a good dose of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion to redress past racial wrongs versus those who regard DEI’s raising of racial consciousness as antithetical to VMI’s socially egalitarian culture.

Be that as it may, Shapira frets that Youngkin’s appointment of four Republicans to the 17-person board “would roll back some of the efforts designed to make VMI more inclusive and diverse.” Only 6% of the Institute’s 1,650 cadets are Black, he notes, and only 14% are women.

Let’s set aside the obvious facts that women are far less interested in pursuing military careers than men, that they comprise only 16.5% of Americans in uniform, and that few college-bound women are interested in undergoing the rigors of the Rat Line.

Let us focus instead upon Shapira’s discussion of race at VMI. Youngkin’s board selections, he wrote, made VMI “slightly less racially diverse” by replacing one Black member, Sean Lanier, whose term had expired. “The new makeup of the VMI board includes nine White men, four Black men, two White women, one Hispanic man and one Native American woman.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (higher ed), Media, Race and Race Relations

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UVa’s Invasive, Ubiquitous DEI Program, Its President and the New Board of Visitors

Posted on July 1, 2022 by | 38 comments

UVa President James Ryan Courtesy of the University

by James C. Sherlock

As a public service and a primer for new UVa Board of Visitors members, I will offer here a brief summary of the extent and costs in dollars, time, distraction and suppression of debate by the University’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program.

Put briefly, they are everywhere, overseeing everything at the University.

On that subject, Victor David Hanson has written:

At a time of impending recession, runaway inflation, and climbing interest rates, universities are charging students thousands of dollars in increased tuition and fees to subsidize an unproductive diversity, equity, and inclusion industry. And like all good commissariats, the DEI apparatchiks produce no research, do no teaching, and bully and repress those who do.

Their chief legacy is the millions of opportunistic mediocrities emerging from the shadows to mouth wokester shibboleths about climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion, identity politics, and transgenderism, while damning the customs, traditions, history, and values of a prior society that alone is responsible for their very affluence and leisure.

A harsh critique, certainly. Perhaps it does not apply to the DEI program at the University of Virginia.

It is up to the Board of Visitors to examine whether Mr. Hanson’s description accurately describes that program and, if so, to make changes.

I will offer here a brief and assuredly incomplete accounting of that DEI bureaucracy and its hold on UVa’s President to let readers get an idea of both its scope and its penetration of the University. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (higher ed), Race and Race Relations

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African-Americans the Main Victims of Virginia Crime Wave

Posted on June 30, 2022 by | 43 comments


by James A. Bacon

The Virginia State Police has published its 2021 Crime in Virginia report, and the big news — that homicides and violent crime continued their two-year surge — seemed not to pique much interest in the mainstream media. To be sure, the television stations, where crime news is a staple, and the Virginia Mercury did give the report perfunctory notice, so give those outlets some credit. But the majors — The Washington Post, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Virginian-Pilot, and Virginia Public Media — ignored it altogether.

Here is the data released yesterday that Virginia’s organs of “social justice” propaganda have not deemed important enough for same-day coverage:

  • 562 homicides were reported in 2021, up from 528 the previous year, and 428 the year before that.
  • 17,993 violent crimes of all types were reported in 2021, up from 16,823 the previous year, and 15,713 the year before that.

Virginia, like the nation, is in the grip of a violent crime wave, even as changes in laws and law-enforcement policy have cut the number of drug-related arrests by half over two years. Remarkably, despite the media’s obsession with finding racial disparities in all walks of life, no outlet — not one — has taken note of the disparities in the race of the assault and homicide victims. Continue reading →

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Posted in Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Media, Race and Race Relations

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Virginia’s New Race-and-Healthcare Dogma

Posted on June 27, 2022 by | 30 comments

Colin Greene. Photo credit: Roanoke.com.

by James A. Bacon

It is now outside the bounds of acceptable discourse in Virginia to question the proposition that “structural” racism accounts for health disparities between racial/ethnic groups.

Virginia’s new health commissioner, Colin Greene, has been called on the carpet for expressing the view that racism is not a public health crisis and, in particular, as The Washington Post summarizes his views, for saying that he was not convinced that structural racism causes higher rates of maternal and infant mortality among African Americans.

Members of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus have declared themselves “outraged,” and members of the Virginia Board of Health have reprimanded him for publicly questioning “basic scientific facts regarding disparities.”

It did not take long for the Youngkin administration to cave. In a letter to Department of Health employees, Greene issued a groveling apology: “I am fully aware that racism at many levels is a factor in a wide range of public health outcomes and disparities across the Commonwealth and the United States.”

The science, it appears, is settled. Virginia’s political-pundit class — in this case, Black legislators, political appointees to the Board of Health, and a Washington Post essayist masquerading as a reporter — now arbitrates what the “science” says. No one is allowed to question it. With Greene’s capitulation, structural racism as a cause of health disparities  now can be considered Old Dominion dogma. Continue reading →

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Posted in Health Care, Race and Race Relations

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Chinese, Hindu, Jewish Groups File Brief Supporting TJ families

Posted on June 26, 2022 by | 31 comments

Editor’s note: This column was published June 21.

by Asra Q. Nomani

Today, a diverse coalition of seven organizations representing parents and students from the Hindu, Jewish and Chinese communities, as well as others, filed an amicus brief — aptly named a brief by friends — supporting the families of Coalition for TJ as they fight to end the anti-Asian racism in Fairfax County Public Schools’ new admissions process to one of America’s top high schools, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, or TJ.

In February, in a lawsuit, Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, U.S. federal judge Claude Hilton ruled the new admissions policy is “patently unconstitutional” because it discriminates against Asian students in an obvious effort to increase the number of Black and Hispanic students at the school. The school board removed a race-blind, merit-based exam to the school in December 2020 and replaced it, in a “rushed” process, the judge ruled, with a subjective admissions process.

Fairfax County Public Schools, dubbed #UnFairfax by parents, is filing an appeal in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Pacific Legal Foundation, representing the Coalition for TJ, has filed its arguments why the ruling is correct. Oral arguments are expected in September. Fourth Circuit judges already indicated they are biased toward the school system, allowing them to continue the unconstitutional admissions process this past spring. If the Coalition for TJ loses the appeal, it will likely appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will next fall hear a similar case alleging anti-Asian bias by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Why does all of this matter? This case raises questions about whether Asian families can expect equality under the law in America, as school systems pursue “equity” plans that discriminate against Asian students. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12), Race and Race Relations

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The New Racial Calculus in UVa Admissions

Posted on June 8, 2022 by | 55 comments


by Walter Smith and James A. Bacon

On March 20, 2022, The Cavalier Daily student newspaper trumpeted the fact that the University of Virginia set a record low acceptance rate, offering slots to only 9,534 applicants, or 19% of the nearly 51,000 total. Of particular note, 52% of the offers went to “students of color” — up from 41% the prior year.

Only a little more than half of students who get accepted to UVa wind up enrolling there, so it’s not known what the ultimate composition of the entering class will be. But it is possible that entering first-year students will comprise the first class in which a majority of students are comprised of racial/ethnic minorities.

That would be no accident. In 2020, UVa recruited a vice provost of admissions, Stephen Farmer, whose most heralded accomplishment at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill had been  setting records for recruiting first-generation students and students from underrepresented minorities. At the time, UVa’s Racial Equity Task Force had recently articulated the goal of building a student body that “reflects the racial and economic demographics of the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

An analysis of acceptance numbers, provided by the University of Virginia and summarized in the table above, shows that UVa admissions this year clearly favor African-Americans, in-state students, and legacy students. If you are an in-state African-American applicant whose parent is an alumnus, your odds of getting accepted are roughly four times that of an out-of-state White applicant with no family connections. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (higher ed), Race and Race Relations

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SOLs: Disentangling Race, Socioeconomic Status, and English Learning

Posted on May 30, 2022 by | 48 comments

by Carol J. Bova

Many politicians, activists and media commentators persist in the conviction that Virginia’s schools are systemically racist. The main evidence to support such a proposition is the reality of disparities of educational outcomes between racial/ethnic groups, like those summarized in the chart at right. If Blacks and Hispanics pass their Standard of Learning exams at lower rates than Asians, Whites and others, that in itself is deemed to be proof that the system is biased against non-Whites.

However, that logic fails to take into account that racial/ethnic groups vary by at least three factors known to affect educational outcomes: socioeconomic status, English as the primary language, and chronic absenteeism.

The table tells an incomplete story. True, the average pass rate for 4th-grade English SOLs is 14% and 11% lower for Blacks and Hispanics, respectively. But Asians pass at a 12% higher rate than the statewide average — more than Whites. Also, multiracial students, who also are classified as “people of color” supposedly subject to discrimination, pass  at a 5% higher rate than the overall average. Clearly, there are other factors than skin color at play. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12), Race and Race Relations

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What Role Will “Equity” Play in UVa’s Pay Raises This Year?

Posted on May 27, 2022 by | 3 comments

by James A. Bacon

The College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia will be using “equity” as a criterion in allocating pay raises in the coming year, according to a memo distributed by Interim Dean David L. Hill.

Hill has divided the 5% pool of funds available for pay raises into three portions. One portion, accounting for 20% of the 5%, will go to “standard promotion raises,” in which “equity” is one criterion among several. The second portion, accounting for 40%, makes no reference to equity; but a third portion, also accounting for 40%, allows department chairs and directors to “address additional merit and equity considerations in their departments and programs.”

The memo does not define what Hill means by “equity.” But the pay raises will be handed out in a context in which College employees are required to submit “diversity statements” in their annual reviews describing their commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in teaching, research and service.

When Bacon’s Rebellion asked if pay raises would be tied to race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation, John Carfagno, the College’s director of communications, denied that they would. Responded Carfagno:

The communication you reference outlines efforts by the Dean’s Office to evaluate potential pay inequities between faculty members who have similar roles, academic backgrounds, performance, and scholarly activities. These can arise due to many factors, including the timing and mode of one person’s hiring relative to another. These decisions are made independent of the traits you referenced in your email to Dean Hill.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (higher ed), Race and Race Relations

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Shocker: After Years of Identity Politics, Hate Speech Is on the Rise in Loudoun Schools

Posted on May 26, 2022 by | 33 comments

Image source: Loudoun County Public Schools by way of WTOP News.

by James A. Bacon

Racial slurs and hate speech are on the rise in Loudoun County Public Schools, according to data released by the school system. Forty incidents were reported in March alone, although the monthly numbers have declined modestly since then.

“They have clearly spiked, particularly since February, and continue to be high,” Deputy Superintendent Ashley Ellis told the school board Tuesday. “This is very unsettling data to see.” So reports WTOP News, among many media outlets.

Yes, it is unsettling to see such a spike, especially considering that reports of hate speech were extremely low — three to five incidents monthly — earlier in the school year. Numerous questions arise, the foremost of which is why. Why has the incidence of reported hate speech exploded? Have Loudoun County schools turned overnight into hotbeds of racism? If so, what does this tell us about the effectiveness of the school board’s years-long effort to expunge racism from the system? Clearly, it’s not working. Indeed, it would appear that the school board’s aggressive “anti-racism” policy has proven spectacularly counter-productive.

Perhaps the lesson is this: if you want to end racism, stop talking about race. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12), Race and Race Relations

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Where “Equity” Means Failing Equally

Posted on May 25, 2022 by | 50 comments

Louise Lucas, Chair, Senate Education and Health Committee photo credit: Virginian-Pilot

by James A. Bacon

State Senator Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, doesn’t just take issue with the Youngkin administration’s interpretation of the data regarding the deteriorating quality of education in Virginia public schools, she finds Governor Glenn Youngkin’s position to be morally reprehensible. Here’s what she said in response to the release of his report, “Our Commitment to Virginians”:

We all know Governor Youngkin’s end goal – to erase Black history and any mention of equity from Virginia’s curricula. This misguided effort based on fake news and debunked theories is an outright attack from the far right, riling up racist constituencies with lies and deceit. This report shows once again that Governor Youngkin wants to take us back to the days of Jim Crow – and I would know, having lived through it. His backwards thinking will throw Virginia’s progress in reverse, harming the next generation and hindering the Commonwealth’s future.

This incoherent jumble of leftist rhetoric is unplugged from reality. Youngkin doesn’t want to “erase Black history.” His report is not based on “fake news,” but state government data. He’s not riling up “racist constituencies” with his calls to strengthen educational standards and close the racial achievement gap. And he certainly doesn’t want to “take us back to the days of Jim Crow,” if by that is meant the re-segregation of public schools.

If Lucas were a blogger, one might dismiss her bile as coming from the lunatic fringe. But as Chair of the Senate Education & Health Committee, she is in a position to thwart Youngkin’s educational reforms. And she’s far from alone. Democratic Caucus Chair Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, though less intemperate in her language, comes from the same place. She described Youngkin’s principles for reforming education as “dog-whistle talking points,” “tomfoolery,” and “platitudes and promises based on lies.” Continue reading →

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

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Who Will Replace Us?

Posted on May 22, 2022 by | 108 comments

by Jim McCarthy

Who is the “who” doing the replacing? Who is the “us” to be replaced? There is no discernable record that indigenous Americans asked themselves this question. In the early 1600s, the Powhattan people of Virginia observed as the English immigrants built a fort and spread their settlement across formerly Powhattan hunting grounds. In 1622, the natives attacked as a measure, according to some historians, to teach the English a lesson.

From the circumstances, indigenous peoples were clear that the newcomers were not of their tribe nor sharing of their sensibilities; they were others with pale skins determined to clear and dominate forested lands for agriculture unburdened by who went before them. The existential evidence was reasonably graphic to conclude that the Powhattan were being replaced, their properties being converted without concern for their interests.

Although the later governing document authored by the immigrant colonialists appeared to accord native Americans the high diplomatic privilege of reserving to the Congress explicit authority to regulate commerce and negotiate treaties with them, the document also excluded untaxed natives from the census. That Constitution ironically contained a provision limiting the taking of property without due process or just compensation. In 1800, Congress adopted an act for the preservation of peace with the natives limiting First Amendment speech and press freedoms as a means to proscribe criticism of national policies and discourage foreign nations from stirring them to protest. Continue reading →

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Richmond Public Schools, VSU, VUU Teacher Residency Initiative is Promising

Posted on May 19, 2022 by | 10 comments

RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras

by James C. Sherlock

The Richmond Public Schools RVA Men Teach program has partnered with Virginia State and Virginia Union Universities to create a HBCU (Historically Black College/University) Teacher Residency program for male minority teachers.

As a long time observer and sometime critic of RPS, I congratulate it and the two universities for this initiative.

The benefits for minority children, and in fact all children, of having male role models in their classrooms are both self evident and well documented.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has reported that about 76% of public school teachers were female and 24% were male in 2017–18, with a lower percentage of male teachers at the elementary school level (11%) than at the secondary school level (36%).

This RPS/VUU/VSU initiative represents a promising effort to increase the supply of male teachers. I congratulate them for it. Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12), Race and Race Relations

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