The wealthy Chicago suburb of Oak Park attempted to do something simple enough for a liberal town: Update the village’s diversity statement.
But as many things involving identity politics go, this simple statement caused the town some embarrassment. Mark Glennon, founder of an Illinois online outlet <a href="https://wirepoints.org/where-hate-has-a-home-oak-park-illinois-2/">called WirePoints</a>, explained what happened in Oak Park.
The Oak Park village board met and debated the diversity statement, which included the phrase “system of oppression.” As Glennon wrote, this upset some members of the board, who felt the phrase unfairly smeared the local police department.
“That’s when Trustee Susan Buchanan let loose, telling the white males on the board to &#8216;shut up,&#8217; and much more,” Glennon wrote. “Keep in mind that one of the targets of Buchanan’s comments was the mayor, Anan Abu-Taleb. He’s a Palestinian immigrant born in the Gaza Strip as the second oldest of 13 children and came to the Chicago area at the age of 18 to attend college.”
Buchanan, according <a href="https://youtu.be/COzVGRhSOuI">to video</a> of the meeting told the white members and Abu-Taleb that they “shouldn’t have an opinion on that.”
“That is the point. Why do you have an opinion on equity? You’ve never experienced oppression so shut up … . Just stop … You are not oppressed … . Enough … You stop it! You are a white male. Your skin is light enough. Stop it,” she said.
Instead of Buchanan losing her job and becoming a political pariah for her comments, she was supported by members of her community. Glennon reported that the “loudest voices” in the town support Buchanan, and have even posted <a href="https://www.change.org/p/oak-park-board-of-trustees-dan-moroney-resign-from-oak-park-s-board-of-trustees/c">a petition</a> demanding that one of the other village board members resign.
“That’s Dan Moroney, who was among the trustees who questioned the wording of the original diversity statement,” Glennon wrote. “They’ve selected him as scapegoat for the bad press Oak Park got from Buchanan’s words and for the threats she says she and her family received.”
Moroney, according to Buchanan’s supporters, is the one who has to go because he spoke about the situation on a conservative Dan Proft’s radio show. Buchanan’s supporters claim that the neighborhood was “targeted by white supremacists” and that Buchanan was threatened.
But, according to Glennon, Moroney didn’t appear on the radio show until October 18, two weeks after Buchanan’s comments went national and after Buchanan said she had been threatened. Also, the reporting on the incident was not initiated by Moroney.
For what it’s worth, the diversity statement was approved on October 9. The Chicago Tribune <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/oak-park/ct-oak-park-diversity-statement-tl-1017-20191009-sevkm5o6yvhf3fxxyiymyqynty-story.html">reported</a> at the time that the statement was updated after each election.
Despite the statement being approved, protesters showed up at last week’s village board meeting to defend Buchanan. A woman suggested men did need to “shut up,” while another said Buchanan’s critics were “vile and Brett Kavanaugh-like.” The Left believes Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted women 30 years ago, even though the available evidence suggests he didn’t. The protester’s reference was likely suggesting that anyone who thought Buchanan’s comments were disrespectful and bigoted was actually a sexual assaulter.

Cropped Hand Of Woman Holding Megaphone By Drawing Against Blackboard

Illinois Town Tries To Release Statement On Inclusion, Chaos Ensues

Diversity

Illinois

There may be no other single college in America that is a better example of the failures of being “woke” than the University of Missouri, more commonly known as Mizzou.
The latest embarrassment for the university comes from its attempt at a PR campaign featuring student athletes. The aim or the campaign was simple enough: Show that student athletes are more than the stereotypical jock. The school asked athletes who they are as a person.
But when the school made images using the photos of these athletes, something went wrong. The photos highlighting white female athletes included quotes saying what they want to be in the future.
“I am a future doctor,” reads the quote from Chelsey Christensen.
“I am a future corporate financer,” reads the quote from CJ Kovac.
But the images featuring African-American athletes don’t include information about their futures. Arielle Mack’s photo quote reads: “I am an African American woman.” Caulin Graves’ quote says, “I am a brother.”
This might not have been such a problem if there was a little more explanation. If they simply asked the students to finish the sentence, “I am a/an,” one might get more insight into the students. We would commend Graves for putting his family first.
But a video released with the images shows that the black students did talk about their futures, but that’s not what the school included.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Today, we will focus on the core values &amp; various identities <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Mizzou?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Mizzou</a> student-athletes hold.
Who are YOU as a person?
Use <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NCAAInclusion?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NCAAInclusion</a> to show that you are more than an athlete, coach or staff member.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MIZ?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MIZ</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ShowMe?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ShowMe</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NCAAInclusion?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NCAAInclusion</a> 🐯 <a href="https://t.co/I8AfQbiAPy">pic.twitter.com/I8AfQbiAPy</a>
— Mizzou Athletics (@MizzouAthletics) <a href="https://twitter.com/MizzouAthletics/status/1187020479783006208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 23, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Graves did not simply say he “is a brother.” He also said he was an uncle “and a leader.”
Mack said she was “a future physical therapist” in addition to the quote included on her image. Another black student athlete said he was an electrical engineer. Why couldn’t those quotes be included on images to continue the theme?
After a swift backlash, Mizzou deleted its tweet featuring the athletes’ images and apologized.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Earlier we made a mistake when we posted a graphic about our student athletes. We apologize. Our intent was to provide personal information about our students, but we failed. We listened and removed the post. This video better represents our intent to celebrate our diversity. <a href="https://t.co/dVZjrLZ254">pic.twitter.com/dVZjrLZ254</a>
— Mizzou Athletics (@MizzouAthletics) <a href="https://twitter.com/MizzouAthletics/status/1187213416278220801?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
RedState’s Kira Davis included screenshots of the failed tweets in <a href="https://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2019/10/25/epic-fail-mizzou-athletics-attempt-diversity-campaign-goes-horribly-horribly-wrong/">her article</a> about the PR disaster, writing:
<blockquote>To recap: at Mizzou white student athletes are future doctors and business people. Black student athletes are…black. Poor Caulin Graves doesn’t even get to be black, just “a brother.” *insert laughy-cry emoji here*</blockquote>
Mizzou’s social justice troubles <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/mizzou-closes-two-dorms-due-to-lack-of-students">began in 2015</a>, when it became the poster child for protests from students claiming their school was a hotbed of racism. During the protests, professor Melissa Click pushed a student journalist and threatened to call some “muscle” over. She was eventually fired and charged with assault.
The incident was embarrassing for the school, which saw a massive drop in admissions the following year. The drop in admissions led to a $32 million budget shortfall, which resulted in the closure of two dorms.
Earlier this year, the school was threatened with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mizzou-faces-loss-funding-threat-over-lack-due-ashe-schow">a loss of funding</a> due to its lack of due process for students accused of sexual assault. Local media sneered at legislators’ attempts to provide basic fairness to murky he said/she said accusations by scoffing at the idea that an accused student deserved to see the evidence against him and to cross-examine his accuser.

Black and white hands

Mizzou Steps In It Again &#8211; This Time With Failed Diversity Stunt Involving White And Black Athletes

University of Missouri

In higher education’s ongoing quest to appeal to the “woke” crowd, colleges and universities across the country are now training professors about “inclusive grading” as part of a larger focus on diversity and inclusion.
The College Fix <a href="https://www.thecollegefix.com/public-university-tells-professors-not-to-grade-based-on-merit/">reported</a> that Boise State University (BSU) is the latest in a long line of schools to jump on the ‘inclusive grading’ bandwagon. This week, the university is hosting an event called “Inclusive Teaching Means Inclusive Grading, Too.” The event is part of a larger certificate program, called Boise State Uniting for Inclusion and Leadership in Diversity (BUILD).
Information regarding the event could not be accessed, but other events with the same name offered insight into what is now being taught. From the Fix:
<blockquote>BSU’s event has the exact same name as a previous University of Tennessee-Knoxville faculty <a href="https://calendar.utk.edu/event/inclusive_teaching_means_inclusive_grading_practices_too#.XaTOB-dKi_I">workshop</a>. It was aimed to “engage instructors in conversations and activities designed to foreground diversity and inclusion in considerations of assessment and grading practices.”
The University of Michigan held a faculty workshop with a near-identical name as well. The Center for Research on Learning and Teaching <a href="http://crlt.umich.edu/events/inclusive-teaching-means-inclusive-grading-practices-too-inclusive-teaching-michigan-series">stated</a> on its website that attending teachers would “be asked to review their own practices” on grading throughout the event.
This workshop is reminiscent of one <a href="https://www.thecollegefix.com/university-seminar-teaches-faculty-not-to-judge-quality-of-writing-when-grading/">held</a> in February at American University, designed to teach faculty “how to assess writing without judging its quality.”
Titled “Grading ain’t just grading” and promising to help teachers rethink “writing assessment ecologies toward antiracist ends,” the workshop <a href="https://edspace.american.edu/ariwa/">warned</a> that “the practices of grading writing” maintained “White language supremacy.”</blockquote>
BSU, the Fix reported, has been on a “woke” kick lately, including hosting a book circle that makes participants “dig deep into ourselves to explore the ways in which we all, as individuals, sometimes unknowingly, support racism and white supremacy.”
The Fix also highlighted other programs coming up as part of the BUILD certification. One workshop is titled “Implicit Bias in the Academic Workplace” and suggests faculty attending reflect on “messages that are fed to us via news and popular culture may cause us to create an inequitable environment.”
Another workshop, titled, “‘Why are You Reacting that Way?’: Unpacking Identity Development &amp; it’s Impact on Interactions in the Classroom &amp; Workplace,” promises to “give participants opportunities to examine the lens they use to interact with others and understand why there is resistance.”
So, it’s now a professor’s responsibility to change their behavior to reduce “resistance” from students? What ever happened to teaching children and young adults how to properly behave?
Another upcoming program asks: “How accessible is your syllabus? That is, to what extent is it able to be used by all intended users, each with differing capabilities?”
Schools across the country have been giving into the woke crowd with increasing frequency. Multiple schools have held “white privilege workshops” designed to teach white people that they are racist and must repent. In <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/huge-university-holds-white-privilege-workshop-joseph-curl">one recent example</a>, the University of North Carolina’s workshop was attended by just nine students.
No subject is safe from the woke brigade, either. In Seattle, curriculum has been proposed that would teach students that math – yes math – <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/seattle-public-schools-teaching-math-ethnic-studies-asks-who-gets-to-say-if-an-answer-is-right">is racist</a>.

Hands raised

‘Inclusive Grading’: Colleges Teaching Professors Not To Grade On Quality

Education

Idaho

Even though &#8220;Sex and the City&#8221; instilled the values of carefree, loveless sex into a whole generation of women, the show&#8217;s creator has one regret: not ensuring more diversity.
Speaking with <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/darren-star-iconic-tv-characters-at-2019-mipcom-1247631">The Hollywood Reporter</a> (THR) in Cannes recently, Darren Star said, in retrospect, he should have included more minority characters.
“That&#8217;s the one thing I probably would have liked to have done differently,” said Star. “Hopefully it transcended that, but looking back, wow, that would have been another way to make it feel more groundbreaking.”
“The show is very much a product of its time and I think the show is a time capsule. You can only think about shows as representing the time that they are being made,” he continued. “TV has evolved in being much more inclusive, and I think that people do now think about series that way.”
In the same interview, Star expressed feeling quite drawn to stories about female characters due to their openness. “I feel like they&#8217;re emotionally very open, they&#8217;re very expressive, they&#8217;re funny. I just think of the female characters as people,” he said. “If you put men in the same situation you just wouldn&#8217;t be able to tell the same kinds of stories.”
Though &#8220;Sex and the City&#8221; has a loyal fanbase, as THR noted, the show has indeed faced criticism for a lack of diversity. The show&#8217;s star, Sarah Jessica Parker, <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/sarah-jessica-parker-says-sex-city-looks-tone-deaf-20-years-1141149">even said that the show looks &#8220;tone-deaf&#8221; 20 years later</a>.
&#8220;You couldn&#8217;t make it today because of the lack of diversity on screen,&#8221; she said in 2018. &#8220;I personally think it would feel bizarre.&#8221;
“I don&#8217;t know that you could do it with a different cast,” she said of a possible reboot. “I think that&#8217;s radical and interesting, but you can&#8217;t pretend it&#8217;s the same. It wouldn&#8217;t be a reboot as I understand it. If you came back and did six episodes, you&#8217;d have to acknowledge the city is not hospitable to those same ideas. You&#8217;d look like you were generationally removed from reality, but it would be certainly interesting to see four diverse women experiencing NYC their way. … It would be interesting and very worthwhile exploring, but it couldn&#8217;t be the same.”
&#8220;Sex and the City&#8221; also made headlines recently when the original author, Candace Bushnell (upon whom the character of Carrie Bradshaw was based), admitted that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sex-and-city-author-regrets-not-having-kids-i-felt-paul-bois">she regrets not having kids</a>.
“When I was in my 30s and 40s, I didn’t think about it,” Bushnell said earlier this year. “Then when I got divorced and I was in my 50s, I started to see the impact of not having children and of truly being alone. I do see that people with children have an anchor in a way that people who have no kids don’t.”
Bushnell and her husband, ballet dancer Charles Askegard, divorced in 2012 after 10 years of marriage – which she said caused her to go without sex for five years. “It’s not that long when you get to my age. I know women who have gone longer,” she said.
Bushnell&#8217;s latest book already has a television deal on the table and will focus on a group of single, middle-aged women from New York City who move to the Hamptons in order to start anew. Similarly autobiographical like “Sex and the City,” the novel was inspired by her own experience as a childless, single woman in her 50s.
“We’re all single women without children. And you think about, what are you going to do when you get old?” she said. “If you don’t have kids, you realize, ‘Who is going to take care of me?’ Your girlfriends.”
“It was a weird, great communal living where your best friends who are like your family are right across the street and you can run and see them any time and you’re there for each other,” Bushnell said. “We live within walking or biking distance [of each other]. We get together usually for Sunday brunch. And sometimes we have a paddle-boarding lunch.”

PaleyFest New York 2016 &#8211; &#8220;Younger&#8221;

‘Sex And The City’ Creator Laments Show&#8217;s Lack Of Diversity

Hollywood

Sexuality

College Board, the university entrance-exam company that produces the SAT, has walked back its plan to assign a numeric &#8220;adversity score&#8221; to students&#8217; college-application profiles, according to <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/college-board-sat-cheating-scandal-announces-new-plan-to-include-socioeconomic-factors-in-admissions/">CBS News</a>.
The plan was designed to give college admissions officers an opportunity to &#8220;view a student&#8217;s academic accomplishment in the context of where they live and learn,&#8221; said a College Board spokesperson back in May, as reported by <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/05/20/college-board-will-add-adversity-score-everyone-taking-sat">InsideHigherEd</a>.
Factors that would have boosted a student&#8217;s adversity score included an unrigorous curriculum, local property values, percentage of students receiving discounted lunches, and the education level of the students&#8217; parents, reports InsideHigherEd.
But many people at the time criticized the College Board for a variety of reasons, including lowering standards and providing opportunities to game the system. Heather Mac Donald, a scholar at the Manhattan Institute, wrote an op-ed in May at <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/college-boards-sat-adversity-score">City Journal</a> criticizing the college board&#8217;s decision, calling it &#8220;the latest response on the part of mainstream institutions to the seeming intractability of the racial academic achievement gap.&#8221;
&#8220;Colleges pay lip service to socioeconomic diversity, but that concept is inevitably a surrogate for race. Colleges have repeatedly rejected admissions schemes that purport to substitute socioeconomic preferences for racial preferences, on the ground that those socioeconomic schemes do not yield enough &#8216;underrepresented minorities,'&#8221; Mac Donald continued.
Jason Richwine, a contributor at <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-college-boards-adversity-score-perpetuates-the-myth-of-sat-bias/">National Review,</a> wrote that colleges should just say that &#8220;diversity is so important to our schools and to broader society that lowering standards is a worthy price to pay.&#8221;
Derek Newton, an education writer at <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2019/05/27/why-the-s-a-t-adversity-score-is-worse-than-no-score-at-all/#593d78071ab5">Forbes</a>, called the adversity score &#8220;worse than no score at all&#8221; because it provided a path for well-off families to game the college admissions system. &#8220;It&#8217;s only a matter of time before highly-resourced, expensive, elite prep schools establish satellites with official addresses in communities with high adversity scores,&#8221; wrote Newton.
According to CBS News, the College Board will replace the adversity score with the &#8220;Landscape Program,&#8221; which provides colleges with data showing the type of schools and neighborhoods applicants come from.
David Coleman, CEO of the College Board, says &#8220;we made changes because we heard and thought we could do better,&#8221; reports CBS News.
&#8220;There is no longer a single number that tries to sum up your neighborhood and school. Today, we&#8217;ll share with everyone exactly how we calculate it, and within a year, every student and family, they&#8217;ll be able to see the information for their neighborhood and school,&#8221; says Coleman.

SAT Test To Be Revamped

College Board Drops ‘Adversity Score’ After Backlash

Democrats are falling over themselves trying to show who is the most authoritative by announcing what they would issue an executive order on as soon as they take office, if they’re elected.
For Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), she has vowed to tackle the mythical gender wage gap and a lack of diversity in the workplace. Despite the fact the country has focused relentlessly on diversity for the past few decades, non-white’s still aren’t adequately represented in many industries and in leadership positions. People like Warren see systemic racism as the reason. Others may think there are not enough qualified applicants to fill those positions, possibly due to socioeconomic issues, rather than overt or covert racism.
Nevertheless, Warren is going to tackle this issue and the gender wage gap, which doesn’t actually exist. There is no “wage” gap. It’s an earnings gap between men and women and due to a variety of factors relating to different career choices between the sexes. When those factors are taken into account, the gap nearly vanishes and there is no evidence what remains is due to discrimination.
That is not to say that discrimination never happens. It surely does, yet the solutions proposed would do more to hurt women and businesses than help.
In <a href="https://medium.com/@teamwarren/valuing-the-work-of-women-of-color-c652bf6ccc9a">a Medium post</a> published Friday, Warren vowed to issue two executive orders upon taking office, one aimed at private sector companies seeking federal contracts and the other at diversifying the federal workforce. The first executive order she mentions would impose “new rules on companies that hope to receive federal contracts.” She would expand existing disclosure requirements to weed out companies “with poor track records on diversity and equal pay,” meaning companies that don’t hire enough people of color may not receive contracts. This may lead to “token” positions in order to receive contracts. Warren would also “ban companies that want federal contracts from using forced arbitration and non-compete clauses that restrict workers’ rights” and from asking salary history. This executive order would also require federal contractors pay a $15 minimum wage and benefits such as paid family leave, flexible hours, and collective bargaining rights.
The second executive order would require that employers “direct real resources towards attracting entry-level applicants from HBCUs, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and other minority-serving institutions,” even though Warren herself admitted that “black women are disproportionately represented in the federal workforce.” She would still impose recruitment policies because there are not enough Black women in leadership roles. This executive order would also divert funding toward paid fellowships for minorities who are underrepresented at specific government agencies. In addition, the executive order would require each federal agency to further diversify their workforce and provide mentorship programs to minorities, as if this doesn’t currently exist.
Finally, Warren said she would direct her Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to “closely monitor” sectors where minority women are overrepresented to enforce claims of discrimination.
“It will also issue first-of-its-kind guidance on enforcing claims involving the intersectional discrimination that women of color face from the interlocking biases of racism and sexism,” Warren said.
As a kicker, Warren included an asterisk about how currently available data “assumes a gender binary &#8211; but we know that peoples’ experiences aren’t.”

Elizabeth Warren Says She’ll Use Executive Orders To End Mythical Gender Wage Gap

Elizabeth Warren

Gender Wage Gap

The France-based beauty chain Sephora will be closing all U.S. stores on June 5 for a day of &#8220;inclusivity training&#8221; following accusations of racial profiling from R&amp;B singer SZA, according to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/korihale/2019/06/04/the-real-cost-of-sephoras-store-closing-diversity-fix/#5549a71945ee">Forbes</a>.
&#8220;The beauty products juggernaut will shut down more than 400 stores to tackle diversity during a 1-hour session,&#8221; reports the outlet.
This past April, Sephora fell subject to severe scrutiny when singer SZA testified on Twitter to being racially profiled at a store in Calabasas, California. She claimed at the time a staff member called security on her in fear she might be stealing.
&#8220;Lmao Sandy Sephora location 614 Calabasas called security to make sure I wasn&#8217;t stealing. We had a long talk. U have a blessed day Sandy,&#8221; SZA tweeted.
On May 1, Sephora responded to the tweet saying, &#8220;You are a part of the Sephora family, and we are committed to ensuring every member of our community feels welcome and included at our stores.&#8221; A few weeks later, the store announced that every U.S. store, distribution center, and corporate would be closing for one day in order to conduct inclusion workshops.
&#8220;Sephora believes in championing all beauty, living with courage, and standing fearlessly together to celebrate our differences,&#8221; the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sephora/videos/464182751023854/?__xts__[0]=68.ARDm29_iF1bEIsT37ErmwHlg6ZqG2o9OKSt2tIuoH50YlJbvl-gpklLIyRuRb19-PJK_eb9jgd-gRWAN1PAJO5jM8G3_4lUlUhjhX2UP3aUq1u_2GUXxjL7MFfX7NlXWiRh8zhu1jlF49pOWgyYAO2gk09z7pWfvXeZT9HaUqQ2vcGEABw41RZI3DRDOqBUdP9hIe_RffmcxIUpxfvbaPpXtoBLzeLKo3OhYxJbOyYcytPbGMdWcU7vQImMLhaZRGeaRur8R0AL-XeIZAOcYeI6_JA_-cSVk9ZhrPbxYLQP3s5-N280Fhx_EmRSTpvjRECxv9IPDmoyRUVUrFTVBglUiw2qfEBw8RbtAcffK-X4JI-SG07Y&amp;__tn__=-R" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">announcement</a> said. &#8220;We will never stop building a community where diversity is respected, self-expression is honored, all are welcomed, and you are included. We belong to something beautiful.&#8221;
As noted by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/03/business/sephora-diversity-training/index.html">CNN</a>, Sephora&#8217;s day of inclusion training almost mirrors what happened to Starbucks after the coffee chain faced accusations of racial profiling when a store manager called the police on a black man for refusing to buy something in order to use the restroom.
&#8220;The coffee chain closed its 8,000 stores nationwide in 2018 for diversity training following<a href="https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/24/news/companies/starbucks-bias-training/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> an incident in which police were called on two African American men</a> who were meeting at a Philadelphia location,&#8221; reports the outlet. &#8220;Starbucks has since changed its policy so purchases are no longer required in order to spend time in a Starbucks or use the restroom.&#8221;
<a href="http://time.com/5294343/starbucks-employees-racial-bias-training/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Time magazine reported</a> that one single day of diversity training cost the company roughly $12 million in revenue. As LA Mag <a href="https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/sephora-closing-sza/?fbclid=IwAR3GHJzEBuNXkp5EpTelXESP7yjMvvB7tK3rcrM_fc6Q67lne3aL6Vd_HRI">reports</a>, few employees actually felt the training made an impact and believed the policy changes to the bathroom privileges would make some stores become loitering farms. Frank Dobbin, a Harvard sociology professor, even told Time that diversity training at such large chains produces little to no results.
&#8220;It is the most common step companies take,&#8221; Dobbin said. &#8220;Unfortunately, it doesn&#8217;t really seem to do much good on average for companies to offer diversity training, because they say you can&#8217;t really change people&#8217;s inherent biases with a training session.&#8221;
Surprisingly, Sephora has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/35551/wiccans-accuse-sephora-culturally-appropriating-emily-zanotti">faced scrutiny</a> in the past from another social justice constituency which accused the chain of cultural appropriation: Wiccans. Apparently, as Halloween approached last year, Sephora released a &#8220;starter witch kit,&#8221; which included perfumes, a chunk of rose quartz, some tarot cards, and a &#8220;sage smudging stick.&#8221;
&#8220;I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;re doing it to spread awareness about the craft, they&#8217;re doing it just for profit in my opinion. Although most witches do use what&#8217;s in the Sephora box, most of us feel that it&#8217;s wrong for just anyone to grab those things and be like &#8216;oh hey I&#8217;m a witch now,&#8217; because it&#8217;s sacred to us,&#8221; one angered Wiccan told Metro UK at the time.

Sephora Closing U.S. Stores For Day Of ‘Inclusivity Training’ Over Racial Profiling Accusations

Race

Yesterday, Harvard University&#8217;s Faculty of Arts &amp; Sciences (FAS) <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fas-diversity-conference-a-decade-of-dialogue-tickets-59724027173#">hosted an event</a> entitled, &#8220;FAS Diversity Conference: A Decade of Dialogue.&#8221; The event <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fas-diversity-conference-a-decade-of-dialogue-tickets-59724027173#">description</a> highlighted that &#8220;anti-racism&#8221; activist Tim Wise would be the featured keynote speaker:
<blockquote>
Over the last ten years, the FAS Diversity Dialogue Series has sparked conversation about diversity, equality and inclusion in the FAS community and beyond. Join us for a retrospective look at diversity and inclusion, a discussion of current issues, and practical guidance on how we can move toward greater inclusion and belonging at Harvard.
We are pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be Tim Wise, prominent anti-racism writer, educator, and activist. A moderated discussion with Tim will be led by Renee Graham, an associate editor and columnist at the Boston Globe.
</blockquote>
Hold aside for a second why Harvard would invite a white, reportedly heterosexual man to lead its ten-year commemoration conference on a diversity initiative. Because as conservative campus watchdog site The College Fix <a href="https://www.thecollegefix.com/keynote-speaker-at-harvard-diversity-conference-says-christians-should-be-locked-up">reports</a>, this &#8220;anti-racism&#8221; activist has a rather colorful online history of grotesquely bigoted statements against religious Jews and Christians. Most specifically, Wise has publicly called for those who actually believe in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament to be &#8220;locked up.&#8221;
Per <a href="https://www.thecollegefix.com/keynote-speaker-at-harvard-diversity-conference-says-christians-should-be-locked-up">The College Fix</a>:
<blockquote>
Tim Wise, an &#8220;anti-racism writer, educator and activist,&#8221; has denigrated Christians as &#8220;Jeezoids and fascists and called Pope Francis evil. He has tweeted that &#8220;people who believe in a God of hell/damnation deserve to be mocked viciously and run out of the public square.&#8221;
Those who base their morality on the Hebrew Scriptures &#8220;deserve to be locked up,&#8221; he said in 2015, claiming to be &#8220;sorta kidding but not by much.&#8221;
The Diversity Dialogue Series provides a &#8220;retrospective look at diversity and inclusion, a discussion of current issues, and practical guidance on how we can move toward greater inclusion and belonging at Harvard,&#8221; according to the event description.
</blockquote>
Here is the full underlying Facebook <a href="https://www.facebook.com/timjwise/posts/10152994403075670">post</a> from 2015, which features Wise commenting derogatorily about former U.S. congresswoman Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and which he set to a public viewership:
<blockquote>
This is America&#8230;people basing their beliefs on the fable of Noah and Ark, or their interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah&#8230;rather than science or logic&#8230;If you are basing your morality on a fairy tale written thousands of years ago, you deserve to be locked up&#8230;detained for your utter inability to deal with reality&#8230;NO, we are not obligated to indulge your irrationality in the name of your religious freedom&#8230;but we will provide you a very comfortable room, against which walls you may hurl yourself hourly if your choose. Knock yourself out&#8230;.seriously, knock yourself out, completely, for weeks at a time&#8230;I&#8217;m sorta kidding but not by much&#8230;I don&#8217;t believe lunatics like this should be locked up, but I do think they have to be politically destroyed, utterly rendered helpless to the cause of pluralism and democracy &#8230;the world is not theirs. They have no right to impose their bullshit on others. They can either change, or shut the hell up, or practice their special brand of crazy in their homes&#8230;or go away. Their choice. And this argument applies to any fundamentalist religionist of any faith who thinks they have a right to impose their beliefs on a secular, pluralistic society. Go away.
</blockquote>
In Wise&#8217;s extremely limited defense, The College Fix notes that the noted &#8220;anti-racism&#8221; activist avoided any bigoted anti-Jewish/anti-Christian language during his Harvard appearance yesterday.

A Harvard Conference Keynote Speaker Has Written That Religious Jews And Christians ‘Deserve To Be Locked Up’

Anti-Semitism

Bible

Christianity

Harvard

Judaism

It turns out that music icon Beyoncé may have had a partnership opportunity with Reebok that went sour due to the pitch team&#8217;s lack of diversity.
In an appearance on <a data-tracker-added="true" href="http://www.espn.com/watch/series/73dc17cc-1ecf-4471-b4a6-5f2d8bb7588d/nba-the-jump" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">ESPN&#8217;s &#8220;The Jump,&#8221;</a> writer Nick DePaula said that the famed singer opted out of an offer from Reebok because she did not see enough people with skin color two shades darker than a white person.
&#8220;She had a meeting at Reebok and they had a whole presentation of everything, potential products, how this could all look and she kinda took a step back and said &#8216;is this the team that would be working on my product&#8217;?&#8221; DePaula said on ESPN. &#8220;And somebody said &#8216;yes&#8217; and she said &#8216;nobody in this room reflects my background, my skin color, and where I&#8217;m from and what I want to do&#8217;. And so she kinda took a step back and left and then, it did not come to terms.&#8221;
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ESPN Writer <a href="https://twitter.com/NickDePaula?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NickDePaula</a> reveals Beyoncé walked out of a meeting w/ <a href="https://twitter.com/Reebok?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Reebok</a> after she highlighted the pitch team&#8217;s lack of diversity &amp; non-existent representation of her background and skin color.
He also talks about Bey getting offers from Jordan (<a href="https://twitter.com/Jumpman23?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Jumpman23</a>) &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/UnderArmour?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@UnderArmour</a>. <a href="https://t.co/J2P3cvGw6I">pic.twitter.com/J2P3cvGw6I</a>
&#8212; BEYONCÉ LEGION (@BeyLegion) <a href="https://twitter.com/BeyLegion/status/1114129438709559297?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 5, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
According to <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/04/228915/beyonce-adidas-ivy-park-relaunch?utm_source=facebook.com&amp;utm_medium=post&amp;fbclid=IwAR3gc6bOzsRk0B1a7R7s1BoIUf7c6wbbcxyusJviesD9UxxAbM6-kT-GrGc">Refinery 29</a>, the singer ultimately settled on a deal with Adidas, which the company announced on Thursday as a &#8220;multi-layered partnership.&#8221; Beyoncé hailed the company for its philosophy of creativity, growth and social responsibility.
&#8220;This is the partnership of a lifetime for me,&#8221; Beyoncé said. &#8220;Adidas has had tremendous success in pushing creative boundaries. We share a philosophy that puts creativity, growth and social responsibility at the forefront of business. I look forward to re-launching and expanding Ivy Park on a truly global scale with a proven, dynamic leader.&#8221;
Eric Liedtke, Executive Board Member &#8211; Global Brands, Adidas,&#8232; said in a press release that the partnership will &#8220;inspire change and empower the next generation of creators.&#8221;
&#8220;As the creator sports brand, Adidas challenges the status quo and pushes the limits of creativity through its open source approach,&#8221; said Liedtke. &#8220;Beyoncé is an iconic creator but also a proven business leader, and together, we have the ability to inspire change and empower the next generation of creators.&#8221;
If Beyoncé actually did reject Reebok due to the color of certain people&#8217;s skin, it reflects a growing trend in the overall culture that says minorities can discriminate according to race as a means to equalize the playing field. It also stems from the prevailing idea that skin color equals a shared experience. Comedian-turned-filmmaker Jordan Peele <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/45141/jordan-peele-i-dont-see-myself-casting-white-dude-paul-bois">said as much</a> recently when he eschewed the possibility of ever casting a white male in a lead role due to that demographics&#8217; overrepresentation.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie,&#8221; Peele said during an appearance at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Hollywood, according to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/rambling-reporter/jordan-peele-says-i-dont-see-myself-casting-a-white-dude-as-lead-us-1197021">The Hollywood Reporter</a>. &#8220;Not that I don&#8217;t like white dudes. But I&#8217;ve seen that movie.&#8221;
Peele&#8217;s comments &#8220;drew loud applause and shouts of agreement,&#8221; reported THR. He went on to characterize his stance as a sort of renaissance for representation in Hollywood. &#8220;It really is one of the best greatest pieces of this story is feeling like we are in this time &#8212; a renaissance has happened and proven the myths about representation in the industry are false,&#8221; he said.

REPORT: Beyonce Declines Offer From Reebok Because Pitch Team Lacked Diversity

Beyonce

This just in: a top Hollywood director said that he does not see himself casting an actor of a certain race as the lead in one of his films.
According to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/rambling-reporter/jordan-peele-says-i-dont-see-myself-casting-a-white-dude-as-lead-us-1197021">The Hollywood Reporter</a>, fresh off the box-office success of the horror movie &#8220;Us,&#8221; director Jordan Peele said he does not see himself casting a &#8220;white dude&#8221; as the lead in one of his future films.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie,&#8221; Peele said during an appearance at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Hollywood. &#8220;Not that I don&#8217;t like white dudes. But I&#8217;ve seen that movie.&#8221;
THR reports that Peele&#8217;s comments &#8220;drew loud applause and shouts of agreement.&#8221;
The &#8220;Get Out&#8221; director characterized his stance as a sort of renaissance for representation in Hollywood.
&#8220;It really is one of the best greatest pieces of this story is feeling like we are in this time &#8212; a renaissance has happened and proven the myths about representation in the industry are false,&#8221; he said.
Not everything Peele said focused on racial politics or social justice. In fact, much of it focused on his transition into filmmaking and how an artist must silence their ego or risk their own peril.
&#8220;Directing for me is about hiring the right people, listening to them and helping them do the best job possible,&#8221; he said, adding that he learned to shelve his ego.
&#8220;You have to shelve it,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You have to check it constantly. It&#8217;s so easy for it to come out and rear its ugly head. &#8220;The ego is deceptive and it will screw you up.&#8221;
Peele&#8217;s &#8220;Us&#8221; took in a whopping total of $88 million at the box-office over the weekend, the second largest opening for an original live-action film. His previous film, &#8220;Get Out,&#8221; broke records by pulling $250 million on a budget of just $5 million. Speaking at Upright Citizens Brigade, Peele said he initially doubted &#8220;Get Out&#8221; would be a success but relished in the challenge of making it a success.
&#8220;Every two weeks I&#8217;d go, &#8216;What the f**k am I doing? I&#8217;m writing a movie where a black man is victimized and all the white people are evil and I&#8217;m trying to get the audience to have fun,'&#8221; he recalled. &#8220;But if you could make that fun&#8230;that&#8217;s what brought me back.&#8221;
&#8220;Us&#8221; tells the story of an affluent black American family facing off against violent doppelgangers of themselves while visiting their vacation home. Unlike &#8220;Get Out,&#8221; Peele has said in interviews that the film was not an exploration of race but rather that human beings are their own worst enemies.
&#8220;Very important for me was to have a black family at the center of a horror film,&#8221; Peele <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/us-trailer-unveils-jordan-peeles-next-movie-watch-video-1171603">said at a screening back in December</a>. &#8220;But it&#8217;s also important to note, unlike Get Out, Us is not about race. It is instead about something that I feel has become an undeniable truth. And that is the simple fact that we are our own worst enemies.&#8221;
&#8220;I dedicated a lot of myself to create a new horror mythology and a new monster,&#8221; Peele said. &#8220;I think that monsters and stories about monsters are one of our best ways of getting at deeper truths and facing our fears as a society.&#8221;
<div> </div>

Jordan Peele: ‘I Don’t See Myself Casting A White Dude As The Lead’ In My Films

Left-leaning CNN has taken heat from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) for not meeting the group&#8217;s standards of diversity and inclusion, reports <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/national-association-of-black-journalists-calls-out-cnn-for-lack-of-black-representation_n_5c7ff1c0e4b020b54d8128c9">HuffPost</a>.
In a statement on Monday, the NABJ said that CNN has been put on a &#8220;special media monitoring list&#8221; and will be further studying the network&#8217;s practices.
&#8220;NABJ has placed <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CNN</a> on special monitoring list due to preliminary research revealing NO black representation within news leadership. We&#8217;re calling for a civil rights audit, as CNN&#8217;s president refuses to meet with our delegation,&#8221; the group announced on Twitter.
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NABJ has placed <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CNN</a> on special monitoring list due to preliminary research revealing NO black representation within news leadership. We&#8217;re calling for a civil rights audit, as CNN&#8217;s president refuses to meet with our delegation. Details: <a href="https://t.co/Yl7Q4vbwfJ">https://t.co/Yl7Q4vbwfJ</a>.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MediaDiversity?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MediaDiversity</a> <a href="https://t.co/grRwet9rhs">pic.twitter.com/grRwet9rhs</a>
&#8212; NABJ Headquarters (@NABJ) <a href="https://twitter.com/NABJ/status/1103026352826052610?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 5, 2019</a></blockquote>
</div>
The <a data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="1" data-v9y="1" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:2;elm:context_link;itc:0" href="https://www.nabj.org/news/440708/NABJ-Elevates-CNN-to-Special-Media-Monitoring-List.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">statement</a> on Monday expressed dismay over &#8220;the lack of black representation within the ranks of CNN&#8217;s executive news managers and direct reports to CNN President Jeff Zucker.&#8221; NABJ took particular issue with CNN&#8217;s dearth of black directors, executive producers, vice presidents, or senior vice presidents. When CNN disputed those claims, NABJ said that no direct evidence was provided to contradict their claims.
&#8220;The special team will also publicly report on identified deficiencies in hiring a diverse workforce in news decision-making capacities at CNN,&#8221; read the statement.
NABJ said it will now be &#8220;calling for a civil rights audit&#8221; to examine CNN&#8217;s &#8220;hiring, promotion and compensation practices involving black employees.&#8221;
Zucker reportedly refused to &#8220;meet with a four-person NABJ delegation&#8221; that was &#8220;based on a personal issue between CNN and NABJ&#8217;s Vice President-Digital Roland Martin.&#8221;
As reported by HuffPost, CNN said that it would meet with NABJ &#8212; but not with Roland Martin, because he participated in a 2016 town hall meeting on CNN with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
&#8220;Previously, former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile admitted, according to a <a data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-rapid_p="8" data-v9y="1" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:10;elm:context_link;itc:0" href="http://time.com/4705515/donna-brazile-russia-emails-clinton/">Time essay</a>, she inadvertently disclosed a town hall topic to the Clinton campaign that was part of Martin&#8217;s research inquiry for the town hall,&#8221; CNN told HuffPost. &#8220;For months, we have been working with NABJ to schedule a meeting because the relationship between CNN and NABJ is very important to us. As we have told them many times, we look forward to a thoughtful discussion about how both of our organizations can continue to work together.&#8221;
&#8220;Unfortunately, the significant and reckless damage that Roland Martin did to CNN while partnering with us during a 2016 Democratic Town Hall has made any meeting that includes him untenable,&#8221; the statement continued. &#8220;Mr. Martin displayed an unprecedented and egregious lack of journalistic ethics and integrity by leaking questions prior to the town hall. As a result, we have told NABJ that CNN will not participate in any meeting that includes him. We have made it abundantly clear that we would be more than happy to sit down with the rest of their leadership team as soon as possible, and that offer still stands.&#8221;
NABJ told HuffPost that the organization&#8217;s mission for diversity should rise beyond personal matters.
&#8220;NABJ questions the ethics of excluding blacks from the ranks of executives on the news side of CNN. We chose to meet with Zucker despite those egregious findings. We did not demand that he be excluded from our meeting because of his record on diversity hiring. Likewise, we will not set a precedent and disinvite an NABJ board member from an advocacy meeting,&#8221; said the statement made to HuffPost.
&#8220;NABJ&#8217;s focus is on diversity in media and not personal issues. Zucker&#8217;s refusal to meet begs the question: Is CNN focused on diversity? We are still requesting answers to the above questions along with a meeting with Zucker on how our organization can help in CNN&#8217;s needed efforts to diversify news leadership.&#8221;
The full statement from NABJ:
<blockquote>
The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) is concerned about the lack of black representation within the ranks of CNN&#8217;s executive news managers and direct reports to CNN President Jeff Zucker. This concern, coupled with Zucker&#8217;s refusal to meet with a four-person NABJ delegation, has prompted NABJ to place CNN on a special media monitoring list.
A special team will perform further research and an analysis of CNN&#8217;s diversity, inclusion and equity practices, per the NABJ Board&#8217;s directive. The special team will also publicly report on identified deficiencies in hiring a diverse workforce in news decision-making capacities at CNN. NABJ is also calling for a civil rights audit that examines the company&#8217;s hiring, promotion and compensation practices involving black employees.
Specifically, NABJ is concerned about the findings of preliminary research that reveals the following:
&#9642; CNN President Jeff Zucker has no black direct reports. 
&#9642; There are no black Executive Producers at CNN. 
&#9642; There are no black Vice Presidents on the news side at CNN. 
&#9642; There are no black Senior Vice Presidents on the news side at CNN.
NABJ received a communication from CNN disputing only one of our research points, saying the assertion that there are not any black vice presidents on the news side is inaccurate. However, when asked to provide the name and position of the individual or individuals involved on the editorial side of news, CNN has yet to provide specifics.
In addition to special media monitoring activities and the civil rights audit, NABJ&#8217;s next steps involve further engaging with CNN&#8217;s parent company, AT&amp;T, which has responded positively to outreach efforts and previously agreed to meet with NABJ.
NABJ&#8217;s delegates are already engaged in very positive outreach with several other media companies and have met or have scheduled meetings with Fox, CBS, NBC and ABC. NABJ believes those companies see the value in such meetings and appreciates the respect those companies are showing for the positive intent of our efforts.
The NABJ four-person delegation has attended previous meetings with other media companies. The delegation requesting a meeting with Zucker includes President Sarah Glover, Vice President-Digital Roland Martin, Vice President- Broadcast Dorothy Tucker and Executive Director Drew Berry.
Zucker&#8217;s refusal to meet with the full delegation is based on a personal issue between CNN and NABJ&#8217;s Vice President-Digital Roland Martin. The issue stems from Martin&#8217;s participation in a 2016 town hall meeting with Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Previously, former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile admitted, according to a <a href="http://time.com/4705515/donna-brazile-russia-emails-clinton/">Time essay</a>, she inadvertently disclosed a town hall topic to the Clinton campaign that was part of Martin&#8217;s research inquiry for the town hall.
NABJ&#8217;s request to meet was and is focused solely on CNN&#8217;s diversity efforts, its results and our strategic priorities as an organization.
</blockquote>

Black Journalists Association Slams CNN For Lack Of Representation

One of Britain&#8217;s largest fire services requires white men to score higher on a recruitment test than women or minorities.
West Midlands Fire and Rescue Service (WMFRS) requires white men to score 70% on verbal and numerical tests, while women and black, Asian, or other ethnic men need to score only 60%. The change was implemented in September 2017, as part of an effort to increase the diversity of firefighters, but is only now being discovered by those outside the department.
Metro UK reports that a &#8220;senior source&#8221; within the department says the program costs £100,000 a year, including £2,500 a month for Facebook ads targeting only women to &#8220;<a href="https://metro.co.uk/2019/01/28/fire-service-changes-entrance-test-deliberately-harder-white-men-8402291/">minimize white men applying</a>.&#8221;
This same source told the paper that WMFRS is the first brigade in the United Kingdom to make the change, which &#8220;directly discriminates against white men.&#8221;
&#8220;This approach was intentionally adopted to directly manipulate the diversity figures to meet the targets,&#8221; the source said. &#8220;This approach to recruitment is appalling. Not only are they discriminating against large parts of my community, but they are also using huge amounts of public money to do so. There is such a negative culture within management who want to achieve their own agendas at all costs.&#8221;
Each month, recruiters look through applicants and select around 1,000 to complete a 45 minute test measuring reaction time. Those who pass then take the numerical, verbal, and mechanical exam. This is where the discrimination (in the name of diversity) comes in, as women and minorities need only score 6 out of 10 on the verbal and numerical portions of the test, while white men must score a 7 out of ten.
&#8220;There should, of course, be measures put in place to encourage those from underrepresented groups to apply, but how would they feel if they found out they were required to perform at a lesser level because of their gender or ethnicity?&#8221; the source told Metro. &#8220;The sad fact is there are people sitting on fire engines today purely because of their gender or ethnicity and I don&#8217;t understand how any fire service leader is comfortable with that as an approach.&#8221;
The source also said the department does not post job advertisements on job boards, preferring instead to run the Facebook ads targeted at women.
A WMFRS spokesman told Metro the department &#8220;is committed to a having a workforce which reflects the diversity of the population of all our communities, and one that is welcoming to all.&#8221; This spokesman also pointed out WMFRS was ranked second in a list of the 50 Top UK Employers because of its &#8220;commitment to workplace diversity.&#8221;
&#8220;Our recruitment shows our determination to challenge outdated perceptions about who can &#8211; and can&#8217;t &#8211; be a firefighter,&#8221; the spokesman said.
David Davies, a Tory Member of Parliament, told the Express that the lowered recruitment standards were &#8220;<a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1078858/Fire-brigade-job-difficult-white-man">totally bonkers</a>.&#8221;
&#8220;They should just be picking the best man or woman for the job. They shouldn&#8217;t be lowering the target for anyone just to meet a target,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The tests are there to make sure the applicant has a certain fitness and intelligence level for a job where they put their own lives at risk and save other people&#8217;s.&#8221;

WHITE MEN NEED NOT APPLY: British Fire Service Lowers Standards For Women, Minorities

United Kingdom

Sketch group Riot Act perfectly mocks the inane concepts of social media outrage campaigns and superficial diversity quotas in a new video aptly titled &#8220;Diversity Firing.&#8221;
Written by Adam Yenser, a writer for &#8220;The Ellen Show,&#8221; and directed by Daily Wire writer Paul Bois, the sketch showcases a (barely) exaggerated illustration of a Woke human resources representative attempting to cure a company&#8217;s &#8220;white male&#8221; problem.
The sketch starts outside the headquarters of Blue Sky, Inc, where a protest has gathered over a viral photo of the company&#8217;s all-white, all-male marketing team. Beside himself over the outrage, CEO Lester Phillips, played by Yenser, meets with an HR rep, played by Bois.
Rocking a &#8220;The Future is Female&#8221; t-shirt, the HR rep recommends Phillips fire employees who&#8217;ve committed severe microaggressions, such as calling an &#8220;adjustable non-conforming metallic twister&#8221; a &#8220;monkey wrench.&#8221;
After Philips cans the entire white, male marketing team and the first micro-aggressor, it&#8217;s fittingly not enough for the HR rep. The rep threatens Phillips with &#8220;just&#8221; social media outrage campaigns if the CEO refuses to tackle Blue Sky, Inc&#8217;s &#8220;festering cesspool of insensitive privilege.&#8221;
The absurd cycle continues until just about every employee is fired for their transgressions against some other protected class. Even Phillips is not safe; he&#8217;s told to &#8220;fire&#8221; himself to save the company. To take his place, the CEO taps a &#8220;gender fluid&#8221; employee.
This should appease the Woke HR rep, right? Of course not. The gender fluid employee sometimes identifies as male. And Phillip can&#8217;t hand over a coup like that to The Patriarchy every Thursday and Friday.
WATCH:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1FDKSBWNJA8" width="853"></iframe></div>

&#8216;DIVERSITY FIRING&#8217;: Comedy Sketch Trolls Woke Outrage Campaigns

Gender

Political Correctness

Social Justice

Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg will be directing his first musical &#8212; a remake of the 1961 Academy Award-winning classic &#8220;West Side Story&#8221; about a Puerto Rican gang facing off against a white American gang on the streets of New York. Fearing a potential backlash, the director recently met with students and faculty at the University of Puerto Rico to hear their perspective on how they should be represented.
According to <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steven-spielberg-met-puerto-rican-activists-west-side-story-concerns-1176285">The Hollywood Reporter</a>, Spielberg, along with screenwriter Tony Kushner and other members of the &#8220;West Side Story&#8221; creative team, made a secret visit to San Juan, Puerto Rico last month where they met with as many as 60 invitees to discuss ways to avoid portraying Puerto Ricans in the same stereotypical light as the original.
&#8220;Why West Side Story? And why now?&#8221; one prominent film critic, Mario Alegre, reportedly asked Spielberg during the meeting.
The 38-year-old Alegre felt that a remake of &#8220;West Side Story&#8221; would be like a remake of &#8220;Breakfast at Tiffany&#8217;s,&#8221; which featured Mickey Rooney in yellow-face.
THR reports that the meeting between Spielberg and the invitees went smoothly overall until one theater history major, Isel Rodriguez, asked the &#8220;West Side Story&#8221; creative team exactly how they plan to represent Puerto Ricans in the film.
&#8220;Musicals have this thing that make you tingle inside and want to sing along,&#8221; Rodriguez said. &#8220;But that&#8217;s a complicated thing when you&#8217;re singing along to [a lyric like ] &#8216;let it sink back in the ocean.'&#8221;
Rodrguez added that she was &#8220;hurt&#8221; upon first hearing that lyric.
&#8220;I thought this would be on everyone&#8217;s mind,&#8221; she said. &#8220;But time was running out and I saw no one was going to ask it. It was the elephant in the room. Every time someone of this magnitude comes to this island, our instinct is not to create any kind of debate, because we&#8217;re kind of accommodating.&#8221;
&#8220;Let it sink back in the ocean&#8221; refers to a line in the song &#8220;America,&#8221; in which the character Anita sings about her love for America while trashing her homeland. &#8220;Puerto Rico / My heart&#8217;s devotion / Let it sink back in the ocean,&#8221; goes the lyric. The movie version of the song, however, featured Anita&#8217;s boyfriend, Bernardo, singing in favor of Puerto Rico in juxtaposition to her, trashing America for its racist tendencies. &#8220;Life is all right in America/If you&#8217;re all white in America,&#8221; he sings.
Tony Kushner told the concerned student that the lyrics will follow the movie version, not the original stage play. &#8220;[That line] is from the musical,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;[Lyricist Stephen] Sondheim changed that because there was a lot of unhappiness about the negativity towards the island in America. So we&#8217;re using the lyrics from the film.&#8221;
THR notes, however, that Kushner was mistaken. &#8220;In fact, Kushner had it reversed,&#8221; reports the outlet. &#8220;The original Broadway version <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omxgBOafV_w" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">referred</a> to an &#8216;island of tropical breezes,&#8217; but the 1961 film version <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQTZoqDHUQo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">changed that lyric</a> to &#8216;let it sink back in the ocean.'&#8221;
Spielberg tried to assure his audience that he has taken great pains to ensure the film&#8217;s authenticity by hiring Puerto Rican actors and dancers.
&#8220;One of the reasons we are here,&#8221; he told Rodriguez, &#8220;the reason we&#8217;ve hired so many Puerto Rican singers and dancers and actors, is so they can help guide us to represent Puerto Rico in a way that will make all of you and all of us proud.&#8221;
Alegre and Rodriguez lamented that aside from representation, the musical itself has a problem with the actual immigrant experience of Puerto Ricans.
&#8220;The musical always presented it like, &#8216;Screw the island. I love America,'&#8221; he said. &#8220;But every time there&#8217;s been a massive migration from Puerto Rico, it&#8217;s been over economic austerity. The musical never explained that it was out of necessity.&#8221;
Rodriguez added: &#8220;No one leaves this island without sobbing. 300,000 people left the island after Maria and the scene at the airport was like a funeral. No one wants to leave. This is paradise.&#8221;
Spielberg concluded by suggesting to his audience that the film will be a critique of the Trump administration&#8217;s hardline stance against immigration, which he portrayed as racially motivated.
&#8220;This will always be Romeo and Juliet,&#8221; Spielberg said. &#8220;But it also speaks a lot to what&#8217;s happening today in terms of what&#8217;s happening at the borders. It&#8217;s very relevant today to essentially the rejection of anyone who isn&#8217;t white. And that&#8217;s a big part of our story.&#8221;

Steven Spielberg Meets With Puerto Ricans To Avoid Backlash Against His &#8216;West Side Story&#8217; Remake, Promises It&#8217;ll Be Anti-Trump

Steven Spielberg

The University of Michigan (UM) spends about $10.6 million a year on the salaries of 82 employees who have something relating to diversity in their title.
Mark Perry, an economics professor at the university and an American Enterprise Scholar, compiled data on publicly available salaries searching for the terms &#8220;diversity,&#8221; &#8220;equity,&#8221; and &#8220;inclusion.&#8221; He found 82 employees with some combination of those words in their title and added up their salaries for the total. The highest paid employee with a variation of this title is the school&#8217;s vice provost for equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer (that&#8217;s his full title), who is paid $407,653 a year.
Adding up the salaries for these 82 employees totals $8 million, but once you add in benefits, the total jumps to about $10.6 million.
&#8220;The University of Michigan Has At Least 82 Full-Time Diversity Officers at a Total Annual Payroll Cost of $10.6M. That Would Support Full In-State Tuition for 708 Students,&#8221; Perry wrote in a tweet about his data.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
The University of Michigan Has At Least 82 Full-Time Diversity Officers at a Total Annual Payroll Cost of $10.6M. That Would Support Full In-State Tuition for 708 Students. <a href="https://t.co/hdvgCMaSAc">pic.twitter.com/hdvgCMaSAc</a>
&#8212; Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) <a href="https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1079564863435870208?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 31, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
One critic of Perry&#8217;s data pointed out that David Brown, the second-highest paid person on the list, is a full-time ear, nose, and throat (ENT) surgeon as well as an administrator.
&#8220;David J. Brown is the Associate Dean for Health Equity and Inclusion as an administrator for 80% of his salary at $220,000. Take him off the list of diversity staff if you want, but the main job duties of most everybody on the list has to do with diversity/equity/inclusion,&#8221; Perry responded.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
David J. Brown is the Associate Dean for Health Equity and Inclusion as an administrator for 80% of his salary at $220,000. Take him off the list of diversity staff if you want, but the main job duties of most everybody on the list has to do with diversity/equity/inclusion. <a href="https://t.co/Y2x6F3eeuh">https://t.co/Y2x6F3eeuh</a>
&#8212; Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) <a href="https://twitter.com/Mark_J_Perry/status/1079602538922606593?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 31, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
UM spokesman Rick Fitzgerald emphasized this point in an email to The Daily Wire, writing that &#8220;some of the U-M employees in the list you cite have a range of other duties beyond diversity, equity and inclusion and several of them work in the U-M Health System,&#8221; which, like Brown, would explain at least some of the high salaries.
Fitzgerald also explained that &#8220;Diversity, equity and inclusion is an important institutional priority for the University of Michigan&#8221; and directed The Daily Wire to a website with articles <a href="https://diversity.umich.edu/">highlighting the university&#8217;s diversity efforts</a>.
In an email to The Daily Wire, Perry explained that UM has a centralized Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI), but that other schools and departments at the university have their own &#8220;specialist&#8221; to handle diversity. For example, student housing has an associate director for diversity and inclusion (who makes $75,760 a year) and the school of music, theatre, and dance has a diversity and inclusion specialist (who makes $109,778 a year).
Perry also explained that he left off 11 out of 14 employees from the Office for Health Equity and Inclusion because they are part of the medical school and hospital. He was trying to be conservative when making his list, but adding in those other employees brings the total to 93 full-time &#8220;diversicrats,&#8221; as he calls them, and adds another million dollars to the total salaries.
The data shows, according to Perry, that schools are spending more and more on &#8220;diversity&#8221; as tuition and other colleges costs increase:
<blockquote>
The explosive growth in diversity staffs at universities, as just one example of the explosive growth in &#8220;administrative bloat&#8221; in higher education, which is one of the major contributing factors to the explosive growth in college tuition. As the attached chart shows, except for the cost of hospital services, there are no other consumer goods, products or services that have increased more over time than college tuition and college textbooks. As college tuition has skyrocketed, largely due to the increased administrative overhead including now small armies of full-time diversity bureaucrats, the cost of college for many students today is only affordable by taking on the burden of huge amounts of student loan debt. As of Q3 2018, there was $1.56 trillion in outstanding student loan debt, and at the current growth rate that will surpass $2 trillion by the end of this year (2019). Student loan debt has tripled since 2006 and doubled since 2010, burdening the average student borrower with $37,000 in student loan debt for the 44 million borrowers.
</blockquote>
So, after all this money has been spent, is UM any more diverse, or equitable, or inclusive? It depends on what statistics you&#8217;re talking about. The link above, from the UM spokesman, includes <a href="https://record.umich.edu/articles/fall-enrollment-includes-greater-economic-diversity-more-underrepresented-students">an article</a> about increasing the number of low-income students at the university &#8212; by providing free tuition to in-state students &#8220;whose families earn less than $65,000 and have assets totaling less than $50,000.&#8221; Another <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/all-news/search-news/lsa-makes-gains-in-year-two-of-diversity--equity--and-inclusion-.html">article</a> discusses providing internships, laptops, and study-abroad scholarships to students with financial need.
In other ways, diversity efforts appear to be underwhelming. UM&#8217;s report on the ethnicity of enrolled students each fall shows there are actually fewer black students enrolled now than in 2009 (though the number has been climbing for the past few years) and fewer Native American students enrolled over the same period. The number of Asian and Hispanic students has increased by quite a bit over this same time period. There were 4,661 Asian students enrolled at UM in the fall of 2009, and 5,899 enrolled in the fall of 2018. There were 1,577 Hispanic students enrolled in 2009, and 2,891 enrolled now.
So, there are increases, but are these increases enough to justify more than $10 million a year spent on diversity? Could the increases be from population increases, rather than anything the university has done?

University Spends $10.6 MILLION A Year On Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Salaries. Is It Working?

University of Michigan

The bestselling author of &#8220;The Diversity Delusion,&#8221; Heather Mac Donald, hosts the latest short video from Prager University: &#8220;<a href="https://www.prageru.com/videos/what-does-diversity-have-do-science">What Does Diversity Have to Do with Science?</a>&#8221; She discusses how politically correct trends are starting to infiltrate STEM fields, corrupting the science university research departments are producing. 
&#8220;The promoters of identity politics, the idea that we are primarily defined by our race and gender, have taken over the humanities and social sciences. That&#8217;s bad,&#8221; she says. &#8220;But not as bad as this: They are moving in on &#8216;STEM&#8217; &#8212; science, technology, engineering, and math.&#8221;
Mac Donald broke down how so-called &#8220;diversity&#8221; initiatives are lowering admissions and training standards to prioritize creating a &#8220;diverse STEM workforce,&#8221; and devoting massive amounts of time and money into producing diversity-related projects, like a &#8220;bias-awareness intervention tool&#8221; in order to &#8220;remediate micro-aggressions and implicit biases.&#8221;
&#8220;The science diversity charade, as I discuss in my book &#8216;The Diversity Delusion,&#8217; wastes extraordinary amounts of time and money that could be going into basic research and its real-world application. If that were its only consequence, the cost would be high enough. But identity politics is altering the standards for scientific competence and the way future scientists are trained,&#8221; she says.
&#8220;&#8216;Diversity&#8217; is now an explicit job qualification in the STEM fields,&#8221; she continues. &#8220;The physics department at UC San Diego advertised an assistant-professor position with a &#8216;specific emphasis on contributions to diversity,&#8217; such as a candidate&#8217;s &#8216;awareness of inequities faced by underrepresented groups.&#8217; Solving the mystery of dark energy apparently now takes a back-seat to social justice. Maybe it was a coincidence, but all five candidates on UC San Diego&#8217;s shortlist were females.&#8221;
Mac Donald explained how science and research departments are now being encouraged to use race and gender as qualifiers while being told to ignore low grades in a &#8220;holistic&#8221; approach to recruiting students for their programs. 
&#8220;This same diversity obsession extends to medical schools,&#8221; she adds. &#8220;Not a happy thought when they wheel you into the operating room for emergency surgery. The promoters of identity politics are literally playing with our lives.&#8221;
Video and transcript below:
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="377" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M9mM93scwi8" width="670"></iframe></div>
<div>
<blockquote>
The promoters of identity politics &#8212; the idea that we are primarily defined by our race and gender &#8212; have taken over the humanities and social sciences.
That&#8217;s bad.
But not as bad as this: They are moving in on &#8220;STEM&#8221; &#8212; science, technology, engineering and math.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
&#8220;All across the country,&#8221; a UCLA scientist reports, &#8220;the big question is: how can we promote more women and minorities by &#8216;changing&#8217; (i.e., lowering) the requirements we had previously set for graduate level study?&#8221;
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
The National Science Foundation (NSF), a federal agency that funds university research, exemplifies this approach. Progress in science, the NSF argues, requires a &#8220;diverse STEM workforce.&#8221; Why this is the case they don&#8217;t bother to say. Somehow, NSF-backed scientists managed to rack up more than 200 Nobel Prizes before the agency realized that scientific progress depends on &#8220;diversity.&#8221;
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
No matter: in July 2017, it awarded $1 million to the University of New Hampshire and two other institutions to develop a &#8220;bias-awareness intervention tool.&#8221; Another $2 million went to the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&amp;M to &#8220;remediate microaggressions and implicit biases.&#8221;
The science diversity charade, as I discuss in my book The Diversity Delusion, wastes extraordinary amounts of time and money that could be going into basic research and its real-world application. If that were its only consequence, the cost would be high enough. But identity politics is altering the standards for scientific competence and the way future scientists are trained.
&#8220;Diversity&#8221; is now an explicit job qualification in the STEM fields.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
The physics department at UC San Diego advertised an assistant-professor position with a &#8220;specific emphasis on contributions to diversity,&#8221; such as a candidate&#8217;s &#8220;awareness of inequities faced by underrepresented groups.&#8221; Solving the mystery of dark energy apparently now takes a back-seat to social justice. Maybe it was a coincidence, but all five candidates on UC San Diego&#8217;s short list were females.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
If traditional standards are keeping women and minorities out of STEM fields, it stands to reason that changing standards must be the way to get them in. Or maybe standards are just another expression of the white patriarchy and thus no longer relevant.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
An introductory chemistry course at UC Berkeley reflects the new &#8220;culturally sensitive pedagogy.&#8221; A primary goal, according to its teachers, is to disrupt the &#8220;racialized and gendered construct of scientific brilliance,&#8221; which defines &#8220;good science&#8221; as getting all the right answers.
This same diversity obsession extends to medical schools &#8212; not a happy thought when they wheel you into the operating room for emergency surgery.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
The promoters of identity politics are literally playing with our lives. Medical schools admissions committees are now told to overlook the low test scores of black and Hispanic applicants in favor of a more &#8220;holistic&#8221; approach. From 2013 to 2016, medical schools admitted 57 percent of black applicants with a low medical college admission test score of 24 to 26, but only 8 percent of whites and 6 percent of Asians with those same low scores, according to Claremont McKenna professor Frederick Lynch.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Racial preferences in med school programs are sometimes justified on the basis that minorities want doctors who &#8220;look like them.&#8221; Really? Seems much more likely that minority patients with serious illnesses want the same thing we all do: a well-trained, skilled doctor.
The desperate attempt to get women into STEM fields is also based on the idea that, absent discrimination, women and men would be equally represented in the sciences.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
This is highly unlikely, however. Differences in math proficiency between boys and girls show up as early as kindergarten. In the top .01 percent of math ability, where we find scientific genius, there are 2.5 males in the US for every female, according to a recent paper in the journal Intelligence.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
This may help explain why women make up 14 percent of engineering workers and 25 percent of computer workers. To acknowledge this was once common sense; now it can get you fired. Ask James Damore, the Google engineer who questioned the company&#8217;s hiring preferences for females.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
The National Labor Relations Board upheld Google&#8217;s firing of Damore on the grounds that his statements about &#8220;purported biological differences between men and women&#8221; were &#8220;discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment.&#8221; This decision means that every evolutionary biologist, neurologist, or economist who acknowledges the differences between males and females is at risk of his job.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
The unique accomplishments of Western science were achieved without regard to the sex or skin color of its creators. Now, however, funders, industry leaders, and academic administrators want us to believe that &#8220;diversity&#8221; is the key to the future.
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
But the truth is the exact opposite: we want our best scientific minds to be free to do their best work. In our highly competitive world, identity politics is an indulgence we can&#8217;t afford.
I&#8217;m Heather Mac Donald, fellow at the Manhattan Institute, for Prager University.
</blockquote>
</div>

PragerU: &#8216;What Does Diversity Have To Do With Science?&#8217;

Conservatism

Dennis Prager

Prager University

Science

Technology

The ever-changing rules about inclusivity strike again.
Last week, two London student groups &#8212; one at King&#8217;s College and the other at Goldsmiths, University of London &#8212; vowed to start using &#8220;<a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/student-groups-at-goldsmiths-and-kings-college-switch-from-using-women-to-womxn-in-communications-a4000926.html">womxn</a>&#8221; in replace of &#8220;women&#8221; in communications. The move is meant to promote inclusivity, even if using the &#8220;word&#8221; in official posts looks ridiculous. For example, the Goldsmiths Students&#8217; Union published a Facebook post on November 20 referring to two school sporting events.
&#8220;Why not give our Womxn&#8217;s Basketball session or Adidas Womxn&#8217;s Fun Run a go later on today?&#8221; the post asked, <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/student-groups-at-goldsmiths-and-kings-college-switch-from-using-women-to-womxn-in-communications-a4000926.html">according to the Evening Standard</a>. &#8220;Womxn&#8217;s yoga&#8221; has also been promoted, the Standard wrote.
A spokeswoman (spokeswomxn?) for the university told the Standard the new spelling &#8220;is used to demonstrate our commitment to inclusiveness. No student has complained about its use.&#8221;
Okay, got it? &#8220;Women&#8221; is not inclusive at all. &#8220;Womyn,&#8221; the spelling adopted by 1970s feminists, is not inclusive at all. But &#8220;Womxn?&#8221; That&#8217;s inclusive enough.
Or maybe not.
A month before the two London schools made the change, the Mirror reported that &#8220;womxn&#8221; is actually a racist term.
Record scratch. What?
&#8220;The word has been called &#8216;racist&#8217; because it has been defined as &#8216;including trans women and women of colour&#8217; on various websites, including the Urban Dictionary,&#8221; the Mirror reported. &#8220;Objectors argue trans women and women of colour do not need a new word as &#8216;women&#8217; does not only refer to white, cis women.&#8221;
So, &#8220;women&#8221; was bad because it meant &#8220;of man&#8221; and therefore removed female independence or something. &#8220;Womyn&#8221; was bad because some people decided it only referred to white women who identify as women because they were born women. Naturally, this made up definition excluded everyone else. &#8220;Womxn&#8221; was supposed to fix that, but now it&#8217;s causing problems because it is essentially &#8220;othering&#8221; women of color and men who identify as women.
The Mirror&#8217;s story came after a museum and a feminist organization sponsored by H&amp;M used the new word in their advertising. The H&amp;M-backed ad was especially nauseating, as it included the word &#8220;womxn&#8221; 15 times in three paragraphs. (Warning: Your eyes may bleed from reading).
&#8220;Her Stories is launching a new campaign to raise essential funds for charities dedicated to womxn seeking asylum and refuge in the U.K. Spelling women differently to emphasise the inclusion of trans women, people of colour, self-identifying genderqueer and non-binary people, the organization has launched the first womxn-only art auction; for womxn, by womxn,&#8221; one paragraph read.
The controversy was first noticed by reporter Tim Pool on Twitter.
&#8220;Remember folks you must use the term &#8216;womxn&#8217; in communications to be more inclusive,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;But be careful because the term &#8220;womxn&#8221; is also racist and sexist.&#8221;
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Remember folks you must use the term &#8220;womxn&#8221; in communications to be more inclusive<a href="https://t.co/smIZe7HYOg">https://t.co/smIZe7HYOg</a>
But be careful because the term &#8220;womxn&#8221; is also racist and sexist<a href="https://t.co/HgEPFt3XIu">https://t.co/HgEPFt3XIu</a>
&#8212; Tim Pool (@Timcast) <a href="https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1068149367348056064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
This is why jumping on the latest social justice bandwagon is so dangerous &#8212; it might already have been deemed problematic by the time you join.

We Should Say ‘Womxn’ Not ‘Women’ To Be Inclusive. Wait, No, That’s Racist.

LGBT

Racism

Transgender

A prep school in Louisiana is alleged to have routinely falsified black students&#8217; transcripts while embellishing their life stories to excite elite colleges into accepting them.
In a lengthy article in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/us/tm-landry-college-prep-black-students.html#click=https://t.co/TqiTukrfpw">The New York Times</a>, former students of T.M. Landry College Preparatory School in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, testify to being sold a bill of goods by a school administration that did little to prepare its pupils for college and everything to portray themselves as champions of the downtrodden. The school&#8217;s students have become viral sensations, such as this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fbFV47wO9w" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">video of a 16-year-old student opening his Harvard </a>acceptance letter, with reports on the &#8220;Today&#8221; show, &#8220;Ellen&#8221; and &#8220;CBS This Morning&#8221; all hailing T.M. Landry as a launching pad into society&#8217;s upper-crust. Just one problem: the whole school is a sham.
Founded in 2005 by Michael and Tracy Landry, the school produced its first graduating class in 2013 and has since earned a reputation for producing (predominantly black) students who sail off to bigger and brighter futures at Yale, Brown, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell and Wesleyan. To varying degrees, however, the Landrys have allegedly been running a con operation by falsifying their students&#8217; grades and sometimes inventing backstories out of thin-air to portray the students as downtrodden black kids that have overcome adversity. Here&#8217;s one such example provided by the NYT:
<blockquote>
Bryson Sassau&#8217;s application would inspire any college admissions officer.
A founder of T.M. Landry College Preparatory School described him as a &#8220;bright, energetic, compassionate and genuinely well-rounded&#8221; student whose alcoholic father had beaten him and his mother and had denied them money for food and shelter. His transcript &#8220;speaks for itself,&#8221; the founder, Tracey Landry, wrote, but Mr. Sassau should also be lauded for founding a community service program, the Dry House, to help the children of abusive and alcoholic parents. He took four years of honors English, the application said, was a baseball M.V.P. and earned high honors in the &#8220;Mathematics Olympiad.&#8221;
</blockquote>
&#8220;I was just a small piece in a whole fathom of lies,&#8221; Mr. Sassau said. &#8220;He was pulling all of the information out of thin air.&#8221;
No such community service program called the Dry House actually existed, nor did Sassau grow up with an alcoholic father who beat his mother. In actuality, his father paid child support. His unfortunate story was just one of many examples that the Times investigated.
&#8220;In reality, the school falsified transcripts, made up student accomplishments and mined the worst stereotypes of black America to manufacture up-from-hardship tales that it sold to Ivy League schools hungry for diversity,&#8221; reports the Times. &#8220;The Landrys&#8217; deception has tainted nearly everyone the school has touched, including students, parents and college admissions officers convinced of a myth.&#8221;
The universities deserve a share of blame for T.M. Landry&#8217;s behavior by creating a culture that celebrates diversity over merit. From the looks of it, the Landrys were simply exploiting the system. One former T.M. Landry student, Raymond Smith Jr., who graduated to NYU, agrees with that assertion. From the Times report:
<blockquote>
The colleges &#8220;want to be able to get behind the black kids going off and succeeding, and going to all of these schools,&#8221; said Raymond Smith Jr., who graduated from T.M. Landry in 2017 and enrolled at N.Y.U. He said that Mr. Landry forced him to exaggerate his father&#8217;s absence from his life on his N.Y.U. application.
&#8220;It&#8217;s a good look, these colleges getting these bright, high-flying, came-from-nothing-turned-into-something students,&#8221; Mr. Smith said.
</blockquote>
So how did T.M. Landry get away with this scheme without any intervention from the state? A simple loophole, it seems. The school accepts no government funding and falls into a narrow category of &#8220;educational institutions that the state does not regulate or approve.&#8221; The state of Louisiana does not even recognize T.M. Landry&#8217;s diplomas, though some diplomas say the school meets state requirements.
The Times report also portrayed the school as a rather abusive, cultish environment, where students were sometimes reportedly forced to kneel before the founder, Michael Landry, for hours at a time to teach them discipline. Other students have been subject to physical and emotional abuse. When students have tried to leave, the Landrys allegedly intimidated them by threatening to hold their transcripts.
The Landrys have denied the accusations.
Students who have gone on to elite colleges have seen mixed-to-negative results. Many report being ill-equipped to handle the difficult curriculum and dropped out entirely.
&#8220;I didn&#8217;t understand why people around me were doing well, and I wasn&#8217;t,&#8221; said one former student who struggled at Wesleyan. &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t tell my friends because they would say, &#8216;How did you get into the school then?&#8217; There were too many questions that I couldn&#8217;t answer.&#8221;

BOMBSHELL: Louisiana Prep School Falsified Transcripts To Get Black Children Into Elite Colleges

&#8220;Gray&#8217;s Anatomy&#8221; star Ellen Pompeo was showered with praise after she &#8220;called out&#8221; Porter magazine for their supposed lack of diversity while she was seated at a roundtable discussion for the outlet. The actress lectured white people on how &#8220;we created the problem&#8221; with regard to skin color diversity deficiencies on sets and said &#8220;Caucasian people&#8221; must demand that their work spaces &#8220;look like the world we see.&#8221;
&#8220;This day has been incredible, and there&#8217;s a ton of women in the room,&#8221; started Pompeo. &#8220;But, I don&#8217;t see enough color. And I didn&#8217;t see enough color when I walked in the room today.&#8221;
Pompeo&#8217;s comments came as she was flanked by &#8220;Scream Queens&#8221; Emma Roberts and two actresses of color, &#8220;Sleepless&#8221; actress Gabrielle Union and Gina Rodriquez of &#8220;Jane the Virgin.&#8221;
Pompeo was mostly concerned about the lack of diversity within the crew on set at Porter magazine.
Flexing her diversity muscles, Pompeo bragged that she told another director of an endorsement project she&#8217;s doing that there is &#8220;not enough color.&#8221;
&#8220;I had meeting with a director of another endorsement project that I&#8217;m doing, and I said, &#8216;You know, when I show up on set, I would like to see the crew look like the world that I walk around in everyday,&#8221; she said.
<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/">According</a> to the U.S. Census data, 60.3% of the population is white, 18.3% is Hispanic, 12.5% is black, and 5.7% is Asian.
&#8220;And I think it&#8217;s up to all productions to make sure that your crew looks like the world we see,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;As Caucasian people, it&#8217;s our job, it&#8217;s our task, it&#8217;s our responsibility to make sure we speak up in every single room we walk into. It&#8217;s our job because we created the problem.&#8221;
The Atlantic&#8217;s Jemele Hill said Pompeo put &#8220;on a master class&#8221; on how white people can be &#8220;an ally&#8221; to people of color.
The official Twitter account for Dictionary.com applauded Pompeo thusly:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Ally. A person, group, or nation that is associated with another or others for some common cause or purpose.
E.g. Ellen Pompeo <a href="https://t.co/3m3FO1ibb6">https://t.co/3m3FO1ibb6</a> <a href="https://t.co/mncdSd8sVm">https://t.co/mncdSd8sVm</a>
&#8212; Dictionary.com (@Dictionarycom) <a href="https://twitter.com/Dictionarycom/status/1064892422105309186?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 20, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
&#8220;I love Ellen Pompeo so much. She normalizes the idea of diversity for other white people who don&#8217;t understand it. Instead of acting like she should be praised for it, she recognizes that it is NORMAL to want and have diversity and representation,&#8221; Women&#8217;s Republic founder Sai Sailaja Seshadri&#8203; said in a tweet.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
I love Ellen Pompeo so much. She normalizes the idea of diversity for other white people who don&#8217;t understand it. Instead of acting like she should be praised for it, she recognizes that it is NORMAL to want and have diversity and representation. <a href="https://t.co/hMVEa1D5Qg">https://t.co/hMVEa1D5Qg</a>
&#8212; sai (@Saisailu97) <a href="https://twitter.com/Saisailu97/status/1064880578800046082?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 20, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
In February, Pompeo made headlines when she called Fox News host Laura Ingraham a &#8220;b****&#8221; and told her to meet her outside, suggesting she wanted to fight her. &#8220;Someone tell this b**** to meet me outside&#8230; Im so not in the mood for playing nice or polite this week,&#8221; she wrote via Twitter.
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Someone tell this bitch to meet me outside&#8230; Im so not in the mood for playing nice or polite this week <a href="https://t.co/LUpm0k3ZvV">https://t.co/LUpm0k3ZvV</a>
&#8212; Ellen Pompeo (@EllenPompeo) <a href="https://twitter.com/EllenPompeo/status/964539012118491136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 16, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>
Pompeo was reacting to Ingraham saying basketball star LeBron James should cool it with the political commentary and &#8220;shut up and dribble.&#8221; Though Ingraham was making reference to a previous book she penned, &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Shut-Up-Sing-Hollywood-Subverting/dp/0895260816">Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the Media are Subverting America</a>,&#8221; the media and most of Hollywood accused Ingraham of racism.
WATCH:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
1) White people sometimes ask me how they can be an ally. <a href="https://twitter.com/EllenPompeo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@EllenPompeo</a> puts on a master class in how to be one.
2) <a href="https://twitter.com/itsgabrielleu?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@itsgabrielleu</a>&#8217;s facial expressions are a whole ass mood.
<a href="https://t.co/niEQfPPdMI">pic.twitter.com/niEQfPPdMI</a>
&#8212; Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) <a href="https://twitter.com/jemelehill/status/1064715806007689217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 20, 2018</a></blockquote>
</div>

WATCH: Ellen Pompeo Calls Out White People On Diversity: &#8216;We Created The Problem&#8217;

I&#8217;m thankful that increasing attention is being paid to the dire state of higher education in our country. Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has just published &#8220;The Diversity Delusion.&#8221; Its subtitle captures much of the book&#8217;s content: &#8220;How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.&#8221; Part of the gender pandering at our universities is seen in the effort to satisfy the diversity-obsessed National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, each of which gives millions of dollars of grant money to universities. If universities don&#8217;t make an effort to diversify their science, technology, engineering and math (known as STEM) programs, they risk losing millions in grant money.
A UCLA scientist says, &#8220;All across the country the big question now in STEM is: how can we promote more women and minorities by &#8216;changing&#8217; (i.e., lowering) the requirements we had previously set for graduate level study?&#8221; Mac Donald says, &#8220;Mathematical problem-solving is being deemphasized in favor of more qualitative group projects; the pace of undergraduate physics education is being slowed down so that no one gets left behind.&#8221;
Diversity-crazed people ignore the fact that there are systemic differences in race and sex that influence various outcomes. Males outperform females at the highest levels of math; however, males are overrepresented at the lowest levels of math competence. In 2016, the number of males scoring above 700 on the math portion of the SAT was nearly twice as high as the number of females scoring above 700. There are 2.5 males in the U.S. in the top 0.01 percent of math ability for every female, according to the journal Intelligence (February 2018).
In terms of careers, females are more people-centered than males. That might explain why females make up 75 percent of workers in health care-related fields but only 14 percent of engineering workers and 25 percent of computer workers. Nearly 82 percent of obstetrics and gynecology medical residents in 2016 were women. Mac Donald asks sarcastically, &#8220;Is gynecology biased against males, or are females selecting where they want to work?&#8221;
&#8220;The Diversity Delusion&#8221; documents academic practices that fall just shy of lunacy at many universities. Nowhere are these practices more unintelligent and harmful to their ostensible beneficiaries than in university efforts to promote racial diversity. UC Berkeley and UCLA are the most competitive campuses in the University of California system. Before Proposition 209&#8217;s ban on racial discrimination, the median SAT score of blacks and Hispanics at Berkeley was 250 points below that of whites and Asians. This difference was hard to miss in class. Renowned Berkeley philosophy professor John Searle, who sees affirmative action as a disaster, said, &#8220;They admitted people who could barely read.&#8221; Dr. Thomas Sowell and others have discussed this problem of mismatching students. Black and Hispanic students who might do well in a less competitive setting are recruited to highly competitive universities and become failures. Black parents have no obligation to make academic liberals feel good about themselves by allowing them to turn their children into failures.
Many readers know that I am a professor of economics at George Mason University. A few readers have asked me about &#8220;Black Freshmen Orientation,&#8221; held Aug. 25 and advertised as an opportunity for students to learn more about the black community at George Mason University. GMU is not alone in promoting separation in the name of diversity and inclusion. Harvard, Yale, UCLA and many other universities, including GMU, have black graduation ceremonies. Racial segregation goes beyond graduation ceremonies. Cal State Los Angeles, the University of Connecticut, UC Davis and UC Berkeley, among others, offer racially segregated housing for black students.
University administrators and faculty members who cave to the demands for racially segregated activities have lost their moral mooring, not to mention common sense. I&#8217;m sure that if white students demanded a whites-only dormitory or whites-only graduation ceremonies, the university community would be outraged. Some weak-minded administrators might make the argument that having black-only activities and facilities is welcoming and might make black students feel more comfortable. I&#8217;m wondering whether they would also support calls by either white or black students for separate (themed) bathrooms and water fountains.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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Diversity

Articles tagged with Diversity

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PragerU: ‘What Does Diversity Have To Do With Science?’

We Should Say ‘Womxn’ Not ‘Women’ To Be Inclusive. Wait, No, That’s Racist.

BOMBSHELL: Louisiana Prep School Falsified Transcripts To Get Black Children Into Elite Colleges

WATCH: Ellen Pompeo Calls Out White People On Diversity: ‘We Created The Problem’

WILLIAMS: University Corruption