Category Archives: Race and Ethnicity

Pledging Allegiance to the Divided States of America 4

by • American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right, Race and Ethnicity • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will-Antonio Gramsci

When the individual’s behavior and consciousness get hooked to a routine sequence of external actions, he is a dead robot, and it is time for him to die and be reborn. Time to “drop out”, “turn on”, and “tune in.”-Timothy Leary

America, the indispensable nation. That old jingoistic canard gets tossed around like confetti in this country, while the rest of the world rolls their collective eyes and crack their collective knuckles. According to patriotic lore, America is some beige, color-blind, miracle designed by the greatest white philosophers since Socrates to free the world from its backwards indigenous ways with the magic of global capitalism. Naturally, this is all bullshit. The kind of sad pep-talk a date-rapist gives himself in the mirror before showering his glamour muscles in Axe body spray. There is absolutely nothing miraculous about America but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t exceptional.

America is an exceptionally cruel experiment in the outer reaches of colonial social engineering. We are a nation defined by the two greatest holocausts in recorded history, spanning three continents and an entire hemisphere. America as we know it was founded by an ambitious collection of European super-colonialists who found themselves and their nations increasingly depleted of the wealth they accumulated from the Crusades. So they traveled the seas in search of greener pastures to irrigate with more dark-skinned blood. They found their sainted killing fields of Shangri-La in the New World and with the superiority of their steel, they decided to take the Americas by force and slaughter anyone who stood in their way. But with an entire hemisphere half empty of its indigenous inhabitants, these European overlords found themselves with too much work for their feeble bourgeois fingers to handle, so they filled their new colonies with shiploads of slaves pilfered from the jungles of Africa to build a nation on their scarred shoulders, murdering millions more in the process and permanently hobbling another entire continent.

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Thomas Sowell on the Myths of Economic Inequality Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations, Race and Ethnicity

Thomas Sowell is much, much further to the Right on most issues than I am, e.g. endorsing neocon foreign policy views, uncritical of the police state, practically ignoring “crony capitalism,” etc. But he’s pretty good at debunking reductionist theories coming from the Left on the causes of a range of disparities, which is his area of specialization.

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Anti-White Politics is anti-Revolutionary Nonsense Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity

An interesting M-L-M critique of the critical theory oriented “Left.” I don’t agree with his general ideology but I agree with his assessment of “identity politics” as having no real value other than to create divisiveness that will have the effect of undermining the system (“destabilizing the imperialist core”), thereby making anti-imperialist victory more likely. That’s why I have spent so much time promoting all kinds of fringe, freakazoid movements and ideologies, and favor the most extreme, ridiculous or insane political candidates. Weaken the system at its core. Another thing I like about Jason is that he recognizes that the “revolutionary potential” of the First World is minimal to non-existent. I agree with his assessment of the Third World at the focus of anti-imperialist revolution, even if I don’t share his Marxism.

 

 

The Trouble With White Guilt 5

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Race and Ethnicity

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

White Guilt is a very serious affliction in this country. Its symptoms include cultural appropriation, political correctness, and obsessive NPR consumption. Fall is peak White Guilt season, wedged between our country’s most cherished celebrations of genocide, Columbus Day and Thanksgiving. A common misconception is that White Guilt is a mental illness. While it can cause delusions in more severe cases, White Guilt is actually a completely natural response to conspicuous consumption, particularly when this addiction to material garbage is built on an ancient Indian burial ground.

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On Antisemitism, Critical Thinking, And Conspiracy Theories Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized

A timely article from Caitlin.

By Caitlin Johnstone

Today a gunman attacked a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania while shouting the words “All Jews must die”. The suspect, Robert Bowers, reportedly had a history of making antisemitic posts on social media, and was taken into custody alive with multiple gunshot wounds. As of this writing, eleven people were killed in the attack.

I don’t have anything interesting or insightful to say about America’s mass shootings, other than to repeat the point I always make that the effects of modern war propaganda on American psychology are wildly under-appreciated and ignored by scientific research. I believe the subject of US gun control is a bit outside my sovereign boundaries as an Australian writer as it only affects Americans, so I don’t really have anything to contribute in the primary debate surrounding the attack. It’s a debate for Americans to have with one another, so I tend to avoid it.

What I do have to offer is a brief description of my experience with conspiracy theories about Judaism and Jewish people as a fringe blogger who writes a lot about conspiracies, and the impression those encounters have left me with. To be clear, when I talk about antisemites I mean the actual bigots who promote hatred of Jewish people, paranoia about Jewishness, or any type of violence against or mistreatment of Jews as a race. I do not mean people who voice legitimate criticisms of Israel and its government, I do not mean people who criticize the way Zionism is used as a tool of manipulation to advance geopolitical agendas, I do not mean people who question the justification for the creation of Israel in the first place, I do not mean people who defend Palestinians, and I do not mean people who voice valid, factual criticisms of George Soros or any other billionaire who happens to be Jewish.

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The Democrats’ Left Turn Is Not an Illusion Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity

The research that is cited in this article, along with the “Hidden Tribes” report that came out recently, seems to confirm what I have long suspected, i.e. that “political correctness” is the ideology of the mostly white, educated, affluent, left-wing of the upper middle class. This is probably one of the more interesting parts of this article:

“In fact, white liberals are well to the left of the black electorate on some racial issues.

Take the issue of discrimination as a factor holding back African-American advancement. White liberals are to the left of black Democrats, placing a much stronger emphasis than African-Americans on the role of discrimination and much less emphasis on the importance of individual effort.

Among white liberals, according to Pew survey data collected in 2017, 79.2 percent agreed that “racial discrimination is the main reason why many black people can’t get ahead these days.” 18.8 percent agreed that “blacks who can’t get ahead in this country are mostly responsible for their own condition,” a 60.4 point difference, according to a detailed analysis of the Pew data provided the Times by Zach Goldberg, a doctoral candidate in political science at Georgia State University.

Among blacks, 59.9 percent identified discrimination as the main deterrent to upward mobility for African-Americans, and 32.0 percent said blacks were responsible for their condition — in other words, blacks are more conservative than white liberals on this issue.?”

By Thomas B. Edsall

New York Times

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Robert Stark talks about The YIMBY Movement & The Alt-Center 1

by • Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Left and Right, Race and Ethnicity, Science and Technology • Tags: ,

The Stark Truth. Listen here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Stark joined with Cartrell Payne(aka The Adventure Kid) to discuss the YIMBY movement, the Alt-Center, and how those issues relate.

Topics:

California Senator Scott Wiener’s housing-transit measure Derailed
Factions of the YIMBY movement including left leaning housing advocates, real estate developers, and the Market Urbanist
Left Wing anti-gentrification activists and their alliance with NIMBY’s
Cartrell’s observations on gentrification in Memphis, Tennessee
The hypocrisy of pro-immigration Limousine Liberal NIMBY’s, and how that combination exacerbates the housing crisis
How the YIMBY movement is also very pro immigration
Income Inequality in California and the mass exodus of the middle class
The film Falling Down which is set in LA in the early 90’s and a warning of a dystopian future
What makes California great and can it be saved?
The New Great Migration of Black Americans back to The South
White Middle Class Conservative NIMBY’s, their motivations, and how they are sabotaging their own self interest
Why YIMBYism and immigration restriction are compatible, and why the Alt-Center should take up those causes
Why YIMBYs need to address aesthetic concerns
Why YIMBYism is compatible with environmental and historic preservation
Citylab and City Journal; their writings on urbanism and political agendas
Why mass transit is inefficient in LA and other Sun Belt cities
The political and cultural flaws of both Blue and Red States
A vision of an Alt Center which include alternative economics, pro middle class policies, New Urbanism, environmentalism, SWPL culture, and socially centrist
Cartrell’s political orientation as an Old School Southern Democrat minus the racism
Cartrell’s critique of both the Black Liberal Establishment and Black Conservatives
Conservative views on the poor and police issues and Conservative Class Cucks
The early 20th Century Populist movement
Norman Mailer’s plan for breaking up New York City which addressed both the concerns of the Left and the Right

Trans Mountain pipeline opponents vow to keep fighting Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized • Tags:

Apparently, this is what “progressive” government looks like under Justin Trudeau’s totalitarian humanist regime.

By Justine Calma

Grist.Org

Canada is coughing up $3.5 billion to buy the floundering Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project from Kinder Morgan. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had vowed “to get that pipeline built,” but pipeline resistance groups aren’t backing down, either.

“This is a declaration of war against indigenous people because they’re not recognizing our own sovereignty,” says Kanahus Manuel, a Secwepemc midwife and mother of four. “So we are putting on our war paint and we are putting on our battle gear and we’re going to fight.”

The Houston-based company had stopped all non-essential spending on the project last month after facing broad opposition from environmental groups, indigenous communities, and the province of British Columbia. Canada says it plans to fund construction of the project until it can find another buyer to take over. If completed, it would nearly triple the pipeline’s capacity to transport crude and refined oil from Alberta to B.C.

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The Last Slave 1

by • Race and Ethnicity • Tags:

An very interesting undiscovered work by Zora Neale Hurston has now come to light.

Vulture.Com

In 1931, Zora Neale Hurston sought to publish the story of Cudjo Lewis, the final slave-ship survivor. Instead it languished in a vault. Until now.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is required reading in high schools and colleges and cited as a formative influence by Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. It’s been canonized by Harold Bloom — even credited for inspiring the tableau in Lemonade where Beyoncé and a clutch of other women regally occupy a wooden porch — but Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel was eviscerated by critics when it was published in 1937. The hater-in-chief was no less than Richard Wright, who recoiled as much at the book’s depiction of lush female sexuality and (supposedly) apolitical themes as its use of black dialect, “the minstrel technique that makes the ‘white folks’ laugh.”

Six years earlier, Hurston had tried to publish another book in dialect, this one a work of nonfiction called Barracoon. Before she turned to writing novels, she’d trained as a cultural anthropologist at Barnard under the famed father of the field, Franz Boas. He sent his student back south to interview people of African descent. (Hurston was raised in Eatonville, Florida, which wasn’t the “black backside” of a white town, she once observed, but a place wholly inhabited and run by black people — her father was a three-term mayor.) She proved adept at the task, but, as she noted in her collection of folklore, Mules and Men, the job wasn’t always straightforward: “The best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people, usually underprivileged, are the shyest. They are most reluctant at times to reveal that which the soul lives by. And the Negro, in spite of his open-faced laughter, his seeming acquiescence, is particularly evasive … The Negro offers a feather-bed resistance, that is, we let the probe enter, but it never comes out.”

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The Bankruptcy of the American Left 2

by • Activism, American Decline, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Strategy

Kudos to Chris Hedges. This is as good an analysis as I would ever expect from someone on the Left. This is a fairly straightforward Marxist analysis within a social democratic ideological framework. But he knows who the real enemy is.

By Chris Hedges

Truthdig

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The Alt-Right is Gay 5

by • Arts & Entertainment, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity, Strategy, Uncategorized, WTF!?

5724398e-af35-4eb9-9c97-3a873d9bd900One thing about European New Right philosophy that I think is right is that America is a completely separate culture and civilization from Europe even if it is a derivative in many ways. Interestingly, North American New Righters try to be more European culturally and intellectually even if many of them are Americans by birth and citizenship. That said, as the demographic change continues and whites become just another minority I don’t see how white nationalists will not become even weirder to most Americans or not be a right wing version of the creepy cross dressing homo plastic surgery freaks of leftist identity politics groups with their own bizarre subcultures and idiosyncrasies. I am just not convinced that a high brow, intellectual, racialist counter culture is going to achieve intellectual hegemony in US cultural institutions and then trickle down from the Alternative Bourgeoisie to the white masses to forma zee Eudapean Amedikin Etno Homozexuelle State.

It’s true that the Alt-Right is growing but the only reason it’s growing is because it provides more social space for non threatening preppies, dandies, stuck up snobs, and closeted homosexuals who have the same west coast values and lifestyles as most yuppie square professionals on the Left (wining and dining at fancy restaurants, driving a nice car, parking, lunch and dinner, having a dog sitter, living in an upscale apartment with a loft in a “good neighborhood,” etc.) except that they hate blacks and dirty Mexicans so they get off on identifying as Euro Mysterion to scare a few democrats who don’t know any better.

One thing you’ll notice about the Alt-Right is that there’s not a whole lot of discussion of actual strategy in their circles. I think one of the reasons the ENR has never been able to extend its influence outside dissident intellectual circles in Europe is because its high brow intellectuals have no conception of practical politics. They’ve never been able to agree among themselves on anything other than their homosexuality to be able to actually work out any practical plan of what a WN / ENR / Alt-Right society would actually look like (form of government, economic system, legal definition of rights and responsibilities, foreign policy, handling of gay marriage and other inter-white irreconcilable cultural conflicts, etc.) or how any of it would really be achieved or implemented.

The Alt-Right was interesting when it was bringing the ideas of real thinkers like Dugin and Benoist to an American audience, and promoting bad motherfuckers like Jack Donovan who has since broken with the Alt-Right. Richard Spencer’s leadership has been terrible. He’s more or less become the new David Duke. Whether that was his intention or not is beside the point. He did nothing to prevent it. Matt Parrott, who used to produce the ATS podcast on VOR and CC, has become a self-parody along with his son-in-law, Matt Heimbach. Those guys have become the new Tom Metzger or something. The Right Stuff guys like Mike Enoch have gone off the deep end as well.

It’s a shit show.

Kind of anti-SJW SJWs.

This is why the Alt-Right and the New American Right will never become anything more than a fetish for a small minority of weird intellectuals just like the symphony or the opera. Practical strategy, armed resistance, and all the other stuff that actually matters beyond the level of a small group of ineffectual intellectuals aiming to develop the white counter-culture through art, literature, and philosophy is a no-go. It’s the same with conspiracy kids, the libertarians, and most anarchists of course, which is why most of our work at ATS has been about addressing these questions. We certainly don’t have it all figured it out but we know the tradition of secession resonates well with Americans, and we know pan-anarchy would enable a number of white republics or white socialist states. Conspiracy theorists can have their UFO tents. Anarchists can have all their varying hyphenated communities. And white nationalists can have many different kinds of homosexual cities. Aristotle noted that the great cities of classical civilization possessed over 150 different constitutions among them. One big homosexual state is just not necessary and let’s be real, it’s not going to happen. So why not aim to break up the central state and scatter throughout the continent?

I don’t think whites have much of a future in modern American political culture and I agree that it’s a problem but I don’t think a white rights movement is the way to go. If that’s what you’re going for, cool, but I’ll be hanging with the anarchists agitating for secession while you guys reread Ezra Pound Part 9 Million behind the symphony set on Sundays.

Holla.

With the rise of the alt-right, Latino white supremacy may not be a contradiction in terms 3

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized

Soon there will be articles in the press discussing the serious and imminent dangers posed by African-American white supremacists. “Clayton Bigsby is not just a fictional character!”

By Gabriela Resto-Montero

Mic

With the rise of the alt-right, Latino white supremacy may not be a contradiction in terms

 

White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the alt-right exchange insults with counterprotesters as they enter Emancipation Park during the “Unite the Right” rally Aug. 12 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The footage from Aug. 12 is shocking.

Five white men surround a young black man curled in the fetal position and beat him with sticks. Some of them back off when another unidentified man in a white tank top and red hat jumps in to continue attacking 20-year-old DeAndre Harris, who is writhing on the ground in the entrance to a Charlottesville, Virginia, parking lot.

Along with footage and images of a car plowing into a crowd of demonstrators and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, the video of Harris’ beating defined the violence that gripped the nation that day when white nationalists descended on the college town. Harris, who had been counterprotesting the “Unite the Right” rally, was left with a broken wrist and eight stitches in his head.

The clashes in Charlottesville catalyzed the American public’s reckoning with the budding white nationalist movement, which had accelerated after Donald Trump’s election. Afterward, the wave of public shaming of the violence in Charlottesville led at least one “Unite the Right” marcher to insist his participation in the rally was misinterpreted as racist. Others who attended quickly lost their jobs after online campaigns exposed them.

But the eventual identification of the man in the white tank top and red hat shook many: He was revealed to be a 33-year-old Puerto Rican resident of Georgia, originally from the Bronx. “I’m the only brown Klans member I ever met,” Alex Michael Ramos joked in a Facebook Live video before he turned himself into police Aug. 28. The Facebook post has since been taken down.

But Ramos wasn’t the only “Unite the Right” marcher with a Hispanic background.

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2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Men and Women, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized • Tags:

Prominent neocon Max Boot moves leftward. In the early 2000s, I predicted that eventually “conservatism” in the USA would look like today’s Democratic Party, and that “liberalism” would look like the present academic left/SJWs. This seems to be the direction in which things are increasingly heading.

Boot says nothing in this article that is particularly insightful. What great epiphanies has he had? That many cops are assholes (duh)? That blacks, poor people, and other disadvantaged folks are more likely to be victims of police brutality than country clubbers (duh)? That some white folks stereotype black folks as criminals and ne’er do wells (duh)? That some men commit sex crimes against women, among other crimes (duh)? That some men (and others) engage in rude, boorish, or inappropriate behavior (duh)?

None of this has anything to do with the critique of totalitarian humanism. That workers are exploited does not legitimize Communism. That the Israel Lobby has too much influence over US foreign policy does not legitimize neo-Nazism. That Islamist extremists engage in terrorism does not legitimize US imperialism or Boot’s own neocon foreign policy outlook. Boot sounds like a guy who has realized that the stock value of “cultural conservatism” is declining, and is looking leftward for a more lucrative gig.

By Max Boot

Foreign Policy

Men wave rainbow and 'black lives matter' flags while marching in the annual LGBTQI Pride Parade on June 25, 2017 in San Francisco. (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

In college — this was in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the University of California, Berkeley — I used to be one of those smart-alecky young conservatives who would scoff at the notion of “white male privilege” and claim that anyone propagating such concepts was guilty of “political correctness.” As a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, I felt it was ridiculous to expect me to atone for the sins of slavery and segregation, to say nothing of the household drudgery and workplace discrimination suffered by women. I wasn’t racist or sexist. (Or so I thought.) I hadn’t discriminated against anyone. (Or so I thought.) My ancestors were not slave owners or lynchers; they were more likely victims of the pogroms.

I saw America as a land of opportunity, not a bastion of racism or sexism. I didn’t even think that I was a “white” person — the catchall category that has been extended to include everyone from a Mayflower descendant to a recently arrived illegal immigrant from Ireland. I was a newcomer to America who was eager to assimilate into this wondrous new society, and I saw its many merits while blinding myself to its dark side.

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The Man Who Gave White Nationalism A New Life Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized

An interesting profile of Alain De Benoist.

By J. Lester Feder and Pierre Buet

Buzzfeed

PARIS — The man the alt-right claims as its spiritual father is a 74-year-old who lives with four cats in a Paris apartment around the corner from a Creole restaurant, a West African clothing store, and a Peruvian supermarket.

His name is Alain de Benoist, and he has published more than 100 books in his nearly 60-year writing career that encompass topics from anthropology to paganism. As the leader of a movement begun in the 1960s known as the “New Right,” he won one of France’s most prestigious intellectual prizes, was a columnist for several of its leading newspapers, and helped build the canon of fascist and radical writers familiar to political players ranging from Richard Spencer to Steve Bannon.

His core arguments are at the heart of many nationalist movements around the world, echoed even by those who do not know his name. His work helped give an aura of respectability to the notion that European “identity” needs to be defended against erasure by immigration, global trade, multinational institutions, and left-wing multiculturalism.

Today, de Benoist generally avoids social media and remains very much a man of the printed page. His Paris apartment is a refuge from the country home where he keeps a personal library of more than 200,000 volumes, a collection so vast he says it has become a burden. His study houses an art collection that includes a modernist portrait of de Benoist with his face encased in what appears to be a mask of metal. A poster for a talk he once gave in Turkey hangs on the bathroom wall, opposite a poster featuring different breeds of cats.

He now sees himself as more left than right and says he would have voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 US election. (His first choice in the French election was the leftist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.) He rejects any link between his New Right and the alt-right that supported Donald Trump.

“Maybe people consider me their spiritual father, but I don’t consider them my spiritual sons,” he said.

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The danger of race-based politics 2

by • Economics/Class Relations, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized • Tags:

Kotkin’s class analysis, his recognition that progressives are just as bad on class issues as conservatives, and his stating the obvious fact that racial demagoguery is a bad idea are all spot on. However, he seems to retreat into a naive civic nationalism that’s likely to prove increasingly untenable as class, cultural, racial, political and other divisions grow. The United States of the future will likely continue to be a wealth, technologically advanced society that is increasingly diverse in terms of population demographics. The society will become increasingly integrated as well (more Buddhists in Congress, etc). However, the emerging class system is one that resembles the kind of class structure traditionally found in Latin America, and social conflict between contending demographics will likely continue to escalate as well. The role of the increasingly all-pervasive public administration state will be in part to manage that conflict, largely through unprincipled means like buying off the loyalty of some groups, suppressing others, playing different groups off against each other, negotiating or forcing settlements between rival groups, etc.

By Joel Kotkin

Orange County Register

Overall, perceptions of worsening racial relations have been building since the Obama years. And now, with everything from the Kate Steinle murder verdict to President Trump’s dog-whistling Muslim tweets, they see destined to worsen further.

Ironically the strongest demand for racial exclusion comes mostly not from traditional racists — still not extinct — but from a campus left determined to address the evils of “whiteness” through policies of racial separation not seen since Jim Crow days. At some campuses, events are held that whites are excluded from and racially separate dorms are being developed. Even at the high school level, there are attempts to be “racially conscious” towards students, essentially teaching them to their racial “profile,” with dubious educational benefits.

President Trump’s unfortunate tendency to go out of his way to offend non-whites, whether they be Navajo war heroes, Hispanics or inner-city African Americans, makes this all worse. The president and the radical racialists both seem to find common purpose in the creation of kindling for racial bonfires.

Race in not the fundamental problem — class is

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