"Would [Harvard] recognize the Ku Klux Klan? For me, the National Lawyers Guild and the Ku Klux Klan are indistinguishable in terms of ideology...."

"If [Harvard] wouldn't recognize Klansmen or if it wouldn't recognize a group of sexists who called for the end of equality for women, then it shouldn't recognize the pro-Hamas National Lawyers Guild.... If this were the 1950s and there was a university say the University of Mississippi — Old Miss — that was forcibly integrated and it was allowing... some of the Klansmen who were students to harass black students, and the federal government came in and said 'Unless you stop Klansmen from harassing black students we're going to cut off federal funding,' people would be applauding that.'..."

Said Alan Dershowitz, in his latest "Dershow":

"There's a sense that Denmark doesn't respect Greenland and that there's this long legacy of racism, exploitation, treating Greenlanders as second class citizens."

"And Greenlanders come from a different culture. They're part of this wider Inuit community that lives in the Arctic Circle in Alaska and Canada and parts of Russia. They have their own language, their own traditions, their own history of how they survive in this very hostile environment. And I met a number of people who said that they were mistreated, they were made fun of, that they were called racial slurs. I also heard a lot about the colonial legacy and things that Denmark had done when Greenland was a colony. They destroyed local traditions. They outlawed some of the religious practices that Greenlanders had been doing for centuries. And there was this scandal in the 1960s and 70s where Danish doctors were inserting IUD birth control devices into Greenlandic girls as young as, like, 12 in an attempt to keep the population down. And they did this to thousands of girls without them really understanding what was being done to them. And this was kept secret until just a few years ago. And when this scandal broke and the news spread that all these women in Greenland had been subject to this, it caused a lot of anger towards Denmark, all these things together. That's what brings us to this moment where just about everybody now wants independence."

From "Trump’s Bid for Greenland," yesterday's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast. Audio and transcript here, at Podscribe.

And here's today's news from Greenland, as reported in the NYT: "In Trump’s Shadow, Greenland Votes for a New Government/President Trump has expressed a desire to 'get' Greenland, but the party that won Tuesday’s election is in no rush to change the status quo":

"Apple has acknowledged an issue with the iPhone's voice-to-text feature where it briefly displays 'Trump' when the user says 'racist.'"

"This glitch has sparked discussions across social media platforms, with some users interpreting it as intentional bias. Apple is reportedly addressing the issue to ensure accurate dictation."

X reports.

Major Scandal Breaking! Apple iPhones now replace the word racist with Trump! pic.twitter.com/buaqR3AxY1

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) February 25, 2025

They weren't really saying babies are racist, but they made it easy to say that's what they're saying, and they were taking taxpayer money to propagate something the people don't want.

Funding for racist baby training is canceled https://t.co/M7H1ks4Vbr

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 15, 2025

"Here’s my view: I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life."

"We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back. If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that."

Tweeted JD Vance.

What did this guy write? NBC News has this:

The Wall Street Journal said it reviewed archived posts from a deleted X account used by [25-year-old Marko] Elez in which he posted messages such as “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool” and, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity... Normalize Indian hate.”

ADDED: Do not refer to Elez as "Big Balls"! Big Balls is Edward Coristine, and he's only 19 years old. So maybe you shouldn't be calling him that. You creeps.

"Kendi is a vegan, a tall man with a gentle, serious nature.... He considers himself an 'introvert and loner' who was chased down by the spotlight..."

"... and is now caught in its glare.... There is a corniness to Kendi that’s endearing, like his use of the gratitude notebook — a thick, pastel-colored pad with gold spiral binding.... Kendi had hired a pair of crisis-P.R. consultants to help him manage the fallout from the layoffs [at the Center for Antiracist Research].... In the fun-house mirror of conservative media, Kendi has long loomed as an antiwhite extremist trying to get rich by sowing racial division.... 'When it comes to the white supremacists who are the greatest domestic terrorist threat of our time, I am one of their chief enemies,' he told me.... Kendi was frustrated to be constantly lumped in with [Robin] DiAngelo, whose ideas diverge from his in important ways. DiAngelo considers 'white identity' to be 'inherently racist,' while Kendi argues that anyone, including Black people, can be racist or antiracist. That puts him at odds with an understanding — common in the academy and the racial-justice movement — that Black people can’t be racist because racism is a system of power relations... that racism is 'prejudice plus power.' Kendi thinks of 'racist' not as a pejorative but as a simple word of description.... Racist and antiracist are 'peelable name tags,' Kendi writes; they describe not who we are but who we are being in any particular moment. He says he opposes the censoriousness that has become the sharp edge of identity politics, because he doesn’t regard shame as a useful social tool...."

 
From "Ibram X. Kendi Faces a Reckoning of His Own/In 2020, the author of 'How to Be an Antiracist' galvanized Americans with his ideas. The past four years have tested them — and him" (NYT).

"I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time, and a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me..."

"... because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. I’m being indicted for you, the American people. I’m being indicted for you, the Black population. I am being indicted for a lot of different groups by sick people, these are sick sick people.... Some of the greatest evils in our nation's history have come from corrupt systems that try to target and subjugate others to deny them their freedom and to deny them their rights. I think that's why the Black people are so much on my side now because they see what's happening to me happens to them.... My mug shot — we’ve all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anybody else? The Black population. You see Black people walking around with my mug shot, you know, they do shirts and they sell them for $19 apiece. It’s pretty amazing — millions by the way."

Said Donald Trump, yesterday in South Carolina, as he received the "Champion of Black America" award from the Black Conservative Federation. He was quoted in "Trump says 'the Black people' like him because he's been 'discriminated against' in the legal system/In a speech to a group of Black conservatives, he also said Black Americans "embraced" his mug shot more than anyone else" (NBC News).

The tone of voice may affect how you interpret that:

Trump at the Black Conservative Federation Gala: I got indicted and lot of people said that’s why the black people like me… pic.twitter.com/QENwQvvyLI

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 24, 2024

Trump: I’m being indicted for the Black population pic.twitter.com/8abSxWdCcZ

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 24, 2024

He also called Joe Biden a racist: "Joe Biden really has proven to be a very nasty and vicious racist. He's been a racist. Whether you like it or don't like it. I happen not to like it. Joe Biden really has proven to be a very nasty and vicious racist. He's been a racist. Whether you like it or don't like it. I happen not to like it.... Biden spent years palling around with notorious segregationist you know that." I don't know what that refers to — some Senator who got elected and therefore received the conventional collegiality of the Senate? If that's all it is, the missing name is Strom Thurmond. Other than that "palling around" reference, I'm just seeing the repeated blunt assertion that Joe Biden has been a racist. Adding "nasty and vicious" or "very nasty and vicious" explains nothing.

And here's some edgy racial humor. I think it's a reversal of the old (and stupid) observation that black people are hard to see in the dark: White people are hard to see in the light....

Trump: These lights are so bright in my eyes I can't see people... I can only see the Black ones. I can't see any white ones. That's how far I've come. That's a long way isn't it? pic.twitter.com/CBBJWJRxnH

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) February 24, 2024

ADDED: At the same event, Trump does a pretty funny imitation of Biden:

"You distance yourself from 'other' white people. You see only unapologetic bigots, card-carrying white supremacists and white people outside your own circle as 'real racists.'"

"You put other white people down, trash their work or behavior, or otherwise dismiss them. You righteously consider yourselves white people who have evolved beyond our racist conditioning. This is another level of denial. There are no 'exceptional white people.' You may have attended many anti-racism workshops; you may not be shouting racist epithets or actively discriminating against people of color, but you still experience privilege based on your white skin color. You benefit from this system of oppression and advantage no matter what your intentions are. This distancing serves only to divide you from potential allies and limit your own learning."

That's the "reality check" on item #21 of a DEI handout called "Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors That Indicate a Detour or Wrong Turn into White Guilt, Denial or Defensiveness."

"Isaacson... writes at length and with compassion about the indignities heaped upon young Elon by schoolmates."

"Elon, an awkward, lonely boy, was bored in school and had a tendency to call other kids 'stupid'; he was also very often beaten up, and his father frequently berated him, but when he was ten, a few years after his parents divorced, he chose to live with him. (Musk is now estranged from his father, a conspiracist who has called Joe Biden a 'pedophile President,' and who has two children by his own stepdaughter; he has said that 'the only thing we are here for is to reproduce.' Recently, he warned Elon, in an e-mail, that 'with no Whites here, the Blacks will go back to the trees.')..."

Writes Jill Lepore, in "How Elon Musk Went from Superhero to Supervillain/Walter Isaacson’s new biography depicts a man who wields more power than almost any other person on the planet but seems estranged from humanity itself" (The New Yorker).

"'The Wrath of Becky'/Rated R for disgusting dialogue and dripping brain matter."

I'm reading a movie review in the NYT. I haven't been paying much attention to descriptions of new movies, but this one caught my eye because of its violently angry young female protagonist. It made me think of school shootings. I sometimes wonder what the entertainment business is trying to upload into the mind of Gen Z. 

For the annals of servitude.

1. "2 Wisconsin Republicans want 14-year-olds to be allowed to serve alcohol in restaurants" (Insider). There's currently a labor shortage, and the bill would only allow the 14-17-year olds to serve alcohol to those who are seated at tables, not those at the bar. Oddly enough, in Wisconsin, underage kids can drink alcohol, even at the bar, if they're with a parent! Anyway, 14-17-year olds already work in restaurants and wait on tables. To let them deliver the drinks to the table would simply enable them to do all the ordinary tasks that are part of the job. What are we afraid of? Child labor? But they're already waiting on the tables. That they might, if entrusted with a small tray of drinks, surreptitiously sip on one? It can't be that we feel a need to protect them from a drinking environment, because they are already working in restaurants. They already see people imbibing. It's not as though we're letting them see an orgy.

2. "Black waiter forced to serve N-word spewing diners decked in Confederate flags: report" (Raw Story). As one server tells it: "A party full of people wearing Confederate flag gear just tried to f---ing come eat in our restaurant. One of our Black servers had to take them.... They’re N-word this, N-word that, while he’s there at the table. They’re not even trying to stop." The black man who waited on the table said that it was a reservation for 11, and he'd started working on the table after only a few had showed up, "including a baby wrapped in a Confederate coat," but he didn't really notice until more arrived. Then, the managers asked if he had "any issues with this table," and he continued until someone addressed him as "boy." He "couldn't return to the table, after which the group demanded the managers force him to return and correct their orders." We're told the "managers tried to defuse the situation," but "he's considering a lawsuit," presumably against his employer. ADDED: Assuming the accuracy of this account, I think the managers ought to have told the customers they had to leave. It shouldn't have depended on the server's declaring an inability to soldier on.

"Twitter and Tesla chief Elon Musk defended Scott Adams... in a series of tweets Sunday, blasting media organizations for dropping his comic strip..."

I'm reading "Musk defends 'Dilbert' creator, says media is 'racist against whites'/The Tesla and Twitter chief blasted media outlets for dropping Scott Adams’s comic strip after the cartoonist’s rant against Black people" by Will Oremus (WaPo).

Replying to tweets about the controversy, Musk said it is actually the media that is “racist against whites & Asians.”... 

In further tweets Sunday, Musk agreed with a tweet that said “Adams’ comments weren’t good” but there’s “an element of truth” to them, and suggested in a reply that media organizations promote a “false narrative” by giving more coverage to unarmed Black victims of police violence than they do to unarmed White victims of police violence.... 

Here's the Musk tweet, responding to someone who tweeted that the MSM had concluded that Adams is racist:

It's hard to say a racist incident never happened, but why was it so easy to say that it did?

"Brigham Young University said Friday that it had completed its investigation into accusations of racial heckling and slurs at a volleyball match against Duke University last month and found no evidence to confirm that the behavior took place."

The NYT reports.

Note the careful language — "no evidence to confirm." They don't and can't say that nothing at all happened. The language in the BYU statement is: "we have not found any evidence to corroborate" ("From our extensive review, we have not found any evidence to corroborate the allegation that fans engaged in racial heckling or uttered racial slurs at the event").

"The Georgia Guidestones, a 19-foot mysterious granite monument in the Peach State, was demolished on Thursday for safety reasons, after being damaged in a blast."

Newsweek reports.

The big mystery about the monument wasn't how it got there, but just who paid to buy the land and put it up. It looks a bit like Stonehenge, but it's not ancient. It went up in 1980, financed by someone who worked through a banker who was sworn to protect his anonymity. 

The stones were engraved with 10 principles (in 8 languages), and the first one is blatantly evil, once you penetrate the euphemism "Maintain":

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the Earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature

"In a case that hinged on proving the defendants’ state of mind, prosecutors argued that the men’s prejudice helped explain why they erroneously viewed Arbery, 25, as a potential criminal..."

"... when they cut him off in pickup trucks and threatened him with guns in a Georgia neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2020. The government presented evidence from 20 witnesses, many of whom testified about racially derogatory text messages, social media posts and remarks from the three men in which they disparaged Black people. 'All three defendants told you loud and clear, in their own words, how they feel about African Americans,' prosecutor Tara Lyons told the jury, made up of eight White people, three Black people and one Hispanic person. 'Yes, race, racism, racial discrimination — those can all be very difficult topics to discuss. But the facts of this case are not difficult.'... The McMichaels and Bryan were convicted on state murder charges in November 2021 after a trial in which prosecutors did not make race a central focus of their case.... Under sentencing guidelines, in the absence of a plea deal, the men are expected to serve their sentences in state prison...."

From "Killers of Ahmaud Arbery found guilty of federal hate-crimes charges" (WaPo). There was no plea deal because the Arbery family objected to it.

The top story in the Wisconsin State Journal: "Wisconsin athletic department condemns fan’s actions at Tuesday’s men’s basketball game."

"The fan was seated across the court from the UW bench and adjacent to the Northwestern student section. A video was posted on social media of him standing up flipping off the student section then making a racist gesture." 

I wondered what racist gesture? The article does not say, but there was a link to the video, and it wasn't what I'd pictured. The fan got ejected from the game, so I'm not sure why this is front-page news. Is it to decry racism or to stimulate the belief that racism is raging in America today?

Just saw this video on TikTok of this incredibly racist Wisconsin fan going at the Northwestern student fans.

Glad to see a Northwestern employee and a police office force him to leave. Do better people. Don’t be like this guy. pic.twitter.com/5noQ7XPqh9

— Xavier Sanchez (@Xavier_Sanchez4) January 19, 2022

"The University of Wisconsin Smears a Once-Treasured Alum."

A column by John McWhorter (NYT). 

The alum is Fredric March, an actor most people going to school today probably don't remember. Try streaming "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946). He was important enough to the University of Wisconsin that they put his name on some theater buildings.

He's been attacked for an obvious reason: He belonged to the Ku Klux Klan! But it wasn't that Ku Klux Klan. It was back in 1919/1920 and there was an interfraternity group that called itself the Ku Klux Klan. To think that means something awful is to be historically ignorant, McWhorter explains:

The later 20th century Klan emerged gradually in the wake of the racist film “The Birth of a Nation” in 1915, and only became a national phenomenon starting in 1921. In Wisconsin in 1919, when March was inducted into his group, it was possible to have never heard of the Ku Klux Klan that was later so notorious.... 

Even Madison’s chancellor, Rebecca Blank, has written that March had “fought the persecution of Hollywood artists, many of them Jewish, in the 1950s by the House Un-American Activities Committee” and that March “took actions later in life to suggest (he) opposed discrimination.”...

So... it was 4 years after "The Birth of a Nation." And "it was possible to have never heard of the Ku Klux Klan"? But why was it called "the Ku Klux Klan"? McWhorter says there's "no evidence" that it's the same Ku Klux Klan. But the name is some evidence, and the lack of any other explanation of the name, and the fact that "The Birth of a Nation" had been out for 4 years are at least some evidence.

I agree with McWhorter that March shouldn't be tarred as a racist for something he did for a year as a young man and that might have been genuinely racist. But the question is whether his name should be used to name the campus theaters. We have a much more important theater-related alum — Lorraine Hansberry. I'd put her name on the theaters. Update the honoring.

Back to McWhorter:

This witch-burning mentality is something most of us less concur with than fear.... The students who got March’s name taken off those buildings made a mistake, as did the administrators who again caved to weakly justified demands, seemingly too scared of being called racists to take a deep breath and engage in reason. The University of Wisconsin must apologize to March and his survivors. His name should be restored to both of the theaters now denuded of his name, including the Madison building, which he in fact helped bring into being and funded the lighting equipment even before the building was named after him. This must happen in the name of what all involved in this mistake are committed to: social justice — which motivated March throughout his life.

ADDED: As someone who has taught the law school course called Evidence, I rankle at the phrase "no evidence." Evidence is anything that makes a fact of consequence either more likely to be true or less likely to be true. There is clearly some evidence that March affiliated himself with a racist group. It's fine to say there's not enough evidence to justify removing March's name from these buildings, especially when we also have evidence that March was an anti-racist. That's all you need to say. 

AND: This isn't a trial of March where his accusers must meet a burden of proof and the question is whether he ought to be convicted of racism. That ought to fail because he has a constitutional right to be a racist. We wouldn't even go to trial. But if it did, there wouldn't be enough evidence to convict him. But the important point here is that the question in issue is whether his name ought to be on campus buildings today. What should the burden of proof be and is it met? That's the way to analyze this controversy.

"When I arrived I was told I should leave political correctness back in the UK, because in Denmark you have the right to say whatever you want, whenever you want and however you want... In Denmark, you can hear the N-word or you can see a Nazi gesture in the name of fun."

Said global studies professor Michelle Pace, who moved from Britain to Denmark 15 years ago. She's referring to the way, in Demark, people joke about race and say you don't have a sense of humor if you object. Using that Danish term "hygge" — for a Danish sort of coziness — Pace calls this "hyggeracisme" (that is, cozy racism).

Quoted in "After jumpers and hygge, ‘cosy racism’ may be Denmark’s next big export/Asylum requests have fallen dramatically thanks to policies that belie the country’s liberal image. No wonder Priti Patel is watching closely" (London Times).

That bit about hyggeracism is a very limited part of an article that is overwhelmingly about Demarks efforts at controlling immigration. Priti Patel is the British home secretary, and she's spoken of fixing Britain's "broken asylum system."

Despite Pace's prompt, the comments at the Times are generally supportive of freedom of speech and restricting immigration.

"What is the problem with individualism?" — The New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner asks Robin DiAngelo.

From an interview titled "Robin DiAngelo Wants White Progressives to Look Inward/The author of 'White Fragility' discusses her new book, 'Nice Racism'":

Your book is a critique of individualism, by which you mean, as you put it, "Our identities are not separate from the white supremacist society in which we are raised, and our patterns of cross-racial engagement are not merely a function of our unique personalities." What is the problem with individualism? 

Individualism cuts the person off from the very society that the concept of individualism is valued in. That’s the great irony, right? If we were in a more community-oriented or collective-oriented society, we wouldn’t value being an individual the way that we do. We have been conditioned to see that as the ideal, that every one of us is unique and special and different, and if you don’t know somebody specifically you can’t know anything about them. 

She's saying that individualism is not individualistic at all, but something we absorb as part of a group that deludes us into not seeing ourselves as part of the group.

Matt Taibbi is annoyed by the repetitiveness and thinness of Robin DiAngelo's new book "Nice Racism."

I'm reading "Our Endless Dinner With Robin DiAngelo/Suburban America's self-proclaimed racial oracle returns with a monumentally oblivious sequel to 'White Fragility.'" 

Fortunately, Matt Taibbi  keeps his book review super-short and even so, he's risking committing the same writerly sin as DiAngelo — saying the same thing over and over. And it would be especially bad to say over and over that some other writer keeps saying the same thing over and over. 

DiAngelo's main point is something I myself believe: Lots of people who think of themselves as good people — because they think of themselves as good people — are — obliviously — racist.

DiAngelo has cashed in with this insight, and who can blame her for slapping together another book? Taibbi dismisses it as "the booklike product released this week by the 'Vanilla Ice of Antiracism,' Robin DiAngelo."  

DiAngelo presents herself — her past self — as an exemplar of the self-loving liberal who views racism as a sin that afflicts those other people — those awful people over there. She writes:

My progressive credentials were impeccable: I was a minority myself—a woman in a committed relationship with another woman…I knew how to talk about patriarchy and heterosexism. I was a cool white progressive, not an ignorant racist. Of course, what I was actually demonstrating was how completely oblivious I was.

It's an important insight, but how do you make it into a book and then another book? There isn't really any new material, just a need to bonk complacent liberals on the head again, and this new book is offered for that purpose.

Matt Taibbi cries out in pain:

Reading DiAngelo is like being strapped to an ice floe in a vast ocean while someone applies metronome hammer-strikes to the the same spot on your temporal bone over and over. You hear ideas repeated ten, twenty, a hundred times, losing track of which story is which....