The prepared content of a Tuesday presentation to the House Democratic Caucus and staff indicates that Democrats will seek to portray apparently neutral free-market rhetoric as being charged with racial bias, conscious or unconscious.

In her distributed remarks, Maya Wiley of the Center for Social Inclusion criticized “conservative messages [that are] racially ‘coded’ and had images of people of color that we commonly see used” and proposed tactics for countering the Republicans’ (presumably) racially-coded rhetoric.

According to Wiley’s group’s website, “right-wing rhetoric has dominated debates of racial justice—undermining efforts to create a more equal society, and tearing apart the social safety net in the process” for over 25 years. Wiley had been invited to run the Democrats “through their strategy and how they message and talk about stuff” pertaining to race and fiscal policy, a staffer for Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., explained.

{snip}

But the threshold for what constitutes racially charged messaging is not always so high. One of Santorum’s cited comments was: “Give them more food stamps, give them more Medicaid is the administration’s approach, rather than creating jobs.” She also cited this comment from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., about raising taxes to fund government programs: “I’ve never believed that you go raise taxes on those that are paying in, taking from them, so that you just hand out and give them to someone else.”

{snip}

To that end, Wiley proposed the use of “race explicit” anecdotes to illustrate problems like the economic crisis. “Explain how each racial group is affected (recognize the unique pain of each group), but start with people who are White,” she wrote in her distributed remarks. “Then raise racial disparities.” For example, she offered the line: “Homeownership is the American Dream. It hurts the same to lose your home if you’re White, Asian, Latino or Black.”

{snip}

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/house-dems-trained-make-race-issue/537146

The bulk of the potential non-citizen voters are in Florida’s largest county, Miami-Dade, where the elections supervisor is combing through a list of nearly 2,000 names and contacting them.

An analysis of a partial list of 350 names in Miami-Dade showed that about 104 have cast ballots going as far back as 1996.

Even if voters are on the list, it doesn’t mean they’re not eligible to cast a ballot.

Consider the case of Miami’s Maria Ginorio, a 64-year-old from Cuba, who said she became a U.S. citizen in August 2009. She said she was angered by a letter she received asking her to go to the elections office to document her status. Ginorio, who said she typically votes by absentee ballot, is ill and homebound.

{snip}

Citizens like Ginorio were flagged as potentially ineligible after the state’s Division of Elections compared its database with a database maintained by Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which records whether a newly licensed driver is a U.S. citizen.

As a result, some citizens could appear to be non citizens now because the DHSMV computer system doesn’t automatically update when someone becomes a citizen, said Chris Cate, a spokesman with the Florida Division of Elections.

{snip}

Christina White, a deputy Miami-Dade elections supervisor, said the county is sending out letters to all potential non voters within 30 days and is asking them to prove citizenship.

The state’s effort to clean the voter rolls are unfolding in a presidential election year in which perceptions of voting problems and potential fraud break down along partisan lines—especially after the Republican-led Legislature last year cracked down on voting registration groups and early voting on the Sunday before Election Day.

{snip}

To be eligible to cast a ballot in Florida, a voter must be a state resident and a U.S. citizen with no felony record. Those who have been convicted of felonies can cast ballots if their rights have been restored by the state. It’s a third-degree felony to commit voter fraud in Florida.

{snip}

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/09/2791674/state-finds-nearly-2700-foreigners.html

{snip} Over the weekend, the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. About 20,000 fans packed the arena.

As concert goers walked to their cars after the show, a mob of what the Newark Star-Ledger is calling “teenagers,” brutally attacked several people. Five people were injured, some of them very badly. Three of the injured victims are teens. Two of the victims suffered serious facial fractures.

Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio said the attacks were motivated by a desire to cause injury. He says the perpetrators were laughing during the attacks.

{snip} Any details that would clue the reader as too the race of the attackers appears to be intentionally omitted.

I called the Star-Ledger and asked if they had a policy of omitting the race of at large crime suspects. The first woman I talked to went to ask her superiors. She came back and told me that there is no formal policy, “but we generally do not publish race.”

I then asked to speak to crime reporter, James Queally, who wrote Star-Ledgers’ two articles on the attacks.

Queally told me that the police report did list the race of the perpetrators and that he censored this information in his two articles on purpose. He also stated that it was the newspapers’ policy to censor race in crime stories.

Then the conversation took a comedic turn. I asked Queally what race was listed in the police report and he refused to tell me. He also said he interviewed three of the victims, but refused to tell me what race they were. Queally did however volunteer that “it’s an 80% black area and the concert was full of white rock and roll fans.”

​Queally denied that the attacks were racially motivated. He said that if it was blacks attacking whites, then that was just a factor of probability. Keep in mind that Queally admits knowing the race of the perps and refuses to say.

​I told Queally about numerous other black on white mob attacks all over the nation and explained to him this was part of a trend of racially motivated hate crimes. At this point Queally went from a friendly demeanor to a very arrogant sounding tone. He replied “well somehow myself and everyone else in the media have missed all of these.” I told Queally I have been documenting these hate crime mob attacks and would be happy to e-mail him lots of information. Queally then hung up the phone without a reply.

During the conversation Queally hinted at his reasoning for wanting to censor the race of the perpetrators. He asked “if all the attackers were black fifteen year-olds, would you avoid all black fifteen year-olds in Newark?” I told him I would, especially a group of black fifteen year-olds. I told him that avoiding a specific demographic known for brutally attacking my demographic at random was  “common sense.” Queally replied, “that’s your opinion.”

In other words Queally places political correctness above public safety, even though “public safety” is one of the topics he is supposed to be covering. {snip}

{snip}

http://www.examiner.com/article/star-ledger-admits-to-censoring-race-savage-post-concert-mob-attacks

She’s spent much of her childhood in and out of homeless shelters. She’s attended more schools than she can easily keep track of—most of them struggling urban schools where disruptions and low expectations are the norm.

But visions of the Ivy League have motivated this high school senior since she was 13, when she became captivated by a character’s similar quest on the television drama “Gilmore Girls.” This fall, she’ll fulfill her goal by heading to Columbia University on a full scholarship.

Eboni’s story in many ways is like those of many children in urban schools. It’s one filled with obstacles of poverty that many never overcome. But her ascent to the Ivy League illustrates what is possible, even at the most challenged schools, when students have a mind-set different from their circumstances.

{snip}

At home, Eboni has a supportive mother who dropped out of high school and hasn’t always related to her ambitions. At Normandy High, the petite 17-year-old is one of about 25 honor students among a student body with a dropout rate in the double digits. Last year, 74 percent of students there failed the state’s English 2 exam, and 83 percent failed the math exam.

{snip}

Eboni’s mother, Lekista Flurry, was 17 when she gave birth to Eboni and dropped out of Pattonville High School. Eboni rarely hears from her father.

No one from Eboni’s immediate family has graduated with a high school diploma. But when Eboni was a baby, Flurry began reading to her. She read through many of their moves, though it stopped when the family was in homeless shelters. She used letter-shaped refrigerator magnets to work on spelling.

{snip}

The family struggles, but Eboni tries to focus on what’s ahead.

For years, she read anything she could find on Ivy League colleges. When she had the money, she’d order books on Amazon about how to successfully apply.

“I’ve been in love with all eight of them at one point, except for Dartmouth,” she said.

She scored a 27 on her ACT, when the average composite score at Normandy High last year was a 16. No one has ever scored higher than a 27 at the high school, according to the school district.

Last summer, Eboni attended a journalism program at Princeton University. There, instructors helped her decide on a college. She chose Columbia.

She applied, and then waited. On Dec. 8, while editing the school newspaper after school, she logged on to the university’s website. It was 4 p.m.—the time the university would post its acceptance and rejection letters for early admissions. Eboni pulled up the letter addressed to her. “Congratulations!” it began.

Along with the acceptance notification, Eboni received another letter saying all expenses were paid.

Eboni cried.

Her goal is to become a journalist.

She knows many of her college classmates will come from elite high schools with stronger academic backgrounds. And she knows she’ll have to work harder than many of them to make up for it.

While Eboni’s ACT score is high for Normandy students, it is on the bottom edge of Columbia’s incoming freshmen. Columbia’s admissions office “takes a broad range of qualifications and characteristics into consideration” when reviewing applicants, university spokeswoman Katherine Cutler said.

{snip}

[Editor’s Note: The top score on the ACT is 36. Students between the 25th and 75th percentile of those accepted to Columbia score between 31 and 34 on the test.]

On Monday, large crowds of devotees gathered at the Marutheshwara temple near Mudhol town in Bagalkot district to observe the ritual, locally known as ‘Okali’.

Eager parents presented their babies, who were between the ages of three months and two years, to priests at the temple who tossed them from the temple roof onto a cloth borne by a group of men standing below.

Though the ritual often evokes criticism, it is defended by devotees and priests, who feel that their belief necessitates a ritual that places babies at such huge risk.

A trustee of the Marutheshwara temple, Basavaraj, said that the ritual was an age-old one and it was important that it be respected.

“This is a ritual that we have been observing from ancient times. The important thing is for us to have the spirit of worship in our hearts, because true worship is from the heart,” he said.

Nine Asian men were yesterday jailed for a total of 77 years for raping and abusing up to 47 girls – some as young as 13 – after plying them with alcohol and luring them to takeaways.

Now police have identified four more suspects alleged to have abused the young witness whose evidence helped secure convictions at the end of the 11-week trial.

But many more remain at large as officers try to establish the real identities of men referred to in court only by nicknames such as Goofy, Ray, Juicy, Arfan, Ali, Manni, Mamma, Pino and Arfan.

-snip-

The trial heard that the men – who are all from Pakistan, apart from one who is from Afghanistan – groomed and ‘shared’ the young white girls because they were vulnerable.

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood, of Greater Manchester Police said: ‘It is not a racial issue. This is about adults preying on vulnerable young children. It just happens that in this particular area and time the demographics were that these were Asian men.’

However, the gang’s ringleader yesterday branded the judge a ‘racist b******’ after he and eight other men were jailed.

The extraordinary outburst came after Judge Gerald Clinton accused the gang of targeting white girls because they were not part of their ‘community or religion’.

Yesterday senior politicians clashed over the case – with one former Labour MP claiming police and social workers ignored complaints because they were ‘petrified of being called racist’.

With experts on paedophilia insisting street grooming by Muslim men was a real problem, the judge made it clear he believed religion was a factor.

He jailed the 59-year-old ringleader for 19 years and eight other men for between four and 12 years, telling them they had treated their victims ‘as though they were worthless and beyond all respect’.

He added: ‘I believe one of the factors which led to that is that they were not of your community or religion.’

But he branded outbursts by some of the men claiming the prosecution was racially-motivated ‘nonsense’, telling them they found themselves in the dock because of their ‘lust and greed’.

Detective Inspector Michael Sanderson, of Greater Manchester Police, said none of the convicted men had ever shown ‘the slightest bit of remorse’.

-snip-

Judge Clifton said it was no wonder he had struck fear into his young victims, branding him an ‘an unpleasant, hypocritical bully’.

He said the girls had been raped ‘callously, viciously and violently’ after being attracted by ‘flattery, free food and alcohol’.

-snip-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2141279/Rochdale-child-sex-trial-Police-hunt-40-suspects-promise-arrests.html

Like me. So last week, on the Chronicle’s “Brainstorm” blog (where I was paid to be a regular contributor), I suggested that the dissertation topics of the graduate students mentioned were obscure at best and “a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap,” at worst.

{snip}

The reaction to my blog post ranged from puerile to vitriolic. The graduate students I mentioned and the senior faculty who advise them at Northwestern University accused me (in guest blogs posted by the Chronicle editors) of bigotry and cowardice. The former wrote that “in a bid to not be ‘out-niggered’ [their word] by her right-wing cohort, Riley found some black women graduate students to beat up on.” (I confess I don’t actually know what that means.) One fellow blogger (and hundreds of commenters) called my post “racist.”

Gina Barreca, a teacher of English and feminist theory at the University of Connecticut, composed a poem mocking me. (It begins “A certain white chick—Schaefer Riley/ decided to do something wily.”) MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry spewed a four-minute rant about my post, invoking the memory of Trayvon Martin and accusing me of “small-mindedness.”

{snip} And 6,500 academics signed a petition online demanding that I be fired.

At first, the Chronicle stood its ground, suggesting that my post was an “invitation to debate.” But that stance lasted for little more than a weekend. In a note that reads like a confession at a re-education camp, the Chronicle’s editor, Liz McMillen announced her decision on Monday to fire me: “We’ve heard you,” she tells my critics. “And we have taken to heart what you said. We now agree that Ms. Riley’s blog posting did not meet The Chronicle’s basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles.”

When I asked Ms. McMillen whether the poem by fellow blogger Ms. Barreca, for instance, lived up to such standards, she said they were “reviewing” the other content on the site. So far, however, that blogger has not been fired. Other ad hominem attacks against me seem to have passed editorial muster as well.

In her Monday mea culpa, Ms. McMillen wrote that her previous “editor’s note last week inviting [readers] to debate the posting also seemed to elevate it to the level of informed opinion, which it was not.” I have been a journalist writing about higher education for close to 15 years now, having visited dozens of colleges and universities and interviewed hundreds of faculty, students and administrators. My work has been published in every major newspaper in the country, most often this one, and I have written two widely reviewed books on higher education as well.

{snip}

But why take my word for it? {snip}

Thirty-five years later in a piece for the Minding the Campus website, former Berkeley Prof. John McWhorter noted that little had changed: “Too often the curriculum of African-American Studies departments gives the impression that racism and disadvantage are the most important things to note and study about being black.”

My critics have suggested that I do not believe the black experience in America is worthy of study. That is not true. It’s just that the best of this work rarely comes out of black studies departments. {snip}

But a substantive critique about the content of academic disciplines is simply impossible in the closed bubble of higher education. If you want to know why almost all of the responses to my original post consist of personal attacks on me, along with irrelevant mentions of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and George Zimmerman, it is because black studies is a cause, not a course of study. By doubting the academic worthiness of black studies, my critics conclude, I am opposed to racial justice—and therefore a racist.

{snip}

My longtime familiarity with the absurdities of higher education did not, I confess, prepare me for this most absurd of results. The content of my post, after all, is hardly shocking; the same thing could have been written 30 years ago. And perhaps that’s the most depressing part of all this. Despite the real social and economic advancement that has been made by blacks in this country, the American faculty is still stuck in the 1960s.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304363104577391842133259230.html?mod=googlenews_wsj