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Inclusion and diversity is so 2020 “Chicago mayor’s decision to only speak to journalists of color is commendable, not racist”, writes someone in the Independent. The apparent erasure of the author’s identity was the Independent‘s doing, not mine, but they – the author – describe themselves as a Black and Native American writer who finds Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s demand to only speak with journalists of colour commendable.
On libertarian principle, I support the right of Ms Lightfoot or anyone else to refuse to associate with people of a different race, but unlike this author I disapprove of racism.
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I absolutely do not think she has that right. I do. You do. She does not.
This is not a private individual speaking in a private capacity. This is not someone who should have rights to free association & disassociation, because this is the mayor of a city, a person who wields the coercive literal force-backed power of the state, and whose every action in an official capacity should be bound and limited by law.
I support the right of every white person not to pay taxes which provide the income and expenses of Lightfoot.
I will make a guess that what Perry said above is not a million miles from what the judge said when overruling President Trump, who (IIRC – it was a while back) was swiftly disillusioned when he imagined he had any say in who attended his presidential press conferences, even to the mild point of requiring those who repeatedly made long speeches instead of asking short questions to give others a chance.
I may of course be wrong: the judge, Ms Lightfoot and the nameless Independent writer who identifies as Black and Native American may all have a Critical Race Theory explanation that fully justifies Ms Lightfoot choosing who attends her pressers but the judge ruling who attends Trump’s pressers. After all, I’m sure I could write such a justification myself, even without asserting the Independent writer’s qualifications.
There is a material difference between those things. Race is the explicit criteria being applied to exclude, which must surely make this very vulnerable to legal challenge. Also, the issue of long winded speeches could be addressed administratively simply by cutting them off & saying “Too long, you’re here to ask questions not make speeches. Next person.” Or better yet, just impose a 20 second time limit on everyone regardless of skin tone.
I don’t think people in government using state power should have “rights” when it comes to how those powers are used.
+1. Outside the ‘logic’ of CRT, it would be very hard to justify an interpretation of current US law that reversed Trump but did not reverse Lightfoot, whereas the opposite is easier to defend. (Inside the ‘logic’ of CRT, by contrast, … .)
🙂 (or do I mean 🙁 ?)
Meh, nothing new.
Mere reinforcement of The Bell Curve.
Because…science.
Has the Mayor’s wife, and The Woman’s Issues Caucus, weighed in?
In order to be properly inclusive it is essential to exclude those who are not diverse. That means white folks because They are all alike; especially the Jewish ones!
I don’t think your libertarian principles are relevant here. Lightfoot is not speaking to journalists in her private and personal capacity, but in her public and official one as mayor. As such, she has an obligation to be open to questions about her conduct in office. If she refuses to be questioned by people of a specific race, she’s denying them their rights, not as journalists (there are no special rights of journalists, as Justice Kennedy correctly pointed out in the Citizens United decision), but as citizens. I suppose it’s okay for her to take no questions from anyone, but if she’s going to take questions, I don’t think it’s proper for her to refuse questions on grounds such as ethnicity.
(I see that Perry has made essentially the same point, but I’m glad to support him.)
She has a duty in her position to communicate with her constituents. The People in America are still the sovereign, and she has a duty to all of them, not just the ones that look like her.
Accelerationism is the way. Lightfoot should be encouraged to talk only to BIPOC; if white journalists were to shrug their shoulders and refuse to quote the mayor on any of the stories they wrote about local government, in no time at all she would be demanding they speak to her before running their news items.
Lightfoot doesn’t want to not talk to white reporters; like a spoiled child threatening to run away from home, what she wants is for white reporters to beg to talk to her.
So, the principles of Affirmative Action make it acceptable to exclude students from schools based on their race, to refuse to hire someone based on their race, to deny housing places based on race . . .
. . . but this only becomes a problem when the media’s own ox gets gored?
Screw that. I’m laughing over the white reporters’ anguish.
(ETA: She’ll still be communicating with her constituents. Her press statements will still be going out to the world. She’s not violating any duty to her citizens by simply choosing which reporters get to carry her views to the world. There’s no liberty violation here beyond the basic blight of Affirmative Action.)
bobby b: Communication is a two-way process.
I can’t go to her press conferences and ask questions. You can’t. There’s a very limited subset of people who can. Do they need to represent the various races? Religions? Interest groups?
Unless there’s a claim that she needs to be taking 1 question from an Inuit, 1 from a Pacific Islander, 3 from blacks, 3 from hispanics, and 8 from whites, we’ve already jettisoned this racial balance idea people here are seeming to support.
And, since it’s the woke Chicago press who have empowered Lightfoot’s black-centric governance history, there’s some delightful karma here.
@bobby b
Screw that. I’m laughing over the white reporters’ anguish.
Are they anguished? I mean which of our almost exclusively leftie reporterati are going to complain about this? More likely they’ll look in the mirror shouting “bad whitey, white privilege” while self flagellating like 13th century monks.
What the press do and say should be important, but it isn’t, because nearly everything the press says is bullshit. So this is just kabuki I’m afraid.
Chicago has had lunatic Mayors before.
The last Republican Mayor (Big Bill Thompson – some 90 years ago, yes Chicago has not had a Republican government in 90 years) thought that there was a vast evil (indeed Satanic) conspiracy all over the world – organised by George V of “England” (which is what he called the United Kingdom). The Mayor could produce no evidence to back his claim – but that proved-them-to-be-true as only someone of vast evil and power could COVER HIS TRACKS SO WELL as George V (so it was – in the mind of the Mayor).
However, a lunatic Mayor did not matter so much in those days as taxes and government spending were vastly lower, and even lunatic Mayors did not go around ordering every business to close (apart from business enterprises used by the Mayor – Mayor Lightfoot is well known to keep hairdressing places and so on open FOR HER, just for no one else).
Under the old Mayor Daley (the first one – not his son) taxes and government spending were high by historic standards – but arguably less bad than other big Democrat cities, and he did not go insane during the pandemics of the late 1950s and late 1960s.
But then no authority went mad during the pandemic of the late 1950s or the one of the late 1960s – no one jumped up and down shouting that to “Save The NHS” (a confusing slogan – is not the NHS supposed save people, rather than the general public save it?) we must all stand on our heads whilst waving our legs about, because “SAGE” says it is vital to appease the mighty Gods Karl Marx and Pookong.
Appeasing the mighty Gods Karl Marx and Pookong is, of course, what “the science” is all about – it is all to do with exterminating the demons of “Whiteness” ask Mayor Lightfoot (or some o fthe members of SAGE).
Chicago today has a government that dominates everything – it can close down every business (apart from to server Mayor Lightfoot) and the debts of LOCAL government authorities alone (not the State or Federal governments – just the local ones) amounts to 126 thousand Dollars per person.
Even in the New York City area the local debts are “only” 86 thousand Dollars per person, how does one get to 126 thousand dollars (per person) local government debt?
Serious question – as I am a local government politician myself and I am not sure how that could be done. In a way I am actually impressed.
What did they do in Chicago? Use gold leaf for toilet paper in the public lavatories?
I suppose part of it is that the Mayor is insane – but how did they manage it? How did they get to about 126 thousand Dollars of debt per person? Again this is just local authority debt (the various boards and so on) the debts of the bankrupt State of Illinois are ON TOP OF this.
Come back “Bill Bill” and Al Capone – all is forgiven.
As for Mayor Lightfoot’s fanatical hatred of white people – well, fair enough, they are leaving Chicago anyway.
Soon there will not be white people there for her to hate – so the “problem” will be solved.
Of course rich idiot white people help such Mayors (and Governors and Presidents) get into office in the first place.
If business owners would NOT spend their money sending their children to “good schools” and then to university, but would keep them at home teaching them the family business, it would be a better world.
As the American big city schools (including the private schools) and most of the universities are dominated by Frankfurt School Marxism, sending your children to such places is Child Abuse.
Keep the children at home – teach them to help out in the family trade or business, do not send them to one of Mayor Lightfoot’s schools, or to the private schools that are dominated by the same Frankfurt School of Marxism doctrines.
And HIT THE ROAD – get out of big cities, whilst you still can.
By the way – nothing that Mayor Lightfoot is doing violates the Frankfurt School Marxist doctrine of “Diversity and Inclusion” – this has always meant “get rid of white-straight-males” who are seen as totally evil (“capitalist”) and needing to be wiped out – even though Karl Marx and Frederick Engels were white-straight-males.
Of course, Central Office believes that the doctrine means being nice to everyone – but it does NOT, as Mayor Lightfoot (quite correctly) points out. The doctrine is that the white people (especially straight-male white people) “exploit” and “oppress” “people of colour” (and other “victims”) via a “capitalist power structures” and, therefore, are evil and must be destroyed.
Mayor Lightfoot may be insane – but her knowledge of basic Frankfurt School Marxist doctrines such as “Diversity and Inclusion” (i.e. kill whitey) is adequate.
Straight-white-males talking about “Diversity and Inclusion”, without understanding that this is a term that means getting rid of them, reminds me of rich people talking about “Social Justice”. I have often heard rich people talk with strong approval of the doctrine of “Social Justice” – seemingly unaware that it means they should be robbed and murdered.
Perhaps it would be a good idea for people to find out what terms mean – BEFORE they use the terms.
Losing Chicago was a shame. It was a fun city, and a great working city. Great court facilities. I spent much time there for work during one four-year period – the front desk guy at the Palmer House would greet me with “welcome back, Mr. B! We have your usual set of rooms for you . . .”
Grab your bag at the airport carousel, jump in the train one floor below, get off a half block from the hotel front door . . . Great set-up.
Mob-ridden? Sure, but they seemed to know how to make it work, and they didn’t bother us visitors. Great food, bars, theaters, attractions . . .
It all seemed to go downhill quickly, about the same time Obama was getting big in the NGO world there. Now . . . no way I’d go back. (Of course, I imagine the same could be written about Minneapolis.)
Imagine a publishing corporation receiving a manuscript from a white author with the working title of ‘Why I’m No Longer Listening To Black People About Race’ – can we envision their likely reactions?
What if the interviewer identifies as black?
https://meme.aho.st/interviewing-lightfoot/