By DAN FAGAN
The Anchorage Daily News editorial board published a column Sunday entitled, “A long-overdue reckoning.”
In it, the board openly called for business owners to discriminate based on race.
“If you’re a manager of a business, take a step back and look at the people who work for you. Do they reflect the diversity of our community? If they don’t, ask yourself: Why not?” wrote Ryan Binkley, Andy Pennington, and Tom Hewitt.
There’s only one way to guarantee the racial makeup of your workforce matches that of your community, and that’s to hire on the basis of race. You’ll need to discriminate against more qualified workers if they don’t meet the racial makeup of the person you’re looking to hire.
This race-obsessed approach to hiring is unfortunately common among many human resource managers working for major corporations that live under a not often written but understood mandate to diversify the workforce. This of course is the opposite of what civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” said King.
The ADN editorial board is made up mostly of virtue signalers trying to prove their wokeness. It makes sense they would expect business owners to place proving their wokeness over hiring the best possible candidate.
In our ever-shifting views on race in our country, something very unfortunate has happened. The idea we should judge, evaluate, and treat others based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin is now considered racist. We’re now told by race-baiting politicians and media types that striving for a color-blind society is no longer an attainable goal. “I don’t see color” is now mocked.
It’s no secret the ADN buys into the ideology that America and Alaska are inherently and deeply racist.
“Even today, racial prejudice scars the face of the Last Frontier,” writes the ADN.
The paper argues the case of the Fairbanks Four “exposed deep rifts and race-based suspicion” in Alaska. The ADN also implies racism is to blame for “domestic violence and sexual assault problems that disproportionately affect rural and native communities.”
The paper, aided in part by money from far-left activist George Soros, has done extensive reporting trying to tie domestic violence in Bush Alaska to racism. The ADN even won a Pulitzer for its effort.
Want to win a Pulitzer? Advance the notion we’re a racist country. You’re halfway there.
The ADN editorial board also called on legislators to do something about racism.
“If you’re a lawmaker, consider what could be done on a policy level to make our union, our state and our community fairer in the way all of their people are treated,” the editorial stated.
Notice Binkley, Pennington, and Hewitt didn’t give an example of a law that promotes inequality. That’s because there are none. The idea that we live in a nation where “systemic” racism is prevalent is nonsense. Nowhere in America or Alaska is racism codified in law.
The single most ridiculous thing the ADN editorial board argues is that we don’t talk enough about racism. The board writes “racism and race-based inequity in our society – have too long been avoided by people like us, for a variety of reasons that don’t hold water.”
“Racism and race-based inequity” is just about all liberal media types talk about anymore. The belief we’re a fundamentally racist nation is built into the fabric of almost every story the media report. It doesn’t matter the problem, somehow, someway, the media will find a way to blame it on racism.
The truth is data show African Americans are not disproportionately killed by white cops. And when it comes to poverty, most of it in America is found in single-parent households with children headed by a female, regardless of race. It is true blacks disproportionately live in poverty in America. But that’s because black women disproportionately have children out of wedlock. 75% of all black babies in America today are born into a single parent household.
And there’s this: 97% of all millennials of all races with a high school diploma, work full-time, and married before having children do not live in poverty. The disintegration of the American family, not racism, is why we have poverty in America today.
The African American economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell said it best,
“Racism is not dead, but it is on life support kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as racists.”
Dan Fagan hosts a radio show on Newsradio 650 KENI from 5:30 to 8 am.
I have watched the idiocy of hiring based on race/gender decimate the ability of some very large corporations to perform. Being a customer of such companies, it has pushed me to their competitor because the customer service suffered due to the lack of ability of the hires.
Somehow, another white guy saying we aren’t a racist country that doesn’t suffer from systemic racism and quotes the one or two minority researchers that agree with his view and ignoring the obvious evidence of the opposite falls a bit flat. And you don’t have to codify racism to have it you moron. Systemic racism is real and you are the proof. Another old white guy calling you out.
Thank you for providing us with all of the trite soundbites of the Marxist Left. I suppose you honestly believe that BLM is not communist or atheist.
If you hate this country that much, simply leave.
Thanks for speaking the truth to this pathetic comment. Let’s start a “go fund me page” to raise money for Steven’s one-way plane ticket out of our beautiful country. Steven is the problem and his solution to real problems is throwing more of other people’s money away on the racist fantasy.
What exactly is systemic racism? I’ll tell you what it is. At least what it is in most conversation today. It is a vague, shifting, undefined term used to turn people against one another. Kind of like “capitalist roader”. A term once applied to anybody with a sense of responsibility and contribution. It ended in the deaths of millions and tens of millions more destroyed lives. No matter what anybody does or says the term will be turned against them as a weapon if they dare to oppose the forward movement of the progressive leftist agenda. I refuse to play. I will NOT heap guilt and shame upon myself in your attempts to launch self-criticism and re-education because of the color of my skin. Period. And I will NOT cease to think clearly in order to feel accepted by people who refuse to do so. I will call good for what it is and evil for what it is wherever I see it regardless of who promotes it. People kneeling on immobile person’s necks and people burning down businesses (of blacks and Asians and Hispanics by the way) others worked hard to build is evil. Period. Organizations started by overt racists with the goal of killing black babies are evil (Planned Parenthood). And those who seek to stir up riots and destroy businesses in impoverished minority communities engage in evil actions (progressive socialists). That quote by Thomas Sowell couldn’t say it better, so I’ll post it once again: “Racism is not dead, but it is on life support kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as racists.”
Can always tell a brainwashed liberal, they are the ones calling people names like we are still in 5th grade ……grow up man, your propaganda is showing
I agree with Steven Frost and would add that Fagan is from Louisiana. Yes, it’s relevant.
Ken, now that we know Fagan is from Louisiana and you know what all Louisianans are like, we now know more about you. I am sure all from Louisiana thank you for letting them know they are just like Fagan.
And oh, Frost referencing two “minority researchers” – that was MLK and Thomas Sowell. Frost likely knows MLK.
Here is your primer on Sowell: He dropped out of Stuyvesant High School to serve in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. He received a bachelor’s degree, graduating Magna cum Claude[ from Harvard University in 1958 and a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1959. In 1968, he earned his doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago. He has authored numerous books. Oh, and he’s black too.
But both Frost and you have likely already dismissed anything Fagan says because after all, he is quoting minorities (ironic), and he is from Louisiana.
Need I say both of your comments lack substance in your attempt to smear Mr. Fagan? Give us some facts to sink our teeth into that defeats his facts. We truly are getting weary of these 5th-grade debate skills.
Affirmative Action is racist!
They gave the game away late in the piece when they quoted Howard Zinn. Cheers –
Trying to revive a newspaper that was on the brink of financial collapse is no easy task in the age of the internet. If the owner of the paper sticks his wettened finger in the air and checks the wind direction, he will also get a huge whiff of the mainstream media bombardment of the day. RACISM. That’s the topic being played-out now. But this topic too will play itself out. So, the owner will be stuck with an outdated editorial that confounds and irritates his paying customers and advertisers. Ryan Binkley should more closely examine the business model of his grandparents. Deliver a product that reveals facts and entertainment, but foregoes the political line-in-the-sand. A venture into volatile politics, such as the aforementioned topic, will divide and isolate the readership and create dissension. This is a poor business decision he made and a poor political decision too, if politics is on his agenda. When the dust settles, the ADN will be viewed as just another agitator of Soros sponsored politics. Ryan Binkley will have created an image that some people love and others hate. And the political division will be monumental. And this miscalculation will be brought to the forefront of his destiny, and remembered by those that he irritated.
So true, Judie. Look no further than Ryan Binkley’s own father who had a shot at becoming governor, or senator, but for the revealing fact that he openly backed a Democrat in the campaign four years before his own run. Tony Knowles. This miscalculation told Republicans that any Republican who misrepresents himself by personally backing a candidate from another political party will have his a$$ handed to him in spades. And that is exactly what happened.
Interesting comments. I feel that Lisa Murkowski is also going to get her butt handed to her on a platter. Of course, her own father kind of served her up.
John Binkley should run against Lisa Murkowski in 2022. Now that would be sweet justice. Twenty years in the making
I would vote for Binkley. Or anyone else just to get rid of the Murkowskis.
Well stated, Dan. It’s not that we are racist as a whole, nor even guilty, as we are told to feel. We have learned to be afraid of being called racist or not have enough guilt that we must now be “cancelled” and publicly shamed by those who have minimal creds but huge influence in the media of public opinion.
Excellent Dan, keep up the good work!!
Dan, once again an excellent summary of the “racism” within the ADN editorial staff. I just loved the Thomas Sowell quote–“Racism is not dead, but it is on life support kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as racists.” Check out the Brown Paper Bag Test on YouTube to see racism within a race.
Well stated, Mr. Fagan. However, the “woke” folk do not care to hear real, provable fact from the voices of reason. They seek to be angry and those who wish to divide the country with non-existent racism find the woke people easy to lead by their nose rings. The woke people were not raised by parents who cared to teach them to reason and question those who have questionable agendas. Their parents were either missing in action, (by divorce or working so that they were raised by childcare workers or became latch-key kids who had to raise themselves). Mr. Fagan, you and Mr. Sowell are absolutely right when you say the degradation of our society is due to the demise of two-parent families.
“The idea that we live in a nation where “systemic” racism is prevalent is nonsense. Nowhere in America or Alaska is racism codified in law.”
Do you actually believe the words you write? I feel compelled to ask because your remark I quote and your arguments seems to display a serious lack of awareness or a lack of willingness to acknowledge a system that favors white people. Being willfully ignorant is not unheard of and being ignorant is something that can be mitigated but whatever the case, your perspective and/or sincerity is questionable if not racist leaning.
Your agenda or your narrative, that everything is fine is nonsense. To say there are no real issues is from a perspective of privilege or detachment is perhaps comfortable but it seems a cruel disregard for others. There are so many racist tropes and talking points offered in some of the comments and your article.
I don’t understand why we aren’t talking about the main issue in this world…and that is checking our egos at the door…the ego and power trips of any person in any leadership role, or even a uniform. I often think, what if I were black in a situation I was pulled over, or giving my piece of mind to a cop that was kneeling on anyone’s neck…I would 100% be treated differently, worse, and stereotyped “dangerous” or a “criminal”. Why are most people incarcerated black, or a minority? We cannot sit around looking at our white faces, shrugging our shoulders and say, “it’s on them”. It takes a village, and that means we all need to care more about others rather than the selfish Americans we are. How do we do this? I know I can’t change the way everyone thinks…I don’t expect white or black people to change over night…but I do think there is a way to start the process…be that there needs to be more Case Managers in the US, or education in schools AND in the work place we must sign documents acknowledging what we as Americans will stand up to, and for in work and outside of work.
If anyone understands trauma, we carry it from one generation to another…sometimes there is one person in a family that can break the cycle, but it doesn’t mean the others will be…so when we think back to slavery, and the people who were sold by their own people to America, and their names changed to the slave owners last names…think about that trauma that has never been healed…time is not the answer on this. It’s a deeper work that we must ALL do. How some black Americans look and feel about themselves is due to oppression. “We are not smart enough, we are not good enough, we are not white enough, we are not worthy of real love,” the list goes on…I can relate to these thoughts, but it’s only because I grew up in a home that seemed really amazing on the outside, but the truth is the inside was chaos. I did not get these feeling from society, I got them from my own home. Black people get them from this sick system which has been passed down to them. The difference between me and someone of color is, I am a white, blonde, female that has it way easier than most people. I still have issues with men in work place thinking we can have a meeting and they flirt with me…it’s uncomfortable and I feel I can’t tell them it’s inappropriate without THEIR EGO pushing back somehow, and minimizing me, and oppressing me. With all this information as a white female, it was easy for me to have the recourses I needed to go do the work to get better…my family thinks I’m weird for going to therapy, and taking interest in my well being. They find it foreign, as most people do. I’m a child of the baby boomers…who are workaholics, and it wasn’t too long ago when racial segregation ended. Here’s the other truth, where is the health care for people to get well…it’s so expensive for me to get the help I need, I can’t imagine being a single mom, black, latino, etc…low income household etc…let’s not even start on the drug problem in the country.
So, here it is…black people do not want charity. Would you? Would your egos allow it? Trying to find people of a certain race to make the work environment more dynamic is a joke. It’s if we MAKE the work environment a safe place for anyone attracted to the job, taking applications, seeing what peoples goals are, and how they can grow in an environment, make things better, add sometime, but the color of peoples skin should not be the reason people are hired. It’s an insult to what people of all races can bring to the table.
I’m not a big political person, as I think choosing sides is AGAIN more division for this country…but I am for ALL AMERICANS. I am for health, and wellness physically and mentally. What I’m not seeing is a lot of people who want to stand up to say, racism is real, and we need to figure this out…same with LGBTQ, same with people whose choices to have an abortion…God judges…who are we? WHO ARE WE? EGO MANIACS…I can admit, can you? We have many issues in the world, are you really going to sit back and start pointing out things that don’t match up, because people shot by cops in America are mostly white because there are WAYYYY more white people in this country. As of July 1st, 2019 there were 328,239,523 Americans. Out of that 76.5% are white, alone and 13.4% black. So please shed some light on why there are a third of black Americans being killed making it 235 in 2019 and white people killed by police were only a little over a hundred of that being 370? Also check out this 2019 article by LA times for more information..just think how many more white people there are here than black people…it’s time we clean out the police, I’m done paying for this shit. White people get away with a lot in the police force. Just so you know…it’s a real thing, how many strikes do they get…until they kill someone?
Food for thought…sleep well.
This must be the “white privilege” that is being spoken of. Where I come from it’s much more a class issue, the upper class talks about white privilege, the rest of us talk about life.
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Here’s an article that might help explain it better than I can. amgreatness.com/2020/06/14/class-not-race-divides-america/
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What utter garbage! I am a well-seasoned citizen, been around a lot of years. Had lots of black acquaintenances, friends, and co workers. Never insulted one, never demonized one, never done a thing to “strain race relations”. Never owned a slave. Never “flirted” with a woman or made one feel uncomforable. Worked hard physically my entire life to provide for myself and family. Never took a dime I didn’t earn. Do not expect me to EVER fall on my sword over my so called white privilege, or to apologize for any part of my life or upbringing. I do not fear getting pulled over by a cop on a dark night. I simply pull over, do what a responsible citizen should do, be respectful of the officer, and go on my way when finished. I am most certainly not “woke”, I simply go through life awake and cognizant of my true responsibilities in this world. They are no different than they would have been 50 or 100 years ago. Today’s world of snowflakes, whiners, snivelers, and activists are a a drain on the society they think they are a part of. I wouldn’t give ten cents for the lot of them. The country needs to wake up and grow up, and maybe start by reading the Constitution we are governed by. I understand that might be a shocking experience.
where is my comment?
I typically get to them every two hours. -sd
lol, ok, just making sure it didnt just disappear:) God bless. Thank you.
Kathleen, you need to read the following op-ed by Walter Williams. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University, and, he is black.
http://www.anchoragedailyplanet.com/188086/williams-the-true-plight-of-black-americans/
Get some background before you speak for all blacks. Such talk IS racism!
There are many “ism’s” in the world. Racism, like many of the “ism’s” is nothing more than another subject that people set their sights upon for whatever reason. If you put race above everything you are a racist, if race is an all consuming facet of your life you are a racist. Being obsessed with a singular idea isn’t always healthy. In my experience racists are consumed by race.
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Here are some other “ism’s” to think about…
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Hedonism describes the theory or belief of engaging and pursuing pleasure or self-indulgence as an important part of life.
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Cynicism is a behavioral trait where a person lacks faith and shows distrust towards others and their motives.
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Altruism is generosity. It is a trait of putting the well being of others before self.
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Familism is a social structure/ practice of placing the interest and well being of the family before the individual interest of its members for the larger good of the family.
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Casteism is a theory wherein a person not just chooses to believe and adheres to the teachings and principles of a particular caste but also holds prejudice or discriminates on the grounds of caste.
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We are more separated by class than we are by race https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/14/class-not-race-divides-america/
If poverty was caused by racism white guys like me wouldn’t be living in a 1973 mobile home in Penland Park. Poverty is caused because rich people don’t pay enough tax on their capital gains and have a bunch of phony deductions.. I don’t know about President Trump because his tax information is secret under federal law, but I bet he pays a lot more than George Soros or Sleepy Joe.
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