90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #269

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #267

'To abolish Whiteness is to abolish White people' lecture goes viral

A video clip that reportedly shows University of California, Berkeley, Professor Zeus Leonardo saying that "to abolish Whiteness is to abolish White people" is currently going viral.

The viral clip appears to come from a 2007 lecture titled "Teaching Whiteness in a Multicultural Context and Color-blind Era" in which the professor asked the rhetorical question, “Is it worth it to be White anymore?”

During the lecture, he argued that since White people "depend" on "Whiteness," if the latter is undercut or abolished, then the entire concept of "White people" is erased.

This is not the first time that Leonardo has been criticized for his views on White people.

The California professor previously came under fire for allegedly making similar remarks when teaching a Whiteness Studies course, namely that “white people are born human” and that they have to be “abused” into becoming White.

Leonardo "engages critical theories to inform his analysis of the relationship between schooling and social relations, such as race, class, culture, and gender," according to his university profile.

Berkeley’s Assistant Vice-Chancellor of the Office of Communications and Public Affairs Dan Mogulof told Campus Reform via email that Leonardo is legally protected by his first amendment right to free speech.

“At the same time, individual employees, including faculty, do not speak for or represent the values, perspectives or positions of the University," Mogulof wrote.

“We believe in diversity of perspective. We [don't] tell people what to believe, or punish them for what they believe in or express, but that’s not to say that the contents of a given individual’s beliefs, or expression, are consistent with our Principles of Community, that capture many of our foundational values in this regard,” the university administrator added.

Leonardo has authored numerous essays including "Critical Social Theory and Transformative Knowledge," "The Souls of White Folk," "The Color of Supremacy," "Contracting Race," and...

Democratic leadership in the House is shutting down an investigation into illegal use of taxpayer funds by Rep. Val Demings (D., Fla.), who was caught abusing mailing privileges as she runs in a high-profile statewide race.

The Washington Free Beacon has learned that the bipartisan House Communications Standards Commission last month opened an investigation into Demings following a complaint that she sent a 12-page, campaign-style mailer to Floridians outside her district. The Democratic chairwoman of the commission, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (Pa.), told her Republican colleagues in a letter obtained by the Free Beacon that she does "not believe that further inquiry is warranted" and on Tuesday will vote against investigating the matter further. Her vote against further action will effectively end the investigation.

Following the commission's initial investigation of the complaint, Demings in a three-page letter from attorneys at Elias Law Group, obtained by the Free Beacon, admitted that the mailings went outside her district. The firm was founded by longtime Democratic operative Marc Elias. Scanlon's campaign also employed Elias for "legal services," having paid his previous law firm thousands of dollars since 2019.

"This is just the latest example of Democrats twisting rules, process, and precedent to cover up the violation of a member," a senior congressional aide with knowledge of the matter told the Free Beacon. "On top of that, the involvement of a partisan attorney like Marc Elias, who simultaneously represents the chair of the Commission, only further raises issues of a conflict of interest. This was a valid complaint filed with the Commission and a clear-cut violation of the rules, yet the Democrat members of the Commission are not only moving towards dismissing the complaint but are actively blocking any attempts to further look into the matter."

Demings's attorneys blamed the private vendor in charge of the mailing for the violation and alleged that their client did not violate federal law because the mailing was not "targeted." Members of Congress are only allowed to send mailers free of charge to residents within their district regarding "matters of public concern and Congressional actions," a practice known as "franking."

Republicans on the commission, such as Rep. Kat Cammack (Fla.), do not believe the matter has been investigated thoroughly. In a letter to Scanlon, Cammack insisted that more information on the alleged mistake is required.

"Here, even though the Member is a candidate for statewide office, she appears to have engaged in little to no oversight of her vendor's operations, explaining that she was so unaware of its operations that she neither reviewed nor approved final mailing lists to ensure compliance, did not know and did not inquire concerning the vendor's mailing practices, and was overall so uninformed about the process that she did not know a violation had occurred" until the complaint was filed, Cammack wrote in her letter.

Demings's campaign for Senate has from the onset been marred by allegations of her using her taxpayer-funded office to boost an uphill bid for Senate. The Free Beacon reported that Demings violated congressional ethics the day she launched her Senate campaign by using her...