BILL OTIS: Our under-incarceration problem.

MICHAEL CRESWELL: On the racial achievement gap.

WEIRD NEWS:  Rare snake found apparently choked to death on centipede.

BANK OF AMERICA MIGHT BE GETTING ITSELF INTO A LAWSUIT:  “Bank of America Announces Zero Down Payment, Zero Closing Cost Mortgages for Black and Hispanic First-Time Buyers.”  This may be another job for the American Civil Rights Project. (Update:  They apparently changed the headline.  The original headline was as shown.)

DAN MORENOFF OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT:  “Breaking Up the ESG Investing Giants.”

MAYBE NOT BORN THAT WAY AFTER ALL:  Remember when the orthodox thinking was that a person is simply born gay and there is nothing to be done about it?  Maybe so … or maybe so for some people … but it is interesting that 15.9% of Generation Z students (born 1997-2002) identified at LGBT as of 2020.  Meanwhile Baby Boomers were at 2% and Generation Xers were at 3.8%

GET WOKE, GET SUED:  The American Civil Rights Project is suing Starbucks for its brazen violation of anti-discrimination laws.  See our press release.  And, yes, there are more lawsuits coming.  We’ll keep suing until the rule of law is respected.

AARON SIBARIUM:  “No Whites Allowed:  Pfizer Fellowship Flagrantly Violates the Law, Lawyers Say.”

YOU HAVE TO WATCH THESE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATORS LIKE A HAWK:  Fortunately, that’s what Californians For Equal Rights Foundation has been doing.  In 2020, we defeated the legislature’s effort to repeal the part of the state constitution put there in 1996 by Proposition 209 (“The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”) But in 2020, the legislature took up a bill entitled “California’s Upward Mobility Act of 2022,” which would have created quotas based on race and ethnicity for appointments to state boards and commissions.  That’s an obvious violation of Proposition 209.  It took a while, but we (in cooperation with the Pacific Legal Foundation) got them to back down.  That’s a victory!

Now we just need 10,000 more such victories around the country.  I’m working on it …

I LOVE A HERO STORY:  When Lori Keeney had a seizure in the swimming pool, her quick-thinking, 10-year-old son Gavin pulled her to safety.  Purr.

UGH:  It turns out homicide is the top cause of death among pregnant women. I didn’t know that when I submitted my dissent to the Commission on Civil Rights’ 2021 report on maternal mortality.  If I had, I surely would have pointed it out to my progressive colleagues.  I’m not sure it would have changed their view that the top fear for African American mothers should be racist doctors and nurses.  But it would have given them something to chew on.

Many progressives don’t want to think about how crime affects African American victims.  They regard it as racist to even bring the issue up.  So far, the progressives on the Commission have been unwilling to conduct a study of the crime increase and its disproportionate effect on minorities.  I could say they don’t give a damn, but that may not be precisely true.  It may simply be that they care more about preventing bad publicity for Democrats.

I’M AFRAID THAT’S PEANUTS COMPARED TO THE COST OF REARING 10 CHILDREN:  Russia offers a hero’s medal plus $16,000 to women who have 10 children.

WE LIVE IN CRAZY TIMES:  Major law firms counsel their clients to keep disparate impact liability in mind when they make decisions about how to handle layoffs (as they should given that the law … or maybe I should say “the law” … requires it).  Meanwhile Minneapolis Schools adopt a policy of outright race discrimination against white teachers in layoffs.

(As always, if you haven’t done so already,  I urge you to read Title VII Disparate Impact Liability Makes Everything Presumptively Illegal, which is a primer on this pernicious policy.)

THE AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT IS STARTING TO RACK UP SOME SUCCESSES:  It represents shareholders who sue corporations that engage in thoroughly “woke” but plainly illegal activities.

Here’s this week’s success:  Each summer, for the past two years, Lowe’s has been conducting an annual small business promotion called “Making It … with Lowe’s.”  Small businesses are invited to submit their new products to an in-house “shark-tank” panel.  The winner is rewarded with nationwide publicity, inclusion among Lowe’s vendors, and sales through Lowe’s 1,728 locations as well as over its website.  The catch:  In order to participate, the business owner had to be a racial minority, female, LGBT, disabled, etc.  After receiving formal notice from the ACR Project that this arrangement in a violation of Section 1981 (as to race) and an assortment of other laws, Lowe’s initially sounded like it was going to be uncooperative.  But when the project was renewed for the summer 2022 under a new name, it was open to small businesses generally.  Good.

Next up for the ACR Project:  Starbucks and then McDonald’s, JPMorgan Chase, and Dropbox.  And plenty more are in the works.  It warms my heart to have an organization to push back against corporate wokeness.

The ACR Project also has a few much bigger anti-woke projects in the works.  I’ll tell you about those as they materialize.

(Full disclosure:  I am chairman of the board, but the bulk of the work is being done by our sole employee Dan Morenoff.)

NEW BOOK:  Science in an Age of Unreason.

HOW GRIGGS v. DUKE POWER CO.’S DISPARATE IMPACT THEORY HAS HELPED CREATE STUDENT DEBT:  “A Novel Plan to Reduce Student Debt.”

For the background all conservatives should have on disparate impact liability and why Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), was an utter usurpation by the Supreme Court, please read “Title VII Disparate Impact Liability Makes Almost Everything Presumptively Illegal.”  Our legal system is soooo messed up.

HANS BADER:  “Minneapolis Schools Will Lay Off White Teachers First.“

THIS IS TERRIFYING TO ME:  Fortunately, the schools are getting major pushback:

As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”

The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.

Phonics.  Phonics. Phonics.  It’s the approach that works.

UNITED BODEGAS OF AMERICA WANTS NEW YORK TO PASS A “STAND YOUR GROUND” LAW:  Well, it does make sense.  Why should a small business owner have to run away while his business is being raped?  Count me with the bodega guys on this one.

LADYLIKE BEHAVIOR:  Transgender cheerleader allegedly tries to choke teammate who wasn’t into this gender identity stuff.

IT ALREADY HAS:  The DEI DIE Revolution Will Transform Tenure.

HARVARD WILL BE REPRESENTED BY ZOMBIES AND ORCS:  Oral arguments in the Supreme Court cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina will be held on Halloween.  I hope that doesn’t turn out to be a bad omen.

Here’s one reason to want to rule against Harvard and UNC.  There are, of course, many others.

REMEMBER WHEN SAN DIEGO WAS A CONSERVATIVE CITY?:  The San Diego Unified School District wants to overthrow “heteronormativity” and promote “genderqueer,” “non-binary,” “pansexual,” and “two-spirit” identities.  Home schooling just became even more popular.

THIS IS REALLY WORTH READING IN FULL:  UNC’s settlement of the Nikole Hannah-Jones lawsuit is really obscene. She gets a modest, but wholly undeserved amount of money ($75,000).  But she also managed to secure “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” sinecures for a boatload (20) university administrators.  Plus more.

JOHN FUND:  Will Sinema Be the Senate’s Iron Lady?