Is Rachel Dolezal Black Just Because She Says She Is? →

Good insight into the way race, ethnicity, and culture intersect:

Both phenomena, of blacks who chose to pass and of blacks who could but abstained, illustrate the porous reality of race, and more crucially, how it’s distinct from ethnicity. On one hand, “black” is a statement of identity. It describes a certain culture and a certain history, tied to the lives and experiences of enslaved Africans and their descendants. It’s a fluid culture, with room for a huge variety of people, from whites, to blacks, to people of Latin American and Caribbean descent.
On the other hand, however, it describes the bottom rung in the American racial hierarchy. It’s a construct, but it was built from physical features, as colonial Americans took Africans, made them slaves, and made them “black.” It designates the people who could be enslaved; the people who had to live under Jim Crow; the people who could be denied mortgage loans and crammed into ghettos; the people who can be plundered by petty municipal authorities.
...

What’s key is that you can’t choose your position in the hierarchy. The political designation of race is a function of power—or, put differently, you are whatever the dominant group says you are. A Nigerian immigrant might not identify with black Americans, but she’s still “black,” regardless of what she says, and if she gets pulled over by the police, that identity will matter most. And on the other end, a black American with dark skin and African features could identify as white with her friends, but in society, she’s black, regardless of how she feels.

Which brings us back to Rachel Dolezal. Is she black just because she says she is?

Pope Francis Is a Christian, Not a Communist

There are several reasons why this question will never really matter, and an almost infinite plenitude of reasons it is an absurd one in the first place...
...In other words, you don’t have to actually partake in any communist politics to qualify as a communist in the United States, you just have to show insufficient satisfaction with capitalism.
...
Capitalism has no special affinity with Christianity, just as socialism is not reserved strictly for atheists. (Indeed, Christian socialist parties are commonelsewhere in the world, and have enjoyed a powerful presence in the United States in past periods.) In fact, much of the philosophical underpinning of contemporary pro-capitalist arguments arose in direct opposition to traditional Christian teaching on property ownership. As Cambridge professor Peter Garnsey points out in his book Thinking About Property, Enlightenment luminary John Locke makes a fine test case: By claiming that virtually unlimited individual accumulation of private property was a natural right, Locke contradicted centuries of Christian writing on the nature and purpose of property, which identified it as a provisional and highly contingent civil right. (Unsurprisingly given this type of reversal, Locke was no fan of Catholics.)
Suspicion of the types of accumulation that characterize capitalism—including the massive build-up of wealth among a small number of unimaginably rich plutocrats—is therefore more common to Christianity than the unreserved embrace of the same that is now typical of American right-wingers. Rather than asking if Pope Francis’ positions on reducing inequality and protecting the environment are products of communism, it would be much wiser and more insightful to ask if conservative rejection of environmentalism and egalitarianism are really products of Christianity. This would at least provide context for the tidal wave of rueful tears that will undoubtedly follow the publication of Francis’ encyclical on the environment, which will rankle the pontiff’s critics not because Francis’ thought is communist, but because it is Christian.
Source: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121996/...

When Americans think of vets, they rarely think of women →

Evidently America is still thinking small, even as women in uniform make strides.
Recent history is full of stories of women breaking new ground. The first woman to fly the F-35, the Air Force's "premier fighter," took to the skies last month. Years earlier she had flown combat missions in Afghanistan. The Navy's Blue Angels have their first female pilot this year.
Army Ranger school recently opened to women. No women made it through the first phase of the course. But 19 women qualified. And 42 percent of them made it through the grueling physical tests of the first four days, compared with 48 percent of men.
The gap between women's service and our perceptions has consequences; it makes female veterans' reentry into American society especially challenging.
Many do not self-identify as veterans and do not apply for the help and the services -- from housing to healthcare to job placement -- they could receive once they return home.

Court Says Unions Can't Force State to Properly Fund Pensions →

Quoted in full:

There is a widely circulated story in policy circles that public sector unions are to blame for underfunded public pensions. The story is that the unions effectively make deals with politicians they support to get generous pensions and leave the funding for people to deal with in the future.

In fact, there is little evidence to support this story, as many states with weak or no public sector unions rank near the bottom in pension funding, while some states with strong unions, like New York and Wisconsin, have pensions that are near full funding. Nonetheless, the story is still widely believed.

A ruling by New Jersey's Supreme Court yesterday should help to kill this story once and for all. The basic issue was whether the unions could hold the governor to an agreement where he had agreed to make payments into the pension funds in exchange for concessions from the workers. The court said no, the governor and the legislature could not be bound by any deal.

In other words, whether or not required payments are made to pensions, at least in New Jersey, is entirely up to the legislature and the governor. The unions have no voice in the matter. 

It should be pretty hard to blame the unions in this situation, but that doesn't mean folks will stop doing it.

I'm a professor. My colleagues who let their students dictate what they teach are cowards. →

When I read about professors being afraid of their own students and changing what they teach in response to that fear, I'm struck by two things. First, I understand why they're afraid. After my decade and a half in the classroom, I can confidently add to the chorus suggesting that universities increasingly treat students like consumers. As administrators seem more concerned with enrollment dollars than students' learning, instructors receive a clear message: "The customer is always right."

Carly Fiorina, and the conservative case for feminism →

After all, feminism is a word that could apply to most Americans. A March Vox poll found 78 percent of Americans believe in the "social, political, legal and economic equality of the sexes," yet only 18 percent consider themselves feminists. For a large number of Americans, it seems, the word is unwelcoming, not the concept. Part of that is political -- a 2013 Huffington Post-YouGov poll found Democrats were more likely than Republicans to consider themselves feminists -- but there's also concern the word is extreme, and something that pits women against men, as we've seen from some of the answers female pop stars and actresses have given when asked if they're feminists.
Fiorina's definition of a feminist is "a woman who lives the life she chooses." It's a more nonpartisan definition -- liberals would say a watered-down one -- and might be more welcoming at a time when a majority don't identify with the word but believe in equality for women.

Reassessing Airport Security →

News that the Transportation Security Administration missed a whopping 95% of guns and bombs in recent airport security "red team" tests was justifiably shocking. It's clear that we're not getting value for the $7 billion we're paying the TSA annually.
But there's another conclusion, inescapable and disturbing to many, but good news all around: we don't need $7 billion worth of airport security. These results demonstrate that there isn't much risk of airplane terrorism, and we should ratchet security down to pre-9/11 levels.