That’s right, the NBA, nearly every black teenagers dream job, is racist against blacks. According to a recent study.

NEW YORK (AP) - An academic study of NBA officiating found that white referees called fouls at a greater rate against black players than against white players, The New York Times reported on its Web site Tuesday night.

The study by a University of Pennsylvania assistant professor and Cornell graduate student also found that black officials called fouls more frequently against white players than black, but noted that that tendency was not as pronounced.

Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at Penn’s Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in economics, said the difference in calls “is large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew.”

The study, conducted over a 13-season span through 2004, found that the racial makeup of a three-man officiating crew affected calls by up to 4 1/2 percent.

The NBA strongly criticized the study, which was based on information from publicly available box scores, which show only the referees’ names and contain no information about which official made a call.

“The study that is cited in the New York Times article is wrong,” president of league and basketball operations Joel Litvin told The Associated Press on Tuesday night. “The fact is there is no evidence of racial bias in foul calls made by NBA officials and that is based on a study conducted by our experts who looked at data that was far more robust and current than the data relied upon by Professor Wolfers.

How long until Jesse Jackson demands the NBA increase the percentage of black officials? Or the ACLU demands the NBA stop racially profiling blacks on the court? We obviously need stricter quotas to ensure racial equality at the free-throw line.

Not even our sports are safe from moonbattery!

On a personal note - good luck to the Mavs tonight. Send those smug San Fran bozos home to the freak show where they belong. A team from the bay area called the “Warriors” is the biggest joke ever. In San Fran they spit on the real warriors. Also, they have the most obnoxious sports fans ever. I’m with Barkley. They’re goin down!

UPDATE:

Who are you, and what have you done with Dirk?

Long overdue, the persecution of three Duke lacrosse players based on blatantly false allegations has finally ended. Head over to Hot Air for coverage and video.

This entire episode shows that there are some fundamental dysfunctions in our society. A significant portion of the population has shown that confirming their cynical views is more important than facts or justice. Whether it be Duke Professors, liberal commentators or race-baiting shakedown artists, a lot of people owe these boys an apology. More importantly, they need to step back and examine their own prejudices and hatreds that literally forced them to believe the worst about young white men even in the face of so much evidence to the contrary.

This is what the constant obsession with identity politics has wrought. Rather than see a woman with ever evolving stories and little credibility, or college athletes behaving crudely - but not criminally - as most such young men do, all these people could see was black and white. Their ideology requires that they see black as victim and white as oppressor. They could not see the facts of this specific case because maintaining the legitimacy of their generally cynical and destructive world view took precedence. But they’re destructive influence has been exposed. We can only hope average Americans were paying attention and will learn the right lesson. Criminal cases should rest on their specific merit and nothing more, not serve to promote a political agenda.

Proving once again that liberals aren’t happy unless they’re unhappy, the NAACP has taken aim at the Dukes of Hazzard. Its a good thing that we have the NAACP out there identifying racism in 20 year old television shows, so that I can continue not caring (and watching the Duke boys when I feel like it).

Still, I can’t fault the NAACP too much, seeing as how they’ve solved the problems of the higher than normal rates of crime, illiteracy, illegitamacy, incarceration, teen pregnancy and unemployment in the black community. They obviously have little left to accomplish, having fixed every obstacle to economic and social parity, minus old television shows of course.

Wait… what?

Presidential wannabe Barack Obama has featured his church-going habits in his campaign for the Democratic nomination. However, the tenets of his Church, Trinity United Church of Christ, could prove problematic for the inexperienced Senator. This is apparently not a new story, but I’m just coming across it. From their website:

Trinity United Church of Christ adopted the Black Value System written by the Manford Byrd Recognition Committee chaired by Vallmer Jordan in 1981. We believe in the following 12 precepts and covenantal statements. These Black Ethics must be taught and exemplified in homes, churches, nurseries and schools, wherever Blacks are gathered. They must reflect on the following concepts:

1. Commitment to God
2. Commitment to the Black Community
3. Commitment to the Black Family
4. Dedication to the Pursuit of Education
5. Dedication to the Pursuit of Excellence
6. Adherence to the Black Work Ethic
7. Commitment to Self-Discipline and Self-Respect
8. Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness”
9. Pledge to make the fruits of all developing and acquired skills available to the Black Community
10. Pledge to Allocate Regularly, a Portion of Personal Resources for Strengthening and Supporting Black Institutions
11. Pledge allegiance to all Black leadership who espouse and embrace the Black Value System
12. Personal commitment to embracement of the Black Value System.

First of all, I in no way think this church is doing something which they should not be able to do. They have a right to associate whatever values they want with their church. Rather, I believe they should recognize on their own that the values they are choosing to highlight do more harm than good. What I take issue with is the social ramifications this type of self segregation has on society. As long as we continue to emphasize lines within the community, there will be strife in America between different ethnic groups.

America would be far better off if we had fewer churches declaring a dedication to just one part of a community instead of the community as a whole. We don’t need a Black Value System and a White Value System and a Latino Value System…etc. We need an American Value System. Martin Luther King understood this, which is why he is so highly regarded still today. A man who wants to be the first black President should understand this as well. In this regard, the religious institution he chooses to associate with tells us a good deal about him.

In honor of Martin Luther King day, here are some of my favorite MLK quotes:

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

This is the kind of absurdity I would expect to hear about under a Democratic President, but from the Bush administration?

The federal government filed a lawsuit Friday against the suburban village of Port Chester, alleging that its at-large method of electing trustees is unfair to Hispanics and violates the Voting Rights Act.

The government requested that the village, or a judge, if necessary, devise a new system that would help elect a Hispanic trustee next year.

In a statement from U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia and other Justice Department leaders, the government said, “Ethnically and racially polarized voting patterns prevail in elections for the Port Chester Board of Trustees” and other local offices.

. . .Port Chester, with a population just under 28,000, was 43 percent Hispanic, according to the 2000 Census. The citizen voting-age population was 22 percent Hispanic. But no Hispanic has ever been elected to the Board of Trustees.

To break this down, the federal government has decided that they don’t like the outcome of local elections (where nothing nefarious is being alleged, the people are accused of nothing more than exercising their right to vote) and now are trying to force their will on local governments. This is exactly the kind of gross federal instrusion upon the states that many of the founders worked so hard to protect us from.

But why focus only on ethnicity? What about other underrepresented characteristics? How many redheads have been elected? How many schizophrenics? We might as well take this statistical litmus test to its logical conclusion and demand exactly proportional representation for all possible groups. The problem with this is that it makes unfounded assuptions about the motives of voters. What if the only Hispanics to have run were just bad candidates? The federal government shouldn’t have arbitrary authority to decide when voting results are valid and when they are not, as that negates the purpose of voting in the first place.

Hat tip: Moonbattery

Sometimes it’s amusing to take part of a news article and rewrite it without the leftwing blinders on. Here’s an example, “Supreme court to confront school racial diversity.”

The Supreme Court confronts whether race can be used in deciding where students to go to school on Monday, testing the willingness of President George W. Bush’s two newest court appointees to overturn programs to foster racial diversity.

First of all, I would use a different title, since the original is not even factually correct. The Supreme Court is not considering diversity at all, that’s merely the ends that liberals think they are working towards. What is being looked at are their methods. So I would go with, “Surpreme court to confront school racial discrimination.” Much more accurate, as would be this opening:

The Supreme Court confronts whether race can be used in discriminating against students on Monday, testing the willingness of President George W. Bush’s two newest court appointees to overturn programs that foster racial discrimination.

Remember, almost everything read in the media must be filtered and translated to remove the author’s leftwing agenda.

La Shawn Barber has a great post on her views of a colorblind society and just what that means.

When I was young and na?ve, I used to believe in a ?colorblind society.? I envisioned a utopia-like world where everyone got along, despite differences in skin color, religion, height, weight, or other ?irrelevant? factors.

Having lived in the real world for a few decades now, I realize how silly I was. Human beings can?t ignore differences if we tried. The best we can do is condition ourselves to not allow those differences to divide us too sharply. If we can do that, we?re doing quite well.

Some people misunderstand the conservative position on ?colorblindness.? I should say my position on colorblindness, since I can?t speak for conservatives or black people. While humans will always make decisions based on what we perceive, the government should not. What conservatives and other anti-race preference opponents like myself believe is that government policy should be colorblind; that is, the government should not make policy, write laws, or base decisions on a citizen?s race, color, creed, or religion. We are to be judged and treated as individuals, not as members or representatives of a racial or ethnic group.

…

The very first reply to her post, from a self described liberal, serves as an excellent example of just how it is a government comes to be obssessed with color.

To the extent that ?affirmative action? programs require quotas and the compelled hiring of certain groups of people, those are clearly wrong.

But I see nothing wrong with laws ? as well as business policies or education policies ? which seek to achieve diversity. Diversity does not mean preference of one group over another; in fact, it literally means the opposite.

Trying to achieve diversity, which in common usage actually means proportionality, is itself a form of quota regardless of whether the means to achieve that end utilizes quotas. Diversity, as typically used, is actually a misnomer. What is actually desired is uniformity. All jobs/institutions must have a uniform representation of all groups, making all such institutions virtual copies of each other. They would, amongst themselves, lack diversity.

On a recent episode of Numbers, the mathematician and star of the show was lecturing his students on random occurrences. He showed them two pictures of dark dots on a white background, in this case representing rain drops. One picture had dots fairly evenly spaced throughout the picture; the other had some close together and some far apart. When asked which better representated random rainfall, many thought it was the picture of equally spaced dots, because people tend to falsely associate even distributions with random behaviors.

Applying this to our current discussion, we see that many falsely associate workplaces or other institutions with exactly proportional group representations as nondiscriminatory, when the opposite is actually true. The only way for such proportionality to ever occur across the board is by interference. Instead, anything not exhibiting proportional representation is seen as evidence of discrimination. Based on this dubious conclusion, they force proportionality through legislation.

Fighting against discrimination is admirable, but the means we used to determine where discrimination is occurring are faulty. Even when disproportionate representation is indicative of a problem, it is often a much different one than race-based agitators assume. The dismal high school graduation rate of urban schools is a prime example of the types of factors that can contribute to those situations.

This well intentioned “diversity” for the sake of “diversity” has the end result of making everyone hyperaware of race. The cumulative effect of having these policies implemented in all levels of government and the work force, rather than the alleviation of discrimination and race conflict as proponents intend, is the exacerbation of these issues. A large part of the reason we still have so much racial tension in America today is due to constant group identity politics. And as long as politicians can find personal profit in pitting these groups against each other, it’s not going to change.

Update: This timely article from OpinionJournal highlights the dangers of unintended consequences from well meaning liberal meddling.

OpinionJournal.com -

The Akaka bill was born out of an angry reaction to the 2000 case of Rice v. Cayetano, in which the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 7-2 vote, declared unconstitutional a system under which non-Native Hawaiians were barred from voting for or serving as trustees of the state’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Fearful of losing control of the rich patronage pot that the office, with its $3 billion trust fund, has become, its supporters decided to up the ante and try to skirt the 15th Amendment’s mandate for equal voting rights by requiring that the federal government recognize Native Hawaiians in the same manner it recognizes separate governments for American Indians and Alaskan Eskimos.

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission issued a report earlier this year that destroyed the notion that the Indian tribe analogy is appropriate. Native Hawaiians, who freely voted in large numbers to join the U.S. as a state in 1959, have never asked to be recognized as an Indian tribe. They not only lack their own system of laws but are dispersed throughout Hawaii and have a high rate of intermarriage with other groups. “The Akaka bill would authorize a government entity to treat people differently based on their race and ethnicity,” said Gerald Reynolds, the commission’s chairman. “This runs counter to the basic American value that the government should not prefer one race over another.”

It may run counter to American values, but it’s perfectly in line with the Democrat value that non-whites require special treatment.