critical race theory quiz

 

 

For some reason, there seems to be a lot of confusion about critical race theory. In order to help clear up some up that confusion, the 10-question quiz posted below should help you. All of the correct answers are posted at the end of the quiz. Some questions may have more than one answer.

 

ONE -  What IS critical race theory?

 

A - a popular topic on the FOX network

B - a popular talking point in political elections

C - a theoretical framework or paradigm that seeks to uncover the ways that institutional, structural, and systemic racism operate and manifest in peaople’s lives and in society

D - a compilation of rules created by NASCAR to make the sport more competitive

 

TWO  - What was the Indian removal Act?

 

A - an 1830 law that forced removal of Native Americans from Florida and other states to Oklahoma

B -  Legislation that changed the name of Cleveland’s professional baseball team to the Guardians    

C -  Legislation that made the Indian motorcycle brand less competitive than Harley-Davidson motorcycles

D -  Legislation that forced the removal of barbershop Indian statues

 

THREE -  What did Executive Order 9066 do?

A -   Forced relocation of Japanese Americans from their homes to internment camps in WWII.

B -   It was one of 9537 Executive Orders signed by FDR during his 4 terms in office

C -  Authorizing the Governor of the Panama Canal to Furnish Certain Transportation to Persons Engaged for Service on the Isthmus of Panama

D -  It was the 10^th Executive Order signed in 1942

 

FOUR -  What was the purpose of the Chinese Exclusion Act?

 

A -  It prevented China becoming a member from being a member of the United Nations

B -  It limited the admission of Chinese nationals to the United States in order to preserve the “good order” of certain locations

C - It prevented the importation of vehicles made in China

D -  It excluded Mandarin from Google Translate

 

FIVE  -  What was the original name for Mount Rushmore?

 

A -  Rocky Top

B - The Six Grandfathers

C - Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe

D -  Big Rock Candy Mountain

 

SIX -    When was the first anti-lunching law passed in the United States?

 

A - 1918

B - 1998

C - 2021

D - 2022

 

SEVEN -  What was the cause of the Tulsa race riots?

A-  The “roaring 20’s prosperity did not result in prosperity to black Americans in Tulsa, and they rioted on May 31, 1921

B -  A Negro man allegedly raped a white elevator operator

C -  it never happened

D -  fans were prevented from attending Donald Trump’s rally on June 20, 2021.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/arts/television/watchmen-tulsa-race-riot.html

 

EIGHT -  Who were the Little Rock Nine?

A -  Nine Negro students who integrated Little Rock high school in 1957

B -  The starting lineup for the city’s semi-pro baseball team

C - An Arkansas musical choral group first started n 1940

D -  A stitch in time saved them

 

NINE -  Who was Emmett Till?

 A - 14-year-old Negro boy from Chicago was murdered in Money, Mississippi while vacationing with his cousins

B - A black northern boy who attempted to seduce a white woman

C -  A young man who is buried in the Oak Lawn cemetery in Chicago

D -  His mother was active in the Civil Rights era

 

TEN - Who was John Lewis?

 

A -  A leader in the civil rights movement. His middle initial was R.

B - A representative for Georgia’s Fifth district from 1986 to his death in 2021

C - A founder of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee

D - Former president of the United Mine Workers

 

 Here are the answers:

 1a – a popular topic on FOX – mentioned 1300 times between March and June of 2021

https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-critical-race-theory-mentions-thousand-study-2021-6

1b. Glenn Younkin used the topic to get elected, and banned it two hours after taking office

https://nypost.com/2022/01/15/virginia-gov-glenn-youngkin-bans-critical-race-theory-school-mask-rules/

1c. A theoretical framework or paradigm that seeks to uncover the ways that institutional, structural, and systemic racism operate and manifest in people’s lives and in society is Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Bonilla-Silva, 1997; Ladson-Billings, 1998; Solorzano and Yosso, 2000. If is a college level course, and is not taught in lower grade levels in America

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/education-development/race-and-ethnicity-hub/what-critical-race-theory

d. not true at all, but the 7^th Generation car WAS designed to make the sport more competitive

2a – On March 28, 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, beginning the forced relocation of thousands of Native Americans in what became known as the Trail of Tears. Not all members of Congress supported the Indian Removal Act. Tennessee Rep. Davey Crockett was a vocal opponent, for instance. Native Americans opposed removal from their ancestral lands, resulting in a long series of battles with local white settlers. But the forced relocation proved popular with voters. It freed more than 25 million acres of fertile, lucrative farmland to mostly white settlement in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/indian-removal-act

2b. the change was made because the former name was considered offensive

2c. no law was passed, but the company found itself unable to compete with Harley-Davidson and other brands. Indian Motorcycle (or Indian) is an American brand of motorcycles owned and produced by American automotive manufacturer Polaris Inc. . Originally produced from 1901 to 1953 in Springfield, Massachusetts, United States, Hendee Manufacturing Company initially produced the motorcycles, but the name was changed to the Indian Motocycle Company in 1923. In 2011, Polaris Industries purchased the Indian motorcycle marque and moved operations from North Carolina and merged them into their existing facilities in Minnesota and Iowa. Since August 2013, Polaris has designed, engineered, and manufactured multiple lines of motorcycles under the Indian Motorcycle brand that reflect Indian's traditional styling.

2d) no law like this was ever passed

 3a) During WWII, the United States  forcibly relocated and incarcerated at least 125,284 people of Japanese descent in 75 identified incarceration sites. Most lived on the Pacific Coast, in concentration camps in the western interior of the country. Approximately two-thirds of the inmates were United States citizens These actions were initiated by president Franklin D. Roosevelt via an executive order shortly after Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans

 3b) FDR signed more Executive Orders than any other president

3c) this was actually Executive Order 9064

3d) It was one of 42 Executive Orders signed in January of 1942, but it was not the 10^th one signed.

 4a) Although China was not admitted to the United Nations until 1971, the delay was caused by a general distrust of the Chinese communist government.

https://www.thatsmags.com/beijing/post/14107/this-day-in-history-prc-admitted-into-the-un

4b) The Chinese Exclusion Act was approved on May 6, 1882. It was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States.

In the spring of 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed by Congress and signed by President Chester A. Arthur. This act provided an absolute 10-year ban on Chinese laborers immigrating to the United States. For the first time, federal law proscribed entry of an ethnic

working group on the premise that it endangered the good order of certain localities. The law remained in force until 1965, and it was finally condemned by Congress in 2011.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/chinese-exclusion-act

4c) No such law exists, but the first Chinese-made vehicle imported to the United States did not occur until 2015

https://www.thatsmags.com/beijing/post/14107/this-day-in-history-prc-admitted-into-the-un

4d) Mandarin has always been an option on Google Translate

 

5a) It was actually a country song introduced on Christmas Day of 1967       

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n9prNixjbg

5b) Originally known as The Six Grandfathers, it became Mount Rushmore after a visit by a New York lawyer named Charles Rushmore in 1885.

https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/mount-rushmore-1

https://blog.nativehope.org/six-grandfathers-before-it-was-known-as-mount-rushmore

5c) this was the Lakota language translation of The Six Grandfathers

5d) originally a song released in 1928, it is now a resort in the Ozarks of Missouri

 

6a) The first anti-lunching bill was the Dyer Anti-Lynching Law was introduced to Congress on April 1, 1918, but it did not become law

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States

6b) 1998 was the last known lynching in America

6c) Although no one was lynched, gallows was erected on the grounds of the United States Capitol, and participants threatened to hand Mike Pence

6) President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching bill on March 29, 2022

 7a) not true

7b) A black man allegedly raped a white female elevator operator, and white residences destroyed an affluent black community named Greenwood

7c) also not true

7d) there many empty seats in the rented venue, and some attendees contracted COVID. There was at least one death (Herman Cain) as a result of lax preventive measures

 

8a) This was actually true. President Eisenhower had to call in the National Guard to protect them

8b) Arkansas is home to TWO minor league baseball teams

8c) Arkansas is home to ten choral groups

https://www.singers.com/lists/choral-groups/arkansas/

8d) The expression ‘a stitch in time saves nine’ originates from 18th-century England. The original use of the phrase described prompt patching or sewing of small holes or tears in clothing or textile materials. Stitching it as soon as possible prevents the tear or hole from getting bigger, requiring more repair work in the future.

The phrase’s first use refers to saving nine stitches in a repair job. However, this proverbial saying went on to describe any situation where taking immediate action to remedy it results in fewer problems down the road.

 https://english-grammar-lessons.com/a-stitch-in-time-saves-nine-meaning/

9a. this is true

9b. Not true, but it was alleged at the trial of the two men who murdered Till

9c. the casket was originally buried in Oak Lawn cemetery, but is now at the National Museum of African American History and Culture museum in Washington D.C.

9d) Also true. The NAACP asked Mamie Till Bradley to tour the country relating the events of her son's life, death, and the trial of his murderers. It was one of the most successful fundraising campaigns the NAACP had ever conducted. Journalist Louis Lomax acknowledges Till's death to be the start of what he terms the "Negro revolt", and scholar Clenora Hudson-Weems characterizes Till as a "sacrificial lamb" for civil rights. NAACP operative Amzie Moore considers Till the start of the Civil Rights Movement, at the very least, in Mississippi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till

 10a. A leader in the civil rights movement

10b. true

10c, also true

10d. Also true, but his middle initial was “L”

https://history.house.gov/People/Detail/16948

 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Lewis#:~:text=John%20Llewellyn%20Lewis%20was%20an%20American%20leader%20of,the%20CIO%20in%201941%2C%20Lewis%20took%20the%20United

         

 

Here’s the answers:

 

ONE - a, b, and c

TWO -  a

THREE -  a and b

FOUR - b

FIVE - b and c

SIX - d

SEVEN - b

EIGHT - a

NINE - all of them

TEN - a, b, and c

 Scoring:

 

1 or 2 – you own a MAGA hat, and you know what “Let’s go Brandon" really means

3 or 4 – you watch FOX “news” too much

5 or 6 – you are better than average

7 or 8 – when can you start teaching?

9 or 10 – have you considered working for a news network?

 

         

 

killing the goose that laid the golden egg

 

 

"The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs" is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 87 in the Perry Index, a story that also has a number of Eastern analogues. Many other stories contain geese that lay golden eggs, though certain versions change them for hens or other birds that lay golden eggs. The tale has given rise to the idiom 'killing the goose that lays the golden eggs', which refers to the short-sighted destruction of a valuable resource, or to an unprofitable action motivated by greed.

Avianus (a Latin fable writer) and Caxton (an English merchant and writer)  tell different stories of a goose that lays a golden egg, where other versions have a hen, as in Townsend: "A cottager and his wife had a Hen that laid a golden egg every day. They supposed that the Hen must contain a great lump of gold in its inside, and in order to get the gold they killed [her]. Having done so, they found to their surprise that the Hen differed in no respect from their other hens. The foolish pair, thus hoping to become rich all at once, deprived themselves of the gain of which they were assured day by day."

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goose_that_Laid_the_Golden_Eggs

 Throughout history, there have been countless examples where greed destroyed a valuable resource, but there is another example of the fable becoming applicable in modern times.

The example is Twitter.

Wall Street has long viewed Twitter as a company that moved too slowly to push out products that would convert its viral popularity into revenue. And while Musk has been scrambling to cut costs and find alternative forms of revenue, Twitter is still heavily reliant on advertising. Last year, nearly 90 percent of the company’s $5 billion in revenue came from advertising, while the rest was derived from data licensing and other services, according to regulatory filings.

Meanwhile, Twitter recently laid off some employees in its sales division, continuing the mass exodus of employees at the company, the Wall Street Journal reported this week.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/22/twitter-advertiser-exodus-musk/

 Trying to determine the value of a social media company is a game best left to fortune tellers, since several large companies are worth LOTS of money, even tough they have little (if any) revenue.

Was Twitter worth the $44 billion that Musk paid for it?

Nobody really knows, but here’s my opinion:

A year from now, Twitter will be worth a fraction of that $44 billion – if is still in business at all.

If you think that the company is too big to fail, consider the fate of another large company that was “too large to fail”.

Enron.

Enron scandal, a series of events that resulted in the bankruptcy of the U.S. energy, commodities, and services company Enron Corporation and the dissolution of Arthur Andersen LLP, which had been one of the largest auditing and accounting companies in the world. The collapse of Enron, which held more than $60 billion in assets, involved one of the biggest bankruptcy filings in the history of the United States, and it generated much debate as well as legislation designed to improve accounting standards and practices, with long-lasting repercussions in the financial world.

The bull market of the 1990s helped to fuel Enron’s ambitions and contributed to its rapid growth. There were deals to be made everywhere, and the company was ready to create a market for anything that anyone was willing to trade. It thus traded derivative contracts for a wide variety of commodities—including electricity, coal, paper, and steel—and even for the weather. An online trading division, Enron Online, was launched during the dot-com boom, and by 2001 it was executing online trades worth about $2.5 billion a day. Enron also invested in building a broadband telecommunications network to facilitate high-speed trading.

As the boom years came to an end and as Enron faced increased competition in the energy-trading business, the company’s profits shrank rapidly. Under pressure from shareholders, company executives began to rely on dubious accounting practices, including a technique known as “mark-to-market accounting,” to hide the troubles. Mark-to-market accounting allowed the company to write unrealized future gains from some trading contracts into current income statements, thus giving the illusion of higher current profits. Furthermore, the troubled operations of the company were transferred to so-called special purpose entities (SPEs), which are essentially limited partnerships created with outside parties. Although many companies distributed assets to SPEs, Enron abused the practice by using SPEs as dump sites for its troubled assets. Transferring those assets to SPEs meant that they were kept off Enron’s books, making its losses look less severe than they really were. Ironically, some of those SPEs were run by Fastow himself. Throughout these years, Arthur Andersen served not only as Enron’s auditor but also as a consultant for the company.

The severity of the situation began to become apparent in mid-2001 as a number of analysts began to dig into the details of Enron’s publicly released financial statements. In October Enron shocked investors when it announced that it was going to post a $638 million loss for the third quarter and take a $1.2 billion reduction in shareholder equity owing in part to Fastow’s partnerships. Shortly thereafter the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began investigating the transactions between Enron and Fastow’s SPEs. Some officials at Arthur Andersen then began shredding documents related to Enron audits.

As the details of the accounting frauds emerged, Enron went into free fall. Fastow was fired, and the company’s stock price plummeted from a high of $90 per share in mid-2000 to less than $12 by the beginning of November 2001. That month Enron attempted to avoid disaster by agreeing to be acquired by Dynegy. However, weeks later Dynegy backed out of the deal. The news caused Enron’s stock to drop to under $1 per share, taking with it the value of Enron employees’ 401(k) pensions, which were mainly tied to the company stock. On December 2, 2001, Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Enron-scandal

The downfall of Twitter will come for two reasons:

1)    Twitter recently reopened some questionable accounts, most prominently the ones of Donald J. Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

 https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3745243-twitter-reinstates-marjorie-taylor-greenes-personal-account/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/11/24/twitter-musk-reverses-suspensions/

 

2)   These moves made advertisers nervous, so they paused there advertising. Since advertising is 90% of Twitter’s revenue, that is not a good thing.  

 One of the first advertisers to suspend their ads was CBS.

 CBS News is one of first major media entities to flee Twitter in the wake of threats from many Musk critics to leave the platform once the billionaire Tesla CEO took over the company.

The major news network confirmed the move during Friday’s episode of “CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell.”

Coverage began with the network reporting on the mass resignations of employees offended by Musk’s “ultimatum” from earlier this week. In his quest to streamline the company, the world’s richest man emailed all employees asking them to commit to an “extremely hardcore” workload or leave the company.

The “ultimatum,” as many disgruntled folks called it, prompted backlash from onlookers who trashed the company under Musk, some calling it a “hellscape.”

https://nypost.com/2022/11/19/cbs-news-suspends-all-twitter-activity-due-to-uncertainty-under-elon-musks-leadership/

Another company that was “too big to fail” was GE. Under Jack Welsh, the company’s market capitalization grew to $600 billion. After he turned over control of the company to Jeff Immelt, the company’s fortunes turn for the worst. Today, it’s market capitalization has shrunk to $95 billion.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/opinion/jack-welch-ge-jeff-immelt.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

 

Elon Musk quickly trimmed the number of Twitter employees dramatically shortly after taking ownership. In response to his draconian new operating procedures, hundreds of more submitted their resignations.

As I mentioned recently in the article below, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is the largest public company in the world. As of August 2020, Berkshire's Class B stock is the seventh-largest component of the S&P 500 Index (which is based on free-float market capitalization) and the company is famous for having the most expensive share price in history with Class A shares costing around $500,000 each. This is because there has never been a stock split in its Class A shares and Buffett stated in a 1984 letter to shareholders that he does not intend to split the stock. On 16 March 2022, Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares closed above record $500,000 a share, resulting in company's market cap above $730 billion.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/11/that-why-they-pay-you-big-bucks.html

Buffett’s company did not grow as large as it did because of massive staff cuts. It did so because it treated its employees as assets, rather than costs.

Advertising plays a very important role in our society.

There was a time when Henry Ford was one of the richest men in America, and he once said, “50% of the money I spend on advertising is wasted – but I don’t know which half.

 Starting in 1936, the Kudner Advertising Agency of New York handled the advertising account for the Buick Motor Division of General Motors. Through the use of clever slogans, as well the creation of the most famous auto slogan of all time (when better cars are built, Buick will build them) , the agency helped lift Buick sales from fewer than 100,000 units a year to 514,497 in 1954, second only to Ford and Chevrolet.

Although Buick sales peaked at 737,879 in 1955, a series of errors on the part of the ad agency, largely tied to television, caused it to lose the ad account at the end of 1957. Those errors caused Buick sales to slide, and by 1957, Buick sales were down to 332,102, well behind Plymouth.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2009/11/when-better-cars-are-built.html

Philip Morris & Company used the Marlboro Man in ads from 1954 until 1999. Although a number of different people portrayed the Marlboro Man during that time period, an ex-rancher named Darrell Winfield had the longest run, at 20 years. He was originally selected by the creative director of the Leo Burnett advertising agency because “he scared the hell out of him.”

In view of the tough image of the Marlboro Man, you would probably be surprised at the fact that Marlboro was originally introduced (in 1926) as a woman’s cigarette. The advertising theme for the cigarette was the less than inspiring “mild as May”campaign, and the brand faltered repeatedly for the next 30 years.

What saved the brand, ironically enough, was lung cancer.

During the early 1950’s, the first studies linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer were released. As a result, smokers started to switch from the favored brands of Camels, Lucky Strikes, and Chesterfields to the “safer” filtered cigarettes, like Marlboro.

Logic would tell you that an advertising agency would focus on these new-found health concerns, but the Leo Burnett agency took an entirely different approach, focusing instead on the Masculine Image of the New Marlboro.

When the campaign started, Marlboro sales were $5 billion a year. Two years later, Marlboro sales were an astonishing $20 billion a year, an increase of 300%. As a result, the Marlboro Man advertising campaign is considered to be one of the most brilliant advertising campaigns of all time.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/10/marlboro-man.html

Print ads have long sustained America’s newspapers, but with the advent of online advertising, newspapers are struggling to survive.

Newspapers make most of their money from advertising. The peak year for advertising revenue was 2006, when it reached $49,000,000. After that, it took a very steep dive, and by 2017, it had dropped to $16,000,000. Newspapers have made up for some of that lost revenue with digital advertising, since the percentage of advertising revenue from digital sources has risen from 15% in 2011 to 30% in 2017.

 Since ad revenue from electronic sources is less than from conventional advertising, newspapers have had to make some very painful cuts. In 2006, the total number of newsroom employees peaked at 74,410. In 2017, that number was 39,210. Benson’s departure from the Arizona Republic happened just a few weeks after a columnist named Linda Chavez stopped appearing in the Opinion section

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2019/01/are-newspapers-dead.html

If the exodus of advertisers from Twitter continues, there is only one thing I can say to  the richest man in the world.

Your goose is cooked.