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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


How real is the Texas legislature’s proposed ban on the racist “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” programs at colleges?

Failure Theater!

Failure theater? This week the Texas legislature passed a proposed ban on race-based “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) programs at its public colleges, requiring all such offices be closed within six months with the staff of such offices terminated.

The final legislation says universities cannot create diversity offices, hire employees to conduct DEI work, or require any DEI training as a condition for being hired by or admitted to the university. All hiring practices must be “color-blind and sex-neutral.” The bill would also prohibit universities from asking job candidates to provide written answers about how they consider diversity in their work or sharing how they would work with diverse populations, commonly known as diversity statements. Critics have equated diversity statements with ideological oaths, while supporters say they help ensure job candidates are prepared to support students from all backgrounds.

The legislation says university governing boards must adopt policies to discipline employees who violate these rules. Under the final version of the draft, university leaders cannot spend state money until they have declared to the state they are in line with the new law.

The bill still has to be signed by Texas’ Republican governor Greg Abbott, but that signature is expected.

Will this ban work? Maybe. It has the advantage over many similar but weak bills passed by other Republican state legislatures in that it actually appears to cut funding, in a sort of indirect way. By directly terminating the staff of DEI offices while insisting these offices be shuttered, the legislature is telling the colleges they can no longer spend any of their funds for them. In addition, an earlier version of the bill allowed the colleges to reassign such DEI employees. The final bill forbids this. The whole DEI political game is ordered to stop, and its perpetrators removed.

I remain doubtful however whether this bill will achieve anything at all. For example, it does not appear to decrease the funding to the colleges. The universities have simply been told the money they formally spent on DEI can no longer be spent on such racist operations. Since they have the cash anyway, what will prevent college administrators to create a new office with a new name, let’s call it the “Openness and Support Office”, and hire the fired DEI staffers that have been terminated from a different college. By simply rearranging the chairs, these administrators — who apparently all enthusiastically support DEI’s Marxist and racist program — can recreate it without making it obvious. And the legislature has agreed to give them the funds for doing so.

Moreover, changing the name of a leftist agenda is par for the course. The left used to embrace the name “socialists.” When its communist-inspired policies became obvious the left than said they weren’t socialists, they were “progressives.” They didn’t change their policies, they simply hoped the nicer sounding name would help fool people about their goals.

Coca-Cola's bigoted company policy
Examples of Critical Race Policy materials that were being used at Coca-Cola
in 2021.

Similarly, only two years ago DEI was called critical race theory by academics. Have you noticed how that latter term has disappeared since it was exposed — as shown on the right — as a racist, anti-white program designed to favor minorities, based merely on their race? College officials simply changed it to DEI instead, and continued the same racist policies favoring minorities and discriminating against whites.

Since the Texas legislature has not cut any funding, I fully expect the DEI offices to disappear but be quickly replaced by another office with some innocuous-sounding name tasked however with exactly the same goals. Its administrators and staff will simply be hired from the terminated DEI staff of another Texas public college.

The real solution, to actually reduce funding to any college that has such programs, remains untried by Republican-controlled legislatures, on both the state and federal level. It seems Republican politicians are still afraid to take firm action, out of a misguided fear they will be called names.

It is long past time to tell the name-callers: “We don’t care!” and proceed with real action. Until this happens, every so-called “ban” passed by Republicans will simply be a Potemkin village fraud, accomplishing nothing.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

6 comments

  • Cotour

    Related:

    CONFUSED? ITS ALL A PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATION

    If you are fearful and confused about what you are watching playing out in our culture and politics today understand that all of politics is a psychological / PR operation in pursuit of political power, money, ideology and control. And you are meant to be fearful and confused, it is a tool of manipulation. What is actually happening is the effective application of extreme radical Leftist / Marxist / Communist political theory whose label has been massaged, adjusted and redefined as “progressive” or the less threatening label of Democrat Socialist. And it is very effective. But you must not be fooled.

    You I am confident are not a radical Leftist “progressive”, you are a middle Right Republican or a middle Left / Liberal Democrat, those are American political animal designations and beliefs. But those who are fully indoctrinated and are strategically driving this political divide and attempted “Fundamental Transformation” in America who are very well trained in these kinds of politically oriented psychological operations intend to destroy the America that you know, love and believe in. And what is happening as a result?

    This: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12136007/NY-law-graduate-uses-graduation-speech-claim-laws-white-supremacy.html

    And this: https://nypost.com/2023/05/27/lululemon-employees-reportedly-fired-for-calling-911-during-robbery/

    Is a result of this: https://www.cairco.org/reference/cloward-piven-strategy-fundamentally-transforming-america

    “What is the Cloward–Piven strategy?

    The Cloward–Piven strategy was developed in 1966 by Americans Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven – both sociologists and political activists. The Cloward–Piven strategy focused on overloading the United States public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis, which would ultimately lead to replacing the welfare system with a national system of “a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty”. An ancillary consequence of the strategy includes shoring up of the Democratic Party, which at the time was splintered by pluralistic interests. Another side effect would be relieving local and state governments of public welfare burdens, since the burden would be shifted to the federal government – in other words, in a manifestation of socialism. Taxpayers, of course, would cover the cost in either case. Cloward and Piven focused primarily on redistribution of income, stating that full enrollment in welfare programs:”

    And it is also currently resulting in this: https://youtu.be/MN7Izhs_PbQ 2:30 min.

    The valid gay movement just like the valid Feminist movement have been highjacked by the Radical, Left, “Progressive”, “Woke”, indoctrinate other people’s children, alienate parents, “personal pronouns”, anti-America agenda segment of the Authoritarian, Democrat / Democrat Socialist, anti-white, “anti-colonialism”, reparations / retribution, no bail no jail, flood the border with millions of illegals to the welfare state party.

    And I am pretty certain that you are not exactly that. You and your vote also may have effectively been highjacked because you identify as a middle of the road Liberal Democrat.

    This political movement is using yesterday’s history of abuses in order to inform the present and justify the retribution for those abuses on people who had nothing to do with it. And that IMO is a broken, irrational and illogical model of justification for retribution and is designed to justify the destruction of the country that you know and love in order to reformulate it in their Socialist / Communist model. Plain and simple.

    No conspiracy, no paranoia, just the raw and honest truth of the matter.

    The bright political lines are being drawn and the political warfare that the Constitution structures will and must play out has been engaged and you are beginning to see the more rational and clearly thinking but fed up among the masses are beginning to appear.

    But the question remains: What will the American people assuming that in today’s world of high technology and seamless invisible manipulation and questionable election tabulation do about it all?

    There will be change, it is the nature of the beast, it is a law of the universe, but America must choose a middle Left middle Right solution to today’s change and not the total destruction required by those who seek exactly that kind of change. jgl 5/29/23

  • wayne

    Mr. Z.,
    Have you been following the recent impeachment ‘thing for the AG of Texas?
    It really illustrates how many RINO’s are actually in the Texas legislature.

  • wayne: Those in control at all levels of government (city, state, federal) from both parties seem to me entirely corrupt, and work aggressively to stymie any action that might change things. What is happening in Texas suggests the same there.

  • ” . . . politicians are still afraid to take firm action, out of a misguided fear they will be called names.”

    Spells and Incantations.

    Social acceptance is fundamental to humans, but maybe you should look at the demands of the accepting society?

  • wayne

    Mr. Z.,
    Yeah… totally corrupt.!
    Texas legislature is controlled by ‘republicans,’ and this is the kinda’ Stuff, they do?!

  • Edward

    Robert asked: “Will this ban work?

    Did the Civil Rights Act work? Not at any place that worships DIE, CRT, or whatever the nom du jour may be.

    These names are a bit like global warming. When problems arise, the name changes (e.g. to “climate change”) in hopes that the new name corrects the defects that were found in the old name. DIE was supposed to be more “inclusive” than Criticizing Race.

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