The Conservapedia has a Racist Agenda

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 10:42 AM on February 26, 2007.

Guest post by Jill Tubman.

The Conservapedia was recently launched as a rival to the Wikipedia.

The Eagle Forum sponsors this repugnant trash. You know the Eagle Forum -- it's Phyllis Schlafly the anti-feminist ultra-conservative. She's against Title IX, against "judicial activism" (code word = nigger loving dismantlers of segregation) and pro-Mexican border fence.

Here's a quote from one of her recent columns supporting Pat Buchanan's just-published book State of Emergency on immigration:

Today, our elites celebrate diversity rather than American ideals and identity. To justify the enormous numbers of foreign born entering the United States, legally and illegally, we are reminded ad nauseam that we are a nation of immigrants.

However, immigrants, legal and illegal, don't come to America because of our diversity of residents, but because we are a land of freedom and opportunity. Most of the creators of our unique land were not immigrants.

Of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, 48 were native-born Americans and two of the others came to this country as babies. Of the 39 signers of the U.S. Constitution, 32 were native-born Americans, and the few signers of both documents who were not native-born all came from Great Britain or British colonies.

The most diversity we had in the founding of America was that some came from big states like Massachusetts and some from small states like Delaware.

Buchanan's book lists all the obvious solutions: no amnesty, a border fence, eliminate birthright citizenship and taxpayer-paid social benefits, prohibit dual citizenship, require businesses to match employees' Social Security numbers, and time-out on legal immigration.

Right. So let's take a look at her alternative to the Wikipedia which supposedly...

... provides, according to Conservapedia's homepage:

… an online resource and meeting place where we favor Christianity and America. Conservapedia has easy-to-use indexes to facilitate review of topics. You will much prefer using Conservapedia compared to Wikipedia if you want concise answers free of "political correctness".

1) In the Wikipedia there is an extensive and well-written entry on the term African-American which serves as an anchor pages for many other related topics on our history, culture, religions, political movements, civic organizations and more. In the Conservapedia, I could find no entry for African-American, Black or even Negro. There is however, a page there for "Mulatto". Just in time for Barack Obama's presidential campaign! That said, the Wikipedia entry for Mulatto could also use some work.

2) The Conservapedia entry for Baraminology which is supposedly an alternative to the "secular concept of species" has a few nuances that the Wikipedia entry on the subject does not share. Apparently creationist theory conveniently makes room to perpetuate discredited racist scientific theory. The terminology used below somehow implies that people of certain ethnicities are not the same biologically(an excerpt):

• Monobaramin: A monobaramin is an ad hoc group of organisms who share common descent. Caucasians and Negros are a monobaramin, as are any group of specific members of a holobaramin such as wolves, poodles, and terriers or the humans Tom, Dick, and Harry. Holobaramins contain monobaramins; for instance, wolves are a monobaramin of the Dog holobaramin.

• Apobaramin: An apobaramin is a group of holobaramins. Humans and Dogs are an apobaramin since both members are holobaramins. A group containing Negros and wolves is not an apobaramin since both members are monobaramins.

3) In contrast to the rich biography in the Wikipedia for Martin Luther King Jr., the Conservapedia chooses to dwell in their King entry on a seldom cited quote that no doubt furthers their agenda to combat the ahem, dark forces of "judicial" and other forms of "activism":

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers …

I stand in the middle of two opposing forces … One is a force of complacency … The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups … the largest being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement.

Nourished by frustration over racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America … I have tried to stand between these two forces … for there is the more excellent way of love …

The quote is given no time or place. There are many gaps here in between the cited passages. Which speech or book of Dr. King's is this quote from, exactly?

4) The Conservapedia's entry on Slavery focuses on the encouragement of the slave trade from 1455 to the 1800s by Africans themselves for profit. The style of the passage is best described as 4th grade book report. The Wikipedia entry on Slavery is lengthy and covers slavery throughout the ancient world, the same period as the Conservapedia and slavery as it exists today. The entry also describes the abolition movement, apologies and reparations, and links to other forms of human rights abuses.

5) There is no entry for W.E.B. DuBois but there is one in the Conservapedia for Marcus Garvey who advocated a "Back to Africa" approach for African-Americans in the first half of the 20th century to solve the problem of American racism.

I could go on. And on. Ms. Schafly thinks she can bamboozle her supporters with a false set of fact free information. But I'm not fooled. And her Conservapedia is about to get schooled.

Tagged as: technology, racism, right wing, wiki

Jill Tubman blogs at Jack and Jill Politics.