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For example, the fact that black applicants for mortgage loans are turned down at a higher rate than white applicants has been widely cited as proof of racism among lending institutions. The Washington Post, for example, reported that a “racially biased system of home lending exists” and Jesse Jackson called it “criminal activity” that banks “routinely and systematically discriminate against African-Americans and Latinos in making mortgage loans.” But the very same data also showed that whites were turned down at a higher rate than Asian Americans. Was that proof of racism against whites, and in favor of Asians?

The Vision of the Anointed

Thomas Sowell

As Jianhua’s father, a victim of the Cultural Revolution himself, kept telling his son, “A thing turns into its opposite if pushed too far.”

The Laws of Human Nature

Robert Greene

Society itself is a codified hero system, which means that society everywhere is a living myth of the significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning. Every society thus is a “religion” whether it thinks so or not: Soviet “religion” and Maoist “religion” are as truly religious as are scientific and consumer “religion,” no matter how much they may try to disguise themselves by omitting religious and spiritual ideas from their lives.

The Denial of Death

Ernest Becker

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