Follow the links at Fire for details, including the law journal article cited therein:
The law review article is titled, "CAMPUS COURTS IN COURT: THE RISE IN JUDICIAL INVOLVEMENT IN CAMPUS SEXUAL MISCONDUCT ADJUDICATIONS"
Linguistics Professor John McWhorter sat down with Bill Maher on a recent episode of Real Time to discuss "anti-racism." McWhorter describes himself as someone who is hearing things that don't make sense and his quest is to try to obsessively make sense of things like "anti-racism." The interview was as intense as it was fast-moving. Several take-aways:
A) "Anti-racism" condescends to people who identify as "black," infantilizing them.
B) There is a great diversity of thought among those who identify as black, almost two-thirds of whom are middle class (or even higher earning), the majority of whom do not live in ongoing fear of being harassed or shot by the police,
C) None of this is to suggest that there isn't still racism, which needs to be addressed.
D) Wokeness is a religion where "whiteness" functions as "original sin" that afflicts even babies, a religion where Robin DiAngelo's misguided book, White Fragility is mistakenly being treated as "research" instead of second-rate literature that advocates for victimization;
E) People pretend to "atone" for "white privilege" by posting on FB that they are "doing the work." This solves nothing.
F) White Fragility is not representative of "the general black view of things."
G) There is no one "black view" of things - Also, "'Yes we can't'" has never been the slogan for black America and it's not now."
H) In the religion of Wokeness, advocates pretend that "racism has never been worse" than today, even in the 1960's and even during the 1850's. These are palpable untruths to any person who knows even a tiny bit of history. "Why is it un-black to address degree?"
I) It is childish for anyone to shut down opposing views to protect themselves from never being told that they are wrong. This "cathartic" approach will never change anything. We need meaningful engagement.
J) Social media has everyone "peeing in their pants," afraid to defer even minimally from Woke orthodoxy, which is making "mendacity" ubiquitous.
K) The fear of being honest and the fear to even tell a joke is "becoming almost everywhere. The only exceptions are people who are "weird like us and you don't mind being hated. But most people are not going to have that disease, and so we are stuck where we are."
If you'd like to follow John McWhorter, you can find him on his own Substack Website, It Bears Mentioning. Also, McWhorter often joins Glenn Loury for conversation at The Glenn Show on Patreon.
Bill Maher: The Democrats have sucked “the fun out of everything. . . . Once upon a time, the [Republicans] were the ones offended by everything. They were the party of speech codes and blacklists and moral panics and demanding some TV show had to go."
It's 2021, the year that neo-racism and neo-segregation came into full bloom. It doesn't matter that "anti-racism" is "well intended." It is now having the same poisonous effects at Disney that it is having every else that this "training" is being forced upon students and employees. Heightened racial conflict is what a company should expect it whenever it segregates groups of its employees by "race." That's what happens when "white" employees are instructed that "they must “pivot” from “white dominant culture” to “something different.” Disney's training claims that “competition,” “individualism,” “timeliness,” and “comprehensiveness” are “white dominant” values that “perpetuate white supremacy culture.” Participants are also told that prioritizing goals is also a "white" thing. Christopher Rufo has obtained "anti-racism" documents from numerous schools, colleges, government offices and corporations. He has released documents showing the training Disney is inflicting on its employees. This re-education includes racially segregated training groups. The full story can be read at Christopher Rufo's own website (at which you can view the leaked Disney documents). Here is an excerpt from Rufo's article:
In the past year, Disney executives have elevated the ideology of critical race theory into a new corporate dogma—and bombarded employees with trainings on “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” “white fragility,” “white saviors,” and launched racially-segregated “affinity groups” at the company’s headquarters.Rufo has written a companion story at City Journal: "The Wokest Place on Earth: Disney mounts an internal campaign against “white privilege” and organizes racially segregated “affinity groups.”"I have obtained a trove of whistleblower documents related to Disney’s “diversity and inclusion” program, called “Reimagine Tomorrow,” which paints a disturbing picture of the company’s embrace of racial politics. Although the intention of the program might be noble, multiple Disney employees, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals, told me that the Reimagine Tomorrow program has become deeply politicized and engulfed parts of the company in racial conflict.
Rufo also tweeted some of the lowlights from the Disney newly instituted education camps:
Disney claims that America has a “long history of systemic racism and transphobia” and tells employees they must “take ownership of educating yourself about structural anti-Black racism” and “not rely on your Black colleagues to educate you,” which is “emotionally taxing.”I agree with Rufo that this training is well-intended, but the effect of the training is poisonous. Dividing people by skin color pits them against each other needlessly, raising suspicions and solving no societal problems in the process. The Woke endgame is Evergreen State College. In other words, they have no end game. No long term plan. No vision for tamping down the hate and suspicion that they are causing with this neo-racism and neo-segregation.White employees are told to “work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed.” They must “listen with empathy [to] Black colleagues” and “not question or debate Black colleagues’ lived experience.”
Finally, participants are told they must “pivot” from “white dominant culture” to “something different.” The document claims that “competition,” “individualism,” “timeliness,” and “comprehensiveness” are “white dominant” values that “perpetuate white supremacy culture.”
Disney recommends that employees read a how-to guide called “75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice.” The article tells readers to “defund the police,” “participate in reparations,” “decolonize your bookshelf,” and “find and join a local ‘white space.’”
Finally, Disney has launched racially-segregated “affinity groups” for minority employees, with the goal of achieving “culturally-authentic insights.” The Latino group was named “Hola,” the Asian group was named “Compass,” and the black group was named “Wakanda.”
Last week I attended a seminar sponsored by Heterodox Academy. The title: Does Mill Still Matter? Among those featured at the seminar were Jonathan Haidt, Richard Reeves and Dave Cicirelli, co-creators of "All Minus One," an illustrated version of the second chapter of Mill's On Liberty. This new book can be downloaded for free.
I transcribed the following excerpts of Jonathan Haidt comments. What follows are Haidt's words at the live seminar, minimally edited for print.
What I think is happening on campus is that we've traditionally played a game in which somebody puts forth an argument and then somebody critiques it. And that's what we've done for 1000’s of years, until about 2015. And then, a new game came into town, where people weren't seeing this like tennis, a game we are playing a game together. They saw it more as a battle like boxing or something where it was a struggle for dominance and power. And when you think of it that way, yeah, it's hard work. And it's painful. But if you think about it as like, you know, playing tennis or a game together, you're expending calories. It's not exactly hard work. It's hard play. And that's what I've always loved about being an academy is that it always felt like hard play. Until 2015.
A common phrase that began in 2014-2015, which is, “you are denying my existence” or “If that speaker comes [to campus to talk], then he or she is denying my existence.” And, you know, it's suddenly came out of nowhere. And we're all talking about what do you mean, denying your existence? And it's because this new way of thinking, where it's all a battle for power, and it's all about identity. And so if there's an is there's a speaker who's critical that on transition-- doesn't accept the reigning dogma on the trans issue? Well, that person thinks, or you might think, that they're critiquing an argument about something. But critiquing the argument is critiquing the identity, which means you're denying that I exist. That really helps us understand why there's such incoherence on campus since 2015, because some people are taking any criticism of their ideas as an attack on their person. And therefore you think I don't belong here on campus. And again, you can't have a university like that.
I also just want to add in one of my favorite quotes I've found in the five or six years I've been working on this topic. This is from Van Jones when he spoke at the University of Chicago. He was asked by, David Axelrod, what he thinks about students who are demanding no platforming and safe spaces and things like that. And while this isn't exactly million in that he's not really talking about, like the benefit to truth, but he's talking about the way this actually makes you stronger and smarter. This is just so brilliant. He says, there's a certain kind of safety, that it’s safety from physical attacks. You know, of course, we care about physical safety. But then he says, I don't want you to be safe ideologically. I don't want you to be safe, emotionally, I want you to be strong. And that's different. I'm not going to pave the jungle for you put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity, I'm not going to take all the weights out of the gym. That's the whole point of the gym. This is the gym. And Richard and his friends protested outside as a political act. And then they went in because it was the gym, and they actually wanted to hear what he had to say. And that, I think, is the model of a politically engaged college student, or what it should do.
I was asked, What do you think is most fundamental question? And they say, Oh, you know, is there a god? Or what's the meaning of life? No, that's like, a big question. Fundamental means, basic, like the thing that everything else is built on. The fundamental question of life, is approach or avoid. That's it. As soon as life began moving, as soon as you get little tails on bacteria, you have to have some mechanism for deciding this way or that? Approach or avoid? And all of the rest of the billion years of brain evolution is just commentary on that question.
And so the human brain has these gigantic tracts of neurons on the front left cortex, specialized for approach. And then a frontal cortex specialized for avoid. And so all sorts of things go with this. So when we're in explorer mode, some features of it are, we're more, we're curious. We take risks. You might feel like a kid in a candy shop with all these different things to explore. You think for yourself. And the model of a student in this mindset would be whoever grows the most by graduation, or whoever learns the most by graduation wins. If that's your attitude, boy, are you going to profit from being in college for four years. [More . . . ]