Michelle Goldberg’s False Claim that Opponents of Critical Race Theory are Refusing to Debate

At the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg dishonestly proclaims the following:

But the right, for all its chest-beating about the value of entertaining dangerous notions, is rarely interested in debating the tenets of critical race theory. It wants to eradicate them from public institutions. “

Fallacy Number One occurs in Goldberg's first three words. Goldberg knows full well CRT's critics include a large diverse group of people that includes conservatives and moderates, but that is not all. Opponents of CRT also include enormous numbers of people who consider themselves to be liberal on numerous issues. These many liberals fiercely oppose the CRT centerpiece: "fighting racism" by simplistically classifying people by color.  Goldberg and her favorite type of social justice warriors seem not to understand basic psychology and U.S. history. Classifying people by color is so incredibly off-the-mark, inefficient, hurtful and nationally dysfunctional that the U.S. fought an entire Civil War to end it, enacted a comprehensive set of civil rights laws to prosecute it and designated a National Holiday in honor of Martin Luther King in order to move forward with functional and kind-hearted ways to judge each other: by evaluating each others' content of character. The idea of moving past skin color as a way to judge each other was originally a liberal idea and this are now embraced by people across the entire political spectrum.

Fallacy Number Two. Goldbert states that "the right . . . is rarely interested in debating the tenets of critical race theory," citing to Christopher Rufo's statement: "“Critical race theory is a grave threat to the American way of life.”  Goldberg's claim is that critics of Critical Race Theory refuse to debate this issue. She makes this claim despite the fact that Rufo has been vigorously debating CRT on Twitter for the past year.  Further,

Rufo has also presented his views in the Wall Street Journal.  But perhaps Goldberg was referring to another prominent critic of Critical Race Theory, Glenn Loury? If so,

A longer version of Loury's statement is here:

And is Goldberg consciously ignoring this invitation by Coleman Hughes to debate Ibram X. Kendi? 

Or is Michelle Goldberg forgetting another (liberal) critic of CRT, John McWhorter who has shown that Ibram Kendi is incapable of honestly acknowledging McWhorter's precisely articulated critiques of Critical Race Theory?

If this is the kind of debate Goldberg seeks, bring on John McWhorter v. Ibram Kendi!

Goldberg is making her claim about the supposed refusal to debate while CRT's other rock star, Robin DiAngelo is busy grabbing exorbitant speaking fees for private events only.  DiAngelo has avoided any and all debates regarding her defective and destructive ideas.  In 2019, her speaking fees were $10,000-15,000.  And see here. How do I know that she has refused to debate her ideas in a public forum?  I invite you to run the following Google search: "robin diangelo debate."  You will not find any evidence that DiAngelo has ever subjected her ideas to public real-time scrutiny.

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Continue ReadingMichelle Goldberg’s False Claim that Opponents of Critical Race Theory are Refusing to Debate

Jodi Shaw Resigns from Smith College After College Administrators Fail to Buy Her Silence

Back in October 2020, I watched Jodi Shaw go public to explain a problem with the hostile work environment at Smith College, her then-employer and her alma mater. I'll never forget the earnestness in her voice, the determined look on her face and her intense emotions as she carefully described the situation. She knew she was about jump off the high dive and there would be no turning back. As I watched her video, I didn't sense any attempt at advocacy or showmanship. Shaw made her video to say some things that were factually straightforward, but socially dangerous for the many Smith adherents of the new religion of Critical Race Theory. She called out that the Emperor had no clothes.

Shaw was concerned that Smith College was attempting to fight racism with what has come to be known as neoracism, a pernicious new version of racism. At Smith College, Martin Luther King's great dream is dead. At the urging of the leadership of Smith College, complex human beings are proudly categorized and judged by the color of their skin, not by the content of their character.

I've followed Shaw's postings and videos carefully since October. Shaw has expanded on her concerns in subsequent videos and tweets: Reducing people to "colors" undermines moral agency, reduces people to "racial objects," and needlessly creates antagonistic in-groups and out-groups. She knew that breaking her silence would threaten her loss of income and perhaps her personal safety and it now has, as explained below.

Bari Weiss is also following Jodi Shaw's story, most recently in an article she titles "Whistleblower at Smith College Resigns Over Racism." Weiss writes:

Jodi Shaw was, until this afternoon, a staffer at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She made $45,000 a year — less than the yearly tuition at the school. She is a divorced mother of two children. She is a lifelong liberal and an alumna of the college. And she has had a front-row seat to the illiberal, neo-racist ideology masquerading as progress.

As part of her article, Weiss has reprinted Shaw's resignation letter in full. Here is an excerpt from Shaw's letter:

I can no longer work in this environment, nor can I remain silent about a matter so central to basic human dignity and freedom. . . . Under the guise of racial progress, Smith College has created a racially hostile environment in which individual acts of discrimination and hostility flourish. In this environment, people’s worth as human beings, and the degree to which they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, is determined by the color of their skin. It is an environment in which dissenting from the new critical race orthodoxy — or even failing to swear fealty to it like some kind of McCarthy-era loyalty oath — is grounds for public humiliation and professional retaliation. . . . Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others. . . .

What passes for “progressive” today at Smith and at so many other institutions is regressive. It taps into humanity’s worst instincts to break down into warring factions, and I fear this is rapidly leading us to a very twisted place. It terrifies me that others don’t seem to see that racial segregation and demonization are wrong and dangerous no matter what its victims look like. Being told that any disagreement or feelings of discomfort somehow upholds “white supremacy” is not just morally wrong. It is psychologically abusive.

Jodi Shaw is no longer working as an employee of Smith College, but she is continuing to actively help Smith College find its way out of the Critical Race Theory thicket. You can follow her tweets here.  She has set up a GoFundMe to help with her living expense and her legal fees.

Bari Weiss concludes her article:

What is happening is wrong. Any ideology that asks people to judge others based on their skin color is wrong. Any ideology that asks us to reduce ourselves and others to racial stereotypes is wrong. Any ideology that treats dissent as evidence of bigotry is wrong. Any ideology that denies our common humanity is wrong. You should say so. Just like Jodi Shaw has.

Continue ReadingJodi Shaw Resigns from Smith College After College Administrators Fail to Buy Her Silence

Stop Being a Dupe: The Danger of Almost Completely Polarized “News” Media.

What happens when the Venn diagram of "news" coverage by outlets on the political Left and Right have almost no overlap? What happens when our "news" outlets become singularities, where people on the political Left rarely tune into Right-leaning "news" outlets and vice versa?  What happens when consumers of the "news" become too trusting, too obedient, too subservient to the carefully crafted political narratives of their favorite news outlets?  It is at that point that news consumers become dupes. Worse, they become agitated dupes who don't want to hear about their blind spots. People on both the political Left and Right insist that they are well informed merely because they get their "news" from the A, B, C outlets.  In the meantime, John Stuart Mill is spinning in his grave over our collective self-induced sickness.

This is the current state of news media and its most rapacious consumers. Matt Taibbi explains the main danger: the lack of informational course-correction. It is now common that blatant errors of fact take root and live on indefinitely. Here is an excerpt from Taibbi's latest article at TK, where he offers many examples (you will be pummeled with examples beginning at the 6-minute mark of Taibbi's video, below). You can find this article at Matt's Substack website. The title his article is "The Bombhole Era":

This technique of using the next bombshell story to push the last one down a memory-hole — call it Bombholing — needed a polarized audience to work. As surveys by organizations like the Pew Center showed, the different target demographics in Trump’s America increasingly did not communicate with one another. Democrats by 2020 were 91 percent of the New York Times audience and 95 percent of MSNBC’s, while Republicans were 93 percent of Fox viewers. When outlets overreached factually, it was possible, if not likely, that the original target audience would never learn the difference.

This reduced the incentive to be careful. Audiences devoured bombshells even when aware on a subconscious level that they might not hold up to scrutiny. If a story turned out to be incorrect, that was okay. News was now more about underlying narratives audiences felt were true and important. For conservatives, Trump was saving America from a conspiracy of elites. For “liberal” audiences, Trump was trying to assume dictatorial power, and the defenders of democracy were trying to stop him.

A symbiosis developed. Where audiences once punished media companies for mistakes, now they rewarded them for serving up the pure heroin of shaky, first-draft-like blockbusters.

In the above video, Taibbi explains that the "news" media now operates like a Ponzi scheme, promising yet failing to pay off. Here is a quote from the one-minute mark:

You've heard of a Ponzi scheme? You promise guaranteed returns using money from the new suckers to pay off the old ones and nobody ever finds out you are bankrupt all along. The bombshell era is a journalistic ponzi scheme you sell every scandal as the biggest ever you stoke audience expectations with words like "historic," "unprecedented," "treason," "Watergate," "concentration camp," "reichstag" and BOOM! You dismount into dramatic predictions before moving on to the next mania.

Continue ReadingStop Being a Dupe: The Danger of Almost Completely Polarized “News” Media.

Dorian Abbott Offers Advice on How to Survive an Academic Witchhunt

Dorian Abbott's job as professor of geophysics was threatened at the University of Chicago for insisting that hiring decisions should be based on merit. He gives this overview of the situation at Quillette:

In the fall of 2020, I became the target of a cancellation campaign after I’d suggested that the best policy for a university seeking to support underrepresented groups, while staying true to its mission of producing knowledge, is to ensure that hiring and admissions decisions are based on merit. It’s an idea that directly reflects bedrock principles advanced during the Civil Rights movement, and which are still supported by a large majority of Americans. But to the mob, I was just an irredeemable enemy of progress and social justice. As part of the now-standard playbook, my attackers formed a Twitter mob and wrote a denunciatory public letter, cynically misrepresenting my views, demanding that my research and teaching at the University of Chicago be restricted, and urging that my department formally denounce me. Fortunately, at a crucial juncture in the proceedings, the Free Speech Union launched a change.org petition in my support, which was signed by more than 13,000 people. (The list probably includes many readers of this essay. Thank you so much for your support!) My university president, Robert Zimmer, subsequently issued a strong statement defending freedom of expression on campus. As a result, I seem to have survived my cancellation.
The full article is titled: "‘More Weight’: An Academic’s Guide to Surviving Campus Witch Hunts."

The brunt of his article consists of strategies for maintaining one's job when threatened by Woke mobs:

Love the people attacking you. Remember that they are human beings.

Determination:

Note that determination does not mean responding to every person attacking you. Many of the people who join a mob take the view that anyone who disagrees with them is presumptively evil, and they will not be interested in facts or reason. Once you realize that you are dealing with someone in this category, I recommend not engaging with them, especially on social media. Just let it go, continue to put your message out in a positive way, and move on to people interested in a discussion.
Courage: "The lesson is that a mob is a crowd of people who have lost their individuality in a frenzy of group madness, but who can be shocked back to their senses if you stand up to them with courage."

Support: Work as best you can with your organization. Also, "So get in touch with organizations such as the Free Speech Union, Quillette, Heterodox Academy, and FIRE, which can help rally some troops to support you."

Perspective: "One exercise that might help is to play out in your mind all of the negative scenarios you can imagine and show yourself that you can survive them."

Abbott ends his article cautioning that we might need to pick our battles, but suggesting that those in tenured faculty positions have a special responsibility for standing up to the Woke mobs.

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Silicon Valley Continues to Invoke its Vague Guidelines to Clamp Down on Free Speech

Yes, I know. The First Amendment doesn't apply to private companies and social media are private companies. But consider also that 95% (or something like that) of our communications to each other are funneled through social media. When Youtube shuts down a journalist's coverage of a news-worthy event based on an absurd interpretation of its unilaterally imposed guidelines, it's something we should document and fix (I don't pretend to have an easy fix). Matt Taibbi tells the story here. It's part of a growing trend. This issue burst onto the national stage when Twitter shut down the New York Post's account over the Hunter Biden censorship story. Krystal Ball's tweet at The Rising sums up this latest incident:

Continue ReadingSilicon Valley Continues to Invoke its Vague Guidelines to Clamp Down on Free Speech