No Thanks, [Formerly Prestigious American University]. I Need to Go To School Elsewhere to Get a Real Education

John McWhorter has received many hundreds of emails from people who are dismayed with the Woke dismantling of American Education. Here is a recent communication he received, redacted to protect this person and published at It Bears Mentioning, McWhorter's Substack Website, part of an article titled, "If I like it, it's data; if I don't like it, it's "anecdata." No - whether you like it or not, it is neither dim nor racist to generalize on the basis of widespread and frequent events (i.e. both cop killings and Elect abuses)." McWhorter introduces this communicating by noting that this person had been "accepted into a graduate program at a prestigious institution."

It hurts so much that I have to decline your offer and several other great offers that I have received from elite universities and programs that used to be the dream schools for young people like me. I am simply very frustrated by ideology masquerading as objective science in today's higher ed. particularly humanity fields. Universities these days are trying to make young people like me feel guilty because we are white and because the whole system is filled with white racists, and me included. There is such strong moralization in the academy that is so certain that it has Science on its side in all of its proclamations. Frankly, today's academy’s ideological dogmatism is one of my major fear and hesitancies for entering it. I fear any work I do, especially in developmental or evolutionary psychology, would be evaluated not on its merit but instead on what is perceived as my politics based on how politically convenient my findings are. I have decided to move to [foreign country] to join a group of very creative and young [subject area redacted by me] on a [ibid.] research project. I want to spend the last 5 years in my 20s on something scientific, not political. But it seems that it is simply impossible to accomplish that goal in my own country.

Continue ReadingNo Thanks, [Formerly Prestigious American University]. I Need to Go To School Elsewhere to Get a Real Education

The Lancet Goes Full Woke in its Claim that Asian-Americans are Unfairly Succeeding in Medical Schools and in the Health Care Field

The medical journal Lancet is an unrepentant convert to Wokeness, as recently pointed out by James Lindsay on Twitter:

In this January 2020 article, “Race as a Dynamic State: Triangulation in Health Care,” The Lancet has turned its Woke-powered spotlight toward “Asian-Americans.” According to this article, in a prestigious medical journal, all “Asians” are the same. Therefore, we can put all of them under one group heading and treat all of them inter-changeably, regardless of their country of origin, and regardless of how hard each “Asian-American” individual has studied in order to be successful in the health care field. And that is merely the first of the many shocking assertions of this article.

This Lancet article scolds “Asian-Americans” for their “privilege,” as if they unfairly achieved excellence merely by being born “Asian.” This article swipes at Asian American are racist in the most basic sense; it judges the characteristics, history and achievement of individuals by irrelevant immutable characteristics. Unfortunately, this sordid tactic passes as “social justice” in ever-increasing numbers of institutions, most notably in our sense-making institutions such as universities and in the conference rooms at publishers such as Lancet. I prefer to call this increasingly popular tactic “neo-racism” because it is the modern heavily-jargoned repackaging of good old-fashioned racism. It's the same despicable idea over which we fought a bloody Civil War. In the year 2021, then, Lancet is proudly promoting a completely discredited destructive approach for interacting with one another.

This Lancet article is preaching, not teaching. No open-minded person could have written this Lancet article. Tt presents a long string of obviously wrong-headed and highly controversial concepts as gospel, evidence-free. These issues raised by this article would have been discussed by any good-faith consideration of this topic of “racial” disparities in the healthcare field. Instead, the authors of this Lancet article intentionally avoided these many issues.

Back at Twitter, commenters had no problem spotting these many glaring problems instantly. I have selected and pasted in some of these comments below. The following comments below allow us to use the above Lancet article as a Wokeness case study:

According to this, Asians attending medical schools, are the "wrong" kind of diversity...

This is so incredibly racist. How does anyone stand for this degradation?

What happened? I thought we were NOT supposed to pick people . . . based on their color.. now that’s the top consideration!

This is their way of minimizing the data that shows Asian achievement being better than white people because they know that collapses their unifying white supremacy equation.

Essentially, they are telling them to recognize they are a “privileged” minority class because it makes other minorities (i.e. blacks) look bad... They mean because it destroys their narrative!!!

The tone and lack of self-awareness on part of writers is what shocks me, even more than the twisted content. They are simply telling people what to do. Extraordinarily patronising and controlling.

Didn't they put Asians in the "white" category recently? All to perpetuate their systematic racism myth.

“And what shall we do when we run out of enemies to destroy?” “Simple, we shall make more”

Yeah, but how did they become privileged? Was it magic?

Attacking the competent has always been a hallmark of Marxism. They won't stop until the starving are attacking the almost-starving.

I like the sentence just after your highlight. "They can consider what it feels like to be the non-model minority" So they are a minority, but a non-model one! "They can refuse to be used in statistics that flaunt “diversity” gains" Oh my... The best science for better lives. WTF!

“Model minority” Asians are a “model minority” and therefore outside of CRT models and therefore part of the problem bc they don’t fit the narrative of overcoming obstacles of oppression. Jews also defy CRT- as if their oppression doesn’t count.

Just wait until they start turning against Nigerian immigrants who are among the hardest working out there...

So “model minority” is a myth but “non-model minority” is not?

Mind you, this is entirely within the western world and not actually in Asia, for the most part. It's so unbelievably stupid.

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Continue ReadingThe Lancet Goes Full Woke in its Claim that Asian-Americans are Unfairly Succeeding in Medical Schools and in the Health Care Field

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

Race Conscious “Solution” to the Limited Supply of COVID Vaccines

I've often argued that we need to refocus, to consciously move back toward the central mission of Martin Luther King:

“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

~From MLK's “I have a dream” speech

It's distressing to see so many loud voices arguing for the opposite, demanding that we need to become ever more conscious of "race" and claiming that we have made no meaningful progress since the Civil War or since the early 1960s.

Basing anything on "race" is always a massively erroneous and ultimately destructive miscategorization.  It will lead to endless strife and mistrust because "race" tells us nothing meaningful about any of the people with whom we share this planet. There is only one way to get to know each other: Taking the time to learn about each other, one at a time. Using "race" as a proxy as a shortcut for this hard work is inevitably destructive. In its simplistic detachment from real-world facts, sorting people based on "color" is akin to basing public policy on phrenology or astrology.

The above is a short prelude for a recent proposal regarding prioritizing people for the COVID vaccine, pointed out by Andrew Sullivan:

Continue ReadingRace Conscious “Solution” to the Limited Supply of COVID Vaccines

Rediscovering Connection at your Local Park

The Internet is an amazing tool that offers us easy ways to connect with each other with very little effort. This magic technology also allows social media sites to pummel us with videos of people bullying each other and physically fighting each other in public places. The triggering "excuses" for these flare-ups are countless. It's often about masks, but many of these videos focus on the bizarre propensity of many people have to divide others into political and “racial” tribes.

In some of these videos people violently assault each other. I recently viewed a video of two families arguing on a store parking lot. Somebody apparently accidentally bumped somebody else, then the situation quickly and needlessly escalated to the point where guns were drawn. I cringe when I see this insanity. A couple of these disheartening videos show up on my feeds every week, posted by people whose motives are often unclear. Some of these videos involve police officers but the great majority do not. Often, every one of the people featured in the video is ill-behaved. Other videos involve unprovoked violence, however, and many of those incidents culminate in physical injuries to an innocent person. Watching too many of these videos plants a false intuition that we are watching typical human beings doing typical things.

Is there a silver lining to these displays of anger and violence? Is it important to sometimes document our human frailties and cruelties? Should we occasionally hold some of these videos up like mirrors to force ourselves to acknowledge the risk that our anger can dangerously escalate into brutality? Can we use some of these videos as teachable moments, showing what can happen when we fail to show restraint and kindness?

Even if there is such a silver lining, it can’t be healthy to watch a steady stream of these videos showing so many people being so shitty to each other. It seems to me that too much exposure to these videos numbs us to the pain and suffering of others. At some point, our in-group tendencies can completely anesthetize our empathy for "the other." Once we cross that line where we no longer care about the pain of others, these videos serve mostly as conflict pornography. For years, Hollywood has been peddling gratuitous violence as entertainment. Movie and TV studios too often stoop to the lowest level of profitable "entertainment." The proliferation of smartphone camera social media videos suggests that there’s no longer any need for Hollywood to continue paying highly trained writers substantial money to concoct their stylized ballets of violence.

In this age of COVID-19, many people are feeling trapped in their homes. Many of us are also transfixed to our screens on which we exposed to far too many videos of people acting badly. Slouching on the couch to watch strangers being mean to each other can’t be harmless. Aren’t these videos causing permanent social damage? And aren’t there better things to do with one's time?

Almost every day, I walk through glorious Tower Grove Park, near my home in St. Louis. On almost every walk I see people from many different demographic and ethnic groups. They show up in the park with their own styles of clothing, music, food, games and language, even now as the weather is turning colder. It is an especially beautiful thing to behold the families at play, parents and their little children. [More . . .]

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