Why We Need to Speak Up, Rather than Coddling the Illiberals

There's a big argument raging about what to call this thing. I refer to it as Critical Race Theory because these teachings have their roots in CRT, even  though these teaching have morphed into what we are currently seeing in many classroom.  Whatever you call it, you can find it in all these places. 

Are there other things to be wary of? Absolutely. Climate issues, current and future pandemics, the false narratives of the far right.  Many of these discussions are unproductive for the same reason that we can't discuss CRT: because we can't even agree on the basic facts.  I'm not in the mood for what-about-ism at the moment, because unapologetic woke struggle sessions now inhabit many of our once-schools and universities. Why do I keep "obsessing" about this trend? Because unquestionable facts (e.g., the biological fact that there are two--and only two-sexes) mean nothing to many of those who lead these sessions. They proclaim that striving for excellent and reaping the rewards of hard work is inappropriate.

On racial issues, the leaders of these sessions are smearing the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. When I read their words, I imagine these loud and rude Wokesters throwing rotten fruit or rocks at MLK and jeering him. They claim to be leading a new improved Civil Rights Movement, but they are reversing the gains of the past 60 years. They call it progress when they go into third grade classrooms, dividing the children by color and sow lifetime seeds of suspicion and distrust when they tell the "white" children that they are oppressors of the "black" children. These kids should be freely playing with each other at recess, but now they are being told to fear each other. Further, the "black" children are being fed huge doses of the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Yet social media bristles with accusations that to have these concerns makes one a "conservative" or a "Republican" and that people like me are paranoid because the new syllabus merely teaches "racial history," as though previous generations of children have not been taught about racial history.

Hell, yes, I'm concerned. And I will keep speaking out as long as larges swathes of social media are motivated to get the facts wrong. I feel the moral imperative to be, if necessary, the only one in the large room to speak up.

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Matt Taibbi: Robin DiAngelo Has Published a New (Old) Book

Matt Taibbi somehow convinced himself to read race-grifter Robin DiAngelo's new book, Nice racism. I can't muster the necessary masochism to join him in this effort, especially after I forced myself to trudge through DiAngelo's first book, White Fragility. According to Taibbi, DiAngelo's sequel is a regurgitation of her first book and nothing more. The title of Taibbi's review is "Our Endless Dinner With Robin DiAngelo Suburban America's self-proclaimed racial oracle returns with a monumentally oblivious sequel to "White Fragility." Here's an excerpt of Taibbi's review:

Nice Racism’s central message is that it’s a necessity to stop white people from seeing themselves as distinct people. “Insisting that each white person is different from every other white person,” DiAngelo writes, “enables us to distance ourselves from the actions of other white people.” She doesn’t see, or maybe she does, where this logic leads. If you tell people to abandon their individual identities and think of themselves as a group, they sooner or later will start to behave as a group. Short of something like selling anthrax spores or encouraging people to explore sexual feelings toward nine year-olds, is there a worse idea than suggesting — demanding — that people get in touch with their white identity?

If DiAngelo’s insistence that “I don’t feel guilty about racism,” reveling in scenes of making people experience and re-experience racial discomfort, and weird puffery in introducing herself by saying things like, “I am Robin and I am white” feel familiar, it’s because she’s hitting all the themes favored by Klansmen and identitarian loons of yore. Read a book like David Duke’s My Awakening (if you can stand it, you can find excerpts here) and you’ll encounter the same types of passages present in Nice Racism.

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Two Worlds

When I first heard about the irresolvable blue dress versus brown dress dispute, I assumed it was an outlier. I didn't realize that it was the template for every social issue going forward.

We now have a world where many of us see decades of commendable racial progress based on MLK's urge that we treat each other based on content of character, not color of skin. On the other side are many other people who consider themselves to be "white" who claim to have experienced an epiphany over the past year. They see themselves as drenched in guilt because they have been blindly perpetuating the mentality of slave-holders. Is there any possible way to bridge this gap?

I believe that Thomas Chatterton Williams has nailed it: Speak only for yourself based only on your own life, your own choices and your own experience. If you've been a lifelong closet racist, such as Robin DiAngelo, then, yes, it's time to come clean. I suspect there are more than a few such people But don't pretend that you can speak for anyone else. Don't pretend that it has been impossible to treat everyone else as individuals.Don't pretend that it is a rare thing. Don't pretend that everyone else inevitably sees people as "colors" and treats them in stereotypical ways. If you recently had a revelation that you are a racist, go fix yourself and quit projecting your dysfunctional mindset onto everyone else. As part of your healing process, you might want to read Thomas Chatterton Williams' excellent book: Self-Portrait in Black and White: Family, Fatherhood, and Rethinking Race.

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Wide Open Classroom Discussion

A professor at Duke has convinced his students to open up classroom discussions. The project could not happen in the absence of trust. An excerpt from the WSJ:

To get students to stop self-censoring, a few agreed-on classroom principles are necessary. On the first day, I tell students that no one will be canceled, meaning no social or professional penalties for students resulting from things they say inside the class. If you believe in policing your fellow students, I say, you’re in the wrong room. I insist that goodwill should always be assumed, and that all opinions can be voiced, provided they are offered in the spirit of humility and charity. I give students a chance to talk about the fact that they can no longer talk. I let them share their anxieties about being socially or professionally penalized for dissenting. What students discover is that they are not alone in their misgivings.

Having now run the experiment with 300 undergraduates, I no longer wonder what would happen if students felt safe enough to come out of their shells. They flourish. In one class, my students had a serious but respectful discussion of critical race theory. Some thought it harmfully implied that blacks can’t get ahead on their own. Others pushed back.

My students had an honest conversation about race, but only because they had earned each other’s trust by making themselves vulnerable. On a different day, they spoke up for all positions on abortion. When a liberal student mentioned this to a friend outside class, she was met with disbelief.

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