Forty Black Intellectuals Chastise Smith College

Here are a few excerpts from today's well-deserved letter to Smith College, signed by 40 Black intellectuals:

"We, the undersigned, are writing as Black Americans to express our outrage at the treatment of the service workers of Smith College in light of the incident of alleged racial profiling that occurred in the summer of 2018.

Before investigating the facts, Smith College assumed that every one of the people who prepare its food and clean its facilities was guilty of the vile sin of racism and forced them to publicly "cleanse" themselves through a series of humiliating exercises in order to keep their jobs. When an investigation of the precipitating incident revealed no evidence of bias, Smith College offered no public apology to the falsely accused and merely doubled down on the shaming of its most vulnerable employees.

Many of us participated in the Civil Rights Movement, fighting for equal treatment under the law, which included due process and the presumption of innocence. We didn't march so that Americans of any race could be presumed guilt and punished for false accusations while the elite institution that employed them cowered in fear of a social media mob. We certainly didn't march so that privileged Blacks could abuse Working class Whites based on "lived experience."

. . .

Please consider that many Black Americans find training that reduces us simply to a racial category profoundly condescending and dehumanizing. Not only do such activities often increase racial animosity rather than reduce it, but they also deeply harm students of color by teaching them to process every one of life's difficulties through the lens of race.

. . .

We implore you to rethink how you have handled this situation. We ask that you publicly apologize to the falsely accused service workers, that you cease forced, accusatory 'anti-bias´ training, and that you compensate your service workers for the harm that you have caused them."

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Critical Race Theory Compared to the Civil Rights Ideals of the 1960s

Critical Race Theory claims to be the new improved way to deal with racial issues. How does the Woke doctrine, spreading through American schools and workplaces, compare to the principles of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's?

The creator of the above image is Woke Temple at Twitter. The "original document" above doesn't exist (I confirmed this through personal communication with "Woke Temple"), but it accurately serves as a summary of some of Martin Luther King's core teachings.  The "corrections" in the graphic accurately reflect commonly espoused principles of Critical Race Theory (For more on CRT, consider the lectures and writings of prominent CRT advocates Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi).  See also this glossary entry for CRT at New Discourses.

It should be apparent that one cannot honor the memory and teachings of Martin Luther King and, at the same time, support Critical Race Theory. They are mutually exclusive, so each of us needs to decide where we stand on this clash of ideas.

In the early 1960s, I was a young boy.  I barely watched the news back then and I didn't appreciate the importance of the civil rights movement. That said, I always knew it was a bad idea to judge each other based on the way we looked. It made deep visceral sense, as did the platitude: "Don't judge a book by its cover."  Now that I'm much older, I sometimes imagine going back in time to march with Martin Luther King to make a strong show of support for the real Civil Rights Movement.

For those of us who were too young to march with MLK, 2021 is our second chance to stand up for true Civil Rights Movement.  Are you willing to be called names like "racist" by a loud group of zealots in order to take this strong moral stand? That would be such a small price to pay compared to what MLK had to endure.  Are you willing to allow people to call you names to help keep this country from decaying back to days where we judge each other by immutable physical characteristics like color of skin?  Where millions of people obsess about what "race" someone is?  To a system of categorizing each other that makes no more sense than astrology or phrenology? Again, this is your chance - - your voice is needed, and all you need to do is to say out loud those thoughts you are already thinking.  Judging each other by the way we look is an outrageously dysfunctional approach to interact with each other.

The longer we don't take a strong stand against Critical Race Theory, the more entrenched CRT will become in numerous schools (grade schools and colleges and see here), media outlets and governmental offices. Here's how bad it recently got at a major national museum.  See also John McWhorter's  analysis: CRT is a new fundamentalist religion.

You know what is at stake.  We've already set aside a national holiday in his honor.  Are you ready to speak up in support of Martin Luther King?

--

Quotes of Martin Luther King that bear on the principles set forth in the "document" above:

[Don't Judge Others by the Color of their Skin]

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

[Violence, Hatred, Love]

Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love... Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

[Segregation]

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children

[More . . . ]

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Bari Weiss: Affluent Parents Who are Afraid to Speak Out When Their Kids’ Private Schools Turn Woke

Here's a short excerpt from a long detailed article by Bari Weiss. She does not name her sources because they told her they are afraid of being named. They also told her that these stories need to be told. Weiss titled her article "The Miseducation of America's Elites Affluent parents, terrified of running afoul of the new orthodoxy in their children’s private schools, organize in secret."

These are two-career couples who credit their own success not to family connections or inherited wealth but to their own education. So it strikes them as something more than ironic that a school that costs more than $40,000 a year — a school with Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s right hand, and Sarah Murdoch, wife of Lachlan and Rupert’s daughter-in-law, on its board — is teaching students that capitalism is evil.

For most parents, the demonization of capitalism is the least of it. They say that their children tell them they’re afraid to speak up in class. Most of all, they worry that the school’s new plan to become an “anti-racist institution” — unveiled this July, in a 20-page document — is making their kids fixate on race and attach importance to it in ways that strike them as grotesque.

. . .

But physics looks different these days. “We don’t call them Newton’s laws anymore,” an upperclassman at the school informs me. “We call them the three fundamental laws of physics. They say we need to ‘decenter whiteness,’ and we need to acknowledge that there’s more than just Newton in physics.”

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MLK: You Die When You Fail to Speak Up for What is Right and True

Martin Luther King spoke from the pulpit at Selma on March 8, 1965:

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

I am thinking of MLK's words, week by week, as I watch the moral rot of Critical Race Theory (CRT) spread through our sense-making institutions:  our colleges, media outlets and government bodies.  And more recently, we can see this at Amazon and Ebay and in the censorship policies of huge social media corporations that attempt to control what we share with each other.

The sad irony is that what is now passing as a continuation of the Civil Rights Movement is the opposite of the Civil Rights Movement.  The Woke movement demands that we judge each other's character and legal rights by irrelevant characteristics, not by the content of our character.

It's time to stand up and publicly declare that this Woke ideology, this Woke religion, is a fraud. Critical Race Theory divides us and spreads suspicion and hatred.  Critical Race Theory attacks the central teachings of Martin Luther King.

It might be uncomfortable for you to stand up to state these obvious things publicly, but there are many important reasons to summon the courage to speak up. Who do you want to see when you look in the mirror in the morning?  Do you see a person who is courageous or do you see a person who is afraid to speak truth to a misguided mob?  Are you willing to sit in silence while that mob smears the teachings of Martin Luther King, a man whose ideas are so treasured that we set aside a national holiday in his honor?

It's time to speak up, even (and especially) if you are the only person in the room willing to speak up.

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