"Friedersdorf: Does it rankle you, as a Black person, when people define white culture with positive stereotypes, such as showing up to places on time?
Mboyayi: That’s exactly how I feel. The education system tends to erase or mute Black people from different backgrounds and experiences. They make this assumption that all Black people are a monolith—they all speak the same way, think the same way, and conduct themselves in the same way.
Showing up on time has nothing to do with being white. It’s something that you’re taught or not taught. My father taught me at a very early age to keep my word. If you say that you’re going to be somewhere at some time, be there. What system of white supremacy was he influenced by?
Friedersdorf: You were willing to talk about all this on the record, under your own name. Other parents with concerns about the public-school system in Evanston were terrified to do so. Are they overreacting?
Muboyayi: They should absolutely be afraid because, you know, certain elements of our community are threatening to get people fired. Even if someone just poses a question, or expresses a conflicting view, you’re immediately labeled a part of the problem, a white supremacist, and people will say, “Find out where they work.”"
The overall theme in this video is that we are not going to be able to solve problem if we are not willing to look squarely at the problem. The horrific problem we face in the U.S. is that a large percentage of black children are not fairing well in American schools. In 2019, only 20% of black children were proficient at math (compared to 52% of whites, 28% of Hispanic and 66% of Asian children). We never get to why this is happening or how to fix the problem if we deny that there is a problem. Wokeness/Critical Race Theory "fixes" the problem by pretending that mathematics is racist, in order words, by disparaging math as "white" and attempting to lower the standards. As Glenn Loury passionately points out, this is a racist move, a backhanded way of suggesting that black kids can't cut it, even though most other children all over the world can. This following video is a 15 minute excerpt of a longer discussion that one can view at Glenn Loury's Patreon Website.
in 2007, Greg Lukianoff wrote an article on "social justice" that the NYT decided was too hot to handle. Lukianoff then shopped his article to the Chronicles of Higher Education, which published it. The problem is that attempts to teach vague world views like "social justice" open the floodgates to teaching personal political preferences and unsubstantiated quasi-religious philosophies as though these are uncontroversial factually-anchored topics that can be described by objective standards. Here is an excerpt from "Social Justice and Political Orthodoxy":
Vague, subjective, and politicized evaluation standards are dangerous. They invite administrators and faculty members to substitute their own opinions and political beliefs in place of evaluating students’ skill as teachers. Many of us can think of teachers and professors whose politics we may not have agreed with but who were nonetheless exceptional educators. Having the “correct” political beliefs no more makes someone a good teacher than having “incorrect” beliefs necessarily makes someone a bad teacher.
The fact that such politicized standards may be well intentioned does not make them less troubling. Attempts to institute mandatory political orthodoxies for “good reasons” are nothing new. Depending on where the political pendulum is at any given moment, such tests may come from the left or the right. In the 1950s, attempts to root out Communist sympathizers in higher education were rightly opposed even by scholars and judges who believed the Soviet threat was very real, because they also believed such enforced conformity of thought incompatible with liberal education.
At the heart of the modern liberal university is an ideal simultaneously grand and humble: None of us are omniscient, none can know what strange paths can lead to wisdom and understanding, and it is arrogant for any institution to assume the role of final arbiter of truth. Official orthodoxies impede rather than facilitate education and lead to dogma rather than living, organic ideas. One would hope that we are long past the time when education was viewed as an opportunity to inculcate “correct” and unchallengeable answers to philosophical, moral, and societal questions.
The problem of imposing mandatory political orthodoxies is a serious one, whether those beliefs concern “social justice,” “individualism,” or “patriotism.” In 1943 the Supreme Court invalidated a mandatory school flag-pledge requirement challenged by Jehovah’s Witnesses because it went against their religious beliefs. As Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote then, efforts “to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential” have proven destructive throughout history, raising the bitter question of “whose unity it shall be.” He concluded: “Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.”
This problem of compelled orthodoxy in the context of Critical Race Theory was addressed by Helen Pluckrose in an article titled, "White Fragility Training and Freedom of Belief." Here is an excerpt on Ideological Conformity
It is perfectly reasonable for employers to require employees to commit to not discriminating against anybody on the basis of race, and to not expressing racist beliefs. Because this is an important issue and employers will want to be very clear about it, a talk or meeting could be necessary and employees might be required to confirm that they understand and commit to following the rules. However, it is also important that the focus is on expected attitudes and behaviours at work and does not require anyone to affirm their commitment to any particular belief system that they may not believe in and should not be coerced into.
The ethical problem with requiring ideological conformity is often understood better by people on the political left when it comes to a belief system like Christianity, which is a majority view and often combined with conservative politics. It is usually clear to leftists that, unless the role is a specifically religious one, an employer should not require their atheist, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist or even Christian employees to affirm the Christian faith. It is less clear to a certain subset of them that they should not be required to affirm a belief in concepts of invisible systems of power and privilege such as whiteness. This is because Social Justice beliefs are not currently recognised as ones to which the concept of secularism should be applied. They should be. . . .
the belief system around these concepts of whiteness, privilege and fragility includes the truth claims that:
An invisible power system exists that perpetuates racism throughout every aspect of society.
Racist systems require power, therefore only white people can be racist and all white people are racist. This invisible racist power system is called whiteness.
Whiteness pervades everything and so is always present whenever white people do or say anything. It is impossible for white people not to behave in racist ways.
White people are generally unable to see the invisible force of whiteness and need theorists like DiAngelo to explain it to them.
Whiteness results in white people being privileged and it is always essential to focus on this privilege to the exclusion of all other factors that could help or hinder a person.
White people cannot bear to be confronted by DiAngelo’s beliefs in their racism. This is because they are psychologically fragile and not because they know their own minds.
Any attempt to disagree with this definition of racism, whiteness or privilege is simply a manifestation of this fragility. Being quiet or going away is also a sign of it.
White people therefore have two choices: they can be racist and admit it or racist and deny it. Both are bad, but the latter is willfully ignorant and therefore really bad.
Critical Social Justice theories of whiteness represent a complex and internally consistent belief system, which is the result of at least fifty years of discourse theory. The similarities between this belief system and belief systems more instantly recognisable as religious, which also believe in original sin, powerful but insidious forces of evil, a priesthood, epiphany and atonement, are clear.
A secular society does not deny belief systems power over others because they are factually wrong. It denies them power over others because it protects the individual’s right to her own private conscience, whether she is right or not. This is a remarkable and counterintuitive thing to humans, but it has served us well.
The principles of secularism hold that, no matter how strongly you believe your belief system to be true or how essential you think it is that all of society holds it to be true and lives according to its moral dictates, you do not have the right to impose it on anyone else. We currently live in societies that do a pretty good job of applying this rule to religion, but which have not yet recognised Critical Social Justice as the same kind of thing. Instead, Critical Social Justice is largely misunderstood as a continuation of the liberal civil rights movements, which worked to reform laws and to open up all opportunities to everyone, regardless of their identities, and whose principles can still, quite reasonably, be expected to be upheld by employers. This is a misunderstanding of Critical Social Justice. As shown above, Critical Social Justice is a very specific belief system, which revolves around several core truth claims, which have not been shown to be true. It requires an admission of inherent racism and regards all disagreement as evidence of the problem.
I didn't want to be spending so much time writing about Wokeness, but it has become clear to me that this is an ideology that reverses many of the hard-earned gains we have made through the Civil Rights Movement and that Wokeness ideology leads to endless societal dysfunction. Because human flourishing important to me, I have no choice but to speak out, at a time where many of my friends and acquaintances have the exact same concerns I do, but are afraid to speak out. Their fears is are based on these things:
1. They don't want to get into yelling matches with activists, which they see as inevitable;
2. They fear being called names like "racist" for things that are not racist.
3. They fear mobs of people following them, threatening them and their families or damaging their property;
4. They fear loss of their reputations based on false accusations by mobs, and
5. They fear the loss of their jobs and/or careers based upon mass-cancellation techniques.
I realize this all sounds hyperbolic, but my conclusions are based on the many dozens of occurrences on which I have written about at this website, as well as many other articles by many other writers. Common responses to my writings have been A) ad hominem attacks, B) scoldings that I have no right to discuss certain topics, as though only certain people have the right to talk about certain things, and C) Whataboutism - Why am I not writing about something else that they would rather I write about, e.g., white supremacist groups? In response to this last point, I already see widespread ridicule over white supremacy. It is not taking root in any of our sense-making institutions such as schools (including prestigious colleges), media outlets (including STEM journals and magazines) and government offices.
I want to give special attention to James Lindsay's excellent Woke Encyclopedia at New Discourses, so very helpful in that the Woke onslaught always involves long streams of highly suspect terminology.
Benjamin Boyce was a student at The Evergreen State College as it melted down, thanks to the applications of critical race Theory on campus. There, not only did he have a first-person view of the mayhem the campus descended into as it happened, he was responsible for filming and documenting a great deal of the footage that has since come to light and found a home in documentaries. Ever since, he has been on a quest to further understand what happened at Evergreen and to document it in full, not to mention similar issues as they crop up in the surrounding Washington state communities.
Boyce has presented this Evergreen tragedy in 23 chapters. His story covers the destruction of what was, and what could still be, an excellent college. What happened in 2017, however, left Evergreen in intellectual and social shambles and resulted in dramatic reductions in the number of students attending Evergreen.
It turns out that students aren’t clamoring for the privilege of paying for an education in such a hostile environment. Evergreen accepts 97% of applications, but enrollment dropped to 2,854 full-time students last fall, compared to 3,810 the semester of the protests. Enrollment increased over the same period at other Washington universities.
The story of Evergreen College was entirely ignored by most left leaning media powerhouses. The New York Timeshas yet to write a single word about the 2017 Woke-triggered implosion at Evergreen College.
I am writing this article to provide the above links to the writers I have found most informative and instructive about the Woke movement. I am linking to these writers with the hope that those who are fearful of speaking out can read these works as an aid to finding their own voice. I am also writing this article as a warning and a prophecy that Evergreen State College was not simply an occurrence but a vision for where we are headed unless we all find the spine to stand up and draw a line in the sand. Unless we do these things together, everything will become Evergreen State.
Here are episodes 1, 2 and 3 of Benjamin Boyce's comprehensive documentary regarding Evergreen State.
I'll end with some deep pessimism. I fear that conversation is no longer productive with the Woke. This is clear in many places today as I have documented at this website. it is abundantly clear in the Evergreen videos, as numerous students demonstrated that they are incapable of having a meaningful conversation with the clear-headed, patient, politically liberal Evergreen College biology professor, Brett Weinstein.
John McWhorter is self-publishing his new book, The Elect, chapter by chapter, on his website at Substack, It Bears Mentioning. His intended audience is instructive. His book is not necessary medicine for people who are actively self-critical, skeptical and enthusiastically open to facts that challenge their world views. Rather, McWhorter's new book is especially intended for those who have fallen into world views where these things have become forbidden and scary and where independent thought on certain matters is prohibited by one's tribe. McWhorter explains:
I am not writing this book thinking of right-wing America as my audience. I will make no appearances on any Fox News program to promote it. People of that world are welcome to listen in. But I write this book to two segments of the American populace. Both are what I consider to be my people, which is what worries me so much about what is going on.
One is New York Times-reading, National Public Radio-listening people who have innocently fallen under the impression that pious, unempirical virtue-signalling about race is a form of moral enlightenment and political activism, and ever teeter upon becoming card-carrying Third Wave Antiracists themselves. I will often refer to these people in this book as “white,” but they can be of any color, including mine. I am of this world. I read the New Yorker, I have two children, I saw Sideways. I loved both The Wire and Parks and Recreation.
The other is black people who have innocently fallen under the misimpression that for us only, cries of weakness constitute a kind of strength, and that for us only, what makes us interesting, what makes us matter, is a curated persona as eternally victimized souls, ever defined by the memories and injuries of our people across four centuries behind us, ever “unrecognized,” ever “misunderstood,” ever in assorted senses unpaid.
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