TED Shadow Bans Coleman Hughes’ Talk on the Issue of Color Blindness

Coleman Hughes gave a thoughtful talk on color blindness at TED, but TED has been reluctant to let its viewers see the talk. Coleman describes the problem at The Free Press. Here's an excerpt:

Like any young writer, I am well aware that an invitation to speak at TED can be a career-changing opportunity. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I was invited to appear at this year’s annual conference. What I could not have imagined from an organization whose tagline is “ideas worth spreading” is that it would attempt to suppress my own.

As an independent podcaster and author, I count myself among the lucky few who can make a living doing what they truly love to do. Nothing about my experience with TED could change that. The reason this story matters is not because I was treated poorly, but because it helps explain how organizations can be captured by an ideological minority that bends even the people at the very top to its will. In that, the story of TED is the story of so many crucial and once-trustworthy institutions in American life.

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Progress Report Regarding the Ibram X. Kendi Antiracism Center

How are things going at the generously funded antiracism center? The National Review reports, in an article titled "Is Ibram X. Kendi a Racist?":

By taking millions of dollars designated for the fight against racism and doing nothing useful with it, does this not describe Kendi? He was in charge of this project — a project that he promised would “solve” the “intractable racial problems of our time” — and the result of his conduct was a failure to “maintain the nation’s largest online database of racial inequity data in the United States”; accusations of professional “mismanagement” that led to an “exploitative” environment that caused “employment violence” and “trauma”; and mass layoffs that left one staff member accusing Kendi of having engaged in “theatre, therapy, and marketing masquerading as institutional commitment,” and having “let down, betrayed, abused and neglected” his employees. It sounds to me like the man has some self-reflecting to do.

Coleman Hughes sums it up with more than a hint of sarcasm:

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It’s Not About the Crime. It’s About the News Coverage

I completely John Lefevre and Wilbert Reilly. The biggest story about this murder of a man riding a bicycle is not about this particular (horrific) crime. It's about the "news" media working nonstop overtime to find racism, but only in one direction. There is no corporate news coverage of this story. Reverse the "races" in this story, however, and this story would dominate the news cycle.

The "news" media are dividing us from each other in numerous ways, trying to make us suspicious of each other, to make a dollar. When a "racial" minority is the victim, they pursue a narrative that divides hundreds of millions of complex human beings into two--count 'em--two colors. As a race abolitionist, I oppose this practice. News stories about crime should point out dangerous people who should be removed from the street, regardless of their "color."

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Corporate Media Racecraft

This is a common tactic of the corporate media: Ignore crime statistics to drum up race-based panic. Wilfred Reilly knows his stats and brings sanity to the conversation, sanity that is inconvenient to many progressives:

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm/dataonline/content/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6686

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FIRE Files Suit to Ask Federal Court to Declare that DEI Statements Constitute Compelled Speech

From FIRE: FIRE is suing to stop regulations that force our clients to espouse controversial views about “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Here is an excerpt from FIRE's announcement today:

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a lawsuit on behalf of six California community college professors to halt new, systemwide regulations forcing professors to espouse and teach politicized conceptions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Each of the professors teach at one of three Fresno-area community colleges within the State Center Community College District. Under the new regulations, all of the more-than-54,000 professors who teach in the California Community Colleges system must incorporate “anti-racist” viewpoints into classroom teaching.

The regulations explicitly require professors to pledge allegiance to contested ideological viewpoints. Professors must “acknowledge” that “cultural and social identities are diverse, fluid, and intersectional,” and they must develop “knowledge of the intersectionality of social identities and the multiple axes of oppression that people from different racial, ethnic, and other minoritized groups face.” Faculty performance and tenure will be evaluated based on professors’ commitment to and promotion of the government’s viewpoints.

“I’m a professor of chemistry. How am I supposed to incorporate DEI into my classroom instruction?” asked Reedley College professor Bill Blanken. “What’s the ‘anti-racist’ perspective on the atomic mass of boron?”

“These regulations are a totalitarian triple-whammy,” said FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner. “The government is forcing professors to teach and preach a politicized viewpoint they do not share, imposing incomprehensible guidelines, and threatening to punish professors when they cross an arbitrary, indiscernible line.”

DEI requirements are controversial within academia. FIRE’s research indicates that half of professors believe mandatory diversity statements violate academic freedom. The sole mention of academic freedom in California’s model framework frames it an inconvenience, warning professors not to “‘weaponize’ academic freedom” to “inflict curricular trauma on our students.”

“Hearing uncomfortable ideas is not ‘curricular trauma,’ and teaching all sides of an issue is not ‘weaponizing’ academic freedom,” said Loren Palsgaard, a professor of English at Madera Community College and a plaintiff in the suit. “That’s just called ‘education.’”

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