Critical Race Theory Infests the Federal Workforce

Need I say this at the beginning of this post? Unfortunately, I might need to. On many topics I disagree with Tucker Carlson and his peers at FOX, or the current Republican Administration, because I lean left on many issues. That said, now on with the post.

I'm glad that Tucker Carlson is shining light on the use of critical race theory in the federal workforce. Carlson's guest, journalist Christopher Rufo, is gathering this information from hundreds of workplaces where CRT is taking the form of religious indoctrination. As Rufo indicates, "There is no place for this toxic, divisive, pseudoscientific ideology in our public institutions."

Rufo Tweeted yesterday: "In the past 18 hours, I've received more than 1,000 messages and 100 new sources for leaked government documents." Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

I'm posting Rufo's recent Tweet below, along with Geoffrey Miller's well phrased comment:

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The Problem with Stifled Dissent

Why should we care about suppressed and chilled speech on important issues of the day? Emily Elkins of the Cato Institute offers the statistics and a clear analysis in "Most Americans Are Scared Stiff to Talk Politics. Why?"

There are many reasons to resist this authoritarian urge to squash dissent. The first is that scientific progress, and by extension, the improvement of human well‐​being generally, requires free thought and open discourse. As Jonathan Rauch explains in his book, “Kindly Inquisitors,” the scientific method breaks down when people become reluctant to ask questions, be creative, challenge each other, and seek out and understand evidence.

Further, as Thomas Chatteron Williams explained in a New Yorker interview, the culture of canceling signals to people what the boundaries of “acceptable” ideas are or else suffer severe economic and emotional punishment. Thus many “steer far clear of the boundary,” causing a “narrowing…stifling effect on not just speech but on thought,” he explained.

Yet silencing people and stifling free thought isn’t an effective long‐​run strategy. It rarely changes minds. It just shuts down civil discourse and prevents people from having opportunities to modify their ideas in the face of new information. Instead, people hold onto their opinions, and just sweep them under the rug.

Political opponents’ disengagement doesn’t necessarily mean victory. Americans still vote. And their political views, silent or expressed, affect how they vote. Persuasion is necessary to change how people think and thus who and what they vote for. But persuasion is hard and requires open dialogue.

Social psychologists have found evidence that we aren’t very good at updating our opinions by ourselves. We need other people we respect to ask us to explain our views and then challenge us with new considerations. It’s typically through this back and forth process that we update our views when people we trust present us with new, compelling information.

But this only works when we feel comfortable to engage in a dialogue. Thus it is only with open dialogue that people’s opinions can be examined, understood, or reformed. Thereby, the best long‐​term strategy is persuasion, not silencing. And persuasion requires open debate.

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Commonalities Between Woke Culture and Religion

From a recent article by psychologist Valerie Tarico titled, "The Righteous and the Woke – Why Evangelicals and Social Justice Warriors Trigger Me in the Same Way."

It occurred to me recently that my time in Evangelicalism and subsequent journey out have a lot to do with why I find myself reactive to the spread of Woke culture among colleagues, political soulmates, and friends. Christianity takes many forms, with Evangelicalism being one of the more single-minded, dogmatic, groupish and enthusiastic among them. The Woke—meaning progressives who have “awoken” to the idea that oppression is the key concept explaining the structure of society, the flow of history, and virtually all of humanity’s woes—share these qualities.To a former Evangelical, something feels too familiar—or better said, a bunch of somethings feel too familiar.

Tarico then lays out many of the similarities in detail. The similarities include:

Righteous and infidels

Insider jargon

Born that way

Original sin

Orthodoxies

Denial as proof

Black and white thinking

Shaming and shunning

Selective science denial

Evangelism

Hypocrisy

Gloating about the fate of the wicked

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Real Numbers on Cancel Culture

Many people argue that people are not really at risk regarding cancel culture. John McWhorter offers some real numbers in his article in The Atlantic, "Academics Are Really, Really Worried About Their Freedom: Some fear for their career because they don’t believe progressive orthodoxies."

To the extent that the new progressives acknowledge that some prominent people have been unfairly tarred—including the food columnist Alison Roman, the data analyst David Shor, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art senior curator Gary Garrels—they often insist that these are mere one-off detours rather than symptoms of a general cultural sea change.

For example, in July I tweeted that I (as well as my Bloggingheads sparring partner Glenn Loury) have been receiving missives since May almost daily from professors living in constant fear for their career because their opinions are incompatible with the current woke playbook. Then various people insisted that I was, essentially, lying; they simply do not believe that anyone remotely reasonable has anything to worry about.

However, hard evidence points to a different reality. This year, the Heterodox Academy conducted an internal member survey of 445 academics. “Imagine expressing your views about a controversial issue while at work, at a time when faculty, staff, and/or other colleagues were present. To what extent would you worry about the following consequences?” To the hypothetical “My reputation would be tarnished,” 32.68 percent answered “very concerned” and 27.27 percent answered “extremely concerned.” To the hypothetical “My career would be hurt,” 24.75 percent answered “very concerned” and 28.68 percent answered “extremely concerned.” In other words, more than half the respondents consider expressing views beyond a certain consensus in an academic setting quite dangerous to their career trajectory.

So no one should feign surprise or disbelief that academics write to me with great frequency to share their anxieties. In a three-week period early this summer, I counted some 150 of these messages. And what they reveal is a very rational culture of fear among those who dissent, even slightly, with the tenets of the woke left.

Continue ReadingReal Numbers on Cancel Culture