Dr. Vinay Prasad reports on the insanity. Here is is in a nutshell (this is my mini-summary):
Mount Sinai School of Medicine: Striving for a healthy weight is racist. NYT: Stop worrying about losing weight. This is part of the new American ethos: This bad thing that is happening to you is not your fault. In fact, nothing is your fault. And there is no need to work hard to achieve anything.
The term "woke" refers to something real. It is important to get clear on what that thing is because we are in the throes of a powerful social movement that is working very hard to evade criticism by refusing to allow us to utter its name.
I have used "woke" for the past few years and I'm not giving up on this perfectly adequate term. There are other almost synonymous terms such as "social justice movement," but nothing quite captures Wokeness like Woke. I'm sticking with "woke," even though the Woke now accuse those who use this term of being insulting or bigoted. The "woke" will be insulted no matter how far down we go down the line of cascading euphemisms, however. This succession is sometimes referred to as a "euphemism treadmill." Another example of the euphemism treadmill can be found with the history of the word "retarded." At its core, "retarded" means slow thinking.
Many people have used the term "retarded" to describe a real life phenomenon that can be plainly seen in some people, unfortunately. Others have used it as an explicative and a pejorative, to hurt someone's feelings, often directing this insult at people who are not diagnosably slow in their ability to think. The fact that the word "retarded" can be used to both describe a real phenomenon and as an insult has resulted in the concoction of a comically long list of synonyms. Every time a new euphemism is invented, someone uses the newly created euphemism as an insult and then people go back to the blackboard to create a new synonym for slow thinking.
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I fully support the mission of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). That mission is expressed in "The Pro-Human Pledge" of FAIR:
Fairness. “I seek to treat everyone equally without regard to skin color or other immutable characteristics. I believe in applying the same rules to everyone, and reject disparagement of individuals based on the circumstances of their birth.”
Understanding. “I am open-minded. I seek to understand opinions or behavior that I do not necessarily agree with. I pursue objective truth through honest inquiry. I am tolerant and consider points of view that are in conflict with my convictions.”
Humanity. “I recognize that every person has a unique identity, that our shared humanity is precious, and that it is up to all of us to defend and protect the civic culture that unites us.”
For more information on FAIR and to sign the pledge, you are invited to visit FAIR.
Andrew Sullivan, a gay man who was attacked by both the political right and left when he promoted the idea of gay marriage in a 1989 article in the New Republic, "Here Comes the Groom."
The Thread continued:
Coleman Hughes warns that the claims of many activists that those of us who seek color-blindness are claiming that we don't see different shades of skin color. This argument is disingenuous. Given that I'm a photographer, I need to set my camera and lights to capture flattering portraits of all kinds of people and skin color can be a factor in how I set my equipment. Further, beautiful people come in all colors. Here are a few excerpts from Coleman's article, "Actually, Color-Blindness Isn't Racist."
"“Color-blind” is an expression like “warm-hearted”: it uses a physical metaphor to encapsulate an abstract idea. To describe a person as warm-hearted is not to say something about the temperature of that person’s heart, but about the kindness of his or her spirit. Similarly, to advocate for color-blindness is not to pretend you don’t notice color. It is to endorse a principle: we should strive to treat people without regard to race, in our public policy and our private lives.
. . .
In the early 1960s, there was an elite consensus that color-blindness was the goal of race politics. Then the race riots of the late 1960s led politicians and corporations to perform an about-face. They began implementing race-based policies as a hasty and pragmatic response to the riots—much like governments and corporations did in response to the riots of 2020. Today, you can scarcely find a professor in an elite institution who would defend color-blindness.
This is a grave mistake. Color-blindness is the best principle with which to govern a multiracial democracy. It is the best way to lower the temperature of racial conflict in the long run. It is the best way to fight the kind of racism that really matters. And it is the best way to orient your own attitude toward this nefarious concept we call race. We abandon color-blindness at our own peril."