Bill Maher: The Democrats have sucked “the fun out of everything. . . . Once upon a time, the [Republicans] were the ones offended by everything. They were the party of speech codes and blacklists and moral panics and demanding some TV show had to go."
Summed up well by this tweet by Glenn Greenwald:
What is your hypocrisy tolerance today?
Peter Boghossian's Letter to the Chronicles of Higher Education. What he writes about civil engineers, physicists and philosophers really hits the nail on the head.
It is worth noting that criticism is framed as harassment only by academicians working in certain domains of thought that are in Critical Theory’s orbit. Civil engineers are not claiming that criticism of truss bridge design is harassment. Physicists are not claiming they’re being persecuted when their contributions to quantum theory are criticized. Philosophers are not claiming victimization when their arguments about free will are scrutinized. Claiming criticism is harassment occurs when a discipline’s North Star is not Truth, but ideology.
The internal rationale for calling criticism “harassment” is as simple as it is absurd: because these Critical Theories are believed to proceed from one’s “social position” as an occupant of some “identity category,” the person and her ideas are treated as though they overlap. They do not. Thinking they do is a dangerous mistake for anyone to make, not least institutions that are nominally devoted to Truth. The backbone of rational thought is separating people from ideas to protect the dignity of the former while being free to criticize the latter.
It's 2021, the year that neo-racism and neo-segregation came into full bloom. It doesn't matter that "anti-racism" is "well intended." It is now having the same poisonous effects at Disney that it is having every else that this "training" is being forced upon students and employees. Heightened racial conflict is what a company should expect it whenever it segregates groups of its employees by "race." That's what happens when "white" employees are instructed that "they must “pivot” from “white dominant culture” to “something different.” Disney's training claims that “competition,” “individualism,” “timeliness,” and “comprehensiveness” are “white dominant” values that “perpetuate white supremacy culture.” Participants are also told that prioritizing goals is also a "white" thing. Christopher Rufo has obtained "anti-racism" documents from numerous schools, colleges, government offices and corporations. He has released documents showing the training Disney is inflicting on its employees. This re-education includes racially segregated training groups. The full story can be read at Christopher Rufo's own website (at which you can view the leaked Disney documents). Here is an excerpt from Rufo's article:
In the past year, Disney executives have elevated the ideology of critical race theory into a new corporate dogma—and bombarded employees with trainings on “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” “white fragility,” “white saviors,” and launched racially-segregated “affinity groups” at the company’s headquarters.Rufo has written a companion story at City Journal: "The Wokest Place on Earth: Disney mounts an internal campaign against “white privilege” and organizes racially segregated “affinity groups.”"I have obtained a trove of whistleblower documents related to Disney’s “diversity and inclusion” program, called “Reimagine Tomorrow,” which paints a disturbing picture of the company’s embrace of racial politics. Although the intention of the program might be noble, multiple Disney employees, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals, told me that the Reimagine Tomorrow program has become deeply politicized and engulfed parts of the company in racial conflict.
Rufo also tweeted some of the lowlights from the Disney newly instituted education camps:
Disney claims that America has a “long history of systemic racism and transphobia” and tells employees they must “take ownership of educating yourself about structural anti-Black racism” and “not rely on your Black colleagues to educate you,” which is “emotionally taxing.”I agree with Rufo that this training is well-intended, but the effect of the training is poisonous. Dividing people by skin color pits them against each other needlessly, raising suspicions and solving no societal problems in the process. The Woke endgame is Evergreen State College. In other words, they have no end game. No long term plan. No vision for tamping down the hate and suspicion that they are causing with this neo-racism and neo-segregation.White employees are told to “work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed.” They must “listen with empathy [to] Black colleagues” and “not question or debate Black colleagues’ lived experience.”
Finally, participants are told they must “pivot” from “white dominant culture” to “something different.” The document claims that “competition,” “individualism,” “timeliness,” and “comprehensiveness” are “white dominant” values that “perpetuate white supremacy culture.”
Disney recommends that employees read a how-to guide called “75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice.” The article tells readers to “defund the police,” “participate in reparations,” “decolonize your bookshelf,” and “find and join a local ‘white space.’”
Finally, Disney has launched racially-segregated “affinity groups” for minority employees, with the goal of achieving “culturally-authentic insights.” The Latino group was named “Hola,” the Asian group was named “Compass,” and the black group was named “Wakanda.”
From an anonymous Medical Student at American University (an excerpt from a longer article):
IDD64 @IDD64 asks: “What happened to “nobody’s saying sex isn’t real”?”
This is actually what compelled me to speak out about this practice in the first place. Well-intentioned non-medical people often assume that medical schools are teaching something like, “Gender identity can be fluid and varied, but biological sex is real, binary, and relevant in medical contexts.” This idea is around five years out of date in the most progressive of institutions. I have been told multiple times in several classes that biological sex is a social construct – not just gender. Granted, I can speak only for my institution, but this change has been frustrating and disturbing to witness.
Robert Woolley @RandomlyBob asks: “Do any of the required textbooks also avoid using those words? If not, might you ask those professors if they think the books are either inaccurate or offensive?”
Our curriculum is constantly subject to revision. Around two-thirds of our written materials have been updated with this new language. For the one-third that has remained out-of-date, our class has received multiple apologetic, itemized emails from course instructors in which they provide corrections, beg for forgiveness and patience, and avow to “do better”. In class, we have been given multiple histories in which the patient’s sex has been deleted, even for cases involving disorders which can manifest differently between the sexes. The words “female” and “male” are being erased and replaced.