Seattle Office of Civil Rights About to Be Sued for Unapologetic Racism

It's the year 2020 and Christopher Rufo is about to file a civil rights complaint against Seattle's Office of Civil Rights. No, you didn't misunderstand me.

Rufo is the director of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty. He’s directed four documentaries for PBS and is currently a contributing editor for City Journal, where he covers homelessness, addiction, mental illness, crime, and other afflictions.  He explains:

Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights has developed a “race and social justice” curriculum for all 10,000 city employees.

I’ve obtained new documents from the city’s segregated “whites-only” trainings, which induct white employees into the cult of critical race theory.

The trainers require white employees to examine their “relationships with white supremacy, racism, and whiteness” and explain how their “[families] benefit economically from the system of white supremacy even as it directly and violently harms Black people.”

Under the banner of “antiracism,” Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights is now explicitly endorsing principles of segregationism, group-based guilt, and race essentialism—ugly concepts that should have been left behind a century ago.

Rufo has posted the training documents used by the Office on his website.

Here's a sample from the training material:

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Andrew Sullivan Discusses the Zero Sum Game Trap of Critical Theory

In "The Roots Of Wokeness," Andrew Sullivan notes that critical theorists ignore history. They throw many of the principles of classic liberalism into the trash, including the lessons we've learned from the Enlightenment. They do this as a prerequisite for the only kind of progress that they are able to envision. Sullivan's discussion occurs in the context of his review of a brand new book that dissects the critical theorist movements:

Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender and Identity,” by former math prof James Lindsay and British academic, Helen Pluckrose. It’s as deep a dive into this often impenetrable philosophy as anyone would want to attempt. But it’s well worth grappling with.

By now, most of us are aware of the linguistic territorial wars being waged by the Woke and their efforts to shrink the Overton Window whenever they feel threatened by opposing arguments and evidence. There is much more to the movement, however, and it attacks classical liberalism itself. It also denies the long dramatic history of social progress and seeks to impose its own brand of authoritarianism:

For me, these theorists do something less forgivable than abuse the English language. They claim that their worldview is the only way to advance social progress, especially the rights of minorities, and that liberalism fails to do so. This, it seems to me, is profoundly untrue. A moral giant like John Lewis advanced this country not by intimidation, or re-ordering the language, or seeing the advancement of black people as some kind of reversal for white people. He engaged the liberal system with non-violence and persuasion, he emphasized the unifying force of love and forgiveness, he saw black people as having agency utterly independent of white people, and changed America with that fundamentally liberal perspective.

The gay rights movement, the most successful of the 21st century, succeeded in the past through showing what straights and gays have in common, rather than seeing the two as in a zero-sum conflict, resolved by prosecuting homophobia or “queering” heterosexuality. The women’s rights movement has transformed the role of women in society in the past without demonizing all men, or seeing misogyny as somehow embedded in “white supremacy”. As we have just seen, civil rights protections for transgender people—just decided by a conservative Supreme Court—have been achieved not by seeing people as groups in constant warfare, but by seeing the dignity of the unique individual in pursuing their own happiness without the obstacle of prejudice.

In fact, I suspect it is the success of liberalism in bringing this kind of non-zero-sum pluralism into being that rattles the critical theorists the most. Because it suggests that reform is always better than revolution, that empirical truth is on the side of the genuinely oppressed and we should never fear understanding things better, that progress is both possible in a liberal democracy, and more securely rooted than in other systems, because it springs from a lively, informed debate, and isn’t foisted on society by ideologues.

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Colin Wright Discusses the Relevance of Binary Gonads to the Purported Sex Continuum

In an article at Quillette titled, "JK Rowling is Right—Sex Is Real and It Is Not a “Spectrum," biologist Colin Wright discusses the importance of gonads to determining the sex of individual organisms in every species of animals except, apparently, human animals. Here is an excerpt:

Both of these arguments—the argument from intersex conditions and the argument from secondary sex organs/characteristics—follow from fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of biological sex, which is connected to the distinct type of gametes (sex cells) that an organism produces. As a broad concept, males are the sex that produce small gametes (sperm) and females produce large gametes (ova). There are no intermediate gametes, which is why there is no spectrum of sex. Biological sex in humans is a binary system.

It is crucial to note, however, that the sex of individuals within a species isn’t based on whether an individual can actually produce certain gametes at any given moment. Pre-pubertal males don’t produce sperm, and some infertile adults of both sexes never produce gametes due to various infertility issues. Yet it would be incorrect to say that these individuals do not have a discernible sex, as an individual’s biological sex corresponds to one of two distinct types of evolved reproductive anatomy (i.e. ovaries or testes) that develop for the production of sperm or ova, regardless of their past, present, or future functionality. In humans, and transgender and so-called “non-binary” people are no exception, this reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female over 99.98 percent of the time.

The binary distinction between ovaries and testes as the criterion determining an individual’s sex is not arbitrary, nor unique to humans. The evolutionary function of ovaries and testes is to produce either eggs or sperm, respectively, which must be combined for sexual reproduction to take place. If that didn’t happen, there would be no humans. While this knowledge may have been cutting edge science in the 1660s, it’s odd that we should suddenly treat it as controversial in 2020. . . . In humans, and transgender and so-called “non-binary” people are no exception, this reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female over 99.98 percent of the time. . . .

By way of analogy: We flip a coin to randomize a binary decision because a coin has only two faces: heads and tails. But a coin also has an edge, and about one in 6,000 (0.0166 percent) throws (with a nickel) will land on it. This is roughly the same likelihood of being born with an intersex condition. Almost every coin flip will be either heads or tails, and those heads and tails do not come in degrees or mixtures. That’s because heads and tails are qualitatively different and mutually exclusive outcomes. The existence of edge cases does not change this fact. Heads and tails, despite the existence of the edge, remain discrete outcomes.

Continue ReadingColin Wright Discusses the Relevance of Binary Gonads to the Purported Sex Continuum

Resigning Psychologist: Anti-Racism Replaces Science at the Academic Excellence National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC)

Russell Warne has resigned from NAGC. He explains:

[A] recent turn of events has made me unable to continue to be part of NAGC. On July 14, 2020, the organization’s board announced its “Expanded Vision for NAGC.” This document is the board’s plan “to confront systemic racism and advance equity for Black students in gifted education.” While I support diversifying gifted programs and providing educational opportunities to children from all demographic groups, this document sacrifices open scholarly inquiry on the altar of social justice activism.

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“Individuals with a Cervix”?

A recent Tweet by evolutionary biologist Geoffrey Miller, reminiscent of J.K. Rowling's famous "people who menstruate" Tweet:

I posted this on FB. It drew the following response from Emily Lemonds:

There are men who have cervices and there are women who don’t. There are people who do not identify as men or women who have them. They do not deserve to have their existence erased for purposes of linguistic laziness.

My Response:

That is such a melodramatic and groundless accusation, that anyone is causing anyone else to "have their existence erased" by using a perfectly useful word so deeply rooted in biology and history! Your accusation, as I see it, is a completely unhinged metaphor suggesting physical injury where there is absolutely none (though there might be frustration). No one would be physically or emotionally injured if the CNN announcement used the word "women." I also disagree with you about who is being linguistically lazy. If you take a random survey of 1,000 people who have cervices whether they consider themselves to be "women," you'll prove my case. I believe in continuing to allow each of those people who has a cervix to feel free to use the word "women" A) to refer to themselves and B) to capture the narratives of their lives, guilt-free. The 99+% of women who have cervices did not start this linguistic territorial war.

A person named Robert Pedroli then commented:

Cervical cancer screenings are recommended to start .... This is how to say it. Eric then you don’t need to get riled up about this.

My response:

I stand up to protect people who are being bullied. That's the way I'm wired. Do you really think it's rude to use the word "woman" to refer to people with cervices? I should make clear that I have no problem with anyone (with any permutation of sexual organs) referring to themselves as a "woman." If a person with a penis wants me to call them a "woman" I will happily do so.

Continue Reading“Individuals with a Cervix”?