Rex Murphy: When the woke come for conservatives of colour - "Professor Rima Azar, who was born in Lebanon during the horrors of a civil war — an experience, believe it or not, more “triggering” than a snippet from a Jordan Peterson talk — dissented from the radical left perspective that Canada is a “racist country.” Thereby she caught the inquisitorial eyes of some woke Mount A. students... Mount Allison, with that courage that now marks almost all universities education institutions, quickly leaped to suspend her, and without pay. Ah, Mount Allison, I presume you still have a philosophy department. Rima Azar is a Canadian. She has the right to speak her mind. To use the phrase beloved by so many, her “lived experience” makes her all the richer on this topic than the majority on the other side of the question. She has tasted some of the most bitter parts of life on this globe of ours. She knows real hurt, has seen pain and death. She came to Canada. She found a welcome. She found work in this “systemically racist” country. These facts — and this is my assumption, but I think it well-founded — told her (a) once a foreigner, (b) from the Middle East, (c) a woman, that, hey, this Canada is a fair and welcoming place. She suffers attacks on her character and is suspended from her job because she expressed praise for the country that accepted her. Off with her head!... If Canada is a place where an immigrant professor is attacked and hurt, for saying the country she came to, to escape the hell of civil war, to say in public that this country is not “systemically racist,” can be vilified and shamed, here’s my question: What kind of country have we become?"
Mount A students 'disheartened' by closed arbitration process for prof who offended them - "The Mount Allison Students' Union questions whether student complaints against a health psychology professor were taken seriously, given the secretive nature in which an arbitration process took place. Rima Azar was placed on a seven-month suspension without pay in May 2021 after an investigation into complaints that some posts on her personal blog were racist and discriminatory. An arbitration process took place earlier this year, with hearings held privately... Course timetables show Azar will be teaching classes in fall and winter... "Academic freedom is not synonymous with free speech and requires much greater consideration of the ends at which it is aimed and the context in which it is situated," the student union said in a statement earlier this month. "Academic freedom is not inherently absolute and untethered, but situated with its end-based goal of creating a non-toxic learning environment.""
Anyone opposing the Cultural Revolution is dangerous and toxic
Argumentative & too emotional - are Indians tough to work with? - The Economic Times - "Corporate Dossier asked expatriate CEOs to describe the most incorrigible traits of Indian work culture. The list we've compiled might upset you, but feel free to argue — which you will anyway:
We're always late... "In India, being late by 15 minutes for a meeting is not considered to be late," he sighs. "Schedules go haywire in India but people don't complain."...
We're very argumentative Indians, as Nobel laureate Amartya Sen tells us, are argumentative by nature and given the opportunity, we will debate and discuss till the cows at home... "Maybe it's because of an inductive approach to understanding things, but Indians make things more complex than they really are," he says. "I value the depth of thinking, but sometimes I have to just close the topic. Else there is complete chaos."...
Expat CEOs invariably see India's diversity as one of its strengths, but truth be told, it takes getting used to. "The diversity poses quite a challenge in terms of unanimity of operations, tweaking the offerings to different needs"...
It takes 3 of us to fix a light bulb...
"In Russia there is just one person doing that job. In sec tors like retail, there is always excess staff in India," he says. It's also very common in the hospitality industry, where guests are pampered with a level of service unheard of in the West. But splitting one person's job among three not only reduces wages, but also the challenge. Or, as Rex Nijhof, the Dutch chief of the Renaissance Mumbai Hotel puts it: "If you have something heavy and only two people available to move it, you have to find a way to build wheels on it. In India, you just get six more people."
We're too emotional... This makes simple performance appraisals a herculean task in Indian workplaces. Bosses are wary about giving negative feedback, however constructive it may be, since the receiver is quite likely to fly into a rage or burst into tears...
We don't trust easily...
"People avoid taking full responsibility for anything because they don't want to take any blame if things go wrong. Then if things do go wrong, they blame something else instead of taking responsibility."...
We're very hierarchical... We're lousy at work-life balance... We're don't follow due process...
We're all stuntmen... Giles Everitt has seen labourers atop skyscrapers, painting the walls without a proper harness or life-line. "If there is one thing I would like to change in Indian work culture, it is the attitude towards health and safety," he says...
We say what you want to hear. If someone says "I'm 99% sure I will be there," most of us know he doesn’t plan to be there at all. But for an expat CEO, such lines create big misunderstandings. New Zealander Glen Peat of Hyatt Hotels used to take a statement like "I'll be with you in five minutes" at face value -- and find himself waiting a long time. "It's ingrained in Indian culture. It's not very honest, but I've realised it's a way of being courteous"...
We do everything at the last minute... doing things at the last minute can lead to shoddy quality"
Clearly written and published by self-hating Indians
ArchitecturalRevival on Twitter - "I read old books because I would rather learn from those who built civilisation than those who tore it down."
Emotional Problems among Children with Same-Sex Parents: Difference by Definition - "biological parentage nullified risk alone and in combination with any iteration of factors. Joint biological parents are associated with the lowest rate of child emotional problems by a factor of 4 relative to same-sex parents, accounting for the bulk of the overall same-sex/opposite-sex difference."
Children do best with both biological parents
New Research on Same-Sex Households Reveals Kids Do Best With Mom and Dad - "Results reveal that, on eight out of twelve psychometric measures, the risk of clinical emotional problems, developmental problems, or use of mental health treatment services is nearly double among those with same-sex parents when contrasted with children of opposite-sex parents. The estimate of serious child emotional problems in children with same-sex parents is 17 percent, compared with 7 percent among opposite-sex parents, after adjusting for age, race, gender, and parent’s education and income. Rates of ADHD were higher as well—15.5 compared to 7.1 percent. The same is true for learning disabilities: 14.1 vs. 8 percent... while being bullied clearly aggravates emotional health, there was no difference in self-reported experience of having been bullied between the children of same-sex and opposite-sex parents... This is not the first time the NHIS data have been used to analyze same-sex households and child health. A manuscript presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the Population Association of America assessed the same data. Curiously, that manuscript overlooked all emotional health outcomes. Instead, the authors inquired only into a solitary, parent-reported measure of their “perception of the child’s overall health,” a physical well-being proxy that varies only modestly across household types. Hence, the authors readily concluded “no differences.” I’m not surprised. This juxtaposition provides a window into the state of the social science of same-sex households with children. Null findings are preferred—and arguably sought—by most scholars and journal editors. Indeed, study results seem to vary by author, not by dataset. It is largely a different approach to the presentation of data that distinguishes those population-based studies hailed by many as proof of “no differences” from those studies denounced by the same people as “junk science.” In fact, population-based surveys of same-sex households with children all tend to reveal the same thing, regardless of the data source. It’s a testimony to the virtues of random sampling and the vices of relying on nonrandom samples, which Sullins argues—in another published study—fosters “a strong bias resulting in false positive outcomes . . . in recruited samples of same-sex parents.” He’s right. Published research employing the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), the ECLS (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study), the US Census (ACS), the Canadian Census, and now the NHIS all reveal a comparable basic narrative, namely, that children who grow up with a married mother and father fare best at face value... The academy so privileges arguments in favor of same-sex marriage and parenting that every view other than resounding support—including research conclusions—has been formally or informally scolded... researchers have admitted the tendency to downplay “any inequities between same-sex partners . . . in part because of the dominant mantra that same-sex couples are more equal than different sex couples.”... It is profoundly ironic that social scientists make strong social constructionist arguments about nearly everything except sexual orientation. Stanford demographer Michael Rosenfeld’s survey project How Couples Meet and Stay Together (HCMST) reveals that while only 3 percent of heterosexual married persons reported being “at least sometimes attracted” to persons of a gender other than the gender of their current partner in the past year, the same was true of 20 percent of men in same-sex relationships and 33 percent of women in same-sex relationships. While the malleability of self-identified lesbian women is now taken for granted among social scientists of sexuality, the one-in-five figure among men in gay relationships is higher than most would guess... Unpublished research exploring the stability rates of same-sex and opposite-sex couples using data from yet more population-based surveys finds that claims about the comparability of same-sex and heterosexual couple stability (again, after a series of controls) are actually limited to couples without children. For couples with children, the dissolution rate for same-sex couples is more than double that of heterosexual couples"
The Dubious Assessment of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Adolescents of Add Health - "In this essay, we argue that researchers who base their investigations of nonheterosexuality derived from reports of romantic attractions of adolescent participants from Wave 1 of Add Health must account for their disappearance in future waves of data collection. The high prevalence of Wave 1 youth with either both-sex or same-sex romantic attractions was initially striking and unexpected. Subsequent data from Add Health indicated that this prevalence sharply declined over time such that over 70 % of these Wave 1 adolescents identified as exclusively heterosexual as Wave 4 young adults. Three explanations are proposed to account for the high prevalence rate and the temporal inconsistency: (1) gay adolescents going into the closet during their young adult years; (2) confusion regarding the use and meaning of romantic attraction as a proxy for sexual orientation; and (3) the existence of mischievous adolescents who played a “jokester” role by reporting same-sex attraction when none was present. Relying on Add Health data, we dismissed the first explanation as highly unlikely and found support for the other two. Importantly, these “dubious” gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents may have led researchers to erroneously conclude from the data that sexual-minority youth are more problematic than heterosexual youth in terms of physical, mental, and social health."
Clearly sexuality is immutable and grooming is impossible
Stability Rates of Same-Sex Couples: With and Without Children - "In contrast to earlier studies, several recent ones have claimed that stability rates among same-sex couples are similar to those of different-sex couples. This article reexamines these latest accounts and provides new evidence regarding stability rates using three large, nationally representative datasets from the United States and Canada. Confirming the earliest work, we find that same-sex couples are more likely to break up than different-sex couples. We find that the gap in stability is larger for couples with children, the very group for which concerns about stability are the most important."
No One is Born Gay (or Straight): Here Are 5 Reasons Why - "why aren’t scientists looking for the genetic causes of heterosexuality? Or masturbation? Or interest in oral sex? The reason is that none of these sex acts currently violate social norms, at least not strongly enough to be perceived as sexual aberrations. But this was not always true. In the 19th century, scientists were interested in the biological origins of the “masturbation perversion.” They were interested because they believed it was pathological, and because they wanted to know whether it could be repaired."
It's Not That "It Gets Better," It's That Heterosexuality is Worse - "One of the most popular gay and lesbian retorts to the homophobic assertion that gays should quit their shenanigans and choose heterosexuality is: “my god, don’t you think I would do that if I could? Who would choose a life of discrimination and homophobia? No rational person would do that, and ergo, I must have been born this way.” Blah, blah, blah. But despite the realities of homophobic bullying, violence, and discrimination (which I will speak to in a moment), this logic simply doesn’t ever ring true for me and I suspect it is more of a discursive habit than anything else. It certainly bolsters heteronormativity, by implying that heterosexual lives are free of gendered violence and suffering (which they are not) and by obscuring the profound forms of queer joy that accompany, and sometimes compensate for, queer suffering... gendered, classed, and racialized violence happens to straight people too, and in many ways, gendered and sexualized forms of violence and suffering are much more unrelenting for straight women"
I guess she hasn't seen the lesbian domestic violence rate
I Left Islam for Liberal Values. Now Woke Liberals Are Embracing a New Religion - "I felt the hijab was misogynistic, and I opposed the strain of violence that had emerged from our holy books. Then there were the blasphemy laws outlined in the Quran, which seemed like the opposite of the liberal values I believe in. As a secular man, I went about my life, working as a contractor for the Canadian military for over a decade in Kosovo, Sudan, Bosnia, Haiti, and then Afghanistan. I encountered other Muslims, and others like me, who were not longer Muslim. But when I came back to Canada in 2014, I returned to a different country than the one I had left. I had left a country that was proud of being the opposite of what bothered me about Islam, that was proud of a tradition of free inquiry and free speech, open debate and civil discourse. The Canada I returned to resembled the religion of my youth more than it did its opposite. I left a culture that was steeped in a sentiment that could be summed up as, "I may disagree with what you say, but I respect your right to say it." I returned to a culture summarized by, "I disagree with what you say, so shut up." Now, Ex-Muslims like me who criticized the religion of our youth were called horrible slurs: "house Muslims," "native informants," "Uncle Toms," or bounty bars, implying we were brown on the outside but white inside. Strangers called me a white supremacist for saying the hijab is misogynistic... Once they started calling it racist to criticize Islam, it was easy to shut the conversation down completely. The accusation meant the accused was morally beyond the pale, and thus completely dismissible. Words like micro-aggressions, trigger warnings, and safe spaces became mainstream. An emphasis on pervasive racism grew exponentially. To even question the extent to which racism was everywhere resulted in accusations of being a racist. Like with religious blasphemy codes, you can only talk about certain topics in specific ways. I couldn't help but notice there was an almost fundamentalist, faith-like aspect to these claims. It was as if in the years since I'd been gone, our society had decided to adopt the blasphemy codes of my youth. When I heard people asked to check their privilege or introspect the ways they have been racist, it sounded like the inner jihad that Muslims are supposed to perform to make sure they are on the correct path... In Islam, giving offense to the pious is considered a grave sin... You can see this idea that giving offense causes harm everywhere in the new critical social justice culture. Anything that gives offense to marginalized people must be repressed for the good of society. And anyone criticizing people of color too strenuously or offending them must be deplaformed and canceled. And just as in Islam, there is a jockeying for who is the accurate representation of the faith, Sunnis or Shia, in the social justice camp, believers decide who the true representatives of each oppressed group are. Fall afoul of the right political view and you will be denounced; people throw around terms such as "political blackness" or "multi-racial whiteness." Just as apostates from Islam are said to not have been real Muslims, detransitioners are told they were never really trans and Black people who speak out against the tenets of critical race theory are told they're not really Black. In Muslim countries, biology textbooks will censor evolution. Now, due to gender theory, biology is similarly coming into conflict with an ideology—and losing. A mixture of post-colonial theory and critical race theory is behind a push to disrupt texts, a call to decolonize the Western Canon and school curricula. Critical social justice ideologies are in direct conflict with Enlightenment values and the rigors of the scientific method, like Islam, and are thus a huge threat to liberalism—like Islam."
John Rich Blasts Other Country Music Stars For Their Silence As Leftist Ideologies ‘Aim To Erase What They Care About’ - "Libs have woven their sectors together while Conservatives are mostly independent operators who cut their own path. The libs have beat the pants off of us in that regard, and now have us pinned. I, with others are now building ‘new hills’ for ppl to run to. Exciting times ahead:)"
Sean Last on Twitter - "A challenge: is one person from the Editorial Board of @JConIdeas willing to state publicly that they agree with the content of this article? If not, why exactly did they publish it? https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/page/133"
"Social scientists have become so conformist and status quo pushing they they literally can’t understand the very idea of publishing controversial work if you don’t openly agree with it. Attitudes like this would be funny if they weren’t doing so much damage to science."
Ironically, showing why the Journal of Controversial Ideas is needed. Since when did a journal need to agree with what it published?!
Anti-woke Canadian rapper Tom MacDonald tops the charts - "Rapper Tom MacDonald, who grew up in Alberta and British Columbia, is known for his anti-woke, anti-government stance — and has amassed a right-wing fanbase for his bold lyrics — is rising to the top of mainstream music charts... His latest song Ghost was the number one most downloaded song in Apple iTunes music store on Thursday, according to Pop Vortex — a rarity for an independent artist. MacDonald’s name has largely steered clear of mainstream media headlines. In an interview with Fox News, he said that “people have become allergic to opinions in North America in these last five years.” He also discussed his song Fake Woke, in which he says U.S. rapper Eminem used to “gay bash” and sing about murdering his mom, but now “he doesn’t want fans if they voted for Trump.”... “There’s this performative wokeness that’s going on in society today and I think it’s important to point some fingers at the hypocrisy and the way that the world is changing — not for the better,” he said. He also called out cancel culture for going too far."
Why I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates - WSJ - "I’m not inclined to hire a graduate from one of America’s elite universities. That marks a change. A decade ago I relished the opportunity to employ talented graduates of Princeton, Yale, Harvard and the rest. Today? Not so much. As a graduate of Haverford College, a fancy school outside Philadelphia, I took interest in the campus uproar there last fall. It concerned “antiblackness” and the “erasure of marginalized voices.” A student strike culminated in an all-college Zoom meeting for undergraduates. The college president and other administrators promised to “listen.” During the meeting, many students displayed a stunning combination of thin-skinned narcissism and naked aggression. The college administrators responded with self-abasing apologies. Haverford is a progressive hothouse. If students can be traumatized by “insensitivity” on that leafy campus, then they’re unlikely to function as effective team members in an organization that has to deal with everyday realities. And in any event, I don’t want to hire someone who makes inflammatory accusations at the drop of a hat. Student activists don’t represent the majority of students. But I find myself wondering about the silent acquiescence of most students... I don’t want to hire a person well-practiced in remaining silent when it costs something to speak up... Normal kids at elite universities keep their heads down. Over the course of four years, this can become a subtle but real habit of obeisance, a condition of moral and spiritual surrender. Some resist. They would seem ideal for my organization, which aims to speak for religious and social conservatives. But even this kind of graduate brings liabilities to the workplace. I’ve met recent Ivy grads with conservative convictions who manifest a form of posttraumatic stress disorder. Others have developed a habit of aggressive counterpunching that is no more appealing in a young employee than the ruthless accusations of the woke. In recent years, I’ve taken stock of my assumptions about who makes for the best entry-level employee. I have no doubt that Ivy League universities attract smart, talented and ambitious kids. But do these institutions add value? My answer is increasingly negative. Dysfunctional kids are coddled and encouraged to nurture grievances, while normal kids are attacked and educationally abused. Listening to Haverford’s all-college Zoom meeting also made it clear that today’s elite students aren’t going to schools led by courageous adults. Deprived of good role models, they’re less likely to mature into good leaders themselves. My rule of thumb is to hire from institutions I advise young people to attend. Hillsdale College is at the top of that list, as are quirky small Catholic colleges such as Thomas Aquinas College, Wyoming Catholic College and the University of Dallas. In my experience, graduates from these sorts of places are well-educated. But more important, they’ve been supported and encouraged by their institutions, and they haven’t been deformed by the toxic political correctness that leaders of elite universities have allowed to become dominant. Large state universities and their satellite schools are also good sources. In my experience, top-performing students at Rutgers are as talented but less self-important than Ivy Leaguers. They’re more likely to accept the authority of those more experienced. This allows for better mentoring, which in turn produces better results over time. The biggest liability that comes with hiring graduates from places like Haverford and Harvard is that they have been socialized to panic over pseudocrises. Talk of systemic racism and fixation on pronouns inculcate in young people an apocalyptic urgency, a mentality that often disrupts the workplace and encourages navel-gazing about “diversity,” “inclusion” and other ill-defined notions that are far removed from the main work of my organization, which is good writing, good editing and good arguments. A few years ago a student at an Ivy League school told me, “The first things you learn your freshman year is never to say what you are thinking.” The institution he attended claims to train the world’s future leaders. From what that young man reports, the opposite is true. The school is training future self-censors, which means future followers."
Emily Ratajkowski: A single article in Vogue encapsulates the many confusions, or should I say insanities, of our elites - "Rarely does one article, written by a supermodel no less, encapsulate the insanity of our elite class all at once, like a distillation of all that’s woke in a few hundred words, but somehow Emily Ratajkowski has nailed it. From the cult of victimhood, to lamenting about the white man she’s married to, to fearing birthing another white man, to declaring gender at age 18, this one has it all and then some. Let’s start with the problem Ms. Ratajkowski has with white men, even though she’s married to one and is white as a ghost herself. In her opinion, we’re too privileged, too entitled, too uncaring, too something. The situation is so bad that even supermodels fear birthing a son these days as a result of all of the trauma experienced dealing with them... “I’m scared of having a son too, although not in the same way. I’ve known far too many white men who move through the world unaware of their privilege, and I’ve been traumatized by many of my experiences with them.” The poor supermodel is so stressed out at the thought of having a boy, she describes herself as “terrified”... One wonders if Ms. Ratajkowski would say the same thing about, let’s say, supermodels. Position of power in the world? Check! Lack of awareness? This is one of the most beautiful women on the planet Earth, also wealthy and famous beyond most people’s comprehension, bemoaning her trauma without any awareness of her own privilege in that regard, so let’s go with a check! Carelessness? Have any male readers out there been treated poorly by a beautiful woman in their lives? I’d say check. In reality, you could just as easily rephrase her statement from most men’s perspective: I’ve known far too many beautiful women who move through the world unaware of their privilege. What’s the point? People lack awareness of themselves? I humbly suggest Ms. Ratajkowski and her elite friends certainly score highly in that regard. Putting this another way, Ms. Ratajkowski has more power and privilege than 99% of the white men in the world... She first appeared on magazine covers at age 20 and has been rich and famous since not long thereafter. When did she find time to experience all of this trauma and hardship at the hands of white men? Who are these white men she’s speaking of anyway? Her international stardom was, in fact, launched by two white men who hired her to appear in their music videos. Are they on the list? Of course, she doesn’t say, but far be it from me to question her lived experience. She insists she’s not the only one this terrified either. “My friend who is the mother to a three-year-old boy tells me that she didn’t think she cared about gender until her doctor broke the news that she was having a son. She burst into tears in her office. ‘And then I continued to cry for a whole month’"... Apparently it got worse from there, after giving birth, the unnamed woman decided she “resented” her husband. “She told me she particularly hated—and she made an actual, physical list that she kept in her journal, editing it daily—how peacefully he slept. ‘There is nothing worse than the undisturbed sleep of a white man in a patriarchal world.’... ‘It was hard to come to terms with the fact that I was bringing yet another white man into the world.’” It is hard to come to terms with the amount of insanity contained in this statement. We live in a world where somewhere close to a billion people live on less than $1.90 per day. They have no running water or electricity, and are practically starving, but according to Ms. Ratajkowski’s no doubt elite friend, there’s nothing worse than a white man sleeping... She even half-jokes that she and her husband “won’t know the gender until our child is 18 and that they’ll let us know then.” Wait a minute, declaring gender at 18? I thought that was bad. Aren’t the woke upset with J.K. Rowling because she is against letting prepubescent children choose their gender? Now, here’s another progressive piling on, claiming her child can’t choose their gender until they’re 18 years of age. Isn’t that discriminatory at best, transphobic at worst? Beyond gender, the poor supermodel’s children are also going to face the constraints of time, motion, and gravity, but why bother tethering humanity to physical reality?... She confesses that “I still fight subconscious and internalized misogyny on a regular basis, catching myself as I measure the width of my hips against another woman’s. Who is to say I’d be able to protect my daughter from it?” This is misogyny in the year 2021? A woman comparing her body to another woman? Much like the rest of her laments, this one is entirely in her own head. Even setting aside that, as a model, Ms. Rajajkowski actually earns her living on her looks, how can the patriarchy possibly be responsible for how women think about each other in their own minds? If white supremacy is so insidious that a self-described progressive can’t get it out of her own head, what hope do any of us have? Of course, back in the real world, it should also go without saying that men compare themselves to other men, too. This isn’t misogyny, it’s humanity and her own neuroses. Ms. Ratajkowski apparently has plenty of those... Ultimately, it’s impossible to say if Ms. Ratajkowski truly believes what she’s written or she’s just catering her messaging to the ever expanding cult of victimhood currently afflicting even the most successful and privileged among us. The article reads like the perfect amalgamation of the latest woke obsessions, as if it were written by some woke computer algorithm. There’s the victimhood (she’s been traumatized), there’s the patriarchy and white supremacy (nothing worse than a white man sleeping), there’s misogyny (she’s obsessed about her body), there’s therapy (her minime), there’s fluid gender (at 18 years of age), and a complete and total lack of self awareness. In that regard, every time I read one of these articles I wonder if the author ever considers the shit storm that would result if they’d simply changed “white man” to “______ man” or, dare I suggest it, woman. Can you imagine claiming there was nothing worse than a black man sleeping or not wanting to bring another black man into the world?"
We're still told that no one hates white men
Patrick Carroll on Twitter - "A lot of people seem tolerant until you start disagreeing with them."
Michigan Students Accuse Celebrated Music Professor of Racism for Screening Othello - "Bright Sheng is a professor of composition at the University of Michigan. He was born in China in 1955; when he was a child, the Red Guards took away his family piano. Nevertheless, he grew up to become a widely celebrated musician: He received a MacArthur "genius" Fellowship in 2001, and has twice been a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in music. His undergraduate students should certainly count themselves lucky to be able to learn from him. Instead, they are demanding the university fire him for rendering the classroom an unsafe space... What was Sheng's transgression? He screened the 1965 version of Shakespeare's Othello in class as part of a lesson about how the play was adapted for the opera. This version stars Laurence Olivier, a white actor, who wore blackface to portray the protagonist Othello, a Moor. The choice was controversial even at the time, and today, the portrayal is considered by many to be akin to a racial caricature... his protestations that he is not a racist only further enraged the students. "Professor Sheng responded to these events by crafting an inflammatory 'apology' letter to the department's students in which he chose to defend himself by listing all of the BIPOC individuals who he has helped or befriended throughout his career"... A significant number of Sheng's students, former students, and colleagues have denounced him as a racist"
Never apologise to the woke
Noah Carl on Twitter - "Social scientists are meant to be interested in culture. Yet because of their overwhelming left-wing skew, they've shown almost no interest in the Great Awokening, which constitutes the most rapid shift in elite culture in modern history."
‘The Atlantic’ publishes article on the rosary as symbol of far-right, violent extremism - "An article published Sunday in The Atlantic magazine suggests the rosary has become a symbol of violent, right-wing extremism in the United States. The article set off a frenzy of reactions among Catholics, ranging from amusement to grave concern over what some see as anti-Catholic sentiment. The magazine later changed the article’s headline from "How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol" to "How Extremist Gun Culture is Trying to Co-Opt the Rosary." Among other edits to the text, an image of bullet holes forming the shape of a rosary was replaced with a picture of a rosary. These editorial changes, nonetheless, left the article’s thesis that there is a connection between the rosary and extremism intact... Asked to comment on the article, Robert P. George, professor of political theory at Princeton University and former chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), told CNA: "It looks to me like the guy who is politicizing the rosary and treating it as a weapon in the culture war is … Daniel Panneton. I know nothing about the guy other than what he says in the article. I hadn’t heard of him before. Although it’s hard to miss the classic anti-Catholic tropes in the piece, perhaps he isn’t actually a bigot. Maybe he just overwrought and needs to take an aspirin or two and lie down for a while." Chad Pecknold, theology professor at Catholic University of America, told CNA the publication of the article points to a "theo-political" conflict in the culture. "The politically elite core in left-liberal media hate Western civilization and they mean to topple every natural and supernatural sign of it. That’s why it’s not sufficient to simply run a piece on right-wing gun cultures, but they must tie it to something which is theologically central to the civilization they feel most threatens their progressive ziggurat. It’s a sign of the theo-political conflict which now grips us; even still, they severely underestimate the power of Our Lady to reign victorious over evil," Pecknold said. Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, OP, a Dominican priest of the Province of St. Joseph, told CNA, "The article is a long-running stream of inaccuracies, logical fallacies, and distortions." The author, he said, fails to understand that "the notion of 'spiritual combat' has been with the Church from time immemorial. Recall that a traditional view of Confirmation is that it made one a 'soldier for Christ.'" "The problem is that The Atlantic does not seem to understand what metaphor means. In no wise, does the notion of rosary as 'combat' imply physical violence," Pietrzyk added... Eduard Habsburg, Hungary's Ambassador to the Holy See, responded by conceding the rosary is indeed a weapon — used for centuries against evil... he refers to Catholic beliefs as evidence of “extremism.”... Pietrzyk, the Dominican priest interviewed by CNA said, "The author takes what are basic Catholic positions on the nature of the Church, Christian morality, and the like, and posit that they are somehow 'extremist.' This is classic misdirection.""
There is only one religion you can hate
Weird, liberals tell us that Muslim Jihad doesn't mean war, but inner struggle