The Origins of the Cruel Ritual of Diversity Training - "It was born the day after Martin Luther King Jr. died. On April 5, 1968, Jane Elliott, an Iowa third-grade teacher, conducted an experiment intended to inform her students what it was like to be non-white in America. Elliott staged a world in which her radical view of race relations in the country was produced within her class of white students. Brown-eyed students were collared, ostracized, insulted, and bullied by their teacher and the blue-eyed students. Then the process was reversed, and blue-eyed students became the targets. Elliot’s intention was to parallel the operation of racial inequality in American society and thereby counteract and eliminate the prejudice undergirding it. But research on the efficacy of Elliott’s method at reducing the propensity of children to play the deeply ingrained game of in-group/out-group has shown no conclusive results. Some studies show incremental reduction of attitudes of preference for racial in-group and distance from some out-groups, while others find very little or no change from baseline attitudes, and still others indicate that diversity re-education may simply encourage whites to emphasize their own hardships to avoid classification in the dominant group. Elliott quickly adapted her experiment for adults, and the level of psychic bullying was significantly amplified with the older subjects. Any of the several films of these experiments (The Eye of the Storm; A Class Divided; How Racist Are You?) can instructively be consulted for evidence of the sharp cruelty at the origin of the diversity training ritual... She’s challenged by a brown-eyed white woman: “But these people are people. You’re assuming that they’re racists and they’ve got a lesson to be learned.” A brown-eyed white man defends this claim: “I just think the logic is a bit faulty.” Elliott’s response: “Listen, sonny, I don’t care what you think, do you understand that? [with dripping, mocking sarcasm] Some of us white folks would rather not see white folks verbally, psychologically, mentally, and emotionally abused.” A black aide to the experiment then chimes in: “This is an exercise for them to understand that this is what comes to you because of the way you look.” If the goal is simply to ridicule whites, then Elliott’s method is adequate to the task... Alas, there is little evidence to support those claims. Musa al-Gharbi, a fellow in sociology at Columbia, summarizes a great deal of research and concludes here that mandatory diversity training often reinforces any existing biases that people may have and is “demonstrably ineffective or even counterproductive.” While some studies show positive effects of diversity in higher education settings, they rely on indirect measures heavily tainted by distorting factors... That many teachers fervently believe that diversity is a good thing is not in dispute, but there is no necessary relationship between this fervent belief and the claim that diversity objectively improves student learning and scholarly output at an institution. In the 20 years since my encounter with that collection of studies, research on the effects of diversity still hasn’t addressed this serious methodological problem. Occasionally, additional forms of data are added to the surveys of faculty and students, but these are invariably also indirect data that do not effectively answer the question. For example, one large national study claimed to show positive educational outcomes that used self-reporting by students on their educational gains as evidence. Anyone who has spent time in an educational institution understands how imperfectly the student’s self-perception of his level of knowledge coincides with objective measures of that same variable. The cynic might claim that there are good reasons that the research on diversity relies on such data for its claims. The subjective data reveal just what the advocates want. Why go searching for additional, more objective information that is likely to complicate matters? The films of the Elliott experiments reveal the emergence of the Manichaean view on race that has come to dominate elite American culture: Racial identity is everything, individual will and behavior are nothing, and the history of American society is little more than group-based oppression. Elliot ferociously denigrates whites who say that it is meaningless to define someone as racist without consideration of that person’s intentions and behavior. She declares that there is no agency involved in being a victim or an oppressor. Supposedly, these are objective statuses assigned by birth in a structurally racist society. No disagreement with that claim is permitted. Contemporary diversity training reinforces her view. Consider, for example, this talk by a former Bucknell diversity officer, who claimed that no white person can meaningfully say “I am not a racist” and suggested that whites who disagree are de facto supporters of the violent “racial tyranny” that is the United States. This is the toxic core of diversity education and training in contemporary higher education, the fruit produced by the seeds planted a half-century ago by Jane Elliott."
Meme - The Meme Policeman: "Santa's reindeer can violate every law of physics and thermodynamics, but apparently are bound to laws of biology because feminism."
Feminist News: "Male reindeers lose their antlers in winter and females don't, so Santa's sleigh is actually pulled by a team of women... Of course it is."
The Meme Policeman: "Also it's transphobic to assume they're all women"
Jase Young: "Imagine being so hung up on wanting to feel superior that you have to claim girl power for a make believe figure of a holiday"
Zachary Goshorn: "The reindeer bullied the shit out of Rudolph, so, yeah they were female."
Tony Curiale: "So now they know what a woman is"
Weird. We're told that in fiction, you can do anything you want. "If you're writing a fairy tale with flying reindeer and misandry, then you enjoy flying reindeer and misandry. "Realism" is an excuse."
Comments: "If you don't know that the plural of deer is still deer, you don't deserve to have an opinion on the subject. Kind of like a uterus or something."
"Feminists say they’re not anti-men, but constantly post stuff like this."
"Genetics for me, not thee."
"Oh so NOW the laws of biology apply."
"Now it makes sense why they were all so mean to Rudolph for looking different"
"That’s why he yells “ho ho ho”"
Santa’s reindeer could be female or castrated males - "While most male reindeer shed their antlers before Christmastime, the antlers of castrated male reindeer fall off at a different time. So, Santa’s reindeer could be female or castrated males... Roberts says most of the reindeer used to pull sleds are castrated males because “they are easier to handle.”"
What the 'math is racist' argument gets wrong about equality rights - "The decision is an opportunity to consider how the guarantee of equality under the Charter has metastasized in the last forty years since its adoption and offers a somewhat hopeful check on s. 15’s drift towards creating positive obligations on the state to produce uniform outcomes between all societal groups. From the perspective of the candidates and the Divisional Court, substantive equality demanded that the government fill in any gaps in outcomes between groups, even if that means eliminating the requirement of proving basic skills for those who would educate our children."
The Meme Policeman | Facebook - "The “banned books” narrative was always bs, as I’ve repeatedly shown on this page, but it was very effective. School board elections across the country rejected conservatives. Where I live, the Moms For Liberty type challengers were soundly defeated, like 2 to 1. Which surprised me since I live in a relatively sane family-focused suburban area where I thought parents would be freaked out by the woke stuff in schools. Anecdotally, the main concern I saw in our community was that there would be “book bans” from the M4L types. People unironically feared books would be banned despite no books actually banned anywhere. There was just some inkling that books were banned down in Florida or something. Of course, when you actually talk with them they quickly realize they have no rational fear of book bans, they can easily obtain whatever books they wish for their kids and that won’t change. Of all the things to worry about with your children, “banned books” shouldn’t even register. Sane people realize this once you have them actually think about it. But the narrative was powerful. So if you wonder why the banned book hysteria was spread everywhere, it’s because it worked."
Japanese netizens repulsed by Fable heroine’s new look - "Serving as another example of the video games industry being obliviously out of touch with fans and intent on destroying the medium with a biased political agenda, the Fable remake trailer earned a high amount of dislikes when it was released"
CTV News: Ex-military general says Canada being destroyed by 'woke movement' : canada - "[The culture war] was engineered in the U.S. to shut down Occupy Wall Street. First, 2008 happened. A bunch of corporations made stupid decisions and were on the brink of bankruptcy. The state bailed them out. People initially kinda swallowed it, but then the pressure started mounting. In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street was gaining popularity. Then what, Obama amended an act that was preventing domestic dissemination of propaganda (note the extremely vague, opaque and non-specific language in the Wikipedia article), and the genie was let out of the bottle. The big media started forcing social justice topics exponentially. The class war was swiftly swept under the rug and replaced with the identity wars. In the meanwhile, the middle class gave up retirement, having kids, property ownership, and is finally approaching the empty stomach territory. Well, maybe now they will notice."
Half of college students surveyed fear expressing their ideas in classrooms - "Intelligent.com surveyed 500 conservative, 500 liberal, and 500 moderate students. This study found that even students whose political views skew more to the center or left of the ideological spectrum are refraining from expressing opinions on political and social issues out of concern for facing consequences from loss of respect and ridicule to jeopardized grades.
52% of all college students say they “always” or “often” refrain from expressing views on political and social issues in classrooms out of concern for potential consequences
Conservative students are slightly more likely than moderate or liberal students to say they refrain “always” or “often”
Losing the respect of their classmates and professors, being ridiculed or confronted, and jeopardizing their grades are the consequences students fear most
Conservative students are slightly more likely than moderate or liberal students to be willing to hear a lecture from a guest speaker, or take a class with a professor who has differing viewpoints...
To James M. Patterson, an Associate Professor of Politics at Ava Maria University in Florida, these findings are not altogether shocking. “While I teach at a relatively conservative, Catholic institution, I have also taught at institutions that have a left-of-center culture,” says Patterson. At both types of institutions, Patterson says, “I find that many students simply have no idea how to disagree constructively, or even if constructive disagreement is possible. Students seem to believe that disagreement is taking sides. Hence, they can only imagine that the potential consequences will be, at minimum, to alienate some of their fellow students. At worst, they might end up fodder for some kind of social media-driven ostracization. It is vital to show students that there are alternatives, namely greater understanding of the issue and respect for differing opinions on how to resolve it.”... For liberal students, the top three concerns are losing their classmates’ respect (37%), being ridiculed or confronted (37%), and putting their physical safety at risk (35%). Conservative students, meanwhile, are less concerned with their physical well-being, and more about standing with peers and professors. The top three fears among this group are losing their professors’ respect (40%), losing their classmates’ respect (40%), and jeopardizing their grade (39%)... We also asked students if they are refraining from expressing opinions in other settings, like social situations or on social media. In online spaces, 58% of conservative students, 53% of moderate students, and 51% of liberals “always” or “often” refrain from expressing opinions on political or social issues, out of concern for potential consequences. Students are more likely to speak openly when socializing with peers in person"
Lena Dunham Denies Donald Glover's Claim She Used N-Word on Set of HBO's 'Girls'
Amazing how one accusation about using the forbidden word sets off fireworks. Being woke doesn't save you from the Sword of Damocles
NeuroDivergent Rebel (they/them/Xe/Xem) 🧠 🏳️🌈 on X - "Why are people who use the any of founding fathers (or Christopher Columbus) as their profile photo always the worst kind of people? Yes, I’m judging. 👀"
We're still told that liberals don't hate their countries
Jamil Jivani: How the regressive left distorts Black history - "Woodson argues that the “radical left” falsely present their political organizations as an extension of past Black social movements. With co-author Joshua Mitchell, Woodson wrote in the Wall Street Journal that past Black social movements in the U.S. were diverse in their strategies and tactics, “but all emphasized human agency, sought liberation, and rejected despair.” Movements like Black Lives Matter stray far from this tradition by “disdaining exhortations toward work, family and faith as ‘respectability politics’ ” and “(giving) up on black America and (encouraging) its needless suffering.” California provides another example of rewriting Black history. The state’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum for public schools features an article titled “Bringing Black Lives Matter into the Classroom,” which calls Rosa Parks’ and John Lewis’s nonviolent civil rights movement “docile” and “passive.” A reported six million students will be taught lessons from this curriculum. Former legal counsel and speechwriter to Martin Luther King Jr., Clarence Jones, wrote a powerful letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom denouncing the curriculum for containing “defamatory falsehoods” about Black history. Braving through police brutality, fire hoses and German Shepherds is far from passive. Risking one’s life to organize a bus boycott or March on Washington is not docile. You may ask why a public school curriculum in America’s largest state would make such claims about an iconic nonviolent movement. The relevant article in the curriculum states plainly that educators should be concerned that “prevailing narratives” are “condemning louder, more militant tactics.” Apparently, favouring nonviolence is controversial in California."
Richard Hanania on X - "In 1917, black soldiers in Houston went around murdering random white people. 16 civilians and police officers died, in addition to 4 rioters killed by friendly fire. The Army just set aside the rioters' convictions and granted them honorable discharges because racism."
Meme - "I feel like this needs to be posted periodically to refresh people's memories.
American Slavery: 246 years. 1619-1865. Segregation: 89 years. 1865-1954
Emmett Till died in the green zone"
These are the same people mocking those who still bring up the injustices of covid hysteria for not moving on
Clearly historical American injustices are more salient than contemporary ones, because we must live in the past forever when it suits the liberal agenda and history is more important than the present
Email invite for ‘electeds of color’ holiday party mistakenly sent to all Boston city councilors - "A high-ranking member of Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration issued an apology after an email invitation for an “electeds of color” holiday party was mistakenly sent out to all members of the Boston City Council, 25 Investigates has learned. Denise DosSatnos, Wu’s director of City Council relations, sent an email to the council’s “honorable members” that read, “On behalf of Mayor Michelle Wu, I cordially invite you and a guest to the Electeds of Color Holiday Party on Wednesday, December 13 at 5:30 p.m. at the Parkman House, 33 Beacon Street.”"
Segregation is good when liberals do it. Of course, if you criticise this you are racist
Boston mayor defends segregated holiday party for 'electeds of color,' reveals it's a tradition - " As part of her defense, she revealed that this segregated party has been going on for over a decade, is held annually by a different member of the "electeds of color" club, and that this year it was Wu's turn to play host... In agreement with Wu was "elected of color" Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson who said there was "no need for apologies at all" and the "email should not offend anyone.""
Libs of TikTok on X - "REPORT: The Mayor of Boston is abusing her position! Here’s footage of the Mayor of Boston @MayorWu getting into a car accident a few months ago. She was driving in a police cruiser which ran a red light. She claimed she was on her way to an event but it was not on her calendar for that morning. It’s against the law to use a police car with sirens and lights if it’s not an emergency or it’s not for public service. She hit a car carrying a mom and her baby who both went to the hospital. The mom is a lyft driver and this is her sole income. She was out of work for weeks."
No-one dare question woke orthodoxy at our universities - "I have decided to leave a secure Professorship at a University of London college after 20 years to move to the independent-minded University of Buckingham. The decision came at the tail end of a five-year campaign by radical activists to tarnish my reputation and get me fired from my job. In 2018, I agreed to take part in a debate at London’s Conway Hall initially entitled “Is Rising Ethnic Diversity a Threat to the West?” featuring mainstream commentators Matthew Goodwin, David Aaronovitch, Claire Fox and Trevor Phillips. None of us held that view but the point was to set out a controversial statement as a foil for debate. Which is supposed to be the point of public life in a free society, and certainly at university. The panel featured a mix of ideologies, races and genders, but this wasn’t sufficient for woke left ideologues, many of them academics, who signed an open letter denouncing us for entrenching “white supremacy”. A millennial member of staff then wrote to me to say I shouldn’t participate. I respectfully said I would be attending, and despite being Head of Department and her line manager, her woke self-righteousness would not take no for an answer. This put crosshairs on my back, mobilising the radical staff-student-twitter complex. In the ensuing five years I faced several twitter pile-ons from student union radicals and their allies and an open letter denouncing me and calling on my university to fire me... my greater worry was the potential for activists to block my research by denying it ethics approval. I had known others whose work was effectively censored through this choke point and this was a risk I was unwilling to take... Each complaint was a drawn-out process involving considerable uncertainty and anxiety. Even without any actual penalty, the ‘process is the punishment’ as some academics have noted. In such a climate, I shied away from contentious issues in class and held back from expressing certain views in writing. This is not how a free society should work. Indeed, a major 2022 survey shows that 7 in 10 right-leaning academics in US universities say they are worried for their jobs or reputations because of how others might construe their words... There are 150 non-leftist research centres in the US, such as the Hoover Institution, but none in Britain."
Qatar is responsible for the decline, antisemitism of US universities - "A PENINSULA that protrudes from Saudi Arabia’s hip and faces Iranian shores, Qatar has become American universities’ leading foreign source of money, according to a study by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy... A country the size of Cyprus, with a citizenry smaller than Buffalo’s, is not a natural funder of a superpower’s higher education... Qatar’s academic meddling is but one part of its manipulation of the outer world, an effort begun in 1996 when the princedom launched Al Jazeera, the Arab world’s first serious effort to establish an international news organization. CELEBRATED AT the time by gullible Westerners as a harbinger of Arab freedom, Al Jazeera indeed parted with previous Middle Eastern norms, stinging Arab governments in ways Arab media had previously avoided. There was only one caveat: Al Jazeera attacked anyone’s government, except its Qatari masters’. It was a microcosm of the Qatari Principle, which uses Western tools to attack Western values, and pretends to be a bastion of neutrality à la Switzerland, while actually waltzing with both sides of any conflict. With Al Jazeera, the Qatari Principle meant championing freedom of speech and at the same time abusing it. In America, it meant granting Uncle Sam a major military hub, and at the same time backing notoriously anti-Western engines like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. In Saudi Arabia, the Qatari Principle meant joining Riyadh’s war in Yemen, but bankrolling its enemies in Syria. And in Israel, it meant doing business and even diplomacy with Jerusalem, but at the same time financing Hamas. For years, the West tolerated all this duplicity, whether because it was seen as harmless or because its benefits seemed higher than its costs. Well, this forgiveness must now change. THE GRAVITY of Qatar’s finagling with world affairs was laid bare in last year’s World Cup."
Foreign money is only a problem when it threatens the liberal agenda
Elon Musk to Start STEM-Focused Primary and Secondary School in Austin, Texas - Bloomberg - "The university will employ “experienced faculty” and feature a traditional curriculum “alongside hands-on learning experience including simulations, case studies, fabrication/design projects and labs”... Home to the University of Texas’ main campus, Austin has become of hotbed of higher-education innovation. The University of Austin, launched two years ago as an alternative to the “illiberalism” of traditional US colleges, plans to open in the fall with an initial class of 100 students. The school, backed by prominent people in academia and finance, including the historian Niall Ferguson, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, has raised about $200 million in private donations."
No wonder the left hate him as "far right"
What Universities Have Done to Themselves - "The idea of this man—a true scholar who attempts to find the honest truth—seems inapplicable to the current moment. And the reason is the three words he uses—“in good faith”—to define how the historian must act. In the DEI/woke regime, the good faith of the scholar is sacrificed to political fashion. In going all in on the regime, those who run the universities negate their own worth. Faculty and professors, administrators and department heads lower their own standing. Because they are not now seen as people of the mind, of the intellect, but as mere operatives, enforcers. They thus give up their place of respect in the public imagination. Regular people used to imagine what a university looks like—rows of gleaming books, learned professors, an air of honest inquiry. That isn’t now a picture the public can see. Now it’s something else, less impressive, less moving. Less important to our continuance as a people. The elites who run our elite colleges are killing their own status. They are also lowering the esteem in which college graduates are held. Your primary job as a student is taking in. You read, learn, connect this event with that, apply your imagination, empathize, judge. It is a spacious act—it takes time to absorb, reflect, feel—which is why you’re given four whole years to do it. But if the public senses that few are studying like independent scholars in there, not enough are absorbing the expertise of their field, that they’ve merely been instructed to internalize a particular worldview and parrot it back . . . Well, if that’s the case, who needs them? Is it even worth having them around in the office? The people of a country have a greater stake in all this than universities and their students understand. And the elite schools are lowering their own standing more than they know."
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria Slams American Universities: No Longer Seen as ‘Bastions of Excellence, But as Partisan Outfits’ - "“When one thinks of America’s greatest strengths, the kind of assist the world looks at with admiration and envy, America’s elite universities would one have been at the top of that list, the anchor said. “But the American public had been losing faith in these universities for good reason.”... The CNN anchor dissected the issue even further “To understand their performance, we have to understand the broad shift that has taken place at elite universities, which has gone from being centers of excellence to institutions pushing political agendas.” According to Zakaria, “American universities have been neglecting a core focus on excellence in order to pursue a variety of agendas, many go them clustered around diversity and inclusion,” which began with “the best of intentions.” “But those good intentions have morphed into a dogmatic ideology and turned these universities into places where the pervasive goals are political and social engineering, not academic merit,” the CNN anchor continued. But the importance of diversity on college campuses ignores one crucial part according to Zakaria, political diversity... The CNN anchor urges universities to “abandon this long misadventure into politics, retrain their gaze on their core strengths, and rebuild their reputations as centers of research and learning.”"
Clearly a conservative who hates learning
How 'benevolent sexism' undermines Asian women with foreign accents in the workplace - "we found these seemingly positive effects of amplified warmth evaluations are only observed in industries traditionally considered feminine, such as fashion and cosmetics. In contrast, there are no such positive effects in industries perceived as masculine, like oil and gas. This warmth bias contributes to occupational gender segregation, funnelling women towards lower-paying and lower-prestige industries and jobs. At the same time, women are being steered away from industries where they are already severely under-represented... accents are not an explicit protected category under the Canadian Human Rights Act, although they are related to the protected category of national or ethnic origin. This lack of protection undermines the legitimacy of accent discrimination... This stands in contrast to a popular solution of “accent reduction.” Accent reduction programs stigmatize accents by suggesting they need to be corrected. Instead of focusing on what workers with accents can do to “fit in,” organizations need to focus on removing systemic barriers that workers with accents face."
It's interesting that something that helps women is bad when it doesn't fit the liberal agenda of shoving women into "male" industries
The list of protected characteristics will never shrink