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Anthropology Free-For-All

Striving For Diversity

June 25, 2025 71 Comments

And so you must be excluded:

A discussion ensues.

Update, via the comments:

It must be quite strange to inhabit a milieu in which the normal meanings of words are either ignored or inverted. By people who aspire to be professional writers. Communicators of ideas.

Such that safety translates as a compulsory and intensely neurotic following of very narrow ideological fashion.

A social environment in which celebrating diversity means pointedly and gleefully excluding anyone we suspect of possibly have differing opinions on something or other, whether expressed or not, and doing so in ways that, to others, those less progressive, seem petty and weird.

Something along those lines.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Reheated

Reheated (108)

June 23, 2025 91 Comments

For newcomers, more items from the archives:

What You Wish For.

Embezzlement, magic blackness, and intersectional complications.

The company in question, Raheem AI, is a chatbot app launched in 2017 with a stated mission to abolish the police and to replace them with “community-based crisis teams” and “liberated dispatchers” – namely, anti-police activists and likeminded social workers – who would respond to emergencies armed with bottles of water and lots of “social justice.”

I know. You’re tempted to invest.

In the comments, Mags notes the claim that Mr Anderson committed “the perfect crime,” on account of those he robbed being much too busy fretting about “the way that police treat masculine-presenting black people.” She adds, not unfairly, a plausible definition of the perfect crime: “Suckering wokies?”

Well, it’s a nonprofit whose employees gratuitously announce their pronouns, and who regard as some kind of injustice the fact that criminal activity often results in arrest, or as they put it, “police terror.” And so, they’re “building a life-affirming world where police are obsolete.” I think it’s fair to assume there’s quite a bit of unrealism and credulity to exploit.

May Contain Drama.

Culture for the implausibly delicate.

Readers will doubtless recall the Chichester Festival Theatre warning patrons that its production of The Sound of Music, one of the most famous and widely-seen musicals in the world, would contain references to Nazis. Which, for some, would apparently come as a surprise.

Levelling.

When cleverness is unfair, inegalitarian, something to be corrected.

And so, instead of all that problematic academic rigour, all those challenging tasks that not everyone can complete, exceptional students will now be obliged to mingle with those less academically inclined, and offered an education “accessible to all,” one “open to the voices of divergent experiences.”

The practised doublethink in play, in which precocious interest in advanced material is actively discouraged, and in which “access” is invoked while gleefully denying it, has been noted here before. Along with educators’ hostility to students and parents who dared to complain about the downgrade, and whose concerns were dismissed as perpetuating “systemic racism.”

As in California, where differences in “school experiences,” i.e., differences in ability and achievement, are something to be eliminated by holding back high-achieving students, with curriculum guidelines based on “social justice,” and educators who are visibly “committed to social justice work.”

And likewise, we have Jennifer Katz, a professor of education at the University of British Columbia, scolding parents who question the conceit that bright children will somehow flourish if taught more slowly and in less detail in a more disruptive environment. While implying, quite strongly, that any parents who complain must be racist.

And then there’s San Diego, another bastion of progress, where teachers are instructed that in order to be “anti-racist,” they must “confront practices” deemed inegalitarian and which result in “racial imbalance” – say, norms of classroom behaviour, a disapproval of tardiness and cheating, and oppressive expectations of “turning work in on time.”

There’s a through-the-looking-glass quality. A fun-house mirror malevolence.

For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.

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Written by: David
Agonies of the Left Film Politics

Dumb, Yes, But Fashionable

June 21, 2025 90 Comments

From the world of cinema and pretentious agonising:

The implications of Mr Boyle’s modish piety, presumably unintended yet implied nonetheless, are explored quite pithily in the replies.

Among which, the implication that white writers and directors should only concern themselves with suitably pale-skinned characters, carefully excluding non-white characters, and non-white actors, lest they appropriate or colonise something or other.

Likewise, the implication that a white person couldn’t possibly comprehend the inner life of a brown person – these magical, put-upon beings – which itself rather implies that white audiences needn’t turn up to films in which non-white people appear prominently. Due to their alleged incomprehensibility.

Strange basis for a global film industry, if you ask me. But there we are.

Update, via the comments:

Previously in the world of pretentious agonising:

Setting aside the small matter of, er, assault and strangulation, readers may wish to ponder the notion, advanced by Mr Rivera and his numerous supporters, that white people, especially white people with blonde hair, shouldn’t be allowed to serve Japanese food.

Do follow the link for the inevitable twist and colossal hypocrisy.

And from the comments following which, this:

The dogmatic scolds who bang on about “cultural appropriation” rarely display much understanding of how culture comes about. Perhaps they imagine that the world would be richer and more pious without Akira Kurosawa’s vivid reworkings of Shakespeare, or his ‘appropriation’ of American band music of the 30s and 40s, and without Kurosawa’s own films inspiring Sergio Leone and George Lucas, etc. The riffs and copying, the to-and-fro, are to a very large extent what culture is.

But no, we must all become twitchy and neurotic. That’s bound to go well.

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Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (772)

June 20, 2025 103 Comments

Relax with a little gardening. || She felt the important thing was to self-narrate. || Mom, I suspect, was not home at the time. || One for the anatomy quiz. || Men With Long Hair, 1967. || The floor is lava. || Ploppy chocolate. || For armchair tourists, a walk around Pall Mall and St James’s Palace. || Some improvement needed. || The progressive retail experience, parts 630, 631, 632, 633 and 634. || “People keep saying that Hamas hates us, but, like… maybe we vibe.” || It helps to have the children afterwards. || The new minority. || Not maddening at all. || Cursor anxiety, a thread ensues. || Our totally balanced betters express their feelings. || Balance shifted. || Belated pushback. || Unboxing video. || No, he doesn’t own a grocery store. || Not sure it fits, love. || Customer feedback.

To enable extra commenting options – including @username mentions, upvotes, and live notifications – scroll down to the black ‘Meta’ box at the very bottom of the page and click register. It’s free and quite painless.

And you can, should you wish, follow me on X.

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Written by: David
Anthropology His Pretty Nails Politics

Drag Queen Incongruity 2

June 19, 2025 30 Comments

Further to this, which some of you are still processing – understandably, I suppose – I do have more. Complete with wearied question:

In the subsequent thread, the term humiliation ritual is deployed.

Not unfairly, I think.

Other questions include “Is this real?”

Update, via the comments:

In reply to the question immediately above, EmC notes this,

It occurred on June 18, 2025, celebrating a resolution honouring Black drag history,

And asks,

Er… why?

It does, I think, raise the question of whether further resolutions, and further transvestite vamping, will be required for drag queens of other racial and ethnic groups. Lest some drag queens feel insufficiently included and affirmed.

Hm. I suspect today may be a day of many questions.

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Written by: David
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