For newcomers, three more items from the archives.
Omar Kholeif is professionally ethnic and terribly oppressed. Though by what he doesn’t say.
Mr Kholeif doesn’t mention any first-hand experience of vocational or artistic exclusion based on ethnicity, or any similar experience had by anyone known to him, which seems an odd omission as it might have made his argument a little more convincing. In fact, the only discernible obstacles he mentions are the limited market value of his chosen skills and the preferences of his own parents.
When clarity is “conservative” and evidence is unhip.
Occasionally, Judith Butler’s politics are aired relatively free of question-begging jargon, thus revealing her radicalism to the lower, uninitiated castes. As, for instance, at a 2006 UC Berkeley “Teach-In Against America’s Wars,” during which the professor claimed that it’s “extremely important” to “understand” Hamas and Hizballah as “social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left” and so, by implication, deserving of support. Readers may find it odd that students are being encouraged to express solidarity with totalitarian terrorist movements that set booby traps in schools and boast of using children as human shields, and whose stated goals include the Islamic “conquest” of the free world, the “obliteration” of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish people. However, such statements achieve a facsimile of sense if one understands that the object is to be both politically radical and morally unobvious.
Some kids play better than others. This simply will not do.
Note that “an opportunity to play” doesn’t seem to entail playing as well as you can. And I’m not quite clear how penalising competence squares with the professed ideals of sportsmanship. However, there is some encouraging news. The handbook helpfully urges talented teams to avoid the risk of forfeiture by “reducing the number of players on the field” and “kicking with the weaker foot.”
Take a big stick to the greatest hits.
Re Omar Kholeif:
No evidence of foul play appears in the piece and a lot seems to hang on the claim of a “disproportionate ratio” of minority employees.
Some ‘disproportionate ratios’ are more equal than others…
“Where are the lobby groups demanding that something must be done to correct this gender discriminatory outrage?”
http://www.countingcats.com/?p=9244
David, the Omar Kholeif article actually annoyed me. (His, not yours) He just sounds childish and irresponsible. How can he take public money on false pretences and not feel ashamed of himself?
Michelle,
I’m not privy to the workings of Mr Kholeif’s conscience, though, no, his rationalisations aren’t an edifying read. But if those rationalisations are shared by his peers and confer certain advantages, well… maybe it’s not surprising that they go unanalysed. After all, the prevalence of such attitudes isn’t random or accidental.
As AC1 pointed out a while ago, stoicism is a defining feature of adulthood and is therefore frequently undermined by peddlers of identity politics, whose worldviews tend to entail, and propagate, a kind of whiny infantilism. If you want to foster pretentious victimhood and an entitlement mentality, stoicism, realism and emotional maturity are obvious obstacles. When stoicism and realism have been suitably undermined, we arrive at attitudes like those of Dea Birkett, Linda Bellos and Mr Kholeif.
It’s like Spartacus in reverse:
And the more these attitudes are encouraged and rewarded, the more it escalates.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-blame-victim-hero.html
Read the above. Remember Projection is the defining aspect of leftism, so maybe by playing “victim” they are try to cover up guilt of some kind?
“the only discernible obstacles he mentions are the limited market value of his chosen skills and the preferences of his own parents”
A middle-class kid wastes four years getting a joke degree and then can’t believe there aren’t many jobs where his joke degree is worth anything. So he blames this on racism, disadvantage, parents, etc. Not on the fact he chose a joke degree.
Some people just don’t want to grow up.
svh,
“Not on the fact he chose a joke degree.”
Yes, it’s hard to believe the world has little use for yet another person schooled in media studies and “queer film theory.”
“Some people just don’t want to grow up.”
But if behaving like a child is rewarded – say, with bursaries and favouritism – then there’s an obvious incentive not to bother growing up. The Guardian panders to these inclinations more than most, which may explain why so much of its commentary sounds so adolescent. Unfortunately, adolescence often involves infinite self-righteousness and grievance by default. As Kevin and Perry might say, everything is so unfair.
To claim that systemic racial injustice is taking place in an unlikely sphere and yet offer no evidence to that effect – and then, despite that lack of evidence, to make demands on other people’s money as if one were simply entitled – has an adolescent ring to it. If a person’s alleged “disadvantage” hinges on their choosing a career path of which their parents don’t wholeheartedly approve, then they’re stretching the definition of “disadvantage” to the point of parody. Again, adolescent. Mr Kholeif’s article doesn’t reveal any evidence of his (or anyone else’s) supposed disadvantage, let alone disadvantage rooted in “historical oppression.” It does, however suggest a mix of opportunism, vanity and disingenuous coaching. His presumption and sense of entitlement have of course been rewarded.
Though some may think that a mixed blessing.
Talking of academic matters, David, I assume that you’ve been following the debacle within the Libyan – sorry – London School of Economics and Political Science:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/nickcohen/6751678/why-howard-davies-had-to-resign.thtml
It comes as no surprise to me that Shami Chakrabarti, the champion of civil liberties and human rights, is on the LSE Council, and that she had no problems accepting Qadafi’s blood money.