Bad Medicine
I’ve previously mentioned the taxpayer-funded race hustler Dr Caprice Hollins, whose efforts to empower black Seattle school pupils included dismissing grammar and foresight as “white values” and expectations thereof as “cultural racism.” Rather than encouraging “students of colour” to articulate their thoughts, to be responsible and plan ahead, like everyone else, we must, said Dr Hollins, see people as “racial beings” and “teach [children] to view the world through a racial lens.” But we mustn’t correct their grammar and spelling, or expect them to turn up on time.
Similar sentiments were voiced, in a somewhat boggling way, by Dr Riyad A Shahjahan, a professional educator at Michigan State University and a “social justice theorist,” who wants us to believe that people with brown skin are mystical and exotic, akin to leprechauns, and, unlike white people, “inhabit [their] bodies fully.” Dr Shahjahan also denounces expectations of attentiveness and academic competence, and even punctuality, as racist and oppressive. We should, he says, embrace “embodied pedagogy” and “disrupt Eurocentric notions of time.”
With such deep and incontestable thinking in mind, it may not be surprising to learn that the Writing Centre at the University of Washington, Tacoma is exploring similar avenues. The Centre, the stated goal of which is to “help writers write and succeed in a racist society,” aims to improve the life chances of brown-skinned students by encouraging them to give employers the impression that they’re incapable of mastering even rudimentary grammar:
An “antiracist” poster in a college writing centre insists American grammar is “racist” and an “unjust language structure,” promising to prioritise rhetoric over “grammatical ‘correctness.’” The poster, written by the director, staff, and tutors of the Writing Centre, states, “racism is the normal condition of things,” declaring that it permeates rules, systems, expectations, in courses, school and society… The Centre pledges to “listen and look carefully and compassionately for ways we may unintentionally perpetuate racism or social injustice, actively engaging in antiracist practices.” “We promise to emphasise the importance of rhetorical situations… in the production of texts,” announces the poster. “We promise to challenge conventional word choices and writing explanations.”
The Writing Centre press release - which, according to one of its authors, Dr Asao Inoue, took “over a year” to write, despite its brevity – tells us that language is “constantly changing” and it is therefore, allegedly, “difficult to justify placing people in hierarchies or restricting opportunities and privileges because of the way people communicate.” Instead of becoming proficient in the structure and expressive possibilities of the national tongue, students – brown ones – should “become more critical” of “unjust language structures.” Apparently, the way for minority students to flourish as writers is to dismiss any criticism of their prose, and any attempt to improve it, as a racially motivated “microaggression” and an “oppressive practice,” and thus proof of “an inherently racist society.”
In short, then, students with brown skin needn’t be articulate, verbally self-possessed, or precise in their thoughts. And that ungrammatical job application, the one enlivened with incomprehensible sentences and lots of inventive spelling, will do just fine. And by the time the real-world consequences of this “social justice” posturing become difficult to avoid, Dr Inoue will have been paid – and be merrily exploiting the next batch of suckers.
Thank goodness these enlightened people are here to help.
Higher education is turning into a madhouse.
Higher education is turning into a madhouse.
Well, it’s strange, to say the least, to see so-called educators, self-styled champions of “social justice,” functioning more as saboteurs. In that, if you were spiteful and wanted to undermine the practical life chances of black students, and leave them resentful, unskilled and racially fixated, and heavily in debt, it’s hard to see what you’d do differently.
The Writing Centre press release – which, according to one of its authors, Dr Asao Inoue, took “over a year” to write, despite its brevity
It took them over a year to write 495 words? Jesus Christ.
It took them over a year to write 495 words?
It must be all that shimmering prose. It’s the only explanation.
It must be all that shimmering prose. It’s the only explanation.
Or affirmative action in action.
This bullshit won’t stop until it ceases to be a well-paid career choice.
One wonders whether these professors reject the Eurocentric notion of time in their own professional lives.
P.S. David, I hate to microaggrieve you, but there’s a preposition missing before “inventive”.
Standards or ‘social justice’. Pick one.
I hate to microaggrieve you, but there’s a preposition missing before “inventive”.
Well spotted. I was, er, testing your powers of observation. Obviously.
“Each year, the entry requirements for undergraduate programmes are reduced, meaning we get a high number of students who are almost illiterate.”
http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/college-illiteracy-growing
As our host would say, ‘not entirely unrelated’.
They want an angry, frustrated and excluded group to use as a vanguard for their revolution. Blacks will do nicely.
I’d laugh at this more if I wasn’t envisioning a world with a “ban the employment cover letter” movement. After all, if grammar is racist, then cover letters are just an invitation to judge potential employees by racist standards.
It must be all that shimmering prose. It’s the only explanation.
I’d also guess that their press release, such as it is, is intended as a sort of manifesto.
One surmises that the work was that of a committee, composed of the kind of “crab bucket” personalities you might imagine, each one intent upon leaving her or his own glorious imprint. It must have been a tortuous drafting process.
It must have been a tortuous drafting process.
Given that these are people who are evidently proud of the fact it took them “over a year” to cobble together 495 words of evasive and question-begging claptrap, it’s hard to argue with that.
Dear God, it’s almost funny.
I’d laugh at this more if I wasn’t envisioning a world with a “ban the employment cover letter” movement.
Weeeellll . . . do note that tactically that’s sort of already present given the ability to use the internet as a resume firehose . . . Those receiving three to four digits of applications for any one job opening have to then figure out some other way of culling through the hipsters vs the actual applicants who can do the job.
One more time:
And yet these predatory mediocrities dare to think of themselves as the good guys.
Apparently, the way for minority students to flourish as writers is to dismiss any criticism of their prose, and any attempt to improve it, as a racially motivated “microaggression” and an “oppressive practice”
– and people’s refusal to buy their writing, or inability to understand it, would be called? Pretty sure the market will weed-out this mess on its own; sad that people’s {i.e., the writers’} lives will once again be destroyed by unforeseen (though obvious) consequences and bull$h1t teachers.
Of course – silly me – the only ones who’ll understand their literary efforts will be their fellow struggling-artistes. “Preaching to the choir”, anyone?
– Oh and – “In short, then, students with brown skin needn’t be articulate, verbally self-possessed, or precise in their thoughts.” This statement, properly rationalised as equally-applicable to people with white skin, can’t be called ‘racist’ or even ‘suppressing-equal-opportunity’, as it calls to-mind a certain Ms. Penny.
I’m sure you can think of others as well…
It took them over a year to write 495 words?
They’re giving the students a standard to aim for.
“It took them over a year to write 495 words?”
They were probaby supposed to deliver it 364 days earlier, but their principles required them to “disrupt Eurocentric notions of time”.
Eurocentric notions of time
Somebody has never worked with French, Spanish, or Italians. Nor have they been married to a Russian.
So, what then is the explanation for other languages such as German, where Bavarian children are taught from the earliest grades that their home dialect is not acceptable in an academic setting? Rather, instruction is accomplished in the High German dialect of Lower Saxony and students are expected to write and converse fluently in same if they wish to succeed in German society. Heaven forbid that social mobility and success have a correlation to one’s ability to communicate in the lingua franca.
We’ve been here before, of course. When we learned that correcting spelling and punctuation errors creates “an unsafe environment for students of colour.”
It’s already corrupted college debate as in the third item in this Elsewhere, https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2014/05/elsewhere-125.html
I’m surprised only that it didn’t start in English Comp. (do they teach that anymore?) before moving to debating and not t’other way around.
And lest any Brits feel superior, we have our own attempts to lower standards in the name of fairness.
Ah, I see the We’ve been here before, of course is from 2013 while the Elsewhere is from 2014 so the rot did start at the root before moving on to the branches.
Reading their statement is enough to give anyone with a decent standard of English, inherent or otherwise, a blinding headache. I believe Jonathan (10:02) is correct in his assessment that this nonsense will only stop when it ceases to be lucrative.
“people’s refusal to buy their writing…”
Will be met with scolding, lecturing and demands for taxpayer subsidization of their “work”.
It’s already corrupted college debate as in the third item in this Elsewhere
Blimey, I’d forgotten about that.
Behold, “social justice” jive.
I’m surprised only that it didn’t start in English Comp.
Oh, it did.
The shift began a couple of decades ago, when the classic form of an argumentative essay, i.e. introduction with a coherent thesis, several paragraphs with supporting evidence followed by an acknowledgment and rebuttal of contrary views and supporting evidence and ending with a strong conclusion affirming the thesis was deemed “problematic.” Then came the shift to so-called “expressivist” composition where the writer’s feelings and personal experiences became the sole measure of competence. Add in composition teachers’ “content envy” in only teaching classical rhetoric and not more “meaty” topics, and suddenly Composition 101 turned into “Social Justice Topics and Grievance Cataloging” in short order.
Behold, “social justice” jive.
Hey… knock a self a pro, Slick! That gray matter backlot perform us DOWN, I take TCB-in’, man!
(As a side note, Al White approached the idea of jive as an independent language in Airplane! quite seriously. Spent weeks researching pidgins to make it more realistic – which the quoted claptrap is… not)
Also, the title of this thread has placed a seed of Bon Jovi in my head. Curse you, Thompson.
Al White approached the idea of jive as an independent language in Airplane! quite seriously. Spent weeks researching pidgins to make it more realistic – which the quoted claptrap is… not.
Sadly, the videos have since been removed, but at the time it was quite extraordinary to behold. The hyperventilated jabbering was, intentionally, difficult to comprehend and totally unmoored from the ostensible topic, and so its failings only became fully apparent after several gruelling attempts. Despite being called a debate, it was just a barrage of bald assertion and random buzzwords, and lots of flailing about and barked profanities, and crap about being “an authentic nigga,” with little discernible logical structure or constraint. For great stretches of time, minutes on end, it was actual gibberish, even by the dismal standards of “social justice” blather.
I wish I’d transcribed more of it.
The Centre, the stated goal of which is to “help writers write and succeed in a racist society,” aims to improve the life chances of brown-skinned students by encouraging them to give employers the impression that they’re incapable of mastering even rudimentary grammar
I bet the most racist place they’ll ever see is the Writing Centre at the University of Washington, Tacoma.
I bet the most racist place they’ll ever see is the Writing Centre at the University of Washington, Tacoma.
If I wanted to witness some in-your-face racial bigotry and hysteria – racism that was blatant, institutional and openly celebrated – one of the first places I’d look is the nearest Angry Studies department.
Such is progress.
So any discipline that challenges any minority student at any time is now, by definition, racist.
Got it.
This is how you create functional illiterates who are nonetheless Affirmative Actioned into universities. Once there, they are thus unable to succeed anywhere BUT the Angry Studies.
I see what these hucksters are doing.
Sadly, the videos have since been removed
Behold the power and the glory:
https://youtu.be/fmO-ziHU_D8?t=40
Behold the power and the glory
Well done, that man.
I suppose the thing is, if what you’ve internalised in class is self-flattering, self-dramatising garbage that isn’t likely to withstand even elementary scrutiny, then it doesn’t much matter if its regurgitation is incoherent and incomprehensible. All the better, in fact.
.. then it doesn’t much matter if its regurgitation is incoherent and incomprehensible. All the better, in fact.
I believe the intention is not to baffle and confuse the audience and judges: it is to humiliate them. The two ‘Debaters’ know perfectly well that they’re spouting complete gibberish, but no-one dares to call them out. Instead, they swallow it down and beg for more.
If ‘people of colour’ are mystical, exotic, and superior in all ways, why has every country in Africa turned into a shithole once they gained independence?
but no-one dares to call them out.
If so, wouldn’t that be an example of “black privilege”?
I denounce myself.
If so, wouldn’t that be an example of “black privilege”?
Obviously there can be no such thing as ‘Black Privilege’, as Black People are at all times and places oppressed by White People.
I denounce myself.
Report for re-education.
Suppose you were a white supremacist who was trying to create a nefarious plan to keep disadvantaged minorities in their place. But of course you can’t be obvious about; people would immediately see what you’re about. You have to make it look like you’re trying to help minorities even as you are crippling them.
It might look a lot like the current progressive political agenda.
Instalanche.
Everyone look busy.
Instalanche.
[ Combs hair frantically, looks in vain for tie. ]
What about the white debater who not only used the same style of pidgin gibberish but interspersed his wisdom snatches of bad music?
If I were a student I would turn in an old Mr. Dooley essay and claim that was the speech of my people.
May I pick a nit? In the USA, the word is “center,” not “centre.”
Privilege = intelligence, and the underprivileged deeply resent it.
In the USA, the word is “center,” not “centre.”
Yes, I had fathomed that. But I don’t live there.
“May I pick a nit? In the USA, the word is ‘center,’ not ‘centre.'”
That’s a pretty racist nit. Check your privilege.
Instalanche.
[ Combs hair frantically, looks in vain for tie. ]
Tie? Hell, I was wondering if I needed to put on pants.
Hell, I was wondering if I needed to put on pants.
My upholstery!
“For great stretches of time, minutes on end, it was actual gibberish, even by the dismal standards of “social justice” blather.
I wish I’d transcribed more of it.”
Please don’t feel that way, David. Life is short, and you’ve got nothing to prove.
You have still not caught on, have you? Ridiculing the graduates of such instruction because they will have a hard time getting a job in the corporate/business world means nothing to them. That’s not where they are looking for jobs. They are looking for jobs in a) academia, b) government or c) Not-For-Profit advocacy organizations. These are all supported by tax dollars (and in the case of A and C) donations that are tax deductible. They don’t want to make profits and get rich. They don’t have to be economically productive. They want a comfortable lifestyle in a job they are almost impossible to get fired from and to set laws, rules and regulations for you and me to live under.
Pres. Trump should create an EO that says “No person with a ‘* Studies’ degree can be hired for any Executive department under any circumstances.”
Life is short, and you’ve got nothing to prove.
Plus, there is a glass of red just inches from my hand.
And would someone please slide a newspaper under Mr Norman…?
I guess this is the rebirth of Ebonics…
Perhaps instead of reading “racism is the normal condition of things,” it should say “racism am the normal condition of things.”
“racism is the normal condition of things,”
Well, can you blame me?
promising to prioritise rhetoric over “grammatical ‘correctness.’”
As an aside, may I (as Mr. Obvious) point out how ludicrous this entire concept is? Grammatical correctness is literally what makes rhetoric make sense and function. Its absence robs rhetoric of most or all meaning.
This is akin to claiming that one is prioritizing the power output of the engine in one’s racecar over having a functioning transmission and having wheels.
When the focus is wholly on the individual, it excludes any possibility of society, or the constructs of communicating with, much less getting along with, each other.
Dr. Hobbes, please call your office.
So basically everything is “Island Time” for non-whites?
US educators across the board would fail any other country’s qualifications and competitive hiring exams for teaching. Thus this pompous statement about grammar being racist is cynical self-protecting cover for the fact the paid salaried person doesn’t know the first thing about language, grammar or teaching it.
English grammar is among the world’s easiest to learn, but US schools perpetually hiring know-nothings who waste students’ time, have created a self-serving narrative to cover their incompetence that it’s somehow ‘hard.’
So if these “educators” ever get ill, I take it they’ll want to be treated by illiterate doctors who don’t show up on time?
And don’t forget the Marxist philosophy lecturer and Guardian contributor Dr Nina Power, who thinks that, among educators, knowledge and competence are outmoded and unfair. And who insists that equality of intelligence is “something to be presupposed” because – well, just because – “everyone is equally intelligent.”
And would someone please slide a newspaper under Mr Norman…?
Now, now. I was wearing pyjamas. I think I’m presentable now.
One nice thing about working from home is that getting dressed is optional. 😉
If I were a student I would turn in an old Mr. Dooley essay and claim that was the speech of my people.
!
Oh, My.
Right. More additions to the reading queue so noted, Next!
If ‘people of colour’ are mystical, exotic, and superior in all ways, why has every country in Africa turned into a shithole once they gained independence?
Perhaps the countries in Africa are mystical, exotic, and superior shitholes.
My upholstery!
Hey, everyone! David’s gone and installed a jukebox!!!
Hmmm.
David; I am indeed intrigued by your juxtaposition of John Denver with Riders In The Sky. I do grant it must be useful for calming down the neighbors.
For us high class symphonic types, could you also add in some P.D.Q. Bach as well?
Academic Cloward-Pivens.
Well, it’s strange, to say the least, to see so-called educators, self-styled champions of “social justice,” functioning more as saboteurs. In that, if you were spiteful and wanted to undermine the practical life chances of black students, and leave them resentful, unskilled and racially fixated, and heavily in debt, it’s hard to see what you’d do differently.
I agree. Students who follow this inept and evil teaching are being set up. I wonder if the great humanitarian and social justice warrior George Soros has a hand in this?
well, just because – “everyone is equally intelligent.”
That line of thought always does my head in. You may as well claim everyone is the same height.
I’m in Victoria, Australia. This appeared in the news yesterday and appears relevant:
“INEFFECTIVE school courses riddled with lightweight texts have been dumped and Shakespeare is back under the biggest overhaul of the Higher Schools Certificate syllabus in two decades.
The classical works of the Bard, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Joseph Conrad will become mandatory for Year 11 and Year 12 students to study in new back-to-basics syllabuses to be unveiled to schools today.
Writing skills, grammar, punctuation, vocabulary and proper sentence structure will also be given much greater priority under the shake-up as a compulsory part of the new English syllabus.”
Jim – a one time teacher of English and currently a speaker of the Queen’s English.
———————————————————————————–
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/shakespeare-back-but-why-was-he-sacked/news-story/20a1799b0c2cbcc58fff4bd345ee6e79
So, apparently students are being told that when employers pass them over due to their inability to write coherently, they will be perfectly justified in complaining. I think that, once they leave the academic nest, these students will find that complaining does not have the effect that it does on campus.
They want an angry, frustrated and excluded group to use as a vanguard for their revolution.
Disaffected radicals want to swell the ranks of the disaffected, not the ranks of the cheerfully upward mobile.
Yes, exactly. It’s all part of the “political correctness” strategy that dates back to Herbert Marcuse.
Ayn Rand addressed the issue in her essay The Comprachicos – in 1970. She also discussed Marcuse, but separately; it hadn’t all come together yet.
If I wanted to witness some in-your-face racial bigotry and hysteria – racism that was blatant, institutional and openly celebrated – one of the first places I’d look is the nearest Angry Studies department.
Or say Crown Heights in the early 1990s.
Despite all der Fuhrer about the alleged antisemitism of today’s (very pro-Israel) administration, somewhere in all the goodthink American lefty right-onanists have done a mighty fine job of ignoring not only their dethroned idol’s greatest hits, such as giving the Muslim Brotherhood a country, or handing the Iranian regime mountains of money and green light for developing nuclear weapons, or nearly a decade of lectures in which a Jew building a house was held as morally equivalent to Muslims teaching their children to stab Jews to death as a ticket to heaven, but – but also somehow overlooking the fact that they support a political party which still counts among its senior members a son of a bitch who actually encouraged and supported an anti-Jewish pogrom on American soil.
Ignorance is strength.
Hypocrisy is virtue.
mikesixes wrote: “…when employers pass them over due to their inability to write coherently, they will be perfectly justified in complaining.”
Yes and then they will want to sue someone, as was seen some decades ago when children, failing academically, were routinely passed on year-by-year up the school system just to keep everyone happy, but their certificates or diplomas were, after graduation, worthless. [If my aging memory serves it was part of affirmative action in the 1970s-’80s – I lived in the US then.]
It is a great dis-service not to tell people when they are failing as failing is part of learning. Without the experience of [reasonable] failure there can be no growth and development in us.
Related from The Atlantic in 2008.
The link above.
@VinceN: It’s rather hilarious, if you think about it, that the left was at the same time “disaffecting” ordinary members of the middle class, angering and excluding them. Evidently they thought this could continue until the middle class was eliminated. I think they’ve created a vanguard they didn’t plan…
Hi Jim ‘Queens English”
I heard that too – I’m in South us and wish we had a similar program here.
Ten years ago I did ‘English studies’ for year 12. Technically, this was meant to be the ‘hard’ english. No Shakespeare, and we only had to read one book. My teacher, perhaps more of the ‘old school’ was very disappointed that The Great Gatsby had been taken off the curriculum – apparently it was decided that it was ‘too outdated’ and ‘no longer relevant.’ So we read a bloody awful bloody by a modern australian author, that everyone hated. this book was also so insanely basic, that come exam time I received a HD on my essay on this book despite never actually reading it through.
From the kids I know who did year 12 last year, things have not improved…
Bugger, meant to be “South AUS”
stupid sausage fingers.
On Nina Power, the following assertion to the equal intelligence one is almost as bizarre; namely, as a monumental non sequitur, that the teacher should be ignorant. Surely even with the question begged regarding knowledge as product of motivation and opportunity, the claim that we should *not* ask people who *are* motivated and knowledgeable to share their privilege and advantage with others would seem… what’s the word, *idiotic*.
Then again, if there are no such things as fools bereft of intelligence, judgment, and knowledge, I can’t point out that she is one. Well played?
It’s likely all a lie, of course, as I put my cynic’s hat back on. This is the most virtuous thing to *claim* to believe – fundamentally there will still be those determining truth for the soft minds. People who one mustn’t *say* are more clever, wiser.
Bottom line, these racialists do not believe that “brown people” can master basic language skills, oral and written. It is not “low expectations” it is no expectations.
Hi juliaeryn,
I gather you’re in South Australia. The weaker the curriculum, the less value is your certificate, diploma or degree in the eyes of others. Having sat on very many interview panels I and others on such panels knew what degrees or certificates presented by applicants had real substance. As is said by various respondents above, it is a form of condescension by leftists to allow people to progress through education without really learning, just doing “busy work”. See the reference by R. Sherman above about having to teach people who really are not interested, but have to take classes for vocational acceptance alone. Not everyone should get a “ribbon” in the race of life and those who do should have to work for it. We only have the right to try. We do not have the right to success.
Jim.
The truly insidious thing is that in addition to providing students with a worthless education which hinders their social mobility upward, these “predatory mediocrities,” to use David’s term bankrupt the students (and in many cases their parents) in the process through the insidious student loan scam. Thus, do they kill two birds with one stone: prevent entry into the middle class and destroy the current middle class which hopes their offspring will do better than they.
in addition to providing students with a worthless education which hinders their social mobility upward, these “predatory mediocrities,” to use David’s term, bankrupt the students (and in many cases their parents) in the process through the insidious student loan scam.
It would, I think, be much too generous to regard these supposedly “compassionate” educators as merely dogmatic idiots, or well-meaning people who’ve made a mistake. Gargling the identitarian Kool-Aid to such an extent that racial paranoia and animosity are encouraged as virtuous isn’t something that just happens. And to spend years not noticing the obvious practical consequences of their own absurdly racialised worldview requires obstinacy and contortion, i.e., choice.
In a way, it’s grimly comical. The students are encouraged to be hypercritical, indeed delusional, regarding the motives of white people, even to the point of dismissing the correction of grammar as some egregious, racially motivated act of oppression. And yet the motives of their educators, whose status and careers depend on cultivating tribalism and resentment, and a kind of pernicious flattery, are spared any similar questioning, or any questioning at all.
but also somehow overlooking the fact that they support a political party which still counts among its senior members a son of a bitch who actually encouraged and supported an anti-Jewish pogrom on American soil.
Oh, who? Do tell.
It would, I think, be much too generous to regard these supposedly “compassionate” educators as merely dogmatic idiots, or well-meaning people who’ve made a mistake.
Oh, I agree completely. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, the entire system (as it currently exists) has been constructed for the purpose of destroying the middle class or petite bourgeoisie, if you prefer, by preventing entry of the younger generations and sucking the savings from the older. Your post highlights one aspect of this desire.
Your post highlights one aspect of this desire.
Maybe it’s a benefit of not being a teenager, or just my incorrigible cynicism, but it’s often struck me how credulous and incurious students can be, especially if what’s being peddled flatters them as radical and righteous, and therefore superior. Remember ‘Andria XX’, who pissed away a fortune on degrees in “gender studies” and “social justice studies,” merrily railing against “conservatives” and “heteropatriarchal crap,” and who was then shocked to discover that these trinkets were worthless in the real world? And who, even then, while struggling to find employment and dealing with massive debt, couldn’t quite bring herself to admit that she’d been had, duped, taken for a ride.
I finally had time to read the Statement.
As I predicted, it is well written with perfect garmmar. They even semi-colon the bullet points correctly.
So their own Statement betrays themselves — they could have written it with “non-racist” incorrect grammar. But then would have looked like ignoramuses themselves. And that would never do.
The students are encouraged to be hypercritical, indeed delusional, regarding the motives of white people… And yet the motives of their educators, whose status and careers depend on cultivating tribalism and resentment, and a kind of pernicious flattery, are spared any similar questioning, or any questioning at all.
That.
So their own Statement betrays themselves
Well, yes, but it took the lot of them over a year to write a mere 495 words….
My authentic language is the love child of Hylda Baker and Prof. Stanley Unwin.
And I say that without fearimost the contraception.
Incidentally, there’s a piece by Stephen Pinker (can’t be arsed to look for it) written in flawless English defending riting like u feal.
So their own Statement betrays themselves
In much the same way that Dr Caprice Hollins invariably used conventional grammar and pronunciation when being interviewed by the media, thereby asserting her own status as a supposed intellectual, a person of learning. And I doubt that an ungrammatical ethnic patois was used when conning Seattle taxpayers out of $86,000 a year.
But hey, she got hers.
Modern USA was created by Europeans and so modern US culture derives from European culture. English is the main language and it does have rules of grammar and accepted spellings too. Are these academics trying to destroy the employment chances of these students of colour regarding their written CVs etc? Also why do certain academic spout such ridiculous nonsense?
Stanley Unwin.
I’m probably unusual for an American in having any idea who that is. Of course, my familiarity comes from the excellent second half of Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake.
Oh, who? Do tell.
Horrifyingly, I’m not sure exactly who Squires is referring to, but not due to lack of candidates, only specific knowledge. I’m guessing Keith Ellison, with background in the NOI and various and sundry, since Byrd is now dead and at least nominally claimed to have repudiated his leadership in the Klan. There are almost certainly others.
@Spork
It’s probably Al Sharpton, “activist” and MSNBC worthy, whose ring national Democrats are required to kiss at some point if they wish to further their political ambitions. IIRC, he instigated riots against the Jewish residents of Crown Heights, accusing them of various misdeeds at the expense of Black citizens. See also this.
The authoress was just saying impressively to her companion: “—ever know a sincere emotion to express itself in a subordinate clause?”
“Joyce has freed us from the superstition of syntax,” agreed the curly man.
“Scenes which make emotional history,” said Miss Heath-Warburton, “should ideally be expressed in a series of animal squeals.”
“The D.H. Lawrence formula,” said the other. “Or even Dada,” said the authoress.
“We need a new notation,” said the curly-haired man, putting both elbows on the table and knocking Wimsey’s bread on to the floor. “Have you heard Robert Snoates recite his own verse to the tom-tom and the penny whistle?”
Dorothy Sayers, Clouds of Witness, 1926
Everything old is new again. “Your grammar can’t contain my complexities” was trite nearly a century ago.
@R. Sherman: Mea culpa – I was limiting myself to current elected and appointed individuals, not inclusive of the members-at-large of the power structure. Sharpton is, as you note, odious.
Instead of becoming proficient in the structure and expressive possibilities of the national tongue, students – brown ones – should “become more critical” of “unjust language structures.” Apparently, the way for minority students to flourish as writers is to dismiss any criticism of their prose, and any attempt to improve it, as a racially motivated “microaggression” and an “oppressive practice,” and thus proof of “an inherently racist society.”
This.
Teaching students how to write well and find work would be too boring, I guess.