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.
Teaching students how to write well and find work would be too boring, I guess.
It seems to me that the basic problem with so much of this Angry Studies stuff, which is now spilling into other areas, is that it flatters the vanities of educators who imagine themselves as dissidents and revolutionaries – or “change agents” in the jargon – remaking the world, such is their supposedly pivotal role. But this is very often done at the expense of credulous students, whose vanities are also flattered, briefly, but who often leave university with negligible skills to succeed in the world, with an entitled and resentful attitude, and with plenty of ready-made excuses for why any subsequent failure isn’t their fault.
In this case, students who repel employers with their chippy attitude and grammatical incompetence will presumably rationalise any hardship and alienation as proof of the evils of “whiteness” and the “racist society” that their lecturer banged on about. Because the more obvious explanation would be much too bruising to their egos.
credulous students, whose vanities are also flattered, briefly, but who often leave university with negligible skills to succeed in the world, with an entitled and resentful attitude, and with plenty of ready-made excuses for why any subsequent failure isn’t their fault.
Don’t forget the mountain of debt.
For those with 90 minutes to spare, here’s Ben Shapiro at UC Santa Barbara with a talk titled “Society Is Not Victimising You.” The comment around 30:37, about the study showing how cultivated victimhood actually harms minority students, lowering their grades and diminishing their life chances, seems apposite.
unlike white people, “inhabit [their] bodies fully.”
If I’m not inhabiting my body fully, can someone please tell me where I can find the disembodied bits? I feel it’s important to reunite myself, for the sake of sanity if nothing else.
If I’m not inhabiting my body fully, can someone please tell me where I can find the disembodied bits?
It was but one of Dr Shahjahan’s many baffling claims, part of his objection to expectations of punctuality and attentiveness, and shortly before he suggested students use class time to ponder their stomachs and knees as a “tactic of resistance.”
I swear I’m not making this up.
can someone please tell me where I can find the disembodied bits?
Common mistake. It’s actually the thin person inside a fat person idiom. From this we can deduce that inside every fat black person, unlike some fat white people, there is only a fat black person.
Hey, I don’t make the rules.
Dr Evil wrote: “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.”
The same applies to other countries such as Australia and New Zealand. [Not so sure about Canada at the moment.] There is a structure of society that has evolved over centuries, not necessarily perfect in every aspect, but better than others for the majority who live in and are part of that structure. Some people cannot adapt easily, e.g. those who are intellectually impaired or who are mentally ill, while others cannot adapt because circumstances have not allowed them to learn the necessary skills, e.g. cogent writing and speaking English. Hopefully, given the chance and hard work they can and will adapt. Some simply cannot be bothered to adapt, but, because of this group the modern trendy social theorists wish to destroy the total structure on which their own success rests, no matter that they are demonstrating massive hypocrisy by denying others what they themselves received and all just so they can proclaim to their fellow hypocrites how noble and progressive they are.
At a personal level I am gravely concerned by [and highly anxious at] the process of destruction of the fundamental structures of society including language as I am autistic and my ability to function in society [I have no capacity for empathy – I cannot read social-emotional meaning between the “lines”.] depends on maintenance of a coherent and predictable set of rules including criminal and civil laws, the rules of social behaviour and the rules [grammar] of language.
Its a bit ironic that the tyranny of low expectations (which in this case is pretty close to no expectations, other than agreeing with the profs propaganda, and being the right color) shown by these leftie profs, for minority students (that they should not even have to use correct grammar, or even show up on time) is actually a far more condescending and racist attitude than the racism they say the oppose.
“denying others what they themselves received”
Crabs escaped the bucket, pulled up the ladder and have been shooting the fish in the barrel.
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.
Posted by: David | February 22, 2017 at 09:16
This is my shocked face.
This is my shocked face.
denying others what they themselves received
It’s a common enough manoeuvre among a certain kind of patrician leftist. As when the communist poet Michael Rosen told fellow Guardian readers, in carefully crafted prose, that “there’s no such thing as correct grammar,” and that encouraging children to learn the rules and possibilities of the national language, on which his own status and livelihood depend, is inegalitarian and should therefore be frowned upon. Or when Robert Skidelsky airily suggested that the rest of us don’t need, and shouldn’t aspire to, the kind of material comforts that he himself enjoys.
It is awfully difficult to keep them as pets should they gain the basic skills needed to move up in the world. What’s a lefty without any pets, or without the bigotry of low expectations? I think we all know the answer and it’s lefty kryptonite.
There are two basic reasons it took a year to deliver 495 words:
1) The animal rights activists have interfered with the total number of monkeys they could employ, and
2) It’s getting harder and harder to find the required number of typewriters to supply the monkeys with their typing tools. The monkeys have been found to not deal with the user interface on a computer as well as they do on a real typewriter.
It’s still going to take a lot more monkeys and a lot more typewriters to write the equivalent of the Works of Shakespeare.
“people’s refusal to buy their writing…”
One only has to look at the example of Post-Modern Art to see where this is leading us. There the corresponding “people’s refusal to buy their artwork…” means that they demand the government fund an anti-establishment transgressive art that is deemed by them to be essential to the nature of modern society that it must be subsidised despite nobody willing to pay for it. Or maybe the funding is demanded specifically because nobody is buying it, indicating the ongoing oppression of the artist that would never happen in a communist society, a place where every artist would be able to be paid the same wage the same as a neurosurgeon or a factory manager.
It was but one of Dr Shahjahan’s many baffling claims…
For every shade darker the group you identify as, +1 to agility. This is known as the “The Swarthier They Are, the Harder It Is to Make Them Fall” rule (Socialists & Justice 3rd edition).
shortly before he suggested students use class time to ponder their stomachs and knees as a “tactic of resistance.”
Ah, an isometric exercise! They’ll need that abdominal strength when it’s just them and seven of their most anonymous friends armed with pipes against one random guy lying unconscious on the ground.
For every shade darker the group you identify as, +1 to agility. This is known as the “The Swarthier They Are, the Harder It Is to Make Them Fall” rule (Socialists & Justice 3rd edition).
You have no idea how badly I want to make a Pathfinder joke right now.
Sort of related, this. Because apparently there’s now a special black-person-only way to use clapping emoji on Twitter.
And one day, with some practised contortion, you too could be as woke as this guy here.
you too could be as woke as this guy here.
Smug much?
Smug much?
It’s a face on which you could wear out several pairs of shoes.
Sort of related, this. Because apparently there’s now a special black-person-only way to use clapping emoji on Twitter.
They don’t use jazz hands?
Smug much?
Incidentally, the camp cartoonish chap in the video writes for Mic magazine, which claims to help its leftist readers “rethink the world.” By publishing things like this.
“For every shade darker the group you identify as…”
Can’t this be Dolezaled, though?
If not, maybe this thing would help. I wonder what it is…
You have no idea how badly I want to make a Pathfinder joke right now.
Progfinder attempted to address the lingering white privilege of S&J 3.5 by eliminating all racial bonuses and imposing distributed penalties. Scoring of features ensures that only the correct races are more equal than others.
Of course, there is a transracialism feat…
the communist poet Michael Rosen
Some ironic amusement can be found in that area. Michael Rosen’s storytelling videos are enormously popular for chopping up and reassembling into vulgar insanity known as Youtube Poop, with Rosen claiming to kill babies, engage in incest, time travel, and so on with nonce words and in-jokes a plenty. This is only possible because, wait for it, words can be reused in many contexts according to sets of rules, to convey meaning. These rules, commonly known as grammar…
At any rate, he knows perfectly well how easy it is not to make sense even being grammatical. Making the making of sense even harder is idiocy.
I denounce myself.
This bullshit won’t stop until it ceases to be a well-paid career choice.
The option to end public education has existed for decades and decades. The political right is impotent.
In order to increase diversity and inclusiveness, we must have a space that excludes White People
In order to increase diversity and inclusiveness, we must have a space that excludes White People.
In a saner world, these clowns would find themselves being laughed out of every room they entered and then shuffle back to their dorms, only to discover that their belongings had been dumped at the nearest bus stop.
It’s a face on which you could wear out several pairs of shoes.
I was expecting to see something like this. I say “something like” because when I googled for such after viewing this specific one on FB, I found it was quite the trend. Why I let that surprise me after all these years, I have no idea.
In a saner world, these clowns would find themselves being laughed out of every room they entered….
More people in that environment need to challenge them, and especially to mock them. Unfortunately, most of the decent ones have been shamed or brow-beaten into complicity with their own demonisation and humiliation. We need, as a civilisation, to collectively grow a pair.
The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.
Vaclav Havel
Jonathan,
In order to increase diversity and inclusiveness, we must have a space that excludes White People
“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”
Wait… what??? Ohferfuckssake.
Somewhere out there, George Wallace is laughing.
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.
One might suspect they need an “oppressed” group to champion and “help” in a manner that leaves them constantly oppressed… to justify more “help” and protect their “helper’s” phoney baloney jobs.