The Wrong Neighbours
In progressive academia, that blueprint of utopia, it appears there’s some unrest:
Black and Latino student groups at the University of Florida recently protested a plan to house their organisations in one building, saying it would erase and marginalise their black and brown bodies and their cultures at the predominantly white institution.
The university had revealed plans for a U-shaped building that would accommodate both organisations:
The two groups would each get their own wing of the building and simply share a walkway and elevator.
Sounds swanky.
But members of the Institute of Black Culture and the Institute of Hispanic-Latino Culture expressed fury at the plan.
You see, being so pious, and so very, very special, they mustn’t endure proximity to the wrong level of melanin, what with the risk of contagion and a loss of specialness. A student organiser of the protests, Daniel Clayton, said,
My main complaint to the University administration… is that we are not taken seriously at all. It is not appropriate to dismiss student concerns as being ludicrous.
However, inevitably, university administrators have been cowed by the usual histrionic rumblings and have agreed to build the immensely tolerant groups two entirely separate buildings. And with equal inevitability, the students are now insisting that the new buildings, the cost of which is unclear, should be “visibly distinct from the rest of campus.”
Ahem.
I’m putting together a posse. With jokes like that, you’d better get out of town.
Queer activists are using magic as a resistance
Late to the game. As a junior on one of the Fleet Street papers, a friend of mine was sent to Greenham Common to interview a covern of witches. Their rituals were varied, but most seemed to involve hanging used tampons on the perimeter fence; they were battling a covern employed by the MOD, apparently.
Their rituals were varied, but most seemed to involve hanging used tampons on the perimeter fence; they were battling a covern employed by the MOD, apparently.
That seems totally normal.
Well, where else would you hang used tampons?
Weary our voice?
Weary of your voice…
Their rituals were varied, but most seemed to involve hanging used tampons on the perimeter fence
You want to watch a total meltdown, point out to a neopagan that all their rituals bear no resemblance whatsoever to surviving pre-Christian traditions, but are transparent copies of upper-class bourgeois 19th century occult practices. And the guy who invented Wicca was a student of Aleister Crowley just before his death.
You want to watch a total meltdown, point out to a neopagan that all their rituals bear no resemblance whatsoever to surviving pre-Christian traditions,
Episcopagan.
See also . . .
I don’t see what’s wrong with separate facilities as long as they’re equal.
I’m tempted to poke it with a stick right now.
Is it a sharp, pointed stick?