Academia Politics Problematic Punctuality Shakedowns The Thrill Of Unemployment

They Sell Failure

July 21, 2020 by David 152 Comments

From a needlessly indulgent New York Times piece on Robin DiAngelo and her fellow clown-shoe race-hustlers:

[Marcus] Moore directed us to a page in our training booklets: a list of white values. Along with “‘The King’s English’ rules,” “objective, rational, linear thinking” and “quantitative emphasis,” there was “work before play,” “plan for future” and “adherence to rigid time schedules.” Moore expounded that white culture is obsessed with “mechanical time” — clock time — and punishes students for lateness. This, he said, is but one example of how whiteness undercuts Black kids. “The problems come when we say this way of being is the way to be.” In school and on into the working world, he lectured, tremendous harm is done by the pervasive rule that Black children and adults must “bend to whiteness, in substance, style and format.”

Well, that’s one way of looking at it. A perverse and pernicious way, I’d suggest, and an obvious blueprint for degrading, perhaps irreparably, the lives and opportunities of those sufficiently credulous to internalise it. Unless, of course, the cultivation of tardiness, self-absorption, and lack of focus, along with a disregard for deadlines, standards and obligations, and a disdain for reciprocity, will somehow catapult minority students into gainful employment. But such is the way of the woke. Or of “equity transformation specialists,” in Mr Moore’s case.

One might instead argue that this supposedly “white” “obsession” with “mechanical time” – which is to say, basic foresight and punctuality – or just adulthood – has very little to do with oppressing the negro, as Mr Moore claims, and rather more to do with courtesy and treating other people as if they were real, just as real as you, and no more deserving of delays, frustration, or gratuitous disrespect. It seems to me that punctuality is not only about getting things done, about practicality and cooperation, but about getting over yourself. And presumably, Mr Moore – the one reducing black children to strange and otherly beings, unmoored by mere temporal concerns – would prefer his payments for this claptrap, aired to teachers and school administrators, to materialise promptly. Not, say, three weeks late. Or hey, whenever.

Update, via the comments:

Nikw211 notes,

Adherence to clock time is ‘democratic’ insofar as the same standards and expectations apply to all members of society regardless of status. For instance, it is not only the student that has to be on time, but also the teacher, where respect for good time-keeping has to be demonstrated, and demonstrated consistently, as a rule that applies to everyone. Only in undemocratic and rigidly hierarchical “big man” communities, where the strongest and most powerful are free to ruin the lives of others for any reason or for none at all, do you commonly find poor time-keeping used as a symbolic way of humiliating the vulnerable and more powerless.

Well, quite. And again, it’s interesting just how often woke posturing entails a rejection of reciprocity. It’s practically a signature.

Punctuality is, among other things, a gesture of recognition, of empathy. You’re acknowledging the other person as mattering, as someone whose time is as finite as your own and no less valuable. And if someone exempts themselves from such reciprocal expectations – having been encouraged to do so by supposedly grown-up educators – then it seems likely they will do less well in life, whether socially or materially. To pick a humdrum example – if a schoolfriend’s mom invites you to join them for tea, and you turn up an hour late, unapologetic and still expecting to be fed, this is not an obvious basis for congratulation. Or a second invitation.

From this childhood example, you can, I think, extrapolate.

Update 2:

And that’s the thing about adherents of “equity” ideology – a term that seems to mean something like “equality of outcome regardless of inputs.” They disdain the habits of bourgeois life as something to be done away with, at least for certain favoured groups, while expecting the rewards of those same bourgeois habits.

Previously, this and this. Via Julia. 




Subscribestar
Share: