Elsewhere (303)
Douglas Murray on the “unconscious bias” hustle:
[“Unconscious bias” testing] became the basis of an industry, propelled by people pushing divisive ideas about identity politics. These people either believed or professed to believe that the exercise was scientific and could actually correct the brains and behaviour of anyone who had beliefs they disagreed with. So far and fast did this run that soon the inventors of the monster realised what they’d created and tried to kill it. Two of the three Harvard academics responsible said publicly that the exercise was not capable of being used in the way it was being used. There are too many variables in peoples’ behaviour over any day, never mind over time, to quantify, pin down - let alone ‘correct’ anyone’s ‘biases’. But that is where the opportunists came in. For in recent years another group decided to claim that these ‘tests’ had some laser-like precision. They began to charge hundreds of pounds to people to tell them that they were biased. A very nice racket to get into. For if anyone objected then this was simply yet more evidence of unconscious bias.
The particulars of “unconscious bias” woo were touched on here, where we learned that guilt – and the need for correction – can be determined by the random positioning of a chair. Such is intersectional science.
Via Darleen, Christopher F Rufo finds more primary school indoctrination:
A fifth-grade teacher at the inner-city William D. Kelley School designed a social studies curriculum to celebrate [Angela] Davis, praising the “black communist” for her fight against “injustice and inequality.” As part of the lesson, the teacher asked students to “describe Davis’ early life,” reflect on her vision of social change, and “define communist”—presumably in favourable terms. At the conclusion of the unit, the teacher led the ten- and eleven-year-old students into the school auditorium to “simulate” a Black Power rally to “free Angela Davis” from prison, where she had once been held while awaiting trial on charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder. The students marched on the stage, holding signs that read “Black Power,” “Jail Trump,” “Free Angela,” and “Black Power Matters.” They chanted about Africa and ancestral power, then shouted “Free Angela! Free Angela!” as they stood at the front of the stage.
In news that will shock no-one, the school in question is not rated highly in academic terms, with only 3 percent of students proficient in maths by sixth grade, and only 9 percent proficient in reading. Still, fear not. Our peddlers of “equity” have a fix for everything.
And via Mr Muldoon, whiteness has been helpfully classified. For children. By educators.
Attention, people of pallor:
So, dear reader. Which kind of monster are you?
Imagine being an educator, the principal of a school, and proudly issuing parents with a paranoid racist pamphlet titled The Eight Types of Negro, dense with conspiracy theory, and with almost every option somewhat unflattering. I invert the races, of course. But apparently this is where we are now. In the fiefdom of the progressive.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
Again, Douglas Murray’s article for those of us not sad enough to pay the Telegraph money to view their (other) propagandist garbage.
What is “consuming black culture without the burden of blackness”? Listening to The Supremes? What burden is being referred to here?
Is it this burden?
Ben Sixsmith on the difference between having ‘good’ opinions and being a good person.
Imagine being an educator, the principal of a school, and proudly issuing parents with a paranoid racist pamphlet titled The Eight Types of Negro, dense with conspiracy theory, and with almost every option somewhat unflattering
“The white regime”? These people are f*cking insane.
Gosh, a parade of narcissistic limelight-huggers and fame-hunters accuse one of their number of “calling her fat … and mocking her religious beliefs”.
How can the rest of us go on living, allowing such evil to go unchallenged?
“The white regime”? These people are f*cking insane.
“The corner shop was out of Thorazine, so I got you some woke identity politics…”
The 8 White Identities
What I find most curious about the people who peddle such hateful, divisive guff is the mental contortions they go through to pretend to themselves that they aren’t personally simply out-and-out racists. That they can’t be the racists because they are the right colour. Or read the right newspapers. Or watch the right cable news channel. Despite the implications of simply reversing the racial descriptors in their screeds.
What’s quite apparent behind all of this denial is that such people don’t oppose racism at all, they just believe in the concept of good and bad racism. Though they know they can’t come out and say so, because they recognise there is stigma attached to any support of the “r-word”. But they think they are good racists. And they also think that if they oppose bad racism with their good racism it will all cancel out.
You know, like if you put a Ku Klux Kanner in a sealed room with a Black Panther their mutual racist hatred will just cancel and peace and love will break out.
Dishonesty and stupidity are the foundation of all successful utopias, don’t cha know.
the mental contortions they go through to pretend to themselves that they aren’t personally simply out-and-out racists.
As Lionel Shriver put it, “Progressives seem especially prone to disguise one feeling as another.”
And as Instapundit often quips, “I’m beginning to think that the past 50 years or so of letting our children be educated by the enemies of our civilisation may have been a mistake.”
Is it this burden?
Source?
As usual I find myself at the top of the list! Damn I’m good!
Source?
Sorry, it’s by Leslie G. Illingworth. From Punch, December 1956 marking the union of British Togoland and the Gold Coast to form the newly independent Ghana.
Which kind of monster are you?
Child abuse.
White privilege:
Shot.
Chaser.
Hangover.
Meanwhile, “I’m beginning to think that the past 50 years or so of letting our children be educated by the enemies of our civilisation may have been a mistake.”
Child abuse.
Yes, it is a kind of psychological abuse – the work of nasty, broken people who wish to do damage to others. And as we’ve seen many times, the propagators of this noxious dogma are quite shameless and impervious to correction. Appeals to logic or realism, or reciprocity, are unlikely to have an effect. A positive one, that is. The ideological poisoning will only stop when the creatures responsible are chased from the village, as it were.
With nail guns, if necessary.
Shot.
Chaser.
Maybe that’s the wrong Dyjuan Tatro? Seems like the most logical explanation.
How can the rest of us go on living, allowing such evil to go unchallenged?
Context: it’s an open secret in Hollywood that Whedon fathered Charisma Carpenter’s child. So it’s a bit more than just a director being an asshole to a starlet.
While I can understand the skepticism over every new crop of #MeToo allegations, there is a spectrum, and Whedon’s alleged behaviour leans more towards the original “quid pro quo” style of harassment. Which, I should note, is illegal.
Also Michelle Trachtenberg, who has made the claim that there was an informal rule on set that Whedon was not allowed to be in the same room alone with her, was fifteen at the time.
These things aren’t black and white. Quid pro quo harassment would be illegal in the office of a midwestern paper company, but we all know the casting couch exists and is used by many starlets to advance their careers. On the other hand, directors have the power not just to not give you a job, but completely destroy your career if you don’t give in.
There’s a spectrum, with Mira Sorvino at one end and Corey Haim/Feldman at the other. I suppose reasonable people can disagree on whether the spectrum even ought to exist, but the more you get to the rightmost side of it, the more indefensible it becomes.
There’s a cynical cruelty to the unconscious bias accusation. It targets people who have already been bullied into accepting impossible (and immoral) standards of race blindness and xenophilia, standards that force them to be hypocrites and liars, and then this trained hypocrisy is “discovered” and used as evidence against the target, and justification of past, present and future moral retraining.
There’s a cynical cruelty to the unconscious bias accusation.
As we’ve seen, finding no evidence of prejudice, repeatedly, does not appear to stop them from wishing to inflict discomfort, as if those over whom they have power were somehow guilty anyway. It’s a license for sadism and petty vindictiveness, and attracts precisely the kind of people you’d imagine it would attract.
From Punch, December 1956
Thank you, Karl. I’ll take this as still another reminder that it might be loads of fun to locate and browse the complete Punch archives.
skepticism over every new crop of #MeToo allegations
I thought the whole conceit of feminism was that women were fully functional grown-ups perfectly capable of engaging with an adult world? My attitude, I’m afraid, is “Take it to court, or Fuck Off”.
I thought the whole conceit of feminism was that women were fully functional grown-ups perfectly capable of engaging with an adult world?
I’ve lost jobs because I refused to cover up illegal behaviour by my superiors and the company executive. I didn’t sue those employers because the long-term fallout to my career would have been devastating. That doesn’t stop me from warning people away from those people or those companies.
I believe that these people are suffering from unconscious retardation. The sad thing about unconscious retardation is that the sufferer is totally unaware that he is retarded. So you must ask yourself, “Am I retarded?” and if the answer is “No”, well, there you have the bad news.
So you must ask yourself, “Am I retarded?” and if the answer is “No”, well, there you have the bad news.
There’s actually something to that. Woke-ism is one big Kafka trap deploying loaded questions and gaslighting answers. It’s a feature not a bug.
James Lindsay breaks down the “academic” origins of much of this in his New Discourses podcast series. There’s a particularly good 4 part fisking of Marcuse’s 1965 essay Repressive Tolerance. There are also several episodes that deal with critical race theory.
Here.
Here we go again.
The spread on that Identities spectrum is amusing and terrifying to observe when juxtaposed with the concept (that I cannot currently find the reference for) of progressing people along the enemy <--> friend axis.
They don’t hate white supremacists any more than the rest. They just use Stage 1 as the stick to keep you moving down the list. Until you get to the point of actively destroying white people & culture you are at risk of being labeled a supremacist. The steps aren’t there to identify people. They are a tool to further radicalize whites. You are either progressing or you are an enemy.
It won’t even be enough to express pleasure at white kids being beaten at school or keeping black students from being punished. The groupthink won’t stop pushing until you are actively involved in the implementation of school curricula that tell white kids they’re guilty and policies that ensure black kids cannot be punished by the school or local government.
The William D. Kelley school here in Philadelphia is par for the course for most public schools in this district in 100% black communities: putrid facilities, incompetent administrators, and teachers who are either phoning it in, think they are activist saviors, or are just waiting to get the hell out and change careers so they no longer have to deal with feral children who are taught virtually nothing at home.
So, dear reader. Which kind of monster are you?
By this standard, definitely #1. It’s not unconscious bias; it’s simply a matter of observation as to what works, and what doesn’t.
_______________
I actually know Angela Davis (well to some extent; have spoken with her on a number of occasions).
A nastier piece of work would be difficult to find. She makes Irma Grese look like Mother Teresa.
Steve E – a better link for accessing James Lindsay: https://newdiscourses.com/author/jameslindsay/
The William D. Kelley school here in Philadelphia is par for the course for most public schools in this district in 100% black communities:
It doesn’t have to be that way. Which points to those who fetishize black folk for political power and the black folk who collude with them.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Which points to those who fetishize black folk for political power and the black folk who collude with them.
I know way too many public school teachers more interested in taking fist-raising selfies and calling themselves “activists” than they are in becoming subject matter experts who know how to manage and educate kids.
The local Archdiocese has been working tirelessly with non-profit and corporate partnerships to keep the Catholic schools open in poor neighborhoods. Those schools have waiting lists.
Here we go again.
These people make Immanuel Velikovsky seem like a paragon of science.
Given the introductory paragraph’s demonstration of both abject stupidity and basic illiteracy, it’s not worth reading the puerile enumerations part.
Sorry we killed your grandparents, but we are going to bring back culture.
Darleen: De Blasio’s sprockets: https://youtu.be/QHZR9SA5pOg
Steve E – a better link for accessing James Lindsay
Thanks for that exdemocrat. 🙂
De Blasio’s sprockets:
Hilarious. One of my favourites.
My sons and I are sporting our sprockets gear right now–thermal base layer to keep us warm while shoveling the driveway. We just did the sprockets dance for my wife while she was on a zoom call.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Sowell is a realist and a pragmatist. He realizes progess occurs one person at a time. Leftists think in class terms. Everyone must be equally miserable except for the elite dictatorship which they believe they will belong to.
Sowell is a realist and a pragmatist. He realizes progess occurs one person at a time.
Learning math or history is hard work, and teaching it to kids is more work. Much easier to teach fake “woke” math and history which, being made-up garbage, any moron can learn and repeat.
I actually know Angela Davis… A nastier piece of work would be difficult to find.
You should write up an account of your interactions.
I can’t fathom putting a child in a government school.
You should write up an account of your interactions.
Too lazy, and too reluctant to come out of the closet that much, but here’s a vignette.
One time there was a (ginned-up) controversy regarding political speech on campus, with attendant protests, etc. Angela Davis wanted to shut down some speaker to the right of Lenin, and I asked her if that didn’t run contrary to the issue of academic freedom.
She transfixed me with a look of utter contempt (as in “you idiot”), and disdainfully replied, “The Party doesn’t care about the issue. The issue is merely a vehicle for agitation, to build a mass movement.”
“But doesn’t that run counter to free speech?” I replied.
“You’re free to speak the truth. You’re just not free to speak lies.”
As a young, right-on leftist (i.e., nitwit), I was shocked by her cynicism, which really opened my eyes. Shortly thereafter I had my “road to Damascus” conversion to the conservative curmudgeon I’ve been ever since.
From other conversations with her, I personally have no doubt that she would stick at nothing – and I mean, nothing whatsoever – to advance communism.
I believe that these people are suffering from unconscious retardation.
As I once asked someone then dear to me, regarding their choice of a toxic relationship as the pillar of their life:
Are you mentally retarded?
Then why do you have to pretend to be, for this other person’s benefit?
She transfixed me with a look of utter contempt…
Evergreen Frank Herbert:
“When I am weaker than you, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your Freedom because that is according to my principles.”
As Lionel Shriver put it, “Progressives seem especially prone to disguise one feeling as another.”
That.
That.
It’s something to bear in mind. And it’s a reason I keep mentioning the psychology of leftism. If you don’t entertain the possibility of dishonesty, self-flattery and projection, for instance, leftist posturing, and its dissonance with reality, can be rather confusing.
Child abuse.
And this pernicious, stupefying, nakedly racist horseshit once again has an advocate in the White House.
Question asked, apparently unironically, following this news.
“Is vision really necessary for sitting in a windowless cannister in orbit?”
No, much better when weightless not to have the primary source of orientation and information and instead randomly float and bump around grabbing handles, levers, and switches till you find the right one.
It is all fun and games till something goes wrong*.
– Persons of short stature (<130 cm)
Been there, done that.
*(OK, not having legs allowed Douglas Bader to pull more Gs than his bipedal comrades, but when the Germans took away his artificial legs – including the one they allowed to be dropped to him, having lost one bailing out – it did make that whole escape thing a bit more of a problem)
Question asked, apparently unironically, following this news.
Regarding the disabilities in general, it’s one thing to consider a candidate who may be well qualified, perhaps over qualified (if such is possible) in so many areas that a certain otherwise disqualifying disability could be overlooked in favor of those other qualities, but quite another to go searching out people with disabilities and then shoe-horning them into a job where other people’s lives and billions (trillions?) of dollars of other people’s money are being invested. But then, that’s how government is done today, and not specific to space travel.
The other question I have is, if sitting in a windowless canister in orbit describes the job to a significant degree, why do we need to be sending humans at all? Seems like a tremendous waste of a valuable human’s time. Sometimes I wonder if the driver for a space program isn’t so much humanity’s desire to explore but a subconscious desire to implement Golgafrincham Ark B.
Apparently, maths students shouldn’t have to show how they arrived at an answer. Because that would be “white supremacy.”
Instead, they should make TikTok videos.