We’re All In This Together
The University of Utah has formed an “Anti-Racism” committee which will be tasked with “improv[ing] the overall campus climate regarding issues and events of racism across all intersections of identity.” The video, however, only mentions one race.
It’s an “intergroup dialogue,” you see, spanning “all intersections of identity and bias.” And in which only one notional group is implied as by default chronically victimised, albeit in ways that are somewhat mysterious. The term “anti-Blackness” is deployed many times. Though particulars of this alleged oppression are not immediately forthcoming, indeed entirely absent, as if such details were unnecessary – possibly on account of the time spent needlessly declaring pronouns, and repeating the words “equity,” “diversity” and “folx.” Students are, however, steered towards a course on “whiteness privilege,” during which people of pallor can feel suitably ashamed for their collective skin – sorry, sin.
We are told,
The Anti-Racism Committee recommends and evaluates measures to ensure that everyone enjoys a campus free of racism and hate.
And this feat will apparently be achieved by singling out The White Devil as uniquely defective and deserving of correction.
Update, via the comments:
Given the supposed gravity of the supposed problem, such that it requires committees and an ever-expanding infrastructure, you’d think these keen, colossal minds might share at least a hint of what it is they’re planning to “interrogate” and purge from the Earth. Alas, in page after page, we get only airy waffle about “systems… policies and processes,” none of which are specified, even in broad terms. The university itself is mentioned as allegedly a venue of seething racial bigotry, but again, no particulars are offered – none whatsoever. The claim, and what it implies about students and staff – which is to say, the insult - is simply presented as in no need of explanation, or examples, or any supporting evidence.
The video features Dr Bryan Hubain, the associate vice-president of student development and inclusion – a man who boasts of being a “black, gay immigrant” as if this were a credential, an accomplishment, a triple whammy – and a reason for our eternal fascination – and whose LinkedIn profile tells us he is schooled in “critical race theory.” So, no reasons for suspicion there.
Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.
“We are all equally guilty. Especially you.”
Well, you have to wonder why it is that no-one involved in the project – and there are lots of them, all declaring their pronouns – “he/him/el” – noticed that the impression being given was not entirely even-handed, and instead implied a number of, shall we say, begged questions.
David,
With respect (seriously, you are one of a kind), you make “load-bearing arguments”, they do not.
You are serious, they are not.
The real question is, what are we going to do about it?
I mean, I suppose it’s possible that the “dialogue,” the particulars of which are not forthcoming, will include, say, the importance of reciprocation, and acknowledge the possible harm done to white students who are continually told, either explicitly or by implication, that they, being White Devils, are the source of all injustice. Born to oppress.
Though I wouldn’t put money on it.
Somewhat related:
A numerical number. And “disparities” in academic performance, and in pretty much anything, can only be proof of racism. No other variables need be considered, it seems. This is the standard.
We used to be a serious country.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/22/police-pin-hopes-rainbow-cars-drive-hate-crime/
It’s always interesting to look at the data.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/black-population-by-state
I would hazard a guess that it is extremely difficult to fill diversity quotas in Utah.
Dr Iruka’s CV must be one of the most outstanding examples of grifting and complete lack of oppression one could imagine. Whether it is the 3 degrees (no tittering in the back there please) from Temple, Boston U and U Miami, the multitude of presumably well-paid sinecures on the US equivalent of QUANGOS is or her recent elevation to the National Advisory Council she is, to use the vernacular, “getting hers”.
racism, arguably, is the air we breathe
Smelling their own farts, then.
Smelling their own farts, then.
Heh. Well, quite.
If you start an ostensibly “anti-racist” organisation and the introductory materials give the impression that racism is somehow a demographically unilateral phenomenon – something done to black people, but never by them, and with Designated Oppressors clearly earmarked in advance – and while claiming that any disparities in outcome can only be explained by such allegedly all-pervasive-yet-unspecified racism, i.e., racism by white people, then the project seems pretty much worthless. Indeed, a form of gaslighting.
Which is to say, an active degradation of the moral and intellectual environment.
Well, you have to wonder why it is that no-one involved in the project …noticed…
Oh, I don’t have to wonder. I’ve worked government projects. Defense department contracts, FBI, TSA, even one for the UK Ministry of Defense. Noticing quite obvious things, like repeatedly missed deadlines or “new” project development strategies that are actually failed ideas the software industry rejected decades ago, or insanely unreasonable/unlikely deadlines, or team meetings where the creepiness factor was almost laughable, or where we were told to stick with the program, by a company whose motto is “we never forget who we’re working for”, because we weren’t building a logistics system, we were building houses. Yes. We were “building your house and your house and…”. You just don’t ask questions. Everything will be fine.
The Anti-Racism Committee recommends and evaluates measures to ensure that everyone enjoys a campus free of racism and hate.
However, not considering abolishing The Anti-Racism Committee as a prime mover of racism and hate.
Whether it is the 3 degrees (no tittering in the back there please) from Temple, Boston U and U Miami…
I have heard that Temple professors have a reputation for bullsh*t. That is, more so than universities in general.
“We are all equally guilty. Especially you.”
Heh. I think you nailed the essence of the grift.
racism, arguably, is the air we breathe
To paraphrase the Hollies – “All ytes need is the air that they breathe to oppress you”.
And yet these are supposedly serious academics. High priests is more like it – there’s an air of religious zealotry about this.
And yet these are supposedly serious academics. High priests is more like it – there’s an air of religious zealotry about this.
Given the supposed gravity of the supposed problem, you’d think these keen, colossal minds might share at least a hint of what it is they’re planning to “interrogate” and purge from the Earth. Alas, in page after page, we get only the usual airy waffle about “systems… policies and processes,” none of which are specified, even in broad terms. The university itself is mentioned as allegedly a venue of seething racial bigotry, but again, no particulars are offered – none whatsoever. The claim, and what it implies about students and staff – which is to say, the insult – is simply presented as in no need of explanation, or examples, or any supporting evidence.
The video features Dr Bryan Hubain, the associate vice-president of student development and inclusion – a man who boasts of being a “black, gay immigrant” as if this were a credential, an accomplishment, a triple whammy – and a reason for our eternal fascination – and whose LinkedIn profile tells us he is schooled in “critical race theory.”
So, no reasons for suspicion there.
“new” project development strategies that are actually failed ideas the software industry rejected decades ago
I hope you’re not talking about Agile/Scrum, because that sh!t is as undead as Count Tepes of Transylvania. A chemical engineer friend of mine texted me from the middle of his PMP recertification course to ask if software development actually used this “Agile” stuff they were learning[1].
Regarding the topic at hand, this is the result of the Gramscian “long march through the institutions”. Whether that created, or was merely made possible by a lack of civilizational confidence, here we are. The outrage is not that the University of Utah has formed an anti-racism committee; it’s that this grifter managed to get admitted to a university at all, much less earn three degrees.
[1] The answer, in case you’re curious, is “no, although we all say we do”.
I’m still waiting for the student groups brave or crazy enough to form clubs and committees dedicated to preserving the Straight White Male privilege that previous generations struggled so hard to provide.
I mean, can you imagine the nervous breakdowns? The Undergrad Senate meetings? The articles in the student newspaper? It would be glorious to behold!
The claim, and what it implies about students and staff – which is to say, the insult – is simply presented as in no need of explanation, or examples, or any supporting evidence.
That.
That.
Well, if someone repeatedly claims that their workplace, a university – i.e., its staff and students – are racially bigoted and undermining the lives and opportunities of minority students – such that committees are required, along with an elaborate and expensive, and ever-expanding, infrastructure – then the very least that someone could do is specify how, ideally with some evidence.
Lest others think they’re bullshitting.
“Police pin hopes on ‘rainbow cars’ to drive out hate crime”
I would humbly suggest that they’re more likely to cause it. But then, given the way this hustle seems to operate, maybe that’s the idea.
“It’s always interesting to look at the data.”
I think I’ve worked out why there were so many pasty-faced BLM “protesters” at CHAZ last year. (Remember that? It already seems like decades ago.)
“’black, gay immigrant’ as if this were a credential, an accomplishment, a triple whammy”
But, to Our Betters, it is. These things confer status; it’s like being the elder son of a Duke or being on first-name terms with the crowned heads of Europe to a previous generation.
“The answer, in case you’re curious, is “no, although we all say we do”.”
Phew. Because, speaking as a keen amateur, the thought that major businesses are running on software developed basically the way I’d do it keeps me awake at night. It’s a bit like hearing that airliner maintenance is being taught using one adjustable spanner, a Haynes manual, and a rusty can of 3-in-1 oil.
But, to Our Betters, it is. These things confer status
And I’m pretty sure there’s a word for that.
Phew
I’m not sure it will ease your mind when I say that in lieu of “Agile”, most software development teams engage in a project management methodology best described as “directionless flailing”.
It’s a bit like hearing that airliner maintenance is being taught using one adjustable spanner, a Haynes manual, and a rusty can of 3-in-1 oil.
The vast majority of software projects won’t kill anybody if they misbehave, so there’s no real incentive to do things any better than we are. Some software projects – like subway switching control software – will kill people, and those systems are developed under incredibly strict regimes with multiple independent quality checks. There’s often a professionally licensed engineer involved, as well, which means at least one person with very real skin in the game.
“most software development teams engage in a project management methodology best described as “directionless flailing”.”
Perhaps a new career beckons after all…
Seems accurate:
an “intergroup dialogue,” you see, spanning “all intersections of identity and bias.”
Nice white lady feminists haven’t caught up with what “intersectionality” really means. They think of a Venn diagram with the sets “complains about men”, “complains about whites”, and “complains about heterosexuals”. So the central intersection is like one of the cozy wine sessions where she and her friends complain about their husbands, with the status bonus that some of those friends are now black and/or lesbian. She might have to defer to the “lived experience” of those minorities, but that’s balanced out by her own lived experience of “sleeping with the enemy”.
But the black feminists who introduced the concept were thinking more of a Venn diagram with the sets “non-male”, “non-white”, and “non-heterosexual”. Being in any of those sets entitles you to deference from those who aren’t in that set. And the more of the sets you’re in, the higher your overall status is. So listen up Hilary, we’re not in the cozy little intersection together, I’m on the inside and you’re on the outside and you defer to me.
Boomer white feminists still think of “intersectionality” in terms of a majority – on the basis of its own majority moral concepts of kindness or tolerance or dialogue – making efforts to include minorities in its tent. But intersectionality is a minoritarian ideology – it’s a moral inversion where the uninvited guest is entitled to judge his hosts on the basis of his own moral principles that he’s so wonderful that he’s entitled to insert himself anywhere and his hosts should be grateful to have him. Such guests boast about being incompatible and obnoxious and overstaying their welcome, because under minoritarianism, those are moral failures of the hosts.
I hope you’re not talking about Agile/Scrum, because that sh!t is as undead as Count Tepes of Transylvania.
No, indeed sir. what I speak of is…quite the opposite. While the world was going to Agile, the brain trust twixt the FBI and my employer decided after numerous failures over the years to meet deadlines, that they would set an entire year aside to do ZERO coding, just design, design, design until the “design” was finally perfect. This for a project that was essentially taking an existing, very successful project (even mentioned in numerous TV series) and simply expanding its capabilities to add on different means of processing somewhat similar information. It was at that critical point, where they decided they were not going to code for a year, that I joined the program. I damn near went mad. Seriously.
To their “credit”, so to speak, they did develop 4 week “sprints” consisting entirely of documentation review. A “lucky” 13 of these…across a year. So they at least could brand it Agile…so long as no one who took Agile remotely seriously was looking.
Don’t forget to…not smile at the black folks:
http://twitter.com/WokeTemple/status/1429840675193987072
Born to oppress.
Meanwhile, in the motherland:
https://nationalinterest.org/print/feature/ive-worked-refugees-decades-europes-afghan-crime-wave-mind-21506
I visited U. Montana. They had an expressed goal of having x% black (can’t remember exact number). This came out to more black people than in the entire state, men women and children. Numeracy, how does it work?
…repeating the words “equity,” “diversity” and “folx.”
Quick question for the editors: do we pronounce the “-x” words as “folks” and “latinks,” or is it supposed to be “foal-ex” and “la-teen-ex”? I’ve been getting a lot of contradictory advice.
Which is quite a transformation, really.
Regardless of what they post on YouTube video comments and Twitter threads, that’s exactly how most of the MCU’s target demographic feels. I struggled through WandaVision and I haven’t bothered with any MCU media since. Although I hear some of the What If episodes are kind of interesting.
EDIT: Never mind. The first two episodes of What If are explicit race and sex swaps for more popular white male characters.
Numeracy, how does it work?
Numeracy is racist. Expecting melanin-gifted individuals to be numerate is racist.
What is it David always says? If Our Betters wanted to create a permanent underclass dependent forever on handouts, how would they do things differently to what they do now? Or something like that.
Oddly enough Tamils from South India and Sri Lanka are as melanin-gifted as sub-Saharan African tribesmen, and yet they seem to have no problem at all with complex mathematics. Neither, for that matter, are a lot of melanin-gifted recent immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, so enhanced melanin content doesn’t always equal stupidity. Asian students from poverty-stricken families seem to be able to grasp complex mathematical concepts, so poverty doesn’t always equal stupidity. But I think what these successful groups all have in common is a cohesive or even semi-cohesive family structure in place, with fathers present in many or most homes.
Admitting that fathers are critical for the success of children means admitting that men are necessary and good. That kind of thinking will have you thrown from a rooftop if you’re not careful.
Neither, for that matter, are a lot of melanin-gifted recent immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa
There’s a selection bias in your sample you’re not accounting for.
Don’t forget to…not smile at the black folks:
I smiled and waved at a neighbor the other day, that is nigh a lynching, even if he smiled and waved first because he was subconsciously acting out of his own black white supremacy imposed on him though the generational trauma of blacks in the South having been expected to smile at wypipo.
Maybe I can get a book out of this too.
I’ve been getting a lot of contradictory advice.
According to a friends woke daughter, “folks” and “la-teen-ex”. The difficulty is the singular of “folx” (e.g., ein volk) and the plural of “Latinx”. Is it a case like “sheep” the same singular or a herd, or Latinexs (which I have seen), or the more proper Latin (NPI) Latinices ?
Latinices
Is that like Italian ices?
Admitting that fathers are critical for the success of children means admitting that men are necessary and good. That kind of thinking will have you thrown from a rooftop if you’re not careful.
Yep – it’s why I only say such things here, and under an assumed name. I remember the falling-flowerpot-from-upper-floor-balcony problem in physics class, and would prefer not to meet the same fate…
“folks” and “la-teen-ex”
No, no, no! This won’t do at all. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching the antics of the Woke, it’s that they are paragons of consistency and clear rulemaking. There’s just no way they’d go with this sort of mix-and-match nonsense.
Don’t forget to…not smile at the black folks
The demands are getting increasing weird:
You’re a racist if you don’t look at black people.
You’re a racist if you do look at black people.
You’re a racist if you smile.
You’re a racist if you frown.
Latinices
Is that like Italian ices?”
Lattices.
Or not.
pst314, it’s “logic” of the same kind as:
Wine mixed with water makes you drunk.
Whiskey mixed with water makes you drunk.
Brandy mixed with water makes you drunk.
Conclusion: water makes you drunk.
Woman banned from zoo for being obsessed with chimp … she says they’re “having an affair”
Most liberal county in Wisconsin: jail will now refer to inmates as “residents” or “persons in our care”
Because it would be wrong to show rapists and murderers that we disapprove of them.
(Never mind that the right message to violent felons is “you are scum and unless you reform the world is better off without you.”)
…do we pronounce the “-x” words as “folks” and “latinks”…
Shamelessly stolen from someplace I can’t find again – the proper pronunciation for those who use those is “pendejx”.
If the software you are developing has the ability to add incremental improvements and you actually don’t try to paper over waterfall with it, it doesn’t suck much more than anything else. It is a bit of a death march, since (in our case) you should deliver something that you can demonstrate to the business every 2 weeks. (Although our business folks are willing to wait until the end of an epic, so you can actually change base functionality for the better.)
We, as it so happens, have a QA group that contains honest QA engineers. There’s a QA guy who works with my team, and when he says something is broken, I go look. It is much much better for him to find my failures than our customers. I may disagree with his determination of failure, but when he’s correct, he’s correct, and I tell him so in public meetings.
shrugs If you have shit management, your software methodology won’t make a difference. Canadian engineers, however, wear the iron ring. (I did work in the US branch of Nortel for quite a few years and got to meet some of those engineers. They told me what it meant.)
it doesn’t suck much more than anything else
The only decent software project management book ever written is The Mythical Man-Month, full stop.
Scrum/Agile/XP was a crashing failure on the very project where it was invented, although the people who worked on it claim to this day that it was a “success, for some definition of success”.
Scrum can work well on a very specific type of project. Like all fads in software engineering, it’s been heralded as The Second Coming and turned into some kind of universal that every project can benefit from – including, apparently, ones that have no visual components or customers in the Agile sense.
Canadian engineers, however, wear the iron ring
I used to be one. Punched out when I realized that as dippy and fad-riven as software engineers are, at least they aren’t actively and consciously corrupt the way traditional engineers are. It’s easier to teach developers how to do engineering than to teach engineers to be honest, and less personally risky.
What the frak are you Oppressive Racists in the U.K. up to now?!
Use of the Welsh language is SYSTEMIC RACISM!!!
… because too few Oppressed, Virtuous People of Color speak it.
Admit it! You racist bastards PLANNED that, centuries ago!
Meanwhile, in the motherland:
And there’s more in the article about the open contempt with which the border crossers (and their well-funded advocates) treat the system – “They’ll stand right there, balding, grey at the temples, and insist that they’re eighteen,”.
And the system will make excuses for them. An Irish judge mitigated the sentence of a Pakistani national who facilitated the illegal immigration of Afghanis on the basis that he did it as a favor to some people from the old country and didn’t need to be paid for it. This is backwards – normally needing the money is a mitigating factor for the crime, not that you did it out of your heart’s conviction. The judge excused it as a case of “misplaced loyalty”. But it’s loyalty where you’d expect it to be – to the people he has family and tribal and religious connections with. Misplaced loyalty would be to whatever European bureaucracy he managed to manipulate into giving him residency paperwork.
Given that the author (Cheryl Benard) is married to an Afghan-American diplomat and has been a long-time advocate for refugees from the region, it’s brave of her to face up to those kinds of truths. But she goes back onto the narrative track with her feminist psychologizing about how they hate happy independent women, and her continuing conviction that this failure of managerialism should be corrected not by discontinuing mass immigration from Afghanistan but by a more expensive and complex managerialism for keeping track of badly behaved Afghans and the Austrians who complain about them.
Benard is a former child actress who can be seen at five years old in Kleine Leute mal ganz gross, a 1958 film about Berlin children sent for a vacation in Bavaria as a respite from their difficult lives in the divided city. WW2 guilt theoretically closer in time, and all the misery in the world to choose from, yet it was thought perfectly normal that a heartwarming story could be made about looking after a busload of white children from their own nation. Whatever the world was judging Germany for, its moral stature at the time didn’t depend on accepting planeloads of the unable-to-assimilate and unwilling-to-assimilate from every failed nation in the world.
Never mind. The first two episodes of What If are explicit race and sex swaps for more popular white male characters.
Heh. Yes, not quite making the point they apparently think they’re making.
I saw the first episode – presumably, the strongest – and wasn’t entertained. I quite like the animation style, in general, but, again, the writing wasn’t good. Just clunky and obvious. Oh, and a sex-swapped lead character that didn’t work visually. She looked… disproportioned and unattractive, which could be construed as symbolic of the writer’s politics. During an interview, the writer, Ms A.C. Bradley, made a point of using the words “white men” as a pejorative, implying that, unlike her, they were terribly privileged and entitled, which should have been enough of a reason for me to do something else.
The forthcoming Doctor Strange episode is the only one I have any interest in. But at this stage, it’s almost a morbid curiosity.
[ Added: ]
It scarcely needs saying, but we have a self-imagined ‘creative class’ of severely-educated middle-class ‘progressives’ that’s increasingly removed from, and at odds with, the tastes and values of the audience it supposedly serves. It isn’t a new phenomenon, but it is, I think, becoming more pronounced, and on many fronts.