Rendered Tearful By The Undertakings Of White People
It turns out that the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University have much to offer the pretentious and racially neurotic:
As is the custom, an operatic tone is adopted and victimhood is feigned and deployed as a credential, a basis for deference. Though particulars of any credible harm, any actual modern-day “racism,” are thin on the ground. And the reasoning, such as can be discerned, is just a tad contrived. Quite how those “undertakings of white people” – in the arts and sciences – are crushing the hopes and dreams of students, robbing them of breath, remains somewhat unobvious. Likewise, the logical or moral basis for “reparatory measures.”
Yet those doing the demanding, a group of Nottingham academics, insist that these alleged woes, these “enduring detrimental legacies,” whatever they might be, “are issues that require urgent and sustained attention.”
I’m guessing this is where the applause is supposed to go.
Despite the theatre of “ongoing emotional pain,” the proponents of degree-course “decolonisation” seem quite enthused by their scolding and leverage. Their ability to wring pretentious atonement from fellow players of the game.
The central reasoning, such as it is, seems to be that some indirect historical beneficiaries of slavery, including those born after abolition, also gave money to universities, which, in ways somewhat mysterious, invalidates those universities’ modern-day course content and renders it harmful to People Of Pigmentation. “Reading classical European literature” and “travelling to historic landmarks” are among the activities deemed tainted and bruising.
In short, on a par with other recent efforts to “decolonise” degree courses, to purge them of the “inequities” of “white knowledge,” and thereby exterminate any trace of “white supremacy.” As when the Quality Assurance Agency, an organisation that boasts of being “trusted by higher education providers and regulatory bodies to maintain and enhance quality and standards,” demanded that computing courses address “how divisions and hierarchies of colonial value are replicated and reinforced” within the subject.
I’ll give you a moment to ponder that one.
If the particulars are, again, unclear and the reliance on verbiage unconvincing, and if readers are unsure of what “neoliberal systems of power” might be, and how they might bear upon musical notation or the Royal Veterinary College, at least the antipathy towards things deemed “white,” and thus offensive, is hard to miss and evidently relished.
Despite such causal convolution, the racial browbeating is having its intended effect:
And goodness, we can’t have that.
That.
They’re just taking the piss now, aren’t they?
There is, I think, a certain contrivance – and an air of being accustomed to deference, of winning by default. As if asking for convincing particulars would itself be some kind of outrage. An affront to the chosen narrative.
Another recurring claim strikes me as rather dubious. We’re expected to believe – and to affirm – that minority students are somehow disabled by choosing to study a subject in which their racial group is not at all times centred or depicted as pivotal. But were I to choose to study, say, the history of paper-making or porcelain, I don’t think I’d be crushed by the importance of Chinese craftsmen. I don’t think the race of the historical innovators would have much bearing on my grades or send me spiralling into depression.
I was reminded of this poisonous farce at the University of Birmingham, where, in a publicly-funded scheme, white academics were humiliated and singled out for their entirely invisible racial bigotry, and assigned with racial minority “reverse mentors,” whose job was to make their victims “feel quite uncomfortable.”
No actual evidence of racial bigotry was unearthed, of course, none whatsoever, but the humiliation ritual continued nonetheless. As I said at the time,
I think it also offers a clue as to the kinds of personalities attracted to the claptrap above.
It’s a little trite to compare this to the boy who cried wolf, but the use of spiteful (and typically baseless) accusations of racism against individuals and institutions must by now have long since passed the point at which the diminishing returns have become obvious?
It’s almost a full 10 years since the campaigns for Remain in Britain and for HRC in the US tried loudly and often to gain power by relentlessly smearing not just their opponents as racist, but anyone who said they were willing to listen to the views of Leave and Trump.
It didn’t work then, and it’s even less likely to work now.
Britain’s population has changed steadily over the course of the last 75 years or more.
If these researchers have genuinely found that life for ethnic minorities is as intolerable and insufferable as they make out then at this point all they are doing is gifting the real ethnonationalist far right with ammunition.
TL;DR
This (shared on David’s Twitter account)
Clam:
What do you mean “now”?
It was always only about misdirection, replacing reality with an arbitrary narrative – from the very first narcissistic emotional manipulation.
It was never, ever pure, never about being nice or fair. If you believe it ever was, you are one of the useful idiots.
It was always only about coercing people to see four fingers but say “five”.
The broader “decolonisation” movement does have obvious connotations of insult and, as in the University of Birmingham episode, above, outright psychological abuse. Even the more commonplace slogans are vaguely insulting. “Diversity is our strength,” and so forth. As if these little islands were somehow pale and enfeebled and had no history of significance prior to the arrival of large numbers of browner, more noble beings.
Well, depending on context, diversity may be a strength, just as it has glaringly apparent downsides, seen daily, but on which we’re not supposed to comment.
The most pernicious effect of the Industrial Revolution is freeing up this lot from the salt mines.
Yes, well, computer science was lost long ago with the “Ada Lovelace was a programmer” nonsense. It’s so baldly not true that even Wikipedia has to admit it. Decolonizing bigendian compilers is small beer.
I remain unconvinced that such studies require a university. Or even benefit from one.
Only if you take the claims at face value. Remember, these are Bezmenovites. The goal is not to address wrongs; it’s to destabilize society. BLM and its precursors focus on the most transparently false narratives precisely because they are false. The goal is to drive society into two irreconcilable camps – you are either for the police or against them; for women or against them; for trannies or against them; for unrestricted immigration or against it; there can be no middle ground where actual abuses are detected and rooted out while the larger tradition is preserved. There must not be any common ground. When a society is riven by internal dissension it cannot defend itself when the tanks roll in to “restore order”.
Good riddance.
there can be no middle ground where actual abuses are detected and rooted out while the larger tradition is preserved.
And yet there is something in the liberal/progressive/leftist mindset that is prepared to accept that there is no middle ground. I remember having a conversation in the 90s with a neighbour. She said, “I take it you’re a conservative.” I said I’m a fiscal conservative but tend to be more of a liberal on social policies. She told me, in no uncertain terms, that wasn’t possible.
I can understand how progressives and leftists can think this way. They’ve been trained to it. This was a middle aged Liberal woman. The kind that used to pride themselves on being in the the mushy middle. What radicalized these folks?
Ooo! Let’s start a list. Here’s “good riddance” #2.
[ Admires new dish-draining rack. ]
[ Looks for crockery in need of washing. ]
You wish you had my glamorous life.
The darnedest things that can bring pleasure … [looks appreciatively at new collection of clear storage food containers]
I used to have one of those but then got one of these.
[ Dirties spoon, washes it. ]
Heh.
Not quite at the stage of generating needless washing-up, though I am looking forward to the next batch with a certain anticipation.
At the same time that US blacks were in slavery, there were initially MORE white slaves (indentured servants) who entered that status to get to the New World. After 5 years or so they were freed—IF they survived, and many did not. Do they have a legacy of slavery? If not, why not?
In the 1700s (not sure when it ended), criminals and the Irish were pressed into service in the British navy. A polite way to say they were slaves. Do they have generational trauma? Why not?
Jews in Europe were confined to ghettos, could not get gov’t jobs or be in the army etc right up through WWII. Do they have persistent trauma?
During the presidency of Jefferson, there was such a virulent slave trade of whites by N Africa countries (Libya, Tunisia now) that he got Congress to approve the first real US navy and waged a war to stop it.
During actual slavery days, there were virtually no POC in GB. How could current brown people in GB be suffering from the lingering effects?
I feel you, sister.
When Natives and the recent immigrants from the Caribbean here complain about racism, I like to remind them that my father’s family is of Irish descent, and the end of the Being Badly Treated By The British Empire line starts way back there, sister.
Again, it’s not about redressing wrongs. It’s about dividing society into inimical, irreconcilable factions.
Yes, that’s my point. Even if you want to stake a out a middle ground, the left will not let you. That’s the reason for the platitude “The Right thinks the Left is misguided and can be reasoned with; the Left thinks the Right is evil and must be destroyed.”
As I’ve said before, in terms of ideology, “diversity” seems to be the belief that the less we have in common, and feel we have in common, the happier we will be. An unobvious proposition, to say the least.
The Left has persuaded me to view the Left the way they view the Right.
In case it was unclear how upside down everything is, Biden just gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to George Soros, the man who put more criminals back on the street than any other human. “freedom” right
You mean The Spoon? Ah, the college life. The Spoon, The Fork, The Cup, The Bowl, The Plate. But things were simpler then. [ Stares at jar full of pens, pondering how many of them might actually function long enough to address an envelope ]
PiperPaul
Thing on the right looks like a hospital bed.
On the other hand, I think Hilary Clinton richly deserved her Medal of Freedom. By publicly describing half the country as “deplorables,” she was one of the first to turn the Democrats (and their Never Trumper allies in the GOP, or the Establishment GOP if you ill) into a memable laughing stock, cracking the facade to reveal the rot underneath.
Do not expect English professors to understand anything outside their field.
Especially when they are in departments of “Critical Race and Political Economy”.
Looking back, most of the English professors I knew were ignoramuses and fools of mediocre intelligence.
At some point, deportation should be abandoned in favor of draconian punishment.
Not always voluntarily. My paternal family (Click) were sold out of Debtors Prison in England and forced to come to the Colonies in 1697. They ended up on a VA plantation for about 60 years until their debt was paid off. One of my history professors said they were lucky. Most indentured were only freed by running away or the grave.
Ccs, the practice of the forced conscription of sailors (informally the “press gang”) has longish historical roots (Edward I in the 11th century) but was primarily used by the Royal Navy from the mid 18th century and formally ended in 1815 after the final defeat of Napoleon. Mostly restricted to men aged 18-55 who were already mariners, but some landsmen were undoubtedly pressed, and prisoners could opt to swap their sentence for service. Not enormously different to conscription into a nation’s army if slightly more rapidly applied.
And depending in quite how one does the estimates, it is very likely that significantly more Europeans were taken to North Africa as slaves than west Africans were taken to the Americas. However thanks to the different policies followed, modern descendants of slave populations only occur in the Americas, the North Africans gelded most of the male slaves.
He said publication of his criminal history violated his “human rights”.
Not sure if he should be treated as a human being or as a rabid dog.
You’re jealous that it has better hair than you?
On the subject of impressment:
With the rationale that American citizens were still subjects of the crown, impressment of American sailors by the Royal Navy was one of the cassus belli for the War of 1812.
In fact, one the reasons it is sometimes claimed as an American victory is that the treaty ending the war included a provision that the Royal Navy would stop doing that.
Mind, if they stopped all impressment in 1815 (the last battles of the War of 1812 were fought in 1815,) it didn’t cost the English anything to include the Americans in ‘everybody.’
We just need to suit the method of deportation to the person being deported. In this instance a trebuchet seems indicated.
Of course his victim has no rights.
Interesting way to say you’re open for business.
Fontmaster.
Same affect you’d expect when talking about yesterday’s exam. Only that wasn’t the subject at hand.
So to speak.
Pretty good kerning, too.
Yeah, he ain’t right.
Liberals. You don’t hate them enough.