Mr Kaufman – who can doubtless detect racism in the motions of subatomic particles – would have us believe that his friend was using the word white as a racial descriptor, rather than, as seems more likely, an unremarkable acknowledgement of a traffic light’s colour when talking to a child.

In light of which, Mr Kaufman’s claims of being “bombarded” with racism – daily, everywhere – become at least explicable, if not convincing.

The pedestrian crossing signal that so distresses Mr Kaufman – a rudimentary humanoid figure, made of white lights on a black background – can be seen here, from a safe distance. You may want to steady yourselves. It’s all very upsetting, at least for the exquisitely sensitive – people finer than ourselves, and who write for the New York Times.

One might note the selectivity of the police, court and media in terms of which pretences are to be indulged with great diligence. Such that claiming to be a child, when you’re actually 27, to thereby gain sexual access to minors, is referred to as “pretending,” while claiming to be female, all physical reality to the contrary, is not.

And so, when local parents discover that a determined paedophile has once again been stalking children, and even trying to enrol in schools – supposedly as a girl, despite him being a 27-year-old man with facial hair – then none of those concerned parents must be allowed to know what the man in question looks like, or to know about his previous crimes – even though he’ll be loose again within days – and they must not be allowed to pass comment on his somewhat bizarre appearance.

Because that would be hateful, it seems. The very stuff of wickedness.

If you suggest that the laws of electromagnetism don’t dramatically alter depending on the melanin levels of the person doing the maths, then you just don’t care about “students of Colour” being “victims of deculturalization” and being “invalidated.”

Indeed, you are “erasing the values and culture of indigenous people,” and are bolstering “post-colonial discourses of White power and control over people of Colour via forcing the internalization of Western science knowledge.” Instead, all people of pallor must denounce themselves as oppressors, embrace “other ways of knowing” and “re-imagine what science education spaces can look like.”

Sadly, however, and despite the assertions above, the aboriginal alternatives to Maxwell’s equations and commutative algebra remain oddly unspecified.

In the comments, Karen M notes with amusement that science education is construed by Dr Matias as “forcing the internalization of Western science knowledge,” and adds, “This is called teaching. It’s why the students are there.”

Indeed. One might even suppose that internalising Western science knowledge might help students pass science exams and perhaps find science-related jobs. Say, in the West, where the students in question happen to live. Or in fact anywhere, given its global nature.

However, like so many of her peers, Dr Matias shuns the obvious in favour of contortion. And so, we’re told that “colour-blind” teaching – which is to say, treating students fairly, as individuals, rather than tribally, as racial mascots – is itself somehow “racist” and must be done away with. Apparently, we must have different rules for different groups, based on how brown they are.

Again, the basic conceit is that “urban students of colour” are incomprehensible creatures, akin to leprechauns, and not subject to normal proprieties; and that in order to impart even rudimentary information, one must first disavow one’s own values and standards, which other, paler students are nonetheless expected to meet. This, we’re assured, is “social justice.”

Boston Public Schools saw fit to endorse this programme of “Re-Evaluation Counselling” for fifteen years. And the counsellors declare that they are “dedicated to eliminating racism in the world,” thereby enabling “deep relationships across racial lines.” Hence, one assumes, all the chasing and screaming.

Because, you see, being pressured to declare yourself oppressed and racially traumatised, truthfully or not, while being chased into your bedroom and invited to wrestle, is an obvious path to both mental health and “social change.”