I’ve previously mentioned the taxpayer-funded race hustler Dr Caprice Hollins, whose efforts to empower black Seattle school pupils included dismissing grammar and foresight as “white values” and expectations thereof as “cultural racism.” Rather than encouraging “students of colour” to articulate their thoughts, to be responsible and plan ahead, like everyone else, we must, said Dr Hollins, see people as “racial beings” and “teach [children] to view the world through a racial lens.” But we mustn’t correct their grammar and spelling, or expect them to turn up on time.

Similar sentiments were voiced, in a somewhat boggling way, by Dr Riyad A Shahjahan, a professional educator at Michigan State University and a “social justice theorist,” who wants us to believe that people with brown skin are mystical and exotic, akin to leprechauns, and, unlike white people, “inhabit [their] bodies fully.” Dr Shahjahan also denounces expectations of attentiveness and academic competence, and even punctuality, as racist and oppressive. We should, he says, embrace “embodied pedagogy” and “disrupt Eurocentric notions of time.”

With such deep and incontestable thinking in mind, it may not be surprising to learn that the Writing Centre at the University of Washington, Tacoma is exploring similar avenues. The Centre, the stated goal of which is to “help writers write and succeed in a racist society,” aims to improve the life chances of brown-skinned students by encouraging them to give employers the impression that they’re incapable of mastering even rudimentary grammar:  

An “antiracist” poster in a college writing centre insists American grammar is “racist” and an “unjust language structure,” promising to prioritise rhetoric over “grammatical ‘correctness.’” The poster, written by the director, staff, and tutors of the Writing Centre, states, “racism is the normal condition of things,” declaring that it permeates rules, systems, expectations, in courses, school and society… The Centre pledges to “listen and look carefully and compassionately for ways we may unintentionally perpetuate racism or social injustice, actively engaging in antiracist practices.” “We promise to emphasise the importance of rhetorical situations… in the production of texts,” announces the poster. “We promise to challenge conventional word choices and writing explanations.”

The Writing Centre press release - which, according to one of its authors, Dr Asao Inoue, took “over a year” to write, despite its brevity – tells us that language is “constantly changing” and it is therefore, allegedly, “difficult to justify placing people in hierarchies or restricting opportunities and privileges because of the way people communicate.” Instead of becoming proficient in the structure and expressive possibilities of the national tongue, students – brown ones – should “become more critical” of “unjust language structures.” Apparently, the way for minority students to flourish as writers is to dismiss any criticism of their prose, and any attempt to improve it, as a racially motivated “microaggression” and an “oppressive practice,” and thus proof of “an inherently racist society.”

In short, then, students with brown skin needn’t be articulate, verbally self-possessed, or precise in their thoughts. And that ungrammatical job application, the one enlivened with incomprehensible sentences and lots of inventive spelling, will do just fine. And by the time the real-world consequences of this “social justice” posturing become difficult to avoid, Dr Inoue will have been paid – and be merrily exploiting the next batch of suckers.

Thank goodness these enlightened people are here to help.

And speaking of notable trends: 

A leading girls’ school has drawn up a “gender identity protocol” that allows pupils to be called by boys’ names and to wear boys’ clothes if they request it… There are understood to be up to 10 girls in the sixth form who have gone through a formal process to be known within the school either as boys or as gender-neutral.

Ten, in just one sixth form of maybe 200 students, in a school of 770. 

“We are moving to the point where your gender is a choice,” said [headmistress, Clarissa] Farr. “I see this as a social phenomenon, especially in London, which is much talked about among school leaders.”

And presumably, among students too.

Farr said no one had yet come forward to be counselled on whether to embark on medical procedures to change sex. If a pupil had fully transitioned and become legally male they could no longer be a pupil, the protocol states, because St Paul’s is a girls’ school.

At risk of sounding heathen and indelicate, and while wishing no ill to people actually alienated from their own physiology, I do wonder to what extent this may be a fashion thing, a way to become interesting.

Ian Miles Cheong reports,

The latest sex trend: Spraying vaporised liquid nitrogen on your genitals.

So, um. Do let us know how it goes.

Fun with condoms. // Fans of FC Magdeburg help their team locate their opponents’ goal. (h/t, Obo) // Dads who didn’t want a dog. // On the theme for Doctor Who. (h/t, Damian) // Whalesynth. // Life at sea. // The Victorian illustrated Shakespeare archive. // The search for the greatest, like, ever, Valley Girl. // A brief history of Oscar-winning visual effects. // A brief history of nail clipping. // This. // TopoTopo. // Our impartial media. // Made with Google Earth. // Meanwhile, in academia. (h/t, TDK) // Delivery of note. // You have my undivided attention. // A touch of drag. // On the adhesive properties of geckos’ feet. // Don’t touch my stuff. // These things exist. // And finally, informatively, an interactive real-time 3D map of every bit of man-made stuff currently in orbit.

Via the comments, Spiny Norman steers us to another ‘progressive’ initiative:

The University of Cincinnati is sponsoring a workshop on “white fragility” and “white tears” this semester… “White fragility,” as defined by a paper in the International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, “is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviours such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviours, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium.”

In the spirit of reciprocity, I’ll attempt an alternative, and perhaps more realistic, definition. “White fragility” is the unremarkable fact that people by and large don’t like being slandered as racists and then assigned with some pretentious collective guilt, the supposed atonement for which requires deference to actual racists and predatory hokum merchants.

As Hippogryph notes in the comments, the official definition of “white fragility” looks an awful lot like Kafkatrapping, a dishonest and pathological manoeuvre, a form of emotional bullying, in which the denial of an unproven and insulting accusation is instantly seized upon as damning confirmation of said accusation. The object being to inculcate pretentious guilt via some notional group association, making a person feel somehow responsible for the actions of others, even strangers long dead, over whom he or she has zero influence. It’s an attempt to induce a profound unrealism, and thereby compliance. 

In light of which, we could parse the official definition of “white fragility” a little further:

These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear…

Or, put another way: “How dare you be annoyed by our slandering? How dare you question our motives as anything other than benign?”

…and behaviours such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation.

Or, “How dare you talk back and draw attention to our question-begging? How dare you not want to remain in the presence of people who wish to do you psychological harm?”

I’m paraphrasing, of course.