This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil… I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a fucking favour.

A dementedly racist woman, Aruna Khilanani, a woman who happily shares her fantasies of killing random white people, is invited to Yale to lecture the young and credulous. 

She’s a psychiatrist, by the way, presumably with paying patients. 

Note that if you challenge Ms Khilanani’s incoherent rambling, or her wildly arrogant generalisations, or her evasiveness and disregard for actual evidence, this is because you are “defensive,” being white, and are therefore “unable” to process her deep and radical wisdom. Including her conviction that “white people don’t eat bread.”  

Her talk, we’re assured, was “very well received.”

Update, via the comments:

Ms Khilanani is eager for the world to understand that she is a thinker, an intellectual. In large, bold letters, we’re told that,  

I may be one of the only [sic] psychiatrists in the country that has a Masters level body of knowledge in theory on marginalised identities… I majored in English at the University of Michigan, and completed a Masters of Humanities at the University of Chicago focusing [sic] gender theory, race theory, African American Studies, Embodiment, Post Colonialism, Sexuality, queer theory, Culture, South Asian Studies, and Marxism.

Grammar and proof-reading are not, one assumes, among Ms Khilanani’s many, many areas of focus and expertise. And curiously, the result of all this fierce rumination is a woman who struggles to support, or sustain, any kind of argument, and who appears unable to think in straight lines, such that one thing follows from another. Evidence is reliably absent, as is logical connective tissue. Instead, we get a series of bald assertions, quite a lot of blathering and deflection, and unrelated fragments of what can only be described as a bizarre conspiracy theory. We’re told, for instance, that expectations of racial reciprocity, mutual civility, would be a “false equivalence,” though why remains unclear, beyond the claim that white people are inherently defective, are “psychologically dependent on black rage,” and “have five holes in their brain.”

As a Boston high school sophomore, Keondre McClay said he was pressured by the head of a district-sponsored youth advocacy programme to attend an overnight retreat in Newton, where white adults asked the black teenager to wrestle out his emotions on a gym mat with them. They said it would help him purge his trauma from experiencing racism.

Um. A little odd. But hey, we mustn’t judge. After all, these are progressive, caring people, tumescent with compassion for the brown-and-therefore-downtrodden. 

McClay fled to his room. Jenny Sazama, the programme leader, and other retreat participants chased after him. For more than an hour, he recalled recently, they hugged him on his bed and entreated him to return to the group “counselling” session while he hid under the covers screaming, “Please leave me alone!”

As you can see, they care an awful lot. 

When they eventually left, he locked the door, but someone got the facilities manager to unlock it. McClay called someone to help him get home at midnight. “I was, for lack of a better word, assaulted,” said McClay, now 21.

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.

Cyclists and the cycling industry must come to terms with the reality that cycling is a powerful narrator in the power of whiteness that feeds anti-Blackness.

Via Instapundit, news from the frontier of woke sports, where “the power of whiteness within cycling” is, we’re assured, a thing that exists:

It’s time for cycling to think beyond white fragility, white privilege, implicit bias, and microaggressions, and begin to think about its root cause. Cycling must reject interventions that continue to individualise anti-Black racism, and work to break down the structures that allow whiteness to retain power in the sport.

As is the custom, assertions soon pile high, albeit unsteadily, and questions are begged at a rate of knots. The “system of privileges and advantages afforded to white people” is denounced more than once, along with “the whiteness of cycling,” though, as so often, the particulars remain unobvious and unconvincing. Apparently, “white privilege” is a phenomenon to be taken as a given, always and everywhere, and in which we must believe. For instance,

In late September, many in the sport turned a blind eye when it came to light that world-champion Chloe Dygert ‘liked’ several racist and transphobic tweets.

I’m unfamiliar with Ms Dygert or her views, but the sole, supposedly damning, example of her “transphobia” is her liking of the statement “Men who identify as women are not actually women.” This does not strike me as phobic, or scandalous, or indeed inaccurate. And for a female athlete to prefer competing against other women, i.e., fairly, should not be controversial – in a sane world. As for alleged racism, the only evidence provided is the liking of a tweet that says, “White privilege doesn’t exist; good choice privilege does.” But even to dispute woke conspiracy theories is, it turns outs, itself proof of racism and a basis for “disgust,” which seems enormously convenient, for the accuser, and must save a lot of time. And so, this liking of a tweet is framed as,

an expression of the violent normality of anti-Black racism in the world.

Which is in no way hyperbolical or ludicrous, obviously.

And yet they say you must gargle it.

In her blueprint, [Tigard-Tualatin School District Director of Equity and Inclusion, Zinnia Un] describes the new oppressor as an amalgamation of “whiteness,” “colour-blindness,” “individualism,” and “meritocracy”… For Un, they are the values of white society, the primary impediment to social justice.

What is the solution to pathological whiteness? According to Un and the Tigard-Tualatin School District, the answer lies with a new form of “white identity development.” In a series of “antiracist resources” provided to teachers, the Department of Equity and Inclusion includes a handful of strategies for this identity transformation… Couched in the language of professional development, the process assumes that whites are born “racist,” even if they “don’t purposely or consciously act in a racist way.” The first step in the training document is “contact,” defined as confronting whites with “active racism or real-world experiences that highlight their whiteness.” The goal is to provoke an emotional rupture that brings the subject to the next step, “disintegration,” in which he or she feels intense “white guilt” and “white shame,” and admits: “I feel bad for being white.” 

Christopher F Rufo on the indoctrination of children, and their teachers, in Portland schools. 

Once suitably ashamed and disintegrated, the victim – and the word victim is entirely apt – is quizzed on whether their submission to this psychological abuse has resulted in sleep deprivation and broken relationships – these are good signs, apparently. Signs of “change-making” and “solidarity.” Of emerging wokeness.

At which point, readers may recall the openly sadistic ravings of “diversity” pioneer Jane Elliott, another psychological molester of children, and who described, with satisfaction, how one of her younger victims went from being a “brilliant, self-confident, excited little girl to a frightened, timid, uncertain little almost-person.” This state of demoralisation and neurosis – of children being manipulated and bullied, and bullied again, until they feel “discomfort, guilt, shame, embarrassment and humiliation” – is an achievement, you see. The way white children should feel – if they are to be saved.  

If the prospect of eight-year-olds being told that they are “of course” racists, by definition, and that they are, on account of being white, complicit in oppression and murder… if that sounds too grotesque to actually be happening – in taxpayer-funded schools – do read Mr Rufo’s article in full.

Update, via the comments:

Noah Carl on the undiscussable: 

Consistent with earlier studies, [Louis Jacob and colleagues] observed a moderately strong negative association between IQ and obesity… The authors also found that the association remained statistically significant when adjusting for a range of other variables. However, their findings were not warmly received in all quarters. On 26 February, the journal [Lifestyle Medicine] published a letter to the editor titled ‘Concerns regarding “Association between intelligence quotient and obesity in England” and unjustifiable harm to people in bigger bodies.’ Despite comprising only a couple of thousand words, the letter has thirteen authors, which tells you something really needed saying.

After introducing themselves as “academics, health professionals, health psychologists and lay experts in weight stigma and discrimination, public health, patient advocacy and risk communication,” the critics assert that “the contents of this paper are likely to cause unjustifiable harm to people in bigger bodies.” I had assumed that ‘obese’ was the correct medical term, but that is evidently no longer the case. Perhaps if the original authors had referred to the “association between intelligence quotient and bigger bodiedness,” they could have forestalled some of the criticism.

Note the signatories’ conceit that “people in bigger bodies” should have some kind of veto over research into obesity.

Via Captain Nemo, Damian Counsell on race, facts, and fervour: 

[A] senior elected representative in two of the most powerful institutions of the establishment Left has invoked the phrase [“institutional racism”] to justify telling a non-white woman occupying one of the three great offices of state that she should be expelled from the country of her birth. For a segment of the self-proclaimed Left, the words “institutional racism” conjure a threat so cryptic that it requires no evidence, and so evil that it excuses overt racism. [Howard] Beckett deleted the tweet, but his subsequent apology is even more revealing. “I’m very sorry for my earlier tweet,” he wrote. “I was angry to see Muslim refugees being deported on the morning of Eid Al Fitr.” At the time of writing, the immigrants in question are believed to be Sikhs, not Muslims; but such distinctions matter little to a particular kind of crusader.

And Simon Webb on black “microaggressions”:

From the world of campus wokescolds, where innovation never ends:

The opinion editor of the Northwestern University’s student newspaper recently published an article asserting that white people walk awkwardly on sidewalks because of their internalised racism.

The editor, Kenny Allen, who is black, is quite confident on this point.

Laying out the claims by University of Richmond sociologist Bedelia Richards for determining “whether one’s university is racist” — such as which groups feel most “at home,” whose “norms, values and perspectives” are legitimated, and “who inhabits positions of power” — Allen concluded that “White people” meet most of the criteria.

A shocking twist. Feel free to gasp.

You see,

People at this predominantly White school would not move out of our way on the sidewalk. This was one of many reminders that diversity does not mean inclusion at NU.

Sadly, and perhaps oddly, no particulars or examples are offered to support this claim. Despite the alleged ubiquity, Mr Allen shares no damning anecdotes of obstinate white people failing to accommodate the brown and downtrodden-by-default. Apparently, we are to accept as obvious, as beyond question, that any such failures of politeness and spatial reciprocation are exclusively the fault of white people, on account of their being white, and therefore oppressive. Indeed, we’re told that pavement users of pallor are actually re-enacting “the rules of Jim Crow,” which “required Black people to yield to White people whenever possible.”

Many White people walk around campus having unknowingly absorbed this particular facet of White supremacy, and the leaders of the institution do little to make us believe that White supremacy is something worth challenging in the first place.

That the cultivation of a chippy, racially paranoid attitude may itself increase the likelihood of pavement collisions and general frustration, and be a self-reinforcing phenomenon, is a possibility that has seemingly eluded Mr Allen, who instead directs his energies to bemoaning the “violent feedback” to his pronouncements. A violence that includes gentle mockery and, it would appear, demurral of any kind.

“I’m perfectly legal and I’m a teacher.”

Via Mr Muldoon.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Faced with complaints from parents about the indoctrination of children, an official in Rockwood School District, Missouri, instructed teachers to create two sets of curriculum: a false one to share with parents, and then the real set of curriculum, focused on topics like activism and privilege.

These instructions were sent to all middle and high school principals in the district. “This is not being deceitful,” wrote Natalie Fallert, the official in question, before adding, “I hate that we are even having to have this conversation.” 

It occurs to me that when your solution to such complaints includes the words “so parents cannot see it,” it may be time to revisit your assumptions. A subsequent non-apology, issued by a different official when the instructions to deceive became more widely known, insisted that the school district views parents as “allies” in the education of “our children.”

An unhappy phrasing, all things considered. 

For newcomers and the nostalgic, more items from the archives:

Imagine The Picnics.

Emily Zak wants us to know that fresh air and countryside are, like everything else, terribly oppressive.

Naturally, Ms Zak has an extensive, at times bewildering list of excuses for why any outdoors recreation should be tinged with guilt and wretchedness. From the claim that, “our society leverages natural spaces as a tool for capitalism and colonialism,” to the “toxic binary expectations we have about gender.” To spare you the tedium, I’ll summarise: If you can’t borrow a tent or don’t have a pair of suitable shoes, and if you don’t see enough adverts featuring gay people kayaking, and kayaking in a discernibly gay-affirming manner, it turns out you’re being oppressed by society.

Pantomime.

A balding, middle-aged transvestite, a sociology lecturer, wishes to confuse your children.

Dr Cremin doesn’t seem to grasp, or isn’t willing to admit, that his craving for public transgression – to, as he puts it, “sow gender confusion in kids” – by which he means young people over whom he has leverage – reveals quite a lot about his character. And his fitness to teach. I hate to sound prim, but if I were – God help me – a sociology student, I doubt I’d be reassured by the fact that my lecturer felt entitled to use the classroom as a venue for his transvestite fetish. It does rather suggest a pathological level of self-involvement and raises a suspicion that students may find themselves playing captive audience to – or being reluctant participants in – some personal psychodrama. A kind of power game. Some variation of, “I can do this and you can’t stop me without being accused of bigotry.”

They Come To Teach Us.

Polite man encounters Mao-lings. Mao-lings lose their minds, scream abuse, then assault him.

People often don’t like the words I say or write because they don’t like the way I say or write them. They don’t like the emotion, intention, passion, and words I use to emphasise all of the above.

In the pages of Scary Mommy, Ms Amber Leventry, a “queer person and educator,” is telling us how it is:

When folks become uncomfortable, they focus on the tone of the words being said and label it as unprofessional, angry, off-putting, or inappropriate. Rather than actually hearing what I’m saying, they try to avoid accountability or problem-solving by advising me to be more approachable or calm. This is tone policing, and it happens most often to marginalised groups and women — especially Black women — and it happens everywhere. It’s bullshit.

At risk of being difficult – and making claims of “bullshit” seem a tad premature – other possibilities come to mind. It is, for instance, generally easier to process calm speech and to formulate a meaningful response. Dealing with agitation and temper isn’t often conducive to mutual understanding, and it’s hard not to be defensive when someone is shouting and swearing at you. Needless to say, fits of vehemence and impatience aren’t the most obvious path to nuance and the clear communication of detail. And it may, of course, be the case that the person doing the shouting and shrieking is simply a bully and accustomed to getting their own way by means of decibels and arm-flailing.

However, Ms Leventry is much too busy to engage with such humdrum possibilities. Instead, we get a hint of the regard in which she holds her peers and employers:

I recently provided a training for K- through third grade teachers about how to make their classrooms more inclusive for transgender and gender nonconforming kids. It was LGBTQIA+ allyship 101. The principal asked me not to swear during the training because some of the elementary school teachers don’t like swearing. This wasn’t a threat; it was an admission that some of her staff would be policing my words and then shutting down if they became offended when I didn’t spoon-feed them G-rated language and in a way that didn’t disrupt their naïve view of the world… Instead of focusing on the content, they would only be able to focus on the tone or package in which the content was delivered.

A pretty good reason, one might think, to prioritise effective communication over any satisfaction to be had in unnerving strangers with incongruous coarseness and bellowed epithets. Assuming, that is, that what matters is the aforementioned content, not adolescent self-indulgence or displays of domination.