How dare you want a say in what we, your betters, do to your children?

Previously. Via Damian Counsell. 

Colleges to avoid, #124:

New students at Pomona College, Claremont, California, were welcomed to campus with posters in their dorms… stating that all white people are racist. The signs state white people should “acknowledge your privilege” and “apologise if you’ve offended someone,” adding that offensive language includes words like “sassy” and “riot,” which are “racially coded.” “Understand that you are white, so it is inevitable that you have unconsciously learned racism,” it asserts. “Your unearned advantage must be acknowledged and your racism unlearned.” Further, the poster claims that white people should “just listen!” rather than explaining their own perspective.

Don’t talk back. Dialogue is oppressive. Unilateral racial scolding is where it’s at. Because, for people of pallor, your very existence is something to atone for – and no-one would ever take advantage of free hits. After much “unlearning,” and suitably chastened and humiliated, you will then take your place in the new and glorious progressive pecking order.

Heather Mac Donald on the world’s real unsafe spaces: 

Because Albinos’ body parts are believed to carry magical powers, their limbs are highly marketable — once obtained, of course, through mutilation or murder. Attending school for sisters Bibiana and Tindi Mashamba was a nightmare; not only did other children throw rocks and spit on them and teachers beat them, but the threat of murder was ever-present. So, like many Third World girls, they simply stayed home. But even such a retreat from the public realm couldn’t protect them. The day after their father’s funeral, Bibiana’s leg and two fingers were hacked off in the hope of a lucrative sale.

Good Samaritans brought the girls to the Orthopaedic Institute for Children in Los Angeles so as to provide Bibiana with a new prosthetic leg. And then students from USC’s law school started an asylum appeal for them. Did those law students seek to get them asylum in Nigeria, say, or Haiti, so that they wouldn’t be oppressed by white privilege? No, oddly, they targeted their asylum petition at the U.S. government, the place where victims of the brutality, superstition, and hatred that characterise so many Third World countries flee to (along with equally reviled Western Europe). The petition was successful, and now Bibiana and Tindi are students in Ojai, California, where they are eager to catch up on their lost schooling and go on to college. There are no reports as of yet of the girls being stoned in Ojai.

Seth Barron on the unmentionable costs of illegal immigration: 

New York’s Health + Hospitals Corporation, which runs the city’s massive public health infrastructure, takes it as its mission to provide care to anyone who needs it, without regard for immigration status. This policy is a major reason why HHC is on constant verge of financial collapse. During the last fiscal year, HHC needed an emergency allocation of $337 million from the city [i.e., taxpayers] just to keep its doors open, and the prognosis for the future is even worse. At an April press conference, Dr Ram Raju, president of HHC, said that caring for illegals consumes about one-third of his $7.6 billion annual budget. Rounding down, that means that $2.5 billion — of which the city is picking up an increasingly large chunk every year, as state and federal aid dries up — goes toward providing health care to illegal aliens in New York.

And Cathy Young on the alleged gender politics of headphone use:  

Back in 2013, Dan Bacon posted a piece titled “How to Talk to a Woman Who Is Wearing Headphones.” This three-year-old blogpost was dug up and pilloried by a Twitter activist named Brandon Evers, whose Twitter bio states, “I support intersectional feminism, but only women can decide if I’m a feminist” and helpfully clarifies that his personal pronouns are “he/him,” and whose Twitter feed is mostly one long exercise in ‘look how progressive and pro-feminist I am’ moral posturing. Brandon’s tweet quickly went viral with 18,000 retweets, and the outrage machine kicked in, with Bustle, Slate, and numerous other sites denouncing [Bacon’s] post as a creepy and misogynistic call to sexual harassment and boundary violation. Revelist, a publication for millennial women, compared Dan Bacon to mass murderer Elliott Rodger, who killed six people (four of them men) in 2014 because he was mad about being rejected by women.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.

Heather Mac Donald on race hustlers and riots: 

For the last two years, President Barack Obama has seized every opportunity to advise blacks that they are the victims of a racist criminal justice system. We should not be surprised when that belief, so constantly inflamed, erupts into violence. Even in his remarks at the memorial service for the five murdered Dallas cops, Obama had the gall to trot out his usual racial vendetta against the police, even though he was fully on notice that cops were being killed because of it… Obama’s indictment ignored, as usual, the astronomically higher rates of black crime that fully explain racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Meanwhile, Obama hasn’t uttered a word in condemnation of the lawless behaviour in Milwaukee, two days into the events. […]

And as important as the political stoking of that hatred is the academic race industry that keeps black victimology at a fever pitch. The 2015–2016 school year saw an outbreak of delusional self-pity among black college students across the country. They claimed to be discriminated against by faculty, administrators, fellow students, and academic standards. Never mind that many allegedly disparaged students were attending the colleges in question only because of racial preferences, despite having test scores that would automatically disqualify white or Asian applicants. Never mind that nearly every waking hour of a college administrator is devoted to the cultivation of a separatist racial consciousness among black students and to dreaming up new racial sinecures for faculty and other administrators.

For an example of that victimology, and the behaviour being excused by faculty and staff, see this surreal episode. Note the impunity and inversion of reality. And note the description, by the university’s vice provost for student affairs, of blatant racial thuggery as “a wonderful, beautiful thing.”

A group of students at the Claremont Colleges in search of a roommate insist that the roommate not be white.

But of course. I mean, it is the twenty-first century.

Student Karé Ureña posted on Facebook that non-white students in need of housing arrangements should reach out to either her or two other students with whom she plans to live in an off-campus house. The post states that “POC [people of colour] only” will be considered for this living opportunity. “I don’t want to live with any white folks,” Ureña added.

[Student] Dalia Zada expressed concerns about the anti-white discrimination. “‘POC only?’ Maybe I’m missing something or misunderstanding your post, but how is that not a racist thing to say?” “This is directed to protect POC, not white people. Don’t see how this is racist at all…” responded AJ León, a member of the Pitzer Latino Student Union.

“People of colour are allowed to create safe POC only spaces. It is not reverse racism or discriminatory, it is self-preservation,” Sara Roschdi, another Pitzer Latino Student Union member, stated. “Reverse racism isn’t a thing.” “We don’t want to have to tiptoe around fragile white feelings in a space where we just want to relax and be comfortable,” commented Nina Lee, a Women’s Studies major. “I could live with white people, but I would be far more comfortable living with other POC.”

“White people always mad when they don’t feel included but at the end of the day y’all are damaging asf [sic] and if a POC feels they need to protect themselves from that toxic environment THEY CAN! Quick to try to jump on a POC but you won’t call your friends out when they’re being racist asf [sic],” noted Terriyonna Smith, an Africana Studies major and Resident Assistant for the 2016-2017 year. “I’m not responding to NO comments and NOPE I don’t wanna have a dialogue.”

Parents and alumni, please take note. This is what identity politics does to a child.

Victor Davis Hanson on borders and the lack thereof: 

Among elites, borderlessness has taken its place among the politically correct positions of our age — and, as with other such ideas, it has shaped the language we use. The descriptive term “illegal alien” has given way to the nebulous “unlawful immigrant.” This, in turn, has given way to “undocumented immigrant,” “immigrant,” or the entirely neutral “migrant” — a noun that obscures whether the individual in question is entering or leaving. […]

What we might call post-borderism argues that boundaries even between distinct nations are mere artificial constructs, methods of marginalisation designed by those in power, mostly to stigmatise and oppress the “other”… “Where borders are drawn, power is exercised,” as one European scholar put it. This view assumes that where borders are not drawn, power is not exercised — as if a million Middle Eastern immigrants pouring into Germany do not wield considerable power by their sheer numbers and adroit manipulation of Western notions of victimisation and grievance politics. Indeed, Western leftists seek political empowerment by encouraging the arrival of millions of impoverished migrants.

Inevitably, the issue of naked, often comical hypocrisy becomes hard to avoid:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg offers another case study. The multibillionaire advocates for a fluid southern border and lax immigration enforcement, but he has also stealthily spent $30 million to buy up four homes surrounding his Palo Alto estate. They form a sort of no-man’s-land defence outside his own Maginot Line fence, presumably designed against hoi polloi who might not share Zuckerberg’s taste or sense of privacy. Zuckerberg’s other estate in San Francisco is prompting neighbours’ complaints because his security team takes up all the best parking spaces. Walls and border security seem dear to the heart of the open-borders multibillionaire — when it’s his wall, his border security.

See also, Simon Schama Syndrome. 

In academia, the past will be remembered by erasing any unflattering reference to it:

Yale University has established a new committee dedicated to deciding when and how the school should rename buildings, monuments, and other campus features it believes are too offensive for a modern university.

And over at Columbia University (and Bowdoin, and Barnard, and Wesleyan, and NYU):

Behind these moves away from [admissions] testing is another phenomenon that schools do not appear to have stated explicitly.

But coyness aside, deliberately lowering standards is apparently a good thing.   

And lifted from the comments, meet Olivia Legaspi, a young woman with sense:  

Here’s what I was told during my freshman orientation at Haverford College: “Speak up when you feel uncomfortable. Place your own wellbeing above all other concerns.” In short, the school was ready to protect me from any personal slights or hurt feelings I might suffer. What counted as a personal slight or similar offence was up to me to define. This surprised me. It surprised me because at McDonald’s, where I worked before I started school, acting in this way would have probably cost me my job, a job I needed in order to go to college.

Among other things, Ms Legaspi notes that expecting your own feelings to always be indulged and prioritised, however inconvenient to others and however small the slight, sounds an awful lot like “privilege.”

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

If you are only attracted to able, ‘mentally well’, cis, normatively beautiful people, from class privileged backgrounds, then you are upholding violent norms.

Attention, husbands, wives, lovers, seekers of amour, and the partnered of the world. Student activist and avowed “feminist killjoy” Josefin Hedlund wishes to correct your desires in a totally non-dogmatic, non-presumptuous way:

This myth [of love, marriage and monogamy] still has a powerful hold in today’s Western neoliberal societies. Its most important message is that love is magical and apolitical. However, at a closer look, it is obvious that love actually works to uphold hetero- and cis-normative, patriarchal, capitalist, and hierarchical structures in society. 

Better stow your luggage and strap yourselves in. The ride may be bumpy.

Test yourself: write down the gender, race, class, social, political, educational, and geographical background of everyone you have been attracted to. Do you see a pattern?

Maleness aside, can’t say I do. In fact, I doubt I could recall everyone who’s ever caught my eye. And it occurs to me that if even momentary attraction requires a thorough preemptive vetting of each person’s geographic and educational background, and knowledge of their bank balance and socio-political views, then something’s gone horribly wrong. I should think few of us have time to maintain what sounds like a hugely impractical academic sorting fetish.

If you are only attracted to able, ‘mentally well’, successful (by society’s standards), cisgender, normatively beautiful, slim people, from class privileged backgrounds… you cannot just declare that who you are attracted to is a personal preference.

I feel there ought to have been some kind of explanation here, to pad out the assertion. I’m still waiting for some elaboration on that “upholding violent norms” thing. And it’s not entirely clear to me how my own lifelong coupling, with a chap, is “upholding hetero- and cis-normative, patriarchal, capitalist, and hierarchical structures in society.” Perhaps we’re supposed to enjoy the air of mystery. Still, there’s lots of boilerplate and rote regurgitation:

Christina Hoff Sommers on feminism, facts and philosophy: 

The [feminist philosophy] movement also ignores the finding — consistently documented by a large empirical literature — that, on average, men have stronger interests in investigative and theoretical pursuits and women stronger preferences for social and artistic pursuits… These are just group tendencies of course, and we should be careful not to over-generalise, but they are pronounced and persistent… Yet when the New York Times invited five feminist philosophers to discuss the gender gap [in philosophy] in 2013, not one even entertained the possibility that women might tend to find other subjects more interesting. Instead, the group talked exclusively about things like male privilege, harassment, and stereotypes…

Philosophy departments are not biased against women in hiring. There may be fewer women interested enough in philosophy to pursue it as a career, but those who do are more likely to get hired. According to a study by the American Philosophical Association, between 2012 and 2015, other things being equal, female PhDs were 65% more likely than men to find a permanent academic job within two years of graduating. And look at the APA itself. Over the past 5 years, more than half of its divisional presidents have been women. For 2016, women hold all the top positions. It is difficult to see how a profession that hires women at a higher rate than men and awards them its top leadership positions is rigged against women.

On a similar theme, this item from the archives. And also this one. 

Michael Poliakoff and Drew Lakin on unknown history: 

The overwhelming majority of America’s most prestigious institutions do not require even the students who major in history to take a single course on United States history or government. Disregard for the importance of United States history in the undergraduate history major is matched by the overall disappearance of United States history requirements from general education, the core curriculum that should be part of every student’s education… [A] survey of seniors at the “Top 50” colleges and universities, those holding the most prestigious positions in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, found that only 22% could match the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” with the Gettysburg Address.  

And somewhat related, Duke Pesta on the left’s choke-hold on higher education – and its consequences:

I started giving quizzes to my juniors and seniors. I gave them a ten-question American history test… just to see where they are. The vast majority of my students – I’m talking nine out of ten, in every single class, for seven consecutive years – they have no idea that slavery existed anywhere in the world before the United States. Moses, Pharaoh, they know none of it. They’re 100% convinced that slavery is a uniquely American invention… How do you give an adequate view of history and culture to kids when that’s what they think of their own country – that America invented slavery? That’s all they know.

Worth watching in full. 

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Here’s a thing:

Elementary school teacher Tracy Rosner… is suing the Miami-Dade County Public Schools in federal court because she claims “the principal had an unfair policy of requiring its foreign language teachers to actually speak the language they were teaching.”

No, you didn’t misread that. 

Outside of not knowing Spanish, she asserts she was “otherwise qualified” for the position.

As a result of the school rejecting her suggestion that they also employ an additional member of staff to handle the actual Spanish teaching, Ms Rosner has apparently suffered “emotional pain, mental anguish, [and] loss of enjoyment of life.”