I want to share with people why I didn’t know I was white. Because I think a lot of people don’t know they are white.

I bring thrilling news from academia:

Professor of education and human development at George Washington University, explains how she needed “somatic embodied training” to “learn that she was white”.

These people are responsible for training new teachers. pic.twitter.com/yXBv2KV7VW

— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) October 18, 2021

The speaker quoted above is Dr Julia Storberg-Walker, an associate professor of education at George Washington University. A teacher of teachers, of those who will in turn shape young minds, or try to, anyway. Our educator’s realisation of her own “whiteness” – and thus innate wrongness – was, we’re told, a result of “somatic, embodied training,” which is essential, apparently. In order to struggle with one’s “positionality” as a White Devil, a doer of “harm,” a devourer of souls.

Dr Storberg-Walker’s academic biography tells us,

Her activist/scholar work…

Because one can’t not be an activist, obviously.

is generative and aims to develop equitable and compassionate frameworks, models, and processes for the purpose of catalysing whole planet interdependence and flourishing.

Whole planet flourishing. Goodness. This feat is to be achieved by drawing on,

quantum field theory, and wisdom traditions spanning diverse cultures and historical moments.

Readers are invited to speculate as to exactly how quantum field theory might bear upon such topics as “critical race activism,” or “colonised words,” and how it might inform “deep learning” about the seemingly endless pathologies of being pale. Alas, Dr Storberg-Walker remains coy on the subject, merely teasing us, and instead offers the following:

When job and employee don’t quite gel. 

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

The new student counselling director at Middlebury College has vowed to use “more inclusive” methods to treat student mental health, including a focus on white supremacy and social justice.

Ah. I think I see the problem.

Alberto Soto, who received his PhD. in counselling psychology from Brigham Young University, told the Middlebury Campus newspaper that… “The body and mind cannot be healed solely by self-care and focusing on surviving… At some point we must address and identify the source of all our psychic suffering, which is whiteness, heteronormativity, patriarchal systems, etc.”

When not using the word “whiteness” as a modish pejorative and “questioning Eurocentric ideas surrounding mental health,” Mr Soto plans to “challenge the historically-dominant whiteness” of the campus and thereby “create a more open environment for students.” This heavenly state of openness and resurgent mental wellbeing will be rendered upon the Earth by telling students at an upscale and statusful liberal arts college how oppressed they are and by invoking racial conspiracy theories, the aforementioned “whiteness” and “white supremacy,” as the root of all distress.

Readers will recall that Middlebury College is where students suitably gorged on “inclusivity” and “social justice” display their righteousness and mental stability by physically menacing elderly scholars, trying to trample them underfoot, and assaulting female staff, such that they require a hospital visit and, subsequently, a neck brace.

The Middlebury campus has spent the past few years cultivating its persona as one of the most active antiracist campuses in America… Yet at the same time schools have ramped up their antiracist efforts, mental health among students has only gotten worse.

Readers may wish to speculate as to why that might be, and why the phenomenon – a surge in students reporting “anxiety and depression” – predates the pandemic.

Annual tuition at Middlebury is a mere $56,000, excluding books and housing.

Via Captain Nemo in the comments, a tale of woe and trauma from party person Mr Jordan Bennett: 

Okay so I had the most DISGUSTING INVALIDATING experience at Heaven nightclub last night,

Hey, I visited Heaven one evening in the early 90s. I’ve seen what can happen.

a place where I am meant to feel free and accepted.

A big gay club for today’s downtrodden homosexual. There is, though, the small matter of security checks. For weapons and such.

Queuing to enter the club it splits into 2 lines- MAN and WOMAN – to be checked by seperate [sic] people.

Sharp-eyed readers may have an inkling of what’s coming.

I am non-binary so OF COURSE I’m gonna queue in the women’s line in sheer protest of where I know they would expect me to queue based on my appearance.

But of course. Let’s call it intersectional decision-making. Or a contrived, rather needy, excuse for drama. 

I wait to be checked nervously and then one of the security staff rudely gestures me to the other line for men. I then kindly tell them that I am non-binary whilst highlighting the pronouns on my earrings which clearly say ‘They/Them’

Sadly, however, said earrings had lost their talismanic powers:

They carried on refusing me access, repeatedly saying this side was for ‘women only’. I shamefully walk to the other side. The two distinctly separate box-like detectors for each queue added to the prison-like atmosphere. I felt invalidated and embarrassed.

Habitual self-involvement can do that, I suppose.

A left-leaning management consultant recently asked his left-leaning Twitter followers for their thoughts on the insufficiently left-leaning working class. The replies – from self-declared socialists, Guardian readers, “woke remainers,” and assorted “social justice advocates” – are, shall we say, of a type, but may nonetheless be of interest. 

Via Damian Counsell, who adds, “If you want to know why the Conservatives have an 80-seat majority…”

Also, open thread.