Part 2,036: 

An Antifa member in Portland who was charged with felony arson and riot crimes has been revealed to be a journalism student at the University of Oregon. Alma Yesenia Raven-Guido, 19, of Beaverton, Ore., has been charged… with two counts of felony rioting, second-degree felony arson and first-degree felony criminal mischief. A serial riot arrestee, she was arrested again Tuesday night at a Black Lives Matter-Antifa riot in north Portland where the police union hall was set on fire. 

Journalism, baby. Unbiased and impartial, bringing you the truth.

Upon arrest, Raven-Guido was found to be carrying multiple lighters and three plastic bottles, including one that was melted, in her backpack. She was also in possession of a crowbar and spray paint. Beyond her involvement in militant Antifa activities in the Portland-area, she has also been prominently featured in government diversity programmes. In 2019, she was part of the Beaverton Organising and Leadership Development programme, which exists to train emerging leaders of colour in Beaverton’s city government. She listed “racial justice” as one of her areas of interest in the programme’s survey.

And hence, of course, the vandalised Japanese restaurants. And the assaulted Asian-American journalists. And the Apple Store being on fire, again. And the targeting of local churches, whose meal programmes for the homeless were apparently deemed offensive.

Update, via the comments:

Ms Raven-Guido, being educated, is someone who seems to think that “racial justice” is enhanced by wrecking someone else’s neighbourhood with vandalism and fire, thereby ensuring the closure and withdrawal of local businesses and amenities – a phenomenon we’ve seen many times – and consequently reducing opportunities for employment, and degrading the quality of life for local residents, many of whom will be minorities, and whose homes were put in danger by the aforementioned fires.

It’s a lunatic conceit, and yet quite common among the severely educated.

And among those doing the educating. 

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Maths teacher Paul Rossi shares his experience of “anti-racism training” at a Manhattan high school, during which he questioned the alleged imperative to foreground each student’s racial identity, and questioned the value of racialising human attributes – including the claim that “objectivity” is somehow a characteristic of “white supremacy”:

When my questions were shared outside this forum [a mandatory, racially segregated Zoom meeting], violating the school norm of confidentiality, I was informed by the head of the high school that my philosophical challenges had caused “harm” to students, given that these topics were “life and death matters, about people’s flesh and blood and bone.” I was reprimanded… He further informed me that I had created “dissonance for vulnerable and unformed thinkers” and “neurological disturbance in students’ beings and systems.” The school’s director of studies added that my remarks could even constitute harassment.

And then the strange became stranger, one might say sinister.

Update:

Very much related. Or, Knowing That It’s Creepy And Immoral, And Harmful To Children, And Doing It Anyway.

We’ve been here before, of course, on more than one occasion.

Hot from Helsinki, the works of Finnish artist Iiu Susiraja. First, her dazzling 2018 performance piece, Big Melody:

If the charms and profundities of the above should somehow remain elusive, clarity is offered by the following:

In the pages of the Guardian, an elaborate humblebrag, care of race-grifter Natalie Morris:

It’s often hard to articulate why something that sounds like a compliment can be so harmful. On the racism scale, being told that you’re beautiful is hardly the worst thing that can happen. But just because something presents as a positive on the surface, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t dig deeper into the wider implications of this phenomenon.

Being found attractive is, we’re assured, terribly “problematic.” Though the aforementioned difficulties of articulating why will soon become apparent. We learn, for instance, that celebrities who are difficult to racially categorise are merely,

cherry-picking the elements of Blackness that suit their brand without any of the uncomfortable or disadvantageous implications of actually living as Black.

Quite what this magic “Blackness” might be is, alas, left to the imagination. Likewise, the phrase “living as Black” is delivered portentously but just left to hang there, devoid of particulars. Instead, we’re treated to vague, erratic rumblings about “proximity to whiteness” – a term that is itself not so much an explanation as an incantation, a marker of status. It seems we should just know these things, or nod as if we do. We are nonetheless informed, quite firmly, that,

it’s impossible to see the rise of mixed beauty ideals as a positive thing, because at its heart sits an unsettling insistence on white superiority.

It’s impossible, you see. Again, how Ms Morris arrived at this assertion is less than clear. Though, this being the Guardian, it does have an air of inevitability, of predestination. A book-plugging detour into anecdotes concerning dating and racial fetishism does little to help matters, beyond suggesting that sometimes compliments can be informed by niche racial kinks, and that some kinks are more common than others. Not much of a foundation for sad songs of collective oppression. As if determined to be unobvious, Ms Morris shares this:

In the 1930s and 1940s, there were groups warning about the dangers of “race crossing”; there were calls for mixed people to be sterilised; we were denigrated as deviant, stupid, contaminated, undesirable. Isn’t the contemporary idealisation of mixedness – the suggestion that we are more beautiful or have “the best of both” – simply the other side of the same coin?

Wanting to sterilise people and not wanting to sterilise them are two sides of the same coin, apparently.

John Sexton at Hot Air: 

Elisa Parrett teaches at a public technical college outside of Seattle called the Lake Washington Institute of Technology. Last June 19, in the wake of the death of George Floyd, the school held an event called Courageous Conversations which was based partly on Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility. 

In short, a two-hour racial struggle session based on stupefying woo. 

Dr Parrett used the session, attended by close to 200 educators, to air some fairly obvious concerns, regarding tribalism, zealotry, and the racially segregated nature of the gathering, speaking for a total of four minutes. A summary of Dr Parrett’s comments can be found at the link above and here, where Jesse Singal shares a longer, more detailed account. Readers are invited to search out anything particularly scandalous.

Five days later, Parrett got an email from President Amy Morrison… It read in part, “Because of your egregious behaviour which has led to substantial harm to hundreds of colleagues on campus, I have asked [Vice President of Instruction, Suzanne] Ames, Dean Doug Emory, and [executive director of H.R.] Meena Park to meet with you in the next few days to have a serious conversation about how successful you can possibly be on campus in the future.” Two days later, Parrett was placed on administrative leave… A disciplinary complaint was filed against Parrett by the vice president… The complaint alleged Parrett had behaved in a “corrupt, insolent and insubordinate manner.”

And because this is Clown World, where there’s always more,

When [Jesse] Singal emailed the Vice President about the story, she doubled down and claimed that Parrett had been “aggressively yelling at folks in the meeting.” At the time, she was apparently unaware that Singal had the audio of the entire session. When he sent her a copy and asked her to point out where Parrett had yelled at anyone, a university spokesperson suggested Parrett’s “visible anger” wasn’t conveyed by the audio.

It was, it seems, a kind of aggressive yelling that was radiated at inaudible frequencies and which therefore cannot be captured by mortal recording devices.