Christopher Rufo on Victoria’s Secret and social-justice lingerie: 

The company presented the new spokeswomen not only as representatives of their intersectional identities — the original line-up included an African refugee, a pink-haired lesbian, an obese biracial woman, and a male-to-female transsexual — but as social-justice activists committed to “systemic change.” […] It would be a ghastly faux pas to point out that some of the women… are, to put it delicately, not as beautiful as their predecessors. To the contrary, the public must affirm [“LGBTQIA+ activist” Megan] Rapinoe and [overweight “body advocate” Paloma] Elsesser as at least equally beautiful as the outdated and oppressive standards embodied by Heidi Klum and Tyra Banks. One cannot point out, either, that the Collective’s social-justice activism is mostly a self-serving scam.

Needless to say, the results of this woke rebranding have not been entirely positive.

And Mr Rufo again, on woke Disney: 

The core of Disney’s racial program is a series of training modules on “antiracism.” In one, called “Allyship for Race Consciousness,” the company tells employees that they must “take ownership of educating [themselves] about structural anti-Black racism” and that they should “not rely on [their] Black colleagues to educate [them],” because it is “emotionally taxing.” […] White employees, in particular, must “work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed.” Disney recommends that employees atone by “challeng[ing] colourblind ideologies and rhetoric” such as “All Lives Matter” and “I don’t see colour”; they must “listen with empathy [to] Black colleagues” and must “not question or debate Black colleagues’ lived experience.”

Or put more simply, “You are guilty by default, so just stand there while we scold you.” With seemingly unintended irony, employees are also informed that thoroughness and punctuality are “white-dominant” values and products of “white supremacy culture,” and therefore, presumably, bad. As a measure of woke perversity – one might say, unhingement – a pretty good indicator.

I as a student did NOT want to know about my teachers’ personal lives.

From the comments following this, in which Mr Jo Brassington, a teacher of small children, considers it “so important” to parade around the classroom, looking “cute,” in painted nails and make-up: 

Update, via the comments:

Mr Brassington is, he says – or they says, because pronouns, obviously – that he’s “working to make educational spaces more emotionally honest.” And so, we’re expected to believe that “queer” teachers everywhere are somehow being suppressed and robbed of their energy unless they can start cross-dressing at work and telling small children about how screamingly fabulous they are. Such are the struggles of the modern primary-school educator.

Readers will note that the exhibitionist tendency and self-preoccupation are presented as an identity, something to be affirmed and applauded. But it’s not clear to me how one might differentiate an identity of this kind from a kink, or a mental health issue. And when you’re talking about adults having influence and authority over small children, it’s not an entirely trivial matter.

I have questions, dear reader. Important, probing questions. Are you unenthused by hip-hop tracks about “police brutality and racialised oppression”? Does rapping about poverty and “the woes of Black Americans as artists” not render you giddy and enthralled? Do you not delight in endless repetition of the word nigga?

I ask because we’re told, by Dr Jeremy McCool and Dr Tyrone Smith, two devotees of “critical race theory,” that a failure to gush with enthusiasm is a result of “systemic bias and inherent prejudice,” and is suppressing such innovation. It is, they say,

The silencing of intellectuals in music.

This profound and damning revelation was uncovered by means of a “notional study” in which 310 participants, young adults, half of whom “self-identified” as black and the other half as white, were invited to listen to various tracks and read selected lyrics, before being asked whether they would be likely to skip said track if heard in the car, or would instead continue listening, mesmerised and ready to be educated.

In each instance, the white participants in the experiment rejected the messaging at a higher frequency than the Black participants.

Extrapolating with gusto – one might say wildly – our scholars promptly invoke “the silencing of Black narratives and perspectives.” It turns out that if a hundred or so white people are slightly less interested in rote racial narcissism expressed via the medium of rap, this could result in “artists who typically make thought-provoking music being shunned by the industry.” It’s all terribly unfair, you see. If true.

It remains unclear whether our mighty scholars considered the quality of the music as music, i.e., beyond any supposedly radical and “thought-provoking” content, those “deeper political implications.” Nor is it clear whether lyrical monotony, generic braggadocio and crass sexual references may have played a part in boring some more than others. To say nothing of many rappers’ own reliance on cartoonish racial stereotypes. Readers are, however, invited to ponder the intellectual heft of the following extract from one of the selected tracks, Da Baby’s Rockstar:

The progressive San Francisco school-board president recalled by voters earlier this week claimed her ousting was a “consequence” of fighting for racial justice, and represents a victory for “white supremacists.”

Yes, those “white supremacists” for which San Francisco is famed – i.e., local parents, including hundreds of “non-citizen immigrants,” who happen to have skin of many different colours.

More than 70 percent of voters elected to recall [board president, Gabriela] López and two other progressive board members, Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga.

The trio’s history of mismanagement and self-indulgence is pretty much what you’d expect of leftist monomaniacs given power and a seemingly endless supply of other people’s money, with a budget deficit of $125 million, and two hours spent debating whether a gay white dad was sufficiently “diverse” to join a volunteer parent committee.

One of the ousted ladies, Ms Alison Collins, has of course been mentioned here before, when disdaining pupils of Chinese or Korean ancestry as “white” or white-adjacent, and therefore suspect, and when insisting that a parental preference for academic rigour is “racist,” and that the way to fight for “high-quality schools” is to abandon expectations of competence.

An educator, you see.

Andrew Gutmann and Paul Rossi on the woke indoctrination that parents aren’t supposed to see:  

In workshops such as “Integrating Healing-Centered Engagements Into a DEIA School Program” and “Racial Trauma and the Path Toward Healing,” we learned how DEI practitioners use segregated affinity groups and practices such as healing circles to inculcate feelings of trauma. Even students without grievances are trained to see themselves as victims of their ancestors’ suffering through “intergenerational violence.”

The next step in a school’s transformation is “inclusion.” Schools must integrate DEI work into every aspect of the school and every facet of the curriculum must be evaluated through an antibias, antiracist, or anti-oppressive lens. In “Let’s Talk About It! Anti-Oppressive Unit and Lesson Plan Design,” we learned that the omission of this lens—“failing to explore the intersection of STEM and social justice,” for instance—constitutes an act of “curriculum violence.”

Children of kindergarten age are defined, enthusiastically, as “natural social-justice warriors” and “small activists.”

Regarding the above, a professor of political science doesn’t want you to notice: 

Dr Tabachnick, above, also thinks that “critical race theory,” of which we’ve spoken many times, is being targeted with a “smear campaign.” As opposed to, say, being revealed as stupefying and pernicious, and its boosters and practitioners quoted verbatim.