Toni Airaksinen pokes a stick at some contrived agonising: 

This “intellectual trauma” is, you’ll be shocked to hear, entirely the fault of “whiteness” and “heteromasculinity.”

As we’re in the realm of the excruciatingly woke, the terms violence and trauma are of course misused and deliberately misleading.

The supposed violence and trauma, then, is actually an attempt to excuse rates of classroom misbehaviour among black students.

Throughout the paper in question, the term “brilliance” is deployed no fewer than seventeen times, as if it were some obviously inherent, pre-existing attribute – of students who can’t be arsed to study, who don’t pay attention in class, who undermine the efforts of others, and whose grades, as a result, leave much to be desired.

Even more frequent is use of the term “whiteness,” an alleged phenomenon on which the paper is premised. Though readers in search of some clear and convincing definition, or some compelling evidence of its existence, may find their hopes dashed. We are, however, assured that “whiteness” is something that gets in the way of black students “maintaining their Blackness.”

And furthermore,

Saturated, you hear. Positively dripping with the stuff.

So, to paraphrase our fretful educators: Among these allegedly downtrodden and traumatised minority students, expectations of promptness and accuracy, of arriving at correct and verifiable answers, and handing work in on time, are alien things. Instead, it seems, we get lots of loud and goofy behaviour. Thereby disrupting attempts to learn by other, more conscientious students.

And which, it has to be said, isn’t entirely flattering of the drama’s supposed victims, or an obvious basis for sympathy, even pretentious sympathy. Nor is it an obvious footing for some sweeping, de-whitened reinvention of how mathematical knowledge might be imparted. All conjured into being at the expense of those more diligent and whose classroom behaviour isn’t selfish and disruptive.

Well, again, if a student doesn’t feel obliged to do the work, to learn, or to hand in said work by a given deadline, like everyone else, and instead spends class time pissing about, loudly, then being unwelcome seems an inevitable consequence of those choices.

And constructing elaborate, question-begging excuses for such behaviour, as if these inadequacies were somehow proof of obscured “brilliance,” things to which one should defer, and actively affirm, doesn’t strike me as a convincing, long-term solution. Indeed, it sounds rather… what’s the word? Oh yes, toxic.

Readers will note how any feelings of incompetence and not being welcome are immediately blamed on external causes, on some ectoplasmic “whiteness,” that Befouler Of All Things. As if such feelings had nothing whatsoever to do with the choices and behaviour, and the personal shortcomings, of the students themselves.

Instead, Dr Jasien and her colleagues expect the teaching of mathematics to be driven by the goal of “healing… intellectual trauma,” by paying “attention to the minds and bodies of students.” The students being, it seems, much less obliged to pay attention to anything beyond themselves.

And so, we’re told that “exclamations” and “cacophony” are “to be both expected and valued.” Because when you picture a maths classroom and people getting to grips with differential equations or vector calculus, the first thing that springs to mind is the word cacophony.

Update, via the comments:

Somewhat related:

As Mr Trump unboxes his kettle in the White House, I’m going to offer this reminder of the meltdowns and moon-howling that greeted his election victory. Such were the feats of pretension and competitive neuroticism, some kind of historical document seems in order. 

Among those traumatised was the novelist and Guardian contributor Francine Prose, whose mental health took a catastrophic turn, complete with hair loss and sudden-onset eye-twitching. Symptoms that were accompanied by agitated ramblings about Hitler, Stalin, dictatorship, people thrown from helicopters, and “the imprisonment and execution of those who disagree.”

Of course, Ms Prose was far from alone in her weird theatre of distress, and social media was ablaze with performative convulsion. Among the titans of the fabulist resistance was this tightly wound progressive chap, who envisioned internment camps for those like himself, i.e., tightly wound progressives, with the streets being patrolled by some Trumpian Sturmabteilung.

Oh, and let’s not forget the Ohio high-school teacher Danielle Mann, whose post-election demands, issued from her classroom, included a list of the addresses of likeminded progressives, all of them, everywhere, and the mandatory wearing of identifying bracelets. So that she would know how everyone else voted.

At which point, readers may wish to imagine an alternative timeline, in which society has been customised to accommodate the fevered twitching of our self-imagined betters. A world they would find congenial, shaped in their image, according to their compulsions.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Via the comments, some elaboration on an Ephemera item from Friday, specifically, this feat of contrivance:

Tiktoker blames capitalism for looters and suggests we should have compassion for these criminals instead of law enforcement dealing with them pic.twitter.com/xh89bARkpE

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 13, 2025

To which, Darleen replied, 

Dicentra added, not unreasonably,

The kinds of people who enthuse about looting and rioting, and who seem to find it ideologically arousing – often progressive women – are not generally in the realm of coherent argument. Or indeed, good faith. Hence the disregard for the obvious factors mentioned by Darleen. For those like the wide-eyed creature seen above, I don’t think reality plays much part in what’s happening in their heads and then spilling out of their mouths. It’s much more about their own psychology, their own need to be perverse.

See, for instance, this. In which, Vice columnist Rachel Miller, a terminally woke young woman, attempts an indignant defence of looting and feral predation. Via which the allegedly downtrodden will be liberated and empowered, thanks to the destruction of their own local pharmacies, convenience stores, and other amenities.

And who concludes, with obvious self-satisfaction, that those who would rather not have their livelihoods destroyed and their neighbourhoods reduced to a rubble-strewn warzone – including quite a few black people – are “kinda (or definitely) racist.” Because “anti-looting discourse” is a function of “white supremacy.”

Ms Miller’s rush to denounce “respectability politics” – i.e., expectations of moral reciprocation and a general aversion to inflicting on others, arbitrarily, the kind of violation one would not care to receive – is, I’d say, a clue.

It’s not politics, it’s pathology.

One might, for instance, wonder how Ms Miller would feel were she the female Amazon driver seen being swarmed and assaulted here:

Having been assaulted and robbed, and left sprawled in the road, as if she were nothing of consequence, would she be overwhelmed with optimism and other warm feelings?

Answers on a postcard, please.

I did not see that coming. || A not entirely compelling arrangement. || The next part of the plan is unclear to me. || Incoming. || A collection of Doctor Who title cards. || Mathematics and the Moon. || This is one of these. || An inexact landing. || Autonomous bus, China. || A brief history of arsenic. || Eating uranium, 1985. || Traffic obstruction. || Rugs. || Flattened dog rugs. || Gyrations. || Things deemed racist, a thread of some length. || An awkward pause, a rambling evasion. || Those poor darling looters. || He had a cunning plan. || Perfect for urban skies. || Problematic wheel orientation. || Surprisingly solid. || She hates America with a passion, but you have to pay her to leave. || Public domain image archive. (h/t, Things) || Artful. || Family activity. || And finally, it came from the asteroid belt.

To be notified of new posts, you can follow me on X / Twitter.

To enable extra commenting options – including @username mentions, upvotes, and live notifications – scroll down to the black ‘Meta’ box at the very bottom of the page and click register. It’s free and quite painless.

And in the world of The Progressive Retail Experience: 

From Fortune magazine:

During the lengthy interview quoted above, Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth hints at the development of “creative” solutions for customers demoralised by unimpeded thieving and the subsequent lockdown status of many stores. Paying customers, a seemingly shrinking demographic, will, we’re assured, be offered a “better… in-store experience” via “new scheduling optimisation logic” and “leveraging our omnichannel capabilities.”

Oddly, Mr Wentworth, whose business is planning to close another 450 stores during the coming year, avoids any use of the words shoplifting, looting, or theft.

Perhaps he finds such terms unsavoury, much like the Observer‘s Martha Gill, the Guardian‘s Owen Jones, and academic Gloria Laycock, according to whom, the law-abiding should resign themselves to ever more inconvenience and social degradation, and being alienated from their own neighbourhoods, because punishing habitual criminals – who are, we’re told, “traumatised” and “vulnerable” – is somehow unfair and terribly unfashionable.

Update: 

Commenter [+] adds,

It has to be said, the prospect of shopping for shampoo in a store where pretty much everything, including shampoo, is under lock and key and requires elaborate and protracted negotiation in order to actually buy it, and in which looters might at any time appear and start smashing up the place, with little opposition, does not entice. But hey, maybe that’s just me.

John D observes, not without cause,

It doesn’t exactly bode well. And as noted previously,

And being insulted in this way, as if one were uncivilised and not to be trusted, seems unlikely to invite warm feelings or repeat custom.

Quetzalovercoatl adds,

At which point, readers may wish to cast an eye over the previous shoplifting post, linked above, in which you almost have to marvel at the mental contortions, the elaborate contrivance. Whereby this increasingly aggressive and routine predation is romanticised, despite all evidence to the contrary, including countless videoed examples and the use of machetes. And in which, the aforementioned Observer columnist dismisses the thieving and looting as “relatively trivial,” as businesses close and entire neighbourhoods are demoralised and robbed of amenities.

Mental contortions in which the obvious, practical, and traditional response to such behaviour is hastily waved aside as “exactly the wrong approach” and “the worst instincts of the electorate.” As if arresting and imprisoning habitual thieves, thereby interrupting their criminal adventures, should be considered a total failure and unworthy of the effort. Instead, our Observer columnist and her equally progressive peers blame the retailers, the victims, and suggest more padlocks, and more barriers on shelves of shampoo.

Oh, and “decriminalise shop theft,” of course.

As if that weren’t already a common assumption of those doing the looting. And as if the lack of prompt punishment, and the consequent air of impunity, somehow wouldn’t embolden the creatures being so grotesquely indulged. A boldness with no obvious upper limit. As if signs of weakness in one area of life, this cowed impotence, couldn’t possibly inspire other kinds of crime and antisocial behaviour. As if the response could never, ever be, “Ooh, what else can I get away with?”

All to avoid enforcing even the most basic standards of behaviour. Of civilisation. Because, what, somehow that would look bad…?

For those unfamiliar with The Progressive Retail Experience, the series to date, numbering some 608 entries, can be found here.