Monday, April 24, 2017



College Activists: Searching For Truth Makes You A Racist

Do you believe there’s an objective truth? Well, you’re a white supremacist then, at least according to a small number of black Pomona College students.

In a letter that strings together words the students no doubt learned in their Blank-Studies classes in what almost appears to be social justice Mad Libs (the word “marginalized” appears seven times in the one-page document), the students claim inviting a speaker critical of Black Lives Matter and supportive of police amounts to oppression.

Further, the three authors of the letter—freshmen Dray Denson, Avery Jonas, and sophomore Shanaya Stephenson—explain that “the Truth” is a concept rooted in racism.

“The idea that there is a single truth–’the Truth’–is a construct of the Euro-West that is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment, which was a movement that also described Black and Brown people as both subhuman and impervious to pain,” the students wrote. “This construction is a myth and white supremacy, imperialism, colonization, capitalism, and the United States of America are all of its progeny. The idea that the truth is an entity for which we must search, in matters that endanger our abilities to exist in open spaces, is an attempt to silence oppressed peoples” (emphasis added).

Notice the list of social justice buzzwords: white supremacy, imperialism, colonization, and capitalism. I’m surprised they didn’t include authoritarianism and Donald Trump.

The letter is a response to an email sent by Pomona College president David Oxtoby, who on April 7 criticized those who protested the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald. Mac Donald was invited to speak by the Rose Institute for State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, Pomona’s sister school, about her book, “The War on Cops.” Some students called her a “notorious white supremacist fascist,” and proceeded to chant “Black Lives Matter” while banging on the windows of the building where Mac Donald was scheduled to speak.

Disagreeing With Me Makes You a White Supremacist

Oxtoby wrote in his email to students that Pomona opposes “preventing others from engaging with an invited speaker.” He further stated that Pomona’s “mission is founded upon the discovery of truth, the collaborative development of knowledge and the betterment of society.”

Denson, Jonas and Stephenson took offense to Oxtoby’s defense of the truth.

“The idea that the search for this truth involves entertaining Heather Mac Donald’s hate speech is illogical,” the students wrote. “If engaged, Heather Mac Donald would not be debating on mere difference of opinion, but the right of Black people to exist. Heather Mac Donald is a fascist, a white supremacist, a warhawk, a transphobe, a queerphobe, a classist, and ignorant of interlocking systems of domination that produce the lethal conditions under which oppressed peoples are forced to live.”

Where do they get the idea that Mac Donald doesn’t think black people have the right to exist? Defending good cops and criticizing the bad tactics of a politically correct group (that not all black people have decided to join) doesn’t mean she believes black people don’t have a right to exist. Also, again notice the string of social-justice-warrior buzzwords to describe Mac Donald.

Mac Donald wasn’t the only target of the students’ ire. They also wanted the school to “take action” against the Claremont Independent, a right-leaning campus publication. The three students, along with nearly a dozen others, signed their names to the letter, then said if the Independent publishes those names and they “receive threats and hate mail,” then Pomona should “take legal action against members of the Claremont Independent involved with the editing and publication process as well as disciplinary action, such as expulsion on the grounds of endangering the wellbeing of others.”

Get that? They signed their names, but if they receive any backlash for their actions they want other students expelled and sued. How progressive.

Mac Donald Responds: ‘A Major Embarassment’
In a statement to The Federalist, Mac Donald called the letter “a major embarrassment to the Pomona and Claremont faculty.” She cited instances of poor writing and grammar, but lambasted the content as well.

“The students appear to argue that the ideal of free speech is based on a mystifying and oppressive concept of unitary truth, and that such a concept solidifies white supremacy … [yet] They are fully confident that they possess the truth about me and about their oppressed plight at Pomona and Claremont,” Mac Donald said.

Mac Donald also defended her work, saying the students have misread it.

“My entire argument about the necessity of proactive policing is based on the value of black lives,” she said. “I have decried the loss of black life to drive-by shootings and other forms of street violence. I have argued that the fact that blacks die of homicide at six times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined is a civil rights abomination. And I have tried to give voice to the thousands of law-abiding residents of high-crime areas who are desperate for more police protection so that they can enjoy the same freedom from fear as people in more wealthy areas take for granted.”

Do What We Want Or Else We’ll Say You’re Racists
The students have also demanded that Oxtoby respond to them by Tuesday at 4:07 p.m. and send a revised email by Thursday, “apologizing for the previous patronizing statement, enforcing that Pomona College does not tolerate hate speech and speech that projects violence onto the bodies of its marginalized students and oppressed peoples, especially Black students who straddle the intersection of marginalized identities, and explaining the steps the institution will take and the resources it will allocate to protect the aforementioned students.”

So. Many. Buzzwords.

The social justice warrior problem on college campuses appears to be escalating. The protests are becoming more violent, and the demands are becoming more absurd. Just last week, the editorial staff of the Wellesley College student newspaper wrote: “If people are given the resources to learn and either continue to speak hate speech or refuse to adapt their beliefs, then hostility may be warranted.”

The phrase “hate speech” has lost all meaning on campuses, as it now refers simply to speech liberal students don’t agree with. They claim it is bigoted, dangerous, and “violent,” making it acceptable—in their minds—to respond with physical violence.

I’d honestly believe this letter was a hoax, like that ridiculous article on the Huffington Post demanding we take away all white men’s voting rights, which was taken down because the author was fake—except you can actually find these students in the campus directory.

SOURCE 






Dignity and Fairness Matter for Every Child in the Locker Room

The American Civil Liberties Union recently noted in a blog post that “the burden of confronting and remedying injustice falls on the shoulders of the oppressed.”

There is some truth to this: The oppressed are powerful voices in any battle for justice. But when it comes to defending the most vulnerable among us—our children—it is chiefly the responsibility of parents, teachers, school administrators, and lawmakers to defend their rights.

Yet the ACLU, rather than seeking justice, fairness, and privacy for every child, has chosen to privilege a select few while utterly disregarding the privacy rights of millions of other young students across the country.

In the growing conversation taking place about what privacy means in intimate facilities, and whether one’s biological sex is a relevant factor to consider in boys’ and girls’ athletics, we’ve heard a lot from certain students who are working through very sensitive issues pertaining to their sex and gender identity.

And that is a good thing. Their voices matter in this conversation.

But substantially missing from this national conversation are the indispensable voices of the vast majority of children, and particularly girls. Ignoring their voices results in a failure to advance true equality and justice and violates children’s fundamental rights. Indeed, not one child’s privacy should be compromised.

And yet, young girls across the country—including in Illinois and Ohio, as just two examples—have been subjected to anxiety and humiliation when their school administrators secretly decided to open the schools’ locker rooms, restrooms, or showers to the opposite sex.

In Texas, 10-year-old Shiloh Satterfield recently described to the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee how uncomfortable and anxious she feels now that her school has changed its policies to let boys into the school’s intimate facilities.

Her parents join thousands of other parents understandably concerned about what this means—not only for their children when changing clothes for gym class or showering after a swim meet, but also for overnight school trips where their daughters could be forced to share a bed with a biological boy (or vice versa).

And take the young boy in Pennsylvania who is not even able to change for the school’s mandatory gym class because the school is forcing boys and girls to undress together and to try “to act as natural as possible” while doing so. The boy is receiving a failing grade for each class he is unable to change for.

Young girls and boys across the country are trying to be heard—to share their discomfort and embarrassment at the thought of having to undress with a member of the opposite sex, or their frustration that they will no longer be able to compete in a fair environment if their sports teams allow boys and girls to play together.

These voices are not coming from a place of fear or social dislike. I’ve witnessed the love these students have for their friends who consider themselves transgender, while simultaneously pleading for their own rights, dignity, and privacy to be protected.

Just last week, a 15-year-old boy who identifies as a girl competed in a Connecticut high school girls’ track meet and won the 100- and 200-meter dashes.

Even a quick glance at the pictures from the meet reveal that this young man, who now identifies as a woman, is still very much built as a male and is already significantly larger than his female peers.

As a woman who loved playing sports in high school, it’s obvious to me and many others that allowing biological males to compete with females is fundamentally unfair to girls who are physically different than high school boys.

Allowing boys, regardless of how they identify, to play on girls’ sports teams creates an unequal playing field for girls to compete and deprives them of a fair chance to qualify for—let alone win—athletic competitions.

Before the Civil Rights Act of 1972, women did not have the same athletic opportunities as men. In this emerging conversation, we cannot forget the ground women have gained for equal opportunities.

Permitting the definition of sex to be changed or ignored would undermine the very essence of what it means to be male and female, which is a particularly relevant factor when it comes to athletics.

This understanding of biological differences is precisely what led to the passage of federal laws that help ensure a fair playing field for women. And now, some in our society, ironically in the name of equality, are running roughshod over what women fought so hard to obtain.

Many would like to paint this as a one-sided story about one victim: the boy who thinks he’s a girl, or the girl who thinks she’s a boy. And these children absolutely deserve love, attention, and support.

But supporting and caring for them does not mean we should inflict injustice on other children. We owe every young person in America a better response—a compassionate and fair solution that ensures protection for every student’s privacy and well-being, such as the policy that Alliance Defending Freedom has recommended to schools since 2014.

This policy allows schools to respect student privacy by continuing to designate separate boys’ and girls’ showers, locker rooms, and restrooms while providing other facilities for any student uncomfortable with using areas that correspond to his or her biological sex.

Justice requires that we protect the privacy and dignity of every child. We as a society should pause before we tell some children that their voices and their privacy rights don’t matter.

SOURCE 





Clemson ‘Diversity’ Training: Time Is Culturally Relative, Expecting Promptness Is Racist

Clemson University’s ‘diversity education and training” teaches employees that every “cultural perspective regarding time” is equally valid, so it’s wrong to expect people to be prompt.

Clemson is spending $26,945 on “diversity education and training” for its faculty members, Campus Reform reports:

“Clemson President James Clements pledged that ‘all employees will participate in diversity education and training,’ last April, in order to create a more inclusive environment on campus.”

In one slide, employees are taught that tardiness is acceptable because the concept of time is culturally relative. Thus, every culture’s perception of the actual time must be respected - since one “cultural perspective regarding time is neither more nor less valid than any other.”

The slide gives the example of “Alejandro,” who called a 9:00 AM meeting, and teaches that he should not rebuke a group of foreign professors and students who show up late:

“Time may be considered precise or fluid depending on the culture.”
Thus, the slide teaches, Alejandro shouldn’t impose his definition of time on others, because “his cultural perspective regarding time is neither more nor less valid than any other.”

SOURCE 

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