I remember how it was -- JR
Friday, March 05, 2021
College Scholarships as Reparations: Virginia Gets Woke
If it were possible for each of us to trace our ancestry by millennia, it’s a fair bet that everyone in the world would be able to find slaves somewhere. But should such genealogical discoveries be a basis for a college scholarship? Costly, unconstitutional and wacky as the idea seems, many lawmakers in Virginia think it is. And it soon may become law.
On February 5, the Virginia House of Delegates voted 61-39 to approve a bill (HB 1980) that would require the state’s five colleges and universities established before 1865 – the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia Military Institute, Longwood University, and the College of William & Mary – to offer four-year full scholarships and other grants to applicants who can prove descent from slaves who had worked as builders, maintenance workers or groundskeepers at these institutions. The bill’s sponsor, Delegate David A. Reid (D-Loudoun County), who is white and a career Navy man to boot, calls passage “a small but important step to acknowledge and address that the foundational success of five universities was based on enslaved labor.”
The bill, in other words, mandates reparations. And when it comes to reparations, “small” steps have a way of becoming big ones. That all the slave owners and slaves in Virginia are long deceased makes no difference to zealots like Reid. Neither does the possibility that not all the slaves were black (a great many slaves in the New World in fact were white). The only qualification to receive a scholarship is an ability to show descent from slaves.
The vetting process, needless to say, would be time-consuming. That’s why the bill requires that affected colleges and universities work with the Virginia State Council for Higher Education in constructing family trees of the laborers. In the case of the University of Virginia, for example, an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 living persons would qualify for scholarships.
If the bill passes the Virginia Senate and is signed into law by Governor Ralph Northam, who is a reparations advocate, the program would take effect in the 2022-23 academic year. Affected institutions would not be allowed to cover program costs via state subsidies or tuition hikes; they would have to tap into endowments or private funds. In addition, these institutions must build a memorial to enslaved laborers on former and current “institutionally controlled grounds and property.”
A few schools have gotten a head start in the latter endeavor. The College of William & Mary, in obsequious fashion, is creating a $2 million memorial to slave laborers, set for completion by the end of 2022. Brian Coy, a University of Virginia spokesman, notes his school has “already undertaken a number of initiatives to reckon with our own history of slavery and segregation, as well as the continuing societal impacts of those institutions.”
Supporters rationalize this shakedown by claiming that Virginia’s colleges and universities, if not the state itself, owe their existence to slavery. “Virginia wouldn’t exist without the labor of enslaved people,” remarks Delegate Reid. “All of our higher ed institutions have benefited from this history.” This is nonsense. Excellence in higher education, whether in Virginia or elsewhere, is the result of a sustained commitment to teaching, research and community service. It has nothing to do with slavery, past or present.
Meanwhile, a descendant of University of Virginia slave laborers, Myra Anderson, offered this slice of moral browbeating. “This university flourished based on their [her relatives’] blood, sweat, tears and labor, so I see that offering scholarships is a way to create an educational atonement because there’s nothing that can be done to compensate for slavery.” For the record, a sixth great-uncle of Ms. Anderson, Thrimston Hern, was sold by the estate of Thomas Jefferson in 1827. That apparently qualifies her for a full-ride college scholarship.
As Democrats currently control the Virginia Senate by a 21-18 margin, this legislation may become law. Whatever the outcome, it should be understood in the context of the campaign for monetary reparations payable by whites to blacks. Corporations, state governments, churches and other institutions increasingly are hopping aboard this bandwagon. My monograph published last year by National Legal and Policy Center, Slavery Reparations: Revival of a Bad Idea, dissects the misleading nature of this campaign.
Congress, led by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Tex., this January reintroduced a reparations bill (H.R. 40), the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Africans Act. This measure has been kicking around continuously since 1989, but it may succeed this time. At this writing, it has nearly 175 House co-sponsors. President Biden announced his support for a commission a year ago while on the campaign trail. Supporters speak of the “debt” being in the trillions of dollars. That would cover many scholarships, among other taxpayer-funded giveaways.
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Megyn Kelly says she took her children out of 'hard-left' private school because her son, 8, was subjected to a 'three week trans-education experiment' and her kindergartner had to write essay on problems with the Cleveland Indians' mascot
Megyn Kelly has told how she removed her three children from their private Manhattan schools after the teaching took a 'hard left' turn.
Kelly and her husband, novelist Doug Brunt, are parents to Edward Yates, 11; a nine-year-old daughter, Yardley; and son Thatcher, seven.
In November Kelly revealed she was taking her children out of school and leaving New York City.
Her sons attended the $55,900-a-year Collegiate School on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
Her daughter is believed to have attended the $57,385-a-year Spence School on the Upper East Side.
On Friday night she explained that decision to Bill Maher on his HBO show, Real Time.
'We loved our schools,' she said, explaining that the boys went to all-boys schools, and her daughter an all-girls school. 'Loved our teachers, loved the students and faculty and parents. 'They were definitely leftist - we are more center right - but that was fine; my whole family are Democrats.
'But then they went hard left, and then they started to take a really hard turn toward social justice stuff.'
She said her sons' school in particular troubled her. When he was in third grade, she said, they 'unleashed a three-week experimental trans-education program.'
Kelly said it was difficult for her son to understand, and not helpful. Her son was in a class where the children were eight and nine at the time.
'It wasn't about support — we felt that it was more like they were trying to convince them,' she said. 'Like, come on over.'
She also said her kindergartner, Thatcher, 'was told to write a letter to the Cleveland Indians objecting to their mascot.'
Kelly said: 'He's six. Can he learn how to spell Cleveland before we activate him?' She added: 'If he's going to be activated, Doug and I should do it.'
Kelly said it was a question of 'reason and unreason'.
Collegiate School is ranked as one of the best private schools in the country and also claims to be the oldest.
It counts JFK Jr., his nephew Jack Schlossberg, and Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff among its alumni.
Roman Abramovich and CNBC broadcaster Andrew Ross Sorkin are among those who sent their children there.
Maher read from a letter which was circulated among a diversity group at the school that said things like 'there's a killer cop sitting at every school where white children learn.'
The letter, written by the executive director of Orleans Public Education Network, Nahliah Webber, also claimed 'white kids are being indoctrinated in black death'.
Maher continued reading: 'I'm tired of white people reveling in their state-sanctioned depravity and snuffing out black life with no consequences.' He added: 'There [are] racist problems problems in this country, but this is hyperbole. And this is making people crazy. This is not the way we get to the Promised Land.'
Kelly agreed, saying: 'It's divisive, it's racist, and it's had exactly the opposite effect of the one they intend.'
Kelly cited the rhetoric was 'divisive and counterproductive', and it was not just her children's schools but all the schools in the city.
It was unclear where her three children were now enrolled.
Kelly has since September been hosting her own podcast.
The former Fox News anchor spent a year at NBC with a daytime chat program, Megyn Kelly Today - leaving in October 2018 following a controversy over her remarks about blackface at a Halloween party.
'When I was a kid, that was okay as long as you were dressing up as like a character,' she said at the time, in comments that precluded her departure.
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UK Universities minister compares ‘decolonisation’ of history to ‘Soviet Union-style’ censorship
The universities minister has claimed courses are facing “decolonisation” by tutors who she complained were “censoring history” like the Soviet Union.
Michelle Donelan suggested books were being removed from reading lists in an effort to prevent students being forced to confront “hate speech”.
The Tory MP for Chippenham insisted that "a lot of the talk" surrounding the issue was about removing elements of history rather than adding alternative viewpoints.
However, the minister’s comments were criticised by historians who suggested she had misunderstood attempts to place subjects such as the British Empire in the context of questions of race and slavery.
Speaking to a Daily Telegraph podcast, Ms Donelan said: “As a history student, I’m a vehement protector and champion of safeguarding our history.
"It otherwise becomes fiction, if you start editing it, taking bits out that we view as stains.
"A fundamental part of our history is about learning from it, not repeating the mistakes, being able to analyse and challenge why those events happened, how those decisions were made so that we don't repeat those actions in the future."
Ms Donelan said: "If we're going down this road of taking bits out, are we then going to end up putting bits in that we wish had happened?
"It's a very dangerous and odd road to go down, and certainly it has no place in our universities, I would argue, and it has no place in academic study.
"And it just doesn't work when governments try to remove elements of history. Look at the Soviet Union, look at China. There are multiple examples where it's been tried. It doesn't work."
Ms Donelan said she was in favour of adding in sources from "less well known sources and often overlooked individuals in history" but claimed that "most of the narrative that is coming out... is about removing elements of history, about whitewashing it and pretending that it never happened, which I just think is naive and almost irresponsible".
But the minister’s comments were met with exasperation among academics.
Charlotte Lydia Riley, a lecturer in 20th century British history at the University of Southamptonm tweeted: “This historian says Michelle Donelan is talking out of her arse... she doesn’t understand decolonising the curriculum, she doesn’t understand the purpose of history and she seems a bit hazy on the Soviet Union.”
Laura O’Brien, a historian of 19th and 20 century France, said there was “absolutely no evidence” key texts were being removed from reading lists as the minister claimed.
She added Ms Donelan “completely misunderstands and misrepresents” deconolonisation, writing: “Efforts to decolonise curricula do not seek to ‘leave out the bits we see as stains’. Hardly! If anything, they draw greater attention to questions of race, empire, slavery, colonisation, and to diversify - not censor! - the voices included in reading lists.”
Ms Donelan’s intervention comes after schools minister Nick Gibb rejected compulsory lessons about the British Empire and the slave trade and said they would risk lowering “standards”.
Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch has also claimed that some campaigners wanted UK history to be taught “in a way that [suggests] good people [are] black people” and “bad people [are] white people”.
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Protecting American Children from Today’s Educational Activists
A friend of mine told me a story that left me with a cold shudder. He is an old-fashioned left-leaning "liberal" and a strong advocate of public education. All his children attend public schools. In fact, he is vehemently opposed to the idea of promoting private schools on the premise that its implementation will result in a more stratified society because, he believes, poor whites and blacks will be disproportionately disqualified from attending such institutions.
In good faith, he has always entrusted his children’s education to what I had typically referred to as Government Schools. He was confident that his children would receive a robust education from K-12 grade.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, he was forced to monitor the classroom activities of his children. Unemployment had left him more time to inconspicuously sit-in -- especially on the classes of his 6th grader son.
He was shocked, one afternoon, to come upon an assignment being conducted during an English class in which all the white students in the zoom online course were required to place their arms beside a brown paper bag. How his 6th grader had acquired a crisp brown paper bag was a mystery to him. The teacher asked them if they noticed a difference in color between their skin and the brown paper bag. All of the white students nodded, and some verbally assented. The teacher asked them if the color of the bag looked close to the color of some of the students identified as black in the class. His son peered at the zoom screen and raised the icon button identifying his acknowledgement. The teacher then announced with full moral rectitude and intransigence the following:
If your skin color is different from the color of the paper bag, then you are part of a problem in America known as systemic racism that does irreparable harm to all black and brown people in America. Further, if your skin color is different from the brown paper bag and you are identified as white you enjoy something called white privilege which means you are practicing racism every day without knowing it.
Each such student that had a different color than the brown paper bag bore a collective guilt. The teacher then went on to ask the class if they had ever heard the term, “Reparations.”
Out of some sense of visceral, atavistic paternal protection, my friend slammed down his son’s computer and told him to go to his room for a while. He said he stood with his fingers pressed into the metal cover of the computer, shaking with incredulity.
I explained to him that guilt implied wrong-doing, and that because his son at age twelve had committed no egregious harm against any black person that he would eventually grow to feel a burgeoning sense of resentment. Over time, as his mind grew more focused and the charges against him repeated had been codified into a cultural norm, he would feel that he was the real cause of all harms directed at black people. I said that something evil and sinister was going to take root in his son’s psyche.
My friend grew alarmed. But I pressed on. His son, I told him, would grow to feel resentment towards black people. It would be mild at first; a contemptuous discharge fueled by a growing sense of his superiority and empowerment that he, by the power of his whiteness, could cause so much harm and that he, by that same magical power of whiteness, could alleviate the misery and suffering of blacks. I told him it would not end well, His son’s curriculum would include a phalanx of black and white progressive nihilists who would call for the annihilation of “whiteness” which, his mind would come to understand as: the annihilation of all white people from the earth including himself. His son, I told him, runs the risk not just of becoming a racist, but of a white supremacist. Becoming a white supremacist, he will come to believe, will be his only default position from which to protect his life from the early stages of assault being waged against it -- starting with the seemingly benign comparison between his skin color and that of a brown paper bag. And all this from white liberals masquerading as anti-racists.
Be careful how you proceed with his education, I warned him. It is not too late for you to assume responsibility and assert control of his mind by extracting him from one of our many national security threats destroying our American civilization: our Government schools on the tertiary level, and our nation’s universities. The decision is yours.
Doubtless, readers have been keeping up with reports of how our public schools have become inundated with what is becoming known as “Culturally Responsive Teaching.” Teachers are required to implement “action civics” in the classroom, leading students in activism on behalf of various causes.
A school district in San Diego conducted a “white privilege training” for its white teachers who were told they were racist for being white, and for upholding racist ideas and policies. They were made to feel ashamed for teaching on stolen Native American land.
Seattle Public Schools also held racially charged teacher-training sessions that accused them, unequivocally, of murdering the souls of black children everyday through systemic institutionalized, anti-black, state-sanctioned violence. They, too, were told they were natural racists because of their mere possession of white skin, and that they had to self-consciously reject their “whiteness.” Any objection to their indictment of being racists, they were told, no matter how well-argued or factually grounded, would be dismissed as a reflex of their whiteness, as “lizard brain,” which was proof of their white fragility.
These stories come on the heels of decolonized courses in which Shakespeare, Homer, Chaucer and other classics are expurgated from curricula in high schools and colleges in the United States (I cannot keep up). The idea first started by Rutgers that grammar is racist, has been extrapolated on to the disciplines of science and math -- they, as well, are racists disciplines, we’re being told.
It is obvious that today’s cultural activists are guilty of massive child abuse in our classrooms. They have criminalized independent thinking, logic, reason, and so, have ended up conceptually breaking the minds of our children. They have usurped the purpose of educational from one of learning to one of, ultimately, Marxist indoctrination and the destruction of the values that undergird American civilization. They are using children as political pawns, weapons of mass destruction, and objectified instruments in their war against the United Sates of America.
They have declared war on this country’s children and their precious minds -- openly, vulgarly, and with full forethought of malice.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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