I remember how it was -- JR
Monday, November 22, 2021
A Manhattan middle school will racially separate students during a controversial social justice exercise officials say is meant to 'undo the legacy of racism and oppression.'
Next week, the Lower Manhattan Community Middle School will reportedly separate kids in grades seven and eight into five racial groups for a two-day program meant to explore 'How do our racial identities influence our experiences?' Principal Shanna Douglas wrote in an email to parents.
The students will be divided into five racial groups: whites, Asians and mixed-race students will each get their own groups, African American and Hispanic students will be combined into one group, and there will be an additional group for those who are uncomfortable with the format, the New York Post reported.
Following the groupings, the students will enter into a discussion that ponders 'why are we even talking about racial identity?' according to the email.
Douglas told parents that the school - which is 44 percent Asian, 29 percent white 15 percent Hispanic and 8 percent black - has failed to adequately address race issues in the past, the Post reported.
She said part of the reason this program has come about is because of student's interest in the topic of race.
'Students are talking about it since race has become a popular topic on social media, or parents are talking even more about it at home due to the recent incidents across the nation,' she wrote to parents, saying the exercises are part of the school's mission to 'undo the legacy of racism and oppression in this country that impacts our school community.'
Department of Education spokesman Nathaniel Styer told the Post that this exercise will be entirely optional and student participation is not mandatory.
'This optional program was developed in close coordination with both the School Leadership Team, PTA, and families,' Styer said, adding it has been made 'abundantly clear to both students and parents that anyone can opt-out of this two-day celebration if they desire.'
Parents have shared mixed reactions to the practice, which is known as 'affinity groups,' but some say that they trust school staff to navigate the difficult discussions. 'I think our teachers know how to handle it,' one mom told the Post.
Another parent said she also had no objections. 'The staff is very good about being clear when it comes to race,' she said.
But other parents are questioning the practice and say they believe separating kids by race goes too far.
'I think a lot of us feel like this is too much,' one mom told the Post. 'But most parents are too afraid to say anything at this point. Why are we separating our kids like this?'
Her reaction was echoed on social media, where people reacted negatively, saying this was a step backward and a return to segregation at schools.
One person tweeted: 'Why doesn't anyone ask, 'How does this re-branded racial segregation help kids learn?' [Spoiler alert: it doesn't.] How disgusting to divide 11 year old friends & classmates by race in 2021 NYC.'
Another person wrote: 'Irony is broken: 'The Lower Manhattan Community School will conduct the controversial exercises as part of its mission to 'undo the legacy of racism''...by bringing back racist segregation!'
Other people simply responded by tweeting: 'We’re going backwards,' 'Segregation is back? I thought that was already done away with...' and 'I'm so done with woke racism.'
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Black racism again
A group of four black girls attacked a group of Asian students on a Philadelphia SEPTA train on Wednesday in an attack which was caught on camera. The group of girls aged between 13 and 16 threw punches and screamed profanities at the Asian students
Passengers on the train did not intervene with the teens until the girl was on the ground and kicked several times
Authorities have identified the attackers although they have not been named
Each member of the group has been charged with aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation, criminal conspiracy, simple assault and disorderly conduct
The mother of one of four black teenage girls who was captured on video brutally assaulting a group of Asian students on a Philadelphia train turned her into police as all four were slapped with a slew of charges, including ethnic intimidation.
Shocking video captured the group of black teenage girls brutally throwing punches and screaming profanities at a group of Asian students this week.
The unidentified girls, who were between the ages of 13 and 16, were charged with aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation, criminal conspiracy, simple assault, disorderly conduct, and recklessly endangering another person, according to the district attorney's office.
Thomas Nestel, police chief for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), said the attack was unprovoked and had been based on the group's ethnicity, noting that 'ethnic slurs were used by the attackers.'
Nestel revealed how the mother of one of the teen suspects recognized her own daughter from the video and went straight to the cops.
Her daughter and her pals turned their fury on a group of four students, which included three boys and a girl, who were traveling on the train on Wednesday from North Philadelphia.
Police said 'ethnic slurs were repeated and directed at them and mocking them for their heritage... it was clear they were picked on because they were Asian,' Nestel said.
One of the suspects was also charged with robbery for the attempted theft of a victim's air pods, the prosecutor said.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said the city would not tolerate such acts of hate and that he was appalled after learning about the incident.
'Those involved in the assault have been identified and will be held accountable. I want our residents to know that we will not tolerate any acts of hate,' Kenney tweeted.
It is unclear what sparked the feud, but video footage shows a girl in an all-pink outfit and a black ski mask screaming profanities at around 3.30pm on Wednesday.
The video opens with the girl in pink screaming at a group of Asian boys while another in a black quarter-zip jacket punches one who is wearing a red jacket.
The girl in pink appears to say, 'You want to doubt my people,' before firing off a string of profanities.
'You want to come on, b***ch? You want to try me, b***ch, f**king try me, I'll f**king beat ya,' she continued screaming as she stood over the the group of sitting boys.
She also yelled at a female Asian student standing near the boys.
Another girl, dressed in a black sweater that reads 'confidence collection thurl' across the chest, pointed her finger and screamed at the boys: 'Don't try that s**t again. Don't try that s**t again.'
It is unclear what the other students did to anger the girls.
An older girl, dressed in black with a black bandana over her hair, stepped in and pointed at the boy sitting close to the window next to the one in red and said: 'It was really him, it was really him.'
She then proceeded to turn around and slap the mask off the Asian girl, screaming at her: 'Get the f**k out of here, And bitch, stop f**king [indiscernible].'
The Asian girl appears to be upset, but doesn't say anything as she adjusts her mask back over her nose.
The girl in pink then corners her, backing her up until her back's against the door, yelling: 'What? What? What?' as she pushes the Asian girl.
She appears to slam the palm of her hand into the girl's head several times before the girl falls to the ground.
She bends down and continues to hit her before more girls come over and begin to stomp on her back as she screams.
The girl in pink takes off one of her slipper-like shoes and slams it into the girl's head while calling her a b***ch.
Someone in the background can be heard screaming 'yo, yo, yo.'
The video ends as the girl in pink straightens up to look at the male yelling at them to stop.
A SEPTA spokesperson called the incident 'violent and disturbing,' but reported no major injuries.
The Philadelphia School Administration said they 'did have additional Student Support staff on hand at Central High School to support any students who be experiencing anxiety over what happened.'
A Philadelphia City Councilman David Oh is calling on SEPTA and the Philadelphia School District to increase safety measures.
'There has to be a response by the police, by SEPTA school safety officers, formerly known as school police, and by SEPTA itself. It has a police force and we need to see them,' he said.
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The Left is now dominated by highly educated people
Higher education tends to lead to arrogance and the most arrogant ones find a natural home on the Left, who never cease trying to impose their ideas on the whole of society. The great tyrannies of the 20th century -- from Communism to Fascism to Nazism -- were all "socialist"
Highly educated people tend to be well-off so their chief concerns are a long way from the concerns of poorer people. So the Left is steadily losing the working class vote that it once relied on
Since 2016, the year Britain voted to leave the European Union and the United States elected Donald Trump, to the dismay of the educated classes in both countries, speculation has grown about whether centre-left or social democratic parties can remain in the electoral race, or whether a polarising world has no place for them.
The centre-left’s demise is far from certain – the German Social Democrats did well in recent national elections. Yet in a host of countries, including Australia, social democrats are struggling to balance the interests of their two big support bases: educated progressives and working people, who in Australia are majority Anglo-Celtic but also contain people from many migrant and refugee backgrounds and Indigenous Australians.
The gaps between these groups over climate change, identity politics issues and – in many countries – immigration, can seem too great to enable a centre-left party to craft a coherent policy platform and election-winning story.
Fifty years ago, there was no such divide. The proportion of the population that was university-educated was just too small. As late as 1975, only 15 per cent of Australian 19-year-olds went to university. Most young people left school to enter factories, trades and shops, as well as nursing and white-collar jobs in banks, company offices and even the public service. Half of all workers were union members.
Today globalisation and technological change have swept away the manufacturing and clerical jobs that were so plentiful in 1975. Unions represent a mere 14 per cent of workers, and just over 5 percent of workers are under 24 years old. As the number of middle-income jobs has shrunk, inequality and the premium paid for a good education have soared.
Aside from some tradies, construction workers and the odd DJ or sports star, people who leave the education system after year 12 will not have a well-paid job. The gap between the lifetime income produced by someone with a university degree and those with a year 12 qualification or less is $700,000, according to a 2016 report by the Grattan Institute. These changes help to explain why 42 per cent of 19-year-olds now go to university.
As the size of the tertiary-educated class has expanded, its political views have changed places with those of the less educated. French economist Thomas Piketty calls it “the great reversal”. Piketty analysed electoral results in the US, Britain and France since World War II to show that in 1960, a person of low education and income in these countries was almost certain to vote left. Today, except for members of some minority groups, that person is increasingly voting right. At the other end of the scale, a person of high education levels in 1960 was most likely to vote right. Today, he or she is almost certain to vote left.
In the US, Trump won much of the white working-class vote in 2016 and held a good share of it in 2020, despite slashing taxes on the rich and trying to nobble initiatives such as Obamacare that helped lower-income people. On the night of Trump’s defeat in 2020, Republican politician Josh Hawley, a graduate of Princeton and Yale, tweeted: “We are a working-class party now.” Hawley’s tweet was self-serving and only half true: there remain plenty of rich and powerful Republicans.
Yet the change may be underway in Australia, too. The ALP still holds most federal lower-income electorates; there has been no Trump tide or breach of the “Red Wall”, the Conservative rout of British Labour in working-class seats in the north of England in 2019.
Nevertheless, in the 2019 federal election, the average swing to Labor in the 20 seats with the highest share of university graduates was nearly 4 per cent. The average swing against Labor in the 20 electorates with the lowest share of university graduates was just over 4 per cent. It is a perfect reflection of Piketty’s argument.
In their report on that election defeat, senior Labor figures Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill pointed to the growing gap between the party’s two constituencies. The party had “become a natural home for diverse interests and concerns, including gender equality, the LGBTQI+ community, racial equality and environmentalism”.
These issues were important, and Labor should not abandon principled positions on them, Emerson and Weatherill wrote. However, working people often resented “the attention progressive political parties give at their expense to minority groups and what is nowadays called identity politics”. At a time of great economic dislocation, working-class voters “would lose faith in Labor if they did not believe the party was responding to their needs”.
The risk for Labor is that if its membership continues to shrink and become more concentrated in the inner cities, the priorities of its progressive activists will predominate. The party has a model for where that might lead in the crushing defeat of British Labour, including the loss of many working-class seats, under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019.
A progressive politics that emerges almost exclusively from universities will take particular forms. The student cohort is much more culturally and economically diverse than it once was. Yet political or viewpoint diversity on campus seems to have shrunk.
The shift is troubling political scientists on the centre-right, according to Cancel Culture: Myth or Reality?, a paper published in July by Pippa Norris, an Australian political scientist at Harvard University. Her analysis of a survey of nearly 2500 political scientists around the world, including Australia, suggests that “cancel culture is not simply a rhetorical myth”. More conservative political scientists are experiencing “worsening pressures to be politically correct, limits on academic freedom and lack of respect for open debate”.
Another trend emerging from universities and shaping left-wing thought, including its extreme manifestation in episodes of cancel culture, has been identified by Nick Haslam, a professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne.
About eight years ago, Haslam noticed that concepts of harm were taking on broader meanings across many fields of academic research. He also found that the threshold for identifying an instance of harm seemed to have dropped. This pattern held true in work on abuse, trauma, bullying, mental illness, addiction, violence, prejudice, racism and hatred, among other concepts.
For example, the meaning of abuse had expanded over time to include not only physical or sexual assault but psychological or emotional injury, and neglect. Bullying now refers to adults as well as children, while addiction can refer to sex and gambling as well as drugs.
In a 2016 paper Haslam gave the trend a name: “concept creep”. He thinks an increased focus on harm is helping to shape the goals of the progressive left.
“It has become standard operating procedure in sections of the left to appeal to harm, to the need to protect the vulnerable, when trying to justify some initiative,” Haslam says in an interview. “It also explains why verdicts on behaviour are so moralistic, since harm is central to moral judgment.”
He sees these trends playing out in the claims of identity politics, with their frequent use of terms such as hatred, phobia, racism and violence. “People are reacting in a way that seems disproportionate to the acts themselves (at least if you don’t accept the recent stretching of these concepts), and in a way that is turbo-charged by social media and political polarisation.”
Haslam stresses that “concept creep” has positive aspects. Broader concepts of mental illness and bullying, for example, have helped sufferers. People concerned about harm often show high levels of empathy, and in many ways we are a kinder society than we once were. Nevertheless, he worries that “concept creep runs the risk of pathologising everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood.”
Haslam’s work shows how ideas born in universities migrate over time to the wider society, as students in the humanities, psychology and law go on to work in the media, arts, publishing, the public service and education – fields where the priorities of the progressive left will be most powerfully expressed.
A left dominated by the educated class is likely to be idealistic and principled in fighting racism, sexism and prejudice of any kind. It will support redistribution of wealth – it remains a left-wing movement – but is likely to
register material issues and poverty as more distant concerns. It will focus intently on climate change and on creating the no-carbon economy, but be less sensitive to the claims of workers whose jobs are lost in the transition to it, as Bob Brown’s 2019 Adani convoy revealed.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
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://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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