A Student Sleuth Found Evidence that Our University Practices Reverse Racism. Here’s Why I Advised Him Not to Publish It

It's stupid enrolling underqualified students in advanced courses. They will mostly just flunk the courses concerned

At the American university where I teach, one of my assigned tasks is to advise undergraduates—mostly freshmen and sophomores. This essay describes a conversation I had in 2017 with one of those advisees. I will call him Daniel.

Daniel was a sophomore at the time. He had been an advisee of mine for a year already, and I’d come to understand that he was a prodigy. I’d also formed a hypothesis, based on a certain bluntness and lack of social tact he exhibited, that Daniel might be on the autism/Asperger’s spectrum. He seemed weak on interpersonal skills and narrowly, even obsessively, focused on math and science. During his first year of university studies, Daniel had taken a number of upper-level math and physics courses that none of my other advisees had taken, and had earned flat As in almost all of them. His GPA probably would have been a perfect 4.0 if the university had allowed him to take only math and science courses. As it was, it was a 3.85.

At the end of his freshman year, Daniel applied for admission to a competitive honors program that our university runs, but he was rejected. He came to my office to discuss this—or, rather, to complain about it. I soon realized that he was not just disappointed; he was angry. Daniel believed he’d been treated unfairly. He believed he was the victim of reverse racism.

I told Daniel that I understood why he was upset, but I reminded him that the program he’d applied to is highly competitive. The admissions committee presumably received many strong applications. There is always some subjectivity in admissions decisions, I noted, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Subjectivity isn’t the same as unfairness.

Daniel said he wouldn’t be upset if he believed that the applicants who’d been admitted to the program were as strong as him, or stronger. But he said he had reason to believe they were not.

I asked him what he meant by that. He then pulled a laptop out of his backpack and opened up a spreadsheet.

Daniel proceeded to explain that he and a friend had both applied to the same honors program and had both been rejected. Afterwards, they wondered who had been accepted. They scrutinized the social-media accounts of fellow students and found several dozen applicants who’d posted about being accepted. A lot of them, they noticed, were either African American or Hispanic. Daniel and his friend then asked around and identified several dozen students who had been rejected, many of whom were Caucasian or Asian. This made Daniel and his friend suspicious. They decided to create a spreadsheet—the one Daniel was showing me—to organize the data they’d collected; and then they decided to gather more.

Daniel explained that he and his friend wanted to find a measure of academic achievement that they could track statistically. A student’s GPA is not public information, but the Dean’s List is; so they were able to use that as a discrete variable—Dean’s List, yes or no—as a rough proxy for achievement. Daniel explained to me that it would have been better to use a continuous variable (like GPA), but he and his friend had to work with what they had.

Daniel explained that he and his friend had performed various kinds of statistical analysis on the data, and had concluded that admission to the honors program was closely related to Dean’s List status within certain groups. However, there were large differences in acceptance rates across those groups. Overall, he told me, the factor that explained the most variance in admissions outcomes was (as he’d suspected) the race or ethnicity of the applicant. The patterns were quite stark. African Americans who weren’t on the Dean’s List had a better overall chance of being admitted to the honors program than whites or Asians who were on the Dean’s List.

I told him that I thought he might be right about why he hadn’t been accepted into the program. It looked to me like the push for diversity might have been the cause, or at least a key factor, in regard to the decision—though it was impossible to be certain. I then briefly (and perhaps half-heartedly) outlined the usual justification for affirmative-action programs.

But what I emphasized most was that I thought it would be unwise for Daniel to launch a campaign against the admissions committee, even if his data was as strong as he seemed to think it was. I told him that a campaign of the sort he was considering would almost certainly fail. He might get some catharsis out of it in the short run, but it would probably do no good in the long run. The committee was unlikely to revisit its decisions or change its procedures going forward. Support for affirmative action is almost universal among academics. Very few are even willing to express hesitations or second thoughts on this issue, lest they be deemed racists. The people who make these decisions feel good about the people who benefit from affirmative action, and they avert their gaze, as much as possible, from the people who are harmed by it. They might be embarrassed by Daniel and his friend’s data, but they would probably not abandon their approach.

I warned Daniel that I thought his plan might end up doing him a lot of harm. If he chose to make his exposé public, the most likely outcome would be that some student or faculty member would accuse him of being a racist. Publishing his data would probably end up hurting him rather than helping him.

When Daniel heard me use the word “racist,” even in this conjectural, non-accusatory way, he responded angrily. He told me that he was not a racist. He had voted for Democrats in the 2016 election and hated Donald Trump. And as it happens, I had reason to believe this was true. The morning after that election, Daniel had come to visit me in my office, deeply troubled by what a Trump presidency might mean for scientific research and funding.

Daniel told me that he believed affirmative-action policies were justified for college admissions, but he did not think they should be used to filter out qualified applicants to honors programs and graduate programs.

He then spoke for several minutes about his own ethnic background. He reminded me that he was Jewish, and told me that both of his parents had put up with a lot of antisemitic discrimination in their universities and workplaces. Back then, they were regarded as “non-white” and were discriminated against as a result; now (ironically) he was considered “white” and was being discriminated against on that basis.

I listened with real sympathy. The situation seemed unfair to me, too. To be honest, I’ve never been quite clear on how we’re supposed to get over centuries of judging people by their skin color or ethnicity by paying more and more attention to skin color and ethnicity.

In the past few years, in fact, I’ve increasingly had the sense that affirmative action may be backfiring. Policies meant to correct historical iniquities seem to be stoking racial resentment. Like Daniel, I dislike Trump intensely. I don’t have much in common with his followers, and I certainly don’t think of myself as one of them. But I do, increasingly, understand some of the grievances that motivate them. I wish I didn’t, but I do.

In the end, as I’ve mentioned, I didn’t tell Daniel about any of my personal experiences or private thoughts. I assured myself that doing so might be counterproductive: after all, my goal was to calm Daniel down, not rile him up.

I told Daniel that he could still succeed at our university, and get accepted by a top graduate school, even if he never made it into the honors program—as long as he just kept on taking challenging math and science classes and posting good grades. That would carry the day. He would move ahead, while the unqualified would fall by the wayside, unable to do the heavy intellectual lifting that advanced courses required.

https://quillette.com/2022/02/17/a-student-sleuth-found-evidence-that-our-university-practices-reverse-racism-heres-why-i-advised-him-not-to-publish-it/

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UK: Government rolls out ‘guidance’ on teaching racism in schools

The government is rolling out guidance to schools on how to approach teaching racism for the first time, following controversial ministerial intervention in classrooms.

Schools are already required to teach in a politically impartial way, but this instruction from ministers will specifically advise teacher on how to address “sensitive issues”.

The guidance comes after the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, waded into a debate over the teaching of anti-racism in Brighton schools last week, and ordered an investigation after becoming “concerned” by non-discriminatory resources being shared with students.

Slides from race training given to teachers in Brighton and Hove schools leaked to The Sunday Telegraph said that “between the ages of three and five, children learn to attach value to skin colour: white at the top of the hierarchy and black at the bottom”.

“Over the last few years, there has been much discussion about political impartiality in schools, often in the context of specific political issues and movements,” the education secretary said of the government’s unique guidance.

“I know that this has at times been difficult for school leaders, teachers, and staff, as they navigate how to handle and teach about these complex issues sensitively and appropriately.

“That is why I’m pleased this government is publishing clear guidance explaining schools’ existing legal duties on political impartiality.”

The manual suggests that the teaching of historical figures should focus on “factual information” about them, and that teaching of the British empire should be presented in “a balanced manner”.

One scenario refers to teaching pupils about racism and cautions that teachers should be aware that campaign groups such as Black Lives Matter “cover partisan political views”.

The recommendations say that “teachers should be clear that racism has no place in our society” when covering this topic with pupils, and should “help pupils to understand facts about this and the law”.

It adds that some campaign groups such as BLM may cover “partisan political views … which go beyond the shared principle that racism is unacceptable, which is a view schools should reinforce”.

“Examples of such partisan political views include advocating specific views on how government resources should be used to address social issues, including withdrawing funding from the police,” it adds.

The guidance says that for recent historical events, “including those which are particularly contentious and disputed, political issues may be presented to pupils”.

It also states: “This includes many topics relating to empire and imperialism, on which there are differing partisan political views, and which should be taught in a balanced manner,” adding that schools should be free to teach pupils about significant political figures, including “those who have controversial and contested legacies”.

But it adds that this may need to be reserved for older pupils, and says that it could be advisable to focus teaching on “what these figures are most renowned for and factual information about them”, if teachers think pupils may not be able to understand the full context of contested information about their lives.

The guidance states that when teachers are discussing the decriminalisation of homosexuality with pupils, they should not present discriminatory beliefs held at the time in an uncritical way, or as though they are acceptable today.

It adds that pupils should not be presented with views that oppose fundamental societal values, such as views denigrating freedom of speech or the democratic process.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/racism-schools-government-guidance-teaching-b2016601.html

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School District’s ‘Equity Specialist’ Admits How They Are Indoctrinating Students

It appears that states like Texas, which has taken steps to try to prevent the advancement of the controversial idea of Critical Race Theory (CRT), may have rushed through their legislation too quickly, leaving gaps in the bill’s language, which those on the left are exploiting.

A former “equity specialist” at a Texas school district admitted that its schools teach through a Critical Race Theory (CRT) “lens,” according to videos obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Jonathan Pérez, a former “Equity Specialist” at Fort Worth Independent School District in Fort Worth, Texas, says the school district teaches through a CRT lens, during an August 2020 equity training session for teachers, according to a video leaked by a teacher and obtained by the DCNF from Carlos Turcios.

Mr. Turcios is an activist who spent four years on FWISD’s Racial Equity Committee and is now an education activist fighting CRT in the district.

“The fact is there are so many … things, policies, practices, procedures, programmings that we have that have been deep … in our system so long that when we really dissect it through a Critical Race Theory lens, is one of the lens that we use, we see how these inequities come up and show up,” Pérez said during the training, according to video footage obtained by the DCNF.

In one of their glaring hypocrisies though, while insisting the culture becomes color blind, they teach those attending their classes to view nearly EVERY interaction with people, in terms of race.

Instead of building people’s self-confidence and skills, which provides them with the best opportunity to compete in the workforce, their racial leadership works to reduce standards, tries to end the traditional merit-based system for determining promotions, and confusingly promotes antiracism by teaching racism against those with “white privilege”.

“Racism shows up on our way to work, on the radio, on the TV shows, again, it shows up in multiple forms,” he said. Peréz added that it reminded him of a tweet he had seen that said “racism is so deeply embedded in our country, that when you protest against it, people think you’re protesting against the United States.”

He said the goal of their racial equity team is “to dismantle institutional and systemic racism” in the district “at the community level, school board level, the district level, the campus level and the student level.”

The district holds an annual “Racial Equity Summit,” where speakers and administrators discuss equity initiatives that FWISD is implementing, but Peréz said you “can’t dismantle a 400 year old racist system in one day or two conversations.”

At the December 2021 FWISD Equity Summit, racial equity consultant Altheria Caldera gave a presentation where she said you should “never be embarrassed to be antiracist” and explained it is “totally okay to be woke,” according to a video of the event shared with the DCNF.

“In fact, you should be embarrassed not to be [antiracist] … school board members and other elected officials … [if] they are hesitant at any point to say that they are antiracist, they don’t need to be in that position,” she said. “Because, if you are not anti-racist, what are you?”

Peréz explained that to “make this kind of change it starts at the very top” with school board members.

“Our school board members passed a racial equity policy that allows us … I don’t want to say allows us, but … gives us the opportunity to bring these conversations to the forefront without the fear of getting in trouble or retaliation,” he said.

“Especially for our white brothers and sisters, when we get into these conversations, it gets so hard that they many times either they just don’t want to listen to it or even for our colleagues of color, students of color, like it’s so hard that people would just rather not deal with it,” he added.

Teaching people to be racists, in their journey to defeat racism, only makes sense to those who immerse their selves in far-left bubbles.

The radical group never leaves the Kool-Aid sessions long enough to see that their views of people with white skin areas anti-Ameican and the abuses people of color experienced based solely on their skin color too.

https://trendingpolitics.com/school-districts-equity-specialist-admits-how-they-are-indoctrinating-students-ethom/

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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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