I remember how it was -- JR
A poisonous pledge
I grew up in North Carolina in the 1950s where I regularly faced one of the most egregious symbols of segregation—two water fountains, side-by-side, labeled “White” and “Colored.” I freely drank from the same water jug that Black farmworkers did in fields at my home, an all-White Presbyterian orphanage with 225 disadvantaged children ages two to eighteen (hardly a recognized seedbed for “White privilege”), but I couldn’t share a water fountain with the same workers at the Belk department store in downtown Statesville, three miles away. I played with the Black workers’ kids during summers but couldn’t ride the same bus with them to the same school. The disparities of racial treatment were not lost on my pre-woke generation.
Many others and I saluted and internalized the dream of protesters of the 1960s, that Blacks and Whites could together outgrow the shame of prevalent stark contrasts in racial treatment, and I welcomed the then imagined future in which people would no longer be judged by skin color.
Since the Reverend King majestically proclaimed his Dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, I’ve done my darnedest to work with people based on the “content of their character” (and scholarship). I understand that skin color is hard to ignore, but I’ve taken King’s admonition seriously, as have hordes of others, especially in universities. By the standards of the 1950s, I have lived through substantial (if not enormous) racial progress—I say with gratitude and relief.
On-Campus “Woke Racism”
Yet, my dream of shared color blindness is suffering because of my university’s relentless insistence on giving skin color— “blackness” or “anti-blackness”—priority in people’s on-campus interactions. Administrators, from the chancellor on down, regularly make sweeping pronouncements, suggesting that those in a non-minority—translated, “Whites”—should be suspected of “systemic racism,” whether they are “conscious” or “unconscious” of their affliction. It’s as if those side-by-side “water fountains” have been reintroduced in disguise, cloaked in the rhetoric of “inclusive excellence.”
The irony in such claims is that (non-Hispanic) Whites on campus are a distinct minority, at 15 percent of the 36,000-student body (and 36.6 percent of California’s total population). Granted, Blacks represent a tiny minority of on-campus students, 2.1 percent (but also only 5.8 percent of California’s population, with only 13 percent of Blacks seeking a college education). Nevertheless, administrators seem convinced that Blacks’ small share can be attributed, to a non-trivial extent, to pervasive on-campus anti-Black racism, with rare reference to other explanations, including admission standards and Blacks wanting to attend other universities with more Blacks and, maybe, fewer Asians (the dominant on-campus ethnic group).
Campus “inclusive excellence” proponents seem unaware that they have been countering one form of racism with another—dubbed “woke racism” by Columbia University linguist John McWhorter—and are thus aggravating on-campus divisions. They seem equally oblivious to the prospects of sowing seeds of exclusion (and resentment) under their mantra. They also appear unconcerned that some on-campus Blacks have tired of being denied, through promotions of special considerations for them, full credit for thriving on their own at a demanding major research university.
The “Take the Pledge” Campaign
In explaining on-campus “woke racism,” I offer exhibit 1, the university’s step-too-far, a campaign to persuade, or intimidate, all in the university to “Take the Pledge.” You might think that the pledge is dedicated to some academic honor code or a fund-raiser. No. The campaign is devoted to making skin color key to developing a campus culture of “inclusive excellence,” where “Black people can thrive at UCI,” a goal no one contests (if applied equally to all others). To do that, however, all in the university have been implored repeatedly to pledge to:
Acknowledge the existence of anti-Black racism
Understand your relationship to anti-Black and micro- and macro-aggressions
Recognize uncredited labor that Black people expend to manage the effects of unconscious and conscious acts of bias, prejudice and bigotry
Confront anti-Blackness to build a thriving culture for Black people
The pledge effectively seeks signees to confess to their own non-deniable original sin of inculcated systemic racism. It concludes, “I recognize that a whole university response is required to build a culture where Black people thrive at UCI and beyond.” Nice words, I grant.
The message is clear: Set aside a transparent fact of campus life, that a large percentage of all students in the country’s most highly diverse student body are first-generation college students, many are from humble backgrounds (a third are Pell Grant recipients), some are from oppressive foreign regimes—and all are no less deserving of a culture free of blanket claims of on-campus racism by non-Blacks and Blacks alike.
What is remarkable for an elite public research university that has long prided itself on the extent of its data-driven scientific studies is that the “Take the Pledge” campaign has been vigorously pursued without a scintilla of documentation, not even a single recorded data point of an anti-Black racial incident on campus. No one has even considered the extent to which anti-Black incidents are greater or lower than anti-Asian incidents by non-Blacks or Blacks.
Not that such incidents haven’t occurred. The point is that the campaign promoters have not done their homework. Instead, they have followed the path of the racists they have criticized: They have caved to their prejudices, a key one being that because (as promoters have professed on video) racism was self-evident in Charlottesville’s violent protests and the George Floyd murder, all members (or some unknown subset) of my university community must harbor a racial animus toward Blacks, which is to say, they are guilty by racial identity or just administrative fiat. By the breadth of their racial claims, promoters do more to signal their own self-proclaimed racial virtue than they do to solve (or just avoid aggravating) what they present as a vaguely defined social-justice problem.
On-Campus Racial Reeducation Programs
At the beginning of the “Take the Pledge” campaign, pledgers were not pressed to reveal their identities. Now, signers are asked to provide their names, email addresses, and UC-Irvine affiliation (which means promoters can tabulate and track those who have and have not signed the pledge, which should be worrisome). They are also asked to give permission to use their names and testimonials in future “marketing materials.” And they have begun to promote the signees’ testimonials, which, to date, represent a tiny fraction of those considered in the university community (students, faculty, staff, alumni, extended supporters, and who knows?). No one should be surprised if signing becomes mandatory. Indeed, count on it. The proponents are missionaries.
Within a day of the jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial in Wisconsin handing down its not-guilty verdict, the chief inclusive-excellence officer on campus cited the verdict as yet another reason for all on campus to take the Pledge, officially declaring for the university, “[T]the verdict conveys a chilling message: Neither Black lives nor those of their allies’ matter.” The officer’s message is even more chilling, given how such an official university pronouncement could easily stoke on-campus racial divisions, as it likely has.
Administrators are apparently concerned that many pledgers will need corrective reeducation and have provided a fourteen-week course, the UCI Inclusive Excellence Certificate Program, which covers on-campus “racial bias,” “White supremacy,” “mechanisms for devaluing Black people,” and rationales for the Pledge. Pledge proponents seem intent on having non-Blacks seek absolution by confessing to their racial sins and then attending reeducation camps (tactics reminiscent of those commonly employed by oppressive regimes and groups the world over, not in scholarly communities).
* * * * *
Wouldn’t a pledge to uphold King’s sentiments—or the Golden Rule—more effectively promote “inclusive excellence”? The loss in this well-intended but misguided take-the-pledge campaign is an unrecognized affront to King’s dream that one day people will be judged by the “content of their character,” not their skin color. That day has, sadly, been postponed at my university.
https://blog.independent.org/2022/05/11/a-misguided-take-the-pledge-campaign/?omhide=true
***********************************************Using ‘Wrong’ Pronouns Could Lead to Suspensions in Virginia Public Schools
Living as a Christian could get a student suspended from public school in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Earlier this month, the school board conducted an annual review of its Regulation 2601, proposing edits to a 70-page-long document on “Student Rights and Responsibilities,” and parents noticed something shocking.
According to a short provision buried deep in the document, students could face suspension for up to five days, and possibly further punishment, for referring to a fellow student according to their biological, God-given sex.
“Using slurs based upon the actual or perceived gender identity (which includes, but is not limited to, malicious deadnaming or malicious misgendering),” reads the offending provision, which appears on Page 21, under the “SBAR Code” “RB9h,” three pages into an extensive table aligning all possible offenses and punishments.
The corresponding “Level 4” violation (nowhere defined) merits the punishment “circled R” (“®”), defined on Page 19, “allows for a suspension up to 5 days [if frequency and intensity are present]. Also allows for a referral to the Division Superintendent … ” (text in brackets is a proposed addition).
Is it just me, or is the bureaucratic jargon intentionally designed to confuse and discourage parents?
Glossing over its granting sexual orientation and gender identity protections parity with innate categories, this particular provision has three glaring problems.
The first is the use of the words “deadnaming” and “misgendering.” These words carry no meaning to a normal, sane person who hasn’t imbibed the transgender Kool-Aid. They describe using someone’s given name and biological pronouns, respectively, when that person identifies with a name and pronouns of the opposite sex. They’re mostly used as shorthand smears to apply sinister connotations to innocent behavior.
Secondly, the provision describes using someone’s accurate name or pronouns as “slurs,” in a list with prohibitions of “slurs” based on someone’s race, religion, or disability. This is totally backward. Not long ago, it was insulting to call a man “effeminate,” or to call a woman “mannish.” Now, we’re told, it insults certain people to not call them the opposite sex of what they truly are. “He looks like a boy in a dress” should only be an insult if it is not true.
Thirdly, Fairfax County wrongly assumes malicious intent in using the “wrong” name or pronoun. It presumes that transgender affirmation is the only moral option. It rules out the possibility that someone could have good motives for behaving otherwise, such as a commitment to absolute truth, concern over someone’s eternal soul, or seeking their present happiness (as distinct from accommodating their present feelings).
In other words, it assumes Christians are acting maliciously. After all, every American so far who has gotten in trouble for using the wrong pronouns has been a Christian deeply committed to the Bible’s teaching. In fact, the terms of this provision target Christians so precisely it seems as if it were intentionally designed with them in mind.
But not to worry, the students’ new overlords, Fairfax County teachers, are merciful—or at least patient. Based on their guidelines, they likely won’t suspend a student for a first offense. But they will correct them and expect it not to happen again.
“Any student who commits multiple offenses … may … face more stringent disciplinary action as a result,” they warn. They aren’t out to get your child at first, so long as they get them in the end.
If they can’t persuade a student to reject biblical truth about human sexuality, that student had better beware. They could face graver disciplinary action, like suspension. If a suspension doesn’t work, they can refer the student to the division superintendent, who “will consider all possible sanctions in the same hearing (to include short-term suspension, long-term suspension, reassignment, and/or expulsion).” And even afterward, the student “may be subject to ongoing consequences, even after the student returns,” including “probationary conditions” and “restitution.”
If Fairfax County Public Schools isn’t promoting moral training in a secular religion, I don’t know what is. The irony is, the Supreme Court warned against this very type of pressure in banning prayer from school functions.
“There are heightened concerns with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and secondary public schools,” said the majority in Lee v. Weisman (1992). “What to most believers may seem nothing more than a reasonable request that the nonbeliever respect their religious practices, in a school context may appear to the nonbeliever or dissenter to be an attempt to employ the machinery of the State to enforce a religious orthodoxy.”
To transgender ideologues, pronoun affirmation is simply a “reasonable request,” but to a Christian (a “dissenter” from their new orthodoxy), this behavior in a school setting amounts to enforcing their religious orthodoxy. And because the controversy is over names and pronouns, students’ free speech is at stake, as well as freedom of religion.
Christian students in Fairfax County Public Schools will face an uphill battle against this increasingly intolerant culture—and what begins in a wealthy D.C. suburb will be quickly exported to other school districts as well.
One question Christian students will have to wrestle with is, how can they best honor all the authorities in their life when their parents say one thing, but their teachers say the opposite? (Home schoolers don’t face that question because their parents are their teachers.)
Parents should help prepare their children to wrestle with tough questions, face the world’s pressure to conform, and have a solid foundation on which to stand.
Parents bear the primary responsibility for educating their children. They should consider how best to protect their children from this gender insanity. Should they enroll them in a Christian school? Should they educate them at home? Should they run for school board? There are many good options, but “doing nothing” is not one of them
*************************************************
The Left’s War on Children
What are we doing to our children?
The leaked news that the Supreme Court may be about to overturn its controversial 1973 Roe v. Wade decision has sent political shock waves across America. It’s also given new life to the left’s faux trope about “the right’s war on women.”
But if we take a step back and take an honest look at the bigger picture, the real war being waged in America is the left’s war against our own children.
Have we fully considered how many of our children will be able to survive the life-altering gauntlet that the left has put in front of them?
It was the phraseology in President Joe Biden’s recent comment about women having the right to choose to “abort a child” that crystalized this thought process in my mind.
For children, not being aborted is only the first obstacle in the left’s gauntlet. Just think about it:
—Even if children survive by not being aborted in the womb, or, as some extremists from the left have proposed, being aborted up to a few weeks after birth …
—Even if young students are not emotionally damaged, beginning at the lowest grades in school, by being exposed to complex sexual issues and graphic sexual images and concepts that are well beyond their age to comprehend …
—Even if many adolescents are able to maintain their self-confidence, despite attempts to purposefully confuse them by teaching them to question their inner selves with regard to race and gender …
—Even if our children are not coerced to alter the sanctity of their God-given biology, despite the overt efforts by school officials to glorify transitioning to another gender …
—Even if youth who have gender dysphoria survive government-sanctioned emotional brainwashing, surgical mutilation, and chemical castration, and do not commit suicide …
—Even if middle and high school students can avoid the trauma of inappropriate or criminal sexual contact by teachers, coaches, pastors, priests, camp counselors, and other adults in authority positions …
—Even if the rulings of our next new Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is soft on sex offenders and whose proclivity is to side with convicted child predators instead of victimized children and families, don’t give the sexually deviant more of an incentive to prey upon our children …
—Even if young women aren’t discouraged from participating in healthy athletics because their sport is dominated by males who say they are females …
—Even if students don’t suffer long-term consequences from harmful mask mandates and vaccinations that never should have been imposed or recommended for them …
—Even if students somehow graduate from schools that don’t adequately prepare them to become a productive and proud member of our society, instead trying to turn them into political advocates …
—Even if our children grow into psychologically and physically secure young adults, despite continual prompts to view themselves as victims and part of some aggrieved identity-politics group …
—Even if they navigate this outrageous gantlet that the left has erected …
With the weight of all of this upon their shoulders, what are the odds—and how can we expect—that we will have raised a generation of Americans with the strength and wisdom to care properly for themselves, their families, and their country?
Most of these issues shouldn’t fall within the purview of schools. No one-size-fits-all, government-centric approach ever can adequately address the diverse needs and values of America’s melting pot of families.
Indeed, education on these issues must come from only within the private walls of each family’s domain. We seem to have forgotten that parents are the true and ultimate teachers of our children.
Only with an intimate understanding of each young person, developing as a unique individual—as only a close family member may truly know—should these issues be addressed.
In extreme circumstances, for instance, absent a stable family environment or with deeply troubled youth, public dollars can provide families with choices to seek private, professional therapy.
But the left’s strategy to indoctrinate our youth is nowhere near over.
The next major issue will be claims of the declining mental health of our nation’s youth—and it might be true to some extent. And, of course, the agenda-driven left will be ready to rush in with its latest prescriptions and school curricula, including destructive policies that will further advance its agenda and, ultimately, only make matters worse.
However, what you and I know—and what I presume the left also knows but will never admit—is that it was the left’s prescriptions that caused whatever mental health issues may exist in the first place.
These are purposefully inflicted wounds that will leave lifelong scars on our nation’s most precious assets.
So again: What are we doing to our children?
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/05/09/the-lefts-war-on-children
***********************************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)
*******************************
No comments:
Post a Comment