The more we obsess about race, the worse it gets

The sticky note from hell!

As a candidate for Madison school board, Blaska was interviewing with the Capital Times editorial board for an endorsement that was never going to happen. Except that Blaska was asking the questions.

“Are you guys racists?” I asked the panel of four, led by editor emeritus Dave Zweifel. After some sputtering, the four — three of them white — disavowed any racist inclinations. “Then how about Madison’s teachers? Are they racists?” More sputtering.

They wound up endorsing my opponent Ali Muldrow, who accused the average Madison public school teacher of acting this way:

“How do we blame black children, how do we hurt black children, how do we get rid of black children, how do we not listen to black children.”

We have gotten to the point in American life that if a person of color alleges racism it must be so. 

• This is what empowers Freedom Inc. to condemn Madison teachers as fundamentally racist. 
• It’s what allows Brandi Grayson license to spout the most spurious nonsense and still be appointed to advisory committees. 
• It permits the school superintendent to ruin a beloved positive behavior coach because the Rev. Marcus Allen saw an incomplete and misleading video. 

The new McCarthyism

“Pusillanimity has become the plague,” writes Daniel Henninger. “The lurch toward timidity” causes:

• The great Nike corporation to scuttle the rollout of Independence Day sneakers embossed with the Betsy Ross flag because a showboating scold named Colin Kaepernick said to do so.
• The New York Yankees to banish Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America.”
• A San Francisco school to paint over a Works Progress Administration mural (painted by a Communist!) depicting the life of George Washington that includes a dead Native American and slavery. (Shades of the Taliban!)

None of which The Capital Times will criticize lest “Your Progressive Voice” (as it bills itself) be itself smeared with the brush of racism. It’s the new McCarthyism.

The latest victim of this 21st Century smear-mongering is Edgewood College, one of the most liberal of institutions. The Capital Times is up this week with a lengthy hit piece branding this small liberal arts college as a haven of racism.

The cover story is headlined, “Culture shock: Former Edgewood College students and staff complain of racist campus culture.” The story is anchored by a disenchanted Edgewood College administrator named Tony Chambers, who left the school. 

So liberal is Edgewood College, that after Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the school invited its supposedly traumatized students to vent their rage on Post-It© notes on a specially designated table.

Not a swastika … but a smiley face!

Some mischievous prankster mocked this institutional hankie sniffing by posting a sticky note reading “Suck it up, pussies.” This message was accompanied by a winking smiley face.

The small liberal arts college went into a DEFCON 1 alert. The diversity and inclusion director summoned a committee of security officials and college administrators. It determined that that the school was victim of a hate crime under the federal Clery Act, which requires colleges and universities to report crime and security incidents to the U.S. Department of Education. Madison police were notified. The insensitive Post-It noter remains at large. The Capital Times writes:

Chambers became the public face of the incident when he prepared a statement to send to faculty, staff and students. In the missive, Chambers called the posting of the note a “targeted act of intimidation and cowardice” that “violated every value that this institution considers to be at its core.”

Except that of free expression, apparently.

The letter was mocked by local conservative commentators who portrayed police involvement as runaway political correctness and Chambers’ letter as overblown. Chambers blames talk radio host Vicki McKenna’s on-air discussions for fueling a backlash.

Blaska was one of those. (“Is it a swastika? Is it a burning cross? No, it’s a sticky note.”)

You will get that which you pay for

Like every other institution, Edgewood has committed itself “to develop cultural competency among faculty, and students.” Minority student enrollment is up. 

Except today, every micro-aggression is grist for censure. Did you know that two of Mitch McConnell’s great-great grandparents owned slaves?! 

Back to the sticky note, the school president refused to throw the school’s full institutional weight behind Tony Chambers’ over-wrought letter of condemnation. More evidence of racism! The Capital Times reports that Mr. C. “spent thousands of dollars on legal representation, filing complaints with the school and with the state, all of which were dismissed.”

Which can only mean the State of Wisconsin is complicit in Edgewood’s racism! Certainly not that Chambers’ micro-aggressions were ill-founded.

But credit to CT reporter Steven Elbow for including this nugget of truth: 

[Edgwood College] isn’t alone. Chambers’ story and those of others who have worked and studied at Edgewood highlight a vexing dilemma for institutions of higher learning: a growing emphasis on diversity and inclusion brings with it an escalation of racial tensions.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: It’s why presidential candidates are talking about making Joe and Jane Blow pay reparations to Oprah Winfrey. It is why the Madison Common Council has decided police are the problem, not crime. Why city government has a “racial equity coordinator” who cries racism when she doesn’t file enough signatures to get on the ballot.

• It is why Jussie Smollett.
• It is why “We don’t have to listen to the police and you can’t touch us.”
• It is why A.O.C. says Speaker Pelosi  “is singling out newly elected women of color”

Because I’m not a racist but you are.