Ms. Currie, in Madison WI you ARE the status quo!
Progressives who don’t know if they’re a woman or not are celebrating one opinion leader’s difficulty defining “Woke.” The Werkes has no such disability (another word deemed offensive).
Here in the Peoples’ Republic of Madison WI, if it moves, it’s Woke. Our public schools are abolishing honors classes in the name of “Equity.” Thanks to “disparate impact,” 13-year-olds wearing GPS ankle monitors are jacking cars. Diversity specialists are sifting through history like Egyptian archeologists in pursuit of post hoc reparations. James Madison has been deprived of naming rights to one of our high schools. Lindberg elementary is next. West high school will be renamed when some pecksniff denounces the injurious role Western civ has wreaked on Democrat(ic) party voters.
‘Hierarchies of oppression’
Wilfred Reilly defines Woke in National Review:
A “woke” person, or “social-justice warrior,” is someone who believes that (1) the institutions of American society are currently and intentionally set up to oppress (minorities, women, the poor, fat people, etc.), (2) virtually all gaps in performance between large groups prove that this oppression exists, and (3) the solution to this is equity — which means proportional representation regardless of performance or qualifications.
The Werkes’ Definition: David Blaska is not an individual. He is a member of the old, white, cis-gendered-male cohort. As such he is privileged and guilty of oppression. He owes some form of reparation, monetary or otherwise.
Like its antecedent, Marxism, Wokism denies conscious agency, instead stratifying humankind into various taxonomies of class — physical as well as economic. All of it divided between victim and oppressor. The more “intersectionalities” you can rack up — female, queer, obese, immigrant, even student … Congratulations!
Talking the talk
The Woke are parading their virtues in Madison’s aldermanic elections. The Wisconsin State Journal asks candidates their most important issue. Here on the SW side, incumbent Yannette Figueroa Cole answers “Preventing violence with an equitable and inclusive lens.” What kind of eco-babble is THAT? Over on the near east side, Alder Jael Currie talks the same jabberwocky:
Addressing disparities and ensuring equitable access to city services … acknowledging disparate outcomes … adopt policy and practice with equity at the forefront. … Ensure we are centering voices, experiences, and policy that defy the status quo.
— Jael Currie, “Candidate Q & A”
Heads at the Policy Werkes just went BOING! Yeah, the Woke have their own dog whistles. Currie’s challenger in the near east side’s 16th District is Kim Richman. His most important issue? “Public safety.”
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Kim Richman ain’t Woke. Good luck in the election.
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
Pingback: Woke alder wants to ‘defy the status quo’ – Wisconsin Family News
Eliminate Honors Classes and lower standards and help make all our students ignorant. Guaranteed to ensure a solid block of Democrat voters for life.
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“(Blaska) owes some form of reparation, monetary or otherwise.”
The Gotch’ll lay claim to the otherwise.
His vast operation doesn’t raise beans…yours does, ergo, he’ll be over to collect his due in a timely manner; shoot him an email for peak pickin’s.
Better yet, his intersectionally institutionalized, structurally systemic disparate fragility would prefer they’re delivered; seeing you’d be going right past the HyVee, perhaps pick up some bacon (he prefers thick sliced) and butter en route…?
The Gotch
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Our public schools are abolishing honors classes in the name of “Equity.”
The United States Of The Offended: The WUSSIFICATION Of America
The Coddling of the American Mind How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure
The Gotch
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Been reading a lot about this topic lately and the second book has come up quite a bit. Only strengthens the case for parental rights legislation and school choice. There is going to be a big market for private schools if this madness continues.
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The talented Dr. Haidt began this project after a May 2014 lunch conversation, so this was pre-Michael Brown, Jacob Blake, George Floyd, BLM, 1619, CRT, etc.
One might argue those events, and others, have affected the curricula and trajectory of ELHI; for the better, status quo, or for the worse?
Anywho, those incidents, et al, have resulted/lead to part of what Jack Marshall calls The Great Stupid>/i>, which he touched on today:
The Rotting American Public School System’s NEW PHILOSOPHY: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Call Failure A Success
For more, give Mary Hudson’s Public Education’s DIRTY SECRET a read.
The Gotch
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FYI, Greg Lukianoff wrote this on twitter last week:
The message of Coddling of the American Mind is not “hey kids, toughen up!” It’s “adults, stop teaching kids the mental habits of anxious & depressed people.”
He and Haidt both disliked the word coddling. Their publisher came up with it.
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“adults, stop teaching kids the mental habits of anxious & depressed people.”
No disagreement, there; but FF‘sS, who’s in the position of coddling?
Despicable Lefty calls it Haidt Speech….
The Gotch
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It’s entertaining to read the letters to the editor in the State Journal from progressives trying to convince everyone that “woke” just means “aware”. The only thing most of them are aware of is their self-manufactured Matrix reality.
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“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
-Martin Luther King 1963 (civil rights leader, once greatly admired by the left)
This August will mark 60 years since that speech. Restorative Justice, Affirmative Action, Critical Theory, Diversity-Inclusion-Equity, etc. ……. Wokeness in general, has been working overtime to ensure that this “dream” is never realized.
When dealing with young thugs preying upon society the *content of their character” is of little importance. Skin color is the first box filled out in a woke assessment of ANY individual.
The woke judge everyone by the location of that person’s coordinates on some multi-dimensional map of “oppressed grievances”. This is a game that fools are all too willing to play, yet, all who play will lose in the end.
All “dreams” of equality are just that, “dreams”
And all “dreams” end once you become “woke”.
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You forgot Jefferson Middle School. I wonder if they will change La Fallette High School? Maybe they should just number them and then they wouldn’t offend anyone.
I have a transgender person(?) running in my alder district. It’s interesting reading his/her/they(?) responses to the papers questions.
It will be interesting to see after this election how many state constitutional amendments and state laws will be unconstitutional and how fast Madison, MMSD and Dane county can raise my property taxes.
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And now Lindbergh Elementary School is in the crosshairs of the witch hunters, Bob.
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Schools won’t be the last. Just like the “Confederate Rest” at Forest Hill Cemetery I’m sure Camp Randall and Madison Streets are on someones list .
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Speaking of erasing history, I read an article on the web posted 11/29/21. At that time the Taliban were charging “tourists” $5.00 a head to stare at the huge empty holes in the central Afghanistan cliffside where ancient Buddhist statues had stood, prior to Taliban demolition just before the U.S. invasion in early 2001.
Can’t make this dystopian s–t up.
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Just as liberals look silly getting all wrapped up in the newest catch-phrases, conservatives look silly contorting themselves to claim that discrimination/injustice is a thing of the distant past that has no impact on the present or future.
Someone will now post “you’re putting words in our mouths, we never said that!”, but the main thrust of this silly anti-woke crusade really does boil down to that.
Wilfred Reilly’s definition of woke is also silly. It takes the cake to assert that American institutions were NOT intentionally discriminatory and oppressive. Just outright take history and throw it down the memory hole, why don’t ya?
Oppression is literally fundamental to the history of human interaction – people have always schemed to get something out of others’ efforts and to keep power over others once they have it. Sure, fancy words are spoken and laws are passed and the mechanisms evolve, yet we persist in a situation where a few people get way way more out than they put in and have enormous power over other people. Call me a Marxist, tell me to prove it, write it off as just my opinion, but to act like what I say isn’t true is simply silly. It’s like saying humans have always been and always will be nice and fair with each other and nobody would ever take advantage of someone else (oppress them) just because they can. Is that really the hill the anti-woke are standing on? Oppression doesn’t exist?!
There are people of all political stripes, right and left, who would like to improve upon this oppressive situation (corporate power, electoral law, banking systems and the Federal Reserve, human rights, the list goes on). But the oppressors are having a field day now that their very existence is denied in the name of anti-woke.
Yes, please do disagree with the liberals regarding how to address the problem. But don’t deny that there is a problem. It looks silly.
(Or just come out and say that since oppression of others is a natural product of human nature we should just be ok with it. I think that is satanic, but at least it’s honest)
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“corporate power, electoral law, banking systems and the Federal Reserve, human rights” Good list! I wouldn’t label concern with any on this list as being “woke” though. The woke stuff to me is small potatos things like changing school names that do not make a difference. When things like the Fed go down it will make a big difference. And it will be quit obvious. Bitcoiners will not be re-fighting the same war for 50 years after they win.
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Yeah, the woke are often misguided and naive. But the current trend in Republican politics is making quite a mountain out of it and making silly arguments in the process.
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Consider that the woke have, with regularity:
– Downplayed, excused, encouraged, and participated in violence against law enforcement, businesses, government property, and bystanders
– Ridiculed and gaslighted citizens who rightfully take security measures to defend against said violence
– Claimed that expecting safe streets and neighborhoods is white privilege
– Demanded billions in reparations for people who never were slaves from people who never owned them
– Adopted the beliefs of CRT thought leaders like Ibram X. Kendi who proclaim that the solution to past discrimination is present discrimination, and that a proper vehicle for this discrimination is an answerable-to-no-one Department of Antiracism
– Forced said beliefs into the public education system by threat of cancellation and career ruin of anyone who dissents
– Demanded our students be graded on emotional learning rather than curricula that will keep them competitive with their overseas peers
– Twisted our universities into centers of thought control rather than marketplaces of ideas
– Pushed the idea that stomping out free speech is acceptable whenever said speech doesn’t align with someone’s personal beliefs
– Piled on to an already dangerous mental health crisis by convincing many young people that they they are oppressed victims with no control over their personal circumstances
Given all this, “misguided and naive” is an exceedingly mild way of describing the woke, to the point of being apologetic.
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And given all this, it is quite proper to make a mountain out of it.
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Rollie where have you been?
I reread the article and comments, no where do I see any claim that oppression has not existed in the past, only that it does not exist here today. There is no racial oppression in this country. If you are referring to oppression from corporations, the government, banks, or anything else that affects us all — that wasn’t what the article was about.
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The racism of the past has set the table for where we are today. The effects live on. And, while we have laws now that we didn’t have in the past, people are still racist. Laws don’t stop people from acting how they want to act.
I don’t know any of you here, but I get the feeling that you don’t intimately know many people of color. You might be surprised to know their experiences, rather than writing off what they are saying by claiming that racism and it’s effects magically disappeared when laws were passed. I know a woman whose parents were sharecroppers who fled north with nothing to escape the racial economic and physical violence in the south. Tell her racism did not impact her life.
As it looks like you agree that there do exist systems of oppression, yes- these are not now typically explicitly race based in the same way as in the past. But coupled with the effects of history, these oppressive systems do tend to hit communities of color harder. Hence the phrase “black lives matter”, because if black lives are freed from oppression we’ll know that all lives have been freed.
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Nope. There will always be someone screaming oppression. The paradox is the more you patronize these groups the longer they will stay oppressed. Politicians have milked this for years.
At least be honest about it. It’s not “black lives”, it’s lower class African-Americans. Black (and brown) immigrants are very successful. There’s plenty of lower class white Americans that have the same outlook – they’re “Oppressed” by immigrants.
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Blunt……. but true.
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Yeah, I hear you. I actually don’t like to use race as the signifier, but it’s still a part of the dominant communication style. In the past black and white were easy signifiers of a place in the hierarchy. We carry over that use, but it’s not fully racial in the same way anymore, it’s more philosophical. Racially black people can subscribe to oppressive (“white”) philosophy and the inverse/converse too. You either believe that oppression is ok (you’re “white”) or you believe that oppression is not ok (you’re “black”).
Unfortunately, even when racially black people completely buy in to white philosophy, there are still things out there which do point to the issue of racism. That stuff makes it more difficult to just put racial signifiers into the dustbin of history and only focus on philosophy. But now I’m kind of branching out, I’m basically trying to illustrate that the anti-woke “there’s no such thing as systems of oppression” is silly.
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“I don’t know any of you here, but ….”, you should leave it at that. I am 70 years old, and you would be amazed by what I know and have seen.
I don’t know YOU, but your understanding of history seems to originate in some pool of academic papers you’ve read. What are you hoping for? That all people magically embrace, and love ensues? Petty grievances exist from nations all the way down to family levels. Universal love has not occurred so far over the last 12,000 years.
All day long on the internet, in movies, news, sports, and real life I see the faces of successful Black people. Film stars, TV stars, business leaders, politicians, athletes, musicians, every single niche of American life. And still, more cries of racism and oppression. Have successful Blacks joined the oppressors ? Are there two species of Black Americans? We know that they all apply themselves equally, they tell us so, so it has to be racism. Right?
For any group of people to elevate themselves to the top of their societies, it must come from within. It cannot just be bestowed.
I am truly sorry about your lady friend and her experiences with racism. But—, the survivors of Nazi work camps, after years of the constant threat of death, when they were freed felt joy, and saw it as an opportunity to build a future. Perhaps there is hope for her.
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“All day long on the internet, in movies, news, sports, and real life I see the faces of successful Black people.”
A black man’s (IMO) excellent MUST READ about the strange phenomenon that certain blacks are unaffected by RAYcism:
(caps/bolds/italics mine throughout)
How is ours a nation that oppresses blacks?
That is a bold, and wide ranging claim to make. And, as I have invoked before (and at times you’ve shot down, at times legitimately, and at times not, IMO), how can a country that oppresses an entire race of people, a group of people that share the same race as I, somehow not oppress me? Not oppress my father? My brother? My sister, uncle, niece, cousins?
If there is something that makes us different, that makes Thomas Sowell, and Jason Riley, and Walter E. Williams, and Derrick Green (writer for Project 21, a leadership network for Black Conservatives), and many other blacks who are apparent immune to this different, then why is no time devoted to identifying what that secondary component is, that causes us to be excluded from this oppression? We spend so much time discussing intersectionality, but ignore the intersection where systemic racism meets some unknown, unspoken characteristic possessed by some of us, where we become immune to that aforementioned systemic racism. If that’s our goal, eradicating racism, WHY IS NO ONE ASKING THOSE OF US WHO AREN’T FINDING RACISM AROUND EVERY CORNER, WHAT OUR SECRET IS? Why are the cameras consistently shoved in the faces of the victims of our racist society, but never us? (You and I both damn well know the answer)
To me, it’s be like someone claiming that Jack is biased against ALL commenters that have “Chris” in their screen name. If Jack’s never been biased against you, can that claim be credibly made? Shouldn’t there be a deeper dive, to identify other characteristics held by the group being infringed upon, rather than lazily basing it on a trait that’s also held by many people who haven’t been affected?
But, to my original question…by what metric can one claim that America is oppressive towards blacks?
Is it the ritualistic, indiscriminate killing of blacks by cops? B/c according to the Washington Post Police Killings tracker, in 2017, twice as many whites are killed by cops than whites (164 to 326). And while, yes, Im fully aware that means (since whites outnumber blacks 5 to 1) that blacks are MORE LIKELY to be killed, it also means that whites are killed in high enough number, that police killings cannot be solely about race. And 95% of police killings involve men, but there’s no outrage about that…so if we’re being intellectually honest and consistent, it cannot be about police killing rates relative to a particular demographic’s representation in the population, right? Unless we’re willing to admit that men are over represented in activities that bring them into violent contact with police…but that can’t be it, unless we’re ALSO willing to admit (I think you see where this leads)…
Is it about black poverty rates? 46% of Black families with children that are headed by single Black women live in poverty, vs 8% of black families where the parents are married (which obviously trails statistics for while single mom headed households/married households), but as of 2014, only 29% of black adults were married, down from 61% in 1960. It stands to reason that a 2 income household leads to more financial stability, and is something that can be created regardless of how racist our society is (I mean, the black marriage rate was 80% in 1890, when the US was still in the immediate shadows of the Civil War and Reconstruction). Did the legacy of slavery just…skip a few generations? Is systemic racism somehow preventing us from marrying one another?
Is it black property ownership? According to Jason Riley in his book “False Black Power”, “74.2 percent of black homeowners completely owned their residences as of 1900, versus only 68 percent of white families.” And yet, according to Ebony, that number for blacks “was down to 41.2 percent in 2015″…some 115 years after a time when laws were in place specifically to prevent and deter black progress.
So, what exactly is it about our modern society, with the number of social liberals who live in the US at an all-time highs (as bound by the length of time that Gallup has been polling for this statistic), and the number of (dirty, racist) social conservatives at all-time lows (also bound by the same Gallup limitations), that makes us MORE of a racist society that we were in 1960? or 1900? Or 1890, when discriminating against blacks was still codified by law?
HELP ME UNDERSTAND THE OPPRESSIVE SOCIETY THAT EXISTS ALL AROUND ME, BUT REPEATEDLY FINDS WAY TO STAY OUT OF MY PATH, TIME AND TIME AGAIN? I promise I won’t accuse you of Whitesplaining…but only if you catch me in a good mood*. 😉
*-As a minority, I reserve the right to accuse you of any particular “-splaining”, “-ist”, or “appropriation” that I see fit…usually, depending on which direction the wind is blowing that day. I dont make the rules, I just follow em.
Five Informational Links At Bottom Of Post
The Gotch
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What I’m hoping for is the same thing that Jesus hoped for. Just because we haven’t succeeded for 12,000 years doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Everyone’s understanding of history comes from similar sources: people we meet and media we consume. The oppressors have always been hard at work to distort or eliminate those sources of knowledge.
Note that the survivors of the Nazi camps were involved in a significant system of reparations totaling in the many billions of dollars, not to mention the establishment of the State of Israel. This is not a very apt comparison to African Americans. But thank you for your kind words about my friend.
And yes, racism still exists and I think it’s ok to talk about it. It appears that you are tired of hearing about it, and it’s your right to feel however you want.
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Rollie, note that many of the Nazi camp survivors returned to their destroyed homes and farms in Ukraine and Eastern Bloc countries, and tried to rebuild a life. As for the State of Israel, I think you needed to be Jewish.
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Rollie, certainly you can see the irony of criticizing us for having opinions about race relations while not having the lived experiences of minorities, but in the same breath making blanket assumptions about us while admitting you don’t know anything about our lived experiences. Most of the views I post here stem from my own lived experiences (good, bad, and ugly) and are supplemented by how I was brought up and by a variety of political commentary I consume. I’d wager that most other regulars on here are the same way. Contrary to how so many leftists out there dismiss us as, we’re not all bigoted ghouls whose relationship with blacks is limited to “that one guy at work”.
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OT, but:
*Is that OU Michael Knight Arena the butt-ugliest court you’ve ever seen?
Looks like someone tried to clean up a pile of retch from the center out.
Gutsy Win!
*Klesmit is MONEY!
*Wahl gets stuffed five (5) times in close?
*Badgers 12-13 FTs!
*Bucky outrebounds the 5th tallest team in the NCAA!
On_To_Vegas!
ON WISCONSIN
The Gotch
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Rollie, since oppression is an intimate part of being human, I take it you are against reparations.
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I believe in justice, and reparations should be made whenever injustice occurs. American slavery reparations are complicated by the huge amount of time that has passed – it should have occurred immediately after the Civil War, like Germany paid reparations immediately after WW2. But it didn’t happen, and here we are.
I also believe in transcending above our base human instincts. Murder is part of human nature, but I don’t condone it. Oppression is another part of human nature that our great spiritual teachers have urged us to rise above. That’s why I bring up satanism – the satanic faith preaches that we should embrace human nature and follow our base instincts rather than deny them or transcend above them. I don’t subscribe to that faith.
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Pingback: ‘Our schools are products of white supremacy’ | Blaska Policy Werkes
My point being that since oppression is a fundamental human behavior– whether based on skin color, religion, socioeconomic status, geographic location, being one of the cool kids in school, etc.. reparations are silly and meaningless.
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“There is no racial oppression in this country”?
Sticking to the local scene, commenting as a cis-gendered white male who supports equal opportunities for all, and who spent 10+ years in the tech field here, that black people were (and unless there has been some dramatic change) still are nowhere near to equal opportunity as their white peers.
One simple example. At a tech-darling company, I hired the first and only black developer. He was (and is) extremely talented. I had to push to get him hired and when he was hired, he was kept in the entry level position he was over-qualified for. When I left the firm, he was still in that position. My advice to him was to find a place that would appreciate his talents. He did, by moving out of the city.
This is not an isolated example. Time does not permit more.
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Tech darling that starts with E is known more for age oppression.
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I am serious when I say good for him. He did exactly what I and dozens of my peers of many demographics have done when we were stuck in lousy jobs working for companies that didn’t care about us or appreciate or develop our talents. And it’s the same advice I give to anyone in a similar situation. Most people I know have gone through something similar, some several times. It is not indicative of racial oppression. It is unfortunately the way most of corporate America treats their employees. Be thankful for capitalism and at-will employment.
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Yes, I am in agreement with you on what you, I and others I know have done. The difference is that it is done informally but systematically to black people.
Background – I’ve been in mgmt positions most of my life, in Madison in the tech field, so have directly observed what I am describing.
And yes to capitalism, but acknowledging that it has incredible weaknesses that need to be addressed. This is one of them.
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Been in the tech field in Madison for over 30 years and have never seen what you are describing. What I have seen is a huge influx of “brown people” that are doing extremely well.
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As of 2007, which is when I left the field (and is awhile ago), I stand by my comment.
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I’ve also worked for years in a professional field that requires smart, independent, driven people to run it. People in it often have to prove their worth and/or threaten to go elsewhere to get ahead, but that happens to everyone, not just traditionally disadvantaged groups. In my experience, minorities have often been treated better than others just so management can avoid even the appearance of racism. In one instance, a woman got hired for a job that I used to do for 10 percent more than what I started with, and she had a lesser resume and didn’t negotiate her salary.
Capitalism has its problems, but I’d still rather have that than something else. Especially something that doesn’t reward go-getters as well.
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