If you can get it!
Madison WI is where Woke comes to rule!
If critical race theory is not being taught in our K-12 schools, why is the WI Department of Public Instruction teaching it to our classroom teachers?
The Werkes has highlighted past indoctrination sessions, but DPI landed top draft picks by signing diversity, equity, and inclusion propagandists Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo to next year’s roster of seminar leaders. (Credit to the Badger Institute for bringing to our attention.)
Few critical race theorists are more dangerous than Kendi and DiAngelo. They are the Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller of the DEI bomb.
Admit what you did, Carlo
The WI Educational Equity Network exposes professor DiAngelo to Wisconsin educators next January (01-25-24). Her latest book, Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm, could be autobiographical if the lady had a sense of irony and wasn’t busy sniffing out racists in every teachers lounge. Perhaps realizing that the market for racial guilt is drying up, DiAngelo mines fellow white progressives, whose defining characteristic is guilt (much as a deeply forked tail defines the male barn swallow). The Equity Network syllabus:
Based on her second NYT best-selling book, Dr. DiAngelo identifies many common white racial patterns and breaks down how well-intentioned white people unawarely [“unawarely” ???] perpetuate racial harm. These patterns include:
• Rushing to prove that we are “not racist”
• Downplaying white advantage
• Romanticizing black, indigenous and other peoples of color (BIPOC)
• Pretending white segregation “just happens”
• Expecting BIPOC people to teach us about racism, carefulness, guilt and shame.
— WI Educational Equity Network
In other words, you poor progressives! You just can't win!
Start ’em out young!
Columbia University professor John McWhorter calls the book that made DiAngelo’s name, White Fragility, the second-worst book he’s ever read. And “over time, John McWhorter’s assessment of Ibram Kendi’s book How to be an Antiracist has gotten worse and worse.” (Sourced here.)
Kendi is up next May (05-23-24). His latest book is How to Be a (Young) Antiracist. No, CRT is not taught in the K-12 grades! (SNARK ALERT!) “Ibram X. Kendi is the false prophet of a dangerous and lucrative faith,” writes CRT’s nemesis, Christopher Rufo.
Kendi’s core thesis — that racism is the single, self-evident cause of racial differences in everything from school grades to incarceration rates to income and thus must be rectified using “antiracist discrimination” — reiterates critical race theory’s basic concepts.
— Christopher Rufo
→ Nan Brien has died; member of Madison school board from 1985 to 1994, president for three of those years. Active in Grandparents United for Madison Schools. Opponent of school choice and charters. But gave Blaska a forum. (Her obituary)
Racism explains little
Would that some future WI superintendent of public instruction (say: Scott Walker or Scott Jensen) promote political philosopher Thomas Sowell’s latest book. Social Justice Fallacies explores “the dire unintended consequences of trying to make the world ‘equitable’ by handing out benefits and punishments according to racial and sexual identities,” according to Barton Swaim in the Wall Street Journal.
The earlier progressives embraced genetic determinism and believed people other than Anglo-American whites to be genetically inferior; today’s progressives, by nearly exact contrast, believe … that any variance in success among individuals of different races must be the result of conscious or unconscious racism.
[In the] market collapse of 2008 … It was true that black [mortgage loan] applicants were turned down more often than white applicants for the same loans, but it was also true that white applicants were turned down more often than Asian-Americans. So were banks discriminating against white applicants? No, the difference had to do with the average credit ratings of whites, blacks and Asians.
— “The Left against itself“
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Does NOT expect BIPOC people to teach him about racism, carefulness, guilt and shame. He has none — not even carefulness.
26 responses to “‘Nice racism’”
I can agree with much of what you say here. If you could, in turn, also agree that many black youth, through no fault of their own, have been born into dysfunctional families because those were fractured by slavery and Jim Crow, and therefore deserve a helping hand at an early age when they’re still malleable in order to help overcome those handicaps, then there could be a constructive right-left alliance against the counterproductive woke insanity.
Peter, teachers have always been willing to give anyone extra help (if they will take it) regardless of the underlying cause. That’s nothing new: my grade school teachers in the Wayback Machine spent more time on the dumb kids. Slavery, Jim Crow, family alcoholism, single parenting, poverty, crime, inadequate diet. …
You’re my age, if memory serves, but I think, if we strain, we both can still remember long ago when we were teenagers in high school and were convinced we knew everything.
Everything we were to be, by that late date, had already been baked in (to be later leavened by maturity). The point being, these teens we see today wilding in Sun Prairie High Schools hallways, were damaged many years before. By the time they’re 16, it’s too late.
If we are to have any realistic chance to help them learn constructive habits (like impulse control, gratification postponement and planning ahead), the interventions need to start when they are toddlers before bad habits become ingrained.
But, this is a big subject for a blog post. Let me invite you to a cup of coffee to chat more about all this.
“By the time they’re 16, it’s too late.”
An L.A. gang task force operative with whom The Gotch was familiar put that figure at age 12.
That was 45 years ago.
The Gotch
“Damaged” is the wrong word, “Conditioned” is a better description, IMHO. The amazing thing about the human brain is that it will wire itself to succeed according to the environment it finds itself in.
Science shows that myelination is key to this wiring process. Myelination is most active in the very young (toddlers) and then again during adolescence. Evolutionary theory says this happens because that’s when many of our ancestors were kicked out of their tribes. Those that could learn new skills had better chances of surviving.
This period of hyper learning lasts into our mid 20’s. After that you are more likely to be the old dog that can not learn a new trick.
To take advantage of the adolescent surge, you have to put the kids in a new environment with different requirements/expectations and not just part time.
NAILED IT! Inner city Boston kid here. The ravages of desegregation by force ruined the educations of not just the poor white kids who were shipped over to poor black neighborhoods, but the same for the poor black kids. The rich neighborhoods had no such problem. And as you point out, single parenting and poverty along with substance abuse – that cut across racial lines and made a horrible mess and disadvantage to all, including the white collar, educated crowd who suffered with the resulting high crime rate. We just have to live long enough to see the patterns, the excuses, the deprivation and abuse caused by the “rich men north of Richmond”…jes ‘ sayin’
Agree, the Boston desegregation order turned out to be a horrific disaster, and wound up making a bad situation worse.
Agree, too, that it is short-sighted to look upon the tragic effects of dysfunctional poor white families on similarly disastrous educations outcomes for their kids, which are not dissimilar in aggregate to those in black dysfunctional families.
Both need and deserve a helping hand.
Born into dysfunctional families because those were fractured by the welfare state.
Certainly, in many cases, the welfare state contributed to worsening things. But I think you’re wrong to try to write off the terrible harm that slavery and racism originally inflicted on African Americans and their family structure.
Look, African immigrants arriving today are as incredibly successful as any new ambitious immigrant group — and that is largely because they avoided the centuries here of slavery and, thus, have vibrant family life, the critical lynch pin to success for the 2nd and 3rd generations.
Wrong. African immigrants, Haitians and Cubans, were not brought up to think of themselves as victims. They came to the U.S. for opportunity, not handouts. By any measure, the black nuclear family has disintegrated since 1950. Now they and guilty progressives are being force fed Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, reparations, affirmative action, lower academic standards, relaxed discipline, critical race theory.
And your prescription seems to be more of the same.
Now you’ve got me confused, Dave. You’re agreeing, not disagreeing, with me that the current African immigrant experience is as inspiring as other waves of ambitious immigrants.
If you talk with the large African immigrant population you’ll find that they are not into victim hood, as you think they are, and do not want to have their inspiring experience confused with social breakdowns.
NO! Is something wrong with your computer? did you miss the word “not” (brought up to think of themselves as victims) ???
Got it.
“Wrong. African immigrants, Haitians and Cubans, were not brought up to think of themselves as victims. THEY CAME TO THE U.S. FOR OPPORTUNITY, NOT HANDOUTS“ (bolds/caps mine)
Bravo Indigo November Golf Oscar!
The Gotch
The inimitable Dr. Sowell: “Since This Is An Era When Many People Are Concerned About ‘FAIRNESS‘ And ‘SOCIAL JUSTICE,’ What Is Your ‘FAIR SHARE‘ Of What Someone Else Has Worked For?” (bolds/caps/italics mine)
The Gotch
[…] This post originally appeared at https://davidblaska.com/2023/08/27/nice-racism/ […]
Take a bunch of the money that should go to helping poor folks and build more volleyball courts. Everyone will feel better about themselves.
I’m looking forward to the NFL season but NOT looking forward to seeing “End Racism” plastered in endzones and on the back of players helmets. This coming from the most racist organization on the planet if you judge by players race.
The NFL can end racism on the field anytime they want. Just require every team to have X amount of (insert race) players on the field at all times.
Looking forward to the NFL finally overcoming their Asian hate this year.
FYI – In the early 1960’s, there was an unofficial racial quota in the NFL. Teams would only keep 5 black players on the roster (the Redskins would have no black players until 1962).
Lombardi refused to comply along with the AFL. Similar quotas existed in the NBA but that too was broken by the upstart league, the ABA.
I want to know why we still celebrate MLK jr. day or days if the woke doesn’t believe in anything he said? Maybe they should read his “I have a dream” speach more.
Like clockwork: within 24 hours of a racist mass shooting conservative blogs rush in with counter programming to massage the egos of conservatives and reassert the rationale that racism is fake news.
Summary of the conservative point of view:
The problem isn’t racism. The problem is that liberals observe and talk about racial disparities, then Black people hear the liberals talk and they roll over and decide there’s no point in trying because they’re just a victim and there’s no hope. The solution is for liberals to stop talking about it and for Black people to stop being so stupid and get off their butts.
Is this an incorrect summary? Or did I just word it too honestly?
You mean kinda like the court date for Trump being set for Super Tuesday? I give you credit, Rollie, at least you engaged your internal editor for this post and it’s relatively brief, readable and cogent. Seriously, though, have you thought about stand up?
It would be more honestly worded if you included something about how leftists are desperate to find racism in places where it probably and definitely doesn’t exist. The Amy Cooper incident, 1619 Project, boulder removed from the UW Campus, Frederick March, Abraham Lincoln statue, certain Disney World rides, and gas stoves all immediately come to mind.
I’d be interested in knowing how much the taxpayers are paying for Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo to visit.
Whatever the number, it’s too much. Tantamount to Freedom Inc. collecting taxpayer money to fund their anti-police screeds.
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