"Workshop" just sounds so darned evocative... I imagine all these wordworking tools, and little curls of shavings on the floor, and a scent like cedar in the air.

But this workshop would probably not be that enriching... Or that challenging, for that matter.

This Iowahawk tweet to mind comes to mind.

You weren't going to leave that "workshop" with a doorstop or a bootjack or anything useful.

Do you get the sense that the people professing to want to do something about racism really just want a turn at being the racists?

Yes.

Fortunately, the people opposing sexism aren't like that at all.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C.S. Lewis

I was going to try to use that quote, but I'm not sure the participants in this workshop were either sincere or particularly concerned about the good of their victims. But I suspect lots of people would gleefully act like little shits if they knew they'd be praised for it.

...whose experience is different from that of white, middle- and upper-class women....

The assumption underlying all these calls for "intersectionality" and "diversity" seems to be that being white automatically equals being middle or upper middle class. Nowhere is it conceded that white people can be poverty-stricken, isolated, or disadvantaged. White people are assumed to have privilege, no matter their real socio-economic situation.

You weren't going to leave that "workshop" with a doorstop or a bootjack or anything useful. ~ Crid at December 21, 2017 12:37 AM

Or a useful skill.

Reminds me of an anti-sexual harassment workshop I had to take when I worked for a bank. The HR person running it told us not to use "sports" terms like "the whole nine yards" because they might exclude women. When I explained to her that it was not a "sports" term, that in no known sport was nine yards a significant measure, she harrumphed and refused to call on me for the rest of the seminar.

I left the workshop with no better understanding of workplace discrimination, women's struggles, or anything for that matter. I'd lost a day of productive work and gained nothing.

Regarding the whole nine yards, the etymology is unclear. The phrase has a murky history and its origins are unknown. But it is not a sports phrase.

Every orthodoxy requires "the infidel". When external ones aren't available, members will begin finding them among their fellows, and they will be weighed, measured, and found wanting. Seems to be an iron law.

Every group I've been involved with ever has done a lot of hang-wringing about how they can attract more POC.

Hiking group I was in was trying to get more WOC to come on hikes.
Undergrad college was trying to recruit WOC.
Grad school was trying to recruit students OC and was very upset there weren't enough professors OC.
First two jobs were desperately trying to get more POC.
Religious retreat I went to a few times wanted more POC too.

Apparently I am attracted to white-heavy places and activities.

At the risk of sounding like a horrible human being, sometimes this whole POC-recruiting business sounds like it is more about validation for the white people to prove how open minded they are than anything else. If the POC aren't interested, then maybe respect that. If you want to be around more POC, maybe go join the organizations run by THEM rather than wishing they would come to the ones run by YOU!

This doesn't always work... I found a religious org similar to ones I'd been involved with, but with a Black/African twist rather than a European one... they did not have nice things to say about White people. Which, frankly, is fair enough.

I dunno, it feels a bit... "Well we know there was the whole slavery thing, but let's let bygones be bygones and be best buddies, come join the organization I run or accept me in yours!" I mean, I don't blame them if they don't want to.

"Do you get the sense that the people professing to want to do something about racism really just want a turn at being the racists?"

Yeah. David Horowitz told me: "We wanted our rights so we could use them to take away everyone else's rights."

At work, they make the civil servants take a sexual harassment training course. (Mercifully, us contractor scum are exempt.) The people who have been to it come back saying, "If you want to know how to sexually harass someone, they'll teach you how to do it!"

"...they did not have nice things to say about White people. Which, frankly, is fair enough."

I have no sympathy. Like all the rest of the 20th-century civil rights movements, it has degenerated into special pleading: "We demand to be admitted everywhere that you go, but we also demand to have private places where you aren't welcome."

NicoleK, I agree: "sometimes this whole POC-recruiting business sounds like it is more about validation for the white people to prove how open minded they are than anything else."

It's also treating them like icons or pets instead of people, on some level, and I find that icky.

My black friends are the same as my white friends: Smart, high-achieving, interesting thinkers who've done things with their lives. Fetishizing their skin color and treating them like learning disabled people who need a little extra help in life is racism that I want no part of.

Eh, whatever. Segregation only ended a decade or so before I was born, it was in the lifetime of not just my parents but some of my cousins and the older end of my generation. So I get it. I don't take it personally.

As I just tweeted (to someone who said his mom called this "reverse racism":

https://twitter.com/amyalkon/status/943847246486835203

@amyalkon
Replying to @Jonespuffin It's just racism, not reverse racism. I went to high school w/two smart, high-achieving black girls from wealthy (intact) family - both acing AP classes, etc. I believe both went on to Harvard or some big ivy. Being child of poor single parent, not having black skin, is the prob

I remember laughing at the inability of white women to see to the logical conclusion 25 years ago when one who had been promoted just because of her sex turned to me and said, "Can you believe that they are now promoting black people for affirmative action? It's not enough anymore to just be a woman; that was how it's supposed to be; now they're giving blacks an advantage, and that's just not fair."

What did the polio charities do when there was a vaccine that basically ended it? Why, they discovered new causes! They did not declare victory and go home.

Now being the most pampered and privileged class in the world, feminists have to expropriate racial grievances and invent new victimhoods because living longer, being sexual libertines, getting useless college degrees, and enjoying early heart attacks just isn't enough for women. They got what they wanted; the worst possible curse you can have.

Narcissism is everywhere.
All races, male and female.
Narcissism is sadly the norm.

The writer reminds me of Communits during the Stalin era who clung to the faith in the face of his barbarities, even rationalizing their own arrests as being due to "mistaken identity". It also calls to mind the empty assurances of Ivanov, interrogator of Rubashov in Koestler's novel, "Darkness at Noon", when he tells the veteran Bolshevik Revolutionary Rubashov, falsely accused of betrying the revolution, that far in the future, when it can do no harm, the truth of Rubashov's innocence. Folks like the writer think that they are selflessly sacrificing themselves for a better world, and that they will be recognized for it some day. Delusional.

> Communits during the Stalin era

I say we affirm this spelling as acceptable.

Looking forward to the time when we look back on "intersectionality" as a divisively archaic concept (and the author of the Tribune article mischaracterizes it here).

It's entirely possible to concentrate on one thing — feminism, conservatism, whateverism — without having to reflect on a million other -isms at the same time and try to figure out how they all reflect and refract on one another. In fact, it's probably more productive.

If you are at a disadvantage due to some group characteristic, how can you overcome it? You can work your ass off, study hard, stay married, dress sharp when you go out, save your money, like the Jews and Chinese and millions of immigrants. Where I live the hispanics are getting ahead rapidly by starting businesses in roofing, laying concrete, house painting, lawn care--note I did not say working for white people. They own their business and I've hired lots of them. You could look at white people to see what they do to get ahead (Hint, it doesn't involve yelling at people who are successful, it does involve working hard). This idea that whites have it all because they stole it is simply stupid. Who did I steal anything from by going to school? Furthermore, it is FAR from true that all white people make it. Check out the middle-aged white men at the stores around you--they are not all managers. Many are putting stuff on the shelves or driving trucks, not exactly high paying jobs.
I would also like to point out that every single group of people in the world has at one time been conquered and enslaved. Are we all going to hold grudges forever? The English were enslaving the Irish in the 1700s and the Irish were enslaving the English before that.