The Anti-Progress Of Anti-Racism
Michael Powell writes in The New York Times of how it's been going in pricey New York City private schools tackling "white privilege":
Several years back Grace Church School, an elite private school in Manhattan, embraced an antiracist mission and sought to have students and teachers wrestle with whiteness, racial privilege and bias.Teachers and students were periodically separated into groups by race, gender and ethnicity. In February 2021, Paul Rossi, a math teacher, and what the school called his "white-identifying" group, met with a white consultant, who displayed a slide that named supposed characteristics of white supremacy. These included individualism, worship of the written word and objectivity.
Mr. Rossi said he felt a twist in his stomach. "Objectivity?" he told the consultant, according to a transcript. "Human attributes are being reduced to racial traits."
As you look at this list, the consultant asked, are you having "white feelings"?
"What," Mr. Rossi asked, "makes a feeling 'white'?"
Some of the high school students then echoed his objections. "I'm so exhausted with being reduced to my race," a girl said. "The first step of antiracism is to racialize every single dimension of my identity." Another girl added: "Fighting indoctrination with indoctrination can be dangerous."
This modest revolt proved fateful. A school official reprimanded Mr. Rossi, accusing him of "creating a neurological imbalance" in students, according to a recording of the conversation. A few days later the head of school wrote a statement and directed teachers to read it aloud in classes.
"When someone breaches our professional norms," the statement read in part, "the response includes a warning in their permanent file that a further incident of unprofessional conduct could result in dismissal."
This is another dispatch from America's cultural conflicts over schools, this time from a rarefied bubble. Elite private schools from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., from Boston to Columbus, Ohio, have embraced a mission to end racism by challenging white privilege. A sizable group of parents and teachers say the schools have taken it too far -- and enforced suffocating and destructive groupthink on students.
...Kindergarten students at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx are taught to identify their skin color by mixing paint colors. The lower school chief in an email last year instructed parents to avoid talk of colorblindness and "acknowledge racial differences."
...Critics, a mixed lot of parents and teachers, argue that aspects of the new curriculums edge toward recreating the racially segregated spaces of an earlier age. They say the insistent emphasis on skin color and race is reductive and some teenagers learn to adopt the language of antiracism and wield it against peers.
There's a surprise.
Paul Rossi from Grace Church School -- who has since left -- gets how racist this "anti-racism" is:
Mr. Davison said he was worried students were made to feel shame because of race. "We're demonizing white people for being born," he said, adding later, "We're using language that makes them feel less than, for nothing that they are personally responsible."
Again, a set of quotes from above says it all:
"Some of the high school students then echoed his objections. "I'm so exhausted with being reduced to my race," a girl said. "The first step of antiracism is to racialize every single dimension of my identity." Another girl added: "Fighting indoctrination with indoctrination can be dangerous."
A comment at the NYT:
ManhattanMom, New York, NY
To avoid all this enforced virtue signaling and palaver about racial identity, which is aimed at covering up the truth about private schools -- that they only exist to provide assured pathways to wealth and status, and currently more white folks can afford them than people of color -- send your kids to public school. You'll enjoy the true diversity there. And so will your kids.
Sounds like there is lots of BS out there.
The paint example is a bad one, though, you should be able to make skin color out of available paints, how else are you supposed to do a self-portrait or portrait of anyone else for that matter?
When I taught make-up class I taught kids to mix base colors to match their skin tones, too. It was not racially charged.
NicoleK at August 28, 2021 7:47 AM
"...Kindergarten students at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx are taught to identify their skin color by mixing paint colors. The lower school chief in an email last year instructed parents to avoid talk of colorblindness and "acknowledge racial differences."" ~article
The problem is the second half NicoleK. Learning to mix colors should be taught in art. Matching skin tones is no different than matching fruit colors or other plants, animals, and objects.
Making that basic art lesson about race is racism. The lesson doesn't have to be racially charged. They made it racially charged.
Ben at August 28, 2021 9:20 AM
A very good sign of progress the past 40 years has been the rise of inter-racial marriage/dating. The current woke want to put a stop to that. Stay in your lane. No cultural appropriation or even dating. Anyone with any melanin is POC--just like in the Jim Crow south--even if the melanin is 1/8. Soon we will have names for all the mixed race people, like in Brazil. Octaroon is my fav. To be consistent, an octaroon should only get 1/8 the victim points as a full black person.
Oh and anti-semitism is back big-time.
I think I just saw that at Yale (maybe) the entering class was only 16% white male.
So much progress. Wonder when the race war starts?
cc at August 28, 2021 9:20 AM
"So much progress. Wonder when the race war starts?"
CC, a race war is the goal of the "anti-racists."
Charles Manson would be humbled, yet proud.
Jay R at August 28, 2021 10:17 AM
Anti-semitism IS back big time. It was always there with far right neo-nazis but now has become part of the left as well. I dunno if it's the horseshoe effect but it does seem like Jewish people are getting it from both sides now.
NicoleK at August 28, 2021 11:37 AM
When Obama was running for president the first time Republicans, thinking they were being smart, kept calling him a socialist. To their unpleasant surprise they found that, rather than hurting him, socialism was becoming more popular among young people.
By their definition a white supremacist looks like a really kick-ass thing to be. By my definition--someone who thinks white people are a superior race--it absolutely isn't, but by their definition white supremacy sound quite desirable. And you don't even have to be white so everybody wins except for leftist who have succeeded only in defining themselves as idiots. Yay.
Michael Fonda at August 28, 2021 11:46 AM
That's because most of those young people do not understand what socialism and its inevitable consequences are.
Those young people are the products of an education system that promised to prepare them for the adult world, but did not. So, when they were subsequently promised a government system that would take care of them and smooth the rough edges from adulthood, they jumped at it.
Conan the Grammarian at August 28, 2021 2:47 PM
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