"Benevolent Racism"
That's what I call the insulting and racist demands for handouts to black academics.
The latest is in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and it, like so many of these calls for special treatment for academics who are black -- insultingly intimating that they cannot make it in The Academy without white people's help.
By the way, I interviewed a black academic today for my next book. Not out of the "charity" article calls for, but on the strength of her work. She's impressive scientist and thinker, and it was absolutely exciting to speak with her.
The Chron piece (scroll down) by Ebony O. McGee is insultingly titled, "Ready to Be an Ally for Black Academics? Here's a Start: Twelve ways that white faculty members can better support Black academics in their department and across the campus."
By the way, imagine if the title were reversed. Wouldn't it sound like black faculty members condescending to white ones, as if they're pathetic little lumps who can't make it without race-shaming others?
1. Acknowledge how power (meaning white supremacy, often described informally as "academic politics") operates at our institutions and work, long term, to dismantle it. That means adopting specific, measurable ways to identify power and how you plan to be accountable and participate in campus change. Short-term, this process means teaching us how to navigate these dynamics. As studies (like this one) show, few Black, Indigenous, and other people of color hold positions in upper administration, which means that we are not even in the room when conversations are happening and decisions are being made that affect Bipoc faculty members and students. We need to be included in those conversations and decisions.2. Reject standardized testing. Lead the elimination of the SAT, ACT, GRE, and other structurally racist assessments and admissions policies that keep the number of Black and other racial-minority students low.
3. Count our service work toward promotion. Advocate that Black faculty members receive credit toward tenure for recruiting, mentoring, and retaining students of color. Black academics and staff members are the reason that most Black students stay at predominantly white institutions. We should be rewarded for our student-retention efforts -- and so should Black staff members (who are miracle workers).
4. Stop playacting that you are clueless about your own privilege. Don't forget about implicit bias, but let's focus on the ways in which you are collaborating in the white, male, heterosexual, abled-bodied, middle-to-upper-class ideologies and systems at your institution. Acknowledge that you are sophisticated about your racism. You're not fooling anybody. We see you, so stop it. Acknowledging privilege, biases, and/or racism is the first step toward being an ally. But taking that step while still knowingly and tacitly supporting, enforcing, and maintaining those problems is an even more insidious matter.
5. Sponsor us, boldly. Discuss our achievements when we are not around, and don't feel shy about letting "them" know that we truly are just as brilliant as you describe us to be. In some instances, just get out of the way and let us do what we are well prepared to do.
I have to laugh, because even with a name like Ebony, this woman seems not to have met very many black achievers. Luckily, I have. Two of the top students in my high school were black twins from a wealthy family. They didn't need the SAT and other tests "eliminated" for them. They're probably how they got into Harvard.
RELATED: Contrast the tone and thinking in McGee's piece with that of Shellye Archambeau, "One of Silicon Valley's First Black Female CEOs."
Find the current.Like in a river, currents of power and opportunity flow through organizations and industries. The key is to find the current and then jump in and work intentionally, allowing it to propel you farther, faster. When I became CEO of MetricStream, I looked for the current of opportunity. What problem could we solve that had enough demand to save the company? I found it in compliance and risk management, which ultimately became its own software category, with our company as an early leader.
"academics who are black -- insultingly intimating that they cannot make it in The Academy without white people's help."
Advice Goddess
Black people on average have lower IQs than whites. Very few black people are smart enough to become professors. Most black academics would be out of a job if professorships where awarded on merit. So except for a few outliers they really can't make it on their own.
Why can't we just be honest? Black people do worse than other races in America because on average they are not as smart. It's not racism, it's genetics. This is sad but it's also not my fault or my problem.
Heterodox Orthodox Rabbi at November 13, 2020 5:42 AM
HORbunny, it's certain that if our culture were even more cruelly skewed to advantage those with higher general intelligence, you'd not be pleased with the result.
Crid at November 13, 2020 7:30 AM
That's ad holmium Crid. Do you have any actual arguments?
Heterodox Orthodox Rabbi at November 13, 2020 7:33 AM
Well, for starters, there's "holmium." You seem to want to start an anonymous fight with someone about something serious ('Heterodox Orthodox Rabbi,' genetics & intelligence, etc.), but don't have the clarity to land a punch. Every few weeks you show up here and squeal as if to say MY menses are the bloodiest of them all!, but no one seems to care. Maybe you're not a sharp guy on his best path.
Crid at November 13, 2020 8:16 AM
The spelling mistake is irrelevant Crid. You make plenty of them.
Yes I comment every few weeks here. And? You comment every day, do you have nothing better to do then read everything Amy wrote?
I'm sorry that posts about IQ trigger you (are you black?). Either way I have been nothing but polite and I am not interested in your rudeness. I'll be ignoring your posts from now on.
Heterodox Orthodox Rabbi at November 13, 2020 8:31 AM
No, I'm just beautiful.
Crid at November 13, 2020 8:42 AM
Also—
> The spelling mistake is irrelevant Crid.
That's very Benlike.Golly- What did Amy do to attract two commenters with that same tic?
Crid at November 13, 2020 8:48 AM
"I'll be ignoring your posts from now on."
You have from the outset, or you'd know things already.
Please ignore the whole blog.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
-----
On Topic: Lowering standards doesn't do anything but lower performance. Some people shouldn't be doctors, lawyers, pilots or firefighters.
Radwaste at November 13, 2020 9:41 AM
So reviewing the earlier comments by "Heterodox Orthodox Rabbi" (and "GuyWhite"), we see this same Ben-ish aversion to commas in first sentences, particularly those addressing other commenters by name.
You almost get the sense that someone wants to affirm ideas for which they can't withstand even pseudonymous association.
Crid at November 13, 2020 9:42 AM
HOR notes that black people don't score as highly as whites on IQ tests invented by whites.
However, that does not mean that someone with a lower IQ can't also be a college professor. You don't need to have the highest IQ possible. You just need to be smart enough to know the material.
Moreover, there are college programs in which IQ is irrelevant, if not detrimental. Such as the arts, including music, theatre, dance, culinary arts.
If HOR is Ben, quite possibly this alter ego is something he uses when posting truly offensive things. Perhaps afraid that cancel culture will catch up to him.
Patrick at November 13, 2020 10:13 AM
Just because the mean or even median IQ for a given population segment is lower than another doesn't mean that there would be zero of that segment with a high IQ. The differences between men and women are significant in this context. Both groups have the same average IQ. Yet there are significantly more men with a high IQ than women. Averages are insufficient information.
No Patrick I am not HOR. I have never posed under that name. I don't think I've ever posted under any name here but Ben. I've just slowed down posting here. Quite frankly it has turned into a kind of old folks club where people exclaim in surprise about the new thing that no one could have seen coming. And of course that new thing happened 20-30 years ago and was well predicted. That not being my thing I've moved on.
And seriously Patrick, you trust anything Crid says? The guy claims AOC and Trump voters are the same people. He does a great job of projecting but actual correlation or analysis isn't Mr. 'Have you ever kissed a girl?''s forte.
Ben at November 13, 2020 11:16 AM
If we were all farmers on our own land, lowering standards wouldn't matter. But we live in a high tech society. A high % of jobs require some precision. Even shipping products is high risk when you ship the wrong stove to someone and have to pay to pick it up again.
The ebony person wants to get credit for political activism. Mentoring is already given credit at uni but activism is not part of the job. Get tenure first. Part of the problem for black academics is they are so conditioned to look for offenses that they see them everywhere. In the real world, 1/2 of junior profs (any race) don't get tenure. I've known some that I thought were brilliant and productive and still didn't get tenure. In the real world, a black prof can be an incompetent jerk just like a white prof. In the real world, a university is not your friend.
cc at November 13, 2020 11:17 AM
> claims AOC and Trump voters
> are the same
Care to offer a cite?
Crid at November 13, 2020 11:29 AM
> HOR notes that black people don't score as highly as whites on IQ tests invented by whites.
Then why do jews and asians score higher than whites on these tests?
Crid at November 13, 2020 12:26 PM
Patrick, you don't need to be just smart enough to learn the material, you need to be smart enough to invent new material.
NicoleK at November 13, 2020 1:06 PM
The tallest and strongest person in the crowd may be female.
The most brilliant person in the crowd may be black.
While these propositions may be true in any given instance, still, the "smart money" doesn't bet that way.
Stereotypes, however often they may be inaccurate, nonetheless exist for a reason.
(I should note that the most brilliant professor I ever personally encountered, Thomas Sowell, is black. I thank my lucky stars I enrolled in his class at UCLA. He opened my mind and changed my way of thinking. No one can intelligently comment on Critical Race Theory without reading his books, in my opinion.)
Jay R at November 13, 2020 1:20 PM
With wide variation in the quality of secondary schools, how does McGee propose we test the readiness of someone for college-level education? The valedictorian at one school is the class dunce at another, so GPA and class rankings are only relative measurements.
Conan the Grammarian at November 13, 2020 2:33 PM
> Crid at November 13, 2020 12:26 PM
That is NOT my comment.
Someone's spazzing out.
Crid at November 13, 2020 2:42 PM
WTF happened to this thread.
NicoleK at November 14, 2020 6:28 AM
Someone testing a robot? That or drugs. Or maybe a lack of drugs.
Ben at November 14, 2020 6:48 AM
So, no citation?
Crid at November 14, 2020 8:52 AM
These "professors" seem to be a century behind.
" Sponsor us, boldly."
" Lead the elimination of the SAT, ACT, GRE"
". . . identify power and how you plan to be accountable"
"Stop playacting"
They sound like the old Imperialists. Rudyard Kipling wrote about this in 1899:
"Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard—"
And what is with Christinae Amanapour/CNN comparing the Trump administration to Kristalnacht? She even ran a clip of the book burning.
It hasn't been GOP operatives smashing glass and banning speech.
The left has a poor relationship with reality.
And doesn't anyone like elephants?
Spiderfall at November 14, 2020 9:52 AM
These "professors" seem to be a century behind.
" Sponsor us, boldly."
" Lead the elimination of the SAT, ACT, GRE"
". . . identify power and how you plan to be accountable"
"Stop playacting"
They sound like the old Imperialists. Rudyard Kipling wrote about this in 1899:
"Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard—"
And what is with Christinae Amanapour/CNN comparing the Trump administration to Kristalnacht? She even ran a clip of the book burning.
It hasn't been GOP operatives smashing glass and banning speech.
The left has a poor relationship with reality.
And doesn't anyone like elephants?
Spiderfall at November 14, 2020 9:52 AM
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