". . . stop reducing my personhood to a racial category. Stop telling me what I
must think and feel about myself. Stop presuming to know who I am or
what my culture is based upon my skin color. Stop asking me to project
stereotypes and assumptions onto others based on their skin color.” - Jodi Shaw
I have been working on a post about the new and radical Biden administration and the future of the GOP which has grown quite long and unwieldy so am breaking it up into several parts. This first section focuses on the ideological struggle that is the #1 priority for our country today; defeating Critical Race/Social Justice Theory (CRT), a subject I've written frequently about in the Your Future series. This morally corrupt ideology continues to sweep through American institutions, and is now being promoted as a top priority by the new administration. If successful, it spells the end of a nation based on tolerance and the acceptance that we can be one country even while containing a multitude of viewpoints and backgrounds. For those of us who have always promoted
equality under the law, removing discriminatory barriers, and
encouraging and welcoming true diversity in our workplaces and lives, what is unfolding around us is a disaster that was unthinkable a few years ago.
There is a growing
community of liberals/progressives who understand the illiberal nature
of the threat posed by CRT to the continuance of America as a democracy and to the
core values of freedom of speech, conscience, and equal treatment under
the laws. This is extremely important because it is only if effective
opposition grows across the political spectrum that this
threat can be defeated because so many of our institutions - academia,
media, the federal bureaucracy, the tech companies and many other
corporations, NGOs - are dominated by the left.
As liberal criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield recently wrote, referring to liberals who failed over the years to resist this trend:
They should have said no at the outset and not empowered the woke
into believing that they ran the show, but they believed it would pass,
the woke would grow up and recognize their childish ideas. That, of
course, hasn’t happened, and it wasn’t just some dumb college kids doing
typically dumb kid stuff. And a lot of people have been hurt by it.
It’s
going to be a lot harder now, after so much of the intellectual
infrastructure of society has been bastardized in an effort to placate
the woke, to call bullshit and end it. But if we don’t put away the
guilt and grow some guts, the damage may be unfixable. People may not be
guilty for society’s historic transgressions, but we will be guilty for
the cowardly failure to put an end to it.
Below are some of these liberals/progressives (a couple might characterize themselves as centrists and there even a couple of self-described socialists) you can find on Twitter(1)
and, through them, links to longer articles and examples of the insanity that has been unleashed. Because of their
background and beliefs they provide valuable insight on the growing
intolerance of the Woke Left and how to combat it. Most are Americans,
with a sprinkling of Aussies and Brits (all of the Anglosphere is under
assault from Left Totalitarians). Almost all of the Americans strongly
opposed Trump and voted for Biden in the hope that his reputed
moderation would temper the onslaught of CRT, a hope now dashed as I will explain in the next post.
Andrew Sullivan (purged from NY
Magazine for being insufficiently Woke; "And so our unprecedentedly multicultural, and multiracial
democracy is now described as a mere front for 'white supremacy'"),
Wesley Yang ("At the start of the MeToo purge, there were a few pieces by women noting their trepidation about its potential course whose authors were all cancelled; the race purge has successfully preempted such pieces from running in the first place.")
Zaid Jilani ("the left has replaced social liberalism with social control")
John McWhorter ("The big question about The Elect is not how to get through to them (usually impossible) but how to keep them from taking over and destroying lives"),
Bari Weiss (purged from the NY Times
for being insufficiently Woke; "We all know something morally grotesque is swallowing liberal America"; read 'Spirit Murder', Neo-Segregation and Science Denial in American Schools),
Seerut K Chawla ("the woke believe 'language creates reality', which is why 'problematic' ideas must be censored & not heard"),
Inaya Folarin Iman ("The end of 'woke' thinking may, in part, come from the exhaustion of its followers. It requires self-destructive levels of emotionalism to sustain itself"),
Mike Nayna ("it becomes necessary to depersonalize the 'enemies of Society' in order to transform the official lie into truth" quoting Aldous Huxley),
Colin Wright ("It's shocking how badly critical theory bungles everything it touches. On important issues of race, sex, biology, medicine, etc, it reliably produces the most flawed conclusions and morally corrupt prescriptions imaginable"),
Chloe S Valdary ("The problem is that so many are looking at people of color as symbols for certain ideas instead of full-fleshed individuals. But I'm not an idea, I'm not a symbol or a figment of your imagination. I'm a human being."),
Peter Boghossian ("If organizational diversity and inclusion were about removing barriers so that minorities can succeed, I'd be an ardent supporter. But 'diversity' and 'inclusion' are not about that"),
Wokal Distance ("Don't you ever let any of these people ever pretend that they are honest. They make no effort to give people charitable reading and then use uncharitable reading to justify smear jobs"),
Glenn Loury (read Unspeakable Truths about Racial Inequality in America),
Dr Debra Soh ("We can support equal rights without denying science or biology"),
Abigail Shrier ("fact checked" by USA Today and Instagram for making a factually accurate statement regarding the Biden EO on Gender Identity),
Michael Tracey ("The most disturbing thing about this radically expanded definition of 'harm' is that some portion of the people claiming to be 'harmed' by anodyne utterances of words probably are being sincere - their psyches really are that fragile. And they are attaining positions of power"),
Geoff Shullenberger ("One right to work argument has long been that union dues, which can be funneled towards causes and candidates beyond the immediate interests of members, are coerced speech. Now it seems a pro-union position is 'lol of course being in the union means total ideological agreement!"),
Ayishat Akanbi ("If you are convinced that one racial group has a monopoly on wickedness, then historically, you wouldn't have been hard to convince that some races were evil"),
Samuel Kronen ("I think systemic racism is a vague concept, white privilege an unhelpful one, and cultural appropriation an objectively good thing. I may be wrong, but I am normal, and anyone concerned with creating a better world will have to engage with people like me without name-calling", and read Is Critical Race Theory un-American?),
Thomas Chatterton Williams (on the new Chicago commission to review statutes including those of Lincoln, "What is there to 'review' about statutes of Abraham Lincoln? If there can't be statutes of Lincoln we're essentially saying there can't be statutes at all. He saved our country and died for it. What has anyone else done?")
Bo Winegard ("His views on race and sex . . . are likely as far from reality as imaginable, but since they cohere with the views of woke elites, we don't and won't hear much about how far from reality Biden is")
Brett Weinstein (purged from Evergreen State College for teaching evolutionary biology),
The Woke Temple ("I endeavor to present the teaching of Woke Ideology & Critical Race Theory objectively and accurately using their scholars' own words.")
Obaid Omer ("I left Islam for liberal values. Now Woke liberals are embracing a new religion. To even question the extent to which racism was everywhere resulted in accusations of being a racist.
I couldn't help but notice there was an almost fundamentalist, faith-like aspect to these claims.")
Lee Jussim ("Leftwing Authoritarianism has 3 manifestations:
Dogmatic intolerance of opponents;
Willingness to censor opponents;
Endorsement of violence, bullying, social vigilantism.") You can also find his blog at Psychology Today.
Also recommended is Helen Pluckrose (on Twitter) and Counterweight, the organization she and others recently founded in the UK (but also providing services in America) with this mission statement
We are here to provide you with practical information and expert
guidance to resist the imposition of the ideology that calls itself
“Critical Social Justice” on your day-to-day life. Our primary focus is
on people who find themselves in situations where they need to push back
at this ideology in their place of work, university, children’s school
or elsewhere and defend their right to their own ethical frameworks for
opposing prejudice and discrimination. We connect you with the specific
resources, advice and guidance your particular situation requires. The
Counterweight community is a non-partisan, grassroots movement
advocating for liberal concepts of social justice that include
individualism, universalism, viewpoint diversity and the free exchange
of ideas.
Counterweight has been overwhelmed by requests
for help since it launched last week. Under the Biden Administration
such an organization is even more relevant.
Of special
note are Asra Q Nomani and Judea Pearl, both on Twitter. Nomani,
journalist and Pakistani immigrant, is part of a group of Asian
immigrant parents in the DC suburbs fighting to keep Thomas Jefferson HS for Science & Technology, one of the top merit-based STEM high schools in the country, from being dismantled in
the name of "equity", because parents of Asian ancestry make their children study too much (I wish I were kidding, but this is an actual accusation being made to justify eliminating merit admissions - something that is also happening in New York City, San Francisco and other Progressive dominated cities). Judea
Pearl, a California academic, is the father of Danny Pearl, the
journalist beheaded by Pakistani jihadists almost twenty years ago
because he was an American and a Jew. Asra Nomani met Danny Pearl in
Pakistan and is still following the ongoing and very active court
proceedings regarding his murderers.
Jodi Shaw, ("The repeated insistence that our ability or willingness to engage in these performative rituals as a continued condition of our employment is a potent brand of harassment - the kind everyone colludes in because we are too afraid not to")(2), graduate of Smith College, who works as an administrative assistant there. After a two-year ordeal of Woke brainwashing, in desperation Ms Shaw went public with a YouTube channel about what was happening at Smith. UPDATE: Ms Shaw has just resigned from Smith. Rather than accept a settlement from the college that would have required her to stay silent, she is leaving without anything. You can read her full resignation letter below (3). It is worth your time to do so.
For those interested in the theoretical nuts and bolts and bigger implications behind CRT, the New Discourses website provides very well done primers.
Essential online magazines to read are Tablet and Quillette, neither of which are conservative. Tablet is "a daily online magazine of Jewish news, ideas, and culture"
which provides a wide range of stories from different perspectives and
has increasingly featured more articles related to CRT. Quillette
describes itself as "a platform for free thought. We respect ideas,
even dangerous ones. We also believe that free expression and the free
exchange of ideas help human societies flourish and progress."
Founded to provide an outlet from those threatened institutionally
across the political spectrum it has increasingly focused on the threat
from the Left because that's where the threat is.
These liberals
and progressives realize they are at the same, and sometimes greater,
risk as conservatives in terms of losing jobs, careers, reputation if
they dissent from any of the commandments of CRT but have the courage to
speak out. We need more like them.
Anti-woke liberals and progressives also have to come to grips with the fact there is something is wrong with modern liberalism which has allowed this ideology to flourish. CRT has been able to use the tenets of liberalism to infiltrate and then metastasize within the institutions liberals used to dominate. Liberalism has proven defenseless against an ideology which rejects its foundational beliefs in tolerance and rational inquiry.
There are also conservatives providing an invaluable service in providing concrete examples of the use of CRT materials in education and training. Sources are parents whose children are being subjected to this insane and hateful garbage and employees of companies and government agencies being subjected to training sessions which employ techniques used during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Christopher Rufo is on Twitter and you can also find him at christopherrufo.com
One of the stunning revelations of the past year is the extent to which these pernicious and destructive doctrines have already taken root in our educational system. You can follow an ongoing lawsuit filed by the black parent of a mixed-race child against a private school, alleging her child is being forced to make compelled speech endorsing CRT concepts, contrary to his personal conscience and beliefs, and was retaliated against when he objected.
I could go on and on with horrifying examples of what is happening in our society but if you sample just a few of the names I've mentioned above you will find plenty.
And finally I can't resist recommending Titania McGrath, a British woke spoof account. When started in 2018 it seemed over the top absurd but you can no longer distinguish the satire from what the woke are doing in reality every day.
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You can read earlier entries in the Your Future series for more about CRT so here is a summary:
CRT is a conspiracy theory, which unlike QAnon, has considerable support in American institutions and now in the Federal government. It claims that the only determinant for actions in our society is race (sometimes gender is added), a society which has been constructed by whites in a conspiracy to maintain white supremacy and systemic racism. All of the language used in our society has the sole purpose of maintaining that dominance. The proof of that dominance is any result in our society that is not "equitable" (that is, does not result in numerical equality of each race) because race and white privilege is the only explanation for inequitable results. To argue against this is to use the language of white supremacy and thus adherents of CRT do not need to be engage with its opponents, instead they can simply be denounced because to argue against CRT is in itself proof of racism.
If you think the language of "equity" which has replaced "equality" in our discourse does not have real world implications think again. Last fall the CDC's public health advisory panel on vaccinations established priorities for the new covid vaccines based on equity principles even though the CDC's own modeling showed that thousands more would die based on those principles. The panel of public health experts effectively endorsed voluntary manslaughter because they valued equity above human lives.
Think about it - "equity" means treating individuals and groups differently in order to achieve "equal" outcomes. And since we know that an equal outcome in the sense used in CRT is only momentary and will come out of balance over time, discrimination in how individuals and groups are treated will be forever.
Many people misunderstand how CRT uses the term "systemic racism" (a term which is the organizing principle of the Biden administration). It has nothing to do with legal, institutional, or conscious racism. In CRT lingo any society in which any outcomes as measured by racial groups do not reflect the proportion of that group, as it exists in that society, is, by definition, evidence of "systemic racism".
Given this viewpoint, CRT holds that power, and who has it, is the only important organizing principle in society; not ideas, not competing interests. CRT will use processes to gain control and power but does not believe those processes need to be reciprocal or neutral. Once they have achieved control and power, those processes can be discarded. As President Erdogan of Turkey said to King Abdullah of Jordan, "democracy is like a bus, when it gets to my stop I get off". Or as Frank Herbert put it in Children of Dune:
"When
I am Weaker than you, I ask you for Freedom because that is according
to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your
Freedom because that is according to my principles."
And that is why the progressives and liberals listed above are trying to ring the alarm about this New Faith which has infiltrated and is destroying traditional liberalism.
Because everything in how society is organized is solely determined by the white conspiracy to perpetuate white supremacy, everything in society needs to be reordered and there is no distinction between the political and the personal. That is why it is necessary to purge anyone who says or thinks anything defined by CRT as racist from jobs, careers, educational opportunities, regardless of whether their actions demonstrate any racism.
It is why our very language is changing because it is by the use of language designed by whites that white supremacy is maintained. Once language changes the structure of society can be changed. This explains why teaching and training curriculum based on CRT seem, to normal people, to be spouting nonsense like 2+2 does not necessarily equal 4 or that having a meeting agenda is a white supremacist way of thinking.
CRT repudiates the notions of the Civil Rights Movement that we share a common humanity and creed. It is why the 1619 Project, historical nonsense based on CRT, almost eliminates Frederick Douglass and minimizes the role of Dr Martin Luther King when it comes to race in America because their ideas were not based solely on race. It repudiates the ideal of neutral processes when it comes to judging people as individuals. It is why the 1619 Project seeks to erase the real American founding because that founding is based on universal ideas.
Don't believe it? Here are two Critical Race theorists, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic, writing in Critical Race Theory: An Introduction:
Unlike traditional civil-rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundation of the liberal order; including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.
Here's a little more wisdom from the same duo:
For the critical race theorist, objective truth, like merit, does not exist, at least in social science and politics. In these realms, truth is a social construct created to suit the purposes of the dominant group.
For my liberal friends who have difficulty understanding how radical the woke at places like the Times are, think about those great narrative historians of America you enjoy reading - Ron Chernow, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Joseph Ellis, David McCullough. Through the lenses (a favorite woke term) employed by the woke these authors promote white supremacy and privilege and are as deserving of the bonfires as anything written by William F Buckley.
CRT denies that the individual can think outside this structure imposed
by white racists. It denies the power of ideas, other than those
focused solely on race. It is why CRT and white nationalism resemble
each other. Both believe that race is the sole determinant upon which
American society should be based. Their difference is in who should be
on the top. And, in some instances, CRT and white nationalism focus on the same "enemies". During 2020, the NY Times, the major proponent of CRT in the media, published an article listing the most powerful people (as defined by the paper) in America. The purpose was to demonstrate that blacks are underrepresented and thus provide another example of systemic racism. Interestingly, elements of both the Woke Left and white nationalism quickly identified that there was a subgroup within the white power elite identified by the Times - a subgroup with the most disproportionate number of powerful people compared to their percentage of American population - Jews. Under CRT any group which has a larger than equitable share of power has gained that power via a conspiracy designed to obtain and then control its position of supremacy - therefore Jews, who are also white whether they consider themselves or not to be so, have conspired to attain and then maintain that position, a viewpoint CRT proponents share with white nationalists. For more on the dangers facing Jews from the New Racism read Pamela Pareksy's piece in the Spring 2021 edition of Sapir:
In the critical social justice paradigm, Jews, who have never been seen as white by those for whom being white is a moral good, are now seen as white by those for whom whiteness is an unmitigated evil.
Though, as this article from the Hedgehog Review tells us, the New Racists' problem with religion is not limited to Jews. This is scary stuff.
The ascension of CRT has occurred with dizzying speed. After a long academic gestation period it burst onto the scene like the creature bursting from John Hurt's chest in Alien and with the same ruthless destructiveness. As twitter person The End Times puts it, "Ibram Kendi's [author of How To Be An Antiracist] racism went from fringe to published book to mandatory policy in a handful of years". Now Kendi has an endowed chair at Boston University, along with $10 million in funding from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, from which he can spout his anti-democratic and totalitarian views such as:
The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.
To best sum it up, a young English woman who joined the woke movement motivated by a feeling of solidarity with marginalised groups, left after realizing it was not really about:
Solidarity: it creates division amongst people based on certain identities, even between different minorities
Equality: it creates hierarchies based on certain identities
Improvements: it wants to dismantle
Inclusivity: it excludes people from the wrong identities
Compassion: it's about hatred, revenge and anger
Diversity: it wants everyone to think and behave the same way
Lessening discrimination and stigma: It creates more
Liberation: It thrives on authority and control(4)
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(1)
Pro Tip about twitter. It's easy to set up a Twitter account. I have one
and have never Tweeted and never plan to. I use it to read people and
organizations I'm interested in. In turn, those people and groups provide useful links to more lengthier pieces as well as original documents. If you hit the Follow button on a
Twitter account, your own account will show to anyone who looks what you
are Following. To avoid that, bookmark Twitter accounts you want to
read regularly as Favorites on your phone and just use those when wanting
to access an account.
(2) The climate of fear is not limited to America. Here is a prominent English academic and feminist deplatformed because of her views on transgender issues speaking on the fear. Feminists who think there are biological differences between the sexes are under fierce assault, accused of transphobia by activists. Here's a young woman fired from her job for refusing to kowtow to those denying biology. JK Rowling, a firm feminist and progressive, has been under attack for the same reason, but been able to resist deplatforming because she is such a valuable property for her publisher and representatives. Unfortunately, some other women who have supported her, have been deplatformed because they are not as valuable to their publishers and literary agents.
(3) Jodi Smith resignation letter:
Dear President McCartney:
I am writing to notify
you that effective today, I am resigning from my position as Student
Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life at Smith
College. This has not been an easy decision, as I now face a deeply
uncertain future. As a divorced mother of two, the economic uncertainty
brought about by this resignation will impact my children as well. But I
have no choice. The racially hostile environment that the college has
subjected me to for the past two and a half years has left me physically
and mentally debilitated. I can no longer work in this environment, nor
can I remain silent about a matter so central to basic human dignity
and freedom.
I graduated from Smith College in 1993. Those four
years were among the best in my life. Naturally, I was over the moon
when, years later, I had the opportunity to join Smith as a staff
member. I loved my job and I loved being back at Smith.
But the
climate — and my place at the college — changed dramatically when, in
July 2018, the culture war arrived at our campus when a student accused a
white staff member of calling campus security on her because of racial
bias. The student, who is black, shared her account of this incident
widely on social media, drawing a lot of attention to the college.
Before
even investigating the facts of the incident, the college immediately
issued a public apology to the student, placed the employee on leave,
and announced its intention to create new initiatives, committees,
workshops, trainings, and policies aimed at combating “systemic racism”
on campus.
In spite of an independent investigation into the
incident that found no evidence of racial bias, the college ramped up
its initiatives aimed at dismantling the supposed racism that pervades
the campus. This only served to support the now prevailing narrative
that the incident had been racially motivated and that Smith staff are
racist.
Allowing this narrative to dominate has had a profound
impact on the Smith community and on me personally. For example, in
August 2018, just days before I was to present a library orientation
program into which I had poured a tremendous amount of time and effort,
and which had previously been approved by my supervisors, I was told
that I could not proceed with the planned program. Because it was going
to be done in rap form and “because you are white,” as my supervisor
told me, that could be viewed as “cultural appropriation.” My supervisor
made clear he did not object to a rap in general, nor to the idea of
using music to convey orientation information to students. The problem
was my skin color.
I was up for a full-time position in the
library at that time, and I was essentially informed that my candidacy
for that position was dependent upon my ability, in a matter of days, to
reinvent a program to which I had devoted months of time.
Humiliated,
and knowing my candidacy for the full-time position was now dead in the
water, I moved into my current, lower-paying position as Student
Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life.
As it
turned out, my experience in the library was just the beginning. In my
new position, I was told on multiple occasions that discussing my
personal thoughts and feelings about my skin color is a requirement of
my job. I endured racially hostile comments, and was expected to
participate in racially prejudicial behavior as a continued condition of
my employment. I endured meetings in which another staff member
violently banged his fist on the table, chanting “Rich, white women!
Rich, white women!” in reference to Smith alumnae. I listened to my
supervisor openly name preferred racial quotas for job openings in our
department. I was given supplemental literature in which the world’s
population was reduced to two categories — “dominant group members” and
“subordinated group members” — based solely on characteristics like
race.
Every day, I watch my colleagues manage student conflict
through the lens of race, projecting rigid assumptions and stereotypes
on students, thereby reducing them to the color of their skin. I am
asked to do the same, as well as to support a curriculum for students
that teaches them to project those same stereotypes and assumptions onto
themselves and others. I believe such a curriculum is dehumanizing,
prevents authentic connection, and undermines the moral agency of young
people who are just beginning to find their way in the world.
Although
I have spoken to many staff and faculty at the college who are deeply
troubled by all of this, they are too terrified to speak out about it.
This illustrates the deeply hostile and fearful culture that pervades
Smith College.
The last straw came in January 2020, when I
attended a mandatory Residence Life staff retreat focused on racial
issues. The hired facilitators asked each member of the department to
respond to various personal questions about race and racial identity.
When it was my turn to respond, I said “I don’t feel comfortable talking
about that.” I was the only person in the room to abstain.
Later,
the facilitators told everyone present that a white person’s discomfort
at discussing their race is a symptom of “white fragility.” They said
that the white person may seem like they are in distress, but that it is
actually a “power play.” In other words, because I am white, my genuine
discomfort was framed as an act of aggression. I was shamed and
humiliated in front of all of my colleagues.
I filed an internal
complaint about the hostile environment, but throughout that process,
over the course of almost six months, I felt like my complaint was taken
less seriously because of my race. I was told that the civil rights law
protections were not created to help people like me. And after I filed
my complaint, I started to experience retaliatory behavior, like having
important aspects of my job taken away without explanation.
Under
the guise of racial progress, Smith College has created a racially
hostile environment in which individual acts of discrimination and
hostility flourish. In this environment, people’s worth as human beings,
and the degree to which they deserve to be treated with dignity and
respect, is determined by the color of their skin. It is an environment
in which dissenting from the new critical race orthodoxy — or even
failing to swear fealty to it like some kind of McCarthy-era loyalty
oath — is grounds for public humiliation and professional retaliation.
I
can no longer continue to work in an environment where I am constantly
subjected to additional scrutiny because of my skin color. I can no
longer work in an environment where I am told, publicly, that my
personal feelings of discomfort under such scrutiny are not legitimate
but instead are a manifestation of white supremacy. Perhaps most
importantly, I can no longer work in an environment where I am expected
to apply similar race-based stereotypes and assumptions to others, and
where I am told — when I complain about having to engage in what I
believe to be discriminatory practices — that there are “legitimate
reasons for asking employees to consider race” in order to achieve the
college’s “social justice objectives.”
What passes for
“progressive” today at Smith and at so many other institutions is
regressive. It taps into humanity’s worst instincts to break down into
warring factions, and I fear this is rapidly leading us to a very
twisted place. It terrifies me that others don’t seem to see that racial
segregation and demonization are wrong and dangerous no matter what its
victims look like. Being told that any disagreement or feelings of
discomfort somehow upholds “white supremacy” is not just morally wrong.
It is psychologically abusive.
Equally troubling are the many
others who understand and know full well how damaging this is, but do
not speak out due to fear of professional retaliation, social censure,
and loss of their livelihood and reputation. I fear that by the time
people see it, or those who see it manage to screw up the moral courage
to speak out, it will be too late.
I wanted to change things at
Smith. I hoped that by bringing an internal complaint, I could somehow
get the administration to see that their capitulation to critical race
orthodoxy was causing real, measurable harm. When that failed, I hoped
that drawing public attention to these problems at Smith would finally
awaken the administration to this reality. I have come to conclude,
however, that the college is so deeply committed to this toxic ideology
that the only way for me to escape the racially hostile climate is to
resign. It is completely unacceptable that we are now living in a
culture in which one must choose between remaining in a racially
hostile, psychologically abusive environment or giving up their income.
As
a proud Smith alum, I know what a critical role this institution has
played in shaping my life and the lives of so many women for one hundred
and fifty years. I want to see this institution be the force for good I
know it can be. I will not give up fighting against the dangerous pall
of orthodoxy that has descended over Smith and so many of our
educational institutions.
This was an extremely difficult decision
for me and comes at a deep personal cost. I make $45,000 a year; less
than a year’s tuition for a Smith student. I was offered a settlement in
exchange for my silence, but I turned it down. My need to tell the
truth — and to be the kind of woman Smith taught me to be — makes it
impossible for me to accept financial security at the expense of
remaining silent about something I know is wrong. My children’s future,
and indeed, our collective future as a free nation, depends on people
having the courage to stand up to this dangerous and divisive ideology,
no matter the cost.
Sincerely,
Jodi Shaw
(4) Update: I recently came across a piece by Assistant Village Idiot, a psychiatric social worker, that pointed out something that has troubled me but have been unable to quite identify my concern or articulate it. What, precisely, is CRT trying to build as it strikes me as logically incoherent and difficult to discern what, at a concrete level, it envisions for the future. AVP pointed out that CRT has, so far, produced no true art.
This is a major red flag for the intellectual foundation of a
philosophy, that artists in no medium can bring forth anything of
interest. The heart of artistic expression is transposition, of
reframing or new understanding of one concept and making it manifest in
another. If you can find nothing to transpose, it means there is nothing
there.
This is unsurprising, as Theory never pretended to be making anything, only analyzing it. It's right there in the name, Critical Theory.
It critiques. It is described as a tool for interrogating everything
else. "Interrogate" is supposed to have a more refined meaning than the
picture that pops into our head from movies, of guys sitting in a chair
under bright light, getting beat up after any bad answer. It's supposed
to mean "asking questions." In reality, it's pretty much the sadistic
guys with the brass knuckles. You either aren't interrogated at all
because you're on their side, or you get the crap beat out of you.
So we interrogate history with Critical Theory. We look at American education through the prism of Critical Race Theory. We examine
music or literature via Theory. But we never make anything with it.
Making something requires talent, courage, and effort. A critical
theorist might have any or all of these things. But they aren't
required for the job.
