I had not heard about the Seattle Public Schools fiasco until I read about it on Natalie Solent’s blog. If, like me, you have not been keeping up with statist nonsense out of the Pacific North-West of the United States, the Seattle Public Schools administration defined cultural racism thusly:
Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers…
Following much-merited riducule from bloggers and exposure in the media, the Seattle Public Schools district has beat a hasty retreat. However, we know that they will be back, with a similar sort of attempt to smear their political opponents.
Natalie Solent made the point:
The policy decision that “emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology” constituted racism came to my ear like a little echo of the draft European Constitution: an attempt to build in a left-wing position without going to the trouble of arguing for it. Under this definition pretty any student daring to defend Republican ideas could have been accused of racism. And that was the idea. It was all about power.
So anyone that subscribes to an individualist philosphy of any kind is clearly on notice; left-wing statists will continue to try to use intellectual gymnastics like this to try to silence Republicans, libertarians, Conservatives or anyone else opposed to their agenda. The racist smear is ideal for this.
Part of the point of Samizdata.net is to counteract nonsense like this. on the sidebar it says what we are about:
A blog for people with a critically rational individualist perspective. We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous… lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
“developing the social individualist meta-context for the future” means, in part, creating an intellectual climate where nonsense like that peddled by the Seattle public schools board is treated with the laughable contempt that it deserves.
It is true that we have a long way to travel, but every day has its own task.
“a future time orientation”? I guess all of in the NSS are beyond the pale as well.
Oh, and by the way. Shakespeare was the greatest English language writer ever and Oxford English Dictionary is the one true source defining our language.
These folk just deserver scorn… but anyone with a kid in Seattle should really consider putting them in a real school. There ain’t much call for basket-weavers these days.
The hardest part of the struggle is getting people to understand that these seemingly innocuous and tolerant and oh-so-carefully phrased rules and guidelines are anything but what they appear to be.
Solent is exactly right. These repeated attempts to define any opposing opinions as racist, sexist, homophobic, intolerant, and generally out of bounds, and unacceptable continue relentlessly.
Recently, the guidelines for majors in several areas of social work, education, and others were defined to exclude anyone who did not accept left-liberal orthodoxy.
Repeatedly, academics and students who disagree with the holy writ of leftist multiculturalism and politically correct ideas are charged in kangaroo courts on campuses around the country with various offenses. When examined, the “crime” usually turns out to be that the offender argued against a commonly held bit of collectivist victimology and was, therefore, a racist or sexist.
The educational system is not failing because of poverty or racism or second languages or any of the other standard dodges used to avoid an examiniation of the underlying philosphy dominent in the schools.
The failure is directly attributable to the disastrous, intrusive, and corrosive effects of replacing serious educational subjects with political indoctrination and multi-culti fluff and nonsense.
Yes indeed Veryretired
Yes indeed!
I think this shows how far “anti-racism” has indulged in mission-creep. It used to be discrimination based upon the colour of someone’s skin, it is now based upon their ideologies as well.
I’m not sure it’s a deliberate attempt to smear political opponents (though that’s a pleasing by-product for the left). I have no idea what they are up to or why they feel this terrible need to dismantle Western culture but they’re desperate to do it just the same.
This bunch of parasites should get down on their knees and be thankful they live in Western civilization and not some third-world pesthole. Which is exactly what we seem to be heading for, unfortunately.
Well if saving for the future is “racist” Americans (and British people) have got a lot less racist in recent times (borrowing does not have to be based on real savings – oh no, the book keeping tricks of credit expansion can square the circle, or so modern “economics” teaches).
Of course that is the point: Being a savage is not about having a black skin or a bone structure of a particular type. It is about just thinking about how to satisfy the next animal desire rather than building for the future (such as planting a tree that only future generations will see full grown), it is about being a beast rather than a human being.
A savage can have any colour skin. My guess is that the people who wrote these “anti racist” words had pinkish gray (“white”) skins.
As for “anti racism” having a political agenda, that is old news Nick.
In the 19th century the antislavery movement was dominated by people like Salmon P. Chase and William Lloyd Garrison, but those days are long gone.
Even the sainted Dr Martin Luther King jr. was strongly influenced by Marxism.
It must give the left a big laugh every year that the United States has a national holiday in honour of man who, yes, did hate racial discrimiation – but also hated private property (almost a big a laugh as putting the faces of hard money men like Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson on the government fiat money notes).
Nor was he alone. It is no accident that by the 1960’s the Civil Rights movement was not just about getting rid of the Jim Crow laws (which demanded that blacks be discriminated against), it was also about demanding that people associate with blacks (in trade) whether they wished to or not.
Nor was in just about blacks, even in 1964.
What the Civil Rights movement (or at least its leadership) was already about was building a planned society where people would live they wanted them to live – and think they way wanted them to think. Race was only one part of it.
What was presented in public as a struggle against black people being forced to sit in the back of a bus or use a seperate water tap, was really about slowly building a system where government would control everything. Every aspect of life from the cradle to the grave.
The treatment of blacks (whether by the Jim Crow laws or by private choice) was an excuse for a power grab by collectivists (most of whom were and are white) who controlled the movement and used well meaning people as tools.
It still is being used as an excuse. No change in the law or change in the private treatment of blacks will change the drive of the movement (as the leaders always had more important aims).
Yes, leftists discriminate against conservatives in many way, especially on college campuses. But it strikes me as contradictory for one to say that the ideologies they discriminate against are by necessity individualist. The viewpoints on social issues that conservative often take in America are usually collectivist – defense of marriage legislation, anti-prostitution laws, war on drugs, etc. Most of these views boil down to imposing morality on others, which the government is not supposed to be doing or preserving societal institutions, as far as I understand (and please correct me if I’m wrong).
At the same time, they, the arrogant leftist intellectuals, contend that collectivism is on their side – and only their side.
Paul Marks:
Do you have any links to sites that would help me learn about MLK’s dislike of private property? Ditto stuff about forcing people to associate with blacks whether they want(ed) to or not. Thanks much
It is no accident that virtually every ‘gender studies’ at the college I soon will attend are tought by feminists. It makes me sick. Such is modern academia.
“. . . creating an intellectual climate where nonsense like that peddled by the Seattle public schools board is treated with the laughable contempt that it deserves”
Contempt, and ridicule, is all this School Board and their ilk deserve. They’re fucking stupid.
But we keep sending our kids to public schools . . . uhh, did someone say stupid ?
CFM
The most bigoted disgusting white supremacist racists I ever encounter are firmly ensconced in the PC leftist part of the spectrum. Even though I have much experience dealing with that ilk, I am still amazed by the pure evil of the smiling faced politically correct white supremacist.
Did you catch that slip where this accidentally showed through? The PC crowd believes only white people are biologically developed enough to plan ahead. Being innately bigoted, the PC take these assumptions for granted and see themselves as benevolent for not lording their natural superiority over “people of color”.
Their beliefs are confirmed by the quotas and lowered expectations they choose over genuine efforts to improve the quality of education and achievement among people who are indeed disadvantaged but getting more so every day because of attitudes like these.
It seems improbable and I had to dig away at these people for many years before I took it as given, but PC believes and is founded on racial superiority.
Makes your skin crawl, doesn’t it?
What do they mean by “future time orientation”?
I’ve been struggling to work out what they even mean, let alone why it should be racist.
It’s a serious question – any enlightenment would be welcome.
Reading this made me think, first of all, of Mark Twain’s dictum: “In the first place God made idiots. That was for practice. Then He made school boards.”
That the Seattle School Board has now removed this policy from their web site is, unfortunately, probably nothing more than a tactical retreat. The storm of criticism they brought down on themselves made them realize they had gone too far. Doubtless the policy will now be quietly reintroduced over a period of months and years.
Finally, the Left seems to have engineered the situation where allegations of racism an be used to silence just about anyone, while they get to define what racism is. Certainly, it has evolved far from its original definition of denying someone accommodation, employment or whatever simply on the basis of their skin color. It’s time they were called on this.
Pete, “future time orientation” is code speak for “ability to plan ahead”. As in able to transcend instant gratification and think about consequences.
There are many areas in which blacks have excelled, but can anyone name the African Shakespeare, the African Pushkin, the African Moliére or the African Goethe? No, of course not. And more recently, does anyone in their right mind really want to match Maya Angelou against that pantheon of dead white males?
Given that indigenous sub-Saharan Africa was mostly pre-literate across the entire social spectrum until well into the 20th century, not to mention there are a hell of a lot more white people than black people globally speaking, it is hardly surprising that the historical pool of Great Black Authors is rather small and will continue to be so in relative terms for the next couple centuries, given the vast cannon of Western literature that came into existence since the advent of the printing press in Europe in 1447. That is not racism, it is just historical reality.
Camus was African.
So was St Augustine of Hippo.
Both great writers and thinkers.
I guess they don’t count though.
Pete, I think they mean the western tendency to look to and seek to create a golden future, rather than the (usually religious) opposing tendency to look back upon and seek a return to a golden past. What might be called Modernism, as versus Classicism.
Camus was born in Algeria, that is true, but to quote the Duke of Wellington when someone called him Irish, being born in a barn does not make you a horse. Clearly Camus was French.
As for St Augustine of Hippo, I would hardly call him either a literary figure or a composer.
Camus was born in Algeria, grew up there, went to university, worked the early part of his career there, married there and he even represented them at football. What’s more, most of his works are set there, including probably his two best-known, L’etranger and La Peste.
I realise that things were different then (both my grandfathers would now be considered Irish but neither did) and that we’re getting off the topic, but Camus was clearly an Algerian (with a Spanish mum).
Not really. Algeria was a Department of France (rather than a de jure colony) with a French administration with French schools and he grew up in a French environment, albeit a (de facto) colonial one.
Let’s not forget the great Indian writer George Orwell.
And don’t forget that great Indian comedian, Spike Milligan 😛
So if they are rejecting “future time orientation” does that mean they admit the “Five Year Plan” doesn’t work?
“…the Seattle Public Schools district has beat a hasty retreat.”
(Link to statement by “Caprice D. Hollins, Psy.D. Director of Equity & Race Relations”.)
You know… it’s been remarkable, to me, how for decades some people have complained about “cardboard characters” in Ayn Rand. And then a scene like this rolls along in real life, and the real “cardboard characters” even have cardboard names.
And they fit, too.
It really is the damndest thing.
Billy:
You know…I tread lightly around the “Randroids”…but overall, I too am somewhat stunned at how often real events play out like an Ayn Rand pageant.
*shudder*
Nate — if, almost fifty years ago, now, That Woman had written that character with that name, the worldwide sneering and hilarity would have been scathing. Just like they have been for nearly fifty years. But, now, here’s that character, actually walking the land on two legs and being that character in real life.
People often congratulate The Onion on convergences between its “humor” and real life. The problem that Rand has with large swathes of people is that she didn’t do what she did with humor in mind, and for good reason: this stuff is far too serious to laugh at.
But she really did see it coming, and lots of people would do well to pay attention.