Dear Social Justice Warriors of Yale...

[Ray McCarthy]

'person of color' is preferred.

A stupid American alternative.
Every human except Albino people are coloured.

 

[Nick B]

'Colored person' is unacceptable; 'person of color' is preferred.
.

Prefered by who? I had a long conversation last week with a co-worker - an African guy who moved to the UK some 16 years ago. We got on to racism because we talked about cities vs rural life, and like me, he said he was sick of cities and crowds and didn't care if his was the only black family in a village, since racism was nothing like it was when he arrived in England.
I asked him what he thought about the term person of colour, he laughed and said it was ridiculous. He said 'I'm black, you're white. It isnt an insult, just obvious statement of fact.'

I've asked a few black people the same question (because I am not afraid to talk to people about sensitive issues) and not one has like the term poc.

So. Who is it that prefers this strange, and innapropriate term?

 

[MWagner]

The “stay in your lane” mentality that seems to undergird so much progressive discourse—only polyamorous green people really “get” the “polyamorous green experience,” and therefore only polyamorous greens should read and write about polyamorous greens, say—ignores our common humanity.
​

I can't fathom what people with such an outlook on life get out of literature. Where's the love of stories? The imagination? The yearning to experience other worlds and other lives lived? I'm skeptical that these people even have a genuine interest in art. It seems art is simply an arena in which to champion their ideological causes.

If you don't believe in our common humanity, or that literature can evoke universal truths in diverse settings and characters, then the classics are frankly wasted on you anyway.

And here's an insightful comment in response to the article galanx linked to:

All lot of the calls to "diversify" the canon seem to me like refusals to confront the extreme difference that comes from the passage of history. So Homer, Milton, Shakespeare all get grouped together as basically the same, simply because they were all "straight, white men" (categories that they would not themselves have recognized as we see them now). All of history, in this view, is just a long, unchanging series of Very Bad, Unenlightened Things, until a few years ago, when the enlightenment finally came.
​

Maybe students shouldn't take classical literature courses until they've learned enough history to put the literature into context. To regard the world before about 1960 as an undifferentiated era of ignorance and oppression is to suffer under a crippling intellectual handicap.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Shakespeare

Shakespeare and Peyps were at risk of being accused of being papists.
I think at least one playwright Shakespeare knew was executed. There's a reason why many of his plays were careful politically in terms of Tudor sensitivities.
Lots of writers of the "Classics" were not rich or powerful, just educated enough to be able to write.

 

[galanx]

A stupid American alternative.
Every human except Albino people are coloured.

Making one wonder why white people invented the term 'colored people', use of which to a white person in some places could have got you shot, beaten up, or arrested.

Amazingly enough, each culture has its own ethnic divisions , and its own tems for dealing with them, even Americans.

 

[galanx]

All lot of the calls to "diversify" the canon seem to me like refusals to confront the extreme difference that comes from the passage of history. So Homer, Milton, Shakespeare all get grouped together as basically the same, simply because they were all "straight, white men" (categories that they would not themselves have recognized as we see them now).

Of course Homer, Milton, and Shakespeare are grouped together in the canon- now, by us, no matter how they would have seen themselves- while Lady Murasaki, Li Bai, and Rumi are not. That's kind of the point.

 

[Nick B]

Making one wonder why white people invented the term 'colored people',..

Every ethnicity invents terms for other ethnicities.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

white people invented the term 'colored people'

I don't accept either of those terms for humans. They are not useful in the context they are usually applied.

 

[svalbard]

India Knight: Students these days are too mollycoddled to be at university

India Knight hits the nail on the head with this article.

 

[MWagner]

Shakespeare and Peyps were at risk of being accused of being papists.
I think at least one playwright Shakespeare knew was executed. There's a reason why many of his plays were careful politically in terms of Tudor sensitivities.

The ignorance of identity politics zealots to the historical divisions between Protestant and Catholic just shows how myopic their outlook really is. They're completely oblivious to any historical identities beyond their holy list of gender/race/sexuality. But that's to be expected from people who are psychologically driven to seek out simplicity above all else. To recognize any differentiation between straight white christian males would be to introduce nuance and complexity that deprives them of the comfort they so desperately seek in stark ideology.

Lots of writers of the "Classics" were not rich or powerful, just educated enough to be able to write.

Are you trying to suggest that being a white male didn't automatically make you rich and privileged?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Are you trying to suggest that being a white male didn't automatically make you rich and privileged?

I know that that's not a serious question.
Ask anyone not a Norman in 12th C England? Even a lot of the Normans were not not rich. It's no accident that almost all the names for live animals and birds are not French and all the names for meat on the table are French (though the Normans were not French originally).
Most Europeans till after WWII* were worse off than most minorities in USA today. Till 20th C, very few well off.
As for "Polish Nobility" after the Polish - Lithuanian commonwealth, I think the average shop keeper was better off.

In EVERY society in all ages, a small proportion of people control the wealth**, today as much as ever. This is actually WORSE today outside of Western Europe and North America. Also the proportion of women with wealth is far worse outside Europe and North America. The societies most under siege from "activists" are the least corrupt (apart maybe from Financial Institutions in some), most equal, most opportunities and wealthiest in the the world. That's why people want to go there.

is jealousy and ignorance sometimes a motive?

[* Traditionally, Artists, sculptors, writers, poets, furniture designers, Architects, clothes designers, scientists and musicians depended on the rich patrons. Today they depend on multinational corporations, or self publishing. Only a tiny fraction of creative people EVER have been well off. Did anyone ever go into the "Arts" as a quick rich scheme? Some had inherited wealth that allowed them to indulge in the Arts as a hobby, some of that sunk without trace and other items have benefited us all.]

[** Of the "West", the most discriminatory employers (against anyone not like themselves in politics, age, ethnic background and gender) are largely the "High Tech"/ "New Tech" companies, many but not all originated in "Silicon valley". Many care nothing for privacy, consumer rights, tax laws etc, practically non-violent sociopaths, but that's a different issue. Agitators in the "West" are picking the wrong targets.]

 

[MWagner]

The societies most under siege from "activists" are the least corrupt (apart maybe from Financial Institutions in some), most equal, most opportunities and wealthiest in the the world. That's why people want to go there.

There's no one so reluctant to recognize progress as a progressive. And that's the single biggest reason I don't regard progressive identity politics as a credible movement. You would think anyone interested in human liberation and tolerance would want to A) assess which societies have made the most progress on these fronts, and B) take note of how those societies came to achieve those gains.

But that would involve A) acknowledging that the West today isn't the worst society in history B) recognizing that the West has some vital cultural qualities that enabled social progress here rather than in China, India, or Egypt. Both of those fall afoul of the central belief of the radical left - that they grew up in a monstrous society, and any and all opponents of that society must be in the right. An ideology that so stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the empirical truth that the West today is closer to their ideals than any other society in history is not to be taken seriously. It's little more than a collective emotional tantrum.

 

[MWagner]

India Knight: Students these days are too mollycoddled to be at university

India Knight hits the nail on the head with this article.

A summary for those of us who don't subscribe to the Times?

 

[Toby Frost]

Both of those fall afoul of the central belief of the radical left - that they grew up in a monstrous society, and any and all opponents of that society must be in the right. An ideology that so stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the empirical truth that the West today is closer to their ideals than any other society in history is not to be taken seriously. It's little more than a collective emotional tantrum.

Well, I think that sums the whole thing up very nicely.

Actually, this whole Yale business reminds me of that old song by the Dead Kennedys, "Holiday in Cambodia":
"So you've been to school for a year or two, and you know you've seen it all..."

 

[Extollager]

MWagner, re your message #112 above:

"...College campuses are centers of contempt for business and for cultural norms alike. There, prestige is accorded to those who denounce entire classes of people as villains and who claim to speak on behalf of other classes labeled as victims. It is ironic that our institutions of higher education are so often the sources or drivers of our contempt for these two institutions--the market and the family. Both institutions are the product, and also the settings, of the kind of evolutionary process that appears to be responsible for the enormous economic, political, and social progress that the modern West has made. They have made possible a society successful, wealthy, and comfortable enough to reject the foundations of its own success."

Discuss here?--

Non-Profits vs. For-Profits: Accountability; College Campuses

 

[Extollager]

Here's a thoughtful essay on this topic.

Renewing the University > Publications > National Affairs

 

[Extollager]

"...the primary purpose of a college is to deliver to students the civilization’s deepest thought and art, so they can live their lives in the midst of greatness..."

Not so today.

Safe Spaces

 

[Extollager]

Here is an excellent lecture by the distinguished author and professor Gary Saul Morson that contrasts the achievement of the great Russian authors (including Svetlana Alexievich, Nobel Prize 2015, author of Secondhand Time), especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, with the reductive obsessions of the 19th-century Russian radicals and today's social justice warriors and theorists. Dr. Morson's talk begins about 4:00 and lasts about 50 minutes.

The title, "Pray for Chekhov," means that we should hope for an interest in the quotidian and the breadth of the human, as opposed to the devotion to the preconceptions of the "intelligentsia."

Pray for Chekhov: Or, What Russian Literature Can Teach Conservatives

The lecture seems to me timely and also to whet the appetite again for (re)reading these superlatively worthwhile masterpieces.

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

A summary for those of us who don't subscribe to the Times?

You don't have to subscribe. Just register. It's free and easy. Minimal hoops. They just want you to establish a nic and a password. They don't even make you go to your email to get a pass they send you.

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

India Knight: Students these days are too mollycoddled to be at university

India Knight hits the nail on the head with this article.

Spot on indeed. I hadn't encounterd Ms. Knight's work before. Anyone interested in this sort of thing might want to look at some of Mark Bauerlein's work. He is an english prof at Emory University and is in the trenches on the front line so to speak. His best known book is "The Dumbest Generation". It is closely reasoned, carefully documented, anticipates and rebuts the most standard excuses. Here is a short piece by him:
Emory's Mark Bauerlein doubles down on The Dumbest Generation - Atlanta Magazine
Or, if you're more the A/V type, search his name on youtube. He gives a lot of talks.