A sad casualty of DEI/Woke at Cambridge University

[Loren Pechtel]

Dig into "racism" and you find socioeconomic and cultural effects.

Literally everyone but you understands that sustained, intergenerational racism has socioeconomic and cultural effects. And I'm just being kind pretending that it is unintentional on your part, I think it is actually highly implausible that you write as well as you do yet are as stupid about race issues as you want us to believe you are.

There are lasting effects. You can't fix them your way. It would be like the ER doc treating a broken arm with a seatbelt.

I shudder to imagine what you think "my way" of lessening the impact of systemic racism might be...

In this particular case, if I had "my way", Cambridge would barely exist to be applied to, because it would be flatly illegal to prevent qualified applicants from attending college if they wish to do so, especially in UK where I would argue it already nominatively is. Race is the distraction of the day, not the true cause of the problem. They want you to hate black doctors and pretend they "stole" seats from white doctors, because that's safer for their bottom line than having the public ask why their government is preventing any prospective doctors from getting the education their citizenship supposedly guarantees them. But a university with a 5 billion dollar endowment is not actually unable to afford a few thousand new chairs. You should be less gullible. No one who waves a bigotry flag in your face and points you at your most disadvantaged neighbors has your best interests at heart. You're being used, and moreover, played for a fool. We all deserve better than that.

Cambridge would exist in a fair world. The reality is different schools have different admission standards that reflect different expectations of the students.

And the issue of stole seats is that seats are a limited quantity. My impression is that you are in a setting where admissions are unlimited, stealing seats therefore can't happen. But when there are a fixed number of seats if you hand a less qualified person a seat you took it from someone more qualified. There is no other way it could work.

And you don't understand about endowments--if they have $5B in endowments that lets them spend maybe $100M a year that they are already spending. It doesn't mean they can spend more.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Jason Arday had the distinction of being the youngest Black professor in the University of Cambridge’s history. His publications specifically focused on race and racism in the British educational system, and he didn’t shy away from using his own life in his examples. After the deliberate targeting of his veracity as an academic by another former Cambridge professor, dismissed due to his racism and white supremacist views, Prof. Arday came under intense scrutiny with regard to his Ph.D. thesis and the stories in his memoir. Besides making the point that his Ph.D. advisor and the university cleared him of any deliberate plagiarism allegations, I want to be clear that I don’t care whether or not any of these allegations against Prof. Arday were true

You are not even addressing the words I pointed out. Doesn't matter if he's guilty is admitting he's wrong.

i addressed your exact words hence the quotation marks around “a smoking gun for DEI”. Ironically, your response did not answer my question.

Repeating yourself doesn't change the fact that your answer does not address my point. The author of this article doesn't care if the allegations are true, his status as being black is more important. That's the reality of DEI in a nutshell. Good intentions, but remember what road is paved with them.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Dig into racism and you will find that socioeconomic forces enforce societal strata by race and firm expectations and perceptions of individuals according to ‘family background’ including and especially race and family income which gave historically been entertained and enforced through racist policies at every level from local to national.

Can you provide some examples of those racist policies, and how they're functioning today?

It's the standard sin of the left: perceiving people merely as components of a group. The fate of the average of the group is what counts, not why.

Strange. Because that seems to be exactly what you and Derec are doing.

No. We are saying to evaluate individuals, ignore what group they might be part of. Membership that is not by choice should have no bearing on the situation.

 

[laughing dog]

Jason Arday had the distinction of being the youngest Black professor in the University of Cambridge’s history. His publications specifically focused on race and racism in the British educational system, and he didn’t shy away from using his own life in his examples. After the deliberate targeting of his veracity as an academic by another former Cambridge professor, dismissed due to his racism and white supremacist views, Prof. Arday came under intense scrutiny with regard to his Ph.D. thesis and the stories in his memoir. Besides making the point that his Ph.D. advisor and the university cleared him of any deliberate plagiarism allegations, I want to be clear that I don’t care whether or not any of these allegations against Prof. Arday were true

You are not even addressing the words I pointed out. Doesn't matter if he's guilty is admitting he's wrong.

i addressed your exact words hence the quotation marks around “a smoking gun for DEI”. Ironically, your response did not answer my question.

Repeating yourself doesn't change the fact that your answer does not address my point. The author of this article doesn't care if the allegations are true, his status as being black is more important. That's the reality of DEI in a nutshell. Good intentions, but remember what road is paved with them.

The author's opinion is that Mr Arday was unfairly hounded because of his race. Given that one of the accusers is appears to be a racist, her opinion has some grounding in reality. But even if her opinion is biased, that opinion has nothing to do with DE, but with opposition to what she sees a racist attacks. People have been concerned about racism long before DEI was around.

Repeating your evasions does not change the reality - you have yet to answer my question. How is that woman's opinion a smoking gun for DEI given that she has absolutely nothing to do with Mr Arday's hiring or even Cambridge University?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Dig into racism and you will find that socioeconomic forces enforce societal strata by race and firm expectations and perceptions of individuals according to ‘family background’ including and especially race and family income which gave historically been entertained and enforced through racist policies at every level from local to national.

Can you provide some examples of those racist policies, and how they're functioning today?

It's the standard sin of the left: perceiving people merely as components of a group. The fate of the average of the group is what counts, not why.

Strange. Because that seems to be exactly what you and Derec are doing.

No. We are saying to evaluate individuals, ignore what group they might be part of. Membership that is not by choice should have no bearing on the situation.

But you are saying to evaluate individuals based on individual achievement while at the same time you are judging how the aggregate of actual evaluations have gone across groups... based on average metrics across groups.

 

[Politesse]

Cambridge would exist in a fair world. The reality is different schools have different admission standards that reflect different expectations of the students.

Calling blatant, undisguised class favoritism and greed "just reality" in a rhetorical sense, changes none of its effects on actual, observable and measurable reality.

 

[Toni]

Reminds me of a conversation I had with a black South African black businessman when I was in Mumbai in 2003. He wanted Apartheid back. Not because he was for Apartheid. But because it was dismantled in a bad way. Each South African company needed a quota of blacks. The blacks who got hired becasue of the quota knew they were, so they didn't work. His black employees didn't work. His white employees did. His words. Inplication, South African DEI killed the ambition of blacks. This was in 2003. Since South Africa has gone from a healthy economy on par with Europe, to a standard dysfunctional African post-colonial economy. I know this wasn't the only reason it's economy has tanked. But I am sure it didn't help.

Interesting how all of your "solutions" to social ills involve reducing a negligible harm to whites by greatly harming Blacks instead. It's almost as though you are... what's the word for that again?

You think it's "negligible harm" to exclude skilled and motivated white people in South Africa from jobs? And you think it's "great harm" to expect black South Africans to competently do the jobs they were hired for rather than just being tokens that let's their employer tick a box?

I'm not sure I understand the version of "harm" you're working from.

The point is that no one should be excluded because of race. For centuries and well into the 20th century, it was very common place. It still happens. I've watched white co-workers who disliked another co-worker of color attribute all sorts of characteristics based on race upon the object of their dislike. I had to threaten to report a colleague to the head of the lab--not the intermediaries but the head of the lab or to HR if he would not stop referring to a black coworker as boy. A few years ago.

There are still some like that but other opportunities exist. It is a nuisance problem, not the limiting issue it used to be. Everyone sometimes gets treated unfairly, you can't hope to squash it all and the attempt causes more harm than benefit. Zero is never the optimum number of defects.

What dies that mean: It’s a nuisance problem? Not a limiting issue as it used to be?

Please explain

 

[Toni]

Your story made a point of emphasizing that the only reason your parents succeeded is because they're white, and that if they had been black success would have been unachievable.

I think you're overestimating the role of race in success within the last half a century.

The breadth and depth of the effects of racism varies by region. I live in a “liberal” state where until about 15 years ago, the local newspaper only printed the photos of black criminals in a town where the population was over 95% white and so were the criminals.

So, it may be the case you are underestimating the role of race in success in the last half of the century.

I think Tony’s mistake was saying “impossible,” and Emily seems to be treating “possible” as if all that Jim Crow shit was just decorative.

Also, Tony’s story goes from the Great Depression to buying a house in the early ’60s. How did we get to “the last half century”?

It’s definitely a different t world now, especially in my home town. Well into adulthood, I learned from school friends who had also moved away that my hometown was mentioned in the Green Book as an avoid. My mother’s stepfather was in the Klan, something we did not know until many years after he died—but was only a little surprising. Aside from the disgusting racism which we were well aware of, he could be a very kind and generous person, despite being of very modest means. He took in two foster kids during the Great Depression and always donated apples from his orchard to the local school. Which did not erase or even mitigate the rampant racism. Mentioned only for the contradiction. I do not understand the enormous blind spots and never did, even as a young child.

But that is the atmosphere in which my parents grew up—north of the Mason Dixon and technically desegregated but that didn’t mean that if a black family tried to move into my hometown, they would not find a burning cross on their lawn.

No, I don’t think that a black man born where my father was born and growing up in the circumstances under which he grew up would have made it to a position as high as my dad did, especially with only a high school diploma. I saw too much ugly stuff to believe otherwise.

I still find that as horrifying as I did as a kid.

But: I will say that now my old high school is 40% minority students, including but not limited to black and Hispanic students. During my school days, there were maybe 2 Hispanic families who sent kids to my high school.

Yes, times had changed by the time I was in high school, more than 50 years ago and have changed much more since then.

I listen to former classmates bemoan how things have changed. A lot of warehouses and fulfillment centers stand on where there used to be beautiful fields of corn, beans, some wheat and plenty of hay. They are very ugly but they have brought in significant money and diversity, both urgently needed. Unfortunately a lot of traffic too. You got to take the bitter with the sweet, I guess.

 

[Toni]

DEI is racist. It reduces people to a skin colour, making all other attributes irrelevant.

That is objectively false. "...making all other attributes irrelevant". That is ridiculous. If that were the case, African Americans that dropped out of high school would be admitted to medical school. The blind would be hired as bus drivers. Monolingual Hispanics hired as translators.

This is crux of the anti-DEI nonsense. The lie that it is only about race or gender or disability. People like Dr. Z need to exaggerate the influence of DEI in hiring or admissions in order to make it look like a big dirty secret.

He went too far. It's not all other attributes irrelevant, it's all other attributes are secondary to what group they are in.

To you, sure.