This week's top woke fauxgressive idiot

[AthenaAwakened]

I can see why. White supremacists have clearly completed their long march through the institutions and its white supremacists all the way down, right?

I can understand why someone prone to hysterical over-reaction would post such a ridiculous straw man, but why would you?

You are more afraid of violent white supremacists than of CRT peddlers. Why? How many violent white supremacists do you encounter each day? At work, at home, shopping for groceries?

I encounter zero. If there are white supremacists at my work, I have no idea of it, because social standards so condemns violent white supremacy nobody would dare to admit it. And I have not met or interacted with violent white supremacists. (A couple of years ago, I was assaulted by a drug addict on a bus because he thought I was "looking" at him, but we were both white, so I'm pretty sure race didn't play into it).

But in the American academy, American for-profit corporations, and American public schools in far left districts (San Francisco particularly) - and in Canada and Australia and the UK as well - it is a matter of faith to proclaim that all institutions and conventions are systemically racist (including the concept of merit), that non-white minorities that achieve higher than whites are white adjacent enablers (multi-racial whiteness), that non-equal outcomes means systemic racism. White people (and cis white heterosexual men especially) can be castigated for the actions of some of their ancestors and are de-racialised by the very people who think 'white people' racialise others.

High schools that achieved prestige by being selective are now destroying their own value because merit is racist.

Medical schools in the febrile grip of CRT madness continue to select students who have lower medical aptitude in order to achieve something approaching racial 'representativeness'. Meanwhile, all the posturing and virtue signalling in the world cannot improve the higher black failure rate in the USMLEs, a failure rate easily statistically predictable given the lower overall aptitude and achievement scores of black medical students compared to white medical students.

No. I am not afraid of violent white supremacists. I am afraid of society destroying its own value and achievements for a vision built on an illusion.

There is quite a bit in this quote that is not right, but one thing in particular that is not right is this:

High schools that achieved prestige by being selective are now destroying their own value because merit is racist.

Merit isn't racist. Merit is classist.

A great deal of what passes for merit is advantage and dumb luck. As someone who has taught in the public schools of NC and worked as a private tutor, I can assure you, those test scores you vaunt as evidence of merit are in most cases evidence of extra hours of tutoring, parents with the money to expose their children to greater learning experiences, and students who, for whatever reason, caught the attention of their teachers in such a way as to make those teachers take an interest in those students.

Success for one is a group effort for many.

 

[Metaphor]

There is quite a bit in this quote that is not right, but one thing in particular that is not right is this:

High schools that achieved prestige by being selective are now destroying their own value because merit is racist.

Merit isn't racist. Merit is classist.

If I'm correct, you are back on the board after an extended absence (I too had an extended absence). Welcome back.

When I say 'merit is racist', I of course do not mean to imply I believe merit is racist. I am merely echoing the claims of people who believe CRT.

A great deal of what passes for merit is advantage and dumb luck. As someone who has taught in the public schools of NC and worked as a private tutor, I can assure you, those test scores you vaunt as evidence of merit are in most cases evidence of extra hours of tutoring, parents with the money to expose their children to greater learning experiences, and students who, for whatever reason, caught the attention of their teachers in such a way as to make those teachers take an interest in those students.

Success for one is a group effort for many.

I believe that the people who are admitted into, and practise medicine, should be the people who have the most medical aptitude and will make the best doctors (they are the ones who merit it the most).

Now, of course medical aptitude will be influenced by many factors, including your K-12 education, the nutrition you had as a child, your parents wealth, being in a two-parent household, how much your parents cared about your education, how naturally gifted you are, how much you devote to studying, how much you are willing to give up, and how much you have already done to prove yourself (such as displaying academic achievement).

None of those factors is evenly distributed, and that is perhaps unfortunate, but it's also reality. Some of these things can be changed and some cannot. But pretending that we can change medical aptitude after someone has finished high school and already has a degree, or we can simply treat them as if they really would have had a higher aptitude had circumstances been better for them, does not help anyone. It does not help the student who fails the USMLE. It does not help the medical school that has more fails than it needed to have. It does not help society to have fewer qualified doctors than it would have had.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

If I'm correct, you are back on the board after an extended absence (I too had an extended absence). Welcome back.

When I say 'merit is racist', I of course do not mean to imply I believe merit is racist. I am merely echoing the claims of people who believe CRT.

A great deal of what passes for merit is advantage and dumb luck. As someone who has taught in the public schools of NC and worked as a private tutor, I can assure you, those test scores you vaunt as evidence of merit are in most cases evidence of extra hours of tutoring, parents with the money to expose their children to greater learning experiences, and students who, for whatever reason, caught the attention of their teachers in such a way as to make those teachers take an interest in those students.

Success for one is a group effort for many.

I believe that the people who are admitted into, and practise medicine, should be the people who have the most medical aptitude and will make the best doctors (they are the ones who merit it the most).

Now, of course medical aptitude will be influenced by many factors, including your K-12 education, the nutrition you had as a child, your parents wealth, being in a two-parent household, how much your parents cared about your education, how naturally gifted you are, how much you devote to studying, how much you are willing to give up, and how much you have already done to prove yourself (such as displaying academic achievement).

None of those factors is evenly distributed, and that is perhaps unfortunate, but it's also reality. Some of these things can be changed and some cannot. But pretending that we can change medical aptitude after someone has finished high school and already has a degree, or we can simply treat them as if they really would have had a higher aptitude had circumstances been better for them, does not help anyone. It does not help the student who fails the USMLE. It does not help the medical school that has more fails than it needed to have. It does not help society to have fewer qualified doctors than it would have had.

I'm not saying you can take a 25 year old who never took a science class and turn him into a brain surgeon. I am saying that merit in a sociological sense is an illusion. We would do better to steer clear of it as an excuse for failure and to instead concentrate on improving educational opportunity for all.

 

[Keith&Co.]

My wife taught for seventeen years. She couldn't get her students to stop using 'gay' as an insult, to bring a pencil to class each day, or to stop being late to school because they stopped for Starbucks. The effectiveness of teacher influence is grossly overestimated by fearmongers.

I dunno about that. Judging by the current state of the world (being the ghetto that it is) I think there are a shit ton of teachers like Ingrid Seyer-Ochi putting their own spin on education.

Each teacher gets each kid for a few hours a week. Compare that to the time they spend on their phone.
Unless we're actually handing out pitchforks and psychoactive drugs, we can hardly even compete, unless it's with a message they're already receptive to.
And they would have adopted that attitude somewhere else...

 

[Gospel]

My wife taught for seventeen years. She couldn't get her students to stop using 'gay' as an insult, to bring a pencil to class each day, or to stop being late to school because they stopped for Starbucks. The effectiveness of teacher influence is grossly overestimated by fearmongers.

I dunno about that. Judging by the current state of the world (being the ghetto that it is) I think there are a shit ton of teachers like Ingrid Seyer-Ochi putting their own spin on education.

Each teacher gets each kid for a few hours a week. Compare that to the time they spend on their phone.
Unless we're actually handing out pitchforks and psychoactive drugs, we can hardly even compete, unless it's with a message they're already receptive to.
And they would have adopted that attitude somewhere else...

Honestly, I agree with you. None of my teachers had anything to do with who I am today. According to their opinions I should be dead right now. Still think they do have influence on others though as I've encountered quote a few of their pets during my travels through the US educational system.

 

[cycomiko]

Is nobody going to point out that ISO didn't actually say "mittens = white privilege" or am I the only one that read what was available in the link? Her point, from what I can tell, is that being able to dress that casually and act disinterested at such a meaningful event is what she viewed as white privilege. That seems to imply that if a black woman had dressed casually for such an event that she'd be skewered for not showing respect for the occasion. Like the odd reaction to Kamala Harris on the vogue cover being too "casual" or Obama's tan suit backlash. I'm not in any way saying I agree with this teacher lady but maybe we should discuss her actual view rather than the dumbed down version in the OP.

I can see her point to an extent, if it really is how I read it, but she did seem to take it to an extreme rather quickly.

 

[Gospel]

I like the tl,dr version about mittens and white privilege & think it's an accurate summary deserving of an A+.

 

[cycomiko]

I like the tl,dr version about mittens and white privilege & think it's an accurate summary deserving of an A+.

fair enough. if you want a taste of the white privilege but still want to be able to easily hold the blunt you could grab a pair of the gloves i wear for snowboarding. they're called trigger mittens. like regular mittens but your index finger has it's own sleeve so your thumb and index are free to pinch.

 

[Gospel]

SOLD!

 

[Elixir]

The effectiveness of teacher influence is grossly overestimated by fearmongers.

Obviously we need more people like Margie the Qaren Lady on government education committees.
I bet your wife never tried the AR15 method of instruction, right?

 

[thebeave]

Bernie's mittens be racist, y'all! Or at least so says a woke San Francisco teacher and SF Chronicle writer.

Did Bernie's inauguration outfit epitomize 'white privilege'? A San Francisco teacher thinks so.

Original article on SF Chronicle. Paywalled, as if anybody would pay for that dreck.
S.F. high school students get a lesson in subtle white privilege

Actually, I think the teacher may have a point. Compare Bernie's picture to that of Amanda Gorman, the inaugural poet:



It's cold day, and she has NO mittens at all, or a warm puffy jacket like Bernie. No winter hat either, just some weird red band in her hair. I suspect she tried to get decent mittens for the event, but the local Salvation Army told her, "We don't sell big, warm mittens to black people".

 

[Keith&Co.]

The effectiveness of teacher influence is grossly overestimated by fearmongers.

Obviously we need more people like Margie the Qaren Lady on government education committees.
I bet your wife never tried the AR15 method of instruction, right?

Which is why she lasted 17 years in the business, where i would have maybe made it three days....

 

[laughing dog]

I can see why. White supremacists have clearly completed their long march through the institutions and its white supremacists all the way down, right?

I can understand why someone prone to hysterical over-reaction would post such a ridiculous straw man, but why would you?

You are more afraid of violent white supremacists than of CRT peddlers. Why? How many violent white supremacists do you encounter each day? At work, at home, shopping for groceries?

The assault on the US capitol involved white supremacists. Here a list of white supremacists involved in US domestic terrorism (https://www.newsweek.com/here-list-suspected-white-supremacists-suspected-domestic-terrorism-2019-1469700). Anders Brevik is a white supremacist. Unlike CRTers, white supremacists have an observable track record and propensity for violence.

Violence is directly tangibly destructive, ideas are not directly tangible destructive. White supremacy is a real problem in the US with tangible destructive results. CRT is not a real problem with tangible destructive results except to incite bigots, racists, and conservatives into flights of unfounded fear.

I encounter zero. If there are white supremacists at my work, I have no idea of it, because social standards so condemns violent white supremacy nobody would dare to admit it. And I have not met or interacted with violent white supremacists. (A couple of years ago, I was assaulted by a drug addict on a bus because he thought I was "looking" at him, but we were both white, so I'm pretty sure race didn't play into it).

But in the American academy, American for-profit corporations, and American public schools in far left districts (San Francisco particularly) - and in Canada and Australia and the UK as well - it is a matter of faith to proclaim that all institutions and conventions are systemically racist (including the concept of merit), that non-white minorities that achieve higher than whites are white adjacent enablers (multi-racial whiteness), that non-equal outcomes means systemic racism. White people (and cis white heterosexual men especially) can be castigated for the actions of some of their ancestors and are de-racialised by the very people who think 'white people' racialise others.

High schools that achieved prestige by being selective are now destroying their own value because merit is racist.

Medical schools in the febrile grip of CRT madness continue to select students who have lower medical aptitude in order to achieve something approaching racial 'representativeness'. Meanwhile, all the posturing and virtue signalling in the world cannot improve the higher black failure rate in the USMLEs, a failure rate easily statistically predictable given the lower overall aptitude and achievement scores of black medical students compared to white medical students.

Cool story bro. Maybe you could sell the screenplay to the SyFy network.

No. I am not afraid of violent white supremacists. I am afraid of society destroying its own value and achievements for a vision built on an illusion.

The irony of that is truly amazing.

 

[TSwizzle]

1. It's wacky.
2. It's fairly innocuous.
3. It's unlikely to cause any tangible harm to anyone.

Innocuous, unlikely to cause harm ? WTF ? This nut bar is a teacher and teaching this nonsense to her students it seems.

{snip} The effectiveness of teacher influence is grossly overestimated by fearmongers.

It's hard to measure but I still think this nut bar is in the wrong job.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The effectiveness of teacher influence is grossly overestimated by fearmongers.

Obviously we need more people like Margie the Qaren Lady on government education committees.
I bet your wife never tried the AR15 method of instruction, right?

Which is why she lasted 17 years in the business, where i would have maybe made it three days....

We all perfectly know why you'd been out of the job in three days as a teacher in school.

 

[Metaphor]

Violence is directly tangibly destructive, ideas are not directly tangible destructive. White supremacy is a real problem in the US with tangible destructive results. CRT is not a real problem with tangible destructive results except to incite bigots, racists, and conservatives into flights of unfounded fear.

laughing dog, you once said that a woman slapping a man is not necessarily 'violence'.

You also appear oblivious to the constant chant of the Woke left that words are violence. The Woke left thinks misgendering is violence. Not 'entails' violence. Is violence.

CRT ideas have been implemented at federal, state, and local levels. Major institutions, including universities and multi-billion dollar corporations, have embraced it. You are deeply deluded if you think critical race theory has not had more impact in the last few decades than white supremacy.

Cool story bro. Maybe you could sell the screenplay to the SyFy network.

No. They don't make documentaries. Anyway, the movie is never as good as the book.

 

[laughing dog]

Violence is directly tangibly destructive, ideas are not directly tangible destructive. White supremacy is a real problem in the US with tangible destructive results. CRT is not a real problem with tangible destructive results except to incite bigots, racists, and conservatives into flights of unfounded fear.

laughing dog, you once said that a woman slapping a man is not necessarily 'violence'.

That is true. But given the context, it is irrelevant.

You also appear oblivious to the constant chant of the Woke left that words are violence. The Woke left thinks misgendering is violence. Not 'entails' violence. Is violence.

It takes an extreme level of obtuseness to equate physical violence to claims of non-physical violence. FFS, get a grip.

CRT ideas have been implemented at federal, state, and local levels. Major institutions, including universities and multi-billion dollar corporations, have embraced it. You are deeply deluded if you think critical race theory has not had more impact in the last few decades than white supremacy.

Since the US's current social structure is due in part to white supremacy, your claim is laughable.
Right now, the US is going through the last gasps of white people (mostly men) losing power. In part, it is what drives the reactionary hysteria that your descriptions of the current state of civilization exemplifies.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In a world of 6 billion people, there are lots of absurd ideas promoted by people. So, nothing like this is surprising. Nor is it noteworthy.

Yup. Unless you show the nuts are either widespread (ie, Q) or in power (many of the loons in Islam) it means nothing.

 

[Metaphor]

It takes an extreme level of obtuseness to equate physical violence to claims of non-physical violence. FFS, get a grip.

I did not equate them. I disagree that words are violence. It's the Woke left, which includes CRT believers, that equates them.

Since the US's current social structure is due in part to white supremacy, your claim is laughable.

The claim that CRT beliefs are believed and implemented by both government and non-government actors in the US is not 'laughable', it's reality.

Right now, the US is going through the last gasps of white people (mostly men) losing power. In part, it is what drives the reactionary hysteria that your descriptions of the current state of civilization exemplifies.

Sure hun. I'm the one who thinks black people and women can't wear mittens on cold days.

 

[laughing dog]

I did not equate them. I disagree that words are violence. It's the Woke left, which includes CRT believers, that equates them.

In other words, you had no relevant point.

The claim that CRT beliefs are believed and implemented by both government and non-government actors in the US is not 'laughable', it's reality.

Didn't dispute your claim, so again, you have no point.

Sure hun. I'm the one who thinks black people and women can't wear mittens on cold days.

At least this is explicit babble.