1. At a meeting of Dallas county commissioners, a problem occurred when a white council member referred to the office as a "black hole" due to issues with paperwork being lost. One of his fellow members took offense to this, claimed that the issue was actually a instance of a "white hole" and demanded an apology for the previously-unknown racial epithet.
Seriously?!? If we are to assume that a celestial body which has an absence of light (hence the "black" in it's name) is racist and perhaps by extension the entire natural universe, then what hope do we have for racial reconciliation in our world.
2. Keith Sampson, a janitor at Purdue University-Indianapolis is in the midst of a legal dispute regarding his reading of a scholarly book called "Notre Dame vs the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan" during his break time at work. The fact that, by virtue of its title alone, the book seems to be an homage to a victory over racism and that it was and is readily available in the universities library makes no difference to the complainant or the Affirmative Action Officer whose case it has become. Inexplicably the charges have since be changed from the book itself to other unnamed (and thus, likely nonexistent) harassing behaviors.
I guess there are some limits to the lack of self-awareness on which these academics seem to have a monopoly. Apparently someone looked back and realized the obvious hypocrisy in being a book-burning, civil liberties organization. It's a pity that university diversity nazis don't feel this shame more often.
3. In England, nursery school staff have been advised to keep an eye out for racists as young as 3 years old. While I am firm believer in starting early with excessive discipline on children who have little or no concept of their actions (read with sarcasm), I think they may have gone off the rails on this one. One of the included "racist" behaviors is dislike of unfamiliar foods.
Apparently the correlation is that if a pre-schooler doesn't like curry or jerk chicken, it's only a matter of time before they are attacking their South Asian or Caribbean classmates with sharpened graham crackers.
I must give credit to Crunchy Con and Little Green Footballs for bringing these 3 stories to my attention.
Am I alone in my despair for the future of logic in western civilization?
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I remember reading about the janitor issue--it is a bit crazy. It has definitely made me paranoid about what I read at work--I believe my worst book at work was when I was teaching myself crochet and had The Happy Hooker open on my desk. I thought twice and put it away.
ReplyDeleteI was teaching a lesson on statistics and teaching about sampling, including taking a stradified random sample. Which means you calculate the percents of different type of people in the population, and pick a sample that is also equally diverse. Of course we counted the amount of black, hispanic, asian, and white kids in the class to give an example, then found a good sample. 30 seconds later I found myself having to teach them the difference between being a racist and simpling collecting data for the sake of statistics, and learning.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should have a few more of these types of lessons in schools. And yet every other teacher thought I was crazy that I, a white teacher, would ever talk about race. Seriously is this what we have come to. Statistics about race are used in our newspapers everyday. And one more the news is riddled with misleading data because of the manipulation of sample. And yet because I am white I can't teach my students how NOT to be mislead by the statistics, because I can't bring up race at all. Now that is just crazy! I thought I was supposed to educate not sit by and watch ignorace grow.