Whether one calls it cultural Marxism, intersectionality, or some nasty combination of the two, universities continue to publish material that lazily argue that white Americans create toxic conditions that need to be confronted and eliminated.
Don’t be polite. That’s racist.
For example, Robert Wenzel points to a Wall Street Journal article that discusses an effort to combat civility because it “is a manifestation of white patriarchy”. In the article, Steve Salerno writes that two University of Northern Iowa professors are spearheading this campaign because “civility within higher education is a racialized, rather than universal, norm.”
[T]heir core contention is twofold: One, that civility, as currently practiced in America, is a white construct. Two, that in a campus setting, the “woke” white student’s endeavor to avoid microaggressions against black peers is itself a microaggression—a form of noblesse oblige whereby white students are in fact patronizing students of color. Not only that, but by treating black students with common courtesy and expecting the same in return, white students elide black grievances, bypassing the “race talk” that is supposed to occur in preamble to all other conversations. Got it?
It is bad enough that someone came up with this idiotic theory. It also appears that it has been put into practice.
Something similar is happening in collegiate debate, where historically high standards of decorum are under siege as manifestations of white patriarchal thinking. So are the factual and logical proofs that debaters are normally expected to offer in arguing their case. Some participants are challenging the format, goals and ground rules of debate itself, in some cases refusing even to stick to the topic at hand.
Again the driving theory is that all conversations must begin by addressing race. As one top black debater, Elijah J. Smith, writes, debate must, before all else, “acknowledge the reality of the oppressed.” He resists the attempt on the part of white debaters to “distance the conversation from the material reality that black debaters are forced to deal with every day.”
Mr. Smith and his think-alikes seek to transform debate into an ersatz course in Black Studies. In a major 2014 debate finals, two Towson University students sidestepped the nominal resolution, which had to do with restricting a president’s war powers, in order to argue that war “should not be waged against n—as.” Two other students decided that rather than debate aspects of U.S. policy in the Mideast, they’d discuss how the common practices of the debate community itself perpetuate racism. Other recent debates involving black participants have devolved into original rap music.
A few debates have featured profane outbursts and even the hurling of furniture. In one memorable case, when the clock ran out on a student during the championship round, he yelled, “F— the time!”
The “existential crisis” of white Christians
Meanwhile, an Morgan State University associate professor claims that white Christians are experiencing an “existential crisis” due to the declining religiosity of white America.
According to Campus Reform:
Darrius Hills, who teaches African American religion at MSU, claimed in the journal Black Theology that white Christians have lost their “spiritual centre” and are collectively facing an “existential crisis” that has led them to turn to Donald Trump for help “ameliorating these racial and religious anxieties.”
Before criticizing Hills’s thesis, it is important to note there is an element of truth within it. Princeton economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case published a report finding that from 1999 to 2014, not only has the death rate for middle-aged white Americans been increasing, the cause of that increase is due primarily to suicide and afflictions stemming from substance abuse. The mortality rate is most pronounced among those with no more than a high school education. To Dr. Deaton, the only phenomena comparable to these “deaths of despair” is the AIDS epidemic.
When one considers the de-industrialization of the United States over the past 30 years, particularly in flyover country, it shouldn’t be a surprise that one consequence would be despair among those who lost previously stable jobs. Trump clearly tapped into that frustration, and helped him win the White House.
However, the leap in Hills’s thesis occurs in the presumption that white Americans voted for Trump to ameliorate “racial and religious anxieties”.
Although the research makes no mention of any interviews or focus groups with white Christians—a common feature of qualitative research—Hills nonetheless contends that white religious people are in a perpetual state of despair.
“It is a perpetual despair that results from the acknowledgment and the realization of personal, social, and political reconfiguration and its impact upon the hierarchical positionality of White communities,” he asserts.
Interpreted through the lens of critical race theory [which will be discussed below – Mr. Fool], Hills argues that white American males are uniquely discontented in the current year, claiming that they have feelings of “aggrieved entitlement” because of the rising minority population in America, and have therefore “proven to be eager and willing theological bedfellows.”
Hills adds that white Christian support for Donald Trump “raises disturbing questions about the nature and mission of evangelical Christian thought as it pertains to racial and religious reconciliation,” calling the current “racial divide” among white Christians a “continuation of [Christianity’s] socio-religious platforms since the eighteenth century.”
For those wondering what “critical race theory” is, according to the UCLA School of Public Affairs’s Critical Race Theory website:
[Critical Race Theory] recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color. CRT also rejects the traditions of liberalism and meritocracy. Legal discourse says that the law is neutral and colorblind, however, CRT challenges this legal “truth” by examining liberalism and meritocracy as a vehicle for self-interest, power, and privilege. CRT also recognizes that liberalism and meritocracy are often stories heard from those with wealth, power, and privilege. These stories paint a false picture of meritocracy; everyone who works hard can attain wealth, power, and privilege while ignoring the systemic inequalities that institutional racism provides.
In other words, the “scholar” (hee hee hee) does not need to find a specific person do anything specifically to argue that a racist act occurred. He or she merely assumes that racism exists, and that any institution that perpetuates it must be destroyed. Full stop.
In fact, “Professor” Willis co-authored an article with Tommy Curry, a Texas A&M “professor” who argued in a podcast that “in order to be liberated, some white people may have to die.”
It is simply astounding that universities not only publish such mad gibberish, but hire people to write it. If this continues, it will only be a matter of time before the reputation of the academy, as far as the liberal arts are concerned, evaporates.
In the meantime, it appears that Americans will be forced to suffer through such idiocy.
The post The academy’s demonization of white Americans continues appeared first on A Simple Fool.
Source: A Simple Fool – The academy’s demonization of white Americans continues