One downside of America's aspiration to be a classless society is that there is little if any sense of working class society. Being working class is seen as simply not earning enough, quite probably a personal failing, and in any case something that you should leave behind as soon as you're able. Widespread unionization after World War 2 might have mitigated this, but that state of affairs only lasted for 30-40 years.
It's also true that shit rolls downhill, and this goes for matters of wokeness as much as anything else. Whenever a corporation says that they "need to do better", "doing better" almost invariably means throwing an employee or two under the bus, putting the survivors in awkward encounter groups, and making sure none of it effects the way the CEO and other top executives live.
And of course the new digital realm of social media often seems dedicated to increasing the speed at which a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.
All three dynamics can be seen at play in the recent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/us/smith-college-race.html">turmoil</a> at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. A student teacher aid was living in the dorms in the summertime, when they are otherwise closed. A janitor didn't know she had gotten special permission, only that someone was hanging out at the dorm which wasn't supposed to be open to Smith students. He'd been instructed to call security, which is what he did.
The student posted about the incident on Facebook. In the absence of any evidence she accused the workers of racism, including a couple of food service workers who had nothing to do with any of it. The result has been the sort of ugly witch hunt more associated with Salem than Northampton, and people have actually lost their jobs.
In the face of all this, the school's administration has been worse than useless in defending its employees' rights. And as has often seemed to be the case in recent years, whatever the ACLU's concern is, it's not civil liberties.
The name of the student who made the accusations is published in the NYT article. I'm not using it here because she's not the point. Young adults are raging narcissists, and probably always have been. And look at the examples they're given today. But adults, college presidents very much included, are supposed to act as a check on their narcissism. That's their job, and they're not doing it.
2 comments:
This is an excellent summary of the issue, the particular incident at the university as well as the situation in general - along with some amusing and pointed analogies.
It's amazing to me that anyone believes CRT will make things better for everyone because it's so obviously deceitful that it's a wonder anyone would agree to support the exercise. Last week I read Bari Weiss's article about Jodi Shaw, the woman who resigned her position at Smith over the ongoing bullying after this incident. She wrote a long letter to the president of the school which was published and widely read. Before making the letter public she refused to accept settlement money that would have been tied to a non-disclosure agreement.
The security guard who was called to the lounge by the janitor recalled going through multiple training sessions about race and intersectionality at Smith after the incident, which he said left workers cynical. He left his job shortly after.
'I don't know if I believe in white privilege,' he said. 'I believe in money privilege.'
I think what we see developing here is fertile ground for a widespread movement. How about 'Rationalists of the world unite' for a slogan?
Thank you very much. :)
CRT is, among other things, a self-perpetuating scam. Of course it's going to make things worse. Only by things being worse can CRT advocates make the case for their own necessity. I can only hope that a sufficient number of people push back. I know a bit about Jodi Shaw and like her. She was "just" a school librarian but seems to have a better idea of what a school should aspire to than a number of deans.
Can't blame the guy for leaving that job. At the same time, I figure Smith got what they wanted as well, which was to fill that position with a newbie who wouldn't dare make any waves. And yes, money privilege shows no signs of going away.
The nice thing about the real world is that this kind of dysfunctional thinking doesn't take root as much there. Which is why the real world is one of the things that cancel culture wants to cancel.
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