Wokal Distance Profile picture
Sep 23, 2020 19 tweets 7 min read Read on X
1/
"No one ever becomes an Antiracist."

-Ibram Kendi, Author of: "How To Be An Antiracist," "Be Antiracist," and "Antiracist baby."

If you ever wanted proof that wokeness is a sham and it's academics are total frauds, there it is.

So, let's talk about Antiracism

A THREAD🧵
2/
Race in America is a difficult topic, and must be dealt with carefully, rigorously, and with an eye to helping people grow, learn, and heal. Americans of all races want to put an end to racism, and doing that means getting this stuff right.

It MATTERS.
3/
Antiracism is neither careful nor rigorous.

Look at Ibram Kendi: first he says people have the ability to be antiracist, then he says no one ever becomes antiracist.

How are regular people supposed to make sense of this as they try to understand difficult racial issues?
4/
This is not going to work, people aren't going to be able to move forward when they get contradictory messages like this. So let's have a closer look at this shall we?

Kendi starts with an old trick: he redefines racism. Kendi doesn't see racism as a matter prejudice...
5/
In his book "how To Be An Antiracist," Kendi says “One either endorses the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist or racial equality as an antiracist.”

The idea here is that racism is not a state of mind, or a matter of the heart, it isn't about prejudice or intent...
6/
Kendi thinks antiracism is anything that moves toward racial equality, racism is anything that moves away from racial equality.
It doesn't matter why the inequality occurred because intentions never enter into it. Anything that creates or allows racial inequality is racist.
7/
If it is not clear by now, Kendi judges all policies by whether or not they produce equal OUTCOMES.

So ANY policy that allows unequal racial outcomes to continue is racist. Again, it makes no difference WHY the outcomes are different.

Racial inequality = racism. Period
8/
Let's use an example:
If more Asians per capita get into law school but more blacks per capita get into Physics programs, and physics makes more money, that means there is income inequality between Asians and Blacks. Kendi would say this means racism is present...
9/
It doesn't matter WHY Asians prefer law or Blacks prefer Physics, or WHY physics pays better. What matters is that there is racial inequality and therefore that system is racist and anyone that supports that system is racist.
10/
This is a demand for equality of outcome. And Kendi's solution, pictured below, is to allow an agency of un-elected people to ban policies and ideas the agency decides is racist.

He wants to BAN IDEAS.

This is utterly authoritarian.
11/
And if you think Kendi is kidding, he is not. Kendi was recently hired by Boston University and given a 10 million dollar grant by @jack to start the BU center for Antiracist Research, but his ideas about Antiracism are already showing up, and it is not good.
12/
Here you can see Boston University ( @BU_Tweets ) has a statement of academic freedom. That statement says very clearly: academics have a right to teach and learn in an atmosphere of "unfettered free inquirey," and are granted "full freedom to engage in research."
13/
Normally, such a strong policy would be enough. However, the Boston Playwrights' Theatre, which offers programs as part of the BU English Department, has already adopted Antiracist policies which violate the Boston University policy on academic freedom...
14/
This policy is in CLEAR violation of the @BU_Tweets policy on academic freedom.
Forcing professors to adopt an "Antiracist lens," and demanding quotas for which texts are used is a violation of the right of to professors decide what they will teach, and how they will teach it
15/
Here, from the same policy (source: bu.edu/bpt/about-our-…) we see a requirement that professors make a land acknowledgement at performances. This is nothing less then compelled speech, and is a clear violation of the professors right to teach what he or she sees fit.
16/
So Kendi has Just been hired, and already the woke elements of Boston University are violating the policy of academic freedom at that university. Why? because inequality is racist, and if academic freedom allows inequality to persist, then academic freedom is racist.
17/
This is the problem with Kendi's ideas about Antiracism.
1. There's no nuance about WHY outcomes occur
2. There's no consideration for peoples' intentions
3. There's no consistency; Kendi can't even make up his mind about whether you can become antiracist or not.
18/
.@DrIbram created a theory that functions as a blunt instrument for creating equal outcomes. His theory lacks the nuance to avoid running roughshod over people's lives, but the theory demands we give Antiracists the right to make policy. This is a recipe for authoritarianism
19/
In light of this, we ought to avoid using woke theories of "antiracism." This is not because we are in favor of racism, it is because we need ideas that will help us get rid of racism in a way that doesn't run roughshod over people's rights.

We need liberalism.

/fin

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More from @wokal_distance

Sep 19
1/
This U.S. government report is the most insane thing I've ever seen. It calls for:

-Men in women's prisons
-letting boys use girls washrooms in k-12
-cross-sex hormone access for foster kids
-lawsuits to help minors get hormones and surgery

It's way worse than you think /🧵 Image
2/
In the section on School and education on the chief concerns is making sure people "use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity."

In practice this means letting boys who identify as girls use the girls bathroom even if they have fully biology. Image
3/
The report says transgender inmates should be allowed to access facilities that align with their gender identity.

In practice this will mean fully functioning biological males who *identify* as female will have a right to be housed in women's prisons.

That's totally absurd Image
Read 22 tweets
Sep 9
I think Critical Theory is a lot like what Robert Nozick called Normative Sociology: "The study of what the causes of things *ought* to be"

Critical Theorists analyze problems in terms of what they *want* the cause to be, rather then what the cause of that problem actually is.
The result is that there are large number of errors because rather then dealing with the thing that is actually creating the problem, they end of trying to solve the problem by analyzing the thing that they were hoping was the cause of the problem.
A problem occurs when Critical Theorists doing "Normative Sociology" think everyone is obligated to agree that the cause of the problem is whatever the Critical Theorists say it is; and then go about morally shaming and scolding anyone who disagrees about the cause of the problem
Read 8 tweets
Sep 5
1/
The attack on Winston Churchill and the revisionist WWII history is a the right wing version of the "everything is problematic" move the woke have been using for years.

It's a right wing 1619 project that wants to destroy the "Post-war consensus" by making America look bad.
2/
This is a right-wing "Critical Theory" of America's involvement in WWII.

The goal is to delegitimize the American order that emerged in the wake of WWII, and so the people doing this magnify America's mistakes during WWII and minimize the horror of what the Nazi's did.
3/
Doing this allows them sow doubt as to who was really responsible for WWII and this then allows them to go about undercutting and subverting the moral authority that America gained by helping to defeat the Nazi's.

They want to drain the moral authority of post-war America.
Read 7 tweets
Sep 4
1/
Darryl Cooper is to WWII what Norman Finklestein is to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Cooper buries people in historical minutia knowing the average person isn't equipped with a deep enough understanding of WWII to properly contextualize the historical points Cooper uses.
2/
The average persons understanding of WWII does not have a high enough resolution to historically locate and properly contextualize the points Cooper brings up, so they aren't properly equipped to determine the relevance, importance, or implications of the facts Cooper presents
3/
When someone can't integrate a set of facts into their understanding of something, they can become intellectually disoriented and begin looking for a way to make sense of the new facts.

This disorientation is what Cooper is trying to create with his deluge of minutia.
Read 9 tweets
Sep 3
1/
Critical Theory gets almost everything wrong. Here's Why:🧵

There is a certain type of argument one often hears coming from the “woke” Social Justice left (often associated with Critical Theory), which claims that quite literally everything is political.
2/
The argument is that the intellectual force of every justification depends on accepting the value structure that is assumed by whatever it is one is defending. The defense of anything relies on values pre-supposed by what one is trying to defend.
3/
This argument is taken by Critical Theorists to be proof that rational justifications merely assume the values and validity of the very thing they are justifying, and so the justifications only work if you already accept the validity of the thing in question.
Read 23 tweets
Aug 31
Imagine how bewildering the world must seem to 10 year old boys:

Boys shirts are about being lazy and playing video games while Girls shirts are about being future CEO'S and leaders.

They call masculinity toxic and say boys are privileged while also saying the future is female
Image
Image
On the one hand if all the boys win, thats very bad cause boys winning is not fair to girls, but girls only like the boys who win.

And also, all girls winning is good, all boys winning is oppression.

How are 10 year old boys supposed to make sense of this?
I'm genuinely asking this because the male S U I C I D E epidemic is at an all time hight, and the rates of men offing thenselves starts to take off at 15.

This is a serious problem Image
Read 6 tweets

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