-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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2/ on racist resentment against white people and racialist identity politics, complete with the racist stereotyping.
This shows a continuity of thinking over a period of a decade, and there has been no take back, or explanation for the disgustingly racist tweets she made.
3/ Chris said he didn't care if she was fired, the point was to use her posts to force the New Yorker to choose between equal enforcement of bans on hiring racists who make racist content, or to be explicit that racism against Jews and whites is allowed...
The game being played by the "sex is a spectrum" people is to engage in a sleight of hand between the ontological question (what makes this thing what it is), epistemological question (how do we know this thing when we see it), and linguistic question (how do we define the word)
The tactic is to attack the definition by blurring the lines between the primary features that make the object what it is and define its function and the secondary features we use as proxy's for identifying the object when we encounter it "in the wild".
For example, the primary features of a pencil are the fact that it has a graphite tip that can be used to write erasable and that it is sized correctly for handwriting.
The secondary features are that it is yellow (on the shaft) and pink (on the eraser)
1/ Leftist activism uses exactly this dynamic as a strategy. The goal is to create hot-takes that generate enormous outrage (IE: Syndey Sweeney ads are fascist) which bait people into reacting by writing response pieces or by dunking on it
2/ By using the negative engagement and dunking as free advertising, the leftists is able to provoke more outrage.
They repeat this process until people have outrage fatigue, and the hot take no longer provokes strong reactions, and stating the hot-take no longer causes outrage.
3/ Once the hot-take no longer causes outrage, leftists repeat it until people are sick of it and it becomes background noise. At this point the hot-take becomes banal, and people begrudgingly accept that the hot take is now just another part of the landscape of public opinion
If you hang around leftist circles enough you'll hear the "nazi bar" parable, and this explains how they think about everything.
They don't see themselves as part of being a social movement based on highly controversial and hotly disputed ideas...
...Leftists think their moral values, and social views are just uncontroversial expressions of what is morally right, and leftism is just what you get when everyone is "being kind" and "being a good person."
In their heads, they are the regular crowd at the bar.
They see leftism as the natural, normal, and healthy state of affairs that occurs when everyone is "being kind," they don't realize that leftism is a worldview and political ideology that is hotly contested, and that's built on a set of social values that are highly controversial
The claim that it is an undue burder to ask women to put any effort at all into their relationships with men is a load bearing pillar of woke feminism.
This paper claims that asking women to interpret what men say is a form of "hermeneutic labor" which harms women.
The paper argues that hermeneutic labor is the emotionally taxing requirement that women should interpreting what men say and how they feel. It also argues that women act as men's therapists by telling men how they feel, and that women do all the relationship maintenance.
The premise of the paper is that women do all the work of interpreting how both people in the relationship feel, and then expressing that so they can both understand. The author basically says that women have been acting as mens' therapists for centuries.