Thread by @BrighamLives

Today we’d like to bring you our preliminary review of yesterday’s BYU’s Race, Equity, and Belonging Committee report. Original at race.byu.edu/00000177-d543-…. Thread.
#DezNat
#LDS
#BYU
#TakeBackBYU

The report was compiled at the request of BYU President Worthen. The Committee is made of nine faculty members from administration and the law, sociology, athletics, and social sciences departments. Religion, STEM, and general education were not represented.

Only one of them, Michalyn Steele, appeared on our list of BYU professors to avoid. We apologize for the omissions.

This is not a neutral review. The Committee, as we will show, approached this subject with obviously motivated reasoning. Our goal is to provide you with opportunities to contest this biased, treasonous report and any that will follow.

The bulk of the report is a list of 26 proposed reforms to alleviate the alleged racist environment at BYU. They begin by assuming this and ignore the recent campus climate survey that showed that minority students are overwhelmingly satisfied.
news.byu.edu/announcements/…

Their single concession to the mass of satisfied students comes on page 5, where they are dismissed. If there is "much to admire and appreciate" about BYU the rest of the report does not mention it. "BIPOC students" are assumed to be uniformly stressed, oppressed, and unhappy.

It is irresponsible and dangerous to tell students who do not feel like they're having a problem that they should, to tell students who are comfortable with their environment that they should be constantly vigilant for inevitable racism. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The report frequently cites BYU's 2012 Fostering an Enriched Environment Policy, which it claims is inadequately promoted and followed. This policy presents a scriptural view on diversity and inclusion that is directly contradicted by the Committee's recommendations.

#DezNat gets a shoutout on page 7 as a non sequitur boogeyman that makes students "worry about physical safety" when they don't know how to call the racism cops.

Pages 12-15 list the Committee's findings:
-Minority students feel isolated because many BYU students do not share their race or grant it due deference
-University systems do not treat racism as its own "thing"
-BYU so white
-building names racist

They then present their list of recommendations to further isolate ethnic minority students, sabotage BYU's commitment to excellence, and cement all races and ethnicities at BYU as strangers and foreigners.

First recommendation is, of course, bureaucracy. They suggest a BYU Office of Racism would effectively combat the grievances above, and as they often do they cite a list of secular universities that have done so that they are envious of. Bureaucratic creep solves everything.

They suggest racism become a vice-president position, guaranteeing pressure on that vice-president to find anything that could be called racism to keep their job.

Recs 3 and 4 are also along these lines, forcing existing student multicultural organizations into the Racism Office and planning and providing racial struggle sessions.

General ed and religion must be changed, *specifically as a consequence of 2020 media events.*

Remember that this Committee includes two athletic faculty and two law professors but, somehow, zero religion faculty. They go to Religious Education with their demands, which include classes on race in the Church. We do not trust such classes to provide appropriate nuance.

Demands 6-8 involve altering mission statements to, finally, encourage BYU students to be concerned for their neighbors and learn about other cultures.

We wholeheartedly support #7, which would promote the Fostering an Enriched Environment Policy, which rightly applied would dissolve this Committee for good.

As we were instructed at the last General Conference, our gospel culture and gospel citizenship trump any race, culture, or nationality, especially at church universities. It is the responsibility of students who feel isolated to learn to love those who may be different.

The majority of issues suffered by the few ethnic minority students who report the most suffering would be solved in an instant if they would stop being racist. The world tells us we cannot be racist against white people, and these students pay the price.

#9 is more bureaucracy, this time also to advance "equity." Beware bureaucracy and beware words you're an automatic bad person for questioning.

The Committee is extremely concerned about enrolling more ethnic minority students. They believe altering the demographic makeup of the university will lead to unquestionable dividends for the students, the school, the nation, and the world. Look at all those individual cites!

Actually they're not citing research, they're citing Supreme Court cases, the 5-4 Grutter and the 4-3 Fisher that only passed because Scalia died.

look at this trash

Having confused SCOTUS for science, the Committee goes on to provide us with graphs, which prove that the absolute number of admitted minorities has gone down, and some minorities are hardly admitted at all. They do not provide percentages. Would you like some?

Admittedly providing percentages on some of these "trends" is academic given how low their totals are, but why would the Committee have given us these tables and not just a list? We admit it is baffling but congratulate the Native Americans on their recent victories over blacks.

These statistically meaningless figures are of great concern to the Committee, who are quite inept at cooking stats.

The Committee is especially concerned about the lack of pure-blooded Indians applying (Native Americans outmarry at 75% and mixed-blood Natives are by far the largest contingent of multiracial Americans)

Remember that statistics in the "low single digits" can have an outsized effect! (police shootings of unarmed black men)

The Committee clings to a faith in Magical Negro faculty who will provide Teachable Moments to culturally incompetent BYU students. By "all students" they of course mean "white students."

If you thought "motivated reasoning" was just an insult

Imagine having to worry about "committed to fostering an enriched environment" and "not committed to fostering an enriched environment" on your faculty record rather than, you know, "really good at Hebrew."

The report mourns the low graduation rate for pure-blooded ethnics without celebrating the high achievement of those of mixed race. We share their concern and approve of the mentoring and tutoring programs currently in place, but fear the effect of stating, institutionally...

...that minorities are bad at school.

There are many reasons why people of certain ethnicities have consistently poor outcomes, and many of those are beyond the time horizon BYU can provide interventions at. Planting seeds for the next generation may be the best the university can do.

Holding them accountable for societal and genetic factors beyond their control, though, is liable to create incentives to graduate students who are just not ready, which is unfair to students, schools, families, and employers.

This recommendation returns to the Committee's common thread of "be more racist." What did you think "race-conscious" meant? Does the prophet disapprove of "racism" but approve of "race consciousness?" Can you be "race conscious" of bad neighborhoods or dangerous individuals?

Can anyone tell me why this statistic is useless

In previous recommendations the Committee acknowledged that the Church and the world have different demographics but assumed we could take on "better" (they never mention goals) proportions through sheer guts. Here they forget this.

This rec is worthless since they already admit they don't care about results of studies.

"Ask our lawyers how we could get away with being racist"

Throughout these sections the Committee touches on the idea of an "adversity score." They assume that minority applicants will have terrible home lives, and that BYU should absorb the long-term effects of neglect, abuse, mental illness, etc. This is dangerous and contradictory.

Dealing with these problems is the purpose of Christ and the purpose of the Church. He will bind up every broken heart but He knows that there is a time and a place to run a sanatorium. Many church programs aside from CES deal with these issues.

The Committee wishes to use these issues as a wedge to make a more diverse school with. Later they complain that ethnic minority faculty are overwhelmed by their students' mentoring needs. What do you think would happen if students were selected specifically for being high-risk?

We are not suggesting that disadvantaged people are unfit or unclean or could not thrive in a college environment. We are simply pessimistic about the maintenance of BYU's academic excellence should long-term issues become prominent in admissions decisions.

The Committee takes issue with the distribution of scholarships and again attempts to confuse with lazy statistics. We hold that such disparities stem from socioeconomic factors that are not the University's responsibility.

They seem to be upset that minority students do not receive merit-based scholarships at an outsized rate compared to their established low presence at the university.

They assume scholarships are based on merit and are not racist and are upset about that.

The Committee constantly betrays a parochial and Americentric view of Church history along with their racism. This section is two paragraphs and achingly vague. They admit they simply want token black scholarships.

This has been a contention by many people for decades. Policy has consistently reflected that every student already receives a massive Church-funded discount. This seems to be a sneaky way to bypass that.

Rec 19 seems to report the plight specifically of black students who had to spend so much time finding out that they could not get a white girl kicked out for staring at their hair that they couldn't focus on classes. Solution in search of a problem.

#20 is especially odious. Later on they quote President Nelson's desire for us to build "bridges of cooperation instead of walls of segregation." Here they directly suggest building walls of segregation.

Segregation spaces are, they insist, common in secular schools, and they believe such spaces can build community among minority students, which would be fine if the school's goal was not to build community among all students.

They suggest such a space could direct students to mentors of an appropriate race, encouraging student racism.

#21 we support and wish to improve on. Their main issues are that minority students are disproportionately charged with Honor Code violations and that grooming standards for exotic ethnicities are unclear.

Many students from disadvantaged backgrounds (and more if adversity scores begin to be included in admissions) have had stunted moral development and do not understand concepts such as consent and property ownership. Discreet mentorship in for at-risk students may be warranted.

Students report a lack of guidance for hairstyles appropriate to those of African descent. Developing such guidance would not be difficult.

The remainder of suggestions are reforms to increase the number of ethnic minority faculty. This is self-evidently a generational issue and the Committee says as much.

They continue to insist that students are incapable of receiving proper mentoring from faculty of an improper race. This flatly and boldly contradicts Church and scripture.

They insult the experience and intelligence of BYU students by claiming that students do not understand cultural diversity without faculty of a proper race and that students will assume from a lack of minority faculty that minorities are dumb.

Who believes they truly desire intellectual diversity?

#23 suggests they groom minority students as future faculty. This would follow simply if their other racist conclusions were assumed.

#24 suggests a Colored PhD Party as a minority faculty job fair. Imagine how embarrassing and counterproductive this would be if it failed once.

With #25 they introduce the concept of "cultural taxation" we've alluded to previously. The idea is that minority faculty are overwhelmed by racist students demanding their mentors look like them.

The Committee suggests their workload be eased and extra resources provided rather than teaching students not to tax.

They recommend extra leniency be given to faculty of the appropriate race on the chance that they were not poor teachers but were in fact targeted by racist students. This is patronizing to faculty who genuinely wish to improve.

Immediately afterward they suggest these overtaxed teachers be further taxed by senior leadership responsibilities, making up for it by perhaps not letting them teach while doing so!

They did not feel it was in their power to suggest renaming BYU buildings but they have a chapter after their official suggestions where they do that. Notice the vagueness, the appeal to peer pressure, the scare words.

They of course use compassion verses to suggest that 1. harm has been done by this normal thing and 2. the way to alleviate it is to follow their course of action.

This immense and onerous set of suggestions relies on incredibly shaky premises - that feelings are hurt by not saying Ute used to live here, and that the solution is not to simply deal with it.

This is a lie.

This Committee believes it has great power and can communicate demands to the administration. That is the translation of this seemingly soothing tone.

It is our hope that this Committee become nothing but an embarrassing footnote to the glorious future of Brigham Young University. We do not believe the Brethren will long allow this holy place to be so disgraced, but while it lasts we must show this racism it has no place there.

As counter-suggestions, we propose students of minority and/or exotic backgrounds be presented with training in how to get along in a complex, culturally diverse, yet one-culture-dominant world. We believe this would serve them better than insisting to them they're oppressed.

We support measures to reduce the othering suggested by the Committee. In the spirit of togetherness and to destroy walls of segregation, we suggest the abolition of the Black Student Union and other ethnic groups, their roles to be filled by Multicultural Student Services.

We suggest programs be developed to assist white faculty in assisting minority students with their unique sets of problems, and to assist minority students in empathizing with and relying on white faculty.

We reject any efforts to increase segregation, to inform students that they are or should feel oppressed, to establish thoughtcrime at BYU, to enshrine racism at BYU, and every other infernal trick suggested by the above Committee.

Thank you.