British gov't has released the report of its Commission on Race & Ethnic Disparities (CRED).
"Put simply we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities. The impediments & disparities do exist, they are varied, and ironically...
2/11
"...very few of them are directly to do w/ racism. Too often ‘racism’ is the catch-all explanation, and can be simply implicitly accepted rather than explicitly examined.
The evidence shows that geography, family influence, socio-economic background, culture & religion...
3/11
"...have more significant impact on life chances than the existence of racism. That said, we take the reality of racism seriously and we do not deny that it is a real force in the UK."
Report author "Tony Sewell’s bold statement will surely be welcome for many people...
5/11
"...of various minority ethnicities, as well as the majority of white people, who, since the death of George Floyd & subsequent BLM protests last year, have felt like strangers in their own home.
The main strength of the report is its insistence that the complexities...
6/11
"...of social life cannot be reduced to a single variable, which in this case, is race. The report does not deny that racism exists, but it does maintain that not all disparities are incontrovertible proof of racism. Even where disparities point to racism...
7/11
"...it can be challenging to ascertain the causal weight attributable to it because racism doesn’t exist as a discrete feature. A far more complex picture of the distribution of material & cultural goods in British society emerges than the dominant one in public discourse.
8/11
"The report will no doubt irk those who have considerable emotional, not to say professional, investment in the narrative of Britain as deeply institutionally and structurally racist, but hopefully, most will engage with it in the spirit with which it has been produced:...
9/11
"...with an open a mind as possible, and a view to creating a better public understanding of complex social realities where some long-standing disparities co-exist with new realities. This is not to deny racism past or present, but it does suggest that where inequalities...
10/11
"...exist, it is more likely to be because important foundational values of cultural and political liberalism, namely tolerance, freedom and equality, have been forgotten, ignored or rejected. The report’s publication is itself a timely reminder...
11/11
"...that those charged with the power to effect policy changes, or shape public opinion, need to be practically guided by liberal principles."
Read @DontDivideUsNow 's response to the report of the UK's Commission on Race & Ethnic Disparities:
[Your proposed curriculum outline] "is the praxis of Critical Race Theory. I wholeheartedly believe that the tragedies and triumphs of differing ethnicities should be known, but I strongly oppose the ideological hijacking of Ethnic Studies and the unequal and inequitable treatment of some ethnicities as proposed by your suggested curriculum outline.
🔥🔥🔥🧵
2)
"What's being put forward is not a true celebration of heritage or shared American values. It is the quiet embedding of the praxis of Critical Theory, especially Critical Race Theory—ideas that do not unite our children, but promote some, demoralize others, and divide all. This course outline repeatedly uses the language of systems, resistance, collective identity, Marxist terms, terms drawn and defined by Critical Race Theory, and reinforces the idea that power structures frame our reality.
3)
"A course embedded with the practice of Critical Race Theory will teach students to see themselves primarily through the lens of race, oppression, and power. It replaces character with color and encourages children to view themselves either as historic and perpetual victims or oppressors based on immutable traits they cannot control.
"I have a word now...about races and race lines. I have no hesitation in telling you that I think the colored people and their friends make a great mistake in saying so much of race and color. I know no such basis for the claims of justice. I know no such a motive for efforts at self-improvement. In this race-way they put the emphasis in the wrong place. 🧵
2)
"I do now and always have attached more importance to manhood than to mere kinship or identity with any variety of the human family. Race, in the popular sense, is narrow. Humanity is broad. The one is special the other is universal; the one is transient, the other permanent.
3)
"In the essential dignity of man as man, I find all necessary incentives and aspirations to a useful and noble life. Manhood is broad enough, and high enough as a platform for you and me and all of us.
"BLM de-policing policies seem to have taken thousands of (mainly Black) lives. During the BLM era, the age-adjusted Black homicide rate has almost doubled, rising from 18.6 murders per 100K African-Americans in 2011 to 32 murders per 100K in 2021. Murders of Black males rose to an astonishing peak of 56/100K during this period (in 2021), while Black women (9.0/100K) came to 'boast' a higher homicide rate than White men (6.4) and all American men (8.2)." 🧵
2)
"Yet for all our lambasting of BLM, police unions and leaders have not covered themselves in glory, largely supporting precinct level decisions to de-police the dangerous parts ('no-go'- or 'slow-go'-zones) of major cities, and refusing to support reforms that do cut crime but discomfort cops. Astonishingly, high homicide rates have little or no impact on whether police commissioners keep their jobs, giving cops few incentives to do better rather than just well enough.
3)
"The real question for those of us who want to make police better rather than run for office or get government grants, is how we can get low-performing police departments to learn from the best, and how we can get the mayors, city councils, governors, and state legislatures overseeing police to enact the sort of civil service reforms, like higher pay coupled with abolishing civil service tenure, that are likely to succeed in getting police to make all lives matter.
Remember when the neo-segregationist left told you that white doctors were killing black babies?
Turns out they were either incapable of analyzing their own data or outright lying to you.
A new study demolishes the failings and falsehoods in that first study. We unpack it: 🧵
2)
The original study claimed black newborns had lower mortality rates when cared for by black physicians. This got a lot of attention and influenced legal discourse, despite its, ahem, limitations. Classic 2020: it was as if they wanted you to think black people and white people couldn't live together.
The study was so influential it was even cited (with clumsy inaccuracies) by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissent in the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case, demonstrating how far-reaching its conclusions became.
"In December of 2022, I published on our university library website a research guide consisting of a bibliography of black writers with heterodox views. By May of 2023, five months later, I had been labeled a racist, placed on administrative leave, and targeted for firing."
3)
"The bibliography was created and compiled by folks at an organization called Free Black Thought whose mission is, in their own words, to represent the rich diversity of black thought beyond the relatively narrow spectrum of views promoted by mainstream outlets. Although their website contains a variety of resources, my librarian’s eye was immediately drawn to their bibliography, which they named the Compendium of Free Black Thought (). They presented it as an open access work and encouraged folks to use it as they see fit.bit.ly/36FTtDQ
"How could it be that the university is zealous about policing pronouns but blasé about the advocacy of hateful violence?"
Roland Fryer's latest for the WSJ, "Anti-Israel Protests and the ‘Signaling’ Problem," reproduced here in full. 🧵
2)
"The anti-Israel protests on college campuses present a puzzle for observers of academic norms and mores. Today, even relatively minor linguistic infractions, like the failure to use someone’s preferred pronouns, are categorized as abuse at many elite institutions, some of which even define potentially offensive speech as 'violence.' One need not even speak to run afoul of campus speech codes; I recently participated in a training in which we were warned of the consequences of remaining silent if we heard someone 'misgender' someone else.
3)
"Definitions of 'harmful' speech have become so capacious that one assumes they include antisemitism. In some cases, they surely do: A university wouldn’t take a hands-off approach to a student or faculty member who expressed prejudice against Jews in the manner of Archie Bunker or the Charlottesville marchers. Yet that’s what many of them have done when faced with protesters’ speech that is offensive to Jews, even when it crosses the line into threats, intimidation and harassment.