Elizabeth Warren was a lower-middle class white woman from a middling law school. She did what she had to do.
I'm pointing out that this cuts in both directions: 1.) she stole a position that was supposed to help native people and appropriated it for herself as a white woman, 2.) she was responding to a system that favors POC and a class of wealthy white incumbents.
Her act was far more revealing of the nature of the system than anyone quite lets on
By all accounts she really was the best in her particular sub-field. But without either elite credentialing or some other tip, it would not have been enough for Harvard.
Recall that Tucker Carlson was praising her economic policies, which grew out of her rather ambiently gender reactionary work on the "two-income trap", early on.
Her hard swerve to hyper-progressivism was perhaps in part subliminally motivated by her vulnerability/guilt/need to compensate for the race appropriation thing.

Also possibly just deep strategic confusion and gullibility
I'm ultimately saying there is a halfway sympathetic reading of her lies and appropriation that the very rules that prompted her to lie and appropriate absolutely forbids her or anyone else from telling
And so in place of that accounting, which can never happen, we had the insane DNA test thing and daily gaslighting from the conjoined political and media classes
I mean, sure, to some degree she probably bought into her family lore, whatever. That's not why she conveyed the piece of information about her identity that Harvard then proudly brandished in the face of Derrick Bell's threatened boycott unless HLS hired a WOC.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Wesley Yang

Wesley Yang Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @wesyang

2 Apr
Yang has had a certain Teflon quality throughout the mayoral race and the municipal political lifers who know they have to tear him down to have a chance must also be weighing this imperative against their own political futures if the favorite wins
Calling him a mini-Trump is of course obscenely wrong in one sense, but not entirely wrong in another sense: he gives people an opportunity to vote against the entrenched political system per se for the first time. (And the promise of more competence in being an alternative.)
(more competence than Trump that is.)
Read 4 tweets
2 Apr
The YG song about robbing Asians that YouTube refused to take down begins

“First, you find a house and scope it out

Find a Chinese neighborhood, cause they don't believe in bank accounts...” abc7news.com/exclusive-oakl…
A key initiative here is to get Asian immigrants to get over whatever weird superstition prevents them from trusting in banks
I first heard about Meet the Flockers soon after this security cam video went viral. People were all like “slay kween” etc...
Read 8 tweets
2 Apr
Non-BIPOC Vermonters presently have to be over the age of 50 to sign up for the vaccine.

Vt Governor just announced that any BIPOC person over the age of 16 can sign up.
CDC withdrew guidance that would prioritized essential workers before the elderly (who are the by far the most likely to die from covid) because the latter group was disproportionately white after the guidance attracted controversy.

But here's Scott just going for it.
This is how it works...a tentative trial balloon, then tactical retreat in the face of pushback...then you barrel over the finish line in defiance of the Equal Protection clause because the new elite consensus supports it and nothing ultimately hems in elite consensus
Read 8 tweets
1 Apr
This thread is interesting because it describes academics constrained from speaking what they believe to be true for fear of social consequence while denying that they are “afraid of being canceled” or that such a development is a “crisis of free speech”
It shows how one may describe precisely X but still being constrained from calling it X, thereby...underscoring the depth and intensity of X in the very act...
Thread about my Chronicle of Higher Education piece on this subject:
Read 4 tweets
31 Mar
Defending free speech is a precondition of restoring the integrity of truth-seeking within academia, but it is only a precondition. Forms of discipline and abnegation constitutive of the dignity of the vocation must also be resuscitated. patreon.com/posts/on-acade…
It is a bizarre irony that these principles have to be stated at all, and a compounding irony that they must be stated under the cover of pseudonymity. patreon.com/posts/on-acade…
But so it is these days. Some regimes protect the autonomy of truth seeking while others subordinate it to political agendas; in this sense truth seeking is always political. But the integrity of the act itself, where it is permitted, always transcends politics.
Read 4 tweets
26 Mar
Haidt: helicoptering, anti bullying initiatives, and social media psychologically weakened the millennial generation.

Middle schools must discourage use of Instagram.
In Haidt’s view, “anti-bullying” in practice turned into adults hovering over kids and not allowing them to deal with conflict on their own, thus leaving a generation bereft of that crucial social skill and inuring them to demand that authority figures resolve conflict for them
This is an area where I do think discussion of “the marginalized” is merited as there is a differential impact on different sorts of people (including studious, introverted kids) of the free range approach; it’s about striking a certain balance
Read 17 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!