Someone posted this in a group chat last night so, naturally, "can't work today boss, have to research RACE WAR." Let's go
Starts out with a short narrative, in 1969, of a beloved chemistry teacher who confronted a few black students about breaking his window. They sucker punched him and attempted to burn him alive
After the 1968 Great School Strike, armed gangs took over schools for a time. Mostly it was because teachers and admin didn't adapt to the new realities (partly due to ideology). Schools didn't always have metal detectors and a small army of security staff. . . .
At least one incident of a teacher being raped. An interesting parallel: the only places I've read this being systematic are a) Cultural Revolution and b) certain periods in the USSR. Draw whatever parallels you might
One reason this went largely unrecorded (ref to another sexual assault) is craven administrators and bureaucrats didn't want to publicize negative events that might hinder their advancement. Hmm, this sounds familiar
Important subtext here: despite multiple violent & sexual assaults, school overrun with armed gangs, _parents did not know and publicizing it was de facto prohibited_. You know all those terrible TikTok videos? It's been like that for decades, you're only seeing it now
Different teacher beaten by dozens of students: "[a]nd these were kids I've known a long time . . . I thought I had a close rapport." Same in every revolutionary situation: neighbor against neighbor, student against teacher-- the closer the relation, more exceptional the violence
Classics of Ghetto Inner-City Poetry, vol I. "Hey Jew boy, wish you were dead." Interesting parallels: this poem was used as pretext to crack down on "racism", including the call to reverse some of the integration that caused this mess in the first place. . . .
Journos and social scientists already compromised by 1970. Parents started noticing their kids had black eyes and withdrew, often to private schools. Has anything changed since or are we still in the long 1970s?
I like that a student causally mentions a bomb went off and, indeed, a quick search brings up Molotov cocktails, at least. How many of these events go unrecorded? It becomes commonplace to a student-- thinking back on high school, "come to think of it, there were rapes & bombs"
Read, and know that we've never left the 1960s-- this has been the dominant regime, ideology, and social situation since then--
Jewish Defense League is now known only as a minor 'terrorist organization' in the '60s and '70s-- some reason in these statements. I didn't know Cornell was taken over for a time by armed black militants
Professional struggle sessions on racism are also as old as the '60s. Meanwhile, militants made ominous demands and entire streets had to shut off with police barricades.
Let's just check the history. High school collapses, is "racially rebalanced" (less black), performs well for a time, reverts again to become NYC's worst school, is closed down, and is used as an Avengers movie set. Perhaps the whole history of modern America is contained here
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My favorite anecdote about how academics think, about a year ago I went to a conference that happened to be nearby, and an old prof asked about my work. She didn't believe me when I told her my salary. Not "wow, that's crazy" but a direct, "no you don't."
To them the world is very structured, just like academia. If you're a professor you can make 60 - 90k. Or you can go to 'industry' where you will instead be allowed to make 100 - 130k. There are strange categories like 'CEO' or 'capitalist' but those must be predatory in some way
This also explain the egalitarianism. Life is *supposed* to be a series of legible boxes that when you check them off, you get the set reward. Check the PhD box but you still make 70k while someone else's salary grows more rapidly? This is an affront to their image of the world
10 pieces of proven investment advice for these volatile times:
1) You need to be addicted to stimulants. One pack of cigarettes or coke a day, those are rookie numbers. "I'm afraid of a heart attack." You know what prevents heart attacks? Winning-- these men are in their 90s.
2) Survive a Holocaust. If you're white, move to South Africa, and if you're black, any other part of Africa. You need the protean survival instinct that only the looming threat of impending doom can cultivate. Afterwards, you'll get backaches when the market's about to crash.
3) Grow up a poor, illiterate farmer. Book learnin' will stifle your natural instinct and intuition, poison your mind with useless astrology. And forget stock picking entirely if you have an MBA: make spreadsheets for Home Depot, buy index funds, and drink Bud Light instead.
I am going to steelman 'systemic racism', as an intellectual exercise. What it could mean is sometimes misunderstood even by its 'theorists', like this one who considers it a form of neo-Marxism. In practice many proponents use it this way.
Part of the problem is ‘systemic racism’ refers to a purported empirical phenomenon and a theory meant to explain why it occurs. We need to impose clarity over the discussion and its concepts, otherwise we will rule the whole dilemma incoherent outright.
What do 'systemic racism' believers care most about? Everywhere their writings are focused on 'unequal outcomes by race.' Let's call the phenomenon 'unequal outcomes' instead of 'systemic racism', to avoid deliberate conceptual confusion and antagonism (which is often desired).
Black nationalist terrorism was on the rise, but then it the very notion disappeared. You can tell they have thought very seriously about their concepts and how to measure them properly, and that social science isn't nothing more than a political practice
Global Terrorism Database, finally updated for 2020, finds anti-white extremists, jihadis, and antifa among the few perpetrators of fatal terrorist attacks. Plausibly right-wing ones are half, and this is with tremendous effort to define 'terrorism' in the 'right' way
All this time, lawyers were overproduced, driving down their wages, causing smart people to select out, leaving a middling nuisance class-- the question is simply how to contain them (1.3 million is Dallas sized)
You can generalize this to many of the professions. 'Law' isn't what it was in the '60s. See also 'therapy': back when it was called 'analysis' it attracted some of the world's brightest ppl, now the lazy and incompetent. Change the ppl, change the field
Note the problem is, however, worse than it seems: many JDs do not actually become 'lawyers' (some programs have placement rates as low as 50 percent). There's an invisible glut at the bottom, some a nuisance and others simply ppl we defrauded
Re-reading Thucydides and it reveals so clearly that political science is redundant, a mistake. I went to one of those quant programs that derided the Classics and now realize it was a self-preservation maneuver
Unrelated, but I've written syllabi for a few friends the past year and browsing others it's sad how they've converged without coordination. Stale, remedial, boring-- US Politics and International Relations aren't Calculus, to be taught from a thick book titled the subject matter
All the revisionism, "critiquing" the Classics, and we've still landed on the least interesting outcome. All the middling programs should be sapped, replaced with math and the Classics. We've shown ourselves to be incapable of an inventive, rigorous alternative