Social Justice – Page 19 – Philip Greenspun’s Weblog

The social justice of coronashutdowns

January 2, 2021January 2, 2021 by philg

An email exchange with a friend who was trying to persuade me to see reason (i.e., accept that the obviously correct reaction to COVID-19 is shutdown). If you’re short of time, just check out the two sections highlighted in bold face.

Me:

Opponents of shutdowns, including me, primarily argue that the shutdowns do not save either lives or life-years. While a shutdown in a non-police state may delay some deaths tagged to COVID-19, the shutdown itself, in our view, will kill far more people via deferred health care (e.g., cardiology), increased obesity, reduced fitness, increased alcoholism and drug use, despair due to loneliness, poverty due to unemployment, intensified poverty in poor countries with which we have reduced our trade and tourism. (a partial calculation).
It is not that we deny the value of “lives saved”. We deny the assertion that the government is actually saving lives. It will be 5-10 years before we can see for sure who was right. And maybe we won’t ever get an accurate total because a lot of the deaths due to shutdown will be in countries that may not be great at keeping statistics (see https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/world/africa/coronavirus-hunger-crisis.html for example). And some of the deaths won’t happen for another 60 years or so. Children who have lost a year of education will have shorter lives, if previous statistics of life expectancy versus education can be used as a forecast. We don’t have an infinite fountain of money and resources, so the $trillions being spent right now on coronapanic won’t be available to spend on health care and medical research in the decades to come.
Proponents of shutdown wrap themselves in virtue by claiming that they are the only people who care about human life. But I see these proponents as mostly indifferent to human life. They don’t care about any deaths that aren’t tagged to COVID-19.

Him:

Mostly people are scared and confused and it is hard to make an accurate model on which to base decisions, because we only have “in circuit” testing of the various components that makes the anticipated effect of changing things hard to gauge.
Complicating things further has been a president with a personality disorder and the unfortunate human susceptibility of many people to become enthralled to those with that disorder, so that the matter of shutdowns is conflated with that man and his followers.
In any case, I get what you are saying. If that was all you were saying I would not object. But mixed in is a streak of righteousness that I think is uncalled for. Your adversaries are mostly not stupid or badly motivated. They mostly just disagree with you.
Let’s take obesity. I think it is highly unlikely the pandemic will directly affect obesity long term. … If you had appropriate clothing and water, you could walk to California without eating, because walking is extraordinarily efficient and fat is extraordinarily energy dense. Exercise and dieting rarely make a significant direct difference in obesity and often have a paradoxical effect, especially dieting. Babies born to women during famine develop obesity as a compensatory response. Obesity is a result of cheap high energy food intersecting with a natural response in some people’s genes to hoard energy when available.

Me:

Folks who are advocating for shutdowns are presumably the most scared, though. So they are therefore the least likely to be thinking and acting rationally. If shutdown advocates actually had facts/science on their side, they wouldn’t have to censor Facebook and Twitter, fire anyone who dissented (e.g., this trauma specialist), etc. Astronomers don’t have to work on hunting down astrologers to get them fired for their heresy. The results of astronomy speak for themselves. To my knowledge, Anders Tegnell wasn’t paying attention to Donald Trump. Nor were the scientists at the W.H.O. when they said (through June) that masks for the general population wouldn’t stop the plague from spreading.
It wouldn’t bother me if they disagreed, so long as they didn’t also claim that they had a monopoly on scientific truth and that people who don’t accept these truths are idiots. The raging plagues in fully masked Spain and California are good examples. People who say that science proves that masks for the general population will substantially slow down or stop a plague won’t accept any evidence, including the Spanish/Californian plagues, as sufficient to falsify their hypothesis. This is a fundamental aspect of religion. An earthquake that destroys your church and kills innocent children won’t shake (literally) your belief in a benevolent omnipotent God. …
Finally, there is an equity issue that would prevent me from supporting a shutdown. The shutdowns are ordered by people who live in mansions (governors) and supported by rich white people who live in 4,000+ square foot suburban houses (and who may have vacation houses in addition). I’ve heard a few of your [rich Boston suburbs] neighbors talk about how the school shutdown wasn’t a serious inconvenience and they thought it should continue indefinitely nationwide. These are from people who live in 6,000 square feet, who have two college-educated parents at home, who have multiple private automobiles, etc. They never mention what they imagine school shutdown means to a single parent in a 2BR public housing apartment with three kids. Nor do these folks, generally in their 50s, ever say what benefit the shutdown is delivering to a 30-year-old single mom and her 10-year-old kids.
As a rich white 57-year-old, of course I would like to be protected from coronavirus. But even if I thought that wrecking the lives of a 30-year-old public housing mom and her not-at-risk children (via lockdown) would help me, I would be unwilling to use political and police power to extract this benefit for myself. In my view, the young mom and her kids should be free to continue with their lives and education. They’re not stopping me from hiding in my suburban bunker. Why do I need to force them to give up their First Amendment right to assemble and their right to an education under https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ ?
[your lockdown arguments sound] reasonable, but, again, it is one in which old rich people (watching cash stack up even faster while quarantined in their massive beachfront mansions) say that they want to help Group A (the elderly) and they will make Group B (the essential workers) pay for this by taking away schools for Group B’s kids, freedom for Group B to exercise and socialize, etc.

Him:

… it looks like Sweden has now admitted it botched things. and the numbers are rising quickly there now. No ?

Me:

The King of Sweden, a guy with 11 palaces and 3 taxpayer-funded Gulfstreams to move among them, has come out as an advocate of shutdown for the working class. So that’s a kind of admission. And the Prime Minister has decided that he will keep his job by appearing to do some stuff (masks on the crowded metro system where people don’t have the flexibility to social distance; reduce the max gathering size for public events (you can still legally have a party at your house for 100 people if you really want to)).
But I think it is more a shift in how people perceive the situation, not a dramatic change in numbers. Below is a chart of Swedish ICU occupancy by COVID-19 patients. Out of a population of 10.4 million they have 300 people nationwide in their ICUs with a COVID-19 tag. (Keep in mind that Sweden has only about 30% of U.S. ICU beds per capita.) They had closer to 550 during the April peak (and Swedish academic modelers predicted that 20,000 Swedes would be in the ICU during the spring 2020 peak).

Is it a “mistake” to have 1 million children in school (without masks) and 300 old/sick people in the ICU with a positive COVID-19 test result? If you believe that humans are in charge of the virus AND that the interests of the old/sick people outweigh the UN-listed universal right of the children to have an education, maybe this is a “mistake”. But the numbers from all around the world suggest that humans are not in charge of the virus, e.g., with raging plagues in masked-and-shut countries or states. In that case, it could look like a “mistake” to deny 1 million children a year of education in hopes of saving a few life-years.
The complete 2020 data won’t be available until mid-January, but right now it seems almost certain that Sweden will have a lower overall death rate than it had in 2010 (the population has grown about 10% during that interval).
Sweden has a COVID-19 death rate that is less than half of the Massachusetts rate. Given recent trends, it seems likely that Sweden will have a cumulative COVID-19 death rate lower than California’s. With lower income children here in Massachusetts and California now having missed nearly a year of education, I personally wouldn’t say that it is the Swedes who are the failures.
So… anyway, I think we can explain different attitudes by different value systems and different personal situations. The Californians whom I know who are pro-shutdown and pro-mask orders do not have children in public school, do not have to leave the house in order to earn money, and simply deny that there is any cost to the loss of freedom of assembly, the loss of gyms, the shutdown of social life (“I can walk outside by myself any time I want”), etc. If we took them seriously, it wouldn’t be cruel or unusual to put convicted criminals into solitary confinement because as long as they have Zoom they wouldn’t have suffered any loss at all by being confined. Shutdown has almost no cost for them so they don’t need a comprehensive scientific theory regarding the benefits of shutdown in order to advocate for it.
The working class people whom I know in Massachusetts (don’t know any in California) feel that their lives have been mostly destroyed. So they demand a logical explanation for how the governor’s 59 orders (so far) will accomplish something more than delaying a few cases by a few weeks. And, of course, the state of the “science” is nowhere near sufficient to provide them with a coherent-sounding explanation. The virus is an aerosol… but a bandana will provide a lot of protection and children who are together in a (white suburban) classroom for 5 hours/day won’t spread the virus to each other so long as they’re all wearing bandanas. Flying and driving lessons are banned after 9:30 pm for COVID-19 safety, but it won’t be unsafe to be in an enclosed car or aircraft prior to 9:30 pm. If this is our best science, it is not good enough to justify the costs of what is being done in the name of science in the eyes of the working class.

We had to agree to disagree, of course, on what is a religious issue. We’re both MITers so, unlike the Facebook righteous, we are able to disagree on a technical issue without destroying our friendship. I asked him to confirm his mailing address for a New Year’s card. He sent me a new address, which I looked up in Zillow. He is living in more than 8,000 square feet in a house with an estimated value of $9.6 million.

Related, an #InThisTogether aerial photo of a house in Lincoln, Maskachusetts:

(by Tony Cammarata with me flying the helicopter)

“How the Pandemic Has Been Devastating for Children From Low-Income Families” (NYT, December 29, 2020, on the effects of the shutdown that its rich white editors and publishers advocated)

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How was 2020 measured against the principles of Kwanzaa?

January 1, 2021January 1, 2021 by philg

Today is the last day of Kwanzaa. From the History Channel:

Dr. Maulana Karenga, professor and chairman of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach, created Kwanzaa in 1966. … Karenga combined aspects of several different harvest celebrations, such as those of the Ashanti and those of the Zulu, to form the basis of Kwanzaa. … The seven principles, or Nguzo Saba are a set of ideals created by Dr. Maulana Karenga. Each day of Kwanzaa emphasizes a different principle.

(Wikipedia notes that Dr. Karenga (a colleague of Dr. Jill Biden, MD?) was convicted of imprisoning and torturing two women.)

The Unity Cup ritual might struggle in the Age of Coronapanic:

The kikombe cha umoja is a special cup that is used to perform the libation (tambiko) ritual during the Karamu feast on the sixth day of Kwanzaa. … During the Karamu feast, the kikombe cha umoja is passed to family member and guests, who drink from it to promote unity.

The principle of Kwanzaa that is easiest to benchmark:

Cooperative Economics: Ujamaa (oo–JAH–mah)
To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.

As the largest, generally white-owned, enterprises ran away with all of the good stuff in the U.S. economy in 2020, leaving smaller stores and shops devastated, is it fair to say that 2020 was a terrible year for those who observe Kwanzaa?

Here are two that seem at odds with what happened in American cities:

Purpose: Nia (nee–YAH)
To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
Creativity: Kuumba (koo–OOM–bah)
To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

To the extent that the Black community is an urban community, isn’t it fair to say that American urban environments were first depopulated, as those with money fled to the suburbs and countryside, and then made “less beautiful” by the mostly peaceful protests?

On the bright side, here’s a 6,000-square-foot house in suburban Lincoln, Maskachusetts whose value is estimated by Zillow at $2 million. It is in a neighborhood of McMansions that is entirely Black-free in my experience. The residents have placed two signs reading “Black Lives Matter” on their lawn.

(also a sign for a political candidate who promises to keep schools for Black children shut for years, if a “scientist” tells him to order it (USA Today) and/or if the coronavirus manages to evolve to thrive amongst masked-and-vaccinated humans (double secret panic from the Atlantic))

Readers: Do you think the U.S. made progress or slipped backward in 2020 on the principles set forth by Dr. Karenga?

Also… Happy New Year to everyone!

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Celebrate guys such as Chuck Yeager while displacing them from corporate boards?

December 8, 2020December 8, 2020 by philg

A variety of Facebook friends today posted their respect for Chuck Yeager, who died yesterday at age 97. Some had been in meetings with General Yeager when he was serving in various high management roles and talked about the pointed intelligent questions that he asked.

What about on days when a hero such as Yeager did not die? The same folks post approvingly of rules to forbid the assignment of high management roles to Americans such as Yeager who identify as straight white males. For example, “Nasdaq to Corporate America: Make your boards more diverse or get out” (CNN):

Nasdaq is proposing a rule that would require at least some measure of diversity on the boards of directors of companies listed on the exchange.
The rule, which needs the approval of the Securities and Exchange Commission to take effect, would require companies to have at least two diverse directors, including one woman and one member of an “underrepresented” minority group, including Black people, Latinos or members of the LGBTQ+ community. Smaller companies and foreign companies on the exchange could comply with two woman directors.

(separately, how do the money nerds at Nasdaq evaluate whether someone is a “member of the LGBTQ+ community”? Will it be like the gay evaluation scenes in the Kevin Kline movie In & Out, e.g., a quiz on the titles of Barbra Streisand‘s recorded oeuvre? Does a person meet the B victimhood designation within LGBTQIA+ if he/she/ze/they merely finds people in multiple gender ID categories attractive, but doesn’t act on this attraction by having sex with those people? Similarly, what constitutes “Black people” as far as a Wall Streeter is concerned? Will Nasdaq start looking at Quadroons and Hexadecaroons and decided how many of them are required to add up to the business wisdom of a single “Black” individual?)

(Also, what about Elliot Page? We are informed that a man who was born with XX chromosomes is no different than a man who was born with XY chromosomes. Mr. Page identifies as a man currently. Mr. Page may also identify as white. If are going to give maximum respect to transgenderism, shouldn’t Elliot Page therefore be excluded from boards due to being a white male?)

From the National Air and Space Museum, an X-15 points at Yeager’s old X-1:

(Both the downtown D.C. Museum and the Dulles Airport annex that celebrate Americans willing to risk their lives in the air are currently closed due to coronavirus fears.)

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Immigrant Dad’s tutorial on the “real hidden figures” in Hidden Figures

December 4, 2020September 6, 2023 by philg

The local 9th graders were sentenced to watch Hidden Figures by their English teacher. Immigrant Dad’s running text message commentary:

Watching the movie “Hidden Figures” about Black women at NASA. About how they created the space program for us.

I stopped the movie to say that the real hidden figures were 1600 Nazi scientists, led by Werner von Braun, the SS Sturmbannführer [major] who basically did everything.

All white males.

Aryans.

In this movie, von Braun is nowhere to be seen despite scenes with Alan Shepard and NASA top brass

Can’t afford to have an SS guy in this poetic script.

Black women all coding now. And teaching white men how to do it.

This whole film was a giant waste of time.

I need to help my kid write a paper referencing this work of woke art. I am teaching them how to feed idiots what they want to hear. Useful in life.

Another friend chimed in:

The scene where Harrison smashes the Colored Ladies Room sign never happened, as in real life Katherine refused to walk the extra distance to use the colored bathroom and, in her words, “just went to the White one”

A Silicon Valley coder in the chat group:

These ladies make money in a more civilized manner: https://youtu.be/hsm4poTWjMs (featuring Joe Biden’s friend Cardi B). Those fingernails are like Chinese foot binding, they say, “I am too important to do a ghetto job like programming.” Remember that the black struggle was all about getting off the plantation; why go back to it with all the Indians and people on the autism spectrum? [black power fist emoji]

I’m not sure that the youngsters learned what the teacher was hoping they would…

They are watching and making fun of it. Especially black women programmers. In [one kid’s] view Blacks are as rare in computer science as whites in basketball.

How does Immigrant Dad’s history lesson hold up? Wikipedia:

Operation Paperclip was a secret program of the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) largely carried out by special agents of Army CIC, in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, such as Wernher von Braun and his V-2 rocket team, were taken from Germany to the United States, for U.S. government employment, primarily between 1945 and 1959. Many were former members, and some were former leaders, of the Nazi Party.

Some January photos from the Kennedy Space Center. Note that programmer Margaret Hamilton is depicted larger than life size, while Werner von Braun is at 1/10th the scale. (The photo on the bottom is captioned “The Original Mercury Seven Astronauts with a USAF F-106.” Alan Shepard is among them. They are but midgets next to Margaret Hamilton.)

And this is a good time to reprise my heroic Cirrus SR20 landing on a 15,000′ runway (same trip):

Also a good time to remember our hosts down there, Al Worden, who sadly died just 6 weeks later despite seeming to be in perfect health, and Bruce Melnick, helicopter pilot-turned-astronaut.

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Diversity and Inclusion Training for MIT Students

November 13, 2020November 13, 2020 by philg

One of my MIT undergraduate moles shared with me a September email from the Administration:

We are writing to you regarding the important topics of sexual assault prevention and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Two Required Trainings: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Sexual Assault Prevention Ongoing: Healthy Relationships (see instructions below)
The trainings will be available starting October 1, 2020 and must be completed by November 2, 2020. Instructions to access the courses are below. You will have a registration hold placed on your account and will be unable to register for IAP and/or Spring 2021 classes if you do not complete both trainings by the November 2 deadline.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion starts with a survey that contains unanswerable questions:

How is Student X supposed to know what Students Y and Z are trying to do in forming friendships? (especially given that everyone is dispersed and interacting only via Zoom) The student is also supposed to know what 1,000+ classmates value:

The survey is at least 40 gender IDs short of a complete list:

Department of Flexible User Interface:

The local Federal appeals court got it wrong!

“ageism” is not an “oppression”:

A confusing one:

(If Cian is a student at an engineering university, why do his friends expect him to be sexually active?)

Any time is a good time for a gender transition? No!

Whoever designed this survey does not seem very familiar with the American public housing, Medicaid, SNAP, and Obamaphone programs!

Oppression

After the baseline quiz, it is time for the welcome video, which features seven students, none of them apparently identifying as “white male,” and with no apparent age diversity.

The next video introduces José, a double-victim: Afro-Latino. He says that both of his parents are doctors and that’s why he’s pre-med: “it’s in my DNA”. Is the learner supposed to consider the possibility that academic ability, conscientiousness, and other aspects of intelligence and personality are also in students’ DNA?

“Living our Intersectionality” features the following folks:

“I identify foremost as a very, like, spiritual queer person of color.” (a microaggressive person would say that this person appears to be an Asian female)
“I identify as ABC: African Black Caribbean. Female. I also have ties with the indigenous.” (She’s big enough that a chandler would likely recommend that any “ties” be at least 1/2″ in diameter, double braid, and secured with a cleat hitch.)

(nobody identifies at the intersection of “white” and “male”!)

Next slide:

“Many of our social justice problems like racism and sexism are often overlapping, creating multiple levels of social injustice.” … We can’t just look at a person’s race or gender (or any of their individual identities) as separate categories. It’s the intersections that truly shape a person’s experience and influence both their opportunities and their challenges. This concept is especially helpful when thinking about issues of fairness and how people are treated in the world.

Let’s hope that President Harris deports anyone who answers “I agree”!

Another remake of Sybil is around the corner:

Heading out to exercise can be just as dangerous as sitting next to the fridge in governor-ordered shutdown for 8 months:

For example, student athletes who identify as women may face conflicts between their identities as women, athletes, and students. They may face pressures to be more aggressive and practice-focused, based on their athletic identity, more feminine and nurturing, related to gender expectations, and more studious and intellectual, based on their student identity.

Student POV: A student who identifies as black says that being black is “incredibly challenging” and “I am constantly in fear for my life”.

We find José again being victimized by his white roommates and their friends. The LGBTQIA+ guy with a stereotypical lisp is fine, but the white girl pressures Jose to go to the BLM rally. The white guy says he expected Jose to look different (i.e., more Latinx and less Black) and that “No offense, but it seems that All Lives Matter would be a better way to bring people together. You’re saying that your [Latinx] dad’s family matters less than your [Nigerian] mom’s?”

What to do about the near-Deplorable?

You can’t proceed until you select the last one.

White people, even those who appear to identify as “women”, make a lot of stupid assumptions:

All Look Same rears its ugly head:

Math is hard:

Will this section be about charging $53,000+ for a few months of streaming video?

“Sometimes equality isn’t actually fair.”

Perceptions can be misleading…

Even the lowliest worm may have power:

Even if you think you personally don’t have power, you may still be participating in structural systems of power where you receive advantages or are considered the norm, while others are disadvantaged or considered outside the norm.

White males reappear in order to define privilege:

(Looks as though he is loving the phone that was developed for him by white and Asian engineers, but white male privilege won’t entitle him to a mobile data signal if he’s in the Boston suburbs!)

Did 9 out of 100 students go into the “wrong” bathroom by mistake or because it was actually the “right” bathroom?

But maybe the ASPCA should be called when a dog is forced to walk on three paws (the fourth being held by the human companion):

Not everyone is unhappy about our new all-virtual world:

There will be a lot of worries when students come out of Shutdown Joe’s multi-year shutdown, having raided the fridge every 15 minutes and never having exercised!

If God exists and is powerful and benevolent, why is it ever unsafe to pray?

Everyone can breathe easier starting January 20, 2021:

Who is oppressed? Someone who has made the mistake of not identifying as a white male…

If you’re morbidly obese and have sex with a different partner every night, you’re at risk of becoming a victim of “internalized oppression”:

One example from the Isms, Phobias, and Microaggressions section:

(Would it be okay to respond “Engagement? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to pay back your student loans by having sex with your already-married dermatologist?”)

Some definitions on the topic that has consistently enriched this blog:

Transphobia is prejudice against transsexual or transgender people. Transantagonism includes hostility, aggression and violence towards trans people. Bathroom harassment is a form of discrimination that is experienced by many trans people, gender nonconforming people, and cisgender people who don’t fit stereotypical ideas related to their gender presentation.

There is no “I” in “Team” and there is no “I” (or “T”) in “LGBTQIA+”:

Know that LGBQA+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and asexual (plus many other associated identities).
Understand that asexuality is a sexual orientation. Asexual people generally do not feel a sexual attraction to others, though they may feel romantic attractions.
Be sensitive when talking with people about coming out stories. Remember that for some people these are traumatic experiences.
Language can create exclusion. Using identity-related words like “gay” to indicate that something is negative reinforces stereotypes.
If you have religious, political, or cultural objections to certain sexual orientations, remember that our community values include treating everyone with dignity and respect.

If a virtuous immigrant student follows a religion that condemns particular sexual acts, how can the community be said to be respecting this religion and the virtuous immigrant by covering hallways with posters celebrating those particular sexual acts?

The longest video is “How do you think about anti-blackness?” Maybe the problem wouldn’t exist if white people kept to themselves?

There is great diversity of experience among people of color. The term BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) is used to highlight some of these differences in history and experience. Respect spaces that are reserved for BIPOC people to discuss issues privately and safely.

At a minimum, white people should refrain from observing Halloween:

Usually marked by a sense of disrespect or superficiality, classic examples of appropriation include wearing the traditional clothing of a racially marginalized group as a Halloween costume, or using a group’s symbols of religious or spiritual significance as decorative accessories. Inclusive spaces reject cultural appropriation.

José returns to be victimized for 1:04 by a white professor who says, on the first day of class, “we don’t get many people like you in pre-med” (certainly a true statement at MIT, since there is no pre-med major!).

Now it is time for Communications and the Stupid White Man reappears to offer an opinion regarding Navajo jewelry:

The software won’t allow the learner to proceed until this answer is corrected. (American universities own vast amounts of land, all of it stolen from Native Americans. If they care about Native Americans, why not pay rent on the stolen land?)

The software reminds students at private universities that they don’t have a right to free speech:

Speech has a special role in higher education and in the United States. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects a person’s freedom of speech and expression from government interference (so it typically applies only to state institutions, though some states create additional legal protections that apply to private institutions).
Most colleges and universities consider freedom of speech and expression to be a critical part of the pursuit of higher education, and are also committed to creating a learning community where students from all backgrounds feel welcome and can concentrate on their studies without facing hostility and discrimination.

This is followed with a bunch of links explaining the difference between “free speech” and “hate speech”.

The next screen has some great drawings:

White men do bad things even before the party starts:

The learner cannot proceed without calling off the “Salsa and Sombreros” party (were Goya-brand products going to be served?). Correct answer:

By thanking Luca for calling out his behavior and dedicating himself to learning more about cultural appropriation, Tanner is respecting Luca’s perspective and behaving as an ally. Everybody makes mistakes — part of being an ally means being open to acknowledging when you’re wrong, and taking the necessary steps to continually check your privilege and your behavior in the future, even when it’s uncomfortable.

(see this 1993 story about a fraternity at University of California that scheduled a “South of the Border” party)

There is a video tutorial on how to apologize after using the wrong pronouns. This is followed up with some text:

Be sensitive to the situation and any histories of inequality. A great apology focuses on the harm that was done and not on the person who is apologizing.

The key to apologizing well? Remember, it’s about acknowledging your actions, not focusing on the other person’s interpretation.

Here’s the 2-minute Self-Care video:

José returns to be abused during a pickup basketball game by a white man who claims to have been fouled: “maybe that’s okay where you come from.” Bad White Man calls José a “thug.”

José considers leaving school, but he is rescued by brave student services staff and other administrators. He decides to stay and says “I’m going to make a difference.” (Like the med students that I teach! None say that they want to go into lucrative specialties and treat patients who have money and/or private insurance. It is a mystery to me where plastic surgeons and dermatologists come from.)

There is a final exam, with pretty much the same questions as the pre-exam:

#NotFunny

With 16 wrong answers out of 16, the undergraduate is qualified to join the Delta Tau Chi fraternity:

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When someone pleads ignorance regarding the Holocaust, fire him twice!

November 12, 2020November 11, 2020 by philg

“Florida Principal Who Wouldn’t Call Holocaust ‘Factual’ Is Fired Again” (NYT):

A high school principal in Florida whose refusal to acknowledge the Holocaust as a “factual, historical event” in an email led to a national backlash, his firing and then his rehiring has been fired for a second time.
The Palm Beach County school board on Tuesday voted 7 to 0 to fire the principal, William Latson, who was removed from his post last year at Spanish River Community High School in Boca Raton, Fla., after a 2018 email exchange with a student’s parent became public.

What did the guy say?

“I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee,” Mr. Latson stated in one of the emails, which were obtained by The Palm Beach Post. Mr. Latson said he had to stay “politically neutral” and separate his personal views about the Holocaust from his job as a public school official.
“I do allow information about the Holocaust to be presented and allow students and parents to make decisions about it accordingly,” he wrote. “I do the same with information about slavery.”

His answer would have been perfect for a deposition. He wasn’t alive in the 1940s. He is not a historian. He doesn’t have any better information regarding what happened during the 1940s than anyone else. Being a school system administrator does not qualify him to offer a history lesson. Also, he did clarify his personal beliefs regarding this period of history:

“I am not a Holocaust denier,” he says in the video. “I have never been a Holocaust denier. I am sorry that my comments caused people to think that.”

What was the point of firing this guy (twice!)? Just to show that even a hint of dissent cannot be tolerated?

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Elite coastal Jews advocate discrimination against white and Asian males

October 28, 2020October 28, 2020 by philg

Let’s look again at White men correctly perceive American Jews as their enemies? Here’s the latest from our Jewish-owned media elite… “Californians, Vote Yes on Prop 16” (New York Times, October 27):

Black and Latino people have been hit hardest by America’s recent one-two punch of public health and economic crises. They’ve been hospitalized for Covid-19 at quadruple the rate of white Americans. Their businesses have struggled to get the support they requested from the government’s Paycheck Protection Program. As of August, the unemployment rate for African-Americans was nearly double that of white Americans.
Amid these widening disparities, California voters are weighing a measure that could be a big help to women, Black and Latino students and business owners. Proposition 16 aims to reverse Proposition 209, a measure that California passed 24 years ago banning consideration of race, gender or ethnicity in public university admissions and public contracting. California was the first state to try to ban affirmative action, and others — including Michigan, Arizona and Washington — later followed suit.

Given that slots at public universities and funding for business owners are fixed and limited quantities, when Women, Blacks, and Latinos (but not the Latinx?) are advanced, necessarily, it is back of the bus for those unwise enough to identify as “white man” or “Asian man.”

Who else loves discrimination against white and Asian males, according to the NYT?

Proposition 16 has its supporters: the governor, Senator Kamala Harris, top public university officials.

So… a Jewish-owned newspaper reaches out from thousands of mile away to advocate for government-organized discrimination against white males and we will simultaneously say that white males who oppose Jewish-Americans are filled with irrational hatred? (We will also declare that white males who vote against the presidency of Kamala Harris are “voting against their own interest”!)

Wikipedia on the New York Times Company (the Class B shares control the company and are 90-percent owned by one family, descendants of Adolph Ochs, though intermarriage calls into question the “Jewish-owned” label and the current publisher has just one Jewish grandparent)

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Free to identify as Albanian American or a Girl Who Codes at GWU

October 27, 2020October 25, 2020 by philg

From my beloved alma mater, George Washington University, “Student groups required to update bylaws to meet GW inclusion policy” (The GW Hatchet):

More than 20 student organizations were found to have violated GW’s gender, race and religion nondiscrimination policy, according to an email officials sent to those organizations last month.
“The University does allow organizations to choose between open and selective criteria for membership – however, selective criteria for general membership into the organization must abide by University policy, including its nondiscrimination policies,” the email states.
Graham said officials contacted 23 student organizations like Girls Who Code College Loop, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Albanian American Student Association.
“Queens Movement is focused on women’s empowerment – how can we be more open and inclusive within our organization if our organization is meant to support women?” Morrisey said in an email.
“Despite these concerns, we remain committed to remaining a safe and empowering place for all of our sisters, regardless of their gender identity, and are confident that these new measures will not infringe upon our ability to do so,” Ades said.
“Title IX tried to protect students from discrimination, and sometimes the best way to do that is to create a space specifically for minority voices,” Mobarhan said in an email. “Orgs like DPE sorority, Women in Finance, GW Women of Color, Women in Computer Science and so much more are necessary for equal opportunity.”

So much great stuff here! GWU is 62 percent female (US News), but those who identify as “women” are examples of a “minority”. It is possible to be a “sister” even if one identifies as a “man”, for example. One will soon be able to identify as a “girl who codes” without identifying as a “girl”. Most confusing: How exactly does a person identify as an Albanian American?

(Readers who thought that I was merely an MIT nerd: I attended GWU as a 14-year-old growing up in Washington, D.C, then transferred to MIT as a 15-year-old sophomore. In other words, I transferred from a school that is now 62 percent female to one that was 17 percent female and called myself intelligent. Also fun: during my attendance there, a dispute arose among the trustees regarding how to make the school more “selective”. One trustee was quoted as responding, “There is a place for a mediocre university in this country and GW is it”. I personally had a great experience there. The professors were passionate about teaching and weren’t consumed with their labs, postdocs, graduate students, etc.)

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