Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Special Snowflakes Run Amok
The New York Times recently published an article that provides a glimpse into the microaggression movement currently infecting college campuses. The article profiles Sheree Marlowe, the chief diversity officer at Clark University, where she teaches incoming freshmen how to identify and avoid microaggressions. Here are a few tips Marlowe provided to the students attending one of her recent “training” sessions:
- Don’t ask an Asian student you don’t know for help on your math homework.
- Don’t say “you guys.” It could be interpreted as leaving out women.
- Don’t randomly ask a black student if he plays basketball.
- Don’t’ show surprise when a “feminine” woman says she is a lesbian.
- Don’t say “Everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough.” (This is a microinvalidation.)
Marlowe knows her stuff. Just ask her. Or does she? Consider this exchange she had with a student:
But some students appeared slightly confused.
“When you use the term ‘self-identify’ as a white woman, are you saying that you can choose your race?” one white male student asked.
“I’ll give you an example,” Ms. Marlowe said. “I went to a conference. I was talking to this man. I thought he was black. I was talking about diversity and social justice.”
“He said, ‘I’m Cuban,’” Ms. Marlowe told the crowd. “I assumed he was black because he was the same skin complexion as me, and the same type of hair.”
The student still seemed confused.
“Maybe we can unpack it afterward,” Ms. Marlowe told the student. “You want to come see me afterward?”
Run, kid. Run fast, run far, and don’t look back.
Marlowe does not seem to understand the difference between race and nationality, despite her fancy title and, likely, six-figure salary. Let me help her: Cuba is a country. A person can be Cuban and black in the same way a person can be Canadian and black. One would think the chief diversity officer at a university would know this but, well, it is 2016.
Where did all of this madness start? As the father of a 7th grader, I can tell you it starts much earlier than college. Since my daughter returned to school nine days ago, the school has had two bullying symposiums. They also have a full-day bullying seminar next week. One of her daily classes is a 30-minute meeting where they talk about — what else? — bullying.
I went to parent night a few days before the start of school and I was dumfounded by the amount of anti-bullying signs in the school. I was in one small area of the school, and I counted 15 anti-bullying posters. Not a single poster of Washington, Lincoln, the Declaration, the Constitution, or anything related to founding principles of our country. It was just anti-bullying stuff.
It is all part of the same movement. A movement that is headed toward what exactly, I am not sure. But I am sure Marlowe is proud of her work. This is the future that she and others like her want. No dead white guys on the walls at the schools. And the kids softened up by a toxic mixture of victimhood and guilt in which they are encouraged to react to even the slightest unintentional comment.
It’s a brave new world, folks.
Published in Culture, Education
I wonder if Ms. Marlowe has ever heard of this guy.
I somehow doubt it.
“Maybe we can unpack it afterward” will be my new go-to phrase when I have no clue how to answer someone’s sensible and direct question, and I don’t want to even attempt doing so in public.
Progressives just love to “unpack”, don’t they? They unpack more than a traveling salesperson. (I wouldn’t want to ascribe a gender to that profession.)
I have occasionally been mistaken for a Jewish person. Somehow, that has never triggered me nor caused me to seek out and cower in a safe space.
I was always called out as a non-Texan when I used the term You Guys, instead of the “Y’All so predominant across the state and the wider South. While I never really took up the habit over the 8 years, I came to appreciate the effectiveness of the term, as well as its charm. It was, and is, a perfectly suitable, and inclusive, replacement to You Guys. Yet, considering its natural affiliation with Texas and the South, could it ever be recommended as a solution. I bet not, because in all their effort to eliminate micro blah blah-ing, there are certain people, places and things to which such concerns do not apply.
One of the disturbing things about Ms Marlowe and our discussion is how divergent our worldviews are. There is simply no common ground.
For us it is self-evident that her views are absurd and completely disconnected from, not only the real world, but from any tradition of rational thought. The shallowness of her discourse is stunning.
For her, it’s just another day at the office among a multitude of people who think like her and continually reaffirm her worldview until it becomes their new and common reality.
Don’t ask Caucasian students if they will take you sailing.
Parents who send their kids to these places are committing malpractice.
The way to solve this is having them learn welding , plumbing or some other useful trade.
We are destroying a generation of American kids who will be handicapped in the global economy.
Did you all have different experiences growing up than I did? Aren’t most people on Ricochet nerds? I’m not saying the schools are going about this correctly, because what they’re doing is obviously not going to work, but I was picked on more often than not from about 1st to 9th grade until I started Drama and learned not to give an [expletive] what other people thought and started becoming much more popular.
I bet half the student population is bullied most days despite the school trying to do something about it. And it’s not teaching the kids that are being picked on any good lessons about life. We put our children in an artificial situation that encourages a pecking order. There will always be people on the bottom in these situations, and it’s wrong to force the kids to go there every day.
I don’t know what the answer to bullying is, but my guess is the first step is to have alternatives to the perfect socialist nirvana that is public school and the “private” enterprises that default to using it as a template.
Is it ok to ask if they are wearing loafers and no socks? And is “loafers” a pejorative term?
That’s the interesting thing about it. You figured it out without attending weekly/daily seminars and training sessions. Kids pick on other kids and say stupid things. It has, and always will, occur.
Part of the problem is the definition of Bullying is fluid. And Progressives are the ones who get to define it. And with a fluid definition, they can nail you as being a bully or microagressor anytime they want. They do the same with so-called “hate-speech.”
My daughter doesn’t think she has seen bullying yet, but she is not sure. She said some boys on the bus were giving her some crap, so I asked her if it was bullying. She said “no, dad, they were just acting like idiots.”
Kids can and will figure this stuff out if we let them. But Progressives won’t stand for it. They must intervene with a plan. Always.
That was my first thought too. 7th grade? Bullying? Unless you have a 1:1 adult-student ratio (and the student’s adult never leaves their side even for bathroom breaks), there is bullying going on.
It’s Lord of the Flies at that age.
The new minimum standard: zero.
The program doesn’t ever need to be done except high-profile hyped sound-bites proclaiming good intentions. The only mandated requirement is public monies spent on the proclaiming.
Yes, I figured it out. Sample size of 1. And after a miserable decade. It wasn’t worth it. Most kids on the bottom aren’t capable of figuring it out. I was lucky. They’re not easily thin or above average attractiveness. Or they’re not capable or interested in learning social cues. We’re exasperating the problem by putting kids in situations where they’re mostly around age peers. It’s just like prison only ostensibly about “learning.” Most of which we’ve all forgotten and now only know the things that we’re interested in or is vitally necessary for work or life.
Rocky disagrees:
Which one is the more authentically American story, the one that rings more true? Are you a coward, is that all you are?
Yes, and probably. Now that I think about it, I honestly can’t recall having been bullied. This might be because it didn’t happen, or it might be that I’m so socially inept I didn’t realize it was supposed to be bullying.
And how do we avoid that? Lock them up? Prevent them from going to school or interacting with others? Permanent safe spaces?
I think we need to be wary of the progressive plans to improve mankind through thought/speech police. They are watering down the issue of bullying and “microaggression” by applying it to nearly everything. Saying the phrase “you guys” is hardly equivalent to what you may have experienced. But they’ve diminished it to such a point as to be nonsensical madness, and unhelpful to those who may truly need help.
Progressives have always had one big fear. The American People. They live in fear that the people will wake up and hang them all from streetlamps.
That is why they tried gun control.
Having failed that, they are now breeding the will to resist and fight out of upcoming generations.
They want docile, fearful serfs who will accept a 7th century existence without violence.
That is their goal, to be in the elite 10%.
If kids work these things out themselves, then we won’t need high-salaried leftwing authority figures to make important decisions for them. And nobody wants that to happen. Best to nip it in the bud.
Several people, including Glenn Reynolds have suggested that our current system of sending kids to be surrounded by other kids is both very strange and problematic and that it would probably be much better if we replaced our current system of schooling with a home-school/apprenticeship model.
Easier said than done, but…
I’m not sure what’s strange about it. However, sending them to a place where most of their interactions are with children of their own age has always seemed a way to foster things like self-absorbed baby boomers. I always have liked schools where children of various ages are in the same classroom.
Yeah. It would go a long way just to mix up the age segregation, so it’s not 7th graders interacting as peers “exclusively” with other 7th graders (or 6-8, or 7-9, or whatever particular configuration the school district uses to divvy up those early teen years.)
So glad I grew up when bullying was allowed. I learned at a young age how to deal with jerks, and not be sensitive to their actions. No trigger warnings or safe places required.
Can she clarify this? I am incorrect to call someone (can I still say some”one”? Can one individual identify as multiple people yet?) “black” when they appear black? But I am correct to call them African-American when they appear black, but are neither African nor American?
That’s racist, sexist, and homophobic.
Or this is.
Or both.
Mike,
I’m sorry but I found this hilarious. You were bullied until you started Drama? Isn’t being in Drama usually the reason why someone is bullied?
What is more likely the case is that after 9th grade the incidence of bullying drops off a cliff.
This is not to been mean, I was a member of the “nerd herd” and like almost everyone was bullied in 6-9th grade. That is what 12-15 year olds do.
I am mid-30’s and the big thing when I was in elementary school was “self-esteem”. It was everywhere. I guess now they have changed to “don’t bully”.
This summer I visited with a few cousins that teach. They conveyed how much more accepting kids are these days to effeminate boys, homosexuals, transgender kids, etc. These sort of things don’t get you bullied anymore. They have even said that nerds are high on the food chain, because being smart is seen to predict future success.
Much of this is probably good, but it doesn’t portend well for social conservatives. SSM is here to stay, and the transgender genie is not getting put back into the bottle anytime soon (at least until the Muslim take over).
That is why I think social conservatives should focus on encouraging families (particularly earlier marriage), opposing abortion, and (my wild card) sexual modesty. The last includes shaming the porn and hook-up culture.
You’re not the only one who was thinking that.
Even Pamela Anderson agrees on this. Her piece in the WSJ last week:
Well, we had a really good theater program, and the people that acted in them tended to be on the more popular side and being in the plays tended to turn us into minor celebrities around the school. But point taken, it’s possible I “aged out” of being picked on. Though I’d be surprised if that was everyone’s experience.