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Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Black Fragility And Neoracism

The story and ensuing kerfluffle about the above, a question on a Civil Prodecure II exam at U. Illinois-Chicago Marshall Law School. appeared in my email yesterday morning. Brief excerpt:
...Prof. Kilborn’s offense was using the “n” and “b” words on an exam. Not the words themselves, but literally the letters “n” and “b” in a question about employment discrimination.

Aren’t we supposed to use letters instead of words, isn’t that the “correct” way to do it? Nope, not to some students....
According to the UIC JMLS Black Law Association, the wording of the question caused some students to be distracted and distressed — one student to the point of having heart palpitations.  Furthermore (emphases mine):
...UIC is now demanding that Prof. Kilborn go through re-education.... 

[...]

Last Friday, the university informed Professor Kilborn’s lawyer that Professor Kilborn would be suspended from teaching this Spring at UIC’s John Marshall Law School (although still paid, and still required to perform administrative duties) so that he can participate in rather time-intensive “re-education” programs: Download 21; 12.16 from Alsterda 

Professor Kilborn will be subjected to an 8-week indoctrination course–20 hours of coursework, required “self-reflection” (self-criticism?) papers for each of 5 modules, plus weekly 90-minute sessions with a trainer followed by three more weeks of vaguely described supplemental meetings with this trainer. Since the trainer will provide “feedback regarding Professor Kilborn’s engagement and commitment to the goals of the program,” disagreement or skepticism about the content of the program is presumably not welcome....
Read the entire article HERE.

Dr. John McWhorter addressed the above dispute and draconian consequences in his essay Black Fragility?   His entire essay is worth reading.  For expedience's sake, however, please note the last two paragraphs of Dr. McWhorter's essay (from which I developed the title of this blog post; emphases mine):

...[W]e must be able to understand black people’s history in slavery and Jim Crow as well as redlining, to be appalled at the story of Henrietta Lacks, to comprehend that racism is something more than name-calling and prejudice, to worship the work of Viola Davis, to savor Amanda Gorman’s poem at President Biden’s inauguration – while also facing that when a black law student claims heart palpitations upon reading “n-----” in an exam question about a discrimination case, it is a performance, and must not be allowed to derail lives and careers.

Protests of this kind test us on how committed we really are to assessing black people according to the content of their character. Normal people don’t fall to pieces when seeing “n*****” on a piece of paper, regardless of their race. The neoracists who have barred Jason Kilborn from campus in pretending this isn’t true are operating upon an assumption that black people are morons. This is a rather fascinating rendition of “antiracism,” and to treat it as “allyship” is nothing less than a cultural sickness.

Read Dr. McWhorter's entire essay HERE.  Worth your time and consideration.


Related video:



49 comments:

  1. I love John McWhorter. You should catch him on The Glenn Show (Glenn Loury) podcast.


    https://bloggingheads.tv/programs/glenn-show

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    Replies
    1. I much prefer Glenn Loury. He's the voice of "reason" amongst the pair. :)

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  2. Gee, that would be terrible if this were the only issue with Prof. Kilborn.

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    1. Jez,
      Did he get disciplined for those matters?

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    2. He said she said. I don't know how those snowflakes will ever make it in the legal profession.

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    3. Idk his disciplinary history, I think it's a private matter which the school would be irresponsible to share with the media. That's why these stories are always one-sided and so often misleading.

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  3. The “other matters” cited in that irresponsible ABA Journal article are demonstrated lies. Andrew Koppelman’s piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (Yes, This Is a Witch Hunt) demonstrated this step-by-step.

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  4. Though both parties have problems with 'political correctness' and the utter misuse of labels and terminology.....the Left has shown the the most egregiously zealous speech controllers lie within their ranks.

    If not being sufficiently 'antiracist' enough to satisfy the progenitors of the label.....makes one a racist....we have a problem of intellectual perfidy. Logically, one cannot discus the harm of using certain words....if one cannot even specifically allude to them.

    How can these people not know how they beclown themselves?

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    Replies
    1. ...because their ends justify their means (in their hearts).

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    2. As Jacques Lacan said to the Paris student revolt in 1968: ‘As revolutionaries, what you long for is a master,’ he told them; ‘You’ll get one …’

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    3. Can this injustice be undone with more fried chicken and watermelon?

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    4. Not w/o Whiskey brooks and cigarette trees. :P

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  5. A student at San Diego State University was moved to sue the university for months of required therapy and home rest, refund of her school expenses, and compensation for pain and suffering due to a traumatic experience on the campus.

    The poor thing saw the name "Trump" painted on a campus sidewalk, and will never be able to walk safely on a sidewalk again.

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  6. The new discourses podcast breaks this down very nicely. The ultimate aim, even though most of the foot soldiers don't know it, is a total destruction of society so that a brave New progressive world can be built upon the ashes.

    https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zb3VuZGNsb3VkLmNvbS91c2Vycy9zb3VuZGNsb3VkOnVzZXJzOjc4MTExNjMyNS9zb3VuZHMucnNz/episode/dGFnOnNvdW5kY2xvdWQsMjAxMDp0cmFja3MvMTE4MzY3ODYxNQ?ep=14

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  7. Professor McWhorter's point cannot be overemphasized. Black people are not fragile. The average black person in the West has had to put up with way more than the average white person has.

    Affluent white progressives are attempting to turn back the clock, and turn all black people into victims. It is insidious, and it is sick. This is anti-American and a fundamental disrespect of people of color.

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    Replies
    1. Whatever happened to striving to become anti-fragile? What does not kill me makes me stronger.

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  8. This is all an emphasis on being black to attract attention, garner sympathy, and strengthen BLM all the while dismantling our institutions of learning with new false narratives and destroying the careers or respected people within academia. I personally am sick of this. I am sure were MLK alive he would call these actions the lies of a heretic by this black woman with her palpitations. People's sensitivities are solely self-serving and at the end of the day I believe we will be seeing another civil war. This time not between the North and South, instead, between Black and White. Look out it will happen.

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    Replies
    1. The goals haven't changed so much as the names under which they will be changed. And change they will... By Any Means Necessary (BAMN)!

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  9. We have a lot of people unable to cope with reality and we're getting more by the minute. Ok by me. They were doing to break a spring at some point and the sooner the better.

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  10. Victor Davis Hanson accurately assesses the left, hoist of their own petard...

    Left Being Consumed by Its Own Hatreds & Hubris

    Usually, I find him a little dry and ponderous, but this one is a gem, gaining speed as it goes. An excerpt:

    Biden and the Left so despised Donald Trump that they lost all sense of moderation, of proportion, of logic itself. Thus, they find themselves in the current ridiculous situation of suffering the consequences of their own unhinged rhetoric and actions.

    Biden’s undoing was claiming not just to be antithetical to Trump, but the antithesis of all that Trump did. His hatred blinded him to the reality that Trump’s record on Afghanistan, the border, COVID-19, the economy, foreign policy, energy, and regulation was in each instance either adequate or very good. To simply nullify all of it, and to claim Trump was an ungodly disaster, meant Biden’s own one-dimensional rejectionist policies had to be winning and successful. And when they were neither, he suffered not just the wages of failure, but of hypocrisy and nemesis as well.

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    Replies
    1. VDH can be spot on at times, but this is not one of them. Trump's policy on Afghanistan was the same as his predecessors, he was as abysmal on COVID as Biden is, and the economy is far larger than any one POTUS, though oppositions routinely hammer.

      Conversely, the Trump base has utterly lost their collective minds over the election fraud fairy tale and other pursuits of invented victim-hood.

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    2. Are we supposed to politely ignore your TDS?

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    3. Do what you wish, but please don't stop your unhinged fealty to hucksters and charlatans. I find it fascinating.

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    4. Regardless of what anyone thinks happened in 2020, its time to move on. You can't go forward looking backwards.

      Trump's monomaniacal fixation on his loss is hurting the Republican Party and further unhinging the fringe of his followers.

      The door was definitely open to fraud in 2020, but unfortunately, Team Kraken quickly turned into an unhinged circus freak act. Rudy went from America's Mayor to town drunk in a matter of month. I don't say any of this with glee. It was sad to watch.

      Nobody could have turned Afghanistan around with the current Pentagon we have. At least Trump pointed us to the exit.

      VDH's point is an excellent one: Dems are so unhinged they are doing the opposite of whatever Trump did. Stupid. And it is destroying them.

      They obviously haven't read Nietzsche's warning: Beware fighting monsters that you don't become a monster yourself.



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    5. Trump's monomaniacal fixation on his loss is hurting the Republican Party

      The Republican Party is hurting itself. It's nothing to do with Trump. They want to go back to serving their corporate globalist masters, then don't expect the support of American workers.

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    6. Dems are so unhinged they are doing the opposite of whatever Trump did. Stupid. And it is destroying them.

      I wholeheartedly agree. While I don't think another GOP candidate is likely to be successful with a "Trump, who?" strategy.....we see the evidence that wherever a "Not Trump" campaign may have worked in the past, it won't work anymore.

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    7. All Republicans need to do to win over Trumpers is support AMERICAN WORKERS adopt policies that would promote SAMLL BUSINESS OWNERSHIP instead of favouring their corporate masters and raining tax benefits upon "BIG" business enterprises who already benefit from economies of scale.

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    8. ...but hey, none of those people can write a $1 million campaign donation check, so 'f 'em.

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    9. Under the current authoritarian leftist Trump-Biden tariff regimes, what small business would you dare to start up? A paper route?

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    10. Certainly not one reliant upon foreign labour or materials.

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  11. Replies
    1. Trump was the pilot for our 2016 "UA Flight 93" election... and was the first willing to break down the door into the flight cabin. Biden has turned the plane around and is headed back towards the twin towers. The passengers don't really care who the next to rush the cabin will be, just so long as the course they plot is the one favoured by the hijackers.

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    2. 2024 is going to be an UGLY presidential race. And IMO, the UGLIER it gets, the better it will be for America. So best hug your nearest MTG-esque tar baby Republican now. It's going to get dirty.

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    3. I think the 25 year long anti-Hillary Clinton campaign did what it could, the ugly started way before Donald Trump stopped financing left-wing Democrats or even 9/11 and Flight 93 was a thing. Counter-factual alternative fiction writers can explore whatever they think 2017-2021 under a President Hillary Clinton would have brought / wrought, but I seriously doubt it would have been as mortally imperiled as the hackneyed screams of horror from the Claremont Institute. A Hillary Clinton presidency would have sucked, but to the degree the Trump presidency sucked isn't even conjecture. Besides strengthening and emboldening the Chinese economy, weakening NATO, and surrendering to ISIS and the Taliban, what did Trump do that Hillary Clinton wouldn't have? The "Flight 93" caricature becomes sick, delusional, mean-spirited cartoon on that screen.

      We certainly would still have a Republican dominated Senate and House going into Hillary's second term (or Ted Cruz's first) and discontent in America probably wouldn't the situation of agitation for agitation's sake without bearing or substance that we have today, with clear election losers trying to gaslight themselves into relevance and their opponents longing for a time they didn't have to abuse the mentally ill.

      Yes, the 2024 election will be ugly. It'll then be a 33 year old tradition.

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    4. The silver lining of that cloudy forecast is that in 2024 the ugly will be the aforementioned gaslighting losers trying to pretend the election processes they've tried to discredit are suddenly worthy of participation again.

      Trump can't bring himself to criticize Biden because Biden jacked him off about vaccines, and so forth. The threadbare tires done fell off.

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    5. ^^Sitting in UA Flight 93 seat D121 waiting for the plane to land^^

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    6. "...going into Hillary's second term (or Ted Cruz's first)"

      lol - leaders don't escape to Cancun, get caught and then slink back with their tail between their legs.

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    7. Vote your conscience. In the scenario, Cruz would have been on the short list of Republicans to oust a President Hillary in 2020.

      The "Flight 93" essay was equally facile and unseemly in 2016. In 2021, we're not supposed to pretend Ashli Babbitt is Todd Beemer but there it is. Being ugly is not going to be a winning strategy in 2024, but they're going to be ugly anyway.

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    8. ^^Will Vote 4 the Politest Go-Along-to-Get-Along (R) Candidate in 2024^^

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    9. Plato, "Charmides"

      SOCRATES: 'Modesty is not good for a needy man'?

      Civility serves him no better.

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    10. ^^Will Vote 4 the Politest Go-Along-to-Get-Along (R) Candidate in 2024^^

      Doubtful. Said Republican shall have not squandered any opportunities to tell Trump voters to FOAD.

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    11. Are Trump voters even going to bother to vote anyway lol

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