22AR27-02
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AR 27:2 - "It's Not Funny" (Oh really?)
In this issue:
RACE - why "disparity will grow until someone again complains of 'inequity'"
+ Walmart 'gets the social justice credit while workers pay the price'
+ how the media ignore what the CRT debate really is
+ humor, truth, and the Left
Apologia Report 27:2 (1,555)
January 12, 2022
RACE
"Social-Justifying the Means: The Move from Equality to Equity Invites Tyranny" by Regis Nicoll <www.bit.ly/3r8LYPb> -- summarizes that "with the rise of progressivism over the last half-century, the goal of social change shifted from equality to equity. Whereas equality is about equal treatment and opportunity, equity is about equal outcomes, which, contrary to the principles of liberalism, require the unequal treatment of persons according to race, class, sex, religion, ethnicity, and, now, sexual orientation and gender identity. ...
"In his book How to Be an Antiracist, [Ibram X.] Kendi argues <www.bit.ly/3F94uwI> that 'the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.'
"If you're a benighted soul who was taught that 'two wrongs don't make a right,' Kendi wants to educate you. 'Racist power,' you see, 'has transform[ed] the act of discriminating on the basis of race into an inherently racist act.' But if racial discrimination 'is creating equity, then it is antiracist,' not racist." Nicoll includes examples of "this ends-justifies-the-means remedy."
He then explains that "the Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects whites against discrimination the same as it does blacks. (The majority opinion was written by none other than Justice Thurgood Marshall, the country's first black justice.) While affirmative action was not the subject of that case, the ruling signified that 'ends-justifies-the-means' social justice is no justice at all."
The impact of policies such as income redistribution, Great Society welfare programs, and Roe v. Wade on the black community have been "staggeringly disproportionate. Consider: prior to 1960, two-parent households were the norm in black families, and the rates of out-of-wedlock births and crime were on par with those of whites. Today among blacks, fatherless homes are the norm, and illegitimate births and per capita violent crimes are three times greater than among whites. What's more, black babies account for nearly 40 percent of the 1.2 million annual abortions in the U.S.5 Over the last 45 years, that's 25 million black artists, poets, scientists, teachers, statesmen, businessmen, doctors, engineers, and others whose lives were cut short before they could take their first breath."
In June of 2021, the mayors of eleven U.S. cities "pledged to pay reparations for slavery. As one mayor explained, 'We need decisive action to address the racial wealth gap holding communities back across our country.' The 'decisive action' decided upon in Evanston, Illinois, was to award $400,000 to 'eligible black households,' part of a pledge to spend $10,000,000 over the next ten years. ...
"The 'rags-to-riches-to-rags' stories of lottery winners demonstrates that not all poor people - black or white - are poor simply because they lack wealth; many are poor because they make poor choices.
"The upshot is that money and opportunity are not sufficient to keep people out of poverty if they have a faulty view of the world, life, and human flourishing. Without a worldview that engenders wholesome values, prudence, and good judgment, the 'suddenly rich' are likely to be drawn back into the orbit of dependence by unwise choices. ...
"Thaddeus J. Williams <www.bit.ly/3ogqK1w> points out that 'different people with different priorities making different choices will experience different outcomes.' These 'different outcomes are the price of freedom,' he writes, while, conversely, 'tyranny is the price for equal outcomes.'
"Consider those 'eligible black households' in Evanston, Illinois. If they do not share the same value system, economic equity will last among them only until each household starts choosing how to spend its windfall. With each choice made by each household, disparity will grow until someone again complains of 'inequity.'" Salvo, 58 - 2021, <www.bit.ly/3pnyUof>
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"Walmart vs. Whiteness" by Christopher F. Rufo -- "Walmart Inc. has launched a critical race theory training program that denounces the United States as a 'white supremacy system' and teaches white, hourly wage employees that they are guilty of 'white supremacy thinking' and 'internalized racial superiority.' ...
"Since the program's launch [in 2018], Walmart has trained more than 1,000 employees and made the program mandatory for executives and recommended for hourly wage workers in Walmart stores. ...
"Following the principle that 'diagnosis determines treatment,' the Walmart program seeks to create a psychological profile of whiteness that can then be treated through 'white anti-racist development.' ...
"The training program recommends that 'discussions about racist conditioning' should be conducted in racially segregated 'affinity groups,' because 'people of color and white people have their own work to do in understanding and addressing racism.' ...
"The training program teaches white employees that ideas such as 'I'm normal,' 'we're all the same,' and 'I am not the problem' are racist constructs, driven by internalized racial superiority. ...
"Walmart's training program seems a study in opportunism. ... [Walmart's] entire nine-member top executive leadership, except technology chief Suresh Kumar, is white, and its top six leaders made a combined $112 million in salary in 2019. Chief executive officer Doug McMillon, whom the whistleblower [who provided the article's documentation to Rufo] described as a 'true believer' in critical race theory, hopes to export woke ideology to every Fortune 100 company through his role as chairman of the Business Roundtable.
"The formula is clear: American executives, among the most successful people on the planet, can collect accolades and social status by promoting fashionable left-wing ideologies. Meantime, their hourly workers, making between $25,000 and $30,000 yearly, are asked to undergo dishonest and humiliating rituals to confront their 'white privilege' and 'white supremacy thinking.'" City Journal, Oct 14 '21, <www.bit.ly/3p4ue7F>
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"How media coverage of critical race theory misses the point" by Robert Pondiscio (Senior Fellow, Thomas B. Fordham Institute) -- "It is not a controversial statement to say that the debate over critical race theory in schools has shed more heat than light. ... [I]t is not too much to expect prestige media to bring to bear a bit more sobriety and subtlety. Explaining complicated issues to interested non-experts is their job.
"Thus it's disappointing to share the findings of a new report from my [American Enterprise Institute] colleague Rick Hess, who took a look at exactly how the media has been covering CRT. Armchair media critics tend to natter on about media bias, but Rick's report surfaces a more troubling issue about media completeness. ...
"Rick examined all the CRT articles published by four major newspapers [and] three influential education press outlets ... from September 2020 to August 2021.
"He found that media accounts in those outlets almost never mention CRT's immensely controversial intellectual foundations. ...
"To put the matter as mildly as possible, it would be strange to think that a system of thought that questions the 'very foundations of the liberal order' would be regarded as anything other than an existential threat to an education system built on that very order. ... CRT is not 'just teaching honest history,' it's a revolutionary doctrine.
"News accounts weren't much more informative about troubling CRT-aligned practices. And there are a host of troubling practices to be found."
It seems that "How these ideas are translated into classroom practice ... should feature prominently in any story about CRT. Yet the push for 'anti-racist' discrimination, as espoused by activists such as Kendi, was mentioned in barely 10 percent of articles. The practice of teaching against colorblindness was similarly mentioned in only 10 percent of articles."
CRT news accounts "Unsurprisingly ... spend a lot of time talking about the evils of racism. Every single article examined in the AEI report discussed racism in some form or fashion. ...
"As Rick points out, this is the one area of the CRT debate about which there's not much debate at all. ...
"'One could be forgiven for imagining that the media had set out to cover the CRT debate in a manner that would aggravate a polarized nation, fuel conservative distrust, and turn a principled debate into a food fight,' Rick concludes. ...
"Rick's eye-opening analysis suggests a remarkable and arguably irresponsible pattern: Coverage of the CRT 'debate' has demonstrably focused on what is not controversial - race - and elided almost entirely what is: revolution." American Enterprise Institute, Nov 11 '21, <www.bit.ly/33G8SW8>
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Time Out for a Laugh ( ... thanks to the Left)
Did you know, a 2021 EU report "literally titled 'It's Not Funny Anymore' warned breathlessly that, by 'blurring the lines between mischief and potentially radicalising messaging,' the 'transgressive humour' of online 'meme culture' threatens to expose people to such amorphous 'far-right' and 'extremist' notions as 'anti-elite arrogance and condescension,' or jokes making fun of those who 'do not question the information that comes from mainstream press and politics.' And why, decrying that 'humour has been weaponised as a form of resistance against a political culture that is supposedly curtailing free speech,' it called for increased global efforts to 'monitor' and 'quarantine' such humor in partnership with tech companies and 'progressive communities.' ...
The icing on the cake: "[T]he EU report bemoaned the fact that 'attempting to counter extremist humour with a form of alternative humour has proven very difficult.'" The Upheaval, Dec 26 '21, "Humor and Humanity" by N.S. Lyons <www.bit.ly/3zuMIlx>
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