23AR28-29

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AR 28:29 - Black professor discovers the cult of anti-racism

In this issue:

EUTHANASIA - "a civilization where euthanasia is allowed would lose 'the right to respect'"

RACISM - "I found anti-racism to be a perversion of religion: I found a cult."

Apologia Report 28:29 (1,626)
August 11, 2023

EUTHANASIA

"Assisted dying, the ultimate act of self-care" by Gaspard Koenig (Les Echos, May 8 '23) -- "France's much-discussed citizens' convention on assisted dying has just delivered its conclusions [and] spoken in favor of "active assistance in dying" (assisted suicide or euthanasia), in line with recommendations from the National Ethics Committee and most recent surveys of public opinion. But French Health Minister François Braun has expressed reservations, and proposed a simple strengthening of palliative care. ...

   "Braun is concerned that a law might 'profoundly change our society and our relationship to death.' Indeed! We remain imbued with Judeo-Christian heritage, which considers suicide a sin so severe as to prohibit burial. ...

   "This cultural subconscious resurfaces in debates on end-of-life issues, and it explains the intense opposition from people like French author Michel Houellebecq, who, despite having no religious fervor, asserts that a civilization where euthanasia is allowed would lose 'the right to respect.'"

   The remainder of this report includes further pro/con discussion. <www.bit.ly/3Ovyudk>

 ---

RACISM

"A Black Professor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell" by Vincent Lloyd (Professor, Director of Africana Studies, Villanova University) -- "On the sunny first day of seminar, I sat at the end of a pair of picnic tables with nervous, excited 17-year-olds. Twelve high-school students had been chosen by the Telluride Association <www.bit.ly/451GU1X> through a rigorous application process ... to spend six weeks together taking a college-level course, all expenses paid. ...

   "Each teenager, brought together for a common project.... In addition to the seminar, the students practiced democratic self-governance: They lived together and set their own rules. ...

   "Four weeks later, I again sat in front of the gathered students. Now, their faces were cold, their eyes down. Since the first week, I had not spotted one smile. Their number was reduced by two: The previous week, they had voted two classmates out of the house. And I was next.

   "Each student read from a prepared statement about how the seminar perpetuated anti-black violence in its content and form, how the black students had been harmed, how I was guilty of countless microaggressions, including through my body language, and how students didn't feel safe because I didn't immediately correct views that failed to treat anti-blackness as the cause of all the world's ills."

   Lloyd explains that "the seminar topic was 'Race and the Limits of Law in America.' Four of the 6 weeks were focused on anti-black racism (the other two were on anti-immigrant and anti-indigenous racism). I am a black professor, I directed my university's black-studies program, I lead anti-racism and transformative-justice workshops, and I have published books on anti-black racism and prison abolition. I live in a predominantly black neighborhood of Philadelphia, my daughter went to an Afrocentric school, and I am on the board of our local black cultural organization.

   "Like others on the left, I had been dismissive of criticisms of the current discourse on race in the United States. But now my thoughts turned to that moment in the 1970s when leftist organizations imploded, the need to match and raise the militancy of one's comrades leading to a toxic culture filled with dogmatism and disillusion. ...

   "The Telluride Association maintains a low profile, even in higher-education circles, but it has played an important role in shaping the US elite. Its alumni are ideologically diverse.... Launched by mining entrepreneur L.L. Nunn in 1911, a few years before he founded Deep Springs College, Telluride aims to cultivate democratic communities among high-school and college students. It runs houses near Cornell and the University of Michigan, where students receive scholarships, govern themselves, and incorporate intellectual life and service work into their residential communities. In 1954, Telluride started its high-school summer program.

   "Over the years, faculty from many leading US universities have taught for the program. Courses have changed with the times: 'Conflicting Ideals of Communism and Democracy' was taught in 1956; the philosopher Robert Nozick taught 'Philosophical Conceptions of Liberty' in 1965....

   "In 2014, I taught 'Race and the Limits of Law' for Telluride's Ithaca location. ...

   "I happened across the Telluride website six years later and was surprised to see my picture, from the birthday party, on the front page. With those fond memories - and with excitement at the prospect of revisiting thorny questions about race after the national conversation had changed so much because of Black Lives Matter - I reached out to Telluride to explore teaching the seminar again. (Telluride seminars are co-taught; my seminar was taught with my wife, a lawyer and indigenous-studies professor.)

   "In the wake of the George Floyd protests, a group of black Telluride alumni pressured the association to examine the racism that, they claimed, was baked into the organizational culture. 'We have all experienced anti-blackness within the association and through its programs,' their open letter said. The result was a redesign of the summer seminars: Telluride would now offer only 'Critical Black Studies' and 'Anti-Oppressive Studies' seminars. The former would 'seek to focus more specifically on the needs and interests of black students.' The seminar I taught - 'Race and the Limits of Law' - would be classed with the latter.

   "In this, Telluride continued a pattern of tracking liberal values as they evolved. ... In 1993, at the height of US multiculturalism, Telluride began offering a new stream of seminars focusing on race and difference and aimed at underrepresented students. But perhaps the implosion of my Telluride seminar suggests that this final step, centering blackness, tempts the US elite, and particularly US elite educational institutions, to take a step too far, a step into incoherence - or worse.

   "At the Cornell location, students live in the same house while participating in two different seminars. ... In 2022, however, I was told that the 'Critical Black Studies' students would live and learn separately, creating a fully 'black space.' My 'Anti-Oppressive Studies' students were separated from them. Instead of participating in a summer community of 32 high-school students, my group was to be a community of 12 (that would dwindle to nine by the time of the mutiny).

   "Furthermore, in the 2022 community, afternoons and evenings would no longer be spent having fun and doing homework. Two college-age students called 'factotums' (led by one I will call 'Keisha') were assigned to create anti-racism workshops to fill the afternoons. There were workshops on white supremacy, on privilege, on African independence movements, on the thought and activism of Angela Davis, and more, all of which followed an initial, day-long workshop on 'transformative justice.' Students described the workshops as emotionally draining, forcing the high schoolers to confront tough issues and to be challenged in ways they had never been challenged before.

   "I am no stranger to anti-racism workshops: I have participated in many of them, and I have facilitated them myself. But the Telluride workshops were being organized by two college-age students, filled with the spirit of the times. From what I gleaned, they involved crudely conveying certain dogmatic assertions, no matter what topic the workshops were ostensibly about....

   "The seminar form pulls against the form of the anti-racism workshop, and Telluride was trying to have them both at once. By its nature, a seminar requires patience. ...

   "A seminar takes time. The first day, you will be frustrated. The second and the third day, you will be frustrated. Even on the last day, you will be frustrated, though ideally now in a different way. ...

   "If the seminar is slow food, the anti-racist workshop put on by college-age students is a sugar rush. ... The worst sort of anti-racist workshop simply offers a new language for participants to echo - to retweet out loud.

   "Students at Telluride experienced two styles of learning next to each other, but also two different cultures. From the initial 'transformative-justice' workshop, students learned to snap their fingers when they agreed with what a classmate was saying. This practice immediately entered the seminar and was weaponized. ...

   "In a recent book, John McWhorter <www.bit.ly/47vimjc> asserts that anti-racism is a new religion. <www.bit.ly/3OyK1IA> It was an idea I quickly dismissed. Last summer, I found anti-racism to be a perversion of religion: I found a cult. From Wild Wild Country to the Nxivm shows to Scientology exposés, the features of cults have become familiar in popular culture." Compact, Feb 10 '23, <www.bit.ly/471wVuV>

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